German Universal Income 'Test'

 There's a study that started up in Berlin....being conducted by the Free University of Berlin.  RBB (public TV from the city) is covering this topic.

So, the study goes this way.....it's another universal income attempt to prove the results (whether good or bad).

For those unfamiliar with universal income....it's basically the idea that it wouldn't matter if you worked or not...you'd get x-amount of money each month.  I know....some of you would call this welfare-plus or some exotic concept of welfare, but no matter how many times attempted in Europe....it generally has proven as a failure.

This time?  For three years....1,200 Euro will dished out to 120 locals.  There's a second group, which is generally in the same wage group, but receiving nothing.

So the questions from this study are this.....for you 120 folks, what did you do with the money?  Did you travel more?  Did you upgrade your job skills?  Did you drink booze or consume drugs more?  Did you go out and donate part of the money to some local charity?  Did you spend it mostly on our kids?  Did you get a dog?  

Somewhere in the background....someone is auditing the 120 folks on a regular basis....getting information (maybe receipts), and establishing a 'trail'.

At the end?  They will publish a study.  It's anyone's guess what will come out of this.

A happiness value assigned to the gift-group and the group without the gift?  I would imagine someone is going to ask special questions to determine how happy folks are.

The odds that one out of the 120 folks was extremely frugal and put every cent into a bank savings plan drawing .5-percent interest?  Well....it wouldn't shock me if you found one single German doing that.

The odds that one of the 120 folks ends up with a serious booze or drug problem?  That probably wouldn't surprise me either.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the 120 folks spend their 1,200 Euro each month on bananas for the elephants at the local Berlin zoo.

The key factor that will come out of the study?  Well....it's going to be the question if folks got lazy....quitting their job, and just living off the 1,200 cash....giving up on work and getting crazy-lazy.  A lot of folks have always suggested people would turn this way.  There's never been a study to prove something like this.  

If my German wife had been among the chosen?     Sadly, every single cent would have gone into some investment portfolio and spent on medium-risk stock options.  At the end of three years....she probably would have had 60k Euro in value.  In the minds of the audit crowd....she would have been a terrible participant in the audit test.