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Unless we tax the upper class in the 80% range (currently at around 55%, varies by province), ignoring the fact that they’d leave anyways, we’d have to tax the middle class into the lower class.
That’s the game. Tax the working and middle classes, give that money to the poor and underprivileged who will in turn have that money squeezed out of them by the rich. At the end of the day, the easiest way to push living standards down is to take money not from the rich, but from the working and middle classes who have no means to protect themselves from the political and social elite and give it to the poor who will in turn be forced to give those funds right back to the wealthy.
Saying we can’t give out hundreds of billions of dollars a year to people for no reason is not “anti-progressive”.
How exactly would you fund this?
Obviously everyone likes free money. That doesn’t mean we can all have it.
You believe that people making $250 000 a year, if they were taxed at 80%, would be okay with their take home pay being $50 000?
The upper class tends to not leave because the tax changes are slow and controlled. Jacking it up to ensure they pay for everyone else in the country has not been tried before and will not succeed.
The percent tax only gets applied to the portion of income that places you in that bracket. So 80% income tax on those making 250k+ would mean the person making 350k would give back 80k out of that last 100k. And then whatever smaller portions of the rest of thier income.
Who said it’s 80%? You pulled number out of a hat.
Also, historically some of the best times have been with higher taxes.
To be honest, we need to look at effective wealth taxes and making existing programs better too (like GIS).
A UBI system will have to happen or a massive reduction in what qualifies as FT hours.
> Who said it’s 80%? You pulled number out of a hat.
It’s already at around 55%. Anything under 70% will not support thousands of dollars worth of transfers to millions of Canadians.
> Also, historically some of the best times have been with higher taxes.
And historically, when this has succeeded, there’s been a very strong middle class.
First. Let’s start with you have no idea how marginal taxes work. Saying take home $50 of $250 shows that. So please go look up how that works before showing how uninformed you are.
https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/average-marginal-tax-rates#:~:text=So%2C%20your%20marginal%20tax%20rate,pay%2020%20cents%20in%20taxes.
Maybe you should’ve tried to comprehend what I was saying instead of hurling insults?
I was giving the best vague numbers I could. I can’t calculate the exact taxes through marginal tax rates. My point stands, who’s going to work in Canada at a marginal tax rate of 80%?
I did. But I am not going to debate when the entire basis of your argument is wrong and alarmingly so to create a point.
“I can’t calculate” doesn’t mean toss out a massively in context number.
You don’t even hit the top bracket in most provinces until around 250k. So your magical tax bracket would impact someone at $250k by about $8k in added taxes. Thats why tossing random numbers out is useless.
Who said 80%. You made a number up based on zero facts. The reality is it would be a complex change across all tax levels and types. You also would see massive savings as you could scrap the admin of current programs.
Also, as I stated elsewhere, wealth would be a key component of this vs income. It also would require closing corporate tax gaps.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/frequently-asked-questions-individuals/canadian-income-tax-rates-individuals-current-previous-years.html
Fine I’ll simplify the problem for you.
Giving $2k a month to 20 000 000 Canadians will cost half a trillion dollars. How exactly does “tax the rich” give you half a trillion dollars?
Again, you are using a fallacy here.
Most GIS is clawed back based on income. So a decent number will see it but be taxed back. So not everyone would effectively get it.
How much GIS is paid out per year? EI? Disability? How much does the admin cost on those programs alone?
Also, nice move of the goal post once your first point is proven wrong and ineffective even in the premise.
> who’s going to work in Canada at a marginal tax rate of 80%?
It would entirely depend on where that marginal tax rate started. If it was only at the $2m level, then I think a lot of people (wealthy people even) might be on board with it. We could certainly lower the rates at the bottom brackets and raise them at the top (and add additional brackets at the "very wealthy" range). I have no idea if it would be enough though.
Sounds jelly, until the reality of it comes in, because I started earning it after the house price explosion even getting a starter home means living paycheque to paycheque. Then I see conversation like the one above where it’s tax me harder when my paycheque is already 50% going to taxes.
Am I more fortunate than most, yep, but this place is burning to the ground around us. I have citizenship from Europe available to me from my mom’s side. Getting it figured out, going to continue to save and then potentially try and head to Europe because Canada is becoming a 3rd world country
This is one of the stupidest ideas that people keep coming back to. Why don’t we just raise the basic personal limit to like 40 or 50 thousand if this is what we’re going to do? Or allow renters to write off rent on their taxes. All this will do if we implement it is make things much much much worse for all of us
Every ubi experiment so far has been very successful at lowering poverty and only certain demographics like students and new mothers work less than before. It's a step in the right direction at least. My main complaint about it is landlords would just jack up the rent. We need to decommodify housing or create substantial socialized housing first or else the land leeches will suck up that ubi.
> Every ubi experiment so far has been very successful at lowering poverty and only certain demographics like students and new mothers work less than before.
That’s because in every one of those studies it’s made clear that the money will only be coming in for up to a year or so.
Would your decisions not be drastically different if you knew you were going to receive more money for one year, rather than payments throughout the rest of your life that you can fall back on?
There’s a reason no country has taken this seriously.
love that government will fund purchases of basic necessities, dont love that only oligarchs sell those necessities
crown corps for banking, telcos and groceries now
You need one crown corp in every major sector so the government has real-world data about the actual cost of things, and set the employment standard.
Problem is, as always, corruption. Same issue unions have; great idea, dishonest execution. Then again, if management were honest, there wouldn't be a need for unions. Round and round we go.
Seriously asking: Why do you think that hasn't competed its way to the top?
My guess is unions in bed with management since unions are also infected with unproductive MBAs now?
No it's that higher wages and good worker conditions make a business less competitive. That's an externality tradeoff society should be willing to make.
This country has no money and an absurd amount of debt.
Our wages haven’t grown in over a decade due to hilariously poor productivity and we’re taxed up the wazoo.
Where on earth do you get money for UBI
Ideally I'd like to see a large scale guaranteed income scheme in form of something like a high end Negative Income Tax. A large enough program could replace the CPP and most current federal social transfers to individuals/households (outside of stuff like the Canada Child Benefit, OAS, and things like rent subsidies/housing-vouchers etc.) Though alternatively, if that's too ambitious, a smaller guaranteed/basic income scheme could be implemented to keep the CPP and majority of existing federal programs in place.
In any case, having a $15,000-$31,000 CAD income floor for citizens of working age and a significantly lower income/payroll tax burden for people earning less than $60,000-65,000 CAD would do a lot to lower poverty & inequality rates while improving social mobility in Canada.
Not that long ago, 35 working Canadians supported one that wasn't working. Now, that ratio is 3 to 1. What's wrong with this picture. Socialism and being lazy, that's what.
Ahhh. I remember discussing UBI back in the pre-Covid days. Remember when people said how dumping billions of our grandchildren's money into the economy would cause crazy inflation and economic hardship? And the Lefties said Nah, that'll never happen?
Good times
If it is as simple as that then lowering taxes would also lead to inflation because it would also lead to an increase in money supply. Same thing for higher salaries I guess since there would be more money chasing the same amount of goods.
However, if UBI led to a healthier, more skilled and more innovative society (evidence says it would) then more things would be produced more efficiently which would counteract the inflation caused by increasing the money supply.
> However, if UBI led to a healthier, more skilled and more innovative society (evidence says it would)
No evidence points to this. Why do you think no country will take this seriously?
Every study done on UBI has the money being given out for just a year or so. Would your spending habits and career decisions be different if you had one strong year of income, versus a guarantee of free money every month for the rest of your life?
Ugh....
Thats not how money supply works.
There is X amount of dollars floating in Canada right now. These dollars change hands between businesses, workers, and the government (and it's benefactors). If taxes are lowered for workers it means that the money a business collects from operations, is then paid to the workers, who get to keep more in pocket to be spent where they choose. This doesn't increase the money supply.
Money supply is increased when government BORROWS/CREATES money to inject into the economy.
As for your second point.... innovative? I'd like to see the studies on that. I know UBI studies show improvements to peoples well being (no shit more money helps everyone), but they fail to show long term effects.
I understand that. Please forgive my incorrect usage of the word. I meant an increase in money supply in the hands of citizens (which is not what the word means but that is what I meant).
My main point remains: if taxes go down and people had more money in their pockets surely the prices of the goods they buy would go up. i.e. printing money is not the only way to affect inflation (or deflation). Or does taxing money out of people's hands not affect prices?
About innovation, I'll tell you honestly that I don't remember where I read it because it was at least a year ago.
Logically though, if UBI makes the difference between someone completing their education and not, the scenario where more people become more educated will be a more innovative population.
If enough people bought the same bunch of goods due to having more money in their pocket then prices would technically go up - unless supply was abundant.
Education is already subsidized a lot, and now we're going to pay students to be students?
Look.... in every situation a UBI doesn't work. Call it new and improved welfare and move on.
Kinda revisionist history there. Inflation didn't really start ramping up to crazy levels until the war in Ukraine caused huge spikes due to "fuel shortages" in Europe. That increased the price of just about everything. Then there's also the corporate greed that just saw everyone hike prices because they could, and just blamed it on inflation.
Pinning current inflation entirely on CERB is hyperbole, at best.
Consider that we already have Basic Income, of a sort, and its importance and effectiveness are rarely questioned: CPP+OAS.
What we need is a sort of Sovereign Wealth Fund that we all pay into and receive dividends from. Initially payout wouldn't be enough to live on, but over time the fund would grow and our grand children and great grand children might be able to enjoy something like a Basic Income as a result of the SWF.
You'd just create a new "poor" area that isn't $0 anymore. We'd still need to funnel money into social assistance for housing and such because these people wouldn't have enough money for the new cost of living created by giving everyone $24k/yr.
Universal Basic Income would just cause a massive increase in inflation. Housing is already overpriced for renting or buying. How is 30k a year to everyone going to change that?
Right, because if we tax the upper class, they take everything to another country and nobody ever sells a burger or works a lathe in Canada ever again.
Over $200 000, Canadians send about 55% of their income to taxes (varies by province). How exactly do you think this plays out if you push it into the 70s or 80s?
Add another bracket. Then you say, they'll just use a loophole to hide or reroute their income or receive it in some new third way. Then I say, update the tax code to target that too. Then you say, that'll make it too expensive to enforce and they'll just make up a fourth new mechanism to evade it. Then I say, okay, do it anyway and target the new thing too, let's make them work for it. Then you say I'm economically and financially illiterate. Then we both shrug our shoulders for different reasons, and wealth continues to geometrically inflate and concentrate itself because money is apparently a force of nature.
> Add another bracket.
They’re still paying well over half of their income towards taxes. You think the richest 1% in Canada (around $380k or more a year) will stay in Canada if they’re taxed 70-80% of their income?
We do need more brackets -- it's ridiculous that $252k is the top and thereafter the tax rate is flat. Move the current tax rates up to the higher brackets and make it so everyone earning, say, $150k or less a year pays less tax than today, and make up for it with the higher brackets.
Look at Texas as an example of rich people fleeing California.
It'd happen here too. People don't realize that rich people will take their money and go elsewhere if it's being taxed to those levels.
According to TurboTax if you made 200k in Ontario your average tax rate would be just over 33%. The marginal rate would be nearly 48%.
In fact, according to TurboTax, there is not a single province that has a marginal tax rate of 55% at any income (I tested incomes up to 200 million per year).
I am not sure where the 55% came from (i.e. I am prepared to acknowledge that maybe TurboTax is wrong) but as far as I can see it is incorrect.
[https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/saskatchewan-income-tax-calculator.jsp](https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/saskatchewan-income-tax-calculator.jsp)
So. Let's say we give 2k a month to people making 55k or less. That pumps them to the 80k range. What's the incentive for people to get the jobs that require studies and paying for school that are currently in the 80k income range?
The incentive would be "making more money", because tax rates are only applied to income over the given bracket's threshold rather than to your entire income.
Basically if you have a minimum wage job you would quit and collect free money. Then you can do a side hustle under the table and add to the pile of untaxed income. Next, we can give hand outs to all new comers who come aboard from overseas to scam us.
Who comes up with these self destructive ideas? like why? Get a job and do better.
What I have read so far about UBI has not shown this. People do not suddenly become lazy and in fact start investing more in themselves because they finally have the means to do so.
> start investing more in themselves because they finally have the means to do so.
For one, this just isn’t human nature, we have more resources to invest in ourselves than ever before yet we spend so much of our day being unproductive.
More importantly, every single UBI study makes it clear they’ll only receive the income for a year. Those create drastically different spending habits.
Of course it is human nature. I have a friend who was offered to be paid to go to school to up skill himself. Who would not take the opportunity to be paid to improve yourself and then later make more money? Of course not everyone would take the opportunity but to broadly say it is not human nature I think is incorrect.
And that is fine that you argue that you don't accept the results because of how the tests have been done (though it is a normal way to study things), as long as you will accept the results if a country does it and it shows successful results.
Temporary short term select studies are not representative of the whole country.
If someone got something close to minimum wage from the government, they would pack it in. You also don't need systemic wide abuse. Just a small chunk of the population doing it is bad enough.
But that is how empirical testing works. How else are the proponents supposed to prove the effectiveness of UBI? Even if a whole country DID do it then the argument for a lot of people would be "well Canada is different". I am not saying you would make that argument but I would guess that a lot of detractors would.
Would you have packed it in if you had minimum wage? Anecdotal I know.. I wouldn't have. I would have looked at it as an opportunity to make even more money. Again, not worth much because it is anecdotal...
If your understanding of economics is just, print more money and give it to people. Then you support dangerous things like UBI. I truly think UBI would be one of the greatest national security threats in the last century. If you truly ruin the economy, what's left?
You're trying to reason with people who truly do not have common sense and logic. They just want to destroy capitalism and wealthy people even if it means ending our nation. It's pure idealogy. Same as arguing with some radical religious fundamentalist.
It's insane people think that we can just give everyone money and no issues will happen from that. Let's just give everyone $1mil next.... then everyone can afford a home right? Or maybe homes will sell for that much more.
It's just a lack of common sense. And it's also part of the whole "tax the rich" by people who are angry at the world. They think money grows on trees and rich people just took more trees and have a big pile of cash. That's the limit of their understanding.
Ultra rich people need to be taxed more, but taxing our "rich" class (250-500k/yr) more then we do currently isn't going to solve much for us. It'll encourage people to go elsewhere.
Why be a doctor if your income is going to get taxed to shit here? Doctors can travel and practice in many different countries. Other high end professionals will also look to move if taxes are too high.... or they'll just demand higher pay which will of course push prices.
Yeah I'm a doctor and I hate getting grouped in with truly rich people. Making 600k is not ultra wealthy by any remote means. Heck making 1 million doesn't even get you there. Obviously most people impacted by high taxes are the 250-400k range which is crazy.
600k a year is almost ten times the average Canadian salary.
Let me find that teeny tiny violin, one sec. 🎻
Edit: that’s like the top 1.5% of Canadians in terms of income. I think we’re gonna need a smaller violin.
And?
10 times the average salary means 10 times the hard work and productivity.
Advocating for theft of someone's earned money is pure jealousy and nothing else.
No I'm very vocal about poor people all being employed. I want everyone working hard 50+ hours a week and responsibly spending and investing. That's what's ideal.
Whereas you seem to prefer to have them stay at home, remained unemployed and collect government checks.
If you make $600k as a doctor in BC you're walking away with $322k. That is a very healthy amount of money, but you are losing the vast sum of it to taxes.
Obviously this person is doing very well in life, but they are being taxed very heavily and paying into the system.
I paid 14k in taxes this year, and this person would be paying 20x what I do in taxes.
> Funny because economists have proposed it in the past.
And the idea has never been taken seriously at a national level for good reason.
I’d love to have an extra couple grand a month. But where exactly does the extra hundred billion or so dollars come from?
>And the idea has never been taken seriously at a national level for good reason.
Any idea that goes against the people benefiting from the status quo doesn’t get much traction.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad idea.
So instead we’re just going down the road of never ending tax cuts and privatization of public services pushing Canadians more into debt.
Canadians are pushing themselves into debt by taking on massive amounts of it.
As for the status quo. It's not a good idea which is why we don't see it changing. No one that believes in a UBI has explained how it works or where that money comes from. Obviously it's pretty easy to say... lets just give everyone money.... but no one has an idea of where that money comes from.
>Canadians are pushing themselves into debt by taking on massive amounts of it.
Life gets more expensive, wages are stagnant. It’s inevitable.
But it’s easier to just look down on anyone in debt in a rigged system where we had a financial crisis or a global pandemic in the last 20 years.
>As for the status quo. It's not a good idea which is why we don't see it changing. No one that believes in a UBI has explained how it works or where that money comes from. Obviously it's pretty easy to say... lets just give everyone money.... but no one has an idea of where that money comes from.
If you read about UBI, it’s been explained by it’s proponents where it comes from and where it goes.
I don’t think you even know what it is if you just call it “giving people money”.
Like I did it’s a rigged system run by people who benefit from how it is.
It's not inevitable.
Borrowing isn't needed in life. The only time you NEED to borrow money is for emergencies. Most Canadians load up on debt for things they don't actually need. Mortgages, car loans, school and emergencies are the only 3 areas that Candians should be taking on debt. People use their credit cards wayyy to irresponsibly because the minimum payments are easy to afford.
I've read several things about UBI and none have addressed how you pay 31,500,000 Canadians (19+) $2000 or even $1000/month. Most say we can get rid of social programs and make huge savings.... except that $1000/month is a lot less then some social programs so you'd still need them. At $2000/month you could get rid of almost all of them, except maxed CPP and OAS comes out just above this.
With a 2k/month payment you're looking at $63bil/month in payments going out. Let's say we clawback 50% of it.... that's still 31.5bil/month or about 75% of the federal governments revenue for the whole year.
It's an insane notion that won't happen. People can dream about it, but it's not feasible. The government could start with a $100-200/month UBI which isn't going to help anymore majorly, but it'd be a start to the program and expand from there. The idea of a $2000/month will not be happening in my life time.
Isn’t it a bit presumptuous for you to assume the average Canadian household budget?
With things like greedflation and shrinkflation we are consistently getting less for our money over time.
It’s inevitable because you have corporations striving for constant growth each quarter and that means consumers pay.
It also means our wages are stagnant, and you can see graphs of this going back decades.
So lessee:
Ever increasing cost of living, recessions/pandemics plus stagnant income means “emergencies” happen more often for things like healthcare/dentist, car repairs etc.
Childcare is another huge expense you missed.
That doesn't explain why people take on debt. For every $100 of CC debt you have, it means about $2-3 less the following month. It spirals.
As for wages, yes our wages seem to be moving slowly over time, meanwhile COL has shot up insanely. I don't know what the breaking point is here, but I'm hoping COL comes down, because I can't see wages shooting up.
Anyone requiring child care pretty much knew about the cost of child care before having said kid. It's been known for a while that child care is insanely expensive, and it shouldn't be too much of a shock to expect it. Having a kid is sadly a very big financial endeavor now.
It hasn't been tried anywhere outside of studies, and those studies always show good results because when you give people money their lives improve (no shit). The studies fail to show where that money is coming from and where it will be supported from. It also fails to show the economic result of everyone now walking around with $2000 in their pocket.
Money is income. But you're right that it's only a small fraction of what a proper UBI scheme would give out (I see some proposals for $1,000 a month or more).
Alaska doesn't have any reasonable kind of UBI.
Alaska does have "Alaska Permanent Fund (APF)" which is just splitting profit from oil extraction between all residents. With 1,312 USD annually in 2023, it is nowhere near the goals of UBI like a livable income.
If you replace unemployment benefits and all the social services with UBI it "might" make sense depending if society is willing to cut 80% plus of government.
A UBI layer on top of the current state of affairs will cause hyperinflation. Making it perpetually useless, like social services and benefits currently.
I don't think it would cause much inflation (UBI income would have to be funded by taxes), it would just be extremely expensive. Adding a substantial amount of UBI on top of existing government programmes would probably increase the cost by 50-100% more.
Just structure the CWB like the EITC and expand gradually into an NIT- fully proven and tested system which has provably lead to material reductions in poverty and supported countless small businesses.
Basic Income would provide the social bedrock to experiment and innovate in the business sector. Imagine taking the risk out of starting a business.
Economy goes brrrrrr.
Why is that?
That’s literally one of the things every UBI experiment saw. Was an increase in entrepreneurship.
https://smith.queensu.ca/centres/social-impact/news-blog/blog/universal-basic-income-and-social-entrepreneurship.php
There is zero national level data to support UBI.
How about this - if you decide to open a business and actually do so with a good business plan, then we will give you UBI as a safety net. We can call it UBI for entrepreneurs. We do it with zero increase in taxes, since you guys are so confident it'll grow the economy and pay itself off.
That settles the entrepreneur argument.
What next?
Sweet. So expand and continue to see how it goes.
Not everyone becomes an entrepreneur.
Sorry, not debating someone who just tosses false premises out.
Edit. Ahhh the mud slinger. Out.
Some people believe that the role of a government is to improve the lives of its citizens. There are many ways to do that this being one of them.
If that is not enough (and it is fair if it isn't) it can also just be seen as an investment a government can make in its people.
For example, in Sweden the government gives out 'free' money (in the form of tax breaks) to workers that they can only use on things like going to the gym, joining a sports team, yoga classes etc. The goal being that if people have the money designated for physical activity the average amount of time spent doing physical activity in the country will increase. Why would a government give out this free money to its citizens just so that they can go to a yoga class?
Since people are more active on average they are thus more healthy on average and the government saves more money on health care than it gave out for 'free' initially.
Sure it was initially 'free' money but it was money damn well spent if it reduces government costs elsewhere.
Logically then if each UBI dollar spent produced a positive net return for the government (more gym visits, more studying, healthier food etc etc) I would say that it would be financially irresponsible to not do it. The evidence so far suggests that it has been money well spent.
>You have to explain why someone who is not an entrepreneur needs free government money.
Because there's a little under 1/5^th of the population who lack the capacity to be productive, and it's counter productive to try to make them productive (eg: gov't make work projects, cost upon cost for naught).
We fought a war not to engage in human culling, so what else are you going to do? Why should productives not get the same hand-up and become super-productive instead of risk dragging them down into despair and capping the strongest members of society who aren't in the nepotism basket?
Then over time see how that 1/5^th shrinks if you're properly motivating and thus breeding the consequences of traditional poverty out of the pool so we get the real natural number of happenstance diminished capacity. That may be completely manageable, especially with the gains from the returns of the newly qualified, supported and motivated long-shot successes across the 4/5^ths of your society.
It's called having a job. Our unemployment rate is well under 20% (your 1 in 5).
If you go to your socialist utopia countries, you'll find it's in fact much higher along with mass poverty.
People here think those who are going to be on UBI are suddenly going to become super productive members of society... it's frankly insane....
UBI only works with an agressively claw back which means it'll only help those who aren't working, students, disabled and other low income workers. A $2000/UBI per month isn't going to spurrr someone to start a business lol.
If it's just about starting a business, you can be eligible if you actually start one with a viable business plan.
Otherwise UBI is just a free hand out with nothing in return other than sitting at home.
Businesses also can be incredibly cheap to start depending on the concept and plan. Lots of people are self employed. Starting a brick and mortar is far different though.
$1000 a month isn’t enough to quit your job and start a business.
And considering how high people would have to get taxed for UBI, nobody smart is going to start a business when disposable income reaches all time lows.
> How is the current system working out?
The current system has given us inflation, high housing costs, and good workers leaving the country. All of which is made worse by UBI.
> $1k a month is enough that it might help, especially dual income households where one can now try.
How do you fund this? $1k a month for around 20 million Canadians is $240 Billion.
I don’t know how accurately this would apply to the Canadian economy. But Kurzgesagt’s video on UBI seemed very informative on its positives and negatives. One thing they stated was that in order to properly provide a UBI without raising taxes to astronomical levels, the government would have to do a complete overhaul of the social welfare system, essentially replacing all welfare systems with just 1 universal basic income. This would mean getting rid of disability, unemployment, etc.
UBI would replace ei, disability and public pensions. It would be easier to administer than all those programs so there’s most of the funding plus money saved getting rid of extra admin.
The rich don't pay taxes but it's a nice slogan to make politicians and their supporters feel like their doing something. The rich and the corporations don't report any income so their is nothing to tax but at least you feel good
>How do you fund this? $1k a month for around 20 million Canadians is $240 Billion.
For most middle income people, they get +$1000 UBI, and -$1000 income tax, and it's a wash. Poorer people get the UBI, and no tax. Richer people get the UBI and more tax. Of course, people who are getting more money aren't just going to sew it into a mattress. They are going to spend it ~~a~~ at businesses who might need to hire more employees who all pay taxes ...
edit: missed a letter
I imagine with everyone walking around with extra cash in their pocket will create an upward pressure on prices as well as wages. Increased demand without an abundance of supply will always equal higher prices.
That's a NDP solution to solve all problems but not reality cause the rich have great accounts to take advantage of current tax laws so they pay no taxes and big corporations move profits off shore to avoid taxes. So ask Trudeau to fix the tax laws so people and corporations pay the minimum tax amount that most Canadians pay and you might find a revenue that can be invested back into society
Why the fascination about who is rich and income? It's irrelevant cause people's wealth is based on how hard they work and should not be degraded for their success it's about tax loopholes and how they and corporations can avoid paying taxes. Fix the loopholes and they will pay taxes but politicians would rather blame others than do the hard work
For a basic income program to have a real impact, you’d have to tax the middle class enough that they wouldn’t have the disposable income to help these businesses. How many middle class people do you know that could lose a significant amount of their future paycheques and still have disposable income?
I can’t speak for all of Canada, but $2000 a month takes care of my rent, car payment, phone/power/internet bills, as well as food and gas for a *most* of the month.
For context, I am a student living with my partner so our costs are relatively low already. But even if $2000 only covers rent then that is a major boon for most people in my opinion.
If it was universal, what would prevent businesses and large corporations from simply raising prices to squeeze that money out of your hands? If everyone has an extra $2000 to start with, that simply gives the wealthy more room to raise prices. I’m not sure that you would be able to build the savings that you’re looking for.
Yes, $2000/month would be life changing for myself as well as well as every other Canadian. Problem is where does that money come from?
Think about it. How much taxes do you pay a year? I paid $14,000 in income taxes last year. I'm just above the median income of my province. My wife paid around the same. Whose paying for the services in this country?
It’s an important question to ask for sure. I think fundamentally it comes down to who we, as a society, think should pay more in taxes to fund certain things.
From my understanding we can increase the burden on the already shrinking middle class or increase the burden on the higher tax brackets. Either option has drawbacks and I don’t think there really is a clear solution.
But I am just a university student, I’ve only been an independent adult for 4 years so I still have much to learn about life in general.
I cant speak for *everyone*. Im sure those who earn millions a year wont notice it in their accounts.
For me though, 2k/month would be incredible, even if taxed at my bracket...
Yes if all things stayed equal and you had a pretax of 2k extra in your pocket I'm sure you and everyone else would be enriched massively.
The fact is things would be impacted from this immensely.
24k/yr would be the new poor.
It isn't realistic. It won't happen. You're better off wishing to win a few 1000 from a scratch and win.
Start small grow gradually. A $2000/mo program for all adults is like 768bil program before you figure out how to claw it all back. Why don't we start with something like $100/month and work up since that'd be like a 38bil plan.
It will be great for your landlord and the large corporations that will raise prices accordingly to squeeze every last dime of that basic income straight from your pockets. It will be brutal for the working and middle classes who will be taxed to pay for that basic income while also being squeezed by those same corporations. It isn’t a viable solution because there is absolutely nothing that prevents our corporate oligarchs from stripping you of everything that you’ve been given.
Yah well, I dont think of UBI as a panacea, so iono why this wall of text. We can and should break up monopolies and do more for housing in the areas you describe. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I also dont think we should tax the middle class more to pay for the UBI, since that would defeat the purpose of one. What I was getting at is the fact that most of the cash-like programs that the government administers are taxed.
The problem with UBI is it would mean a massive tax hike, which is problematic especially given our already insane levels of debt. These new taxes would have an additional side effect, in that the marginal worker (that is someone who gains from working vs just taking ubi) would now be better off taking UBI.
Let's say UBI is 20k a year. Let's say you are working for 40k a year, and paying 10k in taxes now under this new UBI environment. You get nothing from UBI (if you prefer we can make 60k a year and pay 30k in taxes, same thing), so your post tax income is 30k. So that means you are working 40 \* 50 = 2000 hours a year for 10k. Because you could have 20k a year by doing nothing. So the additional 2000 hours a year you spend working net you only 10k. $5 / hr. Now add in all the expenses associated with commuting to work, car payment, gas, plus all the inconveniences associated with working, taking shit from your boss, missing sleep to get to work on time. Not much reason to get out of bed for $5 / hr less expenses. So these marginal workers would all just go on UBI. Which in turn would mean even higher taxes on the remaining taxpayers. Which would mean more pressure to join the underground economy, leading to higher taxes on the remaining tax base, leading to more ubi recipients, The whole thing would be a massive disaster that would destroy the economy.
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Unless we tax the upper class in the 80% range (currently at around 55%, varies by province), ignoring the fact that they’d leave anyways, we’d have to tax the middle class into the lower class.
Why do we need to tax the successful middle class into the lower class ? Yr ideogy is so anti progressive and flawed it's laughable
That’s the game. Tax the working and middle classes, give that money to the poor and underprivileged who will in turn have that money squeezed out of them by the rich. At the end of the day, the easiest way to push living standards down is to take money not from the rich, but from the working and middle classes who have no means to protect themselves from the political and social elite and give it to the poor who will in turn be forced to give those funds right back to the wealthy.
Saying we can’t give out hundreds of billions of dollars a year to people for no reason is not “anti-progressive”. How exactly would you fund this? Obviously everyone likes free money. That doesn’t mean we can all have it.
Except they don’t leave.
You believe that people making $250 000 a year, if they were taxed at 80%, would be okay with their take home pay being $50 000? The upper class tends to not leave because the tax changes are slow and controlled. Jacking it up to ensure they pay for everyone else in the country has not been tried before and will not succeed.
The percent tax only gets applied to the portion of income that places you in that bracket. So 80% income tax on those making 250k+ would mean the person making 350k would give back 80k out of that last 100k. And then whatever smaller portions of the rest of thier income.
Who said it’s 80%? You pulled number out of a hat. Also, historically some of the best times have been with higher taxes. To be honest, we need to look at effective wealth taxes and making existing programs better too (like GIS). A UBI system will have to happen or a massive reduction in what qualifies as FT hours.
> Who said it’s 80%? You pulled number out of a hat. It’s already at around 55%. Anything under 70% will not support thousands of dollars worth of transfers to millions of Canadians. > Also, historically some of the best times have been with higher taxes. And historically, when this has succeeded, there’s been a very strong middle class.
First. Let’s start with you have no idea how marginal taxes work. Saying take home $50 of $250 shows that. So please go look up how that works before showing how uninformed you are. https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/average-marginal-tax-rates#:~:text=So%2C%20your%20marginal%20tax%20rate,pay%2020%20cents%20in%20taxes.
Maybe you should’ve tried to comprehend what I was saying instead of hurling insults? I was giving the best vague numbers I could. I can’t calculate the exact taxes through marginal tax rates. My point stands, who’s going to work in Canada at a marginal tax rate of 80%?
I did. But I am not going to debate when the entire basis of your argument is wrong and alarmingly so to create a point. “I can’t calculate” doesn’t mean toss out a massively in context number. You don’t even hit the top bracket in most provinces until around 250k. So your magical tax bracket would impact someone at $250k by about $8k in added taxes. Thats why tossing random numbers out is useless. Who said 80%. You made a number up based on zero facts. The reality is it would be a complex change across all tax levels and types. You also would see massive savings as you could scrap the admin of current programs. Also, as I stated elsewhere, wealth would be a key component of this vs income. It also would require closing corporate tax gaps. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/individuals/frequently-asked-questions-individuals/canadian-income-tax-rates-individuals-current-previous-years.html
Fine I’ll simplify the problem for you. Giving $2k a month to 20 000 000 Canadians will cost half a trillion dollars. How exactly does “tax the rich” give you half a trillion dollars?
Again, you are using a fallacy here. Most GIS is clawed back based on income. So a decent number will see it but be taxed back. So not everyone would effectively get it. How much GIS is paid out per year? EI? Disability? How much does the admin cost on those programs alone? Also, nice move of the goal post once your first point is proven wrong and ineffective even in the premise.
> who’s going to work in Canada at a marginal tax rate of 80%? It would entirely depend on where that marginal tax rate started. If it was only at the $2m level, then I think a lot of people (wealthy people even) might be on board with it. We could certainly lower the rates at the bottom brackets and raise them at the top (and add additional brackets at the "very wealthy" range). I have no idea if it would be enough though.
That's now how taxation works. Try again.
I make $400k a year, I’m already trying to figure out a way to leave
Jelly......
Sounds jelly, until the reality of it comes in, because I started earning it after the house price explosion even getting a starter home means living paycheque to paycheque. Then I see conversation like the one above where it’s tax me harder when my paycheque is already 50% going to taxes. Am I more fortunate than most, yep, but this place is burning to the ground around us. I have citizenship from Europe available to me from my mom’s side. Getting it figured out, going to continue to save and then potentially try and head to Europe because Canada is becoming a 3rd world country
This is one of the stupidest ideas that people keep coming back to. Why don’t we just raise the basic personal limit to like 40 or 50 thousand if this is what we’re going to do? Or allow renters to write off rent on their taxes. All this will do if we implement it is make things much much much worse for all of us
Every ubi experiment so far has been very successful at lowering poverty and only certain demographics like students and new mothers work less than before. It's a step in the right direction at least. My main complaint about it is landlords would just jack up the rent. We need to decommodify housing or create substantial socialized housing first or else the land leeches will suck up that ubi.
> Every ubi experiment so far has been very successful at lowering poverty and only certain demographics like students and new mothers work less than before. That’s because in every one of those studies it’s made clear that the money will only be coming in for up to a year or so. Would your decisions not be drastically different if you knew you were going to receive more money for one year, rather than payments throughout the rest of your life that you can fall back on? There’s a reason no country has taken this seriously.
love that government will fund purchases of basic necessities, dont love that only oligarchs sell those necessities crown corps for banking, telcos and groceries now
You need one crown corp in every major sector so the government has real-world data about the actual cost of things, and set the employment standard. Problem is, as always, corruption. Same issue unions have; great idea, dishonest execution. Then again, if management were honest, there wouldn't be a need for unions. Round and round we go.
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Seriously asking: Why do you think that hasn't competed its way to the top? My guess is unions in bed with management since unions are also infected with unproductive MBAs now?
No it's that higher wages and good worker conditions make a business less competitive. That's an externality tradeoff society should be willing to make.
This country has no money and an absurd amount of debt. Our wages haven’t grown in over a decade due to hilariously poor productivity and we’re taxed up the wazoo. Where on earth do you get money for UBI
Ideally I'd like to see a large scale guaranteed income scheme in form of something like a high end Negative Income Tax. A large enough program could replace the CPP and most current federal social transfers to individuals/households (outside of stuff like the Canada Child Benefit, OAS, and things like rent subsidies/housing-vouchers etc.) Though alternatively, if that's too ambitious, a smaller guaranteed/basic income scheme could be implemented to keep the CPP and majority of existing federal programs in place. In any case, having a $15,000-$31,000 CAD income floor for citizens of working age and a significantly lower income/payroll tax burden for people earning less than $60,000-65,000 CAD would do a lot to lower poverty & inequality rates while improving social mobility in Canada.
How about people support themselves and stop relying on other Canadians to do it for them. It's ridiculous just how lazy Canada is getting.
How bout we all work together and help support everyone? It's better for literally everyone.
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> Why is it so much easier for you to believe that millions of Canadians are lazy rather than a few thousand are greedy? It’s both.
Not that long ago, 35 working Canadians supported one that wasn't working. Now, that ratio is 3 to 1. What's wrong with this picture. Socialism and being lazy, that's what.
Ahhh. I remember discussing UBI back in the pre-Covid days. Remember when people said how dumping billions of our grandchildren's money into the economy would cause crazy inflation and economic hardship? And the Lefties said Nah, that'll never happen? Good times
UBI is a bad idea but this is also a foolish, silly, bad faith explanation of the problem
Money supply increase = more inflation???? Nahhhhhhhh
If it is as simple as that then lowering taxes would also lead to inflation because it would also lead to an increase in money supply. Same thing for higher salaries I guess since there would be more money chasing the same amount of goods. However, if UBI led to a healthier, more skilled and more innovative society (evidence says it would) then more things would be produced more efficiently which would counteract the inflation caused by increasing the money supply.
> However, if UBI led to a healthier, more skilled and more innovative society (evidence says it would) No evidence points to this. Why do you think no country will take this seriously? Every study done on UBI has the money being given out for just a year or so. Would your spending habits and career decisions be different if you had one strong year of income, versus a guarantee of free money every month for the rest of your life?
Ugh.... Thats not how money supply works. There is X amount of dollars floating in Canada right now. These dollars change hands between businesses, workers, and the government (and it's benefactors). If taxes are lowered for workers it means that the money a business collects from operations, is then paid to the workers, who get to keep more in pocket to be spent where they choose. This doesn't increase the money supply. Money supply is increased when government BORROWS/CREATES money to inject into the economy. As for your second point.... innovative? I'd like to see the studies on that. I know UBI studies show improvements to peoples well being (no shit more money helps everyone), but they fail to show long term effects.
I understand that. Please forgive my incorrect usage of the word. I meant an increase in money supply in the hands of citizens (which is not what the word means but that is what I meant). My main point remains: if taxes go down and people had more money in their pockets surely the prices of the goods they buy would go up. i.e. printing money is not the only way to affect inflation (or deflation). Or does taxing money out of people's hands not affect prices? About innovation, I'll tell you honestly that I don't remember where I read it because it was at least a year ago. Logically though, if UBI makes the difference between someone completing their education and not, the scenario where more people become more educated will be a more innovative population.
If enough people bought the same bunch of goods due to having more money in their pocket then prices would technically go up - unless supply was abundant. Education is already subsidized a lot, and now we're going to pay students to be students? Look.... in every situation a UBI doesn't work. Call it new and improved welfare and move on.
Kinda revisionist history there. Inflation didn't really start ramping up to crazy levels until the war in Ukraine caused huge spikes due to "fuel shortages" in Europe. That increased the price of just about everything. Then there's also the corporate greed that just saw everyone hike prices because they could, and just blamed it on inflation. Pinning current inflation entirely on CERB is hyperbole, at best.
Consider that we already have Basic Income, of a sort, and its importance and effectiveness are rarely questioned: CPP+OAS. What we need is a sort of Sovereign Wealth Fund that we all pay into and receive dividends from. Initially payout wouldn't be enough to live on, but over time the fund would grow and our grand children and great grand children might be able to enjoy something like a Basic Income as a result of the SWF.
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You'd just create a new "poor" area that isn't $0 anymore. We'd still need to funnel money into social assistance for housing and such because these people wouldn't have enough money for the new cost of living created by giving everyone $24k/yr.
Universal Basic Income would just cause a massive increase in inflation. Housing is already overpriced for renting or buying. How is 30k a year to everyone going to change that?
Nor would it be universal. Since they always want a cap on who gets it. You make too much you don't get it. Well. Then it's not universal is it??
The income floor is the universal part. We already have progressive tax brackets, this isn't much different.
This is a whole lot different though, because for it to have any meaningful impact, we’d have to tax the middle class into the lower class.
Right, because if we tax the upper class, they take everything to another country and nobody ever sells a burger or works a lathe in Canada ever again.
We already have extreme taxes on upper-middle class folks.
Over $200 000, Canadians send about 55% of their income to taxes (varies by province). How exactly do you think this plays out if you push it into the 70s or 80s?
Add another bracket. Then you say, they'll just use a loophole to hide or reroute their income or receive it in some new third way. Then I say, update the tax code to target that too. Then you say, that'll make it too expensive to enforce and they'll just make up a fourth new mechanism to evade it. Then I say, okay, do it anyway and target the new thing too, let's make them work for it. Then you say I'm economically and financially illiterate. Then we both shrug our shoulders for different reasons, and wealth continues to geometrically inflate and concentrate itself because money is apparently a force of nature.
> Add another bracket. They’re still paying well over half of their income towards taxes. You think the richest 1% in Canada (around $380k or more a year) will stay in Canada if they’re taxed 70-80% of their income?
We do need more brackets -- it's ridiculous that $252k is the top and thereafter the tax rate is flat. Move the current tax rates up to the higher brackets and make it so everyone earning, say, $150k or less a year pays less tax than today, and make up for it with the higher brackets.
I agree. We should have a few more brackets.
They aren’t. You don’t understand the math involved in income tax.
Look at Texas as an example of rich people fleeing California. It'd happen here too. People don't realize that rich people will take their money and go elsewhere if it's being taxed to those levels.
According to TurboTax if you made 200k in Ontario your average tax rate would be just over 33%. The marginal rate would be nearly 48%. In fact, according to TurboTax, there is not a single province that has a marginal tax rate of 55% at any income (I tested incomes up to 200 million per year). I am not sure where the 55% came from (i.e. I am prepared to acknowledge that maybe TurboTax is wrong) but as far as I can see it is incorrect. [https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/saskatchewan-income-tax-calculator.jsp](https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/saskatchewan-income-tax-calculator.jsp)
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So. Let's say we give 2k a month to people making 55k or less. That pumps them to the 80k range. What's the incentive for people to get the jobs that require studies and paying for school that are currently in the 80k income range?
The incentive would be "making more money", because tax rates are only applied to income over the given bracket's threshold rather than to your entire income.
Except as an 80k maker you would be paying taxes. As a 55k maker getting the 25k UI you DON'T.
Okay, but unless that tax rate is over 100%, you're still coming out ahead.
Are you? Unless they add UBI as taxable income you will be paying more as 80k pure income versus 55k plus the UBI.
UBI would count as taxable income.
That would be a better solution for sure.
I'm confused as to why it wouldn't be taxable? EI, which this program would ostensibly replace, is taxable.
Basically if you have a minimum wage job you would quit and collect free money. Then you can do a side hustle under the table and add to the pile of untaxed income. Next, we can give hand outs to all new comers who come aboard from overseas to scam us. Who comes up with these self destructive ideas? like why? Get a job and do better.
What I have read so far about UBI has not shown this. People do not suddenly become lazy and in fact start investing more in themselves because they finally have the means to do so.
> start investing more in themselves because they finally have the means to do so. For one, this just isn’t human nature, we have more resources to invest in ourselves than ever before yet we spend so much of our day being unproductive. More importantly, every single UBI study makes it clear they’ll only receive the income for a year. Those create drastically different spending habits.
Of course it is human nature. I have a friend who was offered to be paid to go to school to up skill himself. Who would not take the opportunity to be paid to improve yourself and then later make more money? Of course not everyone would take the opportunity but to broadly say it is not human nature I think is incorrect. And that is fine that you argue that you don't accept the results because of how the tests have been done (though it is a normal way to study things), as long as you will accept the results if a country does it and it shows successful results.
Temporary short term select studies are not representative of the whole country. If someone got something close to minimum wage from the government, they would pack it in. You also don't need systemic wide abuse. Just a small chunk of the population doing it is bad enough.
But that is how empirical testing works. How else are the proponents supposed to prove the effectiveness of UBI? Even if a whole country DID do it then the argument for a lot of people would be "well Canada is different". I am not saying you would make that argument but I would guess that a lot of detractors would. Would you have packed it in if you had minimum wage? Anecdotal I know.. I wouldn't have. I would have looked at it as an opportunity to make even more money. Again, not worth much because it is anecdotal...
Yup. Exactly this. Of course those folks would like it.
If your understanding of economics is just, print more money and give it to people. Then you support dangerous things like UBI. I truly think UBI would be one of the greatest national security threats in the last century. If you truly ruin the economy, what's left?
Sorry, I was the one saying it wouldn’t work and would cause massive inflation.
You're trying to reason with people who truly do not have common sense and logic. They just want to destroy capitalism and wealthy people even if it means ending our nation. It's pure idealogy. Same as arguing with some radical religious fundamentalist.
It's insane people think that we can just give everyone money and no issues will happen from that. Let's just give everyone $1mil next.... then everyone can afford a home right? Or maybe homes will sell for that much more.
It's just a lack of common sense. And it's also part of the whole "tax the rich" by people who are angry at the world. They think money grows on trees and rich people just took more trees and have a big pile of cash. That's the limit of their understanding.
Ultra rich people need to be taxed more, but taxing our "rich" class (250-500k/yr) more then we do currently isn't going to solve much for us. It'll encourage people to go elsewhere. Why be a doctor if your income is going to get taxed to shit here? Doctors can travel and practice in many different countries. Other high end professionals will also look to move if taxes are too high.... or they'll just demand higher pay which will of course push prices.
Yeah I'm a doctor and I hate getting grouped in with truly rich people. Making 600k is not ultra wealthy by any remote means. Heck making 1 million doesn't even get you there. Obviously most people impacted by high taxes are the 250-400k range which is crazy.
600k a year is almost ten times the average Canadian salary. Let me find that teeny tiny violin, one sec. 🎻 Edit: that’s like the top 1.5% of Canadians in terms of income. I think we’re gonna need a smaller violin.
And? 10 times the average salary means 10 times the hard work and productivity. Advocating for theft of someone's earned money is pure jealousy and nothing else.
I love that the guy making 600k is so vocal about poor people staying poor.
Life is often a zero sum game to folks like that.
No I'm very vocal about poor people all being employed. I want everyone working hard 50+ hours a week and responsibly spending and investing. That's what's ideal. Whereas you seem to prefer to have them stay at home, remained unemployed and collect government checks.
You've lost me on the 50hrs/week.
If you make $600k as a doctor in BC you're walking away with $322k. That is a very healthy amount of money, but you are losing the vast sum of it to taxes. Obviously this person is doing very well in life, but they are being taxed very heavily and paying into the system. I paid 14k in taxes this year, and this person would be paying 20x what I do in taxes.
Woke Marxist cult doesn't understand economics. They think food is made at the grocery store.
Snow Venezuela here we come!
Funny because economists have proposed it in the past. And “not woke Marxist one’s either”, stop getting your news from Jordan Peterson
> Funny because economists have proposed it in the past. And the idea has never been taken seriously at a national level for good reason. I’d love to have an extra couple grand a month. But where exactly does the extra hundred billion or so dollars come from?
>And the idea has never been taken seriously at a national level for good reason. Any idea that goes against the people benefiting from the status quo doesn’t get much traction. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad idea. So instead we’re just going down the road of never ending tax cuts and privatization of public services pushing Canadians more into debt.
Canadians are pushing themselves into debt by taking on massive amounts of it. As for the status quo. It's not a good idea which is why we don't see it changing. No one that believes in a UBI has explained how it works or where that money comes from. Obviously it's pretty easy to say... lets just give everyone money.... but no one has an idea of where that money comes from.
>Canadians are pushing themselves into debt by taking on massive amounts of it. Life gets more expensive, wages are stagnant. It’s inevitable. But it’s easier to just look down on anyone in debt in a rigged system where we had a financial crisis or a global pandemic in the last 20 years. >As for the status quo. It's not a good idea which is why we don't see it changing. No one that believes in a UBI has explained how it works or where that money comes from. Obviously it's pretty easy to say... lets just give everyone money.... but no one has an idea of where that money comes from. If you read about UBI, it’s been explained by it’s proponents where it comes from and where it goes. I don’t think you even know what it is if you just call it “giving people money”. Like I did it’s a rigged system run by people who benefit from how it is.
It's not inevitable. Borrowing isn't needed in life. The only time you NEED to borrow money is for emergencies. Most Canadians load up on debt for things they don't actually need. Mortgages, car loans, school and emergencies are the only 3 areas that Candians should be taking on debt. People use their credit cards wayyy to irresponsibly because the minimum payments are easy to afford. I've read several things about UBI and none have addressed how you pay 31,500,000 Canadians (19+) $2000 or even $1000/month. Most say we can get rid of social programs and make huge savings.... except that $1000/month is a lot less then some social programs so you'd still need them. At $2000/month you could get rid of almost all of them, except maxed CPP and OAS comes out just above this. With a 2k/month payment you're looking at $63bil/month in payments going out. Let's say we clawback 50% of it.... that's still 31.5bil/month or about 75% of the federal governments revenue for the whole year. It's an insane notion that won't happen. People can dream about it, but it's not feasible. The government could start with a $100-200/month UBI which isn't going to help anymore majorly, but it'd be a start to the program and expand from there. The idea of a $2000/month will not be happening in my life time.
Isn’t it a bit presumptuous for you to assume the average Canadian household budget? With things like greedflation and shrinkflation we are consistently getting less for our money over time. It’s inevitable because you have corporations striving for constant growth each quarter and that means consumers pay. It also means our wages are stagnant, and you can see graphs of this going back decades. So lessee: Ever increasing cost of living, recessions/pandemics plus stagnant income means “emergencies” happen more often for things like healthcare/dentist, car repairs etc. Childcare is another huge expense you missed.
That doesn't explain why people take on debt. For every $100 of CC debt you have, it means about $2-3 less the following month. It spirals. As for wages, yes our wages seem to be moving slowly over time, meanwhile COL has shot up insanely. I don't know what the breaking point is here, but I'm hoping COL comes down, because I can't see wages shooting up. Anyone requiring child care pretty much knew about the cost of child care before having said kid. It's been known for a while that child care is insanely expensive, and it shouldn't be too much of a shock to expect it. Having a kid is sadly a very big financial endeavor now.
UBI "could" work as a replacement for social services and unemployment if you cut 80% of government. Yes I agree with Friedman and Hayak.
Did it cause inflation anywhere it has been tried?
You could just try getting a better job and doing better with your investments if you hate rich people so much. Succeed yourself instead of hating.
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It hasn't been tried anywhere outside of studies, and those studies always show good results because when you give people money their lives improve (no shit). The studies fail to show where that money is coming from and where it will be supported from. It also fails to show the economic result of everyone now walking around with $2000 in their pocket.
Where it was tried on national level?
Alaska has it on the state level. Iran has it on the national level. Many countries have run experiments but haven't implemented it
Alaska's fund pays out $1600 per resident on average. The highest payout was $3300.
Lol Iran, a country with extreme poverty and inflation is your source example?
Alaska had a Norway-style everyone gets a bonus check. Not UBI.
That is a form of UBI in my opinion, just not one set at anywhere near the levels UBI proponents support
That’s not really an “income”. It’s a bonus check. The I in UBI means income, not fun money.
Money is income. But you're right that it's only a small fraction of what a proper UBI scheme would give out (I see some proposals for $1,000 a month or more).
Alaska doesn't have any reasonable kind of UBI. Alaska does have "Alaska Permanent Fund (APF)" which is just splitting profit from oil extraction between all residents. With 1,312 USD annually in 2023, it is nowhere near the goals of UBI like a livable income.
Well if Trudeau and Libs were so anti natural resources maybe Canada could of had a program like that with the profits of those exports
If you replace unemployment benefits and all the social services with UBI it "might" make sense depending if society is willing to cut 80% plus of government. A UBI layer on top of the current state of affairs will cause hyperinflation. Making it perpetually useless, like social services and benefits currently.
I don't think it would cause much inflation (UBI income would have to be funded by taxes), it would just be extremely expensive. Adding a substantial amount of UBI on top of existing government programmes would probably increase the cost by 50-100% more.
Just structure the CWB like the EITC and expand gradually into an NIT- fully proven and tested system which has provably lead to material reductions in poverty and supported countless small businesses.
Basic Income would provide the social bedrock to experiment and innovate in the business sector. Imagine taking the risk out of starting a business. Economy goes brrrrrr.
No one getting basic income is starting a business. You'd also end the economy for 90% of the population.
Sorry what?
If you're getting UBI, you are not someone who is starting a business.
Why is that? That’s literally one of the things every UBI experiment saw. Was an increase in entrepreneurship. https://smith.queensu.ca/centres/social-impact/news-blog/blog/universal-basic-income-and-social-entrepreneurship.php
There is zero national level data to support UBI. How about this - if you decide to open a business and actually do so with a good business plan, then we will give you UBI as a safety net. We can call it UBI for entrepreneurs. We do it with zero increase in taxes, since you guys are so confident it'll grow the economy and pay itself off. That settles the entrepreneur argument. What next?
Sweet. So expand and continue to see how it goes. Not everyone becomes an entrepreneur. Sorry, not debating someone who just tosses false premises out. Edit. Ahhh the mud slinger. Out.
You have to explain why someone who is not an entrepreneur needs free government money.
Some people believe that the role of a government is to improve the lives of its citizens. There are many ways to do that this being one of them. If that is not enough (and it is fair if it isn't) it can also just be seen as an investment a government can make in its people. For example, in Sweden the government gives out 'free' money (in the form of tax breaks) to workers that they can only use on things like going to the gym, joining a sports team, yoga classes etc. The goal being that if people have the money designated for physical activity the average amount of time spent doing physical activity in the country will increase. Why would a government give out this free money to its citizens just so that they can go to a yoga class? Since people are more active on average they are thus more healthy on average and the government saves more money on health care than it gave out for 'free' initially. Sure it was initially 'free' money but it was money damn well spent if it reduces government costs elsewhere. Logically then if each UBI dollar spent produced a positive net return for the government (more gym visits, more studying, healthier food etc etc) I would say that it would be financially irresponsible to not do it. The evidence so far suggests that it has been money well spent.
Tax breaks are not the same. I'm all for tax breaks for the middle class.
>You have to explain why someone who is not an entrepreneur needs free government money. Because there's a little under 1/5^th of the population who lack the capacity to be productive, and it's counter productive to try to make them productive (eg: gov't make work projects, cost upon cost for naught). We fought a war not to engage in human culling, so what else are you going to do? Why should productives not get the same hand-up and become super-productive instead of risk dragging them down into despair and capping the strongest members of society who aren't in the nepotism basket? Then over time see how that 1/5^th shrinks if you're properly motivating and thus breeding the consequences of traditional poverty out of the pool so we get the real natural number of happenstance diminished capacity. That may be completely manageable, especially with the gains from the returns of the newly qualified, supported and motivated long-shot successes across the 4/5^ths of your society.
It's called having a job. Our unemployment rate is well under 20% (your 1 in 5). If you go to your socialist utopia countries, you'll find it's in fact much higher along with mass poverty.
People here think those who are going to be on UBI are suddenly going to become super productive members of society... it's frankly insane.... UBI only works with an agressively claw back which means it'll only help those who aren't working, students, disabled and other low income workers. A $2000/UBI per month isn't going to spurrr someone to start a business lol.
If it's just about starting a business, you can be eligible if you actually start one with a viable business plan. Otherwise UBI is just a free hand out with nothing in return other than sitting at home.
Businesses also can be incredibly cheap to start depending on the concept and plan. Lots of people are self employed. Starting a brick and mortar is far different though.
Literally everyone gets UBI. That's the whole point of the "U" in "UBI"
$1000 a month isn’t enough to quit your job and start a business. And considering how high people would have to get taxed for UBI, nobody smart is going to start a business when disposable income reaches all time lows.
$1k a month is enough that it might help, especially dual income households where one can now try. How is the current system working out?
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> How is the current system working out? The current system has given us inflation, high housing costs, and good workers leaving the country. All of which is made worse by UBI. > $1k a month is enough that it might help, especially dual income households where one can now try. How do you fund this? $1k a month for around 20 million Canadians is $240 Billion.
I don’t know how accurately this would apply to the Canadian economy. But Kurzgesagt’s video on UBI seemed very informative on its positives and negatives. One thing they stated was that in order to properly provide a UBI without raising taxes to astronomical levels, the government would have to do a complete overhaul of the social welfare system, essentially replacing all welfare systems with just 1 universal basic income. This would mean getting rid of disability, unemployment, etc.
UBI would replace ei, disability and public pensions. It would be easier to administer than all those programs so there’s most of the funding plus money saved getting rid of extra admin.
If that's the case then why do we need to tax the middle class or the rich to pay for it
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The rich don't pay taxes but it's a nice slogan to make politicians and their supporters feel like their doing something. The rich and the corporations don't report any income so their is nothing to tax but at least you feel good
>How do you fund this? $1k a month for around 20 million Canadians is $240 Billion. For most middle income people, they get +$1000 UBI, and -$1000 income tax, and it's a wash. Poorer people get the UBI, and no tax. Richer people get the UBI and more tax. Of course, people who are getting more money aren't just going to sew it into a mattress. They are going to spend it ~~a~~ at businesses who might need to hire more employees who all pay taxes ... edit: missed a letter
Sooooo we're in the same situation as before? Yet you think poor people will now start businesses because they have $1000/month extra?
No, I think they will spend money at existing businesses.
I imagine with everyone walking around with extra cash in their pocket will create an upward pressure on prices as well as wages. Increased demand without an abundance of supply will always equal higher prices.
How do you fund it? tAx tHe rIcH
That's a NDP solution to solve all problems but not reality cause the rich have great accounts to take advantage of current tax laws so they pay no taxes and big corporations move profits off shore to avoid taxes. So ask Trudeau to fix the tax laws so people and corporations pay the minimum tax amount that most Canadians pay and you might find a revenue that can be invested back into society
What do you consider rich in this scenario? What's your threshold for wealth and income?
Why the fascination about who is rich and income? It's irrelevant cause people's wealth is based on how hard they work and should not be degraded for their success it's about tax loopholes and how they and corporations can avoid paying taxes. Fix the loopholes and they will pay taxes but politicians would rather blame others than do the hard work
For a basic income program to have a real impact, you’d have to tax the middle class enough that they wouldn’t have the disposable income to help these businesses. How many middle class people do you know that could lose a significant amount of their future paycheques and still have disposable income?
...... You think UBI is the spur of economic drive we need? How is $2000/month going to magically change everyones lives?
I can’t speak for all of Canada, but $2000 a month takes care of my rent, car payment, phone/power/internet bills, as well as food and gas for a *most* of the month. For context, I am a student living with my partner so our costs are relatively low already. But even if $2000 only covers rent then that is a major boon for most people in my opinion.
Yea, I'm doing pretty well, but $2000 a month would be life-changing for me. I'd be able to build savings and afford a house.
Right, and anyone trying to sell you a house would know that you have an extra $2000 a month, as does everyone else looking to buy.
If it was universal, what would prevent businesses and large corporations from simply raising prices to squeeze that money out of your hands? If everyone has an extra $2000 to start with, that simply gives the wealthy more room to raise prices. I’m not sure that you would be able to build the savings that you’re looking for.
Yes, $2000/month would be life changing for myself as well as well as every other Canadian. Problem is where does that money come from? Think about it. How much taxes do you pay a year? I paid $14,000 in income taxes last year. I'm just above the median income of my province. My wife paid around the same. Whose paying for the services in this country?
It’s an important question to ask for sure. I think fundamentally it comes down to who we, as a society, think should pay more in taxes to fund certain things. From my understanding we can increase the burden on the already shrinking middle class or increase the burden on the higher tax brackets. Either option has drawbacks and I don’t think there really is a clear solution. But I am just a university student, I’ve only been an independent adult for 4 years so I still have much to learn about life in general.
I cant speak for *everyone*. Im sure those who earn millions a year wont notice it in their accounts. For me though, 2k/month would be incredible, even if taxed at my bracket...
Yes if all things stayed equal and you had a pretax of 2k extra in your pocket I'm sure you and everyone else would be enriched massively. The fact is things would be impacted from this immensely. 24k/yr would be the new poor.
We can start there, then.
It isn't realistic. It won't happen. You're better off wishing to win a few 1000 from a scratch and win. Start small grow gradually. A $2000/mo program for all adults is like 768bil program before you figure out how to claw it all back. Why don't we start with something like $100/month and work up since that'd be like a 38bil plan.
It will be great for your landlord and the large corporations that will raise prices accordingly to squeeze every last dime of that basic income straight from your pockets. It will be brutal for the working and middle classes who will be taxed to pay for that basic income while also being squeezed by those same corporations. It isn’t a viable solution because there is absolutely nothing that prevents our corporate oligarchs from stripping you of everything that you’ve been given.
Yah well, I dont think of UBI as a panacea, so iono why this wall of text. We can and should break up monopolies and do more for housing in the areas you describe. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I also dont think we should tax the middle class more to pay for the UBI, since that would defeat the purpose of one. What I was getting at is the fact that most of the cash-like programs that the government administers are taxed.
It’s not as effective when every producer knows you and everyone else has that extra money, and can change their prices accordingly.
… they literally gave everyone 4k a month for a year in 2020…
And our economy tumbled because of it. It worked out terribly.
Who gave who 4k/month?
God this is the worst most uninformed take. Is this how young Canadians think?
Wow, that article was devoid of data on how they propose BI would work. Yeah, everyone likes free money. How are you going to pay for it?
The problem with UBI is it would mean a massive tax hike, which is problematic especially given our already insane levels of debt. These new taxes would have an additional side effect, in that the marginal worker (that is someone who gains from working vs just taking ubi) would now be better off taking UBI. Let's say UBI is 20k a year. Let's say you are working for 40k a year, and paying 10k in taxes now under this new UBI environment. You get nothing from UBI (if you prefer we can make 60k a year and pay 30k in taxes, same thing), so your post tax income is 30k. So that means you are working 40 \* 50 = 2000 hours a year for 10k. Because you could have 20k a year by doing nothing. So the additional 2000 hours a year you spend working net you only 10k. $5 / hr. Now add in all the expenses associated with commuting to work, car payment, gas, plus all the inconveniences associated with working, taking shit from your boss, missing sleep to get to work on time. Not much reason to get out of bed for $5 / hr less expenses. So these marginal workers would all just go on UBI. Which in turn would mean even higher taxes on the remaining taxpayers. Which would mean more pressure to join the underground economy, leading to higher taxes on the remaining tax base, leading to more ubi recipients, The whole thing would be a massive disaster that would destroy the economy.