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Another Universal Basic Income Experiment is Underway, This Time in Canada (technologyreview.com)
Lindsay, a compact rectangle amid the lakes northeast of Toronto, is at the heart of one of the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income. Technology Review: In a three-year pilot funded by the provincial government, about 4,000 people in Ontario are getting monthly stipends to boost them to at least 75 percent of the poverty line. That translates to a minimum annual income of $17,000 in Canadian dollars (about $13,000 US) for single people, $24,000 for married couples. Lindsay has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population. The report outlines that the Canadian province's vision for a basic income -- and the underlying experiment -- differs from that of the one we have seen in Silicon Valley. The report continues: The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net. That's not what Silicon Valley seems to imagine, which is a universal basic income that placates broad swaths of the population.
The most obvious problem with that idea? Math. Many economists concluded long ago that it would be too expensive, especially when compared with the cost of programs to create new jobs and train people for them. That's why the idea didn't take off after tests in the 1960s and '70s. It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.
The most obvious problem with that idea? Math. Many economists concluded long ago that it would be too expensive, especially when compared with the cost of programs to create new jobs and train people for them. That's why the idea didn't take off after tests in the 1960s and '70s. It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.
The smarter way would be to pay students or people in vocational training programs a stipend for a maximum of a certain number of years. Encourage self-improvement without the situation becoming permanent.
The difference is that right now there are jobs available. I thought UBI was to support the population when no jobs were available because they were lost to automation.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Education is just a meme when the government can provide all your support. Why work hard and let them take half when you can do nothing and get free money?
Yay! Now there will be people spending their UBI welfare payout on booze instead of using it for important things like food and housing.
Good job Canada!
It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.
But it didn't. The experiment is proceeding according to plan and will continue until the end of 2018.
Contrary to reports, the basic income experiment will continue
The problem with this approach is it removes incentives to work. What if you are currently unemployed or underemployed? If this basic income pushes you up by $17,000, then it removes the incentive to find a better job until you find one that makes well in excess of $17,000. If the stipend is removed once you make about a certain amount, you're creating a disincentive to make that amount.
Giving everyone a smaller basic income (regardless of their current income) avoids that trap: You are still incented to work since you'd get the basic income plus whatever job income.
This seems doomed to failure. But since it is a limited, small experiment, it's still worthwhile to gather the data and try and measure the cost tradeoffs (such as, "At what income would a person need to work until the incentive to stay on the basic income goes away?" Hopefully this would provide real data.
Universal income is still hides the problems with taxation. When is somewhere going to pilot the fair tax?
The problem with homeless shelters is that once a homeless has shelter he's not homeless anymore and stops being eligible to homeless shelters. Which then of course means he's homeless again and is now eligible to homeless shelters, which in turn...
It's a non-stop carousel that does nothing for the homeless and only provides work for the bureaucrats.
#DeleteFacebook
> The most obvious problem with that idea? Math.
Maybe Common Core math would work?
...was it Finland that did this experiment first?
But it's a modern PR thing, oh-we-are-so-progressive, we're going to try this, we're ahead of the heard. I've seen so many countries try this by now (and later ditching it, when it wasn't making the news anymore) that I don't quite believe in the sincerity behind the project.
I'm all for Universal Basic Income, because I personally believe that no one should starve to death, and everyone should have a basic platform where they could work themselves up from rock-bottom to a worthy place in society. And of their own choice, not what WE think is a worthy place. We're all different - there's a place for us all.
But these half assed experiments aren't impressive, just depressive. And they always make the news, as if they where amazing, innovative, new and fantastic.
There's nothing fantastic, new or amazing by it. There's only "PR - LOOK how innovative we are, we're giving it a go".
No you're not. 4K is a drop in the ocean, in fact - it's a drop in a freaking POND somewhere. If you want to see the real ramification of it all, if you want to see the actual effect, it got to be introduced as a WHOLE for everyone. People aren't automatically going to ditch their job, no one wants to live on existence minimum. but it will give oddball individuals a chance to grow into their position in life. It will give people who lost their jobs to automation - a chance to re-educate themselves, it will give people time to reflect, and not just shrivel up and die on some street corner somewhere.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I just learned that I live 25% below the poverty line. Comfortably.
I reported ~$17K income for last year and owed ~$2K in taxes over what I had already paid in deductions.
This year it will be down to about $13K total income. I wonder if I'll still owe tax on that?
What you need to quell the masses .. cheap beer, and now cheap pot for Canada. Happy proles, dead proles ... bring out 'cher dead.
Yep, this. Theoretically UBI only works well if:
1. EVERYBODY gets it
2. There is no minimum wage
The idea is, if you are a restaurant, for example, you'd be more inclined to hire people for $3/hour just to keep the place clean. That's not much, but you could make a few thousand extra a year working a few hours a day over your UBI, even in addition to another higher paying part-time job, it would be worth it to someone.
Just BI, not UBI. Can't call something universal if it's not.
means things are pretty different today then they were in the 60s. And we've got a massive, massive push for automation coming. Basic income doesn't make sense when you need everybody working. Those days are coming to and end. We can't all be Doctors and engineers. A lot of us just aren't smart enough. And we can't retrain everybody. Not everybody can learn a complex new job. Most can't past the age of 30.
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It doesn't remove the incentive to work nearly as much as contingent unemployment benefits, which any competent neoliberal economist is quick to point out.
The minimum wage is also problematic, for the the incentive purist.
Or, for that matter, a food bank.
If you eliminate contingent unemployment benefits, minimum wage, and food banks the most likely outcome is that UBI improves the incentive to work.
And another thing: it would discourage abusive labour practices, where people making low wages are treated like the desperate dirt they truly are (how motivating is that in the long run?)
What you would get instead, is a viable market in piece-work paying hardly anything (it's pure marginal income) where the people taking this work aren't treated like scum, because they really can decide to not turn up again the next day (and maybe learn a new skill instead, in their divey but peaceful UBI hovel).
Once these people gain a habit and reputation for being good workers a $2/hour (on top of their UBI), many will probably elect to progress up the ladder to $3/hour. And so on.
Back to the reality of human psychology (which doesn't truck much in incentive porn), people tend to lift themselves up by slow, habituated, sustained increments. Cattle prods, electric fences, and gang planks don't tend to lead to a long term, productive work force. (It's been tried, and still exists in North Korea, surely the world capital of The Economic Productivity Index.)
At the end of the day, having a ravenous lion six inches behind your desk who gains an inch every time you cease to type fast enough merely serves to wear out your adrenal system, which isn't intended to function from a state of desperation 24/7.
"But derf derf the incentive!" will never rest, who's job is apparently never done, for the wages received must be fine, fine, fine.
The issues I see:
1. Everyone can be trained for any job.
2. There are plenty of jobs available for anyone's skill set and talents.
3. Sometimes, one's talents and abilities just aren't marketable and one is stuck in the hopeful masses trying to get a job at Walmart or an Amazon warehouse.
The biggest fallacy that I see is that there are plenty of jobs for everyone. Even now with this great low-unemployment is employers complaining how they can't get "qualified" people.
What does that mean?
Lack of training? Lack of education? Lack of experience? Using it as an excuse to age/race/gender discriminate?
When I was a youngster, many companies had training programs. Why back in the day, you could take an entrance exam for an Aetna/Travelers/Hartford programmer training program. If you passed, you got in. Then if you passed the course. You got a job. And after 6 months, you were reviewed and if you did well, you were hired.
Those programs are gone. Never the less, when they existed, the big Hartford insurers NEVER had a problem getting qualified programmers.
(It wasn't all great. They'd get laid-off every couple of years. And the crop of thinned of.....just guess. You better have made it into management by your third lay-off.)
What all the plans unfortunately have alike is that they aren't payed by big money, the big players who are the receivers on the global market, who are making more and more with less and less people due to automation. They are payed for by the main tax payers, the middle class. The big players won't give it up. With those premises UBC is doomed to fail. It needs a more fundamental change.
TFS is claiming that tests in the 60s and 70s ended because economists thought it was infeasible. The real story, assuming it's referring to the trials in the US, is that the day before Nixon was going to announce it, someone scared him away with an argument that was basically "OMG T3H COMMIES!"
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It's largely why Finland recently abandoned a basic-income plan after a small test.
The above is incorrect and they didn't: http://www.wired.co.uk/article...
Economists view EVERYTHING as being incentivized by money.
If that were the case then their wouldn't be a flood of retiree volunteers for - many things. (Do a Habitat for Humanity build sometime.)
Humans NEED to work. If we don't , we fall apart. Look at all the Native-American reservations that just get money to sit around. They become alcoholics. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work has pretty much proven that we NEED to work n more importantly have work that we find important. (He's the FLOW guy)
As someone who has PLENTY on money to live on for the rest of my life, I need to work. And no, I do NOT have a superior character trait because I INHERITED my money.
It is vote buying nonsense like this that annihilated Justin Trudeu's Liberal party two weeks ago in the June 7th Ontario general election. Nine days from now when the new legislature begins the Liberals will have so few seats they won't be an official party. The media is badgering the new majority party to make exceptions for the few surviving Liberals so they aren't treated as a handful of nearly powerless, unfunded independents.
So keep it up. Working great so far.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The reason people like are against UBI is because we see money differently.
People like me see money still as a means of trade from way back in the days of yore where trading 6 chickens for 1 goat was a thing. Finding the person who both had what you wanted and needed what you had was troublesome. Thus currency was invented to decouple this. The key principle is remains trade though.
Money, theoretically at least, reflects the amount of effort (time, work, risk, etc) invested by someone. The worth of the currency as a whole is pegged to the amounts of goods and services produced by the country. Increasing the speed of the printing presses does not increase the amount of stuff produced by the country (the GDP), so instead each individual banknote becomes worth less through inflation (punishing savers).
UBI does nothing to increase GDP, and the only way to "pay" for it is to print more currency, thus inevitably leading to inflation. After all, when some other country comes to us and offers us a goat, and we offer them 100 of our banknotes, they will look at those notes an ask themselves "what can we buy with that?". When they look around and realize that no one is producing anything of value, they'll turn around and say "No thanks - there's nothing I want I can buy with that.". That's how economies collapse.
And when you read the referenced article, it turns out that this isn't a trial of UBI at all. It is basically just a boost to the benefits system to see if it can save money in other areas: reducing crime, improving public health and streamlining social payments.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Pre-emptive strike: Math is still math, UBI still doesn't scale up, UBI fanbois need to keep it in their pants, calm down, and resign themselves to working until they drop dead, no free ride for you or anyone else, not until you invent 24th Century Starfleet-style matter replicators and plentiful free power to run them provided by ubiquitos antimatter reactors. </subject>
right now I have to live where the wages are high enough to afford a car, food and my child's tuition. It also means I pay $1300/mo for a crappy 3 bedroom apartment I share with my brother (Need the 3rd room in case the kid has to come back). I haven't bought a house because I can't afford one.
Give me basic income and I can move somewhere else where housing is cheaper because the wages pay less. Even if I don't other people can and will and that will lower housing prices. It also would mean I could take risks with employment (especially if we had single payer healthcare in America). That would also drive up wages and standards of living. What it would _not_ do is help mega corps bottom line. It would utterly decimate the political power of the 1%. They could no longer threaten the working class with death by starvation or lack of medical care to elicit obedience and fear.
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Wouldn't it be better to give everyone a currency print template? Everyone could print currency as they need it.
Unfair use of tax dollars-they better release all the data publicly. Peopleâ(TM)s taxes who are barely getting by are funding people to sit on their ass.
Duh. Of course it's expensive.
The thing is that "creating new jobs" is a stupid illusion.
Sometimes new technologies come along so it's possible to fill desires that went unmet before, either by making totally new stuff or by being more productive and cutting costs. So you get new jobs. Well and good. Sometimes tastes change, so people buy different things than they did before. Fine. Those are organically occurring new jobs.
But if you're a government and you set yourself the task of creating jobs, what that really means is that you have to convince the economy to support something that, up to now, nobody has wanted, or at least nobody has wanted it enough to pay anybody to do it. That means you have to create a sense of need where nobody felt a need before. Filling that kind of need is false productivity; nobody's actually happier or better off. In fact, having a lot of false needs like that seems to make feel people worse off.
Now the farmer has to put in X amount of work to grow the food to feed this person who makes some Thing that the farmer never felt he or she needed before. All the farmer gets for it is money to buy the Thing. The Thing probably won't make the farmer's life any happier at all on net. The builder has to build that person a house, and again gets a pointless Thing in return. And so forth.
Whatever policy you implement to Create Jobs, whether propaganda to make people feel false wants, subsidizing products that wouldn't make it on their own, hiring people to do public works that nobody enjoys, or whatever, is fundamentally doomed to be a waste. The only way that might create useful jobs might be to try to encourage inventing things. But you can't just put millions of random average people to work "inventing", any more than you can invent on a schedule. It doesn't work like that. Anyway, when you've really gotten low on genuine, unsatisfied wants or needs, invention is going to do nothing but improve productivity and eliminate jobs.
There's no net win in poliies to "create jobs". Makework is just that: makework. You might as well pay somebody to sit around and masturbate as pay them to create something that nobody truly wants or needs. You're not making any less work for the people who meet their needs; you're making more.
It would actually make more sense to limit the amount of work any individual was actually allowed to do, so that the economy was forced to employ more people to create the products and services people actually want. That would at least give some people more leisure while giving others employment. It's still an enormous practical challenge, would require all kinds of scary and potentially tyrranical enforcement measures, and might very well not work. But at least it's not OBVIOUSLY IDIOTIC AND INSANE like the idea of "creating jobs" by fiat.
And all of this is even more complicated by the fact that more and more people can't do anything even slightly useful. That farmer who's growing the food? This century, that's not some idiot with a hoe. That's somebody who knows a lot and is part of a sophisticated industry. The menial work is being automated away. When McDonalds installs an automated burger flipper, the displaced worker isn't necessarily going to be able to do anything worth even close to a living wage. We already have a lot of inefficiencies in organizations today because people who would have been doing manual labor in the past are pressed into service beyond their capacity as "knowledge workers". At some point, if you push that far enou
Economists view EVERYTHING as being incentivized by money.
Parent:
It's almost as if you've never taken an economics class.
I have had too many, actually. It's a greater dufus science than Psychology - it's actually a derivative of psychology.
See, the point is that Economists are reductionist. They boil EVERYTHING down to monetary reward which makes them wrong on many things.
Markets and monetary policy - the economists got it together, but personal motivations? NOPE.
Dipshits!
With legal marijuana, now is the time to get into the fast food industry!
I feel that these studies don't do it for long enough with a big enough population to really see what happens to the market. Everyone knows it'll be a temporary boon, and it isn't enough of the population to really put the pressure on. There is a difference of someone saying "Hey, i'll only have this for a few years while the study goes on, so I should focus on using that money to improve myself while I have it for when I don't" and someone saying "I get this for the rest of my life? For reals? Ok! I can quit my minimum wage job and play XBox for a few months and then look at my options!" And what happens when the general populace all say at once: "I could try to get a better house now that I have this extra money!"
I just don't think the studies are very realistic on what people are going to do long term, and what the marketplace changes will look like when pressure for those that desire to upgrade start doing so.
This experiment gives $17000/year to the poors. Without that experiment, they were receiving less than that in social care. So of course they are going to do better with more money. But that shouldn't be the point of the experiment. The experiment should be about comparing how to give $X to the poor in the most efficient way. Is it more efficient to give them a sum with no strings attached? Or to put conditions such as "you loose that money if you earn more than $Y".
Sadly, this experiment isn't going to teach us anything. We already know the conclusion: poor people do more when they are not longer that poor.
lower full time start at 32 hours a week + have OT hit X2+ levels.
It is called "welfare". And I mean actual, unlimited welfare for people who are needy, not the postponed death sentence like in the U.S..
some minimum wage rules are need or you can show at job just to be in the hole day 1 for uniforms / tools / etc.
Tax 1% of business profits, and 1% of household income, and distribute that pile of money evenly amongst all legal residents. It's simple and changes with inflation.
Another Universal Basic Income Experiment is Underway ... the world's biggest tests of a guaranteed basic income... [Area of test] has about half the people in the pilot -- some 10 percent of the town's population.
The Canadians are testing it as an efficient antipoverty mechanism, a way to give a relatively small segment of the population more flexibility to find work and to strengthen other strands of the safety net.
There's nothing univesal about this.
Welfare. The word for this is welfare. Unless everyone gets it, it's not universal. It is income. And I would say that 75% of poverty is pretty basic. So it's good on those fronts, but it's not universal. It is welfare.
Also, it's a shitty experiment unless the populace WITHIN the area ALSO gets to PAY FOR IT. There's two sides of UBI. Where the money goes and where the money comes from. How much does it help the people it's going to? and how much does it royally piss off the people it's coming from? As long as every experiment is a grant or funded from the national coffers which EVERYONE pays into to redistribute money to a FEW select people, it's bogus. I'd even say that dealing with the obvious issue of the high income earners moving across town to avoid the soul-crushing taxes is an important aspect of any UBI test. If they're wealthy enough, moving somewhere without UBI is a viable option, and FUCKS OVER the area. You can't just ignore this sort of impact.
And any suggestion along the lines of "Well we won't allow them to move away" or "It will work as long as UBI is everywhere" sounds an awfully lot like the tactics of soviet communism.
Recently I've found different solutions with similar goals to be more promising and less problematic, such as universal basic services and/or a citizens' dividend.
Problems with UBI:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.co...
http://neweconomics.org/2018/0...
Some better solutions:
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Einstein, whom you're trying to quote, was simply wrong. The reality is that in an analog universe it works to do the same thing over and over because there is a cumulative effect.
Oddly enough Einstein was against quantum mechanics...
"Math. Many economists concluded long ago that it would be too expensive, especially when compared with the cost of programs to create new jobs and train people for them. "
Then those economists do not know how to do basic math. The cost of running a UBI program in Canada for amounts in this range would cost about the same amount the government currently spends on welfare and unemployment benefits. Just merge the two into one UBI and it'll safe both time and money. This program, in the long run, would save money (compared to current social safety net spending) not cost more money.
If I wanted to support a stranger financially, I'd do it. And, maybe, I already do.
By spending my taxes on such support, the government forces me — at the point of a weapon implicitly behind every tax-collection — to support more people, than I would support on my own volition.
That's government overreach — a manifestation of tyranny — and should be denounced as such. Like "meatless meatballs", "compulsory charity" is a self-contradictory term.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
communism will work THIS TIME.
-- comunists, every time
It's the hottest economy in 20 years, where there are more jobs than there are employable people, and these people want to pay people not to work.
Dumb.
I think that since all of the companies on the net are making money from my personal information, information that would not exist if i did not, information specific to me, and generated by me and my actions, I should b getting a chunk of that money. After all, it is me u are making money off of. And since this new wave of info raping begins at birth, for all newborns, put the money earned from u raping their info into a fund to be released to them upon 21st birthday or sooner if they move into higher education. It's the very least u could do....
This is a far better solution than limiting what can/can't be automated. Though I would say to do it as follows:
1. European/Australian style mandatory minimum vacation times, and requiring people to take them. This results in requiring staffing a minimum of 3 people capable to handle every task (can be accomplished via overlapping duties), since at any given moment 1 may be on vacation, and 1 may need to call in sick, quit, etc.
2. Reduce workweek to 32 (or 30) hours. Definition of "part time" reduced to people working under 24 (or 22.5) hours.
3. Remove non-managerial overtime exemptions. Yes this would mean skilled professional workers such as doctors earning OT. I don't see anything wrong with that.
4. Increase OT earnings only if OT is systemically abused.
Since the government here would sooner annex Mexico than implement UBI, it is worth looking in to alternatives that would actually work here. One that they really need to look at is single-payer healthcare. Yes, I know it is grouped into the category of "evil *isms" in this country, but it could make a huge - and hugely positive - economic impact if it were actually implemented.
Take a moment to think about why so many people on the job market are waiting for FT work and why so many PT jobs go unfilled. The driving force behind that decision is health insurance. We tell people they need it, though in many cases PT jobs still are not required to offer it (or at least they are not required to offer it at a price that the employee could actually afford).
If we made even a base plan available to every man, woman, and child, then suddenly the workers who are turning down PT jobs in spite of interest in them (in particular this is a lot of parents of younger children, as well as retirees with poor benefits). could take those jobs. This opens up more FT jobs for people who can't get by on PT work alone.
And yes, single-payer from the government would cost money. It would be a tax, just like income tax. And a large number of people would find that tax would end up being less than what they pay to their insurance through their employer once everything is accounted for, it would just be handled differently.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
if you can't survive on it without doing anything. The purpose of UBI is to prepare society for the automation taking away vast majority of jobs and to see how people behave when they have just enough money without HAVING TO work. /., you'll have to take my word for it. Though I'm pretty sure that ISI Web Of Knowledge has that research.
Previous research showed that if you give people enough to get by, they start new businesses and get pickier when it comes to choosing the job, employers have incentive to improve working conditions etc. It almost seems that the Canada is trying to thwart that by calling UBI something that doesn't even get you above the poverty line.
Sorry, can't provide links right now, so as with most of the things on
Any time you have to rely on the government you are beholden to them. Do something they don't like, and they'll take away your stipend. Another problem (which pointed out in the summary) is what happens when the obligation exceeds what the government can provide (they run out of money)? Now you've got a whole society of people who are screwed and have forgotten how to do for themselves. A much better way to go is to train people to be self reliant, but that requires willingness on the part of the individual and altruism on the part of the government. I'd be all for getting rid of all social support from the government. It's just not a skill set that they excel in. Then make a law that the CEO cannot make more than 3 times what the lowest paid employee makes. No CEO provides more than 3 times the benefit to an organization than a janitor. Think about it. That's a fairly thankless job, and think about the morale and what the place would look like if the janitor went away. Stack that up against the CEO who's "good ideas" are what make the company profitable. The reality is few of the CEOs have their own ideas. They're taking credit for many other people's ideas, and they minimize the ideas that don't pan out. Their actual value is not that great. In fact, this largely applies to the whole echelon of executives. They don't really do the actual work. Often times they don't even know what the actual work requires. They just know how to over embellish while articulating their worth.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
High unemployment that is. Particularly in the Maritime provinces (far east coast of Canada) where most people work in the fishing industry. in the winter, everything is frozen and there is basically no tourism. So most of them go on unemployment benefits - year after year after year. Work 6 months, 6 months on the dole.
When I lived in Ontario I knew this guy that cut grass on golf courses in the summer and collected UI all winter. Lived in his parents basement. Sold a little dope on the side to supplement his "income". In fact, I knew lots of people like that. It was almost as if you were considered a sucker if you worked all year.
This, from what I observed, was the problem with having lots and lots of social programs. Some people need it, some are just lazy. How do you determine who should get it and who should not?
Having a UBI seems like a logical concept. The problem is how do you decide who gets it? How much should it be? Once you're on it how long do you stay on it? Forever? Will people on UBI be allowed to work part time or will that be de-incentivised like it is for current unemployment and welfare programs?
Without some sort of exit strategy this will end up becoming another perpetual "poverty alleviation" program paved with good intentions but littered with poor results.
The problem with pretty well every UBI test conducted is that the methodology is always flawed.
For a society to see solid benefits from UBI, you need at least three generations to receive the program.
First generation may or may not simply take advantage of the opportunity to stay home, take a load off, and work less.
Those people will get bored, or other enterprising individuals will offer to help them out, for some of their YBI income. Initial drop in overall productivity at the project size level. Those people start spending time bettering themselves, and producing children.
Those children grow up, with full access to education, and the support of parents who either are, or are not, overly supportive (they have time, whether good or bad, to spend with those children) and that generation begins to see opportunities and processes the previous generation stopped doing. (IE, things are messy, as nobody wanted to keep cleaning shit up) but some people, who are choosing not to work, decide they don't like all the shit all over the place, and pay others who decide to clean stuff up. (And pay people to repair roads, pay people for food that's no longer available locally, etc)
The third generation born into this actually starts to see how this all works, they have a well established saftey net to fall back on, and want to make things better for themselves, others, and the public in general, and take on additional work.
These "4 year projects" prove/disprove nothing. If you were told, going into a 4 year project that it would be over "at some point" what security does that give you? (Hint: none at all)
Maintaining a perfect record of failure, and for the same reasons. Once the promulgators have collected their fees, they will release the fish and move on to their next scam against the public dollar.
what if Peter's never worked a day in his life because his Dad left him a Trust Fund? And what if there's no useful work for Paul to do? No ditches to dig because we don't have people dig ditches any more than we pay them to add up numbers by hand anymore?
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Well, your old ass thought wrong. You just wanna shit on welfare while most likely gathering social security and medicare yourself.
Actually UBI would take care of that. An employer will have a hard time finding takers for a $1/hour job which has a $300 initial investment requirement, because no one needs a job that badly (because of UBI the employee won't starve or be homeless if he/she walks). The employer would either have to provide the requisite tools as part of employment or offer more money in order to attract employees.
Building housing for FREE HOUSING = x
Free education [vocational/college/university] = s
Free school for pre-kindergarden = y
Free transportation = u
Basic Income = r
* Universal Health Care for every citizen = p
x + s + y + u + r + p == $$ Total package with basic income
Meanwhile, America is experimenting with Universal Basic Debt (UBD).
glhf, hope you enjoy it for a few years until the few people paying the taxes decide they don't want to work anymore.
If we as a society continue to insist that everyone must work to gain the means of their own subsistence, then we must guarantee that every job pays a living wage. To do aught is to admit that there is a permanent underclass whose suffering can be tolerated for the sake of the comfort of a few. Considering the coercion inherent in that worldview, I'm curious how we would differ from the slave states of the past.
otherwise sooner or later a strongman is going to come along, organize them and give them guns. You, being one of the educated members of the merchant class will be the first person they're fury is turned on. This pattern has repeated itself for thousands of years of recorded history. You'd think we'd bloody damn well have figured it out by now. You don't fight tyranny with more tyranny. You fight it with civilization. Foreign aid pays for itself with fewer wars. It's cheaper to drop food than bombs.
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The test is still running as planned and will end after two years - as planned.
After that they will evaluate the result.
It has specifically not been concluded yet if the test is going well or not,
The linked Slashdot article got it wrong.
Where 40 year old people try to decide what to with their lifes afeter changing their major for 15 years.
even more obvious you're trolling
When a dollar is put into circulation it takes X amount of time for that dollar to generate more taxes than the dollar bill itself. For example if the bill turns over five times in a day at 7% tax rates it will take slightly less than three days to generate another dollar. So suppose you print $10,000 and put in in the hands of a poor person. That $10,000 will soon more than double in value which can mean less taxes for the public to bear. Then we have the drug, alcohol and general crime issues as well as mental health issues that can be lessened when people are not under economic pressures. Keep in mind that economic stress is one great reason that humans become depressed and act out in sick ways such as shooting up a school or murdering family members. It is a classic accounting issue. One can easily measure the bad things that come from allowing a bar to open or exist. But we have no method capable of showing what real good comes from allowing bars. How many jobs are created when a couple of business people have a few drinks and reach an agreement to go forward with a new building complex? The effect is that a bar will almost always be considered a negative when in fact it just might be positive in its effects.
As a consequence, most wages would fall, or get mapped to a lower interval scale. Main metrics of success would become merit and coolness factor, basically bragging rights. There would be huge increase in wages for unpopular, dirty or dull jobs, and as a consequence of that, in engineering gigs on inventing and designing automation solutions for that jobs.
I want to sit down and relax...
There. I fixed the headline.
Remember, kids, its not UBI if its not universal. Without "universal" its just another welfare experiment.
Not saying the experiment isn't warranted. Just saying that no matter how often or loudly you call your pet duck a swan, it is still a duck.
For those that might be unaware, the Ontario government is in the process of changing from the Liberal previous one to a new Conservative one. I am not sure what kind of fiscal guarantees are on this program, but I would expect it to be axed ASAP by the new incoming government if they are able to. So I'd be surprised if it lasts after a year and wouldn't be surprised if it was canned before it even really got started.
That said, while UBI might help, the problem isn't a simple one and that simple mechanism isn't going to solve it. If you look at the groups of people that this is going to impact, and how it because pretty obvious...
Broken into general groups (and I know that some folks may fall into several categories)::
1) People who want to work, but can't find work.
2) People who have work, but are underemployed.
3) People who want to work, but cannot due to disability.
4) People who don't want to work.
5) People with serious addiction issues.
6) People with serious mental health issues.
In fact you could probably group 1-4 all together in terms of 5 and 6, but for the purpose of UBI, we'll separate them out.
UBI might help the first two groups of people, but that is about it. As for 3 and 4, at best it might break even with the overhead for maintaining the other types of programs and services already offered. It isn't going to significantly help 5 or 6, and may actually have a net negative impact on 5 given they may just have more resources to spend on whatever addictions they are struggling with.
Both those last groups, which make up a fair portion of the impacted individuals really need real directed focused help, services and people, not just a check. Anyway one of the proponents of the UBI is that it might do away with all the rest of the government services making it more fiscally viable. However the truth is our current social services for those last two are already woefully insufficient, and I don't think it is reasonable to think that UBI, or simply a bit of money is going to solve all our poverty issues.
WTF? Is this some grandfathered project that was put together by that old smelly cunt Ontario voters just kicked to the curb?
Doug Ford, a conservative, just got voted in with a majority, and I can't see him being okay with wasting money on "experiments" like this one, which have been shown time and again to fail everywhere else they've been tried.
Shift to a gig economy and forget about classifying Part-time, full-time. ...and then forget about the other stuff you said too.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
When something is labelled Universal, when it isn't.
Self-actualization = UBI + Wealth Tax
Casteism
gig economy = hustle every day of your (short) working life. and for fuck's sake, have the decency to fuck off and die quickly when age begins shaving 5% or 10% off your hustle speed.
that's a true workers' paradise - according to libertarian useful idiots and other corporate mouthpieces.