South Korea’s Massive Rural Basic Income Pilot and What It Means for UBI | The Basic Income Show #25

Episode 25 of The Basic Income Show!patreon.com/scottsantensChapters:00:00 South Korea's huge rural basic income pilot experiment14:05 The Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act26:30 Miracle Money Experiment Results46:56 Zack Polanski asks Richard Murphy about UBI1:10:21 Baltimore Young Families Success Fund results1:21:07 Hamburg, Germany votes against a UBI pilot1:24:20 TEDEd video about GiveDirectly's cash giving1:38:04 Customers are the real job creators1:41:09 How much wealth is too much wealth?In this episode of The Basic Income Show, Scott Santens, Josh Worth, and Conrad Shaw break down one of the biggest basic income stories in the world right now: South Korea’s massive rural basic income pilot covering more than 200,000 people. They dig into how the “local love” voucher design works, why it targets rural counties instead of cities, and how funding it from solar and wind profits creates a clean-energy dividend model that looks a lot like a permanent UBI fund. From there, they turn to the newly reintroduced U.S. “Guaranteed Income Pilot Program Act of 2025,” led by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, and explain why tying payments to the local cost of a two-bedroom apartment risks becoming a landlord subsidy rather than a scalable universal basic income. The conversation hits core design questions: per-person vs per-household payments, including or excluding seniors on Social Security, and why calibrating UBI to cost of living can undermine competition between high-rent cities and cheaper regions. The hosts then unpack fresh randomized-control-trial evidence from Miracle Money California’s $750/month cash transfers to people experiencing homelessness, alongside results from the Baltimore Young Family Success Fund, which gave young parents $1,000/month for two years.Show links:https://www.scottsantens.com/its-time-to-walk-the-walk-for-universal-basic-income-ubi/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gTgloPR0Awhttps://www.guaranteedincomeworks.org/data-from-baltimore-mdSee my ongoing compilation of UBI evidence on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/scottsantens.com/post/3lckzcleo7s24See my ongoing compilation of UBI evidence on X: https://x.com/scottsantens/status/1766213155967955332For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: http://scottsantens.com/basic-income-faqDonate to the Income To Support All Foundation to support UBI projects:https://www.itsafoundation.orgSubscribe to the ITSA Newsletter for monthly UBI news:https://itsanewsletter.beehiiv.com/subscribeVisit Basic Income Today for daily UBI news:https://basicincometoday.comSign up for the Comingle waitlist for voluntary UBI:https://www.comingle.usFollow Scott:https://linktr.ee/scottsantensFollow Conrad:https://www.linkedin.com/in/conradshaw/Follow Josh:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshworth/Special thanks to: Gisele Huff, Haroon Mokhtarzada, Steven Grimm, Bob Weishaar, Dorothy Krahn, Judith Bliss, Lowell Aronoff, Jessica Chew, Katie Moussouris, David Ruark,Tricia Garrett, A.W.R., Daryl Smith, Larry Cohen, John Steinberger, Philip Rosedale, Liya Brook, Frederick Weber, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Tom Cooper, Robert Collins, Joanna Zarach, Mgmguy, Albert Wenger, Andrew Yang, Peter T Knight, Michael Finney, David Ihnen, Steve Roth, Miki Phagan, Walter Schaerer, Elizabeth Corker, Albert Daniel Brockman, Natalie Foster, Joe Ballou, Arjun ,' @Justin_Dart , Felix Ling, S, Jocelyn Hockings, Mark Donovan, Jason Clark, Chuck Cordes, Mark Broadgate, Leslie Kausch, Braden Ferrin , Juro Antal, centuryfalcon64, Deanna McHugh, Stephen Castro-Starkey, Tommy Caruso, and all my other patrons for their support.If you'd like to see your name here in future video descriptions, you can do so by becoming a patron on Patreon at the UBI Producer level or above: https://www.patreon.com/scottsantens/membership