[Lammy]

Your first paragraph is exactly how I would word a defense of a UBI trial that had a bad outcome. Let’s talk about the good things that happened and were measured instead of speculating about the hypothetical bad things that are out of scope for this trial. A successful small trial will lead to larger future trials that might answer your question in a more satisfying way.

[Planktonne]

Focusing solely on positive outcomes of a study and ignoring criticisms of/flaws in its premise is not really in keeping with scientific rigour.

[Lammy]

Read my comment again but read the entire thing this time ;)

[luckylion]

It's not a UBI study if it only studies whether people like getting money they don't have to do anything for.

I'm repeating it every time: these kinds of studies are the same as measuring the output of "free energy machines" that supposedly work by breaking physics... while ignoring that they are plugged into a wall-socket. To prove that they work, you'd have to unplug them, otherwise you don't need the sophisticated machine and the fancy theory, an extension cord will do the same much cheaper and more efficiently.

[pwinnski]

Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism, and I predict that even a large-scale three-year-long test that involved every western state will still be dismissed as unworkable for the same reasons: no barrier between eastern and western states, and everyone knew the test would end in three years.

[luckylion]

> Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism

No, not really, unless the money for the experiment comes from outside the region. The problem is that the argument for UBI is either that "it'll pay for itself" or "it doesn't cost more than today's system". So we'll need a test that actually tests that.

Maybe it doesn't work and we'll see "okay, it'll be 10% more expensive than today's systems". That can be achieved by raising taxes, and the result of doing that can be seen in the experiment as well: do people leave the region because they don't want to pay an extra 10%, or do they find UBI's benefits to society at large to be so large that they don't mind?

Maybe we'll see that UBI does what the proponents promise: free human innovation and productivity and easily more than pay for itself. Once that result is proven, you'll have no issue to convince anyone.

Not trying to test that at all and then saying "well, even if we would, nobody would accept that" isn't the right approach in my opinion. And it feels like there's something left unsaid: that the proponents also don't believe that it would work and therefore don't want to actually test it, because they're convinced the test will prove that it doesn't work. And as long as it's not tested, they can claim that it totally would work (in theory) without having to prove it.

[pwinnski]

So how do you propose a better test? It seems like you slid easily past that point. To determine whether or not it requires 10% higher taxes, as you suggest, we would have to conduct a test large enough to have an appreciable impact on tax allocation, which seems like it would need to be a really wide test, like state-wide, that lasts for a at least a few years, no?

I guess that's what I'm not seeing: any tests done so far are too small and not long enough and are known ahead of time to be a test. Okay, fine, let's conduct a test that's larger and long-term, with an eye toward permanence. How large, though?How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things? How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?

[luckylion]

I don't think it's fair to ask those that are skeptical of a claim to provide a test that proves it doesn't work, the duty to prove is on those making the claim.

But still: yes, you'll need a larger unit. It won't necessarily have to be a state, though that depends on the country and the tax-setup within. It would have to be something that can set their own taxes. A village would likely be too small, but a medium sized city of 20-50k should certainly see the benefits if they exist. And it wouldn't need to be limited to a few years: convince the inhabitants and you can democratically vote it in, it'll run in perpetuity, or until the money's gone in the case that it doesn't work.

> How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things?

That's not really what's criticized. The issue lots of people have with these tests is that they're only testing the distribution of money, but not the funding. You don't need to have millions of people. I'm pretty sure if you can get 10000 people that are broadly representative of the population at large and get them to fund their own UBI, collectively, and play it out, that'll be a good test in most people's eyes. I'll certainly pay attention, because it'll actually test UBI, not just "if we take money from the national taxes and give it to 500 people, what will happen?"

> How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?

An artificial boom would still be a boom. Would people invest in an area if they knew that they'd have to pay high taxes? If so: great, let them do it, that's not so bad. The problem arises when the number of people asking for UBI grows faster than those investing & funding the UBI. But that's exactly what has to be tested, because it's pretty obvious that the same would happen on a state or national level - unless we're talking about closed borders, which sounds anachronistic.

[pwinnski]

Thanks for the detailed reply!

> It would have to be something that can set their own taxes

In the US, at least, income taxes are levied at the state or federal level, not anything more local than that. Even sales taxes are generally limited by the state, if not set outright. I haven't lived in every state, so it's possible that there are exceptions somewhere, but generally I think such a test would have to come from elsewhere.

TL;DR: the smallest unit in the US that can set their own taxes is a state, making any test smaller than a state somewhat unhelpful.

> I'm pretty sure if you can get 10000 people that are broadly representative of the population at large and get them to fund their own UBI, collectively, and play it out, that'll be a good test in most people's eyes.

Ah, this strikes at the game theory heart of it! And yet still seems to be unworkable in the US. A representative cross-section would need to include both rich and poor, as the nation as a whole does. Either all are asked to pay additional taxes over and above their normal taxes, or the state in which they reside is asked to do with less tax income than normal, as some or all the taxes of those 10k would instead be redirected to the UBI trial. Both seem like a tough sell, either to the richest of the cross-section or to the state itself.

> unless we're talking about closed borders, which sounds anachronistic

Speaking of the US, while we're very poorly suited to doing a small-scale test, we're actually reasonably well suited for having somewhat closed borders, on account of being separated from most countries by big oceans. Movement within the US is trivial, while movement into or out of the US is very difficult. Presumably UBI would have some measure of buy-in that would exclude people who cross the border without documentation, at least initially.

It's even possible that we would end up with a situation like we have now, in which people working without real documentation pay taxes into social security, while never having the ability to draw on social security later in life.

Given the difficulty of finding a cross-section of volunteers and a willing state government, I wonder about alternatives. I think a case could be made that funding a UBI trial from normal revenue could still be instructive IF people participating in such a trial were opted out of all other benefits. That is, let's test the claim that UBI would be cost-effective in part because it would replace existing programs. Pick a cross-section of people, track how much is sent to them and how much is received from them, and make it closed system by denying them access to other support programs. We should be able to track what difference that makes for revenue and expenses, no?

[AnthonyMouse]

So let's unplug them then?

If the theory says that it works and the small scale trial says that it works, it's time for the large scale trial.

[luckylion]

Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale. We don't want to order a billion free energy machines before we know that they actually work without being plugged in.

Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits?

Once that's answered, we'll have a better idea of the feasibility and requirements. If people want to avoid the increased taxes so much that they'll move, we'll know that we need to close the borders to force them to stay, for example.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits?

But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that.

If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.

But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.

You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI.

The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level.

And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.

[luckylion]

> If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.

So it has to be world-wide immediately? Of course, if you only do it in e.g. Denmark, the Danish might escape to Northern Germany or Southern Norway or Sweden, while still living broadly in the same region.

Anything that's "we can't really show how great it will be until all of humanity has been convinced to go all-in, but trust us, it'll be great" has a super high risk: it might not be great at all, but since we've all committed to it, the damage isn't even contained.

> But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.

For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure. Given that their peers are usually similar to them and will also look to emigrate, you might see whole communities leave... at which point you'll need the tried & tested barrier of building literal walls with armed guards on top to keep people from escaping the utopia you've created.

It's not like we haven't tried that before, and it's not like it ended with people being shot for trying to leave. And, once the regimes fell, we've generally considered their actions crimes against humanity. Do we really need to repeat that once every other generation?

[AnthonyMouse]

> So it has to be world-wide immediately?

It has to be at the scale you want to know if it works in order to see if it works at that scale. If you want to know if it works at the state level, you try it at the state level.

> For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure.

You're forgetting about the counterbalance. If you make somewhat more than average then you pay $16,000 in taxes and receive a $12,000 UBI. On net you're paying $4000, not $16,000. And you don't have to pay taxes to fund welfare anymore, so you were already paying most or all of the $4000 to begin with, and still would be in the place without the UBI.

> It's not like we haven't tried that before

There was a country that tried a national UBI before? Which one?

[salawat]

>Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale.

Not a bad idea, but wouldn't that essentially degenerate into a capital allocation business with a functioning taxation/wealth redistribution system?

Let's be honest here. There's nothing "magic" about UBI. UBI is just what happens when you successfully tax the top of the wealth accumulation frustrum such that overall the distribution of wealth is less a pyramid and more a recognizable trapezoid. Less triangular, more quad.

The main problem is tax havening, Hollywood accounting, and abusable tax loopholes. Fix the international taxation scene/arrangement, cut down on the viability of tax evasion via legal fiction engineering, fund the capability to track down and successfully audit examples of gratuitous tax evasion (or implement bug bounties for those who help flesh out corner cases in tax law) and actually implement decent social safety nets and we could be on to something.

I get it isn't easy, that there is a lot of difficulty in getting things just right, but I dare say that in terms of seeing actual credible attempts at implementing what needs to be implemented to make it work I've seen astonishingly little; especially given that these measures would be largely deleterious to the beneficiaries of the current status quo, and would greatly shift the calculus around capital allocation away from billion/trillionaires funding personal space programs to actually enabling national scale endeavor coordination; which also brings with it the absolutely critical aspect of getting the political operating smoothly again to unlock that newly collected capital potential by keeping it flowing back into the input layers of the economy.

I can't be the only one seeing the economy as a massive NN, in which individual people are the input nodes, legal fictions are hidden layers, and government/taxation are the feedback/error propagation mechanism am I?

[AnthonyMouse]

> The main problem is tax havening, Hollywood accounting, and abusable tax loopholes.

But this is one of the other things that a UBI makes easy.

One of the best taxes in terms of resisting avoidance is a flat rate consumption tax. You can move your headquarters but you can't move your customers. You can't arbitrage the rate because it's uniform. The burden falls disproportionately on uncompetitive industries which have to eat the tax when a cost increase across the industry doesn't allow them to raise prices any further because they were already charging monopoly prices.

The normal problem with a consumption tax is that it's regressive. Everybody pays the same rate. But that's the part that gets fixed by combining it with a UBI. Someone making $50,000 may be paying a 35% marginal rate, and $17,500 in tax, but they get $12,000 of it back. Their effective rate is only 11%, even though everybody is paying the same marginal rate.

You get to have an increasing effective rate with increasing income while still having the fixed marginal rate that makes everything administratively simple, and the complexity was what enabled the avoidance.

[luckylion]

I agree, it's essentially a large redistribution scheme that requires those that are supposed to be giving not having a chance to just leave.

Tax havens and loopholes are a problem even today, but hard to fix. Germany or France would (ostensibly) love to fix them, but can't make Luxembourg or Switzerland stop offering deals and havens. Introducing UBI (and higher taxes that provide even more incentives to leave) in France or Germany won't change anything on that front.

Anything that requires global cooperation seems outside of current possibilities. Building something on the basis of "that'll work, no worries" sounds like leaving out authentication of a bank system and saying "no worries, we'll convince everyone not to cheat and log into their neighbors' account". Sure, in theory that's a great concept, but practically I'd personally avoid using that bank.