Feature
What If Everyone Got a Monthly Check From the Government?
In an audacious experiment, Finland is giving some residents a “basic income” of $16,000 for two years, no strings attached. Here’s what two of them did with the money.
Juha Jarvinen and two of his children at home in Jurva.
Photographer: Juuso Westerlund for Bloomberg Businessweek
One afternoon in the final days of 2016, Steffie Eronen got a phone call from her husband, Juha. The Eronens had spent Christmas with relatives in Savonlinna, Finland, and Juha had just made the two-hour drive home so he could return to his job as an electrician. The couple live with their 5-year-old daughter in a cozy, two-bedroom apartment in Mikkeli, a quiet, midsize city in the southeastern part of the country. Juha was calling to let his wife know he was home safe, and oh, by the way, an important-looking letter had arrived for her from the Social Insurance Institution of Finland—or, as everyone calls it, Kela.
“Open it,” Steffie said.