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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.
Or a 3rd possibility: Ms. MacLeod realized that there simply is not enough tax revenue to provide a UBI, without dramatically increasing taxes to a point that is unsustainable.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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
The prisons require at least 3 shifts of staff.
Staff numbers per prisoner need to be high enough for safety.
Prisons just cost a LOT to build, maintain, and run.
And then there are the demands to lock people up for longer to "teach them good".
So they same people who begrudge anyone a liveable benefit seems happy to pay 5 times the amount to lock people up.
And this is in addition to all the other social issues and costs that causes (fatherless children, etc et etc etc)
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.
How the hell is the idea as old as society itself when we didn't even have printed circuit boards until the turn of the last century?
People who believe that we will always need people to work really need to get a fuller understanding of the history of labor. Will there always be some people who need to do something? Probably. However, the proportion of people doing the hardest work will shrink, drastically. That's how things have always worked, and it's the root of your argument. We need almost nobody to be a farmer, so we invented a million new jobs.
The thing about general automation is that we're coming close to a point where thinking is the job. If we can automate that, and we're already starting to, then automating jobs where you don't need to think, which is most of them, will be a breeze. The only obstacle to it this very moment is how expensive a good robot is. If their cost drops below what workers demand, that job is dead to human hands.
Humanity will always serve a purpose. How could we not? We impose purpose upon existence itself, that's what we do. When what is considered "work" that human beings are needed for is so different from what it is now that it is no longer demeaning, unhealthy, or necessary to keep a roof over your head, this argument will be pointless.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Due to having substantially lower overhead, the program would cost less than Social Security does. Medicare could stay, I think; health insurance is a different kind of thing. Those "able bodied young people?" They have old relatives. They'll be fuckin' fine.
Are you saying people in prison should be slowly starved to death or something?
No, just that most of them don't belong in prison. We have technology like tracking anklets and subcutaneous RFID chips that allows non-violent offenders to "serve their time" outside of prison. For instance, they could be sentenced to clean bedpans in a nursing home for 60 hours per week. Or a white collar criminal could teach finance or computer skills to low income people.
There are plenty of better options than prison for most offenders. Other countries have a tiny fraction of our incarceration rate, and end up with lower recidivism rates. Prisons are extremely expensive, waste human potential, and generate more crime than they deter.
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?
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.
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.