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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.
I thought UBI was to support the population when no jobs were available because they were lost to automation.
Jobs are not lost to automation. As processes are automated, production costs fall, freeing up money to invest or spend on other things, creating new jobs and increasing living standards. There is no evidence that "this time is different".
Open your eyes and look at the world. There are rich countries and poor countries. A country is prosperous IF AND ONLY IF it has automated production. Automation not only reduces poverty, on a large scale it is the ONLY THING that reduces poverty.
The tragedy is that imagine you believe yourself to be smart.
"Old man yells at systemd"