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Finland's Basic Income Program Fails

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  • Finland's Basic Income Program Fails

    Finland paid unemployed people a basic income of $685 every month. It didn't work out

    Finland's basic income program that drew international attention was a bust, the Finnish government announced Tuesday.

    The pilot program that paid about 2,000 randomly-chosen unemployed Finnish people a monthly check of €560 ($685) will stop by the end of the year, the BBC reports.

    The program, which started January 2017, was the first of its kind in Europe. The government hoped the extra money would fuel the economy and innovation. The unemployment rate in Finland exceeds 8% and was 9.2% when the program launched. By comparison, the U.S. has an unemployment rate of 4.1%, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    A study published in February by the think tank Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said the country's income tax must increase by almost 30% to fund basic income, and instead suggested a universal credit system as a better solution.

    However, basic income has a fair share of supporters around the world, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Y Combinator President Sam Altman and eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg praised the idea in a Facebook post about Alaska's Permanent Fund, which pools the state's oil revenue and pays out cash dividends to eligible Alaskans.

    The Finnish government plans to release data from the basic income program in late 2019, BBC reports. Link

    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

  • #2
    Not surprised by this at all. I can certainly see arguments for changing the way welfare is administered, but the 'basic income' idea always sounded questionable to me.
    sigpic

    Win nervously lose tragically - Reds C C

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    • #3
      It will be interesting to see both the raw data and the metrics they used to measure success/failure.
      If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
        A study published in February by the think tank Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said
        Wait, USA Today thinks OECD is a think tank?

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