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  1. #1
    I am that guy RandomGuy's Avatar
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    Fears that smarter machines will threaten jobs and stability have led some to suggest that government should give a basic income to all. Suppose the idea spreads


    THE great basic-income experiment began in Finland. Other countries had run pilot schemes, but the Finns were the first to take the plunge. In 2017 Finland started its own test, paying €560 ($635) a month to 2,000 unemployed adults, with no strings attached. After two years, assessments showed no meaningful difference in job-finding rates among those receiving the payments and other unemployed workers, while those getting the cheques reported being happier. There was no way to know whether a universal basic income (UBI), paid to all, would have similar effects. But the Finns concluded that a bold restructuring of their welfare state would allow them to pay a basic income at that level, €560, without raising taxes.

    Finland was an odd case. It was already one of the world’s least unequal countries. Government spending was above 50% of GDP, so the UBI scarcely felt like a big new intrusion. It was also an old country, destined to spend heavily on income payments to a large share of its population no matter what. There seemed little to lose.

    Over time several changes became evident. First, although the UBI did not appear to discourage work, it made it more like a pursuit than a necessity. A sign of this shift was a trend to celebrate one’s 40th birthday with a “gap year”. The New York Times noted the appearance of “flying Finns” on European highways: brigades of middle-aged travellers on motorcycles, touring the continent. Others chose to study for a year or learn a craft. European universities began offering tailor-made courses for them.

    Second, and somewhat surprisingly, older Finns, who before the UBI had a relatively low rate of labour-market participation, worked more. The blurring of the lines between “working age” adults and pensioners probably had something to do with it; so did an uptick in wage growth, thanks to improved productivity and an increase in the share of income going to workers rather than shareholders (as firms had to try harder to keep employees from leaving). Economists attributed the pickup in productivity to better matches between worker and job, and to adults spending more time in training and education.

    A third change was less benign: a rise in nationalism. Finland had long faced a brain drain, as ambitious young Finns left for bigger cities and lower taxes. It was hoped that extending the UBI to non-citizens would attract young people. But that plan came to an abrupt halt when nationalists won 30% of the vote in the run-up to the UBI, claiming that Finland was about to be overrun by scroungers from abroad.

    That did not deter Scotland, when it introduced a UBI a few years after Finland, from making it available to permanent residents as well as citizens: that is, those who had been living and working there for at least two years. The hope was to entice newcomers—which it did. In Glasgow a funky community of entrepreneurs developed; some focused on artisanal businesses that could stay afloat thanks to support from the basic income, others were idealistic expats from Silicon Valley. Edinburgh became a hub for artists and for the rich who wanted to be near them.

    The newcomers brought higher house prices, and some complaints about a loss of Scottishness. But Scotland largely avoided anti-outsider sentiment. Instead, it stumbled on an equilibrium in which the cosmopolitan rich gladly subsidised, through Scottish taxes, both the urban bohemians and the Scottish poor.

    Other places sought to follow suit, not always successfully. Take Idaho. Its governor pitched a basic income less as a way to address poverty than as a modern version of the Homestead Acts, through which America gave away 10% of its land to encourage the settlement of the west. Idaho’s UBI, she said, would attract settlers and enhance individual freedom.

    The governor linked the UBI to a new land tax, but could get no more than a 0.1% annual tax through the state legislature. As a result, in its first year Idaho distributed just $70 to each of its adult residents. The next year the tax take fell; property values dipped as deep-pocketed Idahoans sold their vacation ranches and moved to Montana. The governor lost the next election to an anti-UBI firebrand whose supporters circulated rumours of plans to frame rich Idahoans for crimes which would allow the government to seize their homes to fund the UBI. Idaho’s UBI was repealed.

    For richer, for poorer

    If the record in rich economies was mixed, basic-income supporters hailed a triumph in the emerging world. Seeing the success of GiveDirectly, a charity which used mobile-payments technology to give cash directly to the very poor, European Union governments agreed to craft a new form of foreign aid. Sceptics reckoned they were cynically seeking to pay would-be migrants to stay away, but the plan was a bold stroke against poverty. The EU set up a wealth fund into which they contributed money each year (and to which other governments, charities and individuals can also donate). The fund pays $1,000 a year per person to all adults in any qualifying country. Qualifying countries are those with incomes per person less than a third of the EU average, in which governments agree to certain conditions and monitoring—to ensure that they do not try to expropriate the fund’s payments or use them as an excuse to neglect critical services. Those conditions have so far filtered out about four-fifths of people who might otherwise have qualified for payments.

    The impact on the places that did qualify has been dramatic. Recipient countries registered a sharp drop in poverty. Health and education outcomes also improved. When a coup in the Gambia brought a new government to power which restricted its data-sharing and diverted funding from infrastructure projects, the fund halted payments. Critics accused the fund of punishing Gambians for something over which they had little control. Yet the knock-on effect was striking: the public in recipient countries grew less tolerant of government actions which could threaten payments. China recently announced its interest in becoming a contributor to the fund.

    It is far too soon to declare an end to global poverty. Yet the world has taken critical steps towards a future in which everyone shares in humanity’s economic bounty, and learned a bit about how—and how not—to start building Utopia.


    http://worldif.economist.com/article...money-everyone


    Going to guess I am going to get more bland clichés than considered responses, but thought I would put that out there anyway.

  2. #2
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    UBI won't ever be done in America for same reason there will never be Medicare for All: racism.

    White people don't want to pay for black people, who have been denigrated, going back to St Ronnie, as cheating Welfare Queens in Cadillacs and (healthy) "young bucks" who refuse to work.

    Of course, there are more white people on public assistance, esp in red/slave states, than black people, but they are just collateral damage in the white person's War on Blacks.

    The myth of lazy, cheating, worthless blacks has been installed deeply by racist Repugs working on behalf of the wealthy.

    Anyway, socialist "For the People" Finnish culture, in fact all of Scandinavia, is fantastically different, superior from the uncivilized brutality, the social/economic Darwinistic Me First and Only "ethic" of oligarchical police-state America.

    USA can't even raise the Fed minimum wage for WORKING people. It's even preemptively ILLEGAL in red/slave states for local govt to set a higher minimum wage for workers, never mind a UBI for non-workers.

    The lower 80% of America is ed and un able, and 6 months of Repug regs and rules prove the 80% will get more ed.
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 07-21-2017 at 08:50 PM.

  3. #3
    Independent DMX7's Avatar
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    I'm a liberal but I don't support this... at least not yet.

  4. #4
    Take the fcking keys away baseline bum's Avatar
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    I'm a liberal but I don't support this... at least not yet.
    Free market guys like Hayek and Friedman did.

  5. #5
    Veteran DarrinS's Avatar
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    Hey, if it can work in Finland...

  6. #6
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    Yet the world has taken critical steps towards a future in which everyone shares in humanity’s economic bounty, and learned a bit about how—and how not—to start building Utopia.

  7. #7
    Garnett > Duncan sickdsm's Avatar
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    Can't get health care for everyone but we'll pay you for just being. makes sense.

  8. #8
    Veteran Xevious's Avatar
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    This is where liberals and I have to part company.

  9. #9
    non-essential Chris's Avatar
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    Yeah because small business owners. Universal income would be a disaster for our economy and capitalism.

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