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Free Money Didn’t Help People Find Jobs, Finland Says
- perfunctory 8y agoI find this title a good example of framing. From the article: "On the basis of an analysis of register data on an annual level, we can say that during the first year of the experiment the recipients of a basic income were no better or worse than the control group at finding employment in the open labor market" So you can say "free money didn't help people find jobs", or you could say "free money didn't discourage people to seek jobs". The connotation is a bit different.
- rocgf 8y agoValid point, but I believe people will be less inclined to support this if basic income basically means "we can give all this money for free to people and they will do about the same as people we don't give money to". It's hard to justify it.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoUh, the very first sentence states that people feel better on UBI, for no loss of employment rate. So basically all the mental suffering associated with unemployment is pointless suffering.
- askmike 8y agoI'm not sure you can deduce that it's pointless. It's not like UBI doesn't have any other consequences (such as the feelings of the people who don't like UBI). Note that I think UBI is a great idea.
- avaika 8y agoIn the article they mention, that people from experimental group (w money) are feeling better from health perspective than people from control group (w/o money). I believe that's a strong point to justify the expenses.
- mcv 8y agoWe're already giving free money to people, but at the moment we're giving money to people specifically for not working and for subjecting themselves to humiliating bureaucratic processes. So people get simultaneously rewarded and punished for not working. Instead, let's just give them the money and give them some freedom.
- genericacct 8y agoBesides the entire idea behind UBI is that it is needed because automation has taken / will take most of the jobs. So the headline confirms the need.
- Robin_Message 8y agoAnd the report I heard said they were happier and had better mental health, which has got to be worth something on its own. Also, only giving basic income to unemployed people doesn't give good data on what a society-wide basic income would do. My reading of the study is "bureaucratic and narrowly defined job search advice and systems depress people but have no positive impact in them getting a job" - as you say, the connotation is quite different!
- vanderZwan 8y ago> And the report I heard said they were happier and had better mental health, which has got to be worth something on its own. Even economically, since mental health issues can be very costly
- LoSboccacc 8y agoDunno the society but I would drop jobs to program videogames. Don't think it would be a net benefit for the world but would increase my well being for sure. One question remains tho. If I were to benefit economically from the art production that basic income would enable me to do, would it be ethical to keep that income?
- Nursie 8y agoThe wider reporting of this as "Basic Income didn't work" is worrying too. All we can say is it didn't appear to affect the number of people that found employment, and that the supposed effect of letting people seek work without worrying that they might lose their benefits, didn't happen here. It says nothing about the wider implications of BI in a society where there may be limited work in future.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoIt's even better than that! The title the authors of the study put on their press release is: "Preliminary results of the basic income experiment: self-perceived wellbeing improved, during the first year no effects on employment"[0] So not only does Bloomberg frame it like the doomsday prediction that everyone would turn into idlers never happened, the significant increase in mental health is just quietly sidestepped. [0]: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/preliminary-results-of-the-basic-income-experiment-self-perceived-wellbeing-improved-during-the-first-year-no-effects-on-employment https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN...
- VvR-Ox 8y agoTHAT is exactly the problem: OUR SYSTEM doesn't care how happy you are, as long as you're productive enough for some people to get rich. No one cares if you have a job, if you are homeless or have to suffer poverty. OUR SOCIETY values power and wealth (at least here in the west, I heard about other countries who don't do this so dedicated). If you're poor, sick or have no job than there is even people who'd argue for mercy killing you as not being strong enough for our good society. I think the report about this experiment shows how far away we moved from humanity.
- askmike 8y ago> If you're poor, sick or have no job than there is even people who'd argue for mercy killing you as not being strong enough for our good society. Where do you meet people who argue for that? I Have never heard that outside of (very) dystopian novels.
- SeaSeaRider 8y agoI think he might be a russian troll?
- VvR-Ox 8y agoI think you just try to disqualify my valid arguments because you don't want to see what is happening around here.
- avip 8y agoYep. It reads like one of those nutrition "studies" that conclude with "none of the participants in the Brocoloy juice diet group developed any signs of cancer".
- zozbot123 8y ago> So you can say "free money didn't help people find jobs", or you could say "free money didn't discourage people to seek jobs". The connotation is a bit different. Right. Most perceptibly, you could even frame it as "Disincentive effects from unemployment benefits may be lower than previously feared; switching to free money didn't make people seek more work."
- pixelbash 8y agoShouldn't that be (s/more/less/)?
- zozbot123 8y agoNo, the point is that it doesn't matter if you "pay people not to work" via unemployment benefits that are stopped when they start working again, or just give them a baseline subsidy no matter what - either way, they'll have the same amount of success seeking work. So yes, it's a bit of a failure for basic income, but a win for unemployment benefits.
- eloisant 8y agoWell that's missing the point. Basic income is not supposed to help them find jobs that can sustain them so they no longer need it, but make it optional. Stop make it mandatory to have a well paying job to be able to afford rent and food. Which, by the way, only applies to middle and lower classes anyway because people from higher classes can live off their investments and don't have to work.
- bedane 8y agoAgreed And it did help improve well-being! I'd say it's a success
- bufferoverflow 8y agoYou don't need a well paying job to afford rent and food - just don't live in ridiculously expensive areas. USA has a plenty of very cheap places to live. As the rest of the world, with maybe a few exceptions of very expensive micronations.
- SeaSeaRider 8y agoIn the vast majority of capitalist societies, you don’t need a “well paying job” to eat. There are all manners of safety nets. Even in the USA no-one has starved to death in modern times.
- nelsonic 8y agoIndeed this Bloomberg reporter entirely misses the point! The point of UBI is to free people from BS Jobs and instead help people find meaning in life beyond their "unemployment". It should encourage creative risk-taking with a guaranteed safety-net income. If people are cash-poor they cannot think beyond the stress of paying bills and are forced to take a "wage-slave" JOB (Just Over Broke).
- rajeshmr 8y agoTry it in developing countries. You can see vastly different outcomes, and generally the quality of life will increase in these places. It's an irony that the countries that need this the most don't have the funding, and the countries that do have the funding, report it isn't working.
- hpaavola 8y ago"The Nordic social welfare champion spent the last two years handing out 560 euros ($635) per month to a randomly selected group of 2,000 jobless people aged between 25 and 58." They were selected from a group of people who received a form of unemployment benefit called "työmarkkinatuki". Without going into too much details, it meant that almost all of them had been unemployed for at least two years. And that means that huge chunk of them (I would guess that overwhelming majority) are basically unemployable because they have some limitations (physical of mental) or they do not have any education.
- skocznymroczny 8y agoCan anyone explain to me, with basic income, why wouldn't I want to sit at home all day and play videogames?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoCan someone explain to me, with varying job wages, why I wouldn't just take a low effort shelf stacking or cleaning job? Is it obvious yet?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- easshvsh 8y agoBecause those jobs are boring and require a lot of physical effort.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoSpeak for yourself; I worked at a DIY store for a while doing basically that. My mum's career is cleaning at a doctor's office. They may be repetitive, but that does NOT mean they are not fulfilling.
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoSitting at home playing games all day, or being unemployed are boring. Same for many different jobs that people do. The physical effort is trivial, I shelf stacked for a year as a teen Saturday job. Not intellectually fulfilling perhaps, but a pretty sociable job. Helping a relative out on his fruit and plant growing smallholding was far more energetic.
- dreen 8y agoMost people would prefer welfare than a job like that, even if the job meant more money.
- mcv 8y ago
- forinti 8y agoBut are there jobs available in Finland? 560 euros is not much in Finland; I don't expect people to willingly stay home and live off this amount.
- perttir 8y agoThere are currently weird issue in Finland. There are labor shortage and more than 146k unemployed people in Finland at the same time.
- hannob 8y agoThis whole study is a tragedy. They made a study on a basic income, it cost huge amounts of money, and it was build to fail by declaring a stupid goal. The other results look quite promising, but I tried looking into the data and unfortunately it's very weak. They made only questionaires and the return rates were very low, so it doesn't say much. They had really stupid mistakes in the report (confusing p-values and chi^2 values, wrong additions), all seems really sloppy. In sum they made a study on a stupid goal, and the real results are not very meaningful due to poor methodological quality of the stury.
- Svoka 8y agowhy do you think it failed? IMO - it succeeded. In face of skeptics who told that people won't do anything, people on UBI still found jobs as often as those who didn't have it.
- KaiserPro 8y agono, but it makes people happy. Now, obviously that's a bit against the capitalist grain and all that, but think of it this way: the Luddite rebellion, and mass unrest happened in the UK because people's livelihoods were taken away. Either through automation, or enclosure. This left thousands upon thousands of people with little left to lose forced to crime in order to eat. This is expensive for wider society, you need to spend money of security, courts, jail, insurance public damages. Paying money to make them happy, so that they don't _have_ to turn to crime, or a radical dictator candidate is a price worth paying.
- pikzel 8y agoBut as someone else has to pay for their free money, the perceived happiness needs to be quantified.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoThat's one thing that keeps getting omitted in these things. I don't believe that current unemployment benefits are just as expensive as "just" giving everyone the same amount of money. Plus if it has to be a minimal living income - like minimum wage once was supposed to be - it would have to be higher to cover rent, food, and other mandatory expenses in most places. Or is the idea to adjust it according to where people live? That will just open it up to a lot of fraud attempts.
- dingaling 8y agoCurrent unemployment benefits have significant administrative overhead such as eligibility testing, forms to send and receive, staff who meet with the individuals each week to ensure that they are achieving their required job application targets, additional staff to handle appeals, paper by the ream, printer toner, heating & office space... and only then can the money be disbursed. UBI in contrast just moves money to bank accounts.
- KaiserPro 8y agoLook, I am very lucky to earn enough money to pay a boat load of tax. I would gladly pay _more_ if it meant the following: 1) there are no riots 2) There are no slums 3) There are good provision for health and social care 4) there is low crime. 5) decent education none of these wishes are altruistic. why? because all of these thing directly impact _my_ live and _my_ family slums mean crime hotspots, means no go areas, means muggings. this translates to higher policing, courts and prison costs. it means higher insurance premiums, longer commutes. It pushes up house prices because certian areas are not worth living in. high rentals for everyone. bad health and social care means less productive workforce, which means less taxes being paid, which means worse public services. (and more tax _i_ have to pay, or fork out for private services) the choice is this: cast the longterm unemployed out into the street and suffer the rise in crime, anger and dissent, or pay them a stipend to be happy, content and most of all _cheap_
- SeaSeaRider 8y agoBasic Income is a completed unworkable pipedream, a revival of the “utopianism” of 100 years ago, when society thought that everything could be fixed if we just introduce “x solution”. But we live in complex changing times, so they need for “simple” solutions will always be appealing. For examples, see the current political situation in the USA and Europe.
- merricksb 8y agoDiscussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19114834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19114834
- kofisarfo 8y agoMy understanding was that as automation eats jobs people will need money to live whilst they pursue self-actualisation, creative living and community-based work/contributions (in place of "finding a job"). If the reporting is correct in that the aim was to see how people would respond given the current state of affairs - get a haircut, get a job - then maybe the aim was misguided? Better mental-health, for example, and contributions to common/public good (freed from the scourge of having a job and job-seeking obligations) might be what matter most as the jobs people tend to do are replaced with jobs that they can't yet do. During that transition period of creative destruction what you really don't want is civil unrest (or opioid abuse), right? Perhaps this should have formed a greater part the metric. Of course, how you go about raising taxes in this new world might prove an even more thorny question which relegates the former to "continuing research".
- x10yy 8y agoPerhaps the participants in the study were carefully selected to get the desired outcome. I can't imaging that this is true in the general case.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoAnother commenter pointed it out; these were people that already were unemployed for two years. Which can mean a number of things, but for one, having a gap of two years in your CV will make potential employers raise an eyebrow.
- davidgf 8y agoThe recipients did however report “less stress symptoms as well as less difficulties to concentrate and less health problems than the control group,” said Minna Ylikanno, lead researcher at Kela. “They were also more confident in their future and in their ability to influence societal issues.” It did help people be healthier and happier though, but the headline only points out that they're still unemployed. We must be doing something really wrong as a society when we treat jobs as an end, rather than a means.
- SeaSeaRider 8y agoCommenta saying “it wasn’t real basic income” remind me people who say “it wasn’t real communism” whenever their utopia fails in mass starvation and murdet.
- shearnie 8y agoIt would be more interesting to find what they did with their time before and after. And also the impact of UBI to the already employed. How their vocational prospects have changed. Money given to the unemployed is not UBI, it's the dole.