Posted: 4/23/2018 3:27:59 PM EDT
Since the beginning of last year, 2,000 Finns have been getting money from the government each month — and they are not expected to do anything in return. The participants, ages 25 to 58, are all unemployed and were selected at random by Kela, Finland's social-security institution.
Instead of unemployment benefits, the participants now receive €560 ($690) a month, tax-free. Should they find a job during the two-year trial, they still get to keep the money. While the project has been praised internationally for being at the cutting edge of social welfare, back in Finland, decision-makers are pulling the brakes and taking the project in a whole new direction. "Right now, the government is making changes that are taking the system further away from a basic income," Miska Simanainen, a Kela researcher, told the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The initial plan was for the experiment to expand in early 2018 to include workers as well as people who are not working, but that did not happen, to the disappointment of researchers at Kela. Researchers say that without workers in the project, they're unable to study whether the so-called basic income would allow people to make new career moves or enter training or education. "Two years is too short a time frame to be able to draw extensive conclusions from such a vast experiment," Olli Kangas, a professor who's one of the experts behind the basic-income trial, told Finland's public-service broadcaster YLE. "We ought to have been given additional time and more money to achieve reliable results." In recent years, an increasing number of tech entrepreneurs have endorsed universal basic income, a system in which people receive a standard amount of money simply for being alive. Entrepreneurs who have expressed support for universal basic income include Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Chris Hughes, a Facebook cofounder, and Ray Kurzweil, Google's futurist and engineering director. Executive Summary: People getting free shit wont look for work as long as they are given free shit. Experiment (socialism) failed because not enough time or money was thrown at the experiment (socialism). Color me shocked. |
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And the first thing that came to my mind was .... Should they find a job during the two-year trial, they still get to keep the money. |
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Just curious, I have trust friend friends that are given plenty of free shit, free rent or house bought for them, parents paid for car, parents pay for education, etc.. They don't have a care in the world. These guys would be the worst slackers ever and most likely beach bums if they weren't on welfare from their parents. Absolutely no work ethic whatsoever and everything is handed to them. But now they have steady jobs (usually at some family/family's friend company where it's impossible to be fired), making good money, equity off their houses, 401k etc.. Are we angry about free shit that comes from the government? Or do we think free shit regardless of where it comes from breeds worthless/lazy individuals? I can say wholeheartedly I saw a lot of absolutely worthless people become very successful because they simply won the parent lottery. Just so we're on the same page, I hate both groups and see them as equal leeches. |
