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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.
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
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.
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.
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.