> The danger for any country implementing this is that once they get into the political procee, they will chop and compromise and water down the idea until it is just another item on the big list of ingredient in the social welfare soup €212.13 per month that you qualify for while keeping everything else that exists.
Exactly this. You can already see in the article this process is happening in Finland. At first it talks about basic income, then about how the income should be below a living wage (which at least waters down many of the benefits). It then ends with a suggestion that maybe it won't actually be a basic income, but a stipend for poor people.
Stipends for the poor are hardly a revolutionary new idea being tested for the first time, and calling it a "basic income" is just wrong.
I also am not sure that testing such a thing in only a part of an existing economic area is a valid indicator of how it would function over the whole. If only some people get the benefits it may create some perverse economic incentives.
Exactly this. You can already see in the article this process is happening in Finland. At first it talks about basic income, then about how the income should be below a living wage (which at least waters down many of the benefits). It then ends with a suggestion that maybe it won't actually be a basic income, but a stipend for poor people.
Stipends for the poor are hardly a revolutionary new idea being tested for the first time, and calling it a "basic income" is just wrong.
I also am not sure that testing such a thing in only a part of an existing economic area is a valid indicator of how it would function over the whole. If only some people get the benefits it may create some perverse economic incentives.