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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.
This is really the difference between capitalism as a means to exploit the weak, and capitalism as a means to voluntarily exchange for mutual benefit.
Most people want to work - I have enough money to never need to work another day in my life, yet I still enjoy being productive. Those who say they don't, and that they only work because they have to - those who project their negative image of themselves on the whole of humanity - those who, surprisingly enough, nevertheless seem keen with the idea of earning more than the minimum - are welcome to retire. And to see how it goes for them. Technology doesn't require everyone to be employed 40+ hours/week to keep everyone fed, clothed and housed.
Aren't we already at that point? Even without a basic income?
If you have enough money, you can "buy" politicians to support any cause you want. Even restructuring the tax laws in your favour.
I think that the problem with your theory is that the government doesn't really care where its money comes from, as it is not an entity. Instead, politicians care where their income money from, and that's mostly from the lobbyists. I've never heard of a normal person hiring a lobbyist, so we're basically already in your situation where the government is only incentivized to take care of the rich/corporations... and it shows.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
More like:
10 Government takes money from me at the point of a gun
20 Others get it
30 Goto 10
The ultimate end threat of all taxation is... force. Even in countries (like Canada, where I live) that just take your stuff if you don't pay, they still do so with force.
Or, imagine what happens if you try to stop these strangers from taking YOUR things! You end up with assault and obstruction charges!
I don't understand the concept that if I have a loaf of bread, that I worked all day for, I should have thugs with guns come and steal 1/2 of it for the guy that didn't work.
Of course, the argument is larger than that. The collective good. The list goes on. But, when there's absolutely no restrictions on who gets to take my money, and people say 'fuck it' and just give my money free to everyone else, it seems bizarre.
Steal my money, and interview / assess cases and then give it to actual starving people? Well, I can at least stand that. Steal my money and just walk into the middle of the room, throw it into the air, and say Wheeee!
Wtf?!
If you don't want to pay taxes then go somewhere with no taxes (Somalia?)
Otherwise you have to accept that the majority where you live decided that taxes would be mandatory, and just like they decided that murder will be illegal the law will be enforced. With force if necessary.
Work to change it (good luck) or leave.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry, but that shift has happened a long time ago. The thing a basic income would ensure is that people are not powerless _and_ poor.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
>> would be paid a taxless benefit sum free of charge by the government
By the _government_? Really? Or by Finnish taxpayers?
There can be a middle ground between "the government takes everything" and "no services whatsoever".
Most people don't have much issue with taxes for some basic services like public infrastructure. Roads, police, fire dept, court system. The problem is that the government went far beyond their purpose and started using taxes for all kinds of superfluous bullshit, which they then decide is mandatory, which starts a cycle of ever increasing taxation, more redistribution, and larger government.
At some point, those that are doing a disproportionately greater amount of work than the rest will say "to hell with this" and stop producing, and just live off the hand outs like everyone else. Innovation will come to a halt.
There has to be incentive to work. Things that are given without being earned have no value.
Your selfishness does not offend me as much as your stupidity. "Your money"? What makes you think its entirely your money? You belong in, and benefit from, a society that gives you a foundation on which you can make "your money." Unless you handle your own water, sewage, transportation, security, etc. etc. you are directly and indirectly benefiting from having an organized society and government.
It appears stupidity and selfishness is a deadly combination, leading to idiots like you.
So, according to you, if the majority decides that slavery should be legal, we should just "have to accept that"? According to you, if the majority decides that Jews should be deprived of their property, liberty, and/or life, we should just "have to accept that"? That's the way fasicst think; it reveals a lot about you.
Somalia is such a rotten place due to European colonialism followed by socialism. Since the fall of socialism in Somalia, conditions have actually been improving a bit. Of course, Somalia still has taxes and government, it simply doesn't have a national government within the arbitrary borders drawn by Europeans.
You're never going to be the top of the food chain. There will always be someone above you who uses a part of your income or whatever to support the community as a whole. This can be done fairly well or poorly, but you're kidding yourself if you think that a libertarian wonderland is going to end up becoming anything other than a fucking nightmare.
You think you're self sufficient. You are not. You think that you don't need government. You do.
Libertarianism is fucking retarded.
There is a huge difference between "winning the lottery" and "basic income".
Some people would be happy to sit at home and do nothing except watch TV all day. So?
Other people would keep working in order to afford more options.
Some would keep working because they enjoy the job they do.
Some would keep working because they were not happy sitting at home watching TV all day.
The question is, is the group of people who are happy-not-working large enough to bankrupt the group of people who would keep working?
By your logic, you should never have to pay rent either. You have entered into a contract and in return from certain state-provided services you pay taxes. In case you didn't know, you can enter into contracts through conduct even though I'm sure you have done it many times - e.g. by parking your car in a certain lot. In the case of taxes the conduct is that you choose completely freely to reside in a certain area in which you indeed do benefit from what is funded through taxes. Your example further fails for you as an individual because the history in your case is that you received a shitload of services and benefits before you were even able to defecate on your own - let alone wipe your own ass. You got protection from foreign military threats, criminal threats and had e.g. emergency services were you to have needed them. All that was set up before you were born so you cannot argue as if a bunch of people got together and set it up now against your will. And before you were able to produce any value whatsoever yourself, you had received a lot more. But unlike a typical landlord, you're perfectly free to leave (any Western democracy) without paying anything back of what you have received. You only need to pay whilst you choose to stay and benefit from the state (and if you cannot pay because you don't earn anyhing, you don't even get "evicted" - you don't even have to pay then!). Now, on a more general level it's obvious to any rational person that your system (anarchism/libertardianism) fails because no such society has survived as is evident by looking at the world. If you wish to prove me wrong you can go to the handful of unclaimed areas in the world and do whatever you like there. Attract like-minded people perhaps? If your system is as good as you imagine, it should turn any such area into an appealing place for many. Personally, I suspect, though, that you'd at best reach a Somalia level of society. If there's no enforcement mechanism of your precious property rights, it's indistinguishable from a situation in which you don't have property rights. Then whoever has a bigger gun than you, gets whatever they want from you. And I suspect that that would be a lot more than current taxes.
Murder and taxes are not so different. If one person, or a small group of people, control all the resources everyone else starves to death. Taxation and more generally limits on what an individual or group of individuals can down and control prevent that.
You also have to remember that you are not entitled to monetary wealth by some kind of natural law. Money only has useful value because society recognizes it. You were only able to enjoy your wealth because society enabled you to. Even if you live self-sufficiently off the land in your remote cabin somewhere, society provided an army and legal system to protect you. In exchange for this, you are required to pay taxes.
As I said before, you want to opt out then you need to get out. Otherwise, no matter how self sufficient you are, you are still ultimately leeching off society without holding up your end of the deal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
At some point, those that are doing a disproportionately greater amount of work than the rest will say "to hell with this" and stop producing
At some point, those doing the work will all be machines. If they go on strike, we'll have bigger problems. :)
There has to be incentive to work.
Fear of homelessness or starvation is not the best incentive to work. It's only enough to keep someone showing up; it's not going to produce much inspired output. At some point mankind needs to advance beyond the slave "he who does not work does not eat" mentality and find more meaningful reasons for working.
Things that are given without being earned have no value.
I'm sure you'll keep that truism in mind if you're ever starving and someone offers you some food.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The money you have earned probably came from either a business you own, or a job you were hired to do. Both exist *at all* because of the stability and safety of the place in which you live. You owe all of that to the taxes paid by people who came before you, and by your neighbors.
You sound ridiculous, reaping all these benefits and then insisting that it is morally wrong for you to pay for them at the same rate everyone else does.
Taxation is the price we pay for civilization. If you don't like it, too damn bad, because the rest of us do.
If the $27 trillion that the banks have gotten for free since 2008 hasn't caused inflation, why would $7 trillion, going to actual human beings?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I tend to think of it a bit differently.
In my view of things, in any democratic society governed by the rule of law, people can only become as wealthy as the masses are willing to tolerate.
Maybe some of those who are rich managed to get there by hard work and talent, or maybe they were born into it. Either way, the only reason that the rich are able to stay rich, at a fundamental level, is that every other person in that society is willing to tolerate it. If the poor become angry enough, they will basically either steal all the shit that the rich person has by force, or just outright murder the fucker by forming an angry mob and going after them.
The basic income scheme can be viewed as the rich and powerful having enough foresight to see this possibility and trying to placate the mob sharing the wealth.
Besides, it also helps to keep in mind that those who are truly wealthy are in a position that which country they chose to live in is a near trivial matter of choice. If you have a billion dollars in the bank, and do not like the taxes in one place, you can afford to move to another place with a more hospitable tax regime.
END COMMUNICATION
Haven't we already played this game?
After WWII the West and the Soviets split Germany. East Germany has socialism, where everyone's needs were provided for. West Germany had a capitalist system, where people got what they worked for. Well it didn't take long for people working in the East to figure out that they could do much better in the West, so they left. Yes, some of it was politics, yes some of it was about freedom. But the Berlin Wall wasn't built to stop political activists, pensioners, university students, or those in need of longterm care from fleeing. It was to stop professionals: engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers. The drain of those with the largest net contribution to society was crippling the East German economy. So they built a wall to stop them. It's not an accident that most socialist countries enforce(d) exit visas.
Here in Canada we already enjoy a brain drain of our medical professionals. Why stay in Canada with lower incomes and higher taxes, when you can jump across the boarder and make out so much better. And I predict that Finland will see the same thing. Many Fins already speak Swedish and English so the barrier to exit is low. If you are a high paid professional why lose a huge chunk of your income to those who don't work when you can leave via the Schengen agreement.
Now might say that it won't cost extra because we will cut funding in other programs. Well that's bullshit. But don't take my word for it, or the media's word for it, sit down and do the math yourself. Basic income that provides any meaningful level of income is crazy expensive, well beyond what a few cuts here and there is going to cover.
You might say that only a few people care enough about higher taxes to leave. And you would be right. The problem is that it is the people who pay the most taxes who are going to leave. And when they leave the tax burden on those who stay goes up. Which creates more incentive for people to leave. It's a vicious cycle where the highest taxed leave and the next highest tax bare the burden.
I'll leave you with a thought experiment. Let say a nice liberal state like Vermont decided it's going to implement basic income, but no other state in the union follows suite. What do you think would happen?
Wow, where do you get such a negative attitude toward taxes?
Look the best way to look at it is the following: just by existing, you require stuff. Food, clothing, shelter, and then the slightly more luxurious things such as heating your home in winter (unless you use lumber you chopped yourself exclusively), or using internet to leave the comment. Unless you don't use the internet or electricity and don't have a job and feed yourself exclusively through farming, then you use or require something provided by the public.
Oh, but "I pay for my own internet/electricity/whatever", right? Something like $1 of every internet bill I get is a "Universal Access Fee", which gives people in the middle of nowhere access. Why? because business decided that it's not worthwhile to support you, and we as a society decided it was worthwhile to do. So, we pay a fee (tax, really) that subsidizes costs. Electricity is generated from things dug up from the ground, and that may have caused environmental issues to another region. To be fair to them, we help them clean it up. Goods are trucked in via roads that were paid for by the public. Your healthcare, even if you paid totally out of pocket for doctor and medicine, largely came about due to the US government guaranteeing student loans for doctors (otherwise, banks would not provide such a large amount of money with no collateral) and the fact that public tax money helps subsidize medical research (even if that research ends up owned by a private company, but that's an ethical issue for another day...).
Essentially, by existing, you require stuff, and some of that stuff is not something a free market will support. Too much risk, not enough reward, whatever. So, we as a society get together every once and while and say "Well this needs done anyway, so if business won't do it, how do we pay for it?". We negotiate a small amount every citizen pays into the pool to do these things, and send everyone a bill for the services. This bill from the government is called "taxes".. What, you expect everything to be for free?
Taxes is the bill you get for society to provide you with a modern lifestyle. Now the nice thing about it is that this bill is somewhat negotiable; through voting and our system of representatives, you are more than welcome to be part of the process and haggle for cost and even which services we consider important enough to do/offer. If all you do is complain online and never be involved in government affairs, you're kind of missing the point of living in a democratic society.
So, stop complaining and pay your damn bills. If you're not happy with the service/cost, feel free to get involved in government and change it. At least you have a chance with government... if you're unhappy with your private sector service, they just tell you to get lost.
When the gang of 7 show up at your house, you stand aghast as they explain that you need to give them some wood you have in the back. Wood you chopped, dried, and wanted to use for firewood that winter. And when you fight them?
Why is it your wood? Did you call the land on which the trees grew into existence with the sheer force of your will? Did you design the DNA of the trees? No. Somewhere many generations ago someone came along and said "This is mine." And then some earlier "Gang of 7" started enforcing some artificial notion of "property ownership" because they thought it was in the collective interest.
True freedom would be anarchy - law of the jungle - the strong take from the weak simply because they can. In a world of true freedom, anyone who was stronger than you could come along and take your wood simply because they were stronger.
Property ownership is not freedom: it is actually a limit on freedom - not that that's bad - we do need to place limits on freedom. But, fundamentally, the point is to set up a society where most (ordinary) people can live out simple comfortable lives. And limiting freedom through things like property ownership is a necessary evil. But so are taxes.
At the end of the day, it's all just random chance and the laws of physics. But we can impose artificial "laws" that make things better for most people. But these are not natural laws: they are artificial laws for our collective convenience.
Someone clearly has no concept of how modern society works, or what a social contract is.
The government and you have an agreement. The government provides basic services, like roads (to deliver your things to the stores you shop at), schools to provide education up to grade 12 for not just you but for the people around you so those people can get good jobs and afford the things you make or the services you provide at your job, writes laws which set the rules by which all those living around you should abide by so you don't have to kill each other when a disagreement happens, and neutral law enforcement to administer said rules. In return you pay a portion of your income. The more you gain from society the more you pay. This is called a social contract.
If you don't want to pay your taxes you are welcome to not do so, and the government will not take it from you by force. However you are then canceling the social contract with the government and therefore must leave the territory it governs. If you want to stay but not pay taxes, well then the government is upholding their end of the deal and you are not; they are entitled to take what is due per the agreement by force.
But to build a park bench? Buy art? Take money and give it to everyone, even if they don't need it? Give money to warlords, overthrow foreign governments and put puppets in place of them? Build, create, and do all sorts of non-essential things?
You're acting like you don't get anything in return for that taxation. Not only do you get a nice park (which you may or may not use) but you end up living in a nicer area (which you may or may not care about) but at the end of a day there's every likelihood that close proximity to that now nice park with benches has increased property value which is something that has a direct impact on your financial base.
You give people basic income, that can have a benefit as well in the form of them not trying to sleep on your front lawn or breaking into your house overnight and stealing your food for survival. As for overthrowing foreign governments come back and cry to me when you pay a proper price for your resources. America doesn't overthrow governments for shits and giggles, the running joke is the only government safe from America is one without oil.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." - Churchill.
Imagine restricting financial misery via the tax system so that the least financially miserable people can only ever aspire to having (say) 10x the (personal) income of the most miserable, is that too much sacrifice for the least financially miserable to bear in the US? The people in Finland/Norway/etc don't seem to think so, they already have that kind of system, and they have consistently topped "standard of living" charts for decades.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Taxation is the price I pay for civilization. I live in Texas, where it may be a crime to have more than four dildos... but barring a statistical anomaly, I am not going to get shot up or robbed when I leave my residence to go somewhere. My car rides on a well maintained road, and driving to another city doesn't mean worry about bandits or roadblocks.
Contrary to the local Libertarians, who actually want the state to stop maintaining roads unless the people using them pay for the trucks... government has its uses. Paying for a security patrol, treaded vehicles to go down unpaved roads (Max Max style), electric fences, water, waste water, power (especially the heavy amperage A/Cs require) would be extremely tough for an individual. I don't mind a relatively small chunk of my taxes (under Reagan, more than half your income went to Uncle Sugar) going to keeping the violent guys well away from me.
I pay my taxes happily. Sure a lot cheaper than carrying an AR-15 around just to make it from the house to a store without getting robbed or killed.
Even if you live self-sufficiently off the land in your remote cabin somewhere, society provided an army and legal system to protect you. In exchange for this, you are required to pay taxes. As I said before, you want to opt out then you need to get out.
Get out to where? There's no free land left where you can plant a flag and declare your own independent nation, not even in Somalia. And in any foreign country you wouldn't even be a citizen, if they'll even permit you to come. Surely the strongest claim is to your birthplace and homestead. Let's face it, every country has a strong hypocrisy when it comes to its own existence. The US seceded from the British Empire. The US refused to let the Confederation secede from the union. The only way you "get out" is with enough military force to stop those trying to keep you in. Or to use a classic analogy, it's two wolves and a sheep where the sheep wants to declare independence and create its own laws to protect it from becoming dinner. But the wolves have democratically decided the sheep can't secede. It's the tyranny of the majority, where the majority has also decided who gets to be counted.
You got an alternative?
A Libertarian Utopia is untenable in the long term, because with no government to enforce contracts businesses have very little idea what they've agreed to do, employees have very little idea what their employer has agreed to provide for them, etc. And if somebody is screwing someone else there's virtually no recourse.
Especially if the screwer is wealthy (say, your cable company), because they can just pay a couple goons to beat the shit out of the screwee (say: you) until you stop whining about the bill. Now you can band together with your friends to beat up the Cable Company goons, but you've just recreated the tyranny of the majority.
And soon enough you'll have a real welfare state, as the majority does not like it when Grandma starves while the Cable Company heirs eat Dodo eggs from the flock they spent $157,000,000 recreating with advanced genetic engineering techniques.
You ever heard that old entomologist joke that Communism is the perfect system for ants? Libertarianism would also be great. For domestic cats.
For us big, hairless, empathetic apes the options are pretty much a) Democracy with some sort of Mixed Market economy and b) Dystopian hellscape. Any option c) will turn into a) or b).
You can be self-sufficient without growing your own food, shooting your own burglars, and building your own roads.
Okay, I'll bite... how?
One can make the argument that any time a group of people come together and pool resources to achieve a goal like a road or like collective security it's a form of government. A Homeowners Association is a form of self-imposed government. A town is a form of self-imposed government, at least at its initial charter by the people that lived in an unincorporated area and chose to incorporate it.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Given $x, large number (fortunately, not a majority, but a disappointingly large number) of people seem to be unable to budget for a place to live or food to eat. They will spend their money on things like gambling, booze, drugs, get-rich-quick schemes, fortune tellers, and other scam artists (or perhaps shady financial advisers), and we will still have to bail them out.
The real question is it better to give people raw money (e.g. basic income) or vouchers that they can only spend a certain way (e.g., the current bureaucratic welfare system). The answer will depend on where you are in the political spectrum. If you want to bail these people out anyhow after they fritted away the basic income money, you are a liberal, if you resent that basic income was wasted and want to control what they spend you are a conservative, if you don't think the government should be in that business in the first place, you are a libertarian.
FWIW, in my opinion, I think the real problem is giving people "basic-income" money w/o teaching them about money. You can see this problem in 5-year olds, and 21-year olds and sadly 50-year olds. Giving out basic income w/o teaching people about money would be like giving your 15-yo the keys to a car w/o driving lessons. Sure, some of them might know enough to drive already (and have been driving since they were 12), but odds are, most still would need practice as they still make mistakes and then there's always the question of what do you do with the small percentage of them should never be behind a wheel?
IMHO, there should be a benefits licence for basic-income. If you can't pass the test, you get state-welfare instead. Also, like a driver's licence, there should be a learners-permit time where someone has to "drive" with you before you are allowed to go on your own. In addition, even when you are on your own, if you "crash" too many times (e.g., need supplemental welfare because of poor budgeting), your licence for basic income should be revocable. It should be a "privilege" to get basic income, not a right. The right is to simply survive.
However, I'm sure that's not how this is going to work anywhere. It will simply be organized as a "block-grant" welfare program because the liberal politics behind it.
I call bullshit on this.
All of your assumptions are unproven and I dare say wrong. Why would this only be sustainable by taxing the rich? The money needed for the basic income already exists. This is not so much free money, as a different way of assigning it. We already have welfare systems, but we spend a huge amount of effort and money into the whole management of it in an attempt to make it "fair".
Your assumption that normal tax income cannot finance a basic income scheme needs proof, and you've not provided any.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Saskatoon just a few years ago spent about $120k/year/homeless person in medical and policing costs.
A single bedroom unit in an apartment complex goes for about $600-$1200 depending what building you rent in. A half decent unit would be about $800 - only $9600/year. That is peanuts compared to the medical/policing costs and would provide opportunity to have a place to shower and sleep, take whatever medication they need and find work. I do think this could exacerbate the cost of living and some amount of inflation if large droves of people fall onto government assistance with no capability to work.
The alternative is pretty much the equivalent of killing the poor in some odd sociopolitical passive aggressive manner.
It's ironic that the blue collar guys I've worked with in the past who keep berating people on welfare or social assistance will likely need medical care past retirement that could easily surpass 10 years of working full time. The economic burden isn't your local homeless drunk - the baby boomers in long term care are.