Slashdot Mirror
Finland Begins To Shape Basic Income Proposal (yle.fi)
jones_supa writes: The Finnish social insurance institution is to begin drawing up plans for a citizens' basic income model. If eventually deployed after an experimental phase, the model could revolutionize the Finnish social welfare system. Under basic income all citizens would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government. The proposal's director Olli Kangas says that the model would see Finns being paid some 800 euros a month in its full form, 550 euros monthly in the model's pilot phase. The full-fledged form of the model would make some earnings-based benefits obsolete, but in the partial pilot format benefits would not be affected, and housing and income support would remain as separate packages. We first mentioned this plan a few months ago, and at the start of the year touched on a program that tied a basic income program with the Fimkrypto cryptocurrency.
It's actually the other way around. People won't do minimum wage jobs because they don't pay enough to live on, and if they have a job their benefits end. In some countries benefits continue for minimum wage workers (corporate welfare, where they government props up non-viable businesses that can't or won't pay enough for their staff to remain alive and healthy).
That's what will happen here - people will be able to take low paid, part time jobs to supplement their income because the basic income will mean they have enough to live.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
you left off the sarcasm tag
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Murder and taxation are quite different things.
The Economist once quipped that taxation is like plucking a live goose for feathers for a pillow: You want to get the maximum amount of feathers, with the minimal amount of fuss. This is why there is no point in taxing the rich . . . they will just park their cash in the Cayman Islands or wherever. When I read the story about Cassini's Dive Through the Geyser of Enceladus, I actually thought that this was a scene from rich international corporations to hide their profits there.
Anyway, I think the "Monty Python" crew summed it up best with their sketch that suggested, "I think that we should tax foreigners living abroad!"
Everyone loves a tax that the think someone else is going to end up paying for.
And they all love "free" benefits and entitlements that they think cost nothing to nobody.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Except it's true? Every cent a person makes relies on society to function for its value. Money is a artificial construct that is used to signify an entities value to society. Government contributes to society (and can also be a detriment, mind) and allows a working person to function within it so it gets a cut. Don't wanna share your cut? Well fuck you buddy, if you aren't gonna play ball with society, make a raft and head out into the ocean because society ain't gonna play ball with you.
The US Supreme Court would likely still rule slavery to be illegal and in violation of equal protection and other clauses.
Majorities are insufficient for passing laws that deprive citizens of fundamental rights.
No, sorry, utterly wrong. In fact, no major democracy would allow slavery to be reinstituted simply because a majority wants that to happen.
Mitlon Friedman, a very conservative economist, backed the negative income tax.
I haven't seen a spreadsheet version of specific amounts or tax rates, but the idea is that people with zero market income would get a minimum income. Every dollar they make gets taxed a certain rate which reduces their guaranteed income. So if your basic income was $20,000 and you earned $10,000, you'd be taxed some amount on that $10,000, an effective reduction in the basic income.
I think the tax and benefit reduction scheme is key and I haven't seen an exact table explaining the math. But I think the system is designed to make even low wage jobs profitable (ie, you end up ahead of the basic income even with a small market income) until you make so much money that your tax bill is greater than your basic income payment.
I think as policy part of its claimed economic advantage has to do with eliminating many other social benefit programs, like food stamps, housing vouchers, etc and delivering the same benefit more efficiently and allowing people to make more efficient resource allocations.
If income inequality is a serious problem, I think a negative income tax makes sense. For one, it raises the wage floor a lot, forcing employers to pay more for labor. Higher labor rates would seem to force businesses to cut executive compensation or profitability to meet labor costs. It would probably have some stimulative effect on the economy, since it would be putting more money into the consumer economy (but it I could see where it might be slightly inflationary, too). Since by design it's not meant to be punative, even low wage jobs have an incentive because you will gain an income higher than the basic income for any work.
It's hard to know the bureacucratic efficiencies that would be gained, but I suspect they would be major. I don't know if the concept implies an end to the social security system, but you could see where it would be redundant or could be reduced. It also lets people spend the money in the way that helps them the best, at market eficiency, versus less efficient means (ie, you can rent whatever apartment makes sense to you, versus having to live in a project or qualifying section 8 housing). The lack of complex access and screening mechanisms would mean fewer people stuck in a system and more able to focus their energy on obtaining better jobs or fearing losing their benefits.
I think it would require moderately higher taxes on very high income people and corporations. I don't think this is necessarly bad and you could argue that part of the economy's inequality problem is corporations and very high income individuals sitting on cash because they don't have investment alternatives (think Apples billions in cash) -- as long as that money is held in short-term deposits and short term securities, it's not doing produtive work in the economy. Taxed and returned to the economy, it produces economic activity.
About the only other idea I've found compelling for reducing inequality is a tax incentive to companies that reduce salary ratios between the highest paid and othe employees. Whatever the loss in tax revenue shold be offset by increased tax revenue from better paid employees and increased sales taxes as the money is spent.
In the case of benefits, people are in fact disincentivized from working because their welfare checks are reduced by the amount they work -- it's like having to work for free. Basic income fixes this problem because it's not an income-based benefit, a poor person can get a minimum wage job and not lose anything.
This space intentionally left blank