Finland to pay all its citizens 800 euros a month to fight unemployment

[RangerWickett]

The Universal Wage can help address the "people have to eat" part of the problem, but you're right that it does nothing for the "people have to do something" side of it.

What do kids do when you leave them alone? They have fun, learn, explore, break things, and eat a bunch of candy. I figure something similar will happen, with a tweak that some adults will realize they can make their lives better by doing something other people find useful.

Like, it's akin to what the very first humans did when they were bumbling their way into the first ever 'economy.' Only now there's less chance of people starving.

 

[Kramodlog]

In a similar vein, giving jobs to homeless people. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/u...he-homeless-offers-them-jobs.html?ref=us&_r=0

 

[Janx]

Sure, if they both have compatible phones and if they both have the requisite software in place.



Yes, it can. But we need to get from here to there, and that's the difficult bit.



Starve.

I believe "what is stealing a loaf of bread?" is the correct answer we are looking for

 

[Ovinomancer]

If you try to create a breakpoint at which people will have earned enough (some amount $Y) that they will not receive the handout, you need to pay close attention to what kind of perverse incentive that has. $800 a month is $9.600 a year in non-taxed salary. Assuming that all payroll taxes still remain to fund the program (roughly 23% in Finland), and that you're in the 21% income bracket, that's equivalent to about $16k in salary a year. What you're going to find is that there will be a 'dead zone' in wages at the $Y to $Y+$16k range. In that space it's more profitable to take no raise and continue to draw your $800 monthly.

Of course, you can set $Y so high that the $800 monthly is small enough potatoes that no one really does this, but at that point the number of people is also a minuscule fraction of your population and the effort to cull them from automatic payments, even if mostly automated, will be more expensive to run than to pay them anyway. Programs for universal wages should be universal -- methods to exclude people cause weird and perverse incentives or just cost more to execute than not.

 

[Tonguez]

four day weeks and more time with family or on creative pursuits is awesome

what is immigration to Finland like?

 

[Kramodlog]

what is immigration to Finland like?

If you like to drink vodka, spend time in sweat lodges and have a fixation for knives, you'll fit right in!

 

[Umbran]

four day weeks and more time with family or on creative pursuits is awesome

what is immigration to Finland like?

Note that Finalnd is "land of the midnight sun" territory. Today, the sun rose at about 9 AM, and set at about 3:15 PM in Helsinki - by the solstice, they'll be down under 6 hours of daylight for the day. Many folks don't adapt to that well.

 

[Mallus]

If you like to drink vodka, spend time in sweat lodges and have a fixation for knives, you'll fit right in!

I always imagined Finland as being like Iceland, only with more death metal and fewer trolls (but the same amount of speaking Elvish).

Basic incomes schemes are certainly one antidote to the unfortunate way present-day capitalism is concentrating more wealth in fewer hands than can be good for its long-tern sustainability. Is any developed nation trying something else, say like really beefing up labor's bargaining power/workforce participation levels?

 

[Kramodlog]

Basic incomes schemes are certainly one antidote to the unfortunate way present-day capitalism is concentrating more wealth in fewer hands than can be good for its long-tern sustainability.

Giving people money feeds consummerism, so it doesn't solve capitalism's environmental sustainability problem.

Is any developed nation trying something else, say like really beefing up labor's bargaining power/workforce participation levels?

It seems to be a race for the bottom right now, with only cosmetic variations depending on whom is in power. Politicians are subservient to the economic elite. Our ritualistic elections are just a variant of Saturnalias when Roman masters served their slaves for a day.

There was a federal election here not too long ago. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was agreed upon during the election. The treaty wasn't made public during the election and no party really said that they would refuse to sign it. We didn't have an option to chose. It was inevitable.

 

[Umbran]

What do kids do when you leave them alone? They have fun, learn, explore, break things, and eat a bunch of candy.

What do adults do when you leave them alone? Some of them act like the kids you describe. Many others watch TV and occasionally go bowling.

A hurdle we will have to get past is what, for lack of a better term, I'll call the Protestant Work Ethic. In the past, when we used outright human muscle power to provide the energy to most production, we assigned a moral value to labor. And that makes sense in a world largely driven by scarcity - if the welfare of the community depends on everyone working, then working is pretty darned important.

However, as we become more and more efficient, the welfare of the community depends less and less on the labors of individual people. In fact, you can come to the point where it is better for the community if you *don't* work, that you let the more efficient machinery do the job instead. Standing aside, then, can become the more valuable thing. The question is whether we recognize when we reach that point, or if we maintain the belief that someone who isn't working is morally inferior.