Citizen's Dividend a reality in Finland

[Pointedstick]

Delightful. Let's see if it works! I'd love to see something like that here to replace all the welfare programs.

[dualstow]

It'll never happen in the States. I'm excited for Finland, though. Nice small country, and a good place to try it out.

[Reub]

What? No special interest groups to be bought by politicians? Outrageous!

[clacy]

Interesting and hopefully this works.  It can't be worse than the US's current welfare system, which inherently traps people into a permanent state of welfare dependence.

[moda0306]

It'll never happen in the States. I'm excited for Finland, though. Nice small country, and a good place to try it out.

Why don't you think it would happen?  I'm not necessarily in disagreement, but I'm curious why some folks are so positive that model would be rejected by either citizens or agents of the state would reject a model like that.

[jafs]

Well, I can think of a number of objections.

Some might find it odd to give everybody money, when many of the recipients don't need it, preferring to help people who need help rather than everybody.  Others might dislike the lack of requirements to receive the money, so that anybody (even lazy bums) just gets a check.  Still others might feel that this will discourage participation in the job market, which would be a bad thing.

On the government side, if implemented well, this would probably result in a loss of government jobs, and people don't like losing their jobs.

[MWKXJ]

Why don't you think it would happen?  I'm not necessarily in disagreement, but I'm curious why some folks are so positive that model would be rejected by either citizens or agents of the state would reject a model like that.

A life-boat is only so big. 

Most of the world's ~7 billion people live outside the West in nations that do not provide a citizens dividend.  Such people will happily relocate to countries which subsidize citizenship.  Indeed, Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, America, are already being overrun by purported refugees and economic migrants, who, by and large, are drawn to to the West in search of social programs which are open to those who did not pay into them.  A citizen's dividend, in a world committed to generic global citizenship, will act as a force multiplier for the immigration that is presently drowning the West's peoples.

The following syllogism would seem to sum up the situation:  A citizen's dividend is contingent upon respect for national citizenship; Respect for national citizenship (and indeed, nationalism) is dead in the West; Hence citizen's dividends, too, are dead in the West.

Unless all of the world simultaneously implements a citizen's dividend---including the poverty stricken nations from which most of the world's economic refugees originate---such a program will result in demographic disaster for the West.  The alternative is to define peoples, demarcate borders, and return to nationalism ...to establish who is and is not a citizen, who is entitled to inherit a nation's bounty, and who is not and should be excluded.

Tough sell in the present age of smarmy, sentimental politics.

[Mountaineer]

Seems to be just another income redistribution method to make more people dependent on government.  I prefer that those who are able, do something to earn their government welfare - e.g. clean up trash on the roadside.  Why give money to those who do not need it?  I prefer lower taxes.

... M

[Pointedstick]

Most of the world's ~7 billion people live outside the West in nations that do not provide a citizens dividend.  Such people will happily relocate to countries which subsidize citizenship.
  ...
The alternative is to define peoples, demarcate borders, and return to nationalism ...to establish who is and is not a citizen, who is entitled to inherit a nation's bounty, and who is not and should be excluded.

+1

+2

[jafs]

That's moving the discussion from a citizen's dividend to immigration policies.

A country could decide to implement the first while maintaining strict immigration standards - Denmark is very good to citizens and it's very hard to immigrate there.

[MWKXJ]

That's moving the discussion from a citizen's dividend to immigration policies.

A country could decide to implement the first while maintaining strict immigration standards - Denmark is very good to citizens and it's very hard to immigrate there.

The two are intrinsically linked.  The meaning of citizenship is determined by immigration policy.  The term "citizen's dividend" implicitly calls for discussion of what a citizen is.

Denmark ostensibly treats its citizens with preference, but it is still a member of the nationality-destroying Schengen agreement, and as such, like the rest of modern Europe, is in effect, borderless.  As in America, economic migrants---given free range in the country---will swell in burgeoning shadow communities, living off what benefits they are eligible for, and, relentlessly over time, agitating for citizenship and the benefits currently due only to citizens.  And what's to stop them?  Not border enforcement, not time, not the prevailing globalist philosophy of the West.

Finland, too, is on borrowed time.  The blood is in the water and the sharks are coming.  Finland's remoteness in North-Eastern Europe, cut off from the Baltics by the Gulf of Finland, backed by the poor, undesirable-destination Russia provides some measure of an "immigration buffer", however, the world's impoverished masses will come as there is now a dividend incentive in addition to the forsaken fruits of the labors of generations of Finns.

[dualstow]

It'll never happen in the States. I'm excited for Finland, though. Nice small country, and a good place to try it out.

Why don't you think it would happen?

I think jafs' initial response is a good start, and I fully agree with MWKXJ, although I must admit I hadn't even thought that far yet.

[Pointedstick]

The two are intrinsically linked.  The meaning of citizenship is determined by immigration policy.  The term "citizen's dividend" implicitly calls for discussion of what a citizen is.

Brilliantly put.

[jafs]

Well, of course they're linked.

But, my point is/was that a citizen's dividend doesn't imply a loose immigration policy, and so if one is opposed to the latter, that's fine, but it's not the same thing as being opposed to the former.

One can support or oppose either of those or both of them.

[Pointedstick]

Well, of course they're linked.

But, my point is/was that a citizen's dividend doesn't imply a loose immigration policy, and so if one is opposed to the latter, that's fine, but it's not the same thing as being opposed to the former.

One can support or oppose either of those or both of them.

Then I think you agree with MWKXJ's point: if we want a citizen's dividend in the USA, a prerequisite is making citizenship for foreigners a privilege not a right. This applies to literal or de facto citizenship. Illegal immigrant non-citizens today obtain driver's licenses, pay in-state tuition at government-run universities, become accredited lawyers, and access welfare benefits through their children who become citizens via birthright citizenship. These facts are evidence of the kind of disrespect for borders and citizen/non-citizen distinctions that would cause a citizen's dividend to fail. Immediately you'd have leftists yelling about how unfair it was be that illegal immigrants who work just as hard as Americans are denied these life-saving payments.

[jafs]

Well, I was just really trying to separate the two in order to have a clear conversation, so that it didn't get derailed.

I think the idea of a citizen's dividend is interesting, but not my first choice about how to deal with poverty/income inequality in this country, regardless of immigration policy.

From my point of view, a guaranteed minimum income program would be much more attractive, if we're looking at those sorts of things.  And I like the idea of simplifying how we help people, rather than having a bunch of different agencies/programs they have to navigate in order to get help.

Immigration policy is a hard issue to deal with, and contains some complexity that most people on either side of the issue don't seem to fully grasp, as far as I can tell.  I think we should be very selective at this point about who we let in and why, and we should streamline the process so that people here on a temporary visa/permit can get their applications processed before that expires.  Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution, and so a Constitutional amendment would be needed if we want to stop that practice.

What we do about the many illegal residents we have now is hard to figure out completely - I'm not against the idea of deporting them in theory, but in practice that's hard and expensive to do.  Somebody who was here on a temporary visa, and didn't get their application processed before that expired is in a different category for me than somebody who came over illegally.  And, if there are children born here, we can't deport them.

[WiseOne]

Well, of course they're linked.

But, my point is/was that a citizen's dividend doesn't imply a loose immigration policy, and so if one is opposed to the latter, that's fine, but it's not the same thing as being opposed to the former.

One can support or oppose either of those or both of them.

Not quite.  If the US announced a citizen's dividend, the southern border would be inundated by crowds surging north - not to mention pregnant women desperate to have their babies on US soil.  Think about what happened when Obama tried to put the "Dream Act" in place.  I see no way to implement anything like that without sealing up the border, tightening immigration policy, and doing away with birthright citizenship.  A very unlikely set of scenarios.

Alaska has had something like that in place for a long time, but it's probably not well known south of the border, plus the weather & distance make it unlikely that illegal immigrants would make it up there.  And it doesn't make up for the high cost of living up there anyway.

[Pointedstick]

On the importance of borders, something I read today seemed exceptionally relevant:

http://thefutureprimaeval.net/notes-on-boundaries/

If you introduce a chemical (eg penicillin) that attacks the ability of bacteria to form cell walls, they lose their cell walls. This kills the bacteria. Why?

Any productive entropy resistant dynamic has an internal economy of connected mechanisms that need to make certain assumptions. The assumptions are often of the form that things deliberately excluded will stay gone, and that things produced will stay available for your use. That is, that investments are protected from destruction by the outside environment. This is accomplished by setting up barriers that insulate some part of the world from leakage or interference.
[...]
If you dissolve the cell wall, the cell dies because it is no longer able to capture the gains of its own labor and profit from its own investments. Barriers and investment protection of some kind are necessary for life or any other form of productivity. Lack of barriers is death.

A nation-state or community is itself a living thing: investing in good people, getting rid of bad people, and organizing them into social structures. Barriers to entry, exit, and interference allow these investments to be made and guaranteed, which allows super-individual social structures like civilization to live. The first civilizations were farming communities that built walls and armies against raiders.

A proposal to dissolve all controls on entry and exit from communities and nations is similar to the proposal to dump Penicillin in a bacterial colony. Soup composed of homogenized life-bits is not alive, despite being constitutionally indistinguishable from life (for a while). Mind you in the case of civilizations, removing one set of walls does not kill it, because civilizations are quite robust, and will find other ways to discriminate, but it does make it harder to live. For example, if we require companies to hire representative samples of the population by race and gender, and they will do things like put all the people they would not have hired in one of the less critical departments, to keep the effect of segregation in the critical departments, but they still have to pay for it, and it is less stable.

[lordmetroid]

In Europe you can't just move to a country, walk into the nearest welfare office and go "Je... Je, je je... *pointing to yourself* - MONEY!" You actually have to have an employment first to be eligable for moving as a personliving living in EU.

[Libertarian666]

On the importance of borders, something I read today seemed exceptionally relevant:

A nation-state or community is itself a living thing: investing in good people, getting rid of bad people, and organizing them into social structures.

And here I thought that everyone recognized Brave New World as dystopian fiction.

[dualstow]

In Europe you can't just move to a country, walk into the nearest welfare office and go "Je... Je, je je... *pointing to yourself* - MONEY!" You actually have to have an employment first to be eligable for moving as a personliving living in EU.

Will that be the case for Syrian refugees in Sweden?

[murphy_p_t]

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution, and so a Constitutional amendment would be needed if we want to stop that practice.

What we do about the many illegal residents we have now is hard to figure out completely - I'm not against the idea of deporting them in theory, but in practice that's hard and expensive to do.  Somebody who was here on a temporary visa, and didn't get their application processed before that expired is in a different category for me than somebody who came over illegally.  And, if there are children born here, we can't deport them.

The gist of the argument rests on the fact that the 14th Amendment requires people to be born on U.S. soil and be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to receive citizenship at birth, as the amendment says. To understand this point a little better, consider the example of children of foreign diplomats born in the United States. These children are not citizens because their parents have allegiance to a foreign country and not the United States -- meaning they are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... nt-covere/


In regards to deportation...how about self-deportation by taking away the comforts...no job (e-verify and draconian punishment of employers), no welfare, no driving license...they might then decide to return home

[murphy_p_t]

has anyone heard of "social credit"? i was thinking of this in regards to the finnish plan, but then found this link...http://www.socred.org/index.php/blogs/v ... l-dividend

[jafs]

The vast majority of legal scholars believe that the 14th amendment applies to children of illegal residents, as well as legal immigrants.

There are a few who take a different view.

That's from the politifact article in your link.

[barrett]

The first sentence of the link the OP provided reads:

"Finland’s government is drawing up plans to pay every citizen a basic income of euros 800 ($1,165) each month, scrapping benefits altogether."

Am I the only one bothered by the bad math?