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Finland Basic Income Trial Left People 'Happier But Jobless' (bbc.com)
Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said. From a report: From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of $685. The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work. While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed. When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. It immediately attracted international interest - but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.
"You want more joblessness, you give out rewards (in the form of cash payment) for being jobless."
And the best part is that the solution is in your post:
"You want people to smoke less, you put higher taxes on cigarettes"
We need to put higher taxes on people who are unemployed. That'll solve unemployment. It's so obvious I wonder why its not in every school textbook.
Free money makes people happy? This is what they learned? Who would have ever guessed?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The point of UBI is to make people happier not have them work more. The problem is that there isn't enough work.
And another problem is that there's not enough money.
Why stop there? Disable all trade outside of a normal walking distance. Why should I in California have to deal with products made with substandard wages in Alabama? Why should Broward County have to deal with imports from Dade county? Why should the Bronx have to deal with uppity Manhattan?