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Finland Is Killing Its Basic Income Experiment (businessinsider.com)
tomhath shares a report: Since the beginning of last year, 2000 Finns are getting money from the government each month -- and they are not expected to do anything in return. The participants, aged 25-58, are all unemployed, and were selected at random by Kela, Finland's social-security institution. Instead of unemployment benefits, the participants now receive $690 per month, tax free. Should they find a job during the two-year trial, they still get to keep the money. While the project is praised internationally for being at the cutting edge of social welfare, back in Finland, decision makers are quietly pulling the brakes, making a U-turn that is taking the project in a whole new direction. "Right now, the government is making changes that are taking the system further away from a basic income," Kela researcher Miska Simanainen told the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.
You didn't need Ms. Cleo to see this coming.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
It has to be universal and permanent to really reflect the outcome expected.
I support a Universal Dividend, anyway, which is self-funding and doesn't have concerning fiscal issues presented by UBIs. The whole UBI thing is a clunky proto-ideal that I regard as old technology.
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This is /., so no one RTFA, but itâ(TM)s the Finnish parliament that stopped it for political reasons in December, only one year into the two year experiment, not because it failed. We wonâ(TM)t know what happened in the study until 2019.
The issue still remains - what to do with too many people going after too few jobs. Currently, our society structured on 65% population working, the rest are young, sick, and old. Of that working population, we tolerate no more than 10% unemployment before social unrest occurs.
Well, what going to happen when half of working population is automated or no longer relevant to get a jobs? For example, when self-driving becomes a reality, what is going to happen to all people that drive for living? Poverty and massive social unrest, that what happens. Autocrats and strongman with "Bring back jerbs" and "Kick out jerb-stealing other people" get elected.
Yes, basic income is really expensive. It will also reduce productivity. However devolution of Western Liberal societies to totalitarianism will be even more expensive. Even nukes might start flying.
Basic Income seems like an interesting experiment. Which comes down to the a root issue.
Do people live to work, or work to live.
This article was kinda wimpy about giving us its findings. Just supporters crying that it didn't have enough time.
However things I would like to see.
For these people on Basic Income, what did they do in their lives? Even if they didn't get jobs, what did they do with their lives? Did they just sit at home watching TV and playing X-Box? Or where they out being active in the community. Volunteering their time and talents to help make things better?
If people live to work. Even if they are not able or unwilling to get traditional jobs, their instincts will still have them being productive member of society, just in ways that Supply and Demand doesn't give a lot of money too.
If people work to live. Then basic income will be negative effect, as having enough to survive is means they are not motivated to do anything else, other then their own benefit.
I expect there is a mixture of these people, but having this targeted at only the unemployed may have found a concentration of the work to live folks vs. people who are on short term job loss, or who are under paid.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How about working for a living instead of leeching of society?
The problem is that when robots take your job that "working for a living" might just turn into grabbing a Kalashnikov and taking whatever you want. Especially if there's no other option available.
UBI will come and it will be a simple writeoff for functioning societies. Think of it as a tax so the pitchforks don't come for you and other smart-alecs.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Because when AI, robots and automation displace more people, the people will need some way of getting a living.
Retraining is a fairy tale - especially for the middle aged - and it is based upon the myth that there is some other industry that is need of those workers.
And we are going to have to get over this Puritanical idea that one must work to make living.
Because just ignoring the problem and telling those displaced people nonsense platitudes will end in revolution. And remember here in the USA there are over 300 million guns out there.
That thing with the Google buses a couple of years ago is just the prelude of what's going to happen if the wealth and income disparity continues. THe election of Trump is another symptom. And the next demagogue may be a Hugo Chavez.....
That will not end well. I'm hoping for a Bernie Sanders Jr.
Because most people want to have more than just the basic necessities of life: a nicer car, a nicer house, holidays, gadgets, whatever. That requires money and so requires finding a job.
Reducing stress while looking for that job makes it easier, it means that you can look for a better job or get training without worrying where the next meal is coming from.
It's also worth noting that it isn't generally isn't the nature of experiments to try one experiment to test an idea one time, and then abandon it. If an idea has any merit, you might try a few different methods and repeat the experiment a few times, see the results, and use information gathered from those results to perform a new experiment.
I say this because I'm sure a lot of people will say, "See? Universal Basic Income failed. People should just give up on the idea." The first design of an airplane didn't fly, but that doesn't necessarily mean airplanes can't work. The first iteration of a social program might be a disaster, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's time to give up.
In any case, we're getting ahead of ourselves because the study hasn't published the results. We don't know yet how successful the experiment was.
And I say all of this as someone who has a lot of doubts about the idea of Universal Basic Income. But I've been wrong before, and no doubt I'll be proven wrong again, about something or other (though maybe not this).
Because most people want to have more than just the basic necessities of life
What evidence do you have to suggest this? Why are there more people accepting of mediocrity than those pursuing higher life goals to get more than basic necessities?
Why work and find a job when I can use a sob story to get legislation passed to give me what I want without work from suckers that do work?
Reducing stress while looking for that job makes it easier
Less stress != easier. Stress can be a good thing. You still have to go through the same crap of finding a job regardless of the stress. Handling stress is part of life and again can be a good thing.
Think of it as a tax so the pitchforks don't come for you and other smart-alecs.
This is what a lot of folks miss about social welfare programs in general. Often it's cheaper to feed a person with food stamps than it is to lock them in a cell and feed them anyhow. Sometimes it's even cheaper to give them housing, food, and a stipend then it is to incarcerate them. This is because removing a person from society costs society more than just the lost economic value of that one person. Sometimes there are children or other dependents left on the outside who then become a drain as well.
It's basic economics, but most self-described "conservatives" never bother trying to do the math. To them, economics is more about ideals than actual money.
The Soviet Union had much, but basic income it didn't have. What it had was forced labor. You worked. You better did if you didn't want to be labeled "unsocial" and end up in a prison or worse.
What you have in Russia is what you get if you force people to work for a set amount of money, in a job they cannot quit and can't be fired from.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sweden , Danemark seem to work because these were very rich capitalist countries before they became solcialist. Still corporate taxes are very low. Anyway, one day money runs out and then you will be saying that this was no real socialism. Venezuela was also greate example of working socialism before it stopped to be good example.
The article and the current Finnish Government may say that, but that's not what is actually happening. They are not trying anything else.
The current Finnish Government is a right-wing coalition that does ideology-based policy making to a point where they ignore all potential negative consequences, criticism and even studies done AT THEIR REQUEST, if they happen to contradict what the Government has already decided they'll do.
Specifically with this issue they don't want universal income or anything that could be perceived as a hand out. Instead they want unemployed people to work for unemployment benefits (wait...what?...yes, exactly)
They're pursuing a very traditional conservative, right-wing economic and political agenda familiar to anyone who knows about what Margaret Thatcher did in the UK, and the GOP has done in the United States for a few decades now.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
but I absolutely RESENT having things taken from me.
On the other hand, would you resent also having things offered to you for free ?
(Random example of things that you get for free in most of the countries in the developed world, like in Finland ?)
Like the ability to go to university and get a degree for you do have the mental capability, for which your parents didn't save massive amounts of money to pay for ?
Like having a public health system that can help you pay your medical bills - because nobody does choose to become sick and even more so, nobody choose on purpose to have the most complicated and expensive to treat disease on purpose ?
Like having an unemployement system that can cover your back if you happen to lose your job ?
Like living in a country where there's an effective police force that is good at keeping the criminality low, to the point that you con't need to constantly be carrying a gun around ?
For these things come for free to you should you need them, the government should be able to pay for them, and for the government to be able to pay for them it needs money, that is taken in the form of taxes.
If Bob can't get a job, because there is nothing useful for him to do but Ted has a job and the fancier car, bigger house, more meals out etc that come with it Bob will be jealous! Bob will either demand productive people like Ted provide him these things as well leading to an inflationary cycle where UBI must be forever increased
You know that the "B" in "UBI" stands for "Basic" ? It is here to cover for the Basic needs of the population.
(Cheap housing, cheap but still healthy food, etc.)
It's aiming at the lower levels of the Maslow pyramid
Until the possession of a fancy car can clearly be considered as a basic need that every single member of the human popular absolutely needs to be covered, the UBI won't inflate to please Bob.
(Maybe one day it will. There used to be a past when even shelter and food wouldn't be taken for granted. In several modern European countries, it's hard to *NOT* be obtaining them.
Maybe in the future the society will evolve to the point where every single citizen is entitled to own a car.
But for now, public transportation system is considered to be covering most of the needs every one has).
Its really better for all of us if we occupy Bob doing something....
Don't worry, TV and Internet are very good at keeping Bob busy.
(except that advertisement might also be very good at keeping bob persuaded that it his god-given natural right to own ${SOME ULTRA EXPENSIVE PRODUCT} )
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