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Ontario Launches Universal Basic Income Pilot (www.cbc.ca)
Reader epiphani writes: The Ontario Government will pilot universal basic income in a $50M program supporting 4,000 households over a 3 year period. While Slashdot has vigorously debated universal basic income in the past, and even Elon Musk has predicted it's necessity, experts continue to debate and gather data on the approach in the face of increasing automation. Ontario's plan will study three communities over three years, with participants receiving up to $17,000 annually if single, and $24,000 for families.
$11.40 General Workers
$9.90 Liquor Servers
$10.70 Student Under 18 (less than 28 HRs/wk)
Over 300 billion in debt, double the debt of California with only a third of the population....
Automation has been going on since the industrial revolution, yet new jobs seem to keep on being created. My current job didn't really exist twenty years ago.
People keep predicting the obsolescence of humans but unemployment these days in most rich world economies is not that high. That said, it would be good if we had better ways of measuring employment beyond the binary employed/unemployed states. If someone's not claiming unemployment benefit and working then it's assumed that they're doing okay, but they might be working three minimum wage jobs and barely getting by. That should be as worrying to policy-makers as someone not working at all. Then we might be in a better position to see if we're at the point where we need a universal basic income.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I am pretty sure that penalizing people for becoming a "family" will have consequences.
With that said, if they do this pilot correctly it will yield very interesting data.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
start by lowering full time hours / making OT cost alot.
Why should jay have to work 60-80+ hours a week doing the work of 3 people for the pay of 1?
When we can fill that job with 3 people working about 30 hours each?
"with participants receiving up to $17,000 annually if single, and $24,000 for families."
Q: So why are you filing for divorce?
A: Irreconcilable financial differences.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
i'd be mad as hell if i lived in one of these places and was subsidizing experiements to give people money without them contributing in any way
The liberal in me wants to react very strongly to this, but I did spend four years as a student in an English city called Salford. That place was infested with vast numbers of people who lived out their lives on the dole, many of them with no family tradition of work going back a few generations. They were generally troublemakers who got their kicks from attacking students (physically and verbally) on a regular basis. Crime levels were very high. One good thing is that there wasn't much gun crime since guns are so rare and hard to get in England, but instances of burglary, auto theft, shoplifting and anti-social behavior was just off the charts.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of these experiments, but I'm not optimistic about them.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I've seen more vigorous debates amongst kids on tee-ball teams. Hoping for a vigorous debate on an issue like UBI in the conservative echo chamber that this place has become is as logical as picking up a crow feather on the street and hoping to use it to fly to the moon. There are so few commenters left here - and so little variation in thought and opinion - that I'm not sure we can even have a meaningful debate on emacs vs vi any more.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The math for this doesn't work out.
Even assuming 4,000 single households at 17,000 a year that means 68,000,000 for a single year. Even if that 50,000,000 is per year rather than total they're still a minimum of 18,000,000 short if they were targeting single households.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I think that countries, states, or whatever geographic boundaries you prefer deciding to do something about massive unemployment/underemployment before chaos ensues is a good plan. Society falls apart around 20% unemployment and we're headed towards way more than that. I know some people are predicting that another massive shift will happen that allows people to continue to be employed, but I don't see it. The first time we didn't have something readily available to take up the slack that automation produced was the early 90s. During that time in the US, all the big companies went on a massive downsizing spree, dumping all the low-skilled clerical workers onto unemployment. We managed to get through this change, but now the pace of technology change that allows for fewer human workers is getting much faster. Now it's not just low-skill work, but mid-level knowledge work as well. After being told they'd never amount to anything unless they went to college, millions of corporate employees are going to be out on the street with no way to make money.
I think implementing basic income buys us time to let the age groups who've had to build their lives around wealth accumulation and a career ladder age out. The work-for-money-for-stuff way to run your life has been around for ages and I don't think most people know of any way to meaningfully contribute to society outside of that. Unless you want to propose how we kill money and wealth as a measure of success and buying power, this is the best way to solve a very difficult problem. If we don't do it, the divide between rich and poor is going to get to an unsustainable level, possibly at levels seen around the Gilded Age or French Revolution timeframes. That won't end well for anyone.
None of these studies really seem to study true universal basic income, in which everybody, rich or poor, regardless of how much money they make, receives the same basic amount.
All the current trials going on seem to be focused on giving money to people who have no jobs or make very little. We already have program in place that do this kind of thing already, so they probably won't find a whole lot of difference with the systems that we already have. They are basically making small changes to the welfare system in order to not cut off benefits as soon as you find a job. But other than that, there isn't much difference.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Therefore the data collected and the conclusions drawn from this scheme (and all the other UBI pilots that have come and gone) is incomplete. We need to gauge the effect it will have on populations not for a few years, but how will it affect generations? Will a child growing up in a UBI household have a different attitude towards the need to get a job or attend school? Is there even any point in getting an education if you know that the state will provide everything - and that there probably won't be any jobs for you anyway?
A three year experiment won't tell you about the long-term consequences.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
People are afraid of a society where everybody is retired and robots are doing most if not all of the work. I mean we had that before, with slavery. Heck, Dubai is doing that today. Most Dubai citizens don't work. They get $100K for being born on top of an underground oil lake. Dubai isn't so bad, I mean other than religion related stupidity. In general, if they were a secular atheist country it would be good. Just because people aren't working it doesn't mean it's bad for society.
A better way to handle it might be to divide the funding so that some of it is general use, but some can only be used for shelter and basic utilities.
Most economists agree that basic minimum income should be no strings attached, as the various costs of living can vary greatly from area to area, even within the same city. In some areas food costs less, in some areas housing costs less, in some areas transportation is very expensive, etc...
I agree with subsidizing children, but there should be a cap. If you don't have any means of supporting yourself, we shouldn't be subsidizing you having a half dozen more people you can't support, either.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
With that said, if they do this pilot correctly it will yield very interesting data.
I very much doubt it will because it is implemented in a way which directly undermines the arguments for universal basic income which is normally taken to mean that everyone gets a fixed income regardless of circumstances. Instead this project reduces that income at the rate of $1 for every $2 earned. Unlike the real deal this provides a reasonably strong motivation NOT to take low paying jobs since you only get a benefit of half the wage you earn. It also means that you now have to start means testing people to see how much they earn which requires bureaucracy and officials and incurs expense.
The whole point of basic income is to cut the administration expense because everyone gets it regardless while also preventing the disincentive to work of typical unemployment schemes by clawing back money when people get even a low paying job. The Ontario scheme fails to achieve either aim and so seems unlikely to work or provide any data about whether such type of schemes could work.
I'm sure you can technically "live" on $17k/yr but let's be real, this isn't won-the-lotto, now-you-can-relax money. After the pilot is over these people are gonna get kicked in the junk.
And, yeah everyone will love the program because it creates an artificial income disparity between people "in" and people "out" of the program. A true basic income test has to be truly universal, otherwise it'll just end up like the FEMA credit cards after Katrina or soldiers on leave -- a bunch of shady businesses will crop up with great ways for these people to blow all that extra money, and if there is one thing that people are generally good at doing across all income brackets it's spending someone else's money.
Seconded.
I've been on this site since about 2001. The 'This site has gone to shit' arguments have been around that long too. However, in the past 2 years (since around the /. Beta fiasco it seems) most of the quality comments have all but left. 'Conservative echo chamber' kinda hits the nail on the head. The libertarian dog whistle / talking points get trotted out so often it's just boring now to read. Arm-chair economists with such deep insights as 'Don't like your job, move and get another one, dummy!' seem to be about the best the site has to offer now.
Why am I still here then? Habit mostly, I gave it up (and read Soylent) for a good while, and now I come back, thought not as often as before. As for reading comments, I guess I still do out of some hope that they might get better again...though my tolerance is lower I spend only a fraction of the time trying to sift through the Randian garbage.
Wealth is an abstract concept. In nature noone owns anything. Its society which gives rise to law which gives rise to property and money which gives rise to wealth. if its not working for most people society has the right to decide to try another way. Given that more and more economic value is being created by machines whose income accrues only to the owners of the machines and not to entire society (though without society we would still be hunting and wearing skins so no machines would have been invented); we may need a new system. A star trek kind of society where people's basic needs are taken care of by the output created by machines (which are owned by society as a whole) and people work for prestige and luxuries. This can work in a society where 90% of the economic output can be provided by machines and you only need humans for 10% of the creative jobs. For such jobs a human who doesnt have to work but wants to do the work will be much more productive. The humans who dont want to work will be bored and eventually stop reproducing so the problem will solve itself over 5-10 generations in a humane manner.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Your problems are twofold.
1. You think libertarian is a synonym for conservative,
2. You believe that now that leftist voices don't drown out all others, that Slashdot is now a "conservative echo chamber." This is the response of people who are not used to having their ideas challenged.
Slashdot has always leaned left. Now it's centrist. And that bothers you. Ars Technica is leaning further left these days, so go hang there. They have a user moderation system that's dumber than Slashdot's, but at least you won't get the banhammer for irking any of the hired moderators on the articles anymore.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Except Ontario doesn't have control of the monetary supply so CAN'T print it.
As such, it DOES have to come from somewhere.
Umm... you think "bored" humans will stop reproducing? I don't think you know very many humans.
You have to read down just a bit, and then you see:
"Jaczek said that people in the program will be randomly contacted from each region's low-income population and invited to apply."
Basic income, in any iteration I've seen seriously applied, isn't just for poor people. Money for poor people is fucking welfare. We have that already. Welfare is the "provision of a minimal level of well-being and social support for citizens WITHOUT CURRENT MEANS to support basic needs" (capsemphasis mine).
The idea of basic income is that everyone gets it baseline, no drama, no forms, no qualifications, with the obvious caveat that this money has to come from somewhere, so one assumes a relatively large increase in income tax. The supposed benefits and risks of this are numerous, but what is definitely known is that to actually test this, you need to not JUST be giving the money to poor people. The big question about basic income is, what effects will it have on society. You can make economic models all day long, the whole point about doing a test is to figure this out.
You want to know: are people less motivated to work? Are they healthier? Are they happier? What does it do to families? (the model being tested, where two single people living together get 2*17,000 = 34,000 a year, while if they marry they get 24,000 a year, has a pretty obvious and glaring bias as regards marriage)... and these questions aren't just relevant for poor people. They are relevant for middle class, and rich people.
All of these tests seem to be set up to give a certain set of results. They are carefully crafted to avoid asking the questions that need to be asked. I really don't know what to think about this.
On the contrary, reproduction becomes a huge problem when sex is the only form of entertainment that people can afford.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's really hard to tell if UBI is a great idea, or a horrible one, but the biggest issue is that it's impossible to trial in this manner.
To actually test UBI, several things need to happen:
1) you make it truly universal, no means testing, no targeting to certain demographics, everyone gets it, from the millionaires, to the homeless.
2) you cover everyone in a reasonably large geographic area, no exceptions.
3) You also need to turn off all the other services it's supposed to replace (welfare, employment insurance, disability amounts, etc)
This is important because without 1 and 2 you end up with a distorted system. You don't get to see if everyone having extra money simply drives all prices up by that amount making it useless (if the poverty line moves up by the exact amount of the UBI, have you really helped anyone?), or if it actually allows people to live. You end up with simply a lottery where some lucky people have more money, while everyone else has the same.
While 3 also helps make sure you're looking at an undistorted system, it is also about being able to afford to do this at all. UBI can only be affordable if you use it to cut out massive amounts of government bureaucracy, if all the bureaucracy is left in place, you'll never find enough money to make it work.
These trials will be a success or a failure depending on what the agenda of the study really is, but neither outcome tells you anything at all about how the system would actually work if rolled out universally.
It's not a test of UBI if the participants are all selected from low-income populations. The pilot program as described is just a streamlined welfare system. The challenge of UBI will be whether people in productive jobs will work less if they have a basic income to fall back on. Would someone with a $32k/year (or more) job give work up and play video games for $17k/year? That is question that will determine if UBI succeeds or fails.
"We need laws banning the use of machines"
That's where you can stop. Without machines, there is lower efficiency and we need every hand available to work the fields and the swords. We can go back to kingdoms where being rich was passed down through bloodlines with land ownership. People working 60 hours a week just to keep food on the table won't have time for all this liberal "feed the poor" bullshit.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They already did a basic income experiment back when Prime Minister Trudeau was called Pierre.
In short... Most everyone kept working or didn't start working as early but stayed in school longer.
Also, hospitalizations went down, particularly for mental health problems.
But if you want a real Twilight Zone mindfuck - look up Nixon's basic income experiment.
Run by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
Granted... they saw it as a way to eliminate social programs instead of to expand them. But even they found that there was no change to "work ethic" - everyone still kept working.
Apparently, being "at or just above the poverty line" is simply not enough for most people.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"A single person could receive up to about $17,000 a year, minus half of any income he or she earns"
UBI is a sum of money unconditionally given to all citizens. This is a grant that comes with a 50% effective tax rate on your first earnings, massively disincentivising people from finding jobs.
foo mane padme hum
If different people get different amounts based on disabilities or marital status then it's not universal.
If you get less depending on how much you make then it's not basic.
This is welfare. Try again, Canada.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Exactly. You have to either make it simple for people to come off of welfare or stop complaining about people on welfare. You can't both punish them for leaving it and being on it. Pick one.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Umm... you think "bored" humans will stop reproducing?
Yes. The premise of TFA is that in the future we will have robots that can do anything that humans can do. I don't know how much an anatomically functional interactive sexbot will cost, but it will likely be way cheaper than alimony and child support, and it won't get headaches. If it has a "mute" button and can make sandwiches, that is even better.
I probably shouldn't post this, but go to Hacker News. The conversations seem to involve more earnest discussion, and the articles seem to cover more technical depth.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
with participants receiving up to $17,000 annually if single, and $24,000 for families.
Discourage people from actually getting married by essentially paying them not to! Can't have those pesky independent families, with their ability to depend on each other rather than the state can we. Can't have people loyal to each other rather than our glorious government.
This is a seriously distressing policy.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You think libertarian is a synonym for conservative,
In many of the important ways, it is. Both want to let corporations to have the ultimate power over the people by destroying the parts of the government that interfere.
1) It only takes one farmer to grow food for one hundred (?) people. Figure a few more people for food and shelter, education, etc. For the sake of argument, figure we only need N people, where N 20, people to take care of 100. What do the other 80 people do?
2) We don't have to force 80/100 people into meaningless, soul-deadening, junk producing, environment draining pointless jobs.
3) Less pollution since there is less need for pointing production.
4) If everyone has UBI, no need for welfare, unemployment, etc.
5) It unleashes creativity for the not employed. It makes it much easier to fund startups, research, art, etc.
6) More time to spend caring for children; less money spent on child care.
7) It will stimulate the travel business sector, as people have more time to travel.
8) It makes it easier for business to let go of non-productive or otherwise surplus employees.
I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment, they swarm like flies to honey. With that type of environment you simply will never see disagreement, people have better things to do than shout at a wall. Since Slashdot has people with higher average IQ, and a marginally better moderation system, dissenting thought isn't punished and can be debated on it's merits (to a point).
There's also the simple fact that a percentage of people will naturally shift right as they get older. So, if slashdot's reader base has good retention without much "new blood" being injected into it, this change could manifest as a result.
The right-leaning ones are just as bad. It happens whenever people commit their loyalty to any political ideology.
Before anybody tries UBI, I'd like to see trapless welfare. I don't know how bad this is in Canada, but the USA has a lot of "welfare traps". That's a situation where people remain on public assistance rather than work because their real income falls when they start working. We do so many stupid things such as labeling people "low income" and making them wait a long time for "low income housing". Then their "low income status" actually becomes an asset!
Fix that first, then get back to us.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What do we do with people when there's no work for them?
Not going to be a rhetorical question for much longer. Driving, for example, is the single largest job category in North America....what happens when autonomous vehicles take over? Not going to be a market for that skill. Do we let those people starve? Think about it....lots of economic displacement is on the way.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
True story:
My SO, Deb, and I were laying about in bed one lazy afternoon; she seemed to be dozing lightly.
Me: "Hey, baby?"
Her: "Mmmm?"
Me: "When {unspoken:sex} robots come out, can we get a French maid?"
...a few seconds pass...
She: "Sure."
She: "We'll call him 'Pierre.'"
I made a photo-toon of this
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What do we do with people when there's no work for them?
If everyone has a sexbot, then after a generation or so, the "surplus worker problem" will be solved.
Think about it....lots of economic displacement is on the way.
It will be far smaller than the displacement caused by farm automation, and that happened during a time when the population was growing rapidly.
But they're not doing that. This is a means-tested, graduated scale welfare mechanism.
This is not UBI, it doesn't even vaguely resemble UBI, and as a test of UBI, it's worthless, because its results are completely unrelated. To any degree the results are used to make any decisions at all about actual UBI, the decisions will be nonsensical. Garbage in, garbage out.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Convicted felon, here.
I disagree with almost everything you said.
I didn't rob a bank until I was 40 years old. Was I a moral person for the first 39 years, and then an immoral one after? Pretty simplistic. I postulate that you will abide by your morality right up until your kid says "Daddy, I'm hungry" and you have nothing to feed her. (I'm not saying this is what happened to me, but to a lot of bank robbers I met inside.) Maybe you're different. Kudos to you, if so, I guess.
The biggest cause of poverty is not government regulation, that's ridiculous. I suspect it's poor understanding of money by parents and peers, causing poor behavior modeling. There's a reason college graduates' kids go to college and the working class poors' kids go to the payday loan shop when things go south. Did your parents launch you on a positive trajectory? How did they know how to? Maybe they didn't. Again, maybe you're different. Kudos to you.
Mine wanted to, but didn't know how.
Sure, socialism is always doomed to failure, if you reduce everything down to a false dichotomy. Look how much better the outcomes were in the 1800s for the robber barons. Not so much for normal people.
Anyway, they're TRYING it. Let's at least wait and see.
I knew lots of drug dealers in prison that would never have been there if they had had UBI before they started selling drugs.
Sure, once they get into some real money they might not want to stop, but the guys that are not yet dealers are at-risk, and UBI would stop most of that shit cold.
On the other hand, decriminalizing most drugs (which is one of the places that I see eye-to-eye with Libertarians) guts the profitability of drug dealing, while reducing the jail population. Prohibition does not work.
Rapists, pedophiles, murderers, white collar criminals, etc., will still be problems, but you'd be amazed how UBI would stop bank robbery.
Is the sum enough to live in Ontario?
Yes, the basic income amounts are technically correct for individuals and small families in Ontario.
Single students outside of major cities (i.e., not in Toronto) go by on $12-15k/year. That's in a dorm or cheap studio. I had an exchange student with spouse and small kid who lived as a family on $24k, for a year. No frills absolutely but they rented a basement apartment and were generally okay. This assumes that one does not ever want to have anything above the minumum, very rarely travels long distance, does not acquire any expensive hobbies or interests, and does not get into any trouble medically or otherwise (or that any nontrivial contingency is truly 100% covered by welfare). Some flexibility to move to areas with less expensive housing may also be required. However for families with multiple kids significantly more than $24k is needed, if the kids are to have decent upbringing (such as have own rooms at home and some experiences outside of those provided by the school system).
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
What is cheaper, a "robot" to drive a car or a human who will work for free?
The robot. It can run 24/7, rather than the DOT requirement of 11/24 for humans, thus doubling the utilization of the vehicle. It will also (likely) be much cheaper to insure, it will require less safety equipment, it is less likely to pilfer the cargo, etc.
I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment.
You are wrong.
I've expressed quite a few dissenting opinions on Slate.com (as typical a left-leaning news site as there is), mainly objecting to various criticisms of Trump. For instance on the first travel ban I said the numbers showed that you couldn't call it "targeted at Muslims" for what the phrase "targeted" usually means. There has been disagreement, sure, but I was never once dismissed as a racist or a nazi, and I wasn't shunned. Here are my posts so you can verify it yourself. (On Slate, you have to click the speech bubble to view the comments, and wait a few seconds while it loads).
Why haven't I been dismissed as a racist nazi? or shunned? I think it's because I am mostly polite, rational and fact-based in my posts, and people see this and respond positively to it. Usually not *agree* with it, but at least respect me for it. I think you generally get out what you put in.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...
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Well it takes between 4 and 9 years to get into low income housing in most of Canada. It's around 4-5 years here in Ontario, programs like section 8 don't exist in Canada in the same general terms either. There are "generational welfare" families in Canada without a doubt, but then there's also the people who don't want anything to do with it. You'll see a lot of seasonal people who work in eastern canada(fisheries/crab/lobster/etc), who work the other half year in Alberta's oil patch or in the potash mines in SK or MB. ~10-20 years ago before the war on coal was kicked into high gear, those people would work seasonally in the eastern canada coal mines. Lot of people would spend half a year or more on welfare because of that, it actually got worse and crime exploded in eastern canada when those mines shut down. Then it was compounded when the paper mills shut down because of environmental groups throwing a hissyfit. Huge drug abuse explosion from all of this as well. People like to think that solutions for this stuff is simple, but when you throw 10k people out of work things get desperate quick.
Om, nomnomnom...