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

Excellent.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[The Real Dr John]

Agreed. The money will quickly flow back through the system anyway, and will end up as a profit for some company somewhere. People don't just sit on their meager cash.

If everyone in the world got a survivable benefit package for their region, we would be in a lot better shape than we are with the current crony capitalism system.

Re:Excellent.

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

So you're suggesting that when we all do better, we all do better? That's preposterous! Why do you hate America?

Re:Excellent.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a voluntary exchange if the alternative is starvation/homelessness.

Consider a slave: they are not in a literal sense forced to work, but if they don't work, they endure something horrid e.g. whipping. Nobody can be forced to move their hands in a particular way, or to think about a particular thing. It's just that they had two choices, and the "get on with work" choice was the least horrid.

Slave = does work;
Slave-owner = gives slave food rather than a whipping.

Alternative: slave gets whipped, or dies of starvation.

Under pure capitalism:

Wage-slave = does work;
Owner = gives money to pay for food;
Government = does not lock up the wage-slave for stealing food.

Alternative: wage-slave gets locked up, or dies of starvation.

The owner under pure capitalism outsources the job of punishment for non-compliance with the system. The obvious capitalist counterargument is "but the wage-slave could start up their own business!" - this is true for the small proportion of people who have the intelligence and health to start up a successful business. The second counterargument is "but the wage-slave could better themselves and save up, so they are no longer a wage-slave!" - this is again true only for a proportion of people who have the intelligence and health etc. etc., and that proportion is always diminishing with the advance of technology. Ultimately, the vast majority of people end up as wage-slaves.

The reason regular slavery is not like wage-slavery isn't because the economics are much different, but because we have a whole lot of regulation designed to prevent people being worked to death like animals. It's still a bandaid over the far more sensible solution: a basic income to cater for basic (universal) human needs, with improvement coming through voluntary exchange that no party needs to get involved in, but chooses to.

Re:Excellent.

[sumdumass]

Who picks up the trash for minimum wage? Most places around here get $15 an hour starting wage, more if your driving and more if you been at it for a while. The minimum wage is $8 something an hour. And this is in the mid west to central US.

Re:Excellent.

[nbauman]

Make everyone not working do 10 hours of community service a week.

Making everybody do community service is one of those ideas that sounds like a good idea until people try to do it in reality.

In New York City under Mayor Giuliani, people on welfare were required to do commuinity service. There were several problems with that.

First of all, if they were doing anything useful, they were replacing a paid City worker who would have been making $15 an hour or more for it. But instead, they were getting "paid" in welfare payments that were the equivalent of about $3 an hour. Most people in the program liked working. That raises the question of, "If you want them to work and get off welfare, why not give them a job that pays enough to live on so they won't have to go on welfare?" (Answer: There were no jobs.)

Second, they weren't doing anything useful. It was a boondoggle. The welfare office would send people to city offices, like the Fire Department headquarters, and the managers at the fire department wouldn't know what to do with them. One guy in a municipal building said that they sent people around to empty his waste basket 12 times a day. They could get injured, they could injure other people, they could do damage. It would take more time for a supervisor to teach them how to do something useful than it would for the supervisor to do it himself.

There were other problems like, where does a mother on welfare get someone to look after her kids when she's working? A lot of those mothers would have been working, if they could have gotten child care.

A third problem is, who else is required to do "community service"? Criminals, who are sentenced by the courts. Giuliani was treating people on welfare as if they were criminals.

Re:Total lack of power analysis

[gweihir]

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.

Re:Basic income

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:People working when they don't have to

[khasim]

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?

Re:Basic income

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Basic income

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:Basic income

[Jeremi]

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.

Re:Inflation?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm curious how inflation will not eat up most/all of this.

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?

Taxes are basically a bill

[mx b]

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.

Re:Basic income

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Total lack of power analysis

[Tom]

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.