Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 413 posts

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#51

Post by a_humean »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17
ScottBurson wrote: post #5

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…

Is there any data backing up the idea that it actually is a disincentive? 1. Anyone I know that has received benefits for being unemployed desperately wants to be employed again. 2. In the UK, unless things have changed, you can work up to 16 hours per week while receiving unemployment benefits and I believe the benefits you receive gradually falls with the amount of work you get paid for. 3. If you suddenly lose you…

Under the present system in the UK it really doesn't make much sense to work This bug/feature in the welfare system is actually a major motivation behind the UK government's long beleaguered universal credit system, which is meant to support this kind of part-time work. The idea being that a worker should never ever be penalised by the benefits system for working, but should always earn significantly more in work than out of work and working more hours should always result in a net increase in income.

They are trying to do this by unifying almost all benefits (unemployment, disability, housing, child benefits, etc...) under a single administrative umbrella, and then only reduce the net benefit by £0.66 for each £1 earned through work. Its been delayed significantly because it requires a major IT overhaul, and that project has so far been a £1-2 billion black-hole of incompetence by a series of IT consultancies that have all failed to deliver the system needed to merge all these complicated means tested processes together.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#52

Post by Already__Taken »

zhemao wrote: post #44
ultraforce wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be possible to do a modified system where they instead of losing the universal income unemployment benefits. There could be a system where the benefits are lowered in proportion to the income earned from jobs, that allows for those who are able to and want to work but are only able to find low paying jobs to have benefits that do not discourage them from doing work.

That's basically a negative income tax. That is, if you make below a certain amount, the government gives you money until your income reaches some base level.

Does that have any negatives that basic income doesn't? To me it sounds like a direct subset of that UBI aims to achieve. So a solid stepping stone towards it.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#53

Post by pvdebbe »

wjossey wrote: post #4

tl;dr Finland is going to selecting 2,000 unemployed individuals, at random, and offering them cash without strings. Current unemployment schemes, they believe, hold back individuals from finding part time work / any work because the benefits outweigh the job opportunities. They hope that this new scheme promotes people to take work and have an adequate safety net to prevent homelessness and hunger.

I wonder why the participants couldn't be chosen from the whole working-age pool. Unless, the final system is not meant for working people at all, going against everything the universal welfare meant to solve. Doesn't surprise me one bit.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#54

Post by Manglano »

JackFr wrote: post #19

If its only going to jobless people, not UBI. This is not a meaningless distinction -- one of the features of UBI is that it is universal . If this just goes to unemployed people we cannot see the change in behavior with people who are earning close to their reservation wage. Do they stop working? This is streamlined rebranded welfare. Not a paradigm shift.

These are distinct concepts. Anyone can receive the benefits, so it is universal, but there are conditions.

Advocate for the Unconditional Universal Basic Income. All citizens deserve an equal allotment of the benefits, especially because no nation's populace is ever 100% mobilized as workforce.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#55

Post by sqrt »

ScottBurson wrote: post #5

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…

I'm interested in hearing why it's a bad thing to disincentivize working more. Is it so bad for someone to not be working should they have enough money to live on? (I'm not sure if the benefits in this specific case are enough to live on, but I guess I'm thinking about the general principle.)

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#56

Post by bmj »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17
ScottBurson wrote: post #5

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…

Is there any data backing up the idea that it actually is a disincentive? 1. Anyone I know that has received benefits for being unemployed desperately wants to be employed again. 2. In the UK, unless things have changed, you can work up to 16 hours per week while receiving unemployment benefits and I believe the benefits you receive gradually falls with the amount of work you get paid for. 3. If you suddenly lose you…

1. Anyone I know that has received benefits for being unemployed desperately wants to be employed again.

How wide is your social network (by this I mean people you actually know and see)? How diverse is it? My experience, living in the Rust Belt in the US, just north of Appalachia, is that many people are more than happy to live on the dole for as long as possible. I chalk some of this up to laziness, and some of it up to the lack of reasonable work.

3. If you suddenly lose your job benefits aren't built so that you can maintain your current life style. You likely have car, insurance, and mortgage payments to make and the benefits you're receiving either just get you by or you have to renegotiate some of that debt. Not a situation you want to be in long-term.

Again, my sense is that your observations are true for some given demographic, but are probably not entirely accurate for people who are truly living at or near the poverty line. Those people may have been working, even steadily, but they probably didn't have a home, and may not have even owned a car.

You are right, of course, that if I lost my job (as a software developer), I'd be okay for three to four months without benefits, but it would be hard to maintain a home and a vehicle after that. That likely goes for many on HN. But we generally aren't the demographic best served by unemployment benefits.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#57

Post by sampo »

noonespecial wrote: post #11

>It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income. That last part is huge. A disincentive to work by cancelling benefits is a feature of nearly every current system. It is extremely important that someone test a system without this in it to see how a people react. This looks like a very important test for the viability of UBI.

> A disincentive to work by cancelling benefits is a feature of nearly every current system. It is extremely important that someone test a system without this in it to see how a people react.

One example we can look at are university students in Finland. They get 340€ per month student benefit plus €200 student rent support, a total of 540€ per month.

This student benefit is not decreased as long as a student earns less than 1000€ per month from other income. And yes, the students are quite eager to take part-time and short-term jobs.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#58

Post by unfamiliar »

edblarney wrote: post #33
wjossey wrote: post #4

tl;dr Finland is going to selecting 2,000 unemployed individuals, at random, and offering them cash without strings. Current unemployment schemes, they believe, hold back individuals from finding part time work / any work because the benefits outweigh the job opportunities. They hope that this new scheme promotes people to take work and have an adequate safety net to prevent homelessness and hunger.

Why don't they just ease/remove the limitations on the current program?

Because that would cost a shitload of money and might not work. Hence a trial run.

Re: Finland will hand out cash to 2000 jobless people to test universal basic income

#60

Post by pvdebbe »

TillE wrote: post #14
ScottBurson wrote: post #5

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. Worst. Idea. Ever. I know -- it's a common feature of income support systems, including here in the US. I don't know whether UBI is going to prove workable or not. But even if it doesn't, if we could just redesign the systems we do have so they never give recipients a disincentive to work…

Means-tested programs are the epitome of wasteful government bureaucracy. It's never the right way to "compromise". If we can't sell straight UBI, then something like universal food stamps would be a good first step: https://web.archive.org/web/20160321083817/http://mattbrueni...

Also a huge problem is that you get this living support based on your income, and it has no proper upper bounds. One could receive hundreds if not a thousand euro in extra support if they chose to live in a costly neighborhood (namely, central Helsinki). Even more of a disincentivizing factor to consider here.
Post reply on HN