Finland's 2-Year Test of Universal Basic Income Concludes that it Doesn't Seem To Disincentivise Working and Benefits Recipients' Mental and Financial Wellbeing (newscientist.com) 560
The world's most robust study of universal basic income has concluded that it boosts recipients' mental and financial well-being, as well as modestly improving employment. From a report: Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings attached. The payments of 560 euro ($600) per month weren't means tested and were unconditional, so they weren't reduced if an individual got a job or later had a pay rise. The study was nationwide and selected recipients weren't able to opt out, because the test was written into legislation. Minna Ylikanno at the Social Insurance Institution of Finland announced the findings in Helsinki today via livestream.
The study compared the employment and well-being of basic income recipients against a control group of 173,000 people who were on unemployment benefits. Between November 2017 and October 2018, people on basic income worked an average of 78 days, which was six days more than those on unemployment benefits. There was a greater increase in employment for people in families with children, as well as those whose first language wasn't Finnish or Swedish -- but the researchers aren't yet sure why. When surveyed, people who received universal basic income instead of regular unemployment benefits reported better financial well-being, mental health and cognitive functioning, as well as higher levels of confidence in the future.
The study compared the employment and well-being of basic income recipients against a control group of 173,000 people who were on unemployment benefits. Between November 2017 and October 2018, people on basic income worked an average of 78 days, which was six days more than those on unemployment benefits. There was a greater increase in employment for people in families with children, as well as those whose first language wasn't Finnish or Swedish -- but the researchers aren't yet sure why. When surveyed, people who received universal basic income instead of regular unemployment benefits reported better financial well-being, mental health and cognitive functioning, as well as higher levels of confidence in the future.
Shocking results (Score:3, Insightful)
Giving people money improves their financial well-being? I'm glad top scientists are exhausting their brainpower on this case.
Re:Shocking results (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah it's obvious ain't it?
Yet the US still fails to realize that simple truth, and stays firm in its "every man for himself" policy.
Asking the better-offs to spare some change for the less fortunate's well-being. Imagine that...
Re: Shocking results (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone wants what I have they should work hard for it, too. It wasn't bad luck for them and good luck for me. I didn't play roulette in a casino, I literally spent decades working 7 days a week with a grand total of 3 weeks of vacation.
Go to school, get good grades, don't drink or take drugs, don't have a kid before 35, don't commit. Rimes, work your ass off. You'll do great. It is definitely harder than just having the government steal from me to give
Re: Shocking results (Score:4, Insightful)
It was, in fact, *mostly* bad luck for them and good luck for you.
Learn about the fundamental attribution error, and learn some statistics. You got lucky in ways you didn't see. There are people who worked harder than you and ended up destitute. There are people who have never worked hard at all and are much richer than you. Chance events are a huge factor in outcomes, but people persistently attribute their own successes to work, and other people's to luck, and other people's failures to bad choices, and their own failures to luck.
Studied externally, without the bias of wanting to feel smug, we find that luck is a huge factor and often completely outweighs the others, although working hard certainly *helps*.
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Disincentive Threshold (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the big question is, if you implemented it here in the States, whether it would provide a disincentive to working 50+ hours a week, as many American employers expect out of their employees.
Finland: [businessculture.org]
Finnish weekly working hours are the same as the European Union average. Yet, there is more overtime and less part time work (although this has been increasing recently) Working hours vary among highly educated employees. Around 10% work a short week (less than 34 hours), and about 50% work a normal working week (35-40 hours). However, about one third of this category works 41 to 49 hours per week; and one sixth works over 50 hours per week.
America: [fool.com]
. . .40% of U.S. employees regularly work more than 50 hours per week, and 20% work more than 60 hours per week. . .
Those are just the first sources I found, but I don't think the claim is that extraordinary to require extra digging. The point is, that the Fins, being less overworked to begin with, probably don't find extra cash as a disincentive to working. I think a lot of Americans would demand to work less hours, or take on a part-time job instead, if this was implemented. Not that that would be a bad thing.
Re:Disincentive Threshold (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the big question is, if you implemented it here in the States, whether it would provide a disincentive to working 50+ hours a week, as many American employers expect out of their employees.
I hope so. Does that 50+ hour work-week make Americans more productive? Or is it just the result of the always-on stress of the possibility to be fired in a whim? And the fear of the absence of a decent social rescue if that happens?
Americans might use less time to fight for their jobs and as a result might be more creative and therefore productive.
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It makes Americans more productive per year (the highest annual GDP per capita [wikipedia.org] after you exclude oil exporters, banking nations, and countries which give massive corporate tax breaks so multi-national companies route money through them).
But less productive per hour worked [oecd-ilibrary.org] (The US is below the OECD average.)
W
Dishonest framing of results (Score:5, Informative)
One of the primary reasons why we're considering the scheme over here is the idea that it would clear up so-called "incentive traps" ("kannustinloukku") where it doesn't make sense for unemployed people to take on low-paying or part time work as the increase in income wouldn't outweigh the additional effort. This is a well recognized issue that most parties freely acknowledge as an issue in our unemployment and benefits system. When the trial started one of the most widely touted purposes of it was to see if clearing up these "incentive traps" would increase the workforce participation and hence have the program pay for itself.
However as the results showed that there wasn't any tangible improvement in workforce participation, and this was already clearly visible in preliminary results published a year ago, the focus has shifted onto other things. Despite the fact that testing if clearing up so-called "incentive traps" would improve workforce participation was one of the primary, if not the primary purposes of the test from the outset.
A lot of people tout UBI as a necessity due to automation and globalization destroying work, but the purpose of Finland's UBI plans has always been to simplify the benefits system and to clear up so-called "incentive traps" keeping the unemployed from accepting jobs offered to them, hence increasing labor force participation and having the system ultimately paying for itself. Even if the media and the people running the study have tried painting it up as something else, it's primary purpose was always to improve labor force participation and simplify benefits and not be an expansion of government welfare programs.
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To be clear, the ultimate goal was shrinking of government welfare programs. It's why it was greenlit by the conservative government. The idea was that if this worked, it would both reduce the incentive traps within current system, and allow massive shrinking of government bureaucracy related to figuring out who should be getting what welfare.
Re:Dishonest framing of results (Score:4, Interesting)
With automation/globalization, UBI is inevitable (Score:2)
Most essential skills can be done by a huge portion of the population, non-manufacturing blue collar jobs, or even most healthcare jobs. It's a small percentage of people who can be a good nurse, but we get a lot from all over
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That's a lot like saying "we'll worry about icebergs when we hit one", from the bridge of the titanic as it left port.
We might not have much to gain at the moment from establishing a UBI, but that actually means it's a good time to get it started. Just set a target of $5 a person and figure out a progressive tax rate so that it pays for it's self. Peg it to inflation in the cost of living and then slowly scale it up as workforce participation decreases. That way we can skip the whole phase where we risk los
Not A Basic Income (Score:4, Insightful)
Apples to Oranges? (Score:4)
Comparing my little town or county (in Nawth Ca'lina) to the stalwart citizens of Finland would be like comparing horses to hyenas. I seriously doubt the results would be the same.
It works because... (Score:3, Informative)
The money goes from millions of people to a few thousand.
Flawed assumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
The payments of 560 euro ($600) per month weren't means tested and were unconditional,
In fact since they were only given to unemployed people they were not unconditional. The same reasoning also blows apart the idea that these were "universal" basic income.
All this amounts to is that unemployed people were given a different amount of unemployment benefit. It would come as no surprise to anyone that those getting more money while unemployed would have better mental health and financial wellbeing. You could probably correlate that to any two groups: unemployed or doing the same job - those who got more money were happier.
But does this experiment show a cost-benefit analysis and does it scale to be truly universal?
Re:Flawed assumptions (Score:4, Informative)
The 'unconditional' part is that once the person got a job, it wasn't taken away.
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You missed one key aspect of UBI, which is what they talk about in TFS - recipients of the benefit aren't disincentivised from finding work due to the threat of losing their benefits. The so called "benefits trap".
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax payers support "these people" one way or another in any first world.
A UBI project like this wants to find out whether this method of support is more efficient than what is currently used.
Of course this is irrelevant to countries who see their people as a means to an end like China, Russia or the USA.
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No, universal means everyone. Some people are self-sufficient.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are self-sufficient.
Not in any first world country.
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, like inflation so the extra fake income vanishes into higher prices for everything and then some lower the average standard of living while simultaneously increasing taxes to pay for that decrease in average life quality. Yay! Let's do it!
That is certainly a valid concern. And that's why Finland is experimenting with it first to see if there are any negative effects. Sometimes you just don't know until you try.
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We would not have the same results here.
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We are well acquainted with the "welfare class and welfare mentality" of America's rich who don't pay taxes and feel entitled to bailouts when the "free market" threatens their profit.
Of course, since the rich control the government through bribes, the chance of something like this passing here is slim.
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Informative)
Commentators seeking to create the impression that high-income households are paying an outsized share of the nation’s taxes tend to focus their attention narrowly on the most progressive taxes. It is true that some of our revenue sources are quite progressive, including the federal personal income tax, corporate income tax and estate tax.[1]
But Americans pay other federal taxes that are not progressive. For example, everyone who works pays the Social Security payroll tax. This tax does not apply to the investment income that most very wealthy families have, and it only applies to the first $132,900 of earnings a worker receives in 2019.
Americans also pay state and local taxes that are particularly regressive, meaning they capture a larger share of income from low- or middle-income families than from wealthy families. State and local income taxes are much less progressive than the federal income tax, and some states have no income tax at all.
Property taxes levied at the state and local level affect everyone who owns a home or other real estate and affect renters as well because landlords tend to pass on some of their property taxes as part of the rents they charge to tenants.
State and local sales taxes are paid by virtually everyone. These are particularly regressive because poor families have little choice but to spend all their income buying necessities while wealthy families can save most of their income, shielding it from sales taxes.
https://itep.org/who-pays-taxe... [itep.org]
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not so sure about that. See, a problem with the welfare class is its near impossible to get out. Everyone knows to have emergency savings, maybe a month or two of salary, but oh, you can't afford food? Well, I see you have savings in your account so you can't get food stamps until you don't have a nickle to your name. Oh, you're on Medicaid, well, as long as you don't go over this threshold you'll have insurance for free, but as soon as you make another $100 then you'll have to get health insurance on your own or through your job which will likely cost you $200-500/mo.
The welfare state is designed to keep people in. You have to have a massive change in income somehow to jump the gap between welfare and middle class. It's not graduated reductions, dollar for dollar, or better make a dollar lose a half dollar, to allow people to actually come out, and to also give incentive to have savings to deal with emergencies. Instead it sets you up to always have a hand out and to be living by a thread. A mishap and everything blows up on you.
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Just to be clear, this was not a test of "normal" UBI.
2000 unemployed people were given 500 euros per month, unconditionally.
173000 unemployed people were given X euros per month, but the X euros were taken away if they got a job. We don't know what X is.
So the people who were punished for getting a job were less likely to get a job. Over a year, they worked 6 fewer days. Most of the people in both groups remained unemployed.
This was only a test of UBI vs "normal" unemployment payments. The UBI worked s
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Informative)
Price controls cause shortages. Economics 101.
Inflation is not rising prices, and you cannot fight it with price controls. Inflation is too much currency chasing too few real world goods. It manifests as rising prices.
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, with UBI more people will feel secure enough to try entrepreneurship and produce more goods. More small businesses will survive long enough to take off.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll just get even more stuff.
Once you get above a certain income (taxation) level, you are paying way more in taxes to support UBI than you will receive through UBI, so it's a net loss if you are even a little successful.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a financial shell game. The plan would be for the government to see if it should keep the existing unemployment scheme at X billion per year, or switch to UBI at Y billion per year.
If UBI performs better than unemployment, then it just comes down to what the numbers are.
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No, you are listing programs for the elderly or possibly for (universal) healthcare. UBI would NOT have to coincide with removing retirement and healthcare benefits from the elderly, particularly since they have paid into those benefits their entire lives. Also, unemployment is NOT funded federally.
So of all those remaining, welfare, it wouldn't be hard at all to see replacing "all those" with UBI. Of course, "special interests" by definition will be biased either for it or against it. That's not insigh
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would work to just expand existing programs to everybody. For instance everybody would get EBI (food stamps). This also has the advantage that Fox News watchers would know directly how incredibly small this amount of money is and would be unable to run propaganda pieces about college students spending it on lobster. They would know exactly how many lobsters a person can buy with it (not many). And it would eliminate the ridiculous beauracracy installed by that Wisconsin (?) senator who was so mad that somebody with a job could get food stamps.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is retarded. How much US rich end up paying for special living arrangements because they can't live along with people that don't have anything to lose? How much do you pay for private schools because you can't go into same one that general public goes to? How much property value inflates because you *need* to keep certain population out of it? This goes on and on and on. You don't get to live with all that money that you get, you lose it on all the shit that keeps you separated from people that don't have it. Why?
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Every bit of stuff that capitalists get as returns from their capital was taken away from someone else too.
Capitalist systems love to redistribute wealth to the wealthy.
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Nope: a "no true Scotsman" is used to protect a too broad generalization from counter-examples, but stating that basically all first-world countries have some form of welfare is not a "too broad generalization", it's a matter of fact.
Once you have welfare, the question is in which form it's most efficient to provide it: UBI is a new take at the issue with its own pros and cons.
The problem is, the analysis should be made in the long term and from a purely pros-cons point of view: in some places it's instead
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
No I was merely excluding the USA from that list.
Joke aside, any society pays for "those people". You either pay taxes, the beggar (and if only by awkwardly having to act like you don't see them) or the bricklayer to build a wall around your house.
You pay for the fact that some people are treated like lepers. One way or another. Funny enough, usually the more money you save, the unhappier everyone gets... unfortunately this doesn't work as simple in reverse.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
I just completed a degree in Astrophysics, and in my last semester we took Relativity. We obviously cover relativity in a lot of different courses but this was an entire course dedicated to it. It was super cool, we covered tensors, the Einstein field equations, black holes, white holes, parallel universes, all kinds of stuff.
Interestingly, it turns out that the Laws of Thermodynamics actually don't work once you incorporate relativity. They aren't actually "Universal" at all, but only locally true within a particular reference frame.
Redshift, for example, which is due to the stretching of spacetime as light travels through it, violates Conservation of Energy. As a single photon is redshifted, its frequency decreases. From the Planck-Einstein relation (E = hf) the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency. Hence a photon which has been redshifted arrives at its destination with less energy than it left the source with.
Photons are discrete so they cannot be "split" unless they are absorbed and re-emitted by interacting with some matter. Where did the energy go? The answer is that it goes nowhere, it is simply "lost".
Interesting stuff, huh? Completely irrelevant of course, but then again look what I'm replying to.
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The answer is that it goes nowhere, it is simply "lost".
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but doesn't go into the expansion of space?
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Well, expanding space seems to exert a stretching force on photons . . .
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:4, Insightful)
Universal income would be great if it didn't come with a $4 trillion price tag in the US. Plus everyone plans on getting both free health care and universal income so that adds another $3-4 trillion to the price tag.
The US only collects about $3 trillion a year in taxes. These programs need about $7 trillion a year to pay for them. So if we enacted 100% taxation on income over $90,000 that should raise enough revenue to pay for these programs. The problem with 100% taxation is that it causes people to stop working and then there is nothing to tax.
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With a GDP of over $20T, the US has the capacity to fund social programs. $4T-$8T is not a drop in the bucket, but nobody says that feeding, housing, healthcare, and educating hundreds of millions of people would be cheap.
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You have to look at national income, not GDP. GDP includes government and capital spending. For example building a new auto plant is GDP, but it is not income. There is only about $13T of national income in the US.
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When you are figuring out how to pay for this, take into account that state, local, federal are already taking $5 trillion of that $13 trillion in taxes. There is only $8 trillion of income left.
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It is a good point. I can guarantee you that if we had even >80% tax on income over $90K (per your example), I'd quit the day before it went into effect. And if we had universal government paid health care, I wouldn't even find a part time job. I'd just go have fun. To make this universal in the US at the $600/mo they cite, would cost ~$2.4T. Now, remember that someone has to pay for this. Does it come from people paying income tax? At what tier? Businesses paying income tax? Remember all those big busin
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is stupid,. Yes, if the tax was an arbitrary cutoff at 90k for 80-100% of your income, people would be disincentivized to work harder. Which is why that isn't what we would do. It would be a slower ramp. You're responding to a very obvious strawman as though that's what anyone is suggesting.
I'm not sure why you'd quit though. Are you really willing to take that big a drop in income just to spite the government? Cause I would rather have a nice chunk of change than not. Or are you one of the many people who don't understand how a progressive income tax works?
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, you really bought in to supply-side economics. We've tried it, it doesn't work. That should be pretty obvious by now.
The problem we have now is that money isn't circulating in the economy; it's pooling, mostly at the top. A wealth tax, and sensible tax policy would mitigate that, and limit the wealth disparity.
See, money tends to move from the bottom up, not from the top down. Billionaires don't invest because it makes them feel good about themselves, they invest to increase their own net worth. They build systems designed to capture as much wealth as they can, and do everything in their power to reclaim any that managed to find its way in to your hands.
Where do you draw the line? Who draws it?
Wasn't this explained? Right now, the thinking is a top-tier 90% tax rate on income over $50 million. That line is drawn by the people -- through the representatives we've elected. That's how our system of government is supposed to work, when it's not being co-opted by oligarchs.
What you really want to know is why so many people want to draw the line there. That should be obvious if you've been paying attention. Then again, you seem to have trouble understanding how money works.
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I wouldn't even find a part time job. I'd just go have fun.
Really? You only need a $200,000 investment portfolio to sustain a $600 a month draw-down indefinitely. How long would it take for you to save that much if you found a way to live on $600 in your current situation how long would it take you to save that much? Less than 5 years, i'd wager. Chances are, you could quit your job today if that's how you really feel.
Re:Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Informative)
Standard foolishness. And bad math.
First, we are talking about $600 a month. X 12 months, x 300 million americans = 2.160 trillion. That gives the money to everyone, child, senior, students, employees. But that will REPLACE welfare and unemployment, not on top of it. That will reduce it to no more than 2 trillion. That's how much we need to fund this, not 3-4 trillion.
Next the idea of taxing 100% being bad does not have to be explained. The fact you thought it did makes me think a lot less of you.
The federal government collects over 3 trillion, but that does NOT include what the states collect. As the states pay for things that would go away with a universal income, you need to include that too.
So the Total taxes collected by all US taxing agencies is about 5 Trillion, not 3.
As for collecting another 3-4 trillion, yes if we were STUPID enough to get that by taxing 'income' of people only it would not work. But that's not all we tax. There is corporate tax and property tax, and a ton of other taxes. The US GDP is about 20 trillion. We are talking about 10% of it. There are LOTS of ways to collect that extra 2 trillion without doing anything as stupid as your plan.
Elizabeth Warren's tax plan which taxes ONLY people that have $50 million or more dollars would bring in $4 trillion.
More than double what we would need.
Now, I am not saying a Basic Income would be a good idea. But I am saying that you personally are clue-less.
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It's cause of how FUBARed our entire country is. One political party is like ""government cannot work" and people keep electing them to sabotage it. Our US federal government alone spends more (per capita, in absolute terms or adjusted by purchasing power) on healthcare than any other country's government and in Germany, Canada, etc. they at least get healthcare for that cost.
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because it doesn't seem to work any better compared to other social services offered.
It was a good idea, I am happy that they tried it out. But it didn't work. So it is time to move on and try something else.
For UBI recipients are the tax payers. The goal is beyond normal social services hoping people will be willing to work more above UBI as they are no longer worried about basic living needs. It didn't work out.
Now we can look at the data, see what factors caused it to fail, and revamp UBI, or come up w
Re: Mental and Financial Wellbeing (Score:5, Informative)
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All of these studies where a small portion of a population receives UBI do seem inherently flawed. These people have a little more money in an otherwise normal economy. Their results don't really reveal what's going to happen when UBI is truly universal, because that is absolutely a whole different scenario. I kind of think that UBI doesn't really make a lot of sense until we've automated enough that there really isn't enough work to go around.
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UBI, just like any social security program, doesn't introduce more money into the system, so it shouldn't cause inflation. It's a method of redistributing wealth that's already there. Everybody has $2,000 a month more money, but if you're making $10,000 a month you give it back in taxes.
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I wouldn't say his point makes zero sense. It's difficult to express an idea without context, and it's sometimes difficult to give reasonable context without being very specific. I do this all the time, especially over exaggerating points to make mine more clear,
Sure, I don't think anybody would suggest that all alcoholics are poor, and all criminals are poor. But for many alcoholics and criminals, being poor is a huge impacting factor. Maybe that's too specific, being financially insecure can have all
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>People don't commit crimes because they're poor
Stopped reading here. Either you're hiding from centuries of data or just humping absolutes and being disingenuous.
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> Interesting but falls down at step 2. People don't commit crimes because they're poor. Or become alcoholics because they're poor. Or stop being criminals and drinking when they get a job.
Actually, both of those have been observed to happen. What you've offered is evidence that they don't happen exactly 100% of the time, but no one thought they did. The causality question has been studied a lot, and yes, poor people become significantly higher risk for criminal behavior (because they would rather have m
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Most drug use isn't "chemical addictions". Lots of people drink alcohol without ever being alcoholics, and some even drink to excess... without becoming alcoholics. Some popular street drugs are not known to have any mechanism by which they can create chemical dependency in the first place. Other things can produce chemical dependencies which aren't addictions. For instance, benzodiazapines can create a chemical dependency, but they aren't "addictive" in the usual sense. Gambling can produce addiction, but
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UBI, just like any social security program, doesn't introduce more money into the system, so it shouldn't cause inflation. It's a method of redistributing wealth that's already there. Everybody has $2,000 a month more money, but if you're making $10,000 a month you give it back in taxes.
This is incredibly naive. Supply and demand. If you increase the supply of money to the average person, they will spend it creating more demand for products and services, thereby increasing the price for those same products and services. It doesn't matter where that money comes from.
If you are looking to completely decimate the economy, I can think of no faster way than UBI. Though the current COVID-19 shut down is giving it a good run for being faster.
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If UBI simply brings more people to the mean income, why would there be any price pressure at all? The chief issue, I would think, would be the cost to the economy of supporting UBI, because if it was made widely available, that's a pretty massive income redistribution project, and will mean other sectors of the economy will have to pay for it. This means higher taxes, including, I would assume, business taxes. That would cause upward pressure on prices, so clearly there's a point of equilibrium behind prov
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Have you ever noticed that there are fewer farmers now than 200 years ago?
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When the Industrial Revolution began in England, it saw a large exodus of labor from traditional agricultural jobs into factories. That's why England's factory towns rapidly grew during this period. In other words, displacement in one relatively low skilled area of work was replaced by another kind of low-skilled work. Where exactly will the cashiers go work?
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Re:This disincentive argument makes no sense (Score:4, Informative)
you need to read up on the diminishing marginal utility of wealth and income; scholars won Nobel prizes for thinking it through and you are completely oblivious to it. Alternatively, you could brush up on the definition of incentive; the word has a meaning and you can't wish it away.
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In country like Finland, this wouldn't happen because one of the if not the biggest subsidy paid out to the citizenry is the housing subsidy. It's paid to approximately 10% of total population (2017 numbers).
Since the plan is that UBI would basically replace other existing subsidies, it wouldn't impact rent prices at least, because those are already very heavily subsidized by the government.
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About 2/3 for general housing assistance, around 80% for student variant and 100% for military (mandatory conscription for all males of age for half a year to a year). That's just housing benefit. Almost no one gets only that. The typical companion is unemployment benefit, which is often dependent on your salary prior to becoming unemployed for a certain period (I think up to 500 days right now). After that you're dropped to basic assistance which is around 900 euro.
You also cannot get an expensive home for
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Seems easier to just not take it in the first place.
Re:Over 50% tax rate (Score:5, Insightful)
union makes strength, remember? solidarity, protection and redistribution are the very reasons we have civilized communal societies.
if you prefer not to pay and to go alone, fine. build your own roads then, your own army to defend them and offer your services to another species. oh and invent your own telecommunications network to speak to them. on the bright part, you can skip the technology needed to treat your heart disease when time comes because you probably won't make it that far.
those who want society to keep being a thing, though, know that a big chunk of the population is going to be out of jobs due to automation soon. want to just let them starve to death? fine. the problem is that poor people don't buy stuff, nor do robots, and with stuff not being bought your fancy capitalism is game over pretty soon. so to keep this system going those unemployed better be able somehow to keep buying stuff.
if it makes you feel better, just imagine that it's somebody else's taxes, and yours are invested in bailing out banks, military spending and, well, general corruption networks. you will be paying anyway, makes no difference.
Re: Over 50% tax rate (Score:4, Insightful)
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You always get more of what you subsidize (such as, in this case, idleness), and less of what you tax (such as work). Always...
I agree, it probably wouldn't work in the US. The fact that you view UBI as an 'idleness subsidy' (and likely many of your countrymen share that view) is exactly why UBI would not work in the US.
That isn't how it is viewed in Finland (either by the receivers or payers of the UBI), and therefore it works quite well, as you can read for yourself in TFA.
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TFA tries to put a nice spin on it, but is not convincing at all.
Tell you what... Since 1939 or so, we witnessed a multi-decade "experiment", during which Finland (having repulsed USSR) remained Capitalist, while a very similar nation of Estonia (unable to resist Stalin) became Socialist/Communist.
Obviously, Capitalism won, hands down — despite E
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Well, if you read the line under the headline, it makes more sense:
Some workers are making more from unemployment than at their old jobs, complicating reopenings
Regarding your second line, I feel like you're being reckless with the word "always."
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People are being strongly incentivized to stay in their homes. They're also clamouring to be let out. Your hypothesis seems to have some issues.
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The US has a completely messed up model, where you can literally bring in more money in welfare benefits than you can from minimum wage jobs, and the amount of welfare is diminished in proportion to the amount earned. There's no incentive to take a $15/hr job is you're going to lose welfare payments equivalent to $15/hr.
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States Where Welfare Recipients Are Paid More Than Minimum Wage [cheatsheet.com]
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Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
You left out the part about maybe condemning yourself and/or your loved ones to death if you go back to work.
Well done. Do you have any other tricks?
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Gosh, you must not ever get in a car then. Doing that might condemn you and/or your loved ones to death!
Stop being a scared pussy - that's what they want. This is nowhere near as bad as the predictions used to collapse the economy and make you even more dependent on your betters in government.
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that's what they want
THEY???
OH NO! Do you know how much you're risking by posting on a public forum, Mulder? They might be on to you!
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I assume you live in the US or another country similarly stupid. If you lose benefits equal to the amount worked, there's no incentive to work.
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It's astonishing that they still push this lie not just in the face of common sense but against hard evidence.
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Do you think they would still refuse to come back to work if they got the $600/week either way?
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By any objective measure Finland has a better quality of life than your country.
Who knows, he might live in Norway. I kind of doubt it, though.
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Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a myth, one that's tied up with all kinds of interesting history. Poor people are overwheminlgy poor because their parents were poor. *Especially* in the US, which has one of the lowest economic mobility rates in the OECD.
Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a myth, one that's tied up with all kinds of interesting history. Poor people are overwheminlgy poor because their parents were poor.
That is awfully close to "people are poor because of genetics," which is just another way of saying "poor people make poor people decisions."
If you grow up in a poor household, you are either taught frugality or bad habits. That's the difference between generational poverty and temporary poverty. A family that is now 2 or 3 (or 4) generations into welfare subsistence are much more likely to remain poor than a family where a parent loses their job.
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Re:Be careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people are largely poor in the west because of bad choices.
This sounds a lot more like an ideological premise than a supportable statement.
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Nah, the 20 million in the US who have become newly poor simply made the bad choice to live through the COVID-19 epidemic. Every circumstance is simply a choice, you know. /s
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"The market" does not work well when there is an imbalance of power. In the United States, employers have too much power. For example, I believe it's inhumane that a person can lose access to affordable health care if they lose their job; a wealthy society that does not provide affordable universal healthcare to its citizens is immoral.