My letter to the NY Times re: Free Basic Income Is Not a Solution to Unemployment

Re: Free Money for the Jobless


Dear Sirs:
Your article about Finland's experiment in providing a free basic income to the unemployed fails to address the main question--what exactly is the cause of unemployment and what is the best way to eliminate it? The cause of unemployment is a change in the market, which, if not caused by government itself, is a natural occurrence in a dynamic economy. The great Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase "creative destruction" to describe the process whereby an advancing, wealth generating economy is constantly shedding old production methods for better ones, causing malinvestment of capital and temporary unemployment of labor. Government programs such as unemployment insurance hinder the necessary and beneficial process of capital and labor adapting to the new market environment. Not only do they cause disincentives to adaptation, they must be funded out of the wealth generating sector of the economy. Finland's experiment in going beyond unemployment payments and providing a basic income is simply the welfare state bureaucracy trying to justify its own existence after the failure of its previous programs. There is no solution to unemployment other than that provided by the market itself.