
Finland ends Basic Income trial - sixhobbits
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700
======
sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921).

------
rijoja
Doesn't testing this on unemployed people only quite silly. I mean the answer
to the question "would poor people benefit from more money?" is quite obvious.
The real question is whether people who already are employed would stop
working had they received "free" money. I'm so disappointed in this glaring
hole in the methodology!

~~~
dragonwriter
> Doesn't testing this on unemployed people only quite silly.

Not necessarily: if the purpose of the test is to determine how basic income
affects outcomes over a period for the unemployed, having the experimental
group to whom BI is given be exclusively drawn from the set of people
unemployed at the beginning of the experiment and comparing that to a similar
group of unemployed people not given BI is a fairly sane experimental design.

~~~
scarmig
It's important to emphasize that right now, the responsible thing is to
perform extensive experiments on how UBI will affect work incentives. There
are lots of unknowns, and this will give us some information to formulate
later questions, once results are actually reported.

------
jadedhacker
There's literally no information in this article other than the government
decided to end the trial. One reason it might have been ended is because there
were anti-social effects. However, it might also have been ended at the behest
of anxious rich people afraid that positive results would increase their
taxes. We'll have to wait for the full report.

------
elihu
The headline "Finland's basic income trial falls flat" implies that the
results were poor, but the actual article just says that the government
decided not to fund it anymore and the OECD doesn't think it'll work without
going into what the results were.

~~~
manicdee
The Finland experience turns out to be a great example of how not to run a UBI
experiement:

\- no management support (government was divided and attention wandered)

\- unemployment benefits sre privately managed so those entities lose out if
UBI is successful

\- not universal (no entire village/city was chosen)

\- tiny sample size

\- only unemployed people chosen

\- no employed people, chosen from a range of income brackets

But regardless of the flaws, the experiment will be held up as an example of
why UBI doesn’t work (never mind that the experiment was not UBI).

------
mgleason_3
There’s a lot of unanswered questions. To bad the results weren’t released.

It’s interesting that the OECD feels “Basic Income” would increase Finland’s
poverty rate while their proposal for a “Univeral Credit” (a consolidated
benefits system) would lower it. But, it gives no clear reason why.

~~~
mgleason_3
Possibly the Basic Income is seen as a disincentive to work because you only
receive it if you’re unemployed (or earn less than a minimum income level).
But you loose it once you’re employed (or earn more the minimum income level)

------
medlazik
> _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._

560€ for the unemployed? We've had this in France for decades[1]. Not sure why
they needed such an experiment.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_acti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_active)

~~~
tjoff
I don't know how it is in France but I think the keyword here is
_unconditional_. I'd guess most countries require you to actively look for
jobs and potentially force you to accept any reasonable job you might get or
you loose the "income".

~~~
medlazik
Of course, missed that part. My point was more about the 560€ which is
ridiculous as an incentive to anything. The RSA is regarded as poors staying
poor and profiteers gaming the system to keep having it. It was pretty clear
an _unconditional_ 560€ wouldn't have changed anything.

------
partycoder
Universal basic income makes sense if you are spending a lot of money on
people already:

\- crime prevention

\- justice system (the state gives you a free attorney if you cannot pay for
one)

\- jail is more expensive than an expensive hotel

\- people without shelter going to hospital emergency rooms

The idea is that by giving them money they would get back on their feet. Some
people don't care though.

Personally I think it should not be universal, and that there should be
certain amount of merit to apply for it.

------
i_am_nomad
You cannot possibly have a meaningful trial of UBI unless most if not all of
the population is receiving it. Providing a basic income to all will
profoundly alter the economy in some ways we can predict and in some ways we
cannot.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Providing a basic income to all will profoundly alter the economy in some
> ways we can predict and in some ways we cannot_

If proponents can't propose sensible and limited tests to de-risk a UBI
proposal, it's not a serious one. There are downside risks to raising tax
levels by 30%. That has to be offset with experimental data.

~~~
scarmig
I'm a strong proponent of a UBI, and I agree with you 100%.

But you make it sound like most UBI advocates are insisting it be inplemented
in one fell swoop and have no idea how to test it empirically. That's not the
case at all: this was one such test, and I'm eager to see the actual
methodology and results.

Another is being run by YC itself.

This isn't some imaginary proposal that can never fail and can only be failed.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _you make it sound like most UBI advocates are insisting it be inplemented
> in one fell swoop_

Pardon me, didn't mean to come across that way. The history of social programs
informs us to start small and scale carefully. If a program doesn't work in a
town, it's unlikely to work nationwide.

~~~
scarmig
We're probably in agreement, then. Though, with a caveat: sometimes it can
fail in a town but succeed on a wider scale. For instance, a city offering
generous, open-access homeless benefits is almost doomed to have all its
benefits swamped as it attracts homeless from around the country, but that
doesn't give us much information about how the same policies would work if
implemented nation-wide.

In the case of the UBI, though, those effects can be worked around by
designing the experiment well.

------
tabeth
I've never really understood basic income. Why give everyone free money? Why
not just give the people who need things the things they need?

Is this really an economic problem or a cultural one? Just decide on what
everyone should have and how much and then find those who lack those things
and give it to them.

EDIT: the responses below are interesting but unconvincing. Why wouldn't
giving everyone X amount raise all prices by X?

In a world with targeted advertising and unprecedented advertising I'm
confident basic income would be counter productive.

If giving everyone X works, why not 2X? 3X? Lastly, where is the money for
this scheme coming from and why would anyone who doesn't need it agree to
this?

~~~
azernik
Because knowing what people need requires an expensive and error-prone system.
Most people know what they need and will go buy it given the money to do so -
the joy of fungible assets!

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _knowing what people need requires an expensive and error-prone system_

Unemployment provisioning in the United States is relatively inexpensive. I
wonder if the administrative savings are being overstated, having been
estimated before governments digitized such things.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Unemployment provisioning in the United States is relatively inexpensive.

UI isn't about identifying very specific needs, it's about identifying a
particular easy to assess monetary need and meeting some of it: people whose
lifestyle is adapted to the income provided by their job, without it, need an
income roughly comparable to the take-home income from their job.

That's pretty much the easiest need assessment in public safety net programs.

------
marricks
I think the best thing to try is universal basic income for those making less
than X and then slowly getting phased out once you hit middle to upper class
is best. People want to work but if the end up not getting enough to live
while looking for work and not much more when the work you have a recipe for
trouble.

Getting everyone onboard with taxing the rich to pay for it would be tough in
US with its penchant for doing the exact opposite, cutting welfare and giving
wealthy tax breaks... how trials like this go will be very interesting. I look
forward toy the results even if it’s just targeting unemployed persons.

~~~
andrewchambers
Then it is not "universal" or "basic" anymore, how is that different to just
more benefits.

~~~
freeloop10
It depends on how you look at it. A phase out of UBI could also be viewed as
an additional tax.

In fact, you could consider the current system of benefits only if you are not
working a form of UBI, if you just treat the UBI not received by the working
as a tax against the benefits they would have received.

All in all, UBI isn't much of a departure to what we already have, except that
people are expecting the benefits given would be much moar.

------
RickJWagner
"US venture capitalist Sam Altman, who runs start-up funder Y Combinator, is
organising a basic income experiment."

Interesting.

Also: Those uber-rich guys who like the idea should pony up some cash, maybe
spreading it around the poor community of San Francisco. It'd be a great way
to study the concept.

