I also think in general all the research around basic income misses an incredibly important piece that is being proposed in policy changes.
Basic income experiments usually game it like this:
We will give you x years of payments monthly for just being alive.
Then they see what happens. The problem is, policy has one huge difference. It doesn't end.
The difference between, I'll give you 2 years of payments monthly and then you'll have to take care of yourself the rest of your life is extraordinarily different than, I'll give you monthly inflation adjusted payments for life, there will be no point in the future when you will need to take care of yourself again.
Think about the FIRE movement. People are working to create an early retirement for themselves with the government not offering it. There will certainly be a percent of the population who retires with basic income.
To be more precise, it has no specific end date, but in a democracy, it can be repealed again with every new parliament. Or possibly via a ballot initiative.
At which moment the net recipients are in for a major shock.
The bigger danger is its just a path to the end of democracy. If the 50.1% can just vote themselves a bigger piece of the pie, how long before the morlocks decide they don't like supporting a bunch of eloi. If the morlocks decide eloi votes don't count, what are they going to do? Go on strike?
Democracy is not the same as time-limited dictatorship. A well-working democracy has constitutional safeguards against policies that are hostile against parts of the population.
If you're living in a country where 50.1% of the population can impose their will on the other 49.9% unopposed, you're not living in a healthy democracy. Regardless of what the media says.
(And yes, the Brexit referendum is a good example of that. All the issues the British government now has in living up to the results of that binary decision are problems of their own making -- on the other hand, one might say that these current problems show that the British democracy is in a healthier state than that referendum made it out to be)
Basic income experiments usually game it like this: We will give you x years of payments monthly for just being alive.
Then they see what happens. The problem is, policy has one huge difference. It doesn't end.
The difference between, I'll give you 2 years of payments monthly and then you'll have to take care of yourself the rest of your life is extraordinarily different than, I'll give you monthly inflation adjusted payments for life, there will be no point in the future when you will need to take care of yourself again.
Think about the FIRE movement. People are working to create an early retirement for themselves with the government not offering it. There will certainly be a percent of the population who retires with basic income.