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Finland to end basic income trial after two years

theguardian.com

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Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#31

Post by jillesvangurp »

PinguTS wrote: post #16
jillesvangurp wrote: post #6

Basic income for some is not basic income. No country has tried this yet. Most countries actually do have a form of basic income where they are subsidizing food, shelter, healthcare in some form or another for essentially all people falling outside of the safety net of income, pensions, social security & welfare, charity, etc. I tend to think of basic income as the former without the absolutely massive bureaucratic o…

Bureaucracy is also some type of basic income. Disrupting bureaucracy means also higher unemployment, because that means, that those people have either to find another job or the will live on welfare as well.

I see this as a form of hidden unemployment that we just happen to favor sponsoring collectively for whatever reason. These people would fall back to basic income and be free to take jobs just like everybody else; depending on ability and willingness.

But I take your point and this is why I pointed out that dismantling this will be highly disruptive and unpopular. Ironically, the problem is bigger in countries that are more likely to otherwise be in favor of a form of basic income. I.e. countries with extensive existing social security systems.

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#32

Post by jillesvangurp »

mantas wrote: post #28
aeroman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really true that much of the spending goes on bureaucracy? In the UK the depatment of work and pensions spent £167 billion in 2012, of which £6.4b was spend on departmental and operational delivery costs. Admittedly this is still a large amount, but it does allow targeted spending, which might have some advantages too. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-ben...

This is one of the main oversights of UBI fans. E.g. disabled people definitely need more help.

Sure, just like today's disabled people are not left to die on the streets. Many disabled people never had careers to begin with so it is not a massive change. And you could always opt in to some form of disability insurance.

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#33

Post by mantas »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #32
mantas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main oversights of UBI fans. E.g. disabled people definitely need more help.

Sure, just like today's disabled people are not left to die on the streets. Many disabled people never had careers to begin with so it is not a massive change. And you could always opt in to some form of disability insurance.

I'm talking from Euro PoV. In my country disabled people get payouts and special care regardless of their career or insurance. They definitely couldn't afford gear and care on common UBI.

If someone is disabled and never had a good career going, additional disability insurance is not an option for them.

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#34

Post by jillesvangurp »

aeroman wrote: post #14
jillesvangurp wrote: post #6

Basic income for some is not basic income. No country has tried this yet. Most countries actually do have a form of basic income where they are subsidizing food, shelter, healthcare in some form or another for essentially all people falling outside of the safety net of income, pensions, social security & welfare, charity, etc. I tend to think of basic income as the former without the absolutely massive bureaucratic o…

Is it really true that much of the spending goes on bureaucracy? In the UK the depatment of work and pensions spent £167 billion in 2012, of which £6.4b was spend on departmental and operational delivery costs. Admittedly this is still a large amount, but it does allow targeted spending, which might have some advantages too. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/08/uk-ben...

Varies from country to country of course. The UK has comparatively little job security and benefits and it is an expensive place to be out of work. I did the back of the envelope calculations for the Netherlands a few years back and the amounts spent on this are quite high. I've confirmed with friends from Finland and Germany that the situation is similar there.

But based on the numbers you cite, the UK has about 66M inhabitants. So 167 billion/ 66 million, is about 210 per month per capita. Not great to live on of course but it's a start. And this is absolutely everybody counting babies, children, the elderly, etc covered.

I quickly googled some numbers https://fullfact.org/economy/welfare-budget/ that are loosely aligned with what you cited with a little more detail. Based on their number of 217 billion, you get to about 273/month. That's a little under what wellfare gets you per month (https://www.gov.uk/income-support/what-youll-get).

Interestingly that 217 billion includes only 2.4 billion as unemployment benefits as opposed to a category of 'other' that is listed as 14.5 billion or 18 pounds per month per capita spent on what I assume is bureaucracy. That 217 excludes NHS, which is another 110 or so billion; or about 138 per month. Since that basically already takes care of healthcare for everyone; no need to change that.

You get where I'm going with this. if you start doing back of the envelope math like this, stuff starts adding up towards an admittedly lowish basic income for everybody being feasible at the cost of 23% of GDP. It gets better if you take into account that some people live together (aka. families) and can pool resources. It gets even more interesting when you start looking at the tax situation. Income tax + social insurance fees don't quite add up but can be supplemented by VAT, corporate taxes, and other fees. Arguably, if you make labor cheaper, you could raise the corporate taxes a bit. Also, people that work still pay taxes over what they earn extra. There are a lot of people that are not working at all right now that might work a little bit if it earned them some extra.

So, it's not a zero sum game and there are lots of financial knobs to fiddle with here of course.

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#35

Post by yazr »

Sharlin wrote: post #2

Finn here. The trial has been criticized from the get-go as being a poorly-designed compromise; those of us with a more cynical outlook suspect that it was intentionally nerfed so as to discredit the idea of basic income in general. But I guess it's just politics as usual; the current government as a whole is not exactly sympathetic with the idea of free money to "lazy people". Everyone does seem to agree, though, th…

From the outside, Scandinavia is generally regarded as a successful(-ish?) big-government model.

And yet, talk to any Scandinavian, and you get the same cynical comments about sub optimal government behavior...

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

yazr wrote: post #35
Sharlin wrote: post #2

Finn here. The trial has been criticized from the get-go as being a poorly-designed compromise; those of us with a more cynical outlook suspect that it was intentionally nerfed so as to discredit the idea of basic income in general. But I guess it's just politics as usual; the current government as a whole is not exactly sympathetic with the idea of free money to "lazy people". Everyone does seem to agree, though, th…

From the outside, Scandinavia is generally regarded as a successful(-ish?) big-government model. And yet, talk to any Scandinavian, and you get the same cynical comments about sub optimal government behavior...

Standards are set by experience; the better your experience, the higher your standards.

Re: Finland to end basic income trial after two years

#37

Post by 80386 »

198739834 wrote: post #27
80386 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Necessary for what? Maybe not optimizing iPhones. But somebody has to make the music that goes on the iPhones, and it's pretty hard to do that if you're working on their hardware full-time. There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". As for their eventual disappearance, they'll be neglected, but they won't be slaughtered -- if nothing else, that doesn't look go…

>Necessary for what? For whatever the people who provide the money need. >There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary". I don't think the corporations/governments will just have a few hundred million people around to add some culture to the place. >It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam. Yes but the infrastructure of modern society is extremely…

>That is what people think they will do, but it is not what they will do. It is not the utopia that they think it will be because there are fundamentals about human nature that mean we don't really just sit around thinking up theories and playing guitar.

We already have a sample population for this: retirees. Empirically, some people do need jobs, and some don't. I work with a guy who retired, couldn't stand it, and rejoined the workforce. On the other hand, my mother retired early to go into astrophysics.

I'm about to quit my job and work on improving my coding skills (and networking, and so on) until I get hired in tech. A few of my friends are doing the same. (Independently - I'd already decided to do this when they started telling me about their plans.) They seem to be doing better than they were before they quit.

Maybe that's a mistake, and I'll end up depressed and subdued if I'm not on someone's payroll. But I don't think so. I'm working a physically exhausting job with hours that aren't very compatible with having a life outside work - I don't think I have to worry about becoming more depressed and subdued.

> The people on welfare now do not have that life. They are mostly depressed and subdued, which is the point of welfare.

I think there are some important differences between welfare and UBI. If you're on welfare, it means you've failed at the grind - if you're on UBI, it might just mean you've opted out of it.

I don't know much about the welfare system, but I'd be surprised if it's possible for someone to live indefinitely on welfare alone. With UBI, that may end up being a possibility.

Another possibility with UBI is to use it to free up resources for investing in your future. I worked with a guy who was holding down three different jobs, working seven days a week, because that's what he had to do to make ends meet. Maybe he should just learn to code, but where's he going to find the time?

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