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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.
It's a fascinating study and i applaud Finland for this experiment. But i wonder if the psychology of these people will change as they get use to this basic income, and then, over time, they take it for granted and even forget it is there. In other words, will they return to a state of depression over time?
I'd be happier if people gave me money too. Particularly when you give me but not others money. And when you remind me of the fact that you are giving me money right before asking me how happy I am.
Sorry but this whole study is flawed and the results are useless.
The problem is that any job under the UBI scheme would be heavily taxed, because that's where the UBI money is coming from.
but also a healthy respect for it being offered.
In other words, a reminder of who your benevolent overlords are, to whom you owe allegiance.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Whether you stand or you lay, three thousands is the pay", "we fake we work, the government fakes it pays us". For everyone except dissidents, there was effectively a guarantee of employment. Even if you were drinking at work every day, you didn't get fired as long as you showed up. No one cared about the quality of work. There were also organized vacations, etc. Any consumer goods were at a permanent shortage, and even if you actually found them in a shop (after queues of truly epic length), many common items costed you ~1000 times the work time as for a worker in the western world. But basic food was obtainable, and no one starved.
Many shortages were intentional, sometimes due to cartoonish villainry on the part of the government. My grandpa was a sailor, and once his ship got held at the port's approach for two weeks because their cargo included a load of oranges, and the govt didn't want oranges to be available for Christmas -- they were supposed to be for New Year. The oranges spoiled. Orwell didn't invent this part -- many parts of 1984 were depictions of actual life in the soviet world.
So the population was held at sustenance level, with any luxuries (even such as toilet paper) being hard to obtain and a cause for celebration. But the sustenance level was kept -- if you were neither in the Party nor a dissident, you lived a poor but safe life, neither above nor below sustenance.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
But the study also shows UBI doesn't make people stop working. This, IMHO, is the most important result of this study because it removes one of the biggest objections to UBI.
Honestly, I think this comparison is a sham until you agree to provide for them for life. I mean I could do things for one or three or five or ten years. But if that'd totally fuck my chances of ever getting back in a job as an old geezer with a ten year gap in his CV, well... I'd not do it. Until you say it's a gravy train all the way in, no need to actually do something I'll consider it a temporary reprieve. You got though the basic messaging, but as data it's junk.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings