Slashdot Mirror
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.
Nope, it doesn't. Believe it or not some people are not 100% selfish.
Free as in beer or free as in open sores?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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.
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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Because we don't need everybody working all the time in order to get our needs and wants met, perhaps? Maybe?
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.
It's part of the English language, Bub. Deal with it.
Guaranteed minimum income was tried as a multi-year experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba (Canada) in the 1970s. From the wikipedia page for "mincome":
"...only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[7] Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.[8]"
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I have three very selfish and practical reasons why I support it: (a) If I'm ever poor and have kids, I will want to get vaccines for them even if I can't afford it; (b) Paying for vaccines today is cheaper than paying for the illness tomorrow; and (c) Vaccinating everyone else in society cuts the chances of me or my loved ones becoming sick.
In evolutionary biology, that's called reciprocal altruism. Communities that take care of their members survive. Communities composed of people who don't help each other don't survive.
A minimum income is an excellent way of eliminating valueless bureaucracies while ensuring that those that need the income get it. As much as the plight of the poor saddens me and they should be helped, the dead beat government worker pushing paper deserves no such assistance. Administrative overhead should be the first thing on the chopping block.
"artists would do art"
If it fit within The Party Lines.
"the sick would work to get healthy"
Soviet Union has lagged behind Western countries in terms of mortality and life expectancy since the late 1960s
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy"
And yet the GDP per capita in the USSR for 1982 was $5,000, compared to $14,400 for the U.S.A.
http://countryeconomy.com/gdp/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you're going to make an argument for Socialism, using the U.S.S.R. as an example is a poor choice.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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
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.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
"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
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 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,
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?
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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.