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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.
It did not reduce unemployment, but it reduced the stress of that situation for people. That social impact of that cannot be ignored. In addition, this was only 2,000 random people out of 400,000. That is not enough to determine the economic impact on any sort of measurable scale.
This experiment it is a starting point, not a failure.
What happened to the crime and traffic rates?
What is the cost of living in Finland?
Not enough info in the story.
I know people on welfare that get small checks like this each month. The only reason they don't try to work is because they will loose their free money, so instead they just find creative ways to live off what they are given. The last thing they would ever consider doing is finding a job.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
The results from experiments with a random selection of 2000 people cannot be extrapolated to a hypothetical situation of Universal Basic Income. Job dynamics when everybody has a guaranteed source of income would be... interesting.
This is actually a really shitty test. Give wage slaves a year of guaranteed pay and of course they will take the year off, it's the only time in their lives they'll get a year-long vacation before they've gone senile. Basic income tests which don't last for life are invalid (to say nothing of their non-randomized selection of candidates.) This whole study was propaganda to keep plebs thinking they need to spend every waking hour of the good parts of their life working for someone other than themselves.
A lot of people like to point out that basic income will not motivate people to work, yet we're subsidizing that laziness, and that's certainly true. However, the mistake is assuming that we aren't paying for it already. I would rather use a basic income to replace all of the existing social programs that we spend billions of dollars on per year. It's far better solution in that it's more adaptive (food stamps are useless if you need to repair your car to get to a job) and less expensive to administer since it's a single program.
But it's also necessary to look at it in terms of other costs it might help prevent. People without money or any way to obtain it aren't going to sit and starve. More often than not they turn to some form of crime. It costs a lot of money to hire a police force necessary to deal with that crime and to incarcerate the criminals who perpetuate it. If $700 a month stops us from having to pay almost four times that amount to lock that person up in jail, we're recognizing cost savings there as well.
I think that large scale government wealth redistribution schemes are folly, but a basic income is the best way to go about doing it. From a utilitarian point of view, we're already spending massive amounts of money on these types of programs. I think it's a good compromise because the left gets their government program and the right gets a smaller government.
I'm on the fence about the whole thing but I find it interesting that there's an assumption that the result was a bad thing. I don't believe in an afterlife so you're born, you live, you die. The only thing that makes much sense during that period is to try and be happy and this study seemed to improve their happiness.
Now, one might say 'fuck that, I paid for their happiness which makes me unhappy' which makes really good sense.
The real question is, is there sufficient free energy in the system that we can provide food and lodging for humanity if they don't contribute *IF* we also provide increasing incentives to contribute. So you get a basic income for doing nothing and more and more for actually contributing to the system.
I've seen no compelling objective modeling either way.
Yeah, they should learn to code and then they can work for themselves.
Have you considered the stress that people experience when they need to pony up the money when taxes are being paid? Lack of empathy, cruel and cold immorality is so typical among the socialists.
Thanks, after reading your comment I went and read the article more closely. It says
Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.
As you say, that's an incredibly disingenuous summary. The big worry about UBI is that people won't work. The test is "do people work less?" and even on this very limited test, the answer is no. That's the unexpected (by anti-UBI people) answer that makes this test a resounding success. The fact that it's being sold as anything else is Finland's government and the media being dishonest.
A few things:
1 - They did not get employment more than their counterparts (it doesn't help 'em find jobs).
2 - They did not get employment less than their counterparts (they don't take the money and slack off).
3 - They were collecting this instead of unemployment or other benefits (which may have different bureaucratic ramifications one way or another depending on program implementation overhead).
4 - They were happier.
5 - This is a successful experiment - it produced data in a controlled manner which can likely be replicated.
There are a few narratives left to be explored. Here are some samples of such stories:
(PRO) "UBI, as implemented, costs less than the collection of unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance, and other assorted benefits. Giving poor people money through a unified program decreases administration costs and allows for individual choice regulation in the marketplace without affecting employment outcomes."
(debatable-PRO) "UBI, as implemented, is more expensive than unemployment costs in implementation, but results in happier and less stressful citizens."
(neutral) "UBI, as implemented, did not result in people just sitting about the house."
(debatable-CON) "UBI did not result in additional risk-taking, business-starting, or other activities, as hypothesized."
(CON) "UBI cost the taxpayer money to pay people to be happier while they sat at home doing nothing productive."
You really shouldn't live like you are. To say you can't change that is a lie you tell yourself. Cut one minor expense or two a month and you can have thousands saved over years of working. Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
My household income is >$200k but my cable, movie and video entertainment bill is literally $0 out of habits formed when my income was not this high. I go to the library and check out TV shows and movies and watch youtube. I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities. Now I have an extra $120 a year to save. Over 30 years, cancelling netflix alone is $3,600 without accounting for investment earnings.
I thought that one of the big benefits of UBI is that it replaces a bunch of other complex, difficult-to-manage and costly programs. TFA does not state if they saw any cost savings from running the program. People who want to work are going to eventually find jobs. People who want to abuse the system are going to abuse the system. The question is if UBI is easier and cheaper to manage than supposed programs to encourage people to go back to work.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
No one says that UBI makes people work more, just that it is not an impediment to people working. I'd say the result they found is completely what would be expected for a successful test.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"Trump supporters," which is the most mealy-mouthed goddamned phrase on the Internet, are still not as retarded as the communist faggots who feel the need to shoehorn Orange Man Bad into every single discussion they see.
So, if I understand what you're saying, handing out free benefits to people (instead of them earning them) makes them feel better but essentially doesn't improve their condition so you're left with a largely dependent group of people who cannot fend for themselves?
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/cat...
Who'd a thunk it?
-Styopa
We don't advocate feeding wild animals since it introduces long-term, bad behaviors such as a lack of foraging skills, attracting too many animals to an area, and increased reproduction rates due to an abundance of food. It also increases the risk of a disease outbreak due to more animals in the area. So why do we promote basic-income programs for younger, healthy people?
The trial is limited by its length as well as choice of participants.
From the article:
From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).
Very few people would stop looking for work, or even consider a career change for the equivalent an $8000 check. If I wanted to start a business, I would need at least 2-3 years of savings, and if the business fails, I'd want something to tide me over until I find a new job. If I were to change careers to do something I think is beneficial to mankind, but doesn't pay much, such as teaching, I'd want enough to last me to retirement.
The other problem is that unemployed people are already looking for jobs. The reason they don't have one is because they can't find one. Giving them money makes no difference. To see the economic effects of UBI, you'd have to give it to the entire population, which in turn stimulates demand and thus business and job growth.
If they want to do a proper study, it should be 20 years, with a representative sample of individuals from all walks of life. An effort should be made to track spending habit changes, which would inform us on the potential wider economic impact.
You really shouldn't live like you are. To say you can't change that is a lie you tell yourself. Cut one minor expense or two a month and you can have thousands saved over years of working. Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
My household income is >$200k but my cable, movie and video entertainment bill is literally $0 out of habits formed when my income was not this high. I go to the library and check out TV shows and movies and watch youtube. I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities. Now I have an extra $120 a year to save. Over 30 years, cancelling netflix alone is $3,600 without accounting for investment earnings.
The only thing (in bold) I got out of your entire post is that you're a racist scumbag.
This is actually a really shitty test. Give wage slaves a year of guaranteed pay and of course they will take the year off, it's the only time in their lives they'll get a year-long vacation before they've gone senile. Basic income tests which don't last for life are invalid (to say nothing of their non-randomized selection of candidates.) This whole study was propaganda to keep plebs thinking they need to spend every waking hour of the good parts of their life working for someone other than themselves.
Year long vacation??? You are seriously overestimating what a luxurious al life you can lead on $695 dollars per month and it makes you sound like one of those clueless conservatives who think single mothers are living the high life on 7.25 dollars an hour working 16 hours a day 7 days a week while raising three kids. Speaking for myself 695 dollars per month would not even be enough to pay for rent or pay off the mortgage, even if I downgraded to a dirty cockroach paradise of a living space, not even close. If I wanted to prioritise not starving to death over paying off the mortgage on that UBI, I'd have to settle for housing in the form of a nice cardboard box under a bridge, that way, 695 dollars would do me fairly well for food, washing and clean clothes. If somebody held a gun to my head and made me choose between this $695 UBI, and working somewhere as a dish washer (instead of what I usually do, which is coding) I'd pick the dishwasher job in a heartbeat because even a crappy job like that just pays much better.
Sudden wealth that you're not used to dealing with is nowhere similar to handling a small sum that's less than average wage. You also don't suddenly have to deal with all the new "friends" that show up wanting a piece of the pie.
Just another day in Paradise
But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
What if they do this for 2-6 months or more in a stretch?
Do you then let them starve on the street? What about their kids, these people fuck too you know.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In most places in the west, you can have all the necessities and then some with minimum incomes (either unemployment or otherwise). The rates are calculated based on the price of bread, income, communications etc.
In most parts of the US, actually in all parts of the US, it will provide for a BASIC rent if the state doesn't outright pay your rent (like NY and CA where rents can be outrageous in the cities).
Plenty of people live at the minimum income range across the entire US, whether or not they have a job, the majority of them does not end up stealing their way through life. This notion that you are required to steal from the rich because you are poor is a myth and extends well into the left mythos, where even if you do well, you are encouraged to steal from the rich because they don't "deserve" their wealth.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There isn't enough info, and I doubt a 2k test run will yield statistically detectable changes in crime and traffic rate. (Aside: what if crime rates actually went up due to UBI?)
The biggest problem with 2k doing the test is; that's not enough people to tank the economy if this turns out to be economically important.
That said, I would say that happiness in life is ultimately the most important thing. Happiness is what makes life worth living; but if the economy collapsed because of UBI, I don't think people would be happy for long.
You can't experiment with UBI on 2000 people- you need to do it with a whole region, or country... I wouldn't want to be living in one of the first test places though in case it went wrong.
The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in.
Turns out that many people are very lazy and will put in as little work as they believe they can get away with...which meant the harvest was bad, and a small group of people did the bulk of the work for functionally nothing, because they got as much as the person who didn't as much as twitch a finger to help. Which meant they stopped contributing labor--since they got the same as somebody who contributed nothing, they had no incentive to not match the minimum contribution--which meant that the fields just simply went unworked and the only people who ate were those who thought to raise food for themselves.
Oh, and we got ideas like those who won't work, won't eat. (Those who can't work generally would get charity--even if it was in the form of the community finding some kind of work they could do, especially when it was seen as demeaning to not be given some job, no matter how symbolic it was.)
This also is pretty common in cultures which aren't that far away in time from having been running on subsistence--somebody who doesn't contribute and isn't basically an investment is a parasite on their community, if they don't have that many basic resources to spare.
And this study proved that aspect to be worthless as the people didn't suddenly get jobs now that the benefit cliff argument was negated. So if the strongest argument for UBI is now disproven, even without actually trialling an actual UBI, when do we finally give up on this horrible idea?
"The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in."
That's make sense on a society where labour makes a difference, but we are heading to a society were labour means shit and what really meets ends is ownership of increasingly labour-less means of production. A totally different scenario.
Key phrase here is "heading towards." Until we have a 100% post-scarcity system that can maintain itself indefinitely without a human twitching a finger, labor does not mean shit and the last thing anybody who does not expect to be part of the ruling class should want is to have the state have control of the means of production and the distribution of goods. You want this to end well? Every bit of the system needs to be not scarce--including the means of production and everything one might need to run it forever--so as to ensure no group could get a monopoly, and the state itself needs to have slightly less power than a dead cockroach.