What is it about people who have never experienced socialism claiming that it is so bad? Most of the G8 has socialized medicine and their citizens wouldn't have it any other way. And yet people in the united states would rather pay insurance companies money to deny them medical care - more money per capita to cover a smaller portion of the population than any of the G8 spend on universal coverage?
Do you pay a toll each time you walk on the sidewalk? You would if it were owned by a for-profit corporation. Same with water, fire, police, etc. You'd be hounded to death by micro-payments for everything, INCLUDING breathing - because, after all, it costs money for pollution controls to keep the air breathable.
So, get people to sweep the streets. Great way to put municipal workers, who actually know how to drive the street sweeper, out of a job. "Bt that's okay - they'll be able to collect UBI in return for sweeping the streets." Any you create another layer of bureaucracy, because now you need more supervisors to supervise untrained people to do the job than you would with trained, experienced people.
Your idea won't work. It will just turn a few good existing jobs into crappy make-work schemes for many while lowering the quality of services.
But hey, let's do the same with the fire department. Who needs trained professionals when we can force people on UBI to do the job for free?
One of the functions of government is to transfer wealth. You don't think those roads you drive on magically appeared by themselves? People were paid to build them, with money obtained by taxes. Same as education - another transfer of wealth from taxpayers to teachers. Same with police and fire, street lighting, etc. If it's a public service, and it costs money to pay people to do it, there's going to either be a transfer of wealth via taxation, or printing up money to pay for it, or loans that will be paid back to the lenders, again via a transfer of wealth by taxation or printing up money.
So ultimately, all government spending is either paid via a transfer of wealth or the printing press.
Following World War II tax increases, top marginal individual tax rates stayed near or above 90%, and the effective tax rate at 70% for the highest incomes (few paid the top rate), until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. Kennedy explicitly called for a top rate of 65 percent, but added that it should be set at 70 percent if certain deductions weren't phased out at the top of the income scale.[24][25][26] The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988. It slowly increased to 39.6% in 2000, then was reduced to 35% for the period 2003 through 2012.[23] Corporate tax rates were lowered from 48% to 46% in 1981 (PL 97-34), then to 34% in 1986 (PL 99-514), and increased to 35% in 1993.
And yet the RIGHT to be anonymous is nowhere in the constitution. Try to keep up. If it's not explicitly in the constitution, it's something that can be legislated either way, including at lower levels of government. That's how the law works.
A well-designed UBI equates to freedom. Freedom from exploitative employers. Freedom to launch a small business or develop an invention despite a lack of employment income. Liberation from the "poverty trap," where taking a paying job means surrendering welfare and other benefits... Fact is,
Fact is that nobody has shown that giving people lots of free stuff produces anything other than poverty in the long run.
So show the controlled studies that prove that giving people free stuff results in poverty in the long run. Bill Gates got lots of free stuff from his folks. Seems that people born in privilege do okay financially.
It will only work in countries which don't rely on immigration to gain wealth. It's crazy we give away citizenship in 5 years and then potentially give away a life time of free money. I am doubtful of loyalty immigrants have to their new country of 5 years. Do they care if it succeeds or not? They didn't care to much about their home countries so they left. This will be abused, and people will seek to abuse it, because no true Canadian identity, everyone is in it for themselves, and everyone wants to exploit for their benefit.
It would probably work in places where national pride is real and not engineered from the capital city.
WTF is "no true Canadian identity?" Better yet, what is "Canadian identity?" You want a test to see who is a "true Canadian?" We saw last week that most Canadians were against the house motion condemning Islamaphobia - so most Canadians have proven themselves to be racist ignorant fuckheads on that topic.
"They didn't care much about their home countries so they left." Well, that applies to every single human being on the planet who isn't living in Africa, because that's where humans originated.
The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which its captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany. After they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the refugees were finally accepted in various European countries, and historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II.
And then we have stupid Conservative leadership candidates who (Maxime Bernier) want to use the military to stop illegal refugees from crossing into Canada - how? Shoot them? They're already being arrested upon entry - what more do you want? Deny them the right to apply as refugees? The situation in the US is deteriorating - we don't have to march in goose-step with them.
And Canada's version of Donald Trump - Kevin O'Leary - wants to suspend provisions of the Constitution via the notwithstanding clause. I'm not okay with either of them - and you can be damn sure that at several provinces will make noises about seceding if this becomes a reality, same as if they try to ban abortion or implement other parts of the ultra-right agenda.
Canada is supposed to be better than this shit. We're obviously not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be.
Universality isn't what you think it is. You still pay income tax on that UBI - and at a certain earned income point, you've got it all clawed back - without the bureaucracy of a means test. It's self-balancing under the existing tax code.
Not all UBI programs are created equal. UBI is taxable income, and as your income increases, more is clawed back in income tax. Also, test programs like the one in Canada in the '70s reduced UBI payments by 50 cents for every dollar of earned income, so that if someone earned twice the basic UBI payment, they were no longer collecting UBI. The "Universal" was that the program was open to everyone, not that everyone would automatically receive it - just those who needed it as a form of "top-up" for deficient incomes, or as an income to meet their basic needs.
But of course, people with knee-jerk reactions against the idea don't do their research - they just parrot right-wing and libertarian talking points, because "I've got mine, Jack, so fuck off" is so much easier than actual research and thinking.
If they want any luxury beyond this, let them go out and work for it, like the rest of us.
Time for a reality check. "Like the rest of us" is already a minority. Slightly less than half the total population works. Total working = 152,528 (February 2017). Total population = 325,874,000. So the total working population is 46.85%. And it's going to get worse as more people continue to retire than are born. And that's not including projected job losses in the millions as automation play the grim reaper to those jobs that are left.
It's already de facto legal in many areas. At one rally, a guy toking a joint went up to a cop and said "Aren't you going to arrest me?" The cop said, "Why? Nobody's filed a complaint."
Either legalize it and control it, or ban tobacco as well. Now, I'd prefer the latter (because it all stinks like shit) but banning only one of the two is hypocritical.
And yet they're all people who live in the Americas. So by definition, they're just as much "Americans" as anyone living in any other part of the Americas. Same as people living in Germany, France, Spain, etc. are all Europeans. And with the way the USA is going, you can hardly call it the United States of anything.
With UBI you'd find it easier to look for a job that you'd enjoy more - and yet you're against it. Must be that, deep down, either you really do like your job, or you don't like ANY type of job. Your pick.
UBI would increase job mobility, which means that a job you might enjoy more, but that is currently being held by someone who feels that they can't risk quitting to try to find something better suited to them, or to create their own job, or to take time to retrain, could more readily open up. But again, you're like the turkeys who vote for thanksgiving because "that's what happens every thanksgiving." Too afraid to realize that YOU will benefit.
And not just you - society as a whole benefits when people are doing work that better suits their talents. Increased productivity, lower violence, better health, fewer hospital visits, better educational outcomes for children (and yes, these have been proven outcomes) benefits everyone who is not part of the slave-prole-exploiting class.
Just another example of "be careful what you ask for - you might get it." Remember everyone clamoring for sex robots. Well, get ready because robots are going to give you the f*cking over of your life.
Off-shored manufacturing jobs are also falling to robots - just ask Foxconn.
26 May 2016: Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots.
One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post.
Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit."
You seem to forget how that worked out - the Terminator was captured and re-programmed. It has no loyalty to it's owner - it's just a robot. And the more robot guards you have, the more likely that one of them is going to be hacked. (and it only takes one).
And yet humans are becoming obsolete every day. The tech doesn't have to be 100% reliable - just have a reliability that is sufficient to save money after lawsuits for damages. Same as the Ford Pinto gas tank - they didn't bother to fix the gas tank because they calculated it would be cheaper to settle any law suits.
The bean counters don't care about you - and they'll care even less when they too are AIs running in a server farm.
And yet nowhere do you refute my argument that there is no right to anonymous, consequence-free speech. What a fucktard - read your constitution and try to find it.
The ONLY universal law is the law of the jungle. And keep in mind that the USA gained its' independence because of terrorists who were guilty of treason. If you stand in the way of my survival, you either negotiate something we both can live with, or else. I don't consider my survival under such conditions as a "total disaster." And you won't be around to consider sh*t because you'll be too busy arguing about how that's not right.
Automation has nothing to do with it. There's no reason why someone can't turn your defense mechanisms against you, and the more of a prick you are, the more you incentivize others to do so. So be an anti-social heartless prick - please - it will be good for the gene pool. The fewer the hypocritical libertarians there are, the better.
You'll learn that your value isn't what you have, but how you get along with others.
Your example is contrived, and has NOTHING to do with bullshit detection. You also fail to understand that self-determination is a right, not just a privilege reserved for the cognoscenti. People have a right to be willfully stupid, as long as they are willing to pay the consequences of their willful ignorance. Same as they have the right to euthanasia, suicide, abortion, sex change, divorce, same-sex partners, polygamy, polyandry, and group families, and everything else under the name of personal autonomy - "my body, my choice." If 10 people decide to form a "family" and raise all their children together as one family unit, you have no say in the matter.
The only justification for intervention is when it manifestly negatively affects others who have not consented, or individuals who cannot consent, such as children. Let the morons vote for Trump - as predicted, they are destroying the Tea Partiers and other extremists in the GOP from inside - something that their opponents could never do.
Slashdot Mirror
What is it about people who have never experienced socialism claiming that it is so bad? Most of the G8 has socialized medicine and their citizens wouldn't have it any other way. And yet people in the united states would rather pay insurance companies money to deny them medical care - more money per capita to cover a smaller portion of the population than any of the G8 spend on universal coverage?
Do you pay a toll each time you walk on the sidewalk? You would if it were owned by a for-profit corporation. Same with water, fire, police, etc. You'd be hounded to death by micro-payments for everything, INCLUDING breathing - because, after all, it costs money for pollution controls to keep the air breathable.
So, get people to sweep the streets. Great way to put municipal workers, who actually know how to drive the street sweeper, out of a job. "Bt that's okay - they'll be able to collect UBI in return for sweeping the streets." Any you create another layer of bureaucracy, because now you need more supervisors to supervise untrained people to do the job than you would with trained, experienced people.
Your idea won't work. It will just turn a few good existing jobs into crappy make-work schemes for many while lowering the quality of services.
But hey, let's do the same with the fire department. Who needs trained professionals when we can force people on UBI to do the job for free?
Lincoln: If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?
Listener: 5
Lincoln: No, 4. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
So ultimately, all government spending is either paid via a transfer of wealth or the printing press.
Following World War II tax increases, top marginal individual tax rates stayed near or above 90%, and the effective tax rate at 70% for the highest incomes (few paid the top rate), until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. Kennedy explicitly called for a top rate of 65 percent, but added that it should be set at 70 percent if certain deductions weren't phased out at the top of the income scale.[24][25][26] The top marginal tax rate was lowered to 50% in 1982 and eventually to 28% in 1988. It slowly increased to 39.6% in 2000, then was reduced to 35% for the period 2003 through 2012.[23] Corporate tax rates were lowered from 48% to 46% in 1981 (PL 97-34), then to 34% in 1986 (PL 99-514), and increased to 35% in 1993.
And yet the RIGHT to be anonymous is nowhere in the constitution. Try to keep up. If it's not explicitly in the constitution, it's something that can be legislated either way, including at lower levels of government. That's how the law works.
Fact is that nobody has shown that giving people lots of free stuff produces anything other than poverty in the long run.
So show the controlled studies that prove that giving people free stuff results in poverty in the long run. Bill Gates got lots of free stuff from his folks. Seems that people born in privilege do okay financially.
Racist much?
Actually, I kind of LIKE slacker news - it's more reflective of slashdot's users - slacking off at work to post on slashdot is de rigeur.
It will only work in countries which don't rely on immigration to gain wealth. It's crazy we give away citizenship in 5 years and then potentially give away a life time of free money. I am doubtful of loyalty immigrants have to their new country of 5 years. Do they care if it succeeds or not? They didn't care to much about their home countries so they left. This will be abused, and people will seek to abuse it, because no true Canadian identity, everyone is in it for themselves, and everyone wants to exploit for their benefit.
It would probably work in places where national pride is real and not engineered from the capital city.
WTF is "no true Canadian identity?" Better yet, what is "Canadian identity?" You want a test to see who is a "true Canadian?" We saw last week that most Canadians were against the house motion condemning Islamaphobia - so most Canadians have proven themselves to be racist ignorant fuckheads on that topic.
"They didn't care much about their home countries so they left." Well, that applies to every single human being on the planet who isn't living in Africa, because that's where humans originated.
This was a crime against humanity, and the USA and Canada were equally guilty:
The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which its captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany. After they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the refugees were finally accepted in various European countries, and historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II.
And then we have stupid Conservative leadership candidates who (Maxime Bernier) want to use the military to stop illegal refugees from crossing into Canada - how? Shoot them? They're already being arrested upon entry - what more do you want? Deny them the right to apply as refugees? The situation in the US is deteriorating - we don't have to march in goose-step with them.
And Canada's version of Donald Trump - Kevin O'Leary - wants to suspend provisions of the Constitution via the notwithstanding clause. I'm not okay with either of them - and you can be damn sure that at several provinces will make noises about seceding if this becomes a reality, same as if they try to ban abortion or implement other parts of the ultra-right agenda.
Canada is supposed to be better than this shit. We're obviously not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be.
Universality isn't what you think it is. You still pay income tax on that UBI - and at a certain earned income point, you've got it all clawed back - without the bureaucracy of a means test. It's self-balancing under the existing tax code.
Not all UBI programs are created equal. UBI is taxable income, and as your income increases, more is clawed back in income tax. Also, test programs like the one in Canada in the '70s reduced UBI payments by 50 cents for every dollar of earned income, so that if someone earned twice the basic UBI payment, they were no longer collecting UBI. The "Universal" was that the program was open to everyone, not that everyone would automatically receive it - just those who needed it as a form of "top-up" for deficient incomes, or as an income to meet their basic needs.
But of course, people with knee-jerk reactions against the idea don't do their research - they just parrot right-wing and libertarian talking points, because "I've got mine, Jack, so fuck off" is so much easier than actual research and thinking.
If they want any luxury beyond this, let them go out and work for it, like the rest of us.
Time for a reality check. "Like the rest of us" is already a minority. Slightly less than half the total population works. Total working = 152,528 (February 2017). Total population = 325,874,000. So the total working population is 46.85%. And it's going to get worse as more people continue to retire than are born. And that's not including projected job losses in the millions as automation play the grim reaper to those jobs that are left.
It's already de facto legal in many areas. At one rally, a guy toking a joint went up to a cop and said "Aren't you going to arrest me?" The cop said, "Why? Nobody's filed a complaint."
Either legalize it and control it, or ban tobacco as well. Now, I'd prefer the latter (because it all stinks like shit) but banning only one of the two is hypocritical.
And yet they're all people who live in the Americas. So by definition, they're just as much "Americans" as anyone living in any other part of the Americas. Same as people living in Germany, France, Spain, etc. are all Europeans. And with the way the USA is going, you can hardly call it the United States of anything.
With UBI you'd find it easier to look for a job that you'd enjoy more - and yet you're against it. Must be that, deep down, either you really do like your job, or you don't like ANY type of job. Your pick.
UBI would increase job mobility, which means that a job you might enjoy more, but that is currently being held by someone who feels that they can't risk quitting to try to find something better suited to them, or to create their own job, or to take time to retrain, could more readily open up. But again, you're like the turkeys who vote for thanksgiving because "that's what happens every thanksgiving." Too afraid to realize that YOU will benefit.
And not just you - society as a whole benefits when people are doing work that better suits their talents. Increased productivity, lower violence, better health, fewer hospital visits, better educational outcomes for children (and yes, these have been proven outcomes) benefits everyone who is not part of the slave-prole-exploiting class.
In the long term, you're fsck'd
Just another example of "be careful what you ask for - you might get it." Remember everyone clamoring for sex robots. Well, get ready because robots are going to give you the f*cking over of your life.
26 May 2016: Apple and Samsung supplier Foxconn has reportedly replaced 60,000 factory workers with robots.
One factory has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots", a government official told the South China Morning Post. Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region, added: "More companies are likely to follow suit."
You forgot another option - unemployed and educated. The times, they are a'changin'.
You seem to forget how that worked out - the Terminator was captured and re-programmed. It has no loyalty to it's owner - it's just a robot. And the more robot guards you have, the more likely that one of them is going to be hacked. (and it only takes one).
And yet humans are becoming obsolete every day. The tech doesn't have to be 100% reliable - just have a reliability that is sufficient to save money after lawsuits for damages. Same as the Ford Pinto gas tank - they didn't bother to fix the gas tank because they calculated it would be cheaper to settle any law suits.
The bean counters don't care about you - and they'll care even less when they too are AIs running in a server farm.
"I am not gay" - said every single closeted gay man ever.
And yet nowhere do you refute my argument that there is no right to anonymous, consequence-free speech. What a fucktard - read your constitution and try to find it.
The ONLY universal law is the law of the jungle. And keep in mind that the USA gained its' independence because of terrorists who were guilty of treason. If you stand in the way of my survival, you either negotiate something we both can live with, or else. I don't consider my survival under such conditions as a "total disaster." And you won't be around to consider sh*t because you'll be too busy arguing about how that's not right.
Automation has nothing to do with it. There's no reason why someone can't turn your defense mechanisms against you, and the more of a prick you are, the more you incentivize others to do so. So be an anti-social heartless prick - please - it will be good for the gene pool. The fewer the hypocritical libertarians there are, the better.
You'll learn that your value isn't what you have, but how you get along with others.
Your example is contrived, and has NOTHING to do with bullshit detection. You also fail to understand that self-determination is a right, not just a privilege reserved for the cognoscenti. People have a right to be willfully stupid, as long as they are willing to pay the consequences of their willful ignorance. Same as they have the right to euthanasia, suicide, abortion, sex change, divorce, same-sex partners, polygamy, polyandry, and group families, and everything else under the name of personal autonomy - "my body, my choice." If 10 people decide to form a "family" and raise all their children together as one family unit, you have no say in the matter.
The only justification for intervention is when it manifestly negatively affects others who have not consented, or individuals who cannot consent, such as children. Let the morons vote for Trump - as predicted, they are destroying the Tea Partiers and other extremists in the GOP from inside - something that their opponents could never do.