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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?
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.
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.
Milton Friedman called it the "negative income tax" and it's meant to get rid of all the bureaucracy around all the various social programs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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]"
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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...
We tried this in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and ended up with 10 year waiting lists for cars.
The failure of the Eastern Bloc was due to their use of a centrally managed command economy, not a guaranteed basic income that they didn't even have.
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.
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.
In places where it has been tried, its always had a net positive impact. Young people stay in education for longer, so become more educated, that impacts positivly in the local economies. Each of the experimental trials also noted that the number of people working increased as people could slide into work and picking up a few hours work a week did not cause thier income to crater. Once the "traps" are removed people are freed to grow into either full employment or to a level that suits them.
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?
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.
Lets unpick this nonsense:
1. Taxes aren't "retard theft based welfare" they are the price for living in a civilized society. Yes, they pay for welfare - they also pay for the military, the police, the courts, infrastructure, and a whole other bunch of things that make it much better to start a business in Western Europe than in Somalia.
2. The idea that people need to be whipped into working is based on your own hatred of mankind rather than any economic or motivational argument. Simple threat is no motivator at all for tasks other than purely menial ones - and this is part of the reason the USSR collapsed and why totalitarian systems tend to be economic basket cases. Holding a gun to someones head is just about good enough when you are making them mine coal by hand, but it doesn't produce good C++ coders.
3.You compound this by demanding people do 40 hours a week of labour that you clearly consider demeaning. Again, you just don't like people. You admit you want to see people suffer. The welfare state does not exist for your personal schadenfreude - it exists to stop people falling through the cracks of society so that later on, when they pick themselves up again, they can contribute. The idea that people are just brutes who need to be kicked to make them do menial labour belongs in the 19th century, not in a modern technological society where most jobs involve complex mental effort.
Thankfully, people in the Netherlands, Finland and elsewhere are starting to listen to rational arguments about intrinsic motivation, benefit traps. Bitter curmudgeons like you are being rightly ignored.
So you'd be okay with me hitting you over and over again with something heavy to motivate you to shut up and sod off?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
- We should need a lot less people working for the public sector handing out benefits.
So the idea is to ... lessen bureaucracy.
This is one of the most interesting points about basic income. If you're against it because you don't want to support others with your tax money, chances are you're also against our morbidly obese public sector. IMHO, basic income is a more libertarian and free-market solution to the problems of the job market than the current nannying of the unemployed.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There is trash that needs to be picked up on the side of the road and public toilets everywhere that need to be scrubbed.
You're not allowed to collect trash from roadside in Finland. That requires a 2-day training for roadside safety pass which costs ~150€. Sad part is, I'm not joking.
Cleaning toilets requires a hygienie pass, for which training takes 1 week and costs ~500.
What's killing Finland is stupid bureucracy like described above, and basic income would eliminate a portion of such, just from different branch of governments.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
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.
Milton Friedman called it the "negative income tax" and it's meant to get rid of all the bureaucracy around all the various social programs.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
Friedrich Hayek agreed:
0. think of your time spent applying and documenting as your 'startup costs'. Since you didn't have the money, that seems pretty damned reasonable to me. But if it's too onerous, you could always not do it. The market at work.
1. If you did away with the company benefits, such as R&D, capitalization grants, etc., I would, as a taxpayer, expect my taxes to be reduced. Taking the unspent tax revenue and tossing it at individuals as a 'share' misstates the purpose of taxation at the US federal level, which should be to operate government. Not sharing others' wealth with those the government designates as recipients.
Has our nation bought into the concept of government as arbiter of all? If so, we need to either reverse this or stage an overthrow to overthrow the overthrow...
Four boxes.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I personally see nothing wrong with letting people suffer as a form of motivation.
yeah when there are 8 jobs and 20 people for them, we should set up an arena and let them fight to the death for the jobs
Like this?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It frankly astonishes me how many people here clearly have never been poor.
Being poor is *shit*. I had next to no money as a student, and the experience strongly motivated me to never be poor again. Anyone who is satisfied with such a pale imitation of life is deserving of nothing but _pity_.
We have welfare, yet people still take jobs, and it's not like those of us with jobs aren't already paying for welfare anyway. All this does is chop out the bullshit middlemen.
I'm in the United States, for reference.
I'm assuming you've never been on the bottom economically.
I volunteered at a food bank for a few years.
The clients mostly consisted of:
1. Veterans on the streets because of mental problems.
2. Mothers/Grandmother's looking after their children's kids (many of the "children" and spouses were in prison for various crimes)
3. Drug/alcohol addicts with no options for treatment (because of no $)
4. People working minimum wage but not making enough to live
5. People with physical disabilities including disfigurement (someone with heavy facial burn scaring isn't likely to get a retail position).
Many of them wanted to and were capable of work and were very happy to take very occasional menial work at the church's events (dish washing for example). They just didn't have opportunities available. The average high school student would get the job before them.
Anyway, to me, there is an entire class of people that we shouldn't kick. I feel that welfare should provide these people with, at a minimum, the same level of services provided to our prisoners. People that have harmed society are treated better than those who are just unfortunate in the US.
For these people, time isn't money: Time is Food.
BlameBillCosby.com
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.
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.
We tried this in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and ended up with 10 year waiting lists for cars.
How's that free market working out in the Soviet Union? Yeah, it's an imperfect free market. But that's what free markets look like.
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
I wouldn't wake up at 4:30am and bust my butt to serve you latte and breakfast. But I would wake up at 4:30am and go to work at a medical clinic, to help people who are suffering. I'd work in a laboratory.
There are lots of doctors who come from very wealthy families, and don't have to work, but graduated medical school and work in medicine anyway. There was a doctor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering who donated his salary to the hospital, and worked free.
The economists are wrong. People aren't motivated by money. They're motivated more by personal satisfaction. Our instinct is to serve the needs of the community. Humans wouldn't have survived 100,000 years otherwise.
Here is a crazy idea if you don't work, you don't eat.
Yeah, that's what Lenin said. "Those who do not work, do not eat."
I personally see nothing wrong with letting people suffer as a form of motivation.
I see nothing wrong with making you suffer as a form of motivation.
I think we should take away the assets of the wealthy, in order to give them a motivation to work. If we just let people sit on a multi-million dollar investment portfolio, they won't have any motivation to work.
If the rich are so smart, when we take their money away, they'll just earn some more.
It's like a chicken. When you take away her eggs, she'll lay some more.
I just wish I still had that guy's flexibility of spine >_
What's killing Finland is stupid bureucracy like described above,
Yes indeed, the attitude that human safety is more important than roadside garbage, that's what's killing finland.
From the days of dawn bartering took place.
Economists point to countries that tried to make everyone equal and there are shortages of supplies and services as evident with the 10 year wait. Why do western countries do not have this problem?
It is because of hte profit motive to create, innovate, and with cash from Ford there are now steel companines, brake makers, seat fabric specialists, and so on ready to supply Ford so the cars can be cheaper and more plentiful and it gives the consumers incentives to work longer and harder to afford them.
Everyone wins. It's a mathamatical fact proven by Milton Friedman who studied pricing functions
http://saveie6.com/
First time I've agreed with a Randian in ages.
Yes: if it's on you to make your own judgement calls, inspect your own meat, all the things associated with a maximally 'free' environment, you need enough free time, leisure and disposable income to spend time studying these situations and making rational decisions.
I figure you can't BE a 'rational free agent' without quite a lot of liberty to consider situations, products etc. and the ability to casually say 'no' or 'not yet, I'm still thinking about it'.
Reducing the pressure for basic survival drastically helps people be rational free agents, or good Libertarians, or indeed people who'd support more of a Libertarian system.
It's like the famous Bob The Angry Flower cartoon. Who's going to till the soil? Somebody who knows hungry people with disposable capital. When you already like gardening and you can make out like a bandit tilling that soil, then tilling the soil heads towards its true market value, without being distorted by coercion.
You're not allowed to collect trash from roadside in Finland. That requires a 2-day training for roadside safety pass which costs ~150€. Sad part is, I'm not joking.
You may not be joking, but you also should take all the trending social media stories with a grain of salt. That is not to say there wouldn't be too much bureaucracy in Finland, hell yes there is.
yeah when there are 8 jobs and 20 people for them, we should set up an arena and let them fight to the death for the jobs
And sell the TV rights (after making them sign releases, no, they don't get a share of the profits).
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Can't argue with the objective. And if it works even approximately as designed, it'll be a good thing.
Just keep in mind that bureaucrats like their perks and will fight to keep them. So make damn sure that the same law that creates this new program eliminates the old bureaucracy. Or it'll be with you forever.
On the gripping hand, it can be argued that keeping that sort (bureaucrats) harmlessly amused isn't a bad thing, so maybe keeping them in a useless bureaucracy might be a perfectly acceptable price for the new system.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
One of the failings of capitalism is that non-productive people are left by the wayside. That said, you know what happens to those "who are down?" They create crime. If you're hungry, you're not going to care how you get food. If they mug people on the streets, or rob houses or cars for quick hits, they will to get the food they need.
Starvation doesn't motivate people to work. It motivates people to eat. If it means knocking an old lady down and stealing her purse, so be it.
People have been known to be freed from jail only to commit a crime to go back in - because it offers shelter and 3 meals a day.
That said, a minimum living allowance actually encourages people to work - the minimum allowance means they have shelter and food. Not terribly good accommodations, and rather plain food, The goal is to encourage people to work - and you do it by not cutting back benefits immediately - but gradually - something along the lines of for every after-tax dollar you make, your allowance goes down 50 cents.
So yes, your basic needs are covered, and if you want to be a lazy ass and do nothing, that's all you want. But if you want to own anything more than cheap housing and probably basic food, well, you have to go out and earn it. And by not cutting back benefits 1:1, it ensures you will seek work (a lot of people don't get off welfare because for every dollar they earn, they lose a dollar of benefits, so it's more advantageous to sit on your ass). But by cutting back at a disproportionate rate, it encourages you to find work and improve yourself. So if the minimum allowance was $20k/year, you need a $30k/year after tax job to lose your benefits. But at this point, your extra spending money means you can improve your personal comfort. So it encourages people to work and make money rather than sit on their ass.
Surprisingly, a province in Canada had tried it for 5 years and noted marked improvements that were not present the years before, nor after. And those improvements include a markedly lower cost - it cost less to give people the living allowance than to administer all the social programs available. It cost less than half the taxpayer dollars (something like $80M versus over $200M), because you can get rid of most of the social security safety nets.
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.
A basic income program is the obvious centerpiece of an efficient welfare state. A carefully implemented basic income will satisfy both libertarians (such as myself) who recognize the practical need for some form of welfare even if they don't like it, and welfare state liberals. Moralizing conservatives might oppose it, but you can't please everyone.
What many of my fellow Americans fail to realize is that we effectively already have a minimum income and a very expensive welfare system. It is merely decentralized - through 76 separate programs - patchwork, inefficient, and riddled with perverse incentives. We are not willing, as a society, to allow the poor to suffer and die without state aid. The sooner conservatives and libertarians here come to understand that, the better. We cannot, and for practical if not humanitarian reasons should not, get rid of the welfare state. But a basic income can make it more efficient, more fair, less intrusive on our private lives, and free from perverse disincentives against work.
I have always, somewhat against my will, been quite impressed by the Finnish welfare state. I have been particularly impressed by how Finland has used the comprehensiveness of its welfare programs to secure the support of all segments of the population. I can see the appeal; my first child is coming next month, and I doubt I could say no to one of the famous "baby boxes" right now, no matter how much of a crusty middle-class libertarian I try to be. I think that this experiment is a wonderful way for Finland to continue play to strengths of their successful system, and I wish you the best of luck. I hope to see similar experiments in my country soon.
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.)
I read Milton Friedman's books. I read his Playboy interview that he liked so much. I read his op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. I also read Henry Ford's books on the assembly line and the whole Ford system.
Friedman's free market works very well in certain circumstances. It was pretty good for organizing automobile factories during the 1930s, and up to about the 1970s. (Of course, the Soviets did a good job of manufacturing tanks during WWII with central command.)
I once studied the electrical power generating and distribution industry (particularly the nuclear power industry). There were private companies and government-run companies. I asked people in the industry to name the best-run companies. If Friedman were right, the private companies would be efficient and the government companies would be inefficient. But that's not what the people in the industry told me. Some of the best companies were private companies, like Commonwealth Edison, and some were government-run, like the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Internet was created by the government. Gordon Crovitz, the Wall Street Journal editorial writer, proved that. He wrote an editorial in the WSJ about how the Internet was really created by private entrepreneurs. All the people whose books and contributions he cited wrote to the WSJ and said that he got their books and their experience all wrong. They started out working on government grants, and the government supported the Internet at every step.
Friedman had beautiful theories. Unfortunately, like Aristotle, he never looked at what was happening in the real world to see if his theories were confirmed. They weren't. Sometimes the free market works better, sometimes the government works better.
You're in a very tiny minority. Most people want more than a mostly dry place to sleep and a box of ramen to keep them alive until the end of month.
Parents typically want more for their children than the minimum it takes to keep them from starving or dying from exposure.
If you're a bit more cynical: Men like women, and women simply aren't interested in worthless, lazy, men who think it's okay to live in near poverty. You'll find that's pretty motivating.
I'll bet that if you had the liberty something like this basic income could provide, you'd quickly seek out work. Very likely, you'd seek out more fulfilling work. Something you enjoy doing, or could find some personal satisfaction through your contributions. As it stands now, you're little more than a slave, forced to work a job you clearly dislike just so you won't starve. That's a terrible way to live.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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?
Better question: would it matter - you're still making $30k, right?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Insightful. Thank you.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Bad news, the world's ownership class is made up of bitter curmudgeons just like him. Like housecats, even though they have nothing to want for, they're still cruel predators, and will prey on us out of gluttony, or just for sport if they feel we haven't been dominated sufficiently.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What's the difference between a guaranteed basic income and a guaranteed job with income you can't be fired from?
If it's legal, then it's not corruption. It's being smart.
From an income perspective none. From a society and functional perspective huge. For one thing the bureaucracy required for guaranteed employment would be gigantic. Additionally the amount of negative self worth you'd get from being forced to do make work would far outweigh any usefulness that would come from the program. A basic income increases individual liberty while guaranteed employment actually reduces it.
Woah captain! In communism, you earned zero dollar and nothing belongs to you. That you work harder or not, you won't get ahead of anybody. Here, you earn a minimum amount and if you work, you will earn far more which means you can buy more stuff (And can get ahead of those losers who stays on the minimum given! ;-). In fact, it may well cost far less money for the government to give everybody 20K than administering all the special social programs and try to watch people abusing it left and right. Nothing like someone who has nothing to do all day long to find loopholes in all the laws and assist programs available to the 'poor'.
So you my working friend can still earn your nice salary and pay yourself a bmw to look better than most other, while those who can't or won't find a job can stay on the minimum income and not die of hunger in the mean time or do a really degrading job. Maybe a lot of employer will have to upgrade the pay of jobs nobody want to do if they want to have anyone doing them? And you think that is a bad thing (McDonald and Walmart will probably be very unhappy if this happen)?
It is sad how much greed there is in the USA and many other country in the world. Everything must belong to a few and the other should just die. That seems the kind of thinking you believe in. It's like you think sharing is all bad. The way communism did it was not great for the luxuries but even then, you did not hear their side of the story. There was no more abjectly poor people left in the USSR after the first few bad years when they made the transition. There are plenty of hungry peeps in the USA today. Capitalism is not all that great without some socialism added to it and a lot of checks and balance from the government.
What if you take everything way from a wealthy person and a few years later they are wealthy again? Do you take it all away again and keep taking it away until they learn their lesson?
Interesting. Almost everyone I know (including myself) is just like you. And it's quite easy, even in the US, to live well on very little money if you do some planning.
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.
Yeah, screw the little kids. Put them in the orphanage!
OK, maybe you meant people without dependents. Sure, but what makes the general population more entitled to your hard-earned wealth than your family? And what about the family business? Don't mind the fact the kids are working hard in your restaurant, preparing to take it over when you retire. Because you died, so now it's closed, sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds given to bureaucrats to play with. Guess Junior can just get a job waiting tables somewhere!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
What about the people who are willing to work, but unable to find work?
The unemployment rate isn't down to 3% yet (not even the white-washed one put out by the government that ignores discouraged workers and the underemployed), so these people are definitely out there. What about them?
Many will claim that when people really WANT to work, they'll figure out a way to make it happen, despite the fact that they themselves have not had to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" in recent years, and thus have no real understanding of how difficult things still are in many sectors of the economy.
The labor market is soft. With very few exceptions, most of those who ARE employed haven't seen a meaningful wage increase in many years.
"Free" or not, the market has failed many of those looking to trade their labor for income in recent years, and with automation taking the place of increasing numbers of human workers, society is going to need to figure out how its members are going to support themselves.
Variations of "I've got mine, so fuck you" may go over well at a Trump For President rally, but those words will provide scant protection when the torches and pitchforks come out. ...and without a solution to the decades-long spiral the labor market has seen in recent decades, the torches and pitchforks WILL eventually come out. It will be a catastrophe for everyone when they do.
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.
What if you take everything way from a wealthy person and a few years later they are wealthy again? Do you take it all away again and keep taking it away until they learn their lesson?
Yeah. Like the chickens. You keep taking away their eggs, so they lay more.
They keep taking it all away from us. Why shouldn't we take it all away from them?
We don't have to take everything away from them. We could leave them with enough for a couple of vacation homes, an Italian sports car, a mistress or two, and a yacht if it's not too extravagant. Anything less than that would be a hardship.
But the rest of it should go to repay society back for the benefits they got from society.
"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.
Very interesting. (I wish you felt secure enough to post as yourself to facilitate discussion - but I understand.) This is similar to what I suspect is true, the cost of administering and policing the current system is onerous.
One of the interesting aspects about this is that 15,000 per household (be it $Canadian, $US or Euros is irrelevant) would be a below poverty income in some places and a very good income in other places. My fear is that some would argue that it should be thus adjusted so that someone living in New York City gets a minimum income of $100,000 while someone living in West Topsham, Vermont (a third world nation just south of Canadian border) would get a $8,000 minimum income. That would then create a migratory pressure dumping people into the high cost areas where they would get higher minimum incomes thinking they were actually getting more - they aren't. It would be better to keep it a flat national $15,000 which would encourage people to live in the places where the living costs are lower reducing the pressure on services and infrastructure in those high urban areas.
I'm not worried about 'cheaters' who won't work - non-issue. They are not statistically significant.
From my understanding one of the biggest reasons the USSR failed was that it essentially decided that it had to be a super power and try to out compete the USA in everything. The USA just proved to be capable of maintaining a higher level of spending for longer. So I wonder if in an alternate version of history if the USSR could have actually thrived if they hadn't wasted so many resources on the cold war, and of course where would the USA be today if it had done the same.
No, if you are valuable then you will continue to make $30K a year. If your company does not value you then you have the option of quitting and seeking another company that does offer $30K or more per year and during that interim period you know you'll have money to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, etc. Then when you get work again you can once again afford luxuries.
Since you have an easier time quitting and finding new work your existing company is going to want to retain you more strongly and will offer you a $2K/yr raise so now you'll get $10K from the government, $30K of your old salary and the extra $2K for a total of $42K per year. Bravo!
And since you are now a free agent you decide you can follow your lifelong dream of inventing the zeetlbutmodugneruums widget that you've had on the drawing board at home. You quit your job, finish inventing, start your company, begin manufacturing and sales, it's a great success, you hare ten people to help you the second year and then the third year you buy out your old company so you can use their dodidooamoa design with your widget. You're now making $1,000,000 per year and you look back on that paltry $10K per year and donate it each year to a local charity because you are such a good girl.
Anything could happen...
That's fine. I'm not worried about you. You'll sit around for a while and then maybe you'll start doing something creative or helpful. Or maybe you won't. You don't really matter. This is an issue of statistical significance. Small outliers like yourself are irrelevant to the theorem. Enjoy your free time.
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
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.
IMHO, basic income is a more libertarian and free-market solution to the problems of the job market than the current nannying of the unemployed.
As a self-identified moderate libertarian, I agree with you. Once you make the basic choice that it's the government's role to support those who cannot support themselves, for whatever reason, then it becomes a question of how you do so at a minimum of cost, interference, and waste.
It's been shown that the fewer restrictions you place on welfare, the closer you get to just plain money, the less all three are. It's also more free. Ergo, just plain cash is pretty much the best option.
I don't read AC A human right
Indeed :)
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The assumption is you'll have pretty much the same number of people working that you have today. But people respond to incentives. It may be the number of people working will go down, which would ultimately mean a tax increase to cover the difference.
did anyone suggest spending a few $ less on food and using the money to get someone from #3 into rehab so he could get work and buy his own food?
0. You missed my point. If that work isn't worth the money, go get your capital elsewhere. You're complaining that it took effort to capitalize your enterprise?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
1. The Soviet Union controlled a heck of a lot more than just setting a bottom to your income.
2. Sure there would be. They just wouldn't be willing to do it for ten cents an hour. Bakers aren't minimum wage employees as is.
I don't read AC A human right
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..."
That's what we peasants have the pitchforks for.
It doesn't have to come to it, but with sufficient social pressure as more jobs are lost to automation and there's inadequate welfare to support those people, it will eventually.
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.
When I see things like this, I start to think... Just maybe, us humans will turn out just fine...
You lost me at "theft".
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
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.
Here's the thing. What if you DO work, but can't get many hours?
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
Sure, but what makes the general population more entitled to your hard-earned wealth than your family?
Sure but what makes you family more entitled to your hard-earned wealth than the general population?
Don't mind the fact the kids are working hard in your restaurant, preparing to take it over when you retire.
Don't mind the fact that all the other workers are also working hard. (Or you could pay them in shares of the company)
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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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Assuming everyone gets the wages no matter the hours and it is similar but how are you going to fund enforcement?
And can you get that money if you work for yourself?
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Is that they welfare system keeping them out of work.
When you lose 90% or more of every dollar you earn why would you want 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.
Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum and Pyramid scam WITHOUT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
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?
76? I thought the Cato Institute had identified over 120 different anti-poverty programs totaling about $900B in state and Federal spending as of 2009.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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.