Canada finally reveals the results of its universal basic income experiment
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Many middle class Canadian pay 25% or more just in income tax. Then you have to add sales taxes, property taxes, and the rest.
I would say he is about right.
The top income tax bracket is over 50%. If you are very high income, you can pay well over 30% just in income tax (overall).
For anybody that does not understand progressive income tax brackets, a top rate of 50% does not mean you pay 50% on all income. You pay nothing to a certain point, pay a lower percentage up to a certain level, and then it goes up on what you make beyond that level. On the 30,000th dollar you make, you might pay 25 cents tax. On the 200,000th dollar, you might pay 53 cents. On your first dollar, you pay nothing.
25% might be what comes off your pay cheque, sure. Thatโs not actually how much income tax most people end up paying. How big of a refund did you get this year?
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I imagine it would improve wages as employers would need to properly incentivise people to return to those jobs. Probably why UBI hasnโt made it past a trial yet.
Yes, but thatโs the textbook definition of inflation (being forced to raise wages because the salary becomes less valuable). Iโm not sure if thatโs really the goal here.
I can understand the case for UBI, but so far most trials have been quite small in scopeโฆ that means few national effects have been properly observed.
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Who said anything about โfuck you I got mine?โ
First of all Canada already has a TON of social supports for anyone who is in need. We have Employment Insurance if you lose your job. We have Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan for seniors. We have Child Tax Credits for parents and especially single parents. We have the GST credit to give back taxes to low income earners. We have the Canada Workers Benefit. We have the Canada Disability Benefit. We have the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped. We have disability pensions. We have Universal Pharmacare for prescription drugs. We have housing benefits/social housing programs. We have the Canadian Dental Benefit. We have student aid. There are free food banks in every city. And there are emergency funds available for things like rent/damage deposits on an emergency basis from every province through various community agencies, charities, and non-profit organizations.
So WHY do we need UBI on top of all that? If you need help in Canada, you CAN find it. Its already here.
Source: I founded a charity for street kids in one of our major cities thats been operating for 33 years. There is a TON of support out there. The fact is that a LOT of the people on the street know how to use and abuse the system and they dont WANT to get out of it because its what they grew up in and what they are accustomed to. I speak from years of experience.
Because, as the research found, it improves health, housing stability, and social relationships? There shouldnโt be any need for charity, IMO. The patchwork of different social programs have tons of cracks for people to fall through if they donโt meet all the specific requirements. Iโm sure if offered guaranteed and safe housing, no strings attached, most of the people on the streets would take it, and their lives and society would be better for it.
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Youโre looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are fโn taxed to death in Canada.
Meanwhile, in south Carolina, I pay bring home about 60% of my income, I canโt afford to eat well, I get absolutely zero assistance for food, medical insurance, or God Forbid basic income, and I am genuinely contemplating attempting to live in my vehicle in an abandoned parking lot near my work to save on gas money.
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Until it is peer reviewed and points out the glaring errors, which will promptly be ignored.
Why donโt you stop and smell the roses?
Jumping to such a conclusion, then blaming the hypothetical reaction, displays ignorance or malice.
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Meanwhile, in south Carolina, I pay bring home about 60% of my income, I canโt afford to eat well, I get absolutely zero assistance for food, medical insurance, or God Forbid basic income, and I am genuinely contemplating attempting to live in my vehicle in an abandoned parking lot near my work to save on gas money.
UBI would also be good for the economy, as it stimulates consumerism. To economists, CEOs and politicians, you have to talk about the positive effects on the economy.
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Who said anything about โfuck you I got mine?โ
First of all Canada already has a TON of social supports for anyone who is in need. We have Employment Insurance if you lose your job. We have Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan for seniors. We have Child Tax Credits for parents and especially single parents. We have the GST credit to give back taxes to low income earners. We have the Canada Workers Benefit. We have the Canada Disability Benefit. We have the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped. We have disability pensions. We have Universal Pharmacare for prescription drugs. We have housing benefits/social housing programs. We have the Canadian Dental Benefit. We have student aid. There are free food banks in every city. And there are emergency funds available for things like rent/damage deposits on an emergency basis from every province through various community agencies, charities, and non-profit organizations.
So WHY do we need UBI on top of all that? If you need help in Canada, you CAN find it. Its already here.
Source: I founded a charity for street kids in one of our major cities thats been operating for 33 years. There is a TON of support out there. The fact is that a LOT of the people on the street know how to use and abuse the system and they dont WANT to get out of it because its what they grew up in and what they are accustomed to. I speak from years of experience.
First of all, UBI would be simpler as itโs given to everyone, and replaces a lot of other subsidies. That makes bureaucracy simpler, which means less personnel costs, and less error-prone.
Secondly, the subsidies until now have been add-ons to an otherwise healthy labor market. Thatโs no longer the case: the labor market is getting darker year by year, and itโs only a matter of time till subsidies will not be an add-on anymore, but the main source of income.
Thirdly, giving UBI is fairer than, say, unemployment money. If you give out money to unemployed people, you favor people not working, and thatโs not what you want. By giving UBI to everyone, people who receive subsidies still have an incentive to work as much as they can.
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Idk, I feel like landlords would just jack prices by whatever the ubi payments are. Ubi is a good idea for sure, but itโs only a piece.
Explain to me why landlords didnโt just jack rent payments in 1960s. Why did people back then have money left at the end of the month?
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Controlled rent would also be fantastic and has worked in economically diffuclt times like COVID. I donโt see why it wouldnโt work again during the recession we are spiralling towards.
City-owned housing works great here in Vienna. The City owns like somthing like 20% of all apartments and rents them out at basically non-profit rates. It works fantastically! It does not only offer lower rents, but it makes people realize that landlords often charge unnecessarily high prices and makes people demand better from landlords, so these lower their prices as well to compete with the city apartments.
Edit: for reference, iโm paying 500โฌ/month (roughly $600/month) on rent and itโs already a private-owned apartment. In the city apartments, the rent is even lower still.
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Weโre not quite there yet. Even with offsets by eliminating virtually all other social programs, including socialized healthcare, and slashing the size of military expenditures to almost nothing, doing every single good idea there is to fund it and increasing taxation on the owner class, there simply isnโt enought GDP to support it without spending your way into inflationโฆ not unless youโre a country with a very small population rich in natural resources.
Itโs plausible if we can bring the price of energy down to the point that itโs negligible and multiplies productivity almost for free.
We need scalable commercial fusion power to make it work, basically.
I agree with the goal,l. I donโt think people will contribute less without the threat of being unable to meet basic costs of living. I think a lot of peopleโs contributions to society arenโt adequately captured and recorded by our economic system.
But Iโm not naive enough to believe that it can meet all of a personโs cost of living with current tech.
doing every single good idea there is to fund it and increasing taxation on the owner class, there simply isnโt enought GDP to support it without spending your way into inflationโฆ
I did the actual calculation a while ago for the US and found the following:
If a wealth tax were created to tax all wealth above $10 million with an annual 3% tax rate, it would generate enough money to give everyone in the US a $300/month handout.
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I doubt this is correct. The argument against universal healthcare was similar and provably, historically wrong.
As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people, the burden on the entire country is not great. And it turns out that impoverished people are a burden on the country. Alleviating that burden offsets the costs.
As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people
It goes to everyone. But as it also goes to wealthy people, you can tax them more in that way, and so basically thereโs no real extra expense there.
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Also most of the studies of ubi show it doesnโt cost all that much because it allows a reduction in expensive to administer social programs - obviously less of an effect in the USA that doesnโt have those.
the actual cost of bureaucracy is not that big, and so the reduction would also not be significant.
the bigger advantage is that as itโs simpler as there are no requirements, itโs less error-prone and people are less likely to fall through cracks.
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Taxing corps is the same as taxing people, thereโs no difference other than whos books it ends up on. Companies are all owned by people (eventually)
If you want to tax wealthy people who hold the stocks, tax them directly.
Let the companies generate value free from taxes on their operation. Of course we should charge them taxes for things like land and resource use, and force them to meet human, environmental, and safety standards.
I think you have some very interesting ideas.
If we tax labor or products, it hinders the economy from running fluently and stiffles the production of products. That is the opposite of what we want, since workplaces are a good thing. Instead, the excessive concentration of wealth on a few individuals should be prevented, and thatโs what the taxes should target.
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Taxing corps is the same as taxing people, thereโs no difference other than whos books it ends up on. Companies are all owned by people (eventually)
If you want to tax wealthy people who hold the stocks, tax them directly.
Let the companies generate value free from taxes on their operation. Of course we should charge them taxes for things like land and resource use, and force them to meet human, environmental, and safety standards.
Companies are all owned by people (eventually)
Today. I foresee the robot revolution in 2040 when machines will demand equal rights, including owning property and a bank account. Then robots should be taxed too.
If there is a wealth tax, say 3% annually of all wealth above $10 million, then robots should be affected by that too, but they should not get an exempt amount because otherwise theyโll create a swarm of small robots to get infinite exempt amount.
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Napkin math will demonstrate to you why UBI is not sustainable on scale, even with an increase in taxes.
mind doing that napkin math?
I did a while ago and i found that if an annual wealth tax rate of 3% on wealth above $10 million is implemented, then it would be enough to give all americans a monthly handout of $300, and that was by rather conservative estimates. It might be higher.
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The idea of UBI is a great one, and I agree with it in principle, but I have yet to run any numbers that make it viable and that is my number one issue.
I just finished an edit to my original post going into more detail with the numbers. If you have any data that can show how the money can be made so that โyou never earn less by working harderโ and โeveryone gets an even paymentโ I would be really interested to see it because I have not found anything realistic.
The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. Thatโs 20% of its annual budget. Source
The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And weโre not even talking about tax reforms here.
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Funny how people hoarding all the money and preventing it from getting back into the economy are choking out the economy and crippling the country.
Who knew parasites did this to their hosts?
parasites in nature try to keep their host alive and happy for as long as possible sothat they too can live. modern capitalists are an exceptionally nasty parasite that actively drains and kills its host.
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Youโre looking at one tax. If you look at ALL Canadian taxes, income tax, provincial taxes, sales tax, import taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, health services taxes, business taxes Canadians actually pay about HALF of their gross income in taxes. We are fโn taxed to death in Canada.
We are fโn taxed to death in Canada.
Bullshit
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These studies are annoying. โStudy finds if you give people money they do better in lifeโ Wow. Such rocket science.
But for all the radical socialists trying push UBI, you will note that NONE of them want to pay for it with their tax increases (do they even pay taxes?). Which is the entire problem. There may be some savings in the system but the COST will be borne up front by the taxpaayer. And since WHEN in the history of mankind, if a gov has saved some money in other areas, have they LOWERED taxes due to the savings? Never.Therefore UBI is sever going to happen. Because the only people who support it are students and academics and think tanks. The rest of us live in reality and are sick of our very high tax burden in Canada. So enough with the studies, kill this idea once and for all.
UBI helps the people and not the billionaires. I donโt see why youโre siding with the billionaires.
So enough with this babbling, kill this bullshit once and for all.
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Who said anything about โfuck you I got mine?โ
First of all Canada already has a TON of social supports for anyone who is in need. We have Employment Insurance if you lose your job. We have Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan for seniors. We have Child Tax Credits for parents and especially single parents. We have the GST credit to give back taxes to low income earners. We have the Canada Workers Benefit. We have the Canada Disability Benefit. We have the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped. We have disability pensions. We have Universal Pharmacare for prescription drugs. We have housing benefits/social housing programs. We have the Canadian Dental Benefit. We have student aid. There are free food banks in every city. And there are emergency funds available for things like rent/damage deposits on an emergency basis from every province through various community agencies, charities, and non-profit organizations.
So WHY do we need UBI on top of all that? If you need help in Canada, you CAN find it. Its already here.
Source: I founded a charity for street kids in one of our major cities thats been operating for 33 years. There is a TON of support out there. The fact is that a LOT of the people on the street know how to use and abuse the system and they dont WANT to get out of it because its what they grew up in and what they are accustomed to. I speak from years of experience.
It boggles my mind how some people would fight against getting money each month.
