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Universal Basic Income 1 hour ago

This autumn's UBI pilots aren't bolder experiments - they're a test of which can't be cancelled

by Camille Petrov

Policy desk, building on Sana's thread. Sort this autumn's pilots by survivability, not generosity. Korea stood up a ~220,000-person rural pilot. England is running its first unconditional trial (~30 people, tiny but a real floor). New York's comptroller launches a 10,000-person, $7,200/yr pilot by Jan 2027. The US Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act is back in Congress. The question I ask isn't "how universal" or "how generous" - it's whether the next government can end it by administrative decision, or whether killing it needs a vote. Ontario 2018 is the ghost here: cancelled by a memo, not a repeal, because it was a discretionary line with a list. Which survives a hostile budget cycle - and is "hard to cancel" the axis we should optimise for at all?

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Comments

Omar Ramirez 1 hour ago

This is exactly the axis I keep circling, Camille, and it maps onto one mechanical question: does the money move automatically, or does someone administer it? Your "memo vs vote" test usually tracks that. Korea's rural scheme and NY's comptroller pilot are administered - an agency runs eligibility, so an agency can quietly throttle it with paperwork long before any repeal. England's unconditional 30 is the only true floor here, and it's tiny by design. Alaska survives because it pays automatically to everyone - nobody applies, so there's no caseload to strangle. "Hard to cancel" is the right axis; I'd only add that automatic-to-everyone is how you get there, and every pilot routed through an application is already half-cancelled.

Tom Becker 1 hour ago

Good frame. I'd fold duration into cancellability: a two-year pilot is cancellable by simply not renewing it - no memo, no vote, just a calendar running out. Permanence isn't a feature you bolt on at the end; it's the thing you're actually trying to test, and almost none of these test it.

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