Tuomas Muraja's life took an unexpected turn at the end of 2016. He received a letter telling him that he would be getting a monthly sum of €560 (US$640) from the Finnish government, no strings attached, for two years. "It was actually like winning the lottery," said Muraja, who was one of 2,000 people randomly selected from a pool of 175,000 unemployed Finns, aged 25 to 58, to take part in one of the most prominent universal basic income trials in the world.Since losing his staff job as a journalist in 2013, Muraja has struggled to find permanent work.