Did Sam Altman's Basic Income Pilot Prove or Disprove UBI?

As a leading expert on the topic of unconditional/universal basic income (UBI), a subject area I've been focused on now since 2013, I'm constantly trying to correct misunderstandings and debunk misinformation/disinformation spread about the concept and the evidence behind it.

The results of another big test of basic income were released in July 2024 and there's a lot of poorly informed summaries and opinions out there about it. As someone who has actually read the results released so far (there's still more coming) as well as the results from over a hundred other studies of basic income and unconditional cash transfers in general, here is my distillation of the findings and the importance nuances of those findings in the context of the pilot itself, and in the larger context of other pilot results.

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00:00 Intro
00:59 Beginning
04:28 The Context
07:20 Employment effects
13:39 Entrepreneurship effects
15:23 Job search effects
16:21 Not a saturation pilot
18:36 Job quality effects
19:53 Geographic mobility effects
20:51 Less abuse of drugs and alcohol
21:47 Health effects
22:47 Spending behavior
24:46 Lila's story
27:01 Future basic income studies
28:58 Conclusion
32:41 Patreon credits

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Special thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark, Tricia Garrett, Zack Sargent, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, Keith Smith, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, John Steinberger, Bridget I Flynn, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, ace bailey, Daragh Ward, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Miki Phagan, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun , Christopher Wroth, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Kara Gillies, Faith Stanhope, Mark Donovan, Capitalists for Shared Income, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Jessica Chew, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, Austin Begin, Deanna McHugh, Nikolaus Rath, chris heinz, Zachary Weaver, Jodi Sarda, Rosa Tran, Ryan Ash-Miller, bradzone, John Sullivan, Team TJ, Yang Deng, Yan Xie, Marie janicke, Tim , Warren J Polk, Jeffrey Emmett, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Kev Roberts, Nicolas Pouillard, Walter Schaerer, Eric Skiff, Thomas Welsh, and all my other funders for their support.

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[HannesRadke]

Thanks for the summary. I'm looking forward to check out these newer studies myself.

[NikoKun]

ONLY 2 percent less likely to be employed, and on average most only worked 1.3 hours less? That sounds like such a tiny "negative" that I can't believe anyone even remotely considers it a failure. That sounds like great news. More people having a little extra time to devote to other things, and a small addition of some people able to quit to pursue a hobby.
Contrast that with the negatives of existing welfare, and the "trap" many experience with assistance that comes with cut offs.. Which encourage people not to shoot for better.

[Tunadorable]

great breakdown, here's some engagement!

[zaighamjamil]

I wish everyone could see this video.
Its so good.

[UBI_NOW]

81% decrease in days using drugs for male recipients👏👏👏

[sudd]

basic income is flawed any any system, but the version we most talk about is basic income as a lower limit to income.
a better version is a basic income that is equal for all, and low, as "basic" suggest.
and even the best version only work for a while, then you realize any monetary economy fail to do anything useful long term for most people.

[emerraldx]

UBI = Freedom, Liberty, Autonomy, Agency & Power sounds like a great sell but sadly no fun acronyms 😮 Humanity needs to get out of its own way and start trusting each other otherwise this whole experiment in civilization is worthless, no more means testing and let’s move Humanity Forward to that Star Trek future before it is too late🧢

[walterwang]

Thanks for the article, I'm very interested in what you think about the inflationary impact of the large scale application of UBI. You mentioned in your article businesses have to hire more people to meet the demand, presumably they have to hire people who don't have access to UBI. But what if everyone has UBI, does that mean businesses have to raise wages of the unattractive jobs significantly in order to attract workers? Would that ultimately cause price to increase enough to cancel out most of the UBI benefits?

[vondoromal]

Sir, I think you admit that when demand has money and resources, the economy is good. Shifting to demand side economics is the fight against supply side economics. Either Demand-side economics leads to UBI or vice versa, they go hand in hand...

[RuslanKovtun]

I'm not against UBI, just telling that no research can be valid until applied to everyone, not just "control group". The is a thing in physics called "potential energy" which is the difference between two current energy and some new level we will get to. Unless UBI applied to all people, no UBI results are valid because a lot of holes are covered by those who aren't under UBI. I have doubts that someone would disagree with all positive changes according to UBI as well as that we can't tell about possible consequences when applied for everyone and this objective fear of unknown is why people against it.

[aidanwelch]

Your chart doesn't show average paid vacation, it shows federal legal minimum. (and all the countries listed were largely more centralized than the US)

[screwstatists]

Everyone will either subsist on providing services and craft goods or manage to save enough or to attract investment for capital goods. Families will have their own trust and concerns. The israeli kibbutz and hutterite colonies are a few examples of successful social groups, but those only work because they are so tightknit.

We might remember the Lars family from Star Wars, who lived on a family moisture farm run by subbordinate AI. Many simmilar scenes are found in that franchise and throughout scifi

Many lower class people will initially begin to fall off but will eventually come into line with this way of life.