Posted on 04/25/2018 10:46:49 AM PDT by bananaman22
While it lasted, Finland’s social experiment that gave 2,000 unemployed people nearly $700 a month with zero strings attached was a decent take home for those who enjoyed its benefits over the 15 months—but the authorities say it’s not working and are moving to wind it down by 2019.
In January 2017, Finland became first country in Europe to launch a universal basic income program, randomly choosing 2,000 individuals without jobs, aged 25 to 58, and giving them a fixed monthly income of $685 without the usual condition that they actively seek employment.
It was a unique social experiment that its advocates hoped would help reduce poverty, boost employment and cut down on crime.
One year and one quarter later, the government is scrapping the program though the country’s social benefits agency, KELA, has requested an extension.
(Excerpt) Read more at safehaven.com ...
“choosing 2,000 individuals without jobs, aged 25 to 58, and giving them a fixed monthly income of $685 without the usual condition that they actively seek employment.”
LOL The Bernie Sanders idiocy...
What could they possibly have thought would be the resultS?
Giving people free stuff, like money and food and clothing, is a huge incentive for those people to remain unemployed. Why work when everything is provided for you?
“The ideas was to enable the beneficiaries of the pilot program to volunteer, study and work on community improvements rather than spending all their time simply trying to survive. In other words, the goal is to make citizens more productive at the end of the day—and better contributors to society.”
A unicorn utopia!
It's just never been tried by the right people.../s
Idjits. If they really wanted to see the long term effects of UBI all they have to do is visit any large city public housing project in America!
Didn’t Nancy Pelosi once say something, about how being free from a job, enables people to be more creative, or something along those lines? The implication being, that being tied down by a job inhibits people??
Yep the right people need to he in charge LOL.
We have all heard such talk from liberal radical types. They say that the failures of Communism and socialism are due to problems in implementation, not due to flaws in the theories of Marx and Engels.
Yep Joe Stalin and chairman Mao just didn’t administer socialism properly..........,
Sarcasm.....
I think part of the ‘hope’ was that people would get a better attitude (the long-term unemployed folks), and they would start a trend of looking for real work.
You see this issue discussed a good bit around Europe, and you can find lots of folks on the long-term listing. Rather than focusing on the guy’s lack of skills or just plain bad attitude (maybe drug use or alcohol use)....they basically want to throw enough money at this....that the guy would react and get a real job.
Part of the other issue for Finland....someone finally sat down and added up the full cost if it went national, and it seems that they admitted that the cost factor scared the political parties a good bit (huge taxation chatter).
So they are back at the same position....lot of long-term unemployed and no idea how to get them focused on a work-agenda.
Eventually the socialists will get serious—guaranteed income and electroshock therapy until your attitude “improves”.... :-(
If people are paid to produce nothing, then nothing will be continue to be produced. If people are paid even if what they produce is lousy, then lousy products will continue to be be produced.
I'm remembering it in regards to ObamaCare. Probably in not having to work to pay for medical care/insurance leaves artistes free to create, etc.
Nah, long as you keep taking it out of one guy’s pocket and putting it in another guy’s pocket free stuff giveaways will always work. (s)
In the end, it will probably have cost them $40 million to prove to everyone’s satisfaction that this was stupid.
Countries that run pilot projects, especially seemingly stupid ones, and think before acting further probably save money in the long run.
How do you ‘wind down’ something you give people who then depend on the entitlement for their very lives?
Yes, and she was right for a change.
Many thousands of Americans were killed by Obamacare and its fallout...and freed from the job, no question!
Yeah, that’s the fantasy driving UBI: that people, freed from the existential imperative of earning a poverty-level income, they’ll take classes to better their career prospects, create artwork, volunteer more, and otherwise be Good People™ - productivity without incentive. Leftists view low-income work as a trap, too much effort for too little results leading to no time/energy to better themselves.
What they absolutely refuse to consider (other than flippantly as unlikely/rare) is that a significant # of poor are such precisely because they have no personal motivation - so giving them a poverty-level income for free merely gives them more time to lounge, eat, and procreate.
They also refuse to consider the productive reality of people doing “nice things” (art, volunteering, yoga, etc) just doesn’t build homes, feed people, cure diseases, etc. They reject the core of capitalism: a thing only has value when another is willing to trade for it ... meaning that if someone is doing something which others will _not_ trade for, it does not have value.
Further, they do not comprehend value as fragile: giving someone $1 of food to consume means that $1 literally turns to $#!^ plus a few hours of energy which becomes worthless if not productively expended.
So yes, Pelosi et al believe most people working at jobs are “inhibited” precisely because they have to work for a meager $X/hr, and because they can’t afford an income gap they can’t afford the cost of bridging (training, moving, job search, etc) to a better work position. Being socialists, their solution is to just throw other people’s money at the designated victims, and tired of having to actually think about solutions they jump at the notion of just giving a poverty-level income to everyone (”hey, that was easy!”) and expect the ills of capitalism to evaporate. ...while nobody has an actual incentive to work (hey, I’d seriously consider moving to the country, slashing my spending, and living off the land+UBI).
Yes.
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