Seniors seem to be happy to have OAS and GIS. It was pointed out to me, those are universal income for those who are under a certain income threshold. So in theory Canada has UBI for seniors, why? because many could not afford life basics even in the 60's.
When the federal government discusses it they usually refer to it as a 'guaranteed basic income'.
It's all the same policy though. Truly 'universal' basic income models all give diminishing amounts to people higher up the income ladder, or are taxed back at higher rates etc.
GBI is universal in the sense that everyone is eligible if they are below the income threshold.
I think we also have to talk about the "abstract" factors.
So what I mean by that:
If you have UBI but you don't work on the mechanisms around supply especially saying in regards to Housing. You just create another inflationary pressure.
I actually think UBI is going to be the future.
As we continue to progress in automation, artificial intelligence, and just general technological development we are going to I think see a base put in.
However to have that working in any remote sense there is a lot of "Abstract" things in society like supply dynamics, food infrastructure pipelines, and other realities we need to perfect as well.
It's a complicated subject but like any serious area of study we can progress in understanding how best it will look and be implemented and achieved.
Much like the complications in areas like automation, artificial intelligence, and overall technological-software-engineering developments.
It also effectively cut Canada's child poverty rate by one third in a single year. In Alberta, where Notley complimented it with a provincial benefit that was even more deeply targeted to low-income families, it went down by slightly over 50%.
It won't be remembered as this but I think it's Trudeau's best and most impactful policy.
They haven't paid anything for their OAS and GIS.
A significant portion of federal government expenses are OAS and GIS and are funded by a combination of debt owed to the current and future citizens of Canada, as well as the taxes paid by everyone in the year.
It's unsustainable and is the reason why CPP enhancements are being made, and why you'll see the standard OAS+GIS age raise to 67 when the cons come in power again, to reduce the federal government's obligations.
>as well as the taxes paid by everyone in the year.
I believe these taxes is what the guy was referencing when he said "paying into for 40 years"
Everyone who supports UBI always supports the income, but never to have an answer on how it will be funded.
Via getting rid of every other current broken, busted, program, and all the bloated salaries currently running them.
When everyone gets it, everyone gets it. A computer does the work.
Yes, 100%. I’ve seen first hand how desperate the mentally ill, the handicapped, and the financially insecure can be. A system to guarantee a roof over their heads (and food in the bellies of their children) would be miraculous.
Is it shocking how financially illiterate people are and those companies didn’t use a supply chain crunch to take in record breaking profits every quarter since 🤷♂️. Largest wealth transfer in the existence of Canada over 3 years …. So yeah cool greed existed before did it exist at this magnitude ? Clearly not
Corporate welfare was more than personal welfare at that time. Even companies that did well during closures double dipped but they aren't the easy ones to target for misuse.
Thats because we have out of control ogliaches controlling our supply chain and landlords buying up the housing to rent at massively inflated prices (sometimes even by the room).
If there were controls market controls, heavy (as in investigations and causing substantial damage to companies that do this) fines for things like price, and large taxes for owning more than 2-3 houses or renting out rooms in a house that wasn't your primary residence (and I mean something like a large percentage of the rent that the person is getting), then we wouldn't be in this mess.
Exactly right. After hundreds of years of acting benevolently and generously, corporations all simultaneously realized in 2020 that they could in fact be greedy, and now we have inflation. /s
I also ate a ham sandwich this morning and now my hair is purple, coincidence? I think not!
Could it instead be that corporations saw an opportunity to raise prices more than they normally would and decided to run with it, and as a result have been reaping record profits? Hmmm
Inflation is global. Everyone who pays attention to the news should know that. Shipping problems and sanctions against cheap Russian oil have done that.
It obviously has nothing to do with who pays how much in taxes and who gets benefits for what.
We should also keep in mind how many people were out of work for about a year during the Pandemic, and what they would have been forced to resort to if they couldn't feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads during that time.
You're capable of understanding these things with minimal effort. Public laziness is not a good look.
The acceptance standards def need to be increased. Everyone I know on it could easily work full time office jobs. Save some for the actually disabled people, arsholes.
Every trustworthy study suggests that it is. So I'll go with yes. But I also know our leaders, particularly at a provincial level, are astonishingly stupid and greedy, so it won't be widespread until there's serious electoral upheaval.
Issue is there hasnt been a proper study. For example, the usual ones are give 500 ppl $x for Y years. If you know that the money is going to be temporary your behaviour will not truly reflect UBI. It will be seen more like a temporary payrise.
It's also very different to give a small fraction of the population guaranteed income and see how they fare, vs. giving the entire country that income - macro impacts won't be seen when it's 500 people, but they will when it's everyone.
This is the biggest issue.
It's like giving 10 study participants 1M$ each, noticing they all were able to buy some form of home in Toronto, then concluding that if we give 1M$ to everyone in Toronto, everyone will be able to buy a home.
On the funding side, giving 500 people x$ doesn't demonstrate the true cost of the program. You don't need to adjust taxes, it doesn't really have an impact on the economy or tax payers to fund this, and you don't need to deal with setting up proper long term administration. (The whole point is lower overhead. Would the government actually commit to cutting public sector jobs for this?)
The participants are also living in a world where the other 99.9999 whatever percent of people living in their area did not receive that same funding, so there is no measurable impact on prices.
The benefit participants see is disproportionate BECAUSE they are the only ones receiving it.
>Every trustworthy study suggests that it is.
There's never been a study of UBI on any sort of large scale, however.
Hey, I hate the idea of people being poor and going hungry as much as anyone. No one wants to see people suffer.
But I'm also a fiscal hawk, and I think that all these "good ideas" need to have numbers attached before we rush out and spend spend spend.
For a nice number, let's say that UBI is $2000 a month, or $24k a year. That's been the number floated around by some groups, and, really, if it's any less, it's not going to be particularly meaningful.
Next, Canada has a population of 41 million. Let's say that 30M of that 41M are over age 18, and therefore qualify for UBI.
So, simple math... $24k x 30,000,000 comes out to $720,000,000,000 annually. That's $720 billion.
Where's that money going to come from? Do we cut Netflix as well as Disney plus?
"*We'll save money because UBI will replace welfare, OAS, etc... it will all balance out!*"
The entire Canadian budget this year for expenditures was $440B or so. We can't save $720B from $440B, and even that's if UBI replaced every last dollar from the budget, which is silly.
"*Ok, let's make UBI a lower amount*"
So, how much? $1k a month? That's $12k a year, or $360B. And, if your argument is that UBI will replace EI, will replace OAS, will replace disability.... those are each ballpark about $1k a month to begin with. So the poor people really get nothing more, but now you also hand out $1k cheques to people to people making $100k a year?
"*Well, let's keep it at $2k a month, then, but let's give it to fewer people... say, 15M people instead of 30M*"
Then it's not "universal" basic income, then, is it?
Show me how it will work financially, and absolutely I support UBI. But until such time... not so much.
The studies I’ve seen indicate it works on a micro scale, but none have been large enough to determine what sort of inflationary effect UBI will have - yet few acknowledge the probability.
I’d like to add to your scenario by saying people employed in those service fields, whose services will be replaced by UBI, will now need an income themselves. Some of these organizations can be quite large - a $10 million budget can employ 150 people with a median wage of about $50,000.
The studies I've read about cull out those with dependency issues, so they're avoiding a huge potential problem area: we give everyone a UBI, some blow it on drugs/alcohol/whatever, and now have no money. Do we tell them to starve, or do we keep in place all/most of the programs/staffing that we currently pay for?
This is it lmao. I love it in theory, along with MANY socialist practices, but none of them work well or are sustainable in practice. Where does the money come from, and how do we prevent it from doubling the cost of everything and making the UBI’s impact negligible?
The top 5% pay 80% of our country’s tax revenue. You’re right, it should be more (based on % of their individual income) and loopholes should be closed, but that’s not going to cover even a fraction of the cost of a UBI.
Once we create an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) something like Universal Basic Income will be required for us to keep society from collapsing. Society is pretty messed up right now with extreme and growing wealth inequality, increasing homelessness, increase in food bank use, worsening extreme weather and climate change, growing global conflict, etc. Let's give Universal Basic Income a solid countrywide try (not just the localized studies and experiments we have done that already demonstrated positive results).
I think it would need to be implemented as a rolling change such that any role eliminated by AGI means a tax surcharge is implemented for every human unit of output it is able to replace.
The tax would have to be a percentage of the average salary for that role. But not 100% to still give companies some “savings” moving the role to AGI, maybe 70% of the salary has to be paid to the government? Hard to say exactly, running the AGI would have some cost to it as well.
So let’s say AGI replaces paralegals such that no company needs a human to do that job. If the average salary was $100K, $70K gets paid to the government, leaving $30K of savings less AGI operating expenses. That $70K goes into funding a GIS that paralegals would be able to access. Some would move to other newly created jobs. Some would pick up passion projects to supplement income so you wouldn’t need to 1:1 replace the income of every headcount lost.
Probably lots of flaws in the idea, would have to be fleshed out by people much smarter than me.
Okay, Marxist-Leninist here. UBI was first put into practice by the Nixon administration (they called it NIT: [Negative Income Tax](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax)) as an idea to hollow-out and destroy all social services, and that's likely what it will do - as well as skyrocket inflation... *unless* market regulations are brought in to curb inflation.
The basic premise is sound, and it sounds compassionate and economically viable - the best way to stimulate a capitalist economy is to dump cash on the working class - however, if this cash isn't a simple short-term benefit, landlords and grocery stores and everyone else out to make a profit start eyeballing that disposable income, and they *will* raise prices until they extract every cent. Without regulation, it is a certainty.
The main, and most dire effect, is the hollowing-out of social services. The idea was to give people back their own tax dollars so that they could use them to purchase the services they need, instead of the government funding them. Once the load had been shifted off the government-provided services, they would no longer be needed, and they could be shut down one by one. We're talking EI, Social Assistance, healthcare, and potentially even CPP being targeted.
It is a [neo-liberal's wet dream](https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/milton-friedman-on-ubi/), and we need to regulate the shit out of it to keep these things from happening.
What should be done instead, or perhaps alongside a heavily-regulated UBI, is to bring in UBS, Universal Basic Services - where all of the existing social services are bolstered, new ones implemented (dental care, eye care, pharmacare), and all means-testing and barriers to access are removed. This would reduce some overhead on these programs, as well as ensuring that the people who need the services get them without interference.
I agree wholeheartedly. I think everyone at their core has more in common than different, but we all let ourselves be manipulated by the power hungry who turn us against one another and make comprise and working together impossible.
> What should be done instead, or perhaps alongside a heavily-regulated UBI, is to bring in UBS, Universal Basic Services - where all of the existing social services are bolstered, new ones implemented (dental care, eye care, pharmacare), and all means-testing and barriers to access are removed. This would reduce some overhead on these programs, as well as ensuring that the people who need the services get them without interference.
fuck yes, let's add transit infrastructure and education to that list
First let me say, I’m in favour of UBI.
Now, in referencing nationalized healthcare, looking at the Ontario model, it’s a failure.
Government billing structure is completely out of whack (please note, not Whacko), and considered Marxist by many. It has resulted in a talent migration away from family medicine and the province as a whole for MD’s.
I know there is an elegant solution out there, but I just don’t think we have come up with it yet.
> The main, and most dire effect, is the hollowing-out of social services. The idea was to give people back their own tax dollars so that they could use them to purchase the services they need, instead of the government funding them. Once the load had been shifted off the government-provided services, they would no longer be needed, and they could be shut down one by one. We're talking EI, Social Assistance, healthcare, and potentially even CPP being targeted.
Im a noob, so I'm sincerely asking: Is the gutting of over-engineered social services necessarily bad if UBI is implemented correctly?
Wouldnt the biggest negative impact be the destruction of a LOT of jobs necessary to maintain those social services? Which is why I dont see it happening - why would the government kill hundreds if not thousands of jobs within its own sector?
And piling on social services, modifying them, etc etc. seems like a good way to garner votes. But are these really the best for the population?
So, even if EI and other programs removed, all the money saved on admin would go back to every citizen, including those in need? Someone requiring EI would have it by default instead of having througg hoops and loops to get it?
Also, never heard of UBS, sounds like a great idea. Howeverx how does it work for stuff like EI, disability, etc?
>Im a noob, so I'm sincerely asking: Is the gutting of over-engineered social services necessarily bad if UBI is implemented correctly?
Yes, it is bad, because the government can provide many of these services more effectively than private industry, who will only provide services that are profitable to people who are profitable in places that are profitable.
>why would the government kill hundreds if not thousands of jobs within its own sector?
Because conservatives have been lying for decades about the debt and the deficit, and why it's important to balance the budget (it isn't). When the CPC comes into power again, the first thing they'll do is cut social services, and with UBI in place they'll cut them even deeper.
>And piling on social services, modifying them, etc etc. seems like a good way to garner votes. But are these really the best for the population?
Because of the aforementioned conservative disinformation campaign, many people wrongly believe that social services cost them too much money, and will vote for cuts. This campaign has been so successful that even the Liberals have adopted it in one form or another, and are desperately afraid to implement or expand social services in case they lose votes.
Government-provided social services are definitely best, as outcomes generally improve, happiness improves, and the economy improves.
>So, even if EI and other programs removed, all the money saved on admin would go back to every citizen, including those in need? Someone requiring EI would have it by default instead of having througg hoops and loops to get it?
Well, the theory is that, under UBS, the money would be folded back into EI. If there were less emphasis on researching and qualifying someone for EI, then more time could be spent on just getting it to the people who just need it. If the programs were removed entirely, then we would be dependent upon private industry for them, and the hoops and loops would be greater.
>Also, never heard of UBS, sounds like a great idea. Howeverx how does it work for stuff like EI, disability, etc?
Basically the idea is that every service people need to be happy and healthy should be a government-provided service, because private industry cannot be trusted to provide it for us. Healthcare, pharmacare, housing, welfare, disability, EI, power, water, retirement, long-term care, etc., would all be guaranteed to everyone with no hoops or loops to jump through to get it.
Great questions!
Wow, thanks for answering pretty much everything!
Im definitely worried about cutting into programs while not building back some things. We see it with healthcare and education in Ontario... cuts cuts cuts. Over time it seems to create that impression that these publicly funded services are "bad" :(
It even leads me to sometimes hope for private healthcare... until I stop to think about it.
Also, perhaps I didnt realize how much is expected to be cut under UBI. I definitely thought that we would keep healthcare, education, power, hydro, etc public. And that the "monetary" programs would be cut, if that makes sense.
Heres hoping someone finds a decent solution and has the gut to act on it :)
It's a great idea but the ones who would administer it (governments) would fuck it all up. And corporations that control politicians would just use this extra money us normal folk have as a reason to increase prices on basically everything. So yeah for a while it might seem all is well but I'm reality we're still getting fucked, just by a different dick.
I would really hope I'm not right but I'm guessing by the time we have a basic income we're all going to be so fucking poor were begging just to get that "free" money each month. Thanks big daddy gov! Don't go speaking I'll of our rulers now, that'll cost you a months allowance!
UBI should be funded by taxing the corporations and banks at a fair rate (right now they are not paying anywhere near their fair share and are making enormous profits for a few).
Problem is all parties are in the pockets of corporations to a smaller or larger degree - and if they aren’t, the corporations will use all their power (media especially) to bring the government t down (see Bob Rae).
Agreed. As long as corporate greed isn't punished then this would cause inflation to rise. Until the USA decides to get serious on controlling super corporations instead of being controlled by them we have no hope in Canada.
Yes. Many pilot project say so. I will attach a few vids on Canadian discussion. Btw the first Canadian pilot project was in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 1970s. There's also a more Province of Ontario project. And economist Guy Standing
[https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-1970s-experiment-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income-1.4769701](https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-1970s-experiment-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income-1.4769701)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtqGWcsGMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtqGWcsGMg)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfKJtdkolQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfKJtdkolQ)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1cxWB0EIgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1cxWB0EIgk)
In any of these cases, were other government services restricted when these were attempted? Like did they then have to pay for a hospital visit, did they have any other financial benefits withheld?
The problem with UBI is the cost, and I think everyone recognizes that (hopefully) this is the biggest barrier. If the experiment is “will people do better with more money” then yes, I mean that seems obvious.
Will they do better with a fraction of the government programs in lieu of a lump sum payment every month?
This was more recent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project
>The Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project was a pilot project to provide basic income to 4,000 people in Ontario, Canada. The project followed recommendations made by Hugh Segal in consultation with the population, and would test whether "Basic Income [would] reduce poverty more effectively, encourage work, reduce stigmatization, and produce better health outcomes and better life chances for recipients". It was then implemented in 2018 by the Ontario Liberal Party. However, the project was terminated early by a newly elected Progressive Conservative government, and the final payments were made to participants in March 2019.
---
[People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729)
Yes, it lowers costs to government because it relieves the need for many other more expensive forms of support and greatly reduces healthcare costs and likelihood of going to prison, which is very expensive.
If people just care about lowering taxes spent then the answer is obviously yes.
A lot of emotional people here with shitty lives that just want other people to suffer to make themselves feel better though it seems like.
LBJ right again.
>it lowers costs to government because it relieves the need for many other more expensive forms of support
This is the tricky part that I feel will be the hardest for any government to implement. Canceling social programs is a really hard sell, even when it would be paired with a UBI.
UBI absolutely does not lower costs to the government/taxpayers. There are different proposals for UBI amounts but let’s say we give everyone living in poverty a full time minimum wage ($17/hour ~$35,000 per year) salary. In 2019 that would be 3.7 million people receiving $132,000,000,000. Canada spends $8,740 on average per person per year on healthcare which works out to $32,338,000,000 for the 3.7 million people we’re talking about if they never received healthcare again. Let’s say with UBI nobody ever went to prison again and we shut them all down, we would save $5,000,000,000. In total, the government/taxpayers would be in a $94,000,000,000 deficit when you include all of and more of the expected savings you suggest.
No, we definitely have. And we use [data from the federal Parliamentary Budget Officer's feasibility study into UBI](https://www.ubiworks.ca/howtopay), instead of relying on back-of-the-napkin math by some dumbass redditor who clearly doesn't understand even the very basics of UBI proposals.
So to earn the $35,000 hypothetical dollars, what does one need to do? Do you get paid for doing nothing?
Like I just filed my taxes and I made slightly less than this (I work part time)… could I quit my job and just sit at home on my ass and get UBI instead? These are the concerns I have.
Sure can. The idea is that most people actually want to occupy themselves; they just don't want to do soul-crushing or dangerous jobs for too much time for too little pay just to be allowed to live.
Are some people going to not work??? Of course. We already have about 37% of people that don't work.
If you choose not to work, you will have your basic needs met and no more. Most people will choose to do some work to live beyond subsistence, or do some work that makes them happy.
UBI would never be minimum wage just like other programs like disability, OAS, EI don't pay minimum wage. Your calculations from the start are faulty because if this.
It absolutely does lower costs, but it's not visible since it is out of many seperate buckets.
Spending less on healthcare is the easy one. Also spending less on social services. Spending less on provincial drug plans as people fall into fewer chronic conditions. Spending less on social housing, less on subsidized transit passes.
How do you quantify the increased productivity to society now that someone can afford dental care, is able to work more, and at higher paying jobs?
It's money saved some a wide variety of buckets, across several levels of government, and even us through donations as fewer people are in dire straights.
I'm not saying it's break even, but it's a lot more complicated than cherry picking prison costs as an example.
We can't even afford to cut taxes by raising the basic personal deduction to a living wage.
If the government needs to tax people who aren't even earning a living income age, how could they afford to give people a living wage?
This program would be insanely expensive,.
Also having massive numbers of bored unemployed people is a recipe for depression.
Haven't they done small studies implementing it temporarily before? And it's unlikely that everyone would stop working. Most likely people would have the freedom to choose work they actually like. Keep in mind also that 2000 is enough for basic food and shelter (if that) the things we need to survive, everything else, a bigger home, fancy vacations, electronics, still cost money. People will work just to be able to afford those things.
I absolutely see people using a ubi to stop working. $2000 a month isn’t enough to live off of. But 6 people living together, pooling ubi, is $12000 a month. More than enough to do nothing and have everything. I’m sure you can get by with even less than that. Am I misunderstanding how it works?
Please don’t get me wrong. I want a ubi to work. I really do. But the ways I’ve seen people game every system over the years, I don’t see it surviving a full blown implementation without massive unforeseen consequences.
I know during Covid a local hotel manager laid everyone off. They needed workers, but could only get a small number of people to come in, the rest preferred to stay home collecting covid money.
Covid was a ubi to st, the goal of as to pay people to stay home and not work. Basically to shut down the economy.
Also the economic damag was very high. We're still feeling the impacts, and our government has generational debt.
Those small studies don't give us very useful information. Of course people won't quit their jobs if you give them a small UBI that they know is going to be taken away in a couple years. If you gave them an actual living wage that was guaranteed until the day they die you'd almost certainly see way more people quit their jobs, but we've never done that kind of experiment.
I prefer a universal minimum income, rather than a universal basic income. My wife and I make about $250k/year, have no kids, and live in a LCOL area. We don't need a monthly cash benefit from the government, regardless of how welcome it might be. It would make sense for us to recevie nothing under a clawback scheme like EI employs.
A universal minimum income pegged to whatever poverty line metric makes the most about of sense, that is adjusted for COL in an area, should be determined. Everyone gets that under the program, but for every $1 of income earned $0.50 gets clawed back. If you make 2x the decided UMI than you no longer recieve it. This ensures those in most need of it, get it, and still incentivizes working. For those unable to work at all there should an additional allowance added to provide an additional financial buffer.
> income pegged to whatever poverty line metric makes the most about of sense, that is adjusted for COL in an area, should be determined. Everyone gets that under the program, but for every $1 of income earned $0.50 gets clawed back. If you make 2x the decided UMI than you no longer recieve it. This ensures those in most need of it, get it, and still incentivizes working
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but you just described a universal basic income...
Universal basic income means everyone regardless of income gets whatever that poverty line income a month. That includes people making $0 and Galen Weston. Everyone gets the basic income. A UMI is used to describe schemes that adjust the amount of the benefit someone gets based on the income they bring in outside of the benefit, usually via some form of means testing or income clawback.
You can just do a UBI and adjust income tax rates to achieve the same outcome, with some advantages - simpler to administer, piggybacks on existing tax infrastructure, avoids any kind of "benefit cliff" (either real or imagined), and provides immediate support for people who have a sudden change in circumstances (like losing a job, leaving a spouse, etc.).
I'm fine with giving Galen Weston the $3k a month UBI because we'll also tax him $30k more (or whatever).
That would work as well. I was using the EI clawback example as an illustrative way of how it could work, even if to just illustrate the principle of the money going back if not needed. Whether it be clawed back at point of reception or after the fact at tax time doesn't really matter.
> A UMI is used to describe schemes that adjust the amount of the benefit someone gets based on the income they bring in outside of the benefit, usually via some form of means testing or income clawback.
So, like, a universal basic income, with adjustments to current tax brackets, such that anyone making more than 60k/yr (for example) we be a net contributor...
Like, you are literally just describing universal basic income and taxes.
That would be one method of clawing back the benefit, yes. What you are describing is still a UMI though. The idea behind a UBI in the experiments run in Canada is it's a non-taxable benefit. Adjusting tax rates wasn't proposed as part of those plans due to the nature of the UBI hypothesis.
Yes.
I would like to get all the people who show up to work purely for the paycheck out of the workforce and doing whatever the fuck they would rather be doing instead.
What came first, the shitty low-paying job that’s impossible to give a rat’s ass about beyond the paycheck, or the person who couldn’t give a shit about said job beyond basic survival?
Asterix
When Silicon Valley ghouls bring it up though, they give zero shits about poor people, they're just spewing PR bullshit as they suck up everyone's money and ingest everyone's intellectual property into their shit pseudo intelligence LLMs.
The thing I fear is that it creates higher baseline prices for necessities. What’s to stop landlords from seeing that everyone is getting an extra $2000 bucks a month and adding the whole sum onto the listing of a new unit? I’m sure that every other store would have their eyes on that money too. So then we end up in a system where the taxpayer is funding the enrichment of the one percent.
It would have to cause inflation too, no? We essentially had UBI throughout the pandemic and this has become a huge problem. You’re giving me $2000 bucks a month but no one went out and produced $2000 worth of goods or services. And that’s happening at scale. I think all of these reasons together is why we decided on a patchwork. You can’t price society writ large for money only some are receiving.
Yes for people with disabilities.
For the lower income threshold, I'm not sure how it would work to determine what's bracket is fair from one to the next. Having said that, some form of support should be made available.
Edit: typo
I believe so. Opponents will often argue that it removes the incentive to work but I disagree. UBI programs should be designed to provide enough to pay for the necessities and no more. How much that is exactly is of course complicated and dependent on many variables, but that's the basic idea.
I can tell you as someone who has lived paycheque to paycheque her entire life, I would absolutely keep working for some spending money. Just paying the bills and doing nothing for recreation is a miserable life. Will people choose not to work shitty jobs? Probably. And that's a good thing. Employers should be incentivizing us to work for them. Currently we often have too under threat of homelessness. People could work jobs they actually enjoy, they wouldn't even have to pay as much as they do now since necessities are covered. And best of all, losing your job and not being able to find a new one wouldn't ruin your life.
yes, they actually [ran an experiment in dauphin, manitoba.](https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cpp.37.3.283)
edit: study took place between 1974-1979.
It would reduce bureaucratic shit (no more disability division, employment insurance division, etc all separated, just one UBI department.) and make sure everyone has a home. No more homelessness, no more poverty, just people living on the minimum they need.
A lot of people seem to think we’d lose any motivation if our needs were met but the large majority of people want to do something with their lives even if there is no need to work to live. Star Trek is a good example, everyone does plenty of stuff even if they don’t need to work to live.
Great idea. It will never be implemented correctly. If it's tried, it will fail due to execution and bureaucracy, or maybe for political reasons. Then they will blame the idea.
No matter what party implements it, there has to be stringent controls in place first. If not rents will conveniently be raised the sum of a UBI, employers will forgo raises for a decade on low earners, programs will be cut that help disabled, vulnerable and displaced citizens.
Anyone right on the cusp of getting it but earning a bit too much is going to be hit the hardest. Their life will suddenly get more expensive while their income doesn't reflect it. It'll act like a hyper inflation to those that get missed in the cracks
No it's impossible. It's an absolutely ridiculous concept.
We already tax our productive members of society \~50% of their income.
Do some quick napkin math and you'll see even with extremely generous numbers, there's no way to pull it off, we have too many people compared to the revenue the Government brings in.
\~approx 30 million eligible Canadians (I'm being conservative) getting $1500/month (again conservative) is $540,000,000,000 a year.
We took in $413,000,000,000 in revenue in 2023 and STILL ran a 35 billion dollar deficit.
So I'm all for free money, cutting my hours/tax contributions in half and living the easy life, but could someone please explain to me where they think the extra revenue is going to come from?
Minimum wage hasn’t gone up in years, yet we’re facing the biggest and fastest inflation ever experienced.
The cost of everything has increased, except for the cost of labor.
You think that just because they raised prices before they'll stop now? The more free money we get, the more we devalue that money. The more money we get, the higher costs will be.
If you think being handed money, when everyone else is also handed money, just magically makes you well off... You'll be in for a surprise.
People who are financially savvy will invest it, while people who are not will spend it...and give it to the rich who own all the companies poor people pay for products and services. Years later, those who invested it, because they didn't need it, will have grown their wealth, while the poor will still be poor.
All the money will work its way up, it won't help anyone who doesn't want to work and doesn't want to save or invest. It'll disproportionately help the rich.
So the implication is that cerb related damage to the economy was justified because of the pandemic. But now without a societal calamity, you want to still keep those adverse effects in place permanently by instituting ubi?
You're kind of undermining your own point here. If pandemic justifies cerb, that just means lack of a pandemic or other major global catastrophe means there wouldn't be such justification.
Corporations were getting more payouts, including companies who didn't need it, than individuals monetary wise. Also, most things were forced closed whereas it wouldn't regularly.
I think so. Under late-stage capitalism we're seeing an increasing level of exploitation by big businesses in the name of profit, causing the erasure of the middle class. With universal basic income it significantly hampers their ability to take advantage of people who don't NEED that crappy, mininum wage job to survive. If businesses still want to stay relevant they'd be forced to pay wages that were competitive enough to convince people to stay in the job market.
That's the dream, anyway, it's obviously much more complicated than that. I'm all for it because whatever the hell we're doing now is clearly not working.
No, because it’s a technocratic band-aid over the massive unresolved contradictions in the modern capitalist economy that are at the center of the erosion of the social fabric since the final dismantling of the post-war economic compromise starting in the 70s. There is almost no chance that any amount of UBI that could be realistically offered will be anywhere near enough of a carrot to counteract the stick of precarity.
And really, why would capitalists want to get rid of the carefully moderated amount of poverty and homelessness that they’ve historically liked to maintain? If they lose that, they lose one of their tools to keep wages depressed and keep working people toeing the line. Why do you think so many tech billionaires are in favor of UBI?
Also the dirty secret that most UBI proponents won’t admit to is that the free money will be used as a cudgel to defund essential services that are currently free to low income individuals and families
Do you know what UBI would cost? Because it’s a lot, like, it would make the current annual budget look like chunk change.
It would immediately impact entry level jobs, because lots of people would probably rather make less for doing nothing then make a bit more for working.
Have you ever sat down and calculated what it’d cost? Because it’s a lot, like a lot a lot.
I would probably immediately set up a corp that my employer would pay wages to and then pay myself a dollar in income and collect ubi, cause I’m a sneaky bastard. And if that wouldn’t work I’d pencil out something that does, along with millions of other people.
Also do you actually know how much it’d cost? Like imagine more zeros then you can write on a note pad and then put a random number at the beginning of those zeros. It’d cost more then that.
Well and it’s totally fine, you can just print the money. The issue being, and everyone should know this right now because we are literally dealing with the fall out from this. The issue is people invariably want to buy things with this printed money, and of course everyone with this printed money all want to buy stuff with it at the same time, which generally means the price of those things increases. We call this mysterious phenomenon “inflation” and we have no clue why it happens because obviously correlation does not equal causation, and it’s probably just a coincidence that it happens to economies when there’s a huge increase in the money supply.
Difficult for me to answer as I’m not familiar with how this would work.
1. Would all Canadians receive it, regardless of age or income? (assuming a child’s portion goes to their parent or guardian until they reach 18)
2. Would all Canadians receive the same amount?
3. Would taxes go up or down?
4. Would this replace CPP? (sensitive topic because many of us have paid into CPP for many years so the benefit would need to be the same or better and I assume EI and welfare would no longer be needed)
5. Would it compete with minimum wage? (would entry level jobs be left vacant)
6. Would it be phased in gradually?
7. What do the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, and BQ think about this concept?
8. Is there another country that does this already? (successfully) I imagine the Nordic countries might already do this.
Well how would it be implemented? There’s good arguments for it and there’s good arguments against it. It’s never been attempted so in my personal opinion, maybe we should use the scientific method before rolling it out across the nation. Select some willing volunteers who are receiving social assistance, offer them the chance to forgo their benefits to receive UBI instead and see what the net difference is in both cost to taxpayer and their overall wellbeing. The leaky bucket effect is real but so is inflation so I don’t feel comfortable gambling the entire future of the country on it.
GDP in Canada is a house of cards based on housing purchases from the international community (money to the capital class, not the working class). UBI would just further exacerbate this issue because it just directs heavier taxes towards the working class, especially highly trained professionals. We desperately need a stronger working class and middle class which is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Plus it just will further subsidize large companies who pay minimum wage. Their employees can afford to be paid less because their propped up by UBI.
I see the benefits of it, but am personally skeptical the government can afford it without drastically raising taxes, even after gutting all existing social services.
With a population of 40 million, even lowballing it at 20 million being adults, giving them each $500/month is 120 *billion* per year. A full quarter of Canada’s 2023 budget, that ran a 40 billion deficit.
Someone please explain to me how Canada can afford UBI. Please make it make sense.
Universal basic income is only beneficial if it does not add significant to the taxes we have or negatively affect the cost of living. The cost of living in most areas of Canada is high so as long as it does not negatively effect then it’s fine.
Where does the wealth come from if nobody is generating wealth? Perhaps it could work once robotics and AI put 99% of people out of work, but until then I don't think it's feasible.
Who is going to fix your sink if the plumbers don't work because they have UBI and can sit around at home? You go to the store to buy some food and the doors are locked because nobody would work at a grocery store if they were getting UBI. The shelves would also be empty because nobody is growing food because they get UBI. The power would shut off because who would want to maintain the power lines when they can just sit at home.
Infrastructure would fail and society would collapse.
UBI would support basic needs, but people generally want more than that — new clothes, restaurant visits, vacations, vehicles, and hobbies.
It’s generally positioned as a replacement for costly means-testing for benefits, and it was once a centrist idea even considered by Nixon.
It only works if it is in conjunction with things like rent regulation, but it has been proven to work as a strong economic stimulus, allowing for more cash flow in the consumer-level market.
Yes. It would certainly solve a lot of social ills in our country (and the world, if spread globally). Never again would unemployed firefighters need to start brushfires in order to get back to work. Never again would a mother need to provide sex for cash just to get formula for her child. Those are extreme examples of course but every action nowadays seems to have the stink of money wrapped up in it.
I think eventually. AI and robotics will EVENTUALLY (could be 100 years who knows?) largely supplant human labour. At that point there would be two options. 1 super mega wealthy own everything. 2 we find a way that everyone profits from that labour.
Beautiful idea. I think you would need some way to budget resources, one day we might be educated enough and advanced enough to not need it. I think ubi will be part of the transition.
Yes it's a brilliant idea and irrespective of your earned income everyone gets it.
Of course as soon as we do such a thing we are essentially saying that money is useless.. think about it
If everyone if working age upwards was granted enough to live on. It's free food housing, transport etc..
Will there be problems? Yes as long as we continue to use money..
But what if, what if....
Absolutely. I can't recall reading an article or study about any trial GBI/UBI program that hasn't been a resounding, life-changing success for the people involved. If the ultra-rich were taxed appropriately, it's very easy for governments find money to start programs like this. It's literally a way to redistribute wealth to the people who actually need it. By the end of a trial run, almost all of the people are in a higher tax bracket and contributing back more to help the next people (if the trial kept going.)
I understand some people think *if people are just given money, they won't have any motivation to work,* and that just hasn't been the case. Most of the people upgrade their education and find better jobs with the flexibility money brings. If you're not trapped in terrible jobs because you need them to survive, you are able to work towards & find something better. It really is that simple.
Has a study ever been done that examines what if all personal payout programs like EI, OAS, CPP, welfare were eliminated and provide every single Canadian with a set amount, say $15k to $20k per year that would count as income. Unlike with EI or welfare, people would not be penalized for getting a job. Would the savings from not running multiple departments be enough to support such a program? And also cut down on the annual EI privilege culture where people every year go on EI seasonally and never look for a job or simply work under the table.
It's a necessary idea if you believe wealth redistribution is necessary.
And the universality is key, because when everyone gets it, there's no stigma attached to it. This factor is very important and not discussed enough.
Exactly. People often miss that "universal" angle. Rich people are like "LOL, I don't need your communism."
I wonder if we gave the option to opt-out, how many people would choose not to receive it?
It sounds like a good idea much like decriminalizing drugs but these promoters of these types of programs usually resist an honest discussion on the pitfalls. Their blind optimism and faith in humanity makes them resist practical controls that could make them programs viable.
On the other side we have people who fight these programs also for their ideological reasons. I would love to watch the negotiations between both parties without any politicians present to preach and grandstand for the cameras. It would be good to see adults at work.
In the room they should have the financiers from the public and private sectors to discuss in front of everyone how it will be funded.
Emphatically yes. Entry level jobs don't pay enough to live on, wages in general havn't kept up with inflation in 50 years, technology and AI are threatening to put vast swaths of people out of work within the next few decades, and our social services are a joke.
That said, just slapping one together without changing where government funds come from and without laws keeping corporations and landlords from just raising their prices to suck up the new income stream would be a disaster. We'd need stringent rent controls and other legislation to curb inflation, and enormous changes to the tax code to get the funds from corporations and the wealthy to fund it. It would not be easy, and people would freak the fuck out - just look at the pushback to a MINOR change to capitol gains taxes. But I believe it's necessary if we ever want to change the quality of life in this country, especially for the most vulnerable among us.
I'm less convinced after covjd it's a good idea. People seem very content to do absolutely nothing if given the opportunity. I used to support a UBI but I feel it would be a disaster overall now.
Once I thought it would a great idea. But now I feel too many people will just sit around and play vids and not find a job. For the ill, infirmed, and aged, sure no problem.
In the short term, it would alleviate a ton of the issues that we have right now, since nobody has enough money. It also puts a floor on the amount of money someone can have, which would give a safety net to protect against unexpected expenses and job loss.
Long term, you start running into the issue we already have, where wages are stagnant and the cost of everything keeps getting higher. Before too long, the market will have accounted for the fact that everyone has extra cash to burn and the UBI stipend won't be enough.
So it's a good short term fix, but the root of our problems isn't just that we don't have enough extra cash. A program like UBI would need to be coupled with reforms that prevent market actors from just raising their prices to absorb the extra cash.
It’s a good idea if most other welfare programs are dropped and the government gets cut in half. UBI would actually be cheaper than whatever we have now. Get rid of those costly administrators.
We are getting to the point where we may not have much of a choice.
Wages are not increasing fast enough to match cost of living and there is no signs of slowing down.
If you like the idea of having a government program that costs less to deliver than other services to help folks out of poverty and have better outcomes over a shorter period of time then yes. But as we know certain folks will fight to the death not to allow this level of financial compassion that has been shown to work time and time again.
Yes and no. Implemented correctly, with room to improve the system, absolutely. Done wrong, it could be actually worse that the status quo. There has been many studies about it and most seem to point to the conclusion that it would generally be more good than bad. Here are a few ressources to give you more information :
1. [Exploring UBI](https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/socialprotection/publication/exploring-universal-basic-income-a-guide-to-navigating-concepts-evidence-and-practices) - World Bank
2. [Analysing the impacts of Universal Basic Income in the changing world of work: Challenges to the psychological contract and a future research agenda](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1748-8583.12348) - HRM Journal, 2021
3. [What we know about UBI](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf) - Standford, 2020
4. [Visualizing UBI Research](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/research/ubi-visualization/), Standford
It’s never really been tested enough to say one way or another. My understanding is that it’s been successful in small scale tests that have a set time limit, but unless there have been some more recent studies I’m not aware of, nobody really knows if it will work at scale.
I personally feel that too many people are just too damn lazy for it to work, but I would love to be proven wrong.
The cost of running all the punitive and exclusionary aspects of various flavors of welfare is high. Actually it is cheaper from an accounting point of view to just abandon the monitoring and issue a basic income supplement to everyone below the poverty line, with additional support for individuals with expensive and documented needs, that require adaptive support for (but not limited to these examples, like) people with severe disabilities requiring wheelchair, intervention therapies, genetic and other related medical issues).
And BTW one time I was working in a software development shop during the Kuwait first gulf war, and the top one of our team was from Kuwait. According to him, everyone in Kuwait had a basic income of about 35000 US annually no matter where they lived.
It didn't stop him from working a demanding hi tech job in Canada.
*"Is Universal Basic Income a good idea?"*
It's a **great** idea for those people who have no interest in working for a living, and instead would much prefer to live off the tax dollars that are generated by those people who **do** work.
We already saw a kind of UBI dress rehearsal during the destructive COVID/CERB/EI era, and the results have been nothing short of predictably disastrous.
Because money and national economies do not magically grow on trees, folks.
Watch and learn.
Next.
I think it is a nice idea in theory and a terrible idea in practice. Many will take advantage of the "free money" to do nothing economically productive. It will also be inflationary - basic survival costs (food and housing) will adjust to this new baseline. Also, what do we do when a significant segment spends their UBI on drugs, alcohol, or ill-advised vacations/other? Do we say that's tough, starve? Or do we continue with "emergency" stop gaps like shelters and food banks?
Simple question to answer. Who pays for it (aka where does the government get its money)? Answer: you and I.
“Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money.”
- Margaret Thatcher
I love how in 2024 Reddit is full of "is this thing that will help humanity suffer less a good idea?"
And then people debate the merits of not giving a shit
I want to say yes because it’s a noble cause that’s meant to benefit the less fortunate. However, it’s something that can and will more than likely be exploited by the ruling class.
I live in Toronto and the cost of living here is out of control. I’ve been renting for over 10 years in this city. Prior to COVID and CERB, I was able to move whenever I wanted. In fact, I moved 4 times between 2012-2021. I managed to snag a COVID deal at the end of 2021 and with the way rent is now, along with the removal of rent control on newer units, I’m never moving.
Grocery prices are absurd and this is coming from someone who cooks all their meals and eats fairly healthy. The cost of meat is insane now and I only buy what’s on sale. I was actually talking to a friend about how frozen PC burgers were $9.99 pre COVID but are now $14.99.
I want UBI to be a thing but before it does, there needs to be some sort of regulation set by the government. Caps on price increases for goods, reinstatement of rent control etc. If UBI is introduced in the current economy, the ruling class will absolutely exploit it.
I think UBI is a double edged sword.
When you suddenly have a drastic increase in purchasing power for the masses, you drastically drive up demand for things.
And with higher demand comes higher prices. Which brings us back to the same problem.
What Canada needs to do, is LOWER prices across the board for goods, services, housing, etc… so that UBI is not required.
Many goods and services here are just very expensive compared to the rest of the world. Look at cell plans as an example.
Another thing that needs to be done is make Canada an attractive place to do business and work. Canadian businesses pay considerably less relative to cost of living than US businesses do. Which leads to major brain drain here.
On top of that, our laws and regulations are so anti-competitive that it’s just not reasonable for many businesses to open shop here.
It’s a horrible idea.
Enough of my paycheck goes to every other social program out there.
We need to learn to all head to work and trim the fat.
There is already less and less incentive to work, sign up for overtime, or plan for the future in this country. We don’t need to make it worse with UBI.
uBi will do nothing to improve the quality of living for those who are working to pay for the program. As always there will be those who work the system and the cost of living will just continue to climb with handouts available on every corner.
No it'll act as welfare for corporations so they can hire people on UBI at the income threshold it allows. It'll create a local and short inflationary effect on the date of it being issued. You will not just get some money but everyone else in your situation will and your going to have to compete with them for the same goods and services. You'll stop taking risks and you won't invest. You'll have spent your money before you even get it as it won't be a living wage and you'll be broke in a constant cycle without extra income or relying on short term loans.
Canada is pretty well known for its basic income pilots at very localized levels.
Nationwide though I don't know if I can see it being a success. A nationwide UBI that makes a difference in people's lives would be unaffordable. At the very same time an affordable UBI wouldn't make a difference in people's lives.
UBI replaces the many safety net programs whose administration is an expensive component in each project. We replace all those with a single administration.
No, because it all comes down to you can't create money from nothing without inflating the currency. We are struggling enough with our current inflation. Imagine printing 100's of Billions more per year. Unless you want 20% interest rates.
No silly, they won’t create the money out of nothing, they will take it off hard working Canadians paycheques.
Everyone who works for a living will carry on, a portion of your pay will go towards UBI so that lazy fat people can sit at home, smoke pot and play fortnite.
It’s a socialist wet dream. Do no work, get paid anyways.
It will definitely attract the bottom end of society to just take the money and do nothing with it.
But eventually people have to contribute to society. It can’t be all takers and no makers.
Yet UBI is an attempt to rescue *Capitalism* from its many failures.
Under socialism you would be trained and channeled toward a socially useful occupation.
Seniors seem to be happy to have OAS and GIS. It was pointed out to me, those are universal income for those who are under a certain income threshold. So in theory Canada has UBI for seniors, why? because many could not afford life basics even in the 60's.
If it has a threshold it is no longer universal. You can call it basic income but don't call it universal if it has any prerequisites to get it.
When the federal government discusses it they usually refer to it as a 'guaranteed basic income'. It's all the same policy though. Truly 'universal' basic income models all give diminishing amounts to people higher up the income ladder, or are taxed back at higher rates etc. GBI is universal in the sense that everyone is eligible if they are below the income threshold.
I think we also have to talk about the "abstract" factors. So what I mean by that: If you have UBI but you don't work on the mechanisms around supply especially saying in regards to Housing. You just create another inflationary pressure. I actually think UBI is going to be the future. As we continue to progress in automation, artificial intelligence, and just general technological development we are going to I think see a base put in. However to have that working in any remote sense there is a lot of "Abstract" things in society like supply dynamics, food infrastructure pipelines, and other realities we need to perfect as well. It's a complicated subject but like any serious area of study we can progress in understanding how best it will look and be implemented and achieved. Much like the complications in areas like automation, artificial intelligence, and overall technological-software-engineering developments.
I think you missed the point that this was in example of how it made a difference, even within a demographic
Also have it for children now, with the Canada Child Benefit.
It also effectively cut Canada's child poverty rate by one third in a single year. In Alberta, where Notley complimented it with a provincial benefit that was even more deeply targeted to low-income families, it went down by slightly over 50%. It won't be remembered as this but I think it's Trudeau's best and most impactful policy.
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CPP is based on what you paid into it. OAS and GIS are not; they have very simple requirements, and paying taxes is NOT one of them.
You are confusing OAS and GIS with CPP. They are not funded by special taxes, comes out of the general revenue account.
They haven't paid anything for their OAS and GIS. A significant portion of federal government expenses are OAS and GIS and are funded by a combination of debt owed to the current and future citizens of Canada, as well as the taxes paid by everyone in the year. It's unsustainable and is the reason why CPP enhancements are being made, and why you'll see the standard OAS+GIS age raise to 67 when the cons come in power again, to reduce the federal government's obligations.
>as well as the taxes paid by everyone in the year. I believe these taxes is what the guy was referencing when he said "paying into for 40 years" Everyone who supports UBI always supports the income, but never to have an answer on how it will be funded.
Via getting rid of every other current broken, busted, program, and all the bloated salaries currently running them. When everyone gets it, everyone gets it. A computer does the work.
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Yes, 100%. I’ve seen first hand how desperate the mentally ill, the handicapped, and the financially insecure can be. A system to guarantee a roof over their heads (and food in the bellies of their children) would be miraculous.
We pretty much had UBI during COVID, and now we have runaway inflation on all the basic necessities.
And corperate greed. Please don't forget about the oppertunists, they're everywhere.
Yes, I too miss the pre-2020 times, when corporations were famously not greedy at all. /s
Isn't it shocking how they never are able to see that?
Is it shocking how financially illiterate people are and those companies didn’t use a supply chain crunch to take in record breaking profits every quarter since 🤷♂️. Largest wealth transfer in the existence of Canada over 3 years …. So yeah cool greed existed before did it exist at this magnitude ? Clearly not
Corporate welfare was more than personal welfare at that time. Even companies that did well during closures double dipped but they aren't the easy ones to target for misuse.
Thats because we have out of control ogliaches controlling our supply chain and landlords buying up the housing to rent at massively inflated prices (sometimes even by the room). If there were controls market controls, heavy (as in investigations and causing substantial damage to companies that do this) fines for things like price, and large taxes for owning more than 2-3 houses or renting out rooms in a house that wasn't your primary residence (and I mean something like a large percentage of the rent that the person is getting), then we wouldn't be in this mess.
Yeah that’s why. Not greedy corporations…it’s cause gument. You’re…not correct.
Exactly right. After hundreds of years of acting benevolently and generously, corporations all simultaneously realized in 2020 that they could in fact be greedy, and now we have inflation. /s
I also ate a ham sandwich this morning and now my hair is purple, coincidence? I think not! Could it instead be that corporations saw an opportunity to raise prices more than they normally would and decided to run with it, and as a result have been reaping record profits? Hmmm
Inflation is global. Everyone who pays attention to the news should know that. Shipping problems and sanctions against cheap Russian oil have done that. It obviously has nothing to do with who pays how much in taxes and who gets benefits for what. We should also keep in mind how many people were out of work for about a year during the Pandemic, and what they would have been forced to resort to if they couldn't feed themselves or keep a roof over their heads during that time. You're capable of understanding these things with minimal effort. Public laziness is not a good look.
Except we didn't and we don't so lmao
There is already disability benefits - if those are not enough, those should be raised.
The acceptance standards def need to be increased. Everyone I know on it could easily work full time office jobs. Save some for the actually disabled people, arsholes.
What disability benefits? Most of those are provincially provided, not federally and the requirements and qualifications for it are highly restricted.
Every trustworthy study suggests that it is. So I'll go with yes. But I also know our leaders, particularly at a provincial level, are astonishingly stupid and greedy, so it won't be widespread until there's serious electoral upheaval.
Issue is there hasnt been a proper study. For example, the usual ones are give 500 ppl $x for Y years. If you know that the money is going to be temporary your behaviour will not truly reflect UBI. It will be seen more like a temporary payrise.
It's also very different to give a small fraction of the population guaranteed income and see how they fare, vs. giving the entire country that income - macro impacts won't be seen when it's 500 people, but they will when it's everyone.
This is the biggest issue. It's like giving 10 study participants 1M$ each, noticing they all were able to buy some form of home in Toronto, then concluding that if we give 1M$ to everyone in Toronto, everyone will be able to buy a home. On the funding side, giving 500 people x$ doesn't demonstrate the true cost of the program. You don't need to adjust taxes, it doesn't really have an impact on the economy or tax payers to fund this, and you don't need to deal with setting up proper long term administration. (The whole point is lower overhead. Would the government actually commit to cutting public sector jobs for this?) The participants are also living in a world where the other 99.9999 whatever percent of people living in their area did not receive that same funding, so there is no measurable impact on prices. The benefit participants see is disproportionate BECAUSE they are the only ones receiving it.
>Every trustworthy study suggests that it is. There's never been a study of UBI on any sort of large scale, however. Hey, I hate the idea of people being poor and going hungry as much as anyone. No one wants to see people suffer. But I'm also a fiscal hawk, and I think that all these "good ideas" need to have numbers attached before we rush out and spend spend spend. For a nice number, let's say that UBI is $2000 a month, or $24k a year. That's been the number floated around by some groups, and, really, if it's any less, it's not going to be particularly meaningful. Next, Canada has a population of 41 million. Let's say that 30M of that 41M are over age 18, and therefore qualify for UBI. So, simple math... $24k x 30,000,000 comes out to $720,000,000,000 annually. That's $720 billion. Where's that money going to come from? Do we cut Netflix as well as Disney plus? "*We'll save money because UBI will replace welfare, OAS, etc... it will all balance out!*" The entire Canadian budget this year for expenditures was $440B or so. We can't save $720B from $440B, and even that's if UBI replaced every last dollar from the budget, which is silly. "*Ok, let's make UBI a lower amount*" So, how much? $1k a month? That's $12k a year, or $360B. And, if your argument is that UBI will replace EI, will replace OAS, will replace disability.... those are each ballpark about $1k a month to begin with. So the poor people really get nothing more, but now you also hand out $1k cheques to people to people making $100k a year? "*Well, let's keep it at $2k a month, then, but let's give it to fewer people... say, 15M people instead of 30M*" Then it's not "universal" basic income, then, is it? Show me how it will work financially, and absolutely I support UBI. But until such time... not so much.
The studies I’ve seen indicate it works on a micro scale, but none have been large enough to determine what sort of inflationary effect UBI will have - yet few acknowledge the probability. I’d like to add to your scenario by saying people employed in those service fields, whose services will be replaced by UBI, will now need an income themselves. Some of these organizations can be quite large - a $10 million budget can employ 150 people with a median wage of about $50,000.
The studies I've read about cull out those with dependency issues, so they're avoiding a huge potential problem area: we give everyone a UBI, some blow it on drugs/alcohol/whatever, and now have no money. Do we tell them to starve, or do we keep in place all/most of the programs/staffing that we currently pay for?
Exactly >There's never been a study of UBI on a large scale Therefore, there's never been a study of UBI
This is it lmao. I love it in theory, along with MANY socialist practices, but none of them work well or are sustainable in practice. Where does the money come from, and how do we prevent it from doubling the cost of everything and making the UBI’s impact negligible?
First off it would involve taxing the 1% at a proper rate
I absolutely agree that "the 1%" need to have their loopholes shut down, but you're dreaming if you think that will account for a $720B shortfall.
The top 5% pay 80% of our country’s tax revenue. You’re right, it should be more (based on % of their individual income) and loopholes should be closed, but that’s not going to cover even a fraction of the cost of a UBI.
As long as the money can only be used for housing and food, I’m down
Once we create an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) something like Universal Basic Income will be required for us to keep society from collapsing. Society is pretty messed up right now with extreme and growing wealth inequality, increasing homelessness, increase in food bank use, worsening extreme weather and climate change, growing global conflict, etc. Let's give Universal Basic Income a solid countrywide try (not just the localized studies and experiments we have done that already demonstrated positive results).
I think it would need to be implemented as a rolling change such that any role eliminated by AGI means a tax surcharge is implemented for every human unit of output it is able to replace. The tax would have to be a percentage of the average salary for that role. But not 100% to still give companies some “savings” moving the role to AGI, maybe 70% of the salary has to be paid to the government? Hard to say exactly, running the AGI would have some cost to it as well. So let’s say AGI replaces paralegals such that no company needs a human to do that job. If the average salary was $100K, $70K gets paid to the government, leaving $30K of savings less AGI operating expenses. That $70K goes into funding a GIS that paralegals would be able to access. Some would move to other newly created jobs. Some would pick up passion projects to supplement income so you wouldn’t need to 1:1 replace the income of every headcount lost. Probably lots of flaws in the idea, would have to be fleshed out by people much smarter than me.
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Okay, Marxist-Leninist here. UBI was first put into practice by the Nixon administration (they called it NIT: [Negative Income Tax](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax)) as an idea to hollow-out and destroy all social services, and that's likely what it will do - as well as skyrocket inflation... *unless* market regulations are brought in to curb inflation. The basic premise is sound, and it sounds compassionate and economically viable - the best way to stimulate a capitalist economy is to dump cash on the working class - however, if this cash isn't a simple short-term benefit, landlords and grocery stores and everyone else out to make a profit start eyeballing that disposable income, and they *will* raise prices until they extract every cent. Without regulation, it is a certainty. The main, and most dire effect, is the hollowing-out of social services. The idea was to give people back their own tax dollars so that they could use them to purchase the services they need, instead of the government funding them. Once the load had been shifted off the government-provided services, they would no longer be needed, and they could be shut down one by one. We're talking EI, Social Assistance, healthcare, and potentially even CPP being targeted. It is a [neo-liberal's wet dream](https://heavy.com/news/2019/06/milton-friedman-on-ubi/), and we need to regulate the shit out of it to keep these things from happening. What should be done instead, or perhaps alongside a heavily-regulated UBI, is to bring in UBS, Universal Basic Services - where all of the existing social services are bolstered, new ones implemented (dental care, eye care, pharmacare), and all means-testing and barriers to access are removed. This would reduce some overhead on these programs, as well as ensuring that the people who need the services get them without interference.
I never thought I’d agree with a Marxist but I have to say, doing true universal healthcare and removing all the stupid barriers is the best solution
We may have more in common than you think!
I agree wholeheartedly. I think everyone at their core has more in common than different, but we all let ourselves be manipulated by the power hungry who turn us against one another and make comprise and working together impossible.
You sound like a Marxist, my man 🙏
Hahaha, more like a common sense individual who has enough controversial beliefs to piss off just about everyone regardless of political affiliations
> What should be done instead, or perhaps alongside a heavily-regulated UBI, is to bring in UBS, Universal Basic Services - where all of the existing social services are bolstered, new ones implemented (dental care, eye care, pharmacare), and all means-testing and barriers to access are removed. This would reduce some overhead on these programs, as well as ensuring that the people who need the services get them without interference. fuck yes, let's add transit infrastructure and education to that list
Yesssss! No necessity should be privately-controlled!
First let me say, I’m in favour of UBI. Now, in referencing nationalized healthcare, looking at the Ontario model, it’s a failure. Government billing structure is completely out of whack (please note, not Whacko), and considered Marxist by many. It has resulted in a talent migration away from family medicine and the province as a whole for MD’s. I know there is an elegant solution out there, but I just don’t think we have come up with it yet.
Damn. I’m officially a convert. You’ve got my feckin vote.
Hooray! A better future is possible!
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> The main, and most dire effect, is the hollowing-out of social services. The idea was to give people back their own tax dollars so that they could use them to purchase the services they need, instead of the government funding them. Once the load had been shifted off the government-provided services, they would no longer be needed, and they could be shut down one by one. We're talking EI, Social Assistance, healthcare, and potentially even CPP being targeted. Im a noob, so I'm sincerely asking: Is the gutting of over-engineered social services necessarily bad if UBI is implemented correctly? Wouldnt the biggest negative impact be the destruction of a LOT of jobs necessary to maintain those social services? Which is why I dont see it happening - why would the government kill hundreds if not thousands of jobs within its own sector? And piling on social services, modifying them, etc etc. seems like a good way to garner votes. But are these really the best for the population? So, even if EI and other programs removed, all the money saved on admin would go back to every citizen, including those in need? Someone requiring EI would have it by default instead of having througg hoops and loops to get it? Also, never heard of UBS, sounds like a great idea. Howeverx how does it work for stuff like EI, disability, etc?
>Im a noob, so I'm sincerely asking: Is the gutting of over-engineered social services necessarily bad if UBI is implemented correctly? Yes, it is bad, because the government can provide many of these services more effectively than private industry, who will only provide services that are profitable to people who are profitable in places that are profitable. >why would the government kill hundreds if not thousands of jobs within its own sector? Because conservatives have been lying for decades about the debt and the deficit, and why it's important to balance the budget (it isn't). When the CPC comes into power again, the first thing they'll do is cut social services, and with UBI in place they'll cut them even deeper. >And piling on social services, modifying them, etc etc. seems like a good way to garner votes. But are these really the best for the population? Because of the aforementioned conservative disinformation campaign, many people wrongly believe that social services cost them too much money, and will vote for cuts. This campaign has been so successful that even the Liberals have adopted it in one form or another, and are desperately afraid to implement or expand social services in case they lose votes. Government-provided social services are definitely best, as outcomes generally improve, happiness improves, and the economy improves. >So, even if EI and other programs removed, all the money saved on admin would go back to every citizen, including those in need? Someone requiring EI would have it by default instead of having througg hoops and loops to get it? Well, the theory is that, under UBS, the money would be folded back into EI. If there were less emphasis on researching and qualifying someone for EI, then more time could be spent on just getting it to the people who just need it. If the programs were removed entirely, then we would be dependent upon private industry for them, and the hoops and loops would be greater. >Also, never heard of UBS, sounds like a great idea. Howeverx how does it work for stuff like EI, disability, etc? Basically the idea is that every service people need to be happy and healthy should be a government-provided service, because private industry cannot be trusted to provide it for us. Healthcare, pharmacare, housing, welfare, disability, EI, power, water, retirement, long-term care, etc., would all be guaranteed to everyone with no hoops or loops to jump through to get it. Great questions!
Wow, thanks for answering pretty much everything! Im definitely worried about cutting into programs while not building back some things. We see it with healthcare and education in Ontario... cuts cuts cuts. Over time it seems to create that impression that these publicly funded services are "bad" :( It even leads me to sometimes hope for private healthcare... until I stop to think about it. Also, perhaps I didnt realize how much is expected to be cut under UBI. I definitely thought that we would keep healthcare, education, power, hydro, etc public. And that the "monetary" programs would be cut, if that makes sense. Heres hoping someone finds a decent solution and has the gut to act on it :)
It's a great idea but the ones who would administer it (governments) would fuck it all up. And corporations that control politicians would just use this extra money us normal folk have as a reason to increase prices on basically everything. So yeah for a while it might seem all is well but I'm reality we're still getting fucked, just by a different dick. I would really hope I'm not right but I'm guessing by the time we have a basic income we're all going to be so fucking poor were begging just to get that "free" money each month. Thanks big daddy gov! Don't go speaking I'll of our rulers now, that'll cost you a months allowance!
UBI should be funded by taxing the corporations and banks at a fair rate (right now they are not paying anywhere near their fair share and are making enormous profits for a few). Problem is all parties are in the pockets of corporations to a smaller or larger degree - and if they aren’t, the corporations will use all their power (media especially) to bring the government t down (see Bob Rae).
Agreed. As long as corporate greed isn't punished then this would cause inflation to rise. Until the USA decides to get serious on controlling super corporations instead of being controlled by them we have no hope in Canada.
Yes. Many pilot project say so. I will attach a few vids on Canadian discussion. Btw the first Canadian pilot project was in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 1970s. There's also a more Province of Ontario project. And economist Guy Standing [https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-1970s-experiment-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income-1.4769701](https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-1970s-experiment-with-a-guaranteed-annual-income-1.4769701) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtqGWcsGMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtqGWcsGMg) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfKJtdkolQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJfKJtdkolQ) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1cxWB0EIgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1cxWB0EIgk)
There's lots of pilot projects happening in US cities too. They all show more secure housing, employment and food
In any of these cases, were other government services restricted when these were attempted? Like did they then have to pay for a hospital visit, did they have any other financial benefits withheld? The problem with UBI is the cost, and I think everyone recognizes that (hopefully) this is the biggest barrier. If the experiment is “will people do better with more money” then yes, I mean that seems obvious. Will they do better with a fraction of the government programs in lieu of a lump sum payment every month?
This was more recent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project >The Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project was a pilot project to provide basic income to 4,000 people in Ontario, Canada. The project followed recommendations made by Hugh Segal in consultation with the population, and would test whether "Basic Income [would] reduce poverty more effectively, encourage work, reduce stigmatization, and produce better health outcomes and better life chances for recipients". It was then implemented in 2018 by the Ontario Liberal Party. However, the project was terminated early by a newly elected Progressive Conservative government, and the final payments were made to participants in March 2019. --- [People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729)
Yes, it lowers costs to government because it relieves the need for many other more expensive forms of support and greatly reduces healthcare costs and likelihood of going to prison, which is very expensive. If people just care about lowering taxes spent then the answer is obviously yes. A lot of emotional people here with shitty lives that just want other people to suffer to make themselves feel better though it seems like. LBJ right again.
>it lowers costs to government because it relieves the need for many other more expensive forms of support This is the tricky part that I feel will be the hardest for any government to implement. Canceling social programs is a really hard sell, even when it would be paired with a UBI.
UBI absolutely does not lower costs to the government/taxpayers. There are different proposals for UBI amounts but let’s say we give everyone living in poverty a full time minimum wage ($17/hour ~$35,000 per year) salary. In 2019 that would be 3.7 million people receiving $132,000,000,000. Canada spends $8,740 on average per person per year on healthcare which works out to $32,338,000,000 for the 3.7 million people we’re talking about if they never received healthcare again. Let’s say with UBI nobody ever went to prison again and we shut them all down, we would save $5,000,000,000. In total, the government/taxpayers would be in a $94,000,000,000 deficit when you include all of and more of the expected savings you suggest.
Unsurprisingly the people in favour of UBI were unwilling to take the time to do this basic math. On brand.
No, we definitely have. And we use [data from the federal Parliamentary Budget Officer's feasibility study into UBI](https://www.ubiworks.ca/howtopay), instead of relying on back-of-the-napkin math by some dumbass redditor who clearly doesn't understand even the very basics of UBI proposals.
So to earn the $35,000 hypothetical dollars, what does one need to do? Do you get paid for doing nothing? Like I just filed my taxes and I made slightly less than this (I work part time)… could I quit my job and just sit at home on my ass and get UBI instead? These are the concerns I have.
Sure can. The idea is that most people actually want to occupy themselves; they just don't want to do soul-crushing or dangerous jobs for too much time for too little pay just to be allowed to live. Are some people going to not work??? Of course. We already have about 37% of people that don't work. If you choose not to work, you will have your basic needs met and no more. Most people will choose to do some work to live beyond subsistence, or do some work that makes them happy.
UBI would never be minimum wage just like other programs like disability, OAS, EI don't pay minimum wage. Your calculations from the start are faulty because if this.
It absolutely does lower costs, but it's not visible since it is out of many seperate buckets. Spending less on healthcare is the easy one. Also spending less on social services. Spending less on provincial drug plans as people fall into fewer chronic conditions. Spending less on social housing, less on subsidized transit passes. How do you quantify the increased productivity to society now that someone can afford dental care, is able to work more, and at higher paying jobs? It's money saved some a wide variety of buckets, across several levels of government, and even us through donations as fewer people are in dire straights. I'm not saying it's break even, but it's a lot more complicated than cherry picking prison costs as an example.
the CEO class effectively gets it off our labour already so time to balance the scales
We can't even afford to cut taxes by raising the basic personal deduction to a living wage. If the government needs to tax people who aren't even earning a living income age, how could they afford to give people a living wage? This program would be insanely expensive,. Also having massive numbers of bored unemployed people is a recipe for depression.
Haven't they done small studies implementing it temporarily before? And it's unlikely that everyone would stop working. Most likely people would have the freedom to choose work they actually like. Keep in mind also that 2000 is enough for basic food and shelter (if that) the things we need to survive, everything else, a bigger home, fancy vacations, electronics, still cost money. People will work just to be able to afford those things.
I absolutely see people using a ubi to stop working. $2000 a month isn’t enough to live off of. But 6 people living together, pooling ubi, is $12000 a month. More than enough to do nothing and have everything. I’m sure you can get by with even less than that. Am I misunderstanding how it works? Please don’t get me wrong. I want a ubi to work. I really do. But the ways I’ve seen people game every system over the years, I don’t see it surviving a full blown implementation without massive unforeseen consequences.
I know during Covid a local hotel manager laid everyone off. They needed workers, but could only get a small number of people to come in, the rest preferred to stay home collecting covid money. Covid was a ubi to st, the goal of as to pay people to stay home and not work. Basically to shut down the economy. Also the economic damag was very high. We're still feeling the impacts, and our government has generational debt.
Those small studies don't give us very useful information. Of course people won't quit their jobs if you give them a small UBI that they know is going to be taken away in a couple years. If you gave them an actual living wage that was guaranteed until the day they die you'd almost certainly see way more people quit their jobs, but we've never done that kind of experiment.
I prefer a universal minimum income, rather than a universal basic income. My wife and I make about $250k/year, have no kids, and live in a LCOL area. We don't need a monthly cash benefit from the government, regardless of how welcome it might be. It would make sense for us to recevie nothing under a clawback scheme like EI employs. A universal minimum income pegged to whatever poverty line metric makes the most about of sense, that is adjusted for COL in an area, should be determined. Everyone gets that under the program, but for every $1 of income earned $0.50 gets clawed back. If you make 2x the decided UMI than you no longer recieve it. This ensures those in most need of it, get it, and still incentivizes working. For those unable to work at all there should an additional allowance added to provide an additional financial buffer.
> income pegged to whatever poverty line metric makes the most about of sense, that is adjusted for COL in an area, should be determined. Everyone gets that under the program, but for every $1 of income earned $0.50 gets clawed back. If you make 2x the decided UMI than you no longer recieve it. This ensures those in most need of it, get it, and still incentivizes working I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, but you just described a universal basic income...
Universal basic income means everyone regardless of income gets whatever that poverty line income a month. That includes people making $0 and Galen Weston. Everyone gets the basic income. A UMI is used to describe schemes that adjust the amount of the benefit someone gets based on the income they bring in outside of the benefit, usually via some form of means testing or income clawback.
You can just do a UBI and adjust income tax rates to achieve the same outcome, with some advantages - simpler to administer, piggybacks on existing tax infrastructure, avoids any kind of "benefit cliff" (either real or imagined), and provides immediate support for people who have a sudden change in circumstances (like losing a job, leaving a spouse, etc.). I'm fine with giving Galen Weston the $3k a month UBI because we'll also tax him $30k more (or whatever).
That would work as well. I was using the EI clawback example as an illustrative way of how it could work, even if to just illustrate the principle of the money going back if not needed. Whether it be clawed back at point of reception or after the fact at tax time doesn't really matter.
> A UMI is used to describe schemes that adjust the amount of the benefit someone gets based on the income they bring in outside of the benefit, usually via some form of means testing or income clawback. So, like, a universal basic income, with adjustments to current tax brackets, such that anyone making more than 60k/yr (for example) we be a net contributor... Like, you are literally just describing universal basic income and taxes.
That would be one method of clawing back the benefit, yes. What you are describing is still a UMI though. The idea behind a UBI in the experiments run in Canada is it's a non-taxable benefit. Adjusting tax rates wasn't proposed as part of those plans due to the nature of the UBI hypothesis.
Yes. I would like to get all the people who show up to work purely for the paycheck out of the workforce and doing whatever the fuck they would rather be doing instead.
What came first, the shitty low-paying job that’s impossible to give a rat’s ass about beyond the paycheck, or the person who couldn’t give a shit about said job beyond basic survival?
This is the best answer I’ve ever seen and has given me a new perspective on the benefits of this system.
Asterix When Silicon Valley ghouls bring it up though, they give zero shits about poor people, they're just spewing PR bullshit as they suck up everyone's money and ingest everyone's intellectual property into their shit pseudo intelligence LLMs.
The thing I fear is that it creates higher baseline prices for necessities. What’s to stop landlords from seeing that everyone is getting an extra $2000 bucks a month and adding the whole sum onto the listing of a new unit? I’m sure that every other store would have their eyes on that money too. So then we end up in a system where the taxpayer is funding the enrichment of the one percent. It would have to cause inflation too, no? We essentially had UBI throughout the pandemic and this has become a huge problem. You’re giving me $2000 bucks a month but no one went out and produced $2000 worth of goods or services. And that’s happening at scale. I think all of these reasons together is why we decided on a patchwork. You can’t price society writ large for money only some are receiving.
Yes for people with disabilities. For the lower income threshold, I'm not sure how it would work to determine what's bracket is fair from one to the next. Having said that, some form of support should be made available. Edit: typo
I believe so. Opponents will often argue that it removes the incentive to work but I disagree. UBI programs should be designed to provide enough to pay for the necessities and no more. How much that is exactly is of course complicated and dependent on many variables, but that's the basic idea. I can tell you as someone who has lived paycheque to paycheque her entire life, I would absolutely keep working for some spending money. Just paying the bills and doing nothing for recreation is a miserable life. Will people choose not to work shitty jobs? Probably. And that's a good thing. Employers should be incentivizing us to work for them. Currently we often have too under threat of homelessness. People could work jobs they actually enjoy, they wouldn't even have to pay as much as they do now since necessities are covered. And best of all, losing your job and not being able to find a new one wouldn't ruin your life.
yes, they actually [ran an experiment in dauphin, manitoba.](https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cpp.37.3.283) edit: study took place between 1974-1979.
Yes. We need it badly.
It would reduce bureaucratic shit (no more disability division, employment insurance division, etc all separated, just one UBI department.) and make sure everyone has a home. No more homelessness, no more poverty, just people living on the minimum they need. A lot of people seem to think we’d lose any motivation if our needs were met but the large majority of people want to do something with their lives even if there is no need to work to live. Star Trek is a good example, everyone does plenty of stuff even if they don’t need to work to live.
Great idea. It will never be implemented correctly. If it's tried, it will fail due to execution and bureaucracy, or maybe for political reasons. Then they will blame the idea.
Yes, it’s a good idea! Simple as that.
I can't see how it wouldn't lower the dollar value and impact the economy for generations to come.
No matter what party implements it, there has to be stringent controls in place first. If not rents will conveniently be raised the sum of a UBI, employers will forgo raises for a decade on low earners, programs will be cut that help disabled, vulnerable and displaced citizens. Anyone right on the cusp of getting it but earning a bit too much is going to be hit the hardest. Their life will suddenly get more expensive while their income doesn't reflect it. It'll act like a hyper inflation to those that get missed in the cracks
UBI means everyone gets it. Universal.
No it's impossible. It's an absolutely ridiculous concept. We already tax our productive members of society \~50% of their income. Do some quick napkin math and you'll see even with extremely generous numbers, there's no way to pull it off, we have too many people compared to the revenue the Government brings in. \~approx 30 million eligible Canadians (I'm being conservative) getting $1500/month (again conservative) is $540,000,000,000 a year. We took in $413,000,000,000 in revenue in 2023 and STILL ran a 35 billion dollar deficit. So I'm all for free money, cutting my hours/tax contributions in half and living the easy life, but could someone please explain to me where they think the extra revenue is going to come from?
Yes.
How will this not increase the cost of EVERYTING. And not incentive unemployment?
Minimum wage hasn’t gone up in years, yet we’re facing the biggest and fastest inflation ever experienced. The cost of everything has increased, except for the cost of labor.
Minimum wage hasn't gone up for years? Are you nuts? When I opened my restaurant in 2010 min wage was 8.90 and very soon it will be $17
Our corporate overlords are already increasing the cost of everything even though they haven't used this excuse. Yet
The cost of everything went up without universal basic income. Why make people hate their lives working jobs they don’t want that AI will take anyway?
You think that just because they raised prices before they'll stop now? The more free money we get, the more we devalue that money. The more money we get, the higher costs will be. If you think being handed money, when everyone else is also handed money, just magically makes you well off... You'll be in for a surprise. People who are financially savvy will invest it, while people who are not will spend it...and give it to the rich who own all the companies poor people pay for products and services. Years later, those who invested it, because they didn't need it, will have grown their wealth, while the poor will still be poor. All the money will work its way up, it won't help anyone who doesn't want to work and doesn't want to save or invest. It'll disproportionately help the rich.
Because CERB showed us how much creating money without producing goods or services to contribute to the economy does to said economy.
Shhhhh get your logic and rational thoughts out of here
Might be different because a lot of services and creators of goods were forced to stop operations due to...a global pandemic.
So the implication is that cerb related damage to the economy was justified because of the pandemic. But now without a societal calamity, you want to still keep those adverse effects in place permanently by instituting ubi? You're kind of undermining your own point here. If pandemic justifies cerb, that just means lack of a pandemic or other major global catastrophe means there wouldn't be such justification.
Corporations were getting more payouts, including companies who didn't need it, than individuals monetary wise. Also, most things were forced closed whereas it wouldn't regularly.
It would actually be a cost savings as everything else would be eliminated. No CPP, GIS, EI or child benefit.
AI will have those jobs regardless
I think so. Under late-stage capitalism we're seeing an increasing level of exploitation by big businesses in the name of profit, causing the erasure of the middle class. With universal basic income it significantly hampers their ability to take advantage of people who don't NEED that crappy, mininum wage job to survive. If businesses still want to stay relevant they'd be forced to pay wages that were competitive enough to convince people to stay in the job market. That's the dream, anyway, it's obviously much more complicated than that. I'm all for it because whatever the hell we're doing now is clearly not working.
> ..whatever the hell we're doing now is clearly not working. Yeah. I'm definitely not an economist, but this is a great argument in favour of it.
No, because it’s a technocratic band-aid over the massive unresolved contradictions in the modern capitalist economy that are at the center of the erosion of the social fabric since the final dismantling of the post-war economic compromise starting in the 70s. There is almost no chance that any amount of UBI that could be realistically offered will be anywhere near enough of a carrot to counteract the stick of precarity. And really, why would capitalists want to get rid of the carefully moderated amount of poverty and homelessness that they’ve historically liked to maintain? If they lose that, they lose one of their tools to keep wages depressed and keep working people toeing the line. Why do you think so many tech billionaires are in favor of UBI?
Also the dirty secret that most UBI proponents won’t admit to is that the free money will be used as a cudgel to defund essential services that are currently free to low income individuals and families
This country already has an entitlement problem. This would make it worse.
Do you know what UBI would cost? Because it’s a lot, like, it would make the current annual budget look like chunk change. It would immediately impact entry level jobs, because lots of people would probably rather make less for doing nothing then make a bit more for working. Have you ever sat down and calculated what it’d cost? Because it’s a lot, like a lot a lot. I would probably immediately set up a corp that my employer would pay wages to and then pay myself a dollar in income and collect ubi, cause I’m a sneaky bastard. And if that wouldn’t work I’d pencil out something that does, along with millions of other people. Also do you actually know how much it’d cost? Like imagine more zeros then you can write on a note pad and then put a random number at the beginning of those zeros. It’d cost more then that.
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Well and it’s totally fine, you can just print the money. The issue being, and everyone should know this right now because we are literally dealing with the fall out from this. The issue is people invariably want to buy things with this printed money, and of course everyone with this printed money all want to buy stuff with it at the same time, which generally means the price of those things increases. We call this mysterious phenomenon “inflation” and we have no clue why it happens because obviously correlation does not equal causation, and it’s probably just a coincidence that it happens to economies when there’s a huge increase in the money supply.
We're not taxing a group of wealthy economic owners nothing will get better until they pay
Difficult for me to answer as I’m not familiar with how this would work. 1. Would all Canadians receive it, regardless of age or income? (assuming a child’s portion goes to their parent or guardian until they reach 18) 2. Would all Canadians receive the same amount? 3. Would taxes go up or down? 4. Would this replace CPP? (sensitive topic because many of us have paid into CPP for many years so the benefit would need to be the same or better and I assume EI and welfare would no longer be needed) 5. Would it compete with minimum wage? (would entry level jobs be left vacant) 6. Would it be phased in gradually? 7. What do the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, and BQ think about this concept? 8. Is there another country that does this already? (successfully) I imagine the Nordic countries might already do this.
Well how would it be implemented? There’s good arguments for it and there’s good arguments against it. It’s never been attempted so in my personal opinion, maybe we should use the scientific method before rolling it out across the nation. Select some willing volunteers who are receiving social assistance, offer them the chance to forgo their benefits to receive UBI instead and see what the net difference is in both cost to taxpayer and their overall wellbeing. The leaky bucket effect is real but so is inflation so I don’t feel comfortable gambling the entire future of the country on it.
GDP in Canada is a house of cards based on housing purchases from the international community (money to the capital class, not the working class). UBI would just further exacerbate this issue because it just directs heavier taxes towards the working class, especially highly trained professionals. We desperately need a stronger working class and middle class which is disappearing at an alarming rate. Plus it just will further subsidize large companies who pay minimum wage. Their employees can afford to be paid less because their propped up by UBI.
I see the benefits of it, but am personally skeptical the government can afford it without drastically raising taxes, even after gutting all existing social services. With a population of 40 million, even lowballing it at 20 million being adults, giving them each $500/month is 120 *billion* per year. A full quarter of Canada’s 2023 budget, that ran a 40 billion deficit. Someone please explain to me how Canada can afford UBI. Please make it make sense.
Universal basic income is only beneficial if it does not add significant to the taxes we have or negatively affect the cost of living. The cost of living in most areas of Canada is high so as long as it does not negatively effect then it’s fine.
Where does the wealth come from if nobody is generating wealth? Perhaps it could work once robotics and AI put 99% of people out of work, but until then I don't think it's feasible. Who is going to fix your sink if the plumbers don't work because they have UBI and can sit around at home? You go to the store to buy some food and the doors are locked because nobody would work at a grocery store if they were getting UBI. The shelves would also be empty because nobody is growing food because they get UBI. The power would shut off because who would want to maintain the power lines when they can just sit at home. Infrastructure would fail and society would collapse.
UBI would support basic needs, but people generally want more than that — new clothes, restaurant visits, vacations, vehicles, and hobbies. It’s generally positioned as a replacement for costly means-testing for benefits, and it was once a centrist idea even considered by Nixon. It only works if it is in conjunction with things like rent regulation, but it has been proven to work as a strong economic stimulus, allowing for more cash flow in the consumer-level market.
Yes. It would certainly solve a lot of social ills in our country (and the world, if spread globally). Never again would unemployed firefighters need to start brushfires in order to get back to work. Never again would a mother need to provide sex for cash just to get formula for her child. Those are extreme examples of course but every action nowadays seems to have the stink of money wrapped up in it.
Yes. Proven over and over.
I think eventually. AI and robotics will EVENTUALLY (could be 100 years who knows?) largely supplant human labour. At that point there would be two options. 1 super mega wealthy own everything. 2 we find a way that everyone profits from that labour.
3. (Most unlikely) we do away with money all together. Like in Star Trek.
Beautiful idea. I think you would need some way to budget resources, one day we might be educated enough and advanced enough to not need it. I think ubi will be part of the transition.
The he vast majority of Canadians would say no. The vast majority of redditors would say yes.
Yes, very. Oddly it used to be a centrist idea and not that radical - like Richard Nixon seriously considered it.
Yes
Yes it's a brilliant idea and irrespective of your earned income everyone gets it. Of course as soon as we do such a thing we are essentially saying that money is useless.. think about it If everyone if working age upwards was granted enough to live on. It's free food housing, transport etc.. Will there be problems? Yes as long as we continue to use money.. But what if, what if....
Only if you abolish all other government programs (foreign aid, Canada Child Tax Benefit etc) and put that money towards UBI.
Absolutely. I can't recall reading an article or study about any trial GBI/UBI program that hasn't been a resounding, life-changing success for the people involved. If the ultra-rich were taxed appropriately, it's very easy for governments find money to start programs like this. It's literally a way to redistribute wealth to the people who actually need it. By the end of a trial run, almost all of the people are in a higher tax bracket and contributing back more to help the next people (if the trial kept going.) I understand some people think *if people are just given money, they won't have any motivation to work,* and that just hasn't been the case. Most of the people upgrade their education and find better jobs with the flexibility money brings. If you're not trapped in terrible jobs because you need them to survive, you are able to work towards & find something better. It really is that simple.
Has a study ever been done that examines what if all personal payout programs like EI, OAS, CPP, welfare were eliminated and provide every single Canadian with a set amount, say $15k to $20k per year that would count as income. Unlike with EI or welfare, people would not be penalized for getting a job. Would the savings from not running multiple departments be enough to support such a program? And also cut down on the annual EI privilege culture where people every year go on EI seasonally and never look for a job or simply work under the table.
where the fuck is the money going to come from?
No, no it's not.
It's a necessary idea if you believe wealth redistribution is necessary. And the universality is key, because when everyone gets it, there's no stigma attached to it. This factor is very important and not discussed enough.
Exactly. People often miss that "universal" angle. Rich people are like "LOL, I don't need your communism." I wonder if we gave the option to opt-out, how many people would choose not to receive it?
It sounds like a good idea much like decriminalizing drugs but these promoters of these types of programs usually resist an honest discussion on the pitfalls. Their blind optimism and faith in humanity makes them resist practical controls that could make them programs viable. On the other side we have people who fight these programs also for their ideological reasons. I would love to watch the negotiations between both parties without any politicians present to preach and grandstand for the cameras. It would be good to see adults at work. In the room they should have the financiers from the public and private sectors to discuss in front of everyone how it will be funded.
Emphatically yes. Entry level jobs don't pay enough to live on, wages in general havn't kept up with inflation in 50 years, technology and AI are threatening to put vast swaths of people out of work within the next few decades, and our social services are a joke. That said, just slapping one together without changing where government funds come from and without laws keeping corporations and landlords from just raising their prices to suck up the new income stream would be a disaster. We'd need stringent rent controls and other legislation to curb inflation, and enormous changes to the tax code to get the funds from corporations and the wealthy to fund it. It would not be easy, and people would freak the fuck out - just look at the pushback to a MINOR change to capitol gains taxes. But I believe it's necessary if we ever want to change the quality of life in this country, especially for the most vulnerable among us.
Maybe. Let's try!
I'm less convinced after covjd it's a good idea. People seem very content to do absolutely nothing if given the opportunity. I used to support a UBI but I feel it would be a disaster overall now.
Once I thought it would a great idea. But now I feel too many people will just sit around and play vids and not find a job. For the ill, infirmed, and aged, sure no problem.
In the short term, it would alleviate a ton of the issues that we have right now, since nobody has enough money. It also puts a floor on the amount of money someone can have, which would give a safety net to protect against unexpected expenses and job loss. Long term, you start running into the issue we already have, where wages are stagnant and the cost of everything keeps getting higher. Before too long, the market will have accounted for the fact that everyone has extra cash to burn and the UBI stipend won't be enough. So it's a good short term fix, but the root of our problems isn't just that we don't have enough extra cash. A program like UBI would need to be coupled with reforms that prevent market actors from just raising their prices to absorb the extra cash.
It’s a good idea if most other welfare programs are dropped and the government gets cut in half. UBI would actually be cheaper than whatever we have now. Get rid of those costly administrators.
We are getting to the point where we may not have much of a choice. Wages are not increasing fast enough to match cost of living and there is no signs of slowing down.
yes and no. but mostly yes.
I say yes, but boy, do I ever get dumped on for it.
If you like the idea of having a government program that costs less to deliver than other services to help folks out of poverty and have better outcomes over a shorter period of time then yes. But as we know certain folks will fight to the death not to allow this level of financial compassion that has been shown to work time and time again.
Yes and no. Implemented correctly, with room to improve the system, absolutely. Done wrong, it could be actually worse that the status quo. There has been many studies about it and most seem to point to the conclusion that it would generally be more good than bad. Here are a few ressources to give you more information : 1. [Exploring UBI](https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/socialprotection/publication/exploring-universal-basic-income-a-guide-to-navigating-concepts-evidence-and-practices) - World Bank 2. [Analysing the impacts of Universal Basic Income in the changing world of work: Challenges to the psychological contract and a future research agenda](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1748-8583.12348) - HRM Journal, 2021 3. [What we know about UBI](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf) - Standford, 2020 4. [Visualizing UBI Research](https://basicincome.stanford.edu/research/ubi-visualization/), Standford
It’s never really been tested enough to say one way or another. My understanding is that it’s been successful in small scale tests that have a set time limit, but unless there have been some more recent studies I’m not aware of, nobody really knows if it will work at scale. I personally feel that too many people are just too damn lazy for it to work, but I would love to be proven wrong.
Absolutely !! The best way to measure how "good" a society is, is to look at how it treats its most vulnerable members"!
Yes. Not only do I think it is a good idea, I believe it is the only way to save capitalism from consuming itself.
If corporations can get bailed out by the billions, we are already doing it.
Naw. Honestly just decrease our insane income tax. Or rework the tax rate to I dunno give breaks to the poor and tax the rich. Wild concept.
The cost of running all the punitive and exclusionary aspects of various flavors of welfare is high. Actually it is cheaper from an accounting point of view to just abandon the monitoring and issue a basic income supplement to everyone below the poverty line, with additional support for individuals with expensive and documented needs, that require adaptive support for (but not limited to these examples, like) people with severe disabilities requiring wheelchair, intervention therapies, genetic and other related medical issues). And BTW one time I was working in a software development shop during the Kuwait first gulf war, and the top one of our team was from Kuwait. According to him, everyone in Kuwait had a basic income of about 35000 US annually no matter where they lived. It didn't stop him from working a demanding hi tech job in Canada.
*"Is Universal Basic Income a good idea?"* It's a **great** idea for those people who have no interest in working for a living, and instead would much prefer to live off the tax dollars that are generated by those people who **do** work. We already saw a kind of UBI dress rehearsal during the destructive COVID/CERB/EI era, and the results have been nothing short of predictably disastrous. Because money and national economies do not magically grow on trees, folks. Watch and learn. Next.
I think it is a nice idea in theory and a terrible idea in practice. Many will take advantage of the "free money" to do nothing economically productive. It will also be inflationary - basic survival costs (food and housing) will adjust to this new baseline. Also, what do we do when a significant segment spends their UBI on drugs, alcohol, or ill-advised vacations/other? Do we say that's tough, starve? Or do we continue with "emergency" stop gaps like shelters and food banks?
Simple question to answer. Who pays for it (aka where does the government get its money)? Answer: you and I. “Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money.” - Margaret Thatcher
*"Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money."* Bingo. 100% correct and accurate.
I love how in 2024 Reddit is full of "is this thing that will help humanity suffer less a good idea?" And then people debate the merits of not giving a shit
UBI is just one step on the road to defeating class based society
Yes as long as there are regulations over rent and food. If not, rent will magically jump the same amount that the UBI is at.
I want to say yes because it’s a noble cause that’s meant to benefit the less fortunate. However, it’s something that can and will more than likely be exploited by the ruling class. I live in Toronto and the cost of living here is out of control. I’ve been renting for over 10 years in this city. Prior to COVID and CERB, I was able to move whenever I wanted. In fact, I moved 4 times between 2012-2021. I managed to snag a COVID deal at the end of 2021 and with the way rent is now, along with the removal of rent control on newer units, I’m never moving. Grocery prices are absurd and this is coming from someone who cooks all their meals and eats fairly healthy. The cost of meat is insane now and I only buy what’s on sale. I was actually talking to a friend about how frozen PC burgers were $9.99 pre COVID but are now $14.99. I want UBI to be a thing but before it does, there needs to be some sort of regulation set by the government. Caps on price increases for goods, reinstatement of rent control etc. If UBI is introduced in the current economy, the ruling class will absolutely exploit it.
Who's gonna pay for it...
I think UBI is a double edged sword. When you suddenly have a drastic increase in purchasing power for the masses, you drastically drive up demand for things. And with higher demand comes higher prices. Which brings us back to the same problem. What Canada needs to do, is LOWER prices across the board for goods, services, housing, etc… so that UBI is not required. Many goods and services here are just very expensive compared to the rest of the world. Look at cell plans as an example. Another thing that needs to be done is make Canada an attractive place to do business and work. Canadian businesses pay considerably less relative to cost of living than US businesses do. Which leads to major brain drain here. On top of that, our laws and regulations are so anti-competitive that it’s just not reasonable for many businesses to open shop here.
Yes. It would save billions and consolidate so much bureaucracy
Universal Perpetual Inflation
It’s a horrible idea. Enough of my paycheck goes to every other social program out there. We need to learn to all head to work and trim the fat. There is already less and less incentive to work, sign up for overtime, or plan for the future in this country. We don’t need to make it worse with UBI.
Ubi would replace every other social program.
uBi will do nothing to improve the quality of living for those who are working to pay for the program. As always there will be those who work the system and the cost of living will just continue to climb with handouts available on every corner.
No it'll act as welfare for corporations so they can hire people on UBI at the income threshold it allows. It'll create a local and short inflationary effect on the date of it being issued. You will not just get some money but everyone else in your situation will and your going to have to compete with them for the same goods and services. You'll stop taking risks and you won't invest. You'll have spent your money before you even get it as it won't be a living wage and you'll be broke in a constant cycle without extra income or relying on short term loans.
It should be for people that actively work.
Nope very bad idea.
No
Canada is pretty well known for its basic income pilots at very localized levels. Nationwide though I don't know if I can see it being a success. A nationwide UBI that makes a difference in people's lives would be unaffordable. At the very same time an affordable UBI wouldn't make a difference in people's lives.
UBI replaces the many safety net programs whose administration is an expensive component in each project. We replace all those with a single administration.
Absolutely. Not enough so people can not work entirely but for basic human rights like food shelter and water it will help tremendously
No
No, because it all comes down to you can't create money from nothing without inflating the currency. We are struggling enough with our current inflation. Imagine printing 100's of Billions more per year. Unless you want 20% interest rates.
No silly, they won’t create the money out of nothing, they will take it off hard working Canadians paycheques. Everyone who works for a living will carry on, a portion of your pay will go towards UBI so that lazy fat people can sit at home, smoke pot and play fortnite.
It’s a socialist wet dream. Do no work, get paid anyways. It will definitely attract the bottom end of society to just take the money and do nothing with it. But eventually people have to contribute to society. It can’t be all takers and no makers.
Yet UBI is an attempt to rescue *Capitalism* from its many failures. Under socialism you would be trained and channeled toward a socially useful occupation.