Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 08 2015, @11:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the handouts-instead-of-gov't-jobs-or-worker-owned-cooperatives dept.

Common Dreams reports

As a way to improve living standards and boosts its economy, the nation of Finland is moving closer towards offering[1] all of its adult citizens a basic permanent income of approximately 800 euros per month.

[...] The monthly allotment would replace other existing social benefits, but is an idea long advocated for by progressive-minded social scientists and economists as a solution--counter-intuitive as it may first appear at first--that actually decreases government expenditures while boosting both productivity, quality of life, and unemployment.

[...] The basic income proposal, put forth by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution, known as KELA, would see every adult citizen "receive 800 euros ($876) a month, tax free, that would replace existing benefits. Full implementation would be preceded by a pilot stage, during which the basic income payout would be 550 euros and some benefits would remain."

[...] Under the current welfare system, a person gets less in benefits if they take up temporary, low-paying or part-time work--which can result in an overall loss of income.

[...] As Quartz reports, previous experiments with a basic income have shown promising results:

Everyone in the Canadian town of Dauphin was given a stipend from 1974 to 1979, and though there was a drop in working hours,[PDF] this was mainly because men spent more time in school and women took longer maternity leaves. Meanwhile, when thousands of unemployed people in Uganda were given unsupervised grants of twice their monthly income, working hours increased by 17% and earnings increased by 38%.

[1] Link to The Independent in TFA was redundant IMO.

...and, before anyone shouts SOCIALISM!, this is actually Liberal Democracy (of the Bernie Sanders type).

An actual move toward Socialism would subsidize the formation of worker-owned cooperatives. An initiative to do that was floated in 1980. 5 percent of taxes would have gone into a pool (kinda like USA's Social Security fund). The Finns rejected it. Source: Prof. Richard Wolff


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:11AM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @12:11AM (#273720) Journal

    And theocracy worked SO well for us in the past, didn't it? Working reeeeeal nice for all those hellholes in the Middle East, huh?

    Don't be stupid, Morris. You're as much of a fundamentalist--blinkered, implacable, unreasonable--as any of the mullahs, when your economic shibboleths are at stake.

    All of this is assuming that scarcity will always be the rule all the time everywhere forever. We are well past the technological point where the very basics of life (water, basic housing, basic food) should be in any way "scarce." It boggles my mind how pseudo-Calvinistic zealots like you would rather see hundreds of thousands perish than see your ideals tainted.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday December 09 2015, @01:32AM

    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @01:32AM (#273741)

    All of this is assuming that scarcity will always be the rule all the time everywhere forever.

    If food someday ceases to be a 'economic good', i.e. traded for money, then that will be an entirely different situation. But today if you can't stretch forth your hand and call a lasagna out of the Internet or a replicator. If you want one Stouffer's/Nestle has to trade with a lot of people to get the ingredients, hire a lot of people to run a state of the art, safe, clean manufacturing (Ok, I hope the one I have spinning in the microwave was made in such a place...) facility, transport it to Walmart, etc. And they all have to pay taxes. None of those people love you, they certainly don't love me, none do it for the lulz, they all want to get paid; because they want things too. That lasagna I'm about to chow down on is most certainly an 'economic good.' If I am to eat it, you can't so we must all bid on it, resulting in establishing a price. So long as the price we consumers are willing to pay exceeds Nestle's cost to make and deliver them they will keep making them. Yum. This is the division of labor, supply and demand; This. Is. Economics. No government intervention or socialist bullcrap can do anything other than make it harder for me to get my lasagna, and for others to simply be forced to go hungry tonight because you dumb fucks raised the price too high for them.

    It boggles my mind how pseudo-Calvinistic zealots like you would rather see hundreds of thousands perish than see your ideals tainted.

    Yet it is Capitalism that feeds the hungry and socialism that fills mass graves. Your so-called good intentions kill, while my greed feeds the hungry billions. Every single time each system is tried we see the exact same result. The formula for prosperity is dead simple. Establish the Rule of Law, keep the money sound enough to make economic calculation practical, enough public safety to allow longterm investment and capital formation without fear of roving bands of warlords, freedom to start a business and keep the profits along with suffering the losses. Do those fairly simple things and prosperity results. Every time.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:24AM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday December 09 2015, @05:24AM (#273809) Journal

      Ah, and here you have hit on the problem: loss is socialized. Cronyism. We do NOT have capitalism in this nation. And something I wish to hell you people would wrap your minds around: we never will.

      Got it? Humans do not work that way. Purity of ideals is nice and all, but humans are imperfect. Power goes to power, money to money, privilege to privilege. Without some kind of countermeasure, laissez-faire inevitably results in feudalism. The things you decry as socialism are all that's holding us back from a dystopian nightmare. And so long as you speak out against them, I challenge you to quit driving on the interstate, quit drinking treated water, wave the snowplows away from your street, and so forth. What Obama meant by "you didn't build that" is that no man (or woman!) is an island.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...