Al Jazeera: Finland introduces basic income for unemployed

Finland has become the first country in the world to pay a basic income to randomly picked citizens on a national level in an experiment aiming at dismissing poverty, motivate people to join work force and decrease unemployment.

The experiment is conducted with 2,000 randomly picked unemployed participants between the ages of 25 and 58. For two years, participants from different parts of the country will receive an unconditional monthly tax-free basic income of 560 euros ($586).

The plan aims to find ways to reshape the social security system in response to changes in the labour market, according to the website of the Social Insurance Institution or Kela, which manages the project. It also seeks to reduce the bureaucracy and simplify the complicated benefits system, Kela says. [...]

Many Finns stay out of the job market for years as they do not want to lose their welfare benefits.

Professor Olli Kangas from Kela says that there are many incentive traps in the present system that are caused by a number of income-tested benefits paid on top of each other. [...]

Consequently, when the participant gets a job, he or she will receive both the salary and the basic income. And he or she will continue to claim other income-based benefits such as housing or childcare in line with his or her income, like every other citizen.

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CityLab: America’s Economic Distress Belt

Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder.

But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty.

A new study from the Population Reference Bureau by Beth Jarosz and Mark Mather tracks the dramatic growth in inequality and poverty across America’s 3,000-plus counties over the past two-and-a-half decades.

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Motherboard: Obama’s Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II

President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, will leave office in a few weeks with the dubious honor of having sold more weapons than any other American president since World War II. And experts say President-Elect Donald Trump will most likely sell even more.

Most of the arms deals totaling over $200 billion in the period from 2008 to 2015 have ended up in the Middle East, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in December. The report, produced by the non-partisan government agency attached to the Library of Congress, breaks down the weapons sold which included surface-to-air missiles, tanks, and supersonic combat aircraft. [...]

Saudi Arabia is spearheading a coalition of Arab nations in a bombing campaign closing in on two years against the insurgent Houthi militias in Yemen, who took over the capital Sanaa in September 2014. The United States has sent special operations forces to assist the Arab coalition in a grinding war that has seen over 10000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis. [...]

“What’s changed during the Obama administration is that increasing arms sales has become a standardized component of diplomacy at all levels of government, not just in the defense department,” Bockenfeld told Motherboard. “For US diplomats to become the salesmen, that has been a new element which really increased exports.”

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Politico: Marine Le Pen calls for return to ECU-style currency after ‘Frexit’

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Tuesday that Europe should retain a single currency even if France withdraws from the euro zone, nuancing her previous position.

The National Front chief has long called for “Frexit,” a French withdrawal from the European Union. This would happen after a referendum on EU membership if she was elected next May (Le Pen has suggested that she would step down if the French rejected her preferred outcome).

But this time she said that after a referendum, Europe should retain a common currency, the euro, in parallel to the French franc. It was the first time Le Pen had recognized, however implicitly, that withdrawing from the euro zone unilaterally could bring about currency fluctuations, which the ECU was designed to prevent. Most French voters do not support withdrawal from the European Union, according to polls in 2016.

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Politico: Moldovan leader strips ex-Romanian president of citizenship

The new president of Moldova on Tuesday stripped a former Romanian leader of his Moldovan citizenship over calls for the two countries to become one.

Igor Dodon took to Facebook to say that former Romanian President Traian Băsescu had “urged repeatedly the liquidation of Moldovan statehood through annexation to Romania.” He added that Băsescu, who stepped down in 2014 after 10 years in office, refused to recognize the existence of the Moldovan people and Moldovan statehood while he was president of Romania. [...]

Băsescu and his wife became Moldovan citizens in November 2016. He said at the time it was a dream come true as he felt linked to Moldova through a common culture and language, according to Romanian media.

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