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Finland Considers Minimum Income To Reform Welfare System
jones_supa writes: The Finnish government is considering a pilot project that would see the state pay people a basic income regardless of whether they are employed or not. The details of how much the basic income might be and who would be eligible for it are yet to be announced, but already there is widespread interest in how it might work. Prime Minister Juha Sipilä has praised the idea, and he sees it as a way to simplify the social security system. With unemployment being an increasing concern, four out of five Finns are now in favour of a basic income. Sipilä has expressed support for a limited, geographical experiment, just like Dutch city of Utrecht is executing this autumn.
does that say that 1/5 is paying for it?
We'll be giving them stuff for being lazy! This is wrong! We have to save Finland from itself and break them from the chains of Socialism!
After all this time reporting on our robotic overlords, somebody realizes they don't get paid, desire no sleep nor suffer as many inaccuracies as us meatbags!
Eventually people will get off this train of consumerism for the good of economic growth, which in the end doesn't mean much for peoples real needs like shelter, food and water. All humanity needs to contribute is entertainment(our only true want) with our overlords taking care of the rest.
And why not recycle street children into food for the rest of us?
Blowjobs are already free for most people.
Isn't this usually called welfare? Apparently "basic income" is the new politically correct term for it.
Why doesn't reform welfare by turning it into a job search/ career search system? Even most of the mentally and physically disabled people can work at some jobs. It just comes down to finding something within their available skill set.
What really get me is that telemarketers and help desk people could easily be workers who work from home who can't go to an office daily for what ever reason. heck businesses can do a remote phone secretary so that you can call in talk to a person, yet still get transferred correctly.
Lots of jobs are possible for those who are currently collecting welfare. The problem is businesses are lazy and demand that all workers show up in the office.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Free as in beer or free as in open sores?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
the same government is negotiating with trade unions to reduce hourly wages, in order to boost national productivity. At a first glance, this seems like a logical pairing with basic income, but the ideas are rooted worlds apart. These trade unions mostly represent traditional 9 to 5 workers (or actually it's 8 to 4 in Finland, because we all know waking up early makes you more productive), and the topic of negotiations is presented as longer work hours for the same monthly pay. Obviously, this won't exactly create new jobs for the currently unemployed. More importantly, this is like arguing over details of horse whip manufacturing while the real world is already driving electric cars -- i.e. working less regularly and more in tune with their own lives, rather than the single, safe jobs of the baby boomer generation.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I don't know about Finland, but in the US the government is spending an amount that equates to $60k per household in poverty (though that figure is somewhat misleading). Some sort of minimum income could let us shrink 90+ government programs into just a few and cut the agencies that hand out the money.
Minimum income programs could also help us address the benefit cliff, which can cause low income workers who get a pay raise to end up much worse off financially.
I don't think anything like this (or anything different at all really) can happen in the US unless there's a major, extremely disruptive change in government. The "insiders serving insiders" government culture will stop any substantial changes.
I don't see how a "limited, geographical experiment" would work. If you just did it for a town, you would think that that town would get flooded.
How do you prevent people from moving into the area to take advantage of the free money? I think the idea of a small-scale test would be
interesting, just not sure how it works in practice.
We tried this in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and ended up with 10 year waiting lists for cars.
Just don't be surprised when no one serves you latte and breakfast on the way to work. After all why should someone wake up at 4:30 am and bust their butts when they could be still be being paid sleeping in and watching TV for the rest of the day
http://saveie6.com/
How is this different from giving people Income support in the UK (i.e. £50 p/w if you don't have a job) ??? How will this get the person re-employed?
It will be interesting to see how the results of the two studies mentioned in the summary compare to the Mincome experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINCOME).
That reported overall positive results, but it couldn't tell whether the lack of abuse was due to the fact that everyone knew it was temporary, even if not for how long. I expect something similar to come up in these two studies and will be interested to see their take on it.
Didn't live in $town before January 1st, 2016? You're not part of the experiment. No exceptions.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Finland has a fairly high level of economic freedom, with the notable exceptions of labor regulations and government spending
"Labor regulations are relatively rigid, and the non-salary cost of employing a worker is high" and "government spending is equivalent to 56.7 percent of domestic output".
I know some elderly people who barely worked an honest day in their life. Now they expect to live on Social Security because it's what a "civilized society does." When I've brought up the subject and suggested that they are morally obligated to give something back for the nearly $10k/year they get from a fund that they never felt the need to contribute to they freak out about how selfish that suggestion is.
And that's why it won't work in the long run. It'll acclimate people to the idea that they have a right to public money just because they showed up, not because they're part of society and it's part of a set of reciprocal rights and duties.
Guaranteed minimum income was tried as a multi-year experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba (Canada) in the 1970s. From the wikipedia page for "mincome":
"...only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[7] Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.[8]"
That being said what a fucking STUPID idea. Its hard enough to get people to get off their ass and work now, and you are going to treat adults like spoiled children by giving them an allowance expecting nothing in return?!
Here is a crazy idea if you don't work, you don't eat. Want a basic living allowance? Then you need to work 40 hours a week at a job, any job. There is trash that needs to be picked up on the side of the road and public toilets everywhere that need to be scrubbed.
I personally see nothing wrong with letting people suffer as a form of motivation. A friend's dad had a saying that makes perfect sense to me now in my old age.
"You do kick a man when he is down. It gives him motivation to get back up."
It's insane to think giving money and benefits to a person sitting on their ass things will get them to get going again. It's very comfortable sitting on your ass, even when it is on the ground.
The west has a very serious problem created by increased efficiency and automation: How to make sure enough wealth reaches all citizens to that they can live decently (ensuring freedom from social unrest) and spend locally (ensuring a working economy). The idea of a base-income for everybody is one possibility that has merit, in fact it seems to be the only one with a good chance of working. "Create more jobs" has basically been a failure, and nothing else suggests itself. The base-income for everybody may still be a failure, but it needs to be tried to see whether it works.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In america we assume people are poor because they are lazy; its a very childlike answer to an enormously complex question. Further simplifying our approach, we generally only define wealth by financial terms. we base our welfare system in part on an inherent desire to punish the recipient for their perceived lack of participation and drive to accumulate money. a more appropriate analysis is to begin with the following assumption: a set of people will never contribute monetarily equal or greater amounts to a society in which they live. This may be due to a number of uncontrollable constraints like illness or ineptitude, but could also be a reflection of your society. Perhaps there is nothing worth doing in the case of the 'working poor' or perhaps there isnt any pay (and perhaps none is expected) in the case of many artists. The question is not how to motivate these people, but how to ensure they are sustained at a comfortable level proportionate to the societies acceptable living standards. In the united states our unspoken answer to this is death on skid row by preventable disease. in the USSR the answer was that everyone according to their means contributed at very least some working effort. artists would do art, the sick would work to get healthy, and others would contribute to foster the wealth of the society as they could, be it intellectual or monetarily.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's a replacement for welfare, employment insurance, social assistance, old age security, etc.... Some fiscal conservatives are in favour of it because if nothing else it minimizes administrative overhead by combining everything into a single program.
Also, it's usually set up so that there is always a benefit to working more. Claw-backs start at 50% and go down as income goes up. (As opposed to silly current welfare that initially doesn't let people keep any of the incremental additional money they make, leading people to not even bother trying.)
It is what is being done ANYWAY here in the UK, with the poorest so poor that they have to be given welfare to pay for the basics because the full salary they receive for their work is insufficient to pay for *necessities*.
And trying to catch benefit cheats (and the tabloid rags enraging people over fictitious and overblown incidence of living the high life by lowlifes on welfare) costs a shitload to police.
So pay everyone what would be needed to live on. Welfare payments have to be made to do this today, so it won't actually cost any more.
And you save on all the shit about policing welfare.
Additionally, the rich benefit from this scheme too: they get paid for what they pay in just as much as everyone else benefits! And increasing the minimum wage payout will benefit the wealthy too!
Lastly, it means that the job market and contract agreements between employer and employee are now REALLY contracts: a meeting of minds and an agreement on terms.
At the moment, you can be given the "choice" of starving on the streets (because welfare won't pay if you refuse to take the job) or accept the job offered. They will not change the terms, or the pay. So it isn't an agreement. It isn't a contract. It is a fiction of a contract, hiding a slavery term. Moreover a slavery that doesn't even place burdens of ownership on the slave owner.
If I can afford to say no to a job, because I can still at least live at the minimum, then I can agree or disagree. If i cannot say no, it isn't an agreement. It's ransom.
So, good.
Most people are willing to work to improve their lives beyond the bare minimum necessities.
Didn't live in $town before January 1st, 2016? You're not part of the experiment. No exceptions.
If you set it in the past, I could see this working ok if you kept the old system around for the newcomers and if there wasn't too many voids created that still attracted people. A potential void that could cause it to still be a problem is a bunch of people who now have basic incomes quit their crappy jobs at mcdonalds so the town has an influx of new people taking advantage of all the job openings. There are plenty of other voids like that which could affect the study if it's a small scale.
It's called the riot index, comparing the 'savings' of austerity to the costs of the resulting property damage. Maybe, Finland doesn't want it to go that far.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Right now, wealthy people in the top 2% love America. They have it made.
The middle class struggles, and can fall from grace very quickly. Lose your job, your house, everything.
The lower class works multiple jobs, usually part time at each, to try and keep a roof over their head and food in their belly. In many ways, especially in their encounters with police, America resembles a brutal dictatorship. If they want anything better in life, they have to resort to crime, notably selling drugs.
This is not stable. It's a recipe for disaster. All it takes is one spark for a revolution to start. And we've seen it time and again throughout history. Look at Germany in the 1930s, or France in the early 1800s.
Now suppose everyone has a basic income. It's enough to keep you alive. But if you want nice things, you have to get out there and work for them. Now you don't have people stealing so they don't go hungry or because they're cold. Now prison isn't considered an improvement to their living conditions. Now the lower class has a stake in the success of American society. They have something to lose!
Nobody's talking about communism. But right now we have democracy for those on top, and a brutal dictatorship for the vast majority on the bottom. Hey, 97% conviction rate in the courts!
This could change things to democracy over socialism. People who are fed & sheltered & happy are far less trouble.
And they will want better things. And those who can work, will want to work. Not because they have to. Because they want to.
All the difference in the world...
Social Justice that matters
Ayn Randian here. I like this because it cuts away huge swathes of state apparatus, all the civil servants and evaluators deciding who is worthy or not. I'm currently funded on a business startup grant by my government, which has been really nice BUT has taken up about 50% of our time in administration and making the applications in the first place -- if all these company benefits including R&D were stripped away as well as personal ones then there would be plenty of money to share out equally between all the individuals. Then startups could function just by living in our garatts and focussing 100% on the actual work. Same for academic types who would like to get on with producing socially useful research without having to spend 50% of their time writing funding applications, what a huge waste of everyone's cash there. Sure a few billionaires would receive $100 a week or whatever, but I believe studies show that doing this still costs less than employing all those civil servants. Libertarians believe in a world of rational free agents being left along to make economic decisions, and it seems that the citizen wage, like state education and healthcare, is a way of bringing more people into this category so that they can play the game and create more wealth.
I know I personally would love to just stop working and be paid by the goverment for doing nothing. The only thing keeping me from NOT doing that is the fact that current welfare laws don't pay enough for that to work here in the US. If you make it so that the government would pay me something I could live on, I'd quit today.
Say what you will about laziness, etc., but there are a bunch of others that are just like me.
Societies will have to decide whether to let people starve, or consider some idea like universal income. I am old enough to remember when anyone who showed up and did a good job was on their way up, and was not always planning for the next every-3-year job hop due to failing companies. Take a look at the short documentary "Humans Need Not Apply". Between the unavoidable stagnation of first world economies, automation, and other factors, the future will be one without many jobs. And part-time jobs at the mall and Taco Bell are going to cut it. Shaming the unemployed will not make sense, if it ever did.
A minimum income is an excellent way of eliminating valueless bureaucracies while ensuring that those that need the income get it. As much as the plight of the poor saddens me and they should be helped, the dead beat government worker pushing paper deserves no such assistance. Administrative overhead should be the first thing on the chopping block.
It is easy to say "people will stop working" or "the country/county/city will be flooded with people from outside" but the only way to know what will happen is to try it out. It already has been done in Canada and was called mincome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The project was cancelled despite its huge success because of an economical crisis and results were locked up until recently.
Move out of $town before January 1st, 2016 and I don't have to pay into this?
That requires a whole system of means testing, punishment for non declaration of addintional income etc, basic income just avoids all that, no rules, so no rule makers and no rule enforcers. Im supprised that tbe US folks are not more responsive to this as its the ultimate form of goverment shrinkage.
As a member of the Finish bureaucrat association I am against this.
This suggestion will put many state employed bureaucrats and administrators out of work.
And at the same time my friends in the government tells me we will loose track of what people are doing with their spare time if they don't have to come to us to discuss why they need money.
Therefore I am strongly against this.
The simple fact of the matter is that some people enjoy torturing other people. Why give money to poor people when you can make them beg? Get them to grovel and beg. Make them fill out useless paperwork and force them to reveal their personal lives to random strangers. And then you can call them names and you can get everyone else in society to look down on them. Isn't that so much more fun?
"Here is a crazy idea if you don't work, you don't eat."
It's not a crazy idea, nor is it your original idea.
"For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat."
- Thessalonians 3:10 (KJV)
Try a quote search sometime.
I hate the fallacy that if you just give people $20,000 a year they will never ever work again. Tell me, if you could live like a McDonald's fry cook without working would you do it? Of course not.
Are there some people who would? OF COURSE, but those people would make shit employees anyway. You are doing the rest of the workforce a favor by eliminating the worst performing, non-motivated chaff from the wheat.
I did some looking into this a few years ago to see how the concept might be applied in Canada. According to my research, if we took all the money currently spent on employment insurance in Canada, and divided it equally, we could provide everyone with an income below the poverty line (around $15,000/year) with around $5,000/year. That is $5,000 per person living below the poverty line, not per household. So a home with three people living in poverty could get $15,000 from the government.
I think this is interesting because we could give away this money without raising taxes, reduce government bureaucracy (there is currently a huge amount of paperwork/waste which involves tracking employment insurance, finding "cheaters" and so forth) and it would make sure the money went to people who needed it rather than people who have large salaries and just want to live comfortably without working a few months each year.
We would immediately see a reduction in stress, fewer work injuries, reduce government weight and our taxes would stay the same. A study in Manitoba about 30 years ago confirmed this and found most people (almost everyone) will continue to work even with a minimum government-supplied wage because most people _like_ doing things and like to be able to buy some luxuries. Sure, there are a few unmotivated people, a few "cheaters" in any system. But most folks want to be productive and don't want to just scrape by with what the government will send them.
As a retired person, I get both a small pension from my work, and Social Security. From my small income I purchase health insurance to supplement my Medicare. I have no savings (wiped out by "problems"). It's enough to live on. As a result, I already live as people in Finland/Utrecht do. I know a ton of retired folks in the same boat. Here is what I observe. Retired folks are as energetic as their health allows. There is an awesome amount of volunteering going on, and a bit of "small business" activities. I myself am a retired computer guy, and as such, get asked to fix a lot of computers. I ask for a "donation" of about $20 an hour for fixes that would cost them $90/$120 at any computer shop. Sometimes I fix things for free. I rationalize that I am helping poor old folks :), and also getting some money for an evening out for my spouse and I. I also maintain an number of community, club and museum websites as an unpaid volunteer. So I am in the category of "not needing a minimum wage". What I really see is this. People are as active as their health allows. There are a lot of social activities and game playing, such as dancing, musical jam sessions, theater presentations, variety shows, golf, pickle ball (like tennis), cards, bingo and water volleyball. Many of these activities require administration, and they are staffed with happy volunteers, who give an amazing amount of time. People into hobbies, such as my spouse who quilts, will work at them from dawn to dusk. People value life, their families, their communities and their world, and they do what they need to take care of their health. What I don't see is violence, drug use, laziness, or homelessness. I will concede that communities (I participate in several) of retired folks represent the result of a lifetime of a good work ethic. But what I don't see are bad results worried about by many. I read Marshall Brain's prescient "Robotic Nation" years ago, and the handwriting is on the wall folks, and I'm glad to see some early-adopter nations experimenting with our future.
Well reasoned post, thanks for the read. As far as purposeful dismantling of govt services; currently in the US there is an effort to bankrupt the federal postal system by placing ridiculous requirements for pension funding. The USPS is one of the few agencies that pays for its own expenses with little federal funding. Obviously they are inefficient and private business could do better, or at least make more campaign contributions.
The system we have now DISCOURAGES work, A national minimum income would not discourage work because theres no penalty for working. You could still have tax credits for low income employed workers.
Everybody is assuming that a Minimum Income would be paid for with tax revenues.
But a Minimum Income would be consistent with "Quantitative Easing for the People".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#QE_for_the_people
The Minimum Income could be funded in exactly the same way as QE, and would have similar economic effects. But instead of the cash going directly to banks, corporations and billionaires, it would be equally distributed among the population.
It's pretty clear who benefits from the existing situation, and why.
Not that difficult:
We're doing a test program in City X - for the next N years half of all current welfare recipients will be randomly chosen to participate in the basic income model instead, to compare the results side by side with the old system. All new arrivals will continue to be served by the old model.
Boom, problem solved. As an added benefit you've also got a control group in the exact same regional socioeconomic setting to compare your results with - no worries about regional differences clouding the results.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Go read this: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...
Here's the problem -- society in North America and Europe at least has been predicated for some time on the concept of full time employment. People buy houses and cars on monthly installment plans, and pay their other obligations monthly as they come due. In the US, unemployment is a disaster. Even if you're not living paycheck to paycheck, most people are hurt financially when that steady income dries up. Worse yet, these "gig economy" supporters are gaining traction and love the idea of having a disposable workforce with no fixed costs.
A plan like a basic income, along with controls that will prevent providers of essentials (landlords, grocery stores, etc.) from simply raising prices beyond attainable levels is a good way to handle this transition. Simply cutting off full time employment will gut the traditional pension/retirement systems, and you'll also have an angry set of retirees wondering why they've saved their whole working lives. The way to make the move to unstable income easier and keep retirees happy is to basically say their savings is for the sole purpose of not having to live on the basic income. No one is ever going to propose getting rid of money as a store of value, nor are we at the point of zero scarcity that would even allow for this to be considered.
What I worry about is that, on the way to the utopian Star Trek economy, we're going to have a few French Revolution style uprisings, where the previously middle class start attacking the super-rich who are immune to any of the forces in this discussion. Something like this would help prevent this possibility. It would also acknowledge that there are some people (drug addicts, mental patients, the disabled) who are not capable of taking care of themselves, and keep them from ending up on the street like many of them are now.
Even better, you can make endless television programs about them, demonizing every aspect of their lives to make sure the public votes for more torture at election time.
There are a lot of people that have great wealth but keep working because they enjoy what they are doing. To suggest that everyone will just bail on work is not a good argument. Furthermore, consider how many people could continue education, or pursue arts, contribute to non-profits, etc. Our whole culture could shift in ways that we cannot fully predict with the security of a basic income.
I hear the footsteps of MILLIONS of Muslims moving north.
Swim the Mediterranean and head across the open EU to the promised land of no work and min pay.
Start giving everyone free money and expect a bum-rush at the border. Asians, Africans, Latinos are going to start invading the country and giving birth their to soak up all the free welfare which they will then wire to their families back in their country of origin. It will be a massive drain on the economy, public schools will turn to s***, crime will increase 100 times current rates, disease and viral outbreaks will run rampant, and McDonalds will start hiring people that can barely speak the local language (if at all).
It is the correct thing to do, long-term.
Why? Here's why:
The bureaucrats pay me, for not rebelling and killing them, for being a productive member of society and cos im so damn awesome.
The rationalising, MUST-WORK-FOR-MONEY crowd... understand, this is for your own good. Cos current situation will, in my opinion, end up with what the french revolution ended. It sucks to be rich and have no head...
You (moneybag) better pay, and keep paying. That is the price of your and your childrens continued existence =)
As a citizen of a capitalistic dictatorship (where money rules), in order to endure living with your lousy materialistic asses, i think its fair enough.
I just wish I still had that guy's flexibility of spine >_
I'm curious if companies will cut salaries if this is implemented.
If I'm making $30K a year for a company and say the government gives me $10K as a base salary,
Would the company I work for now pay me $20K knowing I get rest paid by the government? Or would they simply fire me and hire someone else for $20K again, knowing the government would make up the difference?
If we want a truly fair (meritocratic, equal starting line) society, the property remnants of the recently deceased would be the primary form of taxation by the state. All of the property should be auctioned off to the public.
No one should be born a billionaire.
Ayn Randian here. I like this because it cuts away huge swathes of state apparatus, all the civil servants and evaluators deciding who is worthy or not. [...]
You're aware Ayn Rand hated Libertarians, right?
http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-...
People constantly attempt to paint Libertarians as Objectivists, but to Ayn Rand they were very different, and anarchy was anathema to her:
"All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. " -- Ayn Rand
Personally, I think it should require a test before you are allowed to read Ayn Rand; you must at least recognize that the people in her books where caricatures, rather than representations of real people, or you could easily be sucked into the flawed philosophy of Objectivism, with no way to realize that it was flawed, and more than a Christian is capable of recognizing that "Intelligent Design" is just a renamed version of Creationism, dressed up in different clothes and a fake mustache.
Either way, you are either an Objectivist or you are a Libertarian, but you are not both.
What's with everyone predicting with certainty what will happen? Absolutely none of you know what will happen! The only way to find out is to try it.
Personally, as a moderate with libertarian leanings (although not a true Libertarian), I think it's worth a shot. The fact is that, like it or not, totally getting rid of the state welfare is politically impossible. However, we can make it less of a mess. Instead of having an alphabet soup of government welfare programs (and the bureaucratic overhead to go with it), it's not that crazy to just cut everyone a small check and be done with it. If the plan doesn't work, scrap it. It's hard for me to believe that the world will end (or even be significantly damaged) if we try it for a year. The economy is surprisingly resilient and has survived worse without serious damage.
FWIW, I'm not the only non-liberal with this idea. Here's an argument for basic gauranteed income published by the Cato Institute (Cato Unbound is one of their publications). Here is Charles Murry on the issue. (I'm not the biggest Murray fan, but he's certainly not on the left either.)
This happened between 1979 and 1979 in Dauphin, Manitoba (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html)
It was discontinued because of changes in government.
A recent study: "In 2011, Forget released a paper distilling how Mincome affected people’s health using census data. She found overall hospitalization rates (for accidents, injuries, and mental health diagnoses) dropped in the group who received basic income supplements. "
You could have the state subsidize wages at $7.25/hr, or $15/hr, or whatever, and get rid of the minimum wage altogether. Set the limit for 40/hrs a week so people aren't claiming 120 work weeks, and you are all set.
It's not a real test if you know money is going to end in N years. If you get $3000/month in a basic income, would you buy a house with a $2500/month mortgage if you knew that you'd lose your income in 7 months vs guaranteed for life?
Failed it, they have.
If it's legal, then it's not corruption. It's being smart.
Minimum income works. People just want to live their lives, not beg for money. Most people don't enjoy doing nothing, and want to contribute to their families and community.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html
I think that's pretty much the case.
That and they want to hold the threat of starvation over their heads to force them to do shitty jobs, that otherwise they would have to be paid more to do.
It's sad, and kind of sick when you watch the thought process play out in people who oppose this for those reasons (as opposed to other, non-sadistic reasons like cost).
"But, if you don't force people to work, they won't clean toilets!"
Not for $8/hour, no they won't.
"So society collapses!"
No, you just have to pay more than $8/hour for toilet cleaning work.
"But I make $15/hour in my respectable job. If you pay a toilet cleaner $20/hour they'll make more than me!"
Yes, because your respectable job is, what, a telemarketer? Yes, the guy cleaning toilets has a more important job than you, and should be paid more for doing it. I need clean toilets more than I need a call during dinner time trying to sell me a subscription to Ass-Wrangers Quarterly.
"But, but then...I'll be the one making the least amount of money!"
Yes, you will basically have the "minimum wage job." You want that $20/hour money? Go clean toilets.
"But that's demeaning!"
You were fine with it when somebody else was doing it. And with paying them so little they were only doing it because they'd starve otherwise. You were treating them unfairly, and you liked it. Sick.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Um, because, you know, living in a tent in the middle of winter in Finland is not exactly feasible. I also don't think there will a huge rush to build more houses for people with the less-than-stellar income of 700€ a month.
Finland is already a sort of welfare state. They aren't going to cancel welfare everywhere else for the duration. I assume more people would want to live in the area because you wouldn't need to be humiliated every few weeks for not finding a job in a poor economy. More people might also stimulate the economy and create jobs. It might also raise property prices and rents making it less-than-optimal for people with very little income to move in.
In Finland you need an address. "Under that bridge there" doesn't qualify. I watched a documentary on people who wanted to live in house boats in Finland, but basically couldn't because without an address they basically didn't live anywhere, hence trying to get social services (or mail) was a PITA. The bureaucracy hadn't considered someone might want to live in a boat. Currently the state more-or-less provides a flat for people who would otherwise live under said bridge. Unless the state didn't you would get more people doing crimes just to get into prison, which is expensive for everyone (think human cost, property cost, judiciary system, bureaucracy and upkeep).
It's bureaucracy that's making everything grind to a halt here. Some of it's good, some of unnecessary and some of it we could most definitely do without. I think we most definitely could do with less bureaucracy in the welfare system. I know I'm currently a net-payer for the current system and will be paying for the new system too. I just think that the new system would be better. Even only if I wouldn't need to listen to so much whining about the bureaucracy on one part and about people trying to game it on the other.
I really really don't buy into the idea that most people would be happy with the crappy allowance of 700€ month. It's barely enough to scrape by. If someone is content with that in order to do nothing, they would be truly shitty labor for any job anyway. Let them be then, I say. That money is really cheap if that makes them less prone to create trouble. Humiliating people as is currently the way doesn't help anyone, except maybe the bureaucrats.
I'm a true socialist though. I think that we should take care of the people here, and try to _help_ them be happier and productive in society. I also believe trying to force it with the threat of freezing/starving won't work and is utterly inhumane.
Someone TRUSTS me with their money, I do my best to do right. Why?
Because I do not want to deal with the reprocussions and my own guilt.
What makes you think employment will make a difference?
Working at McDonalds is a shitty boring existance. So is every other low wage job.
And no, our free market economy does NOT Recognize talent.
va disability stills needs to be there on top of basic income.
I'm curious, as an academic exercise, what would be the annual dollar amount the living wage in the the US ? I think it would have to be a national dollar figure, so if you are in an expensive city, you'd likely have to at least think about moving to a lower cost area.
But I really wonder about what that would cost and what the resulting tax implications would be. Here is the poverty threshold (2012) I googled/
Poverty Threshold
1 person $11,720
2 people $14,937
3 people $18,284
Assuming poverty isn't the goal, and living wage is...maybe (arbitrarily) bump that to
Poverty Threshold
1 person $18,000
2 people $22,000
3 people $26,000
One immediate problem is that some portion of the population will start having more kids to take advantage, so there should be some incentive for not having kids...maybe not China's one-child, but something....
My back of the envelope calculations estimate that it would cost something like $1.2 trillion dollars annually, assuming that everyone who is on welfare now actually gets the wage, versus those like myself who would 'get' the wage but then pay it back immediately in taxes.
Well shit! I'm out of mod points.
By the way, is your sig based on Cowboy BeBop's opening theme "Tank!"?
I see many positive sides to basic income systems, but what about inflation? If everyone, including those with normal jobs, get enough money to survive extra every month, will this not dramatically increase inflation? There is (significantly) more money floating around, but not (enough) more work done.
I image it would be visible first in the housing market. They set the basic income such that you can afford to live in a cheap house. But now everyone has more money, but there ain't more houses, so the rent increase, and the basic income is no longer enough.
There have been experiments in this before. Here's one in a small village in Namibia: Otjivero
It seems everyone thought it was a success except the local farmers who enjoyed the large pool of minimum wage labour. There's no indication that they actually lost out but they feared they would.
"pay everyone what would be needed to live on."
Okay... but how much is that minimum living? If you're in London it is perhaps, what 15,000 pounds? Yet here in rural Vermont that same 15,000 pounds would be a huge amount of money. I built my home for only 3,500 pounds. My land cost only 250 pounds an acre. In London it's what, 250 pounds per square meter and a year's rent might be 7,000 pounds? Everything's out of wack.
You can't simply say you're going to pay people more in the cities or more in particular cities because their cost of living is higher. That's unfair and impossible to manage logistically. Additionally it will have unintended consequences of shifting populations in nasty ways and then you'll have to incentivize the payments to convince the poor rural folk like me to not move to your nice shiny cities where we'll get more dole.
There are some things about this idea that sound good but this fundamental question is going to mess it up. I like the idea of replacing the minimum wage, welfare, subsidies and a whole lot of other programs with a simple flat allowance that EVERYONEâ gets no matter what their income or situation. This would avoid a lot of wasteful oversight and policing of the system. Probably save money. It would free people up to be able to do some interesting things. It does need to be low enough that you can't live comfortably - just live, probably with room mates.
âYou'll note I did put a qualifier on EVERYONE. That's because people in prison should not get an allowance. As long as they are incarcerated they're getting their allowance applied to pay for their incarceration and it should also be applied to pay restitution. HOWEVER, once they're out they should get the allowance once again. Otherwise you're just creating another problem that we already have.
700€ would be a lot less than most people on welfare get. You couldn't afford to live with such money in for example Helsinki. Then again, they can relocate to cheaper places. Either way, I support this. I think it will be a lot cheaper than the current system which includes 10s of thousands of pointless overpaid public sector workers. I rather they all get 700€.
I don't think people will be quitting their jobs to live on the 'free money'!
Indeed not. One thing that I have noted to be lacking is the idea that the minimum income payment could be tuned. Too many people unemployed? Research suggests too many people are happy sitting on their asses at home? Nudge the payment down a notch. By the same token, if you have too many people who are actively looking for work because living on the BIG sucks, and the result of too many people looking for too few jobs, resulting in lower wages(and jobs aren't coming in from outside because of cheap(er) labor), you might want to consider notching it UP a bit.
What? Increase payments? Sure - by increasing payments, more will be satisfied by it. This reduces the worker pool, increasing the bargaining power of the remaining workers. In addition, more money to the poorest means more purchasing of goods and services by them, which increases demand for workers to produce said goods and services.
I don't read AC A human right
This is why you'll see commentators criticizing it despite it being an experiment.
Because they DON'T want it to succeed.
"They" being two kind of people.
The first being the ones who got fed all their lives that their own country (with their freely accessible weapons, private healthcare, violated privacy by their intelligence services, police aggression against its population, laughable internet access, ridiculous student loans, etc.) was magnitudes better than any other country in the universe.
The second being the ones that kept bullshitting the first, with a tremendous success.
But rejoice! There's still a solution to that Finland problem: Why not bring to them a healthy dose of "democracy"?
More seriously. It's an experiment. If it fails, it fails. We learn from our mistakes, don't we?
And if it succeeds... Now, that would make things very interesting...
Quite so. Unfortunately it seems unlikely that such an open-ended experiment will get performed, though I suspect a 5-10 year commitment would get similar results. Sadly most experiments of this type seem to be lucky to run for even a few years, and there's rarely any commitment declared up front, greatly undermining the reliability of the results.
Also, I think you may want to recalibrate your perception a bit - the article mentions ~$1,100/month as a likely benefit, roughly equivalent to a full-time minimum wage salary in the US (before deductions). Even factoring in the non-monetary benefits of Finland's socialized medicine, that's still a long way from $3,000. From a US reference point you'd be talking the equivalent of a full-time job at $17.50. That would be an incredibly generous benefit, half again the current US median individual income of $24k.
Personally I think a benefit roughly in line with the current minimum wage is probably a good place to start - just enough for people to get by with, but not a lot of room for luxuries. At least not unless/until you have a house bought and paid for. In fact, if such a "minimum wage equivalent" benefit were instituted you could probably eliminate the minimum wage laws as well and let the free market take over, without the employers holding an "essential good" (aka income) that they can leverage to grossly distort the low-end of the market
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Indeed :)
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Except as a moron, you seem to think there's a "threat" of starvation to begin with. There is no one who cannot obtain food and no one who can prevent anyone else from earning some. Just because you exist is not a reason everyone else is liable for nurturing and providing for your entire life.
You do have it now. Everyone has it now. But it's this giant disguised patchwork of programs that lets some people fall through the cracks, provides perverse disincentives for working, and is loaded up with overhead and inefficiencies.
Why not just call a spade a spade and make it simple? Basic minimum standard of living for everyone (not nice, but if you want better, you've got to work), and in exchange, no more social housing, welfare, medicaid, social security, even minimum wage. They're all just disguised aspects of this minimum standard patchwork.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Well, I suppose if you try to envision far enough ahead where advances in AI,Robotics and automation offload much of the existing labor force, we'll probably need something along these lines to ensure folks have the ability to purchase goods at all.
I don't have to explain what happens to Big Business when no one can buy their products.
May as well run the experiment now to see what issues come of it.
In theory, let's suppose america did this and i registered myself as living at my mom's house, I could receive the check there and have her deposit it and then live comfortably in the Latin American country of my choice (such as Nicaragua or Guatemala)? If it were, say, $350USD?
It's not a real test if you know money is going to end in N years. If you get $3000/month in a basic income, would you buy a house with a $2500/month mortgage if you knew that you'd lose your income in 7 months vs guaranteed for life?
There is a huge different between 7 months and N years. For instance, if you had a basic income guaranteed for 10 years then going back to college becomes a practical solution for quite a few people who otherwise can't go back to school because they need to provide for their family. You wouldn't have to go lifetime but to see the real results you probably need to commit to a minimum of 10 years or barring that long enough that someone could go back to school and train for some career that exceeds the basic income.
Relay on your government to take care of your job, health care, housing. Pretty ant colony-ish.
Finnish here.
Discussion here seems to be very "americanized", assuming there isn't welfare system in place already. THERE IS! Actually suggested amount 700e/mo would actually probably LOWER the welfare income for many people. Currently you get around 500e~/mo as unemplyment welfare, +80% of rent covered if you don't have a job + various other benefits. If you have kids it's not unusual to get more, in total a family can get around 2000e/mo in different kind of welfare payments. If you're not entitled for unemployment money (no education or whatever might be the case), then you get money from social welfare. In either way - you're going to live and get to eat at least.
But two points:
First of all, current system is REALLY heavy on bureaucracy and therefore it's very very expensive to maintain and it's just pain in the ass to fill the forms.
Secondly, the amounts we're talking here are NOT big salaries that you can use to slack around at home. Seriously, they're not. Finland is very expensive country. At most you can eat (forget eating vedgetables every day with these sums) and survive, but that's about it. Most people living on on welfare are barely getting along and constantly looking for a job, but most are "unemployable", over 50+ (companies don't hire that old people), long-term alcoholics, or young students who can't find a job.
So for many people, suggested basic income would likely lower their welfare income a bit, BUT it would simplify the system A LOT which is the point of it. Current bureaucracy system is really expensive for the goverment.
Myself I'm above average salaries (being software developer), living in a nice hippy apartment at central Helsinki, and I'd totally be ok with this, like majority here are, even if it might sound strange.
But in our views, there should not be "us vs them", the goverment vs the people - goverment IS the people and it should provide basic security, education, healthcare for its citizens. It does bring certain level of safety to your life when you know, even if shit hits the fan in really bad way, you won't end up homeless or die because you break your leg and can't afford some silly healthcare insurance.
Peace, capitalists >:)
Surprised our San Francisco Board of Supervisors hasn't implemented the same here. After all, the city is Communist in everything but name. We just don't like to talk about it.
When I see things like this, I start to think... Just maybe, us humans will turn out just fine...
... I am not sure how much I would appreciate this, as I can only assume it would mean this would mean a ramping down of services to help educate me and integrate me into Finnish society (I am from the Netherlands originally). That said, if they would still do as much in these other areas rather than say "hey, we don't need to do any of this anymore because we've already made sure you're not dying" I would be cool with this, and I could actually work after/between school (they are starting my schooling in a few days)
If this was the US.
"Not including Social Security and Medicare, Congress allocated almost $717 billion in Federal funds in 2010 plus $210 billion was allocated in state funds ($927 billion total) for means tested welfare programs in the United States" 318.9 million people in the US. $2,907 divided out.
I do not see how, even if more people worked, and the administration costs were less, this would be possible without raising taxes greatly. You will end up taxing people who work, which will just eliminate their basic income portion.
Maybe this can work in some situations, I have no faith in my fellow Americans if this came here. Every able bodied person I have ever known who received unemployment milked it to the last day. Anybody making under 12 dollars an hour complains how much their job sucks and would quit in a heartbeat if they could.
I know people are going to love comparing Finland to the U.S. but the fact is what is done in Finland and other smaller countries with different governments would not work in the U.S.
Lets pretend we enacted something like this in the U.S. No matter what side of the fence you're talking about the program would be completely hosed along the way. Special interests, that exist on all sides of the aisle would tack on their changes.
While many people will say this would work in the US and cite economics or perfect world situations it would not because we know exactly how politicians operate. Be realistic even if we went full blow socialist that would invite a host of other problems with a host of other elites and hands that rock the cradle.
The U.S. is not the EU and it never will be. Conditions that apply or things that work in one place don't work everywhere.
As far as welfare reform while I can accept that the 'vast majority of people want to make their lives better" what are we saying? Is the vast majority 80%? 90%? Out of millions thats still a lot of people that need to be stopped. I'm a product of the ghetto and I can tell you first hand that people in the 'vast majority' of people in the projects are perfectly happy collecting their check and not working. As someone who lived the welfare experience I can tell you that anyone that claims 'the vast majority of people want to get out' in fact do not want to get out. They want their check and they'll do whatever they have to, to keep it coming.
You do realize that correlation does not imply causation?
If I work for less then I am getting in welfare under Guaranteed Income I am worse off (Cost for traveling to work etc). Why would I even bother to go to work?
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...are at least a stupid as the average American. I thought Europeans were smarter, the ones you hear about certainly are smug in their implications to the affirmative.
...are at least a stupid as the average American. I thought Europeans were smarter, the ones you hear about certainly are smug in their implications to the affirmative.
Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum and Pyramid scam WITHOUT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum; http://worldif.economist.com/a...
Casteism
It has to be the same amount of money for everybody.
It is upto society to reorganise itself around making that situation work. For example people would move out of London to a place where they can be that is within their budget. London would suffer from lack of workers for such tasks and proper supply/demand would start to take place.
Actually I can not believe this as many foreign workers are happy to be 10 to a house taking shifts on using bedrooms or sharing beds. But then maybe these people would also not be eligible for this payment, until they have many years of their own taxes paid into the system on record when formally completing a naturalization process.
I agree people in prison do not get the allowance, well they do, but it is forced to be spent on the cost of their stay. Which brings up another point that society should not treats its prisoners better than its regular citizens. A state income improves the citizens situation but I think prisoners should have a more harsh basic existence behind what state income can provide.
Another real issue is if everyone gets lower wages (but fixed state income amount), so the total is same or higher. Will the cost of buying bread and water increase ? Thus the purchasing power of the state income is reduced. Where and how will an equilibrium be met?
Interesting experiment. I do have moral problems in giving away money to people who do not need it. Or who simply don't want to work. For instance people who are handicapped should receive more money then healthy people because they are not able to work or are not able to work the same amount of hours that a healthy person can, or receive lower wage because their handicap makes them slower. So I think for those people the basic income should be higher. Also how high would it be? Just enough to pay for basic needs (so same as welfare)? Or higher? Whether or not people work depends in part to how high it will be. What happens if you work? If you keep the minimum income regardless of what you do that might trigger some people who have welfare to work because they keep the money they earn whereas today in most countries if you can't earn more then the welfare they cut your welfare (so you profit nothing). So today it doesn't make sense to work unless you can earn more then welfare. I am worried that a minimum income will cause huge inflation. Rising costs like rent, prices of products etc.. Which would make it useless (or making it rise endlessly). Won't this just benefit the rich? People who currently get a lot of support will probably get the sum of that support (welfare, rent support, health support etc.) as basic income. Whereas rich people will have their current income plus the basic income.