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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!
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.
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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.