The results of the largest universal basic income (UBI) trial program in the United States - this one backed by billionaire Sam Altman, no less - are in and entirely unsurprising.

After three years of giving 1,000 low-income individuals $1,000 a month of no-strings-attached cash (and a 2,000-person control group $50 a month), a group of researchers at Altman's OpenResearch determined that recipients mostly spent the cash on life necessities, got a bit choosier in their employment, and made more use of medical care.

Perhaps most critically, it gave participants an increased sense of agency, making them more likely to start their own businesses, take the opportunity to work a lower-paying job for more independence, budget their finances to plan for the future, and improve their prospects through further education.

Thanks for reminding us of what we already knew, Sam: UBI makes overworked, poor people less miserable.

Altman, then the president of Y Combinator, announced plans to fund a UBI study through the startup incubator in 2016.

"I think it's good to start studying this early," Altman said nearly a decade ago. "I'm fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we're going to see some version of this at a national scale."

Altman said he wanted the study to examine some of the most basic questions at the heart of the UBI debate, like whether it would motivate people or lead them to "sit around and play video games," or if recipients would create more economic value than they received. 

The future OpenAI founder also said he believed it was impossible to have true equal opportunity for everyone without some form of UBI, and believes "it will seem ridiculous that we used fear of not being able to eat as a way to motivate people" in 50 years' time.

"Combined with innovation driving down the cost of having a great life, by doing something like this we could eventually make real progress towards eliminating poverty," Altman said.

Try telling that to your fellow American business leaders - they don't seem to be getting the message. 

It's not all sunshine and roses in UBI land

Though the Y Combinator study's results published on July 21, 2024, are generally positive and show the benefits of a no-strings-attached cash payment, not everything was a net positive.

Take, for example, the fact that recipients were more likely to visit the hospital, see a specialist, go to the dentist, and cut down on excess alcohol and drug use - those are all great results, except they didn't lead to a net improvement in participant health.

"On average we do not find direct evidence of greater access to healthcare or improvements in physical and mental health," the researchers say in the report. For many participants, "the additional $1,000 per month alone may not be sufficient to overcome the larger systemic barriers to healthcare access and reduce health disparities."

In other words, UBI is just one piece of the puzzle that is lifting the conditions of the poorest Americans.

Where the UBI could help is in long-term health due to increased access to opportunity, as evidenced by the fact that recipients were 10 percent more likely to be actively seeking a job over the control group.

Those recipients weren't necessarily seeking a higher-paying job, however, and were willing to take a pay hit for a job they found more fulfilling and left them with more free time to pursue hobbies or education.

Employers might not be thrilled about the fact recipients were less likely to apply for jobs they didn't want due to a bit more economic independence, and a 2 percent decrease in recipient employment and an average of 1.3 fewer hours of work per week probably won't win favor with businesses either.

We contacted the team behind the research, and while we didn't hear back, it did tell CBS MoneyWatch that the decrease in labor supply was "moderate," and not necessarily something that would shake the foundations of the American economy.

"People are doing more stuff, and if the results say people value having more leisure time - that this is what increases their well-being - that's positive," University of Toronto economist Eva Vivalt, one of the principal researchers, told CBS.

Unfortunately, Vivalt said that there's no evidence that recipients being more selective about their employment actually helped - the study apparently found no effects on the quality of employment, meaning people weren't making more money by holding out for a better job.

There have been nearly 200 UBI experiments around the world to date, the vast majority of which have taken place in the United States. Several Republican-run US states have banned UBI trials or programs in their jurisdictions.

Altman's support for UBI has continued unabated in recent years, with the entrepreneur saying in 2021 that the AI his company is developing would so fundamentally reshape the economy that "even more power will shift from labor to capital."

"If public policy doesn't adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today," Altman said in 2021. Careful, Sam - you're treading dangerously close to the sort of leftist talking points increasingly out of favor in Silicon Valley. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/23/sam_altman_basic_income/