5 ms·

Finland Will End Its Experiment with Universal Basic Income

33 points by dbattaglia 8y ago

mozumder 8y ago
If this was an experiment, what were the results? What was being measured?
- arnvald 8y ago
  According to the article, it will end in January 2019 (the government decided not to fund extending it), so results can be expected in a year or so.
- jachee 8y ago
  It can be an experiment without being scientific or rigorous. In this case, I believe the ultimate goal was to see how long they could keep it going. EDIT: Why the downvotes? The word "experiment" doesn't automatically imply science. Why couldn't Finland have been experimenting with UBI the same way that individuals experiment with many things: to see what would happen?
jasonkostempski 8y ago
What good is an experiment applied to a small group of people and only for a limited time? The people that get it aren't going to adjust their long term behavior and the local economy certainly isn't going to change in response.
- jerf 8y ago
  Well, we have no alternative. We can't afford an experiment that funds a ton of people and lasts for a long time. No matter how abundantly confident the people of HN may be that BI is the way to go, one of the fundamental lessons of science over the past couple of centuries is that your "abundant confidence" doesn't count for squat in the real world. If BI can't prove itself out in a smaller environment, we on no account can afford to risk our entire economy on it. That said, I'm not saying this was necessarily a viable test of the idea. On the other hand, if it really is a great idea that is going to save civilization, it really ought to have the characteristic that it is still a good idea that is an improvement on the status quo even when applied in the small, such that everybody wants to continue the experiment and expand it, not shut it down. The slow drip of failed BI experiments, even if they didn't "really test BI", is becoming non-trivial evidence against the idea. An idea that only works if we wake up one day and transition the entire national economy at once, or worse, even the entire global economy (which the combination of "open borders" and BI could require, if "open borders" includes handing out BI to everyone who crosses the border), is a non-starter. Even if in some abstract sense it would work, we can't ever attain enough confidence in the plan to make it a rational choice. There are certainly things that have the curve that if done a bit make things worse, but make things better if done wholeheartedly. However, there's a lot more things that people think have that curve but actually make things worse the more they are done. It is impossible to tell the two apart from here, and the abundance of bad ideas should give one pause before making a huge commitment. The twentieth century is strewn with the wreckage of economies that made that mistake, and the twenty-first century hasn't stopped, either. We can really only consider interventions that work in the small for our changes in the large. (And always keeping an eye out for the interventions that worked in the small but failed in the large!)
  - NetMonkey 8y ago
    Simply select 2000 18 year olds and give them BI for life. That isn't all that expensive even in worst case and would actually show if BI could work.
    - AJ007 8y ago
      Pretty sure you can find 2000 18 year olds with a trust fund or part of a Native American Indian tribe that distributes gaming revenue.
      - pyre 8y ago
        "Coming from a rich family" or "part of a Native American tribe" is not a wide enough distribution of people to draw conclusions. Any failures / successes could be down to the environment and may not be able to be extrapolated to the rest of society at large.
        Can_Not 8y ago
        On the other hand, if you're wondering if people who after the end of highschool, are able to finish college without having to get a minimum wage job to pay rent and for college, are doing better in life after college (and what measured amount better), the data already exists and there are far more than 2000 subjects.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - sharemywin 8y ago
      It wouldn't at all show the effects of a large scale implementation. You can't measure the effects of supply constraints and rising prices with small scale tests.
    - dahart 8y ago
      If only it were simple. To actually do that, someone somewhere has to approve a budget of at least 2 billion dollars, that's how much money you're talking about. They have to both find the funding and have the political stamina to withstand the backlash on that kind of spending. * my assumptions are: $25k income (which is just barely above the poverty line), for 40 years (which isn't long enough).
- lambdaphagy 8y ago
  What good is a social policy if you have to implement it at national scale for an unlimited time to see if it works as advertised?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    That largely describes US Social Security.
  - constantlm 8y ago
    Democracy worked out pretty well.
    - dantheman 8y ago
      Democracy scales and in fact works better in small groups than large groups...
    - CWuestefeld 8y ago
      Democracy was tried in many different settings and scopes, over the course of many centuries, before gaining a real foothold. America was NOT a great experiment in a new approach to government - or if it was, that experiment was with a Constitutionally limited system. It was implemented in ancient Greece as we're all taught. At the time of America's founding, there was already a democracy of sorts in place in the Netherlands. Along the way, many other institutions implemented it - for example, pirate ships were often democracies, with the captain chosen by popular acclamation.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Who said anything about the US?
  - fnordsensei 8y ago
    The exciting stuff with negative tax/basic income is to see the systemic effects kick in. And yes, this will be very hard to test small-scale. Kind of how it would be very hard to test whether democracy works or not by giving one person a vote.
thisisit 8y ago
Discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921
CNJ7654 8y ago
It's strange that they would decide not to continue a program without first knowing the results. Are there any publicly available metrics that might indicate how the program is doing so far?
smaryjerry 8y ago
It’s ironic. There is less crime if you give people money... okay. Having money stolen becomes a guarantee instead with UBI.
simonh 8y ago
I'm not convinced these big bang experiments, in the context of a wider economy not organised around the concept, are that useful. For me one of this big advantages of BI is not enabling more people to 'drop out' of the productive economy and become artist such. It's actually the way in which it subsidises low income jobs. One of the big problems we have at the moment is low paying work being squeezed out of the economy through automation and increases in the minimum wage. A basic Income enables more people dropping out of the labour force to get back into it, because with a BI low paying jobs become a more viable way to earn a living. This gets people out of the poverty trap and also makes businesses dependent on low wage work more viable. It could be a real shot in the arm for the employment sectors that the most vulnerable people in our economy depend on. On that basis, rather than pick a few thousand people to give a large BI to, why not start by providing a very modest BI to everybody. Fund it by equally modest tax increases, so it's revenue neutral. You could start with on the order of a hundred bucks (quid, whatever) a month. If a BI is going to have a beneficial effect, then even at this level it ought to do some measurable good.

33 points by dbattaglia 8y ago

mozumder 8y ago

If this was an experiment, what were the results? What was being measured?

arnvald 8y ago
According to the article, it will end in January 2019 (the government decided not to fund extending it), so results can be expected in a year or so.
jachee 8y ago
It can be an experiment without being scientific or rigorous. In this case, I believe the ultimate goal was to see how long they could keep it going. EDIT: Why the downvotes? The word "experiment" doesn't automatically imply science. Why couldn't Finland have been experimenting with UBI the same way that individuals experiment with many things: to see what would happen?

jasonkostempski 8y ago

What good is an experiment applied to a small group of people and only for a limited time? The people that get it aren't going to adjust their long term behavior and the local economy certainly isn't going to change in response.

jerf 8y ago
Well, we have no alternative. We can't afford an experiment that funds a ton of people and lasts for a long time. No matter how abundantly confident the people of HN may be that BI is the way to go, one of the fundamental lessons of science over the past couple of centuries is that your "abundant confidence" doesn't count for squat in the real world. If BI can't prove itself out in a smaller environment, we on no account can afford to risk our entire economy on it. That said, I'm not saying this was necessarily a viable test of the idea. On the other hand, if it really is a great idea that is going to save civilization, it really ought to have the characteristic that it is still a good idea that is an improvement on the status quo even when applied in the small, such that everybody wants to continue the experiment and expand it, not shut it down. The slow drip of failed BI experiments, even if they didn't "really test BI", is becoming non-trivial evidence against the idea. An idea that only works if we wake up one day and transition the entire national economy at once, or worse, even the entire global economy (which the combination of "open borders" and BI could require, if "open borders" includes handing out BI to everyone who crosses the border), is a non-starter. Even if in some abstract sense it would work, we can't ever attain enough confidence in the plan to make it a rational choice. There are certainly things that have the curve that if done a bit make things worse, but make things better if done wholeheartedly. However, there's a lot more things that people think have that curve but actually make things worse the more they are done. It is impossible to tell the two apart from here, and the abundance of bad ideas should give one pause before making a huge commitment. The twentieth century is strewn with the wreckage of economies that made that mistake, and the twenty-first century hasn't stopped, either. We can really only consider interventions that work in the small for our changes in the large. (And always keeping an eye out for the interventions that worked in the small but failed in the large!)
- NetMonkey 8y ago
  Simply select 2000 18 year olds and give them BI for life. That isn't all that expensive even in worst case and would actually show if BI could work.
  - AJ007 8y ago
    Pretty sure you can find 2000 18 year olds with a trust fund or part of a Native American Indian tribe that distributes gaming revenue.
    - pyre 8y ago
      "Coming from a rich family" or "part of a Native American tribe" is not a wide enough distribution of people to draw conclusions. Any failures / successes could be down to the environment and may not be able to be extrapolated to the rest of society at large.
      - Can_Not 8y ago
        On the other hand, if you're wondering if people who after the end of highschool, are able to finish college without having to get a minimum wage job to pay rent and for college, are doing better in life after college (and what measured amount better), the data already exists and there are far more than 2000 subjects.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - sharemywin 8y ago
    It wouldn't at all show the effects of a large scale implementation. You can't measure the effects of supply constraints and rising prices with small scale tests.
  - dahart 8y ago
    If only it were simple. To actually do that, someone somewhere has to approve a budget of at least 2 billion dollars, that's how much money you're talking about. They have to both find the funding and have the political stamina to withstand the backlash on that kind of spending. * my assumptions are: $25k income (which is just barely above the poverty line), for 40 years (which isn't long enough).
lambdaphagy 8y ago
What good is a social policy if you have to implement it at national scale for an unlimited time to see if it works as advertised?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  That largely describes US Social Security.
- constantlm 8y ago
  Democracy worked out pretty well.
  - dantheman 8y ago
    Democracy scales and in fact works better in small groups than large groups...
  - CWuestefeld 8y ago
    Democracy was tried in many different settings and scopes, over the course of many centuries, before gaining a real foothold. America was NOT a great experiment in a new approach to government - or if it was, that experiment was with a Constitutionally limited system. It was implemented in ancient Greece as we're all taught. At the time of America's founding, there was already a democracy of sorts in place in the Netherlands. Along the way, many other institutions implemented it - for example, pirate ships were often democracies, with the captain chosen by popular acclamation.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Who said anything about the US?
- fnordsensei 8y ago
  The exciting stuff with negative tax/basic income is to see the systemic effects kick in. And yes, this will be very hard to test small-scale. Kind of how it would be very hard to test whether democracy works or not by giving one person a vote.

thisisit 8y ago

Discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921

CNJ7654 8y ago

It's strange that they would decide not to continue a program without first knowing the results. Are there any publicly available metrics that might indicate how the program is doing so far?

smaryjerry 8y ago

It’s ironic. There is less crime if you give people money... okay. Having money stolen becomes a guarantee instead with UBI.

simonh 8y ago

I'm not convinced these big bang experiments, in the context of a wider economy not organised around the concept, are that useful. For me one of this big advantages of BI is not enabling more people to 'drop out' of the productive economy and become artist such. It's actually the way in which it subsidises low income jobs. One of the big problems we have at the moment is low paying work being squeezed out of the economy through automation and increases in the minimum wage. A basic Income enables more people dropping out of the labour force to get back into it, because with a BI low paying jobs become a more viable way to earn a living. This gets people out of the poverty trap and also makes businesses dependent on low wage work more viable. It could be a real shot in the arm for the employment sectors that the most vulnerable people in our economy depend on. On that basis, rather than pick a few thousand people to give a large BI to, why not start by providing a very modest BI to everybody. Fund it by equally modest tax increases, so it's revenue neutral. You could start with on the order of a hundred bucks (quid, whatever) a month. If a BI is going to have a beneficial effect, then even at this level it ought to do some measurable good.