Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs?

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Both left and right are promoting the idea of a basic wage for everyone, currently on trial, as a solution to the new world of work

Today, the Finnish economy continues to struggle in the wake of the financial crisis, which hit just as communications giant Nokia’s star was starting to wane. This left Ruusunen, who lost his job as a baker two years ago, struggling to find work. He was unemployed when participants for the basic income pilot were randomly selected, but had started a paid IT apprenticeship by the time he got the letter.

“For me, it’s like free money on top of my earnings – it’s a bonus,” he tells me. But he thinks the basic income will make a big difference to others who are unemployed, especially those who are entrepreneurially minded. “If someone wants to start their own business, you don’t get unemployment benefits even if you don’t have any income for six months. You have to have savings, otherwise it’s not possible.”

But the idea of the basic income has captured a zeitgeist extending far beyond the borders of Scandinavia. Enthusiasts include Silicon Valley’s Elon Musk, former Clinton labour secretary Robert Reich, Benoît Hamon, the French socialist presidential candidate, and South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung. On Friday, Glasgow city council commissioned a feasibility study for its own basic income pilot.

An idea whose time has come?

There is now a growing band of politicians, entrepreneurs and policy strategists who argue that a basic income could potentially hold the solution to some of the big problems of our time. Some of these new converts have alighted upon the basic income as an answer to our fragmenting welfare state. They point to the increasingly precarious nature of today’s labour market for those in low-paid, low-skilled work: growing wage inequality, an increasing number of part-time and temporary jobs, and rogue employers routinely getting away with exploitative practices.

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Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Lafayette said:

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Click to expand...

I have been a continuing advocate of minimum income systems (not as the article incorrectly calls them minimum wages) following developments for quite a long time and have looked into the maths and empirical experiments done in the United States around 1970 as well as at a number of others. I must say, the article is not very good.

Minimum income is not a solution to the mechanization problem and was argued as the solution to unsustainable social democratic overreach and wasteful redistribution bureaucracy. It is To do with this point that in Germany, where two parties have had it in their list of goals for a long time, the movement was stopped. There are too many public jobs on the line and that would go.
It would not really fix the capital and high pay concentration problems, however. It would only stabilize it to benefit high income groups, if it were misused in the way the article indicates.

Its better for everyone if we have to work and struggle to survive

Utopia is a dream that only foolish progressive believe in

Mac77 said:

Its better for everyone if we have to work and struggle to survive

Utopia is a dream that only foolish progressive believe in

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There is some truth in that but the universal income wouldn't/shouldn't be any higher than what is necessary to provide the most basic of needs. People who are satisfied to "just get by" aren't the people who are out there innovating and improving the world to begin with. Lazy people don't change the world, universal income or no universal income.

Lafayette said:

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Click to expand...

there are currently almost 5.8 million job openings.

who is going to pay for it?

again why should I pay people to not work? why do you like taking money from my family and my kids?

I am sick and tired of listening to this nonsense. find a job in automation and be productive.
match the demand of the job market.

BrewerBob said:

There is some truth in that but the universal income wouldn't/shouldn't be any higher than what is necessary to provide the most basic of needs. People who are satisfied to "just get by" aren't the people who are out there innovating and improving the world to begin with. Lazy people don't change the world, universal income or no universal income.

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no it just means less money for everyone else to pay for non-working people.

when people first arrived to this country the motto was work or starve.
since then it has become don't work and live off the labor of others.

Lafayette said:

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Click to expand...

Let's set the minimum income at $250,000 a month. That way everyone can own their own home, have 12 nice cars, send their kids to private schools, be able to pay cash for any medical procedure and be able to hire someone to walk their dog for them. ... oh wait a minute... if everyone is getting that much free money, no one will be working to build homes, no one will be working in auto factories, there will be no teachers, no doctors and no dog walkers....

Government subsidized income sort of exists already. The EBT program has an EBT Cash side where enrollees can get cash back from their EBT cards.


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joG said:

I have been a continuing advocate of minimum income systems (not as the article incorrectly calls them minimum wages) following developments for quite a long time and have looked into the maths and empirical experiments done in the United States around 1970 as well as at a number of others. I must say, the article is not very good.

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France is having the same problem, and it has tried just about EVERYTHING to get people back to work. To no avail. Like a good many countries, French politicians do not understand that Consumer Demand creates jobs, not government subventions. And Demand is only recovering very lately here since 2010.

Which means concurrently that crime-rates have increased very seriously - and in particular altercations between husband and wife.

If the state should pay a minimum subsistence, then it would relieve somewhat the financial pressure - thus preventing some criminal activity. Yes, a government is actively paying the unemployed to "behave" well.

I see no wrong in that, and significant savings in terms of both judicial and incarceration costs. The cost of incarceration of an inmate today in the US is $31,286.

So, what's a "minimum subsistence" income? The Poverty Threshold income, which is ($24K for a family of four in the US) and in France $26200. (At today's exchange rate, same family size, same percentage of median income, that is around 50% - and the Euro at $1.06.)

It seems sensible that paying people a Subsistence Level "Wage" is a better solution (in many respects) than the present Unemployment Insurance ...

Lafayette said:

France is having the same problem, and it has tried just about EVERYTHING to get people back to work. To no avail. Like a good many countries, French politicians do not understand that Consumer Demand creates jobs, not government subventions. And Demand is only recovering very lately here since 2010.

Which means concurrently that crime-rates have increased very seriously - and in particular altercations between husband and wife.

If the state should pay a minimum subsistence, then it would relieve somewhat the financial pressure - thus preventing some criminal activity. Yes, a government is actively paying the unemployed to "behave" well.

I see no wrong in that, and significant savings in terms of both judicial and incarceration costs. The cost of incarceration of an inmate today in the US is $31,286.

So, what's a "minimum subsistence" income? The Poverty Threshold income, which is ($24K for a family of four in the US) and in France $26200. (At today's exchange rate, same family size, same percentage of median income, that is around 50% - and the Euro at $1.06.)

It seems sensible that paying people a Subsistence Level "Wage" is a better solution (in many respects) than the present Unemployment Insurance ...

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One thing that seems important to induce people to go to work is that the gmi be below the poverty level. But let's see, what the present field experiments turn up. The ones in the US were relatively positive and led to less reduction in hours worked than had been expected. Supposedly the results were enough encouraging that it was almost introduced. But the problems I mentioned concerning THE attemptS in Germany above were said to have knocked it down. The main savings of reduced bureaucracy were not attempted in the experiment and the fall off in criminality I do not remember being measured and would probably require quite a bit of time to develop in any event.

ludin said:

there are currently almost 5.8 million job openings.

who is going to pay for it?

again why should I pay people to not work? why do you like taking money from my family and my kids?

I am sick and tired of listening to this nonsense. find a job in automation and be productive.
match the demand of the job market.

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Yours is the reply of a person who understands nothing.

Presume for an instance that YOU were unemployed. How would you feed your family?

Rob a bank ... ?

joG said:

Minimum income is not a solution to the mechanization problem and was argued as the solution to unsustainable social democratic overreach and wasteful redistribution bureaucracy..

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Minimum Income IS the solution to unemployment in terms of subsistence.

It is not the long-term solution, which is education to obtain skills/competencies in demand by employers.

Otherwise, what IS the solution? The unemployed jump off a cliff ... ?

joG said:

One thing that seems important to induce people to go to work is that the gmi be below the poverty level. But let's see, what the present field experiments turn up. The ones in the US were relatively positive and led to less reduction in hours worked than had been expected. .

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Why do you think people must be "induced" to work?

Lafayette said:

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Click to expand...

It may have happened under Bernie as POTUS, but I couldn't see it happening under Hillary when more economically progressive administrations worldwide than hers would have been can't or won't comprehend the benefits of the minimum income, nor that the theorized pitfalls, such as work disincentivization, are largely myths with the right payout levels.

Overall I agree that minimum income is a component of the overall solution for upholding stability and standards of living in the face of outsourcing and automation, but it must be paired with extensive government funding of advanced education necessary for gainful employment in a post-manufacturing economy, in addition to more progressive taxation, international and intranational coordination against tax evasion, tax havens (where over 30 trillion in assets are stashed) and races to the bottom to fund as much.

Surrealistik said:

It may have happened under Bernie as POTUS, but I couldn't see it happening under Hillary when more economically progressive administrations worldwide than hers would have been can't or won't comprehend the benefits of the minimum income, nor that the theorized pitfalls, such as work disincentivization, are largely myths with the right payout levels.

Overall I agree that minimum income is a component of the overall solution for upholding stability and standards of living in the face of outsourcing and automation, but it must be paired with extensive government funding of advanced education necessary for gainful employment in a post-manufacturing economy, in addition to more progressive taxation, international and intranational coordination against tax evasion, tax havens (where over 30 trillion in assets are stashed) and races to the bottom to fund as much.

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As a Socialist I love Bernie.

But Bernie, like me, is too idealistic.

Congress would have shat on all of his dreams, lol. Clinton was the realist.

But a Basic income Guarantee is good. FYI, Lafayette Denmark has something called Flexicurity.

Flexicurity is like Unemployment Insurance but instead you get paid (��Formerly 5, then 4/3 now) 2 years where you go to school in an in demand area of employment paid for by the government. It uses a private business employment index. I like it, this coupled with a lower Basic Income would be decent, but there's a lot of savings to administration from basic income, how admijistratively expensive would this on top of that be??

Lafayette said:

Yours is the reply of a person who understands nothing.
Presume for an instance that YOU were unemployed. How would you feed your family?
Rob a bank ... ?

Click to expand...

I have been unemployed. I beat the street and applied everywhere I could. I got a job doing stucco work.
been there did that until I found something else that paid more money.

So yes you understand nothing.

5.8 million jobs out there if someone can't find a job then there is something wrong with them.

I went back to school and finished my 4 year.
I have skills to match the job market.

I have expanded my skills further I am now PMP certified.
I am expanding my knowledge and skills to meet the job market.

stop trying to take away my families prosperity.

start your own charity and give your own money if you feel so compelled to give other people your money.

Chinandenga said:

As a Socialist I love Bernie.

But Bernie, like me, is too idealistic.

Congress would have shat on all of his dreams, lol. Clinton was the realist.

But a Basic income Guarantee is good. FYI, Lafayette Denmark has something called Flexicurity.

Flexicurity is like Unemployment Insurance but instead you get paid (��Formerly 5, then 4/3 now) 2 years where you go to school in an in demand area of employment paid for by the government. It uses a private business employment index. I like it, this coupled with a lower Basic Income would be decent, but there's a lot of savings to administration from basic income, how admijistratively expensive would this on top of that be??

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it would cost the US 2.1 trillion a year for the upward boundary of 18k a year.
so who is going to pay for it?

why should I suffer more taxation so other people don't have to work?

start a charity then you and Lafayette can give all the money you want to it.

Lafayette said:

From the Guardian: Is Finland’s basic universal income a solution to automation, fewer jobs and lower wages?

Excerpt:

Not to mention the fact that it just might prevent crime often prompted by extended unemployment.

This idea will never take root in a Replicant administration as exists today. It nonetheless responds to a Real Need (and not only in the Europe).

It could have happened under a Hillary (PotUS) and Bernie (Secretary of Labor) AND a Dem-Congress.

(Gimme a break! I can dream, can't I? ;^)

Click to expand...

It's one possible solution, yes. I tend to favor the idea of lowering the work week and paying more, but at this point it's all conceptual.

I expect the pioneers will have some messy years on their hands, just like the pioneers of universal healthcare and public education did. But this (or concepts like this) is certainly the only way forward for nations that wish to maintain any quality of life in the future of end-to-end automation.

And there's nothing to mourn. That's good. It potentially means more people actually being more productive, and not to mention happy. Let's keep in mind that "productive" is not just measured in mountains of cheap plastic crap. It's also measured in the strength and well-being of communities, or just in doing things extraordinarily well, as people tend to when they can afford to do what they're passionate about rather than what they have to in order to not starve. The industrial age lifestyle just isn't that great, frankly, and we should be celebrating that we're leaving it behind and looking forward to something better.

But to buttress the change to income/work hours that needs to happen, we also need to be focusing on the isolation issue affecting much of the developed world. The real benefit of the post-industrial age is going to be in the ability of people to re-connect with their "tribe," which is all too often something they had to sacrifice due to crazy work hours and a social environment of treating your neighbor as competition to be eliminated rather than a friend.

If you reestablish that bond, you also motivate people to do things like charity work, crafting, democratic involvement, etc. So it isn't just a matter of lifting the burden of insane work hours for low pay. It's also a matter of replacing it with a society that is re-focusing on human well-being.

SmokeAndMirrors said:

It's also measured in the strength and well-being of communities, or just in doing things extraordinarily well. The industry age lifestyle just isn't that great, frankly, and we should be looking forward to something better.

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Thanks for underscoring that point.

We cannot say it often enough in this particular forum - that there is something better than bashing out pots-'n-pans (my favorite analogy) on the shop floor.

Because my mother put together sunglasses on the "shop-floor" and came home tired for doing it. She did NOT winter in Florida like the owners of the company - both my parents saved theirs to put their kids through university.

When I say that to French colleagues, they are amazed. Most are younger than I am, and they cannot understand a time and a place where someone might have to pay one-hulluva-lotta-moulah for a postsecondary education ...

ludin said:

I have been unemployed. I beat the street and applied everywhere I could. I got a job doing stucco work.
been there did that until I found something else that paid more money.

So yes you understand nothing.

5.8 million jobs out there if someone can't find a job then there is something wrong with them.

I went back to school and finished my 4 year.
I have skills to match the job market.

I have expanded my skills further I am now PMP certified.
I am expanding my knowledge and skills to meet the job market.

stop trying to take away my families prosperity.

start your own charity and give your own money if you feel so compelled to give other people your money.

Click to expand...

Sarcasm becomes you so well. Try some intelligence next time.

YOU and what happened to YOU are completely irrelevant. The economy is not only greater than one person, its greater than all of us. So, enlarge your horizons and you just might be able to understand "economics" and our place in the scheme.

This IS after all an Economics Forum ...

faithful_servant said:

Let's set the minimum income at $250,000 a month. That way everyone can own their own home, have 12 nice cars, send their kids to private schools, be able to pay cash for any medical procedure and be able to hire someone to walk their dog for them. ... oh wait a minute... if everyone is getting that much free money, no one will be working to build homes, no one will be working in auto factories, there will be no teachers, no doctors and no dog walkers....

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Reducto absurdum...

Surrealistik said:

It may have happened under Bernie as POTUS, but I couldn't see it happening under Hillary when more economically progressive administrations worldwide than hers would have been can't or won't comprehend the benefits of the minimum income, nor that the theorized pitfalls, such as work disincentivization, are largely myths with the right payout levels.

Click to expand...

You must be very young. Either that or you've forgot how hard she fought to get us a decent National Health System. The lady is a "progressive" - but if she never said that public in America its like painting a bulls-eye politically on your chest.

Come on, give the lady a break! She did her best, it didn't work - we will not have the first Female PotUS of the nation.

No, instead we've got a braggart, a fondler of women, and a guy born with a golden-spoon in his mouth.

What we get for that pathetic combination is what we, as a nation, deserve ...

Lafayette said:

Sarcasm becomes you so well. Try some intelligence next time.

YOU and what happened to YOU are completely irrelevant. The economy is not only greater than one person, its greater than all of us. So, enlarge your horizons and you just might be able to understand "economics" and our place in the scheme.

This IS after all an Economics Forum ...

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thank you for not refuting anything I said you ad hominem fallacy is noted though.

so why should my family have to suffer a lesser quality of life? why should my work not be there to advance my family?
that is why I work not so someone else can't work.

5.8 million job out there. if someone can't find a job there is a problem with them.

actually it is relevant. it shows what happens when you put out actual effort and don't sit back and wait for something to happen.

Chinandenga said:

As a Socialist I love Bernie.

But Bernie, like me, is too idealistic.

Congress would have shat on all of his dreams, lol. Clinton was the realist.

But a Basic income Guarantee is good. FYI, Lafayette Denmark has something called Flexicurity.

Flexicurity is like Unemployment Insurance but instead you get paid (��Formerly 5, then 4/3 now) 2 years where you go to school in an in demand area of employment paid for by the government. It uses a private business employment index. I like it, this coupled with a lower Basic Income would be decent, but there's a lot of savings to administration from basic income, how admijistratively expensive would this on top of that be??

Click to expand...

Congress would have shat on both of them; in order for either to get anything substantive done, Congress would have to flip; without that happening, Hillary is every bit as 'pie and the sky' as Bernie, and would essentially be Obama 2.0, including bipartisan agreement on things like more foreign intervention (Hillary being the interventionist hawk she is). There is nothing 'idealistic' about what Bernie was aiming for assuming the conditions were present for major Dem legislation to pass.

Lafayette said:

You must be very young. Either that or you've forgot how hard she fought to get us a decent National Health System. The lady is a "progressive" - but if she never said that public in America its like painting a bulls-eye politically on your chest.

Come on, give the lady a break! She did her best, it didn't work - we will not have the first Female PotUS of the nation.

No, instead we've got a braggart, a fondler of women, and a guy born with a golden-spoon in his mouth.

What we get for that pathetic combination is what we, as a nation, deserve ...

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I'm familiar with her abandoned attempts at the NHS. I'm also familiar with the fact that she's the wife of the first major neoliberal in the wake of their official take over of the Democratic party, and ultimately became their failed representative precisely because she believed in those politics: social progressivism to smokescreen and gloss over economic corporatism (yes, Trump is worse, but this remains nonetheless true, and what lost her the so-called 'blue wall' rust belt and ultimately the EC).

Hillary is not a progressive by any objective measure when taking into account what economic progressivism actually is in the rest of the first world; just compare her stances and politics to your average centrist northern european or Scandinavian politician, nevermind the leftists. As someone who is apparently French and follows American politics you should know this well.

Porkuloss said:

Reducto absurdum...

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Yes it is, but it also reflects the idiocy of such a plan. Make it so that people don't need to work and people won't work.