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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.
Sometimes the best ways to contribute are to pick up garbage in the street, plant flowers, help neighbors, organize games in the park for your community. All these things contribute to a healthy society, and these things go unpaid, and often they don't get done, and communities are shit. House wives used to do it for free, now they don't because women work.
UBI gives people the time to be good people, because they don't have to worry.
Also UBI would also be for open source programmers, and similar people who can't find people to pay them but who are important.
How many well adjusted healthy adults do you know who would willingly live at barely above poverty levels and choose (rather than be forced) to not work or perform charity work? I certainly don't know any HEALTHY such individuals. I don't see any reason to not support those so unhealthy that they don't have the drive to work (ideally while they undergo treatment for whatever underlying condition is causing them to CHOOSE to live in such a way). But then again, I don't see universal health care as something to be destroyed.
No, it wouldn't increase it, it would just cost the taxpayers a lot less in the long run when they don't have to pay big salaries to a bunch of people who would otherwise be investigating your uncle, neighbor, friend's brother, etc. Also, with fake disability claims, these people try to attain every every bit of extra cash for "special diet", "transportation", "emergency fund", and so on. A UBI can potentially eliminate that.
First, what's your specialty doctor?
You say a "modicum" of work. Would that be enough to support themselves? Could they keep it up long term? I ask because with the current screwed up structure of disability, any work they do endangers their continued payments. If they do a week's work, the bureaucrats might decide they're good to go when in reality they have to rest up for the rest of the month to recover. Other people have good days where they can do things and bad days where getting out of bed hurts too much.
Under UBI, they could possibly work on their good days to improve their lives and not have to worry about not being able to work on the bad days. Given long enough without the sword of Damocles over their heads, they might start having more good days.