Posted on 01/02/2017 10:56:17 AM PST by Olog-hai
Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens a basic monthly income, amounting to €560 ($587), in a unique social experiment which is hoped to cut government red tape, reduce poverty and boost employment.
Olli Kangas from the Finnish government agency KELA, which is responsible for the country’s social benefits, said Monday that the two-year trial with the 2,000 randomly-picked citizens who receive unemployment benefits kicked off Jan. 1.
Those chosen will receive €560 every month, with no reporting requirements on how they spend it. The amount will be deducted from any benefits they already receive.
The average private sector income in Finland is €3,500 per month, according to official data. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Not in Europe. They’re still all over the place.
Remember when they were called “standard shift”?
Think I'll invest in a company selling Finnish-Arabic translation books.
Sigh. I learned to drive on a sixties vintage Morgan. The only thing more challenging that working that car's gearbox would be convincing my wife to buy one now.
My late father would not drive anything that didn’t have a three on the tree. He even once traveled all the way from NY to Michigan to pick up a Plymouth wagon that had one because none of the tri-state dealers had them and he was getting a deal on the car to boot.
Oh goody, a new “social experiment”!
You will have to do something about the Suomi weather.
The sand creatures don’t go for the winters.
What would happen if the only qualification for any government benefit is that you are a citizen?
Why should anyone be guaranteed an income when they make no market contribution to society? A means test is not a problem and, if anything, it needs to be administered more severely.
No, you didn’t read carefully.
I’m saying that unless a finn is a drunk or druggie, there’s virtually ZERO domestic unemployment. Finns are hard working people.
And of course they’re scandinavian, I don’t care what anyone says about that crap. I’m a Swede and the Finns are my brothers and sisters.
“Nope; Musk is wrong.”
That’s not an argument. It’s an assertion. At least with Musk, he has a massive amount of evidence to support his assertion. What about you?
Self-driving vehicles have all the markings of a majorly disruptive technology. As such, we expect you to follow the five stages of grief as you are proven wrong:
1. denial - it can never happen
2. anger - people shouldn’t be trying to make it happen
3. bargaining - please don’t let it happen
4. depression - it happened
5. acceptance - of course it happened, always knew it would, it would not have happened without me
Nonsense.
Robotic driverless cars AVERAGE 84 Accidents. If my record were ONLY 80 accidents, could I get hired??
The Govt lets makers HIDE their accident record because they make snooping cars.
I cannot hide my record. I am accountable. LOL
Uber drives thru red lights. We lose our license.
Human pilots are still required in planes after decades, in simple scenarios like flying in open air.
Someone does not trust computer pilots.
The Finns I know are much worse than the Russians I know when it comes to being a drunk.
“Why should anyone be guaranteed an income when they make no market contribution to society?”
Sometimes conservatives lose sight of the underlying principle that forms the basis of a conservative position. Then it becomes merely dogma.
We are against things like high taxes and government dolling out benefits, not only because these things do not work out economically, but also because they are immoral due to violating the principle of ownership.
People have a right to enjoy the fruits of their labors and to be secure in their possessions.
However, society as an organizational structure requires some compromises. For example, if we are neighbors and both have oil under our property, and it turns out to be the same reservoir, how much belongs to whom? What happens if one person discovers oil long before the other?
If a river runs through both of our properties, can I create a dam to harvest electricity even though it disrupts the flow of the water to your property?
You see, things are not always so cut and dry.
Must small children “contribute” to society in order to be provided for? What about disabled children that require extraordinary care and expenses? The left would just say to abort them before they are born. Some on the right say this is not a responsibility of society as a whole and should be left entirely to the generosity of others to voluntarily support these children.
The existence of law and order that forms the cohesive bond between citizens in a nation create an infrastructure that everyone benefits from. This is how we have freeways, roads, electricity, running water, sewage systems, etc.
Our society is advanced and prospers because of this infrastructure. We have the opportunity to earn much more and have a much higher standard of living than most of the people on the planet. It does not belong to any one person. It collectively belongs to the citizenry.
It is our heritage. In some places the natural resources, like oil, are nationalized. Venezuela is a very bad example of this because the leaders treat it as their own. Kuwait has done a fairly good job of distributing the income generated by their oil reserves to its citizens. There are consequences of doing this, such as no citizens wanting to work menial jobs and having to import such laborers. However, it does illustrate that it is economically feasible to do so.
Nations CAN implement policies that result in a net gain in GDP without regard to how much or little its citizens work.
Intellectual property rights are another excellent example. Natural law dictates that innovations be treated in a way that everyone benefits from. That is, there is no intrinsic right for an inventor to prevent anyone else from making the same innovations independently. Before IP law, inventors could only protect their inventions as trade secrets which is sufficient to protect some innovations but not all. You cannot protect films or music this way. And even most physical inventions can be reverse engineered.
So we make such inventions and works of art profitable to encourage innovation, but we do so artificially by arbitrary law. Much of this law is outdated and has lost sight of the original concepts of natural law.
That being said, Apple enjoys massive profits because its innovations are protected by national laws and international treaties. Same applies to most big companies. But the government that empowers them to make such profits is owned by, guess who? We the people.
There are some things in life we are entitled to have, not because we “contribute to society” but because we are human beings, made in the image of God, born into this world, not by any choice of our own, but divinely ordained. It is the duty of society to enable its members, including those who are weak, frail, and defenseless, to survive and even thrive.
But progressive taxation is for progressives, not conservatives. Why should a person who makes a little bit of money pay a smaller percentage than someone who makes a lot? If the percentage is fixed, then the poor will already pay little, and the rich will already pay a lot. There is no justification for different rates of taxation.
The same applies to housing subsidies, food subsidies, and similar government programs. Means-testing (i.e. based on a person’s income or marketable skills) is innately unfair to those who work hard and/or work smart (i.e. innovators).
But, if subsidies are given equally to all citizens, then there is at least a potential for equity and fairness. I am not saying it is automatically fair, just that it could be. However, means testing creates government bureaucracy and red tape, encourages fraud, and is unfair to those who work hard so others can be lazy.
Help for specific disabilities is not means testing. That is a legitimate basis for including some but not others. For example, if a person was crippled by polio, government funds could provide wheel chairs, etc. A person who does not need a wheel chair would not get one. The difference here is that it would not be based on whether the family had enough money to buy a wheel chair.
The only real test for most government “help” should be whether someone is a citizen. Instead we hand out money to illegals and legal non-citizens like it is going out of style.
Fix this and we can all prosper.
I am not advocating a “basic income”, but simply pointing out that it is not intrinsically anti-conservative. The important thing is to protect ownership rights and encourage work, innovation, and the exploitation of natural resources. This is how wealth is made.
“Robotic driverless cars AVERAGE 84 Accidents”
Meaningless unsourced statistic.
How many self-driving cars have been involved in an accident with another self-driving car?
How likely is that to happen?
Without a doubt it will be a bumpy road that leads to self-driving cars dominating the daily commute.
But the assertions that it will not happen are just ludicrous.
I did some computer work for a guy in the early nineties who had a business installing business computer networks. He said that this “Internet thing is just a fad”.
Detractors of self-driving cars are the same way.
Horse and buggies are good enough. These car contraptions will never catch on.
Okay, the Wright brothers proved flying to be possible, but no sane person is EVER going to get in one of those contraptions.
And sure, self-driving cars will NEVER catch on either.
Until they do.
“Human pilots are still required in planes after decades, in simple scenarios like flying in open air.”
Flying is not “simple”.
And it took time for technology to catch up. Have you heard of drones? Computers are capable of doing things humans are not.
We see this with specific tasks also. For example, chess. A few decades ago, a decent chess player could easily beat the best computers. Today, a smart phone can give a rated player a run for his or her money.
If we were arguing over things that require true human intelligence like scientific research, writing novels and other stories, inventing things, etc. then I might agree that we are further off than most predictions.
However, driving a car is not a very difficult task. It requires very little computational power. The biggest difficulty is updating laws and the road infrastructure to accommodate self-driving cars.
There are two fundamental reasons why I am certain this will be adopted rapidly: the technology is already here, and the benefits are enormous.
The cost for the average person to get around is going to be drastically reduced by self-driving cars. Those who do not own cars will be able to get point to point much cheaper than they can own a car today because cars will be shared. And those who own a car will be able to share it and reduce costs as well, if they so choose.
Safety will be drastically increased. There will be accidents and sabotage, but this is nothing compared to what happens every day right now. A little while ago I narrowly missed being in a pileup of about a dozen vehicles. None of the cars were self-driving. At least one human made a tragic miscalculation or did something otherwise completely stupid. The cost of this is huge.
Further, traffic congestion will be greatly reduced, and commute times will drastically shorten. Getting around will become much more efficient.
Cost savings, safety, and time savings will drive the adoption of this technology by society sooner rather than later. And if it does not, then be sure to come back and say so in ten years. I’ve been around here that long and plan to be then as well. But also be prepared to admit your error when it is commonplace within the next decade, because it will be.
It is the duty of society to enable its members, including those who are weak, frail, and defenseless, to survive and even thrive.
is not who I was referring to in my post. I stated specifically the "productive" members of society. If you are not weak, frail, defenseless, or otherwise handicapped, you should be working to contribute to that society. We have far too many parasites in this system which finds over 50% paying no income taxes at all. Such a system cannot survive.
At the instance, a guaranteed annual income is Socialism and at the extreme, Communism. Both have been tried and neither has survived in the long run. The path of History is strewn with the wreckage of such social experiments. I would rather see our system survive, warts and all, than favor a system that doles out money to unproductive members because history shows that such a system is doomed.
One assertion for another. Seemed fair to me.
The way things are going as far as “self-driving” vehicles, their implementation or otherwise is and will be forced by government. It will not be a popular technology driven by consumer demand.
That is communism. And that is the very rhetoric of communism, that such things must be under the control of a central government rather than the purview of families. Keep it up at the risk of your credibility.
But, if subsidies are given equally to all citizens, then there is at least a potential for equity and fairness …
“And that is the very rhetoric of communism”
No it is not.
Communism is where all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
Communism and socialism are both means tested.
What I described is equitable and fair even if it is not necessarily desirable. That is, all government subsidies, grants, etc. should NOT be means tested. The only test should be if you are a citizen.
Do we need a housing subsidy? a food subsidy? a medical care subsidy? Maybe, maybe not. But giving the same amount to all citizens whether they have any wealth or income along with very wealthy, high-income citizens would at least be equitable.
If you think what I described is Communism, you need to study some more. It isn’t. Such a plan would be anathema to any socialist or communist.
Again, I am not advocating a basic income, but I am saying it is not necessarily anti-conservative. Means testing is anti-conservative, progressive, liberal, socialistic, and moves us toward Communism.
Ironically, you want MORE means testing. So do a lot of misguided conservative leaning people because they realize that government subsidies are not going away, so they consider it a necessary evil. And the idea is that stricter means testing is a way to reduce government dependency.
Only it never really works out that way.
We need to greatly restrict how government can spend money. It ought to live within a budget. Perhaps the budget should adapt to economic conditions. Perhaps government salaries should also go up and down based on how much citizens are earning. And perhaps all government subsidies should require a periodic public vote. Maybe votes should be weighted by how much taxes each voter contributes. That might counterbalance the inclination to vote ones self a raise.
It is possible to implement a social safety net without moving us toward socialism or communism. Getting rid of means testing would be part of what is necessary to do this.
And paying our enemies to immigrate and take over is certainly not a way to implement a social safety net in a conservative fashion. We must quit that.
To me the ONLY way to do a universal income in the USA is everyone of legal age gets it and it is exactly the same for everyone regardless of how many kids you have etc.
If you start saying Bob gets more than Bill because Bob has more kids then we all know what will happen in a few short years. You are right once the "means testing" starts then it becomes "Social Engineering" and that always leads to disaster.
If you do a basic income for everyone and eliminate welfare foodstamps etc. what will happen is the government will be in constant search of the proper amount the Basic income should be. It will probably implode the system faster than anything else and sadly I feel imploding the federal boondoggle known as the Federal Reserve System and the Big Spending Congress and their muscle the IRS is the only way we will ever get Fiscal Discipline back in Federal Spending.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.