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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.
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.