Policy and Social
Welfare
According to the article Finland
Wants to Replace Welfare Programs with a Minimum Income for All Residents, Finland is going to giving every Finnish
adult a basic income of about $866 per month to replace previous unemployment
benefits, old-age pensions, maternity allowances, health benefits, housing
benefits and other earnings-based benefits. This policy is said to save budget,
simplify the welfare system and also help to tackle the high unemployment rate problem[i].
The unconditional
basic income, referred as UBI, urged discussion. Although it seems to bring
benefits to Finland society, some critics said that UBI may just work as
experiment to test concepts of social security rather than as a realistic
welfare system. Declan Gaffney said in Even
in Finland, universal basic income is too good to be true there are several
disadvantages that may affect the actual outcome of the policy. Firstly, there
are argument that the UBI is too expensive. Secondly, this policy may not
suitable for the real world where people are not perfectly rational with
perfect foresight and mobility[ii].
Although some think
that UBI is just an idea, this policy interests me for its innovation. Actually
welfare states are always worth to study because of their innovative practice. It
is interesting that those Nordic nations are Marxism followers and pioneers,
offering citizens education, health care, unemployment compensation at a low
price.
Nuance differences in policy can result in huge differences
in the whole society and people’s daily life. When I was in middle school, I was impressed by an article introducing how
Norway set up a social welfare system and the Oil Fund after the discover of
oil and gas reservation in the North Sea. The natural reservation brought
people not only wealth, but the access to high qualified health care and
education. However, this is totally different in China. In the 1970s, a huge
amount of coal mines was discovered in Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia
Province. Because of the lack of proper management and policy, coal mines did
not bring sufficient positive effect to China. On the contrary, there are many
problems left to be solved. Firstly, the mines increased not social welfare,
but the gap between the poor and the rich. Some peasants made billions of wealth overnight, others are forced to
work underground more than 12 hours without security. Secondly, natural
environment is damaged. Because of improper mining and manufacturing method, water
and air are polluted, and the ground is collapsed in some area. What’s worse,
the market equilibrium of coal is damaged, which resulted in a waste of
resource.
Social welfare is
tightly related to Policy. We cannot be more prudent in policies related to
social welfare.
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