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shiranaihito  ·  3447 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: FINLAND: New Government Commits to a Basic Income Experiment

It's probably just a PR-stunt. At least I hope so.

Suppose that 25% of a country's population are living on welfare. Let's say that represents 25% of the country's yearly budget. Naturally, 100% of the money in the budget is used on various highly necessary expenditures etc. There's no money left over.

Now imagine the country's Dear Leaders decide they want to implement Basic Income, which effectively means that now everyone is on welfare. The new welfare expenditures are four times higher, but there was no money left over in the budget.

They've got four options:

  - 1) Cancel Basic Income.
  - 2) Cancel everything except Basic Income.
  - 3) Print Money.
  - 4) Borrow Money.
Three of those are bad ideas, especially in the long run.