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

[Neonchameleon]

Sure. Whenever you just hand out free money with no strings like that, it provides incentive for people to be lazy and not work.

And yet every test I'm aware of (like Canada's Mincome or Namibia's BigNam) shows this not to be the case. Indeed both showed economic activity to rise as (a) people had money to spend things on for minor luxuries (like e.g. cleaners or artwork) and (b) you no longer pay people not to work.

What you don't get is people working 80 hour weeks other than on a vocation. But it's well known that hours after about fourty actively decrease total productivity anyway due to more tiredness and mistakes.

As for being a burden on society, you miss the whole raft of psychological issues that things like food stamps create.

 

[delericho]

As for being a burden on society, you miss the whole raft of psychological issues that things like food stamps create.

Yep. Last year we had instances in Scotland where people (mostly older people) literally starved to death because they refused to ask for help. They didn't want to be a burden on others, see, but their pension just wasn't enough to pay for both food and heating.

 

[Maxperson]

So being given free money (Euros) is not a burden, but being given free money (food stamps) is a burden?

 

[Neonchameleon]

So being given free money (Euros) is not a burden, but being given free money (food stamps) is a burden?

OK. You've managed to flip subject and object in that sentence. And confuse two things.

If all you receive is the same money everyone else does then you don't consider yourself a burden (hence the issue about pensioners dying because they woldn't apply for winter fuel). And this dn't matter even if the government collects it back in income tax from most people. You're just receiving what everyone else does rather than being a special burden above and beyond that of everyone else.

Food stamps are even worse because using obvious food stamps is a humiliation as everyone can see you are on food stamps. Money in your account? No one cares. It's the same money everyone else has.

 

[Maxperson]

If all you receive is the same money everyone else does then you don't consider yourself a burden (hence the issue about pensioners dying because they woldn't apply for winter fuel). And this dn't matter even if the government collects it back in income tax from most people. You're just receiving what everyone else does rather than being a special burden above and beyond that of everyone else.

I don't deserve free money for nothing. Nobody deserves free money for nothing. The extreme poor should be helped out and taught how to get back on their feet, though. Were I to be given something I don't deserve by the government, which has to use taxes to do it, I would feel like a burden. I would be a burden. Do it for the whole country and the entire country is a burden. Are they all a burden equally? Yes. That doesn't mean that they are not, every last one of them, a burden on the government.

Food stamps are even worse because using obvious food stamps is a humiliation as everyone can see you are on food stamps. Money in your account? No one cares. It's the same money everyone else has.

I don't know how they do it there, but here in California food stamps haven't been stamps in years. It's been a card that gets swiped like everyone else's card. If you're humiliated by doing what everyone else is doing, then getting the same free money everyone else is getting is not likely to change that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't deserve free money for nothing. Nobody deserves free money for nothing.

And this is where the right wing and the left wing will never see eye to eye.

To put it simply there are two factors in play here.

1: No one deserves to starve to death or die of exposure. That is far, far more important than any penny pinching worry that people might get things they don't deserve that are nice.

2: If we're talking about what we deserve then based on the history of the world I don't deserve anything more than to be a subsistence farmer earning less than the equivalent of $1000/year if I'm extremely lucky. If I'd been born at most times and in most places of history that's what I'd be. Likewise you. And I don't deserve more than that - but I'm lucky enough to be born in the West in the late 20th Century with a working body and good mind and to a well off family.

I therefore have a lot more than I deserve by the good fortune of where and when I was born. It seems to me therefore mean-spirited to deny others similar benefits.

The extreme poor should be helped out and taught how to get back on their feet, though.

The easiest and cheapest way of doing this is giving them money to let them break poverty traps. Just as the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way of solving homelessness is ... to give people houses.

Were I to be given something I don't deserve by the government, which has to use taxes to do it, I would feel like a burden. I would be a burden. Do it for the whole country and the entire country is a burden.

I trust you don't use the roads and never took advantage of the education system by going to school? I trust you aren't using any government funded research in your use of the internet? I trust you have never in your life taken advantage of any sort of tax break. That whatever you work for has never had any form of corporate subsidy. And that they don't use roads put up by the government or food that passes government inspection.

Yes, I'm prepared to say categorically that you personally are a burden on the government and the rest of society if your only measure is how much you take. And the same is true for me. And every other human being that has ever lived. And that anyone who thinks they aren't is fooling themselves by not seeing the interconnected nature of society.

This doesn't mean it's impossible to give back more than you take. Far from it. If that were impossible we'd be in a Malthusian situation. But the idea you don't actually use resources is silly.

I don't know how they do it there, but here in California food stamps haven't been stamps in years. It's been a card that gets swiped like everyone else's card. If you're humiliated by doing what everyone else is doing, then getting the same free money everyone else is getting is not likely to change that.

In the UK? We don't use them. In the US? Sometimes it's literal stamps.

 

[Kramodlog]

One of the problems with food stamps is that you have to spend them all. You can't save up money if you are good at balancing a budget on food stamps. You have to use them all or get nothing in return.

Food stamps aren't a tool that fight inequality or help people pull themselves out of poverty. It just alleviates a bit poverty and doesn't motivate employers to give their employees a decent wage.

 

[delericho]

I don't deserve free money for nothing. Nobody deserves free money for nothing.

I was born in a state-funded hospital, and educated in state-funded schools and universities. If I'm lucky, in thirty years I'll draw on a state-funded pension. Unless I'm hit by a bus, or otherwise die suddenly, it's likely the end of my life will be under state-funded care. If I lose my job, or I become too ill to work, I'll again be reliant on the provision of the state.

In exchange for this, in the middle section of my life I pay significant taxes that go to fund all those things for other people. When my time comes, it will be other people who pay the taxes to fund all those things for me.

We're all connected. That "free money for nothing" is an illusion - it's free money for the expectation that people will contribute at some other time. And while there will, inevitably, be some people who game the system and become net recipients through their lives, most people will be net contributors - and they must be, because otherwise the whole thing will come crashing to a halt.

The extreme poor should be helped out and taught how to get back on their feet, though.

That's nice in theory, but in practice it doesn't work. It's called the poverty trap, where a person who is extremely poor finds that as soon as they start digging themselves out of it they find all the systems work against them - if their earnings go above this threshold then their benefits disappear, while if they go above that threshold then their debts must be paid back, and so on. With the net effect that they're better off not digging themselves out of poverty - because they could slave away for five years for no benefit, or they could do nothing, enjoy the free time that results, and have the same standard of living for those same five years.

Were I to be given something I don't deserve by the government, which has to use taxes to do it, I would feel like a burden. I would be a burden. Do it for the whole country and the entire country is a burden. Are they all a burden equally? Yes.

No. If I receive 800 euros a month from the government but I pay 1,000 euros a month in taxes, I'm still a net contributor to the system.

I don't know how they do it there, but here in California food stamps haven't been stamps in years. It's been a card that gets swiped like everyone else's card. If you're humiliated by doing what everyone else is doing, then getting the same free money everyone else is getting is not likely to change that.

In the case of California, the humiliating bit will be going to get the card in the first place and/or going to get it loaded with the 'free' money. And, yes, some people would rather starve than be thought of as being so poor as to need that handout.

 

[RangerWickett]

I see people using the phrase, "being given free money," often in the context of "being given free money makes people lazy."

If you have a million dollars in the stock market, and you get enough in dividends to just live a comfortable life without working, are you 'lazy'? The sense I get is that Western society is totally okay with you 'getting free money' if you own something that is invested and are making a profit from it. Now, the government owns a lot of stuff, and it's a government of, by, and for the people, so is it fair justification to say that the citizens are getting a dividend of the 'stock' they all communally have in the government?

I've advocated for the idea of 'birthright capitalism.' Like, American society is very pro-investment, anti-labor. As more jobs disappear, maybe the best way to get people money they need to survive but have them do at least some sort of work would be for everyone to get a small amount of money when they turn 16, in a slow trickle until they're 18, with the requirement that they invest it in the stock market. Public school would care less about educating drones on how to work in offices, and more about teaching people to recognize sound long-term investment opportunities. We'd become a nation of investors, everyone owning a few shares in the robots that make everything for us.

 

[Istbor]

I don't get the thought process of a burden to the Government at all. The Government is there to administer and serve the people. It is the duty and purpose of the Government to do this, not a 'choice' it has to make to take on burdens.

This would certainly alleviate a sense of being a drain on society though. You are no longer some special corner case, in regards to receiving the financial aid. Everyone has that same access to what you are getting. Some people, just want to feel like they are normal and belong to something. I think this helps that, while being unemployed either because you are unable to work or find work, sets you apart and only adds to a feeling of alienation that being poor can bring.


I think there will be many people watching this closely to see what comes of it.