Finland's Largest Trade Union Slams Basic Income as ‘Useless’

"Sisu" in Finnish means "Strength of Will" roughly equivalent to the idiom "taking guts" in English.

Oddly potent coincidence.

> I sometimes wonder if BIG is counterintuitively more popular with libertarians than with liberals/socialists.

It's really not - and the only reason it might even seem like it is is that most discussions really only talk about the theory, not specific policy details.

As a concrete example: let's say that everyone agrees on some fixed amount that should be guaranteed - perhaps $5,000/month. The actual figure doesn't really matter, so you can replace it with whatever you personally think the right value is[0]. The only important thing is that (a) it is a fixed amount (each individual knows exactly what they will receive ahead-of-time), and (b) every person somehow agrees that it is the "right" amount.

Now, that money is cash, so everyone's free to spend it how they want. But invariably, there will be some person for whom that $5,000 isn't enough. Maybe they have an accident that leaves them with a career-ending disability. Maybe they decided to go to Vegas and bet it all on red. Maybe they made a bad investment. Maybe they gave it to a family member who absconded with it.

There are all sorts of situations that you cannot rule out occurring unless you also restrict people from having the agency to do what they want with their money[1]. No matter what that fixed amount is, there will always be someone who ends up needing a bit more in order to put food on the table, whether that comes from bad luck or bad decision-making or both.

The problem is that the libertarians are only on board with giving the $5,000/month on the presumption that it replace the vast array of other government-provide welfare and social services that cost money. So if you say, "well, at that point, it falls to the state to pick up the bill", then you've already turned off libertarians, because they're only on board with the idea because it allows them to dismantle the existing state welfare system.

But on the other hand, if you say "well, tough luck - they had the money, and they still couldn't manage, so it's their responsibility to figure it out" - well, that's not really going to work politically. So, the only way that you could have this (politically, not economically) is to retain some form of a welfare state, at which point libertarians have long since lost interest.

[0] You can even replace it with a linear scale if you'd prefer - again, as long as each person is only entitled to a specific amount.

[1] And if you argue in favor of that, fine, but you're arguing for a fundamentally different system altogether, not a guaranteed income. (And libertarians would hate that system even more than the status quo).

5: Government policy to aggressively drive down the cost of living via automation.

This should also be a libertarian win-win since it benefits everybody through lower costs and it doesn't provide benefits for some at the expense of others, nor does it come with the risk of inherent inflation that a minimum income might have, especially as more work becomes automated and fewer jobs become available for people who don't have the talent or simply the intelligence to do higher-value work, which raises the need for a higher minimum income to supplant the inability to find work.

> If you look at the Finnish or Nordic welfare model in general, most of the income transfers go to to middle class who also pays for them.

Right, but I don't see the difference to basic income in that regard. How do you avoid a politician going "let's cut basic income and lower taxes" benefiting the majority of people that are employed?

It would only lead to inflation if those increased wages were paid via increasing the money supply.

Huh? Increasing wages doesn't cause inflation.

Currency is the lubricant for the trade economy, not the fuel for its engine. You cannot create more goods and services by printing more money.

In general, a person that holds more currency reserves exerts greater command over future production. So by continually taking money away from rich people and giving it to poor people, in the long run, your economy will tend to produce more of the things poor people want, and less of the things rich people want.

Inflation will be a big problem for UBI at first, but prices should eventually stabilize--perhaps after 20 years have passed. Good luck protecting such a system politically for that long, though.

In my opinion, you really can't force a work-for-pay, pay-for-goods economy to support a welfare state. It just immediately routes around the damage. You have to establish a parallel work-by-command, goods-by-rationing economy. That's a whole lot easier to do with robotic workers performing all the difficult and nasty work. It might not collapse due to corruption and shortages this time around. Maybe.

If BI leads to near-full employment, by eliminating poverty traps and subsidizing unskilled jobs, then that's not necessarily a problem.

BI doesn't mean entirely dropping all other forms of contingent social support, such as child care allowances, pensions and disability benefits, so if people genuinely have a reason they cannot work that can still be covered.

Those of us with an academic background in economics call this a change in the quantity demanded. That said, outside of a jargon context the way the word is used here is totally fine and understandable.

If government revenues are collected mainly from personal income taxes, such retreat would signal a lower UBI check next month.

You guys are forgetting that politics is a greedy-search of the issue-space.

The typical politician will say whatever it takes to obtain short-term gains in power. Come election time, that means appealing to the base. Come governance time, it means keeping the lobbyists happy and making deals to advance their own career within the legislature.

Why have Republicans never taken meaningful action on abortion? Because they wouldn't be able to campaign on it every 2 years.

So when it comes to government benefits / entitlements / welfare, the politician must weigh the cost of taking away goodies from the constituents, keeping campaign promises to the base, and keeping lobbyists happy. The choice will be what yields the most short-term political gain.

Nobody's talking about making the real tax-code reforms that will lead to long-term benefits: eliminating the mortgage interest deduction and making healthcare benefits taxable as income. Those will never happen because tax rates would go up on the middle-class voters for both parties. But the long-term economic benefits would be excellent. There are other parts of the tax code that make no sense economically but lots of sense politically.

> But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on.

Machines can do that. If they break in ways a machine can't fix (a diminishing situation over time), an expert gets paid a lot to fix things.

> Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor

Whereas a machine will a better doctor than any human could ever be from the moment it rolls off the factory floor.

> So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services?

Of course! It'll be dirt cheap to implement anyway (unless you're American).

> And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control

Population growth doesn't spiral out of control. We have plenty of studies that prove this.

> and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together

In many places, renewable energy accounts for more than 75% of new capacity. Solar is about to plummet below coal in cost. Electric cars are mainstream, and will over time displace the internal combustion engine. We've got scientists developing cheap carbon absorbers.

Meanwhile, we've already passed the point where there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. Just wait till the truck drivers are displaced in a few years! That'll be fun...

You're saying the individual worker would then have bargaining power of their own, without requiring the collective power of a union?

I think this is true, but there is still virtue to unions; they will just have to work harder to justify benefit..

I don't think this is what will happen though. Rather by eliminating poverty traps and subsidizing low wage unskilled labor, it should lead to near-full employment. In a world like that, BI doesn't even need to provide enough to survive long term and perhaps shouldn't.

Ideally BI is not a slacker's charter, it's a subsidy for employment. After all, somebody has to pay the taxes that fund BI in the first place. However I do agree that it could also increase worker's bargaining power. If the increased demand for unskilled labor created by the BI subsidy for employment increases the quality and value of the work available. For example right now it might not be economically viable for a craft carpenter to hire an apprentice, but BI could relieve them of the burden of having to offer a completely livable wage and the resulting job might be more attractive than flipping burgers or janitorial work.

It's a complex set of variables. My concern with trials is that by only including a small sample of people in a generally non-BI economy, the effects of BI on the rest of the economy just can't be gauged. In particular the effect by which it subsidizes employment may not become visible at all.

Which would require a lack of competition in the sock market.

Right, there is such a point, and it's exactly how things are priced now. Bakeries already have to turn out some profit.

I should clarify that this works for commodities but not for monopolies, eg Disney can jack up prices for new Star Wars movies all it wants, as SW fans don't really have a choice :) But for groceries, clothes, texh, etc, it does work

> there used to be a price control on housing. But then it was abolished by a right wing government

Was there a relaxation of the rules for building new housing? If not, prices for a limited supply naturally went up.

Don't think so, they may be referring to the fact that since the UBI is a fixed value, then the increase for the lower income percentiles is percent-wise higher w.r.t the current income.

If we talk about Finland, there's definitely an aspect of raising prices due to transfers. It is particularly apparent in the price of housing in Helsinki region. Anyone living or moving here who does not have enough income is guaranteed a certain amount of money monthly, plus "reasonable housing expenses" (plus some medical expenses and such if needed). For a family of two parents and two small children, living cost 1419.77 €, plus rent on top of that, with a ceiling rent (known as "reasonable housing expenses") of about 1000 €.

This means that for owner of a flat, there is no point in letting out an apartment of any size or condition below the ceiling rent.

So it's not so much that we have a profound distrust of the free market; it's that the market is not so free.

For Finland, one problem of handing out checks is that we can't print money, so much of the commonly presented monetary and economic theories won't work at all.

I'm not distrusting the free market. I'm counting on it.

Subsidy does not shift supply and demand. It moves the price/quantity equilibrium point and introduces a deadweight loss.

Every time consumers can pay more, suppliers will charge more. The more competitive an industry is, the less value suppliers will be able to capture by doing so. The less competitive it is, the more value suppliers can extract from any change in equilibrium.

Cash subsidy does not change the increasing consolidation and pricing power of companies like Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dow, Dupont, and Syngenta; Deere, CNH, Kubota, AGCO, CLAAS, and Deutz-Fahr; Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and Leucadia National; ADM, Bunge, Cargill (again), Glencore, and Dreyfus; Nestle, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Pepsi, Unilever, Mondelez (Kraft), Danone, Kellogg's, ABF, and Mars.

The world is a big place. Only ten companies stock the majority of its grocery shelves. A handful of companies dominate grains and meats. Only a few rule over agricultural equipment. A tiny number controls pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and specialty seeds. 7 billion people need to eat.

If you give every one of them $5 to buy a sandwich, you can be damned sure that the local spot price of a formerly $5 sandwich is going to rise somewhere between $0.01 and $5. If you're standing between Subway, Jimmy John's, Quizno's, Blimpie's, McDonald's, Burger King, Arbys, and a dozen other sandwich-sellers, that price won't jump by much. But if you're eating at The Only Game In Town Deli, enjoy your $9.49 pastrami.

Nobody works for free. We have been able to over-produce without limit for decades, but we haven't, because we ration resources with the price system. Someone only produces something if you can prove that you want it badly enough, by sacrificing some of your own market alternatives. At some point, someone will turn off their robot rather than give a pair of boots to a person who isn't even going to do so much as to bend over and kiss their ass in exchange. And that's when you have to pick up the rifle, and say, "you turn that machine back on, because we don't want to live in a world that runs on dominance and humiliation." If you want to provide everyone with necessities, you must be prepared to use force to encourage that excess production.

> And yes, we can provide everyone with necessities by handing out checks. We've been able to over-produce food, clothing and many other things essentially without limit for decades. The rest is not going to be far behind.

I don't think this is accurate. You can provide everyone with money by handing out checks. You can't make them buy necessities with it. We seem to still have a social welfare problem in those cases.

The military is an entirely different machine based on obedience, mastery-by-repetition, and attention to detail.

The military needs to minimize creative thinking and maximize swift adherence to the rules.

The value busy works adds in this context is to reinforce that precision and obedience through repetition and consistency.

Insist people not working go to the gym/exercise. Either they start working, or they get fitter. win-win?

>"Do you think in that context busy work has value aside from the actual work?"

No, I don't, because I don't think standing armies are a good thing. I'd rather most people in the military were trained (with re-training on a periodic basis) but were otherwise left to pursue their own interests until they were called upon to defend their country. This has been normal in times past.