
Finland launches trial program to pay unemployed citizens a basic monthly income - breitling
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/basic-income-finland-1.3918671
======
osmala
This basic income experiment has plenty of flaws. Many people get DOUBLE that
from government as benefits anyway, so the premise of that experiment is
flawed. The disintensives for smallish amount of work still continue. Finland
has additional benefits for rent, additional benefits for supported children
and increases to standard unemployment benefits for having to support
children. This isn't really the basic income as most people understand it. It
really doesn't replace benefits bureaucracy with something more streamlined
that deals away with disincentives. By disintensives I mean the situation in
which reduction of benefits and cost of getting to work eat the salary and
there is almost nothing left from the work if its a part time job.

~~~
metafunctor
This is not a basic income experiment. This is an experiment to redefine and
simplify unemployment benefits.

Specifically, this experiment eliminates (much of) the problem that earning a
few hundred euros will cut your unemployment benefits by the same amount. It
allows people to take part-time jobs without being penalized. It's not perfect
for the reasons you give and more, but it might be significantly better than
what is currently in place.

The premise that one can find some universal income amount X and do away with
all other types of benefits is a pipe dream anyway. For some, X will be enough
to scrape by. For others, X will not be enough for their medical care
necessary to survive for two weeks. There will always be a need for some extra
needs-based benefits.

~~~
powmonk
I just wish it would stop being touted as a basic income experiment. It's not
even close.

~~~
alkonaut
Any experiment that changes benefits to be unconditional whereas they used to
be withdrawn if you get a job, will provide very useful insight into peoples
behavior under a basic income experiment.

That is why this a useful basic income experiment - regardless of whether the
program itself is classified as basic income in its current form or not.

~~~
notahacker
> Any experiment that changes benefits to be unconditional whereas they used
> to be withdrawn if you get a job, will provide very useful insight into
> peoples behavior under a basic income experiment.

Not really, because (i) tax credits and other proposed "welfare trap"
reduction methods have been around and studied for a while and (ii) it doesn't
attempt to study any of the features of BI widely believed to have negative
impacts such as the cost of extending welfare to millions of people not
currently [interested in being] eligible for it, possible social effects of
decoupling benefit entitlement from any indication of desire/need and net
income reductions to some current welfare beneficiaries if other programmes
such as housing entitlements are cut. As a general rule, experiments which
don't test any of the perceived negative effects of a proposal generally
mislead more than they inform in debates about whether it's an improvement on
the status quo.

------
Nition
The New Zealand Treasury did a basic analysis on a Guaranteed Minimum Income a
while ago (2010) that's a good read, with a lot of actual numbers crunched:
[http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Wor...](http://igps.victoria.ac.nz/WelfareWorkingGroup/Downloads/Working%20papers/Treasury-
A-Guaranteed-Minimum-Income-for-New-Zealand%20.PDF)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
For those of us too lazy to click a link, would you mind providing a summary
or a few dot-points of interest.

~~~
gallerdude
From a table within the source:

Benefits:

 More equal distribution of income

 Removes disincentive for beneficiaries to undertake part-time work

 Poverty is reduced but only at the 60 and 70 percent relative levels (2, 2A)

 May improve labour market outcomes in some areas: more employee flexibility;
encourages unpaid work; additional employee bargaining power; encourages
entrepreneurial activity; and reduces the opportunity cost of full time
training or education.

 Lowers administrative, management and operating costs

Costs:

 Poverty is either increased across all relative levels as Superannuitants
have their payment decreased by 44% on average (1), or is increased when
measured at the 50 percent relative level (2, 2A).

 Horizontal equity problems due to differential treatment of one and two
parent families

 Many current beneficiaries (e.g. sole parents, the disabled and carers) will
be financially worse off under the scheme

 Reduces the supply of labour: decreases hours worked; increases migration of
skilled workers; discourages people from taking entry level jobs; discourages
further education and training; and the EMTRs for families with children are
very high discouraging further work, MFTC (1, 2).

 High personal income taxes have negative implications for saving, investment
and productivity

 Lowers economic growth (estimated at 2.8 percentage points per year)

 Non-alignment causes integrity and coherence issues for the tax system

~~~
Freak_NL
Meta:

You are using a Private Use Area codepoint (U+F0B7) for your lists. These will
show up as boxes-with-a-hex-code in it for some (I get this), the glyph you
intended (no idea) for others, and a completely unrelated and inappropriate
glyph for the rest.

Why not use one of these instead: » → ▶ ◆ ●

~~~
nightcracker
What's wrong with

\- the

\- good

\- ol'

\- hyphen?

~~~
Freak_NL
Nothing, that is fine too of course.

------
apatters
The largest concerns about basic income are that it will reduce the incentive
to work for at least some people, and that it is phenomenally expensive.

Why not solve both problems by simply eliminating income tax on lower income
brackets instead? This is cheaper, easier to implement and less politically
contentious (we already embrace the notion of progressive taxes, and who
doesn't like a tax cut?). It also gives the money directly to those who need
it most.

I suspect many people support basic income because they fundamentally believe
in a world where you shouldn't have to work to make a living. They use
arguments like helping the poor, or putting everyone on an even playing field,
or the claim that tech will eventually destroy jobs anyway as Trojan horses
for this agenda. I don't agree and I think most people would disapprove of
basic income if you told them that it was intended to undermine the culture of
working and earning to make your own living.

If you really want to help the poor and the working class, support the
elimination of income tax on the lower income brackets instead of basic
income. It is a simpler, better, cheaper, and less divisive solution.

~~~
jclulow
You can't give people a tax break if they earn literally nothing. There isn't
necessarily an economically sensible job for every single person, and it seems
ridiculous to invent bullshit or demeaning jobs just so that people can work
to eat.

I reject the idea that working any deadend awful job just to get by is somehow
virtuous. I love what I do, and I would do it even if I didn't need to work --
but being able to say that is an extremely privileged position to be in.

We're automating away industry after industry. There already aren't enough
jobs to go around, and that will only get worse from here on out. I have no
idea what the future should look like, but we have to start by accepting that
the value of working at a job to feed yourself is not irreducible or
axiomatic.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_There isn 't necessarily an economically sensible job for every single
person,..._

Sure there is. Domestic labor (maid, cook, driver, servant) for more
productive people. Mechanical turk. Selling loose cigarettes. Making tacos for
people and selling them by the side of the road.

We know that these are jobs people could possibly do because in India people
actually do them. Americans just have the opportunity not to work, so they
take that opportunity. This makes us all poorer. BI only makes the problem
worse.

~~~
dkersten
There is limited demand for the jobs you list. If population continues to grow
and automation continues to grow, I believe there will soon be more people
than we need for domestic labor, mechanical turk, selling things on the
roadside, fashion and entertainment, maintaining the automations, lawyers etc.
Anyway, robots can sell cigarettes much cheaper than a person can.

I don't think that inventing bullshit jobs (say an extra few layers in your
local bureaucracy) is really a solution.

I'd much rather everyone got a universal basic income and could focus their
lives on something more useful like their families, or creativity and art or
whatever the post-job-world will be about.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I take it that since you believe there is no useful work to be done, you also
oppose expanding the government and providing new services?

Working women don't need child care, and should in fact be encouraged to stay
home to reduce the demand for jobs? Infrastructure is not crumbling and in
need of repair? That's what "no useful work" means.

~~~
dkersten
I didn't say that there was no useful work to be done. I said that I believe
there to be a limit to how much there is and that I believe that, if
automation continues to grow, that population will exceed how the amount of
useful work.

There will always be useful work to be done, but will there be enough for 7
billion people? What about 10 billion people? Especially as more routine work
gets automated "away".

------
avenoir
Could somebody living in Finland comment on what 560 euros per month will get
you?

Edit: Looking at some stats here [1] and it looks like 565 euros is enough to
rent an apartment outside of city center. It also looks like one could
potentially find something for 450 which leaves pretty decent money for food
and perhaps a bicycle for transportation? Definitely not enough if you
consider utilities though. That's some rough living.

[1] [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?country=Finland)

~~~
kisstheblade
It's possible to live with that amount (because schools and health care are
basically free), but it wouldn't be nice of course.

Note that this doesn't really "cost" anything as the people in the program are
already receiving generous unemployment benefits, " The amount will be
deducted from any benefits they already receive."

So the difference mainly is that you don't have to ask for this money or
report it if you start to earn money. I wonder how your other benefits are
affected though (child support, living expenses like rent and utilities etc.)
if you indeed get a job.

The bureaucracy is a nightmare here with unemployment benefits, so hopefully
something good will come out of this project.

~~~
jusssi
With the amount, it might be possible to survive, not to decently live long-
term.

Personally, the lowest I was able to achieve in practice was about 650€.
Gotchas:

1\. It was over 10 years ago

2\. I had student discounts on housing, lunches, public transport etc.

I suppose I could still have squeezed that down if I really had to,
fortunately I didn't.

------
neilwilson
This is fundamentally unemployment benefit paid to those out of work coupled
with working tax credits paid to those in work.

Nothing new to see here at all other than the elimination of the ridiculous
requirement to look for jobs that don't exist - because there aren't enough
jobs.

Not enough jobs is still the issue, and nothing has been done to redress that.
Nothing changes until the buyers market in labour is turned into a sellers
market.

------
jernfrost
I don't see basic income working in its purest form but then again that is not
what this is. This reminds me of the reforms done to the Norwegian pension
system, which allows people to keep working after retirement without reduction
in pension payments. This was to encourage people who are healthy to work
longer than the standard 67 year retirement age.

To my knowledge this has worked well in Norway, and so I suspect a similar
change can work well for the unemployed.

I think we are going down the wrong path with endless reports, and threats to
get unemployed people back into the workplace. I think it would be better with
stronger focus on positive encouragement.

I won't claim to fully understand the theory of guaranteed basic income, but
as it has been explained to me it seems inherently flawed in its purest form.
The whole point of a welfare system is that members of society will
occasionally experience dramatic situations which can get very costly, whether
from unemployment, serious illness or accidents. That means sudden spikes in
money requirements. A socialized system can handle that as those spikes are
evened out over a large portion of people. But a universal pay is constant to
my understanding and thus won't fluctuate with need.

This all it can really solve is hindering people from lacking basic
necessities like food, shelter and clothes. You can make a system which pays
enough to handle every possible case unless you make the payment really high.
A young healthy individual will require less basic income than a disabled
person in a wheel chair with expensive medications and customized house and
car.

------
pmyjavec
Well if valley types have their way and automate 40% or more of jobs in the
next ten years, then what actually is the alternative? This or major uprisings
and violent clashes?

~~~
paulddraper
> automate 40% or more of jobs in the next ten years

No scheme on earth could automate 40% of jobs in a decade.

> what actually is the alternative

As a proportion of total U.S. jobs, farming declined steadily 5% per decade
from 1800 to 1970.

Imagine telling a youth in 1900 that in his lifetime, 35% of the nation's jobs
would disappear. People will have nothing to do!!

~~~
ThomPete
Between 98-2004 the US lost 4 million jobs to the Chinese. In that same period
the chinese lost 15 million jobs to automation.

I don't think most people understand how fast this is going mostly because we
work in the part that still benefit from this.

When automated cars and truck become a reality then 12 million jobs in the us
are in danger. Transportation being the one job that can't be outsourced to
other countries (contrary to Europe) is the most common job in the US. Once
that's gone so are their jobs.

And can we please stop comparing to farming and the luddite fallacy they are
completely missing the point of whats going on right now. Did the horses get
new jobs when cars started taking over?

Technology replaces jobs that require higher and higher levels of abstraction
and while technology keeps improving humans only improve to the extent that
technology allows them to.

Also here is another good example of a huge manufactorer who is going to get
rid of all their people.

It's here faster than you think.

[http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-
robots-a...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/30/14128870/foxconn-robots-
automation-apple-iphone-china-manufacturing)

~~~
rhino369
But this type of thing has been happening routinely since the industrial
revolution.

Secretary used to be the biggest job in America and now it's virtually gone
because of technological progress.

Do you know how many clerks were automated away when the database was created?

Maybe this time is different, but you can't assume it will be.

~~~
ThomPete
Yes and each decade less and less jobs are created. Now the kind of jobs that
are created in the US are primarily either low paid jobs or temporary jobs
(which means no healthcare which means much harder to live off) On top of that
the cost of living is going up.

So the trend is actually showing us exactly that.

If your claim is that new jobs will be created you need to show those new jobs
cause they are needed right now and I don't see what area you are referring to
which should be able to take over.

Saying we don't know is not an argument when the trends show the opposite.

~~~
rhino369
>If your claim is that new jobs will be created you need to show those new
jobs cause they are needed right now and I don't see what area you are
referring to which should be able to take over.

Predicting what the new jobs will is very hard. Someone in 1870 couldn't
predict that a large percent of Americans would stop farming and instead
manufacture cars, radios, and refrigerators. Those things hadn't been invented
yet.

Also, sometimes automation brings cost down and unlocks demand that increases
the number of jobs in total. More people worked in auto manufacturing after
the factory line was invented than before, despite it drastically reducing the
man hours per car.

There may be a period of high unemployment, but the cheap labor will find
uses. Well, it always has in the past. Against this time might be different if
automation is easy enough to replace nearly all low skill human labor.

~~~
ThomPete
It's not really that hard to predict.

Unless you are somehow expecting technology to stop improving and humans to
somehow improve exponentially the trend is pretty clear. Machines will be able
to do most of the things we do at levels we haven't seen before.

It's not hard to predict new jobs if they are there, they should already be
there and you should be able to point to them.

The numbers speak for themselves. As I said the number of new jobs created
have actually gone down decade over decade in the US.

The real danger is saying things like "jobs will come" thats not an argument
when you can't point to it, then it just become a religious belief in
something there is absolutely no evidence for.

------
nabla9
Finland is one of the best places to adopt basic income.

We already have comprehensive and complex welfare system that creates pockets
where effective marginal tax rate is above 100% (going to work part time
reduces welfare, net effect is negative). In the lowest income service
industry almost half of workers would earn the same if they were unemployed.
Fears of people not working if they get the same money without working seems
to be false.

There is already two groups of Finns that get kind of basic income. Underage
children and old people. Underage children get unconditional sum of money
(goes to parents of course). Old people have guaranteed small pension.

This test has many faults, (its only for unemployed, basic income would be for
everyone) but it's unconditional like basic income should be. People get the
same amount of basic income even if they find work, or work only part time.

~~~
ptaipale
On the other hand, there are about 213 000 officially unemployed and 140 000
"hidden unemployed" with an employed workforce of 2 413 000. Worse than that,
the benefit dependency has now started to become intergenerational. About one
fifth of Finnish young men (20-24) are "NEET" (Neither in employment nor in
education or training). To exaggerate a bit, they don't mind living on
benefits as they have enough for housing, food and computer games, or whatever
they do.

The problem with welfare system's pockets of >100% marginal tax are not only
related to money in the long term. It's also that the payment of benefits is
interrupted very quickly upon the employment office learning of someone
getting any job (even temporary and part time) and resuming payments is slow.
So although the money is evened out in the longer run, people who take a job
tend to have short-term cash flow problems. They really suffer for taking a
job, and that is wrong.

BI would help in that, but as a long-term solution on population level the
equation looks unsolvable.

~~~
nabla9
The biggest problem in Finnish welfare is pensions[1]. They are too high for
babyboomer generation. Basic income would allow creation of something similar
to mini-jobs in Germany but still giving people a choice.

\---

1: Yes. Pensions in Finland are welfare. Pension fund savings cover only tiny
percentage of pension. Young working people are paying sums much bigger than
basic income to old people.

~~~
notahacker
Traditional BI as opposed to this experiment essentially _is_ a state pension
- a fixed monthly payment benchmarked to livable income - but paid to working
age people. So if the biggest problem in Finnish welfare is spending too much
on its 1.5million pensioners (and 250k unemployed) you probably don't want to
subsidise another 1.4 million working age people who aren't working or looking
for work, especially if you have to reclaim those costs by taxing the mere
2.7m people in employment.

Ultimately, if BI had the incredibly desirable (and unlikely) effect of
encouraging every one of Finland's 250k unemployed people to start part time
work and pay tax on those earnings, the state would still be much worse off
than before from paying all these economically inactive people a subsidy they
probably don't need.

------
chunsj
Basic income is not free money, it's redistribution so that every people can
live humane life.

~~~
johnnyg
Money comes from value and value comes from somewhere. If you receive a
redistribution, you've not created value but you've received it. That's "free
money".

And remember friends, TANSTAAFL.

~~~
bendmorris
Rent is also value that one didn't create. A way to fund basic income that
particularly appeals to me is a land value tax, because resources that no one
created (land, oil, etc.) don't rightfully belong to anyone and the benefits
from those resources should be shared.

~~~
ryanx435
There is definateky value provided in exchange for rent. Rent is paying to
stay in someone elses building or what not, not just the land. you are
essentially paying the landlord instead of building your own home.

If you think there is no value to living inside, well, that's just delusional.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Sure, there is a component of rent that comes from the structure. But that
isn't the component that causes the price difference between an apartment in
San Francisco or Manhattan and the same size apartment in West Texas or
Detroit.

~~~
ryanx435
That would be a limited supply of units in a high demand area causing the
price difference, which is a fundamentally different argument

~~~
lmm
And what limits that supply? Some combination of a limited supply of land and
limited planning permission, neither of which are created by the landlord and
both of which could very reasonably be taxed.

------
hydandata
This is wholeheartedly welcome, lets hope 2017 brings more news like this. Not
at all surprised that it is being done in Finland.

------
dudul
Why limit the experiment to unemployed people? It would be interesting to see
what people already earning a living do when receiving this no-strings-
attached income.

~~~
grecy
Australia has some of the most liberal welfare payments in the world - anyone
that isn't earning much (or doesn't have a job, or has never had one) can get
around $250 per week. Forever. Very few strings attached. More money if you
have kids, etc.

It's known there are tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people who
just don't want to work and sit around on it for their entire lives. A few
friends did it for a decade after highschool, just surfed all day every day.

Despite all the naysayers and doomsayers about this kind of thing, Australia's
economy and workforce is perfectly healthy, and has been this way for
decades....

~~~
inopinatus
That is an exceptionally positive review of Australia's economic position.

By contrast can I point out that Australia has a high basic cost of living,
colossal levels of private debt, an epidemic of obesity, an ongoing
productivity crisis that was only temporarily masked by a resources boom, and
a demographic inversion just around the corner that is likely to a) overwhelm
the healthcare system and b) elect ever more conservative governments that
will stifle immigration at exactly the time it is most needed.

~~~
fratlas
Could you elaborate on the 'demographic inversion' that's incoming?

~~~
chiaro
Baby boomers exiting the workforce, along with lower birth rates (and some
increasing anti-immigrant sentiment that curtails the normal set of solutions)
will lead to issues with healthcare affordability and end of life care. But
these are issues that all Western countries are dealing with, and I have no
reason to believe that Australia would be harder hit than many others due in
part to the success of our mandatory saving schemes.

~~~
elyobo
The success of the mandatory saving schemes will probably work for a while,
but the current property crisis in Australia is going to put an end to that
eventually. Give it another 30 or 40 years once the non-boomers that have been
unable to buy a place to live (and have therefore being paying rent their
whole lives and will continue to do so in retirement) and there will be an
even worse crisis.

------
alkonaut
Note that this is an experiment to observe the behavior of those who are on
unemployment benefits when they get unconditional benefits. It is not yet
universal income, even on a small scale (as it is conditional on the current
benefit status).

Note that any "complete" welfare state more or less guarantees, that you will
get X income (or at worst, incur a cost of X). Even if you refuse to work,
society will make sure you aren't hungry. There is universal healthcare etc.
So the money is already spent - a basic income only changes the dynamics by
also offering it to those who work.

Offering it to people who work might reduce the number of worked hours, which
would be a positive effect (might create more jobs, improve health etc). It
comes at an increased cost of course - but that can be offset by increasing
income taxes.

If money is distributed and taxes are _not_ increased, then it is a form of
stimulus. In that context, a Basic Income should be compared to central bank
stimulus (artificially low interest rates etc). If you want to make absolutely
sure that stimulus money ends up spent in the economy, as opposed to saved or
transferred abroad etc - then a BI seems like a better idea.

~~~
lintiness
"If you want to make absolutely sure that stimulus money ends up spent in the
economy, as opposed to saved or transferred abroad etc"

i read this all time around here. money "saved" is usually invested, and that
too stimulates an economy -- and probably more meaningfully long-term.

~~~
fab13n
Saving money amounts to producing some wealth without consuming any wealth in
exchange (generally because you expect your savings to conserve value, and
therefore get the right to consume without producing some time later. Like all
bets and promises, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't)

That's good for the economy when there is a lack of supply: plenty of people
willing to buy stuff while nobody wants to make those stuff. When there's a
lack of demand, it doesn't help. When there's a lack of demand, you need to
make people consume more, possibly by delaying / alleviating the expectation
that they produce something valuable first. This consumption is expected to
allow creation of supply. That's the principle of a Keynesian stimulus.

The problem typically associated with massive unemployment is a lack of
demand: there are plenty of unemployed people who would like to produce and
consume, but they can't find anyone willing to buy whatever they might
produce.

Put another way, UBI is a way to raise the velocity of money, the amount of
commercial exchanges per amount of time occurring in the economy; saving
lowers money velocity.

------
thescribe
I'm very interested in this. My own intuition says basic income won't work,
but it'd sure be nice if it did.

~~~
quickben
Eh, 30% of all income is capital gains income, so passive income does work for
the top 1% without problems.

~~~
cperciva
The majority of capital income flows not to the super-rich, but rather to the
pensions of the upper-middle-class.

Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment income;
many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers / accountants)
fall into that top 1% of incomes. The working-age individuals whose income is
_primarily_ from capital are generally in the top 0.1%.

~~~
ragazzina
> Also, most income earned by the top 1% of income earners is employment
> income; many professionals (doctors / dentists / engineers / lawyers /
> accountants) fall into that top 1% of incomes.

I am not American and I don't know if doctors and lawyers are usually
considered 1 percenters, but Wikipedia says "Data on the minimum yearly income
to be considered among the 1% vary per source, ranging from about $500,000 to
$1.3 million."[1] It is my understanding that half a million dollar is not a
common engineer or doctor income, I am not sure most income earned by 1
percenters is employment income.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25)

------
duckingtest
That's pretty pointless... it has absolutely nothing to do with basic income.
It's a limited time stipend. The recipients' behavior would only be identical
if they were so dumb as to not plan more than a month ahead.

------
known
Causes for Economic inequality
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Causes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Causes)

------
arjunbajaj
I don't understand, how do governments plan to have a long term sustainable
basic income for citizens when AI and other technological developments put a
large percentage of people out of jobs?

~~~
ensiferum
For example, tax the robot work equal to human work. But since the robots
don't need money the salary paid to a robot is pooled to a "common bank
account" and then distributed to humans according to some criteria by the
goverment.

~~~
chongli
Robots won't replace humans on a one-for-one basis. One human could be
replaced by a hundred tiny robots or a factory with a hundred workers might be
replaced by a single big robot. We already have single robots that can do a
task hundreds of times faster than a human so how do you tax them equally to
human work?

~~~
vorotato
Tax them by their production. If one robot can do the labor of 40,000 surely
it can pay for the people it displaced so they don't starve to death.

------
jfoldager
> The scheme is part of the measures by the centre-right government of Prime
> Minister Juha Sipila to tackle Finland's joblessness problem.

I like this is not even proposed by a leftist government. The Scandinavian
left-right scale maps outside the political spectrum of many countries.

------
ge96
Haha lucky, seems like one of those "idealized situations"

If we automated everything, where does money/value come from.

I still don't completely understand how money works "it's a ledger, faith,
gateway of energy" a doctor is worth more than a janitor (not arguing that)

Just when there are no skills involved, everyone's the same, would money still
have a purpose.

Though I like the idea of basic income. I wouldn't mind that myself and I
could remove the fear of being homeless from my mind and focus more on web
development.

~~~
chaosagent
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
scarcity_economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy)

~~~
ge96
I don't understand. Is post-scarcity good or bad?

Scarcity seems to be the reason why anything has value.... No forget that I
kind of forgot what I was going with that.

What I did want to bring up is this argument of land vs. population and
energy/raw materials.

If energy is neither created or destroyed, it's just moved around, and
assuming we still have the sun, if we're just using the energy from the sun
through food, then as long as the sun exists, aren't we fine? Same with water.
Water might be transformed but it returns. Where it would it go? There is also
salt water sure you have to take energy/time to desalinate and purify it.

I just don't get that argument of resources if you have an ineexhaustable
supply of energy as the sun for 5 billion years.

Also humans compared to the size of the Earth, we don't even begin to cover it
as far as human size compared to land size eg. continents.

Please correct me as I'd like to learn.

------
rmc
I doubt they are actually giving _cheques_. It's only USA which still
regularly uses cheques.

~~~
grzm
Well, if we're going to be pendantic about it, the USA doesn't have _cheques,_
either. The only _check_ I currently write is for rent.

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jasonmclaren
The HN headline ("Free money for all") is a bit misleading. The article states
that the basic income will only be given to 2000 randomly selected unemployed
people.

~~~
cperciva
_2000 randomly selected unemployed people_

That's how they're selecting the participants for the trial; but continuing to
be unemployed is not a requirement for receiving the $587. (Indeed, this is
the whole point: They want to see if the existing system of unemployment
benefits is creating a disincentive to finding work.)

------
NurAzhar
in Singapore the unemployed can get up to $500 per year LoL

is this a form of basic income

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known
Good initiative since 1% have 99% wealth
[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35339475)

~~~
cperciva
That article actually says that the top 1% have _50%_ of the _net_ wealth.

But "net wealth" is a really weird statistic. The top 20% of the world has
somewhere around 125% of the world's net wealth, because many people are in
debt.

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sean_patel
As humans, we are inherently Lazy.

What's the incentive to start looking for work if there are no strings
attached on how you can spend money? Is Finland the only country in the world
that has 0 junkies, 0 prescription addicts, 0 dads paying child support?

I agree with @aswanson, this is headed for inflation, or an even worse
financial disaster.

Side Note: Is it easy to immigrate to and naturalize as a Citizen? I'm buying
my ticket.

~~~
ashark
> What's the incentive to start looking for work if there are no strings
> attached on how you can spend money?

More money?

> I agree with @aswanson, this is headed for inflation, or an even worse
> financial disaster.

Why would distributing money _per se_ cause inflation? Does inflation go up
any time money goes from one entity to several?

~~~
cperciva
_Why would distributing money per se cause inflation?_

So-called "helicopter money" is very good at inducing inflation, because it
shifts the equilibrium between "holding money" and "buying stuff". This is the
principle behind quantitative easing. But basic income isn't simply a matter
of _distributing_ money; the money also has to come from somewhere, and
raising taxes (or cutting spending elsewhere) in order to fund BI has a
disinflationary effect.

That said, the inflationary and disinflationary effects are likely to not
apply equally across all goods; if you raise income taxes in order to fund a
basic income system, you'll likely see increased inflation on low-end goods
(since the people who purchase them have more money to spend) and decreased
inflation on high-end goods (since the people who purchase those have less
money to spend).

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> That said, the inflationary and disinflationary effects are likely to not
> apply equally across all goods; if you raise income taxes in order to fund a
> basic income system, you'll likely see increased inflation on low-end goods
> (since the people who purchase them have more money to spend) and decreased
> inflation on high-end goods (since the people who purchase those have less
> money to spend).

This is true, but it's worth pointing out that it applies equally to
_anything_ that transfers wealth from the rich to the poor. You get the same
effect from a significant increase in charitable giving from the rich, or a
reduction in apartment rents, or an economic boom that reduces the
unemployment rate.

And it's assuming that a basic income would actually do that. You could have
one that simply replaces the existing tax code and welfare system without
inherently being any more or less progressive on net. You could have one that
does the opposite -- you could lower the effective tax rate on the rich and
have a very small UBI.

How progressive you want the government to be in terms of income
redistribution is completely independent of whether a UBI is preferable to
means-tested welfare.

~~~
cperciva
Right, I was just taking raising income taxes as an example to illustrate that
policies could create zero net _total_ inflation while still resulting in some
people seeing an increase in inflation and other people seeing disinflation.

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Tick2Time
Basic Income is another failed Utopiasm and it depresses me that seemingly
intelligent people are falling for its populist simplicities. But this is the
age of Trump so I should expect no less.

~~~
flukus
> failed Utopiasm

How can it be failed when it's never been implemented?

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dispose13432
1\. $587 a month in many cities in the US will barely rent a room.

Even in St. Louis ([https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-st-louis-rent-
tre...](https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-st-louis-rent-trends/) ),
average monthly rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1000 a month. In LA, it's
over 2000 a month, in NY it's 2700, in Detroit it's at 1000.

SNAP (Food stamps) give about $255 a month. That means that out of UBI, about
$300 is left over for rent.

2\. If everyone in the US gets $587 a month, that's 1.5 trillion a year.

The current US federal budget is 3.8 trillion.

That's about a quarter of current US federal budget, and we still have to give
an actual livable stipend to the truly poor (SNAP, section 8, medicare), some
kind of defense, leave some for state/city tax, federal infrastructure
programs (freeways/trains).

~~~
gokhan
> That's about a quarter of current US federal budget

Only some will be given free money, and almost all of them will be spent since
receivers are poor and cannot save it, would be quite a boost to the economy.
It's a very direct way of implementing Keynesian policies.

~~~
dispose13432
>Only some will be given free money,

I thought the idea is that everyone from Bill Gates to the beggar will be
given it?

~~~
flukus
And most will have their taxes adjusted so that it makes no difference to the
governments bottom line.

~~~
dispose13432
I'm saying that taxes will go through the nose (close to 25%) for everyone
with quite questionable benefits (will barely pay for rent).

