It seems to me that every basic income ‘experiment’ is flawed because they don’t account for the externalities of higher taxes and the fact that the pool of recipients is limited enough that the market is unaffected. Giving a few thousand people a few thousand a month isn’t going to cause much on an impact on inflation and it’s not going to make rents go up across the market. Additionally, others outside the experiment aren’t getting taxed at a higher rate so they aren’t passing costs on to consumers.
My other main criticism is the fact that most of these experiments measure how “happy” or less anxious the recipients become. Which to me is obvious, yes, free money can do that. But again, they’re measuring the impact of limited free money without the downsides of higher taxes and market impact. Would any of these experiments demand that the recipients also lose access to any other government assistance they may be on? To my knowledge none of them do.
Edit: To put it more succinctly, they are measuring the impact of a stipend and not a basic income program.
My other main criticism is the fact that most of these experiments measure how “happy” or less anxious the recipients become. Which to me is obvious, yes, free money can do that. But again, they’re measuring the impact of limited free money without the downsides of higher taxes and market impact. Would any of these experiments demand that the recipients also lose access to any other government assistance they may be on? To my knowledge none of them do.
Edit: To put it more succinctly, they are measuring the impact of a stipend and not a basic income program.