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Finland Prepares Their First Tests Of A Universal Basic Income (futurism.com)
Finland is getting ready to launch their first pilot program with a Universal Basic Income -- one of several countries which are now testing the concept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Futurism.com:
Finland is about to launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of 2,000-3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approximately $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support. The pilot study, running for two years in 2017-2018, aims to assess whether basic income can help reduce poverty, social exclusion, and bureaucracy, while increasing the employment rate.
In January a basic income program will also begin testing in the Netherlands, according to the article, which points out that Y Combinator has also launched a test program in Oakland, California. And there's now also calls for a Universal Basic Income in India, where one social worker argues it's "sound social policy," while pointing out that it's already being implemented in other countries. "In Brazil, it targets the poor and has been a way out of poverty; in Iran, it has substituted for subsidies and citizens receive about $500 a year..."
In January a basic income program will also begin testing in the Netherlands, according to the article, which points out that Y Combinator has also launched a test program in Oakland, California. And there's now also calls for a Universal Basic Income in India, where one social worker argues it's "sound social policy," while pointing out that it's already being implemented in other countries. "In Brazil, it targets the poor and has been a way out of poverty; in Iran, it has substituted for subsidies and citizens receive about $500 a year..."
Yeah, we all know that neighbor who's sister's daughter's friend knows that One Poor Person who blows all their cash buying a $600 cellphone every other week. They're all like "well I could pay for rent; or I could get a rose gold iPhone to replace my regular gold iPhone. I sure wanna get evicted." That definitely happens, like, all the time.
As a guess, it's probably not means-tested. If they get a job, they keep getting the UBI money.
Post failed at the unnecessary failed and self-interested ideology. There is no connection between your "points" in reality. Government is the only force representing the interests of all people and is the only force to represent any interest against those of the wealthy and powerful. Dismantling ('defunding', etc.) official government leads to default government by the interests of the wealthy, which is normally called for what it is: slavery and feudalism.
If we reduce government spending and reduce the tax rates (which government employees hate), then we would also be making an impact on poverty, as well as empowering the people.
Because people without money or jobs are struggling to pay their taxes?
Or are you some sort of nutjob who thinks the only reason these people are poor and/or can't find work is that rich people, by paying taxes, are prevented from giving charitably and/or creating jobs for them?
It simply doesn't work like that. There is no correlation between countries with lower taxes and a decrease in poverty.
So you are of the opinion that the poor are generally just as irresponsible in their spending as the wealthy, the only difference being how much they start with?
"That does mean food and housing"
And what they need does include entertainment, social connection and interaction, and VARIETY of foods. This may not be required to produce the physical meat of the body but it is a requirement for proper mental function.
There needs to be sufficient regulation to prevent free-marketeering from trying to milk the free money supply.
More generally, it is necessary that the universal basic income is sufficient not to force those on it into defacto poverty.
The two are related in the sense that, with an unregulated free market, if you pump money in but no more material resources, more money is chasing those same resources, pushing prices up.
In general, though, removing the anxiety about putting a roof over your head and food on the table should be considered a necessity if you want to get the best out of your workforce in a modern technologically driven world: the more you brain has to worry about the basics, the less brain there is left to think about productive things.
John_Chalisque
If you don't like the idea, don't live in Finland.
There are plenty of places that agrees with your point of view. In all of them the majority of the population is worse off than they are in Finland but hey, correlation is not causation.
When you give people money taxpayers always get something back, those people spend that money which drives the economy providing jobs and reducing prices.
I'm not sure what a basic income has to do with welfare or even taxes since doing it properly it should come out of the fed tap as an alternative to fueling needed inflation by giving funds to banks. The entire global economic system depends on giving out free money, I fail to see the benefits of giving it to those who have the most right out of the gate vs giving to everyone across the board.
Thanks to globalization and automation there is a shift of labor overseas and a reduction of new jobs to replace less skilled jobs with, a basic income in the western nations that developed the technology that developing nations are utilizing makes sense and enables those nations to bring more of their population into an investment class that actually benefits from their large corporations globalizing and making increased profits. The current system leaves no room for the lower class to invest and all but the upper middle and above can only invest retirement funds. With no wages there is no system of investment for the middle class, leaving no negative impact to the wealthy as jobs disappear domestically and they relocate to newly developed nations with improving and more modern infrastructure. We need a basic income that allows 25-50% of domestic wages to be invested so that the western world becomes the top 1% in the globalized world of tomorrow and not the dessicated corpose left behind by the wealthy who have moved on.
Baloney. Americans are spoiled rotten. We don't even know what being poor truly is. You need to travel a bit and see what poor really means.
To give money, you have to take it in the first place. And when you take it, the opportunity cost means that that money cant be used to pay someone to produce something as well as consume. Instead you are taking money, taking a cut to support the bureaucracy that administers the money and basically you are paying somebody to not do anything at all. You are subsidizing non productivity and unemployment. When you tax something, you get less of it. When you subsidize something you get more of it. It's pretty simple.
You mean your biased, opportunity based, convenience samples collected by untrained observations with unchecked internal bias on interpretations? Yeah, the research with carefully planned survey analysis is better.
Redistributing actually does help the economy. Not in the imaginary ways that derivatives trading does, to be sure, but instead in the practical transaction of goods and services for money sense. Every business needs customers, and customers make decisions on purchases first by availability of funds. For your understanding (or at least those with no empathy): No money means no jet ski, no mansion. For everyone else (and probably actually you too): No money means no transportation (meaning no job), no dinner, no beds tonight, and no decent food for the kids. The decisions for utility of survival are superior for all people to those of the luxury goods you seem to so (enviously?) cherish instead.
Two things people also need to keep in mind when talking about what "Finland" does. First, the US is already spending considerably more per capita than any other country on social welfare (as well as education and healthcare). So, the problem is that the programs we have don't yield results commensurate to what we spend. Second, the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class, often nearly twice as high as in the US.
So, a basic income to replace the current welfare and social safety net, and giving individuals to spend their government welfare as they see fit, would be great. But that's just not in the cards. Do you seriously think that a Congress that doesn't believe individuals are qualified to make decisions about mortgages, payday loans, health insurance coverage, or which school to attend is going to give welfare recipients a couple of thousand dollars per month and tell them to spend it as they see fit? And do you seriously believe that the millions of people who currently work on delivering and supervising welfare-related benefits are going to just quietly give up their jobs?
To give you flip side on this, if you have been denying yourself for years it becomes very hard to work up enough enough willpower to abstain when you get a windfall. I have this problem but to a lesser degree (I would have bought myself a pizza, and the stupid overpriced dessert). Perhaps having a feeling of security regularly would make it so it wouldn't go to his head? Also a basic income is very different from what I am assuming is a lump sum of money?
The key is in the word "universal". These are just trials, but the idea is you to pay every man woman and child no matter their wealth or employment status. Considering very little of current welfare budgets actually reach the people who need it - ironically enough it's all wasted on a massive bureaucracy designed to keep people from accessing welfare - many economists believe it could reduce government expenditure while boosting the economy.
We are also looking at a world where automation replaces more and more jobs. If we don't come up with something soon angry mobs will run riot and capitalists are going to be swinging by their necks. Of course, instead of addressing inequality we could always start to militarise the police and reduce basic freedo... oh wait.
True. Those trust fund brats really sweat.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At some point you can't pay a person's health costs as there's no cure for entropy. At a certain point people will have to accept that they're going to die and the best that can be done is to make them comfortable, or as much as is possible. It doesn't make much sense for society to bear the cost of treating cancer for someone who is in their 80's. If that person has a bunch of money saved up and wants to try to use it to prolong their life, that's their own business, but at some point no amount of money will be able to impede death.
If we're going to move towards a basic income and universal health care, we have to be pragmatic about it. A basic income based off of the current government spending on social programs is certainly possible, but it's going to be a subsistence income and it likely means moving or finding a roommate (or several) if you want to subsist in the more expensive parts of the country. Health care costs in general could be brought to manageable levels if the population as a whole were healthier. The dysfunctional system in place is only partially to blame.
So someone works their whole life, and because they're smarter than you, or more frugal, or more disciplined, you'd prefer a system where the money they've saved is simply taken away from them until they're back down to having only what you have, so you won't hate them any more. That about sum it up? Or are you of the naive position that once you only take things away from "wealthy" people, that the same framework would never be used against people who are simply better off in any way than someone else?
Leave the false imagery aside and try to form a coherent position first. Your argument relies on assumptions and assumptions on assumptions that the poor in society (any of them) are there due to some moral or character flaw which could have been prevented with a bit of ingenuity and work. That is false, proven so by thousands of years of human history if you ever care to study it. The poor are there because of inefficiency in knowledge and physical transfers (both types have costs which in most cases must be paid prior to any service). The poor are poor not because of lack of Puritan work philosophy but because they lacked the advantages that allowed others to avoid most obstacles. Bad health from lack of care in childhood, poor food in childhood, etc. Bad education because of the above, or because of under-funded education systems, or simply being prevented from attending school by war, civil or international, famine, general unrest, etc. Apparently, your environment failed to equip you with empathy or intelligence enough to understand that on your own.
The other thing you'll see with the poor is they're used to everything going to shit. It's tough to plan ahead and stick to the plan when you've spent your entire life having shit fall apart around you. When things are going well you don't expect it to last, so you live for the moment.
When you're poor you can only afford low-quality goods that break all of the time and if you're on welfare you need to be sure to use it all before the end of each month. That is why they and especially their kids get into this habit of acting as if money is a perishable good that needs to be spent ASAP.
I raised two children without netflix, sat tv or cable. It can be done. We used to play games like monopoly and uno and go on trips to the library to borrow books. I have no problem feeding people, even people who wont work. There is no reason for people in the US to go hungry but as to all the other bullshit I say they can work for it. Free cell phones? Fuck that, we're damn near 20 trillion in debt with no real effort to do anything to even slow it down. Sooner or later it'll stop and when it does people will find out what poverty really is.
Not as well as it could since they don't implement the basic income.
Even so, it doesn't work half bad even with the right doing it's best to monkey wrench it.
Are you kidding? Wall street is flying high on wish money. It's the rest of us (who aren't allowed to wish money into existence) that can't make ends meet.
Each winter, we have several homeless freeze to death.
You may want to shut up.
Nobody says that it never happens. But it does not happen enough for lost money to outweigh the amount of money you need to spend on checking that it does not happen. Your anecdotes do not help and you are suggesting that what you said in your anecdotal evidence is a problem, no matter how much you try to deny it. You are using exactly the same arguments every opponent of UBI is using: "Even one fraudster would be too much, we must not let those people steal, that would be the end of the world!" UBI might have drawbacks, but not what you are suggesting. We give them the money. If they don't buy food, they will be hungry. Next month their primary need will be food, not shopping. So they will go eat. If they keep getting the money, eventually they will learn to balance their spending on their needs.
Another point is that once you have a bunch of guys getting money on a regular basis, there is opportunity for someone to help them out, as the unreliability of those guys and the uncertainty of them being able to get the income is lifted. Maybe all they want to do is sit around and play console games. Fine, if 4 of them get together, they might have enough money to get an apartment, big TV, xbox and play games all day. I don't mind. Good for them. At least I don't have to work with some stupid unmotivated punk at my workplace that will just slow me down. And at least they are not in the streets stealing. It is a win win win. In few years some of them maybe get bored and learn some useful skill, do something productive. Who knows. It is a small price to pay for the other benefits.
For example in US mothers often go back to work as early as 2 weeks after giving birth. Can you imagine that? I cannot. How much better would those kids do in life if they could stay home with them on basic income for a year or two? Can you imagine how much smarter those kids will be in 20 years? How many problems that can lift in just one generation? What about the fathers? Not finding a job is no longer a reason to join gang, sell drugs, go to jail. So maybe you got almost no money and live on basic income, but you got now two people raising that kid.
What about veterans? What about disabled people? What about mentally sick? There will always be some punk like you arguing with that one kid that bought xbox. FFS. I've had enough of you guys.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Not likely. Under either a flat or progressive tax structure, people who earned more before UBI will still be the ones earning more under UBI. Whether the net effect is lower or higher income for those people depends on the tax structure.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The amount of homeless people is not an issue of just poverty, it's an issue of a lack of mental health programs. It is cheaper for the Government to dump people on the streets than own asylums. The US also has a huge amount of corruption so tended to get sued a lot when they ran asylums, because it was cheaper than inspections and accountability. You are conflating the amount of homeless to be similar to the rate of poverty I think, but it fails. Count the Homeless and people in Shelters in SF, then compare that to the institutionalized in some other city in Finland and you would have similar percentages.
TFA is reporting _BULLSHIT_, pure and simple crap. Replacing people's current unemployment with a check covered by a new name is NOT Basic Income. Giving EVERYONE a check every month is what Basic Income is. So the PILOT is a crock of shit meant to appease people who somehow think it's a good idea for the Government to hand out money they confiscate in taxes and print to appease a populace who lacks employment options. People will also say "See it works!" and demand more wealth confiscation and checks from the Government because "look"!
The dishonesty here is simple and open, and meets everything else about the claims promoting Basic Income. Sorry, but I have not seen any intellectual debate on the subject. I have read what I consider crap claiming the government should redistribute wealth in the US this way, but no sane economist agrees with this. Interestingly Milton Friedman is often cited as a source for BI, which neglects the majority of his arguments (that Welfare without immigration control will fail).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
angry mobs will run riot and capitalists are going to be swinging by their neck
As a supporter of UBI, I find it to be very compatible with free market ideals. While it provides a social relief program, it also removes the minimum wage regulation that screws up the free market forces in unskilled labor markets. I prefer that when society wants a program, it uses societal programs (government and taxation) to provide the program; forcing employers of unskilled workers to carry that burden is unfair and counterproductive.
Also... I would agree that crony capitalism is a bad thing, but please refrain from using such a broad brush. Free market capitalism, combined with social programs funded directly by the government and sensible regulations, is proven time and time again to bring about better societies.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The poor being irresponsible with their spending is critical for our economy.
The most valuable thing you can sell is manpower. Why? Because it's 100% fiat revenue. For revenue from agriculture products, you need arable land. For revenue from production, you need raw material. For services, all you need is people. And if there is one resource we have no shortage of, it's that.
Services, though, are a fickle thing to sell, because it's the first thing people cut back on when times get tough. If money's tight, do you get a haircut or do you get groceries? Do you get your dripping faucet fixed or do you buy fuel for your car so you can go to work?
So the poor having money to spend means the economy is running. They don't save, they spend. They consume. Consumption means selling, and selling means revenue. And that fuels our economy.
Our current economic problem is exactly that the poor don't have any money left to spend.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When you're poor you can only afford low-quality goods that break all of the time and if you're on welfare you need to be sure to use it all before the end of each month. That is why they and especially their kids get into this habit of acting as if money is a perishable good that needs to be spent ASAP.
That is a really good point, actually. Living in England, perhaps it is more visible, if you know where to look. There are rich people - seriously rich people - who maybe buy a pair of hideously expensive shoes, or a coat that looks very plain, but is very expensive, and then they never buy another for years, because the quality is really good, so in the end they spend less money on clothes and shoes than those who have to buy cheap rubbish that they can use for a few months at best.
I think the basic income could potentially be a very good idea. There will of course be some that just spend it all stupidly - but they already do this. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can probably make some significant savings on administration. In most of the current welfare systems, there is a big, heavy bureaucracy that means test and try to make sure that nobody cheats - it doesn't work, basically, and it makes everything very expensive and so slow, that it actually punishes the large majority that the system should really help. It might also help those people with their self-esteem, if they didn't have to go through onerous and meaningless chores and instead were free to go out and improve their situation with a bit of extra income or education.