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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.
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.
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.
When I read "Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ran a UBI program" I thought, ok, this is it.
Here's a more thorough description of that attempt and why it was prematurely aborted. It's really sad that opportunity was missed...
Donate free food here
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.
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.
WTF is "no true Canadian identity?" Better yet, what is "Canadian identity?" You want a test to see who is a "true Canadian?" We saw last week that most Canadians were against the house motion condemning Islamaphobia - so most Canadians have proven themselves to be racist ignorant fuckheads on that topic.
"They didn't care much about their home countries so they left." Well, that applies to every single human being on the planet who isn't living in Africa, because that's where humans originated.
This was a crime against humanity, and the USA and Canada were equally guilty:
The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which its captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany. After they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the refugees were finally accepted in various European countries, and historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II.
And then we have stupid Conservative leadership candidates who (Maxime Bernier) want to use the military to stop illegal refugees from crossing into Canada - how? Shoot them? They're already being arrested upon entry - what more do you want? Deny them the right to apply as refugees? The situation in the US is deteriorating - we don't have to march in goose-step with them.
And Canada's version of Donald Trump - Kevin O'Leary - wants to suspend provisions of the Constitution via the notwithstanding clause. I'm not okay with either of them - and you can be damn sure that at several provinces will make noises about seceding if this becomes a reality, same as if they try to ban abortion or implement other parts of the ultra-right agenda.
Canada is supposed to be better than this shit. We're obviously not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
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.
Actually in the previous Mincome experiment it was shown that people stopped working to do things like spend time with children or get an education. When people have money they're also not in poverty so your "fact" is obviously an "alternative fact"
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.)
Not surprising - to most people on this planet, being called an American is likely an insult.
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
....found the American!
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.
Good grief! You don't even know what "hard work" means.
Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what you were accusing Calvinists of earlier ("rich people are good, and poor people are bad"), since if it is predestined, it isn't a moral failing.
Of course there are "structural and societal issues that cause cycles of nigh-inescapable poverty": parents make bad choices not because of some moral failings, but because of the bad incentives government has set up for them and because of the lousy education they receive in government schools. It's not the fault of the people who are in poverty, the fault is entirely with the people who keep pushing these bad incentives and throwing more money at our lousy education system.