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Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

scottsantens.substack.com

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Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#61
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

,> There is actually a moral aspect here. Morals in society is that you work to earn your own living and that you don't abuse kindness. That is true, but it leaves out the question of who's morals we are discussing. If the recipient is not under any obligation, and yet gets a job, that morality is played out in them. If the person is under obligation and gets a job as a result, their moral position is unknown but lik…

In this case society is paying (out of moral principles) so this gives it a fair right to set the moral expectation or just the practical one. Let's say someone does not get a job. Are they looking for one and being unsuccessful or are they just cashing their benefits? Checks are needed in practice unless it can be shown they are not (what I suggested in my previous comments).

Sure, in a world where you can effortlessly make that work without waste or moral lossage through faceless bureaucracy on the enforcing side, that seems like a great model. E.g. a parent setting some rules around a large monthly stipend for a child: the humanity remains, it’s efficient, the morality of “if you want money you have to do something for it” can be preserved without incurring larger moral costs like “you don’t understand the circumstances”, and maybe/probably efficiency can actually be improved.

as far as I understand this entire conversation around ubi, that ideal isn’t the issue. Proponents rather hold that you cannot scale this to a society without the cost exceeding the benefit. The bureaucratic machine to sustain these rules inevitably becomes soulless, expensive, inefficient, and counter productive. Is the argument.

It’s not that we shouldn’t, it’s that, at scale, we can’t. Is the argument :)

I don’t think your statement on morals is necessarily incompatible with the practical considerations offered by others. It’s a different conversation.

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#62

What about the mental health of tax payers funding the scheme? Do you want your hard earned taxes to finance “lazy bums” who may or may not be looking for employement. If there are no conditions to receiving the grant, then where is the incentive to take “a” job that comes your way.

The incentive is to not be poor and have more than the bare minimum.

I, for one, am happy to pay taxes to fund this.

I've never understood the argument that people would choose to live like that. It doesn't make any sense.

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#63
post #32

I think this is interesting, but on its own isn't that compelling. A UBI program that doesn't result in improving employment and education long term sounds both unsustainable and like a moral hazard. What I think this does underscore the importance of not trying to make the program ensure personal accountability. That means we must find a way to ensure program accountability, and measure long-term results, without bu…

I think it's the conventional unemployment benefit system that should show measurable benefits, not other way around. All the tracking, surveillance, reporting and interviewing costs money, and should not be done for the sake of it.

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#64
I'd bet a lot of money that a third group subject to the same rules as the second group but with the church or some other not the government (and not funded by them either) 3rd party doing the administrating would have mental health outcomes a lot closer to "no strings attached".

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'People prefer money with no strings attached' is likely a bit reductive. The power imbalance inherent in the expectation that you prove you're 'good enough' to a functionary who has the ability to determine if you have money to buy food or not sounds like a deeply unpleasant scenario to me. I could absolutely imagine a few months of that would be deleterious to my mental health, I don't know about you.

> The power imbalance inherent in the expectation that you prove you're 'good enough' to a functionary who has the ability to determine if you have money to buy food or not sounds like a deeply unpleasant scenario to me. You've essentially described how employment works, and yes, it can be rather unpleasant.

Honestly, that is not how employment works in most of the (civilized) world. In the US, sure, but elsewhere we do have labor laws that matter.

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#66
Applying for phony ghost jobs and pretending your dream in life is to work some shitty dead end job is basically a humiliation ritual. I think it would be much better if unemployed people were simply assigned work by the government. Feeling unambitious? No shame in staying as long as you like. Want something more? Send out as few or many applications as you want.

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#67
post #58

Out of curiosity, why does the Algolia result for this submission show '4 days ago', the submission timestamp '3 hours ago', and the metadata on the submission timestamp '2025-12-18T15:34:11 1766072051'? Is this an example of an article being resubmitted (by the same user?) or otherwise boosted back onto the front page?

Second-chance pool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#68
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax code (at least in the US, YMMV in other countries) is already progressive. Making more will never have you taking home less. However, most welfare systems have hard cutoffs. If you get $500 in SNAP a month and make $500 a month, you have $1000 to last a month. And if the cutoff is $501, making that one extra dollar is going to cost you $499. What would be more difficult, also gameable, but better all around i…

I'm talking about the US. You're looking at the simple version: just income. But the tax code is more than income--there are many benefits that go away at a specific AGI--if you use that benefit you can have an effective tax rate of over 100% in the realm just above the fence. And your system doesn't work. Working is almost never truly free, you have to spend some money to make money. And you don't have that time ava…

Almost all income tax related benefits are phased out. Which ones are subject to a hard cap?

Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#69
post #10

From what I understand, two groups of unemployed persons got €560/mo. One group was required to look for work while the other wasn't. And one group was required to report to unemployment offices, and "satisfy bureaucrats". The results were that the one with unconditional payments had "better mental health". Apparently they used a "validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk o…

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Re: Finland gave two groups identical payments – one saw better mental health

#70
post #57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure a lot of things are linked to "poor mental health" like having to go to work So you think unemployed people are in better mental health than those with jobs? I guess this is part of the reason why we need these studies: because people's default assumptions are often wildly off.

"Unemployed" implies having no or very little money. Having enough so that you don't have to work would definitely improve mental well-being for the vast majority of people I think

"Retired" sounds like a more accurate word for that particular circumstance.
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