They get $75/month. So you're right... Funny thing is that they consider that enough so many of them don't even consider working small jobs etc. So maybe no welfare at all would be better. On the other hand soon technology will eliminate most jobs for unqualified workers, then we'd need to keep them busy and fed somehow.
I think only those who don't realize the costs of real-estate ownership. Actually if an apartment like that costs let's say 100000 euros, then the 350 euros per month are very little. Don't you get deductions for renovations? Here you can use up to 25% of your rent-income tax to deduct repairs.

This amount really is a bit on the low side. 560€ per month is far, far below average income in Finnland which is probably more around 1500-2000€ per person per month after tax. Calling this an income? I would rather call it a bit better social security. In Germany everyone not being able to find work for long time (officially they have to seek work) gets around 450€ social security per month plus the rent of a reasonably cheap apartment. Together this would be more than 560€.

I read about the Finnish welfare system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_in_Finland) but couldn't find out what the financial support for long term jobless people are? Probably cheap/free housing, free health care and some other stuff.

Maybe they meant 560€ and an apartment?

And germans wonder why there are so many unemployed when for example you work in a supermarket you'll get like 1000 euros a month? Isn't it better to just stay at home and do nothing?

There are cases where you can get tax deductions:

1. If it is your own home where you live, you can get deductions from the work costs, ie. when you hire someone else to do renovations and repairs. This is called "kotitalousvähennys", translated something like "home domestic deduction". You might even get it if you hire someone to clean your home, the purpose of it is to encourage people to hire others to do stuff at their homes (instead of just doing it themselves), and fight grey market (you can't get such deductions if you pay directly so that no income tax is collected from the worker).

2. If you are already renting it out, you can deduct at least many (but not all) renovation costs from your taxes.

However, I didn't get any deductions when I renovated the apartment a bit (for less than 5000€, including both work and stuff). The reason was that I had lived there myself before (already moved out), and I was about to rent it out, so neither of those cases applied to me directly.

I tried to find the answer from our tax office home pages, but they were very vague there about my case, ie. live in the apartment yourself first, move out and renovate it, and then rent it out. I got an impression that in such a case you get part of the costs deducted from the taxes you pay for renting it out, but it didn't specify how much is that part. 10%? 50%? 90%? If there had already been a tenant in the apartment when I renovate it, then I could have deducted apparently 100% from the taxes.

I applied for the tax deductions afterwards and figured they decide what part can be deducted. The reply was that I get no deductions at all, the reasoning was that I can deduct the renovation costs from the taxes for selling the apartment (tax which you pay for the profit you make for selling the apartment, ie. you sell it for more than what you had originally paid for it), if I ever do that.

So the suggestions on the tax office home page was misleading or flat out wrong, AND their suggestion about deducting it from the sales profit tax was bullshit because I wouldn't have to pay such taxes for selling the apartment anyway, as I had lived there myself (the meaning of that particular tax is to charge those who buy and sell apartments for living, not those who sell their own home).

Damn tax office hags, they always like to torment people.

I was about to write that but then I read your post hehe. This is why I don't like the real estate and worse, practically our economy is backed by it. Gold was better, less artificial price increase for something everyone needs. Cost of living should go down in a progressive civilization..

If you don't manage to sell that flat before the pipe project, do you think you'll at least make a net profit taking into account all cost, loans and taxes?

I think the model they will be trying is partial basic income, ie. there are other benefits you still get on top of that 560€. I think housing benefit is probably one, then child benefit, and the "ansiosidonnainen" which is a raised benefit you get for a limited time, but it doesn't really come from the social security system anyway but from private "unemployment treasury" (työttömyyskassa) which you must have joined yourself, a kind of an unemployment insurance thingie.

The average income in 2015 in Finland for full-time workers was 3247€/month, and median being 2934€/month. That is before taxes, no idea what they are after taxes (I don't think there are any real statistics for that, also because you'd have to count in also all kinds of benefits even working people get, like the child benefit).

http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/talous_uutiset/palkka-suomessa-3-247-euroa-vertailumaassa-6-428-euroa-6062451

I don't think the idea of basic income is to be on par with wages anyway, it is merely to replace some of the basic social security benefits to make it all simpler and easier to comprehend, and make sure it always makes sense to seek work and try to earn money on top of that social security/basic income. Currently it doesn't always make sense if you receive lots of benefits and deductions for e.g. being a single mother with many children (if you go to work, you'd have to pay for daycare for all your children, get less benefits, you might even lose your home if it is provided by state/community etc... so the job you take should have quite a high wage to make it worth it).

Health care is "free" (ie. mostly financed with tax money) for everyone. Sure you have to pay something if you go to a hospital to x-ray and operation, but the direct costs to you are peanuts compared to what the real costs are. Like, the hospital charging you 100€ for an operation and your time in the hospital, while the real costs might have been in tens of thousands (I pulled those figures from my arse, but I know my arse pretty well).

Naturally this includes only obligatory operations and such for health related problems, you don't get a free boob job or botox here either, those you have to pay yourself.

I think so, as its value has apparently gone up by 50% since I bought it, plus I very much benefitted from interest rates going all the way down just after I got the mortgage. So overall I've been quite lucky with it, I happened to buy at a right time, hopefully I will also sell it at the right time (ie. don't wait too long and then something happens...).

Whenever there is news or discussions about the "outrageous" rent prices in the bigger Finnish cities, I see these comments how rents should be very close to the monthly housing costs that the owner pays (e.g. for my flat the rent should apparently be only little over 200€/month or something just so that I don't make any profit), and how wrong it is if rent income money is used on renovations, ie. the tenants are in practise paying also for renovations. Not fair, they don't own the property so why their rent money is used on renovations at all?!? Right...

I seriously don't understand this line of thinking. It would mean I would make serious loss for renting out my apartment (especially considering the incoming pipe renovation, minimum 30000€ cost thank you), so why should I rent it out at all? Shouldn't I just sell it and put the money somewhere safe (or invest it)? In my case, I'd use it to cut my mortgage for my current home, most probably. Even with the current rent I am thinking does it really make sense.

Earlier it might have been true people were renting out their apartments for very cheap and low margins, because back then the value of their real estate would go up fast every year. So they didn't really care if they were making profit from rent, as the real money came from the value of the real estate. I admit I have also benefitted from that, but back then I was not renting it out, but lived there myself.

Now it is different, the value is not going up similarly and in many places the prices are even going down, so renting out for no "profit" (or actually for loss in a longer term, taking into account the incoming renovations, or if you have a loan for the rented apartment) makes no sense anymore.

Hmm. There aren't many unemployed and 1000 is still much more than 450 and not working is very, very boring. So do we really wonder, I wonder.

Immigrants are treated way better, but we're not allowed to talk about it.

That is one way of seeing the basic income and probably a very good one too. I see it the same way but others might see it differently (more like free lunch). Here we had the same discussion already years ago but we named it differently (was called negative income tax).

So, if I get the 560€ per month basic income bonus and I work during this time with, say, an average income, can I keep the basic income fully or does it get taxed or do I have to give it back completely? You can probably find out by searching for numbers of how much the Finnish government pays for the refugees/immigrants and how much it pays for the unemployed Finnish citizens. This should be public figures.

So far I have heard nothing about people left to rot on the streets in Finnland. It's kind of known to be a country with a very high standard of welfare. Maybe that's why we are astonished at the comparatively high rent for the "middle class" apartment of timppu and the comparatively low amount of basic income.

Yes I think the model is that it is taxed away quite fast from income tax, so middle-class or upper class don't really get that benefit (compared to what they get, or don't get, right now). So income tax would be even more progressive than what it is today. However, it doesn't necessarily mean middle and upper class would have to pay more income tax than today since that basic income would replace many current social security benefits, which are already paid with tax money.

Even with that, I still like the idea that there would be no financial reason not to work. Every cent you earn would be profit to you, even if an increasing part of it would go to taxes. Then again I am unsure if they are able to get completely rid of this problem, as it is only partial income.

Not that much of homeless people here, possibly also because of the harsh winters. But there are some, there was a recent documentary which followed the life of some homeless people here. These seem to be quite special cases, ie. they somehow drop out of the system because they are so passive, don't even know where to seek help, maybe some have been evicted from their earlier apartment for demolishing it etc.


Can you give examples of that? Do you mean the monetary benefits, or what?

I've sometimes tried to find concrete examples of that, are there really some extra benefits that immigrants (who already have a residence permit) get, compared to citizens? I was first thinking if "kotoutumistuki" ("integration benefit") would be such, but apparently it is nowadays just the same as "työmarkkinatuki" that any unemployed would get.

http://www.kela.fi/tyottoman-maahanmuuttajan-tuet

http://www.kela.fi/ajankohtaista-tyottomat/-/asset_publisher/I7X3vuEkReGH/content/id/1973866

Yes, we have some limits but given the look at the market and how US wannabe Sweden has become, I doubt that will last. Those 100 years mortgages are insane, they rely on every increasing real estate price so you can cover the loan once you sell the property but then if you intend to buy a new place, there will be quite a low profit margin unless you build up a real estate empire which of course the average person doesn't have.

From your tone, I take it you are against removing those limits? Don't you feel then they cause dirth of apartments people can rent?

My understanding was that it has caused very long rental queues in e.g. Stockholm area (getting a rental apartment in Stockholm feels like winning in a lottery), and it has also created a secondary "grey" market for the apartments, ie. someone who has been able to get such an apartment, gets a subtenant to it who has to pay more rent than what the primary tenant (who is not necessarily even living there) is paying. At least I recall hearing things like this about the current situation.

I personally am against such limits, based on how I remember it meant it was pretty much impossible to find a rental apartment in e.g. Helsinki due to it.

I think the way to fight rising rents is to abolish obstacles from people renting out their apartments, and building of new apartments. For example here such obstacles have been slow zoning (constructors have had to wait a long time for permissions to build new apartments) and restrictions like that the constructors are not allowed to make only small one-room studios (for which there is probably the highest demand), but have to make also bigger family apartments for which there is less demand. Artificial restrictions.

Also the housing benefit system here unfortunately seems to raise to rent prices (me being a good example, the rent went up from my original 600€ to 700€ because apparently that is the maximum what the housing benefit by the social security covers at the moment), it should be changed somehow.

In theory I'm against lifting them because I don't like high cost of living which will rise if that happens and real estate prices are already too high. In practice, I'm more ambivalent as I probably lack the necessary knowledge to pick one, it probably depends on a number of reasons. Given that there's a huge lack of building going in Sweden (it was on the news recently; an expected 770 000 new apartments/small houses should be built in the Northern part where I live before 2020 but now they don't think we will even cover half of that) I would approve of a reduced requirement on those limits to meet those needs but I don't like the idea of combining free market on rent while at the same time having 100 years+ mortgages. People pay enough percentage of their salaries to their shelter.

That will likely not happen, but I agree. The rich control most properties, it would give them far too much competition. I think it's common that people rent out a room to university students but that is usually temporary and students have no choice so technically they are probably overpaying.

Fun fact: Sweden's GDP compared to the net worth of our 26 richest people is equivalent to about 22%. It's not what you would expect from a socialist nation.