Wednesday, September 16, 2020

McKinsey — An experiment to inform universal basic income


Finnish experiment.
The final results from Finland’s experiment are now in, and the findings are intriguing: the basic income in Finland led to a small increase in employment, significantly boosted multiple measures of the recipients’ well-being, and reinforced positive individual and societal feedback loops.
The numbers look pretty good. Can it be generalized?

This would not suggest that a UBI is a substitute for an MMT JG, however. The rise in employment was small. There would still be a buffer stock of unemployed without a JG.

Do the results imply that a UBI is the only alternative? Would a means-tested basic income perform the same or better?

McKinsey
An experiment to inform universal basic income
Tera Allas, Jukka Maksimainen, James Manyika, and Navjot Singh

14 comments:

André said...

This kind of post highlights the challenges of conducting social and economic experiments.

For example, one of the main issues of the UBI could be its inflationary impact. However, it's impossible to test the hypotesis "UBI brings inflationary impacts in the economy" with the discussed experiment, as only 2,000 or 3,000 randomly picked persons were part of it.

Honestly, the experiment seems useless to measure macroeconomic impacts.

Peter Pan said...

It was an itsy bitsy teency weency little experiment.

Matt Franko said...

“ its inflationary impact.”

They can’t even define “inflation!”...

NeilW said...

"The numbers look pretty good. Can it be generalized?"

No. Finland is a state in a monetary union. The results are no different to having a Basic income in Arizona and nowhere else.

These "tests" inform nothing at all as they don't address the basic problem - where's the Magic Porridge Pot the whole system relies upon.

"In another state in a pegged or monetary union we can exploit" isn't an answer. It's a recipe for warfare.

Income guarantees always fail because they fail to address the supply side - why exactly should other people work for no material gain to resource you?

Ralph Musgrave said...

Neil asks "Why exactly should other people work for no material gain to resource you?"

Well that has always been the main alleged problem with UBI. And the answer from the Finish experiment seems to be loud and clear, namely that there isn't much effect on peoples' willingness to work.

NeilW said...

"And the answer from the Finish experiment seems to be loud and clear, namely that there isn't much effect on peoples' willingness to work."

Which suffers from the obvious fallacy of composition doesn't it. Where does the money they earn and spend get serviced alongside the money they get given? You have to close the model.

We know there is currently an output gap to use up. It doesn't really help when you are comparing the alternative uses of the output gap. Do we give it all to people who currently haven't got a job, or do we reduce the amount they get to give some of it to well to do middle class people who think they are too good to work?

Matt Franko said...

“ why exactly should other people work for no material gain to resource you?”

Here:

https://youtu.be/z_Jx9nqnxOM

Its possible...

Peter Pan said...

Trump wouldn't like that song.

Peter Pan said...

"He was too heavy" - Kim Jong-un

Calgacus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Calgacus said...

Not much of a brother if he can walk perfectly well, maybe better than you, but decides to climb on your back and poop on you. Are you really doing him a favor if you let him do this?

Airheaded support of the UBI, eyes tightly shut against its economic destructiveness and impossibility, and most laughable of all, the idea that it has some moral superiority is a wonder to behold.

Keep up the good fight Neil & André!

Matt Franko said...

All You art degree douche bags pieces of human shit are currently being carried by we Science degree people... FYI.... we actually don’t care until an unqualified Art degree moron is put in charge over us,,, No concern AT ALL you guys can climb on our backs all day long.., that’s why we do it in the first place...

Peter Pan said...

How to get the 1% off our backs... science!

Peter Pan said...

Poor Matt has a monkey on his back... doing finger paintings in the sky.