Current Events > Finland tries UBI... gives up after a year and a half.

(+) Yeah! (+)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700

Finland's two-year pilot scheme started in January 2017, making it the first European country to test an unconditional basic income. The 2,000 participants - all unemployed - were chosen randomly.

But it will not be extended after this year, as the government is now examining other schemes for reforming the Finnish social security system.
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The pilot's full results will not be released until late 2019.

The study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said income tax would have to increase by nearly 30% to fund a basic income. It also argued that basic income would increase income inequality and raise Finland's poverty rate from 11.4% to 14.1%.

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But how will they create a new Renaissance now?
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Let's wait for all the facts
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What a surprise, turns out you can't save everyone and doing so just hurts the people you can save. Welcome to reality, Canada, you're up next when your universal health care explodes on you in the coming years
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Paying people whether or not they work. How could that possibly go wrong?
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Spooking posted...

Of course!

The next step is probably asking neighboring, more well-off countries to chip in for their UBI. Can you imagine Americans being taxed more to pay for Mexico's UBI recipients. lol

You mean like making Mexicans pay for a wall?
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s0nicfan posted...

It also argued that basic income would increase income inequality and raise Finland's poverty rate from 11.4% to 14.1%.

Oh wow didn't see that coming at all

What a shock
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It also argued that basic income would increase income inequality and raise Finland's poverty rate from 11.4% to 14.1%.

Wait, what?

Questionmarktarius posted...

It also argued that basic income would increase income inequality and raise Finland's poverty rate from 11.4% to 14.1%.

Wait, what?

Significantly higher taxation likely dragged down people right above the poverty line to below it.
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Seems folks in this topic are getting chubb from this news...
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Who could have guessed giving people money for doing fuck all wasn't sustainable after all.
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And socialism fails again.

If only someone could have predicted this...
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so 2,000 unemployed people basically got an 18 month paid vacation?

why not send them to america to be cops
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UBI is not possible until we have full automation of most labor sources. Until then, it's pointless to attempt.
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Spooking posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

And socialism fails again.

If only someone could have predicted this...

It almost worked! If only they had somebody else's money...

They ran out, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out always happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c8Gkm8VSLE" data-time="

_OujiDoza_ posted...

Seems folks in this topic are getting chubb from this news...

Ha, my beliefs were reconfirmed!
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Surprise surprise.
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Of course it didn't work. It's too early for UBI, and moreover, you can't just insert it into modern society, which was not built for it, and expect it to fit.

How surprising
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Bump
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Why didn't you post the entire article TC?
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tremain07 posted...

What a surprise, turns out you can't save everyone and doing so just hurts the people you can save. Welcome to reality, Canada, you're up next when your universal health care explodes on you in the coming years

universal healthcare in canada has been around since the 60s.

for a politician to suggest privatizing it again is political suicide.

back during the last Conservative leadership race one of the leading candidates was a libertarian fellow who suggested privatizing some aspects of the healthcare system. His numbers tanked and he lost the race.
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A more thorough quote from the article:

In February this year the influential OECD think tank said a universal credit system, like that being introduced in the UK, would work better than a basic income in Finland. Universal credit replaces several benefit payments with a single monthly sum.

The study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said income tax would have to increase by nearly 30% to fund a basic income. It also argued that basic income would increase income inequality and raise Finland's poverty rate from 11.4% to 14.1%.

In contrast, the OECD said, universal credit would cut the poverty rate to 9.7%, as well as reduce complexity in the benefits system.

It's almost as if there are different ways to implement a UBI system, and some might not work as well as others.
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The Great Muta 22 posted...

Why didn't you post the entire article TC?

I'm not a fan of the antifar style text dump where I just copy and paste the entire article into multiple posts. I don't think it looks good, I don't think most people read them, and it eliminates the point of linking to an article in the first place. I have full faith in your ability to go to the link, read the article if you care about the issue, and correct me where you feel I may have missed something relevant.

RE: Kavatar, if you actually look into Universal Credit that program is just consolidating all benefits payments into a single check, saving on government overhead. It's not a proper UBI.
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It'll be interesting to see the results they release
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Honestly, that can only succeed if standard of living is lowered and you have stipulations to earn it, like working.
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Aren't UBIs also suppose to apply to people that work, why the fuck would you test it solely on unemployed? What were they expecting, was this suppose to help them get jobs or something?
A UBI without a tax increase isn't going to fucking work. I legit don't understand what they were trying to accomplish. UBI isn't a half measure economic policy.
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Aren't UBIs also suppose to apply to people that work, why the fuck would you test it solely on unemployed? What were they expecting, was this suppose to help them get jobs or something?
A UBI without a tax increase isn't going to fucking work. I legit don't understand what they were trying to accomplish. UBI isn't a half measure economic policy.

Extra! Extra! Lazy and stupid people are lazy and stupid even with free money!
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UBI Main backbone is computer and robotization, which will take up most of lower job market. Without it, it is simply unsustainable. You cant really have ome without the other.
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thronedfire2 posted...

so 2,000 unemployed people basically got an 18 month paid vacation?

Not really, since that 560 per month is basically the same as Finland's normal unemployment benefit. But they didn't have to be in any contact to the unemployment office, so some stress of their heads. And they could take gig jobs without having to deal with bureaucracy, or take a full job and still keep the basic income.
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Aren't UBIs also suppose to apply to people that work, why the fuck would you test it solely on unemployed? What were they expecting, was this suppose to help them get jobs or something?
A UBI without a tax increase isn't going to fucking work. I legit don't understand what they were trying to accomplish. UBI isn't a half measure economic policy.

yeah, it isn't a true UBI because of that selection bias. It's more like an unemployment subsidy, or unemployment insurance that no one paid for
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Based on this article, I don't think you should read too much into the end of this experiment.

http://peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/04/25/the-nyt-gets-the-finland-basic-income-story-wrong/

As for the basic income experiment itself, it is worth emphasizing again that it is ending exactly when the government said it was going to end when they launched it. The government is not going to do more experiments, but it never said it was going to do more experiments. As Antti Jauhiainen, Joona-Hermanni Mkinen, and I wrote when the proposal was launched, Finlands UBI experiment was never set up to be much more than a publicly stunt (Antti Jauhiainen and Joona-Hermanni Mkinen specifically said as much in a later piece in the New York Times). The sample size was too small, it was only targeted at the unemployed, and the goal was explicitly to see if the unemployed would take up work if a welfare trap (in this case basic unemployment allowance) was removed.

The latter point is perhaps the crucial one for understanding just how far Goodmans piece has gone off the rails. The way the UBI experiment in Finland worked was they took people who were already on basic unemployment allowance (or labor market subsidy) and then gave them a UBI amount that was identical to what they were already receiving from those programs. The difference was not really an infusion of money. It was a promise that for the next two years, they could take up work without losing their unemployment benefits. So the plan did not give any new free money to jobless people as those jobless people were already getting that free money. And the reason the nature of the free money delivery changed for the experiment was to see if it would make them stop being jobless.

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Yeah I heard about this. Definitely way too early to truly use it right now.

Antifar posted...

The sample size was too small, it was only targeted at the unemployed, and the goal was explicitly to see if the unemployed would take up work if a welfare trap (in this case basic unemployment allowance) was removed.

This the part to pay attention to, when the results are finally published.

This is always the end result of communism/socialism.
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Yeah I heard about this. Definitely way too early to truly use it right now.

Yeah I heard about this. Definitely way too early to truly use it right now.