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Finland's Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Unemployed people derive significant psychological benefits from receiving a fixed amount of financial support from the state, according to a landmark experiment into basic income in Finland that highlights the disadvantages of the country's existing means-tested system.
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants were no more and no less likely to work than their counterparts receiving traditional unemployment benefit. Thursday's set of additional results from the social insurance institution Kela showed that those getting a basic income described their financial situation more positively than respondents in the control group. They also experienced less stress and fewer financial worries than the control group, Kela said in a statement... They had more trust in other people and social institutions, and showed more faith in their ability to have influence over their own lives, in their personal finances and in their prospects of finding employment
Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants were no more and no less likely to work than their counterparts receiving traditional unemployment benefit. Thursday's set of additional results from the social insurance institution Kela showed that those getting a basic income described their financial situation more positively than respondents in the control group. They also experienced less stress and fewer financial worries than the control group, Kela said in a statement... They had more trust in other people and social institutions, and showed more faith in their ability to have influence over their own lives, in their personal finances and in their prospects of finding employment
Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.
Why? Seriously, what's the resulting benefit from unemployed people worrying about money?
I suspect that you think people cannot be motivated to find jobs unless they worry about money. Now as a Finn who if his taxes only paid for UBI would pay for at least two UBI recipients here, I'm inclined to think that people can be just as motivated and certainly more capable of finding jobs if what drives them is not desperation to survive but a desire to have more of the extras you can get with money once your basic needs are covered (basic in a First World country being food, a home, health care and internet access). Extras being things such as holiday travel, a bigger home, new car etc... Or simply put: Did you stop trying to get a raise once you could pay your rent and buy food? If not, why do you think unemployed people would be content with the minimum and not try to get more too? The idea of UBI is not to make people choose not to work. It's to ensure through a simple mechanism that everyone has the basics (It's sort of in the name UB...).
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants . . .
Whether people receiving UBI are more or less happy is irrelevant. Giving away free money to 2,000 people is easy. Giving it to 100 Million people, not so much.
Giving a meaningful amount of money to a large percentage of the population is unsustainable. Period.
You have brought up some good reasons why past attempts of communism had failed. Unfortunately for the people who read the whole thing, this has nothing to do with UBI, nor does it rule out different implementations.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's still wealth redistribution at the bottom.
As such, there's no real incentive to achieve.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The biggest objection to UBI is that it makes people dependent on their government for a living. It exploits a well known bug in democracy by giving people an incentive to vote for the party that promises free money from the public treasury. Down this path lies tyranny.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!