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Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

160 points by joeyespo 11y ago

nugget 11y ago
I'm a fan of the theory of basic income but it seems incompatible with an open border/immigration policy. Given how many refugees are already migrating into Europe (many for economic reasons), how would a basic income change the incentives and migration patterns even further?
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Why do you see it as different from any other positive thing about a country? Good educational and job opportunities, lack of pollution, effective healthcare and so on, your children not having bombs dropped on them, pretty much anything that makes a country better for the people who live there will make it more attractive to immigrants.
  - nugget 11y ago
    Basic income would become a part of the whole picture, for sure. But take Norway as an example: 5 million people and around a trillion dollars in sovereign wealth, which could yield ~ $8k per person (man, woman, and child) per year in perpetuity. All Norwegian citizens now own a share of ''Norway Inc'' as their birthright and receive a healthy dividend. Now 5 million people - that isn't a lot, and it's easy to imagine that over a generation, at least another 5 million immigrants would be interested in migrating. Now we're at 10 million people and our benefit is cut in half. If we're Norwegians, does the entitlement to basic income make us a little more defensive and nationalistic than we otherwise would be? It seems that, while many forces in Europe for decades have successfully pushed towards more open borders and more flexible immigration policies (ultimately spurring GDP growth), the transition to a basic income economy (if it occurs before the developing world catches up to the west) could act as a strong headwind in the other direction.
    - warfangle 11y ago
      On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. So are they going to contribute as much to the sovereign wealth that funds the basic income as the citizens? And is the basic income extended to guest workers / temporary residents as well as citizens? I would think it would be limited to citizens. So you would actually have immigrants contributing to funding basic income without benefiting from it until they obtain citizenship.
      - CountSessine 11y ago
        On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. This is really the core assumption behind Marxism; perhaps not so much the sclerotic centrally-planned dictatorship of the proletariat 'Marxism' we saw in the 20th century as the idealized communal society that Marx envisioned, but un-monetized self-motivation is still required for either. Does that make it wrong? I don't think so; but at least we should think carefully about how we arrange incentives for work in our shining city on the hill. Even if most people aren't working, we still need for that motivated and creative minority to be putting in some hours and to be happy about it.
        istjohn 11y ago
        Un-monetized self-motivation is not required, here. They would be have the opportunity to earn above and beyond the basic income. It's not Marxist or communal at all. We are not talking about abolishing work for pay. We are simply talking about an un-earned payment in addition to whatever they earn in conventional jobs.
        CountSessine 11y ago
        The previous poster made the point, On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. I don't think that it's completely relevant to the BI debate, but what if everyone actually did just decide to sit around doing nothing?
  - chc 11y ago
    I think the fear is that it will disproportionately attract people who are a net drag on society. People being born into a society will show a wide range of personality types and can be molded further by society into what it needs, but people who move to a country specifically for a basic income might tend to be pathological cases.
    - beat 11y ago
      Nobody who is so lazy that they won't work a job is going to go through all the challenges of legal immigration just for welfare. It's a basic logic issue.
      - grecy 11y ago
        Having gone through immigration myself (and still working on citizenship 7 years later...) I agree 100%. The process is extremely long and difficult, and while I persevered, my brother who is an Engineer gave up because it was too much hassle.
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    Why do you see it as different from any other positive thing about a country? All properties of a country are either intensive or extensive of migrants and of existing citizens. Intensive properties would be nice weather and a rich history. Extensive properties are things like public healthcare, public schools, and a civil society. Basic income is no different than other extensive properties; all of these are affected by the culture of and the wealth generated by the country's citizens. Immigration, by changing the properties of the citizenry, will affect all extensive properties of a country, positively or negatively.
- vitalysh 11y ago
  Maybe basic income for citizens only?
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Basic income wouldn't pay out to everybody: the obvious example is that it wouldn't be paid to people in country on tourist visas. Full citizens obviously would get it. Where to draw the line between those two determines how generous you want to be. Most immigrants / refugees I know would be happy not receiving benefits such as basic income as long their children get all the benefits and opportunities that natives do.
  - dageshi 11y ago
    Bear in mind there are 500 million eligible persons within the EU that may move to Finland if they choose. Once there they cannot legally be treated any differently to a Finnish native.
    - vitalysh 11y ago
      Not really true, if you move to Finland as EU citizen, you won't get Finnish social security right away. You have to work here to apply for it.
      - dageshi 11y ago
        How would that work in the case of an unconditional basic income though? If you're not going to have a pre-requisite for native Finnish people to have had a job in order to receive it, can you have a pre-requisite for EU nationals to have a job before they can claim?
        Xixi 11y ago
        The concept you are looking for is that of residency: because you are physically in a country doesn't mean you are a resident of that country. There are rules of residency even within the EU.
        dwiel 11y ago
        I'm not sure, but perhaps it is similar to local voting rights? Do tourists get the right to vote in local elections, or do they have to prove to have lived there for some length of time first?
- acgourley 11y ago
  Isn't it the same today for Finland? They have extensive social benefits already, and this plan is mostly just a restructuring of the current wealth redistribution schemes in place. I assume you only give BI benefits to full residents.
- DonaldFisk 11y ago
  That isn't a problem if it's only available to citizens of the country which introduces it. (It's sometimes called Citizen's Income.) It's usually intended to replace benefits so it would act as a disincentive to would-be migrants.
  - dageshi 11y ago
    Because Finland is in the EU you would have to apply to all EU citizens moving to Finland and pretty much all EU citizens (500 odd million) are legally allowed too move to Finland if they choose too. You're correct that it wouldn't have to apply to anyone outside of the EU.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  > I'm a fan of the theory of basic income but it seems incompatible with an open border/immigration policy. No it isn't. It is very simple to say "Green Card (no basic income) -> Citizenship (basic income) transition depends on N years of taxes paid on time with a dollar value greater than 25 hours/week at minimum wage (or some equivalent proxy value)."
  - notahacker 11y ago
    It's very simple and almost certainly a practical necessary to do this, but changing the logic behind the programme to "nobody in this country should have to work" to "only foreign-born people in this country should have to work" rather undermines the idealism of the whole project... Introducing a work requirement - even if only for some people - is of course rather more compatible with the traditional welfare state view that entitlement to state handouts should be linked to evidence of willingness to contribute to society through paid work. In which case, why not go the whole hog and not pay out to citizens that don't need the money enough to be prepared to look for work?
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      You need some sort of immigration control. No country has the wealth to support 100% of the human population of the world. The work requirement seems the fairest way to handle it to me.
xlayn 11y ago
This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest. From wikipedia: "Governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities." ... "A nation's tax system is often a reflection of its communal values and the values of those in current political power. " [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax#Purposes_and_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax#Purposes_and_effects edit: extend comment and provide support
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Pacifying the public through "bread and circuses"[1] has been a goal of governments for at least 2000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
- ones_and_zeros 11y ago
  Taxes are whatever the electorate want them to be. Plus the modern day idea of taxes is relatively new... I mean, income tax in the US is barely 100 years old. The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause, so really taxes provide for the general welfare (food, shelter, etc), and a basic income covers all of the general welfare bases without all of the overhead of separate agencies and regulations.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause No, it rides on the 16th amendment which explicitly authorized income taxes. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
    - ones_and_zeros 11y ago
      No, the US gov't was able to set taxes well well before the 16th Amendment, which as you point out, is only for income taxes. The US gov't had all sorts of taxes before the 16th Amendment and the justification for that as outlined in the US Constitution is for the general welfare.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause
vinceguidry 11y ago
I'm cautiously enthusiastic about basic income. I want to believe that it really can change everything, until that nagging doubt of "but human nature just doesn't work that way!" inevitably kills the buzz. The idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital could rise out of nowhere and carry us all into a new age. But we don't need to actually implement basic income in order to test that out. Plenty of people already receive checks from the government every month that they live on, in exchange for no real work responsibilities. Like, a whole lot of people. There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. Not to belittle them and their abilities, but there isn't. Just about everything that we consider a real advance comes from people working the system that exists using their own ingenuity, not from people allowed to escape the system by providing them an inalienable source of income. Modern Western societies are rich enough that smart, motivated individuals can mostly rise to the level of their own ability. To do better than that we need to build a better society, not just make the one we have richer. Basic income could be an important step, but it's only one step.
- nilkn 11y ago
  > There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. Could you clarify which people specifically you're talking about? I'm not trying to disagree with you. It's just that the main examples I'm thinking of are retired folks receiving social security and people with disabilities.
  - jerf 11y ago
    Many people are on physical disability who could still be doing most of the things that basic income is supposed to enable. To the extent that it limits them in some specific ways, if the basic income elevator pitch is correct, one would think that it would make what they can do even more likely to come out. This is a very interesting point I hadn't thought of, worthy of some thought. (And that's all I'm saying. I haven't had the thought time yet.)
codyb 11y ago
As I've been growing up I've realized increasing population, automation, and globalization are going to force some sort of change in how we distribute wealth and resources in nations, and in the world. The study of the town in Canada is a favorite of mine. The results are staggering and nearly immediate. Why we haven't moved towards solutions which in the long run may actually save us money through better educated and less stressed citizens sooner is an interesting thing to think about to me. I've never tried to do the math though, it does get expensive quick.
cmdkeen 11y ago
This is all tied up in the Scottish independence debate, a "once in a generation vote" which is set to be replayed in the next few years because the "wrong" outcome happened. The economic argument for independence has collapsed since, especially with the collapse in the price of oil. That given this background the article could say things like there being benefits to the health system from "ending poverty" given the article also took savings from not having pay benefits any more sums up this approach. The 60% of the median calculation used for the poverty* line requires ~£10k annual income, so if you don't have any children this payment would still put you firmly below the poverty line if you didn't / chose not to work. A basic citizen income is incredibly expensive and essentially a massive benefit to the richer classes. * That's leaving aside issues with absolute v relative poverty rates
- redblacktree 11y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by this? > A basic citizen income is incredibly expensive and essentially a massive benefit to the richer classes. How does it benefit the rich in particular?
- danieltillett 11y ago
  I can't believe how close Scotland came to that bullet. How are the independence camp able to have any credibility now?
mschuster91 11y ago
I'm worried if this will provide an incentive to rent hikes - landlords can easily raise rents by pointing out that everyone has additional 800€ per month to spend.
- habosa 11y ago
  That would require collusion between landlords. Otherwise one landlords rent hike of $800 would be countered by another one who is only raising the rent by $750 ... etc until you get back to logical market pricing. Yes some landlords would definitely try it, but I think they'd be quickly corrected by the market.
  - kaybe 11y ago
    I think it would depend on the level of demand. Just look at San Francisco..
- Sharlin 11y ago
  It wouldn't - and couldn't - work like that: where would the extra 5M * 800€ come from? Basically everyone would get the 800€ added to their gross income, but income tax progression would be simultaneously steepened so that in practice middle and high-income individuals would not see a change in their net income. For low-income households Finland already has a housing allowance system. It would be one of the benefits probably obsoleted by basic income (though there are good yet-unanswered questions on eg. how to handle geographical differences in rent levels).
- frankus 11y ago
  Normally higher income would spur housing construction (if the cost of construction is mostly in the cost of the labor/materials), but in areas where land is naturally or artificially scarce (through exclusionary zoning and arduous "process"), it's likely prices would just rise to compensate.
ck2 11y ago
Yes it will guarantee housing prices for rent rise to the guaranteed income. Just like college prices magically rise to the amount of available loans.
- habosa 11y ago
  That is different. The college market is nothing like the housing market. There is no way to say "College A and B are exactly the same merit but College B costs more, so I will choose College A". So many people do not make college decisions based on price (besides the broader decision of private university vs public university vs community college). With rent is is different. If a landlord tries to change the price of an apartment because tenants have more money, people will look for another apartment immediately. Unless they collude or there is a shortage of apartments, the pricing should stay sane.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Why? It doesn't change supply, and I don't think it would have much of an effect on demand, either -- it's too cold for Finland to have much of a homeless population.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    When people are able to pay more, businesses charge more. Also, demand is affected, because people will have the means to buy more, at least until inflation kicks in.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  There's people willing to take cheaper and shittier accommodation in return for extra spending money. Like, community college prices haven't risen top cap out against loan amounts.
rbrogan 11y ago
Would anyone, personally, take something like this as an opportunity to do open source work and/or research projects? Or do you feel like you want/need money as a motivator to be your most productive and a way to keep score in the game?
- manyoso 11y ago
  Yes, I would. And frankly that is a feature not a bug! It would allow people to contribute to the economy in ways that are self-motivating and not for fear of starving. And well motivated people do better work and contribute more which has been empirically validated and also common sense.
- ebfe 11y ago
  Money, without a doubt. I wouldn't do a day of work in my life if it didn't carry personal gain.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  I definitely would, and would particularly use it as a way to spend a lot more time preparing myself to enter a PhD program.
- JDiculous 11y ago
  Most definitely. I feel that there are much more important and interesting problems that I'd rather be tackling than my day to day work, but most of them pay significantly less (eg. policy issues, cancer, curing aging, poverty, etc). Not to mention I love art and creativity. I don't care about money. To me, time is the most valuable thing that money buys (aside from food/shelter). I make money so that I can retire and have the freedom to work on what I want rather than what an employer or boss orders me to. Basic income would give me complete freedom of time, thus allowing me to retire right now and do 100% what I want to do.
digitalsurgeon 11y ago
Finland is in very early stages of "just thinking about it". it probably will not be implemented. International media can not even get this story about a country in Europe right. Imagine how bad or incorrect their news reporting about "other" countries is. source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/8422295 http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/...
venomsnake 11y ago
It will fail. Big time. Not on ideology, but on one simple term - basic income can be used only with strong import tariffs - otherwise it becomes a huge capital outflow out of the country.
- Joof 11y ago
  Makes sense, but I simply don't have the background to agree with you.
andrewclunn 11y ago
The conflation of arguments against wealth redistribution and arguments against over regulation or publicly managed entitlement services is everywhere. If successful then socialists and union leaders might find themselves at odds with one another. There would then be a real practical distinction between left libertarians and right libertarians. Issues of unemployment and minimum wage will become quaint as outdated means of dealing with poverty and inequality... Or it will fail miserably.
nsxwolf 11y ago
I suspect once people's basic needs are satisfied with the basic income, they will spend whatever discretionary income they have on VR porn and legal marijuana, and just do that for the rest of their lives.
frankus 11y ago
"Businesses would have to raise wages to above the living wage to attract people to what are currently lower-paid jobs – assuming that means they will have to pay living wage + 5%" I could see the opposite happen. Assuming you also did away with minimum wages, people could engage in as much or as little casual employment as they wanted to, because they would have their basic income to cover essentials. Not unlike many US teenagers who pick up a summer job for spending money rather than for survival.
petke 11y ago
I'm from Finland and the only place I keep hearing about this "plan" is from foreign media. Its just a experimental study. I'd be surprised if anything came out of it. Finland is not some utopia where magical things happen. We are in a long recession and the govt is cutting social benefits left and right. This thing is a fantasy only foreign media takes seriously.
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  Denmark is also worried about growth. But they have started a program to reduce hours at some select hospitals - to see if they could convert some of the GDP growth into higher quality of life for those workers. And I read that Sweden has been trying a similar program - reducing working hours at some public institutions in order to convert the past decade's GDP growth into a better life. Really, a program for basic income is neither Utopian nor magical - it is just a reasonable thing to try.
rm445 11y ago
Lots of comments and everyone is debating based on their intuition. Basic income is a fascinating idea, but it seems like advocates would love to see a huge place like the USA commit and pile in, when a small trial run would be much more sensible. Finland would be a fantastic place to trial basic income. It's a rich sovereign nation with a population of under 6 million, a GDP of less than a quarter of a $trillion, and close cultural ties with lots of other rich countries. If basic income were the worst thing to ever happen and people were dying in the streets, friendly neighbours could bail the country out. And if all went well, it could be a nice template for larger countries to safely try. Ideally other countries where the idea has support should offer Finland a guarantee of support-if-needed in return for going first.
- drawkbox 11y ago
  Trying it in decimated cities like Detroit would also be interesting.
jfaucett 11y ago
Could an economist weigh in on this? Naively, this seems ridiculously expensive to me. If you wanted to eradicate poverty with this policy, say pay everyone 60% of the mean income, that means the gov't will need to raise taxes by some amount X, in order to provide a corresponding 10% of mean earnings to every member of the population. If you do the quick math for a 5% value of X that would mean an increase in taxes of 30% (on top of the already existing education, national security, health care taxes), so taxes could easily approach 60% or more, unless it is feasible to have a very small value for X mapping onto 10% mean income increase... Anyway, I'm not an economist and would very much like to hear what one has to say about this idea, because it does seem to good to be true.
- istjohn 11y ago
  Read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-aren... The economists Milton Friedman and Friederich Hayek both argued for a basic income.
1024core 11y ago
Why wouldn't inflation swell up to soak up the UBI? If I'm a landlord in a poor(er) area of town, charging $500/mo for an apartment, and UBI is $1000/mo, then why shouldn't I raise my rent to, say $1000/mo because my tenants now have extra money? (Ignore rent-control for now).
- bdamm 11y ago
  Indeed this would seem to be the case. I don't know how well this translates to a country like Finland, where there are a lot of social programs/controls in place already. I would really like to see a strong analysis of the inflation consequences of UBI.
- arebop 11y ago
  Inflation is generally believed to be caused by an imbalance between the quantity of money and the goods & services in the market. BI per se doesn't change the money supply; it can be done by redistribution of existing money rather than debasing the currency.
  - 1024core 11y ago
    I would disagree. If, for example, I take $1B each from every billionaire in the SV (for a total of, say, $20B) and gave each resident of SV (say, 2M residents) an extra $10,000, won't the prices go up? People will go on a spending spree, buying up TVs and cars and games, driving up their prices? There is a reason why gas costs more in SF than in, say, San Mateo.
    - arebop 11y ago
      Then perhaps TV prices will go up, but jet prices will go down. That sort of mixed change in prices is not consistent with the usual definitions of "inflation." Do you still like your argument when you think about quartiles rather than comparing the top 20 data points against the bottom 2 million? I think it's hard for most people to trust their intuitions about the spending habits of billionaires.
- 11y ago
Animats 11y ago
The US had this from the 1935 to 1996 - a broad welfare program. During the first Great Depression, the US was the employer of last resort, with the WPA hiring millions of people to do public works. During WWII, there was a labor shortage, and that ended. After the war, large public housing projects were built. There were people who spent much of their lives on welfare. Until the Reagan years, there were very few homeless people. But there were a lot of people who were just warehoused in public housing for their whole lives. Most of them black. That didn't work.[1] The UK did something similar, "the dole", until the 1980s under Thatcher. That, too, produced a large non-working population. We have a productive enough society to pay for welfare. But it generates a huge, useless, and troublesome underclass. [1] http://ced.berkeley.edu/bpj/2013/06/the-robert-taylor-homes-failure-of-public-housing/ http://ced.berkeley.edu/bpj/2013/06/the-robert-taylor-homes-...
- manyoso 11y ago
  No, we did not. Again, that welfare program is very different from the basic income described here in many ways. Those differences are crucial to understanding the benefits of a basic income in comparison to the broad welfare program you reference. One such difference being that everyone in a society gets the basic income with no strings attached meaning that there is no perverse incentive not to work. With a basic income people are free to work and gain additional income on top of the basic income and to do so for whatever motivations best inspire them free from the fear of starving.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    What is the evidence with regards to the benefit or detriment of the fear of starving?
    - manyoso 11y ago
      I can't cite any studies, but I do remember having heard of many studies indicating well motivated employees are more productive and happy employees are more productive. As for whether the fear of starving is 'good motivation' I would say that personally speaking it is definitely not what inspires my best work. Mileage probably varies quite a bit.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Fun to see an article here from Business for Scotland, a pro-Scottish independence group.
Mz 11y ago
I am really skeptical. My understanding is that every Utopian scheme to provide equally for all citizens without expecting them to work ended up having to ultimately declare "You don't work, you don't eat." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_... This is what Lenin ultimately declared after The Russian Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution In a nutshell, Russian communism was supposed to be something that benefited the commoners -- the workers -- and ultimately it did not accomplish its goal. Russian communism is kind of a famous failure of this sort of thing. Russia ended up staying rather poor for a long time. I see no reason to believe that it works better in an automated society where we increasingly face shortages of enough people who are adequately skilled at administering the automated tech. Historically, societies dependent upon a complex, educated bureaucracy to make their system work went through cycles of failing and resurging, then failing again. If we have no means to motivate people to get educated enough to run the fancy automated tech and the tech upon which our wealth depends dies, then the wealth goes away and the society built upon it ends suddenly and catastrophically. I am extremely skeptical.
benten10 11y ago
Chris Blattman quotes this really nice research that says that employment by itself does not explain inclusiveness. Link: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/identifying-barriers-to-muslim-integration-in-france.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/ide... Here's the money quote (posted elsewhere in the thread too): >Here is Verwimp: >Belgium has a very elaborate welfare state. All citizens have health coverage, schools and universities charge no or few fees, child benefits, unemployment benefits, pensions, are all in place. But this comes at a cost of a closed labour market, meaning a labour system that heavily protects those who are in, but makes entry for newcomers very difficult. >It does not seem to be poverty, but exclusion. Philip wrote to me: >One of my students from African origin, graduating from our MA program, told me (before the Paris attacks) « it is easier to get unemployment benefits in Belgium than to get a job ». He decided to move to Canada. That summarises it. Migrants and their families have full access to the allocations of the welfare state, but face daunting challenges when they want to get ahead in life. >…I am not looking at individual factors to join IS, as young adults across European cities many share similar reasons, but for ‘structural’ factors that make the situation different in some countries compared to others.
gwright 11y ago
> If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from Is that really what basic income is all about? I'm sure there are more ways to look at this but broadly speaking I see two types of arguments for basic income being made: 1) Unconditional provision for basic necessities (food, shelter, clothing, health care, education) in the absence of all other income. 2) Administrative simplification of core assistance programs such that a beneficiary could combine their basic income with the income derived from a basic job (for example, entry level full time position) and be able to provide for their own basic necessities. In scenario 1) there is assumption that individuals have no responsibility to provide for themselves. In scenario 2) there is an assumption that individuals do have a responsibility to provide for themselves but that basic assistance will provide a basic level of security and assistance to make things easier. I find the idea of basic income very interesting from an efficiency point of view (best way to deliver assistance) but I'm wary about the disencentives towards personal responsibility that might arise.
known 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign... can/will provide impetus to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
known 11y ago
I appreciate Finland for NOT pretending to fix social welfare

160 points by joeyespo 11y ago

I'm a fan of the theory of basic income but it seems incompatible with an open border/immigration policy. Given how many refugees are already migrating into Europe (many for economic reasons), how would a basic income change the incentives and migration patterns even further?

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Why do you see it as different from any other positive thing about a country? Good educational and job opportunities, lack of pollution, effective healthcare and so on, your children not having bombs dropped on them, pretty much anything that makes a country better for the people who live there will make it more attractive to immigrants.
- nugget 11y ago
  Basic income would become a part of the whole picture, for sure. But take Norway as an example: 5 million people and around a trillion dollars in sovereign wealth, which could yield ~ $8k per person (man, woman, and child) per year in perpetuity. All Norwegian citizens now own a share of ''Norway Inc'' as their birthright and receive a healthy dividend. Now 5 million people - that isn't a lot, and it's easy to imagine that over a generation, at least another 5 million immigrants would be interested in migrating. Now we're at 10 million people and our benefit is cut in half. If we're Norwegians, does the entitlement to basic income make us a little more defensive and nationalistic than we otherwise would be? It seems that, while many forces in Europe for decades have successfully pushed towards more open borders and more flexible immigration policies (ultimately spurring GDP growth), the transition to a basic income economy (if it occurs before the developing world catches up to the west) could act as a strong headwind in the other direction.
  - warfangle 11y ago
    On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. So are they going to contribute as much to the sovereign wealth that funds the basic income as the citizens? And is the basic income extended to guest workers / temporary residents as well as citizens? I would think it would be limited to citizens. So you would actually have immigrants contributing to funding basic income without benefiting from it until they obtain citizenship.
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. This is really the core assumption behind Marxism; perhaps not so much the sclerotic centrally-planned dictatorship of the proletariat 'Marxism' we saw in the 20th century as the idealized communal society that Marx envisioned, but un-monetized self-motivation is still required for either. Does that make it wrong? I don't think so; but at least we should think carefully about how we arrange incentives for work in our shining city on the hill. Even if most people aren't working, we still need for that motivated and creative minority to be putting in some hours and to be happy about it.
      - istjohn 11y ago
        Un-monetized self-motivation is not required, here. They would be have the opportunity to earn above and beyond the basic income. It's not Marxist or communal at all. We are not talking about abolishing work for pay. We are simply talking about an un-earned payment in addition to whatever they earn in conventional jobs.
        CountSessine 11y ago
        The previous poster made the point, On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. I don't think that it's completely relevant to the BI debate, but what if everyone actually did just decide to sit around doing nothing?
- chc 11y ago
  I think the fear is that it will disproportionately attract people who are a net drag on society. People being born into a society will show a wide range of personality types and can be molded further by society into what it needs, but people who move to a country specifically for a basic income might tend to be pathological cases.
  - beat 11y ago
    Nobody who is so lazy that they won't work a job is going to go through all the challenges of legal immigration just for welfare. It's a basic logic issue.
    - grecy 11y ago
      Having gone through immigration myself (and still working on citizenship 7 years later...) I agree 100%. The process is extremely long and difficult, and while I persevered, my brother who is an Engineer gave up because it was too much hassle.
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Why do you see it as different from any other positive thing about a country? All properties of a country are either intensive or extensive of migrants and of existing citizens. Intensive properties would be nice weather and a rich history. Extensive properties are things like public healthcare, public schools, and a civil society. Basic income is no different than other extensive properties; all of these are affected by the culture of and the wealth generated by the country's citizens. Immigration, by changing the properties of the citizenry, will affect all extensive properties of a country, positively or negatively.
vitalysh 11y ago
Maybe basic income for citizens only?
bryanlarsen 11y ago
Basic income wouldn't pay out to everybody: the obvious example is that it wouldn't be paid to people in country on tourist visas. Full citizens obviously would get it. Where to draw the line between those two determines how generous you want to be. Most immigrants / refugees I know would be happy not receiving benefits such as basic income as long their children get all the benefits and opportunities that natives do.
- dageshi 11y ago
  Bear in mind there are 500 million eligible persons within the EU that may move to Finland if they choose. Once there they cannot legally be treated any differently to a Finnish native.
  - vitalysh 11y ago
    Not really true, if you move to Finland as EU citizen, you won't get Finnish social security right away. You have to work here to apply for it.
    - dageshi 11y ago
      How would that work in the case of an unconditional basic income though? If you're not going to have a pre-requisite for native Finnish people to have had a job in order to receive it, can you have a pre-requisite for EU nationals to have a job before they can claim?
      - Xixi 11y ago
        The concept you are looking for is that of residency: because you are physically in a country doesn't mean you are a resident of that country. There are rules of residency even within the EU.
        dwiel 11y ago
        I'm not sure, but perhaps it is similar to local voting rights? Do tourists get the right to vote in local elections, or do they have to prove to have lived there for some length of time first?
acgourley 11y ago
Isn't it the same today for Finland? They have extensive social benefits already, and this plan is mostly just a restructuring of the current wealth redistribution schemes in place. I assume you only give BI benefits to full residents.
DonaldFisk 11y ago
That isn't a problem if it's only available to citizens of the country which introduces it. (It's sometimes called Citizen's Income.) It's usually intended to replace benefits so it would act as a disincentive to would-be migrants.
- dageshi 11y ago
  Because Finland is in the EU you would have to apply to all EU citizens moving to Finland and pretty much all EU citizens (500 odd million) are legally allowed too move to Finland if they choose too. You're correct that it wouldn't have to apply to anyone outside of the EU.
fweespeech 11y ago
> I'm a fan of the theory of basic income but it seems incompatible with an open border/immigration policy. No it isn't. It is very simple to say "Green Card (no basic income) -> Citizenship (basic income) transition depends on N years of taxes paid on time with a dollar value greater than 25 hours/week at minimum wage (or some equivalent proxy value)."
- notahacker 11y ago
  It's very simple and almost certainly a practical necessary to do this, but changing the logic behind the programme to "nobody in this country should have to work" to "only foreign-born people in this country should have to work" rather undermines the idealism of the whole project... Introducing a work requirement - even if only for some people - is of course rather more compatible with the traditional welfare state view that entitlement to state handouts should be linked to evidence of willingness to contribute to society through paid work. In which case, why not go the whole hog and not pay out to citizens that don't need the money enough to be prepared to look for work?
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    You need some sort of immigration control. No country has the wealth to support 100% of the human population of the world. The work requirement seems the fairest way to handle it to me.

xlayn 11y ago

This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest. From wikipedia: "Governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities." ... "A nation's tax system is often a reflection of its communal values and the values of those in current political power. " [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax#Purposes_and_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax#Purposes_and_effects edit: extend comment and provide support

bryanlarsen 11y ago
Pacifying the public through "bread and circuses"[1] has been a goal of governments for at least 2000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
ones_and_zeros 11y ago
Taxes are whatever the electorate want them to be. Plus the modern day idea of taxes is relatively new... I mean, income tax in the US is barely 100 years old. The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause, so really taxes provide for the general welfare (food, shelter, etc), and a basic income covers all of the general welfare bases without all of the overhead of separate agencies and regulations.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause No, it rides on the 16th amendment which explicitly authorized income taxes. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
  - ones_and_zeros 11y ago
    No, the US gov't was able to set taxes well well before the 16th Amendment, which as you point out, is only for income taxes. The US gov't had all sorts of taxes before the 16th Amendment and the justification for that as outlined in the US Constitution is for the general welfare.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause

vinceguidry 11y ago

I'm cautiously enthusiastic about basic income. I want to believe that it really can change everything, until that nagging doubt of "but human nature just doesn't work that way!" inevitably kills the buzz. The idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital could rise out of nowhere and carry us all into a new age. But we don't need to actually implement basic income in order to test that out. Plenty of people already receive checks from the government every month that they live on, in exchange for no real work responsibilities. Like, a whole lot of people. There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. Not to belittle them and their abilities, but there isn't. Just about everything that we consider a real advance comes from people working the system that exists using their own ingenuity, not from people allowed to escape the system by providing them an inalienable source of income. Modern Western societies are rich enough that smart, motivated individuals can mostly rise to the level of their own ability. To do better than that we need to build a better society, not just make the one we have richer. Basic income could be an important step, but it's only one step.

nilkn 11y ago
> There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. Could you clarify which people specifically you're talking about? I'm not trying to disagree with you. It's just that the main examples I'm thinking of are retired folks receiving social security and people with disabilities.
- jerf 11y ago
  Many people are on physical disability who could still be doing most of the things that basic income is supposed to enable. To the extent that it limits them in some specific ways, if the basic income elevator pitch is correct, one would think that it would make what they can do even more likely to come out. This is a very interesting point I hadn't thought of, worthy of some thought. (And that's all I'm saying. I haven't had the thought time yet.)

codyb 11y ago

As I've been growing up I've realized increasing population, automation, and globalization are going to force some sort of change in how we distribute wealth and resources in nations, and in the world. The study of the town in Canada is a favorite of mine. The results are staggering and nearly immediate. Why we haven't moved towards solutions which in the long run may actually save us money through better educated and less stressed citizens sooner is an interesting thing to think about to me. I've never tried to do the math though, it does get expensive quick.

cmdkeen 11y ago

This is all tied up in the Scottish independence debate, a "once in a generation vote" which is set to be replayed in the next few years because the "wrong" outcome happened. The economic argument for independence has collapsed since, especially with the collapse in the price of oil. That given this background the article could say things like there being benefits to the health system from "ending poverty" given the article also took savings from not having pay benefits any more sums up this approach. The 60% of the median calculation used for the poverty* line requires ~£10k annual income, so if you don't have any children this payment would still put you firmly below the poverty line if you didn't / chose not to work. A basic citizen income is incredibly expensive and essentially a massive benefit to the richer classes. * That's leaving aside issues with absolute v relative poverty rates

redblacktree 11y ago
Could you explain what you mean by this? > A basic citizen income is incredibly expensive and essentially a massive benefit to the richer classes. How does it benefit the rich in particular?
danieltillett 11y ago
I can't believe how close Scotland came to that bullet. How are the independence camp able to have any credibility now?

mschuster91 11y ago

I'm worried if this will provide an incentive to rent hikes - landlords can easily raise rents by pointing out that everyone has additional 800€ per month to spend.

habosa 11y ago
That would require collusion between landlords. Otherwise one landlords rent hike of $800 would be countered by another one who is only raising the rent by $750 ... etc until you get back to logical market pricing. Yes some landlords would definitely try it, but I think they'd be quickly corrected by the market.
- kaybe 11y ago
  I think it would depend on the level of demand. Just look at San Francisco..
Sharlin 11y ago
It wouldn't - and couldn't - work like that: where would the extra 5M * 800€ come from? Basically everyone would get the 800€ added to their gross income, but income tax progression would be simultaneously steepened so that in practice middle and high-income individuals would not see a change in their net income. For low-income households Finland already has a housing allowance system. It would be one of the benefits probably obsoleted by basic income (though there are good yet-unanswered questions on eg. how to handle geographical differences in rent levels).
frankus 11y ago
Normally higher income would spur housing construction (if the cost of construction is mostly in the cost of the labor/materials), but in areas where land is naturally or artificially scarce (through exclusionary zoning and arduous "process"), it's likely prices would just rise to compensate.

ck2 11y ago

Yes it will guarantee housing prices for rent rise to the guaranteed income. Just like college prices magically rise to the amount of available loans.

habosa 11y ago
That is different. The college market is nothing like the housing market. There is no way to say "College A and B are exactly the same merit but College B costs more, so I will choose College A". So many people do not make college decisions based on price (besides the broader decision of private university vs public university vs community college). With rent is is different. If a landlord tries to change the price of an apartment because tenants have more money, people will look for another apartment immediately. Unless they collude or there is a shortage of apartments, the pricing should stay sane.
bryanlarsen 11y ago
Why? It doesn't change supply, and I don't think it would have much of an effect on demand, either -- it's too cold for Finland to have much of a homeless population.
- Natsu 11y ago
  When people are able to pay more, businesses charge more. Also, demand is affected, because people will have the means to buy more, at least until inflation kicks in.
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
There's people willing to take cheaper and shittier accommodation in return for extra spending money. Like, community college prices haven't risen top cap out against loan amounts.

rbrogan 11y ago

Would anyone, personally, take something like this as an opportunity to do open source work and/or research projects? Or do you feel like you want/need money as a motivator to be your most productive and a way to keep score in the game?

manyoso 11y ago
Yes, I would. And frankly that is a feature not a bug! It would allow people to contribute to the economy in ways that are self-motivating and not for fear of starving. And well motivated people do better work and contribute more which has been empirically validated and also common sense.
ebfe 11y ago
Money, without a doubt. I wouldn't do a day of work in my life if it didn't carry personal gain.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
I definitely would, and would particularly use it as a way to spend a lot more time preparing myself to enter a PhD program.
JDiculous 11y ago
Most definitely. I feel that there are much more important and interesting problems that I'd rather be tackling than my day to day work, but most of them pay significantly less (eg. policy issues, cancer, curing aging, poverty, etc). Not to mention I love art and creativity. I don't care about money. To me, time is the most valuable thing that money buys (aside from food/shelter). I make money so that I can retire and have the freedom to work on what I want rather than what an employer or boss orders me to. Basic income would give me complete freedom of time, thus allowing me to retire right now and do 100% what I want to do.

digitalsurgeon 11y ago

Finland is in very early stages of "just thinking about it". it probably will not be implemented. International media can not even get this story about a country in Europe right. Imagine how bad or incorrect their news reporting about "other" countries is. source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/8422295 http://yle.fi/uutiset/kela_to_prepare_basic_income_proposal/...

venomsnake 11y ago

It will fail. Big time. Not on ideology, but on one simple term - basic income can be used only with strong import tariffs - otherwise it becomes a huge capital outflow out of the country.

Joof 11y ago
Makes sense, but I simply don't have the background to agree with you.

andrewclunn 11y ago

The conflation of arguments against wealth redistribution and arguments against over regulation or publicly managed entitlement services is everywhere. If successful then socialists and union leaders might find themselves at odds with one another. There would then be a real practical distinction between left libertarians and right libertarians. Issues of unemployment and minimum wage will become quaint as outdated means of dealing with poverty and inequality... Or it will fail miserably.

nsxwolf 11y ago

I suspect once people's basic needs are satisfied with the basic income, they will spend whatever discretionary income they have on VR porn and legal marijuana, and just do that for the rest of their lives.

frankus 11y ago

"Businesses would have to raise wages to above the living wage to attract people to what are currently lower-paid jobs – assuming that means they will have to pay living wage + 5%" I could see the opposite happen. Assuming you also did away with minimum wages, people could engage in as much or as little casual employment as they wanted to, because they would have their basic income to cover essentials. Not unlike many US teenagers who pick up a summer job for spending money rather than for survival.

petke 11y ago

I'm from Finland and the only place I keep hearing about this "plan" is from foreign media. Its just a experimental study. I'd be surprised if anything came out of it. Finland is not some utopia where magical things happen. We are in a long recession and the govt is cutting social benefits left and right. This thing is a fantasy only foreign media takes seriously.

MrTonyD 11y ago
Denmark is also worried about growth. But they have started a program to reduce hours at some select hospitals - to see if they could convert some of the GDP growth into higher quality of life for those workers. And I read that Sweden has been trying a similar program - reducing working hours at some public institutions in order to convert the past decade's GDP growth into a better life. Really, a program for basic income is neither Utopian nor magical - it is just a reasonable thing to try.

rm445 11y ago

Lots of comments and everyone is debating based on their intuition. Basic income is a fascinating idea, but it seems like advocates would love to see a huge place like the USA commit and pile in, when a small trial run would be much more sensible. Finland would be a fantastic place to trial basic income. It's a rich sovereign nation with a population of under 6 million, a GDP of less than a quarter of a $trillion, and close cultural ties with lots of other rich countries. If basic income were the worst thing to ever happen and people were dying in the streets, friendly neighbours could bail the country out. And if all went well, it could be a nice template for larger countries to safely try. Ideally other countries where the idea has support should offer Finland a guarantee of support-if-needed in return for going first.

drawkbox 11y ago
Trying it in decimated cities like Detroit would also be interesting.

jfaucett 11y ago

Could an economist weigh in on this? Naively, this seems ridiculously expensive to me. If you wanted to eradicate poverty with this policy, say pay everyone 60% of the mean income, that means the gov't will need to raise taxes by some amount X, in order to provide a corresponding 10% of mean earnings to every member of the population. If you do the quick math for a 5% value of X that would mean an increase in taxes of 30% (on top of the already existing education, national security, health care taxes), so taxes could easily approach 60% or more, unless it is feasible to have a very small value for X mapping onto 10% mean income increase... Anyway, I'm not an economist and would very much like to hear what one has to say about this idea, because it does seem to good to be true.

istjohn 11y ago
Read this: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-aren... The economists Milton Friedman and Friederich Hayek both argued for a basic income.

1024core 11y ago

Why wouldn't inflation swell up to soak up the UBI? If I'm a landlord in a poor(er) area of town, charging $500/mo for an apartment, and UBI is $1000/mo, then why shouldn't I raise my rent to, say $1000/mo because my tenants now have extra money? (Ignore rent-control for now).

bdamm 11y ago
Indeed this would seem to be the case. I don't know how well this translates to a country like Finland, where there are a lot of social programs/controls in place already. I would really like to see a strong analysis of the inflation consequences of UBI.
arebop 11y ago
Inflation is generally believed to be caused by an imbalance between the quantity of money and the goods & services in the market. BI per se doesn't change the money supply; it can be done by redistribution of existing money rather than debasing the currency.
- 1024core 11y ago
  I would disagree. If, for example, I take $1B each from every billionaire in the SV (for a total of, say, $20B) and gave each resident of SV (say, 2M residents) an extra $10,000, won't the prices go up? People will go on a spending spree, buying up TVs and cars and games, driving up their prices? There is a reason why gas costs more in SF than in, say, San Mateo.
  - arebop 11y ago
    Then perhaps TV prices will go up, but jet prices will go down. That sort of mixed change in prices is not consistent with the usual definitions of "inflation." Do you still like your argument when you think about quartiles rather than comparing the top 20 data points against the bottom 2 million? I think it's hard for most people to trust their intuitions about the spending habits of billionaires.
11y ago

Animats 11y ago

The US had this from the 1935 to 1996 - a broad welfare program. During the first Great Depression, the US was the employer of last resort, with the WPA hiring millions of people to do public works. During WWII, there was a labor shortage, and that ended. After the war, large public housing projects were built. There were people who spent much of their lives on welfare. Until the Reagan years, there were very few homeless people. But there were a lot of people who were just warehoused in public housing for their whole lives. Most of them black. That didn't work.[1] The UK did something similar, "the dole", until the 1980s under Thatcher. That, too, produced a large non-working population. We have a productive enough society to pay for welfare. But it generates a huge, useless, and troublesome underclass. [1] http://ced.berkeley.edu/bpj/2013/06/the-robert-taylor-homes-failure-of-public-housing/ http://ced.berkeley.edu/bpj/2013/06/the-robert-taylor-homes-...

manyoso 11y ago
No, we did not. Again, that welfare program is very different from the basic income described here in many ways. Those differences are crucial to understanding the benefits of a basic income in comparison to the broad welfare program you reference. One such difference being that everyone in a society gets the basic income with no strings attached meaning that there is no perverse incentive not to work. With a basic income people are free to work and gain additional income on top of the basic income and to do so for whatever motivations best inspire them free from the fear of starving.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  What is the evidence with regards to the benefit or detriment of the fear of starving?
  - manyoso 11y ago
    I can't cite any studies, but I do remember having heard of many studies indicating well motivated employees are more productive and happy employees are more productive. As for whether the fear of starving is 'good motivation' I would say that personally speaking it is definitely not what inspires my best work. Mileage probably varies quite a bit.

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Fun to see an article here from Business for Scotland, a pro-Scottish independence group.

Mz 11y ago

I am really skeptical. My understanding is that every Utopian scheme to provide equally for all citizens without expecting them to work ended up having to ultimately declare "You don't work, you don't eat." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_... This is what Lenin ultimately declared after The Russian Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution In a nutshell, Russian communism was supposed to be something that benefited the commoners -- the workers -- and ultimately it did not accomplish its goal. Russian communism is kind of a famous failure of this sort of thing. Russia ended up staying rather poor for a long time. I see no reason to believe that it works better in an automated society where we increasingly face shortages of enough people who are adequately skilled at administering the automated tech. Historically, societies dependent upon a complex, educated bureaucracy to make their system work went through cycles of failing and resurging, then failing again. If we have no means to motivate people to get educated enough to run the fancy automated tech and the tech upon which our wealth depends dies, then the wealth goes away and the society built upon it ends suddenly and catastrophically. I am extremely skeptical.

benten10 11y ago

Chris Blattman quotes this really nice research that says that employment by itself does not explain inclusiveness. Link: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/identifying-barriers-to-muslim-integration-in-france.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/11/ide... Here's the money quote (posted elsewhere in the thread too): >Here is Verwimp: >Belgium has a very elaborate welfare state. All citizens have health coverage, schools and universities charge no or few fees, child benefits, unemployment benefits, pensions, are all in place. But this comes at a cost of a closed labour market, meaning a labour system that heavily protects those who are in, but makes entry for newcomers very difficult. >It does not seem to be poverty, but exclusion. Philip wrote to me: >One of my students from African origin, graduating from our MA program, told me (before the Paris attacks) « it is easier to get unemployment benefits in Belgium than to get a job ». He decided to move to Canada. That summarises it. Migrants and their families have full access to the allocations of the welfare state, but face daunting challenges when they want to get ahead in life. >…I am not looking at individual factors to join IS, as young adults across European cities many share similar reasons, but for ‘structural’ factors that make the situation different in some countries compared to others.

gwright 11y ago

> If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from Is that really what basic income is all about? I'm sure there are more ways to look at this but broadly speaking I see two types of arguments for basic income being made: 1) Unconditional provision for basic necessities (food, shelter, clothing, health care, education) in the absence of all other income. 2) Administrative simplification of core assistance programs such that a beneficiary could combine their basic income with the income derived from a basic job (for example, entry level full time position) and be able to provide for their own basic necessities. In scenario 1) there is assumption that individuals have no responsibility to provide for themselves. In scenario 2) there is an assumption that individuals do have a responsibility to provide for themselves but that basic assistance will provide a basic level of security and assistance to make things easier. I find the idea of basic income very interesting from an efficiency point of view (best way to deliver assistance) but I'm wary about the disencentives towards personal responsibility that might arise.

known 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign_wealth_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sovereign... can/will provide impetus to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

known 11y ago

I appreciate Finland for NOT pretending to fix social welfare