The Wikipedia article says that the Iranian plan pays $40 per month, which seems very low for consideration as a UBI compared to numbers like $1000-2000 per month that people throw around for the United States. I don't know much about Iran, so I'm not sure if it's 25-50x less expensive to live there.
The only numbers I found on the Saudi plan is $533 million per month paid to 10.6 million people [0]. This works out to about the same individual payment.
I think investigating the effects of these plans in those nations is worthwhile. Separating the effects of the plans from the specific situation in the Middle East would be challenging.
Say you can be a chef, cab driver, plumber, electrician, carpenter, welder or whatever for 1000 riyals a month. And the government is already paying its citizens 1000 riyals a month. No citizen really wants to be a chef, cab driver, plumber etc anymore. No one wants to do a job, the pay equivalent of which you already get for free.
Now some one has to do those jobs, there are two options now. You either pay people more, and therefore now products/services cost more[Inflation]. Or you get people from outside to work at same price you would pay.
This has led to the situation where Middle east is full of South East Asians. Pretty much any skill based job you see is being done by Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis. On the very long run you turn your whole populace into freeloaders. Or worst the laziest kind of freeloaders, who just won't work no matter what. It will eventually precipitate to everything. Given you don't plan to do a job, why would you want an education anyway? Eventually you will arrive at where UAE or Saudi Arabia is today.
Spot on, having lived there for so many years this is exactly what I saw. People pushing for these things dont realize that there are countries where these policies are implemented for decades. Look and them and study. Most of these people have never lived anywhere else
It leads to more nationalism and youll be wishing for the good ol days of today when you go down the path others have gone down.
