Employment Rose Among Those in Free Money Experiment (apnews.com) 177
After getting $500 per month for two years without rules on how to spend it, 125 people in California paid off debt, got full-time jobs and reported lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a study released this week. From a report: The program in the Northern California city of Stockton was the highest-profile experiment in the U.S. of a universal basic income, where everyone gets a guaranteed amount per month for free. Announced by former Mayor Michael Tubbs with great fanfare in 2017, the idea quickly gained momentum once it became a major part of Andrew Yang's 2020 campaign for president.
Supporters say a guaranteed income can alleviate the stress and anxiety of people living in poverty while giving them the financial security needed to find good jobs and avoid debt. But critics argue free money would eliminate the incentive to work, creating a society dependent on the state. Tubbs, who at 26 was elected Stockton's first Black mayor in 2016 after endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, wanted to put those claims to the test. Stockton was an ideal place, given its proximity to Silicon Valley and the eagerness of the state's tech titans to fund the experiment as they grapple with how to prepare for job losses that could come with automation and artificial intelligence. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration launched in February 2019, selecting a group of 125 people who lived in census tracts at or below the city's median household income of $46,033. The program did not use tax dollars, but was financed by private donations, including a nonprofit led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.
Supporters say a guaranteed income can alleviate the stress and anxiety of people living in poverty while giving them the financial security needed to find good jobs and avoid debt. But critics argue free money would eliminate the incentive to work, creating a society dependent on the state. Tubbs, who at 26 was elected Stockton's first Black mayor in 2016 after endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, wanted to put those claims to the test. Stockton was an ideal place, given its proximity to Silicon Valley and the eagerness of the state's tech titans to fund the experiment as they grapple with how to prepare for job losses that could come with automation and artificial intelligence. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration launched in February 2019, selecting a group of 125 people who lived in census tracts at or below the city's median household income of $46,033. The program did not use tax dollars, but was financed by private donations, including a nonprofit led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.
Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't showing that UBI is a good idea, it's showing that direct cash payments are superior to complex welfare/subsidy/food stamp programs.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
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Probably. In 2019 (so no covid-19 effects to consider), the "mandatory spending" part of the budget (all the entitlement programs) would, if converted to a UBI, allow for $8k per person in the USA. So $32k for a family of four per year. Which allows some room to raise taxes a bit on earned income while still making sure that EVERYONE is making more than they are now....
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if converted to a UBI, allow for $8k per person in the USA. So $32k for a family of four per year.
Statements like this completely ignore where most of the money for these types of programs actually goes. Not to the people who need it, but rather to pay the salaries to those who implement said programs.
UBI is just another poorly thought out scheme. It doesn't account for the apathy of people, or the inflation that would be inevitable once people started receiving free money. Better to use taxpayer money to build infrastructure that the people can then utilize to build their own livelihood.
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Statements like this completely ignore where most of the money for these types of programs actually goes. Not to the people who need it, but rather to pay the salaries to those who implement said programs.
That's exactly an argument for UBI. Less rules, means testing, and byzantine bureaucracy means less money spent on things other than helping people who need it.
Better to use taxpayer money to build infrastructure
Won't that drive inflation in the markets for materials used in infrastructure? Surely asphalt will go to $500/pound!
people having more money to buy things would mean more employment for people who make and sell things.
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Inflation is only inevitable if the Feds start printing money like lunatics. Note that that $8k per person figure assumes that the money we're ALREADY spending for free money to (some) citizens were repurposed to a nice, simple check to everyone (~$670/month/person). No need for means-testing bureaucrats - if they're citizens, they get the money.
Now, I'm by no means confident that millions of Washington 'crats could refrain
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This is the rea
Re: Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't let perfection be the enemy of "good enough".
And It's not like the current status quo doesn't have lots of people who game the system unfairly. But we accept the fact that it's part of human nature, and to shut down the system entirely is not worth exacerbating poverty just because we are miffed that bad people do what bad people will do.
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You seemed to attack UBI as flawed because human nature dictates that some segment of people will abuse it. Yet there are already public assistance programs in place now. And the very same logic could be used (and in fact is often used) to justify dismantling them or at the very least curtailing them.
My point is that we sustain public assistance programs today, despite them being susceptible to abuse. We do that because the cost of shutting them down is that people using them in good faith would needles
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Perhaps your opposition to UBI is just you making a bad decision. I'd better not risk it!
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Keep in mind though that while UBI is universal, we (computer touchers) will probably be mostly on the other sideof the tax/benefit crossover. So maybe you'd get a $1k/month but also the income taxes would be $1k higher or so. Still, I'd definitely see this as an impovement, I want to know that if I do finally snap from one too many idiotic meetings, I won't have to starve immediately.
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I think a UBI is a good idea, but anyone who views it as a way of working less will be sorely disappointed when they find out there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. A UBI is to
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Where I live, minimum wage has double over the last 10-15 years. Rent and everything has close to doubled as well, literally, it matched it.
I can bet you a $10000 that the rents rose first. It happened in Seattle and SF.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Informative)
UBI is eventually going to be a necessity, due in no small part to people who post here. Automation and robotics are going to replace most low skill and many medium skill jobs. Previously the farmer could always go screw on lug nuts when the tractor took their place, and so on. Now there is no low skill job market opening up. Sure, some of them could get education and become programmers or pharmacists, but Facebook is having AI write and review programs already, and the only thing keeping pharmacists from being replaced by robots is the inertia of the insurance industry. Tests have been conducted even with high skill jobs like cancer pathologists and contract lawyers. An AI can screen a biopsy slide and make a more accurate diagnosis with many types of cancer than an experienced pathologist in 1/10th the time. 100 errors were inserted in a pile of contracts, a team of contract lawyers found 70-some in eight hours, a trained AI found 80+ in 45 minutes.
There are only going to be two choices that I can see in the future a decade from now, UBI or families starving under bridges.
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Yes those horse buggy and whip makers all got UBI because they went out of business... oh wait.
They went to the car companies to screw on lug nuts. Where is the next batch of low skill low education jobs going to come from? I don't see anything on the horizon.
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So if I receive enough benefits from other people that work their asses off
Fixed that for you.
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Where are you from that 45 hour week days are exhausting?
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Informative)
There was no change to any of the welfare/subsidy/food stamp programs.
This was extra money with no strings attached.
Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
it's showing that direct cash payments are superior to complex welfare/subsidy/food stamp programs.
And just what the hell did you think UBI pilot programs were *supposed* to be trying to show? That it's worse?
Are you saying it's NOT a "good idea" to use direct cash payments, even though it's been shown (as you freely admit) to be *more* efficient than current welfare systems?
Sticking with the old, inefficient, wasteful system is somehow a BETTER idea, in your opinion?
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So instead of science, we should switch to phenomenology? Just do stuff with no particular expectations and see what happens?
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Agreed. I'm not sure why there is the impetus to move from an admittedly flawed public assistance (welfare) system to an economy shaking UBI plan. First in my mind is the idea that due to the size and influence of the government, one must be especially on guard for unintended side effects. Not a small number of huge problems we face are the unintended consequences of well meaning programs. First to mind are mortgage interest deductions, 401k's, and employee sponsored health plans. Those have resulted i
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Re:Wrong Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
I think part of the reason that there's a push to move to UBI rather than our current system is that our current system makes it hard to work a low wage job.
By unevenly distributing assistance (based on income rather than for everyone), it becomes very hard to work to improve one's situation. Cross a (very low) threshold, and bam, no food or medical assistance. I see a lot "why would rich people work if the government is just going to tax them 50%", but at the lower end, you lose a lot more than 50% overall due to loss of support.
I personally very strongly suspect that people would work as long as the UBI was kept low enough (under 15k/year (more than we could afford now)) people would work for some extra, and it could even solve the problem of minimum wage.
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The money saved by creating complex systems (like determining who can work 40 hours), is probably less than just giving it as a flat rate - especially when the goal is to get to that anyways.
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"This isn't showing that UBI is a good idea, it's showing that direct cash payments are superior to complex welfare/subsidy/food stamp programs."
Not even counting the wages of hundreds of thousands of superfluous civil servants who now decide who gets what.
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Also one must remember: this 'UBI' idea will not scale up to include 300,000,000 people. The money just doesn't exist, and 'printing more money' just creates runaway inflation.
There's also the fact that while 125 people were responsible and practical, many people are not, and if you just gave them 'free money' all the time they'd be irresponsible with it -- then likely be standing there with their hand out expecting even more.
I've read more than one cautionary tale in all my SciFi reading abou
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Eh?
This is the persistent perverse misunderstanding of what UBI is.
UBI isn't taking exactly what we have right now, but randomly dumping a bunch of money on everyone.
First for scrap existing welfare. Then you increases taxes a bit. The median earner sees as much tax as they gain so they see no difference. Higher earners pay a bit more. Lower earners receive a bit more. It's not complicated. The numbers work and it doesn't require extra money.
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The study does not show that. I see nothing in the article saying that the people in that program stopped getting welfare/subsidy/food stamps.
Be careful with this. The reason we have public housing, housing vouchers, food stamps (that's the old term BTW), child care vouchers, Medicaid, etc. is because many people are unable or unwilling to pay their bills even when they have the money. It can go to alcohol or drugs, but it isn't just addicts - many people are poor because they have poor impulse control a
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I do too. I had friends that never could afford groceries but always had every new video game along with the equally priced walkthrough books.
Interesting economic study. (Score:2, Insightful)
At that point you will have at least two year or more before the payments, the two years of payment, then two years afterwards. Then in another 10-20 years someone else can do a follow up study and compare them to random selection of people from their pre-payment years and see the differences.
Hawthorne Effect (Score:3)
Select people to receive free money, tell them you want to see if it helps them, then observe them. Don't be surprised if they respond by making their lives better.
The change observed by this study is most likely explained by the Hawthorne Effect [wikipedia.org], where people modify their behavior when they know they're being observed.
Economics is Developing as a Field of Science (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of research into UBI is just one example. The classical economic theory says one thing, but the behavioral economists insist on controlled experiments.
Unfortunately, the general public is not changing as rapidly as economists are. The remnants of classical economic theory will likely be around for a long time.
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Classical economics says that genetic testing to determine an individual's life expectancy should be a wildly popular product.
And indeed it might be if such a thing existed, but it does not.
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Classical economics says that genetic testing to determine an individual's life expectancy should be a wildly popular product.
And indeed it might be if such a thing existed, but it does not.
For people with a family history of certain hereditary diseases like Huntington's [uofmhealth.org] it does.
The paper I'm referencing. [squarespace.com]
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If they were not a small minority and everyone had that ability the resulting effect could be entirely different. The "everyone else is doing it" effect is likely much larger when there are far more actual "everyone else" besides people with your rare particular family history.
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Unfortunately the fans of the "remnants of classical economic theory" rule the governments of the world, and show no sign of giving up power just because they've been shown to be wrong. For example the World Bank and IMF continue to insist on austerity programs and privatization in every case, even though they have **NEVER** worked anywhere they were instituted. Not once have they ever led to a better outcome for the citizens of the countries in question, but they continue to insist that those are the onl
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Governments tend to be very risk adve
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We're essentially seeing this right now - the US is giving out money for free to everyone, in Europe you mostly just have your regular unemployment if you get laid off. I can't find it now but there were some charts showing retail sales recovering much faster in the US. Of course that could be because you didn't have proper lockdowns of course so there needs to be a proper analysis that takes all factors into consideration.
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We used to see politicians pulling out classical economic theory to solve any economic ailment. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we suddenly saw UBI become the preferred method to stimulate the US economy. This is a sudden and surprising shift in fiscal policy. I'm interested in how it plays out long term.
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Austerity is fine in a truly capitalist society. It's meant to be an economic correction for a country to get back into financial solvency. Where if fails is in a welfare society that has the majority of the population stuck on government handouts just to survive. Simply put, if your population doesn't have the economic freedom to weather austerity, it will fail.
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Argentina's economy has fluctuated dramatically over the last century, from the economic powerhouse of Latin America to the largest debtor in the Americas and everywhere in between. I was talking about 2003.
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Deficit spending, or at the very least investing in future long term project in the middle of a crisis only works if you invest the money wisely (e.g. infrastructure, education)
One thing I would lov
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Unfortunately the fans of the "remnants of classical economic theory" rule the governments of the world, and show no sign of giving up power just because they've been shown to be wrong. For example the World Bank and IMF continue to insist on austerity programs and privatization in every case, even though they have **NEVER** worked anywhere they were instituted. Not once have they ever led to a better outcome for the citizens of the countries in question, but they continue to insist that those are the only possible remedies in every case.
I consider the US's economic stimulus payments to be revolutionary by comparison. It's a major shift away from classical economic theory.
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Not once have they ever led to a better outcome for the citizens of the countries in question, but they continue to insist that those are the only possible remedies in every case.
This is because helping citizens is not the goal. Once you understand that it is designed to funnel more money to the wealthy it makes sense. It isn't right, but it is probably working as designed.
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Indeed. I would recommend 'Secrets of the American Empire' by John Perkins (the much better sequel to his original book 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'). He used to arrange these loans until he accidentally grew a conscience.
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Classical economic theory is just political agendas with bad math. Always has been.
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Classical economic theory just turned out to be better than any of the other non-empirical economic theories or policies employed in the past. Like everything else, being ideal isn't necessary to survive. It's just a matter of being more fit than the competition.
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Of course the great advantage of deductive logic is that new data never forces you to change what you believe.
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That's my point. The world is complex and you can almost always find evidence to support contradictory propositions in it. Once you have found the evidence you need to support what you want to believe, deduction won't force you to reevaluate that belief unless you go hunting a proposition that implies the null hypothesis, which nobody ever does. But if you set out to prove your beliefs, sometimes you fail.
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100 years ago, the field of economics was driven primarily by deductive logic. However, with the recent movement in behavioral economics, [wikipedia.org] the field has strongly embraced the scientific method
The history section of your link [wikipedia.org] shows that behavioral economics started in the 1700s.
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That's the kind of revisionist history that you get when you read books like Freakonomics. In reality, there were some economists in the 50s who believed that consumers were entirely rational, and you can see quotes from them, but that wasn't everyone. In reality, deductive logic is still important in economics today, as it is in all sciences.
The SIME/DIME experiments say otherwise (Score:2)
See Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 [amazon.com], pages 150-152. In those two studies, there was a reduction in a desire to work and the number of hours worked, and an increase in the time recipients stayed on unemployment.
And the effect was more pronounced in the longer study.
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The research used in that book is 40 or more years old talking about programs as they existed 40-70 years ago.
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On page 149 of the book:
So not being universal or unconditional, it wasn't a UBI, and the fact that your benefit can be taken away if you make too much money is a disincentive to work.
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That isn't to say the idea is bad though even in those circumstances. San Francisco still has to pay to clean up the shit in their streets and they pay for it in other ways that aren't immediately obvious. At
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San Francisco still has to pay to clean up the shit in their streets
Why are you opposed to job creation [insert poop emoji here]?
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So not being universal or unconditional, it wasn't a UBI, and the fact that your benefit can be taken away...
Yeah, you need to do your homework. There isn't a single "UBI" proposal out there that is technically 100% "universal" or "unconditional" in the way you are thinking - because that's literally fucking impossible. SOMEBODY has to work.
Generally, what they mean by "universal" or "unconditional" is "don't let anyone die of exposure and starve" by providing enough to guarantee they can get proper food and shelter (not this soup kitchen homeless shelter crap). Every reasonable proposal for UBI out there has cr
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So if all your basic needs were taken care of and you didn't have to worry about where your next meal was coming from, or how to afford grandma's surgery, you wouldn't work? You wouldn't finish your degree? You wouldn't start a business?
What would you do all day with no discretionary income? You couldn't afford
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Uhh... usually the these discussions actually swing exactly contrary to what you are saying. The whole point of a UBI is for it to be universally implemented. Bill Gates would get the same check that I get, and Homeless Joe down on the corner would get. One of the major selling points is that doing this would eliminate the cost and waste of doing means testing for all the different systems that we have now. It would also eliminate the bureaucracy surrounding applying for and receiving benefits since you wou
BREAKING NEWS: People like free money (Score:5, Informative)
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Personally, I've been getting free money for decades. I just have to drive into the office and watch kitten videos all day, which is exactly what I do at home.
Weird numbers (Score:4, Informative)
When the program started in February 2019, 28% of the people slated to get the free money had full-time jobs. One year later, 40% of those people had full-time jobs. A control group of people who did not get the money saw a 5 percentage point increase in full-time employment over that same time period.
So, did the number of people with full-time jobs go from 28% to 40%, or did 40% of the 28% who had full time jobs at the start still have them at the end?
If the 40% refer to total participants, did the 40% who had full time jobs use their windfall differently from the 60% who didn't?
Did the job market grow or shrink in town during that time?
"Solve for X, where none of the variables are known."
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Also, did any of this correct for people being able to get better/jobs because their credit score had improved enough to pass a credit check?
Privately funded by a Facebook employee? How about offering everyone in both groups comparable jobs (of any level) at Facebook at the same time and see if the results still hold.
Saying free money causes laziness is projection (Score:5, Insightful)
People LIKE doing things. They like working, as long as that work is at least somewhat meaningful. They like making their lives better. People will work absolutely terrible jobs to make their way in the world.
No doubt, there are lazy people in the world, but that's orthogonal to whether or not you're getting income support. The children of the super wealthy are often super lazy because they can be. But some of them actually do strike out on their own and do things. Elon Musk came from wealth, and he still works on things. He doesn't really have to, but he does.
We should afford everyone in our society the same leg up that Musk had, to some extent. The freedom from worrying about whether you can make rent or pay for food or a doctor is all upside. Some people will take the money and sit around and do nothing, but so what? The number of people it lifts up so they can do what they want is much greater.
Not only do you have experiments like this, but if you look at Quebec's subsidized daycare program, it pays for itself. The cost is actually negative—the government brings the cost of daycare down to about $10/day (it started at $5/day), and so many women got into the workforce that the government's take in taxes fully pays for it. Give people that need the money enough to pay for the basics, and they'll end up contributing back more than they take.
When I hear someone say, "poor people will want to stop working if they get free money," what I hear is, "if you gave ME free money, I would sit on my ass all day, so everyone else must be the same!" And you know what, I'm okay if what you want is a break from work. But stop using it as an excuse to keep poor people poor.
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"When I hear someone say, "poor people will want to stop working if they get free money," what I hear is, "if you gave ME free money, I would sit on my ass all day, so everyone else must be the same!" And you know what, I'm okay if what you want is a break from work. But stop using it as an excuse to keep poor people poor."
THIS. The same assholes who push that argument never seem to have a problem with giving all kinds of tax breaks and subsidies to giant corps who don't pay a nickel in taxes.... they say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds. I would posit that a foolish consistency is the tell of a giant hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy is the tell of a liar.
Re:Saying free money causes laziness is projection (Score:5, Insightful)
People LIKE doing things. They like working, as long as that work is at least somewhat meaningful. They like making their lives better. People will work absolutely terrible jobs to make their way in the world.
Classical economics assumes everyone acts rationally in the marketplace. It's argued that wanting to work is irrational. Maybe that's a projection, but maybe that's true. Either way, the assumption of rational decision making in the marketplace is being rapidly discredited by behavioral economics.
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that money isn't a motivator. It just isn't the only motivator. There are other motivations that aren't considered "rational" by classical economics.
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I was actually considering studying Economics as a major as a freshman, but when I ran smack into the rationality assumption in the fall of my sophomore year, explained and justified very poorly by the professor, I ditched that field completely.
If the professor had sat down with the class and started an intelligent conversation about the topic, I might have been hooked. But this was the late 80s, and most tenured faculty were still scared poopless by the idea of studying human beings AND equations, instead
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It's not like someone can live on $500 a month. All that does is maybe buy them a little time and a little relief from stress; maybe it prevents some of them from becoming homeless, both things which might reasonably be believed improve their performance at things like finding and holding down job.
I don't buy either extreme view. I don't think that a guaranteed income will make everyone lazy, no matter how small it is. Nor do I think that a guaranteed income wont' affect how much people on average work, no
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I won't argue with this. We don't know what the optimum level is. But I know that $500/month can alleviate a lot of suffering for people that aren't making enough money. It would be nice to ensure that people that have no income could live somehow. We pay for their homelessness or hunger one way or another, so why don't we put some money into it up front instead of them being miserable before we try?
I think it's worth experimenting with, anyway. We don't have to get it right on the first try, we just have t
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People LIKE doing things. They like working, as long as that work is at least somewhat meaningful. They like making their lives better. People will work absolutely terrible jobs to make their way in the world.
People certainly like doing things, but there are a lot of jobs where there is a lot of demand but few people who want to do it. For example, few people are passionate about picking up delivering stuff, and yet, it is an essential job and a lot of manpower is required. Some other jobs, especially the artistic kind are really compelling, but there is only a limited demand for it. If there is too many artists and too few delivery guys, because both can live fine, it is going to be a problem. The obvious way t
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Some other jobs, especially the artistic kind are really compelling, but there is only a limited demand for it.
This is false. Artistic temperament is highly associated with a personality trait called Openness. Only the top few percent in Openness are suited to be artists. The rest of us, we'll make things, but only if we want or need them. The problem comes when the high Openness people look down on the rest of us as some kind of insects, who can't experience life the way that they do and who lack so
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No it is not. Ask any artist. They produce far more than they sell. In other words, the demand is limited.
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I would argue that one of the signs of health of a modern society is that there's lots of room for artists to create.
We remember the ancient Romans and Greeks by their philosophy, architecture and art (and their wars and slavery, don't get me wrong), but we're not as concerned with their GDP. Like, let's give future generations something to remember us by that isn't just that poor people were evicted while Jeff Bezos could buy and sell entire states worth of people.
Also: I don't think delivery would be impa
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Projection.
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Cited an example of how it works: women put their kids in daycare at a reasonable cost, and it allowed so many of them to work that it paid for itself. If you give people opportunities, they take them. We see it time and time again.
But maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just seeing what I would do with money like that: take more chances, seize the opportunities that I feel are too risky right now. But at the very least, the number of people that are like me are non-zero, and these experiments over time seem to s
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(of a person) wishing to do what is right, especially to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly.
So someone *not* conscientious isn't pushed to "do what is right", especially "work or duty well and thoroughly".
In other words, lazy. Perfectly correct term.
Cancel all welfare after 2 years? (Score:3)
Economics is a dynamic system (Score:2)
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That's not really how supply and demand works. The cost of rent would still reflect the market, so if landlords start raising their prices, they'll have empty units
Welfare is abusive in Canada - this would help (Score:2)
benefit cliffs = people are better off not working (Score:2)
benefit cliffs = people are better off not working or waiting on the bench for an good job and not just any min wage MCjob.
Baseline Equality (Score:2)
I think in a country with a strong culture to pursue wealth and career advancements, most people wouldn't be happy mucking around at the bottom.
But if the culture beats into people the idea that "you get what you get and you don't get upset", then a larger percentage of those people will sit at th
Stop f*****g calling it "free". (Score:2)
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Selected subjects (Score:3)
Usually the subjects are pre-selected, to avoid those with drug or alcohol addictions, gambling etc. substantially biasing the final results if you try to apply them to an entire population.
Similar handouts to "recent" homeless resulted in positive results; because they had jobs, or recent job experiences and could show up at job interviews looking like they could do the job.
It's great results, but can only be very narrowly targeted.
Long term drug, alcohol abuse, combined with extended unemployment and homelessness results in people being unprepared to go back to the workforce, and no one business is likely to take a serious risk on them.
I wish studies like this wouldn't try to extrapolate well beyond the study results.
This begs the question (Score:2)
Of course giving people free money is usually a good thing. However, we should also ask: at what cost?
For example we can enumerate many benefits of an UBI system. At least getting rid of bureaucracy would be an undisputed nice thing. Yet, we also need to pay for it somehow.
One proposed alternative was redirecting the social security funds to pay for UBI. Sounds good, however it would be nowhere enough. Currently over 64 million people collect an average ~$1,500 social security check. If we were to give this
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The point of the study, presumably, is to examine what would happen if UBI is implemented on a larger scale-- and it's safe to assume that any large-scale implementation would require contributions from the taxpayer. So the OP might be *technically* wrong, but his underlying point is valid.
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Control group didn't have to pay anything.
Read TFA. The control group had lower employment and lower quality of life (more stress, etc.)
Re:Control Group (Score:4, Insightful)
They had their share of the tax burden drop as the unemployed moved into the tax-paying pool.
Re: (Score:3)
So freeing people from the "constraint" of dependency and control - but really that being needing to work with others to have the goods and services you desire... is that an idea of making everyone self-sufficient, or transferring the supply of coopera