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Or moving backwards, the study will findout.
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.
I wonder how to test controlling for reciprocity. I.e., If I receive a basic income as part of a pilot/experiment I will feel tempted to "give back" somehow, while if basic income is a baseline all humans receive, that reciprocity will not be present. How can you design an experiment so that somehow people don't feel they are receiving money in an extraordinary way, but rather that's just part of how the world works.…
This is already being seen in some contexts. For example, the portion of income Americans spend on food has dropped from 17.5% to 10.5% over the last 53 years. "Because of the overall rise in income, and the consistent shrinking of food prices adjusted for inflation, we actually have more disposable income than our grandparents did" [1]. It is likely that improvements in agricultural technology and food distribution have led to the 'shrinking food prices' contribution, seen in the US. This means that there is downward pressure on the actual threshold of what would constitute a basic income, and thereby supporting Sam's assertion.
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/you...
> 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.
> 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.
I think it's great YC is funding some interesting research. I'm a bit curious as to why they didn't partner with some established academics in this area (there's plenty of economists who have done excellent research here) rather than start a new program - but it's YC's money, and they can choose how to spend it. How open do you plan to be about things like datasets/analysis plans and so forth? I think this would be a…