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.

Comments

Re:Excellent.

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[Gavagai80]

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.