canada to experiment with universal basic income

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Sweetleaf
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10 Mar 2016, 11:35 am

nurseangela wrote:

So the OP expects to get paid for doing nothing? The article doesn't take into account how hospitalizations will be paid and what about housing? $800-1,000 a month will hardly cover food and such. And I'm sure these people wanting to get paid for sitting on their asses will want a vehicle and a cell phone to boot. How is all that going to be paid for?

People tend to forget things like cooking, cleaning, doing laundary, helping friends/family/aquantinces with any largish projects needing help, raising kids, gardening, do-it-yourself vehicle and home mantinence ect.....are all doing something other than nothing. Yet some people pretend the only way to not be doing 'nothing' is to work for someone else/a company.

I think what the OP is getting at is with increasing technology which will eventually replace a lot of general labor jobs and even some customer service positions... it will leave fewer jobs which are also very technical and require advanced technological knowledge. So societies will have to figure a way for people to have access to goods and services, which is where the Universal Basic income comes in.

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Sweetleaf
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10 Mar 2016, 11:41 am

arabian1 wrote:

A national basic income is a interesting idea . I read somewhere austrailia give poor people loans to start a business. That might be another idea to consider.

I think that would be a great way to help some people. However actually running your own business isn't really something everyone's capable of...so what is to say any given poor person is going to have the necessary skills and knowledge to actually continue running said business. A lot of non-working poor could simply use a job(which is hard to attain if you're living on the streets and look grungy and smell bad, also depending on how long its been going on you might be malnourished and mentally unstable...not really things job interviewers look for. But yeah I think programs to help impoverished people get regular employment would be more helpful then expecting them all to be business owner material.

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Sweetleaf
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10 Mar 2016, 11:47 am

auntblabby wrote:

^^^if only America could see things past the end of its collective nose and do something like that, instead of the current route of coddling billionaires.

But the billionaires are all that matters, if we don't continue coddling them the wealth will never trickle down... :roll:

Seriously though, if it hasn't trickled down yet I think its safe to assume its not going to unless some drastic changes are made. Yet some people expect all the average citizens who aren't upper class or above to just keep waiting whilst fighting over the scraps in the meantime.

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Sweetleaf
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10 Mar 2016, 11:52 am

envirozentinel wrote:

Our main opposition party supports a basic income grant.

Conservatives don't like such an idea, but many people will use the money to better themselves and make more money. It's like the parable of the talents. You can use it for good or ill.

There are people who are so unhealthily well-off that they don't know what to do with their money, and yet there are so many deserving causes they could be supporting.

Not to mention it may even be easier to use that money to better yourself. I mean I imagine with universal basic income a lot of welfare programs would become obsolete...which would mean for someone in my position instead of getting disability I'd just get the basic income. And with no asset limit or other strings attached it would be much easier to invest in ways to better myself and life than it is now. For instance I have a 2,000 dollar asset limit on SSI which makes it next to impossible to actually save up and invest in some way to become financially independent.

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SpiceWolf
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10 Mar 2016, 11:57 am

arabian1 wrote:

I read somewhere austrailia give poor people loans to start a business. That might be another idea to consider.

Austria maybe, Australia? None that I've heard about.

Jacoby
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10 Mar 2016, 12:59 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:

envirozentinel wrote:

Not to mention it may even be easier to use that money to better yourself. I mean I imagine with universal basic income a lot of welfare programs would become obsolete...which would mean for someone in my position instead of getting disability I'd just get the basic income. And with no asset limit or other strings attached it would be much easier to invest in ways to better myself and life than it is now. For instance I have a 2,000 dollar asset limit on SSI which makes it next to impossible to actually save up and invest in some way to become financially independent.

that's exactly right and that's why it's a policy that is more conservative/libertarian/market friendly than the massive inefficient government bureaucracies that we've erected instead. Cut out the middle man and we'll probably end up saving money, there will be competition and more people able to participate in the market place. The Beltway is a boom town and it's time it goes bust.

It always bothered me growing up going to the public schools that I went to because they would tell us they spend like 20k or something ridiculous per student and that's the tuition to like an elite private school, so why don't they just give us the money to make our own decisions about education?

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10 Mar 2016, 4:14 pm

This concept is becoming more popular in Europe. I believe that Germany and Switzerland are implementing it, and Finland is going to launch it on a limited, trial basis in 2017.

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auntblabby
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11 Mar 2016, 12:28 am

Jacoby wrote:

It always bothered me growing up going to the public schools that I went to because they would tell us they spend like 20k or something ridiculous per student and that's the tuition to like an elite private school, so why don't they just give us the money to make our own decisions about education?

not all of us were cognitively in a position to make proper decisions about how to obtain an education. a good halfway option would be to make the choices vetted and with mandatory pre-counseling before making the choice, and making "exit" or "switch" points if the choice didn't work out.

auntblabby
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11 Mar 2016, 12:29 am

Basso53 wrote:

This concept is becoming more popular in Europe. I believe that Germany and Switzerland are implementing it, and Finland is going to launch it on a limited, trial basis in 2017.

it seems America is always last to come on board with innovations that are old hat in other nations.

Feyokien
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11 Mar 2016, 12:36 am

auntblabby wrote:

other nations are studying it as well. eventually when the only jobs remaining are too techy for most IQs, the universal basic income will be seen as necessary as bread and circuses in an earlier age.

Yeah makes sense. It's going to happen at some point in the next hundred years if the world can keep its s**t together.

luan78zao
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11 Mar 2016, 12:39 am

Jacoby wrote:

And that is why it's unlikely to happen in the US. There are something like 2.7 million federal employees, not counting military and security agencies, and who knows how many state-level welfare workers. Together they make one hell of a lobby.

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arabian1
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11 Mar 2016, 1:28 am

I agree with jacoby about the need to streamline the government. There are
Several organizations, such as citizens against government waste that put out annual reports on how to downsize the government and trim the debt. David walker, former head of the gao, has said america's real debt is closer to 65 trillon .i think it was the gao who put out a few interesting reports a few years ago. One report said the federal government waste 100 billion dollars a year funding duplicate agencies. The other report said the federal government loses 100 billion a year to fraud.we had the simpson bowles comission propse ideas on how to balance the federal budget yet nothing came of it. Its just one of the myriad of problems america faces that will likely never be solved.jacoby were you refering to the lois lerner incident at the irs?

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11 Mar 2016, 1:45 am

our black budget is the big invisible stealth elephant expense in the basement that nobody talks about. that dwarfs even the defense budget.

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11 Mar 2016, 2:01 am

I think the idea is reasonable for the people who have strong motivation to do things and can execute.
If their basic needs are taken care of, they can go ahead and do what they want to do.
With freedom from having to make a living, they may be very creative and make something great and contribute to society.
However, I suspect that for people without strong motivation, they will lose motivation to make efforts in much of anything and not do much productive, creative, contributing to society.
My parents told me that in time of communism when everyone was provided a job and all the jobs had similar incomes like professors making the same money as janitors, most people had no motivation to do a good job at their jobs or to do much of anything else.
It was only small minority who still wanted good education, pursued dreams, were productive and creative, etc.
Possibly there should be a program where people who have good ideas that they want to pursue apply for selective government grants of basic income for a certain time period to give them freedom to pursue their ideas.
Then it is worth it to give the money to the right people who may contribute more to society this way than if they had to work a job that takes much time and reduces focus on their pursuits.

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11 Mar 2016, 2:10 am

btbnnyr wrote:

Communism didn't work because the countries that implemented it had totalitarian governments. No one wanted to advance to more prestigious positions because that put you in the cross hairs to be executed. A top estimate of people killed during Stalins "great purge" is estimated to be 62 million unnatural deaths.

auntblabby
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11 Mar 2016, 2:12 am

a basic income floor could replace things like SSI and SS and also make life much better for the vast majority of working class folk with no pensions or ability to make and save enough money to invest for their future. it would save money in the end in terms of bureaucracy alone. I also think that they should make use of FEMA camps for people who have no place to stay or no place they can afford to stay, it would beat homelessness any day of the week. as it is, uncle sam has other more nefarious plans for those camps, I am sure.

Last edited by auntblabby on 11 Mar 2016, 3:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

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