Ontario Launches Universal Basic Income Pilot (www.cbc.ca) 524
Reader epiphani writes: The Ontario Government will pilot universal basic income in a $50M program supporting 4,000 households over a 3 year period. While Slashdot has vigorously debated universal basic income in the past, and even Elon Musk has predicted it's necessity, experts continue to debate and gather data on the approach in the face of increasing automation. Ontario's plan will study three communities over three years, with participants receiving up to $17,000 annually if single, and $24,000 for families.
minwage $11.40-$9.90 (Score:3)
$11.40 General Workers
$9.90 Liquor Servers
$10.70 Student Under 18 (less than 28 HRs/wk)
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My understanding is that universal basic income is seeking to address the predicted lack of jobs for a large percentage of the populace in the coming years.
Not with our current government, it won't. It seems the only guaranteed basic income they support is that of corporations. Our economy seems to be engendered to siphon money from the middle and lower classes up to the wealthy.
Re:minwage $11.40-$9.90 (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see minimum wage increasing jobs though. On the contrary, I think even economists that support an increase in minimum wage predict a small if negligible negative pressure on job numbers.
'Economists' are wrong very, very often (which is not in a small part because it's very hard to do conclusive research on economies). Their opinions aren't homogeneous either, so you can choose pretty much any point of view and support it by saying 'economists think so'..
The thing with income is that the first parts of it are spent very, very fast on essential goods and services. Supply side economics has clearly failed. It is time for demand side economics and UBI is the perfect tool for it.
Re:minwage $11.40-$9.90 (Score:5, Informative)
In what insane world is businesses "pushed away" by people having money to spend ?
And I am prepared to bet when the results come in you'll be proven wrong - because we've been doing experiments like this for decades and you've been wrong EVERY OTHER TIME.
What WILL happen ? A tiny reduction in the workforce: caused by mothers taking extended maternity leave and young people who otherwise couldn't afford it going to get a college education. A massive drop in the unemployment rate as people who could never DARE risk it before suddenly are able to open their own businesses - and employ their neighbours. Increases in the people's average healthcare (with subsequent reduced costs for Canada's single payer healthcare) and a thousand other good things. Bad outcomes: none.
They did this exact same experiment, in Canada in the 1960s under the name MinCome. We know what the results were. There is no reason to believe they won't be replicated YET AGAIN as in all the the hundreds of other experiments that have been done in this regard for over 200 years now.
In all that time - there was exactly ONE experiment where a failure was reported, the report claimed an 'increase in sloth, lack of willingness to work, increased abuse of the bottle and sexual immorality'. It's an interesting case - since it was the first ever UBI experiment and it happened in England almost 200 years ago now to deal with the massive poverty the Industrial Revolution caused. It was also the very first example of a government commissioning a massive piece of research (over 15000 interviews) to build up a huge stack of big-data from which to draw a report in order to smartly evaluate a policy.
There's just one problem: the report was a complete fraud and fabrication. In fact, it was written BEFORE the interviews were even done by a bunch of fraudsters who just wrote what they thought probably would happen based on their own puritan belief systems. They never even READ the data they claimed their report was based on.
It would take over a century before anybody ever actually did. When they did - they discovered the exact OPPOSITE in the data from what the report said was in there - yet another resounding success.
That report even blamed the UBI for the worker's protest marches of 1821 - ignoring that these happened ALL OVER England, not just in the one little town where the UBI experiment happened.
The only experiment where UBI was EVER reported as anything but a massive economic and social success -was a flagrant fraud.
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It basically has no impact on employment. Industries that claim they now want to replace people with automation have planned to do this before anyways. They just found a pretext in minimal wages. The fact of the matter is that wherever people can be replaced with automation, they were not the main cost-factor anyways, with very few exceptions. Hence the effects of minimal wage are just to make sure people have more spending money and that is universally good for the economy. After all, what point is there i
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Society wants wealth redistribution, but the minimum wage targets specific market sectors (those with low-skill labor) to bear that burden. The fair thing to do is to have society pay for wealth redistribution through taxation, and UBI is a reasonable mechanism to do so.
UBI is more pro-business than minimum wage because it relieves businesses to have more freedom in hiring.
UBI is more pro-worker than minimum wage because they no longer need an abusive job just to survive and just to feed their kids.
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Straight off the top, screw business, who gives a crap about private profits. We are trying to achieve sound stable societies that create freedom for citizens to live happy and socially productive lives. Something that will takes us to the stars and not drown us in wars.
An empty wage does nothing to produce the best possible infrastructure. An empty wage does nothing to provide the best and most supportive health services, physical and mental (healthy, happy, stables populations are not violent). An empty
Re: minwage $11.40-$9.90 (Score:3)
Compared with the minimum wage? It could be much lower. Someone who makes $10/hour today but gets a UBI equivalent to say $8/hour would be better off just making $5/hour at work. And the company is paying less even as the employee comes out ahead.
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Except the minimum wage is $10 so they're not paying less than that. Or they won't find anyone who wants to work for $5/hr and they'll wind up paying $10 anyway.
If you are demanding the equivalent of $18/hour after UBI, you will be replaced by someone who is currently unemployed and only demands $10-15/hour after UBI. UBI is intended for survival and minimum needs, not comfort... if you value any level of comfort then you will need some form of a job, even if just part time, and thus you will have to make your wage demands reasonable.
Income taxes will still be progressive. UBI will certainly affect taxes, but placing a heavier burden on the poor and lower-middle
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Well, let's ask the *science*. London did an experiment a year or two ago. They found about 20 homeless drug addicts and gave them each 2000 pounds. That's quite a bit of cash to addicts at that - mega-binge here we come !
They checked in on them a year later. All of them were clean, most had spent quite a bit of that money on private rehab centers, the others had gotten clean in other ways - 16 had jobs and 4 had started their own businesses.
It will stop the methhead stealing your tools - by giving him the
Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the planet (Score:2, Informative)
Over 300 billion in debt, double the debt of California with only a third of the population....
Re: Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the pl (Score:2)
Ever since Bretton Woods was abandoned, money is created out of thin air constantly!
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Exactly. It's a nice utopian idea, but alas, the earth is not a utopia. The money has to come from somewhere.
You print it. Those who sit on money pay for the new money through inflation. Most economies in the world now depend on inflation.
Re: Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the pla (Score:5, Informative)
Except Ontario doesn't have control of the monetary supply so CAN'T print it.
As such, it DOES have to come from somewhere.
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Wars have been fought over a magical sky being who only exists in stories, and over the decayed slime of plants and animals that lived before humans existed. Humans will find any reason at all to go about and kill one another en masse.
Re: Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the pla (Score:5, Interesting)
Wealth is an abstract concept. In nature noone owns anything. Its society which gives rise to law which gives rise to property and money which gives rise to wealth. if its not working for most people society has the right to decide to try another way. Given that more and more economic value is being created by machines whose income accrues only to the owners of the machines and not to entire society (though without society we would still be hunting and wearing skins so no machines would have been invented); we may need a new system. A star trek kind of society where people's basic needs are taken care of by the output created by machines (which are owned by society as a whole) and people work for prestige and luxuries. This can work in a society where 90% of the economic output can be provided by machines and you only need humans for 10% of the creative jobs. For such jobs a human who doesnt have to work but wants to do the work will be much more productive. The humans who dont want to work will be bored and eventually stop reproducing so the problem will solve itself over 5-10 generations in a humane manner.
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Umm... you think "bored" humans will stop reproducing? I don't think you know very many humans.
Re: Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the pla (Score:5, Funny)
Umm... you think "bored" humans will stop reproducing?
Yes. The premise of TFA is that in the future we will have robots that can do anything that humans can do. I don't know how much an anatomically functional interactive sexbot will cost, but it will likely be way cheaper than alimony and child support, and it won't get headaches. If it has a "mute" button and can make sandwiches, that is even better.
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What do we do with people when there's no work for them?
Not going to be a rhetorical question for much longer. Driving, for example, is the single largest job category in North America....what happens when autonomous vehicles take over? Not going to be a market for that skill. Do we let those people starve? Think about it....lots of economic displacement is on the way.
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What do we do with people when there's no work for them?
If everyone has a sexbot, then after a generation or so, the "surplus worker problem" will be solved.
Think about it....lots of economic displacement is on the way.
It will be far smaller than the displacement caused by farm automation, and that happened during a time when the population was growing rapidly.
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What is cheaper, a "robot" to drive a car or a human who will work for free?
The robot. It can run 24/7, rather than the DOT requirement of 11/24 for humans, thus doubling the utilization of the vehicle. It will also (likely) be much cheaper to insure, it will require less safety equipment, it is less likely to pilfer the cargo, etc.
Sex Robots (Score:3)
True story:
My SO, Deb, and I were laying about in bed one lazy afternoon; she seemed to be dozing lightly.
Me: "Hey, baby?"
Her: "Mmmm?"
Me: "When {unspoken:sex} robots come out, can we get a French maid?"
...a few seconds pass...
She: "Sure."
She: "We'll call him
Re: Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the pla (Score:4)
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False, in nature, you own whatever you possess as long as nobody has the ability to take it from you at the time. If both criteria are not present, then you do not own it... the second point can sometimes be hard to meet, but it is definitely not impossible in many cases. It is entirely possible to own something in nature at one time and not at another if circumstances surrounding either possession or the ability to take it from you ever change.
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It's called taxes. We can debate which taxes would be best, but presumably if someone is making something, whether it be with human beings, robots or some combination, they also have sales, which means there are any number of financial transactions which can be taxed. Pick your poison; corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, excise taxes, etc. etc. etc. In the end, money is just a means of counting value.
Crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Convicted felon, here.
I disagree with almost everything you said.
I didn't rob a bank until I was 40 years old. Was I a moral person for the first 39 years, and then an immoral one after? Pretty simplistic. I postulate that you will abide by your morality right up until your kid says "Daddy, I'm hungry" and you have nothing to feed her. (I'm not saying this is what happened to me, but to a lot of bank robbers I met inside.) Maybe you're different. Kudos to you, if so, I guess.
The biggest cause of poverty is not government regulation, that's ridiculous. I suspect it's poor understanding of money by parents and peers, causing poor behavior modeling. There's a reason college graduates' kids go to college and the working class poors' kids go to the payday loan shop when things go south. Did your parents launch you on a positive trajectory? How did they know how to? Maybe they didn't. Again, maybe you're different. Kudos to you.
Mine wanted to, but didn't know how.
Sure, socialism is always doomed to failure, if you reduce everything down to a false dichotomy. Look how much better the outcomes were in the 1800s for the robber barons. Not so much for normal people.
Anyway, they're TRYING it. Let's at least wait and see.
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So? Does this put the state further in debt?
In figures, quite likely.
In value, not necessarily. Inflation might make the value of the overall debt less.
Re:Ontario, largest subnational debtor on the plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Unemployment (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation has been going on since the industrial revolution, yet new jobs seem to keep on being created. My current job didn't really exist twenty years ago.
People keep predicting the obsolescence of humans but unemployment these days in most rich world economies is not that high. That said, it would be good if we had better ways of measuring employment beyond the binary employed/unemployed states. If someone's not claiming unemployment benefit and working then it's assumed that they're doing okay, but they might be working three minimum wage jobs and barely getting by. That should be as worrying to policy-makers as someone not working at all. Then we might be in a better position to see if we're at the point where we need a universal basic income.
start by lowering full time hours / makeing OT cos (Score:5, Insightful)
start by lowering full time hours / making OT cost alot.
Why should jay have to work 60-80+ hours a week doing the work of 3 people for the pay of 1?
When we can fill that job with 3 people working about 30 hours each?
Re:Unemployment (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, progress creates new jobs, but not in the numbers needed. Over time, the skill level of jobs taken over by machines increases, reducing income prospects for a greater number of people. At the same time, most businesses externalize the cost of training - they won't do it themselves; they expect people to "hit the ground running" after being hired.
If the employment picture were as rosy as you suggest, Uber/Lyft would have difficulty recruiting drivers. Instead, there's a glut.
Re:Unemployment (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know that universal basic income is the way to go but we'll need to do something. Maybe some kind of beautification work force that essentially cleans and maintains things. Creates bike paths and plants landscaping. That would allow people to still work and get some fulfillment out of life.
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Sounds like a public works program. It's one of the few things that gets support from both sides of the aisle, so you might be on to something.
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New jobs keep being created because consumption constantly increases.
When was the last time you stitched a hole in clothing? Hardly anyone does that now. It's just not worth the time when you can buy a whole new outfit for next to nothing. We get to enjoy exotic foods imported from around the world, low-cost just-about-everything. Even electronics, the most complicated machines every made, are not expendable items expected to be replaced after a few years.We get a diet rich in delicious resource-intensive m
Unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
I am pretty sure that penalizing people for becoming a "family" will have consequences.
With that said, if they do this pilot correctly it will yield very interesting data.
Easy math (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: So why are you filing for divorce?
A: Irreconcilable financial differences.
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Some people don't get married in the first place for financial reasons (taxes, medical benefits, etc).
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Yep. Of course, you can look at the cost of living for people on this program, and then subtract the savings of co-habitation - shared rent and utilities.
A better way to handle it might be to divide the funding so that some of it is general use, but some can only be used for shelter and basic utilities. That way there would be no economic benefit either for or against cohabitation.
A stickier issue is children. They ought to cost you (and I say that as a parent), but they ought not to cripple you financia
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Having now read TFA (I know, I know...) I realize that this is not universal basic income at all. They are cherry-picking poor people, and they are reducing the subsidy based on money the recipients earn. While I'm still happy that they are playing around with this, I really wish they'd keep the "rules" simple and just randomly throw various amounts of money at random people, then study the effect. I think they are getting a little ahead of themselves.
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UBI only works when the U is true. They need to do an entire region, but I imagine the provincial tax adjustments would be brutal to figure out, especially for commuters who cross whatever boundary you've set.
This seems like fiddling with welfare and calling it whatever's trending right now... which I guess is OK so long as some valid conclusions can be drawn from the experiment.
Unintended consequences II (Score:3)
A better way to handle it might be to divide the funding so that some of it is general use, but some can only be used for shelter and basic utilities.
Most economists agree that basic minimum income should be no strings attached, as the various costs of living can vary greatly from area to area, even within the same city. In some areas food costs less, in some areas housing costs less, in some areas transportation is very expensive, etc...
I agree with subsidizing children, but there should be a cap. If you don't have any means of supporting yourself, we shouldn't be subsidizing you having a half dozen more people you can't support, either.
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>Most economists agree that basic minimum income should be no strings attached, as the various costs of living can vary greatly from area to area, even within the same city.
Right now poor folk don't get as much choice in where they live as the rich, and I don't see how this would be any different.
If we ever get to a future where all resources and production capacity are fully communal, then where you live (as in, how nice a neighbourhood) would probably depend on how much you were willing to sacrifice el
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that last time people had ideas like that we had concentration camps that killed 6,000,000–11,000,000 people.
divorce in the eyes of the state only? (Score:2)
divorce in the eyes of the state only?
I there may be some discrimination clams based on religion.
Bad data from poor implementation (Score:5, Interesting)
With that said, if they do this pilot correctly it will yield very interesting data.
I very much doubt it will because it is implemented in a way which directly undermines the arguments for universal basic income which is normally taken to mean that everyone gets a fixed income regardless of circumstances. Instead this project reduces that income at the rate of $1 for every $2 earned. Unlike the real deal this provides a reasonably strong motivation NOT to take low paying jobs since you only get a benefit of half the wage you earn. It also means that you now have to start means testing people to see how much they earn which requires bureaucracy and officials and incurs expense.
The whole point of basic income is to cut the administration expense because everyone gets it regardless while also preventing the disincentive to work of typical unemployment schemes by clawing back money when people get even a low paying job. The Ontario scheme fails to achieve either aim and so seems unlikely to work or provide any data about whether such type of schemes could work.
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Indeed. This system is a fraud that only replaces multiple welfare programs with cold, hard cash. It might reduce costs of administration, but it isn't basic income.
I would like to see a basic income program that truly pays everyone, but with the ability for those who don't need it to opt out. Let's see the wealthy progressives literally put their money where their mouths are.
income tax levels = an auto opt out (Score:2)
set income tax levels to a point where there is Basically an forced opt out for wealthy people.
At least Canadian health care that covers all. Unlike the us welfare system where some people in the usa did not want to get off disability as they where risking losing there health care just to have maybe get one at job. And if they lost there job have nothing to fall back on while waiting for a long time / fighting it out to get back on disability
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This is clearly need-based in thinking.
If one person can get by on $X, it doesn't mean two people need $X*2. Housing is normally the greatest cost to a household. My rent or mortgage has always been my biggest bill, even when I lived in a dump in the 1990s. I had a new car, and the rent was still double the car payment.
Re:Unintended consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
With that said, if they do this pilot correctly it will yield very interesting data.
Pilots like this are useless. They have no predictive power because an actual universal basic income is qualitatively different from an "income you and a few of your neighbors will get for less than a handful of years and then it goes away." We already know what people do in circumstances like that. It's called graduate school.
For the timid politicians among us, I have bad news. UBI is untestable. You can't pretend to have it for a while and then discontinue it. But it doesn't matter. No country is ever going to just decide to have an actual UBI. When it happens, it will have happened organically, by easy stages over the course of decades. Social Security and the equivalents around the world are the beginning of that. The amazing ease with which a person qualifies for disability nowadays is another part of that. That's probably how the US will deal with all the unemployed truckers in 20 years' time. You were a trucker? Ok, now that robots do that job, you're "disabled." Because of the kidney damage you suffered due to all the vibration. Wink wink, nudge nudge, sign here.
What will happen is gradual, targeted expansions of social security/welfare that slowly absorbs sections of the population that are unemployable (just as they already do), and then gradually the means testing of those groups will go away, and in 60 years, if there is still such a thing as the developed world, it will have UBI. The rabid libertarians among us see this coming and are having screaming meamies about it because they think people who used to work in factories who then went to work in construction who then went to work driving trucks who now have nowhere to go should definitely die in the street because they can't become software developers. Not a straw man. I've had a person literally say that to my face within the past year, using the actual phrase "die in the street." A person who self-identifies as Christian, by the way, and who attends church every single Sunday. Yes, these are real people who do exist and do think that way.
I believe Marxism is inevitable, but Karl Marx was way ahead of his time, just as this silly "pilot" is. Capitalism is a reasonable system for dealing with scarcity. It does not deal at all well with super-abundance. Marxism deals well with super-abundance, but except for the idle rich, we do not have super-abundance. I believe it's possible that we will sometime before the end of the century, but I strongly expect it will be much nearer the end of the century than the beginning. And "pilots" like this are a waste of time.
After care may be needed (Score:2)
Assume that the person or family just "lives" on the money provided for three years. How will they merge back into the job market after three years of no work experience?
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I'm sure you can technically "live" on $17k/yr but let's be real, this isn't won-the-lotto, now-you-can-relax money. After the pilot is over these people are gonna get kicked in the junk.
And, yeah everyone will love the program because it creates an artificial income disparity between people "in" and people "out" of the program. A true basic income test has to be truly universal, otherwise it'll just end up like the FEMA credit cards after Katrina or soldiers on leave -- a bunch of shady businesses will cro
Vigorous debate? Surely you jest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vigorous debate? Surely you jest (Score:5, Interesting)
Seconded.
I've been on this site since about 2001. The 'This site has gone to shit' arguments have been around that long too. However, in the past 2 years (since around the /. Beta fiasco it seems) most of the quality comments have all but left. 'Conservative echo chamber' kinda hits the nail on the head. The libertarian dog whistle / talking points get trotted out so often it's just boring now to read. Arm-chair economists with such deep insights as 'Don't like your job, move and get another one, dummy!' seem to be about the best the site has to offer now.
Why am I still here then? Habit mostly, I gave it up (and read Soylent) for a good while, and now I come back, thought not as often as before. As for reading comments, I guess I still do out of some hope that they might get better again...though my tolerance is lower I spend only a fraction of the time trying to sift through the Randian garbage.
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Your problems are twofold.
1. You think libertarian is a synonym for conservative,
2. You believe that now that leftist voices don't drown out all others, that Slashdot is now a "conservative echo chamber." This is the response of people who are not used to having their ideas challenged.
Slashdot has always leaned left. Now it's centrist. And that bothers you. Ars Technica is leaning further left these days, so go hang there. They have a user moderation system that's dumber than Slashdot's, but at least y
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You think libertarian is a synonym for conservative,
In many of the important ways, it is. Both want to let corporations to have the ultimate power over the people by destroying the parts of the government that interfere.
Re:Vigorous debate? Surely you jest (Score:5, Insightful)
I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment, they swarm like flies to honey. With that type of environment you simply will never see disagreement, people have better things to do than shout at a wall. Since Slashdot has people with higher average IQ, and a marginally better moderation system, dissenting thought isn't punished and can be debated on it's merits (to a point).
There's also the simple fact that a percentage of people will naturally shift right as they get older. So, if slashdot's reader base has good retention without much "new blood" being injected into it, this change could manifest as a result.
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The right-leaning ones are just as bad. It happens whenever people commit their loyalty to any political ideology.
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I would add - the comments section of typical left-leaning news sites have become absolutely fanatical if even one dissenting opinion is expressed. If you agree with 90% of a topic/idea and provide criticism of the other 10%, you are dismissed as a racist nazi and shunned from the group. Try it some time as an experiment.
You are wrong.
I've expressed quite a few dissenting opinions on Slate.com (as typical a left-leaning news site as there is), mainly objecting to various criticisms of Trump. For instance on the first travel ban I said the numbers showed that you couldn't call it "targeted at Muslims" for what the phrase "targeted" usually means. There has been disagreement, sure, but I was never once dismissed as a racist or a nazi, and I wasn't shunned. Here are my posts so you can verify it yourself. (On Slate, you have t
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Are you me? :-)
Because that's essentially the story I'd put my signature on. (Don't mind my high ID -- I've been lurking for years and/or posting as AC before I actually made an account.)
It's essentially just muscle memory now that drives me to /. every once in a while.
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Math Doesn't Work (Score:3)
The math for this doesn't work out.
Even assuming 4,000 single households at 17,000 a year that means 68,000,000 for a single year. Even if that 50,000,000 is per year rather than total they're still a minimum of 18,000,000 short if they were targeting single households.
Good - I hope it catches on (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that countries, states, or whatever geographic boundaries you prefer deciding to do something about massive unemployment/underemployment before chaos ensues is a good plan. Society falls apart around 20% unemployment and we're headed towards way more than that. I know some people are predicting that another massive shift will happen that allows people to continue to be employed, but I don't see it. The first time we didn't have something readily available to take up the slack that automation produced was the early 90s. During that time in the US, all the big companies went on a massive downsizing spree, dumping all the low-skilled clerical workers onto unemployment. We managed to get through this change, but now the pace of technology change that allows for fewer human workers is getting much faster. Now it's not just low-skill work, but mid-level knowledge work as well. After being told they'd never amount to anything unless they went to college, millions of corporate employees are going to be out on the street with no way to make money.
I think implementing basic income buys us time to let the age groups who've had to build their lives around wealth accumulation and a career ladder age out. The work-for-money-for-stuff way to run your life has been around for ages and I don't think most people know of any way to meaningfully contribute to society outside of that. Unless you want to propose how we kill money and wealth as a measure of success and buying power, this is the best way to solve a very difficult problem. If we don't do it, the divide between rich and poor is going to get to an unsustainable level, possibly at levels seen around the Gilded Age or French Revolution timeframes. That won't end well for anyone.
Re:Good - I hope it catches on (Score:5, Insightful)
"How about we just go back to capitalism and let shit fix itself?"
That's the problem -- this time, it can't. The average level of intelligence doesn't support full employment of people for the jobs that are left over after automation fully takes hold. For those that make it over this hurdle, the business owners controlling access to the few remaining jobs are going to realize their position and work to keep employment as low as possible, increasing their profits.
Businesses are greedy - they don't want to employ anyone. Fast food restaurants would happily replace all of their employees with robots and kiosks if they could, and this is the low end (minimum wage level) of employment. It gets even worse for knowledge workers -- this is why businesses offshore or push for visa programs that allow for cheaper labor.
Not Really Universal (Score:4, Insightful)
None of these studies really seem to study true universal basic income [wikipedia.org], in which everybody, rich or poor, regardless of how much money they make, receives the same basic amount.
All the current trials going on seem to be focused on giving money to people who have no jobs or make very little. We already have program in place that do this kind of thing already, so they probably won't find a whole lot of difference with the systems that we already have. They are basically making small changes to the welfare system in order to not cut off benefits as soon as you find a job. But other than that, there isn't much difference.
Pilots don't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore the data collected and the conclusions drawn from this scheme (and all the other UBI pilots that have come and gone) is incomplete. We need to gauge the effect it will have on populations not for a few years, but how will it affect generations? Will a child growing up in a UBI household have a different attitude towards the need to get a job or attend school? Is there even any point in getting an education if you know that the state will provide everything - and that there probably won't be any jobs for you anyway?
A three year experiment won't tell you about the long-term consequences.
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This. Instead it will be just sort of like winning the lottery. Some of the folks who inflate their lifestyle might end up worse off afterwards when the money stops and they struggle with debt loads they can no longer carry.
In some rural areas we already have a form of UBI, in the form of disability payments. As welfare has been scaled back, those who can no longer work in factories or other manual labor have flooded into disability fall back plan. Judges reasonably go along when confronted with someone
Re:Pilots don't work (Score:5, Interesting)
"Is there even any point in getting an education if you know that the state will provide everything - and that there probably won't be any jobs for you anyway?"
I think that the point of these programs isn't to entirely replace the income that you would get by working an average job. I think it's more along the lines of softening the crushing experience of having to live on US-level unemployment benefits if you lose your job. Going down from your current salary to $410/week for what could be an extended period of time is something most people can't just cover out of savings, etc. Once you lose your income and access to credit, then start losing your possessions, life starts getting much harder.
What will be even more interesting is seeing what the plan is for dealing with the people who are just useless and can't be retrained for another "hip, modern" industry. You're not going to take a factory worker who's spent 20 years assembling the same set of parts and teach them to be a software developer, even a code monkey position isn't attainable without at least some aptitude. I'd say the humane thing to do would be to put them on the equivalent of Social Security Disability income for the rest of their lives. Many 50 year olds who are experiencing age discrimination are having to fake disability claims to bridge the gap between the "unhireable" phase of their work life and retirement, so this would provide them the same benefits and reduce fraudulent claims for the actual disability program.
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The larger problem is that you are inflating the income of *some* members of a group. This means that the overall average income of the people in this group will be slightly higher, but most people in the group will be unchanged. Given that the percentage of people getting this income is low, the overall effect will be minimal. This is not indicative of what would happen with inflation for basic goods and services if this were applied to everyone.
As the above post says, this test will not show long term eff
Automation in the military is the problem (Score:2, Flamebait)
Every other time in history when we had excess young men we had large scale warfare which soaked up the excess. Now with automation there are few casualties in war so the traditional way of dealing with automation is not going to work. We need laws banning the use of machines in war. if people want to kill people from other countries they should have to risk their own lives as well. Air strikes, drones and missiles should be outlawed like Chemical weapons. People should have to put their own lives at risks.
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Groovy Baby!
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"We need laws banning the use of machines"
That's where you can stop. Without machines, there is lower efficiency and we need every hand available to work the fields and the swords. We can go back to kingdoms where being rich was passed down through bloodlines with land ownership. People working 60 hours a week just to keep food on the table won't have time for all this liberal "feed the poor" bullshit.
Work is a virtue (Score:2)
People are afraid of a society where everybody is retired and robots are doing most if not all of the work. I mean we had that before, with slavery. Heck, Dubai is doing that today. Most Dubai citizens don't work. They get $100K for being born on top of an underground oil lake. Dubai isn't so bad, I mean other than religion related stupidity. In general, if they were a secular atheist country it would be good. Just because people aren't working it doesn't mean it's bad for society.
Not much of an income (Score:2)
Gotta love how "up to" results in totally meaningless numbers.
Poor study, this is welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to read down just a bit, and then you see:
"Jaczek said that people in the program will be randomly contacted from each region's low-income population and invited to apply."
Basic income, in any iteration I've seen seriously applied, isn't just for poor people. Money for poor people is fucking welfare. We have that already. Welfare is the "provision of a minimal level of well-being and social support for citizens WITHOUT CURRENT MEANS to support basic needs" (capsemphasis mine).
The idea of basic income is that everyone gets it baseline, no drama, no forms, no qualifications, with the obvious caveat that this money has to come from somewhere, so one assumes a relatively large increase in income tax. The supposed benefits and risks of this are numerous, but what is definitely known is that to actually test this, you need to not JUST be giving the money to poor people. The big question about basic income is, what effects will it have on society. You can make economic models all day long, the whole point about doing a test is to figure this out.
You want to know: are people less motivated to work? Are they healthier? Are they happier? What does it do to families? (the model being tested, where two single people living together get 2*17,000 = 34,000 a year, while if they marry they get 24,000 a year, has a pretty obvious and glaring bias as regards marriage)... and these questions aren't just relevant for poor people. They are relevant for middle class, and rich people.
All of these tests seem to be set up to give a certain set of results. They are carefully crafted to avoid asking the questions that need to be asked. I really don't know what to think about this.
No way to evaluate the pilot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really hard to tell if UBI is a great idea, or a horrible one, but the biggest issue is that it's impossible to trial in this manner.
To actually test UBI, several things need to happen:
1) you make it truly universal, no means testing, no targeting to certain demographics, everyone gets it, from the millionaires, to the homeless.
2) you cover everyone in a reasonably large geographic area, no exceptions.
3) You also need to turn off all the other services it's supposed to replace (welfare, employment insurance, disability amounts, etc)
This is important because without 1 and 2 you end up with a distorted system. You don't get to see if everyone having extra money simply drives all prices up by that amount making it useless (if the poverty line moves up by the exact amount of the UBI, have you really helped anyone?), or if it actually allows people to live. You end up with simply a lottery where some lucky people have more money, while everyone else has the same.
While 3 also helps make sure you're looking at an undistorted system, it is also about being able to afford to do this at all. UBI can only be affordable if you use it to cut out massive amounts of government bureaucracy, if all the bureaucracy is left in place, you'll never find enough money to make it work.
These trials will be a success or a failure depending on what the agenda of the study really is, but neither outcome tells you anything at all about how the system would actually work if rolled out universally.
Wrong side of the equation (Score:3)
It's not a test of UBI if the participants are all selected from low-income populations. The pilot program as described is just a streamlined welfare system. The challenge of UBI will be whether people in productive jobs will work less if they have a basic income to fall back on. Would someone with a $32k/year (or more) job give work up and play video games for $17k/year? That is question that will determine if UBI succeeds or fails.
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>Would someone with a $32k/year (or more) job give work up and play video games for $17k/year?
A long time ago, I worked as unskilled labour. I was a kid and didn't have many options. The 'career' guys not only didn't have options, they didn't have any urge to develop any.
If you handed them a cheque that would get them a bed, three crappy meals a day, and a couple of beers a night (and cigarettes and a bit of marijuana)... they'd drop out and do nothing but eat, drink, and smoke, of that I have zero dou
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This is not universal basic income! (Score:3)
"A single person could receive up to about $17,000 a year, minus half of any income he or she earns"
UBI is a sum of money unconditionally given to all citizens. This is a grant that comes with a 50% effective tax rate on your first earnings, massively disincentivising people from finding jobs.
This is neither Universal nor Basic. (Score:5, Insightful)
If different people get different amounts based on disabilities or marital status then it's not universal.
If you get less depending on how much you make then it's not basic.
This is welfare. Try again, Canada.
So its another socialist attack on the family (Score:3, Insightful)
with participants receiving up to $17,000 annually if single, and $24,000 for families.
Discourage people from actually getting married by essentially paying them not to! Can't have those pesky independent families, with their ability to depend on each other rather than the state can we. Can't have people loyal to each other rather than our glorious government.
This is a seriously distressing policy.
List of reasons for Universal Basic Income (Score:3)
1) It only takes one farmer to grow food for one hundred (?) people. Figure a few more people for food and shelter, education, etc. For the sake of argument, figure we only need N people, where N 20, people to take care of 100. What do the other 80 people do?
2) We don't have to force 80/100 people into meaningless, soul-deadening, junk producing, environment draining pointless jobs.
3) Less pollution since there is less need for pointing production.
4) If everyone has UBI, no need for welfare, unemployment, etc.
5) It unleashes creativity for the not employed. It makes it much easier to fund startups, research, art, etc.
6) More time to spend caring for children; less money spent on child care.
7) It will stimulate the travel business sector, as people have more time to travel.
8) It makes it easier for business to let go of non-productive or otherwise surplus employees.
Before anybody tries UBI I'd like to solve traps (Score:4, Insightful)
Before anybody tries UBI, I'd like to see trapless welfare. I don't know how bad this is in Canada, but the USA has a lot of "welfare traps". That's a situation where people remain on public assistance rather than work because their real income falls when they start working. We do so many stupid things such as labeling people "low income" and making them wait a long time for "low income housing". Then their "low income status" actually becomes an asset!
Fix that first, then get back to us.
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Well it takes between 4 and 9 years to get into low income housing in most of Canada. It's around 4-5 years here in Ontario, programs like section 8 don't exist in Canada in the same general terms either. There are "generational welfare" families in Canada without a doubt, but then there's also the people who don't want anything to do with it. You'll see a lot of seasonal people who work in eastern canada(fisheries/crab/lobster/etc), who work the other half year in Alberta's oil patch or in the potash mi
Re:where does all this money come from? (Score:4, Interesting)
i'd be mad as hell if i lived in one of these places and was subsidizing experiements to give people money without them contributing in any way
The liberal in me wants to react very strongly to this, but I did spend four years as a student in an English city called Salford. That place was infested with vast numbers of people who lived out their lives on the dole, many of them with no family tradition of work going back a few generations. They were generally troublemakers who got their kicks from attacking students (physically and verbally) on a regular basis. Crime levels were very high. One good thing is that there wasn't much gun crime since guns are so rare and hard to get in England, but instances of burglary, auto theft, shoplifting and anti-social behavior was just off the charts.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of these experiments, but I'm not optimistic about them.
Not in Canada... (Score:5, Informative)
They already did a basic income experiment [marketplace.org] back when Prime Minister Trudeau was called Pierre.
In short... Most everyone kept working or didn't start working as early but stayed in school longer.
Also, hospitalizations went down, particularly for mental health problems.
But if you want a real Twilight Zone mindfuck - look up Nixon's basic income experiment.
Run by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. [qz.com]
Granted... they saw it as a way to eliminate social programs instead of to expand them. But even they found that there was no change to "work ethic" - everyone still kept working.
Apparently, being "at or just above the poverty line" is simply not enough for most people.
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Re:Not in Canada... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, being "at or just above the poverty line" is simply not enough for most people.
Or perhaps the words "three year experiment" are sufficient to suggest to people who would otherwise give up their jobs to live on the UBI that they ought to keep a job now to avoid having to find one again when the experiment is over and the free money stops coming in? Imagine if they are in a plight with a low paying job now, how much more trouble they will have finding a job in three years when other, younger people have snapped them up and businesses have downsized because the economy has shrunk.
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Just because people pay you for your services doesn't mean you create more than you consume. Perhaps you have some sort of serious illness, which means your health insurance provider may be paying you more than you are paying them. Perhaps you have enough write offs to heavily reduce your actual taxable income, meaning others are actually paying more tax than you.
But do you really pay enough money in taxes that it covers the building of the road past your house, pay for the wages and equipment of the firefi
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Working.
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Liberals buy votes with hand outs of food, housing, and education.
Conservatives buy votes with tax cuts and lottery tickets.
Libertarians believe the votes should buy themselves (and are surprised when they don't.)
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It WOULD be wise, but it's not. (Score:3)
But they're not doing that. This is a means-tested, graduated scale welfare mechanism.
This is not UBI, it doesn't even vaguely resemble UBI, and as a test of UBI, it's worthless, because its results are completely unrelated. To any degree the results are used to make any decisions at all about actual UBI, the decisions will be nonsensical. Garbage in, garbage out.
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Is the sum enough to live in Ontario?
Yes, the basic income amounts are technically correct for individuals and small families in Ontario.
Single students outside of major cities (i.e., not in Toronto) go by on $12-15k/year. That's in a dorm or cheap studio. I had an exchange student with spouse and small kid who lived as a family on $24k, for a year. No frills absolutely but they rented a basement apartment and were generally okay. This assumes that one does not ever want to have anything above the minumum, very rarely travels long distance, do