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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.
What happened to the crime and traffic rates?
What is the cost of living in Finland?
Not enough info in the story.
Stress about money can be a useful driver to get off your fat backside and go get a job. We'd all love to sit around all day and just be mailed cheques for doing nothing but thats not how a viable economy works in the real world.
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.
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.
Reading between the lines, the report says the group was not more likely to find a job than the control group. However, it does not say they were less likely to get a job than the control group. That's important information. It suggests that economic stress is not as big of a factor in finding work as most of us think.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
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.]
And who are you to demand that everyone needs a job? Who died and made you moral arbiter of the human race?
Most unemployed people don't do "nothing". They spend their energy on voluntary activities that enrich the community. Look at stay-at-home moms (and dads) that run the PTA, do charity drives, organize school events, work at various shelters, etc. Do those activities have zero economic value? Of course not. Just because wages aren't involved doesn't make an activity worthless to society.
Not to mention that I've worked with people with negative productivity. They not only can't do their own job - they actively prevent other people from doing theirs. We could do with fewer employed people in many cases.
Everyone has a choice. Don't work and be satisfied with the bare minimum for survival. Work and have a more comfortable lifestyle. I choose the latter because I don't want to live on ramen and water.
Valid arguments against basic income are economical, not moral. There is legitimate concern about the inflationary effects of society-wide basic income.
Your moral objections are nothing more than frat boy hazing of lower classmen: "it was tough when I did it, so it should be tough for everyone". No. Stick your sanctimonious attitude up your bankhole. Not everyone has to or should be a wage slave.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
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."
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.
/sarcasm Because having a job is the only source of meaning in a person's life.
Devil's advocate:
Maybe economy shouldn't be the driving factor? Open Source exists regardless of financial compensation.
Animals have lived on this planet for millions of years without money. Why are humans the only stupid animal who haven't figured this out?
> We'd all love to sit around all day and just be mailed cheques for doing nothing
Speak for yourself. In my free time I'm building, creating, inventing, researching, work on my games, etc. That is a far cry from "nothing."
Yes, people can get bored doing nothing. While some will continue to due nothing, most people want to feel useful, needed, and accomplish something meaningful to THEIR life.
--
"NEVER mix business and pleasure; for someone will take pleasure in fucking your business over."