[rhn_mk1]

This is not like a universal basic income though: it was not universal.

Handing of the money in an emergency situation has also the fundamental difference that it isn't meant to be sustainable: it's one off, and the preparation does not include reworking the financial structure of the state to make it permanent, like all UBI proposals I've seen so far.

[emteycz]

I absolutely don't get your point. The financial structure of the state was reworked for these not-universal payouts (this is not the USA, the annual budget is made from scratch each year), and if the payouts were universal and more than one the country would be in literal ruins right now. There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form, so how exactly could it be made sustainable if it was universal?

[rhn_mk1]

The difference is: was it reworked to make it sustainable and recurrent, or to make it work this one time?

That it failed in the current political landscape doesn't mean that it will fail in every case, and you haven't presented any evidence ruling it out. Thus "There is no possibility of making it sustainable in the not-universal form" is an unfounded claim.

[emteycz]

How exactly can it be made sustainable in recurrent and universal form, if a low one time not-universal payment nearly crushed the country? Believe me, we really tried to make it work more than one time and for more people. I say we because it required massive amounts of charity on top of the governmental aid.

[rhn_mk1]

I don't claim to have all the answers. But not having a confirmation is not the same as having a refutation.

One thing for sure, a big change will require a long ramp up, or a big shock.

[emteycz]

So, we have evidence of much smaller ambitions not working out, and you claim it says nothing about much larger ambitions, and yet you don't have any answers. Interesting how all of the UBI discussions end this way.

[rhn_mk1]

You're right on most points, so let me justify why I believe it's worth trying.

First, the possibility space of politics/economy is enormous. Presuming European countries are the ones you're talking to which couldn't bear this year's economical help, that's a useful data point, but EU countries share a lot in common: developed, industrialized, capitalist, democratic, old society, efficient etc. That by itself doesn't exhaust all the possible configurations. One could imagine countries that retain the same desirable or unavoidable properties (democracy, old age), but differs significantly in others (simple tax laws?).

Until we determine whether implementing UBI would work from all reasonably reachable configurations, it's still worth evaluating.

There have been semi-successful UBI-like ambitions IMO, when we look at the idea of "bullshit jobs". While they exist in the West, the most interesting example is Soviet countries, where citizens were given the most pointless jobs, which would give them enough money to survive. Perhaps it's not the most successful thing ever, but it's worth noting this didn't cause an immediate collapse of the system.

Treating coronavirus help as a data point is also dangerous. The results are confounded because of how the world economy was affected by the lockdowns.