Finland ends universal basic income experiment

[Dashinka 24,765]

Finland has decided to end its experiment with a universal basic income, in which people are paid an unconditional salary by the state instead of benefits.

The idea of a universal basic income has high-profile champions such as Richard Branson, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

But the Finnish government's enthusiasm for a pilot scheme, a European first which garnered worldwide attention, is petering out. Calls for extra funding for it were rejected and the two year trial will not be extended after next year.

 

 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/23/finland-ends-universal-basic-income-experiment/

 

 

[bcking 3,157]

1. Instead of benefits? So that means those people didn't get any social services that other people would otherwise qualify for? It wasn't clear in the article

 

2. It's also not clear exactly why their interest is "petering out" - What were the outcomes for the Finns (2,000 unemployed people picked at random) that received the money? Compare to the general population? Didn't seem like there was any data to suggest it wasn't working, they just "lost interest". They turned down a request to expand the scheme. You would presume that was because it "wasn't working", but they don't list the ways in which they evaluated whether it worked. I wonder what they were expecting to find in a two year period from the beginning? Did they have a hypothesis they were testing?

[Dashinka 24,765]

51 minutes ago, bcking said:

1. Instead of benefits? So that means those people didn't get any social services that other people would otherwise qualify for? It wasn't clear in the article

 

2. It's also not clear exactly why their interest is "petering out" - What were the outcomes for the Finns (2,000 unemployed people picked at random) that received the money? Compare to the general population? Didn't seem like there was any data to suggest it wasn't working, they just "lost interest". They turned down a request to expand the scheme. You would presume that was because it "wasn't working", but they don't list the ways in which they evaluated whether it worked. I wonder what they were expecting to find in a two year period from the beginning? Did they have a hypothesis they were testing?

I agree, there are a lot of questions the article did not answer.  I guess we will have to dig deeper, possibly it was more expensive than they thought it would be, or they were hoping for some level of those chosen in the test case to be motivated to find employment and get off the program.  From what I can find, I believe the Finns were only thinking to extend this to those unemployed, and not an across the board UBI as was looked at in Switzerland, and has been discussed by some of the movers and shakers mentioned.

[Boiler 46,016]

The Graun had an article, equally vague.

 

Limit on how much you can tax people would seem an issue.

[bcking 3,157]

The trial period was only in 2,000 people. So if the decision to stop was purely based on the cost they didn't need to do the trial. They could have done that math without actually trying.

 

The purpose of a small trial would have been to look at the impact on those who receive the funds. Does it help them, and how much?

 

Presumably those outcomes were not promising, but it would be interesting to know what they actually found. Was unemployment unchanged in the study group? Etc...

[Umka36 781]

The Finnish government plans to release data from the basic income program in late 2019, BBC reports

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/04/25/finland-basic-income-685-fails/549087002/