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Did Finland’s basic income experiment work? [video]

81 points by tagawa 8y ago

zeroname 8y ago
TLDR: Two unemployed people are shown, each receiving 560€ a month with no strings attached. For comparison, median income in Finland is 2900€. The woman doesn't seem to have learned any trade (at least it's not mentioned) and has only ever worked briefly at a factory. She took a job as a telemarketer that she liked. As the program ends, her financial situation will be unsustainable. The man used to be a journalist and has been unemployed for five years. He's still unemployed after the program ends and will now have to "deal with bureaucracy again".
- abledon 8y ago
  I love how they just didn't really do much and kinda slacked. People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day. (I would have also liked to see the study actually show it being a sustainable solution , but the ironic outcome is enjoyed nevertheless!)
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    My mate spent a year on the dole living rent free at his parents learning how to play the drums. He's now a highly paid insurance PM consultant. I have a few other stories like this too, a few people I knew mucked around on the dole for a year, deliberately failing interviews, and decades later are now happy, successful, people. You shouldn't experiment on long term unemployed as they are the abnormal cases, most people get back to work within 3 months if helped. There's a simple thought experiment, if every month you get 100 unemployed people and 90 get a job but 10 are bad and don't, within a year you might look at the system and say 'look, it doesn't work, 120 people are bad and don't get a job, and only 90 get a job', where in reality 1080 got a job and 120 didn't.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      Agree with your point on focusing on that particular sample. But I also heard and seen stories of people who take long (2-3y) career breaks and struggle to get back in, or do at a significant loss of seniority. It’s not so much an unemployment problem. They ultimately find a job. Rather a “damaged career path” kind of problem.
    - hycaria 8y ago
      I don’t see how that’s relevant. We’re talking about long term subsidies and the often prevailing hope that this would enable new vocations and filling of underpayed but highly socially valuable functions (like family care etc) I also happen to know many people through world of warcraft who live on their parents money, have no urge to win their own, simply live on little and have been playing for years now. They are not picking up new skills or doing something social. I rather hope that someday money will be enough of a problem to motivate them to deal with their issues or just do something with their life, than keep things the same and hope for a change.
      - mattmanser 8y ago
        Again, you're focusing on the abnormal, rather than the normal, just like the parent. You come across these people because they spend a much larger amount of time than normal people. It's a basic consequence of simple stats that are very easy to misinterpret, and that's my point.
  - oosjc9a5 8y ago
    My bet, based on what my heart says, is that if everybody could receive UBI, almost all people will do absolutely nothing; levels of depression and mental illness will go over the roof, which could very well end in violence. Introducing UBI because of robots taking jobs reminds me of that quote, "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"
    - htns 8y ago
      Finland is already a welfare state.
    - sascha_sl 8y ago
      >based on what my heart says okay so I can stop reading there, because whatever that is will be informed by the culture surrounding you, which if I had to guess would be center to right american
    - ykevinator 8y ago
      It's so little money that I don't think people would do nothing. I agree with your concern about mental health. Sometimes well intentioned policy sets up an environment that encourages behaviors that lead to mental health issues (the opiod crisis for example).
  - gaius 8y ago
    People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day Yes and no. The B in UBI is basic, you won't starve or freeze but if you want nice things such as a new gaming PC, you would still need to earn to pay for that. Maybe in that world you would do just enough work to earn it, then not bother working again until you needed to upgrade - and that's OK.
    - artiscode 8y ago
      I think it's very lucrative to turn to crime _occasionally_ when basic needs are taken care of. UBI guarantees not starving and having a roof over your head, while a new phone or even a gaming PC is just 1 crime away.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    I don't think the woman slacked, she did get a job, but she was living above her means when it was clear that the program would end at some point. I also think that this is exactly what this kind of UBI will do: Subsidize low-paying jobs. The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely. I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works.
    - kome 8y ago
      Subsidizing low-paying jobs is not a bad thing if you do what you love or you work on your own terms without having to worry too much about profits.
    - Legogris 8y ago
      > The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely. > I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works. If it's like Sweden, then he still has to apply for jobs and is pushed to go outside of his field if he is to continue getting benefits. So many people identify strongly with their occupation. This man is a journalist and author and used to be able to sustain on that. It's as if switching field would be admiting defeat and losing yourself.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I'm reminded of the KLF's cynical but observant "THE MANUAL: HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE THE EASY WAY": http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ "Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through. Also, being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run."
    - gerbilly 8y ago
      The name of the famous band, UB40 stands for "Unemployment Benefit, Form 40"
  - Lorkki 8y ago
    Slacking is what the current system conditions the long-term unemployed to do. That is, the alternative to UBI here isn't "no income"; we already have basic income in Finland, though it's highly dependent on enduring various activation measures that are mostly useless in providing actual employment (and, in a few instances, have turned out to be sweat shops that use the unemployed for unpaid labour). Accepting a low-income, part-time job tends to result in the automatic loss of several months of basic income, though the pay from such job might be significantly less - so, in a situation where there aren't enough jobs to go around, the rational thing to do is to avoid any actual work and to simply keep jumping the hoops. The proposed UBI models are aimed specifially at unraveling these "welfare traps" and at reducing the attached bureaucracy.
- newshorts 8y ago
  The woman seems to become dependent on the program. I thought it was interesting that she leveraged the income to take a lower paying job. Sort of the exact opposite of the intention I would imagine. The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone...
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    >The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      And I suspect that it will like result in even more ressentment from people who chose to stay at home on a meagre UBI against people who chose to work and earn a lot more. In other words it could have a politically explosive outcome (populist, socialist parties getting elected, etc).
    - justaguyhere 8y ago
      I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person. Nobody in my family has ever taken even minor risks like say, traveling abroad (for work or fun), starting a small business etc. I'm the first and I am only taking baby steps now. Point being, we can't expect to give UBI for a few months and suddenly expect people to take big risks or become ambitious or attack huge problems. These things take time. Imagine a person who has seen his parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc being only salaried workers all their life, rarely moving out of their comfort zone. It wouldn't be easy for such a person to suddenly change (climb Everest, start a biz, spend a year writing a novel etc), even if their food and lodging is taken care of. I don't know whether UBI is a good thing or bad. But I think both the for camp and against camp are too quick to jump to conclusions - these are social experiments not Math problems. They will take time and we can only learn by trial and error. And what works in one community might not work in another, even within the same state/country.
    - 8y ago
- davidgrenier 8y ago
  In other words, we learn absolutely nothing about the question the story is titled by?
- kristerv 8y ago
  thanks :D
newshorts 8y ago
I’d like to see more case studies. I could see people taking license to putz around for 2 years, while others try and use the opportunity. Is humanity mostly lazy or mostly productive?
- deleted 8y ago
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dnate 8y ago
I'm very much interested in the findings. There is probably more to it than this 5 minute video can show.
petters 8y ago
I think that to answer the question in the title, looking at two persons only is the wrong approach.
Flip-per 8y ago
TLDR: Misleading title, waste of time. "Finland is analyzing the results to see what lessons can be learned." - that's all the substance there is. It's just a video of two randomly picked persons of this experiment, which doesn't tell anything.
- gamesbrainiac 8y ago
  Thats exactly how I felt at the end of the video. They just ended it, and now they are analyzing the data. It does not say if they will restart the program after their assessment or if they will just end it for good. From the people in the video, what it seems to show is that it can give people some confidence to pursue what they want to do, but at the same time, it does not seem to permanently change their life. I think a longer term study is needed. Furthermore, it is not clear if people will start doing more altruistic work if they have UBI like contributing to open source or working at a non-profit organization.
thomasfl 8y ago
I cant't see how this experiment is set up, can give any answers to what effects general basic income has on the society. A selection of only 2000 people seems too small. 560 USD a month is not enough to get by in scandinavia either. If an experiment is going to prove that society wont't get ruined by general basic income, then an experiment has to be done on a much greater scale than this.
- justaguyhere 8y ago
  That is true, but they gotta start somewhere! Isn't it okay to start small and repeat it a few times, incorporating learnings from the previous round?
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    Doing such a small scale trial prevents any of the impact UBI would have on the job market, so anything learned may not be relevant. Removing 2000 people from the job market doesn't mean much.
  - function_seven 8y ago
    It might not actually be okay. Quantity has a quality all its own. Whatever learnings produced from a small scale study may not actually apply to a large scale implementation. It’s possible you could “learn” the wrong lessons. A couple problems with these basic income experiments are that the participants know they are receiving their money for a limited time, which does not allow them to change their economic participation in meaningful ways. There is also the network effects to be considered. When only a tiny subset of the population is receiving basic income, the effects that you would like to study can’t be observed. I don’t know how those two issues can be controlled for. Basic Income seems like a system where you just have to dive in a cross your fingers.
    - justaguyhere 8y ago
      Fair enough. It is then a tough balancing act between the amount of resources (money especially) available for such experiments and the desired size of them to be actually useful. Finland is very small and very homogeneous, so it reduces the number of variables they need to think about. And they are rich enough to afford such experiments. Must be fun for those working on the such problems :)
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atemerev 8y ago
Of course UBI “works”. There are some rich people who enjoy never having to work, and they are quite happy with that. The problem with it is that it cannot be universally sustainable.
- ggm 8y ago
  Really? I mean sure has some unsustainable qualities but what if it turned out it worked for long enough to carry into a different phase of the business cycle?
  - atemerev 8y ago
    Retirement plans are already unsustainable, retirement age is raising everywhere in the world. UBI is basically a life-long retirement scheme, requiring at least 10x more resources.
    - sascha_sl 8y ago
      There's a difference between unsustainable and underfunded.
      - atemerev 8y ago
        Retirement schemes are currently funded with such creative approaches that Enron would be ashamed of. No stone left unturned: continuous refinancing with future taxes, securitization, implied zero default risk, assumptions of constantly growing economy, and more. Even then, US direct social security is 25% of all budgetary expenses, and with Medicare/Medicaid it is around 60%, much larger than anything else. Unsustainable means unsustainable.
        logicchains 8y ago
        That's a problem with America's dodgy retirement scheme, not retirement schemes in general. In Australia for instance, the government enforces mandatory saving for retirement, but neither the citizen nor the government are able to access the money before retirement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia. This means that peoples' retirements are actually funded by real savings, not by wealth transfer from younger workers, so it doesn't matter if the retired population significantly outnumbers the working population. Singapore has something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Provident_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Provident_Fund.
escanda 8y ago
Pretty surprising stuff since here in Spain the unemployed make about 400 euros a month after they have ended their actual unemployment benefits. This last resort income is for two years. They must attend courses on job skills like cook, welder and so on though. All these courses are free. It's not for life, but it takes out of poverty most people.
- oosjc9a5 8y ago
  The problem with Spain is that there literally are no jobs, and those courses are a charade.
  - xyproto 8y ago
    As long as there is a need to be filled (like food) and a way to fulfill needs (like fishing), there are jobs. There are plenty of jobs to be created, also in Spain.
    - oosjc9a5 8y ago
      First you are assuming that there really are needs to be filled. For example in the case of fishing there are limits to how much you can fish, set by the EU, which maybe we've hit already. Second, jobs don't exist until they are created; saying that they could be created doesn't help unemployed people. Someone has to take the (sometimes very high) risk.
      - marcosdumay 8y ago
        And I bet that once somebody getting those 400 euros a month decides to take that risk, they will not be entitled the support money anymore.
        oosjc9a5 8y ago
        Of course, but in any case, someone who lives off welfare doesn't have the money to start a business. The only option is to ask a bank for money, and they won't give you shit if you're living off welfare.
WheelsAtLarge 8y ago
I bet that it did not have a benefit. Giving money away without a stated goal leads nowhere. The idea of basic income will only work if the receivers are helped along to define what their goal in life will be. Most people have no clue as to what they want out of life. Giving people free money will only make things worse since now they lose the incentive to even try. At least when you have a job you work towards completing someone else's goal. With a basic income, you have no defined goal and you lose the stress of having to find one. People are talking about mass unemployment because of AI, something that will cause societal chaos, so I can understand why governments and the elite would want to push for a basic income. But it needs to be done in a way that will not destroy people's incentive to help society. We don't always see it but the only reason we have and are able to buy what we need is because someone got up and did a day's worth of work. Imagine a future where everyone has a choice of showing up to work. Some people will always show up, some people will never show up but the vast majority will show up depending on how they feel that day. A recipe for a chaotic society.
- nugga 8y ago
  The finnish ubi thing was a joke because it's not nation wide and the amount paid is marginal. I don't see how you can glean any relevant info from that. Wonder what the ramifications are going to be if you're going to see stories of failures connected to not-so-good UBI studies and how they're going to be played by politicians or people against UBI? >Most people have no clue as to what they want out of life. Giving people free money will only make things worse since now they lose the incentive to even try. At least when you have a job you work towards completing someone else's goal. With a basic income, you have no defined goal and you lose the stress of having to find one. [...] it needs to be done in a way that will not destroy people's incentive to help society. This part seems more legit. What is the goal in life? Enjoyment of sense pleasure? Procreation? Creation of works of art? I don't know if the point of life can be slaving away roughly third of your waking hours to fuel a gigantic machine based on pointless consumption of material goods and the 'latest shit'. Then again, I also don't know why we need 7 or 11 billion humans on this planet doing those things and how it's going to be sustainable if more and more jobs are being automated away and more and more people are still supposedly going to be lifted from real third world poverty into low/middle consumer class. No doubt on balance everyone should try to be a force of goodness in this world, right? >Imagine a future where everyone has a choice of showing up to work. Some people will always show up, some people will never show up but the vast majority will show up depending on how they feel that day. A recipe for a chaotic society. I think this is a false comparison. The owner/manager class and employers no doubt are against ubi because it cuts into their power over others. In my opinion the main benefit of UBI is 'strongarming' employers to having to treat workers better because everyone gets paid enough to move on to greener pastures if they find their jobs paying too little compared to how they are treated or how they enjoy their jobs, allowing people from all walks of life no matter their starting position to be more mobile in society. With UBI you would get paid more the more you worked and that's an incentive enough. Some people no doubt will cut back their hours or drop out of life with a bong in their hand but that's on them. How does the economy work anyway? Money has purchasing power somehow correlated to the amount of effort people put into work and the cost of items and services usually reflect a value of time and effort? Won't UBI simply shift some of the ginormous cumulative pareto distorted amount the top whatever% get for simply being at the top to the ordinary folks in the form of a safety net? Productivity seems to be increasing throughout the history yet somehow and arguably perhaps rightly they go to the owners and managers. In a democratic society we can wrestle some of it back because everyone's in this together like it or not and UBI could make for a fairer and less cut throat society.
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botto 8y ago
One part of UBI I still don't understand and have a hard time finding an answer for: If everyone gets a basic level of income no matter what, won't the base level just be pushed up higher? So instead of a flat costing for instance $500 a month, it will cost $1000 month because everyone can afford the $500 flat. I can't see a scenario where a government doesn't have to increase the UBI every year.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Are there no other flats on the world that people can sell for $900 and undercut the competition? Why what you described doesn't happen right now?
  - oosjc9a5 8y ago
    There's a shortage of flats, so there's no need to undercut the competition.
- deleted 8y ago
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- krapp 8y ago
  >So instead of a flat costing for instance $500 a month, it will cost $1000 month because everyone can afford the $500 flat. In this scenario, presumably all businesses raise their prices to the total UBI amount. But now people on UBI who could previously afford multiple goods and services no longer can, because each business demands the entirety of their UBI, participation in the economy is infeasible. Therefore, most of those businesses go under, being unable to actually sell anything and make a profit (bear in mind that this inflation also applies to business owners, and any costs of doing business as well.) This won't happen for the reason renters don't ask for your income and simply demand 100% of your income as rent nowadays - economics isn't that simple. No one is going to buy a flat if they can't also afford utilities and food while living there.
  - misja111 8y ago
    OP did not write that rents would go up until l00% of people's income. IMO what he meant was that certain flats that used to be priced at the level that everyone could afford them, would go up in price when everyone's income would increase because of basic income: and they would keep going up until they reached the same equilibrium that they used to be in beforehand. Of course this would not just apply to rents but to all scarce commodities. I think OP has a valid point; similar things happened after the influx of high income tech workers in SF, or for instance in some European countries after governments gave tax advantages to house owners.
pgt 8y ago
Would universal basic income reduce crime by making it easier for employees to decline immoral tasks?
- dTal 8y ago
  Interesting question. I think one could reasonably expect it to decrease economic crime, where the motivation of the act is to avoid poverty and starvation. This would include both compulsion by one's employer, and also crimes of theft by the unemployed. It may conceivably increase other types of crime, possibly in unexpected ways. Give people time and freedom and just enough money to stay alive, and not all of them will become artists or entrepreneurs. Many will just get bored. Some fraction of those will direct that boredom in destructive directions, like vandalism or drug use. Others, resenting the system, might find a sense of purpose in political activism, which could lead to civil disobedience. So I don't think it's easy to predict.
  - meruru 8y ago
    >Many will just get bored. Some fraction of those will direct that boredom in destructive directions, like vandalism or drug use. You have an excellent punishment option in that case that may well be more effective than prison: remove their right to basic income :)
    - undersuit 8y ago
      I'm a fervent supporter of Universal Basic Income and that very threat is why I want it Universal. Let's fix our societies' failings without the threat of death, hunger, and forced exposure to the elements.
      - meruru 8y ago
        In the case of vandalism, I agree completely removing their basic income would be too much, just fining them like we already do is enough. For things that would land you in prison though, forcing you to have to work like you already have to under the current system seems less cruel than the alternative. Note that under UBI there's going to be a surplus of job opportunities that no one will want to do like cleaning toilets and such. So it's less a threat of death and hunger, and more a threat of having to resort to shitty jobs.
factsaresacred 8y ago
I'm currently in an EU country receiving a 2 year stipend of 750 euros a month as I attempt to build a business. The magic of having that money come in each month is that it removes the cognitive load of uh oh, how do I survive? allowing me to fully devote myself to work. Rather than slack off, I work 16 hour days, 7 days a week. It's not enough to have a social life, or do much of anything, and that's fine. After all why would you be out playing if you've a business to run? Perhaps it doesn't work on a wide scale, but for the sincere and serious, basic income is a gift. And one that I believe every recipient is obliged to repay in the form of job creation, tax revenue or some kind of contribution to society. In the same way that washing machines 'liberated' women in developing countries[1], UBI could be a similar revolution - freeing up time and energy spent in drudgery and reassigning it to (potentially) more worthwhile and value-creating pursuits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2013/04/24/hans-rosling-and-the-magic-washing-machine-a-lesson/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2013/04/24/hans-rosli...
- ykevinator 8y ago
  This is a great use case for ubi. I also think the US should open Medicare for small business. I think the biggest problem with ubi is the branding. It should be billed as alternative social security or something. Using ubi for starting a business is great. ( and good luck to you!)
  - factsaresacred 8y ago
    Thanks!
- Proven 8y ago
  > The magic of having that money come in each month is that it removes the cognitive load of uh oh, how do I survive? allowing me to fully devote myself to work. The only reasonably conclusion is why ever get to the point where your startup makes a product or service - you could spend a lifetime "working" on the launch and retire, if only the money kept coming in. This "basic income for all, out of nothing" is completely insane and I am not at all surprised that so many of this site's readers see no issue with it. Begin by reading "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism", kids.
hackandtrip 8y ago
Italy is doing something similar - everyone with low income can apply to receive "citizienship" income, something like 800EU a month. There are strict rules to avoid fraud (that probably won't work, will explain why): the State will give everyone that applied an offer for a private job in different time spans and different distance - you can only avoid one time. Main problem is - there are no jobs that will pay more than that income, and people will try to avoid and keep the income for at least a year. Surely, in my humble opinion, this is the way to go - together with stricter regulations on non-specialized work, where enslavement is going towards foreign population in EU countries.
- dullgiulio 8y ago
  Oh no, that's not the case at all. The joke (comedian-led) government of Italy is just misnaming unemployment benefits. They have a very foggy plan (and no ability to actually execute it), but it would include plenty of people trying to find unemployed a job close to home. Again, it's a populist joke.
known 8y ago
I think UBI should lead to self-actualization in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_need...
Polarity 8y ago
not enough money, not enough people and too short (you know its ending somewhere soon, so you´re not really free. and the participents still seeking for jobs, because the experiment is ending.). so this test is basically just donating a bit of money to random people, not a basic income experiment (for me at least).
- leke 8y ago
  I didn't get picked for this, but if I did, like you say, I wouldn't have started a business knowing it would end in 2 years.
  - artiscode 8y ago
    May I ask why not? In my opinion 2 years is plenty of time to validate a business and see if it's ramen aka UBI amount profitable.
leke 8y ago
I think it would be more interesting to see what people with jobs would do with that money. As someone working in Finland who can pay rent, bills, buy basic food, and other monthly essentials, it would be nice to have money left over to actually spend on myself.
- samiru 8y ago
  The money would be taxed away, of course.
alkonaut 8y ago
Basic income that isn’t universal is just a targeted handout. A real universal basic income experiment has to be perpetual (so I don’t risk my career and future by not working) and universal for a country (so you get the effect on prices, jobs, rents, health, attitudes). This is also why there may never be an experiment - the first experiment will be the first true attempt.
- runeks 8y ago
  And even if you run the “experiment” on a global scale for ten years, that’s no guarantee that the next ten years will work out the same. It’s really very simple: at our current stage of technological evolution, if everyone stops working, we all die.
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    The most universal and perpetual you can make it is probably one country (possibly e.g the EU or similar) and of course “perpetual” will only ever mean “until political will changes”. It’s important to remember that there is a massive difference between adopting a UBI in a large welfare state like Finland as opposed to eg the US. For a small UBI it’s effectively just a matter of first moving many different systems into a single one. When I was a student I was paid $600/mo or thereabouts to study. Now I’m a well paid dev and parent. We get a child grant for two kids of $300/mo and a daycare subsidy of around $2k per month for the two of them. Those child grants/subsidies require no application or qualification. Obviously under a UBI a lot of that would be shifted into the UBI instead so instead of using subsidized daycare people would choose not to work for a while. So I think it’s entirely possible for some of the Nordic welfare states to change to a UBI-like system. The payout might not be a living wage (as in this experiment) but it could replace student grants, minimum unemployment benefits, minimum pensions, daycare subsidy etc. For full time workers it would just be a huge tax credit (probably offset by an even larger tax hike) Meanwhile I think it would be extremely hard for the US to do the same, because UBI without the intermediate step of a massive welfare state just isn’t going to be easy.
  - summerdown2 8y ago
    It's not that simple at all, otherwise no-one would be talking about it. There are a number of competing effects, but at least one currently unanswered question about basic income is whether people are naturally lazy or naturally entrepreneurial. I.e. given an unshakeable safety net which means they are ok whatever they do, do people work harder to do better than ok, or sit on ok. There have only been unsatisfactory trials so far, but a number of results seem to favour the better result. Here's another way of looking at it. Currently, people can get sucked into a benefit trap. They might have an income from benefits of £100 a week, which vanishes once they start work. So obviously they would lose out unless a job they can get provides at least £100 + travel and other costs. Basic income removes this trap by saying: "You get £100 always. But you also get to keep a large proportion of every pound you earn above £100. Go for it! Under basic income, a person otherwise on benefits can walk round people's houses with a ladder and offer to clean windows - and gain from the process.
kolbe 8y ago
A six minute video of two anecdotes cannot possibly (and did not) answer the question in this title. This is click bait garbage.
- oska 8y ago
  Which is why I no longer click on BBC articles. In contrast, the national broadcasting corporation in my own country (the ABC in Australia) still does fairly good reporting.
supercarsw 8y ago
dont believe the hype please
suprazone 8y ago
hacker news is shadow banning ? how low can hn go ?
kgwxd 8y ago
Could a virtual economoy be a better place to do a proper UBI experiment? Maybe like a Tamagotchi MMO. I'd play it.
ransom1538 8y ago
Will rent seeking landlords just raise rent? If everyone has a BS degree, isn't that just the requirement?
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81 points by tagawa 8y ago

TLDR: Two unemployed people are shown, each receiving 560€ a month with no strings attached. For comparison, median income in Finland is 2900€. The woman doesn't seem to have learned any trade (at least it's not mentioned) and has only ever worked briefly at a factory. She took a job as a telemarketer that she liked. As the program ends, her financial situation will be unsustainable. The man used to be a journalist and has been unemployed for five years. He's still unemployed after the program ends and will now have to "deal with bureaucracy again".

abledon 8y ago
I love how they just didn't really do much and kinda slacked. People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day. (I would have also liked to see the study actually show it being a sustainable solution , but the ironic outcome is enjoyed nevertheless!)
- mattmanser 8y ago
  My mate spent a year on the dole living rent free at his parents learning how to play the drums. He's now a highly paid insurance PM consultant. I have a few other stories like this too, a few people I knew mucked around on the dole for a year, deliberately failing interviews, and decades later are now happy, successful, people. You shouldn't experiment on long term unemployed as they are the abnormal cases, most people get back to work within 3 months if helped. There's a simple thought experiment, if every month you get 100 unemployed people and 90 get a job but 10 are bad and don't, within a year you might look at the system and say 'look, it doesn't work, 120 people are bad and don't get a job, and only 90 get a job', where in reality 1080 got a job and 120 didn't.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Agree with your point on focusing on that particular sample. But I also heard and seen stories of people who take long (2-3y) career breaks and struggle to get back in, or do at a significant loss of seniority. It’s not so much an unemployment problem. They ultimately find a job. Rather a “damaged career path” kind of problem.
  - hycaria 8y ago
    I don’t see how that’s relevant. We’re talking about long term subsidies and the often prevailing hope that this would enable new vocations and filling of underpayed but highly socially valuable functions (like family care etc) I also happen to know many people through world of warcraft who live on their parents money, have no urge to win their own, simply live on little and have been playing for years now. They are not picking up new skills or doing something social. I rather hope that someday money will be enough of a problem to motivate them to deal with their issues or just do something with their life, than keep things the same and hope for a change.
    - mattmanser 8y ago
      Again, you're focusing on the abnormal, rather than the normal, just like the parent. You come across these people because they spend a much larger amount of time than normal people. It's a basic consequence of simple stats that are very easy to misinterpret, and that's my point.
- oosjc9a5 8y ago
  My bet, based on what my heart says, is that if everybody could receive UBI, almost all people will do absolutely nothing; levels of depression and mental illness will go over the roof, which could very well end in violence. Introducing UBI because of robots taking jobs reminds me of that quote, "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"
  - htns 8y ago
    Finland is already a welfare state.
  - sascha_sl 8y ago
    >based on what my heart says okay so I can stop reading there, because whatever that is will be informed by the culture surrounding you, which if I had to guess would be center to right american
  - ykevinator 8y ago
    It's so little money that I don't think people would do nothing. I agree with your concern about mental health. Sometimes well intentioned policy sets up an environment that encourages behaviors that lead to mental health issues (the opiod crisis for example).
- gaius 8y ago
  People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day Yes and no. The B in UBI is basic, you won't starve or freeze but if you want nice things such as a new gaming PC, you would still need to earn to pay for that. Maybe in that world you would do just enough work to earn it, then not bother working again until you needed to upgrade - and that's OK.
  - artiscode 8y ago
    I think it's very lucrative to turn to crime _occasionally_ when basic needs are taken care of. UBI guarantees not starving and having a roof over your head, while a new phone or even a gaming PC is just 1 crime away.
- zeroname 8y ago
  I don't think the woman slacked, she did get a job, but she was living above her means when it was clear that the program would end at some point. I also think that this is exactly what this kind of UBI will do: Subsidize low-paying jobs. The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely. I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works.
  - kome 8y ago
    Subsidizing low-paying jobs is not a bad thing if you do what you love or you work on your own terms without having to worry too much about profits.
  - Legogris 8y ago
    > The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely. > I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works. If it's like Sweden, then he still has to apply for jobs and is pushed to go outside of his field if he is to continue getting benefits. So many people identify strongly with their occupation. This man is a journalist and author and used to be able to sustain on that. It's as if switching field would be admiting defeat and losing yourself.
- pjc50 8y ago
  I'm reminded of the KLF's cynical but observant "THE MANUAL: HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE THE EASY WAY": http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/ "Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through. Also, being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run."
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    The name of the famous band, UB40 stands for "Unemployment Benefit, Form 40"
- Lorkki 8y ago
  Slacking is what the current system conditions the long-term unemployed to do. That is, the alternative to UBI here isn't "no income"; we already have basic income in Finland, though it's highly dependent on enduring various activation measures that are mostly useless in providing actual employment (and, in a few instances, have turned out to be sweat shops that use the unemployed for unpaid labour). Accepting a low-income, part-time job tends to result in the automatic loss of several months of basic income, though the pay from such job might be significantly less - so, in a situation where there aren't enough jobs to go around, the rational thing to do is to avoid any actual work and to simply keep jumping the hoops. The proposed UBI models are aimed specifially at unraveling these "welfare traps" and at reducing the attached bureaucracy.
newshorts 8y ago
The woman seems to become dependent on the program. I thought it was interesting that she leveraged the income to take a lower paying job. Sort of the exact opposite of the intention I would imagine. The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone...
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    And I suspect that it will like result in even more ressentment from people who chose to stay at home on a meagre UBI against people who chose to work and earn a lot more. In other words it could have a politically explosive outcome (populist, socialist parties getting elected, etc).
  - justaguyhere 8y ago
    I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person. Nobody in my family has ever taken even minor risks like say, traveling abroad (for work or fun), starting a small business etc. I'm the first and I am only taking baby steps now. Point being, we can't expect to give UBI for a few months and suddenly expect people to take big risks or become ambitious or attack huge problems. These things take time. Imagine a person who has seen his parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc being only salaried workers all their life, rarely moving out of their comfort zone. It wouldn't be easy for such a person to suddenly change (climb Everest, start a biz, spend a year writing a novel etc), even if their food and lodging is taken care of. I don't know whether UBI is a good thing or bad. But I think both the for camp and against camp are too quick to jump to conclusions - these are social experiments not Math problems. They will take time and we can only learn by trial and error. And what works in one community might not work in another, even within the same state/country.
  - 8y ago
davidgrenier 8y ago
In other words, we learn absolutely nothing about the question the story is titled by?
kristerv 8y ago
thanks :D

newshorts 8y ago

I’d like to see more case studies. I could see people taking license to putz around for 2 years, while others try and use the opportunity. Is humanity mostly lazy or mostly productive?

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dnate 8y ago

I'm very much interested in the findings. There is probably more to it than this 5 minute video can show.

petters 8y ago

I think that to answer the question in the title, looking at two persons only is the wrong approach.

Flip-per 8y ago

TLDR: Misleading title, waste of time. "Finland is analyzing the results to see what lessons can be learned." - that's all the substance there is. It's just a video of two randomly picked persons of this experiment, which doesn't tell anything.

gamesbrainiac 8y ago
Thats exactly how I felt at the end of the video. They just ended it, and now they are analyzing the data. It does not say if they will restart the program after their assessment or if they will just end it for good. From the people in the video, what it seems to show is that it can give people some confidence to pursue what they want to do, but at the same time, it does not seem to permanently change their life. I think a longer term study is needed. Furthermore, it is not clear if people will start doing more altruistic work if they have UBI like contributing to open source or working at a non-profit organization.

thomasfl 8y ago

I cant't see how this experiment is set up, can give any answers to what effects general basic income has on the society. A selection of only 2000 people seems too small. 560 USD a month is not enough to get by in scandinavia either. If an experiment is going to prove that society wont't get ruined by general basic income, then an experiment has to be done on a much greater scale than this.

justaguyhere 8y ago
That is true, but they gotta start somewhere! Isn't it okay to start small and repeat it a few times, incorporating learnings from the previous round?
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  Doing such a small scale trial prevents any of the impact UBI would have on the job market, so anything learned may not be relevant. Removing 2000 people from the job market doesn't mean much.
- function_seven 8y ago
  It might not actually be okay. Quantity has a quality all its own. Whatever learnings produced from a small scale study may not actually apply to a large scale implementation. It’s possible you could “learn” the wrong lessons. A couple problems with these basic income experiments are that the participants know they are receiving their money for a limited time, which does not allow them to change their economic participation in meaningful ways. There is also the network effects to be considered. When only a tiny subset of the population is receiving basic income, the effects that you would like to study can’t be observed. I don’t know how those two issues can be controlled for. Basic Income seems like a system where you just have to dive in a cross your fingers.
  - justaguyhere 8y ago
    Fair enough. It is then a tough balancing act between the amount of resources (money especially) available for such experiments and the desired size of them to be actually useful. Finland is very small and very homogeneous, so it reduces the number of variables they need to think about. And they are rich enough to afford such experiments. Must be fun for those working on the such problems :)

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atemerev 8y ago

Of course UBI “works”. There are some rich people who enjoy never having to work, and they are quite happy with that. The problem with it is that it cannot be universally sustainable.

ggm 8y ago
Really? I mean sure has some unsustainable qualities but what if it turned out it worked for long enough to carry into a different phase of the business cycle?
- atemerev 8y ago
  Retirement plans are already unsustainable, retirement age is raising everywhere in the world. UBI is basically a life-long retirement scheme, requiring at least 10x more resources.
  - sascha_sl 8y ago
    There's a difference between unsustainable and underfunded.
    - atemerev 8y ago
      Retirement schemes are currently funded with such creative approaches that Enron would be ashamed of. No stone left unturned: continuous refinancing with future taxes, securitization, implied zero default risk, assumptions of constantly growing economy, and more. Even then, US direct social security is 25% of all budgetary expenses, and with Medicare/Medicaid it is around 60%, much larger than anything else. Unsustainable means unsustainable.
      - logicchains 8y ago
        That's a problem with America's dodgy retirement scheme, not retirement schemes in general. In Australia for instance, the government enforces mandatory saving for retirement, but neither the citizen nor the government are able to access the money before retirement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia. This means that peoples' retirements are actually funded by real savings, not by wealth transfer from younger workers, so it doesn't matter if the retired population significantly outnumbers the working population. Singapore has something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Provident_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Provident_Fund.

escanda 8y ago

Pretty surprising stuff since here in Spain the unemployed make about 400 euros a month after they have ended their actual unemployment benefits. This last resort income is for two years. They must attend courses on job skills like cook, welder and so on though. All these courses are free. It's not for life, but it takes out of poverty most people.

oosjc9a5 8y ago
The problem with Spain is that there literally are no jobs, and those courses are a charade.
- xyproto 8y ago
  As long as there is a need to be filled (like food) and a way to fulfill needs (like fishing), there are jobs. There are plenty of jobs to be created, also in Spain.
  - oosjc9a5 8y ago
    First you are assuming that there really are needs to be filled. For example in the case of fishing there are limits to how much you can fish, set by the EU, which maybe we've hit already. Second, jobs don't exist until they are created; saying that they could be created doesn't help unemployed people. Someone has to take the (sometimes very high) risk.
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      And I bet that once somebody getting those 400 euros a month decides to take that risk, they will not be entitled the support money anymore.
      - oosjc9a5 8y ago
        Of course, but in any case, someone who lives off welfare doesn't have the money to start a business. The only option is to ask a bank for money, and they won't give you shit if you're living off welfare.

WheelsAtLarge 8y ago

I bet that it did not have a benefit. Giving money away without a stated goal leads nowhere. The idea of basic income will only work if the receivers are helped along to define what their goal in life will be. Most people have no clue as to what they want out of life. Giving people free money will only make things worse since now they lose the incentive to even try. At least when you have a job you work towards completing someone else's goal. With a basic income, you have no defined goal and you lose the stress of having to find one. People are talking about mass unemployment because of AI, something that will cause societal chaos, so I can understand why governments and the elite would want to push for a basic income. But it needs to be done in a way that will not destroy people's incentive to help society. We don't always see it but the only reason we have and are able to buy what we need is because someone got up and did a day's worth of work. Imagine a future where everyone has a choice of showing up to work. Some people will always show up, some people will never show up but the vast majority will show up depending on how they feel that day. A recipe for a chaotic society.

nugga 8y ago
The finnish ubi thing was a joke because it's not nation wide and the amount paid is marginal. I don't see how you can glean any relevant info from that. Wonder what the ramifications are going to be if you're going to see stories of failures connected to not-so-good UBI studies and how they're going to be played by politicians or people against UBI? >Most people have no clue as to what they want out of life. Giving people free money will only make things worse since now they lose the incentive to even try. At least when you have a job you work towards completing someone else's goal. With a basic income, you have no defined goal and you lose the stress of having to find one. [...] it needs to be done in a way that will not destroy people's incentive to help society. This part seems more legit. What is the goal in life? Enjoyment of sense pleasure? Procreation? Creation of works of art? I don't know if the point of life can be slaving away roughly third of your waking hours to fuel a gigantic machine based on pointless consumption of material goods and the 'latest shit'. Then again, I also don't know why we need 7 or 11 billion humans on this planet doing those things and how it's going to be sustainable if more and more jobs are being automated away and more and more people are still supposedly going to be lifted from real third world poverty into low/middle consumer class. No doubt on balance everyone should try to be a force of goodness in this world, right? >Imagine a future where everyone has a choice of showing up to work. Some people will always show up, some people will never show up but the vast majority will show up depending on how they feel that day. A recipe for a chaotic society. I think this is a false comparison. The owner/manager class and employers no doubt are against ubi because it cuts into their power over others. In my opinion the main benefit of UBI is 'strongarming' employers to having to treat workers better because everyone gets paid enough to move on to greener pastures if they find their jobs paying too little compared to how they are treated or how they enjoy their jobs, allowing people from all walks of life no matter their starting position to be more mobile in society. With UBI you would get paid more the more you worked and that's an incentive enough. Some people no doubt will cut back their hours or drop out of life with a bong in their hand but that's on them. How does the economy work anyway? Money has purchasing power somehow correlated to the amount of effort people put into work and the cost of items and services usually reflect a value of time and effort? Won't UBI simply shift some of the ginormous cumulative pareto distorted amount the top whatever% get for simply being at the top to the ordinary folks in the form of a safety net? Productivity seems to be increasing throughout the history yet somehow and arguably perhaps rightly they go to the owners and managers. In a democratic society we can wrestle some of it back because everyone's in this together like it or not and UBI could make for a fairer and less cut throat society.

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botto 8y ago

One part of UBI I still don't understand and have a hard time finding an answer for: If everyone gets a basic level of income no matter what, won't the base level just be pushed up higher? So instead of a flat costing for instance $500 a month, it will cost $1000 month because everyone can afford the $500 flat. I can't see a scenario where a government doesn't have to increase the UBI every year.

marcosdumay 8y ago
Are there no other flats on the world that people can sell for $900 and undercut the competition? Why what you described doesn't happen right now?
- oosjc9a5 8y ago
  There's a shortage of flats, so there's no need to undercut the competition.
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krapp 8y ago
>So instead of a flat costing for instance $500 a month, it will cost $1000 month because everyone can afford the $500 flat. In this scenario, presumably all businesses raise their prices to the total UBI amount. But now people on UBI who could previously afford multiple goods and services no longer can, because each business demands the entirety of their UBI, participation in the economy is infeasible. Therefore, most of those businesses go under, being unable to actually sell anything and make a profit (bear in mind that this inflation also applies to business owners, and any costs of doing business as well.) This won't happen for the reason renters don't ask for your income and simply demand 100% of your income as rent nowadays - economics isn't that simple. No one is going to buy a flat if they can't also afford utilities and food while living there.
- misja111 8y ago
  OP did not write that rents would go up until l00% of people's income. IMO what he meant was that certain flats that used to be priced at the level that everyone could afford them, would go up in price when everyone's income would increase because of basic income: and they would keep going up until they reached the same equilibrium that they used to be in beforehand. Of course this would not just apply to rents but to all scarce commodities. I think OP has a valid point; similar things happened after the influx of high income tech workers in SF, or for instance in some European countries after governments gave tax advantages to house owners.

pgt 8y ago

Would universal basic income reduce crime by making it easier for employees to decline immoral tasks?

dTal 8y ago
Interesting question. I think one could reasonably expect it to decrease economic crime, where the motivation of the act is to avoid poverty and starvation. This would include both compulsion by one's employer, and also crimes of theft by the unemployed. It may conceivably increase other types of crime, possibly in unexpected ways. Give people time and freedom and just enough money to stay alive, and not all of them will become artists or entrepreneurs. Many will just get bored. Some fraction of those will direct that boredom in destructive directions, like vandalism or drug use. Others, resenting the system, might find a sense of purpose in political activism, which could lead to civil disobedience. So I don't think it's easy to predict.
- meruru 8y ago
  >Many will just get bored. Some fraction of those will direct that boredom in destructive directions, like vandalism or drug use. You have an excellent punishment option in that case that may well be more effective than prison: remove their right to basic income :)
  - undersuit 8y ago
    I'm a fervent supporter of Universal Basic Income and that very threat is why I want it Universal. Let's fix our societies' failings without the threat of death, hunger, and forced exposure to the elements.
    - meruru 8y ago
      In the case of vandalism, I agree completely removing their basic income would be too much, just fining them like we already do is enough. For things that would land you in prison though, forcing you to have to work like you already have to under the current system seems less cruel than the alternative. Note that under UBI there's going to be a surplus of job opportunities that no one will want to do like cleaning toilets and such. So it's less a threat of death and hunger, and more a threat of having to resort to shitty jobs.

factsaresacred 8y ago

I'm currently in an EU country receiving a 2 year stipend of 750 euros a month as I attempt to build a business. The magic of having that money come in each month is that it removes the cognitive load of uh oh, how do I survive? allowing me to fully devote myself to work. Rather than slack off, I work 16 hour days, 7 days a week. It's not enough to have a social life, or do much of anything, and that's fine. After all why would you be out playing if you've a business to run? Perhaps it doesn't work on a wide scale, but for the sincere and serious, basic income is a gift. And one that I believe every recipient is obliged to repay in the form of job creation, tax revenue or some kind of contribution to society. In the same way that washing machines 'liberated' women in developing countries[1], UBI could be a similar revolution - freeing up time and energy spent in drudgery and reassigning it to (potentially) more worthwhile and value-creating pursuits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2013/04/24/hans-rosling-and-the-magic-washing-machine-a-lesson/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2013/04/24/hans-rosli...

ykevinator 8y ago
This is a great use case for ubi. I also think the US should open Medicare for small business. I think the biggest problem with ubi is the branding. It should be billed as alternative social security or something. Using ubi for starting a business is great. ( and good luck to you!)
- factsaresacred 8y ago
  Thanks!
Proven 8y ago
> The magic of having that money come in each month is that it removes the cognitive load of uh oh, how do I survive? allowing me to fully devote myself to work. The only reasonably conclusion is why ever get to the point where your startup makes a product or service - you could spend a lifetime "working" on the launch and retire, if only the money kept coming in. This "basic income for all, out of nothing" is completely insane and I am not at all surprised that so many of this site's readers see no issue with it. Begin by reading "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism", kids.

hackandtrip 8y ago

Italy is doing something similar - everyone with low income can apply to receive "citizienship" income, something like 800EU a month. There are strict rules to avoid fraud (that probably won't work, will explain why): the State will give everyone that applied an offer for a private job in different time spans and different distance - you can only avoid one time. Main problem is - there are no jobs that will pay more than that income, and people will try to avoid and keep the income for at least a year. Surely, in my humble opinion, this is the way to go - together with stricter regulations on non-specialized work, where enslavement is going towards foreign population in EU countries.

dullgiulio 8y ago
Oh no, that's not the case at all. The joke (comedian-led) government of Italy is just misnaming unemployment benefits. They have a very foggy plan (and no ability to actually execute it), but it would include plenty of people trying to find unemployed a job close to home. Again, it's a populist joke.

known 8y ago

I think UBI should lead to self-actualization in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_need...

Polarity 8y ago

not enough money, not enough people and too short (you know its ending somewhere soon, so you´re not really free. and the participents still seeking for jobs, because the experiment is ending.). so this test is basically just donating a bit of money to random people, not a basic income experiment (for me at least).

leke 8y ago
I didn't get picked for this, but if I did, like you say, I wouldn't have started a business knowing it would end in 2 years.
- artiscode 8y ago
  May I ask why not? In my opinion 2 years is plenty of time to validate a business and see if it's ramen aka UBI amount profitable.

leke 8y ago

I think it would be more interesting to see what people with jobs would do with that money. As someone working in Finland who can pay rent, bills, buy basic food, and other monthly essentials, it would be nice to have money left over to actually spend on myself.

samiru 8y ago
The money would be taxed away, of course.

alkonaut 8y ago

Basic income that isn’t universal is just a targeted handout. A real universal basic income experiment has to be perpetual (so I don’t risk my career and future by not working) and universal for a country (so you get the effect on prices, jobs, rents, health, attitudes). This is also why there may never be an experiment - the first experiment will be the first true attempt.

runeks 8y ago
And even if you run the “experiment” on a global scale for ten years, that’s no guarantee that the next ten years will work out the same. It’s really very simple: at our current stage of technological evolution, if everyone stops working, we all die.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  The most universal and perpetual you can make it is probably one country (possibly e.g the EU or similar) and of course “perpetual” will only ever mean “until political will changes”. It’s important to remember that there is a massive difference between adopting a UBI in a large welfare state like Finland as opposed to eg the US. For a small UBI it’s effectively just a matter of first moving many different systems into a single one. When I was a student I was paid $600/mo or thereabouts to study. Now I’m a well paid dev and parent. We get a child grant for two kids of $300/mo and a daycare subsidy of around $2k per month for the two of them. Those child grants/subsidies require no application or qualification. Obviously under a UBI a lot of that would be shifted into the UBI instead so instead of using subsidized daycare people would choose not to work for a while. So I think it’s entirely possible for some of the Nordic welfare states to change to a UBI-like system. The payout might not be a living wage (as in this experiment) but it could replace student grants, minimum unemployment benefits, minimum pensions, daycare subsidy etc. For full time workers it would just be a huge tax credit (probably offset by an even larger tax hike) Meanwhile I think it would be extremely hard for the US to do the same, because UBI without the intermediate step of a massive welfare state just isn’t going to be easy.
- summerdown2 8y ago
  It's not that simple at all, otherwise no-one would be talking about it. There are a number of competing effects, but at least one currently unanswered question about basic income is whether people are naturally lazy or naturally entrepreneurial. I.e. given an unshakeable safety net which means they are ok whatever they do, do people work harder to do better than ok, or sit on ok. There have only been unsatisfactory trials so far, but a number of results seem to favour the better result. Here's another way of looking at it. Currently, people can get sucked into a benefit trap. They might have an income from benefits of £100 a week, which vanishes once they start work. So obviously they would lose out unless a job they can get provides at least £100 + travel and other costs. Basic income removes this trap by saying: "You get £100 always. But you also get to keep a large proportion of every pound you earn above £100. Go for it! Under basic income, a person otherwise on benefits can walk round people's houses with a ladder and offer to clean windows - and gain from the process.

kolbe 8y ago

A six minute video of two anecdotes cannot possibly (and did not) answer the question in this title. This is click bait garbage.

oska 8y ago
Which is why I no longer click on BBC articles. In contrast, the national broadcasting corporation in my own country (the ABC in Australia) still does fairly good reporting.

supercarsw 8y ago

dont believe the hype please

suprazone 8y ago

hacker news is shadow banning ? how low can hn go ?

kgwxd 8y ago

Could a virtual economoy be a better place to do a proper UBI experiment? Maybe like a Tamagotchi MMO. I'd play it.

ransom1538 8y ago

Will rent seeking landlords just raise rent? If everyone has a BS degree, isn't that just the requirement?

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