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Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

121 points by SirLJ 9y ago

jackvalentine 9y ago
「The initial plan was for the experiment to be expanded in early 2018 to include workers as well as non-workers early in 2018, but that did not happen – to the disappointment of researchers at Kela. Without workers in the project, researchers are unable to study whether basic income would allow people to make new career moves, or enter training or education.」 And this is the paragraph I went looking for.
- ForRealsies 9y ago
  What didn't they show the results for these 2000 unemployed Finns to 'make new career moves, or enter training, or education'?
- snarf21 9y ago
  Yeah, the other thing that is weird when you read the article is that it wasn't UBI at all. It only went to people from a set that was unemployed. This "trial" just removed all bureaucracy and removed restrictions on side jobs, etc. I'm not sure what you could learn from this experiment. The things a lot of people want to know is can UBI provide a safety net for the poor and allow people to quit a toxic job without fear. It will be interesting to see if any of the 2K participants used this income/time to retrain or receive education.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    Yup that's my point exactly - it's just less restrictive unemployment benefits. As you said the really interesting stuff from UBI is people quitting shitty jobs (or, working part time at shitty jobs instead of 60 hours a week) and doing something else with their lives.
    - ForRealsies 9y ago
      But you cannot ignore the "less interesting stuff" from UBI. I'm curious in the statistics of long term unemployed who start to do something with their lives that they weren't doing before UBI.
praha14 9y ago
I understand the argument that, once free from work, a number of people will voluntarily choose to work as physicists or playwrights or mathematicians. What I haven’t understood, though, is why someone would choose to work as a bricklayer or spend their 20s sitting in a fluorescent office designing an industrial process to make ball-bearing lubricant 0.4% more efficient. It’s that sort of menial, unglamorous labor that our society and quality of life is built on.
- adrianN 9y ago
  If people didn't have to work, the unappealing work that still needs to be done would probably pay a lot more than it does today.
  - Siecje 9y ago
    But it might not be worth it, to make that bearing more efficient if it costs more.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      True, but maybe such inefficiencies are counteracted by the increased number of people in fun jobs. Maybe it suddenly becomes worth it to do things we're currently not doing.
- mcphage 9y ago
  > It’s that sort of menial, unglamorous labor that our society and quality of life is built on. It's also that sort of labor that has been—and will continue to be—replaced by robots. As for why someone would do that? Well, you still get paid your UBI even if you have a job. So they would do that for the same reason anyone does that—they want the money.
- magduf 9y ago
  That's because, for some strange reason, you're confusing UBI with some idealized form of communism. UBI is Universal Basic Income. The keyword here is "basic". If you sit on your ass and collect UBI, you should receive enough money to let you live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and get some crappy food to eat at the local crappy grocery store. Do you want to live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and not be able to afford to eat at a nice restaurant? Me neither. If you want extra luxuries, you have to work more, to make more money. That's UBI in a nutshell.
Shivetya 9y ago
Well it will be interesting to see if they do publish any findings. I do agree it would have been beneficial to see what would happen if workers were added to the mix. The question some like myself would like to see is, did any of the initial participants gain employment and leave the program? What did they do differently while provided with UBI they did not do before. I would also like to see if they will be followed to determine the negative and positive effects on them after it being discontinued. my issue with the UBI fascination is that too many automatically assume there won't be work in a highly automated world or that costs of living won't decrease sufficiently as well. where it ends up is still unknown
- icebraining 9y ago
  did any of the initial participants gain employment and leave the program? The program didn't end even for people who found a job. That's the difference between UBI and regular unemployment benefits.
  - anyzen 9y ago
    True. So, did any of the initial participants gain employment?
- JibJabLab 9y ago
  My issue with it is that we aren't even at a point where UBI is viable. Yes, we have lots of automation but we still have many times more jobs still not automated. The experiment isn't going to show accurate results. But I agree with you - there will still be work available in an automated society.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    UBI doesn't need automation at all; the big question is if society is more productive with it or with traditional welfare. That's why experiments are needed.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    The same amount of work with the same relative amounts of pay? Doesn't that require far greater wealth distribution. Currently people mostly work for companies which make their capitalist owners rich. If the companies ditch workers and use robots then in order for the workers to also be employed the money from those owners needs to be spent on other things - the unemployed workers don't have money other than what they're spending with the pre-existing companies for food/clothing/housing and such. Those currently earning off others labour will increase their take of profits; by what mechanism will that additional proportion of the wealth be made available for new industries. What industries will move the wealth from the Uber rich and distribute it, they're going to need to be large employers of many low-skilled workers. I don't see how this can happen without a revolution such as UBI or a cultural shift to a communistic system, say, that can democratise the profits from robotisation. Yes, the industrial revolution freed workers to take up new roles, but the lower population and higher availability of easily acquired resources fed in to that. The world is different now, I don't see the same happening again, the maths of that doesn't add up.
dandare 9y ago
There are two problems with universal basic income: 1/ Many people think UBI is a great idea but everybody imagines something else. This makes discussing UBI very difficult. 2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Sooner or later people will realize that what they really want is tax/benefit reform, not universal basic income. REAL NUMBERS HERE -> Check out this process flow diagram: https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/87d3102c-5b89-4001-9929-346873d19571# https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/87d3102c-5b89-4001...
- addicted 9y ago
  What’s the reasoning behind #2?
  - dandare 9y ago
    Becuase you first have to take the money from those who earned it.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      You are missing the whole point of UBI - because it's unconditional it doesn't discourage working.
      - dandare 9y ago
        I don't understand your comment, I never said it discourages working.
        akvadrako 9y ago
        You suggested giving it only to those who need it, which makes it conditional.
        dandare 9y ago
upofadown 9y ago
A more accurate title might be: Finland declines to extend its experiment with basic income.
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
These experiments confuse me. Haven't we already seen the result of UBI? Pensions, states that issue money (from state oil income etc), allowances, annuities? The world doesn't come to an end; the people don't all become listless and stop contributing. The currency doesn't inflate uncontrollably; prices don't change at all. The cost of living is unchanged (because economics doesn't work that way). All the FUD produced over this is astonishing. I admit, I had questions to begin with as well. But it takes only a little reading and thinking to get over it.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  How did you come to those conclusions? I've never seen any such study.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > the people don't all become listless and stop contributing Well, in the US two groups that do get state distributions - residents of Alaska and those on Native American reservations - do have disproportionate rates of substance abuse (mainly alcohol). As far as seniors who get pensions, what is your definition of "contributing"? In many cases they are eligible for those pensions only once they declare themselves retired.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Are those groups anomalous though: alcoholism has a generic factor I gather, and colder climates appear to have more substance abuse. With those factors accounted for does providing "pensions" increase substance [ab]use, and is the use problematic.
  - wgerard 9y ago
    > residents of Alaska Probably a bad example to bring up. The Alaska fund distributions amount to roughly ~$1.5k a year. Not quite the same as a pension or UBI. I'll probably get egg on my face for saying this, but I highly doubt anyone in Alaska lives solely on fund distributions. Further, as noted [1], the "dividend had no effect on employment, and increased part-time work by 1.8 percentage points (17 percent)... our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment." 1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf
jkingsbery 9y ago
I wish the article said something about why it's declining to extend the experiment.
- jusssi 9y ago
  The article does say this: > But in December last year, the Finnish parliament passed a bill that is taking the country's welfare system in quite the opposite direction. The new 'activation model' law requires jobseekers to work a minimum of 18 hours for three months - if you don't manage to find such a job, you lose some of your benefits. And Finance Minister Petteri Orpo already has plans for a new project once the basic income pilot concludes in December 2018. In short, the current political climate doesn't support it. IIRC there's also been some discussion whether the experiment has been in violation of equality guarantees of our constitution, as it treats a randomly selected group different from others.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
alkonaut 9y ago
I can't see how it's theoretically possible to do a small scale experiment with UBI. If not everyone gets it, you can't see the big impact on the economy (what happens with supply/demand/inflation). And if it's with a short horizon, then people still have to plan for life after the UBI experiment. You can't give up the career you are going to need to make a living in 2 years time, just because you get paid a small sum per month for 2 years. So I can't see how experiments are worthwhile unless you actually go in head first. UBI should be announced as universal and forever, or it isn't "proper" UBI, and doesn't show the effects of UBI. This is also the reason why no one tries it.
- hawkice 9y ago
  I am very skeptical of claims that outcomes are discontinuous in policy space. Going one step in direction A should give you information about going further in that same direction, at least on some scale of change. Clearly the people running the experiment agreed, because they designed it with the intent to get that information.
  - mrkurt 9y ago
    It's good to be skeptical. There are a whole class of problems that are discontinuous, but it's way too tempting to label things that way. That said, UBI _seems_ a lot more like herd immunity than most policy problems, especially social safety net policy.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Well outcomes are discontinuous where the policies are discontinuous. There's a huge leap in the graph from 'this is temporary' to 'this is permanent.' We can't just write off the effect that has on human behavior.
  - dwc 9y ago
    I imagine that researchers designed the experiment they thought would be accepted rather than the experiment they wanted. Yes, they intended to learn some things and most likely did.
  - 9y ago
peterwwillis 9y ago
Things you need to live: food, dwelling, energy, transportation, healthcare. (And necessary for a thriving economy/government: trade skills, education, military) Self-sustaining would be very plausible on extremely modest amounts of income if the government subsidized the dwelling, energy, transportation, and healthcare. It may be unnecessary for large portions of a nation to work if people produced their own goods and services (most of which could be done by individuals, not even necessitating cooperative work except for a few difficult tasks). What occurred to me, though, is that this would never work in a traditional society because the government would be responsible for too much of people's lives. So as an alternative, a split model may work, where people can choose between a competitive libertarian model and a cooperative socialist model. You either work hard to earn a living that you fully control, or you sit back and let someone provide you with your requirements, and the model you choose determines what things like your taxes or labor go towards. This may be an incredibly stupid and shortsighted idea, but I would love the opportunity to live in a commune subsidized by the government - with the choice to leave for a different model if it sucked.
- fxj 9y ago
  I would call food, dwelling, healthcare, communication(internet) the four basic necessities. So why not providing these for free and for the rest, just tax other sources of income by a fixed rate depending on how much is needed to provide the free ones?
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    For the first two, humans are pretty capable of providing for these themselves. Having the government provide it alone is a single point of failure, and simply adds cost and complexity where it isn't necessary. Healthcare is definitely something which could benefit from subsidy, considering how advancements in it often require large coordination of R&D, manufacturing, schools/practice, etc. Communication is just not necessary at all to live. Transportation, energy, and education are also necessary to enable a means of production, trade, and basic self-sufficiency of living. Paying for these individually is not only less efficient, it hampers the ability of the economy to grow by limiting who has the means to contribute to it. If you can't get to work, you can't do work, and you're basically a burden on society. And having to pay for the energy needed to do things like cook your food and heat your home is just another thing which is inefficient, especially considering different parts of a country may have different access to energy resources. I'm not well read on tax policy so I don't know the best way to fund these ventures, but it would be obvious that one group would need to be taxed heavily while the other was taxed lightly, due to the difference in the use of or contribution to subsidized resources.
Siecje 9y ago
With UBI people say you are not discouraged from working because everyone gets the money no matter how much money they make. But where does that money come from? Once you earn enough surely they will be taxing you more than you receive per month, otherwise the system would not work.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I have really only read comments on UBI so I might be extremely wrong, but I believe the idea is that as we move toward a more "automated" life, the "1%" can make enough to pay for the 99% to have UBI. And since everyone gets the same baseline, even monumentally high tax rates would be tolerable. This is basically a way of redistributing wealth with the added side benefit that you can quit your job without fear of losing everything in your life.
  - nabc45 9y ago
    >you can quit your job without fear of losing everything in your life That sounds like an American problem more than anything else
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      It's a problem everywhere, but many places have some kind of safety-net working to prevent it. The idea of UBI (at least in theory) is to make that safety-net universal, remove the barriers to use it, lower the overhead cost of administering a system like it. Remove the need for applications to benefit from it, remove the wasteful "taxing unemployment income" that happens currently (at least in the US), remove the stigma attached to having it.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > I have really only read comments on UBI so I might be extremely wrong, but I believe the idea is that as we move toward a more "automated" life, the "1%" can make enough to pay for the 99% to have UBI. That's an idea, but far from universal among UBI proponents. Actually, reducing the concentration of capital by redistributing it's returns is part of it, and in that view preventing control of the pre-redistribution gains by an increasingly narrow class is part of the goal.
matte_black 9y ago
Instead of giving out money, why not give out the basic necessities directly? A free home, free utilities, free food, a basic vehicle, free clothes, free healthcare? If you’re happy with these things you’re set, if you want more you work for it and acquire money. Seems like this would accomplish the same goals of UBI, but with less risks and impact on the economy, and at some point you can benefit from economies of scale to provide these things at even lower cost. People would not need the financial discipline and restraint that comes with managing a basic income.
- AndrewDucker 9y ago
  Because people vary. And while you may need a slightly larger vehicle (because of family size) and are therefore willing to spend a bit less on a home, so live further out, others may make the opposite tradeoff. UBI gives people the ability to make the tradeoffs that work for them personally, rather than being stuck in a one-size-fits-all situation.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    You do not need UBI for that, you just need a few more options or packages for people to choose from, which would be trivial to provide.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      More like one package per person. Of course that's still trivial to provide, as you say. You just give everyone a fixed set of points they can allocate to the options available according to their needs. I propose to call those points "money".
      - matte_black 9y ago
        Even if you want a point system it becomes a separated currency from actual money.
        9y ago
simonsarris 9y ago
Studying a UBI pilot with an end date is not studying UBI at all: It is instead studying a misnamed temporary cash payment. By the nature of pilots, the cohort’s behavior cannot reliably change to depend on UBI’s long term existence. No study yet has guaranteed a cohort money forever, and even if it did it would be difficult for a pilot to study the long term effects, some of which may be generations out. What pilot can tell us answers to questions like: "What is it like for kids to grow up with parents who have never worked?"[1] Universal Basic Income projects also tend to fail hard at the Universal part. It’s hard to study how society would change if you are not piloting something that is intended to affect all of society. For the Finland study, the cohort doesn’t even scratch the "U", and somewhat contradicts itself: > During the experiment, a total of 2,000 unemployed persons between 25 and 58 years of age will receive a monthly payment of €560, unconditionally and without means testing. The experiment will run for two years. (quoting from: http://www.kela.fi/web/en/experimental-study-on-a-universal-basic-income http://www.kela.fi/web/en/experimental-study-on-a-universal-...) I've written my own long list of objections to UBI, here: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-incom... I think it's an important problem, but I'm totally flabbergasted at how much simplistic thinking the proponents are willing to gloss over. ~~~ [1] There answer is SSDI but don't look at it if you want to sleep at night. https://web.archive.org/web/20130420171159/http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/04/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_5.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130420171159/http://thelastpsy...
- howard941 9y ago
  Your footnoted link was good reading. Disturbing but good. Thanks for posting it.
- jdpigeon 9y ago
  Very cool to see you on Hacker News. I listened to your piece on Medium (great narrator btw) and loved it. It's started some lively conversations
Uninen 9y ago
The article is a bit misleading since AFAIC there are no agreed plans yet on the next steps. The title implies that the project is totally cancelled, but all of the major political parties in Finland are proposing their own solutions for replacing it. Because of upcoming elections, this is a fairly hot topic.
SirLJ 9y ago
This is the inconvenient truth: UBI is a horrible idea, it will turn the majority of the population into drunks and drug addicts, watching TV and doing nothing all day... If you want to be free in life and not to worry about money, you have to work hard first to get your FY money, this is the only way you will appreciate them and the freedom they provide...
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Reading the comments, I'm getting the feeling of "No True UBI". Every UBI-ish attempt that has been mentioned so far, someone says, "But that's not real UBI, because..." We may need some more precise definitions. UBI-1 is some precisely-defined thing, UBI-2 is some other precisely-defined thing, and so on. Then we can say, well, Saudi Arabia did and still does UBI-4, and it has had these effects. Then we can look at various experiments and start learning something about whether UBI is workable, and if so, what kind of UBI it needs to be.
automoton1 9y ago
Doesn't UBI have the potential to cause inflation (demand and cost-push)? Is this a valid enough concern to search for an alternate solution to UBI?
JBReefer 9y ago
I don't see a top level comment mentioning this, but what if UBI just doesn't work? That's certainly possible - that it works seems to be taken as a given, and evidence against that seems to be dismissed frequently in this thread. A lot of things that work seem like they shouldn't (flight, capitalism) even after a lot of consideration - similarly, a lot of things that don't work seem like they should (Mendelian genetics). Maybe this unfortunately just doesn't work?
Nomentatus 9y ago
So now, Finland has told every citizen "If we ever seriously start UBI, or any further experiment make sure you behave like you don't have UBI, 'cause soon enough, you probably won't."

121 points by SirLJ 9y ago

「The initial plan was for the experiment to be expanded in early 2018 to include workers as well as non-workers early in 2018, but that did not happen – to the disappointment of researchers at Kela. Without workers in the project, researchers are unable to study whether basic income would allow people to make new career moves, or enter training or education.」 And this is the paragraph I went looking for.

ForRealsies 9y ago
What didn't they show the results for these 2000 unemployed Finns to 'make new career moves, or enter training, or education'?
snarf21 9y ago
Yeah, the other thing that is weird when you read the article is that it wasn't UBI at all. It only went to people from a set that was unemployed. This "trial" just removed all bureaucracy and removed restrictions on side jobs, etc. I'm not sure what you could learn from this experiment. The things a lot of people want to know is can UBI provide a safety net for the poor and allow people to quit a toxic job without fear. It will be interesting to see if any of the 2K participants used this income/time to retrain or receive education.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  Yup that's my point exactly - it's just less restrictive unemployment benefits. As you said the really interesting stuff from UBI is people quitting shitty jobs (or, working part time at shitty jobs instead of 60 hours a week) and doing something else with their lives.
  - ForRealsies 9y ago
    But you cannot ignore the "less interesting stuff" from UBI. I'm curious in the statistics of long term unemployed who start to do something with their lives that they weren't doing before UBI.

praha14 9y ago

I understand the argument that, once free from work, a number of people will voluntarily choose to work as physicists or playwrights or mathematicians. What I haven’t understood, though, is why someone would choose to work as a bricklayer or spend their 20s sitting in a fluorescent office designing an industrial process to make ball-bearing lubricant 0.4% more efficient. It’s that sort of menial, unglamorous labor that our society and quality of life is built on.

adrianN 9y ago
If people didn't have to work, the unappealing work that still needs to be done would probably pay a lot more than it does today.
- Siecje 9y ago
  But it might not be worth it, to make that bearing more efficient if it costs more.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    True, but maybe such inefficiencies are counteracted by the increased number of people in fun jobs. Maybe it suddenly becomes worth it to do things we're currently not doing.
mcphage 9y ago
> It’s that sort of menial, unglamorous labor that our society and quality of life is built on. It's also that sort of labor that has been—and will continue to be—replaced by robots. As for why someone would do that? Well, you still get paid your UBI even if you have a job. So they would do that for the same reason anyone does that—they want the money.
magduf 9y ago
That's because, for some strange reason, you're confusing UBI with some idealized form of communism. UBI is Universal Basic Income. The keyword here is "basic". If you sit on your ass and collect UBI, you should receive enough money to let you live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and get some crappy food to eat at the local crappy grocery store. Do you want to live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and not be able to afford to eat at a nice restaurant? Me neither. If you want extra luxuries, you have to work more, to make more money. That's UBI in a nutshell.

Shivetya 9y ago

Well it will be interesting to see if they do publish any findings. I do agree it would have been beneficial to see what would happen if workers were added to the mix. The question some like myself would like to see is, did any of the initial participants gain employment and leave the program? What did they do differently while provided with UBI they did not do before. I would also like to see if they will be followed to determine the negative and positive effects on them after it being discontinued. my issue with the UBI fascination is that too many automatically assume there won't be work in a highly automated world or that costs of living won't decrease sufficiently as well. where it ends up is still unknown

icebraining 9y ago
did any of the initial participants gain employment and leave the program? The program didn't end even for people who found a job. That's the difference between UBI and regular unemployment benefits.
- anyzen 9y ago
  True. So, did any of the initial participants gain employment?
JibJabLab 9y ago
My issue with it is that we aren't even at a point where UBI is viable. Yes, we have lots of automation but we still have many times more jobs still not automated. The experiment isn't going to show accurate results. But I agree with you - there will still be work available in an automated society.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  UBI doesn't need automation at all; the big question is if society is more productive with it or with traditional welfare. That's why experiments are needed.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The same amount of work with the same relative amounts of pay? Doesn't that require far greater wealth distribution. Currently people mostly work for companies which make their capitalist owners rich. If the companies ditch workers and use robots then in order for the workers to also be employed the money from those owners needs to be spent on other things - the unemployed workers don't have money other than what they're spending with the pre-existing companies for food/clothing/housing and such. Those currently earning off others labour will increase their take of profits; by what mechanism will that additional proportion of the wealth be made available for new industries. What industries will move the wealth from the Uber rich and distribute it, they're going to need to be large employers of many low-skilled workers. I don't see how this can happen without a revolution such as UBI or a cultural shift to a communistic system, say, that can democratise the profits from robotisation. Yes, the industrial revolution freed workers to take up new roles, but the lower population and higher availability of easily acquired resources fed in to that. The world is different now, I don't see the same happening again, the maths of that doesn't add up.

dandare 9y ago

There are two problems with universal basic income: 1/ Many people think UBI is a great idea but everybody imagines something else. This makes discussing UBI very difficult. 2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Sooner or later people will realize that what they really want is tax/benefit reform, not universal basic income. REAL NUMBERS HERE -> Check out this process flow diagram: https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/87d3102c-5b89-4001-9929-346873d19571# https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/87d3102c-5b89-4001...

addicted 9y ago
What’s the reasoning behind #2?
- dandare 9y ago
  Becuase you first have to take the money from those who earned it.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    You are missing the whole point of UBI - because it's unconditional it doesn't discourage working.
    - dandare 9y ago
      I don't understand your comment, I never said it discourages working.
      - akvadrako 9y ago
        You suggested giving it only to those who need it, which makes it conditional.
        dandare 9y ago

upofadown 9y ago

A more accurate title might be: Finland declines to extend its experiment with basic income.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

These experiments confuse me. Haven't we already seen the result of UBI? Pensions, states that issue money (from state oil income etc), allowances, annuities? The world doesn't come to an end; the people don't all become listless and stop contributing. The currency doesn't inflate uncontrollably; prices don't change at all. The cost of living is unchanged (because economics doesn't work that way). All the FUD produced over this is astonishing. I admit, I had questions to begin with as well. But it takes only a little reading and thinking to get over it.

dingo_bat 9y ago
How did you come to those conclusions? I've never seen any such study.
prostoalex 9y ago
> the people don't all become listless and stop contributing Well, in the US two groups that do get state distributions - residents of Alaska and those on Native American reservations - do have disproportionate rates of substance abuse (mainly alcohol). As far as seniors who get pensions, what is your definition of "contributing"? In many cases they are eligible for those pensions only once they declare themselves retired.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Are those groups anomalous though: alcoholism has a generic factor I gather, and colder climates appear to have more substance abuse. With those factors accounted for does providing "pensions" increase substance [ab]use, and is the use problematic.
- wgerard 9y ago
  > residents of Alaska Probably a bad example to bring up. The Alaska fund distributions amount to roughly ~$1.5k a year. Not quite the same as a pension or UBI. I'll probably get egg on my face for saying this, but I highly doubt anyone in Alaska lives solely on fund distributions. Further, as noted [1], the "dividend had no effect on employment, and increased part-time work by 1.8 percentage points (17 percent)... our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment." 1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf

jkingsbery 9y ago

I wish the article said something about why it's declining to extend the experiment.

jusssi 9y ago
The article does say this: > But in December last year, the Finnish parliament passed a bill that is taking the country's welfare system in quite the opposite direction. The new 'activation model' law requires jobseekers to work a minimum of 18 hours for three months - if you don't manage to find such a job, you lose some of your benefits. And Finance Minister Petteri Orpo already has plans for a new project once the basic income pilot concludes in December 2018. In short, the current political climate doesn't support it. IIRC there's also been some discussion whether the experiment has been in violation of equality guarantees of our constitution, as it treats a randomly selected group different from others.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

alkonaut 9y ago

I can't see how it's theoretically possible to do a small scale experiment with UBI. If not everyone gets it, you can't see the big impact on the economy (what happens with supply/demand/inflation). And if it's with a short horizon, then people still have to plan for life after the UBI experiment. You can't give up the career you are going to need to make a living in 2 years time, just because you get paid a small sum per month for 2 years. So I can't see how experiments are worthwhile unless you actually go in head first. UBI should be announced as universal and forever, or it isn't "proper" UBI, and doesn't show the effects of UBI. This is also the reason why no one tries it.

hawkice 9y ago
I am very skeptical of claims that outcomes are discontinuous in policy space. Going one step in direction A should give you information about going further in that same direction, at least on some scale of change. Clearly the people running the experiment agreed, because they designed it with the intent to get that information.
- mrkurt 9y ago
  It's good to be skeptical. There are a whole class of problems that are discontinuous, but it's way too tempting to label things that way. That said, UBI _seems_ a lot more like herd immunity than most policy problems, especially social safety net policy.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Well outcomes are discontinuous where the policies are discontinuous. There's a huge leap in the graph from 'this is temporary' to 'this is permanent.' We can't just write off the effect that has on human behavior.
- dwc 9y ago
  I imagine that researchers designed the experiment they thought would be accepted rather than the experiment they wanted. Yes, they intended to learn some things and most likely did.
- 9y ago

peterwwillis 9y ago

Things you need to live: food, dwelling, energy, transportation, healthcare. (And necessary for a thriving economy/government: trade skills, education, military) Self-sustaining would be very plausible on extremely modest amounts of income if the government subsidized the dwelling, energy, transportation, and healthcare. It may be unnecessary for large portions of a nation to work if people produced their own goods and services (most of which could be done by individuals, not even necessitating cooperative work except for a few difficult tasks). What occurred to me, though, is that this would never work in a traditional society because the government would be responsible for too much of people's lives. So as an alternative, a split model may work, where people can choose between a competitive libertarian model and a cooperative socialist model. You either work hard to earn a living that you fully control, or you sit back and let someone provide you with your requirements, and the model you choose determines what things like your taxes or labor go towards. This may be an incredibly stupid and shortsighted idea, but I would love the opportunity to live in a commune subsidized by the government - with the choice to leave for a different model if it sucked.

fxj 9y ago
I would call food, dwelling, healthcare, communication(internet) the four basic necessities. So why not providing these for free and for the rest, just tax other sources of income by a fixed rate depending on how much is needed to provide the free ones?
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  For the first two, humans are pretty capable of providing for these themselves. Having the government provide it alone is a single point of failure, and simply adds cost and complexity where it isn't necessary. Healthcare is definitely something which could benefit from subsidy, considering how advancements in it often require large coordination of R&D, manufacturing, schools/practice, etc. Communication is just not necessary at all to live. Transportation, energy, and education are also necessary to enable a means of production, trade, and basic self-sufficiency of living. Paying for these individually is not only less efficient, it hampers the ability of the economy to grow by limiting who has the means to contribute to it. If you can't get to work, you can't do work, and you're basically a burden on society. And having to pay for the energy needed to do things like cook your food and heat your home is just another thing which is inefficient, especially considering different parts of a country may have different access to energy resources. I'm not well read on tax policy so I don't know the best way to fund these ventures, but it would be obvious that one group would need to be taxed heavily while the other was taxed lightly, due to the difference in the use of or contribution to subsidized resources.

Siecje 9y ago

With UBI people say you are not discouraged from working because everyone gets the money no matter how much money they make. But where does that money come from? Once you earn enough surely they will be taxing you more than you receive per month, otherwise the system would not work.

Klathmon 9y ago
I have really only read comments on UBI so I might be extremely wrong, but I believe the idea is that as we move toward a more "automated" life, the "1%" can make enough to pay for the 99% to have UBI. And since everyone gets the same baseline, even monumentally high tax rates would be tolerable. This is basically a way of redistributing wealth with the added side benefit that you can quit your job without fear of losing everything in your life.
- nabc45 9y ago
  >you can quit your job without fear of losing everything in your life That sounds like an American problem more than anything else
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    It's a problem everywhere, but many places have some kind of safety-net working to prevent it. The idea of UBI (at least in theory) is to make that safety-net universal, remove the barriers to use it, lower the overhead cost of administering a system like it. Remove the need for applications to benefit from it, remove the wasteful "taxing unemployment income" that happens currently (at least in the US), remove the stigma attached to having it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I have really only read comments on UBI so I might be extremely wrong, but I believe the idea is that as we move toward a more "automated" life, the "1%" can make enough to pay for the 99% to have UBI. That's an idea, but far from universal among UBI proponents. Actually, reducing the concentration of capital by redistributing it's returns is part of it, and in that view preventing control of the pre-redistribution gains by an increasingly narrow class is part of the goal.

matte_black 9y ago

Instead of giving out money, why not give out the basic necessities directly? A free home, free utilities, free food, a basic vehicle, free clothes, free healthcare? If you’re happy with these things you’re set, if you want more you work for it and acquire money. Seems like this would accomplish the same goals of UBI, but with less risks and impact on the economy, and at some point you can benefit from economies of scale to provide these things at even lower cost. People would not need the financial discipline and restraint that comes with managing a basic income.

AndrewDucker 9y ago
Because people vary. And while you may need a slightly larger vehicle (because of family size) and are therefore willing to spend a bit less on a home, so live further out, others may make the opposite tradeoff. UBI gives people the ability to make the tradeoffs that work for them personally, rather than being stuck in a one-size-fits-all situation.
- matte_black 9y ago
  You do not need UBI for that, you just need a few more options or packages for people to choose from, which would be trivial to provide.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    More like one package per person. Of course that's still trivial to provide, as you say. You just give everyone a fixed set of points they can allocate to the options available according to their needs. I propose to call those points "money".
    - matte_black 9y ago
      Even if you want a point system it becomes a separated currency from actual money.
      - 9y ago

simonsarris 9y ago

Studying a UBI pilot with an end date is not studying UBI at all: It is instead studying a misnamed temporary cash payment. By the nature of pilots, the cohort’s behavior cannot reliably change to depend on UBI’s long term existence. No study yet has guaranteed a cohort money forever, and even if it did it would be difficult for a pilot to study the long term effects, some of which may be generations out. What pilot can tell us answers to questions like: "What is it like for kids to grow up with parents who have never worked?"[1] Universal Basic Income projects also tend to fail hard at the Universal part. It’s hard to study how society would change if you are not piloting something that is intended to affect all of society. For the Finland study, the cohort doesn’t even scratch the "U", and somewhat contradicts itself: > During the experiment, a total of 2,000 unemployed persons between 25 and 58 years of age will receive a monthly payment of €560, unconditionally and without means testing. The experiment will run for two years. (quoting from: http://www.kela.fi/web/en/experimental-study-on-a-universal-basic-income http://www.kela.fi/web/en/experimental-study-on-a-universal-...) I've written my own long list of objections to UBI, here: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-incom... I think it's an important problem, but I'm totally flabbergasted at how much simplistic thinking the proponents are willing to gloss over. ~~~ [1] There answer is SSDI but don't look at it if you want to sleep at night. https://web.archive.org/web/20130420171159/http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/04/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_5.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130420171159/http://thelastpsy...

howard941 9y ago
Your footnoted link was good reading. Disturbing but good. Thanks for posting it.
jdpigeon 9y ago
Very cool to see you on Hacker News. I listened to your piece on Medium (great narrator btw) and loved it. It's started some lively conversations

Uninen 9y ago

The article is a bit misleading since AFAIC there are no agreed plans yet on the next steps. The title implies that the project is totally cancelled, but all of the major political parties in Finland are proposing their own solutions for replacing it. Because of upcoming elections, this is a fairly hot topic.

SirLJ 9y ago

This is the inconvenient truth: UBI is a horrible idea, it will turn the majority of the population into drunks and drug addicts, watching TV and doing nothing all day... If you want to be free in life and not to worry about money, you have to work hard first to get your FY money, this is the only way you will appreciate them and the freedom they provide...

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Reading the comments, I'm getting the feeling of "No True UBI". Every UBI-ish attempt that has been mentioned so far, someone says, "But that's not real UBI, because..." We may need some more precise definitions. UBI-1 is some precisely-defined thing, UBI-2 is some other precisely-defined thing, and so on. Then we can say, well, Saudi Arabia did and still does UBI-4, and it has had these effects. Then we can look at various experiments and start learning something about whether UBI is workable, and if so, what kind of UBI it needs to be.

automoton1 9y ago

Doesn't UBI have the potential to cause inflation (demand and cost-push)? Is this a valid enough concern to search for an alternate solution to UBI?

JBReefer 9y ago

I don't see a top level comment mentioning this, but what if UBI just doesn't work? That's certainly possible - that it works seems to be taken as a given, and evidence against that seems to be dismissed frequently in this thread. A lot of things that work seem like they shouldn't (flight, capitalism) even after a lot of consideration - similarly, a lot of things that don't work seem like they should (Mendelian genetics). Maybe this unfortunately just doesn't work?

Nomentatus 9y ago

So now, Finland has told every citizen "If we ever seriously start UBI, or any further experiment make sure you behave like you don't have UBI, 'cause soon enough, you probably won't."