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How would it feel to be jobless, but receive a basic $600 monthly salary from the government as support, with no strings attached?
Finland sounds like a dream country to live in with their experimentation of providing $600 a month to unemployed citizens, with a goal in mind of giving them a stronger incentive to find a job. Recipients say they feel more confident about the future and undergo less stress.
While the idea of a basic income isn’t an innovative aspect, Finland is the first European country to test this idea for the next couple of years before evaluating its benefits. Previous tests have been executed in other countries such as Canada, Uganda and Kenya, although didn’t gain enough traction on the account of poverty statistics and growing inequalities.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg and other prominent business moguls such as bond investor Bill Gross are advocates of this business model and have had similar ideas to improve the idea.
How does this incentive work? The initial findings in the previous two years where each participant received 560 euros (about $630) every month definitely showed positive effects on emotional and mental wellbeing, but did not improve the person’s work status. A more detailed investigation will be published in 2020 where final conclusions throughout the experiment will be drawn up.
“Those in the test group experienced significantly fewer problems related to health, stress and ability to concentrate than those in the control group,” the researches wrote in the initial reports. “Those in the test group were also considerably more confident in their own future and their ability to influence societal issues than the control group.”
Do you think basic income can alleviate poverty and spark more desire for people to start looking for work?
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