Slashdot Mirror
Finland Will Give Some Unemployed Citizens a Basic Income (theoutline.com)
Next month, the Finnish government is going to try something completely different to help its unemployed citizens: give them free money. From a report on The Outline: On Jan. 9, 2017, a randomly selected group of 2,000 unemployed citizens in Finland will receive a check for 560 euros (about $585) with no strings attached. They'll continue to receive that check every month for two years straight, even if they find a job or continue to remain unemployed. This is part of an experiment to see what happens to people's participation in the labor market after they've been guaranteed a certain amount of money.
We have the same thing in the US - we call it the lottery. Winning still doesn't seem to correct bad choices.
You can only win the lottery if you buy a ticket. Buying lottery tickets is pretty stupid. So people that win lotteries tend to be stupid people that make poor choices. You would see much better outcomes if the lotteries winnings were assigned randomly.
Disclaimer: I only buy lottery tickets as part of the "office pool", which I view as a social activity, not an investment.
I just want it. Stop dangling the carrot. Its a no brainer, give me $1000 a month or what it ever is, you can be almost certain that $1000 will flow directly back into the economy one way or another. The middle/working class its not like the 1%ers - we're not going to sit on all this money and remove it from the economy.
Rome used to give bread to the mob, because when they didn't, food riots would break out and then you'd see some real violence.
As it is, automation is going to mean a lot of jobs, even low skilled service jobs will disappear over the next half century. So you can buy into your Libertarian-fueled dystopia all you want, but back in the real world, where governments have to deal with real problems, UBI is going to happen, and you can't take your whole "the violence inherent in the system" crap and annoy your relatives with it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As soon as you give people more money, the upper classes will obtain it eventually.
Yes they will, right after the poor have been fed, housed, and given a reasonably comfortable life with that money. Sounds like this kind of wealth redistribution is a win win the way you describe it.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
Other then committing perjury for two years without ever being caught, there was some questionable circumstances about how he got his contractor license.
The former is run of the mill corruption, it's not cronyism. And the latter doesn't sound like it either, even assuming the contractor's license covered a legitimate societal need rather than just being another government feed tube.
Ironically, he did that because he couldn't find a doctor to certify that he was disabled in the knees after being an auto body specialist for 30 years.
Still not cronyism.
Think of it as immunization against hoarding instincts by the mega-rich. They are acting irrationally, hiding so much money that their great-grandchildren probably couldn't even sanely spend it all, in tax havens and such. That hoarding behavior destroys the velocity of money, which stifles the economy as well as causing poverty and crime. Also, as stated by others, UBI is actually really simple in administration.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I feel like you're not following ceteris paribus here.
The hypothetical landlord already owns and maintains that property in the current environment - so is making enough profit or whatever to continue being a landlord.
What you're arguing seems to be that in an unstable economy, if a landlord currently rents out property at $250 a month, and a shock suddenly occurs, then he will go bankrupt because tenants can't pay that. But UBI stabilizes that, so an economic shock doesn't remove the tenants' ability to pay rent.
I would say that in general that is true, but that doesn't have anything to do with price levels - why would a landlord reduce prices if he can get a higher guaranteed utilization at the same price unless he is competing with other landlords? Also consider that $300 a month at the same 90% utilization (supported by the more stable UBI) is more revenue than $250 a month at 100% utilization - the landlord most certainly would try to maximize profit and raise rents.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Really it's a shame, with or without a UBI, that legislators have not managed to take these perverse incentives out of the system. Basically benefits should fade off rather than just disappear at some threshold... the overriding rule should be "if you work, you do better." So far in the U.S. we have Republicans who hate giving anyone money for anything that doesn't involve either kickbacks or indoctrination, and Democrats who are too afraid to open the book on this business without an airtight super majority (excluding potentially backstabbing blue dogs) which they never seem to get.
Well, now that the R's have the majority, probably the entire social safety net will get gutted, so at least when the pendulum swings back, D's will have some brownfield to build on.
Someone had to do it.
Taxation is the only way any civilization can function. Taxation has been a feature of civilization since the beginning of civilization. Some of the earliest examples of proto-writing were basically ledgers used by early civilizations to track taxes.
Get over it. You live in the society, you get to pay a share for that society's function. Your liberty stems from the right to elect representatives to the legislative assemblies that enact taxation legislation. Your liberty does not extend to you not having a moral and lawful duty to pay taxes. Fuck off with your sociopathic selfish "I'm being robbed" crap.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The US has already been giving a subset of citizens BI for years - and the result is horrific. American Indians receive basic income, free health care, free housing, and free education if they choose it - the result is the most impoverished areas in the United States.