Posted on 03/07/2017 9:37:43 AM PST by blam
Mire Ibrahim waves the Finnish flag during a demonstration against racism where an estimated 15,000 people attended in Helsinki, Finland July 28, 2015. Reuters/Vesa Moilanen
For the next two years, 2,000 unemployed people in Finland will share a special bond: Thanks to a new federal program, they'll each receive a free $600 per month, no questions asked.
Even if people get a job, the money will keep coming in.
The program, put on by the country's social security agency, Kela, is testing out a modified version of basic income. Under basic income, every citizen gets a regular allowance regardless of employment status, in an attempt to improve overall well-being and reduce poverty.
The program is only 2 months old, but already people say the extra cash has changed their lives. Here are a handful of their stories.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
My mother's DNA leads back to the Skolt Sami of Northern Finland.
(I'm holding out for a casino there)
[Under basic income, every citizen gets a regular allowance regardless of employment status, in an attempt to improve overall well-being and reduce poverty.]
Of which it will do neither.
And how has it changed the lives of those from whom it was plundered? Where are THEIR stories? For example,"I worked just and had and got $600 a month les because some insane bureaucrat decided to give my hard earned cash to some lazy bum." Governments and liberals NEVER count the cost of their profligate idiotic programs.
“Free” money?
Taken from whom?
SOCIALISM WORKS UNTIL YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY..............
I think the 21st century will see a big push toward some form of guaranteed annual income.
As human labor becomes less needed (automation) I’m not sure how a lot of people will get access to money.
Personally — and this is, frankly, utopian — I like the idea of people having something like “40 acres and a mule” with the expectation that they will grow much of their own food and be (somewhat) self-sufficient. And in addition, maybe Uncle Sugar will send them some monthly check to make starvation less likely.
But if the world does not need your labor, we don’t have a lot of options.
Probably.
A bigger issue is that such a short term test proves nothing. The people taking the “basic income” know that it is a short term experiment and will, many of them anyway, act accordingly and anticipate the end of the experiment.
This is a poorly thought out experiment in Social Science.
The idea is a guaranteed basic income FOR LIFE for all, to cover the anticipated “death of work” due to automation.
The real effects will be seen only when this is actually made permanent and applied to all people in a polity. The consequences may not be completely comprehended until after a couple of generations.
Nobody is considering supply-and-demand.
If _everybody_ has $600/mo, then the universal supply of $600/mo renders the demand practically nil. $600/mo will become the new $0/mo.
OK, it will be more complex than that, but point is what is now $600/mo will be devalued to something paltry. Whatever wonders behoove those 2000 enjoying their new income will be erased when their income becomes the mundane norm instead of the unique exception.
I tried this on a small scale in my family and not sure why it didn’t work out. I gave my wife an extra $3000 every month from my paycheck, and to be fair, she gave me an extra $3000 from hers...we did this for the whole year, and yet when we checked our bank account we were no better off than the year before??...obviously I am doing something wrong.
Suggestions?
The government took that $600 from somebody first.
If the money is free, why not give every single person in the country $1 million per year. Then everyone would be rich and wouldn’t have to work or worry about anything!!
The guaranteed income movement is the logical next step to eradicating poverty by making it illegal.
The enormous bureaucracy devoted to redistributing wealth to those who have not earned it is overburdening in its requirements, paperwork, exceptions, logistics, etc - if you’re going to have a pervasive welfare state, then may as well just send everyone a check for “poverty line” income so nobody is left out and everybody has no excuse to be “poor”. Simple, straightforward, logical.
Except that by doing so they’ve devalued the poverty line. Everyone having that income means prices will rise to limit demand for limited goods/services. Raise the GBI check value, and prices will rise more. Spreading the wealth around doesn’t mean availability of what that wealth purchases will increase - it means prices will rise to limit demand.
Forgot the possessive pronoun - WHOSE money are they giving to these freeloaders?? Please clarify, oh gracious and generous government.
Not a good test.
Better, though not very good, is to study trust fund kids (or those who were), or people who have been living on welfare from birth. People who have actually had a guaranteed income all their lives.
When I was in the army, I went on temporary duty (TDY) a few times - once to Knox and once to Benning.
We got a housing allowance - up to $39 per day.
Guess what all the hotels in the area charged?
Unintended consequences.
“SOCIALISM WORKS UNTIL YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY..............
In our system, there a no less anger a need for taxation. They “print” the money they want.
Correct-—just like raising minimum wage to $15 per hour—that just becomes the new bottom wage; people currently making $15 will demand an increase to $18 per hour, prices go up, etc etc.
“Everyone having that income means prices will rise to limit demand for limited goods/services. “
I don’t think so. In developed countries there are very few people that do not already receive the equivalent income being discussed, they already have this disposable income, its just that at present they are working for this income.
The consumer demand differential should be very small.
That is, assuming that a horde of third-worlders is not invited in to partake in the guaranteed income.
IIRC Alaska had this for years and may still have it.
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