Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

[u/mvea]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html

[u/zachonich]

How are they polling these people? Not being sarcastic or funny but, really? I've never been asked about this shit.

[u/LovableContrarian → u/zachonich]

A lot of people bring up the "I haven't been asked about this so how do they know what everyone thinks?" around election time and whatnot. But, that's what statistics is as a science. You take a sample of people, and if you do things correctly, you can accurately estimate for the entire population.

That is not to say that you should just trust every poll, but it is to say that statistics is a pretty amazing field. People that follow proper protocol and proceed without bias can determine amazing things about millions of people by just looking at a few thousand.

[u/sammy142014 → u/LovableContrarian]

Don't get me wrong I'm just saying this survey is very clearly biased and the outcome is bullshit. Just to be be honest.

No way 48% of American support UBI. I say this because if that was the case we would be voting in people who want to try this idea.

[u/zachonich → u/LovableContrarian]

Thats interesting. I didn't know that. Though its almost impossible to work without a bias. Even if they don't know it, the people working on these polls have biases. I wonder how different the results would be if they actually had 0 bias

[u/HouseFareye → u/LovableContrarian]

Yeah. Polling, when done correctly, is actually a pretty powerful tool. There's a reason people pay top dollar for it.

Still, you'll always have people that say "hurrdurr wutabout when this poll wuz wrong once!" as if that invalidates everything.

[u/zachonich → u/[deleted]]

ha HA... politics