Canada finally reveals the results of its universal basic income experiment
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If so, then my reaction was ignorant and I retract it
I can see why the mistake was made.
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The difference between now and the past is that our current world already produces enough of everything to be post-scarcity.
We produce enough food for 10+ billion people, so anyone going hungry anywhere is a policy failure. We have technology and materials to give everyone shelter, so anyone being homeless is a policy failure. We produce so much disposable clothes and electronics devices and other stuff that it is literally thrown away unsold in the desert.
There is absolutely no reason for people to have to toughen up, just to have access to basic human necessities.
There are many ways to toughen up.
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Every study of UBI has been overwhelmingly positive also every study of UBI has ended without enacting UBI. They will continue to study it until they get the answer they want.
or⊠maybe itâs just diligent to have a very strong body of evidence before you go ahead and make a huge change to your countryâs economic policy based on something?
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Especially with that single-payer healthcare we have. The unit rates for things like Dr. hours or beds in hospitals are enormous. If we can cut down on the number of visits required because people have somewhere safe to live and arenât getting injured/sick living on the street, we could save huge amounts of money. Add onto that the cost of policing and/or incarcerating them, plus the economic benefit of having downtown areas feel safer for people, thus encouraging more people to live/work/spend time in those areas.
Costs are enormous often because of executive compensation and shareholder payout.
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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 theyâll create a swarm of small robots to get infinite exempt amount.
Any income above a few million should be taxed at anywhere from 93-100%.
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Thinking about it, UBI will drive the prices of housing down because people donât have to live where work is available. Companies have to offer cheap housing or people will live elsewhere.
This is a possibility, but I donât claim to be good enough at macro economics to be able to predict whether this will be the outcome or not.
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That is false. As a lesson learned from the Great Depression and the Second World war most countries made sure to have good social protection and wealth was relatively well distributed through good paying manufacturing jobs. People had access to opportunities in the form of free or cheap education and simple wealth through owning a house or apartment was accessible to a large portion of society.
Then Neoliberalism came up in the 80s to destroy this.
You must not be Canadian. We DO have good social protection for anyone who needs it. I worked with street people in a major Canadian city for years. The only way you could go hungry, or without shelter or food was if you willfully CHOSE not to access all the support programs available. We have plenty.
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The difference between now and the past is that our current world already produces enough of everything to be post-scarcity.
We produce enough food for 10+ billion people, so anyone going hungry anywhere is a policy failure. We have technology and materials to give everyone shelter, so anyone being homeless is a policy failure. We produce so much disposable clothes and electronics devices and other stuff that it is literally thrown away unsold in the desert.
There is absolutely no reason for people to have to toughen up, just to have access to basic human necessities.
The poor will always be among you. Even the Bible says that. And if you live in Canada you will be able to access many different gov and charitable programs for support. There is no lack of provision for necessities only lack of knowledge about where and how to access them. The US is a different story.
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Any income above a few million should be taxed at anywhere from 93-100%.
income shouldnât be taxed. wealth should be taxed.
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You must not be Canadian. We DO have good social protection for anyone who needs it. I worked with street people in a major Canadian city for years. The only way you could go hungry, or without shelter or food was if you willfully CHOSE not to access all the support programs available. We have plenty.
In Canada the average person can still buy a house with a low skill manufacturing job?
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Costs are enormous often because of executive compensation and shareholder payout.
Hospitals have to be nonprofit here, so we canât actually have shareholder payouts.
Executive compensation is public information in Ontario and you can look it up - often theyâre paid less than Doctors in their own hospital.
EDIT: also, unit rates are set but the insurer (in this case the govt), so its not like hospitals can charge different amounts based on internal costs.
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I havenât seen any numbers either for or against it, so I canât say anything about viability. If anyone knows enough to run the numbers, Iâd like to see it. The problem with the calculations you show above is that you assume the value of money doesnât change when the world around it changes, but it does.
Especially so if you make a large change like implementing UBI. We need to think about this in terms of resources.
My calculations donât assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
Feel free to provide data on your claim about this massive shift you assume I didnât account for. Preferably which countries have instituted UBI and demonstrated this outcome.
The question you should be asking is whether thereâs enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyoneâs basic needs.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet, let alone a small country. There is enough housing if we factor in how many empty units, houses, and the like exist because of high cost; What we donât have we have ways of providing. There is enough labour to go around when Citizens and residents take the available jobs. The reason why we need TFWâs and things of that nature is because citizens and residents refuse to work on farms even though that is constant seasonal work. The labour is there, the willingness doesnât seem to be.
I donât need to ask a question like that, because it has nothing to do with my point that the cost of UBI is excessive, unmanageable, and there are better ways to do things. We already have social safety nets that need improving for people in need. Every single person doesnât need help, but the social services required by others do.
My calculations donât assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
I donât think you understand what it means to make an assumption. Unless you have true population data (as opposed to sample data), youâre making assumptions. True population data does not exist because we donât have UBI in Canada.
Youâre using the numbers from the study along with stats from past years to justify how things will look when you implement UBI. You can either assume that implementing UBI does not affect the distribution of these stats in any way, or you can assume that they change following a certain model. You do not adjust these stats in any way, therefore you assume that these stats will remain unchanged.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet [âŠ]
If thereâs more than enough for every single person, how does it make sense to say that that the cost UBI is excessive? If we take enough food to feed everyone in the country and just distribute them to each person to ensure that everyone is fed, would that work? The food is there, so we can do it. What if instead of distributing the food, we give everyone vouchers to get their daily food? Is that any different? How about we instead give them a fungible voucher (i.e. money) that they can choose to use on food or anything else? Ditto with every other need.
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Rentals do have their place for people like students, and some businesses who regularly send employees to a city(rare but it happens). Rentals are not inherently bad, but the expectation that someone should rent as a longterm plan is completely fucked. We do not need this many many rental units in the world, not at all.
I donât mean that renting shouldnât exist, but that it should probably not be run privately for profit.
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Why should you own anything privately? You dont need two cars, one should be seized and auctioned publicly so someone else could have a car right? Why are you hoarding them?
Because we live in a capitalist society thats why. There are countries that do what youre proposing but they are much weaker economically and people dont have nearly the rights they do in Canada.
And of all the places to rent, guess who provides the most reasonable places to rent in the country? Is is Blackrock? No. Is it a consortium of investors? No. Is it a commercial landlord in your city? No. Its ALWAYS the mom and pop landlords who rent out basement suites and houses. Get rid of them and rent averages go UP.
Why would I, a single individual, need two cars? Iâd be completely in support of one-personal-car-per-person regulations.
The best places to rent in my country are the buildings owned by the city. Even mom and pop are leeching income off the less-wealthy by providing absolutely no services.
We shouldnât live in a capitalist society. Itâs a bad system that leads to oligarchy and class division. Economic strength is meaningless when the economy isnât in service of the people. Look at all the rights people in the US have. Iâm told theyâre euthanizing disabled people in Canada now because theyâre a financial burden on the healthcare system. Capitalism isnât helping anyone except the rich.
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In Canada the average person can still buy a house with a low skill manufacturing job?
Since when could they do that before? I bought my first house in the early 80s with a low skill job but the definition of âhouseâ has changed. Most people would not consider a square 1940âs 600 sq ft shack with asbestos siding and single pane windows on the wrong side of the tracks worthy of a house theyâd want to own, but we did.
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The poor will always be among you. Even the Bible says that. And if you live in Canada you will be able to access many different gov and charitable programs for support. There is no lack of provision for necessities only lack of knowledge about where and how to access them. The US is a different story.
What a twisted view of the world. Youâre completely mental.
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We are fân taxed to death in Canada.
Bullshit
Id say giving 68k in taxes on an average Cdn family income of 158k is taxed to death, wouldnât you?
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You must not be Canadian. We DO have good social protection for anyone who needs it. I worked with street people in a major Canadian city for years. The only way you could go hungry, or without shelter or food was if you willfully CHOSE not to access all the support programs available. We have plenty.
Homeless shelters are at full capacity, and food banks canât keep up. You have a twisted perspective through your conservative brainwashed religious head.
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My calculations donât assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
I donât think you understand what it means to make an assumption. Unless you have true population data (as opposed to sample data), youâre making assumptions. True population data does not exist because we donât have UBI in Canada.
Youâre using the numbers from the study along with stats from past years to justify how things will look when you implement UBI. You can either assume that implementing UBI does not affect the distribution of these stats in any way, or you can assume that they change following a certain model. You do not adjust these stats in any way, therefore you assume that these stats will remain unchanged.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet [âŠ]
If thereâs more than enough for every single person, how does it make sense to say that that the cost UBI is excessive? If we take enough food to feed everyone in the country and just distribute them to each person to ensure that everyone is fed, would that work? The food is there, so we can do it. What if instead of distributing the food, we give everyone vouchers to get their daily food? Is that any different? How about we instead give them a fungible voucher (i.e. money) that they can choose to use on food or anything else? Ditto with every other need.
For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:
The idea of UBI: âUniversal Basic Income (UBI) is a social welfare concept that proposes providing all citizens or residents of a particular country or region with a regular, unconditional sum of money, regardless of their income, employment status, or wealthâ
There are 32,708,656 Canadians as of 2024 aged 20 or older according to population estimates.
Population estimates on July 1, by age and gender
Estimated number of persons on July 1, by 5-year age groups and gender, and median age, for Canada, provinces and territories.
(www150.statcan.gc.ca)
The 2023-2024 total revenues for Canada was $459.5 billion.
Annual Financial Report of the Government of Canada Fiscal Year 2023-2024 - Canada.ca
Annual Financial Report of the Government of Canada Fiscal Year 2023-2024
(www.canada.ca)
The article cites the experiment where the participants received either $16,989 CAD/year as a single person or $24,027 CAD/year. UBI is supposed to be the same payment regardless of any status, so I am going to use the single person amount for scale.
32,708,656 * $16,989 = $555,687,356,784
$555,687,356,784 - $459,500,000,000 = $96,187,356,784
Canada would need to make almost $100 billion more in revenue every year just to cover UBI, and that does not include anything else Federal revenue is used for.
UBI is not sustainable on scale, and there are better options.
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I donât mean that renting shouldnât exist, but that it should probably not be run privately for profit.
Iâm not wholly against that, but Iâm sure there are some benefits. Vienna is the one often brought up in these conversations because something like nearly half their rentals are public and the rest are private which keeps the market in check. We just need much heavy controls on landlords and most people donât have any experience with landlords that arenât huge, unregulated pieces of shit.
Itâs like how private business is not inherently bad but most places do it so badly that people want out of the whole deal.