6 April 2019

Fortune: Finland's Universal Basic Income Experiment Just Gave Lawmakers a Really Good Reason to Back the Idea

In its first report, Kela said the basic income didn’t much affect the amount of work that the subjects picked up during the experiment, but it did make them feel healthier and less stressed, and more confident about their ability to find work. [...]

Here’s where it gets interesting for lawmakers. According to Kela: “Respondents who received a basic income had more trust in other people and in societal institutions—politicians, political parties, police and the courts—than members of the control group.” [...]

On a scale of 0 to 10, where higher numbers denote more trust, basic income recipients gave an average score of 6.8 for trust in other people, versus 6.3 in the control group. Trust in politicians and political parties got an average 4.5 among basic income recipients and 4.0 in the control group, and trust in courts and cops was 7.2 versus 6.9, again with the control group providing a lower score.[...]

In the U.S., a universal basic income is one of the core proposals of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who maintains that it would not make people lazier. The preliminary Finnish results seem to back him up on that. Kela’s survey, conducted just before the end of the two-year experiment, also showed that those who received the basic income were just as willing to use official job-finding services as those who did not.

No comments:

Post a Comment