<story><title>Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?</title><url>https://www.theincomer.com/2018/02/28/basic-income-crime-rate-drop-by-40-lower-inequality-even-stronger-workforce/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pacbard</author><text>Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions:&lt;p&gt;1. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack random treatment assignment. This leads to biased estimates and wrong conclusions.&lt;p&gt;2. Are the results externally valid? That is, to whom do the results apply? Most UBI experiments are done in contexts that are different than the US (if you are interested in what would happened if UBI becomes law in the US). Local factors could impact the way that people react to UBI. Because these factors do not apply to the US, the study results do not readily translate to the US.&lt;p&gt;For example, the article cites this NBER working paper[1] as proof that UBI has positive impacts on unemployment. The article uses a difference-in-differences model with a systemic control group to get to a causal estimate of receiving dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. This boils down to compare changes in employment between Alaska and states that had similar employment trends during the pre-treatment period. Their analysis seem to be sound and they conduct multiple robustness checks.&lt;p&gt;As far as external validity, how similar is Alaska to the rest of the US? Would results from that setting translate to California, or Mississippi, or New York?&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w24312.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nber.org&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;w24312.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?</title><url>https://www.theincomer.com/2018/02/28/basic-income-crime-rate-drop-by-40-lower-inequality-even-stronger-workforce/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>twblalock</author><text>The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc.&lt;p&gt;In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and there is no reason to believe the same impulses that got us our current welfare system won&amp;#x27;t influence UBI also.</text></comment>