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Canada's Ontario Government Ends Basic Income Project (www.cbc.ca)
Lisa MacLeod, Progressive Conservative member and Children, Community and Social Services Minister of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, said Tuesday that she would end the city's basic income pilot project, calling it expensive and "clearly not the answer for Ontario families." Few details are available as to how the project will come to an end, but MacLeod said her government will end the program "ethically" for anyone who is currently enrolled. Slashdot reader kenh shares an excerpt from a CBC.ca report: Close to 4,000 people were enrolled in the basic income pilot program in Thunder Bay, Lindsay, Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County. The pilot project started in April 2017. It was originally set to last three years, and explore the effectiveness of providing a basic income to those living on low incomes -- whether they were working or not. Under the project, a single person could have received up to about $17,000 a year, minus half of any income he or she earned. "A couple could have received up to $24,000 per year." People with disabilities could have received an additional $6,000.
We ran out of other people's money.
Cue all the comments about how obviously stupid this idea is. More interesting (and harder) would be ideas for dealing with the transition to a society where work is not, in fact, required (thus making jobs scarce). Going to happen? Who knows? But it would be better to prepare for it than to deal with the catastrophe that will result if it does happen and we are not prepared.
2 possibilities: Conservatives are afraid social programs will let the poor improve their lot so they structure them for failure or Conservatives fear someone will cheat the system better than they do
"clearly not the answer for Ontario families."
Except it isn't clear that this isn't the answer. That's why this was a pilot project in the first place. Ontario should just spend the money (which is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall budget) and prove whether this works or not. If it fails then move on and try something else.
... Unless of course you don't care if UBI works or not you just oppose it on philosophical grounds. Then the best thing to do is cancel the pilot.
What you did is not a basic income. It's a garden-variety welfare program, with all the stupid overhead that comes with it, that you called a basic income. This way you can point to this bad joke and use it to discredit anyone actually advocating a basic income. You are deceitful garbage and I hope one day a mob of homeless push you into the sea.
Doesn't "minus half of any income he or she earned" replicate the biggest problem with existing welfare programs, and defeat any purpose of the trial?
This is not basic income.
50% marginal tax rate for a minimum-wage worker is a massive disincentive for formal work.
It is a huge incentive for cash-in-hand work. Or for using your time for non-taxable work.
Minimum wage in Ontario is only $14/hour, so this drops it to $7.
Do you work for $7/hr, or use that time to find clothes in thrift stores, do all your own repairs and maintenance, etc. ?
You can save a lot of money buying quality second hand goods, and DIY, at the expense of time.
Indeed, the program imposed a 50% income tax on working participants: for any $1.00 they made working, the "basic income" was reduced $0.50. That defeats the point of the whole programme.
It barely lasted over 1. What is the point in doing it in the first place? And that's a ridiculous amount of money for a basic income, plus I bet those disabled persons already received disability benefits, and might even work, so they get all that, a basic income, plus their disability basic income benefit. This isn't universal at all, and I guarantee it wasn't implemented as a negative income tax in the first place, so no shit it probably wasn't working. But if you are trying something out at least see it through.
Who thought just handing out money was cheap?
I think it's more constructive to have the data ourselves, so it can be assessed independently. A politician may define success very differently than we would, and I'd prefer my own judgment.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
A lot of comments about whether or not the program should exist, the future, blah blah.
What we actually have (instead of your infantile conjecture) is now hard data about how a cashless society might function. What we really need now is that the data from this is released to the public so we can study it. What sorts of things did people in this experiment do? How did it affect their well being? What was the full cost to the public? What would be the cost of full implementation? Would it be worth it to try it?
I am extremely proud we conducted this study and gathered this data, I watch my neighbors to the south devolving every day and I am filled with hope that we are looking to the future and not copying a country which is sliding down to 3rd world status.
Btw, the fact that americans are too hung up with cultists and nut jobs to even begin to get a project like this together speaks volumes about what they have become
Translation:
'We realised that UBI reduces governments ability to grow its control over peoples lives, grow is bureaucracy, and make small changes every electoral round therefore trumpeting how we have fixed everything this time. With this in mind we have dropped this like a hot potato, because its not best for US'
Totalitarianist governments, left and right, HATE UBI because it reduces their power, hence it will never happen.
WTF does this have to do with a cashless society, and why are you bothering to comment when so very uninformed?
This was not even UBI, but UBI has exactly zero to do with a cashless society.
I suggest you go back to step one, and perhaps learn just a very few very basic facts about subjects you want to discuss with adults. It will help.
UBI is an increasingly reasonable option because we live in an increasingly automated world. By 2030 at the latest, around 90% of people will be completely useless compared to a robot. We can either let them starve and make some of the robots into "riot control" units, or we can feed them and let them smoke weed, play videogames, take up woodcarving, fuck, learn geometry, or whatever other kind of shit they like.
Ever heard of a "dead cat bounce"?
That's what we're in right now regarding employment numbers.
Pretty soon, the AI and automation are going to be more cost-effective than people at many jobs, way more types of jobs than can be replaced by new jobs. What new jobs there will be will be for cognitive top 5% geniuses.
Other jobs which can't be totally replaced will be modified to be hybrid AI/automation + person jobs. The person will probably get paid less than now, since they're only doing part of the work. Many jobs like that will be modified slightly to be more amenable to AI/automation integration.
If you don't see that this time it's different, because the AI and automated systems are approaching/surpassing parity with human capabilities, then you have blinders on, and you live on a river called denial.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Dos that mean when the participants die? These people are now "addicted". You can't just cut them off.
UBI is one of those systems that seem to encourage fraud. No one ever dies so can keep collecting the cash. The mother-in-law wanted to do this to commit pension and social security fraud.
No. The market for "physical manipulation capability, physical skills, and cognitive capability" is ever present.
What I have in quotes sounds a lot like labor, but is more general than human labor.
That market is increasingly being supplied by AI and/or complex, flexible automation, and the pace of that change will be faster than linear, as the technology continues to improve rapidly and cover more of the "labor" pie.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
As predicted by everyone with any working brain cells. Good to know that basic principles of arithmetic still hold, and liberals still can't create money from nothing. It is amazing that government would give up on any new program or chance to grow the bureaucracy, but anomalies do happen. Trouble is, liberals never learn, otherwise they wouldn't be liberals.
This idea that we're heading towards a society where people won't need to work, or where jobs won't exist, is as old as society itself. There is no free ride. There never was, there never will be. The labor market is ever evolving and ever present.
The per-person productivity of the US(*) is now about $58,000.
This means that if everything were distributed equally, every man, woman, and child could be given $58,000 to spend. And they would get another one next year. If you restrict it to adults, that figure goes up by another third.
The rise appears to be exponential, with the "doubling time" roughly 16 years, more or less depending on the growth rate of the economy in past decades. You can easily see this in the Google chart by tracking down to half the current amount (1995), half that amount (1981), and so on.
A few moments though should convince you that exponential rise is the expected outcome - increases in productivity tend to beget more increases in productivity.
For a sense of the time periods involved, note that the US has about 4% of the world population, so if the per person GDP continues to rise as shown, the US will be able to supply the world population with twice that amount in four doublings, or 64 years from now.
Also: other countries are on this same curve and are not accounted for.
By the end of this century we will be at the utopian ideal seen in many science fiction novels, and kids today will live to see it.
As mentioned, we could distribute $58,000 to everyone in the country today, or we could wait 16 years (one doubling) and distribute $58,000 to everyone and still be on that exponential curve.
At some point we will simply have so much wealth and so few jobs that it makes sense to reinvent our economy to compensate.
UBI seems inevitable.
(*) I realize the OP is talking about Canada, but US is the info I have at hand. It should be the same there as here.
Ultimately, Ford is a Trumpette, and he is going to make the poor pay for the sins of the rich. Gods help us!
As such, anything that helps the poor and disadvantaged, like safe injection sites, social housing, social and disabled assistance, are all going to be on the chopping block. And all his friends are going to make huge profits.
Universal Basic Income works better than just about any other system to help people in need, and get them back on their feet again. All of the current systems out there victimize the those in need before they get the assistance needed. It also encourages entrepreneurship as it allows people to quit substance jobs, and try to create ways to make money beyond such. Of course, Trumpettes don't like that because they lose control of the labour market...in fact, that is why Trump is so concerned about Mexicans. It's because he and his friends lose control of the labour market, and thus their control over people. It's enough to make one barf.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
this.
exactly this.
It's amazing how many people can't see beyond their noses to see the AI/automation revolution happening all around them.
/
--/---- you
/ robots
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
...not a city
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So giving away money is expensive? Who would have guessed. Stunning level of stupidity there.
When the title of the linked article is: "PC's plan to scrap Ontario basic income pilot project called 'shameful' by NDP leader"
From later in the article: "The announcement prompted shock and anger among many who rely on the the project and felt they'd been lied to." How do you come to rely on a program that didn't exist just one year ago? What were you doing before you won the UBI lottery? What were you planning to do when the program ended
From even later in the article: '"I'm in shock," he said, reacting to news of the cancellation. "I had a three-year plan and now it's gone."' The three year plan was to buy 54000 lottery tickets; now you only have enough money to buy 17000 lottery tickets.
Finally: "She said too many people in Ontario are already struggling to find affordable housing and feed their families. " This is something I would have liked to see in any of the linked articles: an estimated cost of living for Ontario; how much is 17000/year relative to the cost of affordable housing and food?
This is yet another example of ignoring reality in pursuit of your agenda...
Basic economics dictates that if you give someone 17000/year that money has to come from somewhere. Since it''s coming from the government, the only source of that money is taxes. Increased taxes have a domino effect as it increases the cost of providing goods and services. This is what we call inflation folks.
I would be interested to see the data behind the decision to terminate the project; particularly the job statistics for the 4000 participants before and after the program became active. Remember, the participants were already receiving social assistance before the program started and continued to receive it afterwards. How many participants with jobs stopped working and how many without jobs started working?
UBI has the same basic flaw as the US Social Security system. As long as you have a sufficient number of workers supporting the non-workers, it works well -- as when the baby boom generation was supporting their parents. When the ratio of workers/non-workers decreases, it falls apart -- as when the baby boom generation is being supported by their children.
Talk to me again about UBI when you can solve all it's fundamental economic flaws.
Dont give money to people with jobs.
Means test people and support them. "Social programs in Canada" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Support people who are not working.
The amount of people who then need support is kept low and a normal advance nation with a set number of people needing gov support can be covered by a normal tax rate.
Citizens who cant work, doing education. Retired citizens.
The rest of a nations citizens work and pay tax. No new payments needed for them as they are "working", pay tax and get a wage.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
aid Tuesday that she would end the city's basic income pilot project, calling it expensive
Who knew that handing out free money would get (gasp) EXPENSIVE!?!?!?
This is what a UBI should be eliminating. The program we had in Ontario was stupid unfortunately as moronic as it was it was better than what we have now. Currently once you are on welfare in Ontario you get all kinds of benefits. The only catch is that if you dare to try and get off welfare and even temporarily get a job you lose all of them. Oh, and while you are on welfare you can't save anything or have any substantial assets. So if you get a low paying job, not only could you be worse off, if you then lose the job you could be homeless and starving.
$17000 is a pretty good amount to live on. You can get a room to yourself for $250 in a student ghetto in Toronto. If you like rice and potatoes you can live on $200 a month for food. Another $50 worth of shopping at the Good Will a month and you can survive. I'm not saying it's great but lots of students manage on $6000 a year. My ex and myself when we had our first child survived on $1500 a month and I didn't even feel that poor. (fuck, even counting inflation, I make that in a day now). I don't think it would break the provinces finances if everyone got a flat check of $500 a month and we killed every other social program.
lol wut
Let me prefix this by saying that I don't necessarily support implementing a UBI system. However, I have yet to see anything called a "basic income" or "universal basic incomie" pilot program actually do things at all correctly. As other commenters have suggested, these pilot programs seem to be designed so that they must necessarily fail and be examples the politicians can point at and say, "See? We tried it and it failed." I'm not convinced UBI can actually work, but it definitely won't work if it isn't done right.
To do UBI correctly, it has to go to everybody. And it has to *replace* any income support programs. That is, it has to replace government programs such as (un)employment insurance, government pension plans not funded completely and directly by member contributions (because everyone would get UBI, the pension plan wouldn't be required, would it?). There also can't be any clawback because someone earned some money outside of the program. Doing that just adds administrative cost to the program and discourages recipients from working. Also, every person should get the same amount regardless of age, marital status, etc., though maybe with a minimum age before it kicks in. Otherwise, you recreate existing complex administration processes.
Now, here's the absolutely critical component. This UBI must not be set at a level where the recipient can afford a car, nice television, nice house, 127 cats, and the like. It should provide for *healthy* subsistence in a reasonable market and require careful management of money to do so (which encourages those who won't work to move out of the expensive cities like Vancouver or Toronto and those who want a nicer standard of living to work). It needs to be set such that if you want a nice living, you have to earn additional money, on which you pay taxes. (Also, under a proper UBI system, only the UBI itself would be income tax exempt. There would be no need for low end tax brackets under such a system.)
Limited pilot programs just aren't going to demonstrate anything because they're not going to work exclusive of existing income support programs and are going to potentially unbalance the labour force because the people getting free money can work for less. (That's probably why the clawback had to be there in this case.) To truly demonstrate whether such a system can work, it has to be tried at a fairly large scale and *existing* income support programs must be suspended for anyone participating in such a test.
Now I do understand that there is always going to be someone who isn't well served by such a program. But that's true of all the current options, too. If you're going to insist that it has to be perfect for everyone, then are you willing to give up all the existing social programs that you currently benefit from on that same principle? I thought not. So let's not create strawmen out of extreme edge cases since *every* system has those.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Here in the United States, we have apparently found enough of "other people's money" to give new welfare for farmers.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/po...
Our President, who has a very good brain, will be paying farmers who have been hurt by his tariffs by giving them money that's borrowed from very same countries he levied tariffs against.
That is some 39-dimensional chess shit right there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Is that related to the Totalitarian Anarchist party?
No we should let them starve. When faced with starvation they will rise up against the ruling class and achieve greater equality through force and violence.
As it is UBI is a concept created by the ruling class to give the lower class just enough money so they do not riot. I say let them riot. Then they will know true freedom and not be a slave to handouts from the upper class.
Now THAT is a title!
"Progressive Conservative member and Children, Community and Social Services Minister of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario"
FAIL
Most people that love the idea of basic income are entrepreneurs and big corporations because this means infinite supply of money to accumulate, banks might appear to don't like it because this might expose the credit scam.
Real money needs to be flowing, opposed to that is extreme accumulation, this accumulation without control creates more problems because it requires creation of more money for people to use, but it will end slowly in some accumulator, now we are in the point of mixing real money and fake money (debt or credit money is no real money).
Bet it is a government change thing. Democracy is the best. The will of the people is not to give money out for free
Why are so many people here so emotionally attached to the results of this experiment. It failed, just like in Europe. Why not move on to something that works?
Face it, UBI is a religion just like socialism and communism. Just as we see above, no matter how many times experiments or trials fail, there will be people who claim that wasn't real UBI. That we must have faith in the UBI religion and roll it out to absolutely everyone no matter how many UBI experiments finish early due to making no difference or making things worse. That UBI would work if only we'd put them in charge despite the fact that their knowledge of the issues surrounding UBI could be written on a napkin. And we must have faith that the thousands of intelligent people who not only thought the experiments through, spent years building an actual implementation and risked their careers to make it work obviously didn't know as much as some remtard on /.
It says something about the politicians involved, that such experiments are being shut down before they come to a end. It already happened in Finland, now in Canada: it almost feels like they're afraid of what the results might tell, doesn't it?
Money was created by humans. Like all abstract concepts it has no natural limits. The problem here is that the project was being paid for by a currency user (Ontario) not a currency issuer (Canada).
Canada cannot run out of Canadian dollars because it created the abstract concept in the first place and can do whatever it wants.
Money is a tool to help ensure all have access to survival needs, if it ain't doing that, or its doing harm, then you're using it wrong
We as a human race must be getting dumber to try such ridiculous ideals as compensating people for not trying to achieve a higher standard. I would rather a program pay you to get a education, or learn a trade and make something of yourself. Pay back with taxes from earning a living. We have seen both Finland and Canada try and fail with this. I think that probably is enough proof even for politicians that it doesn't work.
Basic income won't work in any society because the money you will be given will find its way to a loan sharks at ridiculous high rates or to alcohol/drug dealers. The person is poor because he has low intelligence; has low awareness - has wrong priorities in life. He/She is not going to use it cultivate a healthy life style exploring the sciences or arts or doing other health activities. But will likely stay in low intelligence and fall for others who are a little higher in the awareness ladder to poach their free govt given money.
So what is the end result..the poor stay poor in unhealthy situation. So what is the solution? you don't try to make a dumb person smart; it's only if they decide to climb out of the hole, they can. Else it's okay if they fail n die lying a miserable life.
In practice this must have been something along the lines of winning the Set for Life lottery, where you just get a fat check every week for years. I didn't RTFA but I assume the participants were chosen at random? In which case, the ones getting the money probably used the supplemented money to buy fancy toys and the ones who didn't get the golden ticket loathed them.
Dunno, maybe Ontario's people different to the east coast entirely, and I'm judging this poorly, but I doubt it. This was a stupid idea, sorry if that's a little crude.
I tend to rant.
Because look at the other aspects of the government. Education. Military. Health spending. When it is a bad idea the solution is ALWAYS throw more money at it. Universal Basic Income projects seem to be stopped abruptly and with some blurb about the public interest.
No surprise that the current gang would end a trial without waiting for the results to come in. They're driven by ideology and not interested in objective data.
Bigger issue was him taking 1.5% money from disabled as they also put that in same press release so to shove it under a table
...a UBI will just evaporate, effectively making those without work completely destitute. A similar example would be women entering the workforce, the cost of houses doubled and none of us little people are any better off. The only exception to this would be if the populace who are addicted to their new shiny things, decide to start start living on 20k a year in such numbers that they define the cost of living. Not likely.
A UBI with a regulated market however is pretty much Communism and the multiple times it has been tried all have led to tremendous loss of life. Stalin and Mao presiding over the greatest slaughters in human history. Plus making your populace an expense instead of a revenue source will of course lead to minimizing expenses, which is exactly as ominous as it sounds.
I wonder if in history "UBI and Netflix" will be regarded in the same light as "Bread and Circuses"?
Build colleges and subsidize them instead.
It is cheaper and the graduates help the city/province/country when they get jobs and pay taxes.
and the gop healthcare plan is jail / prison if you have an pre ex that the ER can't cover and they want to cut Medicare & Medicaid.
we need to lower full time hours and make OT cost more.
...and the chicks for free.
How demented does a politician need to be, to think this will work?
You have to spell your final line as "De Nile".
But I totally agree that the discovery of plants that grow each year will result in the destruction of hunter jobs. Since all men are hunters, most will lose their jobs. Soon many will starve to death because we will have too much food.
You'd be right there with other Frenchmen throwing their sabots in the machinery, wouldn't you?
People today probably just don't like it being called UBI.
Point in case: I do web development which these days means simply maintaining massive blobs of very complicated pieces of software that are available for free or some silly minimal annual fee. It mostly involves clicking on links and watching the WordPress Update Spinner go in circles. My deployment server is a rented service because I really can't be bothered fiddling with Jenkins or Travis for months on end till I get it right when I can get a nice and shiny UI ready to run my tasks for 5$/Month. That's 10 Minutes of "work" per month at my current rate for someone employed with healthcare, national pension and such.
I'm required to be at the office, but I can do this job on the side, remotely, and not even break into a sweat. I'm employed part time and earn more than most people. I do get to work on mission critical stuff that no one else in a radius of 5 kilometers can do, but that's 40 hours per quarter, maximum.
I'm now moving to automate most of my remaining manual work with custom scripts.
On the other side I have an abundance of spare time, am going to college on the side (College is free in Germany), planning a surf trip and couldn't even be bothered to update my smartphone because it's so powerful. I'm writing this on a refurbished laptop that costed little more than the refurbishment work and shipping +extra RAM & SSD and my main concern is if I will finally manage to get my exercise regime that I have planned going.
The robots are coming ever more and it's only a matter of single digit years until someone replaces starbucks with coffeebots and robots drive our cars and sew our t-shirts and jeans.
Bottom line:
Post scarcity abundance is happening as we speak and - to be honest - I think that's pretty fucking great. If you choose to live a "minimalist" lifestyle like I do (single room appartment, no car, PT & bike, focus on health, education and fun) you can feel it already every day.
And it feels awesome.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You chose to have children when you couldn't afford creating a new human being. FUCK YOU.
Population reduction is another option. We don't need you to have children.
All of these other places failed because they weren't doing it right.
The previous provincial government came in, screwed the pooch, left the economy in disarray and targeted businesses like they are the enemy. And she left little piles of poop for the next government to step in. Misguided, last minute vote-baiting tactics. Ontario already has multiple programs to help disabled and those without work, there is no need for a SJW-driven project lacking any economic sanity, just so they can squeeze "universal minimum income" while they tax other families into undue stress.
Ever heard of a "dead cat bounce"?
That's what we're in right now regarding employment numbers.
Dead cat bounce in economics is a week or two. You are talking about a dead cat made from superball material with rocket engines attached to it to account for what we are seeing. In other words, its not what you say it is.
You sound like Obama "Those jobs aren't coming back" "What is Trump going to do, wave a magic wand and create jobs?" No, reduce taxes, reduce regulations, what the conservatives have said for decades, and it seems to work EVERY TIME.
At my work we have a saying "If you say it can't be done, get the fuck out of the way of the guy doing it"
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The reason things are being automated as much as they are is to solve a very big problem.
That problem is People.
People have labor laws, they have personal issues, they need to take a shit, they go on strike for more money.
Automating them away is a win for most companies.
Let me give you an example. My sister works for a large food retailer in their IT division. Every year around xmas time the pickers (guys in forklifts who load the trucks from the distribution center) go on strike for more money. It's the busiest and most lucrative time of the year for retailers. People get their bonuses, they are on leave (some of them) and it's fucking xmas, so there are presents to be bought and fuckit lets eat some cow etc. so it's important for them to keep the shelves stocked. Empty shelves means nothing to sell, which means no profit. Some stock in the distribution center also has a short shelf life, known as "fast moving consumer goods" and if they are not placed on the shelves within a limited time become garbage (think lettuce and tomatoes, meat etc.) So, when the pickers go on strike over the busiest and most lucrative time of the year it's BIG problem. Which is why they do it. Every fucking year. They get temp workers in who try to keep the shelves stocked, but there is violence etc. from the strikers so they have to then hire extra security to protect the temp workers. All of this costs money and a loss of profit. So they are automating the picking and removing the problem, and the problem is People. They are spending a vast amount of money NOW to remove all problems that humans add to the business in the future. Then there is "shrinkage" which is a nice way to say the fucking humans are stealing shit out of the warehouse. Remove the majority of humans and replace them with robots and theft becomes less of a problem. It's no fucking wonder that automation is advancing so rapidly and spreading so much, it's to remove the problem in the system, which is us.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Ok... for those who have not been in Ontario since 2002 or so, here's the thing - Ontario's UBI was not UBI as much as it was a panic created pandering to the Liberal base to keep them in power after 16 years of poorly designed and implemented programs. This pandering was also stretched out to a higher minimum wage (which sounds good, until realizing those who were making a bit more than the minimum wage, are now at the minimum wage, and the rest of us are that much closer to it), and various other changes impacting those who are at the middle income, to direct money from them to those less fortunate - with little to no impact to those making upper incomes (landlords are a good example - most are not rich despite how it "feels").
For most people I know, including traditionally Liberal voters such as my family and myself, there was a realizing that a lot of what the Liberals did needed to be undone entirely so that it can be corrected in the future.
There's tonnes of people here drawing a line between Ford and Trump, and that is largely due to the amount of time we spend watching American politics. For those who have been here before 2002, they will remember the PC party implemented Drive Clean to reduce auto emissions and improve air quality, Ontario Works - which was a welfare program designed to remove barriers of entry to the workforce for those capable of working, including providing training and education programs (as opposed to just cutting a cheque), business growth vehicles for start-up entrepreneurs, etc etc etc. Sure, they screwed up a few times too, but overall - the PC is nothing like the US Republicans that most Ontario residents roll their eyes at when we watch the news. They lean MUCH closer to the centre.
This was shut down by Mr Ford II, who is also making elected jobs appointed and rewriting city charters to dictate what they are to do.
His late brother was the mayor of Toronto, and was the most recent precursor to your Mr. Trump. This Mr Ford arguably thinks messers Trump and Putin are heroes.
davecb@spamcop.net
Under the project, a single person could have received up to about $17,000 a year, minus half of any income he or she earned. "A couple could have received up to $24,000 per year." People with disabilities could have received an additional $6,000.
That is not UBI. That is is just how workers comp works right now by a different name.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Why, I don't understand. OT is already 150% of your hourly pay. And on top of that you want to make them have to pay more OT hours to get the same amount of work. Do you hate small businesses?
When I was a college age kid years ago, I was as liberal as they come. I wanted free stuff especially since I was only making minimum wage. The rich people can afford it, make them pay for it.
I applied myself in college for something that I was really interested in, computer programming. COBOL was the language of choice in CS at the time, which I used none of because my first programming job for the Federal Reserve Bank was in C. I switched jobs about every 2 to 4 years each time doubling what I was making a year. Well, it has leveled off fluctuating in between 5 and 6 figures for the last 10 years, even though I have changed jobs 3 times in that time period.
But the more money that I make the more conservative I've become because why should I be paying for other people's free stuff?
People that make excuses that didn't apply themselves in school in their teen years are the ones that are crying because they are not getting enough free stuff. I attended a high school reunion this year and it is easy to tell the liberals from the conservatives at the reunion. Everyone that did well in high school came dressed real nice, was in decent shape and drove a relatively nice car. The stoners and football players from high school that never played football after high school were in jeans and pull over shirts. Mostly bald, severely over weight and had problems catching their breath walking from the parking lot and bitched and complained all night long about Trump.
One of the better looking girls from high school that was still in great shape 15 years past hitting the wall, told me that she was surprised that I was the only one left from the class that had all my hair and that it also had very little gray in it. She had also mentioned that it was easy to pick out the ones from class that did well in life based on how well they did in high school.
Bottom line, do well in school in your teen years, learn structure in your life and you will do well and turn out conservative. If not, you will end up bitching and complaining all your life about how you are not getting enough free stuff and end up trying to vote in Bernie Sanders. Only the feminazi wanted Hillary. My own mom voted for Trump just because she couldn't vote for a woman for president. And my mom is well into her 80's. She also never had any contact with the Russians.
Now you are saying "What about disabled people". What about them? I have a disabled son that I fully take care of as should all families that has a disabled person. My mom has helped me out in the past as well as my ex'es parents too with my son and if my dad was still alive so would have he. That is what family is for and the government should have no business in what should be a family matter.
2 possibilities: Conservatives are afraid social programs will let the poor improve their lot so they structure them for failure or Conservatives fear someone will cheat the system better than they do
Interesting ideas, too bad they're demonstrably false. Conservatives on average donate considerably more money to charity than liberals, both as a whole and as a percentage of income. They also volunteer for charities more and give more blood. If everyone in the US would give as much blood as conservatives, the national supply would go up 45%.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...
My takeaway message isn't that conservatives want people to die in the street without food/healthcare/whatever, they just prefer smaller governments and prefer to let a combination of free market, local communities and/or charities to pick up the slack.
in order to continue their free ride at the expense of the people doing the work. The rich didn't get rich by honest efforts, most wealth is transferred not earned. The economic system is complete corrupt and is nothing more than modern slavery. We people are fools for letting ourselves be cheated by the unethical upper class.
That should have been the title.
Medicare / health care needs to be it's own as $1000/mo UBI can buy a junk plan and for some it may need $5000/mo for a good plan.
Overworking human machines causes them greater wear and lower productivity.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Overtime is 150% of your total compensation, including benefits costs. If you're only paying 1.5x hourly wage, you're committing wage theft and are liable for back pay.
Cutting hours and keeping minimum wage set to an annual wage (raising the hourly wage as part-time hours fall) is a way to reduce job availability. It's one way to increase unemployment, and is useful if you manage to drive the economy into a hyperinflation state where you have a labor shortage.
I've been trying to push policy to effectively cause -12% unemployment, which would be economically destructive and require making consumers poorer: you ensure a strong consumer base can buy, they can buy way more than we can supply with our labor force, everyone is too wealthy, nobody can find workers, and you put a stop to that before employers start doubling wages and prices by inflicting a price increase relative to wages.
You stop that madness by dragging unemployment back up to 3% or 5%, while driving working hours to 28 per week (7 hour days, 4 day weeks). People are still about as wealthy as they started, with the poorest being a good bit better off (higher wages, more stable employment, better welfare services).
It's not the kind of thing you just do because you think we should work less. You have to figure out how you're going to siphon off the wealth gains from productivity into free time instead of additional consumption. I had to solve the problem backwards: I figured out how to improve our economic efficiency, but caused a huge productivity spike (on paper), and needed a countermeasure.
You're right to be skeptical, but you have the reasoning wrong: small businesses will be fine, in as much as our economy will be fine.
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People who suggest this never worked a job where OT was offered or did but at a job where the skill level was high enough that it was cheaper to pay OT then to hire a fresh second person.
The hourly jobs I worked that offered 1.5 pay for OT severely restricted that OT. The jobs I worked that OT was paid as straight pay allowed us to work as many hours as we wanted. (That's probably different now due to ACA since they'd be required to offer me insurance)
Requiring less hours while increasing the pay for OT would force people to get a second job. And for you green people, that is more carbon footprint going to yet another job.
We'll always have Paris. And Americans will have twenty two Parises.
Ezekiel 23:20
If I know anything about government programs (both legislative/policy and application types), the only stuff that's ever shut down is what works. Boondoggles live forever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I just learned there was a place called "Paris" in Ontario, Canada.
We can't even fucking come up with original names for our own pieces of land.
#DeleteFacebook
Neither did Steve Jobs, neither does Zuckerberg. Seeing a pattern here? They get stock options, which have no taxable value until sold. They use said stock options to take out loans. Loans are considered a liability and they get to live a tax-free, life of luxury.
Congress needs to close this loophole and treat the loans as income. Loans for actual business operations could still be exempt. Loans backed by stock options used to buy up all of your neighbors houses so you can build a buffer zone around your mansion should be treated as income.
Let me be poor in a nation where the basic necessities of life are too cheap to meter. Where the jobs we don't want today are the breadwinners of tomorrow. Where the services of today's rich are available to the average person. It will all take care of itself folks, just relax and try not to screw up our economy by messing with it.
If you believe UBI can work for 300,000,000 people, then you're clearly and objectively bad at math, and furthermore believe in 'magical thinking'. This is just more proof that UBI is bullshit. Lazy people need to resign themselves to the fact that they'll be working until they drop dead, you're not getting a free ride through life like some NEET.
There is also a London, Ontario so they have both the island (England) and the continent (Europe) covered.
Just wait until you learn that naming cities after what the area produced, or the people that settled there from the old world was the norm in quite a few places. Now to really blow your mind: Kitchener, Ontario was named Berlin, Ontario until WWII happened.
Om, nomnomnom...
and the gop healthcare plan is jail / prison if you have an pre ex that the ER can't cover and they want to cut Medicare & Medicaid.
No, the GOP health care plan will KILL US ALL.
Right after the election of Trump will KILL US ALL.
Right after the Gorsuch nomination will KILL US ALL.
Right after Trump meeting with North Korea will KILL US ALL.
Right after Trump's approval of a new oil pipeline will KILL US ALL.
Right after Trump's lower tax rates will KILL US ALL.
Right after Trump revoking the Obamacare mandate will KILL US ALL.
I still haven't figured out how historically low unemployment and the first real wage growth since, coincidentally, before President Obama is going to KILL US ALL, but I'll pull something out of my ass soon enough.
+5 isn't enough. This. So much This.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But the flip side is that the reason the system exists in the first place is us. Specifically us buying stuff. With the money we made being paid to be part of the system.
Remove us from the system and the system can't financially exist unless we get paid some other way.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Minus a linear function of what you earn is dangerous. It says that you "split the wininngs". It made American welfare a trap for anyone below a critical activation energy. Now it just says "times up, you starve" for how it deals with the activation. Democrats - they don't do math and they don't eat their own cooking.
I think that hysteresis is more likely to not be as much of a trap. I think that a graded schedule that doesn't start with the most aggressive approach (aka equal division of the shared asset as is used in game theory for contested divorce cases), might do better. I would think about ADABoost, and remind you again to re-read "The goal" by Goldratt for an actual path toward actually ending poverty: think about Herbie.
Nice nick
A lot of Democrats are actually just basically neocons who don't hate gay people, or for whatever other reason happened to end up on the other 'team' in American politics. The widespread 'liberal' embrace of Frum show how neoliberal so much of the Democratic establishment is, since anyone actually progressive at all would gag at the idea. There's a reason why Hillary Clinton often used the slogan "America's Already Great"; there's a class of rich assholes who claim to be "progressive" but actually love the status quo, income inequality and endless wars included.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Really it comes down to a basic truth: This was an experiment, and while it doesn't eliminate UBI as a concept, this suggests this might not be a good way to do it. And that's FANTASTIC! Because now we know a way something won't work. This is why I want to see this type of thing: Actually anticipating a problem before it arrives, and trying solutions. This isn't a bad thing. It's a brilliant effort to get ahead of the problems.
And now we need to determine the lessons learned. Ideological presumptions have no place in this step.
I agree. Sometimes I have jobs where we end up doing 7-12's we would get more done with 6-10's in my opinion. I don't always get to make the calls. I don't believe 40 hour work weeks are being over worked.
"Overtime is 150% of your total compensation, including benefits costs. If you're only paying 1.5x hourly wage, you're committing wage theft and are liable for back pay."
Are you talking salary? I wouldn't ever work a salary job again. I'm talking hourly workers. So I don't understand what you mean by that please elaborate. I didn't read much of your wall of text I'm at work currently so I will respond to it after. This has me curious though.
40 hours is roughly the point where we start to see really deep declines in productivity, but we'd still see greater improvements with even shorter work weeks. And, by shortening the numbers of hours worked, we'd end up with more jobs to go around, and less filling the time between useful tasks.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Haha, seriously? Those jails will give you an early release if it means saving on medical expenses. Don't count on them for healthcare.
Cheap storage VM.
Ironically, Paris, ON is in Brant County, and actually affected by the change in the original article.
Wow, that seems almost borderline crazy.. I think a small nation should try it first, then one equivalent to the USA, maybe canada? before we try it.. but thats just my thoughts.
Giving away money is exensive. I could have told you that for free.
I wonder if anyone will figure out where the name "New York" comes from
And, you've also just answered the question of "why did Trump get elected." I find it funny that people call Trump a racist, but that only happened after he abandoned the democrats and their bullshit and ran on a republican ticket.
Om, nomnomnom...
I wonder if anyone will figure out where the name "New York" comes from
It was once "New Amsterdam"; Why they changed it, I can't say (people just liked it better that way)...
Ty, TMBG
No, salaried workers actually don't receive overtime pay at all right now for excess hours. Hourly workers are supposed to receive 1.5x their compensation--meaning if your employer pays you $30k ($15/hr) and spends $9k on healthcare and $1k on disability insurance, you need time-and-a-half based on $40k ($20/hr). They owe you $30/hr, not $22.50/hr. If you got a bonus, you also get time-and-half on that.
Many employers get this wrong. Enforcement is practically nonexistent.
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It's not crazy, just complex and new. We have things like unemployment insurance and disability pensions already; the policy I designed is basically a social insurance. Overall, it's a logistically-purified form of what the Nordic nations do, allowing us to manage means-tested welfares while also taking advantage of an egalitarian social insurance.
The Nordic nations make their basic social insurances more-egalitarian--unemployment insurance, for example, pays quite a bit and you can be on it for something like 7 years(!), while many services simply pay to anyone regardless of income. This is a kind of roundabout way to redistribute a portion of incomes to poverty areas, essentially making all your social insurances and welfare services leak by paying to people who don't really need it because the economy needs it. We can, instead, simply distribute a portion of incomes, and then not worry about the impacts on that when we adjust welfare services (separate the two functions).
Unless you just want to provide full food stamps and HUD housing assistance to everyone making under $40k, and phase it out until about $80k.
All the odd things that pop out are a consequence of improving economic marginal efficiencies. Imagine if your nation implemented an economic policy of raising unemployment and then imprisoning the poor. You raise taxes on the middle-class so they can buy less (fewer jobs), lock people up in prisons, and use the tax money to feed and manage them. Over time, your labor force adjusts (fewer immigrant laborers and babies born), and unemployment comes down from 10% to 5%.
Now: imagine if you elected someone who said, "What the hell are we all doing?!" and then got those people out of prison, provided them welfare, moved them into jobs so they're making an income that can be taxed, and reduced taxes. There's now more income, people can buy more than what they were being supplied in prison, and the prison economy integrates into the regular economy. Those prison people are still consumers of what they were in prison, but also now are consumers of things they didn't produce in prison. They make hardly a dent in unemployment themselves--about 0.2%--but you suddenly need 10% more labor to keep up with the purchasing power of your population, and you don't have it.
That's basically what the Dividend is: it resolves localized recessions and enables greater productivity; the shock is kind of ludicrous. You handle the shock by balancing it against a cut in productivity--doable by reducing working hours and retaining the same minimum annual wages.
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We elected Doug Ford, who promised he wouldn't cut services, but of course he was going to. He's Trump North. DoFo is just as bad. Remember how his brother made news in the US for being so awful?
"Basic," by definition means universal. For a universal basic income to have positive economic effect, it has to be, you know, universal. Universal Basic Income (UBI) puts some people on the dole, but most use it as a springboard for more lucrative dreams. There will always be some people on the dole, and you just have to accept it. If you want humanity to evolve past the stage of One-Must-Work-To-Live, you have to either eliminate the necessity to work, or expand your definition of work to include anything that promotes communal or personal growth. Did you dig a ditch? Great! Did you calculate your business's income-vs-expense? Awesome! Did you write a poem? You earned your cheque! Did you do nothing but watch YouTube... well, at least you consumed advertising, but try a little harder next time, eh?
... we could build an extension to the Detroit-Windsor tunnel that connects just south of the Rio Grande. Folks could start a new life in the People's Republic of Canuckistan.
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs)
Governments gave poor households small stipends to spend as they wished on condition that their children went to school or visited a doctor regularly
http://archive.is/72B2X
Casteism
And Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul
Was Constantinople
Nobody's business but the Turks
paywalled. have another link? i would like to read this. i do a lot of overtime some years.. probably not losing out on much considering all the toys i get given, but still curious.
It was originally settled by the Dutch, thus New Amsterdam. Later the English took over and changed it to New York.
It wasn't paywalled when I went there from Google. The paywall goes away if I delete cookies related to the site and then visit it from Google, but not in an incognito tab using a copy-and-paste of the URL. That's a violation of Google's policies.
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I use safescript so I'm sure it's something with that and that's even more of a reason not to allow their addresses
Over the weekend I was just thinking about the subject of UBI and how it might be best paired with a universal job guarantee. Everyone would qualify for a monthly allowance (say $1,000) based upon meeting the job requirements. This could be anything from 8 hours of doing community service (volunteering at the hospital, reading to kids, cleaning parks, painting murals, etc) to working your normal fulltime job. Anyone who wants the UBI just needs to provide some sort of work and would be guaranteed such a position if they don't currently work. Elderly and disabled would be excluded from this requirement, or may only require 4 hours a month or something. Students can still go to college and qualify for some income (8 hours over a month shouldn't be too taxing) and it would discourage receiving UBI without providing a return to society. It could encourage a drop in homelessness (you work your 8 hours and would have enough to cover low-end rent and food, and could even continue panhandling if you choose). It isn't a magic bullet but could reduce our costs in ineffective entitlement programs while still providing humane assistance to those struggling, while not disincentivizing work. This paired with the flat tax example posted further up might be a real option.