You must log in or register to comment.
Instead of tying this a certain income level, why not just make universal instead? That way instead of spending resources on seeing someone is eligible for basic income, the Government can use it investigate fraudulent cases.
Bill S-233 was previously introduced in 2021 and reached consideration by the Senate’s Standing Committee on National Finance before Parliament was prorogued.
What struck me most about the article is that, a Bill first introduced to the Senate in 1921, and then buried, could be resurrected by the Senate acting independently of the HoC, after some 4 years had passed and a brand new government, new leader.
I could scrape by with $16k a year, even in a high cost of living area. I’d have to get a roommate or find other creative living arrangements, and sacrifice a lot of my current life’s comfortable trappings, but I could do it.
My main question is, should it be one minimum income across Canada, or adjusted by municipality through its own metric or using the military stipend rate as a baseline?
Carney wants to talk a big talk on efficiencies. Streamlining welfare to achieve the basic goals of: is an individual’s health needs met, is an individual’s housing needs met, is an individual’s basic expenses needs met, would likely reduce a lot of the duplicitous services that oversee small segments of people’s needs.
I know MP Leah Gazan would be happy to see this come to the House of Commons. If it does I’ll let my local MP know I support it.
I think adjusting by municipality is a bad idea.
A flat basic income across the country promotes migration to lower COL areas. An adjusted basic income promotes migration to higher COL areas in order to get a bigger income. While different areas having different COLs is pretty unavoidable, I don’t think making high-COL areas more attractive is a good idea.
I’m also not a huge fan of adjusting for couples vs. single people. I get why they do it, it’s an easy way to save money. But the actual expenses of you living with a roommate (as you suggested) compared to you living with a roommate that you’re also sleeping with, don’t change very much. (I have similar complaints about household income being used for basically everything except taxes, but that’s a little further off topic.)
Ironically, I think that the positive impact of UBI is probably well enhanced by various free-market processes. There’s the cost of living balance you mention, but it also makes it easier for market forces to affect wages. When people don’t literally have to work simply to survive, it gives them the option to say “no, this job sucks, I’m walking away from it” much more easily. That means that employers will need to be more attentive to their employees’ needs if they want to keep them.
That means that employers will need to be more attentive to their employees’ needs if they want to keep them.
Or that they’ll lobby even harder to expand TFW slavery.
If they had that sort of lobbying power I doubt we’d see UBI to begin with. Regardless, “evil people might thwart it!” Is not a very good reason not to try to do good things.
Regardless, “evil people might thwart it!” Is not a very good reason not to try to do good things.
It wasn’t my intention to suggest that we shouldn’t try it.
I was merely (and cynically) pointing out the forces who will be pushing against the efforts to do some good for society.
This is pointless without support services to help marginalized people get a solid footing to rebuild their lives.
Cool. So let’s get this passed, and then work on those other things.
It’s not pointless it’s just significantly less effective.
Well that surely won’t happen in Ontario with the fascist narcissistic Ford running things. He is a soulless excuse for a human being for what he is doing to thousand of young/adult disabled people. It is a page right out of the fascist handbook.
Ford has literally gutted ODSP and his abhorrent handling of the Ontario Autism Program (OAP) is disgraceful and hurtful. They combined Ontario works and ODSP. One noticed immediately a difference. The workers treated ODSP recipients like they were Ontario works recipients. They sent out job search forms, etc. to people that were permanently disabled and incapable of working and humiliating them (ask most disabled people, they will say one of their dreams is to actually go out and work so to have these forms sent to them is literally a slap in the face) because these workers were never trained on how to deal with the disabled only people that were unemployed.
We can no longer email our local ODSP office, no more one on one workers, you are tossed into a pool and they rarely call back if ever. We had to actually get a lawyer involved just to contact the ODSP office to get anything done after 6 months of us calling with no call back in that 6 months.
Things ODSP used to cover, gone. Our child has autism and epilepsy. He has never ever had any form official therapy, guidance of any kind due to Doug Ford and gang. We were “approved” for OAP and SSAH almost 3 years ago but are still on the waiting list to actually get funding.
Our case is not unique, there are literally 1000’s of Autistic kids/adults that are not getting ANY therapy that they need to exist and communicate in society. This will lead to more violent altercations with police due to limited communication skills due to lack of therapy and more hospital visits plus more that will by carried by taxpayers down the road for years if not decades. Guess Ford does not care about down the road while he and his gang fill their pockets. We are very grateful for all that we receive. We do not expect anything. The Ford government promised OAP, SSAH and more but have not held true to that promise. Doug Ford is fully responsible for not helping thousands of his fellow Canadians that are disabled kids and adults and leaving them in the lurch.
Good Lord you need to learn formatting.
Ya I do.
Can we afford it right now is the question. I’m not against it by any means, though.
Yes. These programs literally produce more money than they consume. The effects of poverty are more expensive than fighting poverty.
These programs literally produce more money than they consume
Is there research you can provide to back that up?
Again, I’m all for it. But being devil’s advocate here, I just want some evidence.
Simulations of Canadian UBI programs could lead to a 5-year cumulative increase of $46 billion in government revenue and $178 billion in GDP without initial debt funding, or as much as $109 billion in government revenue and $419 billion in GDP if the program is initially 50% funded by government debt (this debt funding would be reduced over time)
As a health economist, you become aware very quickly that we use the healthcare system to treat the consequences of poverty, and we do it in an inefficient and expensive way,” she says. “We wait until people live horrible lives for many years, get sick as a consequence, and then we go in all guns blazing to make things better.”
After several years of painstaking work, she was finally able to publish the results, many of which were eye-opening. In particular, Forget was struck by the improvements in health outcomes over the four years. There was an 8.5% decline in hospitalisations – primarily because there were fewer alcohol-related accidents and hospitalisations due to mental health issues – and a reduction in visits to family physicians.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment
That’s a bad take, there will always be people who will say we can never afford it. The real question should be ‘can we afford not to’ as people live and die in miserable conditions.
Well jeez. I wasn’t saying I’m against it. I’d love to see it happen.
I don’t know of any success stories of it working at scale. I mean, countries using it at scale. Not cities or provinces. I was a part of the short lived pilot program in Ontario before it was axed. Axing it completely fucked me over. It worked. It worked great. I was about to invest in starting a business.
But you know exactly what the opposition will say, right? “How can we afford it?”. Even Trudeau said he saw no path to it. So really, I was just echoing what was already said, sure - but if it keeps getting cancelled then the public will have a sour taste.
Yes, because ultimately it is nothing more than a redistribution of wealth from the wealthy back to the poor and working class, and it’s the people on the bottom of the income ladder that actually drive the economy – especially the local economies – instead of just hoarding wealth.
🤡 gotta save all our taxes to subsidize oil and gas!
