With each step, we shall come closer to a test which is applicable to the USA's poor. For now, we are establishing whether the concept works at all. The article described several previous tests, each of smaller scale and with flaws which this new test aims to eliminate.
This program will tell us what the next test should look like.
Do you mind pointing out where? I went back through the article and found:
With this initiative, GiveDirectly — with an office in New York and funded in no small part by Silicon Valley — is starting the world’s first true test of a universal basic income.
As you stated, there have been other attempts, so I don't know what the definition of "first true test" is.
A universal basic income has thus far lacked what tech folks might call a proof of concept. There have been a handful of experiments, including ones in Canada, India and Namibia. Finland is sending money to unemployed people, and the Dutch city Utrecht is doing a trial run, too. But no experiment has been truly complete, studying what happens when you give a whole community money for an extended period of time — when nobody has to worry where his or her next meal is coming from or fear the loss of a job or the birth of a child.
The Mincome experiment was 5-years. Why was it not "truly complete"?
That, surprisingly, worked well enough to give them the confidence to start a threadbare randomized control trial the year they graduated. It found that the recipients, who received an average of $500, saw excellent outcomes: Their children were 42 percent less likely to go a whole day without eating. Domestic-violence rates dropped, and mental health improved.
Not trying to be argumentative, just not sure what this is testing. What is it controlling for? What is it doing different from previous experiments? What does giving money to every person in a poor community tell you that giving money to poor people in a wealthy community doesn't?
These are very rural and impoverished communities by developed standards. Giving money to the poorest of the poor seems like an obvious improvement for them. What it doesn't say is how you can do it anywhere else.
Mincome guaranteed an income floor but it was not UBI. It was a means-tested income supplement to ensure that someone's income didn't fall below $16K year. If they already made $16K they didn't get any Mincome. If they made $8K, they got $8K Mincome.
GiveDirectly gives everyone in the community who registers $22 month. The amount doesn't go down if the person starts to independently generate income. It will be universal, not means-tested.
This isn't necessarily a better experiment, but it is a different one.
What does giving money to every person in a poor community tell you that giving money to poor people in a wealthy community doesn't?
Well, we don't know. Hence this experiment. Mincome, however successful, was basically a deluxe "welfare" program with all the negative baggage that comes with it. If we're giving a supplement to the poor, and taking away that supplement if they become wealthy, some argue it functions as a 100% tax on work, hence functioning as a disincentive. (That's in addition to the "disincentive" of not forcing poor people to work to meet their basic needs.) If you're in Mincome, why take an $8,000 yr. side job? It would be like working for free. But a person on GiveDirectly, if they get a $10/month side job, their total income will be $32. Side work will continue to be a financially productive investment. It's a different type of experiment.
It looks to me like you are correct the Canadian thing looks like a universal income. So it could be just a garden variety error on the part of the NYT journalist to say it was the first. I'm happy there are other tests going on. Maybe I'm a hopeless idealist but I've always been optimistic about the future but that optimism has been pushed to the wall lately. This was the first thing I've read I while that made me think maybe the future isn't going to be a total dystopian nightmare. Maybe there's hope.
This program will tell us what the next test should look like.