RLAng

The basic premise of this video is simply incorrect. It is based on fake news. A statement from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (the office actually responsible for the basic income experiment): Contrary to reports, the Basic Income Experiment in Finland will continue until the end of 2018 As the name implies, the Finnish experimental study on a Universal Basic Income is a study, first and foremost. The primary objective is to gather information. Therefore, it cannot really "Fail", other than by providing skewed or inaccurate data (which is a possibility, but there is no evidence of that so far). As in any scientific experiment, the results are what they are, once they come out, probably sometime in 2020 (and hopefully, since the study is publicly funded, raw data might also be available in anonymized form). According to the original study plan, the experimental intervention part has a fixed duration (2 years, 1.1.2017-31.12.2018) and the intervention group has a fixed size (2000, chosen randomly). Analysis of the data is done only after the completion of the experimental phase, in 2019-2020, and no results are expected before the end of 2019. None of these things in the plan have changed, and they are not expected to change, according to any actual sources. For added perspective, by quick back-of-envelope calculations (I did not look up any exact figures, just some rough ballpark numbers to get some idea), the budget for the study is around 30M€ which is about 0.006% of GDP if divided over the two intervention years. I do not personally support the idea or the suggested implementation of the UBI, but public funds have been sunk into far worse things than this study (which might eventually come up with some useful information, regardless of current political stance). As a firm advocate of reason and evidence, I would have expected Stefan to at least issue some kind of correction? At least to avoid proliferation of fake news any further?