The Reports of UBI’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

The Reports of UBI’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated: The Mountain of Positive Results vs. Pandemic-Era NullsIn this episode, I read through my newest essay on scottsantens.substack.comChapters:00:00 Introduction00:25 Overview03:05 The Pandemic Happened09:44 The U is Universal14:25 The Household Size Problem18:02 Prevention vs Treatment22:18 Time is a Factor26:22 The Control Group Problem30:17 Evidence For Thee But Not For Me34:58 Missing the Forest For the Trees40:48 There's More to Poverty Than Brainwaves46:12 ConclusionSummary:This essay audits the evidence that actually maps to UBI—per-person, saturation-site, long-duration designs with clean controls—and shows consistent gains in poverty reduction, mental and physical health, crime, education, and labor-market functioning.Key threads: COVID-19 as a confound; universality vs scattered pilots; household-size scaling; prevention vs treatment; time-horizon effects; control-group and benefit-interaction problems; marginal tax rate traps in SSI/SNAP/housing; cash vs in-kind efficiency (MVPF).Referenced cases and pilots: Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend; Stockton SEED; Chelsea Eats; Denver Basic Income Project; OpenResearch UBI Study (ORUS); Baby’s First Years; Finland and Germany basic income studies; Dauphin, Manitoba (MINCOME); India saturation pilots; Namibia village UBI; Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians dividends; EITC and CTC; Bolsa Família.See my ongoing compilation of UBI evidence on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/scottsantens.com/post/3lckzcleo7s24See my ongoing compilation of UBI evidence on X: https://x.com/scottsantens/status/1766213155967955332For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faqDonate to the Income To Support All Foundation to support UBI projects:https://www.itsafoundation.orgSubscribe to the ITSA Newsletter for monthly UBI news:https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribeVisit Basic Income Today for daily UBI news:https://basicincometoday.comSign up for the Comingle waitlist for voluntary UBI:https://www.comingle.usFollow Scott:https://linktr.ee/scottsantensSpecial thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark,Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Laurel gillespie, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun ,' @Justin_Dart , Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Tommy Caruso, and all my other patrons for their support.If you'd like to see your name here in future video descriptions, you can do so by becoming a patron on Patreon at the UBI Producer level or above.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership#universalbasicincome #BasicIncome #UBI