Posted on 12/06/2015 12:35:23 PM PST by bigdaddy45
Authorities in Finland are considering giving every citizen a tax-free payout of â¬800 (£576) each month.
Under proposals being draw up by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution (Kela), this national basic income would replace all other benefit payments, and would be paid to all adults regardless of whether or not they receive any other income.
Unemployment in Finland is currently at record levels, and the basic income is intended to encourage more people back to work. At present, many unemployed people would be worse off if they took on low-paid temporary jobs due to loss of welfare payments.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Democrats do that monthly in exchane for a vote.
And they have the same problem we have here; people don’t want to work a low paying job because they get more benefits not working.
I used to work for a public employee union. Figuring out that the State pays more for employees that approve food stamps than they pay for the actual food stamps, I suggested it would save the State money if people wanted food stamps all they had to submit is an ID, there would be a cap on how much one person could get a month. That would cut out a lot of employees. I thought I was going to get fired for just saying that.
The poor who have no one in a family who is willing to work will be poorer. Those who are willing to work, or who already work, will probably be better off, with the exception of those who are willing only to work for government agencies handing out other people’s money.
Not ideal, but probably less bad.
Think of it as an increased up-front personal deduction that is refundable.
Won't be no FR. We will all be self-loathing libs sucking on the government teat.
See my post 22.
“End result? The poorer will be all the poorer.”
Well, the Finns at the moment are turning LESS Socialist. I say let them experiment. For the most part they have a homogeneous culture little infected by the Islamonazis. Their only issue is how much socialist dictatorship they can stomach.
The Venezuelans appear to have has a stomach full. Today’s elections will be interesting.
It is not who votes, but WHO counts the votes that matters. Uncle Joe Stalin’s most favorite quote
Best welfare idea ever. I wish we could do that. Cutting out the bureaucracies involved and even cutting a LOT of bennies the gibmedats are getting now would be awesome. However, we would have to make sure that ONLY US citizens would be receiving these benefits. So, some of the old bureaucracy would be required, but it would be minimal.
Yea, but if every person isn’t paying more than $1000 a month in taxes, pretty soon, y’all run out of money
...this national basic income would replace all other benefit payments....
Social Security is NOT a welfare program.
On a different note, it says citizens not residents. So, it could be interesting.
Milton Friedman pointed out that the only income redistribution program which did not create perverse incentives was one of the form Finland is considering: no means-testing, just a check to everyone on a regular basis. Not only are all the poverty bureaucrats put out of work and obliged to find productive jobs (or subsist on the common guaranteed income), but there ceases to be any incentive to avoid taking jobs to earn money for fear of losing benefits, any incentive to have out-of-wedlock children to get the child benefits (note: it’s a check to each adult citizen), or for any of the other parasitic behaviors encouraged by means-tested poverty relief programs.
The real question is the cost, which is hard to work out. It should be taxable income, so the well-off would have part of it taxed back to the government, so the actual cost is not 12 x monthly payment amount x number of adult citizens, but (12 x monthly payment amount x number of adult citizens) - (annual cost of all poverty relief programs it replaces + taxes on the payments (which are at each recipient’s top marginal rate)).
Hillary Clinton will be able to figure that out for ya.
wow you get the idiot of the year award for 2016 and we have a month to go in 15. SS is not a welfare program. i paid in more than you will probably ever make in your lifetime. so suck it up. give it all back to me and now because you are such a low info voter ... i’m going to take yours too!
If it only goes to adults, there still should be a hefty personal deduction for dependants—otherwise one would be encouraging people to hook up and subsist on a double subsidy. If one has children and contributes in other ways to the financial good of society by producing stuff, one gets to keep a larger portion of that financial contribution.
Geez, relax Francis. Yes, I know Soc Security isn’t a welfare program. But between SSDI and everything else they’re adding onto it its rapidly going in that direction.
So, are your income pronouncements compensating for something?
.
Do you understand we’re talking about Finland?
Hunger is God’s motivator, not welfare.
Don’t feed the bears!
Because....
It isn’t welfare—it is a Ponzi scheme. Maybe make some adjustments when phasing things in, but a good number of people get more out of it than they paid in, and it is going to collapse sooner or later. I’m 45, and have never had any hope that I would see it last long enough to reoup what is paid into it.
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.