You're ignoring part of the experiment. It's important to figure out what people spend it on and how their spending habits change (which appears to be what this is measuring just judging by the summary of the initial results), the question isn't just "is it nicer for the people who have it?".
Because if people by and large hoard it it has a different impact than if they go spread it around in the local community and keep money flowing throughout the system. It's also good to know if they spend it on luxuries, entertainment, or basic necessities. Do they invest it and does it help them build a better future for their children, or does it just help them pay the bills immediately but doesn't necessarily lift them out of poverty, etc. Otherwise we can't tell if it helps solve the problems people are trying to solve with it (whatever those may be, I am not one of these researchers and am not qualified to speak on the economic specifics, I can just talk to general methodology and what not).
> People will spend it on whatever makes them happiest--that's the whole point.
Just specifically I want to point out the flaw in this reasoning: for a lot of people a $500 night out with their friends might make them happiest, or a new video game system or whatever it is that they like to do, but they may spend it on groceries or to help pay the rent or to invest a little bit instead. Or maybe not. You can't just assume what people will do with it, or what the whole point is, you have to experiment and prove it. Maybe something entirely different that you haven't thought of happens. Again, that's just how science works.
TL;DR this is an important thing to find out. Then we repeat the study in a few communities and see if the results are similar, maybe try it at different wealth levels to compare, etc. this is how science works.
> It doesn't answer the questions that most people have, such as the question in the post you replied to:
There can be more than one question, and more than one answer. Economists are researching this too and have written a lot about it. Just because you have a question, doesn't mean the science has to answer it right away and every single experiment has to be focused on it. There are lots of questions that will have to be answered before this could be tried more widely, these are just two of them.
It's not about it being their business or somebody else's business, it's about good scientific methodology. If they hoard it that does different things to the local economy than if they spend it on luxuries vs if they spend it on rent, etc.
Knowing roughly what income brackets spend how much on what is helpful when deciding if this can work and help people, if it's just a waste of money, if it works up to a point but then anything over that point is mostly a waste, etc. this is how science works. See my other longer answer in this thread for slightly more detail.
One effect is that if you can depend on a basic income and health care then it becomes vastly easier to move, and even if only some people take advantage of that is puts a lot more competition onto housing to not price gouge.
For food and clothes and whatnot there's plenty of competition and those shouldn't rise beyond any mild labor cost increase.
There is not much that can be learned from an experiment like this. The biggest questions of UBI are not made more answerable by it.
Namely, why wouldn't prices/cost of living/rent rise to eat all the stipend, and how will we pay for it at massive scale?
Virtually no one disputes that an extra $500-1k/month given to a subset of people is a benefit to the people who receive it.
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