I was born and grew up in the Netherlands. They still seem to be doing pretty well despite high minimum wage, unemployment benefits and social assistance. Some things have changed though. When I went to university it was still fully paid for by the government, just a small sum to sign up and buy your own books, yet you also got paid to go to school. I wasn't living in luxury, but had no trouble staying debt free. Much nicer to start life without a huge debt to pay off.

I only know of two people from my life in the Netherlands that said screw it, I'm just going to live off welfare. One a single mother, another an alcoholic with bigger problems. People rather work and get ahead once the requirements to stay alive have been full filled.

Of course everyone that works pays for social assistance for those that don't. That's how a welfare state works. And that point is what rubs most people the wrong way. Why should I pay for those that don't work. Well if you enjoy your work you wouldn't have such a big problem with that. And if you don't enjoy your work, you can quit it to find something you do enjoy without running into problems. Not being dependent on your shitty job is a huge advantage of a working social welfare system. Work places now have to provide better working conditions or people don't want to work for them. And happier workers are much more productive than those that simply go through the motions for the next pay cheque. Everybody wins.

Do you know how useless a study with 125 people is? Might as well flip a coin when comparing it to a country of hundreds of millions.

I imagine the analysis of the researchers found the differences between the experimental and control groups to be meaningful. How many people do you think the experiment would have to be done with the apply to 100s of millions?

I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I have a lot of help from my parents. I'm fairly certain that if I just stopped working (or stopped pursuing work since I'm a student now) they wouldn't let me starve to death or die on the streets. The support hasn't stopped me from wanting to work, but instead of working at a retail job (no disrespect to those who do but it wasn't for me) I was able to try and find a job that will better suit me and will likely produce more taxes that will be paid into the system.

I don't know if it would work on a large scale, but in theory, I definitely couldn't begrudge others having the same kind of safety net I lucked into.

In terms of psychological studies, that's a fairly robust sample. It couldn't account for the logistics, but assuming the study was done correctly, there's no reason to expect the sample group would be vastly different than another group in America in terms of the psychological effects. Of course, I'm imagining that like most studies, they'll end by stating more research is necessary. Nobody should be convinced solely based on this in UBI, but it's a relevant data point. 

The latest covid relief bill contained $1400 stimulus checks, that alone costed $422 billion. Just by doing simple math a $500 monthly check would be $1.8 trillion per year. Now how much money does the federal government in US collect every year? Just $3.4 trillion if we look at the year 2019, before the 2020 recession.

GL paying for UBI :)

It's an interesting study, and they seem to be popping up all over the country and in other countries. I'll be curious what the results are 3 years from now. I heard Spain was going to implement it last year, did that ever happen? I'd rather them work on universal health care before universal basic income. I don't see where we are going to have the necessary funds to one day tackle global warming, universal health care, universal basic income, and infrastructure. I'm not necessarily dead against it, but I don't see it as feasible at this time

There are 300 million unemployed people without means to support themselves in the states? Ouch!

That's how UBI works, everyone get a check no matter what reason, even if you're working.

We not talking about unemployment benefits, it already exist in the US and your country (Canada).

Oh I am not against the welfare state at all, I have no interest in living in a country that doesnt have a safety net despite some of it's problems like poor medical support from the GP's and waiting times for exams (God I hate the NHS, why do british people worship it?). Also people forget that there is a theme that is prohibited to be discussed by society, especially the left. There are some people that are just helpless and won't be able to help the society at all. People with very low IQ, with serious mental disorders (which usually leads to drug addiction), people with serious illnesses etc. We can't just let these people rot in the street. In the past the family would take care of the person but today the burden is on the society. And it is better to have theses people with a roof under their heads and food in their belies than roaming in the street and causing other problems.

But universal basic income is different, at least what has been proposed. Provide a help for people that are unemployed or do not want to work with a few hundred bucks is one thing, providing $1500 or a full minimum wage for everybody is different and throws a big burden in society. Eventually it will (my opinion) serve as an incentive for people not to work, increase exponentially the government spending which will then have to be covered by huge amounts of debt of money printing or tax increases.

Unfortunately only a few societies can cope with that, mostly very rich societies like (a few) western european countries and north america

Also two things will never change:

1) If you let government create a tax, it will never go away and will only increase over time

2) If you let government create benefits, they will never go away and with time new benefits will be demanded, all the time.

I'm not sure I see your logic. Giving people more resources increases their ability to be productive. People generally use money to pay their bills/debts, and then extra money to improve themselves and expand their employment opportunities. Many Western countries have programs today that incentivize people remaining unemployed, UBI can't possibly have worse effects than that since it actually removes that incentive to remain unemployed.

Another use for the extra money can also be used to expand the capitalist class by expanding investment resources for the higher wage working class. For the lower wage working class, it gives them leverage to negotiate higher wages with corporate positions while not requiring a minimum/living wage as a small business employee - they can instead be paid in RSAs and/or RSUs. It'll give small businesses and independent entrepreneurs a fighting chance against the mega-corporatization of the economy.