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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..."
You give the poor money and they'll just buy drugs and cellphones, and then we'll still have to feed and house them.
Didn't it just result in long lines in the freezing cold for free cabbage, stale bread, and recycled toilet paper?
TFA says it's the same amount of income as the "social security" there in Finland it's replacing (guessing that maps onto some combination of welfare/unemployment/EIC here in the US). But, TFA doesn't say how UBI is different, other than the name. Any insights?
This only seems like a feasible and reasonable option in a nation whose tax rate has far exceeded the point of reasonable reach. 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. These are not options with current overreach, so we look to this basic income concept as an authoritarian alternative.
It certainly would help to provide a basic income as long as people are free to work and earn extra money without loss of that basic income. There are a couple of difficulties as those that work in low paying jobs will resent people earning about what they earn without working. In the US there is a larger issue. We need the public to be able to spend money on more than just the bare basics of life. Businesses need buyers. The US now has way too many people who have to stretch every penny. That excludes them as buyers for numerous products and services. As employment becomes more and more an unusual thing due to technology replacing human labor, more and more people are excluded from the buyer pool. That means less employment and less taxes and more public expenses dealing with the displaced etc.. The one and only thing that can hope to work is to provide an income that not only covers all the basics but also leaves money left over to spend on things that are not basic needs. If we do not do this we will surely face a total economic collapse and a loss of our nation. It is also obvious that we will have to price control some items such as medical care and medications or no amount of income will help to bail us all out of the impending collapse.
This wont be long enough to show the true damage done to their society and economy. May take a generation, and then it will be too late to fix it.
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
Only the titles have the "Universal" tag attached. The article (and summary) refer to a "Basic Income" that is given to people already on welfare benefits (i.e. not universal), and replaces those benefits. I find it interesting that this will be at the "guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support", which suggests that people might end up losing money as a result of this.
He wanted to start out in a management position making more than me, then had the nerve to ask me why I bother working when I could collect welfare and sit on my ass all day. These fucktards spend their welfare on beer and drugs while their own kids do not have milk in the fridge. I never bother anymore.
Base income to increase employment rate? How is that supposed to happen?
Robots are replacing humans left right and center at an ever increasing rate.
Base income is there to mitigate the effects of increased machine productivity and preventing a rare few from being the only ones reaping the benefits of increased productivity. That's what gouvernments should be seeking to do. But I guess shit will have to hit the fan before anything happens addressing that problem.
Somebody didn't get "basic income". I hope they'll learn before it's too late.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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?
Better get off Slashdot and back to work, you Fins!
"Each according to his ability; each according to his need!"
...they make bad decisions with money and life.
Take anyone who is poor and you will find a string of bad decisions compounding to the point that they are permanently poor.
Not finishing school.
Drugs.
Crime.
Out of wedlock births.
Gangs.
Attire (Those people lining up around the block for $250 tennis shoes are not middle income people.)
And list goes one. At every turn, THEY made a decision that resulted in them being in the situation they are on.
There is always exceptions, but they are few and far between.
In a relatively short amount of time, the Basic Income will be co-opted as a business subsidy, by businesses slashes wages in line with the Basic Income.
How on earth do people think this is better, than government actually creating jobs, as part of a Job Guarantee program? (if you haven't heard of it before, or are about to make a wrong assumption/statement about what a Job Guarantee is, have a quick read here).
The Basic Income is downright dangerous, as it can be used as a trojan horse to consolidate all welfare payments into one - and then provides a very politically easy to attack target, which can be easily destroyed once a big enough economic crisis hits - consolidating and then destroying the entire welfare system.
People need to be a bit more skeptical/cynical, and a bit less gullible/trusting.
Have gnu, will travel.
UBI, noun; cracker for GibsMeDats
For the most part, BAD CHOICES.
Drugs, babies before they are financially responsible, dropping out of school. All choices they made. And here they want everyone else to bail them out.
NO NO NO.
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.
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doesn't mean it shouldn't be better, which, like it or not, is the subtext of your post. Maybe you don't personally mean that, but the folks opposing progress (billionaires. the ruling class, etc) do.
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I was wondering about your stat, so I googled it. The two take aways from that article are
1. They're counting our entire healthcare system ("The private sector finances a much greater share of social spending in America, particularly healthcare")
2. The numbers are being calculated off our per capita GDP. In other words, they're not taking into account the effects of our insane levels income inequality.
Sorry, but If this were one of those fact checker sites you'd get 4 Pinocchios.
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As jobs start to decline, and this starts to bite into the regular workforce, people are going to really appreciate some basic security which they can then build upon as opportunity allows. People should not lose this benefit until they earn a very significant amount of money, thus keeping the greatest possible incentive for people to try for any extra income they can, thus paying tax, gst, and generally helping the economy to keep rolling. I think it's a great idea, and desperately needed for this age. It should also save an enormous amount of money in administering many parts of the current welfare system.
We can't pay everyone at the subsistence level SS pays out, unless we take the attitude of "we'll just print al the money we need, nothing can go wrong with that plan!".
We currently print money and give it to banks in order to increase inflation.
Instead of giving the money to banks, why not give it to the poor instead?
Just 'sayin.
The US already accepts different tax brackets, this is just another tax bracket at the low end, one where you get negative tax rather than zero tax as the lowest rate. The only other difference is that the IRS sends the "refund" check in 12 installments rather than one.
Only the poor or the mega rich would fall entirely into that bracket
Nullius in verba
wow man, you hit the nail on the head there.
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The dirty muslims will appreciate the gesture, and cut your collective throats anyway. You Finnish people ought to have your heads examined. But better this happen to you then us.
an ill wind that blows no good
About those cell phones the poor have - they're "Obama-phones" - and I suppose we should be thankful because it does increase the market for our wares. I've seen this effect in person:
1) Snopes link
2) US News and World Report link
1) A "universal" basic income that is NOT UNIVERSAL is a contradiction in terms.
2) Starvation-level UBI is an insult.
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.
this is a "replace unemployment benefit with one that we don't ask 1000 papers every month for".. a shame really(only those who are eligible for unemployment benefit are chosen for this tesy. and so those on social security dont get into this. and yes they are different and make this test a total joke aimed at securing jobs of burocrats who came up with it to make demand for universal income die out).
finland would be perfect for implementing universal income though, but because it would make the people deciding on which kind of money you get from government unemployed it is unlikely to pass.
(practically everyone is entitled in finland to some form of soc security but the burocrats for performance review reasons keep pushing people from one office to the next. also for the past decade they have been pushing people to higher education, because student benefits are much smaller than basic social security which again is smaller than unemployment benefits. the result is that alcies who can't take care of themselves get most cash.. as those get an appointed caretaker to sort it all out for them. if you dont smell like pee and booze they figure out that you don't need it and try to con you into not receiving your benefits)
Read the section in Charles Murray's Losing Ground about the SIME/DIME experiments in guaranteed minimum income. They were colossal failures.
They might be less of a failure in Finland, due to greater cultural and ethnic uniformity. But that doesn't mean it won't fail, it just means it will take longer to fail.
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If you tax the 1% who do not pay taxes at all these days, you'd probably have more than enough to support the program.
What really would help would be if the government had the right to produce "positive" or "neutral" money. Now, central banks issue money as loans with the obligation of paying usury (the euphemism is "interest") and the money for this usury is never made. So in the end, central banks do not issue money, they only issue uncovered debt.
If a government could issue money (I know that is still possible in the USA, but not in the EU), they could inject it where it is needed and take it away again (through taxes, for example) where it is harmful. Current governments do exactly the opposite: the harmful accumulations are no longer taxed, and everyone else pays for it.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I like the idea of a basic income, but I don't know how it can be made to work without the government controlling a lot of other things. If you give everyone $600 extra I would bet that things like rental costs, utilities, etc. would just expand to take the extra money. We have seen how this works with the extra income with women entering the workforce. As soon as you have limited resources or monopolies the prices will increase as everyone will be able to spend more.
Unless you want to introduce rent controls, fair prices for utilities, etc. costs will just go up
As a EU inhabitant, it's not at all the general tax level that infuriates me. We indeed pay more taxes than the average citizen of the USA. However I, along with every other European I have spoken to, find the complexity and unfair advantages granted to be the biggest issue with being a taxpaying European.
I have no problem whatsoever with my contribution to social welfare. The level of contribution is worth the security I get from it.
We are on the whole a lot less happy though, about the way companies are taxed. They get way to many advantage (E;G.: in Belgium the 5 largest electricity consuming companies doe not pay any extra taxes while an apartment owner pays twice 100€ extra this year for the hookup + a hike of TAV to 22%.)
Also the complexity of tax law is getting beyond all understanding. Belgium this year again added approximately 300 new tax codes.
Governments are pushing socialism more than helping create jobs. This is a disturbing trend that portends an ever growing underclass that has little opportunity to advance in life.
For the very poor people in Northeast and North Brazil, the basic income policy worked VERY well. Marie Claire Brazil even has an article about it (in portuguese, sorry) http://revistamarieclaire.glob... And after a couple of years, people were even able to quit the program by themselves. They asked to quit because they were earning enough to not need the help anymore. This policy certainly worked because it provided for the minimum amount of money a person needs to survive. But after this point, would it be of any worth? Let's see. I just believe so.
So what they are saying is a 45 year old, chronically unemployed, pot smoker, still living with his parents, is some how entitled to some portion of My salary? This kind of interference with natural selection is making our species weaker and less likely to survive.
It will be a human tidal wave if they implement UBI.
So quite where you think "many" do so, I don't know, unless it's a report from some rightwing or neoliberal site that these people exist.
$600 per month in a modern western society is not enough to live on. I don't think we're going to get a real sense of the value of these basic income programs until the provide enough support to allow someone receiving *only* the UBI to live with a little dignity. A studio apartment with basic utilities (no Internet) in Helsinki is like 1,000 euros a month. No food, no clothes, etc.
Ship BLM idiots to Finland
Yeah socialism! Isn't it a wonderful program in which people get something for doing nothing, and yes I understand that some people have disabilities and can't contribute, but those aren't the people I'm talking about. I understand if your trying to get a job and can't do so, but there are plenty of people in this world who don't and are just leeches on the system.
IMO It makes a lot of sense. It has the possibility to end homelessness and food insecurity. I would be for it in USA. First I want to see how the experiment works for the other countries. If people get enough money to keep them afloat, it shouldn't encourage dead beats. Some people might be satisfied with just enough to get by but many more will choose to work for more material goods and status.
In the USA, this would mean MORE administration and MORE bureaucrats. Higher Taxes too! I would be surprised if this would reduce the size of government in any country. In our state, the USA Federal Government wanted the state to start using Medicaid and the state pay the Feds for the extra Medicaid. It was discovered that the state could buy the same insurance policy that the state's employees had for every prospective Medicaid recipient for LESS $$$! The insurance plan was much better than Medicaid and the savings was very notifiable. The USA Federal Government would not permit the state to buy policies for each of the "poor" people and forced the state into a much more expensive plan. This created Federal employees to monitor the state program and state employees to administer the state program. Big win for the Federal Government. Big lose for the "poor" people.
My essay: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi... ..."
"One may ask, why should millionaires support a basic income as depicted in Marshall Brain's Australia Project fictional example in "Manna", but, say, right now in the USA, of US$2000 a month per person (with some deducted for universal health insurance), or $24K per year? With about 300 million residents in the USA, this would require about seven trillion US dollars a year, or half the current US GDP. Surely such a proposal would be a disaster for millionaires in terms of crushing taxes? Or would it?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will oppose it
Casteism
The article didn't say how welfare and universal basic income differ. How does getting the dole under a different name create an incentive to work?
Well lets see. Since this replaces all other benefits... Medical insurance. Well, there goes the whole wad there. Insurance industry wins again. Food: Nothing left Housing: Nothing left Communications: Nothing left So the question is; if you're unemployed you are very screwed, same as before. Except before they had benefits so they didn't have to starve or sell everything they own, give up their children for medical experiments. :)
Not sure how this is going to work if the individual is initially unemployed and maybe gets ill...
Did you think about the idea that 'giving them enough to stay afloat' will devalue the currency. Look at Venezuela, please.
I'm reading lots of kneejerk comments here, which is to be expected on /. But, let's talk about what's working...not much right now. So, it doesn't hurt anything to let these kind of experiments go on, and produce data for us to analyze, and learn if UBI is feasible. As a fiscal conservative, I have my doubts. But, I read an interesting article on fivethirtyeight.com about this not long ago, and it opened my eyes to the possibility that it could work. As computers take away more jobs from humans, we're going to go through a paradigm shift in the workforce, and something needs to be done. So, get off of your soapboxes, and let's let the experiments show us what's right and wrong.
Just another day in Paradise
The first step at least in some countries isn't so much the income, it is curtailing the industries that actively target the poorest sector of individuals for profit through debt. At least in the US. The whole housing crisis was based on lending large amounts of money to people that could never afford to pay it back and large institutions making money off of the selling of bad debt. This is also done through college mills encouraging the poor to get federal student loans that don't go away even with bankruptcy for a meaningless degree. The latest is sub-prime car loans where they sell a car at well over cost with prohibitive interest rates, make money off the debt, repossess the car, sell it again, and again, and again... Never mind how the pharmaceutical and insurance companies literally create whole new classes of poor when a catastrophic health event occurs... Giving someone a couple hundred bucks a month in Universal Income isn't going to address any of those things. The predatory nature of many of these industries towards the poor with little or no consumer protection is a much larger issue than the relatively simple income/welfare problem. Even the way banks (and payday loans) handle daily transactions all geared around the poor not being able to make good on payments and loans in the US is at issue. Basically when so many groups are actively targeting you for your debt, it's pretty hard to get ahead I would think.
just shifting notes alone is not enough , in the us constitution it states " only gold and silver is to be used as legal tender " they did this so that the buying power is not lost due to inflation ! productifity should also be rewarded , the way money is manipulated at present is not the best way to grow ! nor is exploiting others . it is not nessisary , so finding better ways of rewarding is worthwhile . J NASH got the NOBEL because he proved that dog eat dog is not the best economic system ! in a very real way people borrowing to much become slaves , however most people in capitalist countries are not tought in school how to live under the system . do what they see on ads , and have problems , ie get thrown out of a house . finding a better way of doing things is worthwhile .
the power of men in charge of words over men in charge of machines surpasses all wondering S WEIL