Incentives matter. Imo you are not productive if you are paid for doing nothing

"The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit[4] conservative think tank"

Thanks, I'll pass.

This guy is pretty quick to dismiss the results of a very few tentative experiments. Extra money on a regular basis is certainly helpful, isn't generally spent on frivolous things, and produces some positive outcomes. But it's not nearly sufficient to break someone out of a cycle of poverty. If you're roughly "middle class" like me, you know that you're being squeezed all the time. Things get more expensive, and 'the system' is always coming up with new ways to take your money. Imagine being in the same situation, but broke and out of work, with kids. An extra thou a month might keep your head barely above water, but it certainly won't put you on a path to security or self-sufficiency.

The reason these experiments are being tried is that our social order is breaking down. Even if you're able-bodied, well educated, and willing to work, there are too few jobs that pay a living wage. And many people were unfortunately born to the wrong set of parents, so they never got good health care or education. What do we do with these people? Leave them out in the street to die?

Another view of UBI:

https://thefutureofemployment.com/universal-basic-income-a-g...

Innovators are people who can afford to take risks. UBI can enlarge the pool of those people to include those who aren't born into wealth.

Articles like this are so annoying and no surprise coming from a Manhattan Institute guy.

Of course UBI is effective. We have hundreds of studies to look at to determine this, not just two.

The NYT article was shit too. It's one thing to say that $333/mo of UBI to a family of 2 or more didn't appear to have brain development impacts that were measurable within the first few years of life. It's another to say UBI isn't effective.

We know that a guaranteed monthly income floor has all kinds of positive impacts especially on kids, and especially if kids are prevented from living in poverty for their entire childhood.

Read a 30-year study like this article covers.

https://archive.ph/ps8k1

And never forget that a key component of UBI is universality. It's one thing to study the impact on an individual. It's another to test the impact on an entire community.

In the Dauphin pilot where an entire town got it, crime went down 15%, violent crime went down 37%, and hospitalization rates went down 9%. You aren't going to find stuff like that in any pilot that isn't a saturation pilot testing universality.