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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

#191

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

wonderwonder wrote: post #64
Mirioron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a…

We are close to factories that grow food with indoor vertical farming: https://www.plenty.ag/ Any repetitive job can eventually be automated away. The largest impact is going to be fully autonomous self driving cars. That alone has the chance of eliminating 4 million driving jobs, including truckers and cab drivers. This does not factor in the ~3 million people that drive for Uber and lyft. These are not people who a…

I think the other side of this coin is particularly glaring as well.

Since we decided to blame those workless people, and punish them if they don’t find work. They _have_ to find work. Which means more competition for consumption, you _have_ to consume their stuff to keep them fed. Which means more senseless competition to produce shit no one actual my need, more ads, more tele marketing, poisonous food, exploiting of addictive behavior, more jealously guarded trade secrets and “intellectual property” walls instead of cooperation and peer production.

In essense by insisting that all people must be employed at all time, we force the market to produce anti-value.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#192

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

PunchTornado wrote: post #149
zhoujianfu wrote: post #78

I don’t get the goal of trying to get more people to “work”. I would think increasing wellbeing should be the goal. It’s the pursuit of happiness, not the pursuit of hours worked. I’m sure the hunter-gatherers were upset the farmers weren’t motivated to hunt and gather too.

as long as they don't live from my taxes, they can not work.

How much of your taxes would you be willing to spend to get people to stop working?

Let’s say in telemarketing? I get quite a few unsolicited calls, would gladly spend some money to not have to have them.

Or in tobacco perhaps. N or sure how much of my taxes are spent on managing the fallout from that industry, but I’m pretty sure I‘d rather spend them on keeping people from working in it.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#193

Post by moduspol »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #190
moduspol wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also housewives, disability recipients, unemployed young adults still living at home, retirees. We've got several demographics that have their basic needs covered without working. Not all are directly comparable with working peers, but surely some likely outcomes could be predicted.

There was some studies in USA in the 70s which spurred som controversy due to an increased divorce rate. Ostensibly due to more housewives using the financial safety to beak free. An interesting datapoint since you mentioned that group.

Yes. Another fine example of, "when you incentivize doing something, people are more likely to do it."

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#194

Post by anm89 »

Of course redistributing wealth to a person in bulk in the short term is going to improve their wellbeing. Was anybody really wondering if this is true? This is bordering on tautology.

The criticism of these programs is that they will cause economic problems in the long run. It's not to say they won't make anybody happy in the short run.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#195

Post by elliekelly »

true_religion wrote: post #145
gustavo-fring wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Thank you for the input. Google-fu brings this cite from dw: €1,500 ($1,700) per month gross for full-time workers, Germany has one of the highest minimum wages in the European Union. So it seems you made about $20k. Obviously, this isn't much money, so props to you for that. It is about double what UBI could offer (at least in the US) in a country with one of the greatest social safety nets in the world. Don't m…

I don’t understand all the comparisons to the US here. The article is talking about Finland, and the comment poster is from Germany. Is anyone saying this is appropriate for the US right now? In my opinion, the US has a long way to go before even beginning to consider such practices. The UBI is something EU nations can experiment with, not the US.

Can you elaborate? Why can EU countries experiment with UBI but not the US?

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#196

Post by [deleted] »

yohannparis wrote: post #153
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…

UBI is not meant to be without work on other incomes, it just meant to have a financial safety net without regulations and criteria (below poverty, disabled, location, children, etc.) If you get $1,000/month right now, things would go smoother, and you still have to pay tax on your new higher wage. UBI is not a "never work only consume" solution.

[deleted]

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#197

Post by voisin »

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?

The Mad FIentist is an excellent podcast (FI = Financial Independence), and the reddit forums for LeanFIRE (what OP describes here) and FatFIRE are good. FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). Also, check out the book “Your Money or Your Life”. We don’t need to live the way we do, and I for one commend OP.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#198

Post by voisin »

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…

It is relevant that UBI is meant to replace all other social safety net income sources, so the net cost is not $3T.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#199

Post by hnarn »

prewett wrote: post #165
hnarn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Modern-day Westerners live like the gentry.

I couldn't disagree more. Having "Miss Washing Machine" does not make you nobility. I'm talking about the privilege of no stress, not the privilege of not having to do some menial work. It's not hard to visualize a hypothetical modern human who has all the modern luxuries but still lives a miserable existence paycheck to paycheck with massive amounts of stress.

> 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!

Sure, but if you, or someone else, had 12 months to spend any way you want, do you think people would spend 12 months watching TV? People do it to wind down, from stress, from work. We are caught in a wheelhouse that never allows us any extended period of rest or contemplation, so we grab the most "energy efficient"/instantly rewarding relaxation during the time we are allotted.

> Instead of spending 7.5 hours producing amazing works of art and science, we entertain ourselves.

Surely you agree that there's a difference between 7.5 hours of spent "free time" in the context of working 8+ hours a day, compared to the context of not working at all? Don't you think you would use your free time differently if it wasn't regulated in the shadow of your "normal" job?

Everyone has their own theory of human nature but mine is this: given enough time, and boredom, a non-trivial percentage of human beings will sooner or later do something useful. And I'm not saying all work today is useless, obviously it's not, but some of it definitely is and probably, in my opinion, hinders other, truly useful work. And yes, of course "useful" is subjective, but my personal definition of it is emotional or physical labor that furthers humanity through any kind of altruism or sustainable technological advancement (or, obviously, supports these initiatives in any necessary way).

> (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)

Sure, there are lazy people in every group of humans in the world if you look for them. I don't think there's a way to "solve" that problem, if it even is a problem in the first place. Diversity is probably more good than bad, and boredom can be a catalyst.

> 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)

Sure, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. Not that it doesn't exist, but that it needs to exist more, and should maybe even be our primary goal.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#200

Post by hnarn »

luckylion wrote: post #154
fredsir wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the majority of people that prioritize that which you do not like, it's not some hidden force that makes them. Sure they are. People today grow up being told and shown how to be materialistic, how to value short term economical gain, and so on, and then you get people that are like that. It's not surprising, is it? Humans are very much affected by the culture they grow up in. Our culture rewards greed, values…

But that's just US culture, European cultures are quite different (wealth is suspect in Germany, for example, a rather collectivist society) and we still have plenty of mindless consumerism. And really, nobody here is forced to work till they are tired. Yet still, the utopian society where everybody is working on bettering themselves is not happening. At some point I believe we can consider that it's not the circumst…

> But that's just US culture, European cultures are quite different

Being from a "European culture" I can tell you that it most definitely is not. Materialism is deeply encoded in our DNA, and in my opinion hoarding modern valuables is just the equivalent of our time to hoarding berries or furs or whatever else might be useful in the future. I think our production capacity ran away from us before our ability to adapt to excess developed.

> And really, nobody here is forced to work till they are tired.

I really just can't understand what this is supposed to mean. Are you saying there's noone in the US that is forced to work "until tired" to survive? Surely you can't be saying this.

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