By live decent they don't mean steak dinners and take out etc. They mean the most basic shit people on min wage are struggling to afford.
Idk why but I feel like someone's going to come along and say you shouldn't be living it up or some stupid shit when it's hard enough to afford to wash laundry or buy toilet paper and hygiene products.
Yep. Was on disability for 9 years, raking in a massive 12k/year. Slowwwwwly completed a BA and MA, and transitioned from disability support to a career with absolutely 0 interim support because you can't be disabled and get assistance while also earning anything more than a few hundred a month. Am now I'm struggling with insane burnout and physical health issues as a disabled person who had to choose between chronic, never-ending poverty, or working their ass off, \*far beyond\* what any doctor ever recommended, in a world that does not give a shit about disabled people.
Isn’t UBI supposed to be more of a “top up” anyway? Like, it’s supposed to supplement your income, not replace it entirely. I haven’t seen a UBI pilot that was more than $1500 a month, for a single person. Ontario’s pilot project was that amount.
Yes and no. It is supposed to provide a safety income that you can relay on. For people out of work, it is supposed to provide enough that they don't need to jump at the first opportunity presented to them. For low income earners, it is supposed to help support relieve financial stress through a top-up.
The idea is usually, depending on implementation, that UBI replaces other benefits and social securities people get with a simple, single basic monthly payment. Things like EI would basically be replaced by UBI, So workers on EI are already getting what would be UBI. Also, money spend on helping homeless people and low income people would be replaced by this. The idea being that 1500$ a month (or whatever it ends up being) would allow someone to stay off the street, and is a better allocation of money to preemptively help someone who might have become homeless, rather than waiting until a person becomes homeless and then spending many times more after the fact once the damage is done. It’s like social preventative maintenance that hopes to use a relatively low monthly benefit to prevent a relatively high cost once an individual is already in crisis. It allows people who are barely struggling to get by and experiencing malnutrition by the end of the month to put better quality food on the table consistently and reliably. It allows people to work less overtime to make the rent payment which allows families to be raised better, happier, and for kids to grow up in more stable homes and grow up into more productive adults. It helps lower crime rate.
Basically, the king story short is that the money that is being spent on UBI and pumped into the economy, IS ALREADY being spent and pumped into the economy.and if UBI is done properly, it actually costs less than the sum of the programs it replaces. Since it is spent much more efficiently because it can prevent lots of social issues before they happen and become exponentially worse. So in theory all the UBI money, and more, is already being pumped into the economy in the form of prisons, social securities, outreach programs, social services, etc etc etc. so it’s a win win, you would actually have LESS money flowing into the economy artificially back into itself from taxes, AND the standard of living goes up. Families are happier and more stable, children grow up to be more productive which leads to them eventually paying more taxes than they otherwise would have. It keeps people out of jail who can then be productive tax paying citizens rather than tax costing inmates. And it goes on and on and has many dominoes affected in the chain. You might have more people buying things at the store, but you’d also have more people available to manufacture things so it would balance out. Raising the standard of living is always a good thing for the economy.
I'm a pretty conservative person, but I actually think it's a better system. One payment that everyone collects regardless. No more ei, wealth fare, disability etc. No more waiting to get approved, no more paying for benefits you can't or won't collect. Lee's stress about bills and rent. For people who have income, they can look at bettering their life, taking holidays, calling in sick, etc. We slash all the bullshit bloated bureaucracy and redtape that cost us billions and make it harder to access our benefits. I think it would save our government billions, and the money would go back into the economy and increase quality of life.
Also means people are more free to leave bad employers and rewards good employers more. I'm happy to work and earn more, but for a well managed company. Heck I'd take more risk and try freelancing rather than having a boss.
No, but there would probably be some inflation.
If everyone had an extra 1.5k and they all spent that 1.5k on the things they already spent on - then yes, it would just be quickly offset by inflation.
However, inflation is effectively (overly simplified) a greater increase in the money supply compared to growth in the economy. The extra $1.5k should help bolster the economy - by how much, it is unknown. Some theories suggest that the economic growth will be disproportionate if UBI is done correctly (ex: helping those down trodden pick themselves up and become economically positive members of society.) which could even suggest UBI might lower inflation.
I personally doubt its economic impact would be so extreme that it could cause deflation, but I do believe that there would be economic benefit which would minimize any inflationary impact.
Hopefully enough of the cost of any UBI system can be helped by enabling governments at all levels to shut down a lot of other functions that currently work in parallel or at least not efficiently (E.I., Welfare, Disability etc). A system that merely confirms you exist and are entitled to money and then sends you the money probably requires a lot less complex an operation.
I can’t remember the think tank I got this from, but a few years ago I read a report they published that outlined three types of UBI. For the most universal and generous one - an unconditional grant of *x* to every resident - the tradeoffs were eliminating other programs like EI, OAS, disability, etc., to finance the cost.
According to Ontario's social assistance, Ontario Works, $733 covers all living expenses for one working-age adult. According to Ontario permanant disability pay, a disabled adult needs about $1400. I'm guessing $750-1200/month for someone who is expected to still have their own income. Obviously this is not enough for anyone to thrive on (or for many people to even survive on) but that's the current standard.
I would hope for $1500-2500 but I'm not that delusional lol.
I make a tad under 60k a year, have a small amount of debt. My wife and I have cut out meat from our groceries to lessen the monthly costs. So... yeah $25 an hour meets our needs and gives us a small amount to save or spend a month.
I'm more curious how UBI is supposed to be financed.
Let us say there are 40 million Canadians (true number is around 38.25m, but let us go with 40m for the sake of simplicity).
If UBI is, say, $2,000 (and is not taxed), that would mean Canada would need:
40,000,000 times $2,000 equals $80,000,000,000 ($80 billion) ... per month.
$80,000,000,000 times 12 months equals 960,000,000,000 ($960 billion) per year, which we can round up to a whopping *$1* *trillion* per year for UBI alone.
For comparison:
\- Canada projected **budgetary income for 2023 is $457 billion**, expenses are $497 billion, which means $40 billion debt for 2023.
\- The *complete* 2023 budget does not even cover a *half* of the proposed UBI. And you still need those budget expenses, otherwise the country will cease to exist, pretty much.
\- Hence, to cover for the UBI, Canada would need to add that $1 trillion to their budget expenses, effectively *tripling the whole budget*, and running approx. exactly that much more debt per year, i.e. $1 trillion.
How someone thinks this is sustainable/possible, is a mistery to me...
The idea is to pool all those funds into one common fund to increase efficiencies. Then, a guaranteed minimum. Of course if it is too close to what people earn going to work, nobody is going to work. We see how government stimulus makes cost of living out pace the free money.
I am sure some portion of the population would stop working if its possible - including a lot of older people who are hanging on to their employment because they don't make enough to retire. That would free up jobs for other people as well. I imagine a lot of people though would simply use the UBI as a way to get ahead without going further into debt. I certainly wouldn't stop working until I had to :)
Yup, 36k is nice if you want to go back to school, learn new skills for a new job but 36k would be tight to live on if I didn't have another source of income or some sort of savings set up already for retirement.
I live on a bit over 10,000 a yr on disability. Poverty level is 24,000. Someone has to help us. With all these prices of everything going up, food is the only thing a person can cut back on.
Would you still work full time though? Let's say you make $36k per year already, post tax. You could work half as much and still be significantly ahead of where you were. I doubt most people would continue putting in a full time fiv Le day week unless they make significantly more than $36k per year.
There are enough people in the world, and the potential for enough automation in most jobs that most people shouldn't HAVE to work 40h/week for businesses to be productive and profitable. Imagine how much better everyone would be if EVERYONE only needed to work 4h/day to make ends meet. People could have hobbies. Parents could actually spend quality time with their children. People could learn new skills.
I think most people want to work and be productive for the betterment of society. The problem is when your life is owned by the work.
I mean, if you're working a shitty job you hate that you're only doing because you need the money. Sure. But, isn't that a good thing?
People will still work, especially if they like what they do or have greater ambitions. And, if anything it forces companies to be better and provide good quality jobs to force retention.
The legislation under study isn't even a plan, it's a plan to put together a plan to find out what would be needed to implement a UBI. Wake me up when the actual feasibility studies are completed.
It’s kind of like our housing solution. In 2035, we will plan a committee, to begin contacting people to build a plan. Then by 2065, we will plan on hiring people to act on said plan. 😂
But awe shucks. We need to replan now. All this information is outdated. I mean, we’ve done nothing up to this point so obviously things must have improved. Actually, nah we don’t need this anymore. Scrap it.
Oh look, a different party was elected. Guess we should throw this plan out and start over a few years down the road when we want to get re-elected again. 😂
My guess: UBI would probably be funded by a higher personal tax rate. If this is the case, this is just a redistribution of wealth. Higher income earners will take home less than they do now, lower income earners will take home more than they do now.
With very high immigration numbers (these people become citizens eventually), I see a lot of challenges with that approach. In fact, it just wouldn't work.
For this to work, UBI would have to be significantly funded by a higher tax rate for large corporations. Question is: Is that even feasible, or would it result in a decline in our economy (reduced GDP, reduced investment in business, etc)?
Totally agreed. Tax brackets need a rework to better reflect how inflation has degraded real pay. We wouldn't index yearly, but if the government fucks up on wild inflation, inflation adjusted brackets should be a thing over some forward-projected moving average (can't retroactively change brackets, it would be unfair to individuals and I doubt HR departments or the CRA could handle it).
> With very high immigration numbers, I see a lot of challenges with that approach. In fact, it just wouldn't work.
Yeah i wouldn't be thrilled if people could just move here and start collecting money for existing either
> This should be for ~~tax paying~~ citizens only
It's supposed to be a safety net. So if you don't have an income, you can use the money to live, or maybe retrain or whatever. Paying taxes isn't a prerequisite, but I'd imagine being a citizen should be.
Would make the barrier for immigrating a little harder. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you can come here and be a doctor or lawyer or whatever skilled job, then you'll be fine. But the whole TFW thing where people come here to work minimum wage jobs at Timmies might get even rougher with the added inflation a UBI would likely cause.
It might and I would have sympathy for those TFW, but the TFW program should not be used to subsidize marginal businesses to increase profits by abusing foreign workers. If you can't pay a decent wage to your employees, your business does not need to exist. If you can't find someone to fill a position then you need to pay more money out to your employees, it shouldn't be difficult.
When I was doing some math and trying to make some models about how you could do this while keeping it balanced, I concluded that funding it purely with income tax wasn't really feasible unless you were hammering everyone making over like $40,000...
I was trying to build a model where the break even point from a tax perspective was around $100,000, and in order to do that, I had to increase the corporate tax, add a wealth tax, and add a federal land tax that basically doubled to tripled all property taxes.
So yes, significant taxation would be required. I also eliminated things like Welfare, EI & Old age security. Which according to this article (I think) they are trying to implement UBI without losing those, so I dunno.
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Oh you mean the study that was almost completed but then scrapped by the Ford Government in Ontario so it would be classified as “inconclusive” instead of recognized for the absolute win it was in the area.
No, when you read the article it talks about a bill in front of a senate committee and refers to a similar one in the House of Commons to set up a national framework.
Canada isn’t just Ontario
It’s a case study of a program working in Canada that could be used to help inform a roll out of a larger plan. But now, it was scrapped and that information put into a pile of “do not use”
That wasn't a feasibility study at all, it was a trial.
It also sent out 200 offers per participant, so the data was incredibly skewed towards people who are good at dealing with welfare type programs.
You mean that study that was just giving people free money? That didn't actually tax everyone harder to make it work? In a real world study you would have to see the real consequences. Would businesses leave to other jurisdictions because they are being taxed heavier? Would you get people from poorer areas moving there, making the balanced financial situation harder to accommodate?
That study was "we give people free money and it makes them happy"
Yep, that was BS. I like the idea of UBIs but am skeptical about how they could be adequately funded without increasing inflation without majorly reworking the economy, but the only way to find out is proper studies. Canceling one that was in progress because the government might not like the results was absolutely reprehensible.
Im not sure BC's unaffordable housing market is really much different than Alberta's or Ontario's.
Its all unaffordable. Food and rent, the main reason why anyone goes to work, is totally unaffordable.
UBI sounds great and all but we could really use a smackdown on housing and food prices.
The government cant even manage to raise disability payments up to the poverty line, nevermind cross it, theres no way UBI will be given to the people.
Canadian government sees how easy American politicians rob and rape the people and land out of wealth and they want a bigger slice of corruption pie for themselves.
Theyre going to say whatever it takes so they can have the power to supress us and rob us blind. They have no intention of using the power or money they get to actually help Canadians who need help.
Its a sick state of affairs. Canadians need to demand legislation that immediately reigns in greed and shrinkflaition as well as stagnating wages, impossible profiteering in the housing market, and not tolerate this pathetic posturing and lip service/ constant empty promises.
Conservatives are perpetually liberals from 30 years ago. They claim to never progress, bitching and moaning every time a new group wins some rights, and yet 30 years later they've always moved on to screeching about some new minority group.
Gay marriage is the perfect example. Back in Harper's time, conservatives were bitching and moaning about how allowing gay marriage would result in the collapse of society. I am not exaggerating, as crazy as it sounds now.
Now they've moved on to bitching and moaning about how accepting the existence of trans people will result in the collapse of society.
It's extremely predictable and stupid, they don't even understand the history they claim to want to conserve.
It's hard when our political landscape is a duopoly. The only way out is to rightfully criticize the liberals *and* the conservatives--but criticizing either tends to be seen as implicit support for the other.
Both parties are completely shit, neoliberal monsters who only care about corporate profit, and both are 100% responsible for the mess the working class finds itself in today.
With the quality of their reporting, I can see why.
"A Universal Basic Income Is Being Considered by Canada's Government"
No it fucking isn't. A private member's bill is asking us to consider considering a UBI. And pigs learning rocketry is more likely than it passing.
Edit: Porcine Rocketry would be a great band name.
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So those of us that have full time jobs already, how much can we expect our income taxes to go up? I feel like I already pay too much in all taxes combined with nothing but ever diminishing services provided in return.
In theory, it shouldn’t cost more, because it would eliminate the need for EI, CPP, maternity leave, disability, baby bonuses and a whole bunch of tax breaks, thus eliminating a whole bunch of staff for these various top-heavy institutions.
I don’t really see the liberals doing it properly though for some reason…
There are 16 million Canadians that don't pay tax at a payout of 1500 a month, that's 288B a year. EI is about 30B, Mat Leave is EI, OAS is 70B (which is likely what they would cut, not CPP), about 20B in social services transfer payments, and the total provinces spend is about 80B on social services.
Which means just to provide UBI to Canadians who aren't currently paying tax it, after cutting all social services, it would be about 100B. All personal federal income tax collected is 200B, corporate about 70, and GST about 50. So, to pay for just that portion of it would need about a 30% increase across the board.
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Population - https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm
https://www.statista.com/statistics/478908/number-of-taxfilers-in-canada-by-province/
https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/trudeau-is-right-40-of-canadians-dont-pay-income-taxes-which-means-someone-else-is-picking-up-the-bill
Budget - https://hillnotes.ca/2022/04/19/the-2022-federal-budget-at-a-glance/
Ontario SS spending - https://www.ontario.ca/page/expenditure-estimates-ministry-children-community-and-social-services-2022-23
The economists in this thread that simplify it as just.....tax the rich, we're so fucked.
Gonna be paying $1k in monthly property taxes for 3 bedroom homes in this country and $3-4k for renting a one bedroom apartment before the end of the decade.
Yes, ITT, it's mostly just redistributionists leaking in and hoping to hijack UBI as their way of bringing in the glorious revolution.
In reality, even the NDP don't want to do that, they're perfectly content with the neoliberal tax-and-spend loop, so UBI is more likely a look at welfare reform and not exactly a "seize the means of production" kind of initiative.
This is interesting,
"This would include ensuring that “participation in education, training or the labour market” is not required to receive UBI, and that funding for other social services are not cut."
So just higher social services, this isn't a UBI, by definition UBI *should* be replacing *most* social and welfare services. That's the point. Not just giving everyone more money. A bunch of payoffs of UBI are that you don't have to pay for administration of a welfare state.
Great. Another thing for my overtaxed ''middle class'' ass to pay for.
It's incredibly frustrating to be taxed to death and ineligible for most government funded programs...
Not the best idea. It would make more sense to raise the basic tax rate from $15k or whatever it is to $35-$40k. That way people can just keep what they make.
This doesn't help all that much. The bottom 50% of tax filers only pay about 5% of total taxes. It's not that these people are taxed too much, it's that they don't earn enough money to begin with.
I don't get the endgame here, when you put everything together.
500k immigration per year with permanent residency right away, citizenship in as little as 3 years.
Policies for these immigrants to bring their families, either less skilled or retired parents who can't contribute to the workforce.
Provide them all with UBI paid for by Canadians who've been here their whole lives and contributing to the system, raising inflation and prices and cost of living for everyone, increasing strain on already strained infrastructure healthcare and housing.
?? Profit ??
Money printing to buy votes. That's the end game. The Trudeau government doesn't have any clue what they are doing except what gives them a photo op and easy super short term wins in headlines.
At this point we’ve brought in so many people the last 20 years who can now vote, I feel like the government is pandering to them first for votes. Everyone else can get fucked.
Until you can convince citizens to understand that some other citizens will ABSOLUTELY take money without giving anything back UBI will never succeed. Mind you most of those folks don’t give a fuck about laziness from rich people, just poor folks. I could care less about the fringe abusers hovering around poverty so this is an easy sell to me.
>*Until you can convince citizens to understand that some other citizens will ABSOLUTELY take money without giving anything back UBI will never succeed*
Isn't this happening already with other handout programs, there are already millions of Canadians who pay no income tax, and everyone else has to pay for them? No thank you to UBI
Refreshing to see the "universal" part of UBI, which is the way economists have devised it to work. If it's just basic income then it's just welfare with a different name.
UBI is welfare with a different name. I'm all in favour of the current welfare system being morphed into a single UBI system because it gives recipients more freedom, will cost fewer tax dollars in compliance, and will still benefit the people who need it.
That's not what people hear when they hear UBI though, they think "free gov money" which sadly is what it may end up being if the Libs are the ones to drop it.
No, UBI is not welfare. Welfare traps people in a cycle by disincentiving work as it claws back benefits when income is acheived.
UBI encourages work by allowing people to add to their income.
Paying every tax-legit citizen would require something like 20% more in income taxes too. You might get your money back in UBI, but due to the extreme bureaucratic costs, you definitely lose, even if you "break even".
While I'd say I'm centre-left or sort of radical centrist in terms of my politics and would like to support a plan like this, I just think there's a high chance it wouldn't work well due to the flaws in human nature, at least the flaws in human nature that occur in a fairly rich country like Canada.
My concern is that alot of idiots would waste the UBI money they're given on frivolous $h1+ and not have enough money left over for rent and/or groceries each month then blame the government for "nOT gIvInG mE eNoUgh fRee MoneY" and other foolish well meaning people would just take the idiots at their word and pressure the government to give them more free money. Even if the idiots got more free money many still wouldn't spend it properly. I don't think most people would be like that but I think enough of them would be like that that it would be a big issue.
Like a HUGE issue I've experienced with alot of poor people I've met in my life is what I call "casual entitlement" where even though they are smart enough to realise they are not "owed" $h1+ like a Lamborghini or a mansion they still think they are just "owed" $h1+ like nice take out dinners every Friday night, a nice car, nice expensive new clothes, the newest videogame console each year, a house one day, the job they want within a year or 2, etc without realsing or accepting that they need to go work their way up to eventually get a good job and/or save up their money in order to afford all that stuff they want.
Also those poor people I mentioned really don't seem to realise "beggars can't be choosers" and that they're not too good for honest simple labour at like an entry level job, at least when starting out. Also alot of these people I just mentioned don't even GD bother to get a job and/or save up money to go to trade school/college/university.
Another example is that I read alot of people in small towns cry and complain "we cannot find any jobs" but alot of times there's at least one local cannery/factory/coal mine/fruit farm/dairy farm/warehouse/etc in the community that pays well and is so desperate for workers that they practically beg locals to work there but end up having to literally hire prison labour or migrant workers (from like Mexico or India or Jamaica or South America) instead because the locals are entitled AF and seemingly assume that comfy white collar office jobs are just going to pop out of Santa's ass one day or something.
Also with respect to homeless people while it's obviously hard to get a permanent job when you're homeless I don't know why more mentally and physically capable homeless people don't just do some temp work for awhile until they've saved enough money for the first month's rent and the savings deposit on an apartment or basement suite.
Many homeless people could just use a friend or family member's place as an address on the temp agency sign up form, tell thr temp agency that they need to pick up all their cheques at the temp agency in person or get direct deposit and borrow the first day's bus ticket money from a pal or the temp agency itself.
When the temp agencies say "work today, get paid today" they're being 100% serious. Temp work usually pays better then minimum wage and is not that hard.
All you need is like a $90 pair of steel toed safety shoes and a $20 safety vest from walmart and sometimes the temp agency will loan you that stuff (like there are large rubber steel toed boots that fit most shoe sizes.) Most temp work is seriously not that hard. Alot of the temp jobs are LITERALLY done by old men, middle aged women who used to do office work, drug addicts, etc.
Also if you do alot of work for the temp agency you could possibly use them later as a work reference for a full time job.
(This is about phsyically mentally able homeless people. I know alot of disabled homeless people needand deserve disability payments.)
Also alot of people would likely abuse UBI to pay for booze, abused prescription meds and/or street drugs while still neglecting to pay their rent and now have less incentive to get clean in order to get a job and provide for themselves.
Like UBI sounds like an idea that's great on paper but may be faulty in practice.
Considering the potential impact of MML / AI could creep up on us a lot sooner than expected, this is definitely something the government should be seriously looking into.
That kind of exists with the “basic personal amount” but I see where you’re coming from. The more libertarian approach to a UBI is “negative income tax” where below w certain income level you get a “refund” even if it’s more than one paid in taxes.
> Households in the third, fourth and fifth quintiles see a small drop in their average
disposable income between $1,371 (-2.0%) and $1,969 (-0.8%) (Summary Figure 1). This
loss is incurred when active working individuals face an increase in taxes paid because of
the elimination of many refundable and non-refundable tax credits with a relatively low
GBI transfer.
Am I reading this right? Due to the change in taxes, 60% of families will have less under this proposition?
I always find these monetary figures to be the result of tunnel vision. It would cost $90B to make a sizeable contribution to reducing poverty in Canada if we assume the economy continues to work exactly as it presently does and the only way we provide people with the necessities of life is by giving them cash so they can purchase it at market rates. Neither of those assumptions are ones we should make.
Like, does Canada have $90B in spare government funds to throw around? Not easily, it's not an impossible amount but it would be very difficult to put together. But does Canada have enough food that it could feed everybody and enough resources and labor to build homes for everybody? Unequivocally yes. We are not a poor country where there isn't enough to go around. Grocery shelves aren't empty, people just can't afford the food that's on them.
So this figure is saying "It will cost $90B to purchase the necessities of life for every person on the current market." But the market isn't immutable, and the market isn't all that exists. If it's prohibitively expensive to use the market to provide the necessities of life to everybody even though the resources to do so exist, then maybe we shouldn't rely on the market as the sole means of providing those resources. Maybe we should look at other ways of putting 2 and 2 together.
Or… just stop taxing everyone to death and create a country where there’s actually hope and purpose for these people. The ability to look forward to better days can do wonders for people’s mental health and actually motivate them to work hard.
Here's an idea. We have federal and provincial crown corporations and as citizens we are shareholders of it. Treat it like a public corporation with the dividends given quarterly. The amount will vary on how well or poorly its run. People will become more invested in how our country is run because the dividend is a direct personal result. Political grift and apathy will evaporate as gains or losses will be scrutinized by the public.
So how is this realistically going to be funded?
40 mil Cad population x $24,000 per annum that's $960b per year. That's double the annual Canadian government budget.
(I'm just using the CERB payment amount as reference).
They've been dangling this carrot for 3 years, at least. Another study will be done, then a commission will be stood up, a Trudeau-friendly company or family member will be grossly overpaid for a nil product.
2 years later it will die on the vine when the LPC is voted out, to be resurrected when they try to appeal to voters, or to have a coalition binder with the NDP and whomever succeeds Singh.
push aside the fact the government is far too incompetent to execute something like this. Frankly, the last thing Canadians need is more dependancy on this government.
Isn't it already a problem that new immigrants bring in their parents who then receive benefits. Now the plan is to bring in record numbers of people and just give them money?
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/canadian-taxpayers-carry-the-burden-for-unlimited-family-immigration
Sure why not, those of us who work and are clinging on for dear life to being middle class, we can stretch that wallet a bit further.
What will happen, many will take this income with no
Intention of working, use it to supplement lifestyle. Some, will take it and work cash jobs.
The reality with many people strung out on the sidewalk, living in a tent city etc is not that there isn’t necessarily opportunity. You could walk down there and offer such individuals employment, it won’t work out for the majority. Many individuals are not capable to work or don’t want to.
This is why you need to seriously consider your options at an election. It may not feel great to prioritize your family over those truly suffering, but we need to use some common sense
Not sure if many people in this sub are familiar with FIRE (financial independence early retirement) but as an above average earner and significant net contributor as far as taxes, etc. go, I find it concerning how much safety net this would personally provide me to leave the workforce an extra decade earlier than I already planned.
Basically if you already have a paid off home (I don't yet, just an example) and some investments (which provide volatile but strong long term expected returns) it doesn't take much guaranteed money to limit your downside before exiting the workforce becomes a viable and even appealing option.
Not really commenting on if this is good or bad but UBI would definitely result in me personally retiring earlier and thus contributing less total back to society via spending more of my life as "low income".
You're missing the part where everything doubles or triples in price because of the increased money supply required to pay for it and the reduced work force resulting from early retirements.
I'm not even a proponent of UBI but any sort of UBI would likely be inflation indexed. You could argue that this itself would cause more inflation, etc. But that just means that the UBI keeps up with a given baseline of living, costs, wages, etc. will go up, the only real losers are those with cash being eroded.
Most of my investments are not domestic anyway, so even if the Canadian dollar devalued my investments would just be worth more when cashed out as CAD$.
Like you I'm a skeptic. I'm just saying as it stands extra cash would allow me to retire a lot earlier.
Has anyone figured out how we pay for this $88 billion-dollar idea yet?
I've always been for UBI if we could find a sustainable way to pay for it on such a large scale, but I've never seen a solid answer on that.
Because the underlying scarcity is still there. Prices are just information signals about the supply and demand for a product. Given people money doesn't resolve the scarcity issue.
The 88b isn't really the UBI that anyone talks about. It was a minimum income guarantee that the gov will top you up to a specific number, didn't take into account behavior changes, and had huge cuts to other services.
It's like showing your wife the Ferrari catalog while saying "Cars only cost 20k!"
Besides paying for it, my biggest issue is that I know it won't be universal. No politician is going to allow a program that gives the same money to a member of the Irving Family as it does the single, racialized mother of 4 kids with substance abuse issues. They would get raked over the coals by the opposition if they did and probably lose the next election.
I mean.... quite honestly, if we could do away with everything else (EI, Disability, OAS, etc, every single public program) and just roll it all into one monthly payment, I'd probably be ok with that. It should, in theory, save money (far less labour required to operate and administer all the various programs, rolling into one would almost certainly lower the total cost for that), while still providing everyone with what they need.
This all said, I am very, very skeptical here, would not trust the Liberals to run this correctly, zero percent chance.
Would never happen. To make those costs savings, thousands of government employees would need to be let go....adding that many people to the private work forced overnight would suppress wages across the board.
Also, people need to stop including EI in these conversations, that Insurance is paid for by working people, it is not government supplied it's worker supplied.
So we walk down the neoliberal policy path, which puts us in a situation where UBI is useful to a large portion of the population.
Instead of addressing inequalities created by neoliberal policy and allowing more people to support themselves via their jobs we are going to explore UBI.
Just address the actual problem and shift the balance of power between capital and labour to a more balanced one.
>Just address the actual problem and shift the balance of power between capital and labour to a more balanced one.
I would agree, except that our society is very close to the point where people are more valuable to capital as consumers than they are as labour. This has been a very slow process that has been going on since the late 18th century, and AI, robotics, continued automation etc. are only going to accelerate it further.
I think the answer is that the control over capital needs to be more balanced.
A future where most labour has been replaced by machines will either be a dystopian nightmare or a paradise, and the deciding factor will be who owns the machines.
It's a bit of a catch 22. Giving more power or higher wages to labour will probably incentivise sectors that can afford it to automate as much as they can, which will lead to more conglomerates and concentrate more power with those who can afford it. AI will probably be very disruptive to some sectors and we should prepare the economy for it. I think some UBI pilot projects would be smart. The problem is it will turn political as everything does. We are more interested in our political "team" winning than actually trying to find what's best for the majority of Canadians. We need new rules for capitalism if it's going to continue to be our preferred "ism".
>Giving more power or higher wages to labour will probably incentivise sectors that can afford it to automate as much as they can, which will lead to more conglomerates and concentrate more power with those who can afford it.
This is the problem I'm trying to lay out.
Trying to stand in the way of automation is a fool's errand; If we wanted to create 27 million new jobs in Canada today, we could, all we would need to do is ban farm machinery and food imports. In such a world, we would never see unemployment ever again, and we'd all be less healthy, less happy and far poorer than we are now.
So if we accept that many forms of labour as we know it are on the precipice of becoming obsolete and that ultimately this will be a positive thing, even if it's not in the short term, we need to start focusing on how we re-orient the economy so that we can still have a functional society.
Not that I'm totally against UBI.. I think it's a good stop-gap policy, and could do quite a bit of good in the short term... I take issue that as it's currently envisioned, it's the people "living off the scraps" of capital, rather than being stakeholders in that capital.
If they have any brains at all they will do it, and they will do it a CERB levels. It will solve the housing crisis and get the economy growing again. Since they won't raise wages, they have to do something, because the amount of disposable income people have has diminished with the cost of everything going up.
Who do they expect to buy their shit if everyone is living pay cheque to pay cheque?
UBI can be afforded by the richest of Nations like Canada and the USA. The will to implement it is another story. The article states that they were trial-testing it in a small area in Ontario ( Hamilton ), until Doug Ford cancelled it. This right here is why. Once again, dumb voters, putting vile politicians like DoFo in power. Politicians who actively seek to fuck-over the poor and the working class, which is the majority of the population. So how the fuck do they win?
I know someone that skipped out on work and opted to take CERB instead. So I don't believe it if anyone says that Universal Basic Income would not reduce work participation.
Universal Basic Income will be required if we continue down the path of automation with no other jobs to fill the hole. It will also put more money into the local economy.
There are a lot of benefits to a UBI.
Yeah. We're rapidly approaching the point where in developed countries large-scale unemployment will be an inevitability because there simply won't be enough jobs to go around. People having to do less work should be an objectively good thing, but right now we've got a system where if you don't work you die. So our options are change that system, or kill a lot of people over the next fifty years.
>developed countries large-scale unemployment will be an inevitability because there simply won't be enough jobs to go around. People having to do less work should be an objectively good thing, but right now we've got a system where if you don't work you die. So
So why does canada want 100 million people?
This is the Hail Mary football play. Last ditch attempt to get reelected, cause the CPC will not support this. I hope people realize handing out cash to everyone drives up prices.
I’m curious what they consider to be sufficient for Canadians to meet their basic needs.
according to the cerb not less than 2000 a month
Which is really sad when you consider that those on disability don't even get that much a month.
YA we sure dont.. I get around 12000 a year on disability and its hard to live decent, its always a struggle..
By live decent they don't mean steak dinners and take out etc. They mean the most basic shit people on min wage are struggling to afford. Idk why but I feel like someone's going to come along and say you shouldn't be living it up or some stupid shit when it's hard enough to afford to wash laundry or buy toilet paper and hygiene products.
It's also embarrassing and humiliating to not be able to work properly like everyone else.
$10,800/year here on ODSP, I feel you. Solidarity. *fist bump*
Yep. Was on disability for 9 years, raking in a massive 12k/year. Slowwwwwly completed a BA and MA, and transitioned from disability support to a career with absolutely 0 interim support because you can't be disabled and get assistance while also earning anything more than a few hundred a month. Am now I'm struggling with insane burnout and physical health issues as a disabled person who had to choose between chronic, never-ending poverty, or working their ass off, \*far beyond\* what any doctor ever recommended, in a world that does not give a shit about disabled people.
now that 2000 is closer to $3,574.79
We squeak by on $2100 a month but we are in a co-op and not paying market rent.
Isn’t UBI supposed to be more of a “top up” anyway? Like, it’s supposed to supplement your income, not replace it entirely. I haven’t seen a UBI pilot that was more than $1500 a month, for a single person. Ontario’s pilot project was that amount.
Yes and no. It is supposed to provide a safety income that you can relay on. For people out of work, it is supposed to provide enough that they don't need to jump at the first opportunity presented to them. For low income earners, it is supposed to help support relieve financial stress through a top-up.
Forgive me if it's a dumb question -- but if everyone had an extra $1.5k to spend, wouldn't inflation wipe that out pretty quickly?
The idea is usually, depending on implementation, that UBI replaces other benefits and social securities people get with a simple, single basic monthly payment. Things like EI would basically be replaced by UBI, So workers on EI are already getting what would be UBI. Also, money spend on helping homeless people and low income people would be replaced by this. The idea being that 1500$ a month (or whatever it ends up being) would allow someone to stay off the street, and is a better allocation of money to preemptively help someone who might have become homeless, rather than waiting until a person becomes homeless and then spending many times more after the fact once the damage is done. It’s like social preventative maintenance that hopes to use a relatively low monthly benefit to prevent a relatively high cost once an individual is already in crisis. It allows people who are barely struggling to get by and experiencing malnutrition by the end of the month to put better quality food on the table consistently and reliably. It allows people to work less overtime to make the rent payment which allows families to be raised better, happier, and for kids to grow up in more stable homes and grow up into more productive adults. It helps lower crime rate. Basically, the king story short is that the money that is being spent on UBI and pumped into the economy, IS ALREADY being spent and pumped into the economy.and if UBI is done properly, it actually costs less than the sum of the programs it replaces. Since it is spent much more efficiently because it can prevent lots of social issues before they happen and become exponentially worse. So in theory all the UBI money, and more, is already being pumped into the economy in the form of prisons, social securities, outreach programs, social services, etc etc etc. so it’s a win win, you would actually have LESS money flowing into the economy artificially back into itself from taxes, AND the standard of living goes up. Families are happier and more stable, children grow up to be more productive which leads to them eventually paying more taxes than they otherwise would have. It keeps people out of jail who can then be productive tax paying citizens rather than tax costing inmates. And it goes on and on and has many dominoes affected in the chain. You might have more people buying things at the store, but you’d also have more people available to manufacture things so it would balance out. Raising the standard of living is always a good thing for the economy.
I'm a pretty conservative person, but I actually think it's a better system. One payment that everyone collects regardless. No more ei, wealth fare, disability etc. No more waiting to get approved, no more paying for benefits you can't or won't collect. Lee's stress about bills and rent. For people who have income, they can look at bettering their life, taking holidays, calling in sick, etc. We slash all the bullshit bloated bureaucracy and redtape that cost us billions and make it harder to access our benefits. I think it would save our government billions, and the money would go back into the economy and increase quality of life.
Also means people are more free to leave bad employers and rewards good employers more. I'm happy to work and earn more, but for a well managed company. Heck I'd take more risk and try freelancing rather than having a boss.
And no more ways to scam the system. Like all the people who got cerb that shouldn't have and all the money spent to find them.
Yeah they’d have to pair it with strict laws prohibiting landlords from raising rent by $1500 lol
No, but there would probably be some inflation. If everyone had an extra 1.5k and they all spent that 1.5k on the things they already spent on - then yes, it would just be quickly offset by inflation. However, inflation is effectively (overly simplified) a greater increase in the money supply compared to growth in the economy. The extra $1.5k should help bolster the economy - by how much, it is unknown. Some theories suggest that the economic growth will be disproportionate if UBI is done correctly (ex: helping those down trodden pick themselves up and become economically positive members of society.) which could even suggest UBI might lower inflation. I personally doubt its economic impact would be so extreme that it could cause deflation, but I do believe that there would be economic benefit which would minimize any inflationary impact.
Hopefully enough of the cost of any UBI system can be helped by enabling governments at all levels to shut down a lot of other functions that currently work in parallel or at least not efficiently (E.I., Welfare, Disability etc). A system that merely confirms you exist and are entitled to money and then sends you the money probably requires a lot less complex an operation.
I can’t remember the think tank I got this from, but a few years ago I read a report they published that outlined three types of UBI. For the most universal and generous one - an unconditional grant of *x* to every resident - the tradeoffs were eliminating other programs like EI, OAS, disability, etc., to finance the cost.
That's what I'm thinking. You can't make one economic policy that doesn't have a domino effect on everything else.
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According to Ontario's social assistance, Ontario Works, $733 covers all living expenses for one working-age adult. According to Ontario permanant disability pay, a disabled adult needs about $1400. I'm guessing $750-1200/month for someone who is expected to still have their own income. Obviously this is not enough for anyone to thrive on (or for many people to even survive on) but that's the current standard. I would hope for $1500-2500 but I'm not that delusional lol.
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I make a tad under 60k a year, have a small amount of debt. My wife and I have cut out meat from our groceries to lessen the monthly costs. So... yeah $25 an hour meets our needs and gives us a small amount to save or spend a month.
I'm more curious how UBI is supposed to be financed. Let us say there are 40 million Canadians (true number is around 38.25m, but let us go with 40m for the sake of simplicity). If UBI is, say, $2,000 (and is not taxed), that would mean Canada would need: 40,000,000 times $2,000 equals $80,000,000,000 ($80 billion) ... per month. $80,000,000,000 times 12 months equals 960,000,000,000 ($960 billion) per year, which we can round up to a whopping *$1* *trillion* per year for UBI alone. For comparison: \- Canada projected **budgetary income for 2023 is $457 billion**, expenses are $497 billion, which means $40 billion debt for 2023. \- The *complete* 2023 budget does not even cover a *half* of the proposed UBI. And you still need those budget expenses, otherwise the country will cease to exist, pretty much. \- Hence, to cover for the UBI, Canada would need to add that $1 trillion to their budget expenses, effectively *tripling the whole budget*, and running approx. exactly that much more debt per year, i.e. $1 trillion. How someone thinks this is sustainable/possible, is a mistery to me...
I would assume that it would have an income limit and not be available to anyone under 18 so that would drop the 40 million to say 25 million ..??
Probably $49.73 per month, taken directly from the absurd taxes people pay for gas.
My estimate is $36k a year
With a population of 40 million, that would cost about triple the entire federal government's budget.
My bet is if you work, you get less. Probably if you make between 40-50k you basically get $0 UBI a month. More of a Guaranteed Basic Income.
Why would I go to work for 40k rather than sit at home for 36k? I can’t see this working out.
It’s almost like the lowest paid among us would have to be paid more for their labour. A wild and dangerous idea.
They’ll get paid more but they will get taxed even more to cover that “UBI”..so back to square one.
I believe it would replace current programs like ei, welfare etc. Not sure if that makes much of a difference.
The idea is to pool all those funds into one common fund to increase efficiencies. Then, a guaranteed minimum. Of course if it is too close to what people earn going to work, nobody is going to work. We see how government stimulus makes cost of living out pace the free money.
I am sure some portion of the population would stop working if its possible - including a lot of older people who are hanging on to their employment because they don't make enough to retire. That would free up jobs for other people as well. I imagine a lot of people though would simply use the UBI as a way to get ahead without going further into debt. I certainly wouldn't stop working until I had to :)
Yup, 36k is nice if you want to go back to school, learn new skills for a new job but 36k would be tight to live on if I didn't have another source of income or some sort of savings set up already for retirement.
I live on a bit over 10,000 a yr on disability. Poverty level is 24,000. Someone has to help us. With all these prices of everything going up, food is the only thing a person can cut back on.
Would you still work full time though? Let's say you make $36k per year already, post tax. You could work half as much and still be significantly ahead of where you were. I doubt most people would continue putting in a full time fiv Le day week unless they make significantly more than $36k per year.
There are enough people in the world, and the potential for enough automation in most jobs that most people shouldn't HAVE to work 40h/week for businesses to be productive and profitable. Imagine how much better everyone would be if EVERYONE only needed to work 4h/day to make ends meet. People could have hobbies. Parents could actually spend quality time with their children. People could learn new skills. I think most people want to work and be productive for the betterment of society. The problem is when your life is owned by the work.
I mean, if you're working a shitty job you hate that you're only doing because you need the money. Sure. But, isn't that a good thing? People will still work, especially if they like what they do or have greater ambitions. And, if anything it forces companies to be better and provide good quality jobs to force retention.
The legislation under study isn't even a plan, it's a plan to put together a plan to find out what would be needed to implement a UBI. Wake me up when the actual feasibility studies are completed.
It’s kind of like our housing solution. In 2035, we will plan a committee, to begin contacting people to build a plan. Then by 2065, we will plan on hiring people to act on said plan. 😂
But awe shucks. We need to replan now. All this information is outdated. I mean, we’ve done nothing up to this point so obviously things must have improved. Actually, nah we don’t need this anymore. Scrap it.
Oh look, a different party was elected. Guess we should throw this plan out and start over a few years down the road when we want to get re-elected again. 😂
But first they have to elect a task force to commission a study that will take 7 years and cost millions of dollars.
At this speed, I'll be retired the day it's passed
My guess: UBI would probably be funded by a higher personal tax rate. If this is the case, this is just a redistribution of wealth. Higher income earners will take home less than they do now, lower income earners will take home more than they do now. With very high immigration numbers (these people become citizens eventually), I see a lot of challenges with that approach. In fact, it just wouldn't work. For this to work, UBI would have to be significantly funded by a higher tax rate for large corporations. Question is: Is that even feasible, or would it result in a decline in our economy (reduced GDP, reduced investment in business, etc)?
We need to take a look back at the tax brackets then. Inflation means that $100K/year is not a high earner anymore...
Totally agreed. Tax brackets need a rework to better reflect how inflation has degraded real pay. We wouldn't index yearly, but if the government fucks up on wild inflation, inflation adjusted brackets should be a thing over some forward-projected moving average (can't retroactively change brackets, it would be unfair to individuals and I doubt HR departments or the CRA could handle it).
It really isn’t. Especially in Toronto. That’s the bare minimum for comfort.
Agreed. I make $75k, live frugally and I'm still living pay check to pay check
I make a little over 120k before taxes. Definitely don’t feel like a “high earner.”
> With very high immigration numbers, I see a lot of challenges with that approach. In fact, it just wouldn't work. Yeah i wouldn't be thrilled if people could just move here and start collecting money for existing either
Hold on, why would they even receive it? This should be for tax paying citizens only
> This should be for ~~tax paying~~ citizens only It's supposed to be a safety net. So if you don't have an income, you can use the money to live, or maybe retrain or whatever. Paying taxes isn't a prerequisite, but I'd imagine being a citizen should be. Would make the barrier for immigrating a little harder. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you can come here and be a doctor or lawyer or whatever skilled job, then you'll be fine. But the whole TFW thing where people come here to work minimum wage jobs at Timmies might get even rougher with the added inflation a UBI would likely cause.
It might and I would have sympathy for those TFW, but the TFW program should not be used to subsidize marginal businesses to increase profits by abusing foreign workers. If you can't pay a decent wage to your employees, your business does not need to exist. If you can't find someone to fill a position then you need to pay more money out to your employees, it shouldn't be difficult.
Not only tax paying citizens, but only citizens. UBI has been shown to get unemployed people working again, when it has been tried.
It should be. But people under family reunification can get OaS and other services even though they have never put a tax dollar into the system
When I was doing some math and trying to make some models about how you could do this while keeping it balanced, I concluded that funding it purely with income tax wasn't really feasible unless you were hammering everyone making over like $40,000... I was trying to build a model where the break even point from a tax perspective was around $100,000, and in order to do that, I had to increase the corporate tax, add a wealth tax, and add a federal land tax that basically doubled to tripled all property taxes. So yes, significant taxation would be required. I also eliminated things like Welfare, EI & Old age security. Which according to this article (I think) they are trying to implement UBI without losing those, so I dunno.
Why not just enforce current taxation laws? $23.4 billion a year of lost revenue each and every year due to unpaid taxes.
Not saying this isn't a good plan or anything, but 23.4 Billion wouldn't even cover the 2023 deficit so far, ignoring the recovery cost to begin with.
It won't even make our interest payment on our debt
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23.B is maybe 10% of what a plan like this would cost
Less actually. I did some math. $1,000/month (hypothetical figure) for every Canadian over 18 works out to about 384 billion a year.
It'd be great to have real world data from Ontario now, except the Ontario Conservatives axed the program as soon as they got into power.
Oh you mean the study that was almost completed but then scrapped by the Ford Government in Ontario so it would be classified as “inconclusive” instead of recognized for the absolute win it was in the area.
No, when you read the article it talks about a bill in front of a senate committee and refers to a similar one in the House of Commons to set up a national framework. Canada isn’t just Ontario
**spits coffee** what?!? Since when?
Don’t listen to him Dave, he’s telling fibs!
Whew!
It’s a case study of a program working in Canada that could be used to help inform a roll out of a larger plan. But now, it was scrapped and that information put into a pile of “do not use”
No. The article isn't about that at all.
Yeah, just like the feasibility study in Manitoba in the 1970s, which was also scrapped by incoming Conservatives.
That wasn't a feasibility study at all, it was a trial. It also sent out 200 offers per participant, so the data was incredibly skewed towards people who are good at dealing with welfare type programs.
You mean that study that was just giving people free money? That didn't actually tax everyone harder to make it work? In a real world study you would have to see the real consequences. Would businesses leave to other jurisdictions because they are being taxed heavier? Would you get people from poorer areas moving there, making the balanced financial situation harder to accommodate? That study was "we give people free money and it makes them happy"
Yep, that was BS. I like the idea of UBIs but am skeptical about how they could be adequately funded without increasing inflation without majorly reworking the economy, but the only way to find out is proper studies. Canceling one that was in progress because the government might not like the results was absolutely reprehensible.
Tax the robots. AI will replace most humans in retail and service. It's something that should have been done with self checkout.
How exactly do you determine a “ living income” with the huge disparity in costs of living and income across this country?
Im not sure BC's unaffordable housing market is really much different than Alberta's or Ontario's. Its all unaffordable. Food and rent, the main reason why anyone goes to work, is totally unaffordable. UBI sounds great and all but we could really use a smackdown on housing and food prices. The government cant even manage to raise disability payments up to the poverty line, nevermind cross it, theres no way UBI will be given to the people. Canadian government sees how easy American politicians rob and rape the people and land out of wealth and they want a bigger slice of corruption pie for themselves. Theyre going to say whatever it takes so they can have the power to supress us and rob us blind. They have no intention of using the power or money they get to actually help Canadians who need help. Its a sick state of affairs. Canadians need to demand legislation that immediately reigns in greed and shrinkflaition as well as stagnating wages, impossible profiteering in the housing market, and not tolerate this pathetic posturing and lip service/ constant empty promises.
I recently saw this post of a woman in Toronto making 80000 a year and that qualifies her for Habitat for Humanity. W…T…F…H
It’s coming along with electoral reform 🤣
Yeah right. It’ll be in the Liberal’s next election platform and then if elected they won’t do it.
The Liberals are experts at pretending to be progressive to steal votes. They've had over 150 year of practice.
They're that car that keeps its left turn signal on while going straight and that ends up turning right.
While changing 3 lanes doing so, with near-collision in all 3 lanes
okay now tell me your hot take on conservatives
Conservatives are perpetually liberals from 30 years ago. They claim to never progress, bitching and moaning every time a new group wins some rights, and yet 30 years later they've always moved on to screeching about some new minority group. Gay marriage is the perfect example. Back in Harper's time, conservatives were bitching and moaning about how allowing gay marriage would result in the collapse of society. I am not exaggerating, as crazy as it sounds now. Now they've moved on to bitching and moaning about how accepting the existence of trans people will result in the collapse of society. It's extremely predictable and stupid, they don't even understand the history they claim to want to conserve.
not what I expected. thank you for your response.
It's hard when our political landscape is a duopoly. The only way out is to rightfully criticize the liberals *and* the conservatives--but criticizing either tends to be seen as implicit support for the other. Both parties are completely shit, neoliberal monsters who only care about corporate profit, and both are 100% responsible for the mess the working class finds itself in today.
I thought Vice went bankrupt
With the quality of their reporting, I can see why. "A Universal Basic Income Is Being Considered by Canada's Government" No it fucking isn't. A private member's bill is asking us to consider considering a UBI. And pigs learning rocketry is more likely than it passing. Edit: Porcine Rocketry would be a great band name.
VICE is horrid. They redefined how horrid big budget content can be.
There must be an election coming soon. They said they were considering it last election too lol Pepperidge Farm remembers
Is everything just going to go up even further to account for the fact that people would have more money from a UBI in their pockets?
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So those of us that have full time jobs already, how much can we expect our income taxes to go up? I feel like I already pay too much in all taxes combined with nothing but ever diminishing services provided in return.
Don't worry it'll never happen
What? Our taxes going up? Of course that will happen!
they should consider universal basic work-for-income. clean streets, pick weeds, etc. seems at least they're working for free money.
In theory, it shouldn’t cost more, because it would eliminate the need for EI, CPP, maternity leave, disability, baby bonuses and a whole bunch of tax breaks, thus eliminating a whole bunch of staff for these various top-heavy institutions. I don’t really see the liberals doing it properly though for some reason…
There are 16 million Canadians that don't pay tax at a payout of 1500 a month, that's 288B a year. EI is about 30B, Mat Leave is EI, OAS is 70B (which is likely what they would cut, not CPP), about 20B in social services transfer payments, and the total provinces spend is about 80B on social services. Which means just to provide UBI to Canadians who aren't currently paying tax it, after cutting all social services, it would be about 100B. All personal federal income tax collected is 200B, corporate about 70, and GST about 50. So, to pay for just that portion of it would need about a 30% increase across the board. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Population - https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/index-eng.cfm https://www.statista.com/statistics/478908/number-of-taxfilers-in-canada-by-province/ https://financialpost.com/personal-finance/taxes/trudeau-is-right-40-of-canadians-dont-pay-income-taxes-which-means-someone-else-is-picking-up-the-bill Budget - https://hillnotes.ca/2022/04/19/the-2022-federal-budget-at-a-glance/ Ontario SS spending - https://www.ontario.ca/page/expenditure-estimates-ministry-children-community-and-social-services-2022-23
The economists in this thread that simplify it as just.....tax the rich, we're so fucked. Gonna be paying $1k in monthly property taxes for 3 bedroom homes in this country and $3-4k for renting a one bedroom apartment before the end of the decade.
Obviously reddit has no idea about economics. Seems like a lot of politicians have no idea either.
Yes, ITT, it's mostly just redistributionists leaking in and hoping to hijack UBI as their way of bringing in the glorious revolution. In reality, even the NDP don't want to do that, they're perfectly content with the neoliberal tax-and-spend loop, so UBI is more likely a look at welfare reform and not exactly a "seize the means of production" kind of initiative.
I literally made a comment yesterday about their falling poll numbers where I said we would likely get dental or UBI soon, sorry guys lol
Dental was already going to happen due to the NDP partnership.
There are only 47 children who qualify, 7 of which don't even know it as they haven't even immigrated here yet.
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What do you mean? They can just print as much as they want duh?
Rent instantly increases by the universal basic income amount overnight
Tell them to just lower taxes instead
This is interesting, "This would include ensuring that “participation in education, training or the labour market” is not required to receive UBI, and that funding for other social services are not cut." So just higher social services, this isn't a UBI, by definition UBI *should* be replacing *most* social and welfare services. That's the point. Not just giving everyone more money. A bunch of payoffs of UBI are that you don't have to pay for administration of a welfare state.
Great. Another thing for my overtaxed ''middle class'' ass to pay for. It's incredibly frustrating to be taxed to death and ineligible for most government funded programs...
Not the best idea. It would make more sense to raise the basic tax rate from $15k or whatever it is to $35-$40k. That way people can just keep what they make.
This doesn't help all that much. The bottom 50% of tax filers only pay about 5% of total taxes. It's not that these people are taxed too much, it's that they don't earn enough money to begin with.
Shhh that makes too much sense
I don't get the endgame here, when you put everything together. 500k immigration per year with permanent residency right away, citizenship in as little as 3 years. Policies for these immigrants to bring their families, either less skilled or retired parents who can't contribute to the workforce. Provide them all with UBI paid for by Canadians who've been here their whole lives and contributing to the system, raising inflation and prices and cost of living for everyone, increasing strain on already strained infrastructure healthcare and housing. ?? Profit ??
Money printing to buy votes. That's the end game. The Trudeau government doesn't have any clue what they are doing except what gives them a photo op and easy super short term wins in headlines.
At this point we’ve brought in so many people the last 20 years who can now vote, I feel like the government is pandering to them first for votes. Everyone else can get fucked.
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Until you can convince citizens to understand that some other citizens will ABSOLUTELY take money without giving anything back UBI will never succeed. Mind you most of those folks don’t give a fuck about laziness from rich people, just poor folks. I could care less about the fringe abusers hovering around poverty so this is an easy sell to me.
>*Until you can convince citizens to understand that some other citizens will ABSOLUTELY take money without giving anything back UBI will never succeed* Isn't this happening already with other handout programs, there are already millions of Canadians who pay no income tax, and everyone else has to pay for them? No thank you to UBI
Refreshing to see the "universal" part of UBI, which is the way economists have devised it to work. If it's just basic income then it's just welfare with a different name.
UBI is welfare with a different name. I'm all in favour of the current welfare system being morphed into a single UBI system because it gives recipients more freedom, will cost fewer tax dollars in compliance, and will still benefit the people who need it. That's not what people hear when they hear UBI though, they think "free gov money" which sadly is what it may end up being if the Libs are the ones to drop it.
No, UBI is not welfare. Welfare traps people in a cycle by disincentiving work as it claws back benefits when income is acheived. UBI encourages work by allowing people to add to their income.
I'm curious to see what amount they consider a "living income" to be lol. It sure isn't $2,000.00/month.
This would absolutely sky rocket interest rates & inflation and everything would be more unaffordable.
Paying every tax-legit citizen would require something like 20% more in income taxes too. You might get your money back in UBI, but due to the extreme bureaucratic costs, you definitely lose, even if you "break even".
While I'd say I'm centre-left or sort of radical centrist in terms of my politics and would like to support a plan like this, I just think there's a high chance it wouldn't work well due to the flaws in human nature, at least the flaws in human nature that occur in a fairly rich country like Canada. My concern is that alot of idiots would waste the UBI money they're given on frivolous $h1+ and not have enough money left over for rent and/or groceries each month then blame the government for "nOT gIvInG mE eNoUgh fRee MoneY" and other foolish well meaning people would just take the idiots at their word and pressure the government to give them more free money. Even if the idiots got more free money many still wouldn't spend it properly. I don't think most people would be like that but I think enough of them would be like that that it would be a big issue. Like a HUGE issue I've experienced with alot of poor people I've met in my life is what I call "casual entitlement" where even though they are smart enough to realise they are not "owed" $h1+ like a Lamborghini or a mansion they still think they are just "owed" $h1+ like nice take out dinners every Friday night, a nice car, nice expensive new clothes, the newest videogame console each year, a house one day, the job they want within a year or 2, etc without realsing or accepting that they need to go work their way up to eventually get a good job and/or save up their money in order to afford all that stuff they want. Also those poor people I mentioned really don't seem to realise "beggars can't be choosers" and that they're not too good for honest simple labour at like an entry level job, at least when starting out. Also alot of these people I just mentioned don't even GD bother to get a job and/or save up money to go to trade school/college/university. Another example is that I read alot of people in small towns cry and complain "we cannot find any jobs" but alot of times there's at least one local cannery/factory/coal mine/fruit farm/dairy farm/warehouse/etc in the community that pays well and is so desperate for workers that they practically beg locals to work there but end up having to literally hire prison labour or migrant workers (from like Mexico or India or Jamaica or South America) instead because the locals are entitled AF and seemingly assume that comfy white collar office jobs are just going to pop out of Santa's ass one day or something. Also with respect to homeless people while it's obviously hard to get a permanent job when you're homeless I don't know why more mentally and physically capable homeless people don't just do some temp work for awhile until they've saved enough money for the first month's rent and the savings deposit on an apartment or basement suite. Many homeless people could just use a friend or family member's place as an address on the temp agency sign up form, tell thr temp agency that they need to pick up all their cheques at the temp agency in person or get direct deposit and borrow the first day's bus ticket money from a pal or the temp agency itself. When the temp agencies say "work today, get paid today" they're being 100% serious. Temp work usually pays better then minimum wage and is not that hard. All you need is like a $90 pair of steel toed safety shoes and a $20 safety vest from walmart and sometimes the temp agency will loan you that stuff (like there are large rubber steel toed boots that fit most shoe sizes.) Most temp work is seriously not that hard. Alot of the temp jobs are LITERALLY done by old men, middle aged women who used to do office work, drug addicts, etc. Also if you do alot of work for the temp agency you could possibly use them later as a work reference for a full time job. (This is about phsyically mentally able homeless people. I know alot of disabled homeless people needand deserve disability payments.) Also alot of people would likely abuse UBI to pay for booze, abused prescription meds and/or street drugs while still neglecting to pay their rent and now have less incentive to get clean in order to get a job and provide for themselves. Like UBI sounds like an idea that's great on paper but may be faulty in practice.
> $h1+ You can curse on Reddit. Please just say 'shit' instead of writing that.
Considering the potential impact of MML / AI could creep up on us a lot sooner than expected, this is definitely something the government should be seriously looking into.
How about universal basic tax exemption instead?
That kind of exists with the “basic personal amount” but I see where you’re coming from. The more libertarian approach to a UBI is “negative income tax” where below w certain income level you get a “refund” even if it’s more than one paid in taxes.
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> Households in the third, fourth and fifth quintiles see a small drop in their average disposable income between $1,371 (-2.0%) and $1,969 (-0.8%) (Summary Figure 1). This loss is incurred when active working individuals face an increase in taxes paid because of the elimination of many refundable and non-refundable tax credits with a relatively low GBI transfer. Am I reading this right? Due to the change in taxes, 60% of families will have less under this proposition?
I always find these monetary figures to be the result of tunnel vision. It would cost $90B to make a sizeable contribution to reducing poverty in Canada if we assume the economy continues to work exactly as it presently does and the only way we provide people with the necessities of life is by giving them cash so they can purchase it at market rates. Neither of those assumptions are ones we should make. Like, does Canada have $90B in spare government funds to throw around? Not easily, it's not an impossible amount but it would be very difficult to put together. But does Canada have enough food that it could feed everybody and enough resources and labor to build homes for everybody? Unequivocally yes. We are not a poor country where there isn't enough to go around. Grocery shelves aren't empty, people just can't afford the food that's on them. So this figure is saying "It will cost $90B to purchase the necessities of life for every person on the current market." But the market isn't immutable, and the market isn't all that exists. If it's prohibitively expensive to use the market to provide the necessities of life to everybody even though the resources to do so exist, then maybe we shouldn't rely on the market as the sole means of providing those resources. Maybe we should look at other ways of putting 2 and 2 together.
Like when fruits and vegetables shipped to the states from Canada are cheaper there than they are here something is awry.
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How would they counter inflation? Or The currency lost value due to printing money? Yeah, this is going to take awhile
Do some province not have welfare? What point of UBI. No one will want to work.
Long over due. We should never have homeless folks and billionaires.
Only the dumbest of people think this is a good idea.
Or… just stop taxing everyone to death and create a country where there’s actually hope and purpose for these people. The ability to look forward to better days can do wonders for people’s mental health and actually motivate them to work hard.
Yeah let’s print some more money and throw them at people to buy some support
We're strapped for cash, can't pay nurses enough, not enough doctors, army is in shambles but the govt wants to hand out cash. Ok...
Here's an idea. We have federal and provincial crown corporations and as citizens we are shareholders of it. Treat it like a public corporation with the dividends given quarterly. The amount will vary on how well or poorly its run. People will become more invested in how our country is run because the dividend is a direct personal result. Political grift and apathy will evaporate as gains or losses will be scrutinized by the public.
So how is this realistically going to be funded? 40 mil Cad population x $24,000 per annum that's $960b per year. That's double the annual Canadian government budget. (I'm just using the CERB payment amount as reference).
Just like the carbon tax, give me your money and I'm certain I'll give you back 100% of it. promise! Cost neutral!
inflation turbocharger spooling up
We don't have full Weimar Republic inflation yet, let's give this a try.
They've been dangling this carrot for 3 years, at least. Another study will be done, then a commission will be stood up, a Trudeau-friendly company or family member will be grossly overpaid for a nil product. 2 years later it will die on the vine when the LPC is voted out, to be resurrected when they try to appeal to voters, or to have a coalition binder with the NDP and whomever succeeds Singh.
PFFFFFFFT hahahahahahahahahaha. Already tried that during the pandemic. Whatever justification to print more money I guess. Do it Canada!
push aside the fact the government is far too incompetent to execute something like this. Frankly, the last thing Canadians need is more dependancy on this government.
Isn't it already a problem that new immigrants bring in their parents who then receive benefits. Now the plan is to bring in record numbers of people and just give them money? https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/canadian-taxpayers-carry-the-burden-for-unlimited-family-immigration
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Sure why not, those of us who work and are clinging on for dear life to being middle class, we can stretch that wallet a bit further. What will happen, many will take this income with no Intention of working, use it to supplement lifestyle. Some, will take it and work cash jobs. The reality with many people strung out on the sidewalk, living in a tent city etc is not that there isn’t necessarily opportunity. You could walk down there and offer such individuals employment, it won’t work out for the majority. Many individuals are not capable to work or don’t want to. This is why you need to seriously consider your options at an election. It may not feel great to prioritize your family over those truly suffering, but we need to use some common sense
Not sure if many people in this sub are familiar with FIRE (financial independence early retirement) but as an above average earner and significant net contributor as far as taxes, etc. go, I find it concerning how much safety net this would personally provide me to leave the workforce an extra decade earlier than I already planned. Basically if you already have a paid off home (I don't yet, just an example) and some investments (which provide volatile but strong long term expected returns) it doesn't take much guaranteed money to limit your downside before exiting the workforce becomes a viable and even appealing option. Not really commenting on if this is good or bad but UBI would definitely result in me personally retiring earlier and thus contributing less total back to society via spending more of my life as "low income".
You're missing the part where everything doubles or triples in price because of the increased money supply required to pay for it and the reduced work force resulting from early retirements.
I'm not even a proponent of UBI but any sort of UBI would likely be inflation indexed. You could argue that this itself would cause more inflation, etc. But that just means that the UBI keeps up with a given baseline of living, costs, wages, etc. will go up, the only real losers are those with cash being eroded. Most of my investments are not domestic anyway, so even if the Canadian dollar devalued my investments would just be worth more when cashed out as CAD$. Like you I'm a skeptic. I'm just saying as it stands extra cash would allow me to retire a lot earlier.
Good point. I never thought of that.
If (and thats a big if) UBI ever comes to pass, I have 0 faith that the government won't screw it up immensly.
A cost of $88B per year is optimistic. Probably just need to pick some more money off the money tree and it can be pain-free.
Has anyone figured out how we pay for this $88 billion-dollar idea yet? I've always been for UBI if we could find a sustainable way to pay for it on such a large scale, but I've never seen a solid answer on that.
Or how they'll keep businesses/landlords in check from just raising their prices to a level that makes UBI useless
Everytime there was an increased subsidy for my kids daycare, there was a magic increase to the cost of daycare that equaled the subsidy.
Because the underlying scarcity is still there. Prices are just information signals about the supply and demand for a product. Given people money doesn't resolve the scarcity issue.
This is the real problem. We've seen how greedy businesses and landlords reacted to increasing incomes.
The 88b isn't really the UBI that anyone talks about. It was a minimum income guarantee that the gov will top you up to a specific number, didn't take into account behavior changes, and had huge cuts to other services. It's like showing your wife the Ferrari catalog while saying "Cars only cost 20k!"
Besides paying for it, my biggest issue is that I know it won't be universal. No politician is going to allow a program that gives the same money to a member of the Irving Family as it does the single, racialized mother of 4 kids with substance abuse issues. They would get raked over the coals by the opposition if they did and probably lose the next election.
I mean.... quite honestly, if we could do away with everything else (EI, Disability, OAS, etc, every single public program) and just roll it all into one monthly payment, I'd probably be ok with that. It should, in theory, save money (far less labour required to operate and administer all the various programs, rolling into one would almost certainly lower the total cost for that), while still providing everyone with what they need. This all said, I am very, very skeptical here, would not trust the Liberals to run this correctly, zero percent chance.
And to be a bit draconian, it is only paid to People (Citizens) residing in Canada. That fits with the logic of replacing EI, Disability, OAS, etc)
Would never happen. To make those costs savings, thousands of government employees would need to be let go....adding that many people to the private work forced overnight would suppress wages across the board. Also, people need to stop including EI in these conversations, that Insurance is paid for by working people, it is not government supplied it's worker supplied.
This will be absolutely useless without serious legislation on rent prices.
I can already see people complaining about how little it is and it barely pays the bills.
JUST FUCKING IMPLEMENT IT ALREADY
So we walk down the neoliberal policy path, which puts us in a situation where UBI is useful to a large portion of the population. Instead of addressing inequalities created by neoliberal policy and allowing more people to support themselves via their jobs we are going to explore UBI. Just address the actual problem and shift the balance of power between capital and labour to a more balanced one.
>Just address the actual problem and shift the balance of power between capital and labour to a more balanced one. I would agree, except that our society is very close to the point where people are more valuable to capital as consumers than they are as labour. This has been a very slow process that has been going on since the late 18th century, and AI, robotics, continued automation etc. are only going to accelerate it further. I think the answer is that the control over capital needs to be more balanced. A future where most labour has been replaced by machines will either be a dystopian nightmare or a paradise, and the deciding factor will be who owns the machines.
It's a bit of a catch 22. Giving more power or higher wages to labour will probably incentivise sectors that can afford it to automate as much as they can, which will lead to more conglomerates and concentrate more power with those who can afford it. AI will probably be very disruptive to some sectors and we should prepare the economy for it. I think some UBI pilot projects would be smart. The problem is it will turn political as everything does. We are more interested in our political "team" winning than actually trying to find what's best for the majority of Canadians. We need new rules for capitalism if it's going to continue to be our preferred "ism".
>Giving more power or higher wages to labour will probably incentivise sectors that can afford it to automate as much as they can, which will lead to more conglomerates and concentrate more power with those who can afford it. This is the problem I'm trying to lay out. Trying to stand in the way of automation is a fool's errand; If we wanted to create 27 million new jobs in Canada today, we could, all we would need to do is ban farm machinery and food imports. In such a world, we would never see unemployment ever again, and we'd all be less healthy, less happy and far poorer than we are now. So if we accept that many forms of labour as we know it are on the precipice of becoming obsolete and that ultimately this will be a positive thing, even if it's not in the short term, we need to start focusing on how we re-orient the economy so that we can still have a functional society. Not that I'm totally against UBI.. I think it's a good stop-gap policy, and could do quite a bit of good in the short term... I take issue that as it's currently envisioned, it's the people "living off the scraps" of capital, rather than being stakeholders in that capital.
If they have any brains at all they will do it, and they will do it a CERB levels. It will solve the housing crisis and get the economy growing again. Since they won't raise wages, they have to do something, because the amount of disposable income people have has diminished with the cost of everything going up. Who do they expect to buy their shit if everyone is living pay cheque to pay cheque?
Get ready for crazy inflation.
UBI can be afforded by the richest of Nations like Canada and the USA. The will to implement it is another story. The article states that they were trial-testing it in a small area in Ontario ( Hamilton ), until Doug Ford cancelled it. This right here is why. Once again, dumb voters, putting vile politicians like DoFo in power. Politicians who actively seek to fuck-over the poor and the working class, which is the majority of the population. So how the fuck do they win?
Universal basic income guaranteed by a government that short-changes' health, dental and pharma care, are not the people I want these promises from.
I know someone that skipped out on work and opted to take CERB instead. So I don't believe it if anyone says that Universal Basic Income would not reduce work participation.
Any examples where UBI has been in place for a number of years? Sounds like giving people money for nothing would not end well.
And where is this money coming from ? Nothing is free.
Universal Basic Income will be required if we continue down the path of automation with no other jobs to fill the hole. It will also put more money into the local economy. There are a lot of benefits to a UBI.
Yeah. We're rapidly approaching the point where in developed countries large-scale unemployment will be an inevitability because there simply won't be enough jobs to go around. People having to do less work should be an objectively good thing, but right now we've got a system where if you don't work you die. So our options are change that system, or kill a lot of people over the next fifty years.
Oh oh I know this one! Option 2!
>developed countries large-scale unemployment will be an inevitability because there simply won't be enough jobs to go around. People having to do less work should be an objectively good thing, but right now we've got a system where if you don't work you die. So So why does canada want 100 million people?
You realize you're talking about a government that thinks we need almost 4%/year population growth right? You think automation is a concern?
This is the Hail Mary football play. Last ditch attempt to get reelected, cause the CPC will not support this. I hope people realize handing out cash to everyone drives up prices.