neugo

Am Canadian. We really don't like cheaters...

I do if I'm drinking it...

Follow up: Is it possible to DNA test the food? If some vet is selling euthanized animals to a rendering farm - and they are getting ground up and made into pet food, you'd find dog/cat/horse DNA where it shouldn't be...

How is this an actual test of UBI?

For instance, in any UBI scheme, the community has to pay for it. You are taking money from everyone's taxes - and redistributing it to every citizen (or, to the poorest citizens if the scheme isn't universal).

But, in every UBI pilot-program I've ever heard of, they never take the money from the community. The money just appears as if by magic. So, no shit the pilot's going to show that UBI is AMAZING! This is testing helicopter-money, not UBI. Helicopter-money is outstanding in every possible way! Free-money is always better than no-money. It makes everyone's lives better. Once people have to pay for it though, things change...

So, again, how are these results going to be valid if no one in the community has to foot the bill? This 'test' is intentionally removing all the negatives (in any real UBI scheme, taxes rise dramatically, but that's not happening here, everyone gets UBI and no one has to pay that astronomical costs of it).

EDIT: I should also probably mention that a real test of Basic Income would involve a lot of other things too. For instance, almost every UBI scheme requires pretty much all social services to stop on a dime (so the money can be redirected to basic income). So, an honest test would involve welfare payments stopping throughout the test. No more old-age security, workers comp, unemployment insurance, etc... Stopping all those things has a tremendous negative effect on a community, but these pilot-programs exclude all of it.

In China it took at least 2 months of a serious, military style lockdown - social-distancing will take a lot longer than that (and we won't do a full lockdown until it's way too late, because that would devastate the economy even further).