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.

Comments

4/5 in favor

[Anonymous Coward]

does that say that 1/5 is paying for it?

Re:4/5 in favor

[danbob999]

Nope, it doesn't. Believe it or not some people are not 100% selfish.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, exactly. The 20% of people who would stand to gain from this that don't want it are not selfish.

Re:4/5 in favor

[hackwrench]

Just because they would get money without an exchange for something else doesn't mean that they think they will benefit from it. Nobody knows what all the costs are in doing this.

Re:4/5 in favor

[ArmoredDragon]

Not wanting to give out welfare isn't a selfish proposition. I've spoken to social workers who themselves say they prefer not to put people on disability or other welfare programs if they can avoid it, because those people tend to find a comfort zone there and tend to stay that way for the rest of their lives, and it ends up being psychologically damaging to the recipient because they lose the will to improve themselves, end up with depression, etc.

Not to mention, if everybody was that way, you'd start to see a gradual decline in GDP.

Re:4/5 in favor

[michelcolman]

It's not as bad an idea as it might seem at first sight, at least if it's implemented correctly. If everybody gets a certain basic income and can then work to add more money to that income, that guarantees a difference between working and non-working people and therefore provides an incentive to work. Right now, in many European countries, you may actually make less money by working than by sitting at home unemployed. Certainly if you factor in daycare, transportation expenses, etc.

By just giving everyone the basic salary, then letting them earn as much as they like above that (paying tax on those earnings to pay for the basic salary, obviously), you greatly simplify the system. No need to check whether someone is really unemployed or not before sending them their unemployment benefits, just send the same basic salary to everyone. Apply a flat tax to all extra income, and this automatically emulates the older system of progressively rising taxes. Also, it becomes cheap for companies to hire people for smaller tasks, since there needn't be a minimum salary anymore. If someone wants to do some job for $200 a month (on top of his basic salary), no problem.

Of course I'm oversimplifying and there will be a few caveats, but still, it's not as stupid or communistic as it seems.

Re:4/5 in favor

[serviscope_minor]

does that say that 1/5 is paying for it?

I'm a taxpayer in the UK and a small business person. This means I see more tax than most people, because I see corporation tax, employer's contribution and what comes off my paycheck and goes to HMRC. Most people are on PAYE, get a monthly paycheque and never have to actually consider taxes in any meaningful way.

I'm fully aware of my tax burden because I have to administer it.

I support minimum income, for a variety of reasons.

1. You essentially need it anyway even if by another name because we've collectively decided that on the whole it's better than having homeless starving people.

2. You can scrap minimum wage. That's a whole load of administration gone.

3. You can scrap jobseekers allowace with all that administration and crap.

2 and 3 combine to remove the benefit trap. At the moment these things interact in bad ways. For instance taking a short term job on JSA is generally a bad move since when the job ends, there's a delay in getting new payments, so you essentially lose money.

4. It will help lower exploitation of poorly paid workers, because they can realistically choose to leave.

5. It will reduce the friction moving between jobs because the out of work periods aren't as punishing.

6. It will help startups through the early, poorly paid years.

Fundementally most people want to work and the minimum income won't provide a good standard of living. If you want to live well, you'll need a job. It might not work, but I think it's worth a shot and offers to save substantial amounts on administration while improving the felxibility of the economy.

Seems like a win to me.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Kohath]

Who is "selfish"? Is the guy who wants to keep the wages he earned in his paycheck "selfish"? Is the guy who wants benefit money for doing nothing "selfish"?

Maybe labeling people "selfish" and then thoughtlessly dismissing their concerns isn't really a useful way to analyze policy preferences.

Re:4/5 in favor

[sideslash]

It's part of the English language, Bub. Deal with it.

Re:4/5 in favor

[nine-times]

That's a good snarky response, but I actually really hate when these discussions get boiled down to "selfishness". First, because it has a tendency to turn into the same old discussion where one side is moralizing and the other side is presenting some kind of counter-intuitive argument about how "selfishness" is actually a productive impulse. It's boring

But more than that, I think it throws the the discussion off track from the real reasons to do something like this. They are probably looking at a "minimum income" to replace other forms of welfare because they believe it's a better policy. It may be easier and cheaper to administer. It may be more economically efficient. There may be real, practical benefits to a policy like this.

To give a simple sort of example, I'm in favor of providing free vaccines to common illnesses to poor children, even if it means slightly higher taxes for me. There are selfless humanitarian reasons to support that kind of thing, but my motivations are not really all that selfless. 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.

So going back to this plan, I'm in favor of whatever country I live in providing an effective social safety net for a few different reasons. First, I may find myself in a bad position sometime in the future, and I may need that safety net myself. I never have, and I hope I never will, but I possibly could. Beyond that, there are various reasons to think that having a good safety net can be good for society, as well as good for the economy. It removes some of the motivation for hopelessness and crime. If removes some of the hindrance on business to provide those needs for their workers. If it helps get workers back on their feet, enabling them to be productive, then that will help the economy.

I know there's a sort of "common wisdom" that says you need extreme, brutal poverty as a possible consequence in order to motivate people to work, but I just don't really believe that. I don't think that kind of suffering helps anyone. I don't think increasing income inequality and rampant poverty are good for the economy. I know a social safety net costs money, but I would support a good one, funded with my tax money, for some very selfish reasons.

Re:4/5 in favor

[michelcolman]

Unemployed people already get paid (far too much) in most European countries. Like I said, you sometimes even lose money by accepting a job (minimum wage not far above unemployement, and having to pay for car and other expenses, for example). So if anything, it's the current system that's making people stay at home. With the new system, you can accept any job and increase your income right away. If you don't like the job, quit and look for a new one. With the current system, if you accept a temporary job which you don't really like and then quit afterwards, you have to go through a waiting period again. So people don't accept those jobs for fear of losing money instead of making more. With the new system, there's no such fear. Accept any job, quit if you don't like it, look for something new, no paperwork, no hassle, no risks. People will work more.

Re:4/5 in favor

[CrimsonAvenger]

You seem to believe that adding a new government program will end a bunch of other, similar, programs.

The evidence of history is that the new program will just sit atop the older programs, adding complexity without a corresponding decrease in complexity elsewhere....

Re:4/5 in favor

[blue9steel]

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.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Linsaran]

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.

Re:4/5 in favor

[rtb61]

I have heard poor people say that would rather starve to death or freeze to death or be punched in that face over and over again, rather than eat or sleep in a warm bed or not be punched in the face. Well, poor, crazy people at least or rich people claiming to be poor people on the internet, yeah, those buggers do it all of the time ;D.

Easiest way to subsistence payments (this to replace the theft of the right to a subsistence existence, starve or work or kill) to all is nationalise financial services, so the profits become tax paid. So kick out all private banks and insurance schemes and all the government can ensure safety in the event of loss or can lend money with force of law, both very reasonable propositions if you really think about it.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Rei]

If you had a minimum level of income, sufficient for you to share a small apartment with a couple roomates and buy low budget groceries and bus fare and the like, but nothing else, would you just say "I've got it made!" and never work again?

Believe it or not, the vast majority of people want to take steps to better their lives. They don't want to just sit around on their arse all day. They want to own things, they want to be able to do things - that's human nature. And people take on work to be able to afford the things that they want. People also work to avoid boredom and to have achievements they can feel proud of. It's simply not true that you have to threaten people with starvation to keep them working.

One of the biggest discouragements to people working in most conventional welfare systems is that when they start working they lose their benefits. In some cases, they can even end up poorer by working; it's a counterincentive. Under a basic income scenario, this never happens - all work is extra money. And at the same time you ensure that nobody ever starves in the streets. Having such a safety net also ensures that people feel more free to work toward their passions and take big steps that they might otherwise have been too afraid to take for fear of ending up in the streets. And society ends up a better place, even more productive, when people are working in fields that they enjoy. It's a huge benefit to general happiness - which of course should be the goal.

There's other benefits as well. Namely, it simplifies everything. Think of how many various social services are run for different people who have been disadvantaged by different situations. And all of the paperwork and review to see if people quality, and the effort to administer the programs, and ensure compliance, and this, and that. A large chunk of the existing welfare infrastructure can simply disappear if everyone has a minimum level of guaranteed income - X amount for each adult plus Y for each dependent child.

There's a lot of good reasons for such a program.

Re:4/5 in favor

[nine-times]

I don't think I believe that. There are a whole lot of people out there who could sit in easy, lower-paying jobs, and still pay rent and put food on the table, who don't do that. People generally want better lives than, "I can manage to not starve to death," and so they get ambitious and try to find better jobs.

So no, I just don't believe that providing a low "minimum income" that allows families to feed their children will suddenly have everyone quitting their jobs to live off of welfare. There will be some, but those will be people who are basically working at jobs now that don't pay enough for anyone to live on, and the fact that people have to work those kinds of jobs is already a problem.

Re:4/5 in favor

[nbauman]

Not wanting to give out welfare isn't a selfish proposition. I've spoken to social workers who themselves say they prefer not to put people on disability or other welfare programs if they can avoid it, because those people tend to find a comfort zone there and tend to stay that way for the rest of their lives, and it ends up being psychologically damaging to the recipient because they lose the will to improve themselves, end up with depression, etc.

Not to mention, if everybody was that way, you'd start to see a gradual decline in GDP.

So those social workers would also prefer to have a high inheritance tax, because people who inherit enough to live without working will lose the will to improve themselves, end up with depression, etc., right?

Re:4/5 in favor

[CastrTroy]

It's not about giving out welfare or not giving out welfare in this case. It's about what hoops they make people jump through to get the money. With minimum income, there's no hoops to jump through. You don't have to prove you are trying to find work, and they don't have to police the people receiving the money to ensure they are trying to find work, or whatever other types of roadblocks they come up with. The system costs less to run because there is so much less bureaucracy. People will generally want to find a job, as minimum income isn't generally a very comfortable lifestyle.

Re:4/5 in favor

[nbauman]

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.

Re:4/5 in favor

[rubycodez]

Believe it or not, a person can be unselfish but only want to voluntarily support people they actually know and care about, rather than letting some lazy parasite steal from them by force of law

Re:4/5 in favor

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase "those people" in this context clearly refers the the aforementioned people being put on welfare or disability. I'm not sure what point you or the GP were trying to make unless you were trying very, very hard to read a derogatory meaning in a simple, grammatically correct (and mostly unambiguous) phrase where there was none.

Re:4/5 in favor

[bondsbw]

I really like this kind of system. It simplifies the tax code, reduces administrative overhead, and creates incentive to be a productive part of society.

My main criticism is that free money could be used for things other than basic needs. Someone gets a nice 75 inch TV instead of paying for food and clothes for their kids, and then complain to the government that their kids can't be left to starve. Someone else puts the money toward drugs and hookers. Eventually the government caves and puts more money into the system, and before you know it the incentive to work has disappeared.

So I would like to turn this into a restricted debit card that divides the total based on each specific type of use, such as food, clothing, shelter, child care, transportation, etc. The amounts can vary by region (e.g. San Francisco would need higher allotments for housing) and other details like number of dependents.

Re:4/5 in favor

[alvinrod]

People fail to realize that society ends up paying no matter what approach they choose. You can pay for an expensive social safety net, or you can pay for increased law enforcement and prisons to deal with the increased crime from unemployment.

I think the minimum income approach is better than trying to have dozens of programs as it results in a much lower amount of administrative overhead. However, there are some likely abuse cases that should be addressed to prevent the system from being gamed.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Quirkz]

Well, we've got a theory and a counter-theory. Sounds like this is a fantastic experiment to attempt and see how it goes. If it's disastrous, they can change it back or attempt refinements, while the naysayers say, "I told you so!". If it works well, others can learn from it and put it to use. I'm glad someone's trying it so that we'll have some better data points.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Immerman]

Having known a lot of people on welfare growing up, I think the biggest problem is perverse incentives, mostly tied to eligibility requirements. If they lose $0.50 in benefits for every $1 they earn, then not only have you given them that "comfort zone", you've effectively cut their paycheck in half. Would you work as long and hard as you do for half the money? Now imagine you're also having to deal with the discomfort and abuse typical of minimum wage jobs, and earn less than $4 an hour for your trouble. Worse, a lot of benefits fall off in sudden steps, so your heard work and dedication earns a $0.50 raise, and suddenly you are effectively making substantially less per month than you were before. The game is rigged to foster dependency, only the most capable and driven have a realistic path to escape.

I suspect a universal basic income would provide both lower costs and provide more incentives - no eligibility requirements, no bureaucracy to assess it and game the system in exchange for favors, no shame or social stigma associated with receiving it. Just everyone getting a monthly "social dividend" check that they can rely on, and getting paid full value (minus taxes) for their labor. Then, as your earned income increases, the taxes you pay will transparently neutralize the basic income.

If you wanted to get really crazy you could explicitly base the size of that check on, say, a percentage of GDP, and suddenly everyone also has a personal stake in the economic health of the nation. GDP down 10% this year? You're feeling it in your monthly dividend check, and even if you can't find a paying job you have incentive to try to find some way to contribute to society and help the recovery.

Re:4/5 in favor

[nbauman]

It only seems like a win, until more people quit their jobs and take the "free money". Pretty soon, all that free money is useless as nobody is working, and everyone is expecting a check every month. This is nothing short of foolishness dreamed up by people who love socialism. It won't work out at all like they expect.

Interesting theory. Not confirmed by reality. There are lots of societies in which people who could be getting "free money," and nonetheless prefer to work, because they want to do something productive and contribute to society. Most people enjoy productive work. Most of the scientists who make the greatest contributions aren't in it for the money. Look at Alexander Flemming.

Here's a story from the New York Times about how, in the Danish system, people can just refuse to work and live off state subsidies, and one guy, "Lazy Robert," actually does it. The striking thing is that so few people do that. They often do continue with their education; you may think that's a bad thing. People in the aggregate don't follow their selfish financial incentives the way free-market economists predict.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04...?
Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault
By SUZANNE DALEY
April 20, 2013
Robert Nielsen ("Lazy Robert"), 45, who was interviewed on TV, was on welfare since 2001. He was able-bodied but didn't want to take a demeaning job, like working in a fast-food restaurant.

Re:4/5 in favor

[AmiMoJo]

Don't believe the hype. There are lots of media pieces and TV shows about all the scummy people living on benefits and proud of it, but in reality the vast majority want to work and better themselves. The level of benefits isn't that important, what matters is that jobs area available and that they pay reasonably. In the UK some people end up in a situation where if they take a job they will lose their homes as benefits are removed. By the way, the solution to that isn't to lower benefits, it's to raise wages.

Re:4/5 in favor

[ShanghaiBill]

Nobody knows what all the costs are in doing this.

In theory, it could be cheaper than the current welfare system, because administrative overheads are lower, and incentives are better. Since everybody gets it, there is no eligibility test, and no application forms. You get the same amount whether you work or not, so there is less disincentive for employment. But there could be unintended consequences. Taxes may go up, giving companies an incentive to locate elsewhere, and the wealthy an incentive to emigrate. If the benefits are generous, they may pull in non-working immigrants from the rest of the EU.

Re: 4/5 in favor

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if the job is not wanted but necessary, it is worth paying more for it. Supply and demand.

You don't get to force demand by threatening someone with starvation or incarceration for not doing that job.

Someone has to clean the toilets. Your CEO may think it a lowly job, but how much would you have to pay THEM to do it? Vastly more than they are paid for their current job. Surely therefore the job should not be minimum wage. It's worth more than that.

Re: 4/5 in favor

[jpapon]

Or higher wages for those jobs. They may be unskilled jobs, but if nobody wants to do them they should still pay well. Until robots can do them that is.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Chris Johnson]

On the contrary. As a person who's been on disability and started a business and now takes no services at all and pays taxes, you're missing two relevant points worth considering:

1) you're making a choice between starving 'those people' or feeding them like animals, but you can't really change people. Wealthy people do exactly the same behavior you object to, but apparently it's fine for them. It's actually good that people find a level and typically stay at that level of engagement, because it makes them predictable and you can make plans around them if you know what they'll do.

2) If you're doing the behavior you prefer, say starting a business and creating things and working, you must have customers and cannot take money only from other entrepreneurs because they don't have it. There has to be a base of people who are spending money rather than seeking to grow their capital, which is where the money comes from. If 'those people' don't exist, the money supply isn't there to start a business and you're dead in the water.

So, not wanting to give out welfare IS both a selfish and a deluded proposition. I've been self-supporting for years and I have to pay attention to the world out there in a way that salaried Silicon Valley libertarians perhaps don't. You guys get to make value judgements, I can't: I won't get paid if there aren't customers, where a lot of Slashdotters will get paid regardless, or will get paid in proportion to income inequality, not in inverse proportion to it.

I've seen a correlation in income not to capital or the stock market, but to the extent that 'welfare' is stepped on and austerity rules. If you are trying to run a business, which by definition is part of Gross Domestic Product, a well regulated welfare state is your best ally giving you more liquidity in your customer-base, and austerity measures are your worst enemy unless you specifically sell aviation jet fuel for hedge fund managers to flee the country to safe houses when everything comes crashing down.

Pro tip: that is a very small market and job opportunities there are effectively nonexistent.

Read some Mark Blyth, Slashdotters: or of course Piketty. There are experts in this field and your casual opinions might not be the last word in awesome, any more than your boss's casual opinions in code are the last word in effective.

Re:4/5 in favor

[PraiseBob]

Are you aware that you personally, could quit your job, go on welfare, and sit around at home all day, and scrape by with just enough money to eat and keep a roof over your head? Why do you work when you don't "have to"?

Now apply those thoughts of why you work, to other people. It turns out most people are similar, and have hopes and aspirations, want to provide a better life for their families, and want to pursue hobbies, and go to fun places, and so on. The vast majority of people have ambition! Do you really think that fear of starvation is the ONLY thing that makes people get a job?

You are showing an extreme lack of empathy, and making a lot of assumptions about poor people not having hopes and dreams. That honestly says a lot more about yourself than you realize.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Chris Johnson]

Plus we're a mighty long distance away from a 91% top marginal bracket. Just saying.

Here's a question. If a class of people takes ten times the compensation of everyone else for simply gaming the system through mathematical and social exploits, such as advanced-level investment bankers and their technical support systems, but the things they 'create' are not tangible in any way and do nothing but increase capital reserves for their recipients, do they count as people who have stopped contributing?

Re:4/5 in favor

[Cimexus]

Yep - that's the great thing about this concept. It allows countries to get rid of unemployment allowances, low income benefits, old age pensions/security, student allowances, food stamps, all that stuff and replace it with a basic amount that everyone gets.

In many countries you effectively have a minimum income already, made of of some combination of government benefits, tax offsets/credits, etc. If you get rid of all that, and have a simple system where everyone gets a standard payment, and all income from the first dollar above that is taxed (with no random credits/offsets claimable due to low income or family situation etc.), you'd make billions in efficiency gains. As someone that works in IT delivering social services systems to governments, I have seen how ridiculously complex some of these programs are and the amount of money and manpower spent in administering them.

Re:4/5 in favor

[pipingguy]

"There are four ways to spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why you really watch out for what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well then, I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it costs, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40 percent of our national income."

- Milton Friedman

Re:4/5 in favor

[Chris Johnson]

If you're that kind of rich person your time is too valuable and you'll do a terrible job of redistributing what little income you are prepared to let go.

Seriously. You're not going to spend hours out of your day finding poor people and inspecting them to see if they're worthy. You'll do nothing of the sort, so your 'support' will trend towards zero, as the people you know won't need it.

There will be people who'd meet your standard, but you won't know them. Welfare case workers will know them. You'll never have to see them or the ones who aren't so worthy in your eyes. You don't hang around people like that so you have no basis on which to grade them for worth.

Just be taxed and hush. I really doubt you intend to work as a welfare caseworker for the rest of your life, so you're actively choosing not to know the answers to the questions you assume must be asked. That ought to be enough to disqualify you from the chain of command there.

Re: 4/5 in favor

[topology]

Why would things be different under the proposed system? We don't have slaves now, and those jobs get done. They typically have higher pay to compensate for the undesirable aspects of the job or risk associated with them. Someone is choosing to do those jobs instead of other more desirable jobs.

In one scenario you have a choice between Y+0 compensation for job J_Y and X+0 compensation for J_X, Lets assume that J_X is the more undesirable job. The proposed scenario is that you would have a choice between Y+B and X+B, where B is a minimum stipend to cover the cost of existence in society. At worst, Y is going to be commensurate with B. The relevant metric is going to be the ratio (X-Y)/B. In the worst case scenario that boils down to X/B - 1. If the difference in pay for the undesirable job was high, then (X-Y)/B is high and you would still choose to do the undesirable job for its higher compensation. If (X-Y)/B was small then the difference between X and Y is small and if you're smart you would be working the more desirable job for slightly less pay.

The only places where B would have a negative impact on jobs is when X/B-1 is negative. Its better compensation for doing nothing. Since B is so small anyway, any job where X/B-1 is negative is essentially exploitation. You shouldn't be working that job anyway as it doesn't sustain your existence.

Re:4/5 in favor

[tnk1]

I am entirely in favor of a basic income that you get even if you work at other jobs. I think that the automation and structural unemployment we are seeing is the first stages of automation being able to relieve humans of drudgery.

Unless the profits are distributed more evenly, then you just have more starving people and more money to the already rich. I don't even think the rich themselves care about that except for the fact that they are driven to drive up their "high score". To that end, raising that money should be done by putting in specific inputs at points in the economy where it is easiest to realize income from profits that are clearly due to automation.

If we do this right, we can have a solid economy where people still can and do want to work, but we reduce the possibility of people falling through the cracks.

Note, this is not "taxing the rich". While the rich do realize benefits from automation, there are many, many places where the money saved by automation is diverted. Anyone who believes you can simply upend rich people and shake the money out of their pockets to support this has no understanding of how you would really support such an income long term.

Some people in certain industries would likely lose some or all of their business/jobs. Just like the tax preparers might be out of a job if you made all taxation one flat tax that you got a bill for every month, there are businesses and other people that siphon off the largess afforded by higher production who do not show up in some Forbes of Fortune list of rich people.

This system should not borrow to fund a basic income system unless that borrowing is either for cash flow, or is done in a manner that does not encourage spending more than percentage of GDP that is produced by automation as determined in some scientific manner. The only reasonable theory backing basic income is that automation and efficiency removes drudgery which creates a surplus that can be used to support people who would otherwise work at drudgery. Borrowing to achieve some number and creating huge amounts of debt is the denial and possibly the falsification of that theory and is effectively taking money from people in the future for the comfort of people now.

Aside from how this is funded, my only other problem with any of this is that it would likely be administered by *the* government. I'll grant you, it's the obvious solution, but it is very dangerous in the sense that you become even more dependent on the organization that you should be voting every few years to keep in check.

I think basic income and welfare should be administered by entities that are solely and totally devoted to only maintaining those services with no extra power and no extra authority except what they need to maintain the specific system. They have no army, they have no police. They can tax or raise money, but they use other groups to enforce it. The managers of that system are elected specifically for maintaining that system and while politics are probably unavoidable, it might give us the ability to dispense with clueless generalists and lawyers (ie. legislatures) from trying operate a system they don't understand.

In other words, I should have an option of experts on the economy and administration to pick from. Not careerist legislators. I want people who I can trust to give it to us straight and not allow us to pressure them into providing us bread and circuses that our economy cannot afford. I want to elect people who are good at their job, not just good at telling me what I want to hear. I should be able to have the choice to elect a person who I completely disagree with on foreign policy, but they are right-on with managing a basic income, and not feel nervous that they're going to nuke Iran or something.

While it should be a benefit of citizenship, it needs to be understood not as a "human right" but as the expression of human progress in production and economic growth. No one has a right to live. No one has a right to eat,

Re:4/5 in favor

[nbauman]

Only about %0.1 percent of the population cares about inheritance tax

You made that number up, right? You don't have a source for it, right? That's what conservatives always do.

Do YOU care about inheritance tax? WHY? FREE MONEY COMING SOON???

I care about the inheritance tax, just like Bernie Sanders does, because without it, the top 0.1% own as much as the bottom 90% combined. http://www.theguardian.com/bus...

I wouldn't care if the rich simply used their money to buy yachts, diamonds and cars, and fly around the world vacationing in their mansions and at five-star hotels, eating at five-star restaurants. I don't care about their enjoying luxury (even though Adam Smith thought that it was wasteful and the rich should be taxed more).

I care about the rich because they're using their money to buy influence (that is, bribe politicians), and run the country.

It's not enough for them to be rich. They have to create a fantasy in which they got rich because they were hard-working and deserved it (even though most of them inherited their money), and the poor are poor because they're lazy and don't deserve it. They have to destroy it for the rest of us. They maliciously enjoy making the rest of us suffer.

I think we have to take away the money from the rich to disarm them, because they're dangerous to the world. It's like taking nuclear weapons away from Iran.

Re:4/5 in favor

[CronoCloud]

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.

Re:4/5 in favor

[mwvdlee]

This.

Costs of an "everybody the same" system could be much lower. Less overhead for inspectors, services, etc.
Any employment would benefit the unemployed immediately (starting to work 1 or 2 days a week is actually a financial loss to somebody on welfare).

Some people will game the system (probably the same that are currently gaming the welfare system), and these will more likely go unpunished.
For a community as a whole, this may actually be cheaper than trying to go after these hopeless cases.

It's not clear whether it'll work, but it might. The Dutch Utrecht-experiment will be interesting.

Re:4/5 in favor

[fnj]

Your criticism is part of the classic truism that there is no guarantee that all societal members are rational, wise, and reliable providers for offspring and other dependents. Your restricted debit card is worth considering, but I fear the bureaucracy that would likely become involved making the decisions on the split. Also, even within given regions, I have grave doubt that any one-split-fits-all scheme would be fair to all.

Another solution worth considering is simply replacing money with provisions for certain portions of the universal subsidy. For example, for housing, you provide the housing itself instead of money to buy housing. Yes, again, there would be a bureaucracy to construct and adminster the housing, but on the other hand you've cut out all the middlemen making a profit from housing in the present situation. The subsidized housing would be rather spartan, but it would only be a safety net. And there's no real way to scam the system. You're either signed up, living at some particular subsidized housing unit, or you forgo that particular benefit.

Food could be handled by having price-free dining centers. Anyone could just walk in and eat whenever they want to. The fare would be very plain, but nourishing. There's no real way to scam this.

Clothing is much harder. I guess you could have price-free clothing warehouses with plain garments in stock in all sizes. There would be enough plain money in the universal subsidy to allow buying a modest amount of fancier clothing (and food).

I see problems with both the restricted debit card, and with my system, but the plain unallocated cash subsidy has its own big problem, as you point out. I'm afraid providing fair and effective social welfare while at the same time avoiding a dystopia is a very difficult puzzle.

Re:4/5 in favor

[GameboyRMH]

The bad things about mincome are that it's really expensive, and that people will oppose it as "corporate welfare" (really, just look at what is said against the Earned Income Tax Credit) for giving those greedy corporations workers at a very low price.

Ironically, it will solve a real, widespread corporate welfare problem - sub-livable wages. Right now when somebody makes a sub-livable wage, somebody else has to make up the shortfall, whether it's government or relatives. Mincome would mean that nobody needs to worry about whether a wage is livable, and as a bonus it would drive up the wages of these menial jobs that people used to take out of sheer desperation.

The cost of sub-livable wages is also really expensive although it's hard to measure, so the savings there will help pay for mincome.

Re:4/5 in favor

[phantomfive]

If you had a minimum level of income, sufficient for you to share a small apartment with a couple roomates and buy low budget groceries and bus fare and the like, but nothing else, would you just say "I've got it made!" and never work again?

Right now? Yes.

I will also add:
When I first graduated from college, I had no clue how to find a job. It was really stressful and tough, and I wanted to give up. I didn't though, because I didn't have a choice. Having a basic income in that scenario would have been a major disincentive, and I wouldn't have found a job for a long time, if ever.

Re:4/5 in favor

[PopeRatzo]

Not wanting to give out welfare isn't a selfish proposition.

We need to start looking at welfare in a different way. We will soon enter an age when we don't need "full employment" for everyone to have all the goods and services that they need. The late-stage capitalism where the more things are automated, the harder working people have to work, is just not sustainable. The only reason we have that situation today is to support the supply-side perversion of capitalism. It's already groaning under the weight of supply-side economics, and the burgeoning disparity of incomes and wealth is the evidence. When you have more than 40% of the US work-force making less than $15/hr, and 80% of people not having enough savings to retire on by age 68, social and economic disruption is going to occur.

Rich people can hire only so many servants and drivers and people to wash their cars and be nanny to their kids. There are only so many people needed to service the robots. Only so many people needed to do the dirty work. And those are just the low-paying jobs. The middle-income jobs have already started to go. How valuable you think your ability to program Java is going to be by 2017? Or for that matter, by this Christmas?

So, we can decide that a guaranteed minimum income is something we need, or we can decide to become a society where 67 year-old beggers fight with 25 year-old beggers who fight with 12 year-old beggers as they line the streets. As someone who's spent time in such countries, let me tell you, it's not that great to be a well-off person in a place where everyone else is dirt poor. It might appeal to the big-L Libertarians in the crowd, but for the other 99%, it's not a pleasant proposition.

Re:4/5 in favor

[ArmoredDragon]

Believe it or not, the vast majority of people want to take steps to better their lives. They don't want to just sit around on their arse all day. They want to own things, they want to be able to do things - that's human nature.

I don't think it's safe to say the vast majority. A majority? Maybe, it's hard to say, but I kind of doubt it, and I'll explain why. When I was taking business courses in college, I remember reading two conflicting theories about what motivates workers.

One of them went something like: Most employees are inherently lazy, and only by constant supervision, and proper discipline can you get them to continue to work most efficiently. This was the prevailing theory until about the 1940s

The other one went something like this: Most employees want to work, and if you give them more autonomy, more power to make their own work decisions, and more flexibility in work hours, then they are happier and more productive workers. (This theory largely prevailed after Henry Ford set a global trend of 40 hours a week, taking Saturday off, and giving higher pay to encourage his more productive employees to stay with his company rather than go elsewhere.)

Anyways what I'm getting at is this: Both theories are still employed to this day, and each different theory is applied to different types of work. For work on a massive scale that is highly time sensitive, the first theory prevails. For example, UPS is notorious for micromanaging their truck drivers (I recommend further Googling of that rather than explain it here) whereas companies like Google that are looking for creative and engineering talent needed to create the "Next Big Thing(TM)", and those people must have autonomy.

I personally think that the first theory represents the majority however, namely because it applies to some of the most numerous jobs in the world, such as fast food workers, janitors, etc, whose employers rely on them to do menial tasks, and do them quickly, but the quality of employees that they find at the wages they can afford are NOT the self motivated types.

In addition to what I said above, there's another growing demographic that's sort of the elephant in the room here: The basement dweller who spends his days playing World of Warcraft while his parents work. I've seen a lot of these, and IMO they're the biggest cause of the obesity epidemic. If you give these people free money, believe me, they don't move on unless they are literally evicted. I'm sure you guys have heard the horror stories about video game addiction where such and such person loses their job, their wife, and their house, while they were playing video games.

Personally, I don't believe in such a thing as video game addiction, because I've seen people do these things without video games (sometimes it's TV, sometimes it's drug abuse, sometimes it's the religious belief that "god will save me from myself", etc.)

And finally one more point that ties back to the theories about why people work: Both of the theories that I mentioned above stipulate that money itself does not motivate people to work harder; so for example, giving somebody a raise doesn't mean they'll be more productive (if you believe otherwise, I'm sorry, but all of the evidence so far says you're just wrong) but it does mean they're more likely to continue working for you instead of somebody else.

But why am I mentioning this? Simple: If you pay somebody money to do nothing, then they're also more likely to continue doing nothing.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ironic that planned economies have much worse pollution because they have neither the political will via democracy to clean it up, nor the economic might to spare.

Russia in Siberia was spilling an Exxon Valdez a month all over the place due to leaky pipelines.

I'll take our much lower pollution and higher wealth due to capitalism, kthxbie.

Re:4/5 in favor

[RingDev]

Companies could relocate out, but entrepreneurs would abound!

Think about how amazing it would be if you could tell "the man" to go to hell, and go out and start your own company with your own ideas and initiative. Knowing that in the years it's going to take to build a market segment large enough to become significantly profitable that you, your spouse, and your children will all have their education covered, their medical expenses covered, and enough money to cover your mortgage and food.

I would have gone independent long ago if I had such a solid safety net.

-Rick

Re:4/5 in favor

[thaylin]

you realize the middle class was larger when there was higher taxes on the upper class and corps?

Re:4/5 in favor

[nbauman]

It works in Scandinavian countries.

It also works in Germany. The German unemployment system gives Germans the same income from being unemployed as they would if they were employed. Some of the Germans use their unemployment time as a vacation. Others use it to go to school or get more training in their jobs. A welder would learn advanced welding techniques.

If it doesn't work in the US, it's because we're not doing it right.

Re:4/5 in favor

[ShanghaiBill]

Some people will game the system

Could you explain this? How could someone "game" a system that everyone qualifies for, and everyone receives that same benefit? The only way I can see is to not report the death of a spouse, and instead bury the body in the backyard, and continue to spend the automatic deposit to the joint checking account. I think that would be rare, and penalties severe ... or maybe drones could be used to look for freshly disturbed soil.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Ungrounded Lightning]

But there could be unintended consequences. Taxes may go up, giving companies an incentive to locate elsewhere, and the wealthy an incentive to emigrate.

If they set the parameters right they can let this handle the "progressive" aspect of the tax code, too. They can flatten the income tax and eliminate the paperwork and special-cases - to the point where the income tax can be collected directly from employer withholding at a flat rate and no action by the employee, or employee forms beyond "this much paid as wages, this much withheld (here it is)" are needed at all. High-income earners might come out ahead, workers at all levels would have a LOT easier time climbing the income ladder (or starting their own businesses).

If the benefits are generous, they may pull in non-working immigrants from the rest of the EU.

That (along with fraud multiple-registering or registering pseudo-people for the benefit) could be a killer. (The other killer would be opposition from the government tax bureaucrats facing being thrown out to live on the dole plus whatever they could earn elsewhere.)

Re:4/5 in favor

[Etcetera]

In addition to what I said above, there's another growing demographic that's sort of the elephant in the room here: The basement dweller who spends his days playing World of Warcraft while his parents work. I've seen a lot of these, and IMO they're the biggest cause of the obesity epidemic. If you give these people free money, believe me, they don't move on unless they are literally evicted. I'm sure you guys have heard the horror stories about video game addiction where such and such person loses their job, their wife, and their house, while they were playing video games.

A term used in parts of Europe, heavily in Japan (especially within the last 10 years or so), but that's virtually non-existent in the US is "NEET" -- "Not in Education, Employment, or Training (school)". There's a little bit of overlap with the Hikikomori.

The take-away is that we really do have to consider there there's a higher case of actual psychological dysfunction associated with these groups (including "Failure-to-launch" Millennials in the US, etc...) . Whether it's caused by, exacerbated by, or simply correlates with the unemployment is almost beside the point -- once afflicted, any social policy for "fixing" the problem needs to take this into account.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Archangel Michael]

Capitalism does require planning. Just not centralized bureaucratic planning.

In Capitalism, if you're failing, you plan and execute a change or fail. In Central Planning, you fail, you simply raise taxes to make it seem like you didn't fail.

In Capitalism, as markets change, businesses plan and change to accommodate those changes. In Central Planning, change is a sign of weakness, we need to raise taxes to support industries no longer needed.

If you view Centralized Planning as successful, you're ignoring all the failures that are still ongoing.

Re:4/5 in favor

[Hognoxious]

That'd be far preferable to them funding their habit by robbing people.

Re:4/5 in favor

[digsbo]

what is wrong with having people who are accepting of the fact that society does not produce enough jobs for everyone?

That's hard to parse, so I'm not sure what you mean. But assuming there's a societal obligation to "produce enough jobs for everyone" might be a stumbling point, as it asserts without proof that "society" can perform the necessary economic calculations to do so, and has a collective moral obligation to do so. That's not the least bit clear.

Re:4/5 in favor

[scamper_22]

The problem is we basically have this today.
Despite what people say, even about the US, the is a minimum standard of living.
There is social housing.
There is welfare.
There is Medicaid ...
They have kept it crappy because that's why people don't want to end up there. If they kept social housing really nice and made welfare enough to buy food and not many eligibility checks... you'd basically have what is being proposed.

When people speak of a guaranteed income, they generally mean free money to provide a decent life. Maybe a single person with their own apartment and enough money for basic food, internet, tv, phone.

People always want more, but here's the part you're missing.
How much are people willing to work to get *more*?
I want a ferrari right now, but I really don't want to work that hard to get one.

I think you'd be surprised by the number of people who would be quite content with a basic apartment, food, tv, internet..

Re:4/5 in favor

[HornWumpus]

Apply for asylum under a new name every week, setup mail drops and then return to you home nation to live like king?

Does Finland accept asylum applications from Americans?

Re:4/5 in favor

[Dixie_Flatline]

You know, I keep hearing this and it keeps boggling my mind.

It would never occur to me to stop doing things if I had free money. I'd do MORE things. I have a good job right now, but I'd really like to go back to school and study something else. If the government were supporting me and tuition were free, I'd definitely do that right away.

So why do so many people say that everyone would stop working? Is it because THEY'D stop working?

And have you noticed that the incredibly wealthy still work? I mean, Jeff Bezos has a whole lot of personal wealth. He could've quit ages ago. Half of silicon valley could retire somewhere slightly cheaper and never work another day in their lives? Why do they even bother to work? Is it because there's more to life than being the idle rich?

The people that seem to do the least are the ones raised in moneyed privilege. Trust fund kids. They want for nothing, so they do nothing. They've got nothing to strive for.

But someone on a guaranteed income--man, they're just paying the rent and affording groceries. It's hardly the high life. Based on my own life experience, they'd be happy to find something better.

So I have to wonder at the internal process of people that say, "Gosh, everyone would stop working." I don't meant to cast aspersions, but are you projecting? Is the reason why you say that about other people because you know that for yourself, you'd rather just sit on the couch and play console games all day? I actually won't judge you if that's what you DO want to do, but stop telling the rest of us that we have no work ethic independent of money.

Re:4/5 in favor

[operagost]

According to Forbes, most wealthy people earned their money. We're talking 6% versus 69%. I'm not a statistician, but that seems to be well out of the margin of error.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mo...

Re:4/5 in favor

[ShanghaiBill]

Conversely kids without the experience to go independent will think they are ready far too early.

History has shown that the best time to go independent is straight-out-of-college. Or even before finishing college. Experience isn't that helpful when you are trying to do something totally new. Experience just turns you into a cynical naysayer, pointing out why it can't be done, rather than doing it.

Finally

[philmarcracken]

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.

basic income?

[tomhath]

Isn't this usually called welfare? Apparently "basic income" is the new politically correct term for it.

Re:basic income?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's conceptually different. Most ideas of "welfare" are based on "We'll help you, but only when you're worthy, and the goal is to kick you off it" which in turn leads to a whole system to enforce those rules. Which means a lot of it goes to paying people to run that system.

Basic income, however, is simply the idea of making sure people have the money to pay for the things they need to live, and avoids a lot of the expensive infrastructure and management.

Re:basic income?

[FranTaylor]

Looks good on paper. But when enough people stop working and still expect a "basic income" check every month, it will quickly collapse. F

citation required

Re:basic income?

[Halo1]

In every experiment they've tried until now, it actually causes more people to start working rather than fewer. There was a very interesting documentary about it by the Flemish public broadcaster, and it's available with English subtitles (if that doesn't play, there's a lower quality copy on Youtube). It does cause more people to become self-employed though, because they're less afraid of failure and hence are less likely to take on a job they don't like but accept anyway to have income security. And interestingly, those self-employed endeavours turn out to be often quite successful, simply because people are doing something like doing.

Re: Why stop at basic income.

[MightyYar]

Free as in beer or free as in open sores?

Re:Oh noes, the poors!

[ksheff]

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

Re:how does "limited, geographical experiment" wor

[Calydor]

Didn't live in $town before January 1st, 2016? You're not part of the experiment. No exceptions.

Re:Reform welfare

[hackwrench]

Because we don't need everybody working all the time in order to get our needs and wants met, perhaps? Maybe?

No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[MikeRT]

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.

Re:No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[FranTaylor]

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.

that's precisely why it WILL work in the long run, as mechanized society takes away more and more jobs, nobody is going to expect to get an actual job

Re:No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[avandesande]

I would bet that people with this kind of attitude are also terrible employees. I don't see keeping them out of the labor market as a loss.

Re:No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

God, why do you hate the poor so much? Are you a straight white guy or something?

acclimate people to the idea that they have a right to public money just because they showed up

Get yourself a fiddle, Nero - all this has happened before.

Re:No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[PraiseBob]

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."

Since they are elderly, and have few work-gained skills, I would suspect they aren't a good employee for anyone at this stage in their life. Are you suggesting that as a society we should kill them, and have them executed for not being a good enough worker? Or are you simply suggesting to let them starve to death and die of exposure? What exactly are they supposed to "give back" to earn their benefits? And what should we as a society do if they refuse?

Re:No excuse for them to be "unemployed"

[trout007]

Instead of a fixed amount it could be implemented as a simple redistribution. For example a 10% tax on all personal income and gross business receipts (Businesses are people right?) with no deductions. Then divide by the number of citizens and pay out. This can be automated enough to do the updates quarterly. It also insures the system will stable indefinitely since it can't have surpluses or deficits.This will naturally work out (as well as any Centrally planned scheme could) because if people start getting lazy and stop working the amount gathered in taxes will reduce as well as the payment and they would need to work some more to make ends meet which raises the income.

didn't happen in Manitoba

[Chirs]

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]"

Re:didn't happen in Manitoba

[inhuman_4]

Tried and abandoned.

There were a number of problems with the Dauphin study. The biggest being that it wasn't sustainable.

To be viable economic policy needs to work in a closed system. The money given out through mincome needs to be matched by the money coming in through taxes. But the Dauphin system didn't work like that. Instead, the government pumped in outside money, without raising taxes to offset. So the people living in Dauphin got all benefits of socialist style government handouts, without the accompanying higher tax rate.

No one doubts that many thing improved during the experiment. Improving the quality of life in a small community by pumping in free money from the outside is easy. The hard part is making it work as a system.

Re:didn't happen in Manitoba

[thaylin]

Only if you broadly define welfare to include things that are not welfare and you make the system such that there is a a large disadvantage to improving yourself, such is the case in many programs.

Have you thought that the teenagers you are talking about do that because they have little to no money and cannot find good work?

It will be very interesting to see the results

[gweihir]

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.

it makes a rational assumption.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:it makes a rational assumption.

[Major Blud]

"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.

nope

[Chirs]

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.)

Re:Oh noes, the poors!

[pijokela]

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.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It's all based on a very simple rule

[fustakrakich]

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.

It does work...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:It does work...

[hendrips]

There is a very strong libertarian argument to be made for a basic income. Assuming that it were implemented in a carefully though out manner (haha, I know), a welfare system centered around a universal basic income would be much less intrusive than the less generous patchwork we currently have. A couple of examples:

- No more corporate minimum wage. There doesn't need to be one, since there is already a basic income. This allows businesses greater freedom in their hiring and pay practices. It allows marginal workers to hold jobs that aren't worth paying $8.50 an hour + payroll tax for, but might be worth paying $6 an hour for.

-No more intrusive questions about marital status, family living arrangements, drug use, etc. The basic income is universal, so we can dispense with having the government making moral judgments about domestic affairs. No more punishing couples for being married or for not being married (our current welfare system somehow manages to do both at the same time).

Additionally, there are very cynical reasons that the elites should support a basic income, which you have already touched on in your post. There is a reason that you thought of France in the early 1800's and not the UK. The UK elites, starting with the Reform Act of 1832, recognized the practical necessity of compromising with the lower classes in order to shore up their own power. No doubt many in power at the time had the French July Revolution (which had overthrown Charles X and established a liberal regime by force just two years earlier) in mind when the Act was passed.

Today, we have a similar situation to that of Europe in the 1800's, although the issue is about economic participation rather than political participation. I hope that we choose as wisely as the British did.

Re:It's an interesting idea

[Archangel Michael]

Here's the problem, which you exposed, but didn't quite get to.

spending an amount that equates to $60k per household in poverty

and

shrink 90+ government programs into just a few

Yes, spending is likely to be in the area of $60K a year, but how much of that is actually spent on administration of the 90+ Government programs? I don't have the faintest idea what the percentage is, but I'll be willing to bet that it is more than 50% and probably closer to 75% (or even more), as the layers and layers of bureaucracy each have to take a piece out of it.

And the current benefits afforded to welfare, when maxed out, does equal to more than $50K worth of salary / benefits for not working. We have long since passed the idea of a "safety net" approach and gone full into socialism mode with "comfortable". Meanwhile my taxes keep increasing to pay for people who feel entitled to the sweat of my labor.

Genius solution to bloated social welfare agencies

[areusche]

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.

Won't someone think of the bureaucrats?

[periodic]

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.

Re:A country sized face palm event.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A country sized face palm event.

[dunkelfalke]

I personally see nothing wrong with letting people suffer as a form of motivation.

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?

I'm Retired, I Already Live "Robotic Nation"

[C0L0PH0N]

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.

Re:A country sized face palm event.

[turp182]

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.

Do "rich" people quit working?

[blindbat]

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.

Re:A country sized face palm event.

[nbauman]

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.

You're aware Ayn Rand hated Libertarians, right?

[tlambert]

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.

Re:A country sized face palm event.

[thinkwaitfast]

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?

Re:Guaranteed Income Vs Basic Income

[meta-monkey]

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.

Quitting to live off the dole...Less common

[Firethorn]

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.