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.

Comments

Re:I predict a lot of misunderstandings about BI

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I predict a lot of misunderstandings about BI

[MightyMartian]

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.