It's not bad, it just misses a lot of the benefit of 'basic' income. For example, my wife had just finished her education and was looking for a job when COVID hit. She's randomly just as hosed as everyone that actually lost an existing job, but qualifies for none of the same relief.
The benefit of the 'universal basic' part of UBI is that it just washes away all edge cases, and it's pretty hard to feel like you've been wronged by it.
Andrew Yang's Humanity Forward organization is not the nation's government. They don't have the resources to make something universal. That's one of the reasons he ran for president, was so he could do that. The people weren't ready this time, but maybe in 4 years, when he's probably going to run again, they'll be more willing to give him a shot.
But right now he is doing what he can and working with much, much more limited resources, so it only makes sense to target people who are in immediate need because of the crisis.
There are a lot more people than even that 20,000 that are struggling right now (40 million people have lost their job since the start of the pandemic, in the US), but if he divided $5,000,000 by 40 million people, it'd only give each person 12 cents, which doesn't help any single individual enough to make any difference, while simultaneously turning into a much more of a logistical nightmare.
For example he had Sam Harris on his Yang Speaks podcast recently, and Yang said that to a certain extent he sympathizes on how long the stimulus checks are getting out to people because he's been giving money out himself and it's been difficult to pin down current addresses for the people most in need.
So what is it you're expecting him to do with that $5 million instead, that would make it more universal?
I’m not the OP, but I would like to see some UBI studies that are at least permanent (per participant), if not universal.
It’d be a lot more interesting to me to see what happens when 30 people get $1,000/mo for the rest of their lives than what 20,000 people do with an extra $250 once.
You could run a test case in a low income country where 5 million goes a long way. For example, the median per-capita income in India is $600/yr[1]. You could use this money to provide 3,000 people with $300/yr for 5 years.
Give Directly does that. The organization is all about giving money to the extreme poor, and they're outstandingly effective at doing this. At the same time, they structure their giving activities as RCT's at varying levels (formerly household-based, now full villages AIUI) so they're also creating very valuable research output about these issues.
True.. I’d probably rather do $120/yr for 3,000 people for life (as opposed to just five years). Assuming $120 is equivalent to $12,000 in the US, and for life is going to be more interesting than even five years. And at 7% interest you could afford this forever off the $5M endowment.
The benefit of the 'universal basic' part of UBI is that it just washes away all edge cases, and it's pretty hard to feel like you've been wronged by it.