<story><title>A basic income experiment in Kenya</title><url>http://nordic.businessinsider.com/kenya-village-disproving-biggest-myth-about-basic-income-2017-12</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>blueyes</author><text>The title is misleading, because this experiment start in late 2016. Sure, they plan to run for 12 years, but right now it&amp;#x27;s more like a 14-month experiment. Even when the experiment is over, it will have been done on a very small sample. In the dozens, and some will surely drop out.&lt;p&gt;Slightly misleading headline aside, I&amp;#x27;m glad the experiment is being done, since international aid had a lot of problems. The promise of UBI is that you don&amp;#x27;t need huge bureaucratic infrastructure to help lots of people. Maybe all you need is a payment system. Direct cash can put more resources in the hands of the beneficiaries, and less in the hands of aid organizations that exist primarily to persist.[0]&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;411524156&amp;#x2F;in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2015&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;411524156&amp;#x2F;in-search-of-the-re...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>A basic income experiment in Kenya</title><url>http://nordic.businessinsider.com/kenya-village-disproving-biggest-myth-about-basic-income-2017-12</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>aaron-lebo</author><text>Interesting to hear results in the field.&lt;p&gt;My question is how does that transfer to other environments? Do the results at $22 a month in Kenya translate to the results at $1000 a month in the US? There&amp;#x27;s a lot more interesting things to buy with a $1000 in New York than there is with $22 in a village in Kenya. It&amp;#x27;s also a different society, different people. Maybe more religious, etc.&lt;p&gt;Just throwing out a stupid idea: Kenya&amp;#x27;s population is 47 million. To give all of them $22 a month (ignoring age cutoffs), unless I&amp;#x27;m doing the math wrong would be just under $13 billion a year. If some really wealthy people really want to test this, it&amp;#x27;s not impossible.&lt;p&gt;Unlike the article&amp;#x27;s repeated claim that this is the &amp;quot;greatest myth&amp;quot; (it&amp;#x27;s really annoying how news articles editorialize with untestable statements like that), the biggest issue is still cost. How do you realistically put together and pay for a program that can become policy in the US? It&amp;#x27;s the 3 trillion dollar question.</text></comment>