Finland to test 'universal basic income' for the unemployed

peasant

A group of 2,000 unemployed people in Finland will receive a basic income every month from the state, tax-free and with no strings attached. Proponents hope to prove such schemes boost people's motivation to find work.

http://www.dw.com/en/finland-to-test-universal-basic-income-for-the-unemployed/a-36928824

Well ..this will be an interesting experiment.
I for one hope it will work and will serve as an example for other economies

[AH mode] start background music: Dire Straits, money for nothing [/AH mode]

Saipanne

I always wondered why other people don't pay for my lifestyle?

Yay. Bring it on.

Guy:Incognito

So...............dole? With an incentive for employers to pay less ?

Its not a universal basic income unless everyone gets including the employed retired, student in fact everybody.

kippy

mariaalice wrote: »

Its not a universal basic income unless everyone gets including the employed retired, student in fact everybody.

Where was universal mentioned?

osarusan

Some snippets from the OP:

Starting in January, 2,000 unemployed people in Finland will begin receiving 560 euros ($585) every month from the state with no strings attached.

"We think that this could be a big incentive for people to take on at least part-time work," said Marjukka Turunen, head of Kela's legal affairs unit.

Recipients will not pay tax on the basic income, even if they find work and earn a salary in addition to it.

Turunen said many unemployed people who receive social benefits in Finland don't want to take smaller jobs because they fear that, after tax, they will be worse off than before.

kippy

kippy wrote: »

Where was universal mentioned?

Did you read the title of the thread


Finland to test 'universal basic income' for the unemployed

With all the automation and elimination of semi-skilled forms of employment, it makes sense to de-stigmatise the fact of being unemployed. The basic income will only provide for a survivable way of life of course.

All jobs would need to pay enough to make it worthwhile getting to a place of work each day and back again and the basic income would need to remain to maintain an improvement in standards of living.

Saipanne

Saipanne wrote: »

I always wondered why other people don't pay for my lifestyle?

Yay. Bring it on.

It would be far cheaper to administer than the current social welfare system as the money goes into the bank accounts of every (legal) citizen in the country, one cloud computer system would do the work of thousands of civil servants.

mickdw

I believe it's the way forward.
Give every person of working age 188 per week.
Set tax credits so that someone earning say 25k lose all that 188 per week in extra tax compared to current tax rates so for the full time workers there is zero net cost to this.
There should be little in the way of additional benefits over and above the 188 but obviously some room depending on circumstances.
I believe there will be massive savings in terms of fraudulent claims and administration.
The biggest advantage of course will be the incentive to work. No more would you have the situation where you are better off on the dole. Under this scheme if you only earned 50 quid per week, you will be better off than deciding to sit in the house.

kippy

mariaalice wrote: »

Did you read the title of the thread


Finland to test 'universal basic income' for the unemployed

Apologies - trip to specsavers required!

mickdw

mickdw wrote: »

I believe it's the way forward.
Give every person of working age 188 per week.
Set tax credits so that someone earning say 25k lose all that 188 per week in extra tax compared to current tax rates so for the full time workers there is zero net cost to this.
There should be little in the way of additional benefits over and above the 188 but obviously some room depending on circumstances.
I believe there will be massive savings in terms of fraudulent claims and administration.
The biggest advantage of course will be the incentive to work. No more would you have the situation where you are better off on the dole. Under this scheme if you only earned 50 quid per week, you will be better off than deciding to sit in the house.

And another bonus it would eliminate all the foaming at the mouth rage at welfare recipients (maybe)

4068ac1elhodqr

This will be the only option for governments worldwide due to automation/robotics/ai.

By 2030, 2bn jobs worldwide will be lost to progress. Approx 50% of all current positions.
Due to this efficiency and 'economies of scale' it's unlikely that many new roles will need to be created.

user2011

[Deleted User] wrote: »

With all the automation and elimination of semi-skilled forms of employment, it makes sense to de-stigmatise the fact of being unemployed. The basic income will only provide for a survivable way of life of course.

All jobs would need to pay enough to make it worthwhile getting to a place of work each day and back again and the basic income would need to remain to maintain an improvement in standards of living.

I'm shocked, unemployed, thread, boards and sense just don't make umm, sense.

Saipanne

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It would be far cheaper to administer than the current social welfare system as the money goes into the bank accounts of every (legal) citizen in the country, one cloud computer system would do the work of thousands of civil servants.

So thousands more jobs are lost?

mickdw

mickdw wrote: »

Set tax credits so that someone earning say 25k lose all that 188 per week in extra tax compared to current tax rates so for the full time workers there is zero net cost to this.

No the basic income should be universal, like child benefit.

The basic income will be taken into account when calculating the PAYE of employees for tax purposes.
Wages will adjust to reflect this basic income for the earners in the same way as the rents rose to soak up any housing benefits that people were given to enable them to rent in some cities.

Saipanne

Saipanne wrote: »

So thousands more jobs are lost?

It's going that way already, more automation & cloud computing taking away their jobs.

Saipanne

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It's going that way already, more automation & cloud computing taking away their jobs.

Can I get free money? Because all I see every month are hands in my paycheck.

peasant

Saipanne wrote: »

Can I get free money? Because all I see every month are hands in my paycheck.

It's never going to be free, just unconditional.

Saipanne

Saipanne wrote: »

Can I get free money? Because all I see every month are hands in my paycheck.

Sure! Become a central banker, then you can print as much as you want.

4068ac1elhodqr

Money will only be available electronically shortly, paper-printed notes will become void.

To see if you'll become a 'UBI recipient', read the occupation checklists for 2030 and beyond...

Saipanne

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Sure! Become a central banker, then you can print as much as you want.

That's a no then. Guess I'll have to keep funding the lifestyle of the lazy.

Saipanne

peasant wrote: »

It's never going to be free, just unconditional.

It's free for people who get my tax contribution.

Saipanne

Saipanne wrote: »

That's a no then. Guess I'll have to keep funding the lifestyle of the lazy.

I don't you get how this works.

Water John

Without your dedication, Saipanne, the whole show would grind to a halt.

Saipanne

mariaalice wrote: »

I don't you get how this works.

I do. I earn money. The state takes half. That money goes to people who don't work. Same as before.

Saipanne

Water John wrote: »

Without your dedication, Saipanne, the whole show would grind to a halt.

Without the dedication of hard-working people like me, yes, the gravy train would derail.

Ulysses Gaze

Saipanne wrote: »

Can I get free money? Because all I see every month are hands in my paycheck.

Become a Developer, take loans of billions of Euro, live the life of Riley, go bankrupt, run to the UK and stay there a year, come back and start again!

Without paying back a penny!

P.S. Make sure you give a few brown envelopes of cash to FF politicians though.

Matteo Fat Jug

Matteo Fat Jug wrote: »

Money will only be available electronically shortly, paper-printed notes will become void.

To see if you'll become a 'UBI recipient', read the occupation checklists for 2030 and beyond...

Fortunately, I'll be retired by then (unless I need to continue because the pension system gets fúcked up in the meantime).
My IT role involves a lot of cable patching and configuration, so would be half safe in the future, the configuration part can easily be automated. But the manual elements of networking are almost impossible to completely automate as people will always be needed to install the kit into racks.

Water John

The majority of us pay taxes. Its what runs the system. It's about time we began to get imaginative with the problems.
It's time for another phase, what ever direction that may take.
A big leap, as per Nye Bevan.

Then some wish to go back to before his time.

Fr_Dougal

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

Become a Developer, take loans of billions of Euro, live the life of Riley, go bankrupt, run to the UK and stay there a year, come back and start again!

Without paying back a penny!

P.S. Make sure you give a few brown envelopes of cash to FF politicians though.

You forgot the part where these bankrupt developers get re-employed by NAMA.

Saipanne

Saipanne wrote: »

I do. I earn money. The state takes half. That money goes to people who don't work. Same as before.

Robots don't pay taxes and they do the majority of the work these days, much of the revenue that governments collect are indirect taxes, rather than income tax. That trend will only increase as fewer work and more indirect taxes are raised, just look at the recent addition of property & water* charges taxes for example.

*well before the revolt that has stopped them for the time being.

Yourself isit

Saipanne wrote: »

Without the dedication of hard-working people like me, yes, the gravy train would derail.

You are hard working because there is work available. UBI is designed for a future without work (if that happens).

Yourself isit

Matteo Fat Jug wrote: »

This will be the only option for governments worldwide due to automation/robotics/ai.

By 2030, 2bn jobs worldwide will be lost to progress. Approx 50% of all current positions.
Due to this efficiency and 'economies of scale' it's unlikely that many new roles will need to be created.

I doubt that to be honest. If it does happen the world economy is fcuked.

It's an interesting idea, would like to see it vs the cost savings from administration and investigation into fraudulent claims etc

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Sand

Its an interesting one. 10 years ago, I would have had no time for this sort of idea. Get an education, get a haircut, get a job would have been an accurate summary of my views. However, automation is going to destroy hundreds of millions of low skilled jobs. The idea that someone can succeed if they just work hard enough is just not going to fly when automation works harder, faster, longer and more reliably than any human. People shouldn't assume any white collar job is safe either - most trading is automated, with powerful trading software constantly monitoring prices across multiple markets and seeking arbitrage opportunities measured in split seconds. Creativity, charisma and ambiguity may become the only defining human characteristics employers are willing to pay for and those are not something you can be trained in.

What are those hundreds of millions of educated but unemployable people going to do when there is no jobs to be found and they are not the new 'Notch' able to create economic value from sheer creativity and technical know how? Watch while wealth continues to accumulate with a increasingly smaller group of people? They cant be ignored given they will still retain their votes. Brexit and Trump signal that clearly. Society is going to have to figure that out over the next 50-100 years.

I think experiments with universal basic income are important, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out. The main obstacle will be de-stigmatising the concept of unemployment in a society without jobs, but at the same time maintaining drive, ambition, endeavour.

Yourself isit

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

It's going to have to be bloated as there won't be any private sector jobs in the future.

Permabear

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Or never replaced as they retire, like the railways did with the firemen as the unions refused to allow them to be made redundant (British Rail had firemen on the books for over 20 years after the last regular steam train ran).

Ulysses Gaze

Yourself isit wrote: »

It's going to have to be bloated as there won't be any private sector jobs in the future.

Not a chance. And this is just in the UK.

More than 850,000 public sector jobs could be lost by 2030 through automation, according to a study that comes as a further blow after hundreds of thousands of jobs disappeared following the government’s austerity cuts.

The research conducted by Oxford University and Deloitte, the business advisory firm, found that the 1.3m administrative jobs across the public sector had the highest chance of being automated.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/25/850000-public-sector-jobs-automated-2030-oxford-university-deloitte-study

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Sand

Sand wrote: »

The main obstacle will be de-stigmatising the concept of unemployment in a society without jobs, but at the same time maintaining drive, ambition, endeavour.

I think that should read:

the main requirement will be de-stigmatising the concept of unemployment in a society without jobs

Yourself isit

If automation is as job destroying as claimed - and I have my doubts - then nothing is going to stop economic stagnation at best, decline at worst. UBI is just like the last days of the roman empire when the plebs didn't work - slaves did all the work. They didn't engage in revolution but the empires economy was static for generations.

Wage increases along with productivity increases allowed society to get richer in a virtuous feedback loop in the last century. Workers demanded more money, employers more productivity - more money in circulation and more goods in production.

Now automation can produce more but the demand won't be there - the best transmission mechanism for moving money through the economy is wages, as most people don't live of interest, dividends or capital.

UBI won't make up for this lost demand.

Glenbhoy

This has been tried a few times in the past (Google mincome Canada) and doubtless such experiments will become more common place in the future, the amounts involved in this experiment don't seem particularly high which may negate the effectiveness of this one.
As others have alluded to, jobs as we know them will be changing, though, effects may not be as drastic as some think, we'll still come up with some excuse to get out of the house for 7-8 hours a day!!

Water John

Really excellently well put post, Sand.

AlmightyCushion

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

They'll probably have to get paid for relocating as well. This also assumes that the UBI continues to stay as simple as when first implemented. I can't see that being the case. Just look at how complex our current social welfare system is. It used to simpler than it currently is. The moment this comes in you'll have people complaining that Michael O'Leary, Denis O'Brien, other wealthy Irish people get the same as some poor, elderly pensioner. So then there will be a cut off point. Then we'll hear complaints about lazy 18 year olds who still live with their parents and don't bother their arse working getting the same as a struggling single mother. So child benefit is brought back in and young people get a lower UBI rate. Before you know it we'll have a very similar system to what we have now and we'll still have thousands of civil servants having to do the admin work for it.

It's a nice idea but in the real world I can't see it staying as simple and reducing red tape in the long run.

Yourself isit

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

It doesn't. You're right. But that's a failure of the private sector as much as the public sector. There won't be any jobs when you fire the public servants.

Sand

Pillow Feather wrote: »

Why should some people get other people's value when they can't provide value in return?

Ultimately? Because there is 99 of them and 1 of you. Do you really want to force things down a competitive, winner takes all environment?

Society has always been about the wealthy and powerful securing the consent of the poor and weak. All through history, the wealthy have taken pains to present themselves as benefactors, patriarchs, concerned with their fellow man. That balance is not being struck anymore in any serious fashion. American billionaires are more likely to donate to the cause of the lesser spotted bolivian shrew, than the people who often live less than a mile from where they do.

Yourself isit

Ulysses Gaze wrote: »

Not a chance. And this is just in the UK.



https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/25/850000-public-sector-jobs-automated-2030-oxford-university-deloitte-study

I think with automation (again I doubt the science here but let's go with it) is generally assumed that if we can do it we will. That's ignoring the political reality.

Yourself isit

Yourself isit wrote: »

If automation is as job destroying as claimed - and I have my doubts - then nothing is going to stop economic stagnation at best, decline at worst. UBI is just like the last days of the roman empire when the plebs didn't work - slaves did all the work. They didn't engage in revolution but the empires economy was static for generations.

Wage increases along with productivity increases allowed society to get richer in a virtuous feedback loop in the last century. Workers demanded more money, employers more productivity - more money in circulation and more goods in production.

Now automation can produce more but the demand won't be there - the best transmission mechanism for moving money through the economy is wages, as most people don't live of interest, dividends or capital.

UBI won't make up for this lost demand.

Stagnation is a given, when you consider the fact that we're mostly maxed out on just how much consumer products we can possibly possess.
The only way we're going to continue growth is to have disposable everything, we're pretty close to that already!
When did you last upgrade your phone and how old was the previous one when you binned it?
Much of the growth in recent years has been as a result of planned and perceived obsolescences product lifecycle being shortened, a washing machine made in the 1980s lasted 12 years, one made last year will be lucky to be working in six.

Sand

Yourself isit wrote: »

Wage increases along with productivity increases allowed society to get richer in a virtuous feedback loop in the last century. Workers demanded more money, employers more productivity - more money in circulation and more goods in production.

The middle class share of the wealth - and the virtuous feedback loop with it - has flatlined/declined for the past few decades. The economic gains are going to fewer and fewer people. People increasingly feel their children will do worse in life than they will for the first time in a long time. Things cannot continue on the current trend as a political or an economic system.