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Comment by zeroname | Hacker News Reader

TLDR: Two unemployed people are shown, each receiving 560€ a month with no strings attached. For comparison, median income in Finland is 2900€.

The woman doesn't seem to have learned any trade (at least it's not mentioned) and has only ever worked briefly at a factory. She took a job as a telemarketer that she liked. As the program ends, her financial situation will be unsustainable.

The man used to be a journalist and has been unemployed for five years. He's still unemployed after the program ends and will now have to "deal with bureaucracy again".

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I love how they just didn't really do much and kinda slacked. People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day.

(I would have also liked to see the study actually show it being a sustainable solution , but the ironic outcome is enjoyed nevertheless!)

My mate spent a year on the dole living rent free at his parents learning how to play the drums.

He's now a highly paid insurance PM consultant.

I have a few other stories like this too, a few people I knew mucked around on the dole for a year, deliberately failing interviews, and decades later are now happy, successful, people.

You shouldn't experiment on long term unemployed as they are the abnormal cases, most people get back to work within 3 months if helped.

There's a simple thought experiment, if every month you get 100 unemployed people and 90 get a job but 10 are bad and don't, within a year you might look at the system and say 'look, it doesn't work, 120 people are bad and don't get a job, and only 90 get a job', where in reality 1080 got a job and 120 didn't.

Agree with your point on focusing on that particular sample. But I also heard and seen stories of people who take long (2-3y) career breaks and struggle to get back in, or do at a significant loss of seniority. It’s not so much an unemployment problem. They ultimately find a job. Rather a “damaged career path” kind of problem.

I don’t see how that’s relevant. We’re talking about long term subsidies and the often prevailing hope that this would enable new vocations and filling of underpayed but highly socially valuable functions (like family care etc)

I also happen to know many people through world of warcraft who live on their parents money, have no urge to win their own, simply live on little and have been playing for years now. They are not picking up new skills or doing something social.

I rather hope that someday money will be enough of a problem to motivate them to deal with their issues or just do something with their life, than keep things the same and hope for a change.

Again, you're focusing on the abnormal, rather than the normal, just like the parent.

You come across these people because they spend a much larger amount of time than normal people.

It's a basic consequence of simple stats that are very easy to misinterpret, and that's my point.

My bet, based on what my heart says, is that if everybody could receive UBI, almost all people will do absolutely nothing; levels of depression and mental illness will go over the roof, which could very well end in violence.

Introducing UBI because of robots taking jobs reminds me of that quote, "For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"

Finland is already a welfare state.

>based on what my heart says

okay so I can stop reading there, because whatever that is will be informed by the culture surrounding you, which if I had to guess would be center to right american

It's so little money that I don't think people would do nothing. I agree with your concern about mental health. Sometimes well intentioned policy sets up an environment that encourages behaviors that lead to mental health issues (the opiod crisis for example).

People who think UBI will include people voluntarily going out to work at jobs that aren't fun... this study is a wrench in the works! I bet the younger generation will play fornite, league of legends, or scroll insta/snapchat all day

Yes and no. The B in UBI is basic, you won't starve or freeze but if you want nice things such as a new gaming PC, you would still need to earn to pay for that. Maybe in that world you would do just enough work to earn it, then not bother working again until you needed to upgrade - and that's OK.

I think it's very lucrative to turn to crime _occasionally_ when basic needs are taken care of. UBI guarantees not starving and having a roof over your head, while a new phone or even a gaming PC is just 1 crime away.

I don't think the woman slacked, she did get a job, but she was living above her means when it was clear that the program would end at some point.

I also think that this is exactly what this kind of UBI will do: Subsidize low-paying jobs.

The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely.

I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works.

Subsidizing low-paying jobs is not a bad thing if you do what you love or you work on your own terms without having to worry too much about profits.

> The man on the other hand seems to have this outlook that since he used to be a journalist, if he doesn't get another job as a journalist, he'll get to collect unemployment benefits indefinitely.

> I wonder if that's him gaming the system or if that's really how the system in Finland works.

If it's like Sweden, then he still has to apply for jobs and is pushed to go outside of his field if he is to continue getting benefits.

So many people identify strongly with their occupation. This man is a journalist and author and used to be able to sustain on that. It's as if switching field would be admiting defeat and losing yourself.

I'm reminded of the KLF's cynical but observant "THE MANUAL: HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE THE EASY WAY": http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/

"Firstly, you must be skint and on the dole. Anybody with a proper job or tied up with full time education will not have the time to devote to see it through. Also, being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run."

The name of the famous band, UB40 stands for "Unemployment Benefit, Form 40"

Slacking is what the current system conditions the long-term unemployed to do.

That is, the alternative to UBI here isn't "no income"; we already have basic income in Finland, though it's highly dependent on enduring various activation measures that are mostly useless in providing actual employment (and, in a few instances, have turned out to be sweat shops that use the unemployed for unpaid labour). Accepting a low-income, part-time job tends to result in the automatic loss of several months of basic income, though the pay from such job might be significantly less - so, in a situation where there aren't enough jobs to go around, the rational thing to do is to avoid any actual work and to simply keep jumping the hoops.

The proposed UBI models are aimed specifially at unraveling these "welfare traps" and at reducing the attached bureaucracy.

The woman seems to become dependent on the program. I thought it was interesting that she leveraged the income to take a lower paying job.

Sort of the exact opposite of the intention I would imagine. The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone...

>The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone

I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person.

And I suspect that it will like result in even more ressentment from people who chose to stay at home on a meagre UBI against people who chose to work and earn a lot more. In other words it could have a politically explosive outcome (populist, socialist parties getting elected, etc).

I think many proponents of UBI overestimate the ambitiousness of the average person.

Nobody in my family has ever taken even minor risks like say, traveling abroad (for work or fun), starting a small business etc. I'm the first and I am only taking baby steps now.

Point being, we can't expect to give UBI for a few months and suddenly expect people to take big risks or become ambitious or attack huge problems. These things take time. Imagine a person who has seen his parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc being only salaried workers all their life, rarely moving out of their comfort zone. It wouldn't be easy for such a person to suddenly change (climb Everest, start a biz, spend a year writing a novel etc), even if their food and lodging is taken care of.

I don't know whether UBI is a good thing or bad. But I think both the for camp and against camp are too quick to jump to conclusions - these are social experiments not Math problems. They will take time and we can only learn by trial and error. And what works in one community might not work in another, even within the same state/country.

I think you underestimate how little this experiment gave people.

This did not eliminate risk at all.

Why? Without a consumer class it's impossible for everyone to be entrepreneurial. I think it makes very good sense to leverage the income and take a lower paying job. Maybe in so doing, she's able to consume stuff made by someone entrepreneurial, something she would absolutely not be able to do if pushing it to the limit to maximize her own income.

There's no "consumer class". Every person is a consumer, including those who are entrepreneurial. Being entrepreneurial simply means you are in charge of what gets produced. The market then decides whether what you are producing is actually needed. If it isn't, you go out of business. Resources get re-allocated.

The efficiency of this process is the whole argument on why capitalism is superior to other systems.

Subsidies and other special favors distort this process, to the point of overproducing things that are not needed and underproducing things that are. The danger I see is that UBI is exactly such a subsidy.

https://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Consumer+...

"The class of persons able to buy goods and services other than those that satisfy their basic needs. ..."

That doesn't seem like a common term and I'm not sure that's what the parent was referring to. Either way, my argument stands.

> "The idea would be to give people a leg to stand on so they can take risks, not hide in their confort zone..."

560€ per month, in Finland, is not enough take people out of their "comfort zone". Check out the rental prices in some of the larger cities: https://www.vuokraovi.com

The participants received other benefits too, the total was higher than 560 per month.

No, the comfort zone is staying with your low-paying job that couldn't even sustain you if it wasn't for that extra paycheck.

It's not really clear from the video, but neither of these people could possibly be living off of 560€ alone. The man even said that his financial situation didn't change significantly, so there has to be some other source of income.

In other words, we learn absolutely nothing about the question the story is titled by?

thanks :D

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