Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this is a very misleading summary of the results. Here are some actual quote from the study: > Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers. Almost half…
> Sounds like a success to me. I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for. If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.
Social security should be replaced with privately held accounts, just like superannuation in Australia. But in the transition people would need to be paid out their entitlement. So no problem there.
But if UBI replaced all normal welfare (excluding disability etc) is that such a bad thing? As long as the UBI is high enough and indexed to cost of living, welfare that’s broadly targeted at the poor should be unnecessary. Not just unnecessary, it tends to have the effect of making poverty stickier. Any time benefits are inversely tied to how well you're doing, you reduce the incentive to do better.