Finland is one of the best places to adopt basic income.
We already have comprehensive and complex welfare system that creates pockets where effective marginal tax rate is above 100% (going to work part time reduces welfare, net effect is negative). In the lowest income service industry almost half of workers would earn the same if they were unemployed. Fears of people not working if they get the same money without working seems to be false.
There is already two groups of Finns that get kind of basic income. Underage children and old people. Underage children get unconditional sum of money (goes to parents of course). Old people have guaranteed small pension.
This test has many faults, (its only for unemployed, basic income would be for everyone) but it's unconditional like basic income should be. People get the same amount of basic income even if they find work, or work only part time.
On the other hand, there are about 213 000 officially unemployed and 140 000 "hidden unemployed" with an employed workforce of 2 413 000. Worse than that, the benefit dependency has now started to become intergenerational. About one fifth of Finnish young men (20-24) are "NEET" (Neither in employment nor in education or training). To exaggerate a bit, they don't mind living on benefits as they have enough for housing, food and computer games, or whatever they do.
The problem with welfare system's pockets of >100% marginal tax are not only related to money in the long term. It's also that the payment of benefits is interrupted very quickly upon the employment office learning of someone getting any job (even temporary and part time) and resuming payments is slow. So although the money is evened out in the longer run, people who take a job tend to have short-term cash flow problems. They really suffer for taking a job, and that is wrong.
BI would help in that, but as a long-term solution on population level the equation looks unsolvable.
The biggest problem in Finnish welfare is pensions[1]. They are too high for babyboomer generation. Basic income would allow creation of something similar to mini-jobs in Germany but still giving people a choice.
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1: Yes. Pensions in Finland are welfare. Pension fund savings cover only tiny percentage of pension. Young working people are paying sums much bigger than basic income to old people.
Traditional BI as opposed to this experiment essentially is a state pension - a fixed monthly payment benchmarked to livable income - but paid to working age people. So if the biggest problem in Finnish welfare is spending too much on its 1.5million pensioners (and 250k unemployed) you probably don't want to subsidise another 1.4 million working age people who aren't working or looking for work, especially if you have to reclaim those costs by taxing the mere 2.7m people in employment.
Ultimately, if BI had the incredibly desirable (and unlikely) effect of encouraging every one of Finland's 250k unemployed people to start part time work and pay tax on those earnings, the state would still be much worse off than before from paying all these economically inactive people a subsidy they probably don't need.
We already have comprehensive and complex welfare system that creates pockets where effective marginal tax rate is above 100% (going to work part time reduces welfare, net effect is negative). In the lowest income service industry almost half of workers would earn the same if they were unemployed. Fears of people not working if they get the same money without working seems to be false.
There is already two groups of Finns that get kind of basic income. Underage children and old people. Underage children get unconditional sum of money (goes to parents of course). Old people have guaranteed small pension.
This test has many faults, (its only for unemployed, basic income would be for everyone) but it's unconditional like basic income should be. People get the same amount of basic income even if they find work, or work only part time.