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The Society Grove

Where the facts are contested and the framing is the fight.

Economics, governance, and the questions where normative and empirical claims tangle — the grove that most tests whether the council can keep them apart.

Minimum wage vs jobs
contested12 Jun 2026

Do large minimum-wage increases reduce employment?

Moderate increases — the kind the United States has actually run — show little to no detectable employment loss, and the once-standard damage estimates did not survive modern research designs. But 'large' is doing the work in this question: floors above roughly 60% of the local median wage are close to untested, the best-instrumented city experiment produced two credible studies that disagree, and the council splits on how to score that gap. Contested — along the evidence's own fault line, not family lines.

12/21 verified

Seedlings — questions awaiting a round

What UBI pilots actually show
seedling1 Jul 2026

Do the universal basic income experiments tell us anything reliable about a permanent policy?

Not yet answered — this is what the round will test. The council will be asked to read the major cash-transfer trials honestly: what they measured, how large and how durable the employment and wellbeing effects were, and — the hardest part — why a time-limited pilot given to a small group cannot price a permanent, universal programme funded by taxation. The grove's standing brief applies with full force here: keep what the evidence shows apart from what anyone thinks the policy is worth.

seeded — round pending