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Recipients were 50% more likely to be unemployed which led to a more negative emotional state. None of the objectives expected were met and did not even have any effect on the test subjects in those areas.

I often see people saying that with AI there won't be jobs and we will have to start UBI, but UBI has failed everywhere it has been tried. The natural state of humanity is laziness and given an opportunity to not work, people WILL take it. Society cannot survive with no one working and it's bad for mental health. We have to come up with solutions but those will likely naturally come into form with new types of jobs and planning. However, using UBI is not a viable option.

A read of Ludwig Von Mises's, "Human Action" will provide a good explanation as to why humans act and think the way they do. Which will also make it understandable why government intervention with programs such as UBI always fail.

 

[jason10mm]

Shocker. Having all that free time just to bing a season of stranger things in a single day and then rant about it online does not lead to fullfillment....news at 11

 

[Coconutt]

Work is a necessary evil people with too much free time and no purpose im their life tend to do stupid shit.

 

[Avid Reading Horse]

When the AI enslaves us we will finally be happy.

 

[AJUMP23]

Universal income is a terrible idea. People must work in order to feel achievement.

 

[yet_another_alt]

When the AI enslaves us we will finally be happy.

 

[Burning Blade]

socialism is great until the other guy runs out of money

 

[Mistake]

The AI scenario assumes it will be a self sustaining system with no drawbacks. Also, how is UBI any different than an annual stimulus check? Inflation would go through the roof

 

[EverydayBeast]

This is embarrassing at some point you got to get money

 

[poppabk]

Eh. I couldn't really follow the study report but from what I can tell this guy is overselling the negatives and under selling any positives.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I'm not really convinced with UBI, but

Sam Altman, lmao.

 

[Trogdor1123]

There was a study done on mice and it was supposed to provide them with all their needs. It was a disaster and within a few generations, they all died.

I'm massively overly simplifying it and skipping key details but it was bizarre.

Be careful what you wish for.

I'd also argue that UBI would 100% lead to tyranny. Would you really want the government to 100% in control of your money, or what you spend it on?

 

[diffusionx]

The idea that the elites will spend trillions of dollars of their wealth annually to keep a bunch of useless eaters alive is ridiculous. Look at the Georgia Guidestones. The end goal for these AI trans humanist scum bags is lowering world population to 500 million.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

The AI scenario assumes it will be a self sustaining system with no drawbacks. Also, how is UBI any different than an annual stimulus check? Inflation would go through the roof

Depends if it gets funded via taxes

 

[Rentahamster]

The actual source would be a better representation of information than this dude. It's a lot more nuanced than his take on it. It's a red flag that his presentation is of the non-sourced "trust me bro" "you'll accept everything I say without question because you already agree with these preconceived notions" style of video.

Unconditional Cash Study

OpenResearch is a nonprofit research lab that seeks to answer open-ended questions.

www.openresearchlab.org

Findings: Working Papers

OpenResearch is a nonprofit research lab that seeks to answer open-ended questions.

www.openresearchlab.org

NBER Working Paper: Parenting and Children | Findings

We study the effect of unconditional cash transfers on parental behaviors and investments and children’s social, behavioral, and educational outcomes.

www.openresearchlab.org

This paper examines the impact of a large, randomized cash transfer on parental behaviors, investment in children, children's social, behavioral, and educational outcomes, and pregnancy and childbearing. We find that parents who were randomly selected to receive a $1,000 per month unconditional cash transfer for three years spent more on their children each month and reported better parenting behaviors (such as supervising their children more closely) compared to those randomized to receive $50 per month over the same period. However, possibly due to this closer monitoring, parents in the treatment group also reported that their child was experiencing more developmental difficulties and stress. Parents with the lowest incomes at baseline experienced the largest improvements in parenting; among these parents, the transfer also increased the use and quality of non-parental child care. The transfer did not have a meaningful effect on most educational outcomes measured in school administrative records, nor did it affect characteristics of the home environment, child food security, exposure to homelessness, or parental satisfaction. Although treated families were more likely to move, we did not detect changes in most measures of neighborhood quality, though proximity to child-focused amenities such as daycares appeared to increase in the treatment group relative to the control group. The transfer did not affect childbearing, pregnancy, or outcomes related to contraception. While the transfer reduced parents' stress and mental distress in the first year of the program, these effects were short-lived and dissipated by the second year of the transfer, analogous to what was documented previously in the full population of participants.

Qualitative Working Paper: Parental Investments in Children | Findings

We explore the mechanisms through which cash transfers impacted the quality and quantity of time parents spend with their children.

www.openresearchlab.org

This study examines how an unconditional cash transfer reshaped low-income parents' experiences of time and caregiving, focusing on the emergence of presence-centered parenting, a caregiving approach grounded in emotional attunement, relational connection, and everyday co-regulation. Drawing on six waves of qualitative interviews with 117 parents participating in a randomized controlled trial, we identify four key mechanisms through which the cash transfer supported parents' ability to be present with their children: (1) reduced financial stress that freed up cognitive and emotional bandwidth for caregiving; (2) work flexibility that allowed parents to reclaim time and reconfigure routines around caregiving priorities; (3) investments in parental well-being that enhanced emotional availability and responsive parenting; and (4) expenditures on shared experiences that deepened relational bonds. Our findings challenge dominant frameworks that prioritize structured, future-oriented parental investments by highlighting the importance of informal, relational time investments that foster emotional security and connection. This work offers a new conceptual lens for understanding how parental time use shifts under conditions of constraint and relief, with direct implications for social policies aimed at supporting the relational and emotional dimensions of caregiving in low-income families.

NBER Working Paper: Consumption and Household Balance Sheets |…

The Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers on Consumption and Household Balance Sheets: Experimental Evidence from Two US States

www.openresearchlab.org

We provide new evidence on the causal effect of unearned income on consumption, balance sheets, and financial outcomes by exploiting an experiment that randomly assigned 1000 individuals to receive $1000 per month and 2000 individuals to receive $50 per month for three years. The transfer increased measured household expenditures by at least $300 per month. The spending impact is positive in most categories, and is largest for housing, food, and car expenses. The treatment increases housing unit and neighborhood mobility. We find noisily estimated modest positive effects on asset values, driven by financial assets, but these gains are offset by higher debt, resulting in a near-zero effect on net worth. The transfer increased self-reported financial health and credit scores but did not affect credit limits, delinquencies, utilization, bankruptcies, or foreclosures. Adjusting for underreporting, we estimate marginal propensities to consume non-durables between 0.44 and 0.55, durables and semi-durables between 0.21 and 0.26, and marginal propensities to de-lever of near zero. These results suggest that large temporary transfers increase short-term consumption and improve financial health but may not cause persistent improvements in the financial position of young, low-income households.

NBER Working Paper: Employment | Findings

The Employment Effects of a Guaranteed Income: Experimental Evidence from Two U.S. States

www.openresearchlab.org

We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month unconditionally for three years, with a control group of 2,000 participants receiving $50/month. We gather detailed survey data, administrative records, and data from a custom mobile phone app. The transfer caused total individual income to fall by about $1,500/year relative to the control group, excluding the transfers. The program resulted in a 2.0 percentage point decrease in labor market participation for participants and a 1.3-1.4 hour per week reduction in labor hours, with participants' partners reducing their hours worked by a comparable amount. The transfer generated the largest increases in time spent on leisure, as well as smaller increases in time spent in other activities such as transportation and finances. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. We observe no significant effects on investments in human capital, though younger participants may pursue more formal education. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

NBER Working Paper: Health | Findings

Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income

www.openresearchlab.org

This paper provides new evidence on the causal relationship between income and health by studying a randomized experiment in which 1,000 low-income adults in the United States received $1,000 per month for three years, with 2,000 control participants receiving $50 over that same period. The cash transfer resulted in large but short-lived improvements in stress and food security, greater use of hospital and emergency department care, and increased medical spending of about $20 per month in the treatment relative to the control group. Our results also suggest that the use of other office-based care—particularly dental care—may have increased as a result of the transfer. However, we find no effect of the transfer across several measures of physical health as captured by multiple well-validated survey measures and biomarkers derived from blood draws. We can rule out even very small improvements in physical health and the effect that would be implied by the cross-sectional correlation between income and health lies well outside our confidence intervals. We also find that the transfer did not improve mental health after the first year and by year 2 we can again reject very small improvements. We also find precise null effects on self-reported access to health care, physical activity, sleep, and several other measures related to preventive care and health behaviors. Our results imply that more targeted interventions may be more effective at reducing health inequality between high- and low-income individuals, at least for the population and time frame that we study.

NBER Working Paper: The Causal Effects of Income on Political…

We study the causal effects of income on political attitudes and behavior with a field experiment.

www.openresearchlab.org

We study the causal effects of income on political attitudes and behavior with a field experiment. In the experiment, a non-profit gifted 1,000 low-income Americans $1,000 per month for three years tax-free, and 2,000 control participants $50 monthly. Contrary to resource models of participation, we find no effects on political participation or engagement, and rule out effects equivalent to the observational association between turnout and income. Political preferences largely do not change, with the estimates again distinguishable from the observational relationship that economic conservatism increases with income. Dispositions such as trust in government, polarization, and support for democracy also do not change. We do find effects consistent with mood misattribution: affect towards one's own racial group, other racial groups, and some politicians slightly improves. There is also some evidence that treated participants saw work as more important for individuals, society, or even as a requirement for accessing government programs; qualitative evidence illuminates potential mechanisms. Our findings contrast with findings from other economic shocks such as government-sponsored or taxable transfers—thereby helping clarify the mechanisms likely responsible for their effects—and underscore the durability of political predispositions.