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.

Comments

It's not universal if it's not for everyone

[johannesg]

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.

Re:It's not universal if it's not for everyone

[johannesg]

Yes, that is crazy, and I'll tell you why. We already have social security, and that money is already being paid to those people. So what makes UBI different? Well, it mostly appears to be two things: the fact that it is universal, and that no demands are being made on participants. So we test that, and our test parameters will be as follows:

1. It is not universal.
2. The demand being made on participants is that they already qualify for social security benefits.

So what, exactly, are we testing here? What the new name looks like? Because that is all it is.

Re:It's not universal if it's not for everyone

[trawg]

But should we also be supporting people who are certainly capable of working, yet choose not to?

I think that is the goal we should be striving for. I like the John Adams line: "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine."

Or more simply, "I am a soldier so my son can be a shop-keeper and so his son can be an artist."

I think it will be a long time before we get close to the kind of post-scarcity economy that would allow this kind of lifestyle though - if ever. Maybe it can only exist in the realm of science fiction. But I think it is a noble goal to strive for.

In the meantime though: I agree with you. I think if we're going to have a UBI or whatever social program it should be based on subsistence and survival for now, with a view to getting people to want to join the economy if they want more.

Re: Participation Trophy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, me n my unemployed friends just smoke weed all day, then at night we break into coal ash ponds for fun and dump hundreds of millions of barrels worth of contaminated waste water. Good times.

Skittles wrappers aren't the problem.