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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.
If you read the article, you'd see that the people enrolled in the pilot had similar rates of employment to a control group. It isn't that they don't bother -- they bother just as often regardless of whether they have a basic income.
If it were reported accurately, this would alleviate the fear that you just parroted, that people would stop working.
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The main theory behind a UBI is reducing the diminishing returns from going from unemployed to employed. The loss of benefits (unemployment, food stamps, disability, etc) often is as much or close to the income from an entry level job. So instead of getting paid ~$12 / hour for work (after taxes, etc.), you're only seeing a ~$1-2 /hour increase. For many people it's not cost effect to get work when they already on some programs.
The UBI is basically supposed to say "Go get a job, look at all the extra money!"
[Not that I agree/disagree. It has has some interesting ideas, and I think experiments like this is a good idea. But, people are selfish bastards, so I'm not optimistic.]
Finn here BTW.
The Finnish Social Insurance Institution (KELA), i.e the people who manage social security and other benefits payments, has been a massive hassle to deal with that constantly screws things up for as long as I can remember. Anyone who's dealt with them to any significant extent will have personal horror stories to share so and they're more or less universally reviled. Thus it's pretty clear that these people are happier most probably because they don't have to deal with KELA, not because of the unconditional benefits payment.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
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