The basic income scheme that I’ve seen proposed in Finland would not increase people’s incomes: it would simply be a less bureaucratic way of giving people on welfare the same amount of money that they’re already entitled to, but with less hoops to jump through and fewer welfare traps. People who earned enough to not be eligible to welfare today would still receive the money from the UBI, but the tax rate on their other income would be slightly increased to compensate, for an approximately zero change in net income.
In Finland, today, can I just say “I don’t feel like working” and get welfare for life?
(Not an expert on this stuff, but here’s my rough understanding.)
You get a couple years of pretty straightforward welfare if you quit your job, then it looks like they will start doing means testing (tarveharkinta) on your savings and will stop paying you if it doesn’t look like you’re living hand-to-mouth. After you’ve gone through all your savings that the employment office is aware of, I think you can go on living in some sort of rental apartment and get food. There’s also a spectrum of make-work programs from “send your application to this poorly matching open job we picked for you” to “attend this useless training course” to “rehabilitative labor activity” which can end up looking sort of like the American prisoner labor thing. The welfare will be suspended as a sanction if you refuse to attend, but I’m not quite sure how easy it is to end up actually homeless if you keep diligently pestering the social services and refuse to cooperate with anything work-like.
One problem is the diligent pestering of the social services part. Many of the actual unemployed are ill or have some mental problems, and they might not be that good at working the bureaucracy. So it probably helps if you’re reasonably energetic and smart enough to navigate the systems of regulations if you want to become a lifestyle unemployed. Also, you need to make sure to spend your time in an economically unproductive way. Starting any kind of small business will wipe out all welfare eligibility instantly.
then it looks like they will start doing means testing (tarveharkinta) on your savings and will stop paying you if it doesn’t look like you’re living hand-to-mouth. … There’s also a spectrum of make-work programs from “send your application to this poorly matching open job we picked for you” to “attend this useless training course” to “rehabilitative labor activity” which can end up looking sort of like the American prisoner labor thing.
Now here’s why these are really, really dumb policies: they amount to a capital levy and a corvée that are selectively applied to low-income folks who would otherwise qualify for welfare. Needless to say, there’s a reason we don’t use capital levies and corvées anymore, and limiting them to low-income folks does not change that assessment much.
If you’re willing to live on a rather low budget and spend a bunch of energy gaming the system, yes, but that low of an income tends to stress most people out (especially since the system is known to do “fun” stuff like noticing that your insurance company compensated you for your bike getting stolen, and then count the insurance claim as income to be directly subtracted from your welfare payments).
Similarly, as rsaarelm mentioned, if you do anything that the system might consider “work” (sometimes including stuff like volunteering at an event for no pay), you might be denied your payments.
The basic income scheme that I’ve seen proposed in Finland would not increase people’s incomes: it would simply be a less bureaucratic way of giving people on welfare the same amount of money that they’re already entitled to, but with less hoops to jump through and fewer welfare traps. People who earned enough to not be eligible to welfare today would still receive the money from the UBI, but the tax rate on their other income would be slightly increased to compensate, for an approximately zero change in net income.
In Finland, today, can I just say “I don’t feel like working” and get welfare for life?
(Not an expert on this stuff, but here’s my rough understanding.)
You get a couple years of pretty straightforward welfare if you quit your job, then it looks like they will start doing means testing (tarveharkinta) on your savings and will stop paying you if it doesn’t look like you’re living hand-to-mouth. After you’ve gone through all your savings that the employment office is aware of, I think you can go on living in some sort of rental apartment and get food. There’s also a spectrum of make-work programs from “send your application to this poorly matching open job we picked for you” to “attend this useless training course” to “rehabilitative labor activity” which can end up looking sort of like the American prisoner labor thing. The welfare will be suspended as a sanction if you refuse to attend, but I’m not quite sure how easy it is to end up actually homeless if you keep diligently pestering the social services and refuse to cooperate with anything work-like.
One problem is the diligent pestering of the social services part. Many of the actual unemployed are ill or have some mental problems, and they might not be that good at working the bureaucracy. So it probably helps if you’re reasonably energetic and smart enough to navigate the systems of regulations if you want to become a lifestyle unemployed. Also, you need to make sure to spend your time in an economically unproductive way. Starting any kind of small business will wipe out all welfare eligibility instantly.
Now here’s why these are really, really dumb policies: they amount to a capital levy and a corvée that are selectively applied to low-income folks who would otherwise qualify for welfare. Needless to say, there’s a reason we don’t use capital levies and corvées anymore, and limiting them to low-income folks does not change that assessment much.
If you’re willing to live on a rather low budget and spend a bunch of energy gaming the system, yes, but that low of an income tends to stress most people out (especially since the system is known to do “fun” stuff like noticing that your insurance company compensated you for your bike getting stolen, and then count the insurance claim as income to be directly subtracted from your welfare payments).
Similarly, as rsaarelm mentioned, if you do anything that the system might consider “work” (sometimes including stuff like volunteering at an event for no pay), you might be denied your payments.