<story><title>Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available</title><url>https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/study</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legitster</author><text>This is a pretty generous reading of the study.&lt;p&gt;One result they are missing out is that the income actually reduced overall employment compared to the control group, and ended up decreasing household earnings: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w32719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w32719&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even with a generous reading, it was an extremely expensive study. And similar proposals like the Negative Income Tax would cost far less money and have none of the presented downsides.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>Why is it some shock-horror thing that people worked less? I think, for those who imagine AI taking a vast swath of jobs (like Altman), the aim for basic income is to get people working less but without this resulting social&amp;#x2F;work disengagement (whether AI will have that effect is a different matter).</text></comment>
<story><title>Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available</title><url>https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/study</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>legitster</author><text>This is a pretty generous reading of the study.&lt;p&gt;One result they are missing out is that the income actually reduced overall employment compared to the control group, and ended up decreasing household earnings: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w32719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w32719&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even with a generous reading, it was an extremely expensive study. And similar proposals like the Negative Income Tax would cost far less money and have none of the presented downsides.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Willish42</author><text>&amp;gt; And similar proposals like the Negative Income Tax would cost far less money and have none of the presented downsides.&lt;p&gt;Most people file taxes once a year, meaning they would get this payment once rather than monthly, which makes a huge difference if living on the poverty line. Similarly, many people making less than the minimum for filing [1] likely don&amp;#x27;t file their taxes. This was an issue with the child tax credit as well -- you want to get resources to the lowest-income households, but doing that with tax credits means you don&amp;#x27;t actually reach those households, meaning you still have to introduce new programs to reach those people [2]. There were proposals to make that tax credit into a monthly payment but IIRC they did not pass before the child tax credit was ended in 2022.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.irs.gov&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;who-needs-to-file-a-tax-return&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.irs.gov&amp;#x2F;newsroom&amp;#x2F;who-needs-to-file-a-tax-return&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;22588701&amp;#x2F;child-tax-credit-accessibility-irs-portal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;22588701&amp;#x2F;child-tax-credit-accessibility-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>