Lisa Boucher
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lisaboucher.bsky.social
Lisa Boucher
@lisaboucher.bsky.social
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Postdoctoral fellow focused on housing instability, harm reduction, self-care and mutual care. Working to reduce inequities through community-based research. Living with chronic pain. She/her. Ottawa, ON.
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Reposted by Lisa Boucher
andiewinnipeg.bsky.social
Studies about social class, labor, poverty, or other forms of economic inequalities and injustice were especially marginalized and underfunded.
November 4, 2025 at 5:16 AM
Reposted by Lisa Boucher
scottsantens.com
The results of the Dutch experiments were that dropping work requirements and instead trusting people to find work didn't decrease work and also led to increased trust in return, plus better health. Not clawing back benefits as income increased led to more employment.

Combine those, and that's UBI.
The Results The findings, published around 2020, were nuanced but provided powerful ammunition for parties like D66 advocating for a shift away from strict conditionality. 1. Employment Effects were Neutral (which was good news) The most critical finding for proponents was that people did not stop working. Critics had feared that removing the obligation to apply for jobs would make people "lazy." The experiments proved this wrong. The groups that were exempt from strict rules found paid work at roughly the same rate as the group that was forced to apply for jobs under threat of sanctions. 2. Significant Boost in Well-being While employment didn't skyrocket, almost every other metric did for the "trust" groups. Participants reported: Better health: Less stress and fewer mental health issues. Increased trust: A much higher degree of trust in the government and social institutions. Social participation: Many used their newfound freedom to do volunteer work or provide informal care, which they hadn't had the energy or time for when forced to constantly apply for jobs they weren't going to get. 3. Part-time Work Increased In some cities, specifically the groups allowed to keep more of their outside earnings, there was a noticeable increase in part-time employment. This suggested that financial incentives (the "carrot") worked better than sanctions (the "stick"). Conclusion used for the 2025 Platform The key takeaway D66 likely leveraged for their successful 2025 campaign was that the expensive, bureaucratic apparatus of monitoring and punishing people was effectively useless at getting them into work, but very effective at making them miserable. By pointing to these results, they could argue that their proposed "individual basic amount" was not radical "socialism," but scientifically-backed "pragmatism"—a way to achieve the same economic outcomes while vastly improving public health and reducing government bureaucracy.
October 30, 2025 at 10:03 PM