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New UBI Program Launches In Canada To 'Define Our Future' (thestar.com)
As automation continues to replace human workers, a universal basic income program will begin paying $1,689 per month to select Ontario residents later this year, as Canada joins other countries testing a UBI (which include America, Scotland, the Netherlands, Finland, India, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda). An anonymous reader quotes the Toronto Star:
Public support in Ontario for the province's three-year UBI project to be launched this spring in three Ontario communities is remarkably strong. The 35,000 Ontarians canvassed by Queen's Park for their input were near-unanimous in supporting the UBI projects. And they insisted that a UBI augment, rather than replace, existing welfare, medical and other social supports...
A well-designed UBI equates to freedom. Freedom from exploitative employers. Freedom to launch a small business or develop an invention despite a lack of employment income. Liberation from the "poverty trap," where taking a paying job means surrendering welfare and other benefits... Fact is, job scarcity in traditional vocations is acute, worsening and permanent. In 2013, two Oxford professors forecast that about 45 per cent of U.S. jobs could be eliminated by automation within the next 20 years. And a more recent report by researchers at Indiana's Ball State University found that 88 per cent of U.S. job loss has been caused by automation, not globalization.
Interestingly, the U.S. launched a Universal Basic Income pilot program which ran for three years starting in 1968. It was run by 36-year-old Donald Rumsfeld (who would later become Secretary of Defense) working with special assistant Dick Cheney (who went on to become America's vice president from 2001-2009). U.S. representatives even voted to replace welfare with a UBI, but the measure ultimately failed in the Senate.
A well-designed UBI equates to freedom. Freedom from exploitative employers. Freedom to launch a small business or develop an invention despite a lack of employment income. Liberation from the "poverty trap," where taking a paying job means surrendering welfare and other benefits... Fact is, job scarcity in traditional vocations is acute, worsening and permanent. In 2013, two Oxford professors forecast that about 45 per cent of U.S. jobs could be eliminated by automation within the next 20 years. And a more recent report by researchers at Indiana's Ball State University found that 88 per cent of U.S. job loss has been caused by automation, not globalization.
Interestingly, the U.S. launched a Universal Basic Income pilot program which ran for three years starting in 1968. It was run by 36-year-old Donald Rumsfeld (who would later become Secretary of Defense) working with special assistant Dick Cheney (who went on to become America's vice president from 2001-2009). U.S. representatives even voted to replace welfare with a UBI, but the measure ultimately failed in the Senate.
UBI I'd basically giving everyone a trophy just for showing up, regardless of actually being productive. Millennials may love this, but it's terrible for productivity. Everyone needs to contribute in some way, but UBI discourages this. But everyone gets a trophy...
Idiots.
Legalised marijuana and UBI: is Canada trying to createn some sort of utopia?
UBI is always defined as "everyone gets money, no questions asked". It is, in fact, the main selling point: apparently we spend more money on civil servants to figure out who is supposed to receive any money, than that we would spend just giving money to everyone, ridiculous as that may sound.
If you then go and look at all those programs, you quickly find that they are not for everyone at all: these are programs for small numbers of people, people who were preselected by the government because they are already in social programs anyway. There is nothing universal about any of this; these people are already on benefits as is, and the only thing that is changing is that society is making even less demands on their precious time. For example, the people in this program in the Netherlands will not have to apply for jobs anymore - i.e. they won't have to make any effort to stand on their own two legs again anymore, the rest of us will pay for them for life.
Whether this is an enlightened policy, or if society is simply writing off the most problematic people in a humane way, I'll leave for you to decide... But at any rate, it has nothing to do with a _universal_ basic income.
Oh, and the rest of us weren't asked whether we actually want to pay for the upkeep of these people. Personally I don't mind supporting people who are temporarily in a bad situation, or who through circumstances outside their own control cannot get a job. But should we also be supporting people who are certainly capable of working, yet choose not to? Should we, as a society, have families around where being unemployed and on benefits is a lifestyle choice going back three generations? I say we build some container villages. Give them a central kitchen, let them have food and shelter, and no more. If they want any luxury beyond this, let them go out and work for it, like the rest of us.
It will only work in countries which don't rely on immigration to gain wealth. It's crazy we give away citizenship in 5 years and then potentially give away a life time of free money. I am doubtful of loyalty immigrants have to their new country of 5 years. Do they care if it succeeds or not? They didn't care to much about their home countries so they left. This will be abused, and people will seek to abuse it, because no true Canadian identity, everyone is in it for themselves, and everyone wants to exploit for their benefit.
It would probably work in places where national pride is real and not engineered from the capital city.
The rich bribed the communist governments to pass laws making it too expensive for the poor to raise capital to compete with the rich. The poor voted for the communists because of promises to gouge the rich, but they got gouged instead. So now they only get welfare while the rich and communists get richer.
"Slacker News" and a bad orange design? Hope this stays only on April 1st as a prank.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement
When I read "Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ran a UBI program" I thought, ok, this is it. April fools, it's April 1st even in the US, cool cool. Then it links to a fucking real article written long ago. Is this some ultra elaborate /. April first where all the stories seem like they should be jokes but aren't???
So it's been fools day for quite some hours for us.
Society can choose to use that tool in a variety of ways. Mostly it's used as a dishonest form of social classing and the subsequent population control - One step up from serfdom.
It's possible this may change in the future.
The fact that Rumsfeld and Cheney were involved in US trials on the subject should scare anyone paying attention. Free money is a drug. People become dependent on it, and once they have, you can make them do almost anything you like, including accept less money.
Is not a country btw...
We already have had UBI in Canada for generations and it's a disaster: The test group suffers from very high rate of depression, alcoholism, violence and murder.
In fact there's a national inquiry going on right now on why their murder rate is so high.
Canada's native people.
The results of the study are at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED099531.pdf It began in 1967. Rumsfeld didn't take over until 1969 (remember, Presidents are sworn in the year AFTER an election). It's not clear what level of involvement Rumsfeld or Cheney had in this project their office inherited, but their names do not appear in the study.
Fact is that nobody has shown that giving people lots of free stuff produces anything other than poverty in the long run.
If people are worried about joblessness, I have a better idea: make people actually work for their "universal basic income". The government has more than enough things for people to do: clean streets, maintain parks, go around as census takers, etc. As a bonus, people get basic experience actually holding a job and showing up for work.
If the so-called UBI program is supplementing income, then they are just returning tax money.
This is most likely not proportional to how taxes were collected, so it is a form of wealth redistribution, most likely benefiting the poor. Especially if there are wage qualifications, it is just a welfare expansion.
If the program were "fair", the simpler process is to just lower taxes, if the government has surplus money...
As for Rumsfeld proposing "UBI", That was just a supplemental welfare payments.
There's no reason the country as a whole couldn't do something like this, although it'd cost a lot up-front. Maybe UBI's biggest problem is just marketting, and it would be popular once established. Something to think about.
Have you read my blog lately?
UBI I'd basically giving everyone a trophy just for showing up, regardless of actually being productive. Millennials may love this, but it's terrible for productivity. Everyone needs to contribute in some way, but UBI discourages this. But everyone gets a trophy...
The theme here is that when it makes more sense to automate most jobs, including, increasingly, more of the jobs that people are capable of doing, the options before society is to let poverty & homelessness take over, as income sources get eliminated, or have something like UBI. That way, everybody gets to pay for their home & food, and anything beyond that, they have to earn
One thing I'll say, though: any UBI schemes should not be a government run scheme. Reason: governments, aside from being bad at doing anything, would need to raise money from taxes, which would be impossible to recoup from a shrunk income base. Better idea would be to devise ways that people can be compensated for doing the 'mundane' but necessary things, like raising a family, keeping each other entertained and so on.
Very good point. I do think that any UBI scheme shouldn't be government driven, since government only gets money from taxes. A different mechanism should be sought. Maybe something akin to bitcoin, or another computing generated currency?
But like you say, once an UBI is in place, minimum wage laws can go away, and companies can resume hiring kids, for whom that's usually their first steps into the workplace. Also, such entry level jobs would be more interesting, since the grunt jobs would mostly have been automated. And as far as adults go, they can focus on doing what they really enjoy doing, be it coming out w/ gender neutral bathroom designs, or US border wall designs. And ways of getting paid for such activities would ultimately come to them.
What you are describing is selling a service, not transferring wealth. Paying for building a road, or a school, or the police or fire departments is paying for a service, or in the latter cases, paying out the salaries of law enforcement to keep them employed full time. Transfer of wealth is taking money from Peter, who has a job, to pay Paul, who doesn't. Sooner or later, Peter will figure out that he has more to gain by slacking off (in honor of this site's new owner today) and living a lifestyle similar to Paul's, and then, government won't have the money to pay either Peter or Paul. You can argue that Peter would be more philanthropic and keep working like he did earlier, even though he's earning less, but statistically, most of the Peters out there will become Pauls, especially as they won't need to work to keep their homes or food: it'll automatically be paid for.
Which is why we need such a scheme to be a non-governmental scheme, so that it doesn't collapse under its own weight
The demand being made on participants is that they already qualify for social security benefits.
Social security isn't a Canadian program.
Small-s social security is certainly a Canadian program. It's called Old Age Security, Canada Pension Plan, and provincial programs. (source)
("Small-s" means the generic concept as opposed to the proper name of a specific program in a specific country.)
What is it about people who have never experienced socialism claiming that it is so bad?
Because people have experienced socialism, and it was so bad.* See roman_mir's comment about experiences with similar programs in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
more money per capita to cover a smaller portion of the population than any of the G8 spend on universal coverage
Opponents of socialized medicine would counter that some new drugs are made available in countries with socialized medicine years later than in the United States because the single payer in those countries isn't willing to pay as much per month's supply as private insurers in the United States are.
* And not in the sense of a certain Power Glove in the film The Wizard either.
What freedom, when you will live at the grace of government? Surely the author is not so naive as to think governments are unalloyed good?
That ploy can only happen ONCE: the first time, the 1% will take it in the gut. After that, they will go ahead, and either park their money overseas, or if things become bad enough, simply leave. It will be tough to support the economy once they're gone, since the economy ain't the reserves of gold, silver, platinum, diamonds and other precious metals and rare earths, but the productivity of the population. Sap that, and the economy will no longer have legs to stand on.
Is what would happen if everyone gets the exact same amount of money for free every year.
If everyone has $X more a year, the average value of the overall economy remains the same, since no actual value was added. Everyone has more money, though, so the value of each dollar is reduced. This drives up prices, and eventually puts people who are dependent on the UBI back where they were.
$1689 (even CAD) is just too much for a basic income to work, and well more than needed anyway outside of the priciest cities. One of the biggest issues for a national UBI is that it may cost $1500 a month to live in Toronto, or $2000 a month to live in San Francisco, but $500 a month to live in St. Louis (with a roommate). Perhaps we should focus on providing the $500 a month first, and see how many people will willingly move somewhere they can stretch that further, and the migration might even end up lowering the cost of living in the expensive cities? It would become vastly easier for most people to move if they had a basic income to tide them over until they find a job in their new city.
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Irrespective of the kind of work they do...only the bright and interested will excel in their field of choice. The happiness quotient of the society will increase. Only incentive is those who donot work have to lead a celibate, family-less nun/priest life.
Going into retirement and receiving CPP and OAS (and if you're lucky, a Pension) has the exact the same effect as those people having a UBI.
The interesting thing here is about 65% of those in retirement return to work within a decade (source). This is obviously for a variety of reasons. But for those that think that everyone would just live out their lives for free on a UBI, there's consistent evidence to the contrary.
"A well-designed UBI equates to freedom. Freedom from exploitative employers. Freedom to launch a small business or develop an invention despite a lack of employment income. Liberation from the "poverty trap," where taking a paying job means surrendering welfare and other benefits...
Even a well-designed UBI doesn't equate to freedom from your government. You're one election/appointment/regime change from being on your own again.
Being 'on your own' is most always preferable to being a ward of the State. It may not pay as well, but your fight should not be for sustenance from the State. It should be for equal and maximized opportunity, often defined as 'liberty'.
No good comes of giving people an excuse to not provide for themselves when they can do so.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.