The Influence of a Basic Guaranteed Income on Entrepreneurs in Finland

This thesis aims to find out how a Basic Guaranteed Income (BGI) would influence entrepreneurs in Finland. The idea of the BGI is to give every citizen regularly (usually monthly) a suitable amount of money to cover all living costs. It is basic guaranteed since there would not be any requirements to be fulfilled to receive it. Everyone, regardless of age, race, income, profession and working or not would get the same amount to meet a normal and humane living as a full citizen. This thesis will review and analyze literature about this topic and analyze some real life experiments which have taken place. Also a survey among entrepreneurs in Finland is conducted to find out how they think about an BGI and if and how they would act different if it is ever introduced to Finland. In this experiments with the BGI entrepreneurship has been often enhanced. To consider in Finland is also the Nordic Model. In Finland there is already a quite extensive social security system in place. The BGI would maybe not make such a big difference as in other countries with less or even almost none social security in place nowadays. The second part, the survey, did consist of questions addressed to entrepreneurs about the BGI to find out how it would influence their mood and strategy regarding their business. The survey was answered by 51 entrepreneurs from Finland. The results were analyzed with ANOVA. It turned out that the BGI would have quite little influence on entrepreneurs in Finland. They would f.i. take more risks and change the way of doing business. They would not change other factors like employ more people or the amount of hours worked. Additionally they would not think that their individual situation is better or worse in five years from now if receiving BGI. As concluding remark it is necessary to mention that the past experiments as well as the current basic income pilot have been or are conducted with an amount of BGI which can hardly be seen as such