Current Events > Finland experiment of giving 540e/660 usd to unemployed citizend. Opinions?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwjNrxVd-1E

You can still work and get other welfare money. If you get the welfare + 540 it means you can be unemployed and still earn 1100 per month tax free. If you work and earn over something like 1400+ you lose the 540.

This is to reduce the byrocracy, and raise employment rates because people can work shorter days and still live somewhat decently. The reason why many unemployed people stay unemployed is that if they take 4h per day job they barely make more money than what they did when they were doing nothing, and if they lose that job or can't find suitable job they have to start all that paper work again and send lots of papers around and wait some time before getting money again. Sometimes there's errors and papers gets stuck in some level of byrocracy hell, and at worst people can't pay rents and whatnot.

This could greatly reduce stress and make people more motivated to take lower end jobs. It could also make people take advance of this and just continue doing nothing but get more money. Some say something like this would had to happen eventually, because jobs are lost to automation.

Thoughts?
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This will be discussed
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Sami1000 posted...

and raise employment rates because people can work shorter days and still live somewhat decently.

Wait, they want to increase employment by having people work part time and then giving them welfare? So instead of one full time worker, you've got two part time workers on welfare?
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Of course people don't want to work when you convert the safety net into a hammock. These socialist policies will never succeed on any large scale. They barely work in these countries that have populations smaller than U.S. cities.
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the erosion of the balance of power between labor and capital in the west has more or less forced safety nets into a sort of counterbalance for workers to enable them to turn down very unfavorable work arrangements since they're not at risk of death if they do so, as the market no longer supports workers' negotiation for better wages, and the erosion of a western customer base isn't even an issue since developing areas are growing their own customer bases as well.

the optimal method to manage this wealth redistribution to ensure workers don't just sit on the stipend and call it a day is unclear, though. ideally there would be a balance in which when enough workers refuse the job, the pay goes up. but in practice the continued drop in shipping costs and growth of technology in developing nations devalues labor further and works against such government efforts

the portion of the middle class that didn't make the cut into the creative/managerial upper middle class is going to have a very unpleasant century.

that's not to say we shouldn't try. if we give up trying, there will be a lot of violence, and "law and order" will be much more expensive than prevention, unless we decide we're okay with living in a police state.
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Darkman124 posted...

the erosion of the balance of power between labor and capital in the west has more or less forced safety nets into a sort of counterbalance for workers to enable them to turn down very unfavorable work arrangements since they're not at risk of death if they do so, as the market no longer supports workers' negotiation for better wages, and the erosion of a western customer base isn't even an issue since developing areas are growing their own customer bases as well.

the optimal method to manage this wealth redistribution to ensure workers don't just sit on the stipend and call it a day is unclear, though. ideally there would be a balance in which when enough workers refuse the job, the pay goes up. but in practice the continued drop in shipping costs and growth of technology in developing nations devalues labor further

the portion of the middle class that didn't make the cut into the creative/managerial upper middle class is going to have a very unpleasant century.

Arguably an understatment. Spot on though.
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r4X0r posted...

Wait, they want to increase employment by having people work part time and then giving them welfare? So instead of one full time worker, you've got two part time workers on welfare?

None of these people are full time workers. They're turning unemployed welfare recipients into part-time job holders, because the welfare benefits don't get yanked once they get back into some kind of employment.
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Outer_space posted...

Whyyy?

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If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Better to try out a small pilot program and see what happens, than suddenly do something like that nation (or continent) -wide all at once, and then panic when something goes weird.

Scotland is up to something similar.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-pilot-universal-basic-income-ubi-snp-fife-and-glasgow-scheme-a7505411.html

halomonkey1_3_5 posted...

r4X0r posted...

Wait, they want to increase employment by having people work part time and then giving them welfare? So instead of one full time worker, you've got two part time workers on welfare?

None of these people are full time workers. They're turning unemployed welfare recipients into part-time job holders, because the welfare benefits don't get yanked once they get back into some kind of employment.

Yeah, this is what i meant. Had difficult time writing all that down.
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