 Alright, we've got a question, this question got the most votes on the survey. So the question is, could you talk about the results of Finland's basic income experiment? So I think everybody knows what basic income is. Basic income is the idea that what we should do is replace, I mean, mostly this is the idea. There are lots of different variations of basic income. But the most rational presentation of basic income, which I have an iota of sympathy for, I reject because it's tomorrow, but as compared to the welfare state, it's a minor, it could be a significant improvement and a way to ultimately phase out the welfare state. So I'm sympathetic to it as a mechanism to phase out the welfare state. What it really does is it replaces all welfare programs. This is the idea, all welfare programs. And I actually have a twist on it where I even replace public education at all health care programs, just all government programs, which basically a minimum income. So what it says is, no matter whether you're working or not working, no matter whether you're a billionaire or the poorest person in the United States, you get a check from the government and that check from the government is for, I don't know, let's say $12,000. And we're not going to give you any other support. That is, we're not going to give you any welfare. We're not going to give you food stamps. We're not going to give you public education in my world. We don't give you Medicaid. We don't give you anything except this check and everybody gets it. Now the reason everybody has to get it to make this work is that one of the problems with the welfare states, one of the practical problems with the welfare state is that the marginal, the marginal tax for getting a job, if you're on welfare, if you're non-employed is massive. So let's say right now I'm getting welfare and I'm getting all kinds. I'm getting 50 different programs, I'm getting checks, I'm getting food stamps, I'm getting unemployment insurance, I'm getting a bunch of money. One of that is taxed, zero tax. Now let's say total, I don't know, I'm getting $15,000 equivalent, $15,000 in benefits. Now let's say somebody offers me a job for $20,000. Well $20,000 minus taxes, minus Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, how much is that net me versus the welfare and I'm going to lose the welfare because once I have a job I don't get the welfare. So the incentive to work is gone whereas if everybody, because the work, I could actually be worse off by working than staying on benefits because the benefits are not taxed and because I lose the benefits when I gain the work. The basic income, universal basic income is a mechanism that even if you get the work, you still get the benefits and the idea here is that this encourages the incentive to work because you're not losing anything by getting a job. You're not giving up anything by getting a job because all the welfare benefits are gone. You're getting that flat rate check and now anything you work is additional. It's above and beyond the check that you got. So the idea is this would encourage work. The idea is also that it would encourage risk taking. It will encourage entrepreneurial activity because look, I'm getting my $15,000 check from the government no matter what. So if I invest in a small business and if I lose anything, I'm still going to get that $15,000 check from the government. So it increases the incentive to entrepreneurship. It also from a free market perspective, it completely eliminates the bureaucracy. That is all those hundreds of thousands, probably millions of government, state, federal, local employees who administer welfare, who do all the stuff that welfare programs do. They're out of jobs, they're gone because that is replaced by one check that people get and that's it. Social work would have to be private. There'd be no state funded social work. All of that stuff would be privatized and people would have to pay for it or it would be through charities. So that's universal basic income. So what Finland is, so a lot of people are talking about this. It's very popular on Silicon Valley. It's very popular in Europe. It's very popular across the political spectrum, left, right, center. Primarily people who are panicked that robots are going to take all of our jobs. They think universal basic income basically placates all those people who are going to lose their jobs. At least they'll get the basic income. So at least they won't be starving in the streets. So what Finland has done, one other thing. If you think about it, Alaska has a version of this. Alaska is the only state in America where the oil found in Alaska isn't owned by the land owner or the driller, but the oil found in Alaska is owned by Alaska. And Alaska gets massive amounts of revenue from the oil in Alaska. It takes, I think it's a quarter of those revenues. And it gives a check to everybody in Alaska. Everybody in Alaska gets a check for several hundred dollars. I think it is a month, right? You know, I don't think it's a huge amount, but it's something. And there's some evidence that is a consequence of that. Let me see. I read about this evidence here. Yeah. Oh, it's one fifth. No. It's a quarter. Okay. So it's so that Alaska's seen a 17% in part-time employment. Now nobody really knows that that's a causal relationship. And one other thing to say about universal basic income, the pseudo economists to believe that what drives the economy is consumption. They love the universal basic income because universal basic income basically gives money to consumers, to people to spend, which they believe creates economic activity. Of course, what they ignore is that the money has to come from somewhere. It has to be taken from someone. All it is is moving from one pocket to another from an economic perspective. You're taking from the wealthy in particular who would save the money and you're giving to everybody else who we think would consume the money and they believe that would create economic growth. That's one of the dumbest ideas ever, but that is what people believe. Okay. So let's move to Finland. Finland two years ago decided to run a universal basic income experiment. And some researchers at the university, they came up with an experimental design where the government would basically take 2000 random people, give them universal basic income and study their behavior versus the people who didn't get universal basic income. The problem is that politicians got involved. And whereas the study design was probably pretty good. Once the politicians got involved, the study became a complete joke because what happened is remember universal basic income is supposed to replace all of the benefits, but that's too radical for politicians. So the politicians said, no, we'll just reduce the amount of benefits that these 2000 people get. We won't. So they gave them 80% of the benefit. So there's still an enormous disincentive to go to work. Then they said, you know, one of the advantages of UBI is the recipients of welfare don't have to deal with the bureaucracy. They just get a check. And here because they're still getting 80% of the benefits, they still have to deal with the bureaucracy. Anyway, bad experiment of design. It's been running now for two years. It was a two-year experiment. The results for year number one out, that is the results of just being published for the first year. Next year we'll get the results for the second year. It takes about a year to analyze the results, I guess. And the result is that there's no boost employment, which the whole idea again is that unemployed people would become employed because the disincentive would go away. But of course, because they kept the 80% of the benefits, the disincentive was still there. Soon as they got a job, they would lose that 80%. Entrepreneurship went up slightly, very, very slightly, and you know, you could imagine that being a result. You know, I'm not impressed by the experiment. I'm not impressed by the results. I'm not impressed by what they're trying to do here. I'm not impressed by UBI generally. So I'm not sure I have much to say about this. I don't think we could have learned anything from Finland about UBI. I think if you actually ran a UBI proper UBI experiment, you probably would see an increase in employment because I think incentives matter. And if you create disincentive to work, people will likely not work. And if you create incentives to work, they probably would work. So I think you just have to design the experiment right. But of course, what happens in the media is nobody actually reads the study. Nobody actually looks at what actually happened. Nobody actually analyzes anything. So the headlines are that UBI is a failure because it didn't add, people didn't go to work. No problem is they didn't test it. Yeah, go ahead, Davias. Yeah, can I ask a follow-up question on that? Sure. So a couple of things I never quite understood on the implementation. Why does it have to be a cliff where if your income is over a certain amount, it goes away completely? It can phase out gradually like many things in the tax code do. So at a quarter million, it starts phasing out and it's fully phased out at 500,000. Yeah, I mean, you could do that. And I think some proposals have proposed that. I think Charles Murray's proposal for UBI actually phases it out after a certain level of income, probably even below 250 because the disincentive, if it's only $15,000 a year, an extra $15,000 when you're making 250 is not going to change your behavior dramatically. Right. That's why I picked that number. I agree with you. Yeah. And then the far fewer people would have to receive it. Yes. That's true. People have run the numbers. It's still a huge number because every child gets it. You know, it's a big number. You know, the most credible proposal around this was made by Charles Murray, but I think even that was pretty flawed. I mean, I like that everybody gets it because not because of the incentive aspect of it, but because I think it's just, you know, if you're going to do it, everybody should get it. That is the billionaire should get some of his money back, right? And you could probably do it as just as a tax credit or something. But yes, everybody should get it because just in the name of justice, everybody should get it, not, but economically, you're absolutely right. It would be phased out at some point.