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Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#161

Post by Non24Throw »

nicbou wrote: post #107
gustavo-fring wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not giving us the full story. Did he have health insurance (seems like he's in Germany, so yeah)? I made under $30k this past year and did not have health insurance. I promise you that I'd rather have that than try to live off $1k a month. If it sounds so great to you, I challenge you to live off that amount and see if it is as grand as he describes. I'm guessing he's making more than $1k. There are a lot of men…

I can gladly talk about financials. - I have health insurance. It's pretty far from free, and it's mandatory. I wrote a very detailed guide about how German health insurance works [1]. It's not comparable to the US system, and I want to write a separate guide to explain this more accurately. - My take-home is slightly above what a full time minimum wage worker would make. My expenses are around 1400€ a month. It coul…

> I'm happy to answer more questions.

How much are you willing to tell us about the income source?

I’m finding it difficult to think of anything that generates a small but consistent revenue stream with no babysitting, that is also completely unresponsive to low-effort attempts at scaling it.

Usually if there’s no babysitting, that means low-effort scale. Or if it is hands-free but still can’t scale, it’s because you’ve found the boundaries of the market opportunity (but when is that ever just 1k?)

I guess my question is what niche product/service did you find that the entire world only wants $1000/mo of??

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#162

Post by commandlinefan »

gustavo-fring wrote: post #65
nicbou wrote: post #51

Last year, I had something that was very close to basic income (income-generating website that doesn't require active babysitting). I knew a life without work would be amazing, but I never expected it to be this great. I had much more time and energy to enjoy life. There was never a rush to do anything. I woke up when I wasn't tired. I could read in bed for an hour if it felt right. Sometimes I'd just walk 3-5 kilome…

You didn't have UBI, you had a well-paying job. The main UBI proposals for the US target $1k per month and that target means a budget of about 3 trillion per year and does not take into account health insurance. I don't know about you, but living off $1k a month where I live (and it's a relatively cheap area) isn't feasible. Either you get roommates or you are going to end up in the cheapest most out of the way apart…

> living off $1k a month where I live (and it's a relatively cheap area) isn't feasible

Nor is an additional $3 trillion/year expenditure feasible forever. That's what's so disturbing about discussions around UBI: there seem to be people who, genuinely and unironically, believe that the reason some of us are concerned about the concept is because we don't realize how happy not having to work would make people. They appear to believe that, once they've demonstrated that yes, it will really make people happy, they'll have won the fight for UBI.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#163

Post by toomuchtodo »

jacobr1 wrote: post #158
toomuchtodo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a smaller scale, we should see where older folks on Social Security live. They have a form of UBI and also usually don’t or can’t work.

But also have interesting factors of health concerns (more likely to need nursing care, or need a home without stairs) and on the other side, many are more likely to have large savings. There are other factors like some wanting to live near children/grandchildren who are more likely to live in a high-cost area due to jobs. I'm not sure if all the balances out, but those on social security have plenty of different con…

> But also have interesting factors of health concerns (more likely to need nursing care, or need a home without stairs) and on the other side, many are more likely to have large savings.

US statistics:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/04/baby-boom... (Millions of baby boomers are getting caught in the country’s broken retirement system)

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/these-people-are-on-the-verg... (48 percent of American households over the age of 55 still have no retirement savings)

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit... (Although most of those whom Social Security keeps out of poverty are elderly [14.8 million], 6.9 million are under age 65, including 1.2 million children)

For our purposes, it's important that you scope to only those who are collecting only Social Security, and have no other retirement savings to closely model your average citizen collecting a potential UBI.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#164

Post by marcosdumay »

radu_floricica wrote: post #122
marcosdumay wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... I've searched the study, and it looks like results are still scheduled to be published this year. Granted that it was a quick search, but I get no source for the claim that the result was negative. Besides, UBI being cheaper to administer than current social security, failure in finding any difference is a reason to adopt it, not to keep the status quo.

UBI is definitely not cheaper that current social security. "To administer" maybe, but the total cost is probably orders of magnitude more, and doesn't even solve the problem: certain demographics will still need extra.

> UBI is definitely not cheaper that current social security.

If you count taxing a person to give the money back to the same person as a cost, it's certainly not.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#165

Post by prewett »

hnarn wrote: post #73
nicbou wrote: post #51

Last year, I had something that was very close to basic income (income-generating website that doesn't require active babysitting). I knew a life without work would be amazing, but I never expected it to be this great. I had much more time and energy to enjoy life. There was never a rush to do anything. I woke up when I wasn't tired. I could read in bed for an hour if it felt right. Sometimes I'd just walk 3-5 kilome…

Some people may not agree with me but I've always felt that there's an interesting take on our history: Throughout most of civilization, most types of progress has been the result of the intellectual work of an elite. Most progress in science, art, and pretty much anything comes from a "noble" or some kind of free man either doing it themselves, or directly financing someone who did. Most people today probably wouldn…

Ooh, I'm going to try out this argument on the next liberal UBI-er I find.

But, I think we already have done the experiment, and I don't think it's worked out the way you expect. Modern-day Westerners live like the gentry. We have luxurious fabrics, fresh vegetables all year long, we can video conference whoever we want (instead of posting letters), we've got servants to do household chores: Miss Washing Machine and Miss Dishwasher; Mr. Word Processor (secretary), Mr. Spreadsheet (finance), and Mr. Printer (typeset output). As a result we have enough leisure time to spend 3 hrs on our pocket tricorder and 4.5 hrs watching moving pictures (TV), on average, every day! [1] Instead of spending 7.5 hours producing amazing works of art and science, we entertain ourselves. (I suspect the original nobility acted a lot like this, too, given how productive the nobility in books like Jane Austen's or The Great Gatsby were--they sat around all day having a party)

On the other hand, we have created the nobility you were looking for: government grants fund much of the basic science, and a fair amount of arts (via universities)

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by...

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#166

Post by commandlinefan »

standardUser wrote: post #35
nocitrek wrote: post #2

Important thing to keep in mind regarding UBI is that goverment does not generate any money. In order for goverment to give money, it needs to take it from someone. So UBI is just proxy for wealth redistribution. Sure, wellbeing has improved for small group of people, but the question is how scalable UBI is? Remember, road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I wouldn't call trying to build and maintain a prosperous society a "road to hell", but it's true that UBI is just a different form of wealth redistribution. But most nations currently achieve redistribution through a convoluted mosaic of overlapping/competing/intertwined systems, each with their own entrenched bureaucracies and complicated rules. In contrast, a UBI system can be streamlined and efficient and, based…

> I wouldn't call trying to build and maintain a prosperous society a "road to hell"

The phrase was "road to hell is paved with good intentions". "Trying to build and maintain a prosperous society" was the good intentions part. The hell part is the reality that the next generation lives in after wealth redistribution has been forced: we've seen it over and over again, every time it's been tried.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#167

Post by themmes »

EGreg wrote: post #121
logjammin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make good points, but you may be missing why OP's comment is getting the upvotes it's getting, or at least why I'd wager it is: he describes the kind of contentment that most of us can't even imagine possessing without winning the lottery, and he described having that contentment with surprisingly (to him/her) modest means. I can't speak for anyone else, but this is why I upvoted it. Hell, I can think of at least…

If you want an entire lifestyle blog about this, read http://mrmoneymustache.com/ Anyone here a fan?

I’m a fan of the Dutch equivalent geldnerd.nl, mrmoneymustache.com is on my list. Thank you!

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#168

Post by qmmmur »

SilasX wrote: post #84
nicbou wrote: post #51

Last year, I had something that was very close to basic income (income-generating website that doesn't require active babysitting). I knew a life without work would be amazing, but I never expected it to be this great. I had much more time and energy to enjoy life. There was never a rush to do anything. I woke up when I wasn't tired. I could read in bed for an hour if it felt right. Sometimes I'd just walk 3-5 kilome…

You have to be really careful about generalizing from "personally getting regular free money" to everyone getting it. Under a UBI, everyone , unconditionally[1], gets the free money. That has significantly different dynamics than you alone getting it. What happens to rents, for example? If everyone's income goes up, so does the rent. If everyone wanted to live in the same places, for the same reasons, and suddenly ha…

Isn't it the case that if you earn over some minimum threshold you don't receive UBI? In which case it raises the bottom not the entire scale.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#169

Post by fartcannon »

commandlinefan wrote: post #162
gustavo-fring wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't have UBI, you had a well-paying job. The main UBI proposals for the US target $1k per month and that target means a budget of about 3 trillion per year and does not take into account health insurance. I don't know about you, but living off $1k a month where I live (and it's a relatively cheap area) isn't feasible. Either you get roommates or you are going to end up in the cheapest most out of the way apart…

> living off $1k a month where I live (and it's a relatively cheap area) isn't feasible Nor is an additional $3 trillion/year expenditure feasible forever. That's what's so disturbing about discussions around UBI: there seem to be people who, genuinely and unironically, believe that the reason some of us are concerned about the concept is because we don't realize how happy not having to work would make people. They a…

There will come a time when we are capable of a post-scarcity society. Is that now? Maybe. Maybe not. How do we know if we don't try. Make it our target, and we will solve the other problems. If we never change, we will never change.

Let's try to make our lives better.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#170

Post by qmmmur »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #156
luckylion wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could look at Germany. Our welfare system is largely unconditional. You're asked to find a job to pull your own weight, but you're not pushed too hard. You'll get an apartment, TV, utilities, health insurance and a few hundred euros a month for food & what ever you want to spend it on. If we did cut out the theoretical work-requirement and possibly stopped paying the rent and instead paid out money (but then qu…

>So far, I haven't seen the explosion in creativity, entrepreneurship, volunteering etc that's usually promised. That's because most people don't have the ambition and discipline of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and if given the chance would rather bum around their whole life instead of work. I see the same thing in Austria and so do my friends living in other wealthy European countries with strong social nets. Most people…

Shocking. People would rather enjoy life not working as hard as hustling (code for taking big risk without much payoff) to get more money to buy more stuff.
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