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Here’s what a Sam Altman-backed basic income experiment found
A recent study on basic income, backed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, shows that giving low-income people guaranteed paydays with no strings attached can lead to their working slightly less, affording them more leisure time.
The study, which is one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, examined the impact of guaranteed income on recipients’ health, spending, employment, ability to relocate and other facets of their lives.
Altman first announced his desire to fund the study in a 2016 blog post on startup accelerator Y Combinator’s site.
Some of the questions he set out to answer about how people behave when they’re given free cash included, “Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things? Are people happy and fulfilled?” according to the post. Altman, whose OpenAI is behind generative text tool ChatGPT, which threatens to take away some jobs, said in the blog post that he thinks technology’s elimination of “traditional jobs” could make universal basic income necessary in the future.
How much cash did participants get?
For OpenResearch’s Unconditional Cash Study, 3,000 participants in Illinois and Texas received $1,000 monthly for three years beginning in 2020. The cash transfers represented a 40% boost in recipients’ incomes. The cash recipients were at least 300% below the federal poverty line, with average incomes of less than $29,000. A control group of 2,000 participants received $50 a month for their contributions.
Basic income recipients spent more money, the study found, with their extra dollars going toward essentials like rent, transportation and food.
Researchers also studied the free money’s effect on how much recipients worked, and in what types of jobs. They found that recipients of the cash transfers worked 1.3 to 1.4 hours less each week compared with the control group. Instead of working during those hours, recipients used them for leisure time.
“We observed moderate decreases in labor supply,” Eva Vivalt, assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto and one of the study’s principal investigators, told CBS MoneyWatch. “From an economist’s point of view, it’s a moderate effect.”
More autonomy, better health
Vivalt doesn’t view the dip in hours spent working as a negative outcome of the experiment, either. On the contrary, according to Vivalt. “People are doing more stuff, and if the results say people value having more leisure time — that this is what increases their well-being — that’s positive.”
In other words, the cash transfers gave recipients more autonomy over how they spent their time, according to Vivalt.
“It gives people the choice to make their own decisions about what they want to do. In that sense, it necessarily improves their well-being,” she said.
Researchers expected that participants would ultimately earn higher wages by taking on better-paid work, but that scenario didn’t pan out. “They thought that if you can search longer for work because you have more of a cushion, you can afford to wait for better jobs, or maybe you quit bad jobs,” Vivalt said. “But we don’t find any effects on the quality of employment whatsoever.”
Uptick in hospitalizations
At a time when even Americans with insurance say they have trouble staying healthy because they struggle to afford care, the study results show that basic-income recipients actually increased their spending on health care services.
Cash transfer recipients experienced a 26% increase in the number of hospitalizations in the last year, compared with the average control recipient. The average recipient also experienced a 10% increase in the probability of having visited an emergency department in the last year.
Researchers say they will continue to study outcomes of the experiment, as other cities across the U.S. conduct their own tests of the concept.
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Yellowstone hiker burned when she falls into scalding water near Old Faithful, park officials say
Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. — A New Hampshire woman suffered severe burns on her leg after hiking off-trail in Yellowstone National Park and falling into scalding water in a thermal area near the Old Faithful geyser, park officials said.
The 60-year-old woman from Windsor, New Hampshire, along with her husband and their leashed dog were walking off a designated trail near the Mallard Lake Trailhead on Monday afternoon when she broke through a thin crust over the water and suffered second- and third-degree burns to her lower leg, park officials said. Her husband and the dog weren’t injured.
The woman was flown to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho for treatment.
National Park Service / Jacob W. Frank
Park visitors are reminded to stay on boardwalks and trails in hydrothermal areas and exercise extreme caution. The ground in those areas is fragile and thin and there’s scalding water just below the surface, park officials said.
Pets are allowed in limited, developed areas of Yellowstone park but are prohibited on boardwalks, hiking trails, in the backcountry and in thermal areas.
The incident is under investigation. The woman’s name wasn’t made public.
This is the first known thermal injury in Yellowstone in 2024, park officials said in a statement. The park had recorded 3.5 million visitors through August this year.
Hot springs have injured and killed more people in Yellowstone National Park than any other natural feature, the National Park Service said. At least 22 people have died from hot spring-related injuries in and around the 3,471-square-mile national park since 1890, park officials have said.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.