If you lose your job in Finland, you can still be getting free money from the government even after you've found work. No, really. This is not a joke or fake news. The country that sits in northern Europe between Sweden and Russia just got going this week with a two-year experimental program to provide people with an income regardless of their employment status.
Why should Americans care?
At first, someone might wonder why Americans should care what people in Finland do. Do we really care if they have become the first country to do away with standardized education?
Aren't we more interested in the final rose ceremony on The Bachelor? Most of us have never even been to Finland. They are a free and sovereign nation; they should have the right to deal with their unemployed the way they want to. All of those are reasonable arguments, but the reason Americans should care is because some of those ideas tend to spread around until they come across the Atlantic and become part of our national debate.
Finns are free to make their own decisions
Of course no reasonable person would argue that Finland can't implement their own programs for dealing with unemployment. After all, it can't be such a bad idea. If someone loses their job through no fault of their own, they should be given something to help them stay on their feet until another job comes along.
That is reasonable, but take a look at some of the provisions of this program they've started up this week. The organization running Finland's social security systems is giving people a monthly income of what amounts to $582.90 a month. If people find employment, they're still going to continue to get this monthly payment.
Here is the reasoning behind this: it makes sense to keep paying people this money is because people have been discouraged from getting a job because when they do so, they lose out on certain benefits they get being unemployed.
Yes, the system that provides its citizens with everything is giving them too much, so the government now needs to dig into its treasury to pay people to go back to work.
Where is this idea going?
Finland isn't the only country playing with this idea. Scotland is planning to test the idea in some of its cities later this year.
The U.K. voted the idea down in September, and the people of Switzerland voted against a similar idea by a large margin. While the idea's proponents say it will increase employment and work ethic, critics say it's going to be expensive and unworkable. These countries are not the only place this idea of paying people to get back into the workforce is going.
It comes to America
California has already been experimenting with a similar idea. It's not quite the same government-funded idea the Finns have just implemented. Thankfully, the California model is a privately-funded program. Although this one is in its early stages, don't think for a minute the Finnish idea won't start to be argued favorably here.
As Americans have seen with the nearly eight-year-long battle we've been engaged in over the Affordable Care Act, it's not a stretch to think Democrats and Republicans could start debating benefits for unemployed people to get them to go back to work.
The final decision?
Just as the Finns have the right to implement their own programs for their people, the Americans have the right to implement or reject such proposals. On Capitol Hill Wednesday, Republicans discussed their plans for repealing Obamacare while Democrats discussed why it should be kept around. This after voters put the GOP in charge, in part because most voters want the bill altered or repealed. The best hope the country can have is that when this idea comes to the U.S., the vote of the people will be respected more than it has been with Obamacare.
