<
https://scottsantens.substack.com/p/the-200-year-basic-income-experiment-in-brazil-for-women-ubi>
"What if I told you that the Portuguese Empire accidentally ran one of the most
comprehensive basic income experiments in human history?
Not a one-year or two-year or even three-year pilot. Not a few hundred or few
thousand participants. A policy spanning over two centuries, distributing
everything from poverty-level incomes to amounts equivalent to $15,000 per
month in modern purchasing power. And the
results absolutely demolish the idea
that giving people money makes most of them stop working for more money.
This is the question that haunts every conversation about Universal Basic
Income. It doesn’t matter if we’re discussing a UBI of $1,000 a year or $10,000
a month or anything in between—someone always asks: “But won’t people just quit
their jobs?”
The Brazil data, analyzed in 2025 by Marcelo Ferreira at Princeton, doesn’t
just challenge the laziness myth. It drives a stake through its heart. And when
we combine this historical evidence with the massive systematic reviews of the
past decade and the just-released
2025 End of Year Report covering 27
American pilots, the picture becomes undeniable.
We have been terrified of a bogeyman. Unconditional basic income is the
foundation of work, not the enemy of it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
