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 €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 ...
Welfare moms would have to wait for children to turn 18 to benefit from the child’s monthly check. So I think this would end the massive amount of single moms pumping out kids so they can stack benefits! There are definitely some positive things here, I promise I’m not a commie but this could be better than what we have today..
Perhaps he was referring to all those SS programs that are giveaways to those that had not contributed and was not addressing his comment to the payee deserving of his SS check.
Here, you would receive a $1,000 check every month and the only way to cash it would be to pay your Obamacare premium.
Actually, some variant of this plan should have been adopted in America in 2008-— rather than giving the trillions to big business. People would have spent and paid down their debt, and spurred the economy, rather than the bolstering of Wall Street which only benefited the few and did nothing for growth.
That was why Milton Friedman advocated a negative income tax in Chapter 12,”The Alleviation of Poverty,” in his famous book, Capitalism and Freedom. He wanted such a program to help people who had relative low incomes, regardless of race,occupation,or age. But then he would eliminate the Social Security Administration, HUD, price supports for farmers etc.
I’m trying to be open-minded about this. We’re at a point where computers and robots are taking over most jobs, so we actually don’t need as many people doing the stuff they used to do. The old argument is that everyone can just move up-scale, getting a diploma, a bachelors degree, a masters degree, and eventually a Ph.D. so they can remain competitive in the workplace. But there’s also a limit to high-level jobs: how many Ph.Ds do we need to further accelerate the decline in all jobs?
Are people soft because they don’t need to pay for the air that they breathe? Are people soft because they don’t have to pay for the space they personally occupy as they walk down the street? Are people soft because water is essentially free (compared with having to scoop it out of a creek bed)? Are people soft because energy is essentially free (compared to using your own muscles)? Will people be less motivated to do things helpful to their fellow man if all their “basic” needs are satisfied? I don’t know, but I’m interested to see the experiment.
Although concealed by government inflation, the real price of everything is declining as we find increasingly efficient ways to create and distribute products and services. By the standards of a thousand (or even a hundred) years ago, most things are essentially free. (Since they’re so cheap, we use far more of them than we used to, but that’s another story.)
The problem then is that without jobs there’s no way for people to make money to pay for products and services even at today’s prices. But we need something to keep the wheels of production turning, even if those wheels are turned by robots. Where does the money come from if (most) people don’t have jobs? I don’t know.
Whatever happens, it’s going to be a major shift from what we’re doing now. What’s the goal, and what’s the path for getting there?
Charles Murray has proposed this. Per year, $7000 per person, plus $3000 voucher for health care. Zero out all bureaucracy.
If the function was transferred to a red state, that is how’d they do it.
On the other hand, that’s over $3T. I guess if it was added to taxable income, it might work.
[See my post 22.]
I don’t want to go all the way back up there.
Well, I understand your point, but it’s the idea of why taxpaying citizens should be on the hook for those that aren’t or don’t regardless of the amount. Once you grant that deadbeats should get a check at all, the sky’s the limit.
Well.....let’s run a simulation and see what happens.
Every household gets 1,000 a month.
Do the taxpayers get that, too?
They have good jobs AND they are getting $1,000 a month from the government?
No no no. That’s not fair.
That means some government employee will have to keep track of this. Lots of government employees.
Net result: more government employees.
People are already receiving more than $1,000 a month in government benefits. They will lose money?
No no no. That’s not fair.
That means some people’s benefits will be “grandfathered”.
Net result: no immediate decrease in benefits paid out.
People in Libya hear that you can get $1,000 a month for moving to Finland?
Net result: more unemployed in Finland.
People are clever and greedy and lazy.
Good luck Finland!
EBTs for everyone!
LOL!
You. Obamy will write them a check.
You know because! :-D
$1,000/mo for every household would come to $120 billion a month which would come to $1.44 trillion a year.
That's probably half as much as what we are paying for "entitlements" today.
I’d agree with others that this isn’t the ideal setup... but where I disagree and take heat for doing so...
I think this would be a fantastic first step back towards less government and a more capitalistic system.
Less government (than what they have now), more incentive to work (than what they have now), less room for fraud (just make sure that each person gets the benefit one time).
Oops!
$1,000 per citizen, not household.
Quadruple all projections.
This might work... the guy who wrote The Bell Curve came up with the same idea... forgot the name of the book he put it in... but the idea was interesting.
$1000.00 per month to every citizen is such a nice gesture. I am curious though, where will they generate the revenue to finance this fantasy?
“Cutting out the bureaucracies involved and even cutting a LOT of bennies the gibmedats are getting now would be awesome.”
The rub is, that’s the part that won’t happen. Government is not in the business of getting out of business.
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