Canada is considering a guaranteed universal basic income program
thestar.com
thestar.com
The consideration is being done by the Senate, which is a sleepy home for appointed political party bagmen, and unlike the US Senate, has zero power or relevance.
It is so irrelevant and useless that the New Democratic Party has been calling for its abolition for decades.
Studying things is basically the modern canadian senate's job. Just because they do not use their legeslative power much doesn't mean they do nothing.
The system is not without flaws, but i generally like the idea of having former gov big-wigs studying things and making reccomendations. They have the experience to know what is up, but also aren't any more beholden to party politics.
> Nowadays, UBI has come to mean any kind of basic income plan, which usually takes the universal form or a “guaranteed” income plan that scales depending on a person’s need.
Step 1: redefine the term?
Looking at the text of the 2021 bill, which you should probably read instead, it uses the term "livable basic income", not UBI. So at least that's more honest. The text is here, it's really very light, closer to an announcement of an announcement than a plan: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/S-233/first-...
Is there an updated bill somewhere that has more detail? There were debates this year that you can sorta read here:
https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/441/debates/112d...
Click "National Framework for a Guaranteed Livable Basic Income Bill"
UBI or negative income tax to replace the minimum wage and other welfare provisions would be a huge win for Canada, but there are too many people (left/right, federal/provincial etc.) that think they're getting something out of the current situation for it to ever go anywhere.
I don't need almost any money to survive month to month and I fucking hate working.
Thankfully for society though Canada will never give us such a thing.
It's odd how when I mention FIRE there are all sorts of people who say they don't want to "live on lentils" for a bit more freedom, yet when I mention UBI it seems everyone wants to!
I get your point, it requires some effort, but it's not that much.
Because UBI doesn't exist and you can't predict what life will throw your way. I've seen what can happen to people and without a safety net I continue working out of fear.
I need between 15-20kCAD/y to survive, but you never know when that won't be enough anymore.
At this point I honestly just hope I can leave enough money to make other's lives easier when I'm gone in a few years. A nice parting gift if you will.
As opposed to?
I also don't make nearly as much money as other people in this industry. I only managed to crack 100k CAD this year and I'm on the verge of being laid off for "economic reasons".
You also get the instinct to “parent” the poor and limit what they can buy.
Giving it to everyone isn’t the best idea but it’s the best way to keep politicians out of the kitchen.
(And I say this as someone who’s against the idea. But I do think the “universal” is the best idea within a bad idea.)
In the West, with the kicking out of the Church from the public sphere and the rise of hyperindividualism, many of the good works performed by the Church and the community was arrogated by the State. The State is now the uncontested institution, it is now the Church. Now these things become subject to and embroiled in all sorts considerations unrelated to the basic problem of dealing with someone in need. UBI entrenches the very isolating hyperindividualism that ruined the family and destroyed the resulting communities.
That said, I don't understand you very judgmental take about people wasting money on things you don't approve of. I hardly think buying clothes has a large moral imperative but even if someone does want to buy alcohol with their own money, I don't see how that is any of your concern. Also, just because people are "young and healthy" doesn't mean they aren't disadvantaged and need support.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-canad...
Doing what? Does it not even matter to you as long as it consumes 40+ hours every week of their productive lives?
A goal of UBI is to recognize that human value is not always realized via a paycheck (for example, a stay at home parent).
However, I would also bet the current system of multiple federal and provincial assistance programs with differing eligibility requirements and TONS of staff on the pay roll… might cost the same as “1 cheque per SIN”. It will massively ease up the stress on those systems, possibly even negate the need for quite a few of them. (Even if they don’t seem to plan on cutting any of them based on the article)
And on the access side, it’s much less effort, which is the ideal for someone that really needs it.
Also the cynical side of me thinks the Canadian banking oligopoly is excited about a monthly payment will be made into their client’s accounts.
Not so much when you realize that those with high incomes are just going to give their check right back via taxes . And that money is then used to send checks to others who don't make enough to have to give their check back.
Which is a fraction of the money that they already paid in taxes to fund the program in the first place. How was this not self-evident?
Second, what's stopping the world from immigrating to Canada to enjoy this social net? I believe we need tiers for new immigrants or international students. A person that has lived in Canada 30 years should be infront of the line for social assistance.
*The average family paid 45.2 per cent of their income in taxes to federal, provincial and local governments in 2022, estimates the Fraser Institute
I just want to clarify the position of it proponents.
We already do a version of what you're saying and it has a lot of administrative overhead and costs.
For example unemployment requires recipients to actively be looking for a job. Unless you have a doctor approved disability. Or you got a really bad flu and were stuck in bed for a week.
Then you have the people who go apply at the same place every week just to fill the requirement. Other people get an offer but come up with a reason why that job doesn't suit them, it's too far, etc.
So now you need to legislate all that stuff and validate it.
It gets complicated and expensive real quick.
So maybe it's cheaper to "waste" money paying some young/rich people, if you can save all the administrative work.
In order to implement the filter, you now need enormous bureaucracies tasked with tracking and identifying people to filter, equally enormous agencies to enforce the filters, you get endless loop politicians fighting who should be filtered, you get endless lobbying pro and con filtering certain people, you get lots of people who make it their career to evade the filters and another even larger crowd who make it their purpose in life to persecute those who avoid the filter and on and on. All of this is pure waste on society.
That's why UBI is a better idea. Just pay to everyone, remove all the nonsense overhead from being able to exist and move on.
It is pretty targeted though specific people on social assistance, no kids, top up to 85% only of the "market-basket measure". I'm sure there's more to it see the link below.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-gove...
edit: by the way about inflation PEI has the lowest inflation of all provinces.
It's not that shocking.
Political parties in Canada with the word "Conservative" in their name, and especially the ones with the oxymoronic term "Progressive Conservative", tend to be quite left-wing/socialist in practice.
Despite their names, such parties usually favor big and intrusive government, high taxation, high immigration rates, socialist education and health care systems, and other policies that are inherently contradictory with anything resembling conservative ideology.
Canada's general lack of truly centrist, conservative, and right-of-centre parties gives the illusion that the least-left-leaning parties are "conservative", when they really aren't.
When comparing platforms and policies, the Conservative and Progressive Conservative parties tend to be more similar to those of the far-left Liberal parties, and the even-farther-left NDP and Green parties to some extent, than they are to the platforms and policies of the more centrist People's Party of Canada or New Blue Party of Ontario, for example.
1. Administrative costs 2. Disincentive to work 3. Simplification 4. Equality
The government only does one thing: takes money from people, and gives money to other people. They don’t build roads or systems of defense. The vast majority of the government outlays are somehow concerned with giving out money to people that “need” it, and they do a patently awful job at it. The idea of UBI is just to give that money away efficiently instead of creating a massive poverty pimp administration. Even people that hate the idea of giving away money start to look at it favorably in comparison to the current system. In numbers, the US government spends about $25-30k per adult citizen. Maybe give each adult about $15k per year and eliminate all spending on healthcare, education, social security, welfare, housing, and anything concerned with diversity, equity, or inclusion, because everybody’s getting the exact same thing.
But that’s not going to happen without a huge fight from the poverty pimp lobby, and by fight I mean stuffing the pockets of legislators and judges while calling for riots over perceived injustices. So anything in this direction will just increase the size and inefficiency of the poverty pimp business, and thus achieve the opposite of its intention.
In conclusion: nice thought; bad idea.
So instead of being a cost cutting measure and ultimately a source for greater inequality of opportunity, it becomes a measure to reduce inequality of opportunity, with the drawback being that the government has to find a way to fund it. One proposed solution would be progressive wealth taxes, which, if you're a millionaire or higher is a perfectly reasonable thing to be upset about but otherwise not so much.
The classic example is if you can only add $10 value/hour in an area where the minimum wage is $20/hour you will go unemployed. If there is a UBI instead then you receive the UBI plus whatever you are paid in accordance with the value added.
This also means you wouldn't need endless arguments over adjustments to a minimum wage.
You are dead right about poverty-pimps - they are the true parasites in all this.
I believe a UBI is our future, but I'm not entirely convinced we've actually hit the societal-scale productivity necessary to support it yet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37975412
But to answer you as a landlord specifically, supply and demand will prevent that. There will be a one-time inflation event where you will raise your rents to a small degree, but you certainly can't pocket "all of it". Supply and demand will continue to exist just fine -- if you attempt to double your rent, everyone will simply move to a different landlord that raised prices by just 10%.
But poor tenants will be helped massively. (Again, see my linked comment for the math.)
Ideally the guaranteed jobs are something more productive than paying people to dig ditches and fill them back in again. But frankly printing money to pay people to exercise 8 hours a day would probably save billions in healthcare costs.
Anyhow it’s not particularly difficult to work out a greatly more eucivic and eusocial regime than what we currently have. In fact it’s sufficiently easy that a reasonable person can only conclude that the enshittification of our societies is the intentional policy of rulers who don’t particularly care for our welfare.
Oh, wait, so you're claiming it's not a free market in reality? Suddenly those price controls don't seems like such a bad idea then.
it depends - real-estate, in general, is still very much a free market. So to your point the thing to prevent rent from just being raised is someone else undercutting you. That requires there to be adequate housing to fulfill market need which there is in many places but not everywhere. That being said... the current trend of PE firms starting to buy up real-estate for the sole purpose of renting it back to people is pretty concerning, and quite frankly shouldn't be allowed IMO. What next? Privatize the water supply and then pretend the "market will make it more efficient"?
And the answer is that prices will probably be expected to go up to some degree as a one-time thing, in a way that would be approximately a wash for those already with plenty of income, but where it still makes a huge difference for those with little/no income, which is precisely the point.
For example if it's a one-time inflation bump of 10% and UBI of $10K/yr., then:
Person A with income $100,000/yr, now makes $110,000/yr., worth $100,000 in previous dollars
Person B with income $10,000/yr, now makes $20,000/yr., worth $18,182 in previous dollars
Person C with income $0/yr, now makes $10,000/yr., worth $9,091 in previous dollars
And it's important to realize that the inflation is a one-time event. Prices will rise but then they'll stop rising. And if it were 10% inflation over a year, that's the same as the usual targeted 2% inflation rate but compressed from 5 years. (And the central bank might very well target 0% inflation over the following 4 years to compensate.)
What's the basis of that? The UBI is on-going, and inflation has a tendency to "stick".
The extra money keeps on getting spent each year -- it doesn't affect the economy in a cumulative way. The person who used to have $0, and now has $10K to spend this year, still only has $10K next year, and still only has $10K the year after. Inflation would only continue if that person received $10K in year one, $20K in year two, $30K in year three, etc.
And inflation is a complicated thing, but it doesn't tend to stick when its causes are known, and known to be temporary. Inflation is governed by expectations, and those expectations are often unknown. In the case of UBI, it's extremely known.
(Also remember that the UBI is not new money injected into the economy -- it's generally proposed as redistribution in the form of taxation. Which according to the simplest theory wouldn't generate any inflation at all, but because of the resulting shifts in consumption patterns, that's what generates the one-time inflation among basic consumer goods, housing, etc.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/basic-income-pilot-project-fo...
But what I’m guessing will happen in the long run, Employment Insurance will relax it rules enough that almost everyone will qualify for it, therefore giving the guaranteed income through the EI program. It will be easier to refactor the rules in the EI program than it will be to create a whole new program from a political point to view.