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

401–410 of 413 posts

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

#401

Post by gambiting »

Fnoord wrote: post #352
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+…

> The day the 500+ program started, several employees left, literally saying that they have 3-4 children, so by just getting the money from the government they will be better off than working and they don't need a job anymore. They are all jobless and living off 500+ as far as I know. Yeah, yeah... I know that kind of story. This isn't the complete picture. You are presenting anecdotal evidence, and omitting importan…

Hi, sorry that you feel that I'm omitting anything. As you noticed - it's an anecdote. My parents run a business, they lost some employees when 500+ started, as far as I know all of the people who left cited 500+ as the reason why they are leaving. That's about the extent of my knowledge on the situation.

I don't see why the answer to point 1A would be a"counterpoint" to anything - I don't think I presented an opinion on the 500+ program? I did mention what I think will happen with UBI, but again, I don't see the answer here being relevant. I also think that you might be under the general impression that I am against 500+ or UBI - while nothing could be further from the truth. I'm happy those people can live and care for their kids without having to work. If people can pursue their interests without having to work on UBI - great! I'm just saying that with UBI, I think it's a very safe bet to say that a lot of people who are in employment right now will actually stop working altogether. But it's just my opinion, it's not backed up by professional research or anything.

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

#402

Post by gambiting »

mrottenkolber wrote: post #387
gambiting wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can afford to leave because of 500+, they are leaving because they don't want to work there.

Well, yes, very true. Personally, I love my job and I can't imagine doing something I don't like, but at the same time I know several people to whom the idea of liking your job is extremely foreign.

Just as a side note - I think it would be extremely difficult to find people who genuinely enjoy doing hard physical work for 8 hours a day, even at a high price point.

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

#403

Post by komodo »

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.

I only meant as a way to sort of crowdfund research, not as a long term solution. Re: your last line, does the US Earned Income Tax Credit count?

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

#405

Post by mrottenkolber »

gambiting wrote: post #402
mrottenkolber wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can afford to leave because of 500+, they are leaving because they don't want to work there.

Well, yes, very true. Personally, I love my job and I can't imagine doing something I don't like, but at the same time I know several people to whom the idea of liking your job is extremely foreign. Just as a side note - I think it would be extremely difficult to find people who genuinely enjoy doing hard physical work for 8 hours a day, even at a high price point.

To me it seems you imply that its OK to coerce certain people into taking certain work. I view the second paragraph as an attempt to justify that position, despite its conflict with basic humanist ideals.

Ignoring the hypothetical nature of your second paragraph, I think you miss the incentive to all "work", which depends on how much the worker thinks his work is worth.

Take my friend the farmer, who happily works on a tiny organic farm (hard physical work) for very little pay, because he feels his work is sustainable, and productive (helps others, provides food).

Also take my friend the construction worker, who would love to build houses for the rest of his life despite low wages, but won't, because he is unable to find employer that will enable his labor to bear fruit. Sure he could build mansions, and commercial monoliths to no end, embedding stone chipped from the Italian coastline into German upper class house-fronts, or build shopping malls. But he's not an idiot, he won't waste his life pouring his talent into luxury products and consumption infrastructure that won't help anyone in the end. He wants to build sustainable housing for people to live in, houses so cost effective everybody can have one.

Depending on coercion to motivate a work force, implies that the work to be done is actually detrimental to society.

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

#406

Post by ido »

wlievens wrote: post #380
ido wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's 190€ till age 26(!) in Germany but you get other benefits (most significantly a large income tax break, and 14 month parental leave).

Childcare is about 0-400 depending on your income but you have to be outrigh wealthy to get close to the latter (we pay 128€/m with a high 5-figures €/year household income).

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

#407

Post by Ericson2314 »

steakeater wrote: post #308
Ericson2314 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wat. - UBI's lack of criteria is supposed to remove distortions. The population is minimaly incentivized. - Employers loose leverage with UBI; large companies are major employers. - Everybody loves to hate on population size, but shrinking/aging populations are dangerous for the economy. It's a much more complex problem.

You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government). In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue. I don't know what your first point means. Your last point, you are just repeating what you have read somewhere. Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not. Also stop being childish with your "wat" bull…

> In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-source... corporate tax is only 10%. They are far to influential, but not because this.

> You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government).

> I don't know what your first point means.

This I believe is the misunderstanding. UBI is designed so nothing you do will affect your basic income; there are no conditions. Yes, on the meta-level the UBI policy itself could be changed, but assuming it won't the government has no extra leverage over the citizens.

> Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not.

I meant:

- Slowing population growth and longer life expediencies (Europe, Japan, US might catch up a little bit) together result in more old people as a portion of the total population. Some argue this is dangerous for the welfare state.

- More population growth crates more demand and helps economy grow.

You can similarly argue growing economies are bad for human and environmental health because more economic activity conventionally means pollution. For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/14/resea... (sorry for the sensational headline). But growing economies are also very good in other ways.

It would be great if we could have "barber poll" economies and populations that always grow yet stay the same size, but calculus does not allow for this.

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

#408

Post by sctb »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #258
protomyth wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Such meta-commentary (bashing a community that you yourself are a part of) is off topic and only worsens the threads. Please stop doing this.

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

#409

Post by grigjd3 »

damptowel wrote: post #396
grigjd3 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confusing the distribution of money with the supply of money. The distribution of money affects economic priorities. The supply of money (as total income per unit time) affects the overall inflation. While the priorities of an economy will certainly affect prices, it's that some prices will go up and others go down.

If there's a big influx in the supply of money bit it only flows into one sector of the economy then the average inflation might be higher, but won't necessarily mean a constant rise in all prices. So I would argue distribution matters also. Likewise, all that new money being spent inside a certain market might raise the average price level if it's supply constrained, but it might also grow the numbers of players in…

Typically, prices go down as a product becomes commoditized - which is the common trend after a couple years of high demand.

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

#410

Post by rascul »

adwn wrote: post #297
rascul wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years ago I worked with someone who, if he worked too many overtime hours (which came around from time to time), would get into the next tax bracket and it wouldn't be worth it. Not sure how much he got paid or how many overtime hours were required for that to happen, though.

> if he worked too many overtime hours (which came around from time to time), would get into the next tax bracket and it wouldn't be worth it By "not worth it", I suppose you mean that he valued the marginal increase in income less than the marginal decrease in free time – which is entirely subjective and different from person to person? I don't see your point.

In the higher tax bracket, he didn't work enough overtime to offset the increased taxes and ended up with a smaller check than if he worked less. At least that's what he claimed.
Post reply on HN