Do We Need Basic Income Experiments?

A genuine pilot project must match the characteristics of a Basic Income scheme that could be implemented nationwide. Any financially feasible Basic Income scheme would need to alter a country’s existing tax and benefits systems, so for a genuine pilot project to take place, the country’s tax and benefits systems would have to be altered, or new taxes imposed, for a single community. It is difficult to see how this could be done in a more developed economy. To pay Basic Incomes to a community without changing existing tax and benefits systems would not constitute a pilot project; and selecting only individuals for whom the tax and benefits systems can be easily adapted, as in the Finland experiment, would not provide a representative sample, so again the experiment would not be a pilot project. A partial alternative to a physical pilot project is to create a virtual one, which microsimulation can achieve. Work on combining employment market models with microsimulation programmes is being undertaken, so it might soon be possible to create virtual pilot projects that test employment market effects. We would still need physical pilot projects to test for the wellbeing effects that the Finland experiment discovered.