
Finland to end basic income trial after two years - neic
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/finland-to-end-basic-income-trial-after-two-years
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okket
Other recent discussions about Finlands basic income:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=basic%20income&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

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jillesvangurp
Basic income for some is not basic income. No country has tried this yet.

Most countries actually do have a form of basic income where they are
subsidizing food, shelter, healthcare in some form or another for essentially
all people falling outside of the safety net of income, pensions, social
security & welfare, charity, etc. I tend to think of basic income as the
former without the absolutely massive bureaucratic overhead. An enormous cost
saving in other words. To put this in perspective: many European countries
spend almost as much on unemployment programs and related bureaucracy as they
do on the actual benefits payed to the unemployed.

With a basic income you could abolish minimum wage, make labor cheaper for
companies and less risky, make it easier for people to take multiple small
jobs to supplement their basic income and reduce their risk, stop forcing
people to retire or forcing them to work until they are allowed to retire
(both are bad), make all forms of income insurance opt in (pensions,
disability benefits, unemployment insurance), etc. It just simplifies things a
lot.

The reason this is not happening is that dismantling the existing bureaucracy
is highly disruptive and will be hugely unpopular.

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PinguTS
Bureaucracy is also some type of basic income.

Disrupting bureaucracy means also higher unemployment, because that means,
that those people have either to find another job or the will live on welfare
as well.

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jillesvangurp
I see this as a form of hidden unemployment that we just happen to favor
sponsoring collectively for whatever reason. These people would fall back to
basic income and be free to take jobs just like everybody else; depending on
ability and willingness.

But I take your point and this is why I pointed out that dismantling this will
be highly disruptive and unpopular. Ironically, the problem is bigger in
countries that are more likely to otherwise be in favor of a form of basic
income. I.e. countries with extensive existing social security systems.

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Sharlin
Finn here. The trial has been criticized from the get-go as being a poorly-
designed compromise; those of us with a more cynical outlook suspect that it
was intentionally nerfed so as to discredit the idea of basic income in
general. But I guess it's just politics as usual; the current government as a
whole is not exactly sympathetic with the idea of free money to "lazy people".
Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem with the
current system.

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brownbat
> Everyone does seem to agree, though, that welfare traps are a problem

Do you have any programs like the EITC, where benefits fall on a curve and
slowly phase out as you make more, so there's no hard cliff?

Wiki:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit)

Graph:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditW...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earned_IncomeTaxCreditWithOneQualifyingChild.PNG)

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Gravityloss
We have the opposite, it's more of a skyline graph. If you receive subsidies,
a lot of the time, working or studying will yield large and unexpected
decreases to your total amount of income.

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brownbat
It's hard to find much about why, BBC has a link to a study by an OECD think
tank criticising the program, but no idea if that study specifically motivated
decisionmakers in Finland.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-43866700)

Study: [https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-
economic-...](https://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/Finland-2018-OECD-economic-
survey-overview.pdf)

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198739834
Basic income is an admittance that hundreds of millions of people are no
longer necessary. Governments and corporations will not pay billions of
dollars per year to people who do nothing. It will result in a strange
situation where companies like Apple will be giving people money so that they
can buy the iPhones they make.

Eventually, these people will somehow have to disappear. This means there will
also be less demand for the robots to make things. This would then end with a
small population with robots occupying the planet.

Welfare is essentially a way to kill a human's soul. If the choice is to go
out slowly like this, then I would say "it is better to die on your feet, then
live on your knees".

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80386
Necessary for what? Maybe not optimizing iPhones. But somebody has to make the
music that goes on the iPhones, and it's pretty hard to do that if you're
working on their hardware full-time. There are already plenty of "necessary"
people who consume the cultural output of the "unnecessary".

As for their eventual disappearance, they'll be neglected, but they won't be
slaughtered -- if nothing else, that doesn't look good for the cameras. And if
war breaks out in Elbonia between its "necessary" and its "unnecessary",
Elbonia's enemies will probably provide military aid to the "unnecessary".
It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam.

That said, I think a lot of the support for basic income around here is
connected to the demise of academia as a viable career track. Personally, I'd
like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a week (plus my
commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research in fields I'm
interested in.

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198739834
>Necessary for what?

For whatever the people who provide the money need.

>There are already plenty of "necessary" people who consume the cultural
output of the "unnecessary".

I don't think the corporations/governments will just have a few hundred
million people around to add some culture to the place.

>It's worth remembering here that America lost in Vietnam.

Yes but the infrastructure of modern society is extremely fragile. The
occupying force (the governments/corporations) already have control of it at
the start of the war. The only reason we have so many people is due to this
infrastructure. If it was a war where the population was not as fully
industrialized, it would be different.

That is not to say the robot owners will win the war, but lots of people would
die before then.

>Personally, I'd like UBI, but mostly because I'd use it to free up 40 hours a
week (plus my commute, time outside of work invested in a career) for research
in fields I'm interested in.

That is what people think they will do, but it is not what they will do. It is
not the utopia that they think it will be because there are fundamentals about
human nature that mean we don't really just sit around thinking up theories
and playing guitar. The people on welfare now do not have that life. They are
mostly depressed and subdued, which is the point of welfare.

Humans in general need things like self-determination, the feeling of being
valued, the ability to maybe have hobbies that cost more than a basic income.
Getting a job won't be easy to make more money, as there will not be many
jobs.

~~~
80386
>That is what people think they will do, but it is not what they will do. It
is not the utopia that they think it will be because there are fundamentals
about human nature that mean we don't really just sit around thinking up
theories and playing guitar.

We already have a sample population for this: retirees. Empirically, some
people do need jobs, and some don't. I work with a guy who retired, couldn't
stand it, and rejoined the workforce. On the other hand, my mother retired
early to go into astrophysics.

I'm about to quit my job and work on improving my coding skills (and
networking, and so on) until I get hired in tech. A few of my friends are
doing the same. (Independently - I'd already decided to do this when they
started telling me about their plans.) They seem to be doing better than they
were before they quit.

Maybe that's a mistake, and I'll end up depressed and subdued if I'm not on
someone's payroll. But I don't think so. I'm working a physically exhausting
job with hours that aren't very compatible with having a life outside work - I
don't think I have to worry about becoming _more_ depressed and subdued.

> The people on welfare now do not have that life. They are mostly depressed
> and subdued, which is the point of welfare.

I think there are some important differences between welfare and UBI. If
you're on welfare, it means you've failed at the grind - if you're on UBI, it
might just mean you've opted out of it.

I don't know much about the welfare system, but I'd be surprised if it's
possible for someone to live indefinitely on welfare alone. With UBI, that may
end up being a possibility.

Another possibility with UBI is to use it to free up resources for investing
in your future. I worked with a guy who was holding down three different jobs,
working seven days a week, because that's what he had to do to make ends meet.
Maybe he should just learn to code, but where's he going to find the time?

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Simulacra
I'm interested to see what the final report on this program will say. My only
concern with UBI programs is that if a company, landlord, etc. knows someone
is receiving an additional amount of money for free each month, then they can
raise their prices by that much.

