Finland experiment: Basic income for the unemployed.
 

2000 unemployed Finns in a pilot scheme will receive a monthly income of 560 Euros even if they find work.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...for-unemployed

I wonder what it costs to live there. Is that enough money for food and shelter?

This is a good start. Automation and robotics are replacing the need for workers more and more with each passing year. As a result we have a glut of potential labor which is marginalizing more and more of our population.

We need to get used to he concept of paying people not to work to prevent labor surpluses just as we have paid farmers not to grow certain crops to prevent commodity surpluses.

Damn! Gas!

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-livin...ountry=Finland

We need to grow up and realize we cannot breed our way into prosperity. We need to have laws restricting breeding by humans.

More people = fewer jobs to go around and lower pay, higher prices for everything due to higher demand, scarcer resources cause we're using them all up. It's only going to get worse. On top of it many city infrastructures are bursting from overuse with no way to expand, and no money to expand (because a certain segment of society refuses to pay taxes)

Humans aren't the smartest of animals.

Well at least we still agree on something Potter. Human beings are fucking themselves out of a place at the table. And as a species, we're too dumb to do anything about it. China's one child policy is probably the smartest thing any government has ever done. Yet if dare to say it here you will get pig piled in a heartbeat.

The great thinning of the herd is coming, but it won't be by us. Mama nature is going to do it for us.

The white people need to breed or they will soon be a curiosity.

Mixed race couples among the younger people are getting commonplace around here and in Florida where I recently moved from. I figure that in a couple more generations the majority race will look like Derek Jeeter, Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama.

This we agree on!

I have been thinking a tax on automation and robotics would be a start. The tax to be used for training and support of workers affected.



Barney

The problem here who decides the breeding pairs?

If society would just educate the use of birth control and quit the war on sex for fun. It is going to happen, get over it and have a plan.



Barney

Good riddance. ;)

What a weird thread. The Finns have so many basic benefits that US citizens will never, ever, have. There is no real comparison.

Maybe I could get work as a circus freak, get groupies and such. :)

Carl

If you drill down the 'war on sex for fun' was really rules with the purpose of keeping the more valuable females from being impregnated by the wrong guys. Rules for guys were always lax, because they didn't get pregnant.

The rules are totally obsolete, fertility control is now accomplished with pills, and it doesn't actually matter so much if girls go through a party-a-lot phase. But attitudes, among the more conservative sorts, don't adjust quickly.

Those who are concerned by declining birthrates in their favorite hereditary identity group need to work to end birth control available on demand to females. Have to go back to the days when married women needed medical grounds and three doctors had to sign off on it. Otherwise, forget it. Nothing else will work.

It is the irony of the progressive society...the disappearance of children from its spaces.

Most women want to have children, but 'later.' The procrastination results in fewer or no children in enough cases that the birthrate falls below replacement.

Another of those situations where individual interests and the 'welfare of the group' don't line up. If you think the 'welfare of the group' is real enough to limit some freedom for some people, a lot, you favor getting unprogressive here.

I think 'the welfare of the group' looms larger in people's minds when the group is biologically threatened, and smaller when it isn't. Some people are a lot more sensitive on this point than others. You are correct, progressive cultures that promote peace and prosperity are bad for group-centric ethics.

This leads to the authoritarian notion that 'war is the health of the state.' But I'd amend that to 'preparation for war is the health of the state.' Actual war in modern times is so destructive that it's not healthy for anyone or anything. So the tendency of authoritarians to seek war for 'the glory of the group' tends to be the worst thing of all for the group.

Maybe instead of the authoritarian 'stick' of outlawing birth control, progressive 'carrots' would do the trick. Fight the procrastination with incentives. Big incentives for mothers and kids, for kids born before mother is 25, perhaps. All one needs do, I think, is nudge the birthrate up a few 10ths of a percent....

I believe the birthrate is fine, just is some (thinking Eugenics) perceive for the wrong crowd.

The world is vastly overpopulated and with fewer and fewer resources and employment opportunities a day of reckoning will soon be here.

Barney

It's completely true that there's no problem here, except if one is concerned for some certain 'favorite group.' Such groups are quasi-biological, but their importance is totally emotional.

Not only carrots: Ideology is needed to de-energize the thought that moving on up is overwhelmingly more important than children.

An intrinsic love of children needs to exist and the ever lessening of the unease/queasiness re abortion works against such love.

Probably in the future an increase in robots and a useful guaranteed basic salary will make the coming of children less threatening.

Overpopulation? Africa, Australia, North and South America, Russia and Central Asia.

Most people have a much greater intrinsic love of children once they are here, than they do when they are just a possibility. Before the pill came into existence, the female sex drive assured the move from possibility to actuality happened often enough.

I'd focus much more on the pill than on abortion as the change that has made the big difference here. Much bigger impact on birthrate, I think.

Income security ought to be good for birthrate, I agree. (Or bad, depending on one's attitude towards birthrate. There are those who like the idea of population decrease, don't forget.)

After reading this thread, particularly the part about reproduction, I thought I'd offer a few random thoughts from a female point of view.

Someone noted earlier that women are waiting until they are older to have children. I think that was true years ago when there were no laws to protect a woman's job during pregnancy. I don't think it is so true anymore.

There was discussion regarding incentives for not getting pregnant (to keep population down) as opposed to penalties. I don't think incentives or penalties will have much impact in the majority of the population. Just my opinion....

We are brainstorming without a lot of data here. Women's average age at first childbirth ought to be something on which data is available....

Here's the first thing that comes up on Google:

Average Age Of First-Time Moms Keeps Climbing In The U.S.

It's hard to argue that the thing they say is driving the number is a bad thing:

At least in Finland abortions are legal and free and none of the garbage from extremists trying to control women.


Carl

Finland does shit right.

The US should emulate them.

And you believe that Trump will even come close to that?

I've heard that good chess players are always thinking five moves ahead.

That's what I am doing.

That's a dodge. You know that you are supporting a politician that will try to move us as far away from the Finland model as he possibly can.

Cue up the 'We gotta break some eggs to get "Our Revolushun" off the blocks and up a running' rationale from Joad.

Ha!
You nailed it......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26th_of_July_Movement

It's always darkest before the dawn. We need to get to rock bottom first.

And by "we" I don't mean to include any of you losers.

Twelve dudes in the Sierra Maestra. That's when Castro's Cuban Revolution reached rock bottom.

No video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NCC1bIAlrM :rolleyes:

I loves me some Jimmy Buffett.

He's the best thing to come out of Mobile, Alabama, except for Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ausU6_kDnAg

Like this?
Carl

OK, so some tax increases on wealthy people will be rolled back. We should be taxing those bastards back to the stone age, so that's a negative. But fees on insurers, medical device companies, and drug companies? C'mon. Those "fees" are being passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Obamacare is a big windfall cash cow for all the gougers in the Medical Industrial Complex. They are all making too damned much money. And they are greedy and want more. That's the problem and Obamacare does nothing to change that.

All Trump has to do is one thing that he proposed about healthcare and he will have accomplished more for Healthcare than Obummer did in his entire time in office. And that is to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs.

What a load of horseshit, Joad. Pre-existing conditions were outlawed and lifetime caps were eliminated.

Those are good things.

And from what I hear Trump wants to keep them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapoth.../#38a1c8db4e1c

What Trump says he wants may or may not be what he actually wants. And whatever it may be is not what Lyin' Ryan and (Mr Humana) Turtleman wants.

Carl