One thing I didn't see mentioned in the post was an attempt to understand macro economic forces are affected by BI. I understand there are limitations to what can be studied in a controlled environment, and teasing out cause and effect of macro forces can be very, very difficult, but any sort of R&D done at a company normally focuses on reducing the largest risks first, to determine if the project should move forward. Looking at how individual well being and happiness are affected by a basic income seems like an (almost) no brainer as to what the outcome will be - generally positive for those individuals. Maybe this is something that is also being looked at by the team, and just didn't get mentioned in a brief blog post, but I would hope this research is at least thinking about how to address and manage these largest risks first, instead of the opposite.
How basic income affects macroeconomic conditions (inflation, housing prices, demand for labor, etc.) is really important to figure out, but it’s honestly beyond the scope of this study. Unless BI is implemented on a macro level, we can't measure the macro-level effects. We’re focusing on the individual-level effects as a first step, but we'll be looking at more than happiness and well-being. We're using the pilot to help refine outcome measures, but we'll share those once they're finalized.
I wonder if you could get some interesting data about macro effects by giving BI to a whole neighborhood within Oakland, preferably one that historically has had low levels of migration and shops locally. Instead of sampling randomly from the population of Oakland, universally give everyone within a neighborhood basic income (or run a parallel study doing so).
That'd answer some of the biggest questions I have about BI. What happens to rents & housing prices when everyone has an extra $X to spend? What happens to prices in neighborhood shops? To what degree are people willing to travel to avoid high prices? What happens to the social fabric when everyone is richer? Do people engage more with their community when they don't have to worry about basic financial survival? Or do they isolate themselves and enjoy their new toys? If people choose not to work, what else do they spend their time doing, and how does that effect the community?
At the very least, you'd get some really great data about elasticity of rents, housing prices, and local goods which I bet economists would love to have.
