HELSINKI, FINLAND: Socially Innovative Finland – livestreamed event

HELSINKI, FINLAND: Socially Innovative Finland – livestreamed event

Kela (the Finnish Social Insurance Institution), the government body running the nation’s newly launched basic income experiment, is hosting a live-streamed discussion of the basic income trial as well as the country’s long-standing maternity package.

On January 12, Kela will hold an event called “Socially Innovative Finland”, which will provide information about the country’s basic income experiment–launched on January 1, 2017, to much international publicity.

Maternity package, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Visa Kopu

The event will also include discussion of one of Finland’s existing social welfare initiatives: its internationally renowned maternity package, initiated in 1938, which provides all mothers-to-be with a package of child necessities, such as clothing and bedding (the box itself can be used as a crib).

Three members of Kela will speak:

• Olli Kangas (Director of Government and Community Relations): “Basic income – Part of tomorrow’s social security?”

• Marjukka Turunen (Head of Legal Affairs Unit): “How the basic income experiment works in practice”

• Olga Tarsalainen (Communications Specialist): “Finnish Maternity package – The best known brand of Finnish social security”

The event will take place on Thursday, January 12, 9:00-10:30 Finnish time (UTC/GMT +2), at Kela’s head office in Helsinki. It will also be broadcast live at the following page: https://videonet.fi/web/kela/20170112/.

Questions for the speakers can be submitted on Twitter during the event, using the hashtag #basicincome2017 or #maternitypackage2017. Questions may also be emailed in advance to Eeva-Kaisa Kivistö (firstname.lastname@kela.fi).

Complete details about the event are available from Kela: https://www.kela.fi/socially-innovative-finland.

 


Background: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment

On January 1, 2017, Finland launched an experiment in which 2,000 individuals will receive unconditional cash payments of €560 (about 590 USD) per month for two years. Test subjects were randomly selected from a pool of about 175,000 individuals between ages 25 and 58 and already receiving unemployment benefits from Kela, and those selected were required to participate. The main goal of the experiment, at present, is to determine whether unconditional cash transfers are superior to means-tested unemployment benefits with respect to promoting job-seeking and employment. However, Olli Kangas, leader of the research team behind the experiment, has recommended expanding the experiment to other target populations (including “other persons with small incomes” and individuals under age 25).   

News of the experiment’s launch has been widely disseminated through international media, although some reports seem misleadingly to suggest that the Finnish government has actually decided to implement a basic income (or a basic income for the unemployed), despite the fact that the Finnish government is merely testing the policy, with any decision to implement a basic income for its citizens awaiting the conclusion and analysis of the experiment.

The latest information about the study can be found on Kela’s “Basic Income Experiment 2017-2018” webpage: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income-experiment-2017-2018.


For additional background on Finland’s basic income experiment, see these previous reports in Basic Income News:

Kate McFarland “Basic Income experiment authorized by Parliament” (December 18, 2016)

Kate McFarland “Kela’s report on Basic Income experiments released in English” (October 15, 2016)

Kate McFarland “Legislation for Basic Income Experiment Underway” (August 25, 2016)


Article reviewed by Danny Pearlberg 

Cover Photo: Sunset in Helsinki, CC BY-NC 2.0 Giuseppe Milo

Finland: Interview with Tapani Karvinen, from the Pirate party

Finland: Interview with Tapani Karvinen, from the Pirate party

As we’ve reported here, the Finnish government is starting a two-year experiment on a basic income. When the government announced it in last August, a Basic Income News editor conducted a series of interviews in Finland. Summaries of those with the government and a long-term advocate, the Greens, and the Pirates were published here.

This is a longer version of the interview with Tapani Karvinen, who is a politician from the Pirate Party of Finland. He served as the chair of the party between 2014 and 2016. His response to the government’s press release on the experiment is here.

 

How did you come to know about UBI?

The idea of UBI was first introduced to me sometime 2012 through our political party. It gained instant support within our core members and was promptly adopted as a party statute.

What was your first thought on UBI?

I was intrigued by the simplicity and saw how it could correct most of inequality between students, small time entrepreneurs and various types of unemployment.

Has something changed after you first learned about UBI?

As my view on the matter has broadened, I see that we need wider transformation in our economic policies.

Why do you support UBI?

As they say, the simplest answer is probably the correct one. The simplicity of UBI would make the need for large institutes obsolete, and the tax-income would be shared to boost the economy, while giving equal opportunities to work for extra income for everyone, student, pensioner, unemployed or as entrepreneur.

What would you do if you had a UBI?

I’m an entrepreneur in a co-operative audiovisual company and do daytime work in a small business. UBI would enable me to do more income-taxed work.

Have you talked about UBI with your family and old friends? What do they say?

My parents have both owned small business and they do understand how UBI would make their lives less stressful, especially in those silent months, when income is not guaranteed.

How have you been involved with the Pirates?

I joined the Pirate Party of Finland in 2010, was elected as chairman of the party in 2014 and as vice-chairman in 2016.

What is your biggest priority in politics?

I see the Pirate agenda of sharing information as the key for everyone who wishes to improve themselves or seek knowledge for other reasons. There is a saying which illuminates it perfectly, “give man a fish, and he will eat a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat every day.”

How is UBI related to your important political agenda?

UBI enables people to act on what they see meaningful, without stress that those choices would cause economical catastrophe for them or their household. It gives opportunities for innovations, knowledge, arts, politics and just for caring thy neighbour.

What is your thought on the governmental initiative for UBI experiment?

I’m cautiously welcoming for the Finnish governments plan for UBI experiment. The greatest flaw I see in this experiment is that the saturation of UBI receivers is not strong enough to create work amongst group of friends, for example college classmates, who have idea that could be pursued, if it wouldn’t hinder their studies and student benefits. I would have preferred to see local study with high to full saturation of UBI receivers.

Let readers know more about yourself: where and when you were born, etc.

I’m 35 years old, born in eastern Finland (Heinävesi), from a small-business home. During last fifteen years I have worked several professions and for about dozen employers. Roughly put, I have worked five years as doorman for restaurants, five years in several IT-jobs and five doing pretty much everything from warehouse-worker to teaching. I have degree in computer sciences, and I have studied journalism and media-studies for few years.

 

The photo was taken by Hannu Makarainen.

VIDEO: “Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy” course lectures

VIDEO: “Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy” course lectures

As previously reported at Basic Income News, Finland’s University of Tampere held a course on basic income (“Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy”) during autumn semester. This is the third course on basic income offered by the university since the autumn of 2015.

Lectures from the course were recorded and published online by Alusta!, the webzine of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Tampere University. They are available to view on the “Universal Basic Income: New Avenues in Social Welfare Policy” YouTube playlist.

YouTube player

Photo (Tampere, Finland) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Riku Kettunen

BIEN Stories: Jan Otto Andersson

BIEN Stories: Jan Otto Andersson

Jan Otto Andersson (Åbo Akademi University)

Several texts were momentous at the start of my BI journey, even though they did not always fit a strict definition of an unconditional basic income.

The first text was a pamphlet written by my acquaintance Gunnar Adler-Karlsson. In Danish it was called “No to Full Employment”, but it was not published in Swedish until renamed as “Thoughts on Full Employment”. Adler-Karlsson set out a vision of a three-layered society: the necessity economy, the capitalistic economy and the free economy. The vision included a “life income” or “citizen’s wage”, but everybody was supposed to take part in the necessity economy. The year was 1977.

Another text was a visionary collective work “Norden år 2030” (Nordic 2030). The booklet was illustrated with futuristic graphics and fictional interviews with people who had experienced revolutionary changes and now inhabited a United Nordic region. In one interview, “samlön” and “samtjänst” are introduced. The terms are difficult to translate, but maybe “co-wage” and “co-service” would do. The co-wage is a minimum given to all, but all have to take part in the service production. The booklet was the work of a designer and a photographer.

I already was an admirer of André Gorz, when the book “The Roads to Paradise” appeared in 1983. Gorz discussed heteronomous and autonomous work, and how society should be transformed from being dominated by capitalist wage-labour towards more real freedom. One important means was to introduce a BI called “social wage”, “social dividend” or “social income”.

In 1986 I took part in the international congress on Basic Income in Louvain-la-Neuve. My contribution was called “Basic Income in Three Social Visions”: a Red-Blue mixed society, a Blue-Green dual society and a Red-Green combined society. I concluded that a BI could hardly be included in a Red-Blue fordist version; that it could be part of a blue-green anarcho-capitalist, rather dystopian project; but would be a central feature of a Red-Green vision.

At the conference I got acquainted with a piece by Philippe Van Parijs and Robert van der Veen that enthralled me: “A Capitalist Road to Communism”. Back in Finland I told a “night tale” at one of the last party assemblies of the Finnish Communist Party. In the story, two wise men visited Finland. They pondered our problems and persuaded us to introduce a basic income. The eventual consequences were astounding. People gradually found that they were living in a new society. To find a fitting term for it they consulted old books, and the best they could find was “communism”.

In a book “Vänsterframtid. Nationalekonomiska studier av fordismnes kris och morgondagens alternative” (“Left Future: Economic studies of the fordist crisis and alternatives for tomorrow”), I deepened my thoughts on how a Citizen’s Income could be a crucial step towards a red-green society in the Nordic context.

The Left Alliance, a new party encompassing the old radical left fractions, was founded in 1990. The programme of the party included a “Citizen’s Income”. The CI was seen as a central feature of the “Third Left”. The Third Left would combine the best elements from the First republican/liberal Left and the Second social democratic/communist Left.

The Green Party had been established in 1987 in Finland and from the start it supported a basic income. Interest for the idea was also expressed by people in other parties, and a dozen activists from several parties joined to discuss how to advance Basic Income in Finland. The result was a booklet “Perustulo, kansalaisen palkka” (“Basic Income, the citizen’s wage”). It appeared in 1992, but so did the great “lama”, the worst economic crisis in an OECD-country since the war. There was little room for bold new ideas in a country beset with acute financial and social problems.

I attended the BIEN congresses in Antwerp 1988 and Florence 1990. During my stay in London as guest professor in 1989-1990, I became involved with the Citizen’s Income group. I received the TaxMod micro-simulation model developed by Hermione Parker, visited Anne Miller in Edinburgh, and befriended Tony Walter, whom I later invited to my university (Åbo Akademi) to give a course on basic income.

At BIEN’s 1998 congress in Amsterdam, I presented a paper called “The History of an Idea: Why did Basic Income Thrill the Finns, but not the Swedes?” It was published in the book Basic Income on the Agenda.

Olli Kangas and I made an opinion poll of whether and why people in Sweden and Finland supported a BI or not. We found astonishingly more support in Finland. Even the Finnish conservatives were more in favour of the different BI ideas we asked about than the Swedish greens! In the Geneva congress in 2002, I presented our article “Popular support for basic income in Sweden and Finland”.

Since I had become active as an ecological economist, and developed what I have called my “Global ethical trilemma” between affluence, global justice and ecological sustainability, I became absorbed with the relation between ecological limits and BI. In BIEN’s 2012 congress in Munich, I presented the paper “Degrowth with basic income – the radical combination”. A related article “Basic Income from an ecological perspective” was published in Basic Income Studies.

Andersson at 2016 BIEN Congress (source: bien2016.org)

Gradually the interest for basic income has been revived in Finland. A Finnish branch of BIEN has been formed. Olli Kangas has been assigned the delicate task to conduct the pilot study ordered by the government. The task has been made almost impossible for different reasons, but at least basic income is now on the political agenda. Even the Social Democrats are forced to reconsider it seriously.

I was invited as a key speaker to the 2016 BIEN congress in Seoul on the theme “Does Basic Income fit the Nordic Welfare State?” I also acted as a commentator on the planned Youth Dividend experiment in the city of Seongnam.

Andersson (in white) in Seongnam

In Seoul it was decided that the BIEN 2018 congress will be held in Tampere, Finland. I wish you all welcome!


At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.

FINLAND: Basic Income experiment authorized by Parliament

FINLAND: Basic Income experiment authorized by Parliament

Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, announced on December 14 that the Finnish Parliament has passed the act authorizing an experiment of basic income. The experiment is set to begin on January 1, 2017.

Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health drafted the legislative proposal for the experiment in August, and submitted the proposal to Parliament after hearing public opinions on the draft proposal. The proposal elicited some controversy, in part due to the relatively small size of the basic income (560 EUR) as well as the choice of sample population, which will consist only of recipients of the country’s unemployment benefits. However, the basic design of the experiment remains unchanged: a random sample of 2,000 individuals, drawn from current working-age beneficiaries of unemployment benefits, will receive an unconditional basic income of 560 EUR per month for a two-year period. (Brief responses to the objections are included in the most recent version of Kela’s report on the experiment.)

The primary objective of the experiment is to assess whether an unconditional basic income promotes employment. Experimenters will compare the employment rate among basic income recipients to that within a control group of individuals who continue to receive traditional unemployment benefits. As Kela’s website states, the Finnish government is interested in basic income due to its potential to “reduce the amount of work involved in seeking financial assistance” and “free up time and resources for other activities such as working or seeking employment”. The experiment will also provide data used to estimate the cost of implementing a nationwide basic income.

The 2,000 experimental subjects will be chosen by a random-sampling algorithm and contacted by the end of December. Participation is mandatory for those selected.

The first payments will be distributed to subjects on January 9, 2017. Automatic payments will continue through December 2018.

More information about the experiment is available on Kela’s newly-launched web page, Basic Income Experiment 2017–2018.

Source:

Kela (December 14, 2016) “Preparations for the basic income experiment continue


Photo (Helsinki) CC BY-NC 2.0 Jaafar Alnasser