Canada finally reveals the results of its universal basic income experiment

ecency.com /ubi/@blaffy/canada-finally-reveals-the-results-of-its-universal-basic-income-experiment

You're viewing a single thread.

154 comments

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?
- No, Mr Citizen, I expect you to die.
- Idk, I feel like landlords would just jack prices by whatever the ubi payments are. Ubi is a good idea for sure, but it's only a piece.
  
  Controlled rent would also be fantastic and has worked in economically diffuclt times like COVID. I don't see why it wouldn't work again during the recession we are spiralling towards.
  
  City-owned housing works great here in Vienna. The City owns like somthing like 20% of all apartments and rents them out at basically non-profit rates. It works fantastically! It does not only offer lower rents, but it makes people realize that landlords often charge unnecessarily high prices and makes people demand better from landlords, so these lower their prices as well to compete with the city apartments.
  Edit: for reference, i'm paying 500€/month (roughly $600/month) on rent and it's already a private-owned apartment. In the city apartments, the rent is even lower still.
  
  Controlled rent is better than uncontrolled rent, but it suffers from the same problems as minimum wage. And why should landlords even exist? I'm not convinced private rentals should be legal at all. If you're not using a property for personal use or a place of business, why shouldn't it be seized and auctioned or rented publicly?
  
  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 don't mean that renting shouldn't exist, but that it should probably not be run privately for profit.
  
  I’m not wholly against that, but I’m 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 don’t have any experience with landlords that aren’t huge, unregulated pieces of shit.
  It’s like how private business is not inherently bad but most places do it so badly that people want out of the whole deal.
  
  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? I'd 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 shouldn't live in a capitalist society. It's a bad system that leads to oligarchy and class division. Economic strength is meaningless when the economy isn't in service of the people. Look at all the rights people in the US have. I'm told they're euthanizing disabled people in Canada now because they're a financial burden on the healthcare system. Capitalism isn't helping anyone except the rich.
  
  You do know that GDP and economy are different and every year that goes by our economy in Canada gets worse because of heavily stagnant wages and uncontrolled rent and housing prices? It’s not good, we’re just starting from a relatively higher point than many other places.
  Also all you did there was compare private(large) to private(small), which isn’t anywhere close to the argument you think it is.
  
  Explain to me why landlords didn't just jack rent payments in 1960s. Why did people back then have money left at the end of the month?
- No, they're supposed to adapt and overcome. Just like any other time in history when things are tougher. And if you think this is a tough time you havent studied our history well. The Dirty 30's, the Great Depressions, the first and second World Wars, even the Cold War Era was much more difficult. This doesnt even compare.
  
  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.
  
  Free education was a tool to move most of the intelligent workers into white collar roles. Neoliberalism was possible because too few intelligent people were left to organize an opposition.
  
  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?
  
  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 "house" has changed. Most people would not consider a square 1940's 600 sq ft shack with asbestos siding and single pane windows on the wrong side of the tracks worthy of a house they'd want to own, but we did.
  
  Homeless shelters are at full capacity, and food banks can't keep up. You have a twisted perspective through your conservative brainwashed religious head.
  
  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.
  
  What a twisted view of the world. You're completely mental.
  
  There are many ways to toughen up.
  
  hi Thomas Robert Malthus, are you planning another genocide?
- 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.
  
  a country with a very small population rich in resources
  Sounds like Canada. Nationalize our resources and we're set.
  
  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…
  I did the actual calculation a while ago for the US and found the following:
  If a wealth tax were created to tax all wealth above $10 million with an annual 3% tax rate, it would generate enough money to give everyone in the US a $300/month handout.
  
  I doubt this is correct. The argument against universal healthcare was similar and provably, historically wrong.
  As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people, the burden on the entire country is not great. And it turns out that impoverished people are a burden on the country. Alleviating that burden offsets the costs.
  
  As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people
  It goes to everyone. But as it also goes to wealthy people, you can tax them more in that way, and so basically there's no real extra expense there.
  
  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.
  
  Costs are enormous often because of executive compensation and shareholder payout.
  
  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.
  
  Tell me you don't know how UBI works in design or in practice without telling me you haven't learned much about it at all.
- 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.
  https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501
  The 2023-2024 total revenues for Canada was $459.5 billion.
  https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/services/publications/annual-financial-report/2024.html#a9
  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.
  
  I got a good idea. How about mega corps actually start paying taxes?
  
  Taxing corps is the same as taxing people, there's no difference other than whos books it ends up on. Companies are all owned by people (eventually)
  If you want to tax wealthy people who hold the stocks, tax them directly.
  Let the companies generate value free from taxes on their operation. Of course we should charge them taxes for things like land and resource use, and force them to meet human, environmental, and safety standards.
  
  I like this better. It means fully worker owned corporations get to keep more of their earnings because it's more spread out. Discourages wealth concentration.
  
  I think you have some very interesting ideas.
  If we tax labor or products, it hinders the economy from running fluently and stiffles the production of products. That is the opposite of what we want, since workplaces are a good thing. Instead, the excessive concentration of wealth on a few individuals should be prevented, and that's what the taxes should target.
  
  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.
  
  Any income above a few million should be taxed at anywhere from 93-100%.
  
  income shouldn't be taxed. wealth should be taxed.
  
  I got a good idea. How about mega corps actually start paying taxes?
  Please read my comment before responding to me in the future. My point is increased taxation on large earnings up to an incredibly high cap is a better solution than UBI.
  
  Or you know the better option of raising the tax rate, to pay for ubi
  
  Napkin math will demonstrate to you why UBI is not sustainable on scale, even with an increase in taxes.
  
  mind doing that napkin math?
  I did a while ago and i found that if an annual wealth tax rate of 3% on wealth above $10 million is implemented, then it would be enough to give all americans a monthly handout of $300, and that was by rather conservative estimates. It might be higher.
  
  I did it above if you are interested.
  Do you believe $300 a month is sufficient for survival using the core idea of UBI?
  
  Do you believe $300 a month is sufficient for survival using the core idea of UBI?
  It's a start. We'll see how things develop in the future. A first step needs to be made.
  
  You are also okay with those payments going to the ultra wealthy using the core idea of UBI?
  
  yes, why not?
  
  UBI helps the most at need the most. Taxation reduction requires income.
  Every successful social programme requires the proper taxation of rich bastards. That's a history thing.
  If you can't figure that out, I don't need to read the rest. We do not applaud the tenor if he can't clear his throat.
  
  In my opinion, the main appeal of UBI over other forms of support is that
  the absence of means testing ensures no one falls through the cracks, and
  you never earn less by working harder.
  That's not to say that you can't design a support system that doesn't have these issues, but with UBI, they're just trivially non-existent. No need for extra work in figuring out how to fix these problems.
  I don't see how funding would be an issue unless you count the savings from letting people fall through the cracks. Shouldn't it cost the same to effectively support people in need regardless of how you distribute the money?
  
  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.
  
  I'm talking about various social benefits like welfare or disability that would ideally be replaced by a UBI.
  I hear a lot of stories about this but I don't remember if they're Canadian or not; There's a lot of people who are on disability and are still capable of doing part time work or taking care of their kids for an hour every day for example, but they can't because if they're found doing anything, they lose all of their disability benefits. We want a system that allows them to do what they can and be rewarded for contributing to the best of their abilities rather than punishing them for it.
  It's the same deal with welfare. You need to hit a certain income threshold before your take-home income surpasses what you'd get through welfare. Until then, you're putting a bunch of energy into working to make less money when you could be lounging at home and making more. This actively discourages people from bettering their lives.
  
  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.
  
  “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.
  
  That is a false equivalency.
  I am also arguing against UBI, so thank you for adding additional points to my argument.
  Take care.
  
  Once again, misleading to the point of being intentional. A implies B is not the same as B implies A. Having UBI be guaranteed regardless of income is not the same as income being guaranteed regardless of UBI. So why do you keep insisting that it must? At this point I have to assume intent rather than ignorance.
  
  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. The question you should be asking is whether there's enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyone's basic needs.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501
  The 2023-2024 total revenues for Canada was $459.5 billion.
  https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/services/publications/annual-financial-report/2024.html#a9
  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.
  
  The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That's 20% of its annual budget. Source
  The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we're not even talking about tax reforms here.
  
  The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That’s 20% of its annual budget. Source
  The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we’re not even talking about tax reforms here.
  Three points.
  This is about Canada.
  From my earlier post: "UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option."
  You just paid for 1 month of UBI cutting the entire military budget for a year, which took 20% of the annual budget, leaving another 4 months of payment before the country has no budget left.
  
  You keep pretending all over this thread that you would be increasing the income of everyone. You're ignoring completely that you change the tax system so that wealthy people pay more than at present so it's not inventing money, it's redistributing it. You also cancel a bunch of social security programs that it replaces.
  Your sums are based on false assumptions and you're just spreading your FUD which is itself based on ignorance and fear. Stop trying to sound like you know something about it when you keep multiplying the population by the payment as if that was relevant in isolation of everything else that's part of UBI.
  If you want to sound knowledgeable, first so the reading work of learning.
  But I think you don't want to learn you just want to criticise because you don't like the idea of money going from rich to poor.
  
  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.
  
  Also most of the studies of ubi show it doesn’t cost all that much because it allows a reduction in expensive to administer social programs - obviously less of an effect in the USA that doesn’t have those.
  
  the actual cost of bureaucracy is not that big, and so the reduction would also not be significant.
  the bigger advantage is that as it's simpler as there are no requirements, it's less error-prone and people are less likely to fall through cracks.
  
  $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.
  
  Problem is the uber wealthy aren't actually PAID that much. They're given stock options or other, non-liquid cash, which isn't taxed as income. It also doesn't get taxed until you withdraw it (see the capital gains "scare" that the media hyped up over the recent changes to tax code). Had to dig a bit to find it, but Quebec provides their people with >1mil income per year, which is about 7,000, or 0.08%. Extrapolated to Canada-wide (which I'd argue is not accurate and way too high) gives us 27,000. That's not a lot of people to try and draw any major funds from. Especially at a ramping rate of return like proposed.
  Very rich (bezos, Westons, etc) then draw it out as needed, or use it as collateral against loans at lower interest rates than their return on investments, driving things like private equity, corporate landlords, etc. This then cycles, increasing their paper wealth while not actually having a lot of income to tax easily.
  We should de-incentivize wealth hoarding
  I agree. The problem is how to do that without penalizing the bottom end, overcomplicating tax laws further, and/or creating some other loophole for the rich to jump through. What counts into your wealth hording? Property? Investments? Are unrealized gains (ie stocks worth a ton but not yet sold to gain actual money) counted against them? What about property - if the market skyrockets, are people forced to sell their homes?
  What about things like the wealthy transferring their extra wealth to children or spouses? How does that play into it? Its messy once you get into the details of it, and those are the key points that would actually make a difference.
  
  We shouldn't cap income, but total wealth. That would include stocks, assets, etc.
  People should be free to make money, and if making was balanced, then taxes would apply to everyone fairly.
  To reiterate, nobody should be worth a trillion, or even a billion.
  What about property - if the market skyrockets, are people forced to sell their homes?
  The cap wouldn't be so low that this would become an issue. Unless you've hoarded multiple homes worth tens of millions each... a cap would discourage that type of hoarding, too.
  What about things like the wealthy transferring their extra wealth to children or spouses? How does that play into it?
  Family wealth would be capped, just as we are often taxed or given social assistance for total family income/assets.
  If wealth was capped, then even if a family spread around the wealth, it wouldn't be hoarding to the tune of hundreds of billions.
  Really, we could have solutions to every scenario. But the fact is, our current system isn't working at all. It's perhaps the worst system you could dream up, unless you were among the top wealth hoarders in the world.
  But a fair and balanced system would still have "rich" people, they just won't be rich enough to influence elections, control social media, or monopolize any industrial sector.
  
  If someone can make hundreds of millions of dollars while being taxed at 80% (Or 2 million net earned per 10 million gross gained at the top of my 5 minute tax structure) they either cheated and should be dealt with appropriately, or deserve it for never sleeping.
  
  Cheated, stolen it, and had other people break their bodies to "earn" it.
  We're about to see trillionaires in our lifetime, which is obscene. Cap wealth so the hoarding can stop.
  
  I disagree with the extreme measure, posit that a less extreme measure would work just as well or better, and await any kind of data and proper analysis to support your point of view like I have already done.
  I will not continue the conversation otherwise, so take care of yourself if you choose to respond differently.
  
  the lenghts people will go to keep capitalism.
  
  If you did work in some reasonable proportion of married couples, it might get close to break even. Then remember that CPP, OAS and EI all disappear, and whatever funds they have would contribute to UBI. CPP at max draw by itself is almost as much UBI.
  Then, for people that also have some other form of income, some quantity of the UBI would be taxed back.
  I'm not saying that it really does scale up, but your analysis is overly simplistic.
  
  If you did work in some reasonable proportion of married couples, it might get close to break even. Then remember that CPP, OAS and EI all disappear, and whatever funds they have would contribute to UBI. CPP at max draw by itself is almost as much UBI.
  Couples should not receive less under a Universal Basic Income. The point of UBI is every individual receives the same payment regardless of their potential status'.
  Then, for people that also have some other form of income, some quantity of the UBI would be taxed back.
  This is not UBI. The point of UBI is to be the basic income separate from working income, and not impacted by what one makes.
  I’m not saying that it really does scale up, but your analysis is overly simplistic.
  Feel free to provide all of your own data and analysis to demonstrate your assertion.
  
  Except that the amount for a couple in the article was 24K, which is 8K less than individually. You even quoted the 24K and disregarded it.
  If you have 60K employment income, then the UBI would push you to 76K and the UBI would effectively be taxed at the highest rate. If your only income was UBI then you would exceed the basic personal exemption, and would pay zero tax.
  Everyone gets the same UBI, but some people pay more tax on it if they have other income.
  
  Except that the amount for a couple in the article was 24K, which is 8K less than individually. You even quoted the 24K and disregarded it.
  "Couples should not receive less under a Universal Basic Income. The point of UBI is every individual receives the same payment regardless of their potential status’."
  If you have 60K employment income, then the UBI would push you to 76K and the UBI would effectively be taxed at the highest rate. If your only income was UBI then you would exceed the basic personal exemption, and would pay zero tax.
  Everyone gets the same UBI, but some people pay more tax on it if they have other income.
  "This is not UBI. The point of UBI is to be the basic income separate from working income, and not impacted by what one makes."
  Again, Feel free to provide all of your own data and analysis to demonstrate your assertions.
  
  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 means a net tax reduction, with clear quality of life improvements, as long as the obvious social spending programs are eliminated. The higher the UBI, the more programs are obvious elimination candidates. UBI is simply tax credits offsetting tax debits. As obvious examples, the basic tax exemption means rates above the exemption need to be higher to raise the same revenue as if there were no basic exemption. When investment income gets tax breaks and no payroll taxes, employment and business income needs to be taxed higher for same revenue. Lower business income tax rate? = higher employment taxes.
  UBI always costs 0. Just net credits and debits that equal 0. Drastic discretionary budget savings means net tax cuts.
  
  UBI means a net tax reduction, with clear quality of life improvements, as long as the obvious social spending programs are eliminated. The higher the UBI, the more programs are obvious elimination candidates.
  Combined, what is the total cost of all of those programs?
  UBI is simply tax credits offsetting tax debits
  UBI is a payment made to every eligible person, regardless of any status including wealth, every month.
  UBI always costs 0. Just net credits and debits that equal 0. Drastic discretionary budget savings means net tax cuts.
  With the numbers I ran the cost is $555,687,356,784 per year with the current population to pay for the program using the Ontario studies payment model.
  
  Combined, what is the total cost of all of those programs?
  Canada has 0 national security threats other than US. Entirety of budget's necessity is for poverty band aids, and prosperity enhancement which includes roads. UBI replaces all poverty/redistributive programs. There is zero cost to UBI because it is not discretionary government/empire/colony funding. Just credits and debits among tax payers. Elimination of poverty programs is genuine tax reduction.
  UBI is a payment made to every eligible person, regardless of any status including wealth, every month.
  Including to those who pay high taxes, their spouses and adult children, reducing their effective net tax and support rate. Because people have more money, it trickles back up to the rich, such that, as always, the rich get richer even with higher tax rates, because they still have all of the wealth.
  With the numbers I ran the cost is $555,687,356,784 per year with the current population to pay for the program using the Ontario studies payment model.
  Again, all UBI payment levels save money due to discretionary/mandatory budget reductions. Even ultra rich investor class gets it to incentivize them to have larger families. It makes society and ultra rich, richer. Latest $2B payment to Ukraine, could have been $600 to every Canadian. UBI encourages more UBI instead of waste/warmongering.
  
  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...)
  
  replied to wrong post, but if Canada is not subservient to CIA/US empire for Ukrainian war funding, it does have its democracy corrupted by the descendants of genocidal volunteer nazis fleeing USSR war crimes that our parliament gives standing ovations to.
  Back to the topic of UBI, instead of corrupt fascism that steals my money for demonic nazi support, you are free to use your UBI/other money for any nazi/geopolitical purpose you want, instead of improving your personal life and prospects. The other benefit of UBI is the end of divisiveness that occurs from fascist governance that never does what its campaigning suggests.
  "we need slavery, because otherwise, how would single issue Ukrainian Canadians help diminish Russia to the last Ukrainian" is a very weak argument against UBI. You will be empowered to use your own money to have Ukrainian rulership kill all Ukrainians.
  
  Take care.
  
  No. UBI.

154 comments