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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.
2k participants from a cherry-picked sample set is not a national level test.
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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...).
I mean, why is it that when Donald Trump got rich he kept doing business deals? It's been shown that if he just stuck the money his dad gave him in an index fund it would have outperformed his business deals by a sizeable margin and with less risk.
Why is it only poor people getting financial security that ends all drive to do anything else? I mean, nobody ever calls the Job Creators out for that behavior because they don't do it. It's almost as if yes, you can motivate people with starvation but, no, you don't need to.
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financial security makes people feel financially secure.
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. As an added bonus, if UBI is work neutral but increases happiness and reduces stress, it will also improve general health (hence reducing load on health services) and reduce criminality - with the corresponding savings in social and police work.
It seems to me the case for UBI is becoming stronger by the day.
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.
How do you figure? Getting a trickle of free money doesn't remove your incentive to achieve. Would you really just stop working if you started getting a $1000 UBI check every month?
Of course not, not unless you're a complete slacker with low standards. So long as contributing to society lets you improve your standard of living substantially, most people will do so. What removes the incentive to achieve is a system where working harder either has no effect, or actually causes a reduction in your standard of living - the current so-called "welfare cliff" that is faced by virtually anyone trying to get out of poverty in a wealthy nation.
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Nonsense. Your education might have been based on family ties, you never got a good job based on it, if you lacked the education.
You're so full of it, I can't even believe. I spent the first half of my life in a former communist country for chrissake, and you show up with this nonsense.
Look - the better the jobs, the more the political clout mattered. In particular, you couldn't get a leadership job without being a party member in good standing. Yes, many skilled people did play the political game as a necessary step in the search for a good job, and make no mistake: it was the political activity that got them the jobs - that they were any good was not a requirement, but at most a bonus. In some cases, it was even a point of suspicion.
Here's an immediate counter-example to your "never get a good job if you lacked the education": Romania's Elena Ceausescu. Her highest education level was primary school - when she tried to go to night school she got expelled for cheating. Despite being an absolute intellectual nullity, she got a job as a research scientist at ICECHIM (the National Institute for Chemical Research) - a really good position for somebody in the field of chemistry. She even got a PhD and got elected to the Romanian Academy - her title (that she never got tired of repeating) ended up being "Academician Doctor Engineer".