- cross-posted to:
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- technews@radiation.party
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Small nuance compared to the title
The Senate’s national finance committee will study a bill on October 17 which would create a national framework for—but not actually implement—UBI, according to a press release
They’re considering thinking about talking about it.
Hey, any progress is progress. I’m not a fan of the liberal government right now but just the fact that they are talking about this and (hopefully) implementing some sort of structure for it is a big deal imo. I think UBI is a good idea but I would imagine implementing it successfully is going to be a very difficult task.
Is it? Count the # of people in the country, appropriate the money to cover them all + some additional % for those who slip through the cracks for x amount of years, and cut checks. Done.
I think the main challenge is convincing enough people it’s a good idea. You can see some weird arguments against it in the very thread.
Well you don’t want the people who slip through the cracks to wait in line for months to get their money, so you probably need to figure out a system to handle those people and employees to make it work. Deciding how to handle requests from the people like that without allowing abuse of the system and training staff takes time.
I’m sure with research you can find more practical issues that get in the way of implementing it tomorrow, which is before getting to the political issues.
And its looking like conservicrooks are gong to get back in soon which means all talk of this plan will die the second that happens
If Canadians are dumb enough to vote in conservicrooks after watching what happened to the USA, I wish them luck.
Every country is either dumb enough to do that or just barely smart enough not to.
Im not much of a fan of liberals cuz they are corporate centrists basically, I tend to vote NDP as they align the closest to my ideology. What I do like is coalition governments that join together to opposite consevacrook policies
The Senate is actually doing something interesting for once, but the Senate doesn’t usually put forward legislation, and they’re completely unable to put forward spending bills. And on top of that, they’re not The Government.
And on top of that, they’re not The Government.
That phrasing confused me for the longest time. In the US, the senate is part of The Government. It seems like most countries use “government” to mean something like what we Americans call “the administration”.
Yes, that’s more or less right. Different systems will slice it different tlt, but for the most part there’s “government”, which includes all the mechanisms of state, and then there’s The Government, which is the cabinet.
Many systems have independent heads of state and heads of government. In these cases, you have a president with executive powers somewhat similar in concept, but generally less broad in scope, to the US president, and a prime minister or chancellor who is elected by Parliament or the legislative assembly to form an independent cabinet.
It would be like if your executive secretaries were selected by the majority party leader.
In British Commonwealth countries, things are slightly different, because our head of state is the British monarch, and the monarchy has operated under a policy of non-interference for, like, almost a century now. So, they just rubberstamp whatever the head of government presents to them.
Westminster parliaments also operate under a principle of parliamentary supremacy. There’s none of this “equal powers” stuff. The head of state asks parliament for things, but for the most part thr head of state exists to enact the will of Parliament.
Just Canadian government things.
Don’t we already have that framework with EI, AISH, and the more recent CERB payments?
If everyone gets it we can streamline a ton of stuff by removing all the positions that we current use to scrutinize whether or not people deserve EI, AISH, CERB, whatever.
No bi-weekly reporting would also decrease the demand on the servers. Once you’re signed up, you get it and you only need to log in to change your bank info.
Yep that’s the gist of it. That’s where it becomes cheaper than what we currently do.
As an fella from that country right beneath Canada, I hope something like this works, would love to watch our neighbors in the north do something awesome while we fail to do it for decades and decades.
As is tradition.
Your neighbors in the north have something like that already. Alaska redistributes income from oil companies to their people. IIRC it’s only ~150$ per month, but that’s pretty good nonetheless!
$150 a month would cover several bills for us. Does each individual get it or is it per household? Because if it’s per individual (presuming adults only), that’s $300, which would cover some debt too. So yeah, pretty good!
Yeah I would love to see them do it. I mean hopefully it works and we can use it as a reference. If it fails, well that’s their program.
Unfortunately they will bungle this shit the same way the fucked up their healthcare and it will just be a disaster.
Canada doesn’t even give people on disability enough to afford rent, let alone groceries, power bills, car insurance, etc.
Maybe start there. Help the disabled survive.
And God forbid you’re under 65 and disabled. Big load of “fuck you” from the government.
This is actually a big reason why there are so many opponents of the MAID law.
Too many people with disabilities are taking the euthanasia option simply because, they don’t have any way to live.
Which is simply despicable euthanasia has to be chosen, a sign of a broken system all the way around.
My friend is on disability and bring home the equivalent of $20 dollars an hour in a province with a minimum of $15. From my understanding he is on one of the lowest tiers of the benefit. There are a huge variety of levels of disability benefits depending on the type of disability.
My aunt is on disability from the military and brings home over 6000 a month. We definitely need to cut the military budget.
LPC is at least forcing grocery stores to have fair pricing.
There’s a difference between disability paid as income assistance from government services, and disability from private insurance.
Even at the maximum disability allowance, you get about $15.50 a DAY.
In Ontario, disability gets you $1200 per month if you are lucky and max out everything. Most people get $800-900.
For one person on disability, you get $497 for rent. You wont even find a ROOM for $497.
Tell me where you can even rent and pay utilities for less, let alone groceries, clothes, etc.
How will I know now if Im better than someone else if they aren’t homeless or begging? /s
I think the real problem will be, “how do we stop landlords from jacking up rent simply because everyone has some extra money now?”
The same way we do with minimum wage: competition among landlords.
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No company operating in a capitalist system has ever needed an excuse to raise prices. That’s not how it works at all.
Imagine getting a raise because of the quality of your work and not because if you don’t you can’t afford to live
I wonder how UBI would affect homelessness and addiction. I imagine the mental health and housing crises would continue, but differently?
In all of the studies of UBI homelessness decreased. I don’t know about addiction, but drug abuse is generally reduced with increased economic stability since a lot of people use to escape their stressful living situatuon.
Capitalism will find a way to fuck it up
And if not capitalism, then defeatism will surely do it.
In practice during covid, it made it worse. People came to BC, Canada explicitly because it had the best covid benefits, and on TV said that they were collecting the benefits for the purpose of doing drugs with zero intent on helping society.
There will always be some abuse of services. It just turns out to be negligible most of the time. The benefits will far outweigh the losses. Also - people shop for services all the time. If they want to move to a province that has better benefits, that would be normal and smart. If the program ends up being mostly federal, this won’t be as much of an issue as things will be more standardized, though.
CERB (the federal Covid benefits) was federal so B.C. was the same as Alberta which was the same as all the other provinces and territories.
So you are full of shit.
By that logic, provinces should compete to provide the worst social services so people will move away and they can reduce their spending.
Human beings will always find a way to show they are better than everyone else.
The hexbears would be very upset about this if they could read.
Why?
Because liberals can’t beat Leninists to sustainable socialism
I have no idea what you mean by that, but okay.
In plain English, people who support oppressive dictatorships do so a lot of times because they think that distributing economic output in a way that eliminates poverty is impossible in a democracy governed by the rule of law.
If Canada achieves the elimination of poverty without becoming autocratic, the dictatorical evils of the CCP or the USSR are shown to be unnecessary.
Interesting.
Thank you for clearing that up.
The Chinese Party is not even communist. It’s all a façade. The wealth inequality in China is goddamn awful. It’s basically capitalism on steroids but red. Red capitalism.
Holy shoehorn, Batman.
Apparently any dumb post trying to dunk on hexbear will amass upvotes, no matter how nonsensical and sloppy.
Please do this, and do it right, Canada, so your neighbors to the South can use you as an example in trying to push for the same.
This won’t work in the US because we NEED some sort of national health care system first.
We’ll be shoveling money into medical debt even with UBI.
The health care system in Canada isn’t that great right now. There is a huge shortage of doctors. You have to get prescriptions diagnosed and filled from the pharmacist and they are moving people into urgent care (you don’t see a doctor you see a nurse) as there is no doctors. the best you can hope for is you’re not in a situation where where you’re looked at by spiteful nursing staff who determine if you’re allowed to live. Or that you’re not in a hole between antibiotics where you’re hoping you can live long enough that someone will see you before the sepsis takes you.
While I agree with you overall, it’s not like it would be a bad thing if a whole bunch of folks who currently choose between healthcare and eating could start choosing both.
Lol I wish. I genuinely do. But as long as we stay stubbornly opposed to basic shit that the rest of the world is doing like providing everyone with healthcare and maternity leave and stuff, there’s no way.
If you’re a fellow Canuck, here’s a petition to get this realised. It’s not much, but it’s something.
I’m not sure I want this to happen. I’ll read the bill, but I’m not convinced they’ll do it right. For example, UBI is supposed to replace other need-based social programs such as disability, welfare programs, government housing, etc. The entire point is that the money from those programs, which collectively have quite a lot of waste, goes into UBI so everyone can participate in society on a more fair level.
For example, I have a neighbour who is on some kind of government assistance. He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he’d get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
Yes.
This is the thing people don’t understand about a ubi.
I had a coworker who’s wife was a… Case manager? For welfare. Her whole job was determining whether or not people were lying/exaggerating about various elements of their claim.
First of all, government union paper pushers make decent money. There was an entire office full of people that covered cases in their region only.
Second, it’s a soul sucking job. Her primary assumption was that everyone was cheating and lying and she needed to minimize everyone’s payout.
UBI solves both of those things and by plugging it directly into the tax system people can be free to try to earn a better living, which studies have shown most people want when they are given a UBI.
Increased productivity, increased employment, increased entrepreneurship, increased mental health outcomes, there is literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich.
The housing crisis needs to be addressed separately. There is 7 times the amount of housing needed to house the homeless
There shouldn’t be homeless in Canada at all regardless the income. This Airbnb bullshit breaking cities needs to stop.
He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he’d get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
It sounds like there’s some good and some bad that would come from that in his particular case. I don’t live in Canada and haven’t read the bill, but is the income he’d receive close to enough to afford housing? If not his current housing, then at least not slums or whatever?
The housing in Canada is a joke right now. They have homeless but there’s 7 times the amount of housing that could house them. Instead there’s a bunch of empty buildings owned by people who don’t even live in Canada hoarding housing. This should be addressed separately from this matter. Income doesn’t even matter at this point. They’ve pushed people into homelessness even people who have more than one job can’t even afford housing right now.
It doesn’t ask you any ID, even non-Canadians could sign this petition lmao.
There isn’t a person on the planet who will input their personal ID to sign an online petition. The number of non-Canadians who care enough to tilt the petition is probably relatively low. It’s an easy decision to make.
well, ukraine uses id verification (using digital signature or the Diia app) for it’s petitions and it just works ™
well it only asks for signature which reduces chance of something going wrong to near zero.I’m not Canadian and I did it, because wtf not. It doesn’t ask for much, the hardest thing was the postal code.
Honestly the more countries there are with UBI, the better. If done right, more countries will follow suit. Good luck fellas 👍🏻
If you have a link to a more official one, please post it, thanks.
I’m very curious to see how they roll this out. I’m a big advocate for UBI, so this is super uplifting news. I really think this will benefit a lot of people!
Well this is just the very first little baby step and would outline how we’d approach UBI. It isn’t necessarily going to lead to a usable widespread solution anytime soon… but hey, positive motion!
Positive motion indeed. Just having the government acknowledge UBI as a potential positive thing is good imo. We still don’t even have universal dental care so realistically UBI is a long way off, but I like that it’s being talked about.
And as with all things that help average people, like the proposed universal dental, it will be killed the instant the conservacrooks get back in
Oh absolutely, I’m just super jazzed that this is a serious conversation that we are having, and that there is real movement on it (however small)
Are we going to tax the wealthy to pay for it?
Because otherwise this is basically corporate welfare at best, and inflationary at worst.
How would this be corporate welfare? It’s been shown that a UBI is less expensive than what is wasted on the overhead of need-based welfare systems, and eliminates the poverty trap where making more money (such as from overtime or a small raise) disqualifies your household from a higher value of welfare benefits that you would otherwise qualify for.
Because it allows companies extracting extreme profit from labour, paying their upper management exorbitantly and their labourers starvation wages to just keep doing that.
Not every step that makes it slightly easier to exist as a poor person that doesn’t solve capitalism is corporate welfare. Celebrate the steps in the right direction or you’ll make progress impossible.
Never say “It’s not good enough” when you could say “that’s good, what next?”
Never say “It’s not good enough” when you could say “that’s good, what next?”
Man, what a beautifully positive outlook
Employees who have UBI to fall back on aren’t forced to accept that starvation wage. UBI gives everyone a small amount of fuck-you money. Employers paying starvation wages would find themselves with a lack of qualified employees because people can afford to quit and look for a better job.
If you believe that you must believe all programs to help poor people are corporate welfare. And you’re missing three essential other half of the equation that makes UBI possible: increasing taxes in the rich. If a direct transfer of wealth from the upper class to the lower class is corporate welfare, then what isn’t corporate welfare?
If UBI is done right, no one will need to work to survive, so they can just quit that exploitative job.
Correct. In fact, this applies wage pressure upward because employees no longer feel the necessity to stick with a shit-paying job.
if the capitalist class isn’t up in arms about all this then there’s a very good, very profitable, reason.
They probably just don’t take it seriously. And they’re probably right.
This is just another way to keep up the mythical “infinite” growth. Just a little bump as things are starting to stagnate. More money to people = more business = growth.
I think this is the reason why capitalism will keep working properly. Can’t keep growing if you can’t find more people who can pay for your goods or services.
Or maybe I’m just too naive.
How on earth is this corporate welfare?
The only possible way I can see someone interpreting this as corporate welfare is if you’re already so corpo pilled that you think a corporation should be required to pay for an employee’s social services instead of thinking that a human’s basic needs shouldn’t be tied to their employment.
I’ll try to explain my concern with UBI, because I’m genuinely curious:
- It seems like it lets employers off the hook for paying a living wage; in this sense, it’s like food stamps in the US: we’re socializing the costs of underpaying people
- If it isn’t paid for by increasing taxes on the top earners, this would be even more the case, since everyone but the wealthy is pooling the cost?
- I’m also confused as to how it isn’t inflationary: without either price controls on necessary goods and/or public options for housing, wouldn’t this result in companies raising the floor on prices and eating up the benefits of UBI?
- And this is the part that worries me, as someone who knows people on ODSP (Ontario, Canada’s disability-payments system): what’s to stop some jackass right-wing politician from freezing, means-testing or cutting UBI when they want to “balance the budget”?
I like the idea of UBI in principle, but my concern is that it–especially without curbing runaway inequality on the top-end and a pivot away from neoliberal “the market does everything” policies–it doesn’t really solve much at best, and at worst it’s yet another way to transfer money to the wealthy and absolve government of actually providing services.
Probably not.
It would be the solution, though. Redistribute excess to those who have less because there is no egregious excess without egregious poverty.
If they’re not planning on taxing the wealthy, where is the money supposed to come from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Governments don’t raise taxes to pay for things.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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I know this is just first small step but still excited to see it happening. Every wildfire needs a first spark, let’s just hope it spreads,
Every wildfire needs a first spark, let’s just hope it spreads
Still kinda too soon, didn’t have a different analogy?
Damn, sorry. It was the first thing that poped up in my head. We don’t really have wildfires here so didn’t really realize it might be sensitive phrase.
Maybe they will be able to afford it with their economy. In other parts of the world where the situation isn’t that bright, similar measures are being canceled due to lack of financial sustainability. And this is not entirely bad for the economy either. Each country is choosing and only time will tell who is making a sensible choice.
UBI should have the best impact invocations with instability caused by wealth inequality and lack of job security. It is likely that includes the places where they are canceling it due to lack of financial sustainability that would most likely be more sustainable with economic stability for all.
I am on ssi, which is as close as America has to a program like this, and I honestly don’t understand how people survive without the guarantee that there’s going to be money in the bank next month. I mean even if you have a job, job security is getting rare these days with all the jobs that get created being those with high turnover rates.
Walmart and Amazon are going to have to start taking people off of their hire Blacklist because they basically gone through the entire Workforce at this point.
Or at the very least drop the no felons policy, there are more legal crackdowns on those kinds of things anyway, and pretty much every human’s rights advocate worth their salt is eager to point out how punishing ex-convicts by denying the access to food, medicine, and a steady paycheck, is only going to encourage them to become better criminals, when the option ultimately boils down to rob a gas station or don’t eat.
Okay I am literally a published author, and that being a single sentence hurt me to write.
If you didn’t mention the lack of periods I wouldn’t have noticed.
Can someone explain to me how exactly doesn’t every corporation raise prices pretty much immediately? Like, they know that everyone has some cash extra every month, so they just raise their prices to get it into their pockets.
This is the one part of basic income I never quite understood.
Because of competition. Let’s say Company A makes widgets and, owing to people having more money, tries to raise prices. Along comes Company B, which also makes widgets, who recognizes that they can out-compete Company A on price. So, they either don’t raise their prices as much or they keep them the same. Company A is now stuck either accepting lower sales, or lowering prices to compete. Once Company A reduces prices (because they want to survive), they put Company B in the same situation until prices stabilize at some smaller profit margin.
So basically, the exact same supply and demand curves which keep prices stable now. It’s not like businesses aren’t already doing everything they can to separate you from your money.In the end, it such a system would likely lead to some inflation. With more money in the economy, there is likely to be more demand for goods. If supply doesn’t expand to match the new demand, prices will go up. At the same time, increased consumer spending is often a good thing, so long as it doesn’t expand so fast that it creates shortages. It may also push up wages for unskilled workers, and those positions may now be harder to fill, commanding higher wages. It may also drive even more automation of unskilled jobs, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those jobs are almost certainly headed for automation anyways; so, it’s better for society if we get out in front of that trend and avoid having a large pool of young, unemployed and disgruntled people running amok in society. Much better to have higher taxes which are used to keep the unemployed youth at least mostly gruntled instead. But, that’s bad for rich, greedy assholes who would rather walk a tight-rope of just enough bread and circuses and full on civil unrest.
Because of competition
We don’t do that well in Canada
Or in the USA. Remember Jimmy Carter claiming the USA is just a collection of oligopolies? Ya.
Or company A buys company B and raises prices.
Markets need to be regulated in order to function properly
Oh, so it’s definitely not going to work here
What do you mean? Our internet and cell phone plans are definitely competitive!
##/s##
Ah, the famous invisible hand of the market. Doesn’t work now, I’m doubtful anything will change with basic income.
Competition.
Let’s go! To the future!
Isnt this just going to lower the value of the currency aka inflation?
No. More people spending money doesn’t cause inflation.
No, when everyone gets a certain amount of money that money is valued the same as it was earned by only some individuals producing goods/service. /s
How do they plan to finance this?
Taxes.
Much like with stimulus checks, the basic idea is that if people aren’t living paycheck to paycheck (if they are lucky), they are more likely to spend money on goods and services. Which leads to improved profits for said businesses, more employment, etc.
UBI theoretically puts a price ceiling on a lot of goods and services but… that is actually a good thing and helps to constrain inflation which increases the value of money for everyone.
And, as more and more jobs are automated with no alternatives in sight: Taxes are also a lot cheaper than all of the homelessness issues, collapsing housing market, increase in crime, etc.
The only way I can see this working is maybe with some sort of robo-tax (The more robots/AI a company uses, the higher their taxes). But right now it feels like chasing cars.
Why?
UBI is not “nobody ever works again”. It is a safety net. Get injured and unable to work? You can still eat. In school? You don’t need to work two full time jobs in between classes.
But also? If you want to get a bigger place or go on holiday or buy the latest video games or whatever? You still need a job. And that means you are paying taxes on that income.
And the other side involves actually taxing “the wealthy”. Rather than just giving them a pass because Reaganomics.
But also, much like with healthcare: Costs go down significantly when everyone has it. Because all those restaurants that don’t pay a living wage because they “can’t afford it”? They don’t need to. And so forth.
It is going to take work to dial things in. And we should have been doing that work for decades now because LLMs are going to really fuck up all the people who have been pish poshing the factory workers and taxi drivers and so forth.
Well if UBI is indeed a safety net, than it’s really just extended wellfare at that point. Seeing how wellfare is already a quite controversial topic. I do not see this going through political-wise. Unless there is an absolute massive wave of unemployment by the effects of automisation. Which could unify both ends of the political spectrum on this topic.
I am on your side. But I just don’t see this realistically happening (right now).
People already arguing for UBI specifically mention how taxes are already paying for them, through welfare systems.
Their argument is that it’s actually cheaper to pay people a lump sum than to go through traditional welfare services.
True, which is why this framework is doomed for failure:
“…participation in education, training or the labour market” is not required to receive UBI, and that funding for other social services are not cut.”
Other services must be cut to finance this. Pretending otherwise provides ammo to the nay-sayers.
You’re right. And that is why we are in for a REALLY rough decade or so in the near future.
But once even “intelligent” tech workers, celebrity artists, etc are suffering? It won’t just be the cab drivers who “should have seen the way the wind was blowing and learned a new skill”. It is going to be widespread unemployment and suffering.
And that is when even just “We are going to investigate this” goes a long way.
Also: Bad actors will still fuck it up. But most models of UBI I have seen is that you get a baseline from the government and then are encouraged to work on top of that. Which still lends itself well to the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” fallacy and makes it a lot easier to stomach.
We are currently spending the same amount of money (possibly more due to fraudulent claims) on things like AISH, EI, special credits, etc. THAT money will turn into a UBI and streamline everything through less hoops and agencies, saving taxpayers even more money.
It’s cheaper to do it this way but people slap a “welfare” tag on it and hand wave it away because I’d that stigma, much like you just did.
There have been a handful of studies done around the world already if you’re actually interested in it. Almost all of them are positive outcomes.
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That’s my point though. Justly or unjustly so, it is a controversial topic. So you need to convince conservatives otherwise. And boy oh boy, I think that task is even above UBI’s paygrade 🙃.
I’m just expanding the conversation a little bit, I’m not necessarily trying to contradict or disapprove anything you said.
Plenty of younger conservatives already accept the benefits of UBI on the rationale that they’re already paying for welfare.
It works by redistributing wealth from those who have more to those who have less.
Taxing robots is dumb because it creates artificial incentive for companies to avoid anything labeled as a “robot”. Tax people on the ridiculous amount of money they get from belonging to the ownership class, not the specific mechanisms they use to harvest their income.
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How do we pay for anything?
ooooh, debt
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