from Hacker News

Finland Has Second Thoughts About Giving Free Money to Jobless People

by DEFCON28 on 4/26/18, 9:42 PM with 30 comments

• by mistercow on 4/26/18, 10:09 PM

  According to at least one researcher involved with the project, this is basically what was expected all along. It was planned to be a one year trial, and now the year is up and they'll analyze the results before deciding what to do next.

  Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/finland-universal-basic-incom...

• by usr1106 on 4/26/18, 10:29 PM

  Yet another poorly researched article about this experiment. This has been a very limited experiment for only 2000 randomly selected participants (unemployed with certain restrictions). It has beem time-limited from the beginning. More critical observers have always said it is too small and too limited to produce useful data. Some claim it was designed to fail by the governmennt. But the international press has overhyped it with Finland giving away free money.

  Now nothing has really changed and no decisions were taken. No reports have been published and this had not been intended before the end of the trial.

  The so-called news is that the trial is not extended. But that's really a lack of news, an extension had never been planned.

  (I live in Finland)

• by grzm on 4/26/18, 10:30 PM

  Past discussions on the topic on HN within the past week or so:

  - 7 days ago, 169 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874921

  - 2 days ago, 36 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16910856

  - 2 days ago, 45 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16909881

  - 2 days ago, 27 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16912072

• by guidedlight on 4/26/18, 10:09 PM

  I thought the point of universal income was that everyone gets it regardless of their employment.

  Finland just gave the money to unemployed people, so it just became an unemployment benefit.

• by lioeters on 4/26/18, 10:35 PM

  Quoted from: http://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN0...

  Many international media-outlets have published stories alleging that Finland is going to discontinue its basic income experiment. This information is incorrect.

  “The experiment is proceeding according to plan and will continue until the end of 2018”, says Professor Olli Kangas, the leader of the research team at Kela (Social Insurance Institution of Finland).

• by test6554 on 4/26/18, 10:01 PM

  If the goal was to head off job losses from automation, then the work requirement should have been in place, but it should have somehow scaled up and down proportionally with the number of unfilled jobs in the country.

• by qwerty456127 on 4/26/18, 10:11 PM

  The idea that everybody must work and people that don't are a kind of evil, that everybody must sacrifice something (even when nobody actually needs it) to justify their fundamental needs being fulfilled (even if it doesn't actually cost anything) is itself a fundamental evil. The real virtue of economic development is setting everybody free.

• by branchless on 4/26/18, 10:18 PM

  Is this about landlords getting state money for no work?

• by nategri on 4/26/18, 10:25 PM

  What a loaded headline. Get it together, NYT.

• by tnvaught on 4/26/18, 10:14 PM

  "In much of the world, the concept of basic income retains appeal as a potential way to more justly spread the bounty of global capitalism while cushioning workers against the threat of robots and artificial intelligence taking their jobs." So, this is a funny way to acknowledge that global capitalism is really that good. Not only can it provide "bounty," but other, non-capitalist systems may be propped up by its success. It seems ironic that "justly spread" and "global capitalism" are in the same sentence, and not being contrasted.