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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.
It's part of the English language, Bub. Deal with it.
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]"
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.)
Exactly this! I'm from Finland. The idea of basic income means different things for different people around here, but AFAICT the idea is not to give people more money. Instead the idea is to:
- give people the same amount of money they now get from unemployment benefits etc. but without asking any questions.
- tax the money back from people that make a living wage working.
This should have the benefits that:
- If you are unemployed, you can take even just one shift of work and get some money without losing too much of your benefits. This does not currently work too well, because you have to show that you are unemployed to get the benefits.
- If you get some benefits and do some work, you should always get more money by working more. In our current system, there are traps that may actually make you earn less by working more, because you lose more benefits.
- We should need a lot less people working for the public sector handing out benefits.
So the idea is to make working always desireable and lessen bureaucracy.
The scenario you describe is unlikely at the funding level they're proposing. This has actually been tried in reality before, though obviously not on this scale, and the results were quite positive. A guaranteed basic income is one of the few socialist ideas that can actually work because it doesn't require massive bureaucratic intervention & oversight. Canceling more complicated social assistance programs and removing the minimum wage when this is implemented would actually result in a system that is MORE free market rather than LESS. Additionally removing the threat of starvation and homelessness moves some negotiating power from capital to labor and will result in more equitable bargaining that will solve a variety of social issues without government involvement.
The free money might be useless, but I doubt it'll mean nobody will work. If the minimum income is just barely enough to pay for food and shelter well that's all people really NEED, but most people will want more than just a house and food. Also, with some exception, most people are not housecats that are content to just laze about all day doing nothing, most people want to climb the social ladder, get a bigger house, a nicer tv, pay for cable, etc. And that means working. I will agree however that it might mean that businesses need to offer a decent wage to convince people to do bottom barrel work though.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
I have three very selfish and practical reasons why I support it: (a) If I'm ever poor and have kids, I will want to get vaccines for them even if I can't afford it; (b) Paying for vaccines today is cheaper than paying for the illness tomorrow; and (c) Vaccinating everyone else in society cuts the chances of me or my loved ones becoming sick.
In evolutionary biology, that's called reciprocal altruism. Communities that take care of their members survive. Communities composed of people who don't help each other don't survive.
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.
"artists would do art"
If it fit within The Party Lines.
"the sick would work to get healthy"
Soviet Union has lagged behind Western countries in terms of mortality and life expectancy since the late 1960s
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy"
And yet the GDP per capita in the USSR for 1982 was $5,000, compared to $14,400 for the U.S.A.
http://countryeconomy.com/gdp/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you're going to make an argument for Socialism, using the U.S.S.R. as an example is a poor choice.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
The US had this "discussion" a bit over 40 years ago. What we now call EIC was the pilot program for NMI (national minimum income)in the US. Originally it wasn't supposed to be means tested once a year thing and people would just simply get a check. The US president of the time thought it was a great idea to help combat wage deflation and solve other issues.
That president was the dirty pinko commie socialist ( HA! ) known as Richard Nixon. Who was also in favor of a single payer government run health insurance system. Really, if it wasn't for Watergate, we'd have a single payer health care system and a national minimum income like this Finnish program. And we'd have had it 40 years ago.