As Ireland’s $1,500-a-month basic income pilot program for creatives nears its end in February, officials have to answer a simple question: Is it worth it?
With four months to go, they say the answer is yes.
Earlier this month, Ireland’s government announced its 2026 budget, which includes “a successor to the pilot Basic Income Scheme for the Arts to begin next year” among its expenditures.
Ireland is just one of many places experimenting with guaranteed basic income programs, which provide recurring, unrestricted payments to people in a certain demographic. These programs differ from a universal basic income, which would provide payments for an entire population.
There is no evidence. What we know is that generally, throwing money at poor people will have positive effects, thats it.
We have no idea how prices will react, we have no idea how culture around work might change when people grow up with such a system, we have no idea how employment will change and we have no idea what people will actually use their freedom for.
I am personally in favor of some kind of UBI but not because i believe without a doubt in its positive effects but i believe that the world belongs to all of us and simply being born entitles you to parts of the “fruits of the land” and if UBI really doesn’t work out i guess we might just deserve our fate.
I agree we don’t know what exactly would happen if UBI was implemented globally, and what the large-scale effects would be. But saying “there is no evidence” goes too far. There have been UBI experiments, both intentional and by accident.
We generally know how people react in different contexts to different variants of a low to moderate UBI, what the health and work outcomes are, etc. Sure, a “full” UBI would be different. But it would be silly to expect people to react in a completely different way from what we have already seen, at least for a low UBI.
If you need a reminder about past experiments, listen to Scott Santens (youtube, 10min, from 2020). He is obviously very biased (UBI advocate) but he knows all the nuances about past UBI experiments.
Oh i am not saying that there isn’t positive implications for small scale experiments i am saying that this isn’t waterproof evidence that we would see the same effect when done countrywide because the parameters change massivly.
True, but “waterproof evidence” is not the bar required to change a law. Most voters are against UBI not because of the lack of evidence. I think they don’t even want to check the evidence, they are arguing against the idea.
(Sorry for the long reply. I got sucked into this topic ~15 years ago and it all wants to come back now ;-)
You can get quite an emotional reaction from some people to even propose this idea. Even when you propose to implement a tiny, tentative amount, they are still firmly against it.
My guess is that it de-valuates paid work ever so slightly, in principle, which goes against the current paradigm that puts paid work into the center of everything. (Ignoring those who already have an unconditional passive income today.) My guess is also that people really like the feeling that they have earned by their own personal effort any money they own. The truth of who has earned what is, as you know, a lot more complicated.
Actually, I think this is the most well-explored point. Every study is trying to measure this. E.g. quoting Wikipedia:
IIRC most studies have similar findings: employment generally changes only very slightly. Usually it goes slightly down, but nothing dramatic. Given the amount of studies that exist, I think at this point you’d have to argue why those results should not transfer, why at least a comparable (low) amount of UBI should have a large effect on employment elsewhere.
But as I said, I don’t think the political discussion around UBI is really about the evidence.
This one is more interesting. Some studies ignore this completely. (More time spent in paid work is always better, right?) But some try to find out what why people actually stop working.
From memory, in one study some of the newly un-employed were actually going back to finish their degree. And I remember an anecdote of one person who finally got out of an abusive job because of the money, only to find a much better one (better paid, too) a few months later. In one study I think they were even able to argue that the reduced health costs, etc. (people out of poverty are less likely to get hostpitalized or get criminal) is paying for the cost of the (low) UBI. (But IIRC it was additional money.)
You can dismiss this all as anecdotal, or “not real UBI if it was additional money”. But as I said, I don’t think the political reasons why people are against has much to do with the evidence. I think we have enough evidence to say that at least a low UBI is extremely unlikely to hurt the economy, or at least not by more than other policies that focus only on the unemployed already do.