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

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-08/-useless-basic-income-trial-fails-test-at-biggest-finnish-union

by elsewhen • 9 years ago

76 121 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

stuaxo• 9 years ago

but the union also suggests that making it easier to refuse unpleasant jobs may create inflationary bottlenecks.

Shitty jobs being valued higher in monetary terms doesn't sound like the worst outcome I can think of.

sharemywin3• 9 years ago

I think it's tricky. If prices go up then demand drops. So businesses have to adjust to make things work. So late hours, early hours will be dropped so Revenue/Employee is large enough to be profitable. more self check out lines at groceries.

ma2rten• 9 years ago

Or the wages go up for these kinds of jobs, leading to inflation, meaning basic income will not be enough to survive.

staticautomatic• 9 years ago

It's not necessarily true with respect to jobs that if the price goes up, demand drops.

markhahn2• 9 years ago

the price-demand relation is a curve (which can be nearly flat), not a simple inverse function.

iaw• 9 years ago

If prices go up then demand drops

That is not a true statement in Economics. Price is a result of the supply & demand functions, the scenario you're thinking of is a reduction in supply with unchanged demand leading to an increase in price.

We really don't know if that increase in price will be large or not without more data.

the-dude• 9 years ago

If a side-effect of UBI is the retreat of the 24/7 economy, it would be a plus.

Chris20486• 9 years ago

If prices go up then demand drops

demand exists at different price points. Demand will drop, but I think this represents persistent demand.

This is a good thing. I demand disappears at a certain cost, maybe it's not really viable?

e.g. Is there a point at which we'd no longer to pay for a garbage man, deep-sea fisherman or sewage worker?

If yes, maybe we don't really need these jobs. If no, (or the point is high) then maybe these jobs should be higher paid.

prostoalex2• 9 years ago

In retail this creates an effect of employment driven only by high margins. Shopping center consisting of Whole Foods, Neiman Marcus and organic pour-over coffee shop will survive, small corner bodega selling food and various odds-and-ends will not.

This does create additional employment for economists studying origins and dynamics of "food deserts", though.

guard-of-terra3• 9 years ago

- Remove zoning restrictions.

- Make it easy for individual enterpreneurs to open small shops.

This ought to help. Small corner bodega will survive if operated by its owner.

jonwachob91• 9 years ago

It's interesting to understand the primary motivator for UBI around the world. It sounds like the Fins want to use it to take away the minimum wage, while in the US the primary motivator is to take away the rest of the welfare services.

youdontknowtho• 9 years ago

That is interesting. I kind of feel like Charlie Brown and the football...If we agree to get rid of the safety net before UBI is implemented, I don't think the conservatives would follow through. I really don't. I don't think that they are interested in co-governance anymore.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

Seems obvious. It's like the current talk of repealing the ACA and then replacing it with something later. If you actually mean to replace it, there's no reason not to figure out the replacement first, and do essentially an atomic swap of the two.

aaron-lebo3• 9 years ago

I don't think it's quite that bad. It's also not new.

He described the passage of the bill as something of a “con-job” that allowed millions of immigrants in the country illegally to have legal status with a promise of workplace enforcement and other measures to curb future illegal immigration.

But that didn’t happen, he said. And there was little incentive to follow through on promises of strict workplace enforcement, he said, once millions of people were legalized.

“I definitely view this as the 30-year problem,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/todays-immigration-debat...

Both parties are self-serving and don't trust each other for good reason.

distances• 9 years ago

Maybe a technical point, but Finland doesn't have a minimum wage as such. Instead, 90% of Finland's workforce is covered by universally binding collective agreements -- no work on a given field can be done cheaper than the minimum dictated by the respective agreement. This includes cases where neither the employer nor the employee is unionized.

JoeAltmaier2• 9 years ago

Abolishing welfare is the argument that makes it palatable (affordable). But the reason is simpler: automation will put almost all of us out of work. What then? Spiraling consumerism where we all need personal nail polishers? Return to sedan chairs in downtown districts? Abolish home kitchens so we all have to eat out and support chefs?

Or, let the robots lift the yoke of labor from our shoulders forever, and turn to other pursuits.

rm_-rf_slash2• 9 years ago

The problem is that we will still need vital services that computers are still indeterminatably far from accomplishing.

Let's say we go full Star Trek and get replicators (with the seemingly limitless energy that is a hallmark of the series unless it's a "dilithium" episode). Great! All the physical needs at the push of a button!

But people will still need to develop the replicators, manage supply chains, and so on. Even if a machine managed most of it, people would have to know how to step in when the machine fails, because they will.

Bigger problem: medical services. It takes a FUCKING LONG time to become a doctor, and for good reason. So would the many layabouts freed from labor be entitled to top-notch medical services?

We're kind of stuck with the shitty system we have until we have far greater technology than we do today to solve our problems. And that assumes that population growth doesn't spiral out of control and that the climate plays along for long enough for our species to get its collective shit together.

nabla96• 9 years ago

This is because unions think they would lose power if basic income is implemented. Unions in Finland have abandoned part time and low income people and only look after people who have full time jobs (who are members in the unions).

Green party in Finland made 560 euro basic income proposal few years ago that was cost neutral. That was verified with microsimulation model that used real world data.

igravious• 9 years ago

Can you point me towards the micro-simulation model? I'm interested all such attempts to model bits of society.

nabla96• 9 years ago

It was the SISU microsimulation model.

http://tilastokeskus.fi/tup/mikrosimulointi/index_en.html

aaron-lebo3• 9 years ago

This makes me wonder if basic income can't get passed in Finland with a constituency that should (in theory) be in favor, what chances does it have in the rest of the world where dynamics are aligned against it?

Decades before we see it in the US?

ajmurmann4• 9 years ago

I sometimes wonder if BIG is counterintuitively more popular with libertarians than with liberals/socialists. There seem to be four solutions to the automation will require hardly anyone to work problem.

1. Ignore it

2. Patch and reinforce the existing welfare system

3. Basic Income guarantee

4. Try to trying time

1 & 3 are obviously stupid solutions. But a combination of 1 & 3 seems to be what the current administration is doing. Democrats seem to like a combination of 2 & 1. I think 2 is generally the go-to solutions for all liberals/socialists world wide who are used to that approach and therefore are comfortable with it. I think libertarians who acknowledge the problem and therefore not to go with 1 will not like 2 and 4 because they both massively mess with the market. So that leaves BIG. Therefore I wouldn't be surprised if we see some form of BIG in the US before we see it in Europe. The enormous size and regional diversity in the US might prevent that though.

Edit: formatting

nabla96• 9 years ago

I think most economists agree that UBI would reduce poverty traps and marginal tax rates on poor individuals even if they don't support UBI for other reasons.

In Finland these traps and marginal tax rates are especially large. Marginal tax rates on poor can be as high as 80-100+% depending on their situation (with single moms marginal tax rate can be higher than 100+ going to work makes things worse).

The discussion about UBI is framed into lazy bums vs. hard-working good people. Lazy bum argument is easy to counter when you point out that half of the low income workforce in retail would already get the same income from welfare programs if they would stop working. If they would be rational and not value work, they should quit. If people would realize that many of the poor people either can't work full time (due to mental or physical illness) and that their marginal tax rates are usually much higher than in any other income group, they might reconsider supporting UBI.

ianai3• 9 years ago

If they've abandoned part time/low income people then how come they care if those same people have a means to survive? They should welcome them as potential, new consumers of goods/services that their members provide.

nabla96• 9 years ago

They are stuck into supporting their shrinking support base for ideological reasons.

Unions are strongly connected to both social democratic party (SDP). Unions and social democrats achieved many good things for several decades. But things have changed and they and their support base is trapped in the past and looking back to old good times. They are basically party for baby boomer generation.

vesinisa• 9 years ago

I believe the Unions' thinking goes more like that they represent a constituency of traditional 9 'til 5 workers with steady income from one employer. Since such citizen are more likely to have Union membership, the Unions are fundamentally opposed to any social policy that would erode the basic motivation for majority of citizens to choose 9 'til 5 employment, like UBI. Remember that membership is everything to Unions.

reloop2• 9 years ago

Unions in Finland have abandoned part time and low income people and only look after people who have full time jobs (who are members in the unions).

A union is a membership organisation that looks after the interest of it's members, I don't see how they could have abandoned people that aren't members. What has happened in other Nordic countries though is that politicians have worked hard to lessen the power of unions by decoupling things like unemployment and introducing other form of employment. Therefor it makes less and less sense to be a member of a union. But that is to a large extent a political question not a choice by the unions.

I also think maybe one of the biggest unanswered question with basic income is how you can guarantee it long term. We already know that things like minimum wage, unemployment benefits, student benefits and social insurance don't keep up over time despite the power of the institutions and the unions. Now people are saying that we should put all those things in one basket and hope that the politicians don't screw us over later?

nabla96• 9 years ago

Now people are saying that we should put all those things in one basket and hope that the politicians don't screw us over later?

Having one basket for everyone is politically easier to defend.

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. Poor people are taken care on the side.

The reality is that people don't care about poor, but if you create system were everyone gets money equally, people don't want to give it up. We already have kind of UBI for children in Finland where government pays certain amount of money every month for families with children, rich and poor. Nobody wants to give it up, because free money (paid by taxes).

jsnell• 9 years ago

Green party in Finland made 560 euro basic income proposal few years ago that was cost neutral.

Sure. But the ongoing experiment is not anywhere near cost-neutral. It's literally giving free money to all participants, while raising no extra revenue from any source. Even people in favor of the basic income agree that implementing this model country-wide would be totally impossible (the 5% of GDP extra deficit from the article seems like a fair estimate).

So criticizing this experiment seems totally reasonable, no matter what ulterior motives the labor unions might have. The experiment is just not going to be actionable no matter what the outcome, everyone knows it's useless, but it was implemented anyway since it was an item from the coalition agreement that could be ticked off easily.

nabla96• 9 years ago

I agree. The experiment has very limited utility.

ende• 9 years ago

Union leaders don't like UBI because it empowers individuals, not union leaders.

toni• 9 years ago

I get what you're saying but it's probably for the best to expand on your point, and not just a one liner.

ianai3• 9 years ago

Any universal income would eliminate or severely diminish the survival factor of work. The reality that the individual must have work to support him/herself. People accept less than optimal, for them, work situations as a result. If people have options - such as a guaranteed ability to survive, no matter how minimally - they have the power to refuse some situations. That would diminish the bargaining power against the individual worker of all who currently employ people at or near the UBI level.

hinkley• 9 years ago

Not necessarily. It would depend on whether you receive UBI while on strike. If you do then strikers could threaten much longer strikes because the UBI would stretch their savings a lot longer. That would give the unions more leverage. Possibly too much leverage.

ptaipale3• 9 years ago

Of course you would get UBI while on strike. That's the "universal" right there.

It's not a particular change in Finland, though. There are comparatively many strikes in the country, many of them illegal (or, to be precise, breaking collectively bargained contract that is valid applicable law). This is partly due to the fact that unions can raise money tax-free and pay to striking employees tax-free.

sharemywin3• 9 years ago

I would be much more in favor of a employer of last resort program.

ZenoArrow3• 9 years ago

Wouldn't that just result in 'busywork'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_work

Wouldn't it be better to free people from having to work rather than generating a large volume of work for work's sake?

criddell5• 9 years ago

The military is famous for using busy work to occupy people's time during the long periods of waiting. Do you think in that context busy work has value aside from the actual work? If so, then maybe the same principle applies generally.

Chris20486• 9 years ago

training course of last resort?

markhahn2• 9 years ago

Unions want to present themselves as the only possible savior for the downtrodden. But of course! Since when have any two saviors been willing to coexist?

Also a bit strange to hear capitalist-incentive reasoning coming from a union...

amelius• 9 years ago

BI is just a negative form of income tax. So can't we just reduce the relevant income taxes slowly until we start running into problems?

sp332• 9 years ago

A lot of people at the lower end of the income scale are already paying no taxes. So they can't be reduced without going negative right away.

refurb• 9 years ago

What about the earned income tax credit in the US? It's a negative income tax.

allemagne• 9 years ago

A huge number of people do pay negative taxes.

jjawssd• 9 years ago

No, because the people that win with UBI are the poorest people, and they already pay almost no tax.

mhurron• 9 years ago

That helps those without an income how exactly?

snarfy• 9 years ago

Automation will replace all of those trade union jobs, and then they will find basic income not so useless.

Rezo• 9 years ago

"Not only does SAK say that the system may reduce the labor force -- for instance by tempting mothers of small children or those close to retirement to take more time off"

As long as the unemployment rate is > 0, that sounds like a net benefit for UBI. Someone else who isn't at the same life stage can then fill the freed position. You would only think this is a bad thing if you see workforce participation as the end-goal in itself, while all signs point towards massive societal upheaval due to automation without something like UBI.

jcon3213• 9 years ago

I don't understand the principle behind UBI. If everyone makes +$X amount more doesn't everything just raise by +$Y?

ashark• 9 years ago

Are you contending that changes in average income (in either direction, presumably) of the lower, say, four quintiles of society, have no real effect on quality of life? Or only when it's achieved via UBI? If the latter, why is that case special?

jcon3213• 9 years ago

Having a hard time understanding your comment. Are you saying UBI should only be for lower class? Isn't that just a welfare program?

Chris20486• 9 years ago

Maybe certain products are sold on the basis on minimal viable profit. This will not change, even if everyone now has more money.

Things sold on the basis of what people are able to pay are usually based on something in short supply (not liquid?) such that if people (now with more money) started to compete (by offering more money) they could not just produce more of that good; hence the price rises instead, like in an auction.

So UBI should probably be accompanied with some kind of plan for affordable housing (increase housing supply).

ralmeida2• 9 years ago

Not if you assume a fairly free market (not many cartels, etc).

If you could buy bread for $10, and now earn 50% more, a merchant could raise the price to $15 to try to grab the 'newly found money'.

But they would be just raising their margin, since the cost of producing the bread is the same.

A free market then will self-regulate via competition. A new merchant could enter the market charging $14 for the bread, undercutting the $15 guy. And so on, until the price reaches equilibrium based on what the people are willing to pay.

Of course, there's value in the discussion on whether UBI changes the costs of production and/or demand, but it's not as simple as 'income raises, price raises'.

jcon3213• 9 years ago

"Of course, there's value in the discussion on whether UBI changes the costs of production and/or demand but it's not as simple as 'income raises, price raises'"

Makes sense.

logfromblammo3• 9 years ago

What I don't understand is how people can support Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Sallie Mae loan guarantee programs and not UBI-style welfare programs.

They're almost the same thing. The government is essentially providing a subsidy, and middlemen suck up most of the value, leaving the presumptively intended beneficiaries with almost nothing.

Government encourages mortgages with loan guarantees. Home prices rise. Existing builders, owners, and lending institutions benefit, and the new buyers are less able to afford the higher prices and debt loads.

Government encourages student loans with loan guarantees. Tuition prices rise. Universities and lending institutions benefit, and the students are less able to afford the higher prices and debt loads.

UBI encourages purchase of lifestyle necessities with monthly checks. Rent, gas, and grocery costs rise. Landlords and business owners benefit, and people still have to work in addition to the monthly check they are now utterly dependent on.

You can't move the supply curve by fiddling around with prices or demand. You can't provide everyone with their lifestyle necessities independent of work or trade just by sending out checks.

If you want to make home ownership increase, you have to build more affordable (and more-affordable) homes. If you want higher education to expand, you have to build more universities and hire more professors. If you want more unemployed people to not starve and not be homeless, you have to acquire and distribute more food and beds. Why do people persist in thinking you can solve problems by just printing/taxing more money and transferring it to certain groups?

JoeAltmaier2• 9 years ago

The old "prices will rise to absorb UBI" argument. That takes a profound distrust of the free market to even imagine.

As for supply curve, wake up and notice how industry is changing. In the last 10 years, automation has been explosive. Factories coming back to America from overseas don't do it because somehow labor has become affordable. They do it because robots are cheaper than even Chinese and Indian labor.

The robots are ready to lift the yoke of labor from humanity. As expected, folks are reacting with panic and alarm. Yes, it'll be different. But perhaps not the apocalypse that keeps getting threatened.

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.

lolsal3• 9 years ago

What I don't understand is how people can support Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac/Sallie Mae loan guarantee programs and not UBI-style welfare programs.

The guarantee programs are different because if someone defaults on a loan, presumably you can repossess the house and recoup some of the investment. If you distribute basic income and someone blows it all on garbage - what then? Do we let the person die? Do we subsidize further welfare programs to provide food/shelter/healthcare?

I am not an economist - just a person trying to understand. At my current understanding of UBI I don't think I support such a program.

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

In the end it all seems like a no-win situation.

basic income, much like housing debt, will just set a new price floor. This any merchant worth their salt will price things at that point plus a markup.

Thing is that going the other way and freezing the amount of currency in the economy, like say with a gold standard, will do crap all as well. As that just means things will be prices fractions of fractions, and the pay will be likewise.

In the end the only thing that can really solve things is massively, and i mean Star Trek scale massively, crank up supply of goods and services.

And unless we have something like Deuterium (aka the handwaved wonderfuel of every space age sci-fi) and replicators to go with, thats not going to happen as we run into an energy crunch sooner than we like to think.

Effectively humanity can't win.

jacquesm• 9 years ago

Well, unlike housing debt this one is more or less un-avoidable. If you add another 20 to 30 years of progress to software and automation in general there will be a lot more people out of job and if they don't have money to spend the whole machine will grind to a halt. Either that or you can welcome a new generation of Luddites.

recursive• 9 years ago

If my income is $10, and your income is $100, you can buy 10x the stuff I can buy. If you add a basic income of $20, (ignoring taxes lol) now you can buy 4x the stuff I can. It might not affect high end luxury items, but I can probably afford some staple items like socks now.

mixmastamyk• 9 years ago

He's saying the price of socks will rise to eat your new income, no?

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

But what if i am the merchant selling you socks, what then?

That is part of the problem, this at the top are invariably those that sell stuff to those at the bottom (either directly or via ownership in companies that do so).

senko3• 9 years ago

basic income, much like housing debt, will just set a new price floor. This any merchant worth their salt will price things at that point plus a markup.

And immediately afterwards any merchant worth their salt will price things slightly lower and grab the market. (Or rather not, as someone else will again price it slightly lower, and it'll reach the equilibrium at the old cost + markup).

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

But how far down can that go before nobody is interested because there is no profit to be made?

We already see how in the PC market the margins are razor thin. The markup do not have to be 10s of percentages, but it has to be there or there is no point in being a merchant in the first place.

shuntress2• 9 years ago

I don't think I follow.

I believe the purpose of basic income is to provide the guarantee that everyone will be able to afford the bare minimum of shelter and sustenance (sustenance including necessary utilities which in addition to power+water includes internet access).

Are you saying that the effect of introducing a basic universal income would be that the current price of shelter+sustenance will increase beyond affordability from just basic income alone?

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

That is the possibility i worry about yes.

Where i live, Norway, there used to be a price control on housing. But then it was abolished by a right wing government, allowing banks to lend to individuals wanting to buy.

What in effect has happened is that household debt and house prices have risen in lock step ever since.

Similarly, after the unions negotiate a wage rise the prices on good and services will invariably rise to match with a bit of time lag.

Damn it, we can perhaps look at how things work for students that get a fixed government stipend. It has to be constantly adjusted upwards to stay relevant with the price inflation.

Chris20486• 9 years ago

This any merchant worth their salt will price things at that point plus a markup

Couldn't any other merchant then undercut that merchant?

nicholas73• 9 years ago

Basic income is more about social security, even if it changes price points. Plus, the most basic needs have a somewhat fixed consumption rate.

You don't buy more bread if your income goes up. If anything, you buy less and use your money elsewhere.

mindslight• 9 years ago

As that [gold standard] just means things will be prices fractions of fractions, and the pay will be likewise.

The issue isn't how much one unit of currency is worth, but how its value degrades over time and where newly-created money introduced into the economy.

The first concern - it's lower-middle class people that want to save in simple currency, because the transaction and management fees are relatively larger. And so inflation represents a direct drag not on their month-to-month budget, but on their ability to save up economic bargaining power for the future.

The second concern - when creating new money, we would expect areas where that new money is spent to inflate quicker than areas where it is not (conversely, if we printed a new $10T and dropped it in a deep sea trench, we would see zero price inflation). Newly created money is seen by consumers for things that can be financialized - housing, cars, education, healthcare. This has the effect of replacing capital assets with monthly rents - the banks don't actually give out newly printed money, but merely lend it. This discourages these expenses from ever being paid off, leading to decreased economic power due to higher burn rates.

ilikeatari• 9 years ago

I cannot recommend enough Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano as a great thought provoking material on the UBI topic. It made me rethink its potential implications.

ar0• 9 years ago

Almost all of the comments here are very dismissive of the trade union's arguments, but I think it is very important to look at the key problem UBI faces IMHO: Proper work is not just a source of money, but also a source of pride and a feeling of purpose / usefulness. And UBI alone cannot replace this.

This is not only a problem with UBI but with all welfare-focused policies, regardless of how well-intentioned and useful they might be. Put yourself into the shoes of someone on the receiving end. The story a blue-collar worker you are automating away is hearing is this: "We are sorry, but in our AI-fuelled, robot-driven world you are useless. We have no need for you anymore because you can't program deep neural networks. You just don't have what it takes to be a useful member of our society. But - don't worry! We recognize this is a problem, so we have introduced UBI / <insert other welfare programs here> to make sure you are financially covered and don't have to worry about your mortgage."

Is this something you want to hear? No. And that's why people are dismissing UBI and vote Trump - because "You are a hard-working, very capable individual whose job was unfairly stolen by an illegal immigrant" is a much, much better story for your self-esteem. And self-esteem is important [1]!

Not all people have a bucket list of things they would want to do in their spare time, like contributing to cool open source programs or writing the next Harry Potter series. Many just want to live a "regular" life and want to feel useful by providing for their families. They benefit from having a job where they feel useful and are accepted and where someone else (their boss) structures their work and tells them what to do. Taking this away and replacing it with UBI cannot be the (whole) answer. [And, no, I don't have the right answer, either.]

Money is not everything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem#Importance

usefulcat2• 9 years ago

Not sure why this is downvoted. One can certainly argue that personal identity /shouldn't/ be closely tied to one's occupation, but for better or worse right now for most people it very much is, at least in the US and I'm guessing in many other places as well. To my mind, this is the potentially problematic aspect of UBI for which the solutions are least obvious.

benibela• 9 years ago

Proper work is not just a source of money, but also a source of pride and a feeling of purpose / usefulness. And UBI alone cannot replace this.

That can also be used as pro-UBI argument to countering the argument "With an UBI everyone would quit there job and society would collapse."

"We are sorry, but in our AI-fuelled, robot-driven world you are useless. We have no need for you anymore because you can't program deep neural networks. You just don't have what it takes to be a useful member of our society

Well, if robots actually can run everything one day, that is just what they will be told. UBI or not.

Not all people have a bucket list of things they would want to do in their spare time, like contributing to cool open source programs or writing the next Harry Potter series.

If they do not want to do one of these things, they can do something similar to what they do now in their job. Or do they not want to do their job? That is quite a cognitive dissonance. Neither wanting to do it nor wanting to stop doing it.

If they want to be told to do something against their will, they can find someone to draft them to something. Most open source projects could draft people to do something (If they can't contribute to an open source projects, they are useless after all in the robot driven world). I have 1800 unread mails about my open source project. I really could draft some people to check them out.

digitalronin• 9 years ago

How utterly pointless is it to say "This experiment will fail" - they seem to have missed the point of what an experiment is.

known• 9 years ago

Does UBI provide impetus to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

leke• 9 years ago

It's a bit early to be saying that I think. I was disappointed not to get on it. I would have become self employed in a heartbeat.

ptaipale3• 9 years ago

One reason for the opinion of this union organisation is, of course, that they're intertwined with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and to some extent the Leftist League, who both are currently in opposition. So it is rather natural that it is against something that the governing parties (a coalition of centre-right parties with different support bases) has initiated.

drallison• 9 years ago

"Finland’s basic income experiment is unworkable, uneconomical and ultimately useless." writes the author of the Bloomberg article [emphasis added]. This article is not the concept of a basic income; it is specific to the particular choices made for the Finnish experiment.

The content is disappointing. The article collects opinions about the the Finnish experiment primarily from detractors and presents only hearsay anecdotal evidence for strongly held conclusions.

The present pilot program is small,selective, and embedded in the existing economy. I suspect that it will work only when scaled up to the economy as a whole.

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

Related Stories