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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.
I'm in a well paying job that I'm not particularly fond of (though it's not terrible). I'd love to branch out and start my own business doing something I enjoy however that's a lot of risk, especially when I have a young son at home.
If I was guaranteed a small basic income that may give me the safety net I need to get something started.
But that's just my take. Every person would be different.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
So sorry, but this study does not support that position either.
That does not say that the participants were less likely to find work, nor that non-participants were more likely to find work.
If they are equally likely to find work and the program is administratively equally or less costly than tested unemployment benefits, then the program still has a net benefit if only due to the psychological aspects.
Well yes and it was given to people who are unable or unwilling to work now. Make it a decent sum and give it to working class people who are at least 25 and make a similar amount now. See if their investments, wealth, and income increase across the group over five years.
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.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"We can't just generalize "people" because there are some which have virtually no chance of getting a job."
No but we can generalize currently unemployed people and know they have a higher probability of having a disadvantage in job seeking. A more useful test might have been to give a decent UBI to a group that makes a sum on par with that UBI. In 5-10 years are they living on the UBI, continuing to earn twice the income (and probably reach a higher tax bracket even if you don't tax the UBI itself but only count it for that purpose. Have they increased their wealth and earnings at a greater rate than the control group who doesn't have the UBI?
It's the same clueless problem again and again a UBI might organically eliminate the need for many social programs (it should be high enough that nobody qualifies for them) but it isn't charity or a gift to the poor.A UBI is to provide a stronger position for workers to negotiate. Lower the risk of opportunity exploitation and ultimately to provide a means to ensure workers have a fallback when the jobs go away. If you match the UBI dollar per dollar to earned income you provide double incentive to upward advancement and move millions of people into a taxable range. That will make taxation less top heavy and you'll be enabling the growth of massive investment wealth, the returns will generate more taxes, provide for retirement and stimulate the economy. That also leads to a substantially more solvent social retirement program like social security.
The test is "do people work less?" and even on this very limited test, the answer is no.
The article said no such thing. It said that some of the participants found work, and that they were not more likely to do so than the control group. While many people seem to be taking this for granted, the article never said that participants were just as likely to find work as the control group. The full results of the study will not be released until next year. My impression from the article was that they are admitting that they didn't get the results they wanted (more employment) but at least for now are avoiding the subject of just how much negative impact the experiment had on employment rates among the participants while attempting to refocus attention on other aspects like the participants' reported "happiness".
Regarding those who did get jobs: All the participants are well aware that this experiment won't last forever, so it makes sense to plan for what happens after it ends. How might that change under a true UBI, where they can count on receiving payments for the rest of their lives?
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
and btw in which country would SS cover people that spent all their money on drugs and partying? That's not how it works even here in socialist Scandinavia.
You really should look into answers to your own questions as there is a great deal of accessible literature devoted to exactly this problem...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs. If that is your intention, well done!
A UBI is not intended to fix drug addiction issues. If you want to address that problem, you should be looking at policies intended to do just that. The best policies I'm aware of are legalization of all recreational drugs and prescribing drugs as part of a universal healthcare system.
Most of the issues surrounding addiction are made much worse by current laws and enforcement strategies. The social costs to users and the people they victimize are almost completely eliminated through legalization by both prescribing and providing them with appropriate and safe drugs, including the very narcotics they are addicted to, as part of a treatment program.
Doesn't the US have an old age pension system? Aren't there a lot of parallels between such a system and a UBI? Isn't a pension system supported by tax dollars basically just a UBI for the elderly? Don't we see these systems as having an overwhelmingly positive effect?
I desperately want UBI rolled out as I see it massively increasing the efficiency of the work-force by removing the dead-weight... No. The negative weight. You know what I'm talking about: That guy who spends three quarters of his day wandering around talking to people and therefore wasting 1.5 equivalents of time.