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Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

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Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#81

Post by raaaaraaaa122 »

fxj wrote: post #65

A big problem about the basic income is that it is perceived as money that you get for nothing and so people don't have to work and therefore they are lazy. Let me give you an analogy: Imagine that breathing air would cost money and you would have to work in order to breathe. Unless you don't work you would die. Would then a basic income be something that makes you lazy or would it be something that gives you confide…

Of course if there is MAGICALLY enough 'resources' all citizens could enjoy basic income.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#82

Post by criley2 »

zip1234 wrote: post #37
criley2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you realize that automation is eating the jobs that these people used to do, and realize that the service economy can't fit even a fraction of these displaced workers, you have a scenario where we can produce goods for sale in mass with minimal labor but now less people have money to buy things. Creating a death spiral because consumers buying things is the fuel which makes the entire economy run and grow, so wh…

Everyone has thought that automation would eliminate the jobs for a hundred years. In a way it has come true as some jobs that existed before no longer exist, but so far other jobs have been created to take their place. Nobody really knows when or if that will stop.

Yes I am aware of the "infinite work hypothesis" however blindly running into the future and basing 7-8 billion human lives and our entire civilization upon this hypothesis without any mitigation strategy seems naive and high-risk at best.

I will also point out that automation is currently starting to eat fields that were traditionally un-automatable due to either skill, labor price (or both), including everything from complex farm work done for cheap to surgical robots.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#83

Post by maccard »

qntty wrote: post #63
kvczor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the fact that you earn more by doing UI work prove that you are far more useful to society than by making art?

Would society be better off if Linux kernel developers stuck to doing things that paid?

How many people work full time ubpaid on the Linux kernel? For the 4.15 kernel, AMD, Intel, Google and Red Hat contributed between 35 and 50% of the changes, depending on whether you count number of commits or number of lines changed.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#84

Post by Jedi72 »

_red wrote: post #55

Since the economic crises of 2008, central banks have been desperate to induce some positive inflation. "Helicopter Ben" even said he would drive around in a helicopter and drop pallets of cash out of it, before he allowed deflation to take hold (the only way out of their debt crises, is to inflate it away). Its no wonder that the PTB are now pushing for helicopter money across the debt-laden west, its the last tool…

This is a very good point.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#85

Post by throw0101a »

shireboy wrote: post #19

I’m sorry, but “getting free money makes people happy” isn’t exactly a shocking result is it? The result that the employment level was consistent is mildly interesting, though I’d expect the numbers could be different with a longer or larger test. But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?”

> But the real question imo is “does this scale without destroying the country’s finances?”

It depends on how it is implemented and the numbers involved.

One proposal [1] would be to give everyone $US 10K per year starting at age 21, and not having income taxes start until you have an income over US$ 40K.

This allows one to get get enough for the bare necessities (shelter, food) "for free", but if you want to have a life that's more than just subsistence living, you would have to work--but you get to keep a lot of that upfront.

If you want a 'fancy' life, then you'll have to work more, and there would be personal income taxes. Presumably there would be corporate and sales taxes as well.

I don't know enough about the math to know if it is practical.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-are...

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#86

Post by lr4444lr »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #61
Talyen42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employed person making 100k, if given UBI I would quit and not do anything productive-to-society for most of the rest of my life. So yes, that is a legitimate argument. The counter-argument is that the benefit coming from more people pursuing entrepreneurial/risk-taking/passion-driven endeavors will OUTWEIGH the lazy fucks like me.

I'm assuming you'd also downgrade your lifestyle from a 100k/yr to the median individual income or less? (Not being snarky, genuinely curious as to your thought process regarding quitting 100k/yr income because you can survive off 25-30k/yr or something)

After taxes on the 100K plus the costs of commuting and childcare, that difference might not even be so stark.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#87

Post by qntty »

kvczor wrote: post #77
futurenanigans wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you measuring a persons worth based on their income?

OP wrote: "I would have been far more qualitatively useful to society at large." There are far more people that need UI work (in the form of websites, apps, etc) these days than art. UI work scales very well, art not really - you can affect way more people and that is reflected in the salary. "Qualitatively" UI work is far more useful to society.

There's absolutely no basis for a judgement like that without introducing assumptions about what's valuable and what's not.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#88

Post by mises »

swiley wrote: post #68
chrisco255 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have a UBI without massive taxation. Massive taxation increases the risk of doing business. The higher the risks, the less entrepreneurship a country will see.

The argument is that there’s less personal risk sine a failed business won’t result in the founders becoming homeless.

But there's a lot more risk for the investors, and there's a lot less money for companies to buy their products.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#89

Post by perfunctory »

Talyen42 wrote: post #35
spaceribs wrote: post #11

Is it a legitimate argument that smart hardworking people who are considered economically valuable will be swayed to non-economically valuable interests within this system? As a former fine arts student that became a UI developer mostly for the monetary stability, I do feel like if I had the ability to fully invest myself creating art without constantly struggling with relevancy and rent, I would have been far more q…

As an employed person making 100k, if given UBI I would quit and not do anything productive-to-society for most of the rest of my life. So yes, that is a legitimate argument. The counter-argument is that the benefit coming from more people pursuing entrepreneurial/risk-taking/passion-driven endeavors will OUTWEIGH the lazy fucks like me.

I am employed and making more than 100K and still I am not doing anything productive for society. So even if I quit given UBI and become "unproductive" it will have no meaningful impact on anything.

Re: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure

#90

Post by chrisco255 »

UBI is the biggest pie-in-the-sky proposal I've ever seen. Number one, this study shows nothing. It's absolutely worthless to select a few hundred to a few thousand people and give them free money for two years and measure the result.

The far more serious question, is how sustainable UBI is at a macro level. The proposals I've heard mention as much as $1000 a month per person.

That would cost the U.S. somewhere between $1 and $3 trillion a year, just on paper.

U.S. is already 15 years from Social Security insolvency. We have a lot of debt ($20+ trillion) and we're talking about creating a program that costs more than anything like it, ever.

I see no evidence to support the claims and the program has a real possibility of completely wrecking an economy. Beyond reckless.

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