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Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

128 points by grahamel 8y ago

arcticwombat 8y ago
Except, of course, that the actual report has not been completed yet. The article has a single quote from a participant, and the rest is literally just opinion and thoughts. There's nothing to get excited about yet. It's going to be very interesting to read the report though, once it's published.
- cromulent 8y ago
  There's a webcast here: http://videonet.fi/web/stm/2019028/eng/ http://videonet.fi/web/stm/2019028/eng/ They are very open that the trial was not perfect and should be bigger / longer / better structured. Obviously economic experiments cannot control all variables. Interesting that the majority of the UBI recipients switched back to standard unemployment.
- bhelkey 8y ago
  > Miska Simanainen, one of the Kela researchers behind the Finnish study, ... says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money. There is a quote from a participant but the quote is much more convincing.
timonoko 8y ago
TL;DR: They got the same unemployment money (~555€) as before, but it was called Basic Income. But they did not have to partake the quarterly motivation shit from jobless office anymore. Which made them indeed happier. Success!
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Quarterly in the UK had to attend twice a month and agree to spend x hours day on job search and apply for y jobs every week. This is where indeed comes In handy need to prove you have applied for y jobs just us indeed to make up the numbers
- cromulent 8y ago
  No, the key difference was that you could also earn money from other work without losing the government money. This means that you can take on part time jobs without freaking out that you will lose unemployment. This also means (for local business owners) that you can hire people for part time / spec work without being concerned about long term effects. This is a big deal for small businesses.
  - drcode 8y ago
    ...which of course the study showed they didn't do, it showed the cohort did not take on more part time jobs.
    - deleted 8y ago
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- nabla9 8y ago
  There has been much better experiments in the US using Alaska Permanent Fund and creating synthetic Alaska elsewhere in the US to compare against. The Labor Market Impacts of Universal and Permanent Cash Transfers: Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3118343 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3118343 The study provides some interesting and insightful results: >... we show suggestive evidence that tradable sectors experience employment reductions, while non-tradable sectors do not. Overall, our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment. It makes sense that jobs that can be moved elsewhere decrease a little, because people have more bargaining power. It also makes sense, that there is no effect when jobs can't be exported. Employers just pay little more because UBI also creates demand. People still like to buy stuff with all that UBI money. Someone has to work to make tings to sell. In large economic region–US or EU–the effect of UBI would have no noticeable effect to employment.
SatvikBeri 8y ago
So, basically the article says that unemployed people who received a basic income stipend of $685/month weren't any more likely to get jobs within 2 years than a control group who didn't. This doesn't seem very surprising to me – if anything, I would expect people on UBI to be less likely to get jobs, and this study seems like evidence against that.
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  I'm confused - you expect people on UBI to be less likely to get jobs, the article is evidence against that, and you're not surprised?
  - SatvikBeri 8y ago
    The article acts as though UBI should have caused people to get more jobs, and is a failure because they didn't.
- sharpneli 8y ago
  The control group also got money. Just via more paperwork. UBI for Finland is more about reducing bureaucracy and social security errors.
  - _rpd 8y ago
    Yes, the missing context here is the idea that UBI will be financed by cutting existing social services.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  The experimental outcome is actually indirect evidence against the view that traditional unemployment insurance makes people a lot less likely to get a job, at least in this specific experimental population. This is interesting news - it suggests that unemployment benefits works so well already that incentive effects just aren't hugely important, at least not to the extent that you'd find a statistically-detectable difference by giving UBI instead.
Simulacra 8y ago
I think it's human nature to do a little as possible for the most reward. If someone is giving you money to literally do nothing, then you're likely going to do..nothing!
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  That's provably false.
  - mises 8y ago
    Can you add any sources for this? I see several that support OP's position from a cursory search. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort https://medium.com/the-mission/dont-use-rewards-for-motivation-e88c933e26a3 https://medium.com/the-mission/dont-use-rewards-for-motivati... http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/10_2/helarticle/the-case-against-rewards-and-praise http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/10_2/helarticle/the-case-aga...
    - devilshaircut 8y ago
      In your own citation: "Rewards kill creativity. Some twenty studies have shown that people do inferior work when they are expecting to get a reward for doing it, as compared with people doing the same task without any expectation of a reward. That effect is most pronounced when creativity is involved in the task." Would this not suggest that people do their best work when they aren't doing it for the paycheck? In other words, given UBI, anything an individual may do would be his or her own prerogative and therefore represent higher quality output.
      - 2019ideas 8y ago
        >given UBI, anything an individual may do would be his or her own prerogative and therefore represent higher quality output. But having fun making art means little to an economy. Having less fun designing a robot to pick potatoes will transform an economy. Creativity is nice, but it doesn't directly correlate with additional value.
nafey 8y ago
Although I do not support the idea of UBI I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that it didn't work out.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
> The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs I'm confused, was that ever the expected goal of basic income?
- happytoexplain 8y ago
  Same here. I've never heard that angle.
  - gknoy 8y ago
    I definitely did hear it as once facet of why UBI could be good. Right now, in some places there are people who will lose benefits (I forget which variety) if their income goes above a certain point, so they are disincentivized to seek a better job -- as it would net them less income. One thing I recall reading about UBI was that it removed that _condition_, and so there would be no incentive not to get a job (other than feeling like UBI was "enough", which IMO is reasonable).
    - yardie 8y ago
      Those places would be the US and many anglo-saxon influenced countries. Where it is seen as if you are unemployed then it is a failing on your part, not the job market or any other factors. If you do find a job it better pay a living wage and it better pay now. The state will pull benefits almost immediately once your paperwork goes through. And if the job is temporary or seasonal be prepared to start at square one to resume benefits payments. The incentives are really screwed up. They do want you to use it and if you do they don't want you to leave it.
- hannob 8y ago
  It seems more like almost the opposite of the expected goal. My main sympathy for a basic income is that "get people into jobs" so often comes up as an argument against all kinds of progressive changes (environment, shutting down harmful industries, automating bad jobs away, ...). The goal of a basic income should be to let people without a job live a more fulfilling life.
matz1 8y ago
So that if they are happier then that IS success. Job or no job is irrelevant.
- sakisv 8y ago
  Unfortunately the prevailing ideology dictates that if you're not working you are worthless and you should not feel happy.
  - RIMR 8y ago
    That may be the prevailing American ideology, but it certainly isn't the prevailing ideology worldwide. The idea that being bad at capitalism makes you deserving of misery is just awful - our country is too wealthy to act that way.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    It's a tough sell you gotta admit it. That money came from someone making an effort (even if it was in form of large [reluctant]corporate taxes). Also slacking (I am half a slacker on the way to ~zero) is toxic on the long run. I always thought of universal income as way to allow me to grow without a burden. Learning, helping, producing (whether art, tools, ...). It's supposed to help strengthen the social tissue.
    - matz1 8y ago
      yes that money came from someone making an effort, but on the premise that it came from someone who derive happiness by doing the work not because of necessity.
      - agumonkey 8y ago
        it's hard to ensure honestly but I think we agree, the goal is to reduce faux-slavery due to the need for basics necessities
    - manicdee 8y ago
      In a nation that has its own fiat currency, the money does not come from someone making an effort. It is printed, invented. Taxes only control inflation.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> 'happier but jobless' That's a very misleading title. > Universal basic income, or UBI, means that everyone gets a set monthly income, regardless of means. The Finnish trial was a bit different That's a huge difference. It encourages some of the unemployed people to stay unemployed. That's called "poverty trap". This was not real UBI. Also, a 2-year long trial can be very misleading. People take very different choices knowing that they'll receive UBI for 2 years, or 10 years, or their whole life.
- RIMR 8y ago
  Very true. There's always the fact that Finland isn't exactly poverty-stricken as a country. I would like to see this repeated on some real impoverished communities, with a guarantee of income for life, to see if they become more productive as a result.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  The only difference the article mentions is that the experimental subjects were chosen among people getting unemployment benefits. What this suggests is that if you're on unemployment to begin with, differential incentives do not have a detectable impact on whether you'll find a job - that's all. It's saying that incentives aren't everything, at least on a 2-years-out scale.
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lail 8y ago
I wish they included employed people in this trial.
izzydata 8y ago
I thought the idea was to reduce pointless busy work and increase actual productive work for people that wanted to. The overall outcome being increased net productivity. I have no idea how you would measure that though as I imagine there would be less people interested in working overall.
randomacct3847 8y ago
I always thought the point of basic income was so that you didn’t necessarily need every member of society employed in the traditional sense
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  UBI serves two purposes. The first is stopgap rhetoric to prevent socialist-inspired rhetoric from making popular gains as traditional employment is eroded away. The second is to point at UBI and go "See, if you give money to people who were made redundant in the labor market, they probably still won't be able to sell their labor" while doing everything to ignore the fact that the market has moved past certain people.
lixtra 8y ago
While this article is about an even more special population of UBI recipients I have two general criticisms about UBI studies: 1. They are usually time limited. You can expect different behavior if you get financial security for limited time or for life. 2. Most studies seem to be externally financed (here the whole state vs a small population). The interesting part is if people are willing to pay for this within their community. Are you okay to pay for your slacking neighbor (even if she is the exception and UBI turns out to be overall good)?
- mongol 8y ago
  It can never be time unlimited. Laws can change and will change eventually. Any reasoning about UBI for life is flawed.
  - etrautmann 8y ago
    Well, neither extreme seems right. We reasonably expect Medicare to pay out for decades and plan around that even if there's a possibility of laws changing.
- alekseypo 8y ago
  As long as the disbursal is direct (handled by the FR for example), and cuts out bloated gov. orgs. As it pertains to other people, I see it as a floor that will hopefully help people unlock their potential by taking some of the pressure off the exchange of time for wages and focusing it on the meaning of work. If people want to do nothing beyond their UBI income, that's fine - but I don't see this being a widespread phenomenon. It covers the basics, and we have a tendency to yearn for more.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > Are you okay to pay for your slacking neighbor (even if she is the exception and UBI turns out to be overall good)? Finnish society has already shown this willingness to pay. All mainstream political parties support the existing welfare state for the most part, and any Finn knows a few people who live on benefits and want to avoid any kind of hard work. Furthermore, over the 20th century the Church and other forms of private philanthropy have dwindled away in Finnish society. The average Finn today does not want to have to make an effort to personally help out other people, and engage in uncomfortable social interaction, even if we are talking about their neighbours. (After all, those living in blocks of flats rarely even know their neighbours.) So, Finns are quite happy to have a wide social safety net provided by the state – even if it is sometimes "abused" – in order to save them the effort of returning to a charity model where real effort and personal interaction would be expected of them.
sleepysysadmin 8y ago
In Ontario Canada, our outgoing government tried basic income as well. It increased unemployment in the pilot cities. So our new government eliminated basic income quickly because it was the opposite of the general trend of all other cities. The reality is that people don't need money. Money is important but what people need is a purpose and goals. Which a basic income system does not provide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI
- knight-of-lambd 8y ago
  How do you know this when the study was cancelled a year early (by a Conservative gov't, no less)
mises 8y ago
I still see some big issues with universal basic income, and would appreciate one of its supporters responding to some of them: Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. That's nearly 20% of America's GDP. How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level before we commit our entire nation. Why would a national government do this? Necessity. I don't think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k (maybe not the right number, but there should be a cutoff). That just takes money away from those who need it. If a supporter of UBI can respond, I'd like to discuss possible concerns and benefits.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Cost: The money isn't going into a black hole, it's being given to those who tend to spend their money more quickly and more locally (aka the poor). So I would expect it to increase the velocity of money rather than decreasing it, giving the economy a nice boost. Necessity: Any sane UBI system is revenue neutral. So anybody with above average income is going to pay more in increased taxes than they receive in benefits. That's easier and fairer than a claw-back.
- mactrey 8y ago
  > How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? The money isn't pulled out, though. It is redistributed to people, many of whom will immediately spend it, and others will invest it in various (hopefully efficient) ways. > Why would a national government do this? The problem of entry and exit. Say one state like Massachusetts implemented a UBI. Then we could expect many people to move to MA from surrounding states, or do whatever they can to have a legal address there. However I think there are possible solutions to this and a state-by-state implementation is actually possible. For example, Alaska has their dividend program and I think the results from that have been quite good. > I don't think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k I think I agree which is why I'm more in favor of a negative income tax or other means-tested system than true UBI. But if I were to argue in favor of an "everyone gets the same" program I'd say something like, implementation is somewhat less complicated, or it's easier to explain to the public.
onemoresoop 8y ago
> The Finnish trial was a bit different, as it focused on people who were unemployed I think UBI would help people who are already employed in jobs that they hate, to find/invent meaningful jobs. A lot of employed people are miserable but just surviving doing things that they hate (because that's the only thing that pays and so are chained to their misery). I think real UBI would create strong bottom up economies and get rid of value extractors, intermediaries and schemers. It would also help people move out of big cities back to rural areas where things are not so expensive
yasp 8y ago
Did they not have an identical cohort serving as a control to compare employment rates at the end of the trial?
- java-man 8y ago
  no they did not.
  - contrast 8y ago
    Yes they did, according to the article: “Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.” Note this means the headline is the opposite of the truth. And the quote is not to be found in the article. It’s how the author/editor chose to interpret a single individual’s statement, despite the overall finding being very different.
  - fuckyah 8y ago
    wrong
  - java-man 8y ago
    quote: Included in the random sampling were all individuals between ages 25 and 58 whom Kela paid labour market subsidy or basic unemployment allowance in November 2016 for some other reason than a temporary layoff. Random sampling means that all who satisfied the requirements for inclusion in the experiment had an equal probability of being selected into the study population. so the group who received the subsidy was already skewed by a previous selection process. I don't see any mention of a control group in the experiment web site: [0] https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-objectives-and-implementation https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-objectives-and-imple...
- gyaniv 8y ago
  The did. and the result showed that their employment chances were 'no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.' What they didn't do (although some wanted them to), is also check the system on already employed people and checked if that changed their likelihood of staying in a bad job/finding a better job or anything like that. Because that's the real idea behind basic income. not just giving it to the unemployed, but to everyone, with the hope that it would encourage people to find jobs better suited to them, and to allow people to take bigger risks.
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pastor_elm 8y ago
did they really have to study this? We have decades of welfare to analyze. UBI is dead in the water. Call it a negative tax rate instead.
- drcode 8y ago
  It's tough... people feel like the US median standard of living has stagnated (the economic evidence is mixed on this subject) and therefore it is tempting to think there must be some shortcuts we can take to leverage our high GPD into a raised standard of living through direct cash transfers. However, I personally feel that these ideas will lead to counterproductive results, that these sorts of transfers can lead to severe inflation and will lead to a higher unemployment rates, thereby dragging down the very GDP they are dependent on. Unfortunately, both sides of this argument have little direct evidence to support their position... aside from tiny, partial studies such as the one in this article, which cannot give any meaningful insights into the complex macroeconomic effects of a larger UBI rollout, which will likely be singificant. Everyone is at an impasse on this question.
- gevi99 8y ago
  That's what they said about Brexit. We live in times were populists are propped up. To change that the media/social media has to drastically alter. Until it does expect more and more pandering.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  UBI is different from welfare because you don’t have to qualify for it, so it removes any incentives to alter your life to qualify for welfare.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Poland has an interesting example that could be used as UBI experiement. Recently introduced "500+" program pays 500PLN(~$130/£100) for every child after the first one(or all if the family has no other source of income). Now, to you westerners $130/month might sound like nothing, but actually, with 3-4 children you are getting a regular salary for effectively doing nothing, without any extra conditions. And apart from the loss of the benefit for the 1st child if you get a job, nothing stops you from working and yet still collecting the benefit. It has improved the living conditions in Poland considerably, and families with children can now afford a lot more than they could previously. I personally know one company that lost a decent chunk of its staff to it - why work for you while I can get similar amount of money and stay at home? Of course the question of whether Poland can afford such a generous program is a different question altogether, but it cannot be denied that for many people this completely unconditional injection of cash is absolutely equivalent to UBI.
acslater00 8y ago
Surprising that paying people to not work didn't lead to more people working!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zozbot123 8y ago
  That's not what's surprising: if anyone was "paid not to work" in this experiment, it was the control group who stayed on traditional unemployment benefits - and yet they found jobs just as much as the UBI group did!
- notStoicEnough 8y ago
  Er - I'm not a proponent of UBI, but there's an important, but subtle distinction here. UBI is not "paying people not to work." That's more like typical unemployment - when people find jobs, the benefit goes away, creating a disincentive. With UBI, the benefit remains, (theoretically) encouraging risk taking.
- cromulent 8y ago
  It's different to the normal dole in that you can take on part time work without losing the benefit. This is not "paying people not to work" - that is a bad characterization of this trial, but maybe an accurate characterization of the dole. It's saying: Here's your minimum money, go and see what you can do. For a local business owner, it's a big deal to take on a full time employee. If they have UBI, it is not. This makes it attractive and less risky for employers to give a few hours here and there.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  It would have been nice if Ontario was permitted to finish our Basic Income pilot project. It would have been a valuable other data point. Sadly it was killed off before we could see any results. The project in progress, however, saw people leave their existing jobs to, get this: go back to school full time so they could improve their lot, have children, or start businesses. [Instead they got the rug pulled out from under them ~1 year into the program by the new government after being told they could rely on the program for 3 years] I know it's a bit of snark, but your take is a bit simplistic and hand-wavy.
dkns 8y ago
> Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. Isn't unconditional, you know, unconditional? As opposed to "From January 2017 until December 2018"?
mg794613 8y ago
I find the narrative of the article focussing on "how it failed" and only one condition. "Did it increase employement" Of course this is what some might have expected from it, but the researcher itself not. Which is only included as a very last line.
ThomPete 8y ago
It's a general misunderstanding that Basic Income is some sort of job program, it's not. It's a job replacement program for a society where there aren't enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most. Basic Income should provide fundamental living cost support in a society that has no jobs so there is no "but" in there. Edit: Keep in mind we already have Basic Income it's just conditional. UBI is different.
- leereeves 8y ago
  > there aren't enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most. And yet the US has full employment. Could it be that Finland lacks jobs for some reason other than technology?
  - SirHound 8y ago
    Someone working an hour a week counts as employed.
    - blakejustblake 8y ago
      I wonder if the rise of gig-economy type work has dirtied the employment data pool? If you're out of work and looking for a employment, yet you're still scraping by a few bucks every week due to Uber or Lyft or something similar, and you're a part of a significant percentage of people doing the same then unemployment numbers probably aren't as pretty as some would like us to believe.
      - baronswindle 8y ago
        U6 unemployment numbers include workers who are employed part time but would prefer to be full time, and U6 is near all time lows.
        lusmd 8y ago
        But labor force participation rates are still very, very low. If you'd like a job but don't have one, you don't get counted in any unemployment stats except the aggregate labor force participation.
rezeroed 8y ago
Should be "happier but still jobless". No one lost jobs as a result. the result was that the jobless were happier. An improved situation.
jancsika 8y ago
Would be curious to know what the overhead of the UBI program was compared to the overhead of whatever unemployment program it was replacing.
LarryDarrell 8y ago
Which would be a fine outcome. We're entering a real messy period where dignified, decent paying jobs are becoming scarce. All of our philosophies about work and welfare are rooted in a post WWII era where we were essentially rebuilding the world and there was more work than competent people. If we are going to insist that all productivity gains must now go directly to the capital class, we're going to need a UBI, universal healthcare and housing guarantees. I worry that greed is too baked in, and those that have would rather let the world burn before they give the current system up.
- afpx 8y ago
  Lately, I’ve been in the mood to read recently-published business self-help books. One thing that surprised me was that three of the books had a common premise. They began by describing the habits of some of the most notable people in history (scientists, artists, business people, etc). Then, they went on to say how these habits would be necessary to maintain a job in the new globalized marketplace. Wait, what? So, anyone who wants to have a job in the near-future must emulate the habits of some of the most impressive people in history? Wow. I don’t know if this premise is true or just marketing hyperbole. But, if that’s what workers think is required of them, we are in for a scary future.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Wait, what? So, anyone who wants to have a job must emulate the habits of some of the most impressive people in history? Wow. Isn't that how a lot of human progress works? The scientific viewpoint was once a pastime of educated elites. Now the world model derived from it is very much mainstream. (Though it isn't 100% universal) Reading, writing, and arithmetic were once elite and esoteric specialist skills, now they are basic requirements. Mercy, humanitarianism, and individual rights are all fairly recent innovations in human history. I don’t know if that’s true or hyperbole, but if that’s what workers think, we are in for a scary future. Or a fantastic one.
    - petra 8y ago
      Viewpoints and skills are teachable, although that can take a lot of effort. But habits ? depending on what habits are we talking about, some are highly related to personality, to willpower, to interpersonal skills,etc and those are really hard to change, or maybe impossible, for some. And if aim so high in changing human beings, is this the best we can do ? to create better money making machines ? And what will that do to our old values - stuff like kindness, family values, creativity for it's own sake ? And will it even work ? Or is being an Elon Musk copy will just become a requirement for working as a barista ?
sakisv 8y ago
I think the idea of UBI as it is, makes it an easy target for comments that characterize people as "freeloaders" or trading "something" for "nothing". The problem is that the UBI seems to be coming from the taxes that other people, which may be a good first iteration to try something out, but it will fail in scale. I will assume that the aim of these experiments is to find a way to provide for an ever increasing number of people at a time that the number and the quality of jobs is dropping, largely being replaced by automated systems. Last year the governor of bank of England voiced concerns about the automation stripping out jobs which could "lead to a rise of marxism"[1]. I find the idea of a UB Dividend[2], or social dividend[3] instead something which would have more chances to succeed. The main idea behind it is that everyone will be entitled to a dividend which will be funded by private companies. So instead of having the Apples and Googles of the world sitting on a pile of cash, they could put a portion of their earnings in a fund which would then be given back to everyone to allow them to continue to purchase their products and services. 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mark-carney-marxism-automation-bank-of-england-governor-job-losses-capitalism-a8304706.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mark-carney-... 2: https://medium.com/dark-mountain/universal-dividend-a988c31c372b https://medium.com/dark-mountain/universal-dividend-a988c31c... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend
- chillacy 8y ago
  I believe some states already do something like a UBI: saudi arabia and alaska both pay out dividends from resource extraction.
yason 8y ago
The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn't work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the participants. The sample of 2000 people were chosen from a group of unemployed people. I think the criteria for being randomly chosen was having been paid unemployment benefits during some range of dates. So it's not representative of a real UBI at all: the point of UBI isn't to necessarily make things better for the unemployed but, rather, the large group of people who make very little money and barely get along. Cashiers, cleaners, etc who can't live on their earnings, at least in big cities. Or self-employed one-person shops whose income stream is very choppy and who don't make much anyway. Real UBI would be universal so those who are working would get it too -- of course the UBI would increase your income and likely your tax percentage so it would mostly be taxed away from those who do earn a living. The point of UBI is to cut down on bureucracy by removing various individual case-by-case subsidies (but bureaucrats would never vote for that) and make some base level of income predictable and reliable, mostly for people who make less than the lower middle class.
- freedomben 8y ago
  I agree, but I do think it's important to specify that this is only one UBI proposal (it's the UBI proposal that I favor, that Milton Friedman supported as an alternative to bureaucracy heavy welfare programs). There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) and that don't replace other welfare programs. These are nontrivial differences that I don't think should be obscured.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) Means-tested programs like that are, by definition, not unconditional basic income. So there are no UBI proposals that do that, since a proposal that does that is not UBI. > and that don't replace other welfare programs. It's unusual for a UBI proposal not to replace other means-tested benefit programs (though it may not do so immediately absolutely; my preferred implementation would, e.g., merely count as income against other programs qualifications and only shutter each of them completely when the UBI floor had reached above the point where it was possible to qualify for the one of the other programs.)
dawhizkid 8y ago
As someone who wants to remain in the workforce, the absolute most frustrating thing about taking a break between jobs or wanting to bootstrap a company or start something new is not the lack of income during that time but that my healthcare in the US is tied to having a job. Yes, I can buy individual insurance, but moving off and on new plans is incredibly time consuming, and if you have a certain prescription that you are on or have something that is covered by an employer plan but may not be covered by an individual on then it's highly risky to leave.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  > Yes, I can buy individual insurance, but moving off and on new plans is incredibly time consuming, and if you have a certain prescription that you are on or have something that is covered by an employer plan but may not be covered by an individual on then it's highly risky to leave. As someone who spent time doing contract work, and working on my own business, this is what made me seek out work as an employee. I cannot, and will not, play the game of paying for individual insurance. Employers can negotiate for better rates and better plans than you, as an individual, will ever be able to. If you have a health condition or injury, the chances of which will increase each day that you're alive, the individual health insurance market is a disaster.
yingw787 8y ago
I don't know how much I support basic income as a substitute for jobs. Jobs can suck, but basic income takes away the levers for poor people (anybody relying on one primary income stream for disposable income) to be useful to the rich and powerful, leaving them completely vulnerable to the games of the latter. Even if you mopped a rich person's floor and the rich person wanted to dispose of you, he'd likely have to replace you with another floor mopper; the coupling between rich and poor is still there. Without jobs, the poor are completely expendable. If things go well, there's no way the poor can keep paying attention to maintaining the system, and things can go bad. If things don't go well, the bottom can drop out. This is of course not discussing the other benefits of jobs (a feeling of dignity, a way to spend time, being around other people and a tie to society). I'd rather support a system of federated capitalism where everybody owns and rents some amount of capital (financial, intellectual, social, etc.), along with a government that can provide for basic needs. Everyone has some nontrivial amount of power, and has to respect other people and their power.
dcre 8y ago
Very dishonest headline. It failed to increase employment among people who are already unemployed, which no one expected it to do. It also did not decrease their number of working days. https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1093859412182212609 https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1093859412182212609
psadri 8y ago
Handing out free money will most likely just cause inflation and defeat itself. The inflation will make the amount paid out in basic income insufficient to live on. The alternate to basic income for the purpose of housing, health and food, is to provide a basic version of those resources at zero cost.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  We don't know which is why it's good we start experimenting with it IMO.
- DougN7 8y ago
  I don’t know why you were downvoted because you’re right. A simple thought experiment can prove it: give everyone $1 million every year starting today. Is everyone suddenly rich? Just for a few days. Eventually milk will cost $500/gallon. The effects of Supply and demand can’t be legislated out of existence.
  - zimzam 8y ago
    That’s like saying any inflation is bad because if it were a million percent bad things would happen. It doesn’t tell us anything about reality.
    - DougN7 8y ago
      The inflation would render the money we gave everyone nearly worthless, by approximately the amount given out. It’s similar to adding six zeros to every bank account.
  - ball_of_lint 8y ago
    Sure, a massive influx of newly minted money will cause inflation. That's a given. But it's not sustainable and clearly not a sensible way to implement this policy. If we instead took this money from other taxes most likely there'd be some inflation, but not enough to make the money useless. Finally, I know 1m was a hyperbole but basic income doesn't need to guarantee you can live comfortably anywhere without working, only somewhere. Downtown SF? Nope. Most of CA? Still probably too expensive. Midwest? Now we're talking.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
That's a weird way to spin it. Much more useful and interesting, to me, is that UBI recipients weren't any less likely to get jobs. That implies that UBI will not--as some fear--in fact lead to a bunch of lazy, parasitic layabouts. They're still trying to find work, they're just happier and healthier while they're doing it.
antpls 8y ago
Regarding me, I could be happier without working, or working less than I currently do. So, according to the article : "this is a triumph"
pattisapu 8y ago
"Work and love . . . work and love . . . that's all there is." -Freud
ratling 8y ago
What is supposed to be the bad part of this? I would equate 'happier' with 'getting their needs met.' If you have more people than work that needs to get done I don't have a problem with the people who aren't working being able to live.
bakhy 8y ago
This is a weird title. The article says that the people on basic income were equally likely to find a job as those who were not receiving it. I was expecting that basic income might make people less motivated to find jobs, and that would have been an issue. But this result seems like a positive outcome for UBI.
- dmix 8y ago
  It went to 2000 people already getting unemployment benefits. > It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. So I'm curious what affect that had vs the general population's approach to finding employment. Particularly young people who may have never had a job before.
floatingatoll 8y ago
This title misrepresents the outcome. A better headline would have been: > Finland basic income trial improved happiness but not employment It’s unfortunate the BBC chose that quote, as it misrepresents the outcome of the trial as _creating_ joblessness, rather than failing to _alter_ joblessness.
ourmandave 8y ago
Seriously asking. Is it possible to use your basic income to get a loan? I just envision people buying all sorts of things without understanding what they're signing up for. And from a U.S. perspective, I don't trust a system filled with rent-to-owns, payday lenders, and car dealer/financers stopping anyone from making bad choices.
- jostylr 8y ago
  Presumably you could. It is money granted to each person without strings. Not sure how you could avoid it. A better questions would be whether the courts could impose UBI garnishing similar to wage garnishing. I would presume not and hence giving a loan to someone would have to be with the knowledge that the government would not force repayment with UBI funds. It gets back to an issue of whether someone has a history of responsible payments, something which would be more in a person's control with a guaranteed flow of UBI. I view UBI as a way to help ease the debt of many people, particularly those incurred because of lost wages (loss of job, illness). It could also ease the college debt issues because we could stop subsidizing college costs, leading to decreased tuition, and instead the colleges would have to compete with other uses of this money, something they do not have to do with direct college support programs.
mherrmann 8y ago
Not sure how the numbers add up. The infographic says it cost €20M. The text says 2,000 Fins got €560 for 24 months. That would amount to €26.88M.
dvh 8y ago
Just wondering, is there anyone here who lived in socialism (or in single communist party regime) and honestly believe that UBI can work?
herostratus101 8y ago
Silicon Valley People: We need basic income because there aren't enough jobs for low-skilled workers. Also Silicon Valley People: Let's have open borders and import unlimited numbers of low-skilled workers. Doing anything else is racist!
hippich 8y ago
I used to be all-in UBI supporter. To my "hacker" mind it appeared like a wonderful hack around issues society is facing. But lately, as I saw our parents retire, I was thinking about what really keep people happy - and as soon as basics are covered, it appears that "being useful" is what jobs are really about. UBI, as a result, may lock people forever in a jobless situation. UBI will not provide enough capital to bootstrap anything, it might disconnect you from people doing something. This can only increase the resentment between employed and unemployed classes. Granted, some will find themselves doing what they wanted to do their whole life (non-profitable) and couldn't because they had to put food on the table. But is this the case for everyone? I am afraid the rest will risk being marked "not useful" for life, and that doesn't sound like something that makes one happy... Sorry, it is just my random philosophical thoughts and no real answers or pieces of advice here...
- Qwertystop 8y ago
  UBI doesn't prevent you from looking for work on top of it - that's what "unconditional" means here.
  - hippich 8y ago
    Indeed. People who want to achieve something - they will be quite happy about it. But seeing retired parents not knowing what to do about their lives (because they dedicated whole life to getting their children ahead and working their ass off to do that, and now they done with it - what next?) - suggests that there is more to it, than just covering basic needs.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      It seems to me that the problem many retiring people run into is that they have been compelled to labor for the entire life by economic necessity and so viewed retirement as an escape into self-fulfillment, without ever having time to consider what self-fulfillment means, and first really are able to even consider the question in their senior years, burdened by mental habits of decades of servile labor. In a system where people don't usually feel an economic compulsion to work if they are at all able (which is probably not a UBI at the poverty-support level usually suggested as a near-term goal, though that might have a shadow of the same effect) you'd have a lot fewer people running into that problem; they'd learn and organize their life around it when they were much younger.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
There is a basic misunderstanding here. A basic income is unconditional. The Finnish study was not basic income because it was not unconditional. It was instead an experiment to find out if giving specifically unemployed people money would help them find a job. It sounds like perfectly ordinary social security from my perspective in Norway, perhaps with some of the requirements relaxed. If people want to find out if basic income works it has to be given to a representative slice of the population. This has been done several times in North America (once in Canada, and twice in the US), as far as I can tell it was successful.
nickelcitymario 8y ago
In other news: Vegetarianism did not lead an increase in animal population. Policing did not lead to an increase civic engagement. Prophylactics did not lead to an increase in birth rates. ...I wonder what other goals I could retroactively apply to social programs to show how they failed to achieve things they were never meant to address.
manicdee 8y ago
This experiment was performed in 2017. The basic criticisms of it are: - participants selected only from long term unemployed - Finland was still in a period of austerity following recession (low hiring rate) - tiny sample population - limited period - stingy, the amount provided doesn't really provide a basic income
jgalt212 8y ago
If you think the Great Society had bad effects on poor black folks, just wait to see what bad effects UBI has on everyone.
Proven 8y ago
LOL! It took millions to answer the question a low skilled laborer could answer in one second. On the other hand, just answering the silly question created a lot of jobs (especially in social sciences) so a success in its own right :-)))
mikhailfranco 8y ago
Universal Basic Income: Work Hard, Keep Half v. No Work, Free Stuff https://delvedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Universal-Basic-Income.jpg https://delvedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Universal-Bas...
Sidious 8y ago
Well-fare is insidious and destructive. Look up the origins of communism, those people only destroy.

128 points by grahamel 8y ago

Except, of course, that the actual report has not been completed yet. The article has a single quote from a participant, and the rest is literally just opinion and thoughts. There's nothing to get excited about yet. It's going to be very interesting to read the report though, once it's published.

cromulent 8y ago
There's a webcast here: http://videonet.fi/web/stm/2019028/eng/ http://videonet.fi/web/stm/2019028/eng/ They are very open that the trial was not perfect and should be bigger / longer / better structured. Obviously economic experiments cannot control all variables. Interesting that the majority of the UBI recipients switched back to standard unemployment.
bhelkey 8y ago
> Miska Simanainen, one of the Kela researchers behind the Finnish study, ... says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money. There is a quote from a participant but the quote is much more convincing.

timonoko 8y ago

TL;DR: They got the same unemployment money (~555€) as before, but it was called Basic Income. But they did not have to partake the quarterly motivation shit from jobless office anymore. Which made them indeed happier. Success!

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Quarterly in the UK had to attend twice a month and agree to spend x hours day on job search and apply for y jobs every week. This is where indeed comes In handy need to prove you have applied for y jobs just us indeed to make up the numbers
cromulent 8y ago
No, the key difference was that you could also earn money from other work without losing the government money. This means that you can take on part time jobs without freaking out that you will lose unemployment. This also means (for local business owners) that you can hire people for part time / spec work without being concerned about long term effects. This is a big deal for small businesses.
- drcode 8y ago
  ...which of course the study showed they didn't do, it showed the cohort did not take on more part time jobs.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
nabla9 8y ago
There has been much better experiments in the US using Alaska Permanent Fund and creating synthetic Alaska elsewhere in the US to compare against. The Labor Market Impacts of Universal and Permanent Cash Transfers: Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3118343 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3118343 The study provides some interesting and insightful results: >... we show suggestive evidence that tradable sectors experience employment reductions, while non-tradable sectors do not. Overall, our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment. It makes sense that jobs that can be moved elsewhere decrease a little, because people have more bargaining power. It also makes sense, that there is no effect when jobs can't be exported. Employers just pay little more because UBI also creates demand. People still like to buy stuff with all that UBI money. Someone has to work to make tings to sell. In large economic region–US or EU–the effect of UBI would have no noticeable effect to employment.

SatvikBeri 8y ago

So, basically the article says that unemployed people who received a basic income stipend of $685/month weren't any more likely to get jobs within 2 years than a control group who didn't. This doesn't seem very surprising to me – if anything, I would expect people on UBI to be less likely to get jobs, and this study seems like evidence against that.

happytoexplain 8y ago
I'm confused - you expect people on UBI to be less likely to get jobs, the article is evidence against that, and you're not surprised?
- SatvikBeri 8y ago
  The article acts as though UBI should have caused people to get more jobs, and is a failure because they didn't.
sharpneli 8y ago
The control group also got money. Just via more paperwork. UBI for Finland is more about reducing bureaucracy and social security errors.
- _rpd 8y ago
  Yes, the missing context here is the idea that UBI will be financed by cutting existing social services.
zozbot123 8y ago
The experimental outcome is actually indirect evidence against the view that traditional unemployment insurance makes people a lot less likely to get a job, at least in this specific experimental population. This is interesting news - it suggests that unemployment benefits works so well already that incentive effects just aren't hugely important, at least not to the extent that you'd find a statistically-detectable difference by giving UBI instead.

Simulacra 8y ago

I think it's human nature to do a little as possible for the most reward. If someone is giving you money to literally do nothing, then you're likely going to do..nothing!

eeZah7Ux 8y ago
That's provably false.
- mises 8y ago
  Can you add any sources for this? I see several that support OP's position from a cursory search. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort https://medium.com/the-mission/dont-use-rewards-for-motivation-e88c933e26a3 https://medium.com/the-mission/dont-use-rewards-for-motivati... http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/10_2/helarticle/the-case-against-rewards-and-praise http://hepg.org/hel-home/issues/10_2/helarticle/the-case-aga...
  - devilshaircut 8y ago
    In your own citation: "Rewards kill creativity. Some twenty studies have shown that people do inferior work when they are expecting to get a reward for doing it, as compared with people doing the same task without any expectation of a reward. That effect is most pronounced when creativity is involved in the task." Would this not suggest that people do their best work when they aren't doing it for the paycheck? In other words, given UBI, anything an individual may do would be his or her own prerogative and therefore represent higher quality output.
    - 2019ideas 8y ago
      >given UBI, anything an individual may do would be his or her own prerogative and therefore represent higher quality output. But having fun making art means little to an economy. Having less fun designing a robot to pick potatoes will transform an economy. Creativity is nice, but it doesn't directly correlate with additional value.

nafey 8y ago

Although I do not support the idea of UBI I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that it didn't work out.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

> The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs I'm confused, was that ever the expected goal of basic income?

happytoexplain 8y ago
Same here. I've never heard that angle.
- gknoy 8y ago
  I definitely did hear it as once facet of why UBI could be good. Right now, in some places there are people who will lose benefits (I forget which variety) if their income goes above a certain point, so they are disincentivized to seek a better job -- as it would net them less income. One thing I recall reading about UBI was that it removed that _condition_, and so there would be no incentive not to get a job (other than feeling like UBI was "enough", which IMO is reasonable).
  - yardie 8y ago
    Those places would be the US and many anglo-saxon influenced countries. Where it is seen as if you are unemployed then it is a failing on your part, not the job market or any other factors. If you do find a job it better pay a living wage and it better pay now. The state will pull benefits almost immediately once your paperwork goes through. And if the job is temporary or seasonal be prepared to start at square one to resume benefits payments. The incentives are really screwed up. They do want you to use it and if you do they don't want you to leave it.
hannob 8y ago
It seems more like almost the opposite of the expected goal. My main sympathy for a basic income is that "get people into jobs" so often comes up as an argument against all kinds of progressive changes (environment, shutting down harmful industries, automating bad jobs away, ...). The goal of a basic income should be to let people without a job live a more fulfilling life.

matz1 8y ago

So that if they are happier then that IS success. Job or no job is irrelevant.

sakisv 8y ago
Unfortunately the prevailing ideology dictates that if you're not working you are worthless and you should not feel happy.
- RIMR 8y ago
  That may be the prevailing American ideology, but it certainly isn't the prevailing ideology worldwide. The idea that being bad at capitalism makes you deserving of misery is just awful - our country is too wealthy to act that way.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  It's a tough sell you gotta admit it. That money came from someone making an effort (even if it was in form of large [reluctant]corporate taxes). Also slacking (I am half a slacker on the way to ~zero) is toxic on the long run. I always thought of universal income as way to allow me to grow without a burden. Learning, helping, producing (whether art, tools, ...). It's supposed to help strengthen the social tissue.
  - matz1 8y ago
    yes that money came from someone making an effort, but on the premise that it came from someone who derive happiness by doing the work not because of necessity.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      it's hard to ensure honestly but I think we agree, the goal is to reduce faux-slavery due to the need for basics necessities
  - manicdee 8y ago
    In a nation that has its own fiat currency, the money does not come from someone making an effort. It is printed, invented. Taxes only control inflation.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

> 'happier but jobless' That's a very misleading title. > Universal basic income, or UBI, means that everyone gets a set monthly income, regardless of means. The Finnish trial was a bit different That's a huge difference. It encourages some of the unemployed people to stay unemployed. That's called "poverty trap". This was not real UBI. Also, a 2-year long trial can be very misleading. People take very different choices knowing that they'll receive UBI for 2 years, or 10 years, or their whole life.

RIMR 8y ago
Very true. There's always the fact that Finland isn't exactly poverty-stricken as a country. I would like to see this repeated on some real impoverished communities, with a guarantee of income for life, to see if they become more productive as a result.
zozbot123 8y ago
The only difference the article mentions is that the experimental subjects were chosen among people getting unemployment benefits. What this suggests is that if you're on unemployment to begin with, differential incentives do not have a detectable impact on whether you'll find a job - that's all. It's saying that incentives aren't everything, at least on a 2-years-out scale.

deleted 8y ago

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lail 8y ago

I wish they included employed people in this trial.

izzydata 8y ago

I thought the idea was to reduce pointless busy work and increase actual productive work for people that wanted to. The overall outcome being increased net productivity. I have no idea how you would measure that though as I imagine there would be less people interested in working overall.

randomacct3847 8y ago

I always thought the point of basic income was so that you didn’t necessarily need every member of society employed in the traditional sense

fucking_tragedy 8y ago
UBI serves two purposes. The first is stopgap rhetoric to prevent socialist-inspired rhetoric from making popular gains as traditional employment is eroded away. The second is to point at UBI and go "See, if you give money to people who were made redundant in the labor market, they probably still won't be able to sell their labor" while doing everything to ignore the fact that the market has moved past certain people.

lixtra 8y ago

While this article is about an even more special population of UBI recipients I have two general criticisms about UBI studies: 1. They are usually time limited. You can expect different behavior if you get financial security for limited time or for life. 2. Most studies seem to be externally financed (here the whole state vs a small population). The interesting part is if people are willing to pay for this within their community. Are you okay to pay for your slacking neighbor (even if she is the exception and UBI turns out to be overall good)?

mongol 8y ago
It can never be time unlimited. Laws can change and will change eventually. Any reasoning about UBI for life is flawed.
- etrautmann 8y ago
  Well, neither extreme seems right. We reasonably expect Medicare to pay out for decades and plan around that even if there's a possibility of laws changing.
alekseypo 8y ago
As long as the disbursal is direct (handled by the FR for example), and cuts out bloated gov. orgs. As it pertains to other people, I see it as a floor that will hopefully help people unlock their potential by taking some of the pressure off the exchange of time for wages and focusing it on the meaning of work. If people want to do nothing beyond their UBI income, that's fine - but I don't see this being a widespread phenomenon. It covers the basics, and we have a tendency to yearn for more.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> Are you okay to pay for your slacking neighbor (even if she is the exception and UBI turns out to be overall good)? Finnish society has already shown this willingness to pay. All mainstream political parties support the existing welfare state for the most part, and any Finn knows a few people who live on benefits and want to avoid any kind of hard work. Furthermore, over the 20th century the Church and other forms of private philanthropy have dwindled away in Finnish society. The average Finn today does not want to have to make an effort to personally help out other people, and engage in uncomfortable social interaction, even if we are talking about their neighbours. (After all, those living in blocks of flats rarely even know their neighbours.) So, Finns are quite happy to have a wide social safety net provided by the state – even if it is sometimes "abused" – in order to save them the effort of returning to a charity model where real effort and personal interaction would be expected of them.

sleepysysadmin 8y ago

In Ontario Canada, our outgoing government tried basic income as well. It increased unemployment in the pilot cities. So our new government eliminated basic income quickly because it was the opposite of the general trend of all other cities. The reality is that people don't need money. Money is important but what people need is a purpose and goals. Which a basic income system does not provide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI

knight-of-lambd 8y ago
How do you know this when the study was cancelled a year early (by a Conservative gov't, no less)

mises 8y ago

I still see some big issues with universal basic income, and would appreciate one of its supporters responding to some of them: Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. That's nearly 20% of America's GDP. How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level before we commit our entire nation. Why would a national government do this? Necessity. I don't think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k (maybe not the right number, but there should be a cutoff). That just takes money away from those who need it. If a supporter of UBI can respond, I'd like to discuss possible concerns and benefits.

bryanlarsen 8y ago
Cost: The money isn't going into a black hole, it's being given to those who tend to spend their money more quickly and more locally (aka the poor). So I would expect it to increase the velocity of money rather than decreasing it, giving the economy a nice boost. Necessity: Any sane UBI system is revenue neutral. So anybody with above average income is going to pay more in increased taxes than they receive in benefits. That's easier and fairer than a claw-back.
mactrey 8y ago
> How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? The money isn't pulled out, though. It is redistributed to people, many of whom will immediately spend it, and others will invest it in various (hopefully efficient) ways. > Why would a national government do this? The problem of entry and exit. Say one state like Massachusetts implemented a UBI. Then we could expect many people to move to MA from surrounding states, or do whatever they can to have a legal address there. However I think there are possible solutions to this and a state-by-state implementation is actually possible. For example, Alaska has their dividend program and I think the results from that have been quite good. > I don't think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k I think I agree which is why I'm more in favor of a negative income tax or other means-tested system than true UBI. But if I were to argue in favor of an "everyone gets the same" program I'd say something like, implementation is somewhat less complicated, or it's easier to explain to the public.

onemoresoop 8y ago

> The Finnish trial was a bit different, as it focused on people who were unemployed I think UBI would help people who are already employed in jobs that they hate, to find/invent meaningful jobs. A lot of employed people are miserable but just surviving doing things that they hate (because that's the only thing that pays and so are chained to their misery). I think real UBI would create strong bottom up economies and get rid of value extractors, intermediaries and schemers. It would also help people move out of big cities back to rural areas where things are not so expensive

yasp 8y ago

Did they not have an identical cohort serving as a control to compare employment rates at the end of the trial?

java-man 8y ago
no they did not.
- contrast 8y ago
  Yes they did, according to the article: “Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.” Note this means the headline is the opposite of the truth. And the quote is not to be found in the article. It’s how the author/editor chose to interpret a single individual’s statement, despite the overall finding being very different.
- fuckyah 8y ago
  wrong
- java-man 8y ago
  quote: Included in the random sampling were all individuals between ages 25 and 58 whom Kela paid labour market subsidy or basic unemployment allowance in November 2016 for some other reason than a temporary layoff. Random sampling means that all who satisfied the requirements for inclusion in the experiment had an equal probability of being selected into the study population. so the group who received the subsidy was already skewed by a previous selection process. I don't see any mention of a control group in the experiment web site: [0] https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-objectives-and-implementation https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-objectives-and-imple...
gyaniv 8y ago
The did. and the result showed that their employment chances were 'no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.' What they didn't do (although some wanted them to), is also check the system on already employed people and checked if that changed their likelihood of staying in a bad job/finding a better job or anything like that. Because that's the real idea behind basic income. not just giving it to the unemployed, but to everyone, with the hope that it would encourage people to find jobs better suited to them, and to allow people to take bigger risks.

deleted 8y ago

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pastor_elm 8y ago

did they really have to study this? We have decades of welfare to analyze. UBI is dead in the water. Call it a negative tax rate instead.

drcode 8y ago
It's tough... people feel like the US median standard of living has stagnated (the economic evidence is mixed on this subject) and therefore it is tempting to think there must be some shortcuts we can take to leverage our high GPD into a raised standard of living through direct cash transfers. However, I personally feel that these ideas will lead to counterproductive results, that these sorts of transfers can lead to severe inflation and will lead to a higher unemployment rates, thereby dragging down the very GDP they are dependent on. Unfortunately, both sides of this argument have little direct evidence to support their position... aside from tiny, partial studies such as the one in this article, which cannot give any meaningful insights into the complex macroeconomic effects of a larger UBI rollout, which will likely be singificant. Everyone is at an impasse on this question.
gevi99 8y ago
That's what they said about Brexit. We live in times were populists are propped up. To change that the media/social media has to drastically alter. Until it does expect more and more pandering.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
UBI is different from welfare because you don’t have to qualify for it, so it removes any incentives to alter your life to qualify for welfare.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Poland has an interesting example that could be used as UBI experiement. Recently introduced "500+" program pays 500PLN(~$130/£100) for every child after the first one(or all if the family has no other source of income). Now, to you westerners $130/month might sound like nothing, but actually, with 3-4 children you are getting a regular salary for effectively doing nothing, without any extra conditions. And apart from the loss of the benefit for the 1st child if you get a job, nothing stops you from working and yet still collecting the benefit. It has improved the living conditions in Poland considerably, and families with children can now afford a lot more than they could previously. I personally know one company that lost a decent chunk of its staff to it - why work for you while I can get similar amount of money and stay at home? Of course the question of whether Poland can afford such a generous program is a different question altogether, but it cannot be denied that for many people this completely unconditional injection of cash is absolutely equivalent to UBI.

acslater00 8y ago

Surprising that paying people to not work didn't lead to more people working!

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zozbot123 8y ago
That's not what's surprising: if anyone was "paid not to work" in this experiment, it was the control group who stayed on traditional unemployment benefits - and yet they found jobs just as much as the UBI group did!
notStoicEnough 8y ago
Er - I'm not a proponent of UBI, but there's an important, but subtle distinction here. UBI is not "paying people not to work." That's more like typical unemployment - when people find jobs, the benefit goes away, creating a disincentive. With UBI, the benefit remains, (theoretically) encouraging risk taking.
cromulent 8y ago
It's different to the normal dole in that you can take on part time work without losing the benefit. This is not "paying people not to work" - that is a bad characterization of this trial, but maybe an accurate characterization of the dole. It's saying: Here's your minimum money, go and see what you can do. For a local business owner, it's a big deal to take on a full time employee. If they have UBI, it is not. This makes it attractive and less risky for employers to give a few hours here and there.
52-6F-62 8y ago
It would have been nice if Ontario was permitted to finish our Basic Income pilot project. It would have been a valuable other data point. Sadly it was killed off before we could see any results. The project in progress, however, saw people leave their existing jobs to, get this: go back to school full time so they could improve their lot, have children, or start businesses. [Instead they got the rug pulled out from under them ~1 year into the program by the new government after being told they could rely on the program for 3 years] I know it's a bit of snark, but your take is a bit simplistic and hand-wavy.

dkns 8y ago

> Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. Isn't unconditional, you know, unconditional? As opposed to "From January 2017 until December 2018"?

mg794613 8y ago

I find the narrative of the article focussing on "how it failed" and only one condition. "Did it increase employement" Of course this is what some might have expected from it, but the researcher itself not. Which is only included as a very last line.

ThomPete 8y ago

It's a general misunderstanding that Basic Income is some sort of job program, it's not. It's a job replacement program for a society where there aren't enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most. Basic Income should provide fundamental living cost support in a society that has no jobs so there is no "but" in there. Edit: Keep in mind we already have Basic Income it's just conditional. UBI is different.

leereeves 8y ago
> there aren't enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most. And yet the US has full employment. Could it be that Finland lacks jobs for some reason other than technology?
- SirHound 8y ago
  Someone working an hour a week counts as employed.
  - blakejustblake 8y ago
    I wonder if the rise of gig-economy type work has dirtied the employment data pool? If you're out of work and looking for a employment, yet you're still scraping by a few bucks every week due to Uber or Lyft or something similar, and you're a part of a significant percentage of people doing the same then unemployment numbers probably aren't as pretty as some would like us to believe.
    - baronswindle 8y ago
      U6 unemployment numbers include workers who are employed part time but would prefer to be full time, and U6 is near all time lows.
      - lusmd 8y ago
        But labor force participation rates are still very, very low. If you'd like a job but don't have one, you don't get counted in any unemployment stats except the aggregate labor force participation.

rezeroed 8y ago

Should be "happier but still jobless". No one lost jobs as a result. the result was that the jobless were happier. An improved situation.

jancsika 8y ago

Would be curious to know what the overhead of the UBI program was compared to the overhead of whatever unemployment program it was replacing.

LarryDarrell 8y ago

Which would be a fine outcome. We're entering a real messy period where dignified, decent paying jobs are becoming scarce. All of our philosophies about work and welfare are rooted in a post WWII era where we were essentially rebuilding the world and there was more work than competent people. If we are going to insist that all productivity gains must now go directly to the capital class, we're going to need a UBI, universal healthcare and housing guarantees. I worry that greed is too baked in, and those that have would rather let the world burn before they give the current system up.

afpx 8y ago
Lately, I’ve been in the mood to read recently-published business self-help books. One thing that surprised me was that three of the books had a common premise. They began by describing the habits of some of the most notable people in history (scientists, artists, business people, etc). Then, they went on to say how these habits would be necessary to maintain a job in the new globalized marketplace. Wait, what? So, anyone who wants to have a job in the near-future must emulate the habits of some of the most impressive people in history? Wow. I don’t know if this premise is true or just marketing hyperbole. But, if that’s what workers think is required of them, we are in for a scary future.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Wait, what? So, anyone who wants to have a job must emulate the habits of some of the most impressive people in history? Wow. Isn't that how a lot of human progress works? The scientific viewpoint was once a pastime of educated elites. Now the world model derived from it is very much mainstream. (Though it isn't 100% universal) Reading, writing, and arithmetic were once elite and esoteric specialist skills, now they are basic requirements. Mercy, humanitarianism, and individual rights are all fairly recent innovations in human history. I don’t know if that’s true or hyperbole, but if that’s what workers think, we are in for a scary future. Or a fantastic one.
  - petra 8y ago
    Viewpoints and skills are teachable, although that can take a lot of effort. But habits ? depending on what habits are we talking about, some are highly related to personality, to willpower, to interpersonal skills,etc and those are really hard to change, or maybe impossible, for some. And if aim so high in changing human beings, is this the best we can do ? to create better money making machines ? And what will that do to our old values - stuff like kindness, family values, creativity for it's own sake ? And will it even work ? Or is being an Elon Musk copy will just become a requirement for working as a barista ?

sakisv 8y ago

I think the idea of UBI as it is, makes it an easy target for comments that characterize people as "freeloaders" or trading "something" for "nothing". The problem is that the UBI seems to be coming from the taxes that other people, which may be a good first iteration to try something out, but it will fail in scale. I will assume that the aim of these experiments is to find a way to provide for an ever increasing number of people at a time that the number and the quality of jobs is dropping, largely being replaced by automated systems. Last year the governor of bank of England voiced concerns about the automation stripping out jobs which could "lead to a rise of marxism"[1]. I find the idea of a UB Dividend[2], or social dividend[3] instead something which would have more chances to succeed. The main idea behind it is that everyone will be entitled to a dividend which will be funded by private companies. So instead of having the Apples and Googles of the world sitting on a pile of cash, they could put a portion of their earnings in a fund which would then be given back to everyone to allow them to continue to purchase their products and services. 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mark-carney-marxism-automation-bank-of-england-governor-job-losses-capitalism-a8304706.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mark-carney-... 2: https://medium.com/dark-mountain/universal-dividend-a988c31c372b https://medium.com/dark-mountain/universal-dividend-a988c31c... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend

chillacy 8y ago
I believe some states already do something like a UBI: saudi arabia and alaska both pay out dividends from resource extraction.

yason 8y ago

The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn't work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the participants. The sample of 2000 people were chosen from a group of unemployed people. I think the criteria for being randomly chosen was having been paid unemployment benefits during some range of dates. So it's not representative of a real UBI at all: the point of UBI isn't to necessarily make things better for the unemployed but, rather, the large group of people who make very little money and barely get along. Cashiers, cleaners, etc who can't live on their earnings, at least in big cities. Or self-employed one-person shops whose income stream is very choppy and who don't make much anyway. Real UBI would be universal so those who are working would get it too -- of course the UBI would increase your income and likely your tax percentage so it would mostly be taxed away from those who do earn a living. The point of UBI is to cut down on bureucracy by removing various individual case-by-case subsidies (but bureaucrats would never vote for that) and make some base level of income predictable and reliable, mostly for people who make less than the lower middle class.

freedomben 8y ago
I agree, but I do think it's important to specify that this is only one UBI proposal (it's the UBI proposal that I favor, that Milton Friedman supported as an alternative to bureaucracy heavy welfare programs). There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) and that don't replace other welfare programs. These are nontrivial differences that I don't think should be obscured.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) Means-tested programs like that are, by definition, not unconditional basic income. So there are no UBI proposals that do that, since a proposal that does that is not UBI. > and that don't replace other welfare programs. It's unusual for a UBI proposal not to replace other means-tested benefit programs (though it may not do so immediately absolutely; my preferred implementation would, e.g., merely count as income against other programs qualifications and only shutter each of them completely when the UBI floor had reached above the point where it was possible to qualify for the one of the other programs.)

dawhizkid 8y ago

As someone who wants to remain in the workforce, the absolute most frustrating thing about taking a break between jobs or wanting to bootstrap a company or start something new is not the lack of income during that time but that my healthcare in the US is tied to having a job. Yes, I can buy individual insurance, but moving off and on new plans is incredibly time consuming, and if you have a certain prescription that you are on or have something that is covered by an employer plan but may not be covered by an individual on then it's highly risky to leave.

fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> Yes, I can buy individual insurance, but moving off and on new plans is incredibly time consuming, and if you have a certain prescription that you are on or have something that is covered by an employer plan but may not be covered by an individual on then it's highly risky to leave. As someone who spent time doing contract work, and working on my own business, this is what made me seek out work as an employee. I cannot, and will not, play the game of paying for individual insurance. Employers can negotiate for better rates and better plans than you, as an individual, will ever be able to. If you have a health condition or injury, the chances of which will increase each day that you're alive, the individual health insurance market is a disaster.

yingw787 8y ago

I don't know how much I support basic income as a substitute for jobs. Jobs can suck, but basic income takes away the levers for poor people (anybody relying on one primary income stream for disposable income) to be useful to the rich and powerful, leaving them completely vulnerable to the games of the latter. Even if you mopped a rich person's floor and the rich person wanted to dispose of you, he'd likely have to replace you with another floor mopper; the coupling between rich and poor is still there. Without jobs, the poor are completely expendable. If things go well, there's no way the poor can keep paying attention to maintaining the system, and things can go bad. If things don't go well, the bottom can drop out. This is of course not discussing the other benefits of jobs (a feeling of dignity, a way to spend time, being around other people and a tie to society). I'd rather support a system of federated capitalism where everybody owns and rents some amount of capital (financial, intellectual, social, etc.), along with a government that can provide for basic needs. Everyone has some nontrivial amount of power, and has to respect other people and their power.

dcre 8y ago

Very dishonest headline. It failed to increase employment among people who are already unemployed, which no one expected it to do. It also did not decrease their number of working days. https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1093859412182212609 https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1093859412182212609

psadri 8y ago

Handing out free money will most likely just cause inflation and defeat itself. The inflation will make the amount paid out in basic income insufficient to live on. The alternate to basic income for the purpose of housing, health and food, is to provide a basic version of those resources at zero cost.

ThomPete 8y ago
We don't know which is why it's good we start experimenting with it IMO.
DougN7 8y ago
I don’t know why you were downvoted because you’re right. A simple thought experiment can prove it: give everyone $1 million every year starting today. Is everyone suddenly rich? Just for a few days. Eventually milk will cost $500/gallon. The effects of Supply and demand can’t be legislated out of existence.
- zimzam 8y ago
  That’s like saying any inflation is bad because if it were a million percent bad things would happen. It doesn’t tell us anything about reality.
  - DougN7 8y ago
    The inflation would render the money we gave everyone nearly worthless, by approximately the amount given out. It’s similar to adding six zeros to every bank account.
- ball_of_lint 8y ago
  Sure, a massive influx of newly minted money will cause inflation. That's a given. But it's not sustainable and clearly not a sensible way to implement this policy. If we instead took this money from other taxes most likely there'd be some inflation, but not enough to make the money useless. Finally, I know 1m was a hyperbole but basic income doesn't need to guarantee you can live comfortably anywhere without working, only somewhere. Downtown SF? Nope. Most of CA? Still probably too expensive. Midwest? Now we're talking.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

That's a weird way to spin it. Much more useful and interesting, to me, is that UBI recipients weren't any less likely to get jobs. That implies that UBI will not--as some fear--in fact lead to a bunch of lazy, parasitic layabouts. They're still trying to find work, they're just happier and healthier while they're doing it.

antpls 8y ago

Regarding me, I could be happier without working, or working less than I currently do. So, according to the article : "this is a triumph"

pattisapu 8y ago

"Work and love . . . work and love . . . that's all there is." -Freud

ratling 8y ago

What is supposed to be the bad part of this? I would equate 'happier' with 'getting their needs met.' If you have more people than work that needs to get done I don't have a problem with the people who aren't working being able to live.

bakhy 8y ago

This is a weird title. The article says that the people on basic income were equally likely to find a job as those who were not receiving it. I was expecting that basic income might make people less motivated to find jobs, and that would have been an issue. But this result seems like a positive outcome for UBI.

dmix 8y ago
It went to 2000 people already getting unemployment benefits. > It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. So I'm curious what affect that had vs the general population's approach to finding employment. Particularly young people who may have never had a job before.

floatingatoll 8y ago

This title misrepresents the outcome. A better headline would have been: > Finland basic income trial improved happiness but not employment It’s unfortunate the BBC chose that quote, as it misrepresents the outcome of the trial as _creating_ joblessness, rather than failing to _alter_ joblessness.

ourmandave 8y ago

Seriously asking. Is it possible to use your basic income to get a loan? I just envision people buying all sorts of things without understanding what they're signing up for. And from a U.S. perspective, I don't trust a system filled with rent-to-owns, payday lenders, and car dealer/financers stopping anyone from making bad choices.

jostylr 8y ago
Presumably you could. It is money granted to each person without strings. Not sure how you could avoid it. A better questions would be whether the courts could impose UBI garnishing similar to wage garnishing. I would presume not and hence giving a loan to someone would have to be with the knowledge that the government would not force repayment with UBI funds. It gets back to an issue of whether someone has a history of responsible payments, something which would be more in a person's control with a guaranteed flow of UBI. I view UBI as a way to help ease the debt of many people, particularly those incurred because of lost wages (loss of job, illness). It could also ease the college debt issues because we could stop subsidizing college costs, leading to decreased tuition, and instead the colleges would have to compete with other uses of this money, something they do not have to do with direct college support programs.

mherrmann 8y ago

Not sure how the numbers add up. The infographic says it cost €20M. The text says 2,000 Fins got €560 for 24 months. That would amount to €26.88M.

dvh 8y ago

Just wondering, is there anyone here who lived in socialism (or in single communist party regime) and honestly believe that UBI can work?

herostratus101 8y ago

Silicon Valley People: We need basic income because there aren't enough jobs for low-skilled workers. Also Silicon Valley People: Let's have open borders and import unlimited numbers of low-skilled workers. Doing anything else is racist!

hippich 8y ago

I used to be all-in UBI supporter. To my "hacker" mind it appeared like a wonderful hack around issues society is facing. But lately, as I saw our parents retire, I was thinking about what really keep people happy - and as soon as basics are covered, it appears that "being useful" is what jobs are really about. UBI, as a result, may lock people forever in a jobless situation. UBI will not provide enough capital to bootstrap anything, it might disconnect you from people doing something. This can only increase the resentment between employed and unemployed classes. Granted, some will find themselves doing what they wanted to do their whole life (non-profitable) and couldn't because they had to put food on the table. But is this the case for everyone? I am afraid the rest will risk being marked "not useful" for life, and that doesn't sound like something that makes one happy... Sorry, it is just my random philosophical thoughts and no real answers or pieces of advice here...

Qwertystop 8y ago
UBI doesn't prevent you from looking for work on top of it - that's what "unconditional" means here.
- hippich 8y ago
  Indeed. People who want to achieve something - they will be quite happy about it. But seeing retired parents not knowing what to do about their lives (because they dedicated whole life to getting their children ahead and working their ass off to do that, and now they done with it - what next?) - suggests that there is more to it, than just covering basic needs.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    It seems to me that the problem many retiring people run into is that they have been compelled to labor for the entire life by economic necessity and so viewed retirement as an escape into self-fulfillment, without ever having time to consider what self-fulfillment means, and first really are able to even consider the question in their senior years, burdened by mental habits of decades of servile labor. In a system where people don't usually feel an economic compulsion to work if they are at all able (which is probably not a UBI at the poverty-support level usually suggested as a near-term goal, though that might have a shadow of the same effect) you'd have a lot fewer people running into that problem; they'd learn and organize their life around it when they were much younger.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

There is a basic misunderstanding here. A basic income is unconditional. The Finnish study was not basic income because it was not unconditional. It was instead an experiment to find out if giving specifically unemployed people money would help them find a job. It sounds like perfectly ordinary social security from my perspective in Norway, perhaps with some of the requirements relaxed. If people want to find out if basic income works it has to be given to a representative slice of the population. This has been done several times in North America (once in Canada, and twice in the US), as far as I can tell it was successful.

nickelcitymario 8y ago

In other news: Vegetarianism did not lead an increase in animal population. Policing did not lead to an increase civic engagement. Prophylactics did not lead to an increase in birth rates. ...I wonder what other goals I could retroactively apply to social programs to show how they failed to achieve things they were never meant to address.

manicdee 8y ago

This experiment was performed in 2017. The basic criticisms of it are: - participants selected only from long term unemployed - Finland was still in a period of austerity following recession (low hiring rate) - tiny sample population - limited period - stingy, the amount provided doesn't really provide a basic income

jgalt212 8y ago

If you think the Great Society had bad effects on poor black folks, just wait to see what bad effects UBI has on everyone.

Proven 8y ago

LOL! It took millions to answer the question a low skilled laborer could answer in one second. On the other hand, just answering the silly question created a lot of jobs (especially in social sciences) so a success in its own right :-)))

mikhailfranco 8y ago

Universal Basic Income: Work Hard, Keep Half v. No Work, Free Stuff https://delvedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Universal-Basic-Income.jpg https://delvedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Universal-Bas...

Sidious 8y ago

Well-fare is insidious and destructive. Look up the origins of communism, those people only destroy.