Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#41

Post by spacehome » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #7

There are two problems with universal basic income: 1/ Many people think UBI is a great idea but everybody imagines something else. This makes discussing UBI very difficult. 2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Sooner or later people will realize that what they really want is tax/benefit reform, not universal basic income…

You have to give the money to people who don't need it, otherwise it becomes a powerful disincentive to working or earning income. That's what differentiates UBI from welfare and also what makes it so expensive.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#42

Post by swebs » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #20

dandare wrote: post #7

There are two problems with universal basic income: 1/ Many people think UBI is a great idea but everybody imagines something else. This makes discussing UBI very difficult. 2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Sooner or later people will realize that what they really want is tax/benefit reform, not universal basic income…

>2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Wrong. The system doesn't work if you don't give people to money who don't need it: the administrative requirements of assessing who and who doesn't need it, and then policing all this, is just too high. This is the reason UBI was invented in the first place! It's very simple: you giv…

That sounds very similar to the FairTax bill that's been proposed since the 90's. Only with FairTax money comes from sales tax rather than income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#43

Post by bryanlarsen » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #24

magduf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2/ Regardless of what version of UBI you personally support, it is probably not a good idea to give money to those who don't need it. Wrong. The system doesn't work if you don't give people to money who don't need it: the administrative requirements of assessing who and who doesn't need it, and then policing all this, is just too high. This is the reason UBI was invented in the first place! It's very simple: you giv…

Thank you for proving my point. And now look at the numbers in my diagram, the administrative costs are negligible compared to the cost of giving money to those who don't need it.

You're missing a section on the bottom of your chart.

Who will pay for UBI? -- income tax. Raise the per capita income rate an average of £12,000, (£15,000 pounds minus the ~3,000 in savings you calculated earlier).

No net impact on the average taxpayer, little impact on the rich and massive impact on the poor.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#44

Post by spacehome » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

benjohnson wrote: post #39

drdaeman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody thinks UBI is a great idea Irrespective of anyone's personal opinion, I'm absolutely sure it's not everybody. And there are valid reasons for this - but every opponent also imagines something different, just as proponents do.

I don't want it - I have a real knack of stretching money and I could very well see myself becoming lazy if given a dependable source of unearned income.

Look no further than the Financial Independence movement for more evidence than you'd ever need. It's made up of people who basically are creating their own personal basic income, and while some do work to pass the time, a goodly percentage do no economically meaningful work again.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#45

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:14 PM UTC

JibJabLab wrote: post #25

Shivetya wrote: post #5

Well it will be interesting to see if they do publish any findings. I do agree it would have been beneficial to see what would happen if workers were added to the mix. The question some like myself would like to see is, did any of the initial participants gain employment and leave the program? What did they do differently while provided with UBI they did not do before. I would also like to see if they will be followe…

My issue with it is that we aren't even at a point where UBI is viable. Yes, we have lots of automation but we still have many times more jobs still not automated. The experiment isn't going to show accurate results. But I agree with you - there will still be work available in an automated society.

The same amount of work with the same relative amounts of pay?

Doesn't that require far greater wealth distribution. Currently people mostly work for companies which make their capitalist owners rich. If the companies ditch workers and use robots then in order for the workers to also be employed the money from those owners needs to be spent on other things - the unemployed workers don't have money other than what they're spending with the pre-existing companies for food/clothing/housing and such.

Those currently earning off others labour will increase their take of profits; by what mechanism will that additional proportion of the wealth be made available for new industries. What industries will move the wealth from the Uber rich and distribute it, they're going to need to be large employers of many low-skilled workers.

I don't see how this can happen without a revolution such as UBI or a cultural shift to a communistic system, say, that can democratise the profits from robotisation.

Yes, the industrial revolution freed workers to take up new roles, but the lower population and higher availability of easily acquired resources fed in to that. The world is different now, I don't see the same happening again, the maths of that doesn't add up.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#46

Post by hawkice » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #40

I can't see how it's theoretically possible to do a small scale experiment with UBI. If not everyone gets it, you can't see the big impact on the economy (what happens with supply/demand/inflation). And if it's with a short horizon, then people still have to plan for life after the UBI experiment. You can't give up the career you are going to need to make a living in 2 years time, just because you get paid a small su…

I am very skeptical of claims that outcomes are discontinuous in policy space. Going one step in direction A should give you information about going further in that same direction, at least on some scale of change. Clearly the people running the experiment agreed, because they designed it with the intent to get that information.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#47

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

Things you need to live: food, dwelling, energy, transportation, healthcare. (And necessary for a thriving economy/government: trade skills, education, military)

Self-sustaining would be very plausible on extremely modest amounts of income if the government subsidized the dwelling, energy, transportation, and healthcare. It may be unnecessary for large portions of a nation to work if people produced their own goods and services (most of which could be done by individuals, not even necessitating cooperative work except for a few difficult tasks).

What occurred to me, though, is that this would never work in a traditional society because the government would be responsible for too much of people's lives. So as an alternative, a split model may work, where people can choose between a competitive libertarian model and a cooperative socialist model. You either work hard to earn a living that you fully control, or you sit back and let someone provide you with your requirements, and the model you choose determines what things like your taxes or labor go towards.

This may be an incredibly stupid and shortsighted idea, but I would love the opportunity to live in a commune subsidized by the government - with the choice to leave for a different model if it sucked.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#48

Post by smokeyj » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #23

praha14 wrote: post #4

I understand the argument that, once free from work, a number of people will voluntarily choose to work as physicists or playwrights or mathematicians. What I haven’t understood, though, is why someone would choose to work as a bricklayer or spend their 20s sitting in a fluorescent office designing an industrial process to make ball-bearing lubricant 0.4% more efficient. It’s that sort of menial, unglamorous labor th…

That's because, for some strange reason, you're confusing UBI with some idealized form of communism. UBI is Universal Basic Income. The keyword here is "basic". If you sit on your ass and collect UBI, you should receive enough money to let you live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and get some crappy food to eat at the local crappy grocery store. Do you want to live in a crappy apartment with roommates, and not…

Do UBI supporters intentionally not understand supply and demand?

Who wants to work at a restaurant if they don’t have to? Who will lay bricks and take out the trash if they don’t have to? The idea that UBi can help people find fulfilling work leads to the question of who does the unfulfilling work.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#49

Post by jusssi » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

jkingsbery wrote: post #28

I wish the article said something about why it's declining to extend the experiment.

The article does say this:

> But in December last year, the Finnish parliament passed a bill that is taking the country's welfare system in quite the opposite direction. The new 'activation model' law requires jobseekers to work a minimum of 18 hours for three months - if you don't manage to find such a job, you lose some of your benefits. And Finance Minister Petteri Orpo already has plans for a new project once the basic income pilot concludes in December 2018.

In short, the current political climate doesn't support it.

IIRC there's also been some discussion whether the experiment has been in violation of equality guarantees of our constitution, as it treats a randomly selected group different from others.

Re: Finland is scrapping plans to extend its basic income project

#50

Post by snarf21 » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 1:20 PM UTC

jackvalentine wrote: post #2

「The initial plan was for the experiment to be expanded in early 2018 to include workers as well as non-workers early in 2018, but that did not happen – to the disappointment of researchers at Kela. Without workers in the project, researchers are unable to study whether basic income would allow people to make new career moves, or enter training or education.」 And this is the paragraph I went looking for.

Yeah, the other thing that is weird when you read the article is that it wasn't UBI at all. It only went to people from a set that was unemployed. This "trial" just removed all bureaucracy and removed restrictions on side jobs, etc.

I'm not sure what you could learn from this experiment. The things a lot of people want to know is can UBI provide a safety net for the poor and allow people to quit a toxic job without fear. It will be interesting to see if any of the 2K participants used this income/time to retrain or receive education.