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

371–380 of 413 posts

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

#371

Post by gambiting »

schlowmo wrote: post #349
gambiting wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Poland, where recently the government introduced a "500+" program, which means that every family in the country receives 500PLN per month, per child, from the day they are born to the time when they are 18 year old. Now, my parents run a company which mostly has physical workers - and for a physical worker, in the "poorer" part of the country, 1500PLN/per month(after taxes) is an ok salary. The day the 500+…

> "which means that every family in the country receives 500PLN per month, per child" Looks like this isn't quite correct: "The new, universal child-raising benefit of PLN 500 (EUR 114) monthly is granted for every second child under 18, and for the first child if the family income is below PLN 800 (EUR 182) per capita per month (PLN 1,200/EUR 273 in the case of child disability)."[0] [0] http://ec.europa.eu/social/B…

Well, yes - you don't get money for the first child, unless your income is very low. Those employees left their job, became jobless, and therefore were able to claim for the first child too.

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

#372

Post by gambiting »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #345
gambiting wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Poland, where recently the government introduced a "500+" program, which means that every family in the country receives 500PLN per month, per child, from the day they are born to the time when they are 18 year old. Now, my parents run a company which mostly has physical workers - and for a physical worker, in the "poorer" part of the country, 1500PLN/per month(after taxes) is an ok salary. The day the 500+…

Since we are speaking in anecdotes, have you considered they might have just disliked their particular workplace?

Sure, but they have directly said that they are leaving because of 500+. Again, this is the internet, you don't have to believe a word of it.

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

#373

Post by CydeWeys »

Dagwoodie wrote: post #194
CydeWeys wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progressive taxation is more fair from the standpoint of society at large. You're being myopic in only considering it from your point of view. How is it "fair" to force someone who is barely making ends meet and struggles to sometimes put food on the table to pay the same exact tax rate as someone who is rich, and whose biggest economic struggle is wondering whether to upgrade to a bigger yacht this year or next year…

The poor person isn't paying Yacht tax, country club tax, box seats tax, Porsche tax.

Is that a joke? None of those are even real taxes. Sure, you pay sales tax on a yacht, but the poor person is paying the exact same percentage on their everyday items. That's regressive.

Also, don't you see how callous it is to worry about how a rich person has to pay country club dues, in the context of talking about poor people who struggle to afford food sometimes? Why would your sympathies lie with the person who has all of their basic needs met and is "struggling" only to utilize as many luxury goods (yachts, country clubs, sports cars, box seats) as possible?

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

#374

Post by vivekd »

It seems like we can learn so little by selecting only for jobless people. The best way to do a BI test seems to me to get a random sample so we can test how it affects people in various circumstances. Selecting a specific demographic like this seems more a political move than a scientific one.

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

#375

Post by oarsinsync »

thwarted wrote: post #140
kLeeIsDead wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People born into wealth aren't guaranteed that. After all, it's their parents' money, not theirs.

While this is true, it is the closest thing that already exists to a basic income, so it should be the first place to go for material to study before/while setting up a more controlled experiment (assuming a highly controlled, completely reproducible experiment actually can be set up in social/economic sciences). Even in a UBI setup, it's the government's/public's money, not the recipient's, right up until the point…

I don't believe the two scenarios to be as similar as you do.

Wealthy families are able to provide a layer of security that a government stipend never could. You can blow away your monthly stipend from your wealthy family on drugs and alcohol instead of paying the rent, and you're unlikely to end up living on the streets as your family will fold and send you more money. (anecdote: over the last 15 years I've met over a dozen people who were and/or still are like this)

When comparing wealthy family stipends to government stipends, the guarantee needs to be the same. Instead, wealthy families are generally able to guarantee a minimum stipend for their dependents, while governments would be guaranteeing a minimum==maximum stipend for their dependents/recipients.

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

#376

Post by hypnotortoise »

samcollins wrote: post #43
Jarwain wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're calling it Basic Income, not Universal Basic Income. The goal being to see what the differences are between the unemployed and the control group. There may be other issues baked into the implementation, but it will be hard to say the result until it goes into action and we start getting data

I agree. The implementation here will still enable us to learn about some aspects of UBI. The question of how benefits affect the motivation to gain re-employment will still need to be studied in further experiments. I think it's worth celebrating that Iceland is doing controlled tests to explore this way. To really understand the best design for UBI, we need more of this.

It's Finland, not Iceland.

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

#377

Post by wlievens »

komodo wrote: post #45
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.

Why don't we do a basic income lottery? - Anyone except previous winners can enter. - You can only enter once per drawing. - As the pool increases the payout does not, only the number of winners. - Winners get a basic income for life. - As another condition they agree to an amount of monitoring so that we can effectively study how they behave with the basic income. - This one would be hard, but you might have to be m…

You'd probaby have to change their tax regimen too. Seems completely unworkable.

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

#378

Post by xvedejas »

jerkstate wrote: post #351
loulouxiv wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in fact there is no clear ressemblance with communism. Communism primary principle is that all the means of production are state owned, and everyone is therefore salaried by the state, earning as much as everyone else with no oncentive to work more and or better. Basic income aims to the contrary, by helping businesses to offer more flexible work contracts (part-time, temporary work, ...) and potentially lower w…

"earn more for producing less economic output" is not capitalist. you can't simply change the meaning of words to fit your agenda and convince anyone but the extremely gullible.

There are several different ways to implement UBI (look up "negative income tax" for one example). None of them actually result in someone earning more by working less, the marginal income seen given marginal nominal income still has a positive slope.

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

#379

Post by wlievens »

jondubois wrote: post #363
komodo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we do a basic income lottery? - Anyone except previous winners can enter. - You can only enter once per drawing. - As the pool increases the payout does not, only the number of winners. - Winners get a basic income for life. - As another condition they agree to an amount of monitoring so that we can effectively study how they behave with the basic income. - This one would be hard, but you might have to be m…

NOOO! That is a terrible idea. There is already way too much luck involved in our current economic system. If would really suck if all your friends won the lottery but you didn't. These kinds of economic lotteries only create more inequality; which is against the whole point of UBI. It makes more sense to start by giving out a really low UBI to EVERYONE and then gradually raise that amount over time.

That also sounds a lot more legally practical, I think. You could even slowly adjust welfare and taxes as you increase the UBI.

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

#380

Post by wlievens »

ido wrote: post #333
gambiting wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Poland, where recently the government introduced a "500+" program, which means that every family in the country receives 500PLN per month, per child, from the day they are born to the time when they are 18 year old. Now, my parents run a company which mostly has physical workers - and for a physical worker, in the "poorer" part of the country, 1500PLN/per month(after taxes) is an ok salary. The day the 500+…

And yet "Kindergeld" (same principle in Germany & Austria) is more money than that and has existed for decades, and neither country has a much higher unemployment rate than Poland (much lower than Poland in Germany, about the same as Poland in Austria). Furthermore they have fewer children per woman, so this apperantly did not spur a huge baby boom. So not really sure what we can learn from that. Perhaps salaries are…

Kindergeld in Belgium (Flanders) is about 120€. That's a little over 10% of thr minimum wage. In this Polish story it was 33%, big difference. What ratio is it where you are referring to?

For reference, full time day care in Belgium will cost you about 500€ per month if you are not poor.

Post reply on HN