Researchers experimented with universal basic income. It went about as well as you’d expect
A team of researchers concluded a randomized controlled trial (RCT) study last month on the effects of a universal basic income.
Less work, less money
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare system in which the government provides every citizen with a standard minimum income. These payments are unconditional and transferred to citizens on a regular basis without any pre-qualification. The concept is in keeping with the Marxist ideal of wealth redistribution and is seen as a way for the government to exert direct control over citizens.
In a recent study commissioned by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), researchers assembled a randomized group of 1,000 low-income individuals who were each paid monthly stipends of $1,000 for three years. A control group of 2,000 participants received only $50 a month.
The researchers found that those who received the $1,000 payment worked less and lost money. Their annual income dropped $1,500. Their participation in the labor market dropped by 2%. They worked on average up to 1.4 hours less per week. The partners of the participants reduced their workloads “by a considerable amount,” according to the study.
Although they worked less, the UBI recipients were not very productive with their newfound free time. They enjoyed more leisure time, with smaller increases in transportation and attention to finances.
“Our analysis demonstrates that even a fully unconditional cash transfer results in moderate labor supply reductions for recipients,” the researchers concluded. “Virtually all existing large-scale cash transfer programs in the U.S. are means-tested, which provides additional disincentives to work. Rather than being driven by such program features, participants in our study reduced their labor supply because they placed a high value, at the margin, on additional leisure.”
These results may encourage efforts by Big Government advocates to implement UBI, which places citizens completely at the mercy of the government when they are dependent on its support.
Tech oligarchs continue to push UBI
The results clash with predictions by tech oligarchs who have been using the rise of AI technology to promote UBI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has long pushed the idea of universal basic income, believes “that if you could just give people money, they would make good decisions, and the market would do its thing.”
“My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe,” said Altman in 2021. “Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people now do.”
Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” has urged the British government to enforce UBI to cope with the impact of AI.
Hinton told BBC Newsnight that universal basic income is necessary because he is “very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs.” The scientist explained that AI would benefit the rich and not “the people whose jobs get lost.” If wealth is not redistributed, Hinton warned, “that’s going to be very bad for society.”
A more powerful technocracy
But critics say the push for a universal basic income by major tech chiefs is to create a more powerful technocracy. According to one industry source, Altman and his colleagues hope to “become so immensely powerful that they run every non-AI company (employing people) out of business and every American worker to unemployment. So powerful that a percentage of OpenAI’s (and its peers’) income could bankroll UBI for every citizen of America.”
The source told CNBC that the tax revenue generated by AI tech giants will be irresistible to politicians, whose popularity will skyrocket off the universal basic income their voters receive.
“Sam is no different from any other capitalist trying to persuade the government to allow an oligarchy.”
