I will try to comment in E-prime, the sliced bread of HN today :D. In Finland, a welfare state indeed, you can quite easily slack off on the social benefits al

I will try to comment in E-prime, the sliced bread of HN today :D. In Finland, a welfare state indeed, you can quite easily slack off on the social benefits already. If you take up unemployment insurance, you can basically get 18 months of 70% of your salary after you get fired or quit. The insurance (or union membership) costs around 100 EUR a year. A lot of people I know count on this, or already take advantage of it. I see that as a quite big thing, it must drain a lot of money from somewhere if you think about big companies letting people go by big numbers, plus people in 20s or 30s going for one-year backpacking trips. The 800 EUR probably just makes it more simple for the social system to distribute the benefits. Plus some innovation karma for Finland, yay! edit: I fogot my main point: even though it feels somehow discouraging to pass money to slackers, I still don't mind paying the high taxes - I haven't found any other reason that makes Finland so nice place to live!