Imagine getting paid without working. Universal Basic Income or UBI makes this possible.

  UBI is on the rise in countries like Finland and Kenya. Basic income pilots are smaller-scale experiments which employ UBI. The pilots determine if the program can be implemented in other countries including the US.

  According to Time Magazine, UBI is when, “the government would pay every adult citizen a salary, regardless of wealth, employment income or if they worked at all.”

  UBI is meant to solve poverty and unemployment.

  A two year basic income pilot in Finland released its preliminary results on February 8th, 2019. The results show data from the first year of the study.

  From January 2017 to December 2018, a treatment group of two thousand unemployed participants received 560 euros as income which is around $590. The control group comprised of five thousand people receiving unemployment allowance.

  An article in Wired stated that 55% of basic income recipients reported a good state of health. In the control group, 46% reported the same.

  Overall, the treatment group showed a drop in stress levels. More than half of the treatment group experienced little to no stress while 75% of the control group said the same.

  As for employment status, the results found in Reports and Memorandums of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health state, “…the experiment did not have any effect on employment status during the first year of the experiment.”

  Reports on the level of trust in other people, the legal system, and politicians were recorded on a scale from zero to ten with zero being total distrust and ten being the highest possible level of trust. The treatment group scored their trust higher in every category. Between the three categories, both groups scored politicians the lowest.

  Confidence in one’s own future, confidence is one’s own financial situation, and one’s ability to influence societal matters were recorded using a scale from poor to strong. Strong confidence in one’s own future and financial situation was higher in the treatment group than the control group.

  Finland’s preliminary report outlines the importance of a citizen’s ability to influence societal matters. About one third of the test group and half of the control group rated this category poor. In the test group, 30% reported this category as quite strong or strong, and 20% of the control group reported the same.

  The MIT Technology Review said the final report on the trial will be released in 2020. The problem still stands as whether or not UBI is possible for other countries, including the US.

  Andrew Yang is a Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential election. His campaign is based on implementing UBI in the US. On his website, Yang says his reasoning stems from the fact that roughly one third of Americans will lose their jobs to automation in the next twelve years.

  UBI evolved from an impossible ideal into a new solution for unemployment, poverty, and mental health. Universal Basic Income is no longer an idea of the past. It could be America’s future.

Note: To review the preliminary results visit http://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161361/Report_The%20Basic%20Income%20Experiment%2020172018%20in%20Finland.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y