That's an unnecessary quip as that's not the point of checks.
It's not surprising that if unemployed people receive benefits with no strings attached their "mental health" is better since it removes pressure to find a job.
> It was the unconditionality itself—the simple act of trusting people with resources, without surveillance or judgment, without hoops to jump through or forms to fill out—that created these dramatic improvements in psychological well-being.
It not about trusting people with the money they are given.
The usual checks are because people are expected to earn a living by themselves and unemployment benefits are only meant to help them while they can't and are looking for a job. It is not meant to enable a life-style, which is what unconditionality can lead to.
> the conditions we attach to welfare aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences. They are active harms. They create stress, anxiety, and psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate.
Oh dear... This reads like a parody at that point.
An useful measurement would be to see which group, if any, found a job quicker. A finding that conditionality does not speed things up would be noteworthy and helpful, a finding that people feel better when they get money every month unconditionally isn't.
> It could be IQ, cultural-specific, polarized against authority, much of which deserve monitoring.
It doesn't seem so confounding to me. If you were unemployed and needing assistance, do you think you would be happier or less happy having someone require you to report if you've got a job yet and they can take the income away?
It would be better if they made it mandatory for everyone to respond to follow-up surveys, as the response rate differed enough to be called out as a study limitation.
One interesting thing to note is that the study didn’t find that basic income support increased the chances of becoming employed, or receiving basic income support reduced crime. I am also not sure how to extrapolate study results from Finnish people to people in other cultures.
I wonder what is the difference between the two groups as far as the rate of finding employment. Might be that the act of looking for a job is stressful.
If the goal is to get people back to work, it might not make sense to optimize just for better mental health.
Having spent a bunch of time with people who have had persistent issues with stable income, a lot of them internalize it at various levels as them personally not being worth anything, because so many systems involved seem to be operating in bad faith.
Anything involving the US medical system, for instance - even as someone working in tech with good health insurance, so many of my interactions with doctors can be summarized as "the doctor makes a snap judgment in the first 30 seconds of interacting with you, and arguing with it results in them interacting in bad faith thereafter".
And that's not as bad as other machinery in the US. The advice I've heard around trying to use the limited social safety machinery in the US is "plan for it to be a fulltime job for multiple years to get on it, and expect to randomly be kicked off it repeatedly".
And having the systems you interact with regularly very clearly act in bad faith, assuming by default you don't deserve things, does things to people's mental health.
From what I understand, two groups of unemployed persons got €560/mo. One group was required to look for work while the other wasn't. And one group was required to report to unemployment offices, and "satisfy bureaucrats".
The results were that the one with unconditional payments had "better mental health".
Apparently they used a "validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk of mood and anxiety disorders", but realistically how much of this is just people prefer money with no strings attached. Seems pretty obvious. I'm sure a lot of things are linked to "poor mental health" like having to go to work, doing chores and basic maintenance to stay alive. Don't really know is this kind of observation has broader implications
'People prefer money with no strings attached' is likely a bit reductive. The power imbalance inherent in the expectation that you prove you're 'good enough' to a functionary who has the ability to determine if you have money to buy food or not sounds like a deeply unpleasant scenario to me. I could absolutely imagine a few months of that would be deleterious to my mental health, I don't know about you.
> The power imbalance inherent in the expectation that you prove you're 'good enough' to a functionary who has the ability to determine if you have money to buy food or not sounds like a deeply unpleasant scenario to me.
You've essentially described how employment works, and yes, it can be rather unpleasant.
I knew someone who was getting significant public assistance to help get out of homelessness.
The requirements were a nightmare. Your employer had to fill out regular forms, the office administering the program had to fill out regular forms, when they made mistakes they'd threaten to take away your housing (and the office frequently made mistakes). If you were employed there were perverse incentives... they would reduce your benefits my MORE than you earned so it only made sense to get a job if the pay would completely disqualify you from the program. It really was torture.
It's plausible that being in poor mental health might make someone more likely to be unemployed, but that employment can still worsen someone's mental health. Even if unemployment is net better for someone's mental health than working we might see a trend where on average mental health is worse for unemployment due to the fact that employment (of a lack of it) might not cause as of an effect as other factors.
I think this is interesting, but on its own isn't that compelling. A UBI program that doesn't result in improving employment and education long term sounds both unsustainable and like a moral hazard.
What I think this does underscore the importance of not trying to make the program ensure personal accountability. That means we must find a way to ensure program accountability, and measure long-term results, without burdening the recipients with additional mental health burdens.
I think it's the conventional unemployment benefit system that should show measurable benefits, not other way around. All the tracking, surveillance, reporting and interviewing costs money, and should not be done for the sake of it.
These people found out that interacting with the government has a negative effect on your mental health, or that “looking for job is stressful,” and somehow decided to build a narrative around how “socialist welfare is good.”
I'm currently job hunting and 'no shit'. I had better mental health 6 months ago by any measure. Its a ego destroying process, especially with the market now. I've got my first 'tech' interview coming up and while its nice to have a bite after a few months now I'm cramming from interview sites with an increasing feeling of dread.
What about the mental health of tax payers funding the scheme? Do you want your hard earned taxes to finance “lazy bums” who may or may not be looking for employement. If there are no conditions to receiving the grant, then where is the incentive to take “a” job that comes your way.
Out of curiosity, why does the Algolia result for this submission show '4 days ago', the submission timestamp '3 hours ago', and the metadata on the submission timestamp '2025-12-18T15:34:11 1766072051'?
Is this an example of an article being resubmitted (by the same user?) or otherwise boosted back onto the front page?
I'd bet a lot of money that a third group subject to the same rules as the second group but with the church or some other not the government (and not funded by them either) 3rd party doing the administrating would have mental health outcomes a lot closer to "no strings attached".
Applying for phony ghost jobs and pretending your dream in life is to work some shitty dead end job is basically a humiliation ritual. I think it would be much better if unemployed people were simply assigned work by the government. Feeling unambitious? No shame in staying as long as you like. Want something more? Send out as few or many applications as you want.
If you read the article, what does it mean “better mental health”? It means nothing, the “researchers” just came up with some made up metric that justifies their -probable- initial intended outcome according to their political ideology.
I couldn’t care less of the “mood” of people receiving my taxpayer money to stay home without finding a job. If I’m forced (by threat of violence from the state, mind you) to work more hours to give my money to these people, the minimum I expect, is for the metrics to show that my money, served to speed up these people finding a new job and stop living on my money.
27 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 50.9 ms ] threadThat's an unnecessary quip as that's not the point of checks.
It's not surprising that if unemployed people receive benefits with no strings attached their "mental health" is better since it removes pressure to find a job.
> It was the unconditionality itself—the simple act of trusting people with resources, without surveillance or judgment, without hoops to jump through or forms to fill out—that created these dramatic improvements in psychological well-being.
It not about trusting people with the money they are given.
The usual checks are because people are expected to earn a living by themselves and unemployment benefits are only meant to help them while they can't and are looking for a job. It is not meant to enable a life-style, which is what unconditionality can lead to.
> the conditions we attach to welfare aren’t just bureaucratic inconveniences. They are active harms. They create stress, anxiety, and psychological damage that persists even when the financial support is adequate.
Oh dear... This reads like a parody at that point.
An useful measurement would be to see which group, if any, found a job quicker. A finding that conditionality does not speed things up would be noteworthy and helpful, a finding that people feel better when they get money every month unconditionally isn't.
It could be IQ, cultural-specific, polarized against authority, much of which deserve monitoring.
I do not think it is a cost-effective way for working population to fund this "freestyle" living unless society gets something from the idles.
Otherwise, like a professor giving out highest grade of a student to rest of the class, that too shall normalizes ...." at the lowesr level.
It doesn't seem so confounding to me. If you were unemployed and needing assistance, do you think you would be happier or less happy having someone require you to report if you've got a job yet and they can take the income away?
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2025-035.pdf
It would be better if they made it mandatory for everyone to respond to follow-up surveys, as the response rate differed enough to be called out as a study limitation.
One interesting thing to note is that the study didn’t find that basic income support increased the chances of becoming employed, or receiving basic income support reduced crime. I am also not sure how to extrapolate study results from Finnish people to people in other cultures.
If the goal is to get people back to work, it might not make sense to optimize just for better mental health.
Having spent a bunch of time with people who have had persistent issues with stable income, a lot of them internalize it at various levels as them personally not being worth anything, because so many systems involved seem to be operating in bad faith.
Anything involving the US medical system, for instance - even as someone working in tech with good health insurance, so many of my interactions with doctors can be summarized as "the doctor makes a snap judgment in the first 30 seconds of interacting with you, and arguing with it results in them interacting in bad faith thereafter".
And that's not as bad as other machinery in the US. The advice I've heard around trying to use the limited social safety machinery in the US is "plan for it to be a fulltime job for multiple years to get on it, and expect to randomly be kicked off it repeatedly".
And having the systems you interact with regularly very clearly act in bad faith, assuming by default you don't deserve things, does things to people's mental health.
The results were that the one with unconditional payments had "better mental health".
Apparently they used a "validated five-item mental health screening instrument that identifies people at risk of mood and anxiety disorders", but realistically how much of this is just people prefer money with no strings attached. Seems pretty obvious. I'm sure a lot of things are linked to "poor mental health" like having to go to work, doing chores and basic maintenance to stay alive. Don't really know is this kind of observation has broader implications
You've essentially described how employment works, and yes, it can be rather unpleasant.
The requirements were a nightmare. Your employer had to fill out regular forms, the office administering the program had to fill out regular forms, when they made mistakes they'd threaten to take away your housing (and the office frequently made mistakes). If you were employed there were perverse incentives... they would reduce your benefits my MORE than you earned so it only made sense to get a job if the pay would completely disqualify you from the program. It really was torture.
So you think unemployed people are in better mental health than those with jobs?
I guess this is part of the reason why we need these studies: because people's default assumptions are often wildly off.
What I think this does underscore the importance of not trying to make the program ensure personal accountability. That means we must find a way to ensure program accountability, and measure long-term results, without burdening the recipients with additional mental health burdens.
Is this an example of an article being resubmitted (by the same user?) or otherwise boosted back onto the front page?
If you read the article, what does it mean “better mental health”? It means nothing, the “researchers” just came up with some made up metric that justifies their -probable- initial intended outcome according to their political ideology.
I couldn’t care less of the “mood” of people receiving my taxpayer money to stay home without finding a job. If I’m forced (by threat of violence from the state, mind you) to work more hours to give my money to these people, the minimum I expect, is for the metrics to show that my money, served to speed up these people finding a new job and stop living on my money.
All other metrics are irrelevant.