Just How Many More Successful UBI Trials Do We Need?
129 comments
·June 17, 2025tdrgabi
KaiserPro
> why wouldn't rent increase by close to 1000$.
prices are dependent on demand/supply rather than how much money people have.
It might increase rental prices, but the people that are reliant on UBI tend to be on some sort of rent control mechanism.
The biggest hurdle though is that people getting jealous of "money for nothing" despite interest being literally that.
mike_hearn
> prices are dependent on demand/supply rather than how much money people have ... [UBI] might increase rental prices
Which is it? You can't have it both ways. The right answer is that if you print new money prices go up. If UBI is funded by taxes it's not a UBI (some people will end up giving back more in taxes than they "receive" in UBI, so it's net negative for them). If it's funded by borrowing it's not sustainable. If it's funded by money printing then prices will rise and the effect is eliminated.
> the people that are reliant on UBI tend to be on some sort of rent control mechanism
The argument for UBI is it lets you get rid of other means tested welfare systems. If you're going to introduce a category of people who really need UBI vs other people who don't really need it, and have special rules for the former, it's just a rebranded welfare system and those already exist.
rich_sasha
I guess the theory, really, is that it's funded by corporate taxes. The triad of key taxes is income, sales/VAT and corporate. Income, as you say, is out, so is sales (since it's paid by end consumers) so you're left with corporate. And I guess that's kind of what would happen if one day AI takes over. There will be masses of unemployable people, farms and mines and factories ran by computers, and we will all be funded by this.
Until that utopia comes around, I don't see any way to fund UBI, as you say.
azornathogron
That doesn't seem like a full explanation. Sure, prices are tied to supply and demand. But demand is tied to how much money people have, so that just brings you right back to the original question.
dagw
Housing supply and demand isn't static. With UBI the need to live close to employment opportunities decreases, opening up more supply in areas that are currently less attractive and decreasing demand in other areas.
Furthermore we still don't know how people will react to UBI once they feel it is universal and permanent. If you're busting your ass to take home $1500 a month today, and then you get $1500 a month UBI, will you keep working just as much and take home $3000 a month, will you cut down on work and aim for $2200 a month, or will you keep living on $1500 a month and just chill all day. Depending on what choices people make, most people might not end up with that much more money.
schmorptron
This applies less for basic human needs like a roof over the head, especially in a supply constrained market like we've been in for quite some time in many places around the world
echelon
> prices are dependent on demand/supply rather than how much money people have.
That's not the full story of how the economics of demand work.
Demand increases as the money supply increases, but supply remains constant. This is inflation. More dollars chasing the same basket of goods.
Another way to look at it is as the money supply increases, the cost of money and the cost to borrow decreases. This leads to an increased desire to spend. It's an aggregate demand increase across businesses and consumers.
We recently saw the impact of this when the money supply was increased during Covid. It led to one of the largest jumps in inflation in our lifetimes.
KaiserPro
> Another way to look at it is as the money supply increases, the cost of money and the cost to borrow decreases.
I'm going to say something radical here, so do hear me out. any bank that loans money, is increasing the money supply. the more banks lend, the more money is printed. There is no fixed supply of virtual money. We don't really know how much actual dollars there are out there. (ignoring eurodollars)
Banks profits are literally because they are printing money. The very act of loaning out means that the 1 dollar bill you deposited with become 1.8, as its loaned out again to someone else, who then repays it, with interest.
<<end radicalism>>
Sure we had QE, we had covid cash, but the problem with using covid as an example of "giving money to everyone causes inflation" is that its difficult to distinguish from supply chain, tariffs, stimulus and $other.
the other problem is that stimulus was given to companies as well.
but the argument about not increasing the money supply is difficult to argue unless you are a bank, because that's their job, not the government's.
so, the point is, the economics of demand is an approximate model, rather than a formula. Its based on the collective perceived value of a good or service, rather than a strict supply/demand. sure its a close approximation, but not an accurate one.
bradlys
We’ve already seen that the market is not like that. Rent collusion already exists with landlords.
When it comes to a necessity like shelter, it doesn’t follow supply/demand curves all the time.
bryanlarsen
Housing follows supply/demand curves more than most other goods do. Most other goods have elastic supply -- when demand for widgets goes up factories start producing more widgets so the price follows the commodity rule "price = marginal cost" rather than classical supply and demand.
hedora
With UBI and a flat tax, you end up paying:
tax_rate * income - ubi
to the government. Tax rate has to go up for UBI to be revenue neutral. So, it is not inflationary. It just provides safety net for low income people.
Note that this formula would greatly simplify the tax code (especially if income included capital gains and maybe excluded donations), and is also actually progressive (your effective tax rate increases monotonically with income), unlike the current US system.
brendanyounger
The current US federal tax system already is progressive in this way. Your first $X are taxed at 0%, the next $Y at 10%, etc. up to 37%. Your UBI in your formula is basically the standard deduction in the current system. But you still need to work or invest to make the first $X which are federal tax-free.
afiori
those percentages only apply if you decide not to do any of the various legal variants of money laundering
dgfitz
So, when hundreds of millions of people got checks because covid, that wasn't inflationary? Sure feels like it was. UBI is the same thing.
AnimalMuppet
You're not listening. During Covid, we did not do what the GP said. So no, UBI (implemented the way the GP said) is not the same thing.
null
splix
I think you're referring to the Winston Churchill's "on Land Monopoly".
I don't remember exact details and may miss something, but the work is very short so please check it. In short, he described, I believe, a real situation when a major of people in a town got extra extra money because a toll on the bridge to the fabric was eliminated. But in a short time the town's rental cost grew up by exactly this amount.
radpanda
I’ve always seen UBI as part of a post-scarcity sci-fi future. Once the robots run the farms and deliver the food and build the buildings and so on, and there just isn’t enough work to go around for humans, of course the fruits of this productivity should be shared with the wider population (both morally and to prevent uprisings). Sure, in this sci-fi future you can live in your basic pod and eat basic food for free or you can work a little or a lot to try to upgrade your situation.
But I don’t think we’re there yet. We do have a lot of industries that rely on shit jobs that people would rather not do. If we, IMHO prematurely, try to institute a UBI now we’d be in for a world of pain along the way as the prices of basic services skyrocket without robots being ready to step in.
K0balt
“Of course”
But, that’s not where we are headed.
Instead, automation will make money irrelevant in the “we don’t need to make money because money ultimately only can be used to pay wages, and nothing else” way.
Since automation means you don’t pay wages anymore, you only need natural resources and energy.
When corporations no longer see (external) money as useful, but only as a way to apportion resources internally to stakeholders, that makes everyone outside of that system into ants.
It’s grey goo, just on a macroscopic scale.
yorwba
If you make the "basic pod" a tent, wealthy countries could probably afford this sci-fi future today. But "enough money to live like a homeless person without having to beg or steal" doesn't sound so great as an aspirational goal, does it?
If the "basic pod" is supposed to be something more durable, probably the first step would have to be building enough homeless shelters for all the UBI recipients without another source of income.
gruez
>If you make the "basic pod" a tent, wealthy countries could probably afford this sci-fi future today.
Don't you also need food?
insane_dreamer
> of course the fruits of this productivity should be shared with the wider population
we're quickly getting closer to that stage with the promises of AI-increased productivity; and yet, there is not the faintest signal from those building and profiting from AI that the fruits of the increased productivity will be shared; quite to the contrary it will be captured almost entirely by shareholders -- why are investors pouring hundreds of $B into AI otherwise?
PleasureBot
Because you can buy anything with that $1000. Some people will buy clothes, others a new computer, others will travel etc. The demand for any one specific thing (apples, rent, netflix, etc.) will only increase a tiny fraction.
K0balt
Because presumably the money doesn’t come from increasing the money supply but rather by the redirection of tax revenue.
FWIW we have had a form of UBI in the USA for decades: the earned income tax credit, which for many people amounts to a significant subsidy over and above their tax burden. Nobody stopped working, and prices didn’t go up.
gruez
>FWIW we have had a form of UBI in the USA for decades: the earned income tax credit, which for many people amounts to a significant subsidy over and above their tax burden
How is a tax credit that you only get if you're working, and scales up depending on how much you earn (to an extent) an "universal" basic income?
>Nobody stopped working, and prices didn’t go up.
Nobody stopped working because you had to work to get the tax credit.
gruez
Rent is expensive because all the jobs are in expensive metros, so people are forced to move there. With UBI the idea is that some fraction of people won't have to work (or can do part time remote work), and therefore can move to a random town in North Dakota with cheap rent.
vasco
Other cool things cities have is police stations and hospitals, but I guess since there's no jobs you just get treated by a robot in the woods?
But then if people are creating art or working on their theater play or whatever, they'll want other people to show it too. I don't see cities existing only because of jobs.
danaris
This is an unhelpfully binary view of cities vs small towns.
I live in a village of roughly 5k people. The nearest city is 45 minutes' drive away. We have both a police station and a hospital.
cscheid
Presumably because one of the two things are true:
- there's competition, and so if it's possible to rent for less than 1000-eps and still profit, someone will
- there's no competition, which is a cartel, the kind of thing that civilized societies ought to frown upon
vasco
Do you know the adage location location location? The competition for good locations is among renters, not landlords. Seller's market vs buyer's market. Doesn't have to mean there's a cartel, it also doesn't mean there isn't one but it's not a guarantee.
svnt
I am trying to understand your perspective. How do people buying and selling real estate, the origin of the adage “location, location, location,” not compete on locations?
RegnisGnaw
The problem is that no UBI trial reflects how it will work. In all the trials, the people in the trial knows it will end so they won't change their behavior as much as they would if it was permanent. Hence any analysis is flawed.
crmi
I agree most are flawed. I read one (I think from Sweden perhaps) that had a longer timeline and actually used some better methodology than others which seemed more insightful.
But as others say, at the end of the day if everyone has an extra $1000 a month, there will be groups such as landlords trying to jack up prices.
To counter other commenters on this issue - we do have price controls on things such as milk, bread etc and it does 'work' to some degree. In the landlords example above - a smart gov would implement an algorithm for 'greed' and fine/tax offenders and put that money into the UBI cash reserves.
I think UBI as a real possibility needs to be taken seriously. The level of AI has accelerated in such a short timeframe that (imo) we're starting to see the knock on effects into society. This is just in tech for now - thousands applicants for positions, and no one really needing to hire juniors as Claude et al easily replace the tasks they do.
Once other industries realize that they can replace a lot of tasks with ai, we'll see a gradual shortage of jobs for unskilled admin jobs (not manual labour... Yet)
There's a lot of shouting about AGI but the current LLM landscape effects are slowly happening around us right now. UBI studies should be taken more seriously and at a larger scale.
UncleEntity
> To counter other commenters on this issue - we do have price controls on things such as milk, bread etc and it does 'work' to some degree.
My understanding, based in the US, is the commodity price controls set a minimum price to protect the farmers and not the consumers.
To counter your point, look no further than tuition prices at US universities. In the '90s (when I went to university) they were fairly heavily subsidized then the state governments stepped back and federal loans and grants took over. Universities, seeing this new influx of capital, promptly raised their prices well over inflationary rates to capture more and more of these federal funds leading to what we have today. I, admittedly, took the cheap route of community college and state university (along with the GI Bill) and only had something like $6k in student loan debt by the time I got my bachelors in '97 while today's community colleges have higher tuition than what I was paying at university.
Though... I don't doubt AI is going to cause some serious problems when it starts replacing people at high rates across the board.
insane_dreamer
> they were fairly heavily subsidized then the state governments stepped back and federal loans and grants took over ... Universities, seeing this new influx of capital, promptly raised their prices
wasn't this simply a substitution of income sources (from state government grants to the federal government student loans) rather than an actual increase in capital?
magospietato
At least one in my opinion. None of these studies are designed to be capable of tracking "success" across a society.
There's this wide belief that the plebescite will emergently produce great cultural works if they're freed from labour.
We already have effective UBI for the non-working classes in many countries. I can assure you that the recipients produce little of worth.
chneu
Oh I'm so glad some random comment on HN can assure of us such things.
What is this "effective UBI" that you're talking about? Pensions? That isn't UBI.
keiferski
I think I’d rather first have free education, healthcare, public transit, and a half dozen other things paid for / subsidized by the government before UBI is implemented.
Especially as the world gets more complicated: giving people money without any sort of structure or guidance is a recipe for malaise and lack of purpose.
MOARDONGZPLZ
> giving people money without any sort of structure or guidance is a recipe for malaise and lack of purpose.
The whole article talks about this aspect. What was your take on the points the article raised with respect to this?
keiferski
The key point is that people feel better because they have more financial security…which is better achieved by providing the resources I mentioned.
It has nothing to do with laziness, as the (unnecessarily hostile article argues) but is simply because the world is getting more complex, and an inflationary-prone method like UBI is inferior to actually investing in societal institutions.
Many UBI proponents never seem to ever discuss public goods, but think that the ideal solution is to just make everything rest on the individual. I don’t think that will work, and to me it obviously didn’t work during COVID, which was a real world application of UBI.
TimorousBestie
UBI proponents, in the US at least, usually don’t discuss investing in the public good because both political parties and most of their respective wealthy donors are actively hostile to the public good. The current administration just decimated weather forecasting earlier this year, after all.
UBI sneaks around the problem by giving the rich the same exact benefit as the poor.
hn8726
Good chunk of the world already has all of those, so it looks like talking about UBI is right on track there. I suppose countries like USA would need to figure out the basics first though, I agree any basic income seems redundant if one trip to ER wipes out several months worth of UBI anyway
rbanffy
Part of the UBI budget could fund mandatory comprehensive healthcare insurance.
But the US isn't ready for that either.
svnt
> But it’s particularly women receiving basic income who experienced the most significant increases in autonomy, as shown in the chart below.
> Image via Pilotprojekt. Study period: March 2021 to November 2024.
> This is likely because women are more likely to experience poverty and economic dependence arising from the gender pay gap, workplace gender bias, as well as the disproportionate burden of domestic and care labour.
These are false. As the author mentions earlier in the article, these are young adult Germans, working for something close to minimum wage, specifically selected to not have children. They are probably not up against any of these issues.
The reason I am frustrated by these dogmatic answers is because this new sexist dogma prevents any curiosity around the real cause of these differences.
For example, perhaps this result discloses a more fundamental reality about female experience that could be analyzed. Or perhaps the population was skewed toward women who were dependent on partner income because they make up a larger part of that income demographic. But it won’t be explored because it is instantly and inaccurately explained away as systemic sexism. It is intellectually lazy.
joegibbs
I think UBI is something that can only work in small trials.
The people on the trial - whether that’s a random sample or the population of a geographical area - all get an economic privilege over the people who aren’t receiving the UBI, and therefore can buy more goods and services.
But when you expand this to the whole country (which is producing the same amount of goods and services) then prices naturally increase to match the same disposable income that the entire population now has, due to increased demand.
Now you could say that it’s not actually giving everyone the same, increased, amount of money since it would require huge tax raises on the wealthy to afford it.
But when a poor family gets that extra money they’ll spend it on things that a poor family would buy - a new low-tier car, food, a better air conditioner. And a rich family doesn’t just buy the same stuff as a poor one but in greater quantity - that painting is a million dollars and it’s not like it’s going to feed anyone or get them anywhere.
So the price of goods for the average person will increase, because despite redistribution there will be basically the same supply with more demand.
542354234235
But you can buy anything, so demand for any given thing is only go to go up a tiny fraction. Everyone isn’t going to all buy oranges. Some will pay off debt, some will buy a new TV, some will buy cat food, some will buy new jeans. There is no evidence that all goods and services across the entire economy would rise to match (see the entire history of minimum wage). And buying more goods and service mean that businesses have more business, and will pay for more working hours to meet demand, which puts more money in working class hands.
The US already spend $1.19 trillion a year on welfare programs, or about $4,600 per adult in the country. Much of that is wasted due to the massive bureaucracy required for means testing aid (determining rules for eligibility, having people to administer and test for eligibility, enforcing “proper use”, etc.). UBI could just be a check after you file your taxes every year.
Come to think of it, prices often go down with demand, since so many costs are fixed costs that businesses have to whether they have high or low demand. A restaurant has to pay their lease and their staff whether the place is packed on a Saturday or dead on a Tuesday afternoon. People eating out more would better utilize the space and bring per customer costs down. Same with basically all service industries. For goods, most companies have equipment they have to have for manufacturing but aren’t 100% utilized, and increased demand would allow them to optimize closer to 100%. And if they reach 100% and would need to buy more equipment and raise costs, well then there are probably other companies in that sector that aren’t yet at 100% and can still sell at a lower cost.
ethbr1
Supply-side UBI (UBE?) is equally curious.
I.e. if we took the money (or a portion of it) that would be going to UBI and instead used it to directly buy the goods, for distribution, at scale.
Universal tertiary education (for the countries that don't have it), universal healthcare (for the US), universal food and shelter entitlements, etc.
I'll grant that some amount of direct income would be best, because of the flexibility it affords, but UBI in capitalist societies is a slippery slope for the reasons you mentioned (especially market price changes).
Why not instead focus on directly driving costs for basic goods so low (via volume) that we can make them effectively free?
Bender
It seems this is an issue that has risen and fallen a few times since 1797 in the United States of America [1] so it seems there may not be a complete answer to the question at hand and there may be some unwritten or underlying challenges not yet addressed if this keeps coming up. I think the better questions would be what have we not done differently in the last 228 years that would move this forward or what have we done to paint ourselves into a corner?
My own personal concern would be what impact UBI would have on existing social security that everyone in the US has spent their entire adult life paying into. Social Security is neither a benefit nor a welfare program. It is a paid for security blanket that all working people in the USA have paid into with no option to opt out. Would social security go away and would I get all my money back?
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_by_coun...
prhn
cscheid
You can also just grab the same piece from Substack: https://thenoosphere.substack.com/p/just-how-many-more-succe...
codersfocus
UBI is the wrong approach.
Once CBDCs become a thing, citizens should have the ability to have direct credit relationships with the central bank.
We can then transition from a cash based monetary system to an accrual based one (similar to how businesses do their accounting.)
Public benefits, then, rather than being given out like it is currently (e.g. you get $200 for food stamps) will instead be based on allowing you to draw credit.
So, the eGovCreditCard would for example always allow any citizen to draw $200 per month for food expenses.
Potentially, if we want to do more generous policies a la "UBI," we could add e.g. $1000 always being allowed per month for rent.
Health care similarly, instead of if the archaic and very inefficient system we have now where those on the dole often go to emergency rooms, money is funneled through "insurance", etc... would allow you to draw money for regular doctor care. Maybe at a set maxiumim limit per citizen, e.g. $1M.
kajumix
Your suggestion basically amounts to: digitize and centralize welfare. There are already electronic cards for food. If the money is drawn directly from the central bank as credit instead of from the state welfare fund, it won't make it any more efficient. In fact any experimentation among states will disappear. Also, if CBDCs become a thing, you could see a slow slide into behavior control. What people eat, and where they live becomes a concern for the central bank, because they get to decide who the approved vendors are for those things. "Central" anything is a design smell in most cases.
Getting rid of cash also requires proper paper work and identification so you can sign up for the CBDC wallet. In that case you're excluding the very people from the system who need it the most.
codersfocus
I never said get rid of cash, CBDCs and cash can coexist.
Also it would make welfare more efficient, as you can garnish earnings from citizens to repay back the debt, whereas now it's just a gift.
RiverCrochet
In this scheme, what prevents a central bank from abusing its position and denying you access to food due to ideological concern? Cash (for basic stuff) spends the same regardless of my political affiliation or criminal history. An employer can do the same, but I can get a new employer with some effort. I'm not sure I can switch to a different central bank easily.
codersfocus
CBDCs and cash dollars can coexist. If you don't like borrowing from the government, no one is forcing you, you can earn and spend as you do now.
jas8425
So you're saying that instead of receiving $200/month worth of food, poor citizens should go into debt to the central bank by $200 every month? How would that be a better approach? Personal debt is already a huge burden, this seems predatory.
FpUser
>"...credit relationships with the central bank"
Will that come with the healthy interest rate one could never hope to repay?
codersfocus
Interest is not always fulfilled by usury.
For example, friends lend each other money without usury simply because the "interest" comes from helping a friend.
Similarly, the central bank which is an agent of the government fulfills its interest by having healthy citizens. So there probably wouldn't be usury.
Instead, earnings from the citizen would be garnished if they had debt.
neilwilson
Every 'successful trial' is trumped by the far greater data set that comes from the widest 'UBI' trial of them all - state pension payments.
That is a permanent payment to live on to a section of the population, except that section is divided by age not location. And the results from millions and millions of data points across the globe are crystal clear - the people stop working and the dependency ratio goes up.
To the extent that Denmark has just increased the age to 70, ie reduced the size of the section of the population entitled to the payment. They wouldn't have needed to do that if 'people continued to work'.
Of course a payment to a small section of a fixed currency area will work. It's paid for by all the other people from that fixed currency area not getting the payment. As will a small payment that is not enough to live on - which ends up as a subsidy to private sector employers and results in wage compression towards the minimum wage.
The fun starts when you try to give a living payment to all the people within a fixed currency area. And that has yet to be trialed anywhere.
Premature extrapolation is a cruel affliction.
Apreche
We have evil political leadership. It works in its own personal interest and does not care about what is best for the citizens and for humanity. What does it matter if you conduct a study and discover the truth of what is the best policy? All that does is tell the evil leaders to avoid that policy.
Even if we agree on facts, we don’t agree on basic morality. No amount of well conducted studies can overcome that gap.
blueflow
> What did change for many, however, was what they did for work. Within the first 18 months, job-switching rates spiked in the basic income group compared to the control one.
Some jobs are just shit, and people will quit them as soon as they can. UBI would put some companies out of existence.
I'm sorry if this has been answered many times in the past. I didn't find the answer anywhere else.
If everyone gets 1000$ extra, why wouldn't rent increase by close to 1000$. If you're not willing to pay it, someone will. I don't understand how giving all of us X amount of dollars would help. The number of goods are the same, they would become more expensive through inflation.