Jason claimed that keeping the pandemic-era mix of elevated unemployment benefits, stimulus, and crypto gains – a sort of UBI experiment – would lead to negative or sharply throttled U.S. economic growth by pulling people out of the labor force.

In reality, the key elements of that 'UBI experiment' were temporary. Expanded federal unemployment programs (PUA, PEUC, FPUC, MEUC) all expired nationwide in early September 2021, with many states cutting them off even earlier.(congress.gov) There was no ongoing, broad-based UBI-like program after 2021, and the large one‑off stimulus checks were not repeated at scale.

Cryptocurrency wealth also did not provide a sustained substitute for working. Bitcoin peaked around $68–69k in November 2021, then fell below $20k by late 2022 during the 'crypto winter', wiping out a large share of paper gains.(bitcoin101.org) So the supposed long‑run combination of easy benefits plus lasting crypto windfalls never really persisted.

Despite this, the prediction’s implied outcome – that this mix would result in negative or heavily throttled growth driven by people choosing not to work – is at odds with the macro data. Real GDP growth was very strong in 2021 (+5.7%) as the economy reopened, then remained positive and roughly around or above the pre‑pandemic trend: about 1.9–2.5% in 2022 and 2.5% in 2023, with 2024 coming in around 2.8%.(bea.gov) A summary of quarterly data shows that from 2021 through the end of 2024 the U.S. averaged roughly 3.2% annualized real GDP growth, with only brief, inventory‑driven or policy‑driven negative quarters.(visualcapitalist.com) That is not 'negative economic growth' and not obviously 'throttled' relative to a mature economy’s typical ~2% trend.

Labor supply also did not collapse in the way Jason suggested. Overall labor force participation rebounded from its pandemic lows: BLS data show it at about 61.7% in 2021, rising to roughly 62.2% in 2022, 62.6% in 2023, and around 62.4–62.5% in 2024–2025, only slightly below the 63.1% pre‑COVID level in 2019.(bls.gov) Prime‑age workers (25–54) in particular saw very strong engagement: by May 2023 their labor force participation rate was the highest since January 2007, and their employment‑population ratio hit new highs for women.(bls.gov) Unemployment fell back to its pre‑pandemic low of 3.5% by July 2022 and was still only about 4–4.4% in 2024–2025, levels normally associated with a tight job market, not mass withdrawal from work.(bls.gov)

Micro‑level research does support a much narrower version of Jason’s mechanism: an NBER study finds that the enhanced pandemic unemployment benefits modestly slowed transitions from unemployment to employment while they were in effect, raising unemployment by about 0.3 percentage points in mid‑2021 in a counterfactual where all states had ended them early.(nber.org) But these effects were temporary and small relative to the overall labor market and did not translate into a period of sustained negative or clearly sub‑par GDP growth once you look at the macro data.

Because (1) the underlying 'UBI' policy mix did not persist, and (2) the U.S. nevertheless experienced strong or at least solid growth with high labor-force participation and low unemployment rather than a sustained growth slump driven by people choosing not to work, Jason’s broad prediction that this experiment would yield negative or significantly throttled economic growth is best judged as wrong.