A vast majority of candidates running the next parliamentary elections in Finland said they agree with the principle of the basic income, reveals national media.
With contribution from Johanna Perkiö
As the general elections are approaching, the idea of basic income just breached an unprecedented milestone in Finland, with nearly 65.5% of all parliamentary candidates publicly supporting the policy.
The report released by national media YLE is based on direct answers from candidates collected through an online platform launched. 1,642 running candidates participated – for a total of nearly 2,000. Among other questions, candidates were asked if they agree with the following statement: “Finland should implement a basic income scheme that would replace the current minimum level of social security.”
Without surprise, the Greens candidates are the most favorable to the policy (99%), followed by the Left Alliance candidates (95%) and the Center (83%). Significant support is also found among the nationalist party ‘True Finns’ (57%) and the Swedish People’s Party (53%).
Altogether, political parties committed to basic income could virtually represent between 40 and 60% of the votes – theoretically enough to form a government.
On the other side, opponents to basic income are the Social Democratic Party (80% of their candidates), the Conservative Party (67%) and the Christian Democrats (57%).
A wave of new political support for basic income has emerged last autumn when the opposition leader proposed to experiment basic income with pilots projects. According to a recent opinion poll, 70% of Finns endorse basic income.
The next parliamentary elections in Finland will take place on April 19th. It seems the opportunity for introducing basic income pilots in Finland – and Europe – have never been so close.
Credit picture: CC hugovk
The Finns are ahead of the curve, as usual. We can’t even tow our short bus out of the ditch Reagan dumped us in.
Go Finland, be brave !!! The rest will follow! Let’s end poverty all over the world!
I have a few nice links in the comments of this post on FB – https://www.facebook.com/groups/socialism2.0/permalink/372107956304740/
Its the next step towards real social justice. Society as a hole will be a far better place to live for every one.
Go Finland fortune favours the brave. !!!
Technology produces mass unemployment or underemployment. It also produces much more than can be consumed. The next logical step for humans seems to be pointing towards a guaranteed basic income.
“According to a recent opinion poll, 70% of Finns endorsing basic income.”
Really good news.
We’ll see if they put their money where their mouth is.
This won’t solve poverty because in Finland where I live, the poor people live in somebody else’s owned apartment by renting it and pay abut 60-70% of their income every month as rent to the landlord. Maybe if you allow ppl on basic income to get a housing loan from a bank. So when the ‘basic income’ raises, it won’t take long for the landlord to increase the rent and suck the money in that direction. The landlords are already doing great and it seems like landlording in a stalled contruction bubble is the countrys number one way to make money, there’s hardly anything else going on as the GDP has fallen about 30% since 2008 and still declining. This will benefit landlords above anybody else. In one way or another this money will end up in the housing/constructon/politician clique sector. This is a great idea because Finland is said to become the next Greece. It still has an AA- foreign loan credit value but that’s questionable. There’s been lots of layoffs and companies and rich ppl moving (to Portugal). Last month there was talk of Finland not being taken into IMF direction at this time lol… there wouldn’t be any talk if things were going great. I’d still like to see what happens and this idea to be implemented but unless it somehow enables the unemplyed to buy their house so they can at some point get their living expenses to decline and be able to save some money, I don’t know what else the money will do. In Finland the unemployed make about half of what the normal employed get so working isnt really the way to make money here.. I don’t know what is lol.
What I’m trying to explain is… it would work better if the govt just gave the poor ppl houses for free. Wouldn’t need to give money. They should change it from ‘basic income’ to ‘basic free house’.
Perhaps if people would get basic income, they would spread more into the countryside. As they would be less desperate to get a job. There is plenty of room in this country if you don’t insist living inside the kehä 3.