Unemployment benefit cuts take effect on Monday; monthly support may drop by nearly €400

[NukkuMatti]

I read at Yle the following:

Unemployment benefit cuts take effect on Monday; monthly support may drop by nearly €400

When you have only 600€ a month to pay for food, travel, clothes, phone subscription, insurances and 30% of your rent, with a family of 4, this is a huge problem.

This is only the beginning, and in my opinion will hurt Finland in the long term.

Anyone any comments on this?
Please assume for the discussion, that the unemployed are not willful unemployed, and that a big part of the people affected by these measures are actually low wage workers with children and part time workers and according to the article also female.
For this reason please refrain from bashing the "lazy" people, those are not the "victims" I am talking about and those are statistically the minority of the affected people.

It is in my opinion, "not done / unethical" to punish the good behaving / trying / willing to work people, for the few lazy ones. So for arguments sake please leave comments about "the lazy ones" out of this discussion, there is no point in doing so. I personally will not react on such posts, let's keep it civilized.

[Uskomaton]

Let's be honest, wilful or unintentional unemployment, if you have higher income support, it does not really encourage to you look for work. Yes, it is difficult, if you could fully afford your life with income support, then you wouldn't push yourself because you are already at rock bottom. This will encourage people to apply more and more and not too selective about options. Some people wait for the best opportunity while good enough can get them back on their feet.

As a tax payer with very high income, otherwise is not fair. This is good.

[FinlandGirl]

I read at Yle the following:

Unemployment benefit cuts take effect on Monday; monthly support may drop by nearly €400
...
Anyone any comments on this?
Please assume for the discussion, that the unemployed are not willful unemployed, and that a big part of the people affected by these measures are actually low wage workers with children and part time workers and according to the article also female.

The mentioned "nearly €400" are for jobseekers with at least 3 children who are earning at least 300 Euro per month.

It was not fair that jobseekers could earn up to 300 Euro per month without any deduction, while less fortunate jobseekers had to make a living without these extra 300 Euro.

When you have only 600€ a month to pay for food, travel, clothes, phone subscription, insurances and 30% of your rent, with a family of 4, this is a huge problem.

How did you calculate this number?

A single parent with 3 children will still get twice as much as you claim, a family with 2 long-term unemployed parents and 2 children even more.

[NukkuMatti]

Let's be honest, wilful or unintentional unemployment, if you have higher income support, it does not really encourage to you look for work. Yes, it is difficult, if you could fully afford your life with income support, then you wouldn't push yourself because you are already at rock bottom. This will encourage people to apply more and more and not too selective about options. Some people wait for the best opportunity while good enough can get them back on their feet.

As a tax payer with very high income, otherwise is not fair. This is good.

As someone who has seen both ends of the stick, I will tell you it is fair to tax the people with a high income way more than now is the issue, The strongest shoulders should bare the biggest load.

This development is very very very bad:
You completely forget about the chances for the children in the family and you conveniently forget about the fact that a lot of these people actually DO have a job but the wages are so low, they do not cover the living costs in a country where living is way more expensive than other EU countries.

You forget about people not being able to push harder You will make them suffer without a means to escape that newly inflicted suffering, all in favor of the more than enough paid majority. You punish the people that try and accept any offer but even then cannot get out of rock bottom, whatever they try. That is what is happening right now.
That is just dead wrong!!

You would have a point, if there would be a job guarantee from the government, fitted to the abilities of the receiver of discussed benefits.

Just some food for the brain:

Could there be a solution that we have a minimum wage that would be enough to cover all basic needs (this includes for example, but is not limited to: food, clothing, healthcare, housing, energy, transport, communication, leisure).
And the Government will pay this wage, when unemployed, in return you do work for the government to the amount of your abilities and the needs of the government.
The government would have a huge workforce to do a lot of things that would normally cost the state a huge amount of money from foreign companies who do the work right now and move their earnings to another country before tax. THAT is how you save money for the state.

End (corporate) greed!

Why would a rocket scientist earn 50 times more than a cleaner?
Because he studied so long on the cost of the society? while the cleaner already started to pay income tax when he was 16?
Why would a manager earn 5 (arbitrary chosen number) times as much than his subordinate while they spend the same amount of time in the office behind a computer typing the same amount of time? (forget about the manager doing that actually less and talking and having lunch and meetings).
Does not every human deserve the same, with the same amount of work energy and time spent?

In other words (part of my academic thesis):

The disparity in income distribution between individuals in society raises fundamental questions regarding fairness and equity. At the heart of this issue lies the ethical dilemma of whether income differentials accurately reflect the value of individuals' contributions to society. While some argue that higher incomes are justified based on skills, education, or societal contributions, others contend that such disparities perpetuate social inequality and hinder socioeconomic mobility.

The prevailing economic system often rewards certain professions disproportionately, leading to substantial income gaps between individuals performing vastly different roles. For instance, the significant wage differential between a rocket scientist and a cleaner underscores broader societal biases and systemic inequalities. Despite both individuals contributing to society in their respective capacities, the stark contrast in their earnings highlights the arbitrary nature of income distribution.

Furthermore, the hierarchical structures within organizations often exacerbate income differentials, with managerial positions commanding significantly higher salaries compared to subordinate roles. However, the justification for such discrepancies remains contentious, particularly when considering factors such as workload, time spent working, and the nature of tasks performed. This raises pertinent questions regarding the principles of fairness and equity in remuneration systems.

Addressing these disparities requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses both economic and social reforms. One potential solution involves implementing a minimum wage polic that ensures all individuals receive adequate compensation to meet their basic needsy. Such a policy would serve as a foundational step towards reducing income inequality and promoting economic justice.

Additionally, the concept of a guaranteed minimum income, coupled with a reciprocal obligation to contribute to society through meaningful work, holds promise as a mechanism for addressing unemployment and poverty. By providing individuals with financial security while simultaneously engaging them in productive activities that benefit the community, this approach offers a sustainable pathway towards socioeconomic empowerment.

In conclusion, the issue of income inequality demands urgent attention and concerted action from policymakers, stakeholders, and society at large. By reevaluating prevailing notions of value and fairness in income distribution, we can strive towards a more equitable and inclusive society where every individual has the opportunity to thrive.

[FinlandGirl]

Could there be a solution that we have a minimum wage that would be enough to cover all basic needs (this includes for example, but is not limited to: food, clothing, healthcare, housing, energy, transport, communication, leisure).

Finland already has this, through the labour market subsidy combined with other benefits.

A family of 4 might receive up to 2500 Euro taxpayer money per month, that's a lot of money.

And the Government will pay this wage, when unemployed, in return you do work for the government to the amount of your abilities and the needs of the government.

Such working requirements for welfare recipients have mixed results in other countries, since they destroy the entry-level jobs in the regular job market these people could do instead.

When the government uses jobseekers for cleaning, the current cleaner jobs disappear.
When the government uses jobseekers for landscaping in parks, the jobs of the people currently doing the work disappear.
When the government uses jobseekers for all nursing assistant positions, these jobs disappear.
...

A physically fit immigrant with a university degree but without Finnish skill could in your proposal for example be used as an unpaid cleaner for a swimming hall, but that would not be the proper path towards a regular job as cleaner or in any other field.

The government would have a huge workforce to do a lot of things that would normally cost the state a huge amount of money from foreign companies who do the work right now and move their earnings to another country before tax. THAT is how you save money for the state.

An unemployment benefits recipient costs the government more than 1000 Euro per month, that is also a huge amount of money.

The smart move to save money for the state is to convert them from expensive jobseekers to taxpaying employees.

Forcing unskilled unemployed people to clean government office buildings as you suggest is not a good option once you take the huge costs of the unemployment payments into account, the smart move is to give the jobseekers a vocational education in cleaning which gives them good chances of getting private sector jobs that pay at least 1980 Euro per month.

Why would a rocket scientist earn 50 times more than a cleaner?

I don't think there are rocket scientists in Finland who earn more than 1 million Euro per year.

In Finland a factor of 2 is more realistic.

[Piet]

Such working requirements for welfare recipients have mixed results in other countries, since they destroy the entry-level jobs in the regular job market these people could do instead.

When the government uses jobseekers for cleaning, the current cleaner jobs disappear.
When the government uses jobseekers for landscaping in parks, the jobs of the people currently doing the work disappear.
When the government uses jobseekers for all nursing assistant positions, these jobs disappear.

A physically fit immigrant with a university degree but without Finnish skill could in your proposal for example be used as an unpaid cleaner for a swimming hall, but that would not be the proper path towards a regular job as cleaner or in any other field.

An unemployment benefits recipient costs the government more than 1000 Euro per month, that is also a huge amount of money.

The smart move to save money for the state is to convert them from expensive jobseekers to taxpaying employees.

Forcing unskilled unemployed people to clean government office buildings as you suggest is not a good option once you take the huge costs of the unemployment payments into account, the smart move is to give the jobseekers a vocational education in cleaning which gives them good chances of getting private sector jobs that pay at least 1980 Euro per month.

Why would a rocket scientist earn 50 times more than a cleaner?

I don't think there are rocket scientists in Finland who earn more than 1 million Euro per year.

In Finland a factor of 2 is more realistic.

Sorry for the long TLDNR post but, that is how I write… a few times a year.

So full of errors, where shall I start:

- employees do not receive labor market subsidy
- unemployed are not all the same high or low educated, therefore targeted deployment of employment would be needed, like would normally happen too, this prevents your example.
- result is that less money flows to foreign investors and stays in the country.
- less money is dumped into the pit of corporate greed, which is pushing to over-consumption and price hikes.
- The jobs you mention, are not disappearing, they are done by the same workers that otherwise would be exploited by corporate greed for the benefit of foreign shareholders, now employed by the state instead of in those instances the state paying 2 to 3 times the amount of unemployment benefits per worker to a (foreign based?) cleaning company.

So you have it backwards there, the government will not pay expensive unemployment benefits, the unemployment benefits would cease to exist because everyone will get a salary instead, and pay tax over it. There is no difference in the cost for the unemployed, but the government will no longer need to hire a company for triple the price with lots of overhead for management, which they can do themselves as well...

If you argue that this system cannot work because then the other companies providing those services now, would cease to exist because there is no longer any work, that means there is not enough work (jobs) to begin with period.
In that case, there is also no point in lowering the benefits to encourage the unemployed to go working, hence there are no jobs anyway, which strengthens the point for the need of a social welfare solution, because it is (generally) not the fault of the unemployed they do not have a job, there are just no jobs,
Or..we can start of course some kind of mass deportations of the unemployed to other (nordic) countries to solve the problem (sarcasm).
Or the unemployed can become bank robbers and thieves to provide for their family, which brings back tales of Nothingham forrest (Robbin Hood for the unknowing).

It seems that it is very hard to understand that capitalism is an ending pyramid game with a hopelessly bad ending.
Finland is seeing the forebode of this ending coming already, because of the shrinking (workforce) population causing a slow down in tax revenue, while the payments to big corporations continue, it will eventually result in the melt down of the state funding and after that, when everyone poor is dead, unemployment will be solved automatically. Everyone with money will have left the county long before that, with the old people and modest pension, being the ones to suffer the most as they will most likely be the ones staying behind.

Eventually it is humanities only hope to switch from a money and greed based economy, to a reputation based economy where everyone does what he can, to advance the collective growth of well-being and spiritual / emphatic / ethical / scientific evolution and in return one gets what one needs. Above described path by Nukku-Matti regarding the handling of (un)employment and it's and other's needed benefits could be a very good start to such a path.

Every other path leads to Armageddon (anarchy / survival of the fittest) and we will return to the caveman behavior

Anyway that is my opinion..

About the mentioning of the 2500 a family of 4 will get, let's assume that is correct and do the calculation here yes?
Rent (average for a 3 room apartment in for example Espoo) 1250€
That leaves 1250€ for:
Food ±10€ per person a day leaves you at 50€ left.
Electricity: 150€ a month yearly average, if you have a new house that is well insulated,
mandatory housing insurance: 35€-70€ a month)
Internet / phone connection 30€ a month plus 15€ per kid for the phone (± cheapest possible).
Clothing a year (2 times 2 pair of shoes for the growing kids, winter and summer ±70€ each pair = 280€, inside sport shoes for school sports class = 2x 25€. 2x Inside sport clothes for school and swimming gear for both kids is about 300€, 2x 3 coats a year winter spring/fall and summer and rain gear = 600€ ) little more than 100€ a month, this is excluding normal daily clothes like trousers underwear socks etc.
Total 360 = -310€ a month...
The only way to save money is to eat bad quality unhealthy food (like partly in school nowadays).

So the 2500€ you talked about is really a very SMALL amount instead of you making it look like it is a big amount.
This is exactly the problem with Finland and it's wage system, there is no system and no minimum wage that would be considered enough to live on. We talked about this in another thread as well where you actually prove my point, just for the wrong reason (to limit immigration).
The composition of the benefits for the 4 member family totally on well-fare like you described being 2500, let’s break that up and explain for readers delight and education :
Because yo do not come with the numbers, let me be digging in my memory and apply current changes on those (so correct me if I am wrong):(all after tax netto amount)
Labor market subsidy = ±640€ pp (2 adults)
child benefits for 2 kids = ±200€ (when one turns 17 this becomes about half)
Housing benefits = ±900€ (1188 max rent in Espoo for 4 persons x 70%)
together this is about 2500€

Summarized, the amount was reasonable, but is becoming with all the cuts now, obviously too little taking in account the increased cost of living in Finland, especially in the south around the capital (Espoo, Vantaa, Greater Helsinki area, even Sipoo, Vichti and Kirkkonummi already).

Please also note that in the calculations, no costs for travel or hobbies or sports are calculated, these are too expensive as is new daily clothing.

The biggest problem comes now for the families that are living in an apartment that is having a rent above the 1188€ a month for 4 persons, which are a lot because the cheaper apartments are just not available (I checked).
Now these people need to move, but they can't, there is simply nothing cheaper available and waiting lines at public or city owned housing companies are very long already for more than a decade.

Even bigger problems for the families that live in an old building that is part of a shareholders resident housing company (osakeasunto?)
these have by nature high maintenance costs (f.e. 900€ a month) to pay for renovations (parking roof, sewer, water piping, roof, heating, insulation, window frames, doors, locks etc.) These families might have bought the house 5 years ago and have a huge debt (mortgage) and now being unemployed (or even still employed but at low wages job) need to sell it with a huge loss because the housing benefits for this type of housing, will disappear completely next new years day, leaving those families with a problem they cannot solve, which will result in a debt at enforcement (ulosotto) and the inability to ever get out of that debt again including a forced sale and possibly homelessness, while being employed for a slavery salary, stuck to basic income support for the rest of their lives.

This is not how you treat other human beings and I can totally understand the feeling of unfairness and now additional despair from the ones affected, Especially the low wage earners that really work hard for a total family income, less than basic income support level.

At the same time tax payers money, is being paid to big oil companies and foreign owned electricity companies burning fossil fuel, in the form of subsidies. To keep logging companies cutting down Finnish forests to the level it is no longer a carbon sink but the opposite..,All this tax money could be used here to solve this problem ( of creating f.e. exclusion and marginalization).

Yeah priorities are definitely wrong in politics, all because of Corporate GREED!

P.S. Talking about you nitpicking again….
There are no Rocket scientists in Finland, exactly for that reason.
However a real life example: the boss of the employers union earns about 24 times more than a cleaner. (±450K).
Let’s take that as an example then, why is HIS work so much better paid than someone who works supposedly the same hard and same amount of hours (for arguments sake assumed this is the case).

You really should stop taking things out of context and stop nitpicking on details that do not influence the outcome or hit the core of the issue discussed, it is tiring and does not make you taken serious. (yeah I do that sometimes too, but at least I can admit that..).

[FinlandGirl]

- The jobs you mention, are not disappearing, they are done by the same workers that otherwise would be exploited by corporate greed for the benefit of foreign shareholders, now employed by the state instead of in those instances the state paying 2 to 3 times the amount of unemployment benefits per worker to a (foreign based?) cleaning company.

The minimum legal salary for a cleaner is 2.5 times the labour market subsidy, typical salary is 3 times the labour market subsidy.

So you have it backwards there, the government will not pay expensive unemployment benefits, the unemployment benefits would cease to exist because everyone will get a salary instead, and pay tax over it. There is no difference in the cost for the unemployed, but the government will no longer need to hire a company for triple the price with lots of overhead for management, which they can do themselves as well...

Your plan only works when the government immediately stops paying this "salary" to any person who refuses to do full-time work for the government in exchange.

[agroot]

The disparity in income distribution between individuals in society raises fundamental questions regarding fairness and equity. At the heart of this issue lies the ethical dilemma of whether income differentials accurately reflect the value of individuals' contributions to society. While some argue that higher incomes are justified based on skills, education, or societal contributions, others contend that such disparities perpetuate social inequality and hinder socioeconomic mobility.

The prevailing economic system often rewards certain professions disproportionately, leading to substantial income gaps between individuals performing vastly different roles. For instance, the significant wage differential between a rocket scientist and a cleaner underscores broader societal biases and systemic inequalities. Despite both individuals contributing to society in their respective capacities, the stark contrast in their earnings highlights the arbitrary nature of income distribution.

the rates are determined by the market.

Why shouldn't companies be able to pay much more for positions with very few candidates? The issue is even more extreme for entertainment industry - people are consciously contributing to the high salary of football players and movie stars. Why should the government do anything about it?

A minimum salary does not address the income gap. How would 1000 or 2000 euro matter compared to millions?