It’s a crime to not have universal basic income at this point. People aren’t only unable to afford basic living expenses, but they’re losing jobs to automation and AI already. What are these people supposed to do? Go beg on the streets?

It’s a crime to not have universal basic income at this point. People aren’t only unable to afford basic living expenses, but they’re losing jobs to automation and AI already. What are these people supposed to do? Go beg on the streets?

I’d be happy to receive money every months that I payback in full on my tax deductions. If I suddenly stop working, the check just keep coming in. It becomes a safety net available to all, that doesn’t mean you are actually giving it to all, all the time. You can get rid of other program that become redundant. Welfare, employment insurance, hell student loans too could be splified this way.

We’re 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 isn’t enought GDP to support it without spending your way into inflation… not unless you’re a country with a very small population rich in natural resources.

It’s plausible if we can bring the price of energy down to the point that it’s 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 don’t think people will contribute less without the threat of being unable to meet basic costs of living. I think a lot of people’s contributions to society aren’t adequately captured and recorded by our economic system.

But I’m not naive enough to believe that it can meet all of a person’s cost of living with current tech.

UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost trillions Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.

I think a better idea is a reform of taxation.

First $50,000 of income is not taxed.

$50,001-$100,000: Taxed at 15% $100,001-$500,000: Taxed at 25% $500,001-$1,000,000: Taxed at 40% $1,000,000-$10,000,000: Taxed at 50%

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

This would essentially create the conditions of UBI, help to increase funding for support for those who cannot work or are unable to work full time, and the rich finally get to pay their share.

These are also really rough numbers just as an example for the idea.

Edit:

For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:

The idea of UBI: “Universal 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 wealth”

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.

UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost trillions Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.

I think a better idea is a reform of taxation.

First $50,000 of income is not taxed.

$50,001-$100,000: Taxed at 15% $100,001-$500,000: Taxed at 25% $500,001-$1,000,000: Taxed at 40% $1,000,000-$10,000,000: Taxed at 50%

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

This would essentially create the conditions of UBI, help to increase funding for support for those who cannot work or are unable to work full time, and the rich finally get to pay their share.

These are also really rough numbers just as an example for the idea.

Edit:

For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:

The idea of UBI: “Universal 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 wealth”

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.

UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost trillions Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.

I think a better idea is a reform of taxation.

First $50,000 of income is not taxed.

$50,001-$100,000: Taxed at 15% $100,001-$500,000: Taxed at 25% $500,001-$1,000,000: Taxed at 40% $1,000,000-$10,000,000: Taxed at 50%

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

This would essentially create the conditions of UBI, help to increase funding for support for those who cannot work or are unable to work full time, and the rich finally get to pay their share.

These are also really rough numbers just as an example for the idea.

Edit:

For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:

The idea of UBI: “Universal 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 wealth”

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.

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

You are too kind.

Because wealth hoarders would still make HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, even if you taxed 80%.

The tax rate should be 100% past a certain amount of wealth. We should de-incentivize wealth hoarding, and encourage people to retire once they’ve made enough to sustain their family for a lifetime. If they choose to keep working, it should basically be volunteer work after a certain point, and wealth should be redistributed back to everyone else.

If we put a hard cap on wealth, everyone would be in a position to retire young and not struggle through their entire life. This is what we should be striving for.

Tax the rich > fund the working class and social services > economic boom. We Know.

To be real about it. Who is going to say it was bad receiving extra money a month? I understand the health data portion. Question remains is it sustainable and how would it be paid for?

Ah there it is. Knew you couldn’t post without somehow trying to undermine Ukraine and convincing us to stop spending on defense. (Look at their post history…)

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 “you never earn less by working harder” and “everyone gets an even payment” I would be really interested to see it because I have not found anything realistic.

This assumes that people wouldn’t take the same job for less pay if they were guaranteed a fixed amount that more or less made up the difference. If I work a job where I make $50,000/year, and I went to a world where I made $20,000/year UBI and $30,000/ year from my job, I could end up ahead under this scheme with the only additional cost to the economy being my possibly lowered taxes. Under this plan, raising taxes and lowering minimum wage/wage expectations means there would be at most a slight change to corporate taxes (and some jobs would have to pay more when you factor in UBI because desperation would be less of a factor for what people are willing to put up with).

So, realistically, the only cost would be whatever is required to get whoever is below the set line up to the set line, for individuals, corporations, and the government. This would also depend on people who are already making more than UBI to take a “pay cut”, and for corporations to not resist paying more taxes to balance the lower payroll costs. So it’s never really going to happen.

UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost trillions Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.

I think a better idea is a reform of taxation.

First $50,000 of income is not taxed.

$50,001-$100,000: Taxed at 15% $100,001-$500,000: Taxed at 25% $500,001-$1,000,000: Taxed at 40% $1,000,000-$10,000,000: Taxed at 50%

$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%

This would essentially create the conditions of UBI, help to increase funding for support for those who cannot work or are unable to work full time, and the rich finally get to pay their share.

These are also really rough numbers just as an example for the idea.

Edit:

For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:

The idea of UBI: “Universal 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 wealth”

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.

Ubi is just a reform of progressive taxation so that it goes slightly negative as you get closer to zero income instead of stopping at zero percent.

“Universal 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 wealth”

That has no bearing on what your income from your job is. Pretending this won’t have any impact on the value of jobs to both employers and workers can only be intentionally obtuse. That’s like saying that raising minimum wage will have an equal impact on the hourly wage of all employees.

Unless I’ve misunderstood, what OP proposed is just increasing the tax rate of the existing system.

A progressive tax doesn’t result in earning less for working harder; it’s only the marginal income that’s taxed at the higher rate. So a worker who goes from making $50,000 to $60,0000 only pays 15% tax on $10,000 and has a net take home increase of $8,500.