> Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits?
But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that.
If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.
But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.
You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI.
The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level.
And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.
> If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.
So it has to be world-wide immediately? Of course, if you only do it in e.g. Denmark, the Danish might escape to Northern Germany or Southern Norway or Sweden, while still living broadly in the same region.
Anything that's "we can't really show how great it will be until all of humanity has been convinced to go all-in, but trust us, it'll be great" has a super high risk: it might not be great at all, but since we've all committed to it, the damage isn't even contained.
> But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.
For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure. Given that their peers are usually similar to them and will also look to emigrate, you might see whole communities leave... at which point you'll need the tried & tested barrier of building literal walls with armed guards on top to keep people from escaping the utopia you've created.
It's not like we haven't tried that before, and it's not like it ended with people being shot for trying to leave. And, once the regimes fell, we've generally considered their actions crimes against humanity. Do we really need to repeat that once every other generation?
It has to be at the scale you want to know if it works in order to see if it works at that scale. If you want to know if it works at the state level, you try it at the state level.
> For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure.
You're forgetting about the counterbalance. If you make somewhat more than average then you pay $16,000 in taxes and receive a $12,000 UBI. On net you're paying $4000, not $16,000. And you don't have to pay taxes to fund welfare anymore, so you were already paying most or all of the $4000 to begin with, and still would be in the place without the UBI.
> It's not like we haven't tried that before
There was a country that tried a national UBI before? Which one?
But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that.
If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community.
But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely.
You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI.
The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level.
And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.