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Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

So most people 'kept working' but 25% quit, I think that kind of validates that a lot of people will quit, which is the concern. 25% is a lot. It'd be interesting to see numbers from those who were not employed, i.e. how many gained employment.

The bits about 'having to drop future plans' isn't fair. Of course, people will have to adjust after losing a major source of income.

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That popped out at me as well. I'd like to see the actual report because 25% of people stopping work is a big deal. However, it appears the response rate of the survey was only 217 of 4000 (5%) which isn't good. Typically when you have large population level studies like this, you have staff embedded in the town and would conduct telephone interviews with all participants. I wonder if the cancellation of the project meant they could only afford an online survey.

The program was fully designed and budgeted. The new government scrapped it unilaterally after campaigning on keeping it saying "it's not showing good results"—but the study had barely begun!

Any issues with reporting are unfounded since the program wasn't able to run as designed.

It might very well be that they quit low pay jobs they took only because they had no alternative. It's obvious that the job market would need to adjust with an UBI in place. Most wage-slavery level jobs would have no justification to exist anymore.

Quitting is not the metric that is interesting, quitting and staying unemployed long-term is.

to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's what everybody who quit here did, but it is part of the idea of UBI.

That may all be true.

But its extremely dishonest to make the headline "people kept working" when 25% of them quit.

"don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well "

80-90% of the population would fit into this category.

You are not entitled to social services because 'you don't like your job'.

Yea the basic income in the study seems to be means tested so it might incentivize people to quit.

Just want to point out that a universal income would be constant regardless of job held, so there's no incentive to quit. If the UBI amount is tuned correctly, then those who don't have a job can subsist long enough to find a better job, which I'd posit is a net boon for our economy.

wow, that's just dishonest reporting.

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