[ornornor]

Why can’t we ever design one such experiment right? It’s as if we were giving ammunition to those opposed to it by conducting trials that have flaws! Would it really be so hard to run a proper test that follows all the best practices and isn’t biased/flawed so that we could once and for all point at it and say “we can conclusively say UBI is/isn’t viable based on this experiment”?

I mean if a country goes all the way to overcoming political and opinion opposition along with securing funding to actually run such a trial, why not go all the way and do it right?

[luckylion]

A "real" test would be much harder, and to be actually useful, it would also have to contain a way to finance itself, i.e. by testing it not on a selected group of people, but on a region and adding additional taxes for everyone in the region large enough to offset the payments.

If you're only testing the outcome, but not the income, you're essentially allowing "free energy" people to plug their magic machines into a wall socket while you test the energy output of their machines.

Much fewer people will agree to run that test (as it'll negatively affect their bottom line), and I do believe that proponents of UBI will also be more hesitant to run it, as it might prove that adding e.g. 20% to income tax will motivate tax payers to migrate away from UBI zones.

[TotempaaltJ]

AFAIK one component of UBI is that you throw out (most of?) the other welfare benefits you might get. By saving money on that, you could potentially offset or even compensate for the required added income tax.

[jfindley]

This sort of thing gets mentioned a lot, but in practice doesn't work. The amount of money spent on welfare benefits[0], plus the cost of the administration, ends up several orders of magnitude less money than UBI wage x Population size. This is the key problem with UBI: making it actually universal costs an unsustainably huge sum of money, and making it not universal just means you've re-invented welfare benefits, but worse.

0: Doesn't really matter which country you choose the results will be the same

[dogma1138]

It’s also important to note that the direct and indirect benefits of traditional welfare are also considerably higher than even the highest suggested UBI allowances.

For example in the UK housing benefits would be greatly dependent on where you live in some London councils housing benefits can be as high as £400 per week, this alone is more than the highest proposed UBI allowances that aim to match the tax free allowance (currently at £12.5K).

UBI with removal of all other benefits could easily mean that the people that need it the most would be getting less and sometimes much less.

[swebs]

In science, evidence determines your viewpoints. In politics, its the other way around.

If the results of an experiment support your views, then it was a great experiment and proof that you were right all along.

If the results of an experiment contradict your views, then you can fully scrutinize every aspect of the test to come up with reasons why it got such a wrong result.

[plutonorm]

I don't think science is free from those flaws either. Science advances one death at a time.

[swebs]

There are certainly plenty of fields that have a these problems and are vulnerable to be politically driven. I'd say the further toward the "soft" sciences you go, the more you're able to manipulate results to fit certain viewpoints. 538 has a nice little demo showing off the problem.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/

[KittenInABox]

Is CS a soft science? There’s a ton of massaging in machine learning IME.

[swebs]

Yes, some branches definitely. Especially human-computer interaction. Other branches like discrete math or algorithm analysis are impossible to fudge. Machine learning is somewhere in the middle.

[travisporter]

Awesome site! Sadly p hacking is also a problem in many fields not just the soft sciences. It’s a bit of a dig at science but is it a fundamental flaw of the scientific method?

[notahacker]

Doing the test properly means that the subsidy has to be paid for by much higher taxes on the study group only [as opposed to general government revenue raised mainly from taxes on the control group] and that the subsidy has to be credibly promised for life, not just for a year or two.

For obvious reasons, this is politically different to achieve.

[dexterdog]

A real world would have to include everybody in the economy or you will not disprove the objection that it will just create inflation on necessities. It's the problem with economic experimentation. There is only one actual economy and there is no real way to A-B.

[mbar84]

A real test would have to

- pick participants at random (regardless of employment status) - give money to all the participants - make all participants pay higher taxes to finance

For this to be realistic, the participants would not have a choice whether or not to participate. So yeah, I can't for the life of me think why we "can't ever design such experiment right".

[ornornor]

> So yeah, I can't for the life of me think why we "can't ever design such experiment right".

Your sarcasm undermines your point.

[diekdnk]

The test was conducted by a popular right wing party "Kokoomus", which is heavily opposed to the system. This might affect the design of the test

[swebs]

>According to its 2006-adopted platform, the National Coalition Party's policy is based on "freedom, responsibility and democracy, equality of opportunity, education, supportiveness, tolerance and caring".[9] The party is described by literature as a liberal[2] and conservative[3] as well as a liberal-conservative[4] party in the centre-right[8] with catch-all party characteristics.[29] The non-profit Democratic Society described it as "the heir to both liberal and conservative strains of right-of-centre thought" that is becoming increasingly liberal compared to its official stance of conservatism.[6]

>Specifically, it contains elements of cultural and economic liberalism and social reformism.[30] For example, it supports multiculturalism, work-based immigration, gay rights and same sex marriage.[6][31][32][33] Although formerly considered to have been critical of the Nordic welfare model and campaigning for strict doctrines of economic liberalism, in the 1970s the party shifted to supporting more social liberalism, such as increased social security and a welfare state, justified by increased individual liberty.[34]

They've really pivoted on that issue in the past few decades.

[pasiaj]

"Kokoomus ... is heavily opposed to the system"

There is no "system". There is an endless number of possible implementations of UBI on a spectrum that ranges from communist to libertarian.

One of the main UBI stalwarts in Finland is the pinnacle capitalist ideolog and banker Björn Whalroos, who wants UBI to replace ALL other welfare-state programs, including universal health care.

On the other end of the spectrum are proposals for UBI with a purpose to solve issues caused by globalization, patch-work employment, etc.

Kokoomus has strong proponents of UBI and if I recall correctly, the party approved a resolution for studying UBI 13 years ago in their 2007 national convention.