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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.
I totally support something like this, and believe in the future, a basic income system will be inevitable in most modern societies. The current welfare systems are too complex, shaped by special interests, people exploiting loopholes, or gaming the system for benefit. There is too much abuse, wastage and a large chunk of the population feels a sense of resentment.
Shift to a basic income for all, and you now have a level playing field. It is more efficient, it is harder (or impossible?) to abuse, and no one can argue that laziness or poor health decisions or poor financial decisions are being rewarded. All, from CEOs to Rockstars to unemployed alcoholics are being given a basic income.
The two downsides to something like this :
1) It will be much harder to find individuals willing to do certain categories of high risk or menial labor. You would end up having to pay a LOT more.
2) Inflation for certain goods and services could eat away any gains that a system like this could bring. It is similar to how lowering interest rates does not increase house affordability or put more people in homes, instead it just causes house prices to go up and affordability to remain the same.
- Tempestdata
I don't understand the concept that if I have a loaf of bread, that I worked all day for...
I may be able to help there...
Money isn't something tangible, like bread. Money is a game token. It's like D&D hit points. It has value in the context of game, because other players are playing by the same rules. My dwarven cleric has 43 hit points, and my American corporation has three million dollars. Same principle.
If you just bake a loaf of bread, nobody cares. But if you convert your bread into game tokens, then other players will expect you to play by the game rules. If the local game rules include a tax on your tokens, and you hide tokens under the table, then the other players might accuse you of cheating.
Now, I'm not saying our local game rules are perfect. Maybe they'd benefit from a revision. But if you start thinking of money as something real, rather than as a game token, you're going to get confused. You're speaking in terms of "stealing," when you should be speaking in terms of revising rules to improve the game.
On the separate question of whether our game rules should include tax, I'm not an expert. But I found a list on of countries by taxes as a percentage of gdp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For the most part, countries on top half of the list seem like nicer places than countries on the bottom half. There are exceptions, but overall it's hard to deny the trend. So I'm not sure lower taxes actually lead to a better-functioning game system.
Right now, I pay a lot of taxes. If I moved to Hati or Guatemala, house rules would allow me to accumulate tokens faster. But I'd rather stay here. Our local rules seem to make fo a better game, despite the annual drain on my tokens.