> In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we’re going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what.
This is omitting one crucial detail: for how long will the basic income last. At least for myself, my decisions would be completely different if I was to receive unconditional income for e.g. 10 years (or less), vs. for the rest of my life.
So in other words, a long enough time to make people think they can draw reasonable conclusions about the viability of BI, when in actuality it's not long enough. You have to study the generational effects of this sort of thing. People are going to behave very differently when they know this will be around for a very short time versus the rest of their lives, nevermind how people behave when they're second or third generation BIers.
There's only one way to study something like this.. and that's to do it. 5 years is a pretty amazing amount of time and I'm sure some great data will come out of it. Some smart people will probably treat it as a short-term thing and treat it as such, but the majority of the population are probably short sighted and will treat it as if it will be there forever. You can do a lot in 5 years.
> There's only one way to study something like this.. and that's to do it
This is a dangerous thing to experiment with when you have a huge nation of 318+ Million population.
It's far safer to let smaller nations, like Finland (whose entire population is less than New York City), test this idea out for a few generations. It's far easier to "bail out" a city's worth of people than it is a large nation, if things don't go as planned.
I don't think a city in the US is a good sample, since people are more likely to move in and out of the city during a generational (or multi-generational) test case. In addition, city lines/boundaries are "fuzzy" a lot of the time, often with one side of a street being incorporated and the other side not, etc. City boundary lines may also shift over time, etc.
In addition, if it's known anyone with an Oakland address gets BI, some (or many) people will attempt to move there, which will cause other unintended economic consequences for the city, skewing the test results.
A [small] nation is a better sample, since it tends to have fewer of these issues over a long time span.
Well, it's difficult to see how this trial study is going to yield any useful information.
- The sample subjects are incredibly biased, in that they are already founders and presumably motivated individuals. Not a representation of the general population, not even close.
- The study has a time limit (5 years). So no test subject is going to make life-long or life-altering decisions based on this limited trial.
So, this study doesn't seem to accomplish any of the basic tasks needed to study ramifications of such an idea in practice.
All we will know after this study is concluded, is how founders treat monthly cash given to them for 5 years. In reality, it sounds a lot like YC is just paying them a salary to build their business.
YC is testing the outcome of paying their founders a salary in order to achieve greater gains down the road... something any business will attest to being beneficial. This is not a BI study.
I agree, start small, work up. This is why I said let a small nation conduct this test (such as Finland, who is already planning to convert into a BI economy full-scale, from my understanding).
> But you are just guessing at what the problems might be.
No, the issues listed in my previous post are clearly issues with conducting this test at a city level. Part of preparing a study is to examine complications that may impact the findings... and these are obvious complications.
In all honesty, I will be rather surprised if it really winds up being a truly random selection of the Oakland population. The political incentives for the city to find a way to put a thumb on the scales will be very strong.
> Participants will be randomly selected from the population of Oakland
So you are implementing a lottery.
Why not examine existing lottery winner stats? It's essentially identical to what you are doing.
I still fail to see what anyone gains by this "experiment", except for some good PR for YC.
Not to mention, you opted to use a brand new PhD, instead of (or under the supervision of) someone more established and experienced. For this work to be taken credibly, it must have weight behind the research.
If this thing was really just about gathering data, you would have just done it... not wrote-up a blog post about it, posted it to HN, and then spent hours defending it.
I think you are putting too much weight on this pilot. They aren't trying to find out if BI is going to work, they are trying to suss out basic, mechanical issues that they might not have thought of. If good BI data comes from it, great, but that's not the point yet.
Yes but it's a starting point. Conducting a generational study will take, well, generations, and that's too long. Unfortunately the longer term, multi generation study will have to be "done in production" so to speak.
It may work, it may not. But what we're (the US) doing now isn't working.
True but there's a lot of benefits that BI proponents (and I personally) believe will happen that will show up in subsequent generations like closing the educational attainment gap between the poor and everyone else. Also there's the question of if it's sustainable in case the fears of it just making everyone drop out of the work force are true. [1]
[1] Though from the same people you'll hear that work provides so much meaning to life that if people aren't working because they can live without it that they'll just be miserable. Which seems to contradict itself, either work is so meaningful that without we're miserable so we'll work even if we don't have to. Or it's not that meaningful and we'll be fine without it.
But did you read what they said? That's not the point of this. It's a pilot study to get their feet under them and get some idea of how the real, long-term study would go. The point of this isn't to draw conclusions about BI, it's to draw conclusions about how to study BI so as to help them set up the long-term version more effectively.
That's certainly an issue, but your demand stifles any effort to learn more by saying that you have to study "generational effects" (what, maybe a 50 year study before you can learn anything). Which will just be followed up by the equally valid criticism that you can only study this if everyone has BI (to see if it's the relative effect that matters).
Reasonable seeming concerns, but you have to start somewhere to learn anything.
> That's certainly an issue, but your demand stifles any effort to learn more by saying that you have to study "generational effects" (what, maybe a 50 year study before you can learn anything).
It's less costly than rushing into BI. It's one of those social programs that once introduced can NEVER be taken away.
You might think that, because no country has implemented BI, then considered it a failed project, then scraped that system for something better, yet. But one of the countries on this planet might be the first to try that. It's one of those "nobody done it yet thus it can't be done by anyone" ideas that reality so often find is false.
Did you miss the part about this being a small pilot? I sounds like they want to figure out the administration and reporting issues more than anything.
I'm afraid with such short duration you'll not be able to observe true effects of basic income on people's behaviors.
It will be more something like "sabbatical" in academia - you can devote a time to some side projects (whether career related or pure leisure), but everything you'll do you'll do with considerations of how your life will proceed once the sabbatical is over and there is no more safety net (assuming rational actors).
The actual study will likely run for 5 years. The shorter pilot will help us refine our research design and mechanics; we don't expect to answer any of our research questions with the pilot.
Five years is much better but fundamental issue is still there - "there is a deadline after which the utopia ends".
Did you consider maybe using fewer participants but possibly much longer time-frames (e.g. for the same budget 10x less people but 50 years of BI, or even 20x less participants and 100 years of BI to have safe margin)?
I'm aware this would be hard / impossible to personally see to the full fruition (see e.g. Up series [1]), but even just that 5 years window frame for the observation and research (which you already prepared yourself for) but with participants who could have "piece of mind for the rest of their lives" could radically alter the results of the experiment.
Most people will never abandon their job for 5 years of guaranteed income, even if they hate their job.
What happens after the money ends? They have to re-train, search for a job, apply, interview, explain a 5 years gap, climb the office/workshop ladder from the bottom again...
Situation changes radically if the income is guaranteed for life, if they are guaranteed to never have the necessity to work again.
Since a study limited to 5 years can't, by design, satisfy this last condition, it won't be significant at predicting how many people will leave a "hard" job.
What kind of results do you expect from this pilot? I imagine you could get some positive results (i.e. people change behaviour when they get unconditional income), but my expectation would be that not a lot would change. But the problem is that if the result is negative (the behaviour doesn't change), it will be invalid, but most likely misinterpreted by casual observers.
For the short-term pilot, we don't expect to see many behavioral changes--we'll just test the mechanics and refine our research design and outcome measures. We'll begin examining our research questions in earnest with the full 5-year study.
...aaaaand whether or not your children would be receiving it, right? We make many rather large financial decisions based on our choices to procreate or not. If I didn't know if my kids were taken care of, I would probably make different decisions than if I did. There really is no way to test basic income without simply implementing it.
Just because the government says it will be "forever" doesn't mean it will. When thinking about planing the multi-generational prosperity of your family (something few people do to any serious degree) you can't take the perpetual existence of this-or-that political institution as granted.
Which should be just fine under UBI, where you shouldn't be getting anything for children in the first place. Children are not adults, and are not treated like adults for the vast majority of social contracts, and UBI is certainly one of them - we have no expectation today of children to make any income whatsoever now, but to be provided for by their parents. If parents would only be on UBI, that is not enough to provide for kids, but that is a reflection of negligence on the part of the parents.
It is certainly an endemic problem we need solutions for in that the poor, the most promiscuous population, is also the one that cannot afford their own children, but we certainly do not want to give them any incentives to have more kids. Children should absolutely be an expense to the parents, because the parents decided to have them, and unless we need kids (at which point the state can start subsidizing procreation in almost any way they want) we need to maintain strong (and much better than we have) adoption and orphanage faculties, but not excuse bad parents in any way who make irresponsible immature decisions like reproducing without any financial means to care for their own.
> Which should be just fine under UBI, where you shouldn't be getting anything for children in the first place.
If you are going to replace present means-tested benefit programs and not adversely affect current recipients, you need to have a lot higher per-person level of UBI if children aren't covered beneficiaries.
The most sensible target population I see for a UBI in the US is probably "all US citizens and legal permanent residents (green card holders)", without respect to age.
> and unless we need kids
We do. Permanently greying population would be a serious problem.
You only need kids if your society is in a position where those with the wealth to afford children are not having them. Japan certainly has that problem, currently, the US does not. If you are in the Japanese situation, I would still argue opening up immigration is almost certainly cheaper an option than subsidizing child rearing, but we are no where near any problems stateside involving population replacement, and if we did, again, we can open our borders much more before turning to child subsidy.
If parents would only be on UBI, that is not enough to provide for kids, but that is a reflection of negligence on the part of the parents.
Scenario: Single mom of a child with special needs who is devotedly taking care of said child and does not have time to also work for money.
One of my fears with UBI is that I am hearing ideas posited that men will no longer be made responsible for things like child support or alimony because, hey, the woman gets a check anyway. And I think this is incredibly, seriously problematic.
Please do not make such sweeping statements about parents. Parenting is a very tough thing and money alone hardly makes one a decent parent. Studies have shown that there is as much neglect and abuse (and addiction) in rich neighborhood as in the ghetto. The best parents are typically middle class. They have consistently made choices to try to balance the need for money (which takes time) and the need to spend substantial time with their child(ren) in order to raise them.
> One of my fears with UBI is that I am hearing ideas posited that men will no longer be made responsible for things like child support or alimony because, hey, the woman gets a check anyway. And I think this is incredibly, seriously problematic.
Both child support and alimony are not flat basic-necessity calculations, but are income based. The availability of a UBI doesn't change the fundamental premises on which those are built, or even make any significant impact on the formulas -- under the assumption that a UBI paid to the adults would be counted as each adult's income, and UBI paid for the child to the custodial parent(s) would be treated as joint income when the parents are together and income solely of the custodial parent in the formulas after a split, there would be no need to even touch existing formulas.
That's a nice theory. But I have seen comments right here on HN where people suggested that we could stop providing child support payments if we had UBI "because men would be supporting the children via taxes anyway" or words to that effect.
Furthermore, I have read up on the history of the American welfare program. It was dreamed up as a means to "help poor, single moms" at a time when intentionally getting pregnant out of wedlock was essentially unthinkable, so most poor, single moms were widows, not women who had given birth out of wedlock. The design of the program fundamentally changed the social contract and actively promoted the numbers of poor, single moms in the U.S., in part by making it less stigmatizing to have kids out of wedlock.
So, whether it is intended or not, if you pass a UBI, an awful lot of people will feel like deadbeat dads are not such a big deal and you will further change the social contract. The indicators I am seeing is that many of those changes will be negative changes rooted in a presumed lack of responsibility for our actions.
Your argument actually generalizes to a broader one -- if people get money from the government then it weakens family bonds because family members don't need each other as much when they have government money. But it fails for the same reasons all the other ones do, which is that UBI is unequivocally better than the status quo of means tested welfare.
Welfare has the same problem with creating deadbeats but much worse, because if the father does actually pay child support or for that matter stays with the mother to raise the child, then the mother loses the welfare benefits. When you have two parents who are very poor but love their child it creates the unconscionable incentive for the father to leave so that the mother then qualifies for welfare while the father sends what money he can in cash under the table.
UBI at least improves the status quo by eliminating that.
> Scenario: Single mom of a child with special needs who is devotedly taking care of said child and does not have time to also work for money.
To have children without the resources to provide for them is a terrible offense to the child. The single mom you describe made a mistake. Good things can come from bad decisions without trying to sugar coat bad decision making. Your scenario implies she had the child out of wedlock though, because....
> will no longer be made responsible for things like child support or alimony because, hey, the woman gets a check anyway
Certainly not, by my perspective. UBI is for individual needs provisioning. Your children supplant your own needs, and if either parent is exclusively on UBI they are in the unique situation where there is justification for them not having a minimum standard of living even with a UBI because they have committed themselves to taking care of their children first. In practice, that will rarely happen on the side of the custodial parent - the child would just suffer instead - but at least the one paying support would definitely not get out of it.
That is, of course, given that the parents started in a stable financial situation and just divorced, and had the reasonable financial means to afford children. If not, I have no sympathy. You have no right to have society give you money for succumbing to baser instincts, and it is a strong indicator of selfish behavior unfitting of good parents to have kids in such circumstances. And like I said, if the parents had the means, and just got divorced, of course the non-custodial parent should be paying in accordance with their original budgeting for the child, though I would mention that you would often want to the kid to go with whoever has the more stable income rather than who has the vagina more often than we do now (I have experienced through siblings the hell that is custody courts, and it is certainly completely broken today).
> Please do not make such sweeping statements about parents.
If you buy lottery tickets rather than pay your rent, I will make sweeping statements about your financial planning skills. If you splurge on a fancy dinner to then go hungry the rest of the week, I will certainly criticize that decision making as well. If you have children without confidence in your ability to provide for them, I will criticize you for just the same reasons. That does not make you a good or even a bad parent, it just makes you irresponsible.
But it does not matter how much you try to balance time vs money for your children after the fact. If you had them without the resources to provide the time and money they need they are negligent. The best intentions are meaningless when presented with reality, and at the macro-social level your intentions mean nothing next to the millions of other disadvantaged parents who probably mostly also had the best intentions, but led to childhood poverty being at its highest in 50 years in the states because we do not hold people accountable for terrible decision making with some of the most vicious costs possible - the damage poverty does to children is becoming more apparent every year, and it is a travesty to excuse their parents for it because some peoples bad decisions hurt others beyond themselves.
> this could become an incentive for people to have tons of kids
Or, alternatively, to have fewer kids, if they were planning (as many parents in the USA do) to provide financial support for college to those children.
> Or, alternatively, to have fewer kids, if they were planning (as many parents in the USA do) to provide financial support for college to those children.
How's that? Every BI plan I've heard floated around starts paying out when a person reaches 18 years of age (absolutely college age). So, as soon as a child goes to university, they get BI, and parents don't have to afford a single expense. Seems to alleviate the burden of having a child in that age range.
> So, as soon as a child goes to university, they get BI, and parents don't have to afford a single expense.
Most near-term UBI proposals (and all plausible ones) wouldn't pay all living expenses in most college communities + the costs of actually attending college, so the idea that having BI available to college-age recipients would alleviate all parental burdens of college-age offspring is, well, sheer fantasy.
> So, as soon as a child goes to university, they get BI, and parents don't have to afford a single expense.
There are countries where university tuition is free, and the state also pays student benefits to every student, which makes it financially possible to study without receiving money from your parents.
Those countries tend to have lower birth rates than USA.
I can easily imagine plenty of state schools would trade UBI for room, board, and tuition for the brightest students.
For the rest? We need more trade schools today, and we are talking about something theoretical at least years away and probably decades, when we will hopefully be past the ancient university model of tremendous expense and most people are taking courses online or through trade schools at very little cost.
Tuition is due a few times a year (usually twice, but some systems are quarterly). If the student gets a BI every month, there should be no issue affording tuition, in addition to living expenses.
> Tuition is due a few times a year (usually twice, but some systems are quarterly). If the student gets a BI every month, there should be no issue affording tuition, in addition to living expenses.
Tuition, fees, books, etc., together at many institutions are, annually, is near or even greater than the total amount of annual per-person UBI in many proposals I've seen.
Somewhere between 10 years and the-rest-of-your-life, you need to start taking geo-political risk into account. Just because a government says it will be forever, doesn't mean it will.
Indeed, it would have to be guaranteed by some big insurance company (e.g. YC could simply buy annuities). If those companies fail, there will probably be bigger problems in the world :)
The 5 years they are going for just doesn't seem long enough for the reason that if you actually choose not to work during that time, you will very likely be completely screwed at the end of the study when you need to get a job again (similar to mothers leaving the work force for multiple years to raise kids). A person evaluating their options in this program is thus much more likely to use the UBI as supplemental income than as a job replacement like they might if it was guaranteed to retirement age. This is still great, but I don't think the results will be overly indicative of outcomes in a nation-wide rollout scenario.
There is another problem with such a pilot. I think that many of the positive effects of BI will only be borne out in a society in which everyone has it, where a culture exists around the concept of BI, and where the society as a whole is involved in a discourse about its optimal use. If you are an isolated case, you will run into all kinds of obstacles, practical and psychological, and you will not be able to make good use of it. It's like giving smart phones to Neanderthals, it's not going to work although smart phones are actually a good idea.
"We want to run a large, long-term study to answer a few key questions: how people’s happiness, well-being, and financial health are affected by basic income, as well as how people might spend their time.
But before we do that, we’re going to start with a short-term pilot in Oakland. Our goal will be to prepare for the longer-term study by working on our methods--how to pay people, how to collect data, how to randomly choose a sample, etc."
This is omitting one crucial detail: for how long will the basic income last. At least for myself, my decisions would be completely different if I was to receive unconditional income for e.g. 10 years (or less), vs. for the rest of my life.