Finland’s basic income plan could change everything • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#71

Post by WalterSear » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

Ao7bei3s wrote: post #65

vinceguidry wrote: post #12

I'm cautiously enthusiastic about basic income. I want to believe that it really can change everything, until that nagging doubt of "but human nature just doesn't work that way!" inevitably kills the buzz. The idea behind basic income is to remove day-to-day struggle from people's lives. If only they didn't have to worry where their next rent check is coming from, then potentially a huge groundswell of human capital…

Unemployment benefits just aren't like basic income. At all. 1. They're barely enough to feed yourself and pay for rent, if even. Nothing more. 2. The authorities keep you busy filing paperwork and sending applications for awful jobs. Don't meet your quota, miss a deadline, don't make a meeting, or refuse any job (even if quite beneath your qualification), and your benefits are cut. 3. If you're unemployed, long-term…

It's worse in the US. It's essentially beer money.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#72

Post by Xixi » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #24

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income wouldn't pay out to everybody: the obvious example is that it wouldn't be paid to people in country on tourist visas. Full citizens obviously would get it. Where to draw the line between those two determines how generous you want to be. Most immigrants / refugees I know would be happy not receiving benefits such as basic income as long their children get all the benefits and opportunities that natives do…

Bear in mind there are 500 million eligible persons within the EU that may move to Finland if they choose. Once there they cannot legally be treated any differently to a Finnish native.

I think the rules are quite different, or at least they used to be.

For instance as a French citizen if I find a job in Finland and want to move there, all I have to do is fill a EU form, and there I go. Finnish immigration is not allowed to throw me out of Finland, or deny me the right to work there, because it is my right as a European citizen to work wherever I want in the EU.

But, if I were to simply want to go live in Finland (without a job), I do think Finland is allowed to treat me as a perpetual tourist, that is to say not as a Finnish resident: no state benefits, etc. It might even be allowed to send me back to France, but I am not quite sure about it...

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#73

Post by frankus » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #17

I'm worried if this will provide an incentive to rent hikes - landlords can easily raise rents by pointing out that everyone has additional 800€ per month to spend.

Normally higher income would spur housing construction (if the cost of construction is mostly in the cost of the labor/materials), but in areas where land is naturally or artificially scarce (through exclusionary zoning and arduous "process"), it's likely prices would just rise to compensate.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#74

Post by vinceguidry » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:01 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #63

vinceguidry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not opposed to basic income, and I do agree that the dynamics you're presenting might actually happen, in some cases for some people. I think though, that it's going to wind up being Just Another Government Program, if it were to be implemented in the US. There's just not enough money around to give everyone an income of more than maybe a thousand dollars a month. You'd need to really change how government financ…

I don't understand what you mean by "wind up being Just Another Government Program." $1,000/month seems like a highly reasonable amount. It's more than Finland is proposing.

I may have been too generous. By an order of magnitude.

The US has 320 million people living in it. $1000/month * 320 million is $3.8 trillion/year.

That, weirdly enough, is the size of the entire US budget for 2016.

http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-republicans-pass-3-8-trill...

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#75

Post by sethrin » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:02 PM UTC

xlayn wrote: post #5

This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest. From wikipedia: "Governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities." .…

> This is taking the objective of taxes to an extreme: redistribution of resources from the wealthiest to the poorest.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Would you prefer to have poor people dying in the streets? The measure of civilization since the French Revolution has not been how a country treats its wealthy, but how it treats the poorest. As societies, we have agreed that humans have a right to life and happiness but for the most part we're still too much in love with the myth of merit to follow the consequences of this idea -- and it is certainly in the interest of the wealthy and powerful that this should continue. It flatters a man's self-love to believe that he has earned his place in life by his own sweat and toil, when the reality is that if divested of social relations and one's normal milieu very few of us would rise to any degree of prominence. We have slowly accepted the idea that hardship, debility, or infirmity should not necessarily be a judgement against a person's worth, but we are too infatuated with ourselves to believe it wholeheartedly. And so we grant a basic existence, but conditionally: only those who meet an arbitrary moral standard are permitted to live. Basic income recognizes that imposing that moral standard is itself immoral. If you agree that citizens have the right to not die in the streets, or at the least that it is unseemly for a wealthy society to permit such, then you cannot argue against a basic income with any degree of consistency.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#76

Post by frankus » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

"Businesses would have to raise wages to above the living wage to attract people to what are currently lower-paid jobs – assuming that means they will have to pay living wage + 5%"

I could see the opposite happen. Assuming you also did away with minimum wages, people could engage in as much or as little casual employment as they wanted to, because they would have their basic income to cover essentials. Not unlike many US teenagers who pick up a summer job for spending money rather than for survival.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#77

Post by magila » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

warfangle wrote: post #33

nugget wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income would become a part of the whole picture, for sure. But take Norway as an example: 5 million people and around a trillion dollars in sovereign wealth, which could yield ~ $8k per person (man, woman, and child) per year in perpetuity. All Norwegian citizens now own a share of ''Norway Inc'' as their birthright and receive a healthy dividend. Now 5 million people - that isn't a lot, and it's easy to imagin…

On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that. So are they going to contribute as much to the sovereign wealth that funds the basic income as the citizens? And is the basic income extended to guest workers / temporary residen…

The majority of Norway's sovereign wealth is derived from oil exports, it does not scale with population.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#78

Post by gnaritas » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #61

gnaritas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole basis of the US tax system rides on the "General Welfare" clause No, it rides on the 16th amendment which explicitly authorized income taxes. "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

No, the US gov't was able to set taxes well well before the 16th Amendment, which as you point out, is only for income taxes. The US gov't had all sorts of taxes before the 16th Amendment and the justification for that as outlined in the US Constitution is for the general welfare.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause

We were discussing income taxes; and income taxes existed before the 16th as well, based on other tax clauses until the courts ruled the direct taxes and thus unconstitutional. You're correct about the general welfare clause as the basis for most taxes, but it's not the basis for income taxes which is what "taxes" mean generally when people are discussing taxes.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#79

Post by Xixi » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #58

vitalysh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really true, if you move to Finland as EU citizen, you won't get Finnish social security right away. You have to work here to apply for it.

How would that work in the case of an unconditional basic income though? If you're not going to have a pre-requisite for native Finnish people to have had a job in order to receive it, can you have a pre-requisite for EU nationals to have a job before they can claim?

The concept you are looking for is that of residency: because you are physically in a country doesn't mean you are a resident of that country. There are rules of residency even within the EU.

Re: Finland’s basic income plan could change everything

#80

Post by petke » Fri, Jan 15, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

I'm from Finland and the only place I keep hearing about this "plan" is from foreign media. Its just a experimental study. I'd be surprised if anything came out of it. Finland is not some utopia where magical things happen. We are in a long recession and the govt is cutting social benefits left and right. This thing is a fantasy only foreign media takes seriously.