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

nytimes.com

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

#251

Post by koolba »

conanbatt wrote: post #147
omash wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't give it to the people coming in?

Theres something uneasy about 2 people doing the same job at the same gross salary, but different net salaries.

Uneasy to you maybe. If the immigrant has it worse not coming to the land of free money and jobs (even if they're not getting the free money), they're still better off than not coming.

Separately, in a way we already have that uneven net for the same work. If you work two jobs you get paid less (net) than one person doing either of your jobs (for that job, not total). That's what's what a progressive tax does.

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

#252

Post by kalleboo »

austinjp wrote: post #250

What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…

Don't most countries already have welfare systems that keep the lowest possible income at X already? UBI is just supposed to simplify those systems by replacing them with a single non-means-tested system.

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

#253

Post by ScottBurson »

slavik81 wrote: post #187
anotherarray wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the whole point of the experiment? You need to understand how people react to the idea of "not doing anything and still get paid". Do they give up? Do they get depressed? Do they create things? Does entrepreneurship increase? Violence rate?... These are all interesting questions

If there are conditions, it's not universal. The distinguishing feature of universal basic income in comparison to traditional welfare was that it doesn't have the disincentives to work caused by means testing. If you add means testing back in, you've defeated the purpose.

No. As I said previously [0], means testing is not the problem per se. The problem is a particular simplistic way of doing means testing, which is what mathematicians call a step function: below a certain income value you get 100% of the subsidy, and above it -- even very slightly above it -- you get zero. So there's a point where increasing your earned income very slightly results in a massive decrease in your total income.

It's very easy to describe and administer such a subsidy, but it has a terrible bug, which is obvious and everyone has known about it for decades, but somehow we haven't mustered the will to fix it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13202659

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

#254

Post by austinjp »

kalleboo wrote: post #252
austinjp wrote: post #250

What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…

Don't most countries already have welfare systems that keep the lowest possible income at X already? UBI is just supposed to simplify those systems by replacing them with a single non-means-tested system.

It's my suspicion that the means-testing, or other hurdles, prevent the benefit from being universal, thereby preventing the inflationary effect.

Incidentally, I'm not declaring a belief in either means-tested benefits nor UBI, just exploring the territory.

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

#255

Post by iopq »

cmurf wrote: post #32
iopq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can, if you get fired.

Uhh I think to get unemployment you have to be laid off (fired through no fault of your own). I'm not sure how you think he's getting paid 1/2 his current salary if he's fired, that sounds like $0.

Not true. If you get fired for not attending your job, you don't get unemployment. If you get fired for performance reasons, you get unemployment. My father got fired for "insubordination" aka his manager not liking him. He still got unemployment.

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

#256

Post by iopq »

cellis wrote: post #38
iopq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can, if you get fired.

Unemployment is not quite going to be half of parent salary. More like 1/5 to 1/3 if they're lucky.

It's up to half of your previous salary capped up to a certain amount. I actually don't know if my father got half of what he used to earn, but some people that worked for a long time before getting fired or laid off do get half.

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

#257

Post by [deleted] »

austinjp wrote: post #254
kalleboo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most countries already have welfare systems that keep the lowest possible income at X already? UBI is just supposed to simplify those systems by replacing them with a single non-means-tested system.

It's my suspicion that the means-testing, or other hurdles, prevent the benefit from being universal, thereby preventing the inflationary effect. Incidentally, I'm not declaring a belief in either means-tested benefits nor UBI, just exploring the territory.

[deleted]

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

#258

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

protomyth wrote: post #67
acbabis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global food shortage? If you're talking about ethanol from corn, that doesn't sound correct. Corn-based foods are dirt cheap

Yep, the current prices of commodities are pretty low to the point it was a campaign issue in farm country.

Amazing isn't it? It happened in 2008 and the progressive HN downvote brigade have already forgotten it.

"“global land grab” first took off in 2008, when food prices on international markets spiked due to a boom in biofuels and growing Asian consumption of meat and dairy, setting off riots around the world and leading key grain-producing countries to introduce export bans. "

The poor in Haiti had to eat dirt, it was on mainstream news but I guess the HN crowd doesn't think back that far. It actually sparked the African Land Grabs of 2007-2008 which a lot of "progressive minority lovers" don't even know about. I was on HN at the time talking about it and was purely ignored for my concern that black Africans were being kicked off their land. Yet, I've been called racist in my past few HN posts for not agreeing with far left policies on diversity enforcement.

Had they looked up the Oakland Institute they would have seen that land grabs the size of France of the most fertile land in African nations were sold on 99 year leases, tax free, by countries all over the world. Harvard actually was one of those behind the investments. Now the media covers it up by calling it "a myth or exaggeration" and ignoring the riots and numerous youtube videos of villagers fighting back.

sigh HN has become what Digg, Reddit, and Mashable are. Time to leave.

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

#259

Post by titanomachy »

austinjp wrote: post #250

What's to stop UBI from "cancelling itself out" due to inflationary effects? Prior to UBI, the lowest possible income is zero. After UBI, the lowest income is X. The poorest people in the nation will have an income of X, so X becomes the new relative zero, the new baseline. Prices of everything (food, housing, whatever) will reset relative to X. So uni will become worthless shortly after it's introduced.... but only…

Say you have $0 income. A new policy comes into force that gives you $500 a month basic income. Even if prices increased 10x you would still be better off than before. Prices would have to increase an infinite amount for you to be able to afford the same amount of goods as before (zero). Even if you had $500/month before, you'd still be better off as long as prices don't increase more than 2x.

I don't know enough to advocate for or against basic income, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't amount to a no-op. Whether it's done through printing money or taxation, it ends up redistributing wealth from wealthier people to poorer people.

In the case of printing money, the resulting inflation would cause everyone's money to be worth less: rich people, having more money, would end up losing more. In the case of taxation, the redistribution is more direct.

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

#260

Post by nercht12 »

agumonkey wrote: post #209
kLeeIsDead wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, in my opinion, the test would be useless if it had a time limit attached to it.

I think we could get some insights even with a broken test. But it has to be made by open minded scientists other wise people will interpret it as final truth.

Problem is that a "good economy" is a subjective idea. It won't matter if open-minded scientists review it 'cause people are going to interpret the results how ever they want anyways. Edit: I'm not really aiming to contradict you. I would like to see it analyzed in an unbiased manner.
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