It seems too good to be true, but the Finnish government started off this new year by giving 2000 unemployed Finnish people between 25 and 58 years of age an income of up to $2000 per month, according to this New York Times report. They will monitor these lucky recipients to see how many squander their money on vodka versus investing it in something productive such as a business startup. Their experiment will run for two years.
This initiative for a universal basic income has a broad appeal from leftist liberals to libertarians, who see it as a way to shrink stifling social services. According to this CBS News report, an experiment by Manitoba to provide a “mincome” produced positive results. It will be interesting to see if the Finns also find that it pays to provide free money.
“It always should be worth taking the job rather than staying home and taking the benefits. We have to take the risk to do this experiment.”
– Pirkko Mattila, Finland’s Minister of Social Affairs and Health