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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.
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.
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.
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.
No, but it is shorthand for"The United States of America" which is.
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.
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.
I once played an MMO where you would eventually end up paying people to NOT show up to raids because if everyone who came entered the raid zone, the game would crash or at least grind to a halt so badly that nobody could play.
You can think of UBI as being the real world equivalent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well then, it's a good thing this is only an April Fool's article, right? Right?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Well, it's not like they put in Unicode support.
The prank would be to have Unicode support for April 1st and remove it 24 hours later.
#DeleteFacebook
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.
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.
With UBI you'd find it easier to look for a job that you'd enjoy more - and yet you're against it. Must be that, deep down, either you really do like your job, or you don't like ANY type of job. Your pick.
UBI would increase job mobility, which means that a job you might enjoy more, but that is currently being held by someone who feels that they can't risk quitting to try to find something better suited to them, or to create their own job, or to take time to retrain, could more readily open up. But again, you're like the turkeys who vote for thanksgiving because "that's what happens every thanksgiving." Too afraid to realize that YOU will benefit.
And not just you - society as a whole benefits when people are doing work that better suits their talents. Increased productivity, lower violence, better health, fewer hospital visits, better educational outcomes for children (and yes, these have been proven outcomes) benefits everyone who is not part of the slave-prole-exploiting class.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And yet they're all people who live in the Americas. So by definition, they're just as much "Americans" as anyone living in any other part of the Americas. Same as people living in Germany, France, Spain, etc. are all Europeans. And with the way the USA is going, you can hardly call it the United States of anything.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Are you a millionaire or billionaire? If not, you probably won't be paying substantially more. If you are, you probably didn't earn anywhere near as much, and you are more of a leech than welfare or UBI recipients would be.
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Nothing cuts into productivity like inescapable poverty.
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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?
Yeah, it's wealth redistribution, and by definition, UBI does NOT have wage qualifications.
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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.
Actually, I kind of LIKE slacker news - it's more reflective of slashdot's users - slacking off at work to post on slashdot is de rigeur.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Except that the people living there almost universally don't WANT to be called Americans. A major factor is likely that the notion of "The Americas" as a consistent unit has been out of vogue for a few centuries.
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Racist much?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Following World War II tax increases, top marginal individual tax rates stayed near or above 90%, and the effective tax rate at 70% for the highest incomes (few paid the top rate), until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. Kennedy explicitly called for a top rate of 65 percent, but added that it should be set at 70 percent if certain deductions weren't phased out at the top of the income scale.[24][25][26] The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988. It slowly increased to 39.6% in 2000, then was reduced to 35% for the period 2003 through 2012.[23] Corporate tax rates were lowered from 48% to 46% in 1981 (PL 97-34), then to 34% in 1986 (PL 99-514), and increased to 35% in 1993.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If this is driven & done by governments, it will be a disaster, just like you describe. There needs to be a private sector mechanism to fund all this.
UBI wouldn't increase that if everybody gets it: in such a scenario, everybody's basic needs are covered, and then it's upto people on whether they want to earn more, or are happy w/ their lot. Since everybody aspires for more money, you can be sure that that won't disappear: it's just that people will no longer be penalized for not having a job.
There has to be a private sector mechanism of paying for this. Any government run scheme would run the economy into the ground, and be a mere transfer of wealth.
So ultimately, all government spending is either paid via a transfer of wealth or the printing press.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Lincoln: If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
Listener: 5
Lincoln: No, 4. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"Slacker News" and a bad orange design? Hope this stays only on April 1st as a prank.
Yeah, I wondered whether the Slackware Linux project has gained possession of Slashdot?
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
America is almost always used to describe the US. If one wants to use a single term to combine North and South America, then one says 'The Americas', not America.
What First Nations people get from the government is nothing like UBI. It's a much more complicated and insane system than that. Not to mention the generations of systematic destruction of their culture, language, and family structure through things like the Residential Schools system (which is, in all seriousness, the stuff of nightmares).
The national inquiry is about the rate at which they (particularly women) are disproportionately the victims of murder and abduction. It's primarily First Nations people (among others) who have been asking for such an investigation for the last few years.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Technically, I wouldn't, as I'm not Canadian. You are correct, however, that it probably wouldn't be just the 1% that is paying more in taxes. However, it would likely be mostly the 1% who are having major net losses. The ~$20k bump in income would probably be a net gain for everyone currently making $80k or less, which would be around 3/4 of the population.
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i don't know the Canuck numbers, but even if you were to tax a modern US CEO at a 90% flat tax rate, they would be keeping as much income as they made in the 60s before taxes. So, cry me a river over the poor widdle CEOs, whose pay actually has an INVERSE relationship with productivity.
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But we're doing that anyway! If you want to escape that, move to Africa. We pay the shitbag to play video games because it is better than being out committing crimes. Like it or not, there is a bottom to society that you just have to keep entertained or they will ruin it for everyone else.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And if you were collecting UBI, you would still be free to do the exact same thing - except that now your wife could be at home with your soon-to-be-born kid and have some money of her own to spend. Or YOU could take some time off to spend with your kid. Or you could say "fuck the overtime - give those hours to someone who is looking for a job."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And yet you have no problems paying hundreds of millions for security for some rich entitled shitbags to live in Trump Tower, even though they have a paid home in the White House. And to have another lying entitled shitbag who appoints other shitbags to collaborate with the Russians. And more entitled shitbags to take away meals on wheels funding "because it doesn't produce any tangible results". And taking away medicaid from millions of people, because they don't want them to just go away and die - they want them to go away and die while suffering in silence. And a school lunch program isn't as important as a wall to nowhere. And women's health doesn't matter for shit, so let's stop all funding to planned parenthood - even though not a single federal dollar goes to abortions.
You already have shitbags running your country. They're doing a lot more damage than someone playing video games all day can ever do.
If the possibility upsets you, do the same thing that people who are against abortion want to do - they want to ban abortion, why aren't you calling for a ban to video games? It makes just as much sense.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Read the summary, then look at the calendar and read it again. Repeat until you see it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Not at all. Cheney and Rummy or notorious backers of UBI, and always looking out for the little guy!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Language evolves. There is no coherent geological, political, or cultural reason to use the terms America/American to collectively describe the two continents in the western hemisphere and/or its inhabitants. For people living both inside of the USA, "American" without any other qualifiers almost always refers to the USA.
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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.
Not surprising - to most people on this planet, being called an American is likely an insult.
What are you talking about? Miners, factory workers, and truck drivers are already being automated out of jobs. Go look at the fully autonomous 416-ton Komatsu trucks in Australia's iron mines.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Try this scenario for a moment:
UBI is enforced, taxes are collected from the productive population and everybody (everybody, isn't it?) gets their UBI.
Lets say that 50% of people decide that now UBI is good enough for them to not work. By how much do the taxes have to go up on the remaining 50% to pay UBI to all?
Let's say 75% decide to drop off the work force. 85%. Why wouldn't a store clerk drop out? Why wouldn't a bathroom attendant drop out? If the benefit is enough just to live on, why not drop out and then do whatever you want, after all - the basics are provided for by somebody, a very large number of people will drop out.
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Take it to the maximum, what if everybody drops out who pays into UBI? This is the issue with Communism, from everybody according to their abilities to everybody according to their needs doesn't work, nobody wants to work because the more you work the more is asked of you and if you don't work at all then nothing is asked of you.
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Now, let's say UBI is implemented and a large potion of the population drops out. What is the reason for the productive segment of the population to trade with people who are living off of that very productive segment of the population? They simply wouldn't trade with them - there is nothing to gain by trading with somebody who is not producing anything but pays you *with your own money taken from you by force*.
You are not gaining anything by being paid for your products / services with your own money that was taken from you. In other words there is no reason to trade with people who are not working.
UBI will separate the economy into 2: those who produce will trade with each other somehow and those who don't produce but get this 'UBI' will be able to buy absolutely nothing with it.
You can't handle the truth.
Tell me something, why is it that when people are talking about so called 'first nations' then their culture and language and family structure is somehow something to be cherished and protected and subsidised by the government? Why is that important?
Because when white non-Muslim people start talking about themselves in those terms (protecting their language, culture, family structure) they are all of a sudden racists/bigots/sexists/whatever?
You can't handle the truth.
You're ignoring the #1 thing humans are known for - being greedy. The amount that all UBI gives you (in these test cases) is for a tiny apartment or a rented room, ramen, and maybe utilities. Who the fuck would ever want to live like that?
UBI will only work if you give people the extreme minimum required to survive. Most people do not want to live there. Also, with the growth of automation we are only giing to see jobs shrinking in the future. UBI is a good way to prevent those that would end up in extreme poverty from resorting to crime.
If you have to work consistent OT to pay for your mortgage, maybe you are living outside your means.
I see, so what you are saying is that there are / will be people who will be criminal if not for a welfare system. Why have them around? Separate the productive society from these criminals/potential criminals. That will be the outcome eventually anyway.
You can't handle the truth.
You're making a big HUGE assumption that people will not find a comfort zone in what they get for free and then just stay with that. I know many people on SSI who do exactly this. Hell, forget SSI, I know several who have a comfort zone making nothing and just spend their days playing World of Warcraft.
People finding a minimalist way to simply exist and never growing beyond that simply because they don't have to is actually a well documented issue, and you're sitting here telling me that this actually doesn't exist at all, therefore UBI is a good idea.
Like GP said, this is batshit crazy. It's as if people who support UBI think that money alone can solve just any problem you can name. But it can't. Money is just a medium of exchange; it is NOT a means to an end.
I may have not fully explained my idea that well. We are going to come to a time where automation severely hits a lot of the unskilled labor market. There will be a portion of the population that will accept the money and move out of the way. In the context of what the GP said, its not like everyone is going to just stop working. Those that can't find any gainful employment will be taken care of (either though lack of jobs or lack of caring). The people that are still making a good living in what they're doing will keep working. UBI is not the solution we need now. UBI is the solution we need to worry about 50-100 years down the road when automation becomes the norm. Jobs will decrease as automation increases, and unless we do the China "1 child per family" laws, our population is going to keep expanding. What's going to happen that point is that without something like UBI, you're basically putting a good chunk of people into crushing poverty and we become a third world country.
Should I even bother explaining if you're going to be so obtuse? Well fuck it, I'm killing time at work.
Two things are pretty much certain at this point - 1) The amount of jobs is going to continue to decrease with automation. 2) Population is going to keep rising unless we adopt a China like '1 child per family' law.
All this is going to do is resolve a large subset of the population to crippling poverty. What happens in most of the poor neighborhoods you know of? Why, they happen to be disproportionately affected by crime! That being said, UBI is not the solution we need now. UBI is the solution we need to be talking about for the future.
Why is it fair for someone, whose never worked an honest day in their life, to live like a king all because their daddy (or even granddaddy) happened to save a lot of money?
Automation is something that's already been recognized as an upcoming trend, and would over the period of time you mention, take over most unskilled labor. The preparations for it need to start and be phased in to accompany this trend, so that when it reaches a stable equilibrium, UBI would be in place to take care of the problem it creates - massive unemployment. While the employees of that era would have been prepared for that future either through advanced education, or through specialized trades, the employees of today and the transition period would be displaced. UBI needs to be phased in to make sure that they don't fall through the cracks through no fault of their own.
I mentioned this elsewhere in this page. A non-governmental mechanism would have to be created for this to work: government would have to be kept OUT of it. For the reasons you described, having government do this will be pure communism; however, if the free market is allowed to do this, w/ UBI built in, that would create a minimum standard of living. Yeah, there will be people who will live within their comfort zone, but there will also be others who will consider that inadequate, and trade w/ each other, and earn what they want to get the other things in life - a laptop, an iPhone, a 4K TV, et al
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.
You think I am being obtuse but you don't recognize that the proponents of UBI are obtuse for not understanding this simple thing: it doesn't matter one bit *why* a person is not working (automation, illness, being too dumb, whatever). It doesn't matter why a person is not productive.
The only thing that matters is this: if a person is unproductive he or she will not be able to offer anything of value to exchange for goods and services created by the productive population.
That person can try and become productive or can ask for donations.
However if that person is given an entitlement by a collectivist government to take productive output of the productive people and use it without any form of exchange (just because that person exists basically), then eventually the power of the collective to steal from the productive population will be removed if not de jure then de facto. So whatever that person will get in form of a subsidy will buy nothing because at the end it doesn't matter if all of my productivity is automated completely 100% and I produce a bunch of food (for example) with machines. Those are my machines and I have no reason to give it to anybody under the barrel of a gun.
I will use the fact that I have the automated process to produce food to exchange with others who can produce something for me that will protect me from this theft and oppression and I will ensure that my productive output stays mine and does not become redistributed via any form of collectivist action.
This can mean war and this can mean enormous inflation that completely negates the value of the UBI subsidy, whatever it means the effect is going to be the same, the unproductive people will not be able to steal from the productive people for very long.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
"potentially" but probably not actually. I'm undecided on the concept of the UBI, especially as automation comes roaring into its own. But those who will game the system will probably continue to game the system. In fact, it may give some folks more time to think up and enact their schemes.
A potential problem with a UBI is that money, like everything else, has a value. And when things are easy to come by (like you don't have to work for them), their value goes down.
Part of what drove the "housing bubble" in the US 10 years ago was the "cheap money" for mortgages brought about by artificially low interest rates put and kept in place to help the economy recover after the double whammy of the "tech wreck" Internet stock collapse in 1999 followed by the al Qaeda attack in September 2001. Folks could bid up the price on houses because the low mortgage rates let them throw more money into the deal without their "monthly payment" going up. Housing prices went into the stratosphere before it all collapsed, with the losers being people who bought real estate at the inflated prices and didn't manage to sell out before the inflated prices collapsed. The winners were the folks who had bought at "normal" prices, sold out at the highs, and didn't need to buy back in (e.g., they rented instead).
Making money worth less isn't usually good for an economy, which will probably react by raising prices (so that it takes more of the money that is now worth less to obtain a given commodity). I'm very interested in seeing how UBIs interact with an economy on a large scale, but small scale pilot projects are unlikely to demonstrate these effects. That's unfortunate, because those are exactly the effects we need to understand before we engage in a wholesale adoption of UBI.
None of those countries have America in the long form version of their names. While U.S. is also popular, America is not uncommon for the nation itsel.
They call it the United States of America, not the United People of America.
If we create a new semantical system in whic we call a tail a leg, then within the confines of that system, a tail is a leg.
I don't think nearly as many people are "entrepreneurial" as you seem to think. I'm not convinced that a UBI won't work, but I think it's a pretty Pollyanna viewpoint to think that it will work as well as some proponents seem to think. And I know people who just do what they need to do to "get by," which a UBI will make that much easier.
Some of the "founding fathers" of the US believed that the strength of the US lay in its agricultural economy and the availability of land that made it possible in theory for everyone to provide for themselves, and I'm not sure that worked out so well. How much better will it turn out to have people who theoretically don't need to do anything at all?
My idea of the function of government is to provide those services that it makes sense to provide on a collective basis to the taxpayers who fund the government to provide them, not to "transfer wealth." As I understand the political use of the term "transfer of wealth," it isn't used to describe the normal activity of paying taxes to the government so that the government can use the accumulated funds to provide services that benefit the taxpayers. The phrase "transfer of wealth" refers to the practice of taking wealth away from those who have "too much" and giving it to those who have "too little," with a lot of argument/discussion about where the lines for "too much" and "too little" should be drawn. And a little bit of pain because those who have really "too much" are usually capable of gaming the system to avoid paying, leaving those who just have more than "too little" to foot the bill.
In the US, "we the people" created our federal government "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." We can know that, because the folks who did it took the time to write it down. Other countries have different origin stories, but that is ours. To understand the contemporary meanings of those terms, it's necessary to study the ideological origins of the United States. A book that might guide one is this one https://www.amazon.com/Ideological-Origins-American-Revolution/dp/0674443020. Wealth transfer isn't in there.
So basically you're viewpoint is "Fuck working class America, tough shit if they lose their job to automation, they can starve in the street"?
$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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So again, your view is that "Fuck the people, they can starve on the street. Businesses will never ever do anything wrong if we completely deregulate everything!"
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.
UBI doesn't stand a chance. Currently the bulk of welfare recipients are women and minorities. Good luck explaining to the various special interests groups that you're going to level the playing field by paying everyone the same basic salary.
It gets much much worse when you factor in that a significant percentage of mothers receive child support payment (83% of 13.5m, from the last census reports, or roughly 11m mothers) that depends on the fathers earnings and/or earning potential.
What do you do when deadbeat dads simply live in minimal circumstances? By definition you can't take the payment out of their UBI because that would drop it to below survival levels. Granting UBI for the child only assures that the child is kept alive.
This is currently solved by taking everything the father has, and grabbing any future money he makes. Currently we solve it by allowing the fathers income to fall below a livable wage. If mom decides that the kids piano lessons are more important than the father having food, the courts tend to concur.
UBI would put the brakes on that, and the very first time a man who gets raped by the courts of everything during divorce (normal occurrence, BTW) decides to simply not work anymore because his (income - maintenance) falls to below[1] UBI you are going to get a number of the special interests womens groups campaigning for the removal of UBI, to be replaced with something that motivates men to work.
[1] Actually, fall to, not fall below - it cannot be definition go below.
So basically you're viewpoint is "Fuck working class America, tough shit if they lose their job to automation, they can starve in the street"?
Money is not a store of value, it's a measure of value the same way that a ruler does not store distance, it only measures it.
If those who lose their jobs to automation have nothing else to offer society, no value, simply throwing money at them is not going to work. They have nothing of value to give in return, after all.
Society can, and will, tolerate those who have nothing of value to offer if their numbers are low enough. After a certain point, though, it is not sustainable. Where that point lies can be discussed, but merely stating (as you appear to do so) that that point simply does not exist is a silly argument.
TLDR; There is a point at which social welfare is neither sustainable nor realistic. You appear to be arguing that there is no such point.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Business (private individuals) will do things wrong, where did you see me saying something like that? Business is people, people do wrong/bad things. Collectivism and government oppression is always the wrong answer to anything that people do wrong.
You can't handle the truth.
Still doesn't make it a tail - and that's the point. If someone faxes you a picture of a pizza, you can call it a pizza all you want, but you're going to go hungry. Reality intrudes.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
When I say systematic destruction, I don't just mean that their culture etc. is in decline due to broad sociological trends, but that there were active government policies where the goal was systematic destruction. Look up the Residential Schools system if you really care to know more. If it doesn't make you sick to your stomach there is something wrong with you.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Correction: fiat is not a store of value, money is. Money is gold and gold stores value. If you find some gold lost at sea hundreds of years ago it will be just as valuable today as it was then and in hundreds of years from now it will be just as valuable.
You can't handle the truth.
Oh, I am sick to my stomach by everything that governments do, I don't see anything extra special in the way that 'first nations' are treated, to me income and property taxation is the same thing.
You can't handle the truth.
UBI would allow the govt. to do away with other programs...welfare, food stamps, etc., etc. That would actually offset a lot of the cost because the administration of all of those other programs would go away. Everyone gets a check...same amount, no fuss, no muss.
As a conservative who doesn't believe in giving participation awards, my initial reaction to UBI was that it would just be another welfare state program. But after reading more, I believe it may have merit, and needs to be tested. Especially with the inevitable automation of nearly everyone's jobs...maybe not in my lifetime but certainly in my kids.
Just another day in Paradise
Skittles wrappers are the problem, snowflake. . Read up on the "broken window theory".
I think it is called the "broken window fallacy". The term "snowflake" undermines any vallidity your arguement might have on its own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"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.
Except that the people living there almost universally don't WANT to be called Americans. A major factor is likely that the notion of "The Americas" as a consistent unit has been out of vogue for a few centuries.
Key word being "almost". I have met with people that get upset when people from the United States refer to themselves as Americans in exclusion to the other countries in the Americas. Most have been from South America, particularly Columbia for some reason, and occasionally somebody from Mexico. Luckily, I have caught myself when speaking to such groups and even earned brownie points by correcting myself to them before they corrected me.