5 ms·

Finland to end basic income trial after two years

35 points by neic 8y ago

Sharlin 8y ago
Finn here. The trial has been criticized from the get-go as being a poorly-designed compromise; those of us with a more cynical outlook suspect that it was intentionally nerfed so as to discredit the idea of basic income in general. But I guess it's just politics as usual; the current government as a whole is not exactly sympathetic with the idea of free money to "lazy people". Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem with the current system.
- brownbat 8y ago
  > Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem Do you have any programs like the EITC, where benefits fall on a curve and slowly phase out as you make more, so there's no hard cliff? Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit Graph: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditWithOneQualifyingChild.PNG https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditW...
  - Gravityloss 8y ago
    We have the opposite, it's more of a skyline graph. If you receive subsidies, a lot of the time, working or studying will yield large and unexpected decreases to your total amount of income.
- yazr 8y ago
  From the outside, Scandinavia is generally regarded as a successful(-ish?) big-government model. And yet, talk to any Scandinavian, and you get the same cynical comments about sub optimal government behavior...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Standards are set by experience; the better your experience, the higher your standards.
brownbat 8y ago
It's hard to find much about why, BBC has a link to a study by an OECD think tank criticising the program, but no idea if that study specifically motivated decisionmakers in Finland. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 Study: https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-economic-survey-overview.pdf https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-economic-...
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Basic income for some is not basic income. No country has tried this yet. Most countries actually do have a form of basic income where they are subsidizing food, shelter, healthcare in some form or another for essentially all people falling outside of the safety net of income, pensions, social security & welfare, charity, etc. I tend to think of basic income as the former without the absolutely massive bureaucratic overhead. An enormous cost saving in other words. To put this in perspective: many European countries spend almost as much on unemployment programs and related bureaucracy as they do on the actual benefits payed to the unemployed. With a basic income you could abolish minimum wage, make labor cheaper for companies and less risky, make it easier for people to take multiple small jobs to supplement their basic income and reduce their risk, stop forcing people to retire or forcing them to work until they are allowed to retire (both are bad), make all forms of income insurance opt in (pensions, disability benefits, unemployment insurance), etc. It just simplifies things a lot. The reason this is not happening is that dismantling the existing bureaucracy is highly disruptive and will be hugely unpopular.
- Jdam 8y ago
  The currency of politicians is jobs and dismantling the inefficient bureaucracy is damn f*ing expensive.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    Will we eventually find the ability to introduce a new political currency that has more spending power than jobs?
- YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 8y ago
  Talking about disruptive things... to provide an unconditional monetary equivalent of the benefits any unemployed people are currently entitled to (rent, minimum income, supplementary welfare) to everyone, or even every adult would by itself cost more than the entire current government budget, including current welfare costs – so you would really need to rework the whole tax system. Disruptive, perhaps? Or very simple to go ahead and “just try it”?
- 8y ago
Proven 8y ago
Wow, so the experiment succeeded - they figured it can’t work. Well, except for that whiner who reminds me of central banksters and complains it didn’t work because it wasn’t tried for long enough. They can pay me to do nothing for ten years, I’m ready - if they’re interested they Dan contact me offline.
okket 8y ago
Other recent discussions about Finlands basic income: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&pre...
198739834 8y ago
Basic income is an admittance that hundreds of millions of people are no longer necessary. Governments and corporations will not pay billions of dollars per year to people who do nothing. It will result in a strange situation where companies like Apple will be giving people money so that they can buy the iPhones they make. Eventually, these people will somehow have to disappear. This means there will also be less demand for the robots to make things. This would then end with a small population with robots occupying the planet. Welfare is essentially a way to kill a human's soul. If the choice is to go out slowly like this, then I would say "it is better to die on your feet, then live on your knees".
- 80386 8y ago
  Necessary for what? Maybe not optimizing iPhones. But somebody has to make the music that goes on the iPhones, and it's pretty hard to do that if you're working on their hardware full-time. There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". As for their eventual disappearance, they'll be neglected, but they won't be slaughtered -- if nothing else, that doesn't look good for the cameras. And if war breaks out in Elbonia between its "necessary" and its "unnecessary", Elbonia's enemies will probably provide military aid to the "unnecessary". It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam. That said, I think a lot of the support for basic income around here is connected to the demise of academia as a viable career track. Personally, I'd like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a week (plus my commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research in fields I'm interested in.
  - 198739834 8y ago
    >Necessary for what? For whatever the people who provide the money need. >There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". I don't think the corporations/governments will just have a few hundred million people around to add some culture to the place. >It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam. Yes but the infrastructure of modern society is extremely fragile. The occupying force (the governments/corporations) already have control of it at the start of the war. The only reason we have so many people is due to this infrastructure. If it was a war where the population was not as fully industrialized, it would be different. That is not to say the robot owners will win the war, but lots of people would die before then. >Personally, I'd like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a week (plus my commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research in fields I'm interested in. That is what people think they will do, but it is not what they will do. It is not the utopia that they think it will be because there are fundamentals about human nature that mean we don't really just sit around thinking up theories and playing guitar. The people on welfare now do not have that life. They are mostly depressed and subdued, which is the point of welfare. Humans in general need things like self-determination, the feeling of being valued, the ability to maybe have hobbies that cost more than a basic income. Getting a job won't be easy to make more money, as there will not be many jobs.
Simulacra 8y ago
I'm interested to see what the final report on this program will say. My only concern with UBI programs is that if a company, landlord, etc. knows someone is receiving an additional amount of money for free each month, then they can raise their prices by that much.

35 points by neic 8y ago

Finn here. The trial has been criticized from the get-go as being a poorly-designed compromise; those of us with a more cynical outlook suspect that it was intentionally nerfed so as to discredit the idea of basic income in general. But I guess it's just politics as usual; the current government as a whole is not exactly sympathetic with the idea of free money to "lazy people". Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem with the current system.

brownbat 8y ago
> Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem Do you have any programs like the EITC, where benefits fall on a curve and slowly phase out as you make more, so there's no hard cliff? Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit Graph: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditWithOneQualifyingChild.PNG https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditW...
- Gravityloss 8y ago
  We have the opposite, it's more of a skyline graph. If you receive subsidies, a lot of the time, working or studying will yield large and unexpected decreases to your total amount of income.
yazr 8y ago
From the outside, Scandinavia is generally regarded as a successful(-ish?) big-government model. And yet, talk to any Scandinavian, and you get the same cynical comments about sub optimal government behavior...
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Standards are set by experience; the better your experience, the higher your standards.

brownbat 8y ago

It's hard to find much about why, BBC has a link to a study by an OECD think tank criticising the program, but no idea if that study specifically motivated decisionmakers in Finland. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 Study: https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-economic-survey-overview.pdf https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-economic-...

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Basic income for some is not basic income. No country has tried this yet. Most countries actually do have a form of basic income where they are subsidizing food, shelter, healthcare in some form or another for essentially all people falling outside of the safety net of income, pensions, social security & welfare, charity, etc. I tend to think of basic income as the former without the absolutely massive bureaucratic overhead. An enormous cost saving in other words. To put this in perspective: many European countries spend almost as much on unemployment programs and related bureaucracy as they do on the actual benefits payed to the unemployed. With a basic income you could abolish minimum wage, make labor cheaper for companies and less risky, make it easier for people to take multiple small jobs to supplement their basic income and reduce their risk, stop forcing people to retire or forcing them to work until they are allowed to retire (both are bad), make all forms of income insurance opt in (pensions, disability benefits, unemployment insurance), etc. It just simplifies things a lot. The reason this is not happening is that dismantling the existing bureaucracy is highly disruptive and will be hugely unpopular.

Jdam 8y ago
The currency of politicians is jobs and dismantling the inefficient bureaucracy is damn f*ing expensive.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  Will we eventually find the ability to introduce a new political currency that has more spending power than jobs?
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 8y ago
Talking about disruptive things... to provide an unconditional monetary equivalent of the benefits any unemployed people are currently entitled to (rent, minimum income, supplementary welfare) to everyone, or even every adult would by itself cost more than the entire current government budget, including current welfare costs – so you would really need to rework the whole tax system. Disruptive, perhaps? Or very simple to go ahead and “just try it”?
8y ago

Proven 8y ago

Wow, so the experiment succeeded - they figured it can’t work. Well, except for that whiner who reminds me of central banksters and complains it didn’t work because it wasn’t tried for long enough. They can pay me to do nothing for ten years, I’m ready - if they’re interested they Dan contact me offline.

okket 8y ago

Other recent discussions about Finlands basic income: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&pre...

198739834 8y ago

Basic income is an admittance that hundreds of millions of people are no longer necessary. Governments and corporations will not pay billions of dollars per year to people who do nothing. It will result in a strange situation where companies like Apple will be giving people money so that they can buy the iPhones they make. Eventually, these people will somehow have to disappear. This means there will also be less demand for the robots to make things. This would then end with a small population with robots occupying the planet. Welfare is essentially a way to kill a human's soul. If the choice is to go out slowly like this, then I would say "it is better to die on your feet, then live on your knees".

80386 8y ago
Necessary for what? Maybe not optimizing iPhones. But somebody has to make the music that goes on the iPhones, and it's pretty hard to do that if you're working on their hardware full-time. There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". As for their eventual disappearance, they'll be neglected, but they won't be slaughtered -- if nothing else, that doesn't look good for the cameras. And if war breaks out in Elbonia between its "necessary" and its "unnecessary", Elbonia's enemies will probably provide military aid to the "unnecessary". It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam. That said, I think a lot of the support for basic income around here is connected to the demise of academia as a viable career track. Personally, I'd like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a week (plus my commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research in fields I'm interested in.
- 198739834 8y ago
  >Necessary for what? For whatever the people who provide the money need. >There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". I don't think the corporations/governments will just have a few hundred million people around to add some culture to the place. >It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam. Yes but the infrastructure of modern society is extremely fragile. The occupying force (the governments/corporations) already have control of it at the start of the war. The only reason we have so many people is due to this infrastructure. If it was a war where the population was not as fully industrialized, it would be different. That is not to say the robot owners will win the war, but lots of people would die before then. >Personally, I'd like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a week (plus my commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research in fields I'm interested in. That is what people think they will do, but it is not what they will do. It is not the utopia that they think it will be because there are fundamentals about human nature that mean we don't really just sit around thinking up theories and playing guitar. The people on welfare now do not have that life. They are mostly depressed and subdued, which is the point of welfare. Humans in general need things like self-determination, the feeling of being valued, the ability to maybe have hobbies that cost more than a basic income. Getting a job won't be easy to make more money, as there will not be many jobs.

Simulacra 8y ago

I'm interested to see what the final report on this program will say. My only concern with UBI programs is that if a company, landlord, etc. knows someone is receiving an additional amount of money for free each month, then they can raise their prices by that much.