I am not sure how small studies can account for the inflation wide rollout could cause. Consider this hypothetical: If you give 1 of 1000 renters $100, 1 landlord will leave the rent alone because they don't know. If you give 1000 of 1000 renters $100, word will get to 1000 landlords, who will all increase rent $100, because the market will bear it. I'm not saying this will happen, just that a small study enjoys the benefits of anonymity.
There are places in the US that have vacant homes but no jobs. A UBI would let people move there.
Vacant owned home tax could also serve a similar purpose, in addition to financing (actually balancing) the UBI.
They also don't account for the way these decisions would be made, if done at the government level.
Put simply: I'm looking forward to the study where the participants get to vote every year to decide how much money they should be getting from the people running the study.
For completeness the study should also be financed by wealth tax on the asset owners in the area, who can also vote.
If everybody can have one vote per dollar, this system would probably tend to zero UBI. If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.
> If everybody can have one vote per person then some equitable equilibrium could develop.
Yep. As long as the wealthy can't leave, or keep their wealth / investments elsewhere, it should work pretty well.
The rich person will have a choice. Either stay and compete for the money that was taken from other rich people with this tax and given to poor people that are way easier to extort or leave and forgo the opportunity and go to some other place where the only money that's available for taking is what poor earned with their work.
If I were a skillful rich person I'd stay, because that could help me to raise in ranks of the rich more quickly. If I was skilless rich person I'd get the hell out of there because other rich would be getting my money redistributed through this tax.
This is a pretty common and unsupported argument that people also use for things like saying minimum wage doesn’t make sense for the same reason.