In Finland the jobless can get their money for nothing and they don’t have to install microwave ovens:
Finland will soon hand out cash to 2,000 jobless people, free of bureaucracy or limits on side earnings. The idea, universal basic income, is gaining traction worldwide.
The computer graphics in that video are almost as bad as this idea!
Before any advocates of universal basic income start creaming their pants over this let me point out that this is a solution to a problem that was, not surprisingly, created by the government in the first place:
While entrepreneurs are eager to put these people to work, the rules of Finland’s generous social safety net effectively discourage this. Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. For laid-off workers from Nokia, simply collecting a guaranteed unemployment check often presents a better financial proposition than taking a leap with a start-up in Finland, where a shaky technology industry is trying to find its footing again.
The problem isn’t that there aren’t jobs available. The problem is that the Finnish government has created a system that discouraged unemployed individuals from seeking another job. Instead of fixing that problem the Finnish government has decided to exacerbate the problem by giving unemployed individuals money for being unemployed. How will that encourage them to seek a new job? It won’t.
I’m sure a bunch of advocates of universal basic income are ready to accuse me of hating workers because I’m not onboard with their little scheme. But I don’t hate workers. In fact, I am a worker. But universal basic income is an unsustainable idea because it relies on taxes and taxes only exist if there is wealth to steal. Ask yourself this, without employees motivated to work how can employers create the goods and services that create the wealth that supports universal basic income? Without employers wealth isn’t created. Without employees the employers can’t create wealth. This means that eventually the supposedly guaranteed income is no longer guaranteed because there is no money to pay it with.
TANSTAAFL, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, is the rule that the universe runs by. A few words written by some bureaucrats in a marble building can’t make that rule go away.