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 aren’t 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.

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 they’ll create a swarm of small robots to get infinite exempt amount.

Thinking about it, UBI will drive the prices of housing down because people don’t have to live where work is available. Companies have to offer cheap housing or people will live elsewhere.

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.

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.

Any income above a few million should be taxed at anywhere from 93-100%.

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.

Costs are enormous often because of executive compensation and shareholder payout.

I haven’t seen any numbers either for or against it, so I can’t say anything about viability. If anyone knows enough to run the numbers, I’d like to see it. The problem with the calculations you show above is that you assume the value of money doesn’t 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 don’t 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 didn’t account for. Preferably which countries have instituted UBI and demonstrated this outcome.

The question you should be asking is whether there’s enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyone’s 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 don’t 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 TFW’s 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 doesn’t seem to be.

I don’t 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 doesn’t need help, but the social services required by others do.

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.

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.

In Canada the average person can still buy a house with a low skill manufacturing job?

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.

We are f’n taxed to death in Canada.

Bullshit

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.

My calculations don’t 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 don’t think you understand what it means to make an assumption. Unless you have true population data (as opposed to sample data), you’re making assumptions. True population data does not exist because we don’t have UBI in Canada.

You’re 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 […]

If there’s 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.

I don’t mean that renting shouldn’t exist, but that it should probably not be run privately for profit.

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.

Hospitals have to be nonprofit here, so we can’t actually have shareholder payouts.

Executive compensation is public information in Ontario and you can look it up - often they’re 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.

Choosing the right level of income is the key for UBI to work, it has to be enough to live and survive but not so much that a recipient can enjoy luxury. Most people like to contribute to society, being is social is how humans are so dominant as a species.

Most people will contribute to the economy if they can, because it supports ambition, better lifestyle but it doesn’t put pressure to worry about where today’s food is going to be, people take more risks, be more entrepreneurial, explore more curiosity, explore new ideas, people spend time on acquiring more useful skills.

A mentally healthy mind is not entirely lazy. Being lazy perpetually reflects a deeper problem that is psychological to some degree such as having no hope or not being able to Imagine a happy future, or feeling helpless. Mentally healthy people want to contribute to society.

Economy as a whole will expand, which will pay in turn for UBI. First few years of UBI might be heavier on tax payers of the old system, but in long term UBI will lead to better economy. Question is not who is going to pay for it, question is can people agree to pay more out of their own pocket now for a better future for everyone? OR are we doomed as a species by exploiting our own kind?