Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

It&#x27;s a general misunderstanding that Basic Income is some sort of job program, it&#x27;s not. It&#x27;s a job replacement program for a society where there aren&#x27;t enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most.<p>Basic Income should provide fundamental living cost support in a society that has no jobs so there is no &quot;but&quot; in there.<p>Edit: Keep in mind we already have Basic Income it&#x27;s just conditional. UBI is different.

Except, of course, that the actual report has not been completed yet.<p>The article has a single quote from a participant, and the rest is literally just opinion and thoughts.<p>There&#x27;s nothing to get excited about yet.<p>It&#x27;s going to be very interesting to read the report though, once it&#x27;s published.

Which would be a fine outcome. We&#x27;re entering a real messy period where dignified, decent paying jobs are becoming scarce. All of our philosophies about work and welfare are rooted in a post WWII era where we were essentially rebuilding the world and there was more work than competent people. If we are going to insist that all productivity gains must now go directly to the capital class, we&#x27;re going to need a UBI, universal healthcare and housing guarantees.<p>I worry that greed is too baked in, and those that have would rather let the world burn before they give the current system up.

The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn&#x27;t work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the participants.<p>The sample of 2000 people were chosen from a <i>group of unemployed people</i>. I think the criteria for being randomly chosen was having been paid unemployment benefits during some range of dates.<p>So it&#x27;s not representative of a real UBI at all: the point of UBI isn&#x27;t to necessarily make things better for the unemployed but, rather, the large group of people who make very little money and barely get along.<p>Cashiers, cleaners, etc who can&#x27;t live on their earnings, at least in big cities. Or self-employed one-person shops whose income stream is very choppy and who don&#x27;t make much anyway. Real UBI would be <i>universal</i> so those who are working would get it too -- of course the UBI would increase your income and likely your tax percentage so it would mostly be taxed away from those who do earn a living.<p>The point of UBI is to cut down on bureucracy by removing various individual case-by-case subsidies (but bureaucrats would never vote for that) and make some base level of income predictable and reliable, mostly for people who make less than the lower middle class.

&gt; The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs<p>I&#x27;m confused, was that ever the expected goal of basic income?

So, basically the article says that unemployed people who received a basic income stipend of $685&#x2F;month weren&#x27;t any more likely to get jobs within 2 years than a control group who didn&#x27;t.<p>This doesn&#x27;t seem very surprising to me – if anything, I would expect people on UBI to be <i>less</i> likely to get jobs, and this study seems like evidence against that.

This is a weird title. The article says that the people on basic income were equally likely to find a job as those who were not receiving it. I was expecting that basic income might make people less motivated to find jobs, and that would have been an issue. But this result seems like a positive outcome for UBI.

As someone who wants to remain in the workforce, the absolute most frustrating thing about taking a break between jobs or wanting to bootstrap a company or start something new is not the lack of income during that time but that my healthcare in the US is tied to having a job.<p>Yes, I can buy individual insurance, but moving off and on new plans is incredibly time consuming, and if you have a certain prescription that you are on or have something that is covered by an employer plan but may not be covered by an individual on then it&#x27;s highly risky to leave.

While this article is about an even more special population of UBI recipients I have two general criticisms about UBI studies:<p>1. They are usually time limited. You can expect different behavior if you get financial security for limited time or for life.<p>2. Most studies seem to be externally financed (here the whole state vs a small population). The interesting part is if people are willing to pay for this within their community. Are you okay to pay for your slacking neighbor (even if she is the exception and UBI turns out to be overall good)?

I find the narrative of the article focussing on &quot;how it failed&quot; and only one condition. &quot;Did it increase employement&quot; Of course this is what some might have expected from it, but the researcher itself not. Which is only included as a very last line.

I still see some big issues with universal basic income, and would appreciate one of its supporters responding to some of them:<p>Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. That&#x27;s nearly 20% of America&#x27;s GDP. How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it?<p>Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level before we commit our entire nation. Why would a national government do this?<p>Necessity. I don&#x27;t think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k (maybe not the right number, but there should be a cutoff). That just takes money away from those who need it.<p>If a supporter of UBI can respond, I&#x27;d like to discuss possible concerns and benefits.

Surprising that paying people to not work didn&#x27;t lead to more people working!

What is supposed to be the bad part of this? I would equate &#x27;happier&#x27; with &#x27;getting their needs met.&#x27;<p>If you have more people than work that needs to get done I don&#x27;t have a problem with the people who aren&#x27;t working being able to live.

There is a basic misunderstanding here. A basic income is unconditional. The Finnish study was not basic income because it was not unconditional. It was instead an experiment to find out if giving specifically unemployed people money would help them find a job.<p>It sounds like perfectly ordinary social security from my perspective in Norway, perhaps with some of the requirements relaxed.<p>If people want to find out if basic income works it has to be given to a representative slice of the population. This has been done several times in North America (once in Canada, and twice in the US), as far as I can tell it was successful.

I always thought the point of basic income was so that you didn’t necessarily need every member of society employed in the traditional sense

&gt; &#x27;happier but jobless&#x27;<p>That&#x27;s a very misleading title.<p>&gt; Universal basic income, or UBI, means that everyone gets a set monthly income, regardless of means. The Finnish trial was a bit different<p>That&#x27;s a huge difference. It encourages some of the unemployed people to stay unemployed. That&#x27;s called &quot;poverty trap&quot;.<p>This was not real UBI. Also, a 2-year long trial can be very misleading. People take very different choices knowing that they&#x27;ll receive UBI for 2 years, or 10 years, or their whole life.

So that if they are happier then that IS success. Job or no job is irrelevant.

Very dishonest headline. It failed to increase employment among people who are already unemployed, which no one expected it to do. It also did not <i>decrease</i> their number of working days.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MattBruenig&#x2F;status&#x2F;1093859412182212609" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MattBruenig&#x2F;status&#x2F;1093859412182212609</a>

Seriously asking. Is it possible to use your basic income to get a loan?<p>I just envision people buying all sorts of things without understanding what they&#x27;re signing up for.<p>And from a U.S. perspective, I don&#x27;t trust a system filled with rent-to-owns, payday lenders, and car dealer&#x2F;financers stopping anyone from making bad choices.

This title misrepresents the outcome. A better headline would have been:<p>&gt; Finland basic income trial improved happiness but not employment<p>It’s unfortunate the BBC chose that quote, as it misrepresents the outcome of the trial as _creating_ joblessness, rather than failing to _alter_ joblessness.

&gt; The Finnish trial was a bit different, as it focused on people who were unemployed<p>I think UBI would help people who are already employed in jobs that they hate, to find&#x2F;invent meaningful jobs. A lot of employed people are miserable but just surviving doing things that they hate (because that&#x27;s the only thing that pays and so are chained to their misery).<p>I think real UBI would create strong bottom up economies and get rid of value extractors, intermediaries and schemers. It would also help people move out of big cities back to rural areas where things are not so expensive

&gt; Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income.<p>Isn&#x27;t unconditional, you know, unconditional? As opposed to &quot;From January 2017 until December 2018&quot;?

Did they not have an identical cohort serving as a control to compare employment rates at the end of the trial?

In Ontario Canada, our outgoing government tried basic income as well. It increased unemployment in the pilot cities. So our new government eliminated basic income quickly because it was the opposite of the general trend of all other cities.<p>The reality is that people don&#x27;t need money. Money is important but what people need is a purpose and goals. Which a basic income system does not provide.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=mS5WYp5xmvI</a>

Universal Basic Income:<p><i>Work Hard, Keep Half</i> v. <i>No Work, Free Stuff</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;delvedc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2018&#x2F;04&#x2F;Universal-Basic-Income.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;delvedc.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2018&#x2F;04&#x2F;Universal-Bas...</a>

I thought the idea was to reduce pointless busy work and increase actual productive work for people that wanted to. The overall outcome being increased net productivity. I have no idea how you would measure that though as I imagine there would be less people interested in working overall.

In other news:<p>Vegetarianism did not lead an increase in animal population.<p>Policing did not lead to an increase civic engagement.<p>Prophylactics did not lead to an increase in birth rates.<p>...I wonder what other goals I could retroactively apply to social programs to show how they failed to achieve things they were never meant to address.

I think it&#x27;s human nature to do a little as possible for the most reward. If someone is giving you money to literally do nothing, then you&#x27;re likely going to do..nothing!

Should be &quot;happier but still jobless&quot;. No one lost jobs as a result. the result was that the jobless were happier. An improved situation.

Would be curious to know what the overhead of the UBI program was compared to the overhead of whatever unemployment program it was replacing.

I wish they included employed people in this trial.

This experiment was performed in 2017. The basic criticisms of it are:<p>- participants selected only from long term unemployed - Finland was still in a period of austerity following recession (low hiring rate) - tiny sample population - limited period - stingy, the amount provided doesn&#x27;t really provide a basic income

TL;DR: They got the same unemployment money (~555€) as before, but it was called Basic Income. But they did not have to partake the quarterly motivation shit from jobless office anymore. Which made them indeed happier. Success!

Regarding me, I could be happier without working, or working less than I currently do. So, according to the article : &quot;this is a triumph&quot;

Not sure how the numbers add up. The infographic says it cost €20M. The text says 2,000 Fins got €560 for 24 months. That would amount to €26.88M.

If you think the Great Society had bad effects on poor black folks, just wait to see what bad effects UBI has on <i>everyone</i>.

That&#x27;s a weird way to spin it. Much more useful and interesting, to me, is that UBI recipients weren&#x27;t any <i>less</i> likely to get jobs. That implies that UBI will not--as some fear--in fact lead to a bunch of lazy, parasitic layabouts. They&#x27;re still trying to find work, they&#x27;re just happier and healthier while they&#x27;re doing it.

I think the idea of UBI as it is, makes it an easy target for comments that characterize people as &quot;freeloaders&quot; or trading &quot;something&quot; for &quot;nothing&quot;.<p>The problem is that the UBI seems to be coming from the taxes that other people, which may be a good first iteration to try something out, but it will fail in scale.<p>I will assume that the aim of these experiments is to find a way to provide for an ever increasing number of people at a time that the number and the quality of jobs is dropping, largely being replaced by automated systems. Last year the governor of bank of England voiced concerns about the automation stripping out jobs which could &quot;lead to a rise of marxism&quot;[1].<p>I find the idea of a UB Dividend[2], or social dividend[3] instead something which would have more chances to succeed. The main idea behind it is that everyone will be entitled to a dividend which will be funded by private companies. So instead of having the Apples and Googles of the world sitting on a pile of cash, they could put a portion of their earnings in a fund which would then be given back to everyone to allow them to continue to purchase their products and services.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk&#x2F;home-news&#x2F;mark-carney-marxism-automation-bank-of-england-governor-job-losses-capitalism-a8304706.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.independent.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;uk&#x2F;home-news&#x2F;mark-carney-...</a><p>2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;dark-mountain&#x2F;universal-dividend-a988c31c372b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;dark-mountain&#x2F;universal-dividend-a988c31c...</a><p>3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Social_dividend" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Social_dividend</a>

&quot;Work and love . . . work and love . . . that&#x27;s all there is.&quot; -Freud

Well-fare is insidious and destructive. Look up the origins of communism, those people only destroy.

Just wondering, is there anyone here who lived in socialism (or in single communist party regime) and honestly believe that UBI can work?

did they really have to study this? We have decades of welfare to analyze. UBI is dead in the water. Call it a negative tax rate instead.

I don&#x27;t know how much I support basic income as a substitute for jobs. Jobs can suck, but basic income takes away the levers for poor people (anybody relying on one primary income stream for disposable income) to be useful to the rich and powerful, leaving them completely vulnerable to the games of the latter. Even if you mopped a rich person&#x27;s floor and the rich person wanted to dispose of you, he&#x27;d likely have to replace you with another floor mopper; the coupling between rich and poor is still there. Without jobs, the poor are completely expendable. If things go well, there&#x27;s no way the poor can keep paying attention to maintaining the system, and things can go bad. If things don&#x27;t go well, the bottom can drop out. This is of course not discussing the other benefits of jobs (a feeling of dignity, a way to spend time, being around other people and a tie to society).<p>I&#x27;d rather support a system of federated capitalism where everybody owns and rents some amount of capital (financial, intellectual, social, etc.), along with a government that can provide for basic needs. Everyone has some nontrivial amount of power, and has to respect other people and their power.

Silicon Valley People: We need basic income because there aren&#x27;t enough jobs for low-skilled workers.<p>Also Silicon Valley People: Let&#x27;s have open borders and import unlimited numbers of low-skilled workers. Doing anything else is racist!

Although I do not support the idea of UBI I can&#x27;t help but feel a bit disappointed that it didn&#x27;t work out.

Handing out free money will most likely just cause inflation and defeat itself. The inflation will make the amount paid out in basic income insufficient to live on.<p>The alternate to basic income for the purpose of housing, health and food, is to provide a basic version of those resources at zero cost.

I used to be all-in UBI supporter. To my &quot;hacker&quot; mind it appeared like a wonderful hack around issues society is facing. But lately, as I saw our parents retire, I was thinking about what really keep people happy - and as soon as basics are covered, it appears that &quot;being useful&quot; is what jobs are really about.<p>UBI, as a result, may lock people forever in a jobless situation. UBI will not provide enough capital to bootstrap anything, it might disconnect you from people doing something. This can only increase the resentment between employed and unemployed classes. Granted, some will find themselves doing what they wanted to do their whole life (non-profitable) and couldn&#x27;t because they had to put food on the table. But is this the case for everyone? I am afraid the rest will risk being marked &quot;not useful&quot; for life, and that doesn&#x27;t sound like something that makes one happy...<p>Sorry, it is just my random philosophical thoughts and no real answers or pieces of advice here...