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Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

610 points by salmonet 10y ago

scoopr 10y ago
Curious thing, Kela (who handle the benefits, among other things) made their sampling code public[0]. The code doesn't really tell me anything though, except that the random seed is taken from wall time. [0] http://www.kela.fi/perustulokokeilun-otantakoodi http://www.kela.fi/perustulokokeilun-otantakoodi
- kakoni 10y ago
  Same as github link; https://github.com/kakoni/otantakoodi/blob/master/otantakoodi.sas https://github.com/kakoni/otantakoodi/blob/master/otantakood...
applecore 10y ago
How is it "universal" if recipients are required to be jobless?
- keehun 10y ago
  It's a test. Here's what the article says about the motivations behind this test: >> Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. >> The government is eager to see what happens next. Will more people pursue jobs or start businesses? How many will stop working and squander their money on vodka? Will those liberated from the time-sucking entanglements of the unemployment system use their freedom to gain education, setting themselves up for promising new careers? These areas of inquiry extend beyond economic policy, into the realm of human nature. Basically, no one knows how humans/societies will react to such a hand-out, and this is trying to figure out if an eventual universal income will be effective. Also, this quote from later in the article: >> Mr. Saloranta has his eyes on a former Nokia employee who is masterly at developing prototypes. He only needs him part time. He could pay 2,000 euros a month (about $2,090). Yet this potential hire is bringing home more than that via his unemployment benefits. >> “It’s more profitable for him to just wait at home for some ideal job,” Mr. Saloranta complains. >> Basic income would fix this, he says: “It would activate many more unemployed people.”
- dvdhnt 10y ago
  So UBI is fundamentally a safety-net; insurance, if you will. The "universal" quality is that all people will be eligible for UBI. Everyone will receive the difference between what they make and what UBI guarantees. It's sort of like the popular phrase in the U.S. - "everyone is guaranteed the same opportunity but not the same outcome". Thus, while all will have access to UBI, the payout will be determined by individual circumstances. Regarding Finland's program, it's likely they had to choose a group of individuals who were easiest to justify paying UBI under current popular-thought. Therefore, they chose a group already receiving or eligible for unemployment/assistance and argued they were simply replacing one for the other. That is of course just an educated guess on my part. So, yes, UBI itself is in fact universal although the initial rollout, or test, is highly compartmentalized. Edit: As someone pointed out, I'm probably confusing UBI with GMI - Guaranteed Minimum Income. It's starting to feel like we're discussing rules on laying a foundation while others are already fast at work on their fourth and fifth floor, i/e, what's the point of giving everyone a ladder if the roof is consistently growing out of reach?
  - applecore 10y ago
    > Everyone will receive the difference between what they make and what UBI guarantees. This isn't UBI either. UBI would simply give everyone the same income without subtracting the difference for extra earned income. You could earn millions and still receive your basic income.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      Yes it's basically a credit. I think all non-business deductions should go away and turn them into fixed credits (vanishing most of them entirely). Right now two homeowners each with $1000 in deductible mortgage interest, have different tax liability reductions if they're at different tax brackets. The one in the higher bracket actually ends up with a greater reduction in tax for the same deduction. And so on.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      As you define it. I define UBI as having a floor on people's income, where the government ensures everyone is above that floor. So it's universally ensuring everyone had a basic income.
wjossey 10y ago
tl;dr Finland is going to selecting 2,000 unemployed individuals, at random, and offering them cash without strings. Current unemployment schemes, they believe, hold back individuals from finding part time work / any work because the benefits outweigh the job opportunities. They hope that this new scheme promotes people to take work and have an adequate safety net to prevent homelessness and hunger.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Why don't they just ease/remove the limitations on the current program?
  - unfamiliar 10y ago
    Because that would cost a shitload of money and might not work. Hence a trial run.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      They could simply do this (i.e. welfare without limits on working) on a small scale as a 'test' which would be considerably less expensive than BUI test on a limited scale.
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  I wonder why the participants couldn't be chosen from the whole working-age pool. Unless, the final system is not meant for working people at all, going against everything the universal welfare meant to solve. Doesn't surprise me one bit.
  - scott_karana 10y ago
    If it works well, I suspect they'll widen trials.
ScottBurson 10y ago
Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work more, that would be a huge, huge improvement.
- nickff 10y ago
  And taking a job once should not permanently disqualify someone from long-term aid programs like social security.
- TillE 10y ago
  Means-tested programs are the epitome of wasteful government bureaucracy. It's never the right way to "compromise". If we can't sell straight UBI, then something like universal food stamps would be a good first step: https://web.archive.org/web/20160321083817/http://mattbruenig.com/2013/04/10/just-give-everyone-food-stamps/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160321083817/http://mattbrueni...
  - dfraser992 10y ago
    I am reminded of an article I read years ago (sorry, no reference) about a low income family in Chicago (I think) during the Reagan era. The family had saved up a bit of money to send their kid to college, but some bureaucratic org found out. It was responsible for handling their benefits and because the total amount of assets the family had was over an acceptable limit, they cut out _all_ benefits to the family. Till the bank account went down to acceptable levels. Way to go towards helping people help themselves, encouraging middle class values, responsibility, yadda yadda, all the usual stuff Republicans blather about but don't actually care about.
    - tgarma1234 10y ago
      I remember that story and it might have been during the first Clinton campaign in the 90s or anyway one of those "Welfare Queen" stories meant to make public assistance seem like a shorthand for "laziness". There are asset tests for assistance and you can see them broken down state by state here: http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/asset-limits-in-public-benefit-programs http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/ass...
kr7 10y ago
Another limited duration trial (two years). What's the point? It's not going to measure the real effect. People will know it is going to run out and behave differently than if it was permanent.
- nickff 10y ago
  Well it's probably better than just instituting a program and hoping it works. Ideally, all government programs should be subject to measurement and re-evaluation.
  - kr7 10y ago
    The choice does not have to be between "do a bad study" or "do no study at all". A proper study would be permanent and self-contained. Participants would need to give a portion of outside income to the program to simulate higher taxes and/or inflation.
    - cwiggs 10y ago
      You mention make the UBI be permanent so, how long would you expect to wait until the results would be worth looking at, an entire generation?
      - notahacker 10y ago
        Results can start to be worthwhile early on. But the life-altering decisions people make over a two year period when guaranteed a subsidy that runs out at the end of those two years are not particularly likely to be the same as the life altering decisions people make over a two year period when guaranteed that subsidy for life. (If you wanted to really understand all the dynamics, you'd probably want to wait more than a generation to understand how subsidy recipients' decisions to raise children are affected and whether those children make systematically different life choices.)
- readittwice 10y ago
  So true, thanks for writing that! Don't give them the money just for two years, but guarantee them the money over their whole life and you will see vastly different results. Another "problem" with this kind of study is that they are giving money only to unemployed people. Because it would be also interesting to see what people with jobs would do. I suspect a lot of people would switch from full-time to part-time jobs (at least that's what I would do).
ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
Will Finland admit publicly when it fails or will they just hide their idea as if it never happened? Remember Bio-Fuel? How progressive and wonderful it was suppose to be? Until it caused a global food shortage and suddenly none of the media ever talked about it again.
- acbabis 10y ago
  Global food shortage? If you're talking about ethanol from corn, that doesn't sound correct. Corn-based foods are dirt cheap
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Yep, the current prices of commodities are pretty low to the point it was a campaign issue in farm country.
    - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
      Amazing isn't it? It happened in 2008 and the progressive HN downvote brigade have already forgotten it. "“global land grab” first took off in 2008, when food prices on international markets spiked due to a boom in biofuels and growing Asian consumption of meat and dairy, setting off riots around the world and leading key grain-producing countries to introduce export bans. " The poor in Haiti had to eat dirt, it was on mainstream news but I guess the HN crowd doesn't think back that far. It actually sparked the African Land Grabs of 2007-2008 which a lot of "progressive minority lovers" don't even know about. I was on HN at the time talking about it and was purely ignored for my concern that black Africans were being kicked off their land. Yet, I've been called racist in my past few HN posts for not agreeing with far left policies on diversity enforcement. Had they looked up the Oakland Institute they would have seen that land grabs the size of France of the most fertile land in African nations were sold on 99 year leases, tax free, by countries all over the world. Harvard actually was one of those behind the investments. Now the media covers it up by calling it "a myth or exaggeration" and ignoring the riots and numerous youtube videos of villagers fighting back. sigh HN has become what Digg, Reddit, and Mashable are. Time to leave.
noonespecial 10y ago
>It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. That last part is huge. A disincentive to work by cancelling benefits is a feature of nearly every current system. It is extremely important that someone test a system without this in it to see how a people react. This looks like a very important test for the viability of UBI.
- Jarwain 10y ago
  It might be some implicit bias that I have, but I read that as minus, or without, penalties for amassing extra income. As in there are no penalties for amassing extra income. There is a double negative in there. I'm trying to find a more authoritative source on whether this is the case edit: i misunderstood your comment, seems like your interpretation lines up with mine.
- edblarney 10y ago
  These programs depend at very least on the 'savings' government will incur by not having 'massive bureaucracies' to manage the program. The problem is - Government Unions are the most powerful in every state, and they will never, ever allow any significant layoff of personnel. So you get a 'new program' without the most important stated benefit. The reality of government, is that it is systematically inefficient because of entrenched labour practices - no just because they 'may not be good and doing some thing'. I love public transport. In Toronto - we still have people at every station selling tickets and making change. 17 of them were on the 'sunshine' list last year as earning over $100K in the year. You read that right: the guys in the booth making over $100K. Granted, this is with 'overtime', but probably not more than many people in the private sector work. So the government can't help put pay many of it's entities wages that are quite above normal, with massive add-ons and incentives. Given that small tidbit - can you fathom why it's so gosh-darn expensive to add public transit services??? There are a few other fairly fundamental problems with the program as well, first being simply the cost (Ontario government that is 'pro' program said it would cost $175 Billion a year, basically our whole budget) - and then the moral/incentive issue: where I live in Montreal everybody is an 'artist' 'photographer' 'cinematographer' 'choreographer' 'dancer' 'writer'. But they all work in coffee shops and restaurants. Montreal would go bankrupt instantly because the 'cinematographer' that makes my latte in the morning will quit instantly. In my community - there is absolutely no sense of 'industriousness' in the Anglo sense - they see no problem with fussing about making quite bad films that nobody wants to watch. Were there some latent amazing output I might think it's a good tradeoff, but no, they're seasoned amateurs. In a rational and sensible society ... this program would be amazing. But then, in a rational and sensible society, there would be very low unemployment, and streamlined government so that the 'means testing' issue would be moot. It might work in some specific places.
rhapsodic 10y ago
I want to be on record here. Today, December 17, 2016, I predict that this will fail. And by "fail", I mean that this will not become a universal entitlement in Finland.
- yoavm 10y ago
  That it won't become a universal entitlement as it is - that's pretty easy to predict. Question is whether Finland (and the rest of us) could learn from this experiment and make our current system better using the knowledge we gain from it, or not. "Failing" would be an appropriate term only if this would have zero effect on what we have today.
- denim_chicken 10y ago
  Easy there Nostradamus.
- mistaken 10y ago
  I predict the opposite. It will succeed and will be adopted by all developed nations within 50 years.
- omash 10y ago
  Of course this "test" will fail, they're giving it to a group of people who already have a specific state of employment. It won't be seen as a safety net to follow their ambition because of its temporary, non-universal nature. It might make sense for them to hoard the cash until the test is over or spend it lavishly as a temporary reprieve from poverty. I hope this won't create material to make a case against basic income in future.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    While I'm not particularly optimistic, I could imagine it succeeding by temporarily eliminating poverty traps and providing stability for the beneficiaries, allowing them to gain experience or pursue training and end up in a much better position in two years time.
  - DalekBaldwin 10y ago
JackFr 10y ago
If its only going to jobless people, not UBI. This is not a meaningless distinction -- one of the features of UBI is that it is universal. If this just goes to unemployed people we cannot see the change in behavior with people who are earning close to their reservation wage. Do they stop working? This is streamlined rebranded welfare. Not a paradigm shift.
- Jarwain 10y ago
  They're calling it Basic Income, not Universal Basic Income. The goal being to see what the differences are between the unemployed and the control group. There may be other issues baked into the implementation, but it will be hard to say the result until it goes into action and we start getting data
  - samcollins 10y ago
    I agree. The implementation here will still enable us to learn about some aspects of UBI. The question of how benefits affect the motivation to gain re-employment will still need to be studied in further experiments. I think it's worth celebrating that Iceland is doing controlled tests to explore this way. To really understand the best design for UBI, we need more of this.
    - hypnotortoise 10y ago
      It's Finland, not Iceland.
- edblarney 10y ago
  I agree with that statement. But a detail: it will not be 'streamlined'. Those government workers are not going anywhere. It's worth an experiment, though.
- komodo 10y ago
  Why don't we do a basic income lottery? - Anyone except previous winners can enter. - You can only enter once per drawing. - As the pool increases the payout does not, only the number of winners. - Winners get a basic income for life. - As another condition they agree to an amount of monitoring so that we can effectively study how they behave with the basic income. - This one would be hard, but you might have to be made ineligible for other government assistance programs maybe? State lotteries already offer annuity payouts and even better they sometimes have 100k for life lotteries. These aren't perfect as the amount is too high but it's worth studying anyway. The basic income lottery described above would be an even better approximation. EDIT: I just did a bit of googling and it looks like this has been tried before [1][2] , but the amounts were time-limited and low. It would probably have to be state-sponsored to take off. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-basic-income-lottery-2016-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-basic-income-lottery-... [2] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-my-basic-income-project-community#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-my-basic-income-proje...
serge2k 10y ago
How is this a test of UBI? It's just a welfare system.
- undersuit 10y ago
  If you want to really test UBI and not have critics point out some stupid difference between the test program and real UBI you need to implement a permanent, world-wide, basic income. Other wise "it's not UBI." So it's not UBI, it's a test.
vondur 10y ago
I'd assumed that Finland had a really strong welfare system like Norway and Sweden.
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  But it has?
- jpatokal 10y ago
  It does, it's just structured badly.
dbg31415 10y ago
In related news, experts expect sales in Lotto tickets, malt liquor, and Taco Bell combo meals to explode in Finland.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Actually, if we speculate with more alcohol sales, then it will be low-tax vodka from ferries to Tallinn - the alcohol monopoly in Finland has high prices due to taxes, so the expert guess of any consumption increase is to get it from Estonia. And Finland doesn't have Taco Bells.
- sctb 10y ago
  This is not the kind of comment we need on HN. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dbg31415 10y ago
    You keep the political crap off HN, and I won't feel the need to mock it. Deal?
poopsintub 10y ago
Let's say it does work. Based on Finland's small population and economy, what are the chances it's scalable to where we're living in Wall-E?
buryat 10y ago
Implemented on a big scale it'll lead to higher inflation and ultimately will increase stratification.
deleted 10y ago
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koolba 10y ago
What's stopping people from taking their universal income and moving to a different country with a lower cost of living. Do you you have to collect it in person? A UBI of $1-2K/month isn't that much in the western world but you could live like a king[1] in the third world. [1]: Okay maybe not a very rich king but but you'd definitely be doing more than fine.
- taxtaker 10y ago
  Benefits are usually contingent on residency. Go away for too long and you lose your benefits.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  Assuming that recipients are also taxed on their world income there is little difference between someone not working and living somewhere else or or not doing it without the country. It might be something unfair but i cant fathom it being significant at scale. The problem is the people coming in: how do you stop high levels of immigration from people that would not be as productive as finnish people and hence would quickly become a drain on the state. The greatest single enemy of open immigration is welfare.
  - omash 10y ago
    Don't give it to the people coming in?
    - conanbatt 10y ago
      Theres something uneasy about 2 people doing the same job at the same gross salary, but different net salaries.
      - koolba 10y ago
        Uneasy to you maybe. If the immigrant has it worse not coming to the land of free money and jobs (even if they're not getting the free money), they're still better off than not coming. Separately, in a way we already have that uneven net for the same work. If you work two jobs you get paid less (net) than one person doing either of your jobs (for that job, not total). That's what's what a progressive tax does.
murtnowski 10y ago
Wouldn't a better idea be to give it to people with lower middle income which is more indicitive of the average household
muse900 10y ago
What is that gonna achieve exactly? Aren't prices gonna just inflate upwards and things become less affordable? If you just pay everyone X amount of money every month for whatever, it just means that in order to produce something you'll need to pay someone a lot more than that X amount in order to work and produce it and also it means that that item is gonna increase massively in cost in order to pay the items production itself. I am highly against that idea. You want to solve issues? Give free food/water and shelter for survival, thats all a human needs. It doesn't need to be a food from a chef or Evian water or a house with even an internet connection. All it needs is just to provide some safety that that person is not going to die of starvation or weather. Other than that if you want to have a better have and lifestyle well you have to work for it.
- user5994461 10y ago
  Yes. If you pay everyone the same and you wait for years for the inflation to kick in and stabilize. it's not gonna have much effect if only a few thousands people are paid (who may already get unemployment benefits by the way).
- conanbatt 10y ago
  > What is that gonna achieve exactly? Aren't prices gonna just inflate upwards and things become less affordable? Inflation is generalized increases in prices. I really dont understand why people make the argument that UBI would cause inflation due to demand: it would shift prices of many products (because increased demand in basic cheap goods) but probably marginally so and even then it would not affect inflation rates as a whole. High luxury cars are not going to have more demand. > If you just pay everyone X amount of money every month for whatever, it just means that in order to produce something you'll need to pay someone a lot more than that X amount in order to work and produce it and also it means that that item is gonna increase massively in cost in order to pay the items production itself. Outlandish claim! We dont know how its going to happen. Its not true that you have to pay more, actually you could argue you will have to pay less, as UBI supplements the income: i.e. someone that wants to make 1500U$S a month, and with UBI gets 500, might be satisfied with an easy 1000U$S job. True, the jobs that nobody wants to do will probably have a higher premium: it gives higher leverage to every human being as they can choose not to work a bad job like garbage disposal, or cleaning up road kill. So some labor is subject to decreased supply,and others of increased demand. Its impossible to know what would happen without experimentation. > You want to solve issues? Give free food/water and shelter for survival, thats all a human needs. This is the exact opposite point of whats truly attractive about UBI. Free food and shelter is very expensive to give through the state ,and much cheaper to just hand out money! For example, SF spent 241 million dollars in homeless programs in a year[1]. There are about 6,500 homeless people in SF[2]. Alternatively, the city could have given them 37k U$S cash and come out ahead, effectively putting them above the median income in the US[3] In theory, the city could literally make the homeless people disappear overnight at no extra-expenditure. http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php[1] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record... http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/numbers/ http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/numbers/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... [3]
kobeya 10y ago
I'm, that's not universal if it is restricted by means test or employment status.
snicky 10y ago
What's the evidence that results of such study could be generalized to the entire population? I mean, yeah, 2000 people seem like a big group, but one might have different ideas about what to do with free money if the society around stays exactly the same vs when everybody else is also entitled to UBI. When I'm unemployed and look around and see all my friends work I might feel quite ashamed of myself and willing to change, but if all of them "retire" at 30 instead this might not be exactly the case.
Mz 10y ago
Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. The government is eager to see what happens next. Will more people pursue jobs or start businesses? How many will stop working and squander their money on vodka? Will those liberated from the time-sucking entanglements of the unemployment system use their freedom to gain education, setting themselves up for promising new careers? These areas of inquiry extend beyond economic policy, into the realm of human nature. I am not a fan of the idea of universal basic income, but I would love to see the existing social safety net system get tweaked to be less retarded. I hope this experiment goes good places.
romanovcode 10y ago
This is not UBI (universal basic income), this is re-branded welfare.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  Not exactly. While it's initially only being offered to unemployed people, it will have reduced bureaucracy and won't be withdrawn if people start earning. It's by no means a perfect test of UBI, but "re-branded welfare" isn't really fair either.
SCAQTony 10y ago
Finland's population is 5.439 million, It may work for 2000 people but will it be workable and scale up to 10-million, 50-million or 100-million people? I believe the "square cube law comes into play. Square cube law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law
- CopOnTheRun 10y ago
  Why would the square cube law come into play here? I don't understand how it's related to this context.
  - SCAQTony 10y ago
    Ooops. I should have referred to the Economies of scale rule instead. Perhaps 10-people could manage 2000 payouts whereas as the population grew to 200,000 or more regional offices and support staff would grow and inefficiencies would become more expensive.
mrleinad 10y ago
Why don't we just cover everyone's basic needs and be done with it? This is a pointless discussion. Just give everyone enough food, shelter, and free access to medicine. It'll create a society where we don't stress over losing a job because we don't know how we're going to get our food tomorrow. The reason that some people think this "disincentiveces" people to work is that they'd have to pay higher wages and wouldn't be able to exploit human beings, as all capitalist systems do. That's it. That's their whole argument. The rest is just dressing it up with empty moral questions about "giving away the fish instead of teaching how to fish".
- lacampbell 10y ago
  I agree with you in principle. But I am extremely dubious of using the state to accomplish this. I would rather see a cultural shift where we all agree we don't need state coercion to get us to help one another. Anything the state does IMO will be inefficient and involve pay offs to a few select chosen corporations. Do we need force to do this? Do we need cronyism? Do we need corruption?
  - mrleinad 10y ago
    Corruption exists in corporations as well. Who do you think pays bribes to state officials? The state can be efficient too, regardless of it being a monopoly. It just needs the same thing an efficient company does: overseers and the right push to be efficient (a.k.a. an informed and well educated population that knows when they're being scammed and demands better services for their taxes)
    - lacampbell 10y ago
      The US Federal Government can't deliver a fully socialized healthcare system despite spending more money per head than many other developed nations that manage to provide full coverage. What makes you think they could possibly efficiently administer UBI? What possible overseers can a government have? Authority begins and ends with them. It has token overseers sure, the same way a dictatorship to china might point to its token elections. But that is all.
nimoore 10y ago
This is not UBI
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nradov 10y ago
Instead of just giving people money our governments at federal / state / local levels should become employers of last resort for everyone who has exhausted their welfare or unemployment benefits. Guarantee 30 hours / week at minimum wage to anyone who wants to work. Even if it's just trail maintenance or graffiti cleanup they will at least be maintaining basic employment skills, and have enough spare time to retrain for something better.
- ahallock 10y ago
  How about actual job and skills training, instead? I would much rather my tax dollars go to training an electrician than some made-up bureaucratic job.
  - nradov 10y ago
    It's not either / or. Someone can work 30 hours / week and still have time for training. I do agree that we should do more to get the long-term unemployed into training programs at community colleges and trade schools.
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  This is what I really support, but would take it a step further. I feel the problem is so many countries have this poverty line unemployment payments as a once size fits all. I think we should break support into 3 categories. 1) for the immediately unemployed that have had a history of paying tax, give them generous payment coverage between jobs for a 3-6 month window type thing. Something like 60% of their pay. 2) after said time window, if no unemployment is found you are given guaranteed 30 hours (or whatever is right) work at minimum wage in areas that are as non competing the the economy as possible. E.g. Beautifying the city or helping seniors etc. 3) if you refuse to take minimum wage work you can get a set amount of food and basic accomodation to keep you from beng homeless/starving. From point 2, as automation becomes more prevalent and effective the number of hours worked can be reduced to match this progress.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  What's the point of making people do stupid ass jobs? Now I'm all for spending money on the commons in ways the private sector is too petty to address, but do this for the results of the investment, not just for employment. I'm more OK with adjusting UBI to cancel out fluctuations in infrastructure spending.
eanzenberg 10y ago
Why not tax accumulated wealth and assets?
jganetsk 10y ago
I agree with basic income, but most analyses of it are backwards. For most of history, governments addressed unemployment by starting wars. By shipping off to war, the unemployed temporarily get a job. They either come back dead or ready to take a new job in an economy revitalized by the stimulus of government war spending. John Maynard Keynes noticed this pattern, especially during the Great Depression and WW2, and made a brilliant suggestion: continue with these government interventions, but keep the government spending and drop the war part. We call it "Keynesian economics", but really, what Keynes invented was capitalist peace. And guess what, since then, no two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [1] We need a Keynesian boost today, not because of technological progress, but rather the contrary: the rapid technological progress of the 20th century that brought tremendous economic prosperity to humanity has finally come to a grinding halt. Let's stop denying this. The stream of lifechanging breakthrough inventions of the 20th century, from A (antibiotics) to Z (zippers), have ended. As a result, we now suffer from secular stagnation, something Keynes understood very well back then, and Larry Summers understands in the present. [2] It's especially absurd to claim that automation is the cause of this. Automation has already upended society: it was called the Industrial Revolution and happened 200 years ago. The upheaval caused then to human lives and employment was far more dramatic than anything happening today. And basic income is simply the most fair way to apply Keynesian policy. It is more fair to split the money up and distribute it equally to every individual than it is for the government to buy things on their behalf. Highly distributed spending will also avoid creating market distortions and liquidity traps. [3] And the resulting economic boost will lead to increased tax revenues and, who knows, maybe more jobs -- this time not subject to labor market distortions caused by people being desperate for work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree [2] http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular-stagnation/ http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular-stagna... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap
- awqrre 10y ago
  100% automation is not here yet... we are probably at 25% (my very rough estimate)
- 10y ago
kahrkunne 10y ago
I hate being "that guy" but am I the only one who expects this particular brand of communism to not be any better than previous attempts? Somebody's going to have to pay for this...
- fnj 10y ago
  "Somebody" has to pay for welfare, too. The fact that all social welfare programs have a cost is not a reason to reject all social welfare out of hand. Do you really think welfare programs should be abolished? What level of starving to death and freezing to death in the streets are you comfortable with?
- caspianm 10y ago
  Compared to a regular welfare system where they stop paying if the recipient has the ability to support themselves / doesn't need it (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need) UBI is the opposite of communism. This one where people have to be jobless at the start isn't ideal though.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  It isn't a brand of communism. It doesn't involve any nationalization. Also, no communists have ever implemented basic income. It isn't even an exclusively left wing idea. Milton Friedman supported it, Charles Murray supports it.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
sova 10y ago
Thrilled that the idea that ones basic needs be met as a basic human right is gaining traction. Granted, in the form of our most common commodity-abstraction apparatus (cash).
ahallock 10y ago
I feel like we're creating a new government program to counter the failures of an existing one: education. If people had marketable skills, it would be a lot easier to find work. Perhaps tax revenue should go to education and training, instead. I think we're a long way off from total automation of most industries.
- mattlevan 10y ago
  Or perhaps we should drastically reduce government's role in education altogether. After all, we were doing fine before the Department of Education opened in the seventies!
  - ahallock 10y ago
    That would be ideal. Government-run education does not respond to market forces, so I don't trust them to produce skilled graduates.
fnj 10y ago
As many have noted, this is not UBI; full stop. Also, you can't "test" something that is supposed to be universal by definition, on a micro scale and to a selected subset.
randyrand 10y ago
we have unemployment cash benefits in the usa. its quite similar in most regards.
itazula 10y ago
This reminded me of the Y Combinator Basic Income project. The last I read about that was this: https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/ I wonder what the status is?
collyw 10y ago
If it is given to jobless people then its not really universal basic income. Its just removing bureaucracy from the current system.
shurcooL 10y ago
> jobless > universal Doesn't sound very universal. One of the big factors that make it a good idea is that receiving the basic income shouldn't make you disincentivized from doing more and getting a job, etc. Otherwise, how is it different from existing welfare programs and such?
return0 10y ago
A country with very good welfare like Finland is the worst place to test UBI, which is supposed to replace welfare.
fpp 10y ago
From a first cross-read, this article is bluntly discrediting UBI. Starting with numbers: about 204M working age population in the US - hence the USD10K to each of them example would just make somewhere what is spend yearly for military and banks - the 8 times numbers cited in the article of what is spent today does not make any sense. The linked article does not mention any amounts that Finland wants to provide to the 2k people - instead it is referring to Swiss calculations - last numbers I've heard with Finland were on par with current social security / poverty level pays (~EUR600 p/m) - this of course does not enable most of the key effects intended with an UBI (money into spending, freedom of choice for work etc) - it only continues the current system (with some potential savings within the administration). To get a better understanding we have to at least repeat the Canadian experiments from the 1920s (proven that it is substantially beneficiary for the economy overall) - more money than poverty level, people must gain freedom by the possibility to live. Given that soon a large proportion of people will not have a chance to find a job that will allow them to survive, we either go back to lords and serfs or actually look into potentially sustainable solutions.
austinjp 10y ago
What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only if it is truly universal. Someone feel free to tell me if I'm missing something.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Don't most countries already have welfare systems that keep the lowest possible income at X already? UBI is just supposed to simplify those systems by replacing them with a single non-means-tested system.
  - austinjp 10y ago
    It's my suspicion that the means-testing, or other hurdles, prevent the benefit from being universal, thereby preventing the inflationary effect. Incidentally, I'm not declaring a belief in either means-tested benefits nor UBI, just exploring the territory.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 10y ago
      Money is not being created from thin air so why would you think there was inflation?
      - anonyfox 10y ago
        Actually, it is. States/Central Banks can print money as they wish. Go be more exact: printing isn't even necessary, money nowadays is barely more than a replicated database entry.
witty_username 10y ago
Somewhat off-topic but wouldn't it be cheaper and better to test the basic income in a country with low PPP (i.e. poor countries).
NIL8 10y ago
For a good idea of what this type of program can do to a society, take a look at the native Americans. The monthly allotment received by most only perpetuates very serious social problems. I know that most who will push for these types of programs have good intentions, but the outcome will probably prove to do more harm than good, generally speaking.
- danharaj 10y ago
  Yeah there's definitely nothing else to explain why Native American nations are doing so poorly. Edit: This was too snarky but also the parent comment is such a bold claim with no evidence justifying it. Counterclaim: Canada and the US have done plenty to destroy the fabric of native societies since their inception. As an example, the residential school system of Canada[1] which ended in 1996. History is so forgettable isn't it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
- andrewtbham 10y ago
  I don't know about the native americans... but I agree than UBI just doesn't seem to make sense. What has always been more appealing to me than UBI is just the idea of sustainable living... i.e. people own their own houses and there is no property tax and they have very cheap renewable energy sources and maybe cheap robots to grow food. making really cheap stuff to survive just seems like a better long term plan to deal with technology than giving money away. that just devalues money causes inflation.. makes prices higher. seems to me.
choonway 10y ago
Why not universal basic housing. universal basic internet. universal basic food. universal basic computer. Make it illegal to sell them on the open market. Anything except universal basic income. You want cigarettes / alcohol? do some work on the internet. Amazon mechanical turk.
osmala 10y ago
The model selected maybe problematic. A) There are additional benefits for helping to pay rent which are income dependent. B) There are special circumstantial increases to benefits replaced by basic income, that state has to pay inorder to fill its constitutional equality requirements. For instance increases in unemployment for dependent children, expenditures for education program participation for unemployed... Now testsubjects get them by applying for them. Whats potential problem is what it takes to LOOSE them, its a risk factor on every action to earn temporarily, or taking a risky move to try to start a business. Latter causes also a high risk at the end of experiment, unless you have folded it long before end of experiment.
steakeater 10y ago
UBI is a terrible idea. Anyone who thinks that the government handing out money to everyone is a good idea needs to snap out of the propaganda machine. Those who fund you, control you. There is no way around that. When the people funding everyone is the government, and the people do nothing in return, that places huge amounts of power in the hands of a single entity, and removes all power from the people. Large companies are getting larger. There are only a couple of choices in any category, and single companies own many different markets. When you combine that with UBI, you have the government handing you a check, and then you have a choice of a couple of companies to spend that money. The difference between this world and communism is almost nothing. I have never heard of any group of people who were happy on government welfare. Whatever the supposed problem this is supposed to address, it is not a solution. People who are not working at all are not happy. If I were to guess, I would say the real problems that need to be addressed are: too many extremely large companies, often supported by laws they lobbied to create. corrupt government that has no interest in its own country population increases. I mean, many of these people proposing UBI are living in countries where they are actively increasing the population. If you have an unemployment problem, why are you increasing the population?
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  Wat. - UBI's lack of criteria is supposed to remove distortions. The population is minimaly incentivized. - Employers loose leverage with UBI; large companies are major employers. - Everybody loves to hate on population size, but shrinking/aging populations are dangerous for the economy. It's a much more complex problem.
  - steakeater 10y ago
    You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government). In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue. I don't know what your first point means. Your last point, you are just repeating what you have read somewhere. Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not. Also stop being childish with your "wat" bullshit.
mjs7231 10y ago
I fully expect someone to claim this is completly different because of detail xyz, but this has been done before. It worked out better than expected. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...
Ericson2314 10y ago
Wow, everyone is complaining about the misleading headline rather than reading the piece. Oh, and this is the most positive non-opinion piece I've seen on UBI in a major publication, people! How's that?
shinamee 10y ago
Personally, I think this a great thing for creatives and researchers, knowing they can spend as much time as they need to create real value for people without having to think of revenue or investors profits. I heard/read Swiss denied this proposal though, what a shame.
throwaway1892 10y ago
Well, from my experience in France, most of them will stay jobless.
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  Still, the article make an interesting point. And their agenda is clear.
gravypod 10y ago
It's not ubi if it is not universal.
thomasfl 10y ago
Voters in Switzerland recently rejected a basic-income scheme I can't understand why the Swiss politicians wanted to ask the general public for a permission to do an experiment. How can the Swiss population be sure universal basic income will not work when no nation has yet implemented it yet across the whole population?
jobsforall 10y ago
And like all UBI experiments it will ultimately fail because UBI is essentially a form of theft. Hiding behind the money illusion doesn't fool anybody for long. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-theft-a95eeedb5aad#.1xcz4nzwk https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...
leke 10y ago
I could relate to the article. I'm currently living in Oulu, and was also working for a Nokia contractor until 2011. Unable to find work, I went back to polytechnic college for 3.5 years to update my skills and perhaps wait out the recession. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't gotten any better and my new bachelor's degree doesn't give me any advantage. There are plenty of entrepreneurs requiring people of various backgrounds, but these are generally unpaid positions. I am currently writing a web-app for a charity, and have just launched a customised wordpress site for a new business. These are of course unpaid, and like the article states, it's not worth the risk of starting my own business (being a freelancer for example) as it would mean coming off benefits completely and hoping you'll make enough to pay for everything you need to pay for. UBA would suit me great. I could become that freelancer instantly, and with no fear. That company, who's website I just launched wanted to pay me, but legally it was impossible due to the reason I just mentioned (freelancing). I'm also currently writing a language learning app, a mashup of my favourite features of DuoLingo and Memrise in my free time. Perhaps monetising that in some way may lead me out of this stagnation.
vivekd 10y ago
It seems like we can learn so little by selecting only for jobless people. The best way to do a BI test seems to me to get a random sample so we can test how it affects people in various circumstances. Selecting a specific demographic like this seems more a political move than a scientific one.
bestbinaryrr 10y ago
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610 points by salmonet 10y ago

Curious thing, Kela (who handle the benefits, among other things) made their sampling code public[0]. The code doesn't really tell me anything though, except that the random seed is taken from wall time. [0] http://www.kela.fi/perustulokokeilun-otantakoodi http://www.kela.fi/perustulokokeilun-otantakoodi

kakoni 10y ago
Same as github link; https://github.com/kakoni/otantakoodi/blob/master/otantakoodi.sas https://github.com/kakoni/otantakoodi/blob/master/otantakood...

applecore 10y ago

How is it "universal" if recipients are required to be jobless?

keehun 10y ago
It's a test. Here's what the article says about the motivations behind this test: >> Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. >> The government is eager to see what happens next. Will more people pursue jobs or start businesses? How many will stop working and squander their money on vodka? Will those liberated from the time-sucking entanglements of the unemployment system use their freedom to gain education, setting themselves up for promising new careers? These areas of inquiry extend beyond economic policy, into the realm of human nature. Basically, no one knows how humans/societies will react to such a hand-out, and this is trying to figure out if an eventual universal income will be effective. Also, this quote from later in the article: >> Mr. Saloranta has his eyes on a former Nokia employee who is masterly at developing prototypes. He only needs him part time. He could pay 2,000 euros a month (about $2,090). Yet this potential hire is bringing home more than that via his unemployment benefits. >> “It’s more profitable for him to just wait at home for some ideal job,” Mr. Saloranta complains. >> Basic income would fix this, he says: “It would activate many more unemployed people.”
dvdhnt 10y ago
So UBI is fundamentally a safety-net; insurance, if you will. The "universal" quality is that all people will be eligible for UBI. Everyone will receive the difference between what they make and what UBI guarantees. It's sort of like the popular phrase in the U.S. - "everyone is guaranteed the same opportunity but not the same outcome". Thus, while all will have access to UBI, the payout will be determined by individual circumstances. Regarding Finland's program, it's likely they had to choose a group of individuals who were easiest to justify paying UBI under current popular-thought. Therefore, they chose a group already receiving or eligible for unemployment/assistance and argued they were simply replacing one for the other. That is of course just an educated guess on my part. So, yes, UBI itself is in fact universal although the initial rollout, or test, is highly compartmentalized. Edit: As someone pointed out, I'm probably confusing UBI with GMI - Guaranteed Minimum Income. It's starting to feel like we're discussing rules on laying a foundation while others are already fast at work on their fourth and fifth floor, i/e, what's the point of giving everyone a ladder if the roof is consistently growing out of reach?
- applecore 10y ago
  > Everyone will receive the difference between what they make and what UBI guarantees. This isn't UBI either. UBI would simply give everyone the same income without subtracting the difference for extra earned income. You could earn millions and still receive your basic income.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    Yes it's basically a credit. I think all non-business deductions should go away and turn them into fixed credits (vanishing most of them entirely). Right now two homeowners each with $1000 in deductible mortgage interest, have different tax liability reductions if they're at different tax brackets. The one in the higher bracket actually ends up with a greater reduction in tax for the same deduction. And so on.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    As you define it. I define UBI as having a floor on people's income, where the government ensures everyone is above that floor. So it's universally ensuring everyone had a basic income.

wjossey 10y ago

tl;dr Finland is going to selecting 2,000 unemployed individuals, at random, and offering them cash without strings. Current unemployment schemes, they believe, hold back individuals from finding part time work / any work because the benefits outweigh the job opportunities. They hope that this new scheme promotes people to take work and have an adequate safety net to prevent homelessness and hunger.

edblarney 10y ago
Why don't they just ease/remove the limitations on the current program?
- unfamiliar 10y ago
  Because that would cost a shitload of money and might not work. Hence a trial run.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    They could simply do this (i.e. welfare without limits on working) on a small scale as a 'test' which would be considerably less expensive than BUI test on a limited scale.
pvdebbe 10y ago
I wonder why the participants couldn't be chosen from the whole working-age pool. Unless, the final system is not meant for working people at all, going against everything the universal welfare meant to solve. Doesn't surprise me one bit.
- scott_karana 10y ago
  If it works well, I suspect they'll widen trials.

ScottBurson 10y ago

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work more, that would be a huge, huge improvement.

nickff 10y ago
And taking a job once should not permanently disqualify someone from long-term aid programs like social security.
TillE 10y ago
Means-tested programs are the epitome of wasteful government bureaucracy. It's never the right way to "compromise". If we can't sell straight UBI, then something like universal food stamps would be a good first step: https://web.archive.org/web/20160321083817/http://mattbruenig.com/2013/04/10/just-give-everyone-food-stamps/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160321083817/http://mattbrueni...
- dfraser992 10y ago
  I am reminded of an article I read years ago (sorry, no reference) about a low income family in Chicago (I think) during the Reagan era. The family had saved up a bit of money to send their kid to college, but some bureaucratic org found out. It was responsible for handling their benefits and because the total amount of assets the family had was over an acceptable limit, they cut out _all_ benefits to the family. Till the bank account went down to acceptable levels. Way to go towards helping people help themselves, encouraging middle class values, responsibility, yadda yadda, all the usual stuff Republicans blather about but don't actually care about.
  - tgarma1234 10y ago
    I remember that story and it might have been during the first Clinton campaign in the 90s or anyway one of those "Welfare Queen" stories meant to make public assistance seem like a shorthand for "laziness". There are asset tests for assistance and you can see them broken down state by state here: http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/asset-limits-in-public-benefit-programs http://scorecard.assetsandopportunity.org/latest/measure/ass...

kr7 10y ago

Another limited duration trial (two years). What's the point? It's not going to measure the real effect. People will know it is going to run out and behave differently than if it was permanent.

nickff 10y ago
Well it's probably better than just instituting a program and hoping it works. Ideally, all government programs should be subject to measurement and re-evaluation.
- kr7 10y ago
  The choice does not have to be between "do a bad study" or "do no study at all". A proper study would be permanent and self-contained. Participants would need to give a portion of outside income to the program to simulate higher taxes and/or inflation.
  - cwiggs 10y ago
    You mention make the UBI be permanent so, how long would you expect to wait until the results would be worth looking at, an entire generation?
    - notahacker 10y ago
      Results can start to be worthwhile early on. But the life-altering decisions people make over a two year period when guaranteed a subsidy that runs out at the end of those two years are not particularly likely to be the same as the life altering decisions people make over a two year period when guaranteed that subsidy for life. (If you wanted to really understand all the dynamics, you'd probably want to wait more than a generation to understand how subsidy recipients' decisions to raise children are affected and whether those children make systematically different life choices.)
readittwice 10y ago
So true, thanks for writing that! Don't give them the money just for two years, but guarantee them the money over their whole life and you will see vastly different results. Another "problem" with this kind of study is that they are giving money only to unemployed people. Because it would be also interesting to see what people with jobs would do. I suspect a lot of people would switch from full-time to part-time jobs (at least that's what I would do).

ChrisNorstrom 10y ago

Will Finland admit publicly when it fails or will they just hide their idea as if it never happened? Remember Bio-Fuel? How progressive and wonderful it was suppose to be? Until it caused a global food shortage and suddenly none of the media ever talked about it again.

acbabis 10y ago
Global food shortage? If you're talking about ethanol from corn, that doesn't sound correct. Corn-based foods are dirt cheap
- protomyth 10y ago
  Yep, the current prices of commodities are pretty low to the point it was a campaign issue in farm country.
  - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
    Amazing isn't it? It happened in 2008 and the progressive HN downvote brigade have already forgotten it. "“global land grab” first took off in 2008, when food prices on international markets spiked due to a boom in biofuels and growing Asian consumption of meat and dairy, setting off riots around the world and leading key grain-producing countries to introduce export bans. " The poor in Haiti had to eat dirt, it was on mainstream news but I guess the HN crowd doesn't think back that far. It actually sparked the African Land Grabs of 2007-2008 which a lot of "progressive minority lovers" don't even know about. I was on HN at the time talking about it and was purely ignored for my concern that black Africans were being kicked off their land. Yet, I've been called racist in my past few HN posts for not agreeing with far left policies on diversity enforcement. Had they looked up the Oakland Institute they would have seen that land grabs the size of France of the most fertile land in African nations were sold on 99 year leases, tax free, by countries all over the world. Harvard actually was one of those behind the investments. Now the media covers it up by calling it "a myth or exaggeration" and ignoring the riots and numerous youtube videos of villagers fighting back. sigh HN has become what Digg, Reddit, and Mashable are. Time to leave.

noonespecial 10y ago

>It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. That last part is huge. A disincentive to work by cancelling benefits is a feature of nearly every current system. It is extremely important that someone test a system without this in it to see how a people react. This looks like a very important test for the viability of UBI.

Jarwain 10y ago
It might be some implicit bias that I have, but I read that as minus, or without, penalties for amassing extra income. As in there are no penalties for amassing extra income. There is a double negative in there. I'm trying to find a more authoritative source on whether this is the case edit: i misunderstood your comment, seems like your interpretation lines up with mine.
edblarney 10y ago
These programs depend at very least on the 'savings' government will incur by not having 'massive bureaucracies' to manage the program. The problem is - Government Unions are the most powerful in every state, and they will never, ever allow any significant layoff of personnel. So you get a 'new program' without the most important stated benefit. The reality of government, is that it is systematically inefficient because of entrenched labour practices - no just because they 'may not be good and doing some thing'. I love public transport. In Toronto - we still have people at every station selling tickets and making change. 17 of them were on the 'sunshine' list last year as earning over $100K in the year. You read that right: the guys in the booth making over $100K. Granted, this is with 'overtime', but probably not more than many people in the private sector work. So the government can't help put pay many of it's entities wages that are quite above normal, with massive add-ons and incentives. Given that small tidbit - can you fathom why it's so gosh-darn expensive to add public transit services??? There are a few other fairly fundamental problems with the program as well, first being simply the cost (Ontario government that is 'pro' program said it would cost $175 Billion a year, basically our whole budget) - and then the moral/incentive issue: where I live in Montreal everybody is an 'artist' 'photographer' 'cinematographer' 'choreographer' 'dancer' 'writer'. But they all work in coffee shops and restaurants. Montreal would go bankrupt instantly because the 'cinematographer' that makes my latte in the morning will quit instantly. In my community - there is absolutely no sense of 'industriousness' in the Anglo sense - they see no problem with fussing about making quite bad films that nobody wants to watch. Were there some latent amazing output I might think it's a good tradeoff, but no, they're seasoned amateurs. In a rational and sensible society ... this program would be amazing. But then, in a rational and sensible society, there would be very low unemployment, and streamlined government so that the 'means testing' issue would be moot. It might work in some specific places.

rhapsodic 10y ago

I want to be on record here. Today, December 17, 2016, I predict that this will fail. And by "fail", I mean that this will not become a universal entitlement in Finland.

yoavm 10y ago
That it won't become a universal entitlement as it is - that's pretty easy to predict. Question is whether Finland (and the rest of us) could learn from this experiment and make our current system better using the knowledge we gain from it, or not. "Failing" would be an appropriate term only if this would have zero effect on what we have today.
denim_chicken 10y ago
Easy there Nostradamus.
mistaken 10y ago
I predict the opposite. It will succeed and will be adopted by all developed nations within 50 years.
omash 10y ago
Of course this "test" will fail, they're giving it to a group of people who already have a specific state of employment. It won't be seen as a safety net to follow their ambition because of its temporary, non-universal nature. It might make sense for them to hoard the cash until the test is over or spend it lavishly as a temporary reprieve from poverty. I hope this won't create material to make a case against basic income in future.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  While I'm not particularly optimistic, I could imagine it succeeding by temporarily eliminating poverty traps and providing stability for the beneficiaries, allowing them to gain experience or pursue training and end up in a much better position in two years time.
- DalekBaldwin 10y ago

JackFr 10y ago

If its only going to jobless people, not UBI. This is not a meaningless distinction -- one of the features of UBI is that it is universal. If this just goes to unemployed people we cannot see the change in behavior with people who are earning close to their reservation wage. Do they stop working? This is streamlined rebranded welfare. Not a paradigm shift.

Jarwain 10y ago
They're calling it Basic Income, not Universal Basic Income. The goal being to see what the differences are between the unemployed and the control group. There may be other issues baked into the implementation, but it will be hard to say the result until it goes into action and we start getting data
- samcollins 10y ago
  I agree. The implementation here will still enable us to learn about some aspects of UBI. The question of how benefits affect the motivation to gain re-employment will still need to be studied in further experiments. I think it's worth celebrating that Iceland is doing controlled tests to explore this way. To really understand the best design for UBI, we need more of this.
  - hypnotortoise 10y ago
    It's Finland, not Iceland.
edblarney 10y ago
I agree with that statement. But a detail: it will not be 'streamlined'. Those government workers are not going anywhere. It's worth an experiment, though.
komodo 10y ago
Why don't we do a basic income lottery? - Anyone except previous winners can enter. - You can only enter once per drawing. - As the pool increases the payout does not, only the number of winners. - Winners get a basic income for life. - As another condition they agree to an amount of monitoring so that we can effectively study how they behave with the basic income. - This one would be hard, but you might have to be made ineligible for other government assistance programs maybe? State lotteries already offer annuity payouts and even better they sometimes have 100k for life lotteries. These aren't perfect as the amount is too high but it's worth studying anyway. The basic income lottery described above would be an even better approximation. EDIT: I just did a bit of googling and it looks like this has been tried before [1][2] , but the amounts were time-limited and low. It would probably have to be state-sponsored to take off. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-basic-income-lottery-2016-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-basic-income-lottery-... [2] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-my-basic-income-project-community#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-my-basic-income-proje...

serge2k 10y ago

How is this a test of UBI? It's just a welfare system.

undersuit 10y ago
If you want to really test UBI and not have critics point out some stupid difference between the test program and real UBI you need to implement a permanent, world-wide, basic income. Other wise "it's not UBI." So it's not UBI, it's a test.

vondur 10y ago

I'd assumed that Finland had a really strong welfare system like Norway and Sweden.

pvdebbe 10y ago
But it has?
jpatokal 10y ago
It does, it's just structured badly.

dbg31415 10y ago

In related news, experts expect sales in Lotto tickets, malt liquor, and Taco Bell combo meals to explode in Finland.

ptaipale 10y ago
Actually, if we speculate with more alcohol sales, then it will be low-tax vodka from ferries to Tallinn - the alcohol monopoly in Finland has high prices due to taxes, so the expert guess of any consumption increase is to get it from Estonia. And Finland doesn't have Taco Bells.
sctb 10y ago
This is not the kind of comment we need on HN. Please don't post like this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dbg31415 10y ago
  You keep the political crap off HN, and I won't feel the need to mock it. Deal?

poopsintub 10y ago

Let's say it does work. Based on Finland's small population and economy, what are the chances it's scalable to where we're living in Wall-E?

buryat 10y ago

Implemented on a big scale it'll lead to higher inflation and ultimately will increase stratification.

deleted 10y ago

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koolba 10y ago

What's stopping people from taking their universal income and moving to a different country with a lower cost of living. Do you you have to collect it in person? A UBI of $1-2K/month isn't that much in the western world but you could live like a king[1] in the third world. [1]: Okay maybe not a very rich king but but you'd definitely be doing more than fine.

taxtaker 10y ago
Benefits are usually contingent on residency. Go away for too long and you lose your benefits.
conanbatt 10y ago
Assuming that recipients are also taxed on their world income there is little difference between someone not working and living somewhere else or or not doing it without the country. It might be something unfair but i cant fathom it being significant at scale. The problem is the people coming in: how do you stop high levels of immigration from people that would not be as productive as finnish people and hence would quickly become a drain on the state. The greatest single enemy of open immigration is welfare.
- omash 10y ago
  Don't give it to the people coming in?
  - conanbatt 10y ago
    Theres something uneasy about 2 people doing the same job at the same gross salary, but different net salaries.
    - koolba 10y ago
      Uneasy to you maybe. If the immigrant has it worse not coming to the land of free money and jobs (even if they're not getting the free money), they're still better off than not coming. Separately, in a way we already have that uneven net for the same work. If you work two jobs you get paid less (net) than one person doing either of your jobs (for that job, not total). That's what's what a progressive tax does.

murtnowski 10y ago

Wouldn't a better idea be to give it to people with lower middle income which is more indicitive of the average household

muse900 10y ago

What is that gonna achieve exactly? Aren't prices gonna just inflate upwards and things become less affordable? If you just pay everyone X amount of money every month for whatever, it just means that in order to produce something you'll need to pay someone a lot more than that X amount in order to work and produce it and also it means that that item is gonna increase massively in cost in order to pay the items production itself. I am highly against that idea. You want to solve issues? Give free food/water and shelter for survival, thats all a human needs. It doesn't need to be a food from a chef or Evian water or a house with even an internet connection. All it needs is just to provide some safety that that person is not going to die of starvation or weather. Other than that if you want to have a better have and lifestyle well you have to work for it.

user5994461 10y ago
Yes. If you pay everyone the same and you wait for years for the inflation to kick in and stabilize. it's not gonna have much effect if only a few thousands people are paid (who may already get unemployment benefits by the way).
conanbatt 10y ago
> What is that gonna achieve exactly? Aren't prices gonna just inflate upwards and things become less affordable? Inflation is generalized increases in prices. I really dont understand why people make the argument that UBI would cause inflation due to demand: it would shift prices of many products (because increased demand in basic cheap goods) but probably marginally so and even then it would not affect inflation rates as a whole. High luxury cars are not going to have more demand. > If you just pay everyone X amount of money every month for whatever, it just means that in order to produce something you'll need to pay someone a lot more than that X amount in order to work and produce it and also it means that that item is gonna increase massively in cost in order to pay the items production itself. Outlandish claim! We dont know how its going to happen. Its not true that you have to pay more, actually you could argue you will have to pay less, as UBI supplements the income: i.e. someone that wants to make 1500U$S a month, and with UBI gets 500, might be satisfied with an easy 1000U$S job. True, the jobs that nobody wants to do will probably have a higher premium: it gives higher leverage to every human being as they can choose not to work a bad job like garbage disposal, or cleaning up road kill. So some labor is subject to decreased supply,and others of increased demand. Its impossible to know what would happen without experimentation. > You want to solve issues? Give free food/water and shelter for survival, thats all a human needs. This is the exact opposite point of whats truly attractive about UBI. Free food and shelter is very expensive to give through the state ,and much cheaper to just hand out money! For example, SF spent 241 million dollars in homeless programs in a year[1]. There are about 6,500 homeless people in SF[2]. Alternatively, the city could have given them 37k U$S cash and come out ahead, effectively putting them above the median income in the US[3] In theory, the city could literally make the homeless people disappear overnight at no extra-expenditure. http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php[1] http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record... http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/numbers/ http://projects.sfchronicle.com/sf-homeless/numbers/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... [3]

kobeya 10y ago

I'm, that's not universal if it is restricted by means test or employment status.

snicky 10y ago

What's the evidence that results of such study could be generalized to the entire population? I mean, yeah, 2000 people seem like a big group, but one might have different ideas about what to do with free money if the society around stays exactly the same vs when everybody else is also entitled to UBI. When I'm unemployed and look around and see all my friends work I might feel quite ashamed of myself and willing to change, but if all of them "retire" at 30 instead this might not be exactly the case.

Mz 10y ago

Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. The government is eager to see what happens next. Will more people pursue jobs or start businesses? How many will stop working and squander their money on vodka? Will those liberated from the time-sucking entanglements of the unemployment system use their freedom to gain education, setting themselves up for promising new careers? These areas of inquiry extend beyond economic policy, into the realm of human nature. I am not a fan of the idea of universal basic income, but I would love to see the existing social safety net system get tweaked to be less retarded. I hope this experiment goes good places.

romanovcode 10y ago

This is not UBI (universal basic income), this is re-branded welfare.

aninhumer 10y ago
Not exactly. While it's initially only being offered to unemployed people, it will have reduced bureaucracy and won't be withdrawn if people start earning. It's by no means a perfect test of UBI, but "re-branded welfare" isn't really fair either.

SCAQTony 10y ago

Finland's population is 5.439 million, It may work for 2000 people but will it be workable and scale up to 10-million, 50-million or 100-million people? I believe the "square cube law comes into play. Square cube law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law

CopOnTheRun 10y ago
Why would the square cube law come into play here? I don't understand how it's related to this context.
- SCAQTony 10y ago
  Ooops. I should have referred to the Economies of scale rule instead. Perhaps 10-people could manage 2000 payouts whereas as the population grew to 200,000 or more regional offices and support staff would grow and inefficiencies would become more expensive.

mrleinad 10y ago

Why don't we just cover everyone's basic needs and be done with it? This is a pointless discussion. Just give everyone enough food, shelter, and free access to medicine. It'll create a society where we don't stress over losing a job because we don't know how we're going to get our food tomorrow. The reason that some people think this "disincentiveces" people to work is that they'd have to pay higher wages and wouldn't be able to exploit human beings, as all capitalist systems do. That's it. That's their whole argument. The rest is just dressing it up with empty moral questions about "giving away the fish instead of teaching how to fish".

lacampbell 10y ago
I agree with you in principle. But I am extremely dubious of using the state to accomplish this. I would rather see a cultural shift where we all agree we don't need state coercion to get us to help one another. Anything the state does IMO will be inefficient and involve pay offs to a few select chosen corporations. Do we need force to do this? Do we need cronyism? Do we need corruption?
- mrleinad 10y ago
  Corruption exists in corporations as well. Who do you think pays bribes to state officials? The state can be efficient too, regardless of it being a monopoly. It just needs the same thing an efficient company does: overseers and the right push to be efficient (a.k.a. an informed and well educated population that knows when they're being scammed and demands better services for their taxes)
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    The US Federal Government can't deliver a fully socialized healthcare system despite spending more money per head than many other developed nations that manage to provide full coverage. What makes you think they could possibly efficiently administer UBI? What possible overseers can a government have? Authority begins and ends with them. It has token overseers sure, the same way a dictatorship to china might point to its token elections. But that is all.

nimoore 10y ago

This is not UBI

deleted 10y ago

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nradov 10y ago

Instead of just giving people money our governments at federal / state / local levels should become employers of last resort for everyone who has exhausted their welfare or unemployment benefits. Guarantee 30 hours / week at minimum wage to anyone who wants to work. Even if it's just trail maintenance or graffiti cleanup they will at least be maintaining basic employment skills, and have enough spare time to retrain for something better.

ahallock 10y ago
How about actual job and skills training, instead? I would much rather my tax dollars go to training an electrician than some made-up bureaucratic job.
- nradov 10y ago
  It's not either / or. Someone can work 30 hours / week and still have time for training. I do agree that we should do more to get the long-term unemployed into training programs at community colleges and trade schools.
Gustomaximus 10y ago
This is what I really support, but would take it a step further. I feel the problem is so many countries have this poverty line unemployment payments as a once size fits all. I think we should break support into 3 categories. 1) for the immediately unemployed that have had a history of paying tax, give them generous payment coverage between jobs for a 3-6 month window type thing. Something like 60% of their pay. 2) after said time window, if no unemployment is found you are given guaranteed 30 hours (or whatever is right) work at minimum wage in areas that are as non competing the the economy as possible. E.g. Beautifying the city or helping seniors etc. 3) if you refuse to take minimum wage work you can get a set amount of food and basic accomodation to keep you from beng homeless/starving. From point 2, as automation becomes more prevalent and effective the number of hours worked can be reduced to match this progress.
Ericson2314 10y ago
What's the point of making people do stupid ass jobs? Now I'm all for spending money on the commons in ways the private sector is too petty to address, but do this for the results of the investment, not just for employment. I'm more OK with adjusting UBI to cancel out fluctuations in infrastructure spending.

eanzenberg 10y ago

Why not tax accumulated wealth and assets?

jganetsk 10y ago

I agree with basic income, but most analyses of it are backwards. For most of history, governments addressed unemployment by starting wars. By shipping off to war, the unemployed temporarily get a job. They either come back dead or ready to take a new job in an economy revitalized by the stimulus of government war spending. John Maynard Keynes noticed this pattern, especially during the Great Depression and WW2, and made a brilliant suggestion: continue with these government interventions, but keep the government spending and drop the war part. We call it "Keynesian economics", but really, what Keynes invented was capitalist peace. And guess what, since then, no two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's. [1] We need a Keynesian boost today, not because of technological progress, but rather the contrary: the rapid technological progress of the 20th century that brought tremendous economic prosperity to humanity has finally come to a grinding halt. Let's stop denying this. The stream of lifechanging breakthrough inventions of the 20th century, from A (antibiotics) to Z (zippers), have ended. As a result, we now suffer from secular stagnation, something Keynes understood very well back then, and Larry Summers understands in the present. [2] It's especially absurd to claim that automation is the cause of this. Automation has already upended society: it was called the Industrial Revolution and happened 200 years ago. The upheaval caused then to human lives and employment was far more dramatic than anything happening today. And basic income is simply the most fair way to apply Keynesian policy. It is more fair to split the money up and distribute it equally to every individual than it is for the government to buy things on their behalf. Highly distributed spending will also avoid creating market distortions and liquidity traps. [3] And the resulting economic boost will lead to increased tax revenues and, who knows, maybe more jobs -- this time not subject to labor market distortions caused by people being desperate for work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree [2] http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular-stagnation/ http://larrysummers.com/2016/02/17/the-age-of-secular-stagna... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap

awqrre 10y ago
100% automation is not here yet... we are probably at 25% (my very rough estimate)
10y ago

kahrkunne 10y ago

I hate being "that guy" but am I the only one who expects this particular brand of communism to not be any better than previous attempts? Somebody's going to have to pay for this...

fnj 10y ago
"Somebody" has to pay for welfare, too. The fact that all social welfare programs have a cost is not a reason to reject all social welfare out of hand. Do you really think welfare programs should be abolished? What level of starving to death and freezing to death in the streets are you comfortable with?
caspianm 10y ago
Compared to a regular welfare system where they stop paying if the recipient has the ability to support themselves / doesn't need it (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need) UBI is the opposite of communism. This one where people have to be jobless at the start isn't ideal though.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
It isn't a brand of communism. It doesn't involve any nationalization. Also, no communists have ever implemented basic income. It isn't even an exclusively left wing idea. Milton Friedman supported it, Charles Murray supports it.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

sova 10y ago

Thrilled that the idea that ones basic needs be met as a basic human right is gaining traction. Granted, in the form of our most common commodity-abstraction apparatus (cash).

ahallock 10y ago

I feel like we're creating a new government program to counter the failures of an existing one: education. If people had marketable skills, it would be a lot easier to find work. Perhaps tax revenue should go to education and training, instead. I think we're a long way off from total automation of most industries.

mattlevan 10y ago
Or perhaps we should drastically reduce government's role in education altogether. After all, we were doing fine before the Department of Education opened in the seventies!
- ahallock 10y ago
  That would be ideal. Government-run education does not respond to market forces, so I don't trust them to produce skilled graduates.

fnj 10y ago

As many have noted, this is not UBI; full stop. Also, you can't "test" something that is supposed to be universal by definition, on a micro scale and to a selected subset.

randyrand 10y ago

we have unemployment cash benefits in the usa. its quite similar in most regards.

itazula 10y ago

This reminded me of the Y Combinator Basic Income project. The last I read about that was this: https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/moving-forward-on-basic-income/ I wonder what the status is?

collyw 10y ago

If it is given to jobless people then its not really universal basic income. Its just removing bureaucracy from the current system.

shurcooL 10y ago

> jobless > universal Doesn't sound very universal. One of the big factors that make it a good idea is that receiving the basic income shouldn't make you disincentivized from doing more and getting a job, etc. Otherwise, how is it different from existing welfare programs and such?

return0 10y ago

A country with very good welfare like Finland is the worst place to test UBI, which is supposed to replace welfare.

fpp 10y ago

From a first cross-read, this article is bluntly discrediting UBI. Starting with numbers: about 204M working age population in the US - hence the USD10K to each of them example would just make somewhere what is spend yearly for military and banks - the 8 times numbers cited in the article of what is spent today does not make any sense. The linked article does not mention any amounts that Finland wants to provide to the 2k people - instead it is referring to Swiss calculations - last numbers I've heard with Finland were on par with current social security / poverty level pays (~EUR600 p/m) - this of course does not enable most of the key effects intended with an UBI (money into spending, freedom of choice for work etc) - it only continues the current system (with some potential savings within the administration). To get a better understanding we have to at least repeat the Canadian experiments from the 1920s (proven that it is substantially beneficiary for the economy overall) - more money than poverty level, people must gain freedom by the possibility to live. Given that soon a large proportion of people will not have a chance to find a job that will allow them to survive, we either go back to lords and serfs or actually look into potentially sustainable solutions.

austinjp 10y ago

What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only if it is truly universal. Someone feel free to tell me if I'm missing something.

kalleboo 10y ago
Don't most countries already have welfare systems that keep the lowest possible income at X already? UBI is just supposed to simplify those systems by replacing them with a single non-means-tested system.
- austinjp 10y ago
  It's my suspicion that the means-testing, or other hurdles, prevent the benefit from being universal, thereby preventing the inflationary effect. Incidentally, I'm not declaring a belief in either means-tested benefits nor UBI, just exploring the territory.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 10y ago
    Money is not being created from thin air so why would you think there was inflation?
    - anonyfox 10y ago
      Actually, it is. States/Central Banks can print money as they wish. Go be more exact: printing isn't even necessary, money nowadays is barely more than a replicated database entry.

witty_username 10y ago

Somewhat off-topic but wouldn't it be cheaper and better to test the basic income in a country with low PPP (i.e. poor countries).

NIL8 10y ago

For a good idea of what this type of program can do to a society, take a look at the native Americans. The monthly allotment received by most only perpetuates very serious social problems. I know that most who will push for these types of programs have good intentions, but the outcome will probably prove to do more harm than good, generally speaking.

danharaj 10y ago
Yeah there's definitely nothing else to explain why Native American nations are doing so poorly. Edit: This was too snarky but also the parent comment is such a bold claim with no evidence justifying it. Counterclaim: Canada and the US have done plenty to destroy the fabric of native societies since their inception. As an example, the residential school system of Canada[1] which ended in 1996. History is so forgettable isn't it? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
andrewtbham 10y ago
I don't know about the native americans... but I agree than UBI just doesn't seem to make sense. What has always been more appealing to me than UBI is just the idea of sustainable living... i.e. people own their own houses and there is no property tax and they have very cheap renewable energy sources and maybe cheap robots to grow food. making really cheap stuff to survive just seems like a better long term plan to deal with technology than giving money away. that just devalues money causes inflation.. makes prices higher. seems to me.

choonway 10y ago

Why not universal basic housing. universal basic internet. universal basic food. universal basic computer. Make it illegal to sell them on the open market. Anything except universal basic income. You want cigarettes / alcohol? do some work on the internet. Amazon mechanical turk.

osmala 10y ago

The model selected maybe problematic. A) There are additional benefits for helping to pay rent which are income dependent. B) There are special circumstantial increases to benefits replaced by basic income, that state has to pay inorder to fill its constitutional equality requirements. For instance increases in unemployment for dependent children, expenditures for education program participation for unemployed... Now testsubjects get them by applying for them. Whats potential problem is what it takes to LOOSE them, its a risk factor on every action to earn temporarily, or taking a risky move to try to start a business. Latter causes also a high risk at the end of experiment, unless you have folded it long before end of experiment.

steakeater 10y ago

UBI is a terrible idea. Anyone who thinks that the government handing out money to everyone is a good idea needs to snap out of the propaganda machine. Those who fund you, control you. There is no way around that. When the people funding everyone is the government, and the people do nothing in return, that places huge amounts of power in the hands of a single entity, and removes all power from the people. Large companies are getting larger. There are only a couple of choices in any category, and single companies own many different markets. When you combine that with UBI, you have the government handing you a check, and then you have a choice of a couple of companies to spend that money. The difference between this world and communism is almost nothing. I have never heard of any group of people who were happy on government welfare. Whatever the supposed problem this is supposed to address, it is not a solution. People who are not working at all are not happy. If I were to guess, I would say the real problems that need to be addressed are: too many extremely large companies, often supported by laws they lobbied to create. corrupt government that has no interest in its own country population increases. I mean, many of these people proposing UBI are living in countries where they are actively increasing the population. If you have an unemployment problem, why are you increasing the population?

Ericson2314 10y ago
Wat. - UBI's lack of criteria is supposed to remove distortions. The population is minimaly incentivized. - Employers loose leverage with UBI; large companies are major employers. - Everybody loves to hate on population size, but shrinking/aging populations are dangerous for the economy. It's a much more complex problem.
- steakeater 10y ago
  You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government). In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue. I don't know what your first point means. Your last point, you are just repeating what you have read somewhere. Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not. Also stop being childish with your "wat" bullshit.

mjs7231 10y ago

I fully expect someone to claim this is completly different because of detail xyz, but this has been done before. It worked out better than expected. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...

Ericson2314 10y ago

Wow, everyone is complaining about the misleading headline rather than reading the piece. Oh, and this is the most positive non-opinion piece I've seen on UBI in a major publication, people! How's that?

shinamee 10y ago

Personally, I think this a great thing for creatives and researchers, knowing they can spend as much time as they need to create real value for people without having to think of revenue or investors profits. I heard/read Swiss denied this proposal though, what a shame.

throwaway1892 10y ago

Well, from my experience in France, most of them will stay jobless.

throwaway1892 10y ago
Still, the article make an interesting point. And their agenda is clear.

gravypod 10y ago

It's not ubi if it is not universal.

thomasfl 10y ago

Voters in Switzerland recently rejected a basic-income scheme I can't understand why the Swiss politicians wanted to ask the general public for a permission to do an experiment. How can the Swiss population be sure universal basic income will not work when no nation has yet implemented it yet across the whole population?

jobsforall 10y ago

And like all UBI experiments it will ultimately fail because UBI is essentially a form of theft. Hiding behind the money illusion doesn't fool anybody for long. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-theft-a95eeedb5aad#.1xcz4nzwk https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...

leke 10y ago

I could relate to the article. I'm currently living in Oulu, and was also working for a Nokia contractor until 2011. Unable to find work, I went back to polytechnic college for 3.5 years to update my skills and perhaps wait out the recession. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't gotten any better and my new bachelor's degree doesn't give me any advantage. There are plenty of entrepreneurs requiring people of various backgrounds, but these are generally unpaid positions. I am currently writing a web-app for a charity, and have just launched a customised wordpress site for a new business. These are of course unpaid, and like the article states, it's not worth the risk of starting my own business (being a freelancer for example) as it would mean coming off benefits completely and hoping you'll make enough to pay for everything you need to pay for. UBA would suit me great. I could become that freelancer instantly, and with no fear. That company, who's website I just launched wanted to pay me, but legally it was impossible due to the reason I just mentioned (freelancing). I'm also currently writing a language learning app, a mashup of my favourite features of DuoLingo and Memrise in my free time. Perhaps monetising that in some way may lead me out of this stagnation.

vivekd 10y ago

It seems like we can learn so little by selecting only for jobless people. The best way to do a BI test seems to me to get a random sample so we can test how it affects people in various circumstances. Selecting a specific demographic like this seems more a political move than a scientific one.

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