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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

#181

Post by mises »

swebs wrote: post #126

This article just looks like a copy paste job of Kela's official press release https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN... Overall, the experiment failed to prove its main hypothesis that UBI would incentivize the unemployed to find employment. Those who received additional benefits failed to achieve higher employment than the control group. http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/1002…

And it's interesting how many people paint it as showing that it simply didn't decrease the likelihood. One would think that before handing out actual free money, a benefit out to be shown (not just an absence of harm or loss).

Many say that it made people happier, but since when has it been the job of the government to guarantee happiness?

We would do well to remember that many politicians simply use this as a way to get elected. It strikes me as buying votes, writ large.

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

#182

Post by llcoolv »

criley2 wrote: post #177
llcoolv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alright, then why it is not voluntary? the people who would want to share with others are free to do so. why use violence? why put in jail people who refuse to be robbed?

TL;DR: Anarchy is the system you're describing (total voluntary interaction with government, or no government) and there's plenty of anarchists around, and literally 0 successful anarchist states. Let me approach your anarchy differently: Why do we not have anarchy? Because not-anarchy is working and is the best system we've ever used. Why don't we get rid of this to try anarchy? Well -- who's stopping you from creat…

No. Societies who have respect for individual rights are not necessarily anarchy. For example collecting taxes is obviously justified when it would prevent more significant violence - e.g. to fund an army, police and a court. Stealing from the hard-working to give to the lazy brings is a massively perverse incentive which only low birthrates, dysfunctional behaviours and national decline.

On the contrary - there is actually 0 successful socialist states. So your statement is massively misleading.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%...

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

#183

Post by krapp »

criley2 wrote: post #177
llcoolv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alright, then why it is not voluntary? the people who would want to share with others are free to do so. why use violence? why put in jail people who refuse to be robbed?

TL;DR: Anarchy is the system you're describing (total voluntary interaction with government, or no government) and there's plenty of anarchists around, and literally 0 successful anarchist states. Let me approach your anarchy differently: Why do we not have anarchy? Because not-anarchy is working and is the best system we've ever used. Why don't we get rid of this to try anarchy? Well -- who's stopping you from creat…

Anarchists often like to cite the monopoly on violence (often purposely misrepresenting the "violence" for shock value) as evidence that all states are corrupt. Yet the only difference in application between a state and anarchy is violence being a monopoly in the former, versus a free (as in unregulated) market in the latter.

That violence doesn't apply to actors who implicitly accept the fiction of the social contract, and who follow the rules. Rather, it applies, as intended, to those who don't. And this remains true within the construct of a state as well as in anarchy.

The violence implicit in taxation is targeted against people who don't pay their taxes, taxation itself is not an act of violence. The social contract, implicit as it is, does require the needs of society to be met, and the cost of enjoying the rights and protections of law in a society is paid towards the collective welfare through taxation.

Many people will say that anarchy doesn't mean there aren't rules... and fair enough, but you can't have any degree of hierarchy or social interaction without coercion, or violence in the sense that the monopoly on violence describes. There will always be bad actors, charlatans, sociopaths and psychopaths, or simply those who can't afford the burden of debt entered into voluntarily and in good faith. As soon as a rule or a contract is enforced against someone's will, then you've just implemented an ad-hoc, poorly defined subset of a state.

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

#184

Post by mises »

moorhosj wrote: post #179
ams6110 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Those are time killing activities to keep from staring out the window and losing your mind. Which is also a big problem for the elderly and unemployed.

Or, we could view them as “happiness activities”. In labor economics it is called leisure and the goal of people is to optimize between income and leisure. I know lots of employed people who spend their days “staring out the window losing their mind”. It seems we have over optimized in the wrong direction (towards work and away from leisure).

"Happiness activities" are fine, but I'm not sure they should be subsidized by taxes.

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

#185

Post by brixon »

ams6110 wrote: post #164
throw0101a wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Giving everyone $10K/year would just inflate prices until $10K was the zero baseline for income.

If you tie the amount distributed to inflation like the Social Security does in the US then it would auto adjust.

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

#187

Post by davvolun »

dalbasal wrote: post #163
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?”

The ubi debate is surprisingly diverse. You could line up knowledgeable opponents and proponents, and you would probably find their reasons vary wildly. They also come from all over the political map. But I agree with you. It seems odd to me that people are worried about an income harming people on average, or even affecting employment. We already have plenty of people with passive incomes, and they don't generally b…

Right? If anything, it should be very clear at this point, once a person has some money, they almost inevitably want more money.

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

#188

Post by b_tterc_p »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #167
b_tterc_p wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re basically saying that because it has ethical value it can’t make people lazy. That’s irrelevant. UBI might make people lazy. In fact, it would be pretty shocking if it didn’t make some % of the population choose to do nothing for their entire lives but stay at home and play video games. People like to point out that techies would feel more comfortable building start ups, and that’s probably true. But for peopl…

While it is certainly possible to give people enough money to become uninterested of working, one of the conclusions of the experiment is that the UBI version tested did not make people less efficient at seeking employment. UBI just made them happier. In other words, not implementing their UBI version is simply a way to punish unemployed people for not having a job. You can still argue that unemployed people should b…

They didn’t get UBI forever, they got it for a fixed amount of time. If they quit working, they would be shit out of luck when they money stopped flowing. It’s not a very useful experiment.

Really this is just basic economics though. Money has decreasing marginal utility. The first stack of cash you get pays rent, then food, then later on luxuries. For low income workers, the opportunity cost of not working is not being able to afford basic things. If that’s covered, there’s no reason to do a crappy job for low pay. You don’t even need to assume laziness. If cashiers now have their basic needs covered and want to go invest their time into improving their education, then the cost of cashiers goes up. If the cost of cashiers goes up, the cost of food goes up. If the cost of food goes up, the original UBI is now too low, so the cashiers need to stop pursuing education and get some money again. If an equilibrium exists, it’s going to be at the point where poor people need to work, because somebody needs to clean the toilets.

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

#189

Post by b_tterc_p »

moorhosj wrote: post #180
b_tterc_p wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re basically saying that because it has ethical value it can’t make people lazy. That’s irrelevant. UBI might make people lazy. In fact, it would be pretty shocking if it didn’t make some % of the population choose to do nothing for their entire lives but stay at home and play video games. People like to point out that techies would feel more comfortable building start ups, and that’s probably true. But for peopl…

Under UBI, the people with low skills would have the means to upgrade those skills.

Exactly. And if all the people with low skills upgrade their skills, the cost of low skilled labor increases, driving up the price of goods, and making the current UBI insufficient.

We NEED low skilled labor. Bioshock proved this years ago.

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

#190

Post by b_tterc_p »

fxj wrote: post #141
b_tterc_p wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re basically saying that because it has ethical value it can’t make people lazy. That’s irrelevant. UBI might make people lazy. In fact, it would be pretty shocking if it didn’t make some % of the population choose to do nothing for their entire lives but stay at home and play video games. People like to point out that techies would feel more comfortable building start ups, and that’s probably true. But for peopl…

The security that you have medical care, food and housing tomorrow takes away a lot of psychological pressure and your mind can think about other things. But nevertheless I also think about the ethical implications of letting people die because they cannot afford the medical care they need. A society that just thinks only about profitability of a person is in itself unjust and inhumane.

And I agree that these are things that need to be solved. But UBI won’t do that long term.

Like, just to push a point, with medical care, the prices are so absurdly high that a poor person with UBI who had to pay a large medical bill would effectively just lose their UBI to medical debt payments and interest. And now they’re back where they began. It’s an entirely different problem.

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