Free Money Didn’t Help People Find Jobs, Finland Says
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
"On the basis of an analysis of register data on an annual level, we can say that during the first year of the experiment the recipients of a basic income were no better or worse than the control group at finding employment in the open labor market"
So you can say "free money didn't help people find jobs", or you could say "free money didn't discourage people to seek jobs". The connotation is a bit different.
Note that I think UBI is a great idea.
Instead, let's just give them the money and give them some freedom.
Also, only giving basic income to unemployed people doesn't give good data on what a society-wide basic income would do.
My reading of the study is "bureaucratic and narrowly defined job search advice and systems depress people but have no positive impact in them getting a job" - as you say, the connotation is quite different!
Even economically, since mental health issues can be very costly
One question remains tho. If I were to benefit economically from the art production that basic income would enable me to do, would it be ethical to keep that income?
All we can say is it didn't appear to affect the number of people that found employment, and that the supposed effect of letting people seek work without worrying that they might lose their benefits, didn't happen here.
It says nothing about the wider implications of BI in a society where there may be limited work in future.
So not only does Bloomberg frame it like the doomsday prediction that everyone would turn into idlers never happened, the significant increase in mental health is just quietly sidestepped.
[0]: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN...
OUR SYSTEM doesn't care how happy you are, as long as you're productive enough for some people to get rich.
No one cares if you have a job, if you are homeless or have to suffer poverty.
OUR SOCIETY values power and wealth (at least here in the west, I heard about other countries who don't do this so dedicated). If you're poor, sick or have no job than there is even people who'd argue for mercy killing you as not being strong enough for our good society.
I think the report about this experiment shows how far away we moved from humanity.
Where do you meet people who argue for that? I Have never heard that outside of (very) dystopian novels.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-containment-plan/
That's a top city in one of the most powerful / rich country in the world, you don't have to look very far to find other examples.
Seems some of them live in a dome where you can't see all of this development. Nice for them - I could cry sometimes because it's so unfair.
First link search turned up: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-i...
But still, are people talking about mercy killing all of them? I might have to reclassify the meaning of dystopian, the books I read are only half as messed up as this..
What on earth is this comment. Where do you live in “the west”? Western societies are structured around redistribution which ensures that most people are looked after (nothing is perfect). Your rhetoric is baffling.
As a child people had enough money for a good end of life and now they crawl around and collect food and other stuff from waste containers.
Also statistics clearly shows this development. Look at stuff like this (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/21/world-26-ri...) and tell me what you think about that please.
What's baffling about that, can you further explain it to me?
> Western societies are structured around redistribution which ensures that most people are looked after
Do you live in Disneyland?
Companies care about your (mental) health when it's in their direct interest (by paying for mindfulness seminars, ping pong tables, free snacks and other bs), but that's just a way to keep people in check.
You don't have to have a PhD in socio-economics to know that working less directly translates to improved well-being, but well-being isn't going to buy the new porsche and prove the other participants of the global rat race that you're definitely better than them.
"Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation “political economy considers the proletarian only as a worker,” who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him “in his leisure and humanity,” this ruling- class perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from him. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. At this point the humanism of the commodity takes charge of the worker’s “leisure and humanity” simply because political economy now can and must dominate those spheres as political economy. The “perfected denial of man” has thus taken charge of all human existence." - The society of spectacle
Right. Most perceptibly, you could even frame it as "Disincentive effects from unemployment benefits may be lower than previously feared; switching to free money didn't make people seek more work."
Basic income is not supposed to help them find jobs that can sustain them so they no longer need it, but make it optional. Stop make it mandatory to have a well paying job to be able to afford rent and food. Which, by the way, only applies to middle and lower classes anyway because people from higher classes can live off their investments and don't have to work.
And it did help improve well-being! I'd say it's a success
They were selected from a group of people who received a form of unemployment benefit called "työmarkkinatuki". Without going into too much details, it meant that almost all of them had been unemployed for at least two years. And that means that huge chunk of them (I would guess that overwhelming majority) are basically unemployable because they have some limitations (physical of mental) or they do not have any education.
They made a study on a basic income, it cost huge amounts of money, and it was build to fail by declaring a stupid goal.
The other results look quite promising, but I tried looking into the data and unfortunately it's very weak. They made only questionaires and the return rates were very low, so it doesn't say much. They had really stupid mistakes in the report (confusing p-values and chi^2 values, wrong additions), all seems really sloppy.
In sum they made a study on a stupid goal, and the real results are not very meaningful due to poor methodological quality of the stury.
It did help people be healthier and happier though, but the headline only points out that they're still unemployed. We must be doing something really wrong as a society when we treat jobs as an end, rather than a means.
Money given to the unemployed is not UBI, it's the dole.
I can't imaging that this is true in the general case.
Is it obvious yet?
The physical effort is trivial, I shelf stacked for a year as a teen Saturday job. Not intellectually fulfilling perhaps, but a pretty sociable job. Helping a relative out on his fruit and plant growing smallholding was far more energetic.
When the kids were young, SO looked to find something, almost anything part time, so long as it fit around the needs of the children and schools. We were both surprised at how limited those choices were and how often they required some hours commitment that guaranteed they could not coexist with raising young children.
If people are willing to do these jobs, then there's no problem.
Basically, most people want to do something meaningful with their time so they'll work with something they like. Most millionaires still work for example, even though they have means enough to stop at any time.
And if you wanted more money, why wouldn't you work part time, to have a more confortable life ?
But I bet that after a while, also videogames will get boring. You will feel the need to do something outside. Be it some volunteering, just to meet people, or a job you love. Without the need to be profitable, the tyranny of profit.
It wouldn't be that bad, right?
Also: I've seen people do this at university. I seem to recall that people who truly withdrew didn't do well at all, with some exceptions. People who withdrew into the theory, or into student life, at the expense of other things did much better.
Why not ? I would retreat in the middle of the forest with minimal technology if I could afford it (yes this life style cost money nowadays). People are the one who get you in trouble in the first place and avoiding having too much people in your life reduce the troubles and can give you peace.
I think the main reasons most people would still work are:
- To give purpose to their lives and occupy their minds/bodies
- In order to afford a better lifestyle than they could on only UBI (nice house, holidays, going out etc)
BTW - You must know the Polish phrase from communist times: "Czy się stoi, czy się leży, dwa tysiące się należy.". For English speakers: "Down you lie or up you stand, either way you'll earn a grand". Here is how it looked like: https://d-pt.ppstatic.pl/kadry/k/r/1/01/3b/58f074a3247ac_o,s...
There are already people who receive free money, and nobody seems to worry about what they do with their time. In general, most people seem to think more money is better for them, so they work to increase the amount of money they get. One of the ideas behind basic income is that by removing obstacles and disincentives to work, maybe people will feel more free to look for a good job.
It will lead to far fewer falling out of the system entirely thanks to the expense of forms, proof and means testing for benefits (this is well shown), but will also eliminate fractional claiming rates. Means testing and claiming has been shown time and again to put some off claiming at all, perhaps through pride or the current intentional systematised stigma of benefits, even sheer exhaustion from 2 years of seeking work in late 50s to 2,000x rejections.
So we end up with a two tier unemployment system: those in receipt of unemployment, and those who've fallen out of the system entirely or were never in it. I'd rather help those with long term issues as well and have no one fall through the gaps to food bank or suicide.
Because it is better to go to the beach during the day and the parties at night!
A more respectable position is to become the president of your family foundation and go to charity dinners and pretend you care for something.
There are plenty of case where someone create a big business, and when he/she dies the children or grandchildren just spend all the money and the business colapses due to stupidity or laziness (or it is sold).
Because having something you can live for is a basic psychologic need that everyone has. Aswell as social acknowledgement
Now, obviously that's a bit against the capitalist grain and all that, but think of it this way:
the Luddite rebellion, and mass unrest happened in the UK because people's livelihoods were taken away. Either through automation, or enclosure.
This left thousands upon thousands of people with little left to lose forced to crime in order to eat.
This is expensive for wider society, you need to spend money of security, courts, jail, insurance public damages.
Paying money to make them happy, so that they don't _have_ to turn to crime, or a radical dictator candidate is a price worth paying.
Plus if it has to be a minimal living income - like minimum wage once was supposed to be - it would have to be higher to cover rent, food, and other mandatory expenses in most places. Or is the idea to adjust it according to where people live? That will just open it up to a lot of fraud attempts.
UBI in contrast just moves money to bank accounts.
I would gladly pay _more_ if it meant the following:
1) there are no riots
2) There are no slums
3) There are good provision for health and social care
4) there is low crime.
5) decent education
none of these wishes are altruistic. why? because all of these thing directly impact _my_ live and _my_ family
slums mean crime hotspots, means no go areas, means muggings. this translates to higher policing, courts and prison costs. it means higher insurance premiums, longer commutes. It pushes up house prices because certian areas are not worth living in. high rentals for everyone.
bad health and social care means less productive workforce, which means less taxes being paid, which means worse public services. (and more tax _i_ have to pay, or fork out for private services)
the choice is this:
cast the longterm unemployed out into the street and suffer the rise in crime, anger and dissent, or pay them a stipend to be happy, content and most of all _cheap_