A privately-funded experiment in a universal basic income

From reason.com: A Privately Funded Experiment in a Universal Basic Income.

A U.S.-based group is preparing a pilot program in Kenya that will test the effects of a universal basic income—the increasingly popular concept of giving virtually everyone in a community unconditional payments on a regular basis. Unlike past large-scale experiments of this sort, this one is being run and funded privately.

The organization behind the effort is GiveDirectly, a charity whose work in Africa is based on the idea of giving people cash without restrictions on how the money can be spent. (The underlying anti-paternalist principle is that the needy know their needs better than outsiders do.) That outlook led naturally to an interest in the basic income, and so the organizers conceived a randomized control trial: [continue]

I’m looking forward to hearing how this turns out.

(I found this on Diaspora*, where it was posted by Max Strube.)

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