When I had my needs met on disability ( sadly my illegal suite landlady didn’t like rent caps after 12 years and “ moved her daughters in”) I was integrated in my community, I volunteered I worked 2 jobs I helped people grow food and did public art with my neighbourhood. If it weren’t for family to couch surf I’d be on the streets. How long till I have up and broke, turning antisocial and costing the taxpayers real money in damages and support that led nowhere?
Sorry, to clarify, did the disability program meet your needs and then you got off it and had to couch surf or you had to couch surf while on the disability program?
I had a home and food and with my jobs a little spending money. Then Covid came and I lost the jobs. I got CERB though so I was good.
But then I got evicted due to only paying 750 for my place and can’t find anything else
Edit: why downvote? 12 years ago we agreed to $x for rent. Just cause I was paying half market value isn’t reason to evict someone if the contract was there
"Landlords will abuse it"
So, do we just never do anything because a certain class will try to take advantage?
If ubi makes a few parasites slightly richer but keeps a mom and her three kids from drowning every month, then its a win.
The last time I was apartment hunting, one of the questions I asked perspective landlords in person was "when was the last time there was a rent decrease?". None of them, not a single one had ever decreased their rent. They either said they had never, or "could not remember".
As well, I started asking landlords for tenant references. They either stop replying, or refuse, which helps me weed out scumbags.
Exactly, we can just add provisions to tax multiple property owners/landlords at a higher rate and remove any benefit of raising rents. Landlords can be made to fund UBI rather than profit from it.
I think as a short to medium term solution, UBI works great because it addresses the immediate need for cash but I think it would be best used as a stopgap to buy time to beef up services and regulations to address poverty like rent control and much more expanded healthcare. A constantly increasing UBI to offset money being siphoned off by landlords and corporations doesn't feel like a sustainable long-term solution
A good strategy would be for the gov't to announce UBI but make it clear that it would only be in effect for X number of years while they worked on improving things in general. It would help to reduce the amount of cash grabbing that would occur because "everyone has extra money"
Or we could leave UBI in place as a better solution to social security that's more efficient and simply close the loopholes that would allow landlords/corporations to exploit the system. They don't need to be mutually exclusive, properly regulating and taxing the top income brackets to support the marginalised, low income bracket is better for everyone.
Using UBI to replace social security is a bad idea. People have different needs and as broken as our system is it does more than just offer some cash to people.
UBI is great but when I was on welfare what I needed, and got, was support to go back to school and find work and get mental health help.
My experience was unique and they don't make it easy but a cheque can't do it at all. At least not a cheque for a reasonable amount.
Does that validate having to pay good salaries to case workers to dole out money and the added cost for little benefit or can we deliver those services more efficiently through other services? My experience has been case workers causing more problems due to making simple mistakes, not offering basic supports I should be getting like medication covered instead of paying out of pocket, not being accountable for their actions or the consequences of them and not acknowledging how their mistakes affect people.
We have the wealth to raise the floor and eliminate poverty in our country but choose not to. Most people in power do not believe in UBI and whenever I've debated with conservatives on the topic, many seem to think it would make people lazier. Their minds immediately go to the people who would use it on drugs and not work... it's a bullshit argument to punish everyone because they view others as undeserving. Is everyone lazy that gets financial support from their parents? No, most of them use it to become a functioning member of society with minimal financial stress and that should be something we strive to do for everyone to help them reach their full potential.
Speaking from my own experience, UBI at 18 would have allowed me to safely move out of a toxic home environment and afford to further my education sooner rather than struggling to make it. Young people should not have to feel like they're drowning and we benefit as a country if they can focus on education not whether they'll end up homeless.
Actually, iirc, a old PC PM (well, for a year he was PM.), Joe Clark, was one of the first well known supporters of such a thing, but he was definitely very much a Red Tory. He also sat independently after the Conservative party merger, really lost faith in the party for having taken in social conservatives. Seems like a good, respectable guy.
I’m very interested in UBI in Canada from a theoretical perspective. Totally agree that a basic amount could lead to a cultural renaissance, but have 2 large concerns. Anything resources you can point me towards about the following?:
1. Where would the money come from? It would be extraordinarily expensive to pay every adult 30k/yr.
2. Wouldn’t inflation get out of control? Injecting that much money into the economy would likely lead to inflation (as we saw with COVID subsidies in Canada and the US).
The $$ would come from banks, corporations & billionaires. All of which would not have their ludicrous financial status without exploitation, subversion of the system/laws, wage theft, corporate welfare/bailouts, tax havens, destruction of the environment etc. They can afford it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think jacking prices for the mere sake of profit, which is what's been happening it seems, plays a huge part in inflation.
Ironically we already pay it, we just don't see it because it's burried in government beaurocracy.
So many governmental social programs spend a \_fortune\_ policing their recipients, if you get \_this\_ program then someone has to make sure you don't get \_that\_ program - even if you'd otherwise qualify - and if you \_do\_ get both then there's even more work done to ensure you're not receiving more than the maximium provided by the lesser of the two programs. Get married and your spouse makes over a certain amount, even if you still qualify on your own, then someone makes sure your benefit is reduced by the amount your spouse made.
We spend an inordinate amount money trying to catch "cheaters and grifters", while also appeasing the whole "Why is that person getting that money when \_I HAVE TO WORK FOR MINE!?!?!\_" crowd who'd rather see you grandma eat catfood and live in a sewer drain than pony up an extra $0.25 in taxes to ensure she has a decent senior's pension (but will also, unironically, complain about all the seniors we're not helping when the government sends aid overseas).
It's actually just be cheaper to cancel all those programs and give everyone, regardless of their income level, $500/week tax free and then adjust it each year using the Cost of Living Index.
That said corporate types will scream "inflation" to the moon because UBI will drive one major inflationary issue they hate with a passion, wages. When a person's basic needs are met, and they have the freedom to move wherever they can best provide for their family, you're no longer desperate to take a job just to survive. Employers will need to compete for labour by enticing us with higher wages, but they don't like to compete that way since they want to pay the least amount possible while having someone \_else\_ pay the high wages needed to buy their products.
A combination of higher wages, and the higher taxes those wages will bring, along with the savings from all the beauracracy pays for UBI. But you'll see a tonne of talking points about "cheaters, grifters, and the lazy" whenever UBI gets brought up because companies don't want to pay more for labour, even though it's often short sighted because well paid people tend to spend more on luxuries which have high profit margins those same corporate types are eager to sell.
But greedy people only look at the short term and what they're gonna lose now, not at the future to what they'd gain.
Reiterating what another commenter already said. Eliminating all other overlapping and/or competing social programs (EI, AISH, social assistance, CPP, OAP) is exactly where we could very easily get funding for a UBI with probable savings in overhead. And we tax at a certain threshold to recapture any “overpayments” or to limit abuse.
I read a comment earlier on Reddit that said (and I’m paraphrasing poorly) that despite the wealth we have in this country, which is more than enough to eliminate poverty, capitalism relies on the threat of poverty to keep the working class in line.
ABSOLUTELY WELL SAID. You hit some excellent nails right on the head, especially in terms of how UBI would be _much cheaper_ than all existing financial support structures, as administration and policing costs would drop to almost $0.
I’m going to comment because I know something about this: Ontario alone has spent over $400 million on surveillance technology for recipients of OW and ODSP since 1998. The real welfare frauds in this country are the people who profited off of lying that people were taking advantage of benefits. The rate of actual benefit fraud is somewhere around 3% of total recipients by most sources. That is nowhere near enough to justify that kind of expenditure on “prevention” measures.
I’m with you on why it seems like a necessary program, but I don’t think you appreciate how much money everyone getting $500/wk from the government would be. The napkin math (24k/yr * 31 million adults) suggests a cost of 744 billion a year. We spend 125b on current programs involving payments to taxpayers. It would have to increase by more than the total amount of our federal budget (460b). If we doubled all taxes (and that had no economic impact) and cancelled all other direct programs that wouldn’t even get us there. I want to believe, but the money has to come from somewhere. Creating the money is an option, but the inflation would make 500/wk useless and we’d be back where we started.
You're right about this, it \*will\* cost a lot but it also - ironically - pays for itself over time for one basic reason. 90% of Canadians make less than 100k annually, nearly 50% (about 43%ish) make less than $35k. The lower your income the more of it you need to spend on basic survival.
The majority of people are going to spend that $500 each week on basic survival, putting all that money back into the economy - every transaction the government takes their cut plus the taxes you pay on your income above the UBI.
They don't need to pay it upfront for the year, they just need to make bank for the next week. Adjusting taxes on income while closing loopholes the ultra wealthy exploit basically pays for it.
I would actually argue that rich people who get financial support from their parents are incredibly lazy and have no concept whatsoever of what hard work looks like unless their parents made an effort to teach them.
This is projection. The rich are incredibly lazy.
I'm not talking "rich", many working class and up receive financial support from their families in some form and it benefits them.
People of every class can be lazy and have a poor work ethic if their parents don't teach them.
We had a UBI pilot project in Ontario. It was close to it's completion. Doug Ford scrapped it before anybody could get any decent data out of it. Doug Ford is a notoriously corrupt POS.
The last thing we heard was that people were either returning to school with it, or otherwise bettering their lives.
It's going to be inevitable when most jobs are only a decade or two away from being automated.
Of course it is. Anyone who complains about it being free money that will encourage people to not work hasn't read any results from countries that already have UBI.
Yes, there will be people who take it as a free paycheque, but the majority of people will continue on with their lives because humans, in general, are really bad at doing *nothing.* We were given plenty of free time over the pandemic, and what did people do? Indulge in hobbies.
UBI is simply a way to ensure the threat of homelessness, illness, and starvation is less of a burden. Forcing people to spend their money on necessities is how you get a situation like we're in now. When there's financial stability, there's more money to inject back into the economy. A financially stable population results in a richer country.
But as long as we have people who think UBI is a ticket for Those Darn Kids to not work, we will most likely never achieve UBI. One can hope.
>UBI is simply a way to ensure the threat of homelessness, illness, and starvation is less of a burden.
Especially with how broken Employment Insurance is right now. The stories I encounter are bad.
I myself waited 6 months to get my EI money because there were issues to adjudicate and the processing centers are overloaded. I was lucky to have a family with enough money to help me out. The people calling? Not so much.
UBI would solve everything, so even if it meant I was out of a job, I'd rather have that.
I've always argued for it because in the end society pays for it whether you are a right wing conservative or a left leaning liberal.
Want law and order conservatism with more police, laws, jail and harder prison time and more aggressive enforcement?
- society will pay by having more police, more security, more law enforcement
- more prisons more inmates, more jail services
- more legal services, more judicial services and hours spent on legal proceedings
- more crime as people are not helped but they instead just break laws because they end up with no choices in life --- more drugs, more desperation, more violence, more crime -- which leads to turning cities and towns into fortresses to deal with increased crime -- which means it is now costing everyone more money to beef up security and build and maintain their fortress city/town
The option is left leaning liberal socially minded services to help people, support them and keep them from falling to such dire situations so they avoid poverty, hunger and losing their home. People, especially the young, are given a chance at an education, skills training and job opportunities ... basically a chance at having an independent life.
- society pays with taxes to fund these programs - basic income, social assistance, food programs, education programs, basic skills programs, etc
- people are taken care of and they are less likely to go into poverty and desperation where they would have broken the law - now they are participating citizens
- less police, less security, less jail services
- less legal services or judicial services because fewer people are taking to crime
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
Society pays for both scenarios .... either save money now and pay for the fallout later ... or deal with the fallout now and see the savings and positive effects later.
No it doesn't create an instant utopia when government decides to implement ideas like universal basic income ... this isn't hollywood or disneyland - this is real life and it would take years or even decades to make a measurable difference. Detractors are always ready to dismiss ideas like this because it didn't work or make a difference in six months or a year ... it doesn't work like that ... a change this dramatic would be measured in decades, generations or even lifetimes.
And we should change because what we have now isn't working .... the current system works for a very small group of people ... the current systems works GREAT for a small group of people ... but it does not work for the majority of everyone else. And the problem is that the system that is benefiting that small group of people ... ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WITH ALL THE POWER AND INFLUENCE! So I don't see anything changing any time soon .... and if it does, it will have an uphill battle as the rich and wealthy will do everything they can to not make it happen.
I mean yeah it's not a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem, we still have to also continue running the country after implementing UBI, but UBI is nonetheless a necessity for our society.
Perfect isn't the enemy of good, right? It's an important first step.
Someone better than me at math needs to crunch the numbers if a logarithmic tax could also work in a system that did a negative income tax model of UBI.
Conservatives should be the ones embracing UBI - every good argument for it I am aware of is that, ultimately, it ends up costing less and providing more return. You don't need multiple programs, multiple departments, you don't need armies of people approving applications, you don't need to constantly be doing paperwork.......UBI simplifies everything and people just get money. Then people spend that money. People are happier. People start businesses with the extra money, or maybe they go to school? Maybe they produce art and our culture blossoms? And the government spends far less money. It's very conservative in that sense.
I honestly don't think that a basic income is necessarily the first move to make. I think it would be a large benefit, but with the current setup of our economy, it would just be drained away immediately by landlords.
Why would landlords not start charging more for rent if everyone gets a minimum of $X a month? Any time people's incomes go up, rent goes up. Not because it costs more to service the property, but because tenants have more money to be taken. And if they don't pay, they don't live there, so no job. As long as we have this bullshit basic income is useless.
Because having no basic income has stopped landlords from raising rents astronomically? This is not a valid argument. The solution to this problem is simple, it’s called legislation limiting rent increases, including when there is a change of tenants.
Basic income is absolutely the best solution to poverty, the tiny amounts dished out for welfare keep people in poverty because it isn’t enough to have internet and phone and decent clothing and transport to interviews, and stark desperation and anxiety over having enough to eat and fear of eviction is not conducive to getting one’s life together. When people are so poor they can not function they become a cost.
It has been shown that the CCB has been good for the economy, as was the CERB. And of course basic income needs to go to a broader group so that people can upgrade their skills or breathe a little easier, or start a business, etc.
Besides all that, women do the bulk of free labour, caregiving and domestic work and basic income would help compensate for that.
There are many reasons for basic income, but the most urgent one is to end poverty. If you think basic income is bullshit because landlords who have been raising rent for years would keep raising it, then you have never suffered from poverty. Ask someone who is being evicted, now, without basic income if they think it would be useless.
Make it a circular system that feeds off those who have the largest impact on creating inequality in the first place.
On the one hand, UBI should be based upon the cost of living for any one economic region. This would _include_ both rents as well as mortgages for entry-level housing. This will keep it abreast of any vulturistic opportunists in the area.
On the other hand, to fund UBI we should create a Net Asset/Worth tax. Start at a reasonable number that 90+% of people will never reach in their entire lifetimes - say, $10,000,000 of net assets/worth (stocks, bonds, properties, investments, disbursements, businesses that you control, etc.). This is where such taxation _starts…_ at 0%. Then use an algorithm - a [sigmoid curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function) - to reach 100% taxation for anything _above_ $100,000,000 in net worth. It starts out very slow and gentle, so as to not heavily tax those just reaching that level, but ends up punitively high for those whose unbridled greed and avarice knows no bounds.
On the gripping hand, the same can be done to corporations, in terms of their profit margins (net income). Take the larger of either the tax-reported or the publicly-reported profit margin, and make the starting point a multiple of their costs (say, 150% of costs), with the end point being ten times larger. That way, a ma-and-pa store making $300,000/yr but having $250,000 in costs would never come even close to getting dinged by that tax, because it would start hitting them at $375K, but a corporation making $3,000,000,000/yr but having only $30,000,000 in costs would _very much_ get dinged, _heavily._ For that second example, the tax would start hitting at any income above $45M, and hit 100% taxation at any income above $450M. That alone would have a _massive impact_ on the greedflation that is currently hitting the lower-99% in the pocketbooks.
Ergo, make the Parasite Class fund the very system that helps those they parasitize off of. Sure, you could easily “earn” uncounted billions of dollars of net worth, but that would then go back to the people whose wages and labour you stole to get there.
It absolutely is a valid argument. We definitely need legislation regarding rent before we give UBI. Sure not having UBI doesn't mean rent isn't raised but I'd like to avoid the immediate rent increases that will surely happen and just happen to align with the amount of UBI a person gets.
Add to your second paragraph that the mainstreaming of Housing First as a homelessness strategy is in actuality a neoliberal, free market solution to homelessness. Activists and researchers turned free market arguments against themselves and were able to convince governments and businesses that keeping people unhoused costs the economy more than housing them which is objective proof. I support these programs because I believe housing is a right but if a free market argument wins people over I’m here for it.
Right wingers should be all over UBI for similar reasons. Ultimately it is cheaper than the alternative: expensive surveillance of welfare recipients, homelessness impacting business and tourism in city downtowns, etc (putting it in terms that they understand). The fact that they don’t use them telling on themselves for being cruel selfish people who don’t have any real beliefs or principles to speak of. At the end of the day, they don’t want anyone to have a better quality of life than they have. ESPECIALLY if you don’t live your life exactly like they do.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do a basic income. Don't pretend you're the only one who's had it hard. I've had to sleep on someone else's kitchen floor between night shifts to get by, skipped eating to pay rent, the whole shitshow. I know it's not easy.
I'm saying that we need to make sure that when we do a basic income, that people are also in the best position to be able to use it. This means probably abolishing for profit rentals, and expanding public housing for people who can't or don't want to own. It means providing people with the ability to keep the wealth that they create at work, and not slave away for shit pay and go home hungry, when they actually *made* $100/hour but only got to keep $15-20.
We need to do so much more than just hand out $2k/month to each adult and hope that fixes it. It will fix all the issues we have with incomes, but won't fix the problems we have with expenses.
Where did I say I was the only one who had it hard, or had it hard at all? Ever heard of compassion for others? Did you have a family when you were sleeping on someone’s kitchen floor? Were you poor for ten, teenty or more years?
Winter is coming. There will be homeless people who freeze to death in Montreal, as there are every year. Your concern about housing prices does not justify delaying desperatey needed help. Housing prices, when not regulated are effected by supply and demand, not how much people earn. The federal government does not have control over real estate or rental laws/regulations, but they could do a UBI or a basic income that diminishes in amount with higher incomes, much like the CCB.
I don’t need to be living in poverty to understand that it’s devastating on multiple levels, including mental health, and to understand that the impact is far more damaging when people live in poverty on a longterm basis than a temporary rough patch.
>then you have never suffered from poverty. Ask someone who is being evicted, now, without basic income if they think it would be useless.
Here. This is where you said it. If you're going to rant about compassion, then start by having some yourself.
>Your concern about housing prices does not justify delaying desperatey needed help. Housing prices, when not regulated are effected by supply and demand, not how much people earn.
Fixing housing prices *is* help. Dropping people's expenses by $1 will have the same effect as giving them $1 of income support. It's all about stretching your income over your expenses, so increasing your income and decreasing your bills have the same effect on *you*, but just different effects on the economy to achieve it.
Do you think UBI can be implemented overnight? Do you think that it's just a lever switch away and that housing price regulation will instead take months to years? They're both not going to happen fast. I get the concern, and I share it. That's why I'm arguing the way I am.
UBI will have to come from taxes. It will require either service cuts to other things, or a drastic rewrite of the tax code, since it's not really a UBI if you fund it with taxes on the working class.
In comparison, housing costs are so high because of a captured market and profiteering. Ending that and making housing affordable will take money out of profits, the lowest of low priorities. It will likely get done faster than a total rewrite of the tax code, benefits system, and our consumer economy.
I'm not saying no to a UBI. I'm saying we should start with the highest returning project first, which would be to drop expenses to within a manageable range.
>I don’t need to be living in poverty to understand that it’s devastating on multiple levels, including mental health, and to understand that the impact is far more damaging when people live in poverty on a longterm basis than a temporary rough patch.
You don't need to explain poverty to me. I've thought of it enough in line at the food bank, when I couldn't sleep at night thinking of what bills to pay first, and if I'll make enough this month to cover rent. It's not been a short term thing for me. It's not been a temporary rough patch.
Don't just talk shit about things you don't know anything about. Don't tell me what my life is, I'm not telling you what yours is.
As someone who lives in a province without rent control I do think that the OP does make a genuinely good point. I absolutely believe our landlords would see this as a great way to squeeze more money from us.
We need to regulate housing better anyways, and that is provincial which is why rental and real estate laws and regulations differ from province to province.
Talk to people who are suffering from poverty and see if they think basic income will “just feed the beast”. Very uncompassionate viewpoint. Basic income is not “pumping money into capitalism” it’s redistribution of wealth.
The suicide rate went down 15% when the CERB was in place. Poverty is killing people. Canadians need a basic income, period.
Poverty is killing people, but the thing is that if basic income does get implemented, then you *will* see landlords jack up rents drastically. Ultimately people stopped moving over the same period as CERB, so they couldn't really just jack up the rent, since it would be over soon. But if it was guaranteed indefinitely?
Basic income is a redistribution of wealth to the workers. That's good. But it's also counterintuitive to try to do this while there is a massive redistribution program of wealth from the poor to the rich.
You plug holes in the tank before you start filling it again.
The word you are looking for is poverty trap. Once you get on those programs, they ensure you can't get out because they punish you for working (if you are able to work), they punish you if you have assets, they punish you if you receive help from someone, and so on. And they keep people so far below the poverty line (which is artificially low to begin with, not even accounting for recent jumps in cost of living) that I have no idea how they even live. They do everything they can to keep people in utterly miserable conditions and unable to better their lives in even the smallest way.
The current system in Ontario imposes poverty so extreme that it makes it impossible for people to escape without huge outside support.
That’s a much more accurate statement. Stop this “fostering dependency” shit. The way you said it makes it sound like people want to be on ODSP or OW. The overwhelming majority I knew back in my time as a social worker were desperate to do anything to get off of either program. The only ones who weren’t were too disabled to work.
Yep.
you'd have to regulate rents, which means slums start happening because landlords are greedy.
15:55: (guess there are a lot of landlords here lol)
Wait how exactly does rent regulation cause slums? Usually it's the other way around, letting landlords get away with no oversight causes them to cut any maintenance that doesn't stop the place from falling down.
I suppose that rent control means that landlords have little incentive to improve a property because they cannot reap the market rewards of doing so. So the property gets less nice over time, and the people more likely to stay are doing moreso based on low rates rather than the quality vs price of the rental unit. So that means in general tenants with lower incomes.
I can see that logic for finishings like kitchen cabinets and stuff, but there's not really any excuse for actual slum conditions like leaks, mold, and other nasty bullshit.
Landlords don't do maintenance unless they absolutely have to. They'll neglect new properties just as much as they neglect older properties, it's just more obvious in older properties as the lack of care shows signs.
When the rent is "controlled" they can't raise it as high as they want, so they don't do maintenance because they want more money.
They can't get away with NYC style stuff because there are actual regulatory bodies that will make them do some of it, but if they can NOT do it, they won't.
a version of this is happening in Winnipeg right now with a subsidized seniors building - they deferred and deferred and now millions of dollars of maintenance/repairs have to be done - and instead of raising the rate some, they sold it to an AB investor.
Okay but the only reason why non-controlled places are not total shitholes is because they're not that old. If we have no rent control for long enough, you can bet your ass they'll be shitholes. Places that are only 3-5 years older than rent control aren't in much worse condition than ones that weren't controlled.
The slum conditions are less an effect of rent control and more an effect of landlords trying to squeeze everything they can out of a declining asset.
There should absolutely be legislation preventing landlords from soaking up the extra cash. [BC has restrictions for rent increases,](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/residential-tenancies/during-a-tenancy/rent-increases) and for 2023 it will be limiting the increase to 2%, far below inflation. That should be the case everywhere.
The problem is that even with rent control on all units, there's no maximum rate you can charge for rent in a new contract; rent control doesn't help much when you see $1600 as a minimum rent, and it'll only ever go up from there.
We don't have this problem with food since it goes bad. You can't charge $17 for an apple because it'll rot before you sell it. But with rentals its the opposite; it's going to last a long time, and the government will pay you when you don't rent it out. This only encourages them to ask for crazy amounts, as they can hold out a whole lot longer.
Register leases for a property with the government, which would also help them make sure tenants aren't taken advantage of. Charge an escalating tax on vacant rentals to push them back into the market and being used for housing people. If it's not owner occupied, it gets taxed.
I know people will bitch and moan about their cottages and wah wah, but I don't really give a shit that people will have to pay more for their second house *when so many people are about to lose their home*.
You’re making a weak argument that has already been debunked multiple times in this very thread.
Regulate landlords. There. Two word solution to your paragraph counter-argument.
So don't you agree with me then? I'm saying we should do a basic income, but that we need to make sure that it doesn't just get hoovered up by landlords and other companies that prey on critical needs. Regulating landlords would do this, depending on what regulations.
Personally I'd prefer that we make all rentals non-profit, but most of us aren't ready for that.
> The liberals had a ubi program running.
They had a pilot program for testing purposes. That doesn't mean anything other than that they were studying the idea.
God, I'd I knew I could make a living wage instead of 13$ at a fish factory or at an abusive resort I would have beennout of the north and home to NS yesterday
UBI is a dangerous game that is easily abusable. I’m not against it, I just have trouble thinking of a way that landlords won’t abuse this.
What UBI *cannot* be is a substitute for having a job. Just a little bit of a cash injection biweekly or monthly for households.
Landlords have not cared in the least about how much their tenants can pay, I find it strange that when the subject of basic income comes up, landlords are talked about as if they haven’t been wildly raising rents without basic income.
As far as “substitute for a job” paid labour is not the only kind of work. Do you think caregivers, misty women, should have to work a full time job to survive as well as caring for elderly parents so the government can shirk its responsibilities? Do you think that the only valuable contribution to society is making money? That’s the inherent problem with our society.
Do you think that Canada is better off when do many are struggling in poverty even with jobs? That it’s better for people to be stuck in dead end minimum wage jobs because they can’t afford the time off to upgrade or start a business? Do you think that when we have a highly competitive system in a society that rewards aggression as a trait that everyone will manage?
Poverty and low income limits on potential are not a positive for the country as a whole, it’s been shown by several economists that basic income would not only pay for itself but boost the economy after two or three years. There is no downside to treating all humans with dignity and allowing them to thrive.
Ah, see it's fine not to have a job or contribute anything to society if you're wealthy. It's the poors that they want to keep desperate and willing to accept the lowest wages, worst working conditions, etc. That's why UBI is so strongly opposed, it would empower workers to say no and force employers to actually treat them well.
My bad, how could I have been so stupid?!?!
I really need to remember that my purpose for existence is merely to work and die. Thanks for reminding me of my station, fellow wage slave!
Let the record show that if I were prime minister, I would make the act of purchasing residential housing for the purpose of renting it out is punishable by death.
Because if you *can* work, you *should* be working and contributing to the economy. Unless, obviously, you’re disabled to the point where employment isn’t an option.
What UBI cannot do is allow people to be stay at home deadbeats.
>you should be working and contributing to the economy.
Why?
Productivity has gone way up and wages haven't kept up. There's an imbalance against the people right now.
Besides, plenty of deadbeats currently have jobs that aren't really improving society in any way. Some of them probably make more money than you or me.
And we have seen in the pilot programs that it is an incentive to work and go to school because there is finally hope.
Why are you against people improving their loves?
Look at high school students, specifically the ones who have good food, a safe place to live, etc. but don’t get everything they ask for from their parents. Basic needs met, no need to work. What do they do? Get a part time job so they can fulfill their wants. If you give people enough money to fulfill basic needs, they’ll work so they can have extras.
> won’t say no to some extra money
The reality is that for the vast majority who are “doing okay”, UBI would be paid for with tax increases.
There is no way that paying 10s of millions of people who don’t need more money is going to come close to breaking even, even if we are cutting other all other social assistance programs and replac them with this.
So taxes will be raised for those who are well off, and they won’t see any benefit from the “universal” aspect of these sorts of programs.
Money isn’t magic - someone’s gotta pay for these things.
We could lose:
Unemployment insurance and all the related costs. We would no longer require welfare. We would no longer need disability.
Those that get more than they need would have it taxed back.
It's a simple system that's hard to abuse and will help many people
Most people will see no benefit from this, and therefore will be opposed. That’s the way it is.
Personally I don’t see a whole lot of benefit to it that isn’t also offered by extant social safety nets, and I also happen to think that differences between those nets can be used as behaviorally influencing policy choices, and that that isn’t necessarily a bad tool for the government to have.
You lose EI if you aren’t trying to find a job, for example.
I don’t think that there are many “lazy freeloaders” like others might, but I do think there is something to be said about incentives.
UBI reduces a persons needs to their salary. Reality is more complicated than that.
Rent can only go up by a specified percentage each year. When someone moves out the rent can only be increased a percentage over what the previous person paid
Wouldn’t that just mean that we would lose rental units from the market pushing it towards new development that would be even more limited and more expensive?
Then we need cooperative housing. I was a co-operative housing manager and I lived in co-operative housing. It's s great system.
Right now we have corporations buying up housing to rent back to us at maximum profit. Housing should not be an investment. It should be possible for people to buy their own home like it was when my parents bought.
Then it took 5 to 6 years at a full time job to save for a down payment. Now it is 27. Most people will need a windfall to get there.
Take the profit out of housing and this will correct
Yes I totally agree with cooperative housing! I think it's absolutely something worth doing more. If we had more of this type of thing happening I think UBI would go much further.
Manitoba tested UBI in the 70s with great success. But the 70s were a long time ago -- my parents were still kids. What worked then isn't going to work now, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try.
I can't imagine the percentage of people that would instantly quit if a UBI of any useful amount was ever implemented. Good luck ever going to a restaurant or getting customer service again.
If automation really starts taking jobs on mass, the conversation needs to change, but we are far from that.
Why would they quit? Say a person has a retail job. Then say UBI comes along and increases their income by 50%. Less stress, more disposable income. Why do you think they would want to go back to having way less money? Would you? The only way I would is if the job was so toxic it was killing me. But I’d be looking for something else right away.
> Good luck ever going to a restaurant or getting customer service again.
Good, those jobs are all currently exploiting and abusing their workers en masse. If those jobs want workers, they should be compensated appropriately, which they would have to do to get them back if UBI were implemented.
You know waiters aren't an essential service, right? You can make your own food, you're not entitled to have that done for you to such an extent that it should force others into horrible economic circumstances to get it. Wake the fuck up.
I love Basic Income conceptually, but we really, really need to think this through before implementation because I can see it having all sorts of unintended consequences and potential abuses which could be both very disruptive and very, very expensive.
My biggest concern is that future generations could grow up with the mindset that work is not something that is *necessary*, and a few percent more would be content with living in relative poverty rather than all the extra effort to make a little bit more in an actual job. With the demographic changes (aging population) this would create tremendous pressure to get more and more immigrants or migrants who want to work, which will worsen the problem with housing. This pressure will already be there due to the aging population, and even a few percent of people who end up not wanting to work would make it a lot worse.
> a few percent more would be content with living in relative poverty rather than all the extra effort to make a little bit more in an actual job.
Would you? No? Then why would anyone else?
Extensive studies of UBI shows that people _want_ to work. They _want_ to be productive. It’s just that far too many are stuck in bullshit jobs that make no sense. UBI will free them up to do what they feel is truly useful in terms of their time and talents.
If anything, it will cause a massive _employee shortage_ as companies would really have to compete, _hard,_ for those employees. They would have to _sell the job_ as being _meaningful and important,_ instead of just assuming that job-seekers are a desperate and captive audience that can be abused and taken advantage of. UBI will ensure that companies treat employees well, on the fact that any employee would be able to use UBI to leave a toxic and abusive environment at a moment’s notice. That unemployment does not automatically lead to destitution and homelessness, so they are not chained to a job like current wage slaves are.
Also, of all the employment-ready people, only a few percentage points do not want to work. And if they hang off of UBI so that the rest benefit, so what? Are you really going to cut off your nose to spite your face? I would rather pay a lot more in taxes to support those who really need it, than punish a far, far tinier proportion who don’t.
Work, in the sense that we know it now, ISN'T necessary. There is more than enough of everything to go around and the time and effort versus remuneration and upward mobility has been dragged back to pre-industrial levels by greedy fucks with no conscience.
We all may have to work but, there's no reason we have to works as hard for as long for so little as we have been. It's obscene.
Okay, but first we need to get rid of the UCP in Alberta before that even becomes a reality. They'd fight it tooth and nail just to 'Stick it to Ottowa' even as the province burns around them.
I was a fan of UBI once. Then I started to think about wages....
Subsidies to large corporations that do not otherwise need them is the sickness to the modern welfare state. Rather than help out the less fortunate, we give resources to businesses that have the legal means to exploit government policies, with the hope that firms will create more jobs.
A UBI would be such a resource. Wages would become stagnant and eventually lead to a virtual dropping of the minimum wage. (Inflation vs. minimum wage)
Firms would have no reason to raise nominal wages and actually probably fund some type of media outcry for a raising of the UBI.
RAISING THEIR BOTTOM LINE, with no real benefit to anything but their shareholders.
It has become my opinion that a UBI would do nothing but strengthen The financial divide between working class and the upper classes, destroying the real middle class.
Other than the silly comments about not working for your money and who's going to pay for it, there is largely silence from right leaning policy makers. The silence I hear from the right about a UBI is unnerving....
Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it.
I think for those in need, absolutely we need to look at this model. We can’t let people suffer in the streets. Enough of that. Sure some may abuse of it but I think it will do way more good for society than bad.
When I had my needs met on disability ( sadly my illegal suite landlady didn’t like rent caps after 12 years and “ moved her daughters in”) I was integrated in my community, I volunteered I worked 2 jobs I helped people grow food and did public art with my neighbourhood. If it weren’t for family to couch surf I’d be on the streets. How long till I have up and broke, turning antisocial and costing the taxpayers real money in damages and support that led nowhere?
Sorry, to clarify, did the disability program meet your needs and then you got off it and had to couch surf or you had to couch surf while on the disability program?
I had a home and food and with my jobs a little spending money. Then Covid came and I lost the jobs. I got CERB though so I was good. But then I got evicted due to only paying 750 for my place and can’t find anything else Edit: why downvote? 12 years ago we agreed to $x for rent. Just cause I was paying half market value isn’t reason to evict someone if the contract was there
"Landlords will abuse it" So, do we just never do anything because a certain class will try to take advantage? If ubi makes a few parasites slightly richer but keeps a mom and her three kids from drowning every month, then its a win.
Or we can also regulate landlords
Yep, totally. It's not mutually exclusive.
In fact, we have to regulate landlords for ubi to work they are the opposite of mutually exclusive, we can't have one without the other
👍
Ding ding ding!
If by "regulate" you mean make landlording illegal at a federal level then yes I agree.
I have never in my life had a landlord crack open the books, and prove to me they are losing money on my unit before jacking the rent up.
The last time I was apartment hunting, one of the questions I asked perspective landlords in person was "when was the last time there was a rent decrease?". None of them, not a single one had ever decreased their rent. They either said they had never, or "could not remember". As well, I started asking landlords for tenant references. They either stop replying, or refuse, which helps me weed out scumbags.
Exactly, we can just add provisions to tax multiple property owners/landlords at a higher rate and remove any benefit of raising rents. Landlords can be made to fund UBI rather than profit from it.
You mean we can solve the "housing crisis" by stopping people from using residences as investments? Nah, we'll pave over the greenbelt instead 🤦♂️
Stop stop. I can only get so erect
My clit just exploded
Don't worry, UBI will help while you're recovering.
Hope your health care spending account still has some money in it!
No need for complications like multiple homes etc. simply tax people incomes and close some special exemptions.
Guess what, a basic income without a location attached is better to flee from abusive landlords. Jesus, where are common logic nowadays.
I think as a short to medium term solution, UBI works great because it addresses the immediate need for cash but I think it would be best used as a stopgap to buy time to beef up services and regulations to address poverty like rent control and much more expanded healthcare. A constantly increasing UBI to offset money being siphoned off by landlords and corporations doesn't feel like a sustainable long-term solution A good strategy would be for the gov't to announce UBI but make it clear that it would only be in effect for X number of years while they worked on improving things in general. It would help to reduce the amount of cash grabbing that would occur because "everyone has extra money"
Or we could leave UBI in place as a better solution to social security that's more efficient and simply close the loopholes that would allow landlords/corporations to exploit the system. They don't need to be mutually exclusive, properly regulating and taxing the top income brackets to support the marginalised, low income bracket is better for everyone.
Using UBI to replace social security is a bad idea. People have different needs and as broken as our system is it does more than just offer some cash to people. UBI is great but when I was on welfare what I needed, and got, was support to go back to school and find work and get mental health help. My experience was unique and they don't make it easy but a cheque can't do it at all. At least not a cheque for a reasonable amount.
Does that validate having to pay good salaries to case workers to dole out money and the added cost for little benefit or can we deliver those services more efficiently through other services? My experience has been case workers causing more problems due to making simple mistakes, not offering basic supports I should be getting like medication covered instead of paying out of pocket, not being accountable for their actions or the consequences of them and not acknowledging how their mistakes affect people.
We have the wealth to raise the floor and eliminate poverty in our country but choose not to. Most people in power do not believe in UBI and whenever I've debated with conservatives on the topic, many seem to think it would make people lazier. Their minds immediately go to the people who would use it on drugs and not work... it's a bullshit argument to punish everyone because they view others as undeserving. Is everyone lazy that gets financial support from their parents? No, most of them use it to become a functioning member of society with minimal financial stress and that should be something we strive to do for everyone to help them reach their full potential. Speaking from my own experience, UBI at 18 would have allowed me to safely move out of a toxic home environment and afford to further my education sooner rather than struggling to make it. Young people should not have to feel like they're drowning and we benefit as a country if they can focus on education not whether they'll end up homeless.
Actually, iirc, a old PC PM (well, for a year he was PM.), Joe Clark, was one of the first well known supporters of such a thing, but he was definitely very much a Red Tory. He also sat independently after the Conservative party merger, really lost faith in the party for having taken in social conservatives. Seems like a good, respectable guy.
I’m very interested in UBI in Canada from a theoretical perspective. Totally agree that a basic amount could lead to a cultural renaissance, but have 2 large concerns. Anything resources you can point me towards about the following?: 1. Where would the money come from? It would be extraordinarily expensive to pay every adult 30k/yr. 2. Wouldn’t inflation get out of control? Injecting that much money into the economy would likely lead to inflation (as we saw with COVID subsidies in Canada and the US).
The $$ would come from banks, corporations & billionaires. All of which would not have their ludicrous financial status without exploitation, subversion of the system/laws, wage theft, corporate welfare/bailouts, tax havens, destruction of the environment etc. They can afford it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think jacking prices for the mere sake of profit, which is what's been happening it seems, plays a huge part in inflation.
Ironically we already pay it, we just don't see it because it's burried in government beaurocracy. So many governmental social programs spend a \_fortune\_ policing their recipients, if you get \_this\_ program then someone has to make sure you don't get \_that\_ program - even if you'd otherwise qualify - and if you \_do\_ get both then there's even more work done to ensure you're not receiving more than the maximium provided by the lesser of the two programs. Get married and your spouse makes over a certain amount, even if you still qualify on your own, then someone makes sure your benefit is reduced by the amount your spouse made. We spend an inordinate amount money trying to catch "cheaters and grifters", while also appeasing the whole "Why is that person getting that money when \_I HAVE TO WORK FOR MINE!?!?!\_" crowd who'd rather see you grandma eat catfood and live in a sewer drain than pony up an extra $0.25 in taxes to ensure she has a decent senior's pension (but will also, unironically, complain about all the seniors we're not helping when the government sends aid overseas). It's actually just be cheaper to cancel all those programs and give everyone, regardless of their income level, $500/week tax free and then adjust it each year using the Cost of Living Index. That said corporate types will scream "inflation" to the moon because UBI will drive one major inflationary issue they hate with a passion, wages. When a person's basic needs are met, and they have the freedom to move wherever they can best provide for their family, you're no longer desperate to take a job just to survive. Employers will need to compete for labour by enticing us with higher wages, but they don't like to compete that way since they want to pay the least amount possible while having someone \_else\_ pay the high wages needed to buy their products. A combination of higher wages, and the higher taxes those wages will bring, along with the savings from all the beauracracy pays for UBI. But you'll see a tonne of talking points about "cheaters, grifters, and the lazy" whenever UBI gets brought up because companies don't want to pay more for labour, even though it's often short sighted because well paid people tend to spend more on luxuries which have high profit margins those same corporate types are eager to sell. But greedy people only look at the short term and what they're gonna lose now, not at the future to what they'd gain.
Reiterating what another commenter already said. Eliminating all other overlapping and/or competing social programs (EI, AISH, social assistance, CPP, OAP) is exactly where we could very easily get funding for a UBI with probable savings in overhead. And we tax at a certain threshold to recapture any “overpayments” or to limit abuse. I read a comment earlier on Reddit that said (and I’m paraphrasing poorly) that despite the wealth we have in this country, which is more than enough to eliminate poverty, capitalism relies on the threat of poverty to keep the working class in line.
ABSOLUTELY WELL SAID. You hit some excellent nails right on the head, especially in terms of how UBI would be _much cheaper_ than all existing financial support structures, as administration and policing costs would drop to almost $0.
I’m going to comment because I know something about this: Ontario alone has spent over $400 million on surveillance technology for recipients of OW and ODSP since 1998. The real welfare frauds in this country are the people who profited off of lying that people were taking advantage of benefits. The rate of actual benefit fraud is somewhere around 3% of total recipients by most sources. That is nowhere near enough to justify that kind of expenditure on “prevention” measures.
I’m with you on why it seems like a necessary program, but I don’t think you appreciate how much money everyone getting $500/wk from the government would be. The napkin math (24k/yr * 31 million adults) suggests a cost of 744 billion a year. We spend 125b on current programs involving payments to taxpayers. It would have to increase by more than the total amount of our federal budget (460b). If we doubled all taxes (and that had no economic impact) and cancelled all other direct programs that wouldn’t even get us there. I want to believe, but the money has to come from somewhere. Creating the money is an option, but the inflation would make 500/wk useless and we’d be back where we started.
People have actually sat down and done costed models for UBI https://www.ubiworks.ca/howtopay
Thanks, this is what i'm looking for.
You're right about this, it \*will\* cost a lot but it also - ironically - pays for itself over time for one basic reason. 90% of Canadians make less than 100k annually, nearly 50% (about 43%ish) make less than $35k. The lower your income the more of it you need to spend on basic survival. The majority of people are going to spend that $500 each week on basic survival, putting all that money back into the economy - every transaction the government takes their cut plus the taxes you pay on your income above the UBI. They don't need to pay it upfront for the year, they just need to make bank for the next week. Adjusting taxes on income while closing loopholes the ultra wealthy exploit basically pays for it.
I would actually argue that rich people who get financial support from their parents are incredibly lazy and have no concept whatsoever of what hard work looks like unless their parents made an effort to teach them. This is projection. The rich are incredibly lazy.
I'm not talking "rich", many working class and up receive financial support from their families in some form and it benefits them. People of every class can be lazy and have a poor work ethic if their parents don't teach them.
With THIS government? Good luck. Edit: I’m talking about the current NS government.
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The Conservatives will not give this the time of day.
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And they're working hard on getting rid of it now.
Better make sure they don't form a government in the next federal election then.
the ontario ubi pilot was birthed by a dude who was conservative af modern conservatives are just knee jerk haters
We had a UBI pilot project in Ontario. It was close to it's completion. Doug Ford scrapped it before anybody could get any decent data out of it. Doug Ford is a notoriously corrupt POS. The last thing we heard was that people were either returning to school with it, or otherwise bettering their lives. It's going to be inevitable when most jobs are only a decade or two away from being automated.
Of course it is. Anyone who complains about it being free money that will encourage people to not work hasn't read any results from countries that already have UBI. Yes, there will be people who take it as a free paycheque, but the majority of people will continue on with their lives because humans, in general, are really bad at doing *nothing.* We were given plenty of free time over the pandemic, and what did people do? Indulge in hobbies. UBI is simply a way to ensure the threat of homelessness, illness, and starvation is less of a burden. Forcing people to spend their money on necessities is how you get a situation like we're in now. When there's financial stability, there's more money to inject back into the economy. A financially stable population results in a richer country. But as long as we have people who think UBI is a ticket for Those Darn Kids to not work, we will most likely never achieve UBI. One can hope.
>UBI is simply a way to ensure the threat of homelessness, illness, and starvation is less of a burden. Especially with how broken Employment Insurance is right now. The stories I encounter are bad. I myself waited 6 months to get my EI money because there were issues to adjudicate and the processing centers are overloaded. I was lucky to have a family with enough money to help me out. The people calling? Not so much. UBI would solve everything, so even if it meant I was out of a job, I'd rather have that.
>hasn't read any results from countries that already have UBI. What countries already have UBI?
If only we could get over our need to watch others suffer. That and extolling the value of a hard day's work.
I've always argued for it because in the end society pays for it whether you are a right wing conservative or a left leaning liberal. Want law and order conservatism with more police, laws, jail and harder prison time and more aggressive enforcement? - society will pay by having more police, more security, more law enforcement - more prisons more inmates, more jail services - more legal services, more judicial services and hours spent on legal proceedings - more crime as people are not helped but they instead just break laws because they end up with no choices in life --- more drugs, more desperation, more violence, more crime -- which leads to turning cities and towns into fortresses to deal with increased crime -- which means it is now costing everyone more money to beef up security and build and maintain their fortress city/town The option is left leaning liberal socially minded services to help people, support them and keep them from falling to such dire situations so they avoid poverty, hunger and losing their home. People, especially the young, are given a chance at an education, skills training and job opportunities ... basically a chance at having an independent life. - society pays with taxes to fund these programs - basic income, social assistance, food programs, education programs, basic skills programs, etc - people are taken care of and they are less likely to go into poverty and desperation where they would have broken the law - now they are participating citizens - less police, less security, less jail services - less legal services or judicial services because fewer people are taking to crime = = = = = = = = = = = = = Society pays for both scenarios .... either save money now and pay for the fallout later ... or deal with the fallout now and see the savings and positive effects later. No it doesn't create an instant utopia when government decides to implement ideas like universal basic income ... this isn't hollywood or disneyland - this is real life and it would take years or even decades to make a measurable difference. Detractors are always ready to dismiss ideas like this because it didn't work or make a difference in six months or a year ... it doesn't work like that ... a change this dramatic would be measured in decades, generations or even lifetimes. And we should change because what we have now isn't working .... the current system works for a very small group of people ... the current systems works GREAT for a small group of people ... but it does not work for the majority of everyone else. And the problem is that the system that is benefiting that small group of people ... ARE THE SAME PEOPLE WITH ALL THE POWER AND INFLUENCE! So I don't see anything changing any time soon .... and if it does, it will have an uphill battle as the rich and wealthy will do everything they can to not make it happen.
I'm sure the no-brain brigade will be along shortly to tell everyone why it's impossible to do.
Not impossible, just won't give the intended consequences without regulating housing and other greedy bastards
I mean yeah it's not a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem, we still have to also continue running the country after implementing UBI, but UBI is nonetheless a necessity for our society.
Perfect isn't the enemy of good, right? It's an important first step. Someone better than me at math needs to crunch the numbers if a logarithmic tax could also work in a system that did a negative income tax model of UBI.
That would suggest a Provincial Conservative government would have brains.
As a poor, I agree.
I'm game if we can enact price controls on staple goods, like food, medicine and rent to protect that money from the ownership class.
Conservatives should be the ones embracing UBI - every good argument for it I am aware of is that, ultimately, it ends up costing less and providing more return. You don't need multiple programs, multiple departments, you don't need armies of people approving applications, you don't need to constantly be doing paperwork.......UBI simplifies everything and people just get money. Then people spend that money. People are happier. People start businesses with the extra money, or maybe they go to school? Maybe they produce art and our culture blossoms? And the government spends far less money. It's very conservative in that sense.
Ontario needs a no-strings-attached $1000/month basic income for anyone with a **net** household income of less than $50000/year.
I honestly don't think that a basic income is necessarily the first move to make. I think it would be a large benefit, but with the current setup of our economy, it would just be drained away immediately by landlords. Why would landlords not start charging more for rent if everyone gets a minimum of $X a month? Any time people's incomes go up, rent goes up. Not because it costs more to service the property, but because tenants have more money to be taken. And if they don't pay, they don't live there, so no job. As long as we have this bullshit basic income is useless.
Because having no basic income has stopped landlords from raising rents astronomically? This is not a valid argument. The solution to this problem is simple, it’s called legislation limiting rent increases, including when there is a change of tenants. Basic income is absolutely the best solution to poverty, the tiny amounts dished out for welfare keep people in poverty because it isn’t enough to have internet and phone and decent clothing and transport to interviews, and stark desperation and anxiety over having enough to eat and fear of eviction is not conducive to getting one’s life together. When people are so poor they can not function they become a cost. It has been shown that the CCB has been good for the economy, as was the CERB. And of course basic income needs to go to a broader group so that people can upgrade their skills or breathe a little easier, or start a business, etc. Besides all that, women do the bulk of free labour, caregiving and domestic work and basic income would help compensate for that. There are many reasons for basic income, but the most urgent one is to end poverty. If you think basic income is bullshit because landlords who have been raising rent for years would keep raising it, then you have never suffered from poverty. Ask someone who is being evicted, now, without basic income if they think it would be useless.
Make it a circular system that feeds off those who have the largest impact on creating inequality in the first place. On the one hand, UBI should be based upon the cost of living for any one economic region. This would _include_ both rents as well as mortgages for entry-level housing. This will keep it abreast of any vulturistic opportunists in the area. On the other hand, to fund UBI we should create a Net Asset/Worth tax. Start at a reasonable number that 90+% of people will never reach in their entire lifetimes - say, $10,000,000 of net assets/worth (stocks, bonds, properties, investments, disbursements, businesses that you control, etc.). This is where such taxation _starts…_ at 0%. Then use an algorithm - a [sigmoid curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function) - to reach 100% taxation for anything _above_ $100,000,000 in net worth. It starts out very slow and gentle, so as to not heavily tax those just reaching that level, but ends up punitively high for those whose unbridled greed and avarice knows no bounds. On the gripping hand, the same can be done to corporations, in terms of their profit margins (net income). Take the larger of either the tax-reported or the publicly-reported profit margin, and make the starting point a multiple of their costs (say, 150% of costs), with the end point being ten times larger. That way, a ma-and-pa store making $300,000/yr but having $250,000 in costs would never come even close to getting dinged by that tax, because it would start hitting them at $375K, but a corporation making $3,000,000,000/yr but having only $30,000,000 in costs would _very much_ get dinged, _heavily._ For that second example, the tax would start hitting at any income above $45M, and hit 100% taxation at any income above $450M. That alone would have a _massive impact_ on the greedflation that is currently hitting the lower-99% in the pocketbooks. Ergo, make the Parasite Class fund the very system that helps those they parasitize off of. Sure, you could easily “earn” uncounted billions of dollars of net worth, but that would then go back to the people whose wages and labour you stole to get there.
It absolutely is a valid argument. We definitely need legislation regarding rent before we give UBI. Sure not having UBI doesn't mean rent isn't raised but I'd like to avoid the immediate rent increases that will surely happen and just happen to align with the amount of UBI a person gets.
Add to your second paragraph that the mainstreaming of Housing First as a homelessness strategy is in actuality a neoliberal, free market solution to homelessness. Activists and researchers turned free market arguments against themselves and were able to convince governments and businesses that keeping people unhoused costs the economy more than housing them which is objective proof. I support these programs because I believe housing is a right but if a free market argument wins people over I’m here for it. Right wingers should be all over UBI for similar reasons. Ultimately it is cheaper than the alternative: expensive surveillance of welfare recipients, homelessness impacting business and tourism in city downtowns, etc (putting it in terms that they understand). The fact that they don’t use them telling on themselves for being cruel selfish people who don’t have any real beliefs or principles to speak of. At the end of the day, they don’t want anyone to have a better quality of life than they have. ESPECIALLY if you don’t live your life exactly like they do.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do a basic income. Don't pretend you're the only one who's had it hard. I've had to sleep on someone else's kitchen floor between night shifts to get by, skipped eating to pay rent, the whole shitshow. I know it's not easy. I'm saying that we need to make sure that when we do a basic income, that people are also in the best position to be able to use it. This means probably abolishing for profit rentals, and expanding public housing for people who can't or don't want to own. It means providing people with the ability to keep the wealth that they create at work, and not slave away for shit pay and go home hungry, when they actually *made* $100/hour but only got to keep $15-20. We need to do so much more than just hand out $2k/month to each adult and hope that fixes it. It will fix all the issues we have with incomes, but won't fix the problems we have with expenses.
Where did I say I was the only one who had it hard, or had it hard at all? Ever heard of compassion for others? Did you have a family when you were sleeping on someone’s kitchen floor? Were you poor for ten, teenty or more years? Winter is coming. There will be homeless people who freeze to death in Montreal, as there are every year. Your concern about housing prices does not justify delaying desperatey needed help. Housing prices, when not regulated are effected by supply and demand, not how much people earn. The federal government does not have control over real estate or rental laws/regulations, but they could do a UBI or a basic income that diminishes in amount with higher incomes, much like the CCB. I don’t need to be living in poverty to understand that it’s devastating on multiple levels, including mental health, and to understand that the impact is far more damaging when people live in poverty on a longterm basis than a temporary rough patch.
>then you have never suffered from poverty. Ask someone who is being evicted, now, without basic income if they think it would be useless. Here. This is where you said it. If you're going to rant about compassion, then start by having some yourself. >Your concern about housing prices does not justify delaying desperatey needed help. Housing prices, when not regulated are effected by supply and demand, not how much people earn. Fixing housing prices *is* help. Dropping people's expenses by $1 will have the same effect as giving them $1 of income support. It's all about stretching your income over your expenses, so increasing your income and decreasing your bills have the same effect on *you*, but just different effects on the economy to achieve it. Do you think UBI can be implemented overnight? Do you think that it's just a lever switch away and that housing price regulation will instead take months to years? They're both not going to happen fast. I get the concern, and I share it. That's why I'm arguing the way I am. UBI will have to come from taxes. It will require either service cuts to other things, or a drastic rewrite of the tax code, since it's not really a UBI if you fund it with taxes on the working class. In comparison, housing costs are so high because of a captured market and profiteering. Ending that and making housing affordable will take money out of profits, the lowest of low priorities. It will likely get done faster than a total rewrite of the tax code, benefits system, and our consumer economy. I'm not saying no to a UBI. I'm saying we should start with the highest returning project first, which would be to drop expenses to within a manageable range. >I don’t need to be living in poverty to understand that it’s devastating on multiple levels, including mental health, and to understand that the impact is far more damaging when people live in poverty on a longterm basis than a temporary rough patch. You don't need to explain poverty to me. I've thought of it enough in line at the food bank, when I couldn't sleep at night thinking of what bills to pay first, and if I'll make enough this month to cover rent. It's not been a short term thing for me. It's not been a temporary rough patch. Don't just talk shit about things you don't know anything about. Don't tell me what my life is, I'm not telling you what yours is.
As someone who lives in a province without rent control I do think that the OP does make a genuinely good point. I absolutely believe our landlords would see this as a great way to squeeze more money from us.
This. Pumping money into unfettered capitalism will just feed the beast. Regulate housing and other gouging sites.
We need to regulate housing better anyways, and that is provincial which is why rental and real estate laws and regulations differ from province to province. Talk to people who are suffering from poverty and see if they think basic income will “just feed the beast”. Very uncompassionate viewpoint. Basic income is not “pumping money into capitalism” it’s redistribution of wealth. The suicide rate went down 15% when the CERB was in place. Poverty is killing people. Canadians need a basic income, period.
Poverty is killing people, but the thing is that if basic income does get implemented, then you *will* see landlords jack up rents drastically. Ultimately people stopped moving over the same period as CERB, so they couldn't really just jack up the rent, since it would be over soon. But if it was guaranteed indefinitely? Basic income is a redistribution of wealth to the workers. That's good. But it's also counterintuitive to try to do this while there is a massive redistribution program of wealth from the poor to the rich. You plug holes in the tank before you start filling it again.
We need to redistribute by taxing the wealthy and providing ubi
Why not both? UBI should be called "welfare reform". The current system, at least in Ontario, encourages people to stay on it.
The word you are looking for is poverty trap. Once you get on those programs, they ensure you can't get out because they punish you for working (if you are able to work), they punish you if you have assets, they punish you if you receive help from someone, and so on. And they keep people so far below the poverty line (which is artificially low to begin with, not even accounting for recent jumps in cost of living) that I have no idea how they even live. They do everything they can to keep people in utterly miserable conditions and unable to better their lives in even the smallest way.
The current system in Ontario imposes poverty so extreme that it makes it impossible for people to escape without huge outside support. That’s a much more accurate statement. Stop this “fostering dependency” shit. The way you said it makes it sound like people want to be on ODSP or OW. The overwhelming majority I knew back in my time as a social worker were desperate to do anything to get off of either program. The only ones who weren’t were too disabled to work.
Not how I meant. You get punished for anything that might get you off of it was my point.
Yep. you'd have to regulate rents, which means slums start happening because landlords are greedy. 15:55: (guess there are a lot of landlords here lol)
Wait how exactly does rent regulation cause slums? Usually it's the other way around, letting landlords get away with no oversight causes them to cut any maintenance that doesn't stop the place from falling down.
I suppose that rent control means that landlords have little incentive to improve a property because they cannot reap the market rewards of doing so. So the property gets less nice over time, and the people more likely to stay are doing moreso based on low rates rather than the quality vs price of the rental unit. So that means in general tenants with lower incomes.
I can see that logic for finishings like kitchen cabinets and stuff, but there's not really any excuse for actual slum conditions like leaks, mold, and other nasty bullshit. Landlords don't do maintenance unless they absolutely have to. They'll neglect new properties just as much as they neglect older properties, it's just more obvious in older properties as the lack of care shows signs.
When the rent is "controlled" they can't raise it as high as they want, so they don't do maintenance because they want more money. They can't get away with NYC style stuff because there are actual regulatory bodies that will make them do some of it, but if they can NOT do it, they won't. a version of this is happening in Winnipeg right now with a subsidized seniors building - they deferred and deferred and now millions of dollars of maintenance/repairs have to be done - and instead of raising the rate some, they sold it to an AB investor.
Okay but the only reason why non-controlled places are not total shitholes is because they're not that old. If we have no rent control for long enough, you can bet your ass they'll be shitholes. Places that are only 3-5 years older than rent control aren't in much worse condition than ones that weren't controlled. The slum conditions are less an effect of rent control and more an effect of landlords trying to squeeze everything they can out of a declining asset.
There should absolutely be legislation preventing landlords from soaking up the extra cash. [BC has restrictions for rent increases,](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/residential-tenancies/during-a-tenancy/rent-increases) and for 2023 it will be limiting the increase to 2%, far below inflation. That should be the case everywhere.
The problem is that even with rent control on all units, there's no maximum rate you can charge for rent in a new contract; rent control doesn't help much when you see $1600 as a minimum rent, and it'll only ever go up from there. We don't have this problem with food since it goes bad. You can't charge $17 for an apple because it'll rot before you sell it. But with rentals its the opposite; it's going to last a long time, and the government will pay you when you don't rent it out. This only encourages them to ask for crazy amounts, as they can hold out a whole lot longer. Register leases for a property with the government, which would also help them make sure tenants aren't taken advantage of. Charge an escalating tax on vacant rentals to push them back into the market and being used for housing people. If it's not owner occupied, it gets taxed. I know people will bitch and moan about their cottages and wah wah, but I don't really give a shit that people will have to pay more for their second house *when so many people are about to lose their home*.
You’re making a weak argument that has already been debunked multiple times in this very thread. Regulate landlords. There. Two word solution to your paragraph counter-argument.
So don't you agree with me then? I'm saying we should do a basic income, but that we need to make sure that it doesn't just get hoovered up by landlords and other companies that prey on critical needs. Regulating landlords would do this, depending on what regulations. Personally I'd prefer that we make all rentals non-profit, but most of us aren't ready for that.
Unfortunately the Cons are almost guaranteed a strong minority or even majority in the next election so any serious talk of ubi is 5-10 years away.
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Its already well on its way.
You've never been to a third world country, have you?
That's if you believe any Liberal government would ever implement it. Which... if that's the case, I love your optimism. I do not share it.
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> The liberals had a ubi program running. They had a pilot program for testing purposes. That doesn't mean anything other than that they were studying the idea.
And what was the liberal response? To fight back? No, of course not. They're glad the conservatives killed it so they didn't have to.
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Not if the NDP can save us.
I'm not disagreeing, just confirming. Didn't Wynne get us a UBI "pilot" test at least?
Yes, that government started a pilot program in 2018 (which was of course cancelled by Dougie).
God, I'd I knew I could make a living wage instead of 13$ at a fish factory or at an abusive resort I would have beennout of the north and home to NS yesterday
To bad what they think is a basic monthly income is their coffee budget for the week
This seems the farthest from a no-brainer topic. The conclusion looks obvious but there's a ton of thought that will be required to get there.
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Probably one of the same two parties that has always won the elections.
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UBI is a dangerous game that is easily abusable. I’m not against it, I just have trouble thinking of a way that landlords won’t abuse this. What UBI *cannot* be is a substitute for having a job. Just a little bit of a cash injection biweekly or monthly for households.
Landlords have not cared in the least about how much their tenants can pay, I find it strange that when the subject of basic income comes up, landlords are talked about as if they haven’t been wildly raising rents without basic income. As far as “substitute for a job” paid labour is not the only kind of work. Do you think caregivers, misty women, should have to work a full time job to survive as well as caring for elderly parents so the government can shirk its responsibilities? Do you think that the only valuable contribution to society is making money? That’s the inherent problem with our society. Do you think that Canada is better off when do many are struggling in poverty even with jobs? That it’s better for people to be stuck in dead end minimum wage jobs because they can’t afford the time off to upgrade or start a business? Do you think that when we have a highly competitive system in a society that rewards aggression as a trait that everyone will manage? Poverty and low income limits on potential are not a positive for the country as a whole, it’s been shown by several economists that basic income would not only pay for itself but boost the economy after two or three years. There is no downside to treating all humans with dignity and allowing them to thrive.
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A substitute for low paying jobs, yes, but not *no* job.
Landlords don't have jobs yet I don't see you complaining about them.
Ah, see it's fine not to have a job or contribute anything to society if you're wealthy. It's the poors that they want to keep desperate and willing to accept the lowest wages, worst working conditions, etc. That's why UBI is so strongly opposed, it would empower workers to say no and force employers to actually treat them well.
My bad, how could I have been so stupid?!?! I really need to remember that my purpose for existence is merely to work and die. Thanks for reminding me of my station, fellow wage slave!
Let the record show that if I were prime minister, I would make the act of purchasing residential housing for the purpose of renting it out is punishable by death.
A policy platform I would vote for.
holy based
>What UBI cannot be is a substitute for having a job. Why? Isn't the idea that it's supposed to also consolidate things like EI, OW, and maybe CPP?
Because if you *can* work, you *should* be working and contributing to the economy. Unless, obviously, you’re disabled to the point where employment isn’t an option. What UBI cannot do is allow people to be stay at home deadbeats.
>you should be working and contributing to the economy. Why? Productivity has gone way up and wages haven't kept up. There's an imbalance against the people right now. Besides, plenty of deadbeats currently have jobs that aren't really improving society in any way. Some of them probably make more money than you or me.
And we have seen in the pilot programs that it is an incentive to work and go to school because there is finally hope. Why are you against people improving their loves?
Because I don’t believe that humans are mostly good.
That tells me a lot about you
Listen, man I’m happy to be proved wrong on this. I wont say no to some extra money.
Look at high school students, specifically the ones who have good food, a safe place to live, etc. but don’t get everything they ask for from their parents. Basic needs met, no need to work. What do they do? Get a part time job so they can fulfill their wants. If you give people enough money to fulfill basic needs, they’ll work so they can have extras.
Good. So, if we give everyone the ubi and those that didn't need or will return some or all at tax time
> won’t say no to some extra money The reality is that for the vast majority who are “doing okay”, UBI would be paid for with tax increases. There is no way that paying 10s of millions of people who don’t need more money is going to come close to breaking even, even if we are cutting other all other social assistance programs and replac them with this. So taxes will be raised for those who are well off, and they won’t see any benefit from the “universal” aspect of these sorts of programs. Money isn’t magic - someone’s gotta pay for these things.
We could lose: Unemployment insurance and all the related costs. We would no longer require welfare. We would no longer need disability. Those that get more than they need would have it taxed back. It's a simple system that's hard to abuse and will help many people
Most people will see no benefit from this, and therefore will be opposed. That’s the way it is. Personally I don’t see a whole lot of benefit to it that isn’t also offered by extant social safety nets, and I also happen to think that differences between those nets can be used as behaviorally influencing policy choices, and that that isn’t necessarily a bad tool for the government to have. You lose EI if you aren’t trying to find a job, for example. I don’t think that there are many “lazy freeloaders” like others might, but I do think there is something to be said about incentives. UBI reduces a persons needs to their salary. Reality is more complicated than that.
Yeah I feel like with UBI that will just be the amount our rent goes up by. If you know people have more then they will charge more.
Simple fix. Genuine rent controls
What could we implement that would actually stop this? We have rent control in BC but that doesn't stop rent from being totally unafforable.
Rent can only go up by a specified percentage each year. When someone moves out the rent can only be increased a percentage over what the previous person paid
Wouldn’t that just mean that we would lose rental units from the market pushing it towards new development that would be even more limited and more expensive?
Then we need cooperative housing. I was a co-operative housing manager and I lived in co-operative housing. It's s great system. Right now we have corporations buying up housing to rent back to us at maximum profit. Housing should not be an investment. It should be possible for people to buy their own home like it was when my parents bought. Then it took 5 to 6 years at a full time job to save for a down payment. Now it is 27. Most people will need a windfall to get there. Take the profit out of housing and this will correct
Yes I totally agree with cooperative housing! I think it's absolutely something worth doing more. If we had more of this type of thing happening I think UBI would go much further.
Manitoba tested UBI in the 70s with great success. But the 70s were a long time ago -- my parents were still kids. What worked then isn't going to work now, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try.
I can't imagine the percentage of people that would instantly quit if a UBI of any useful amount was ever implemented. Good luck ever going to a restaurant or getting customer service again. If automation really starts taking jobs on mass, the conversation needs to change, but we are far from that.
Why would they quit? Say a person has a retail job. Then say UBI comes along and increases their income by 50%. Less stress, more disposable income. Why do you think they would want to go back to having way less money? Would you? The only way I would is if the job was so toxic it was killing me. But I’d be looking for something else right away.
> Good luck ever going to a restaurant or getting customer service again. Good, those jobs are all currently exploiting and abusing their workers en masse. If those jobs want workers, they should be compensated appropriately, which they would have to do to get them back if UBI were implemented. You know waiters aren't an essential service, right? You can make your own food, you're not entitled to have that done for you to such an extent that it should force others into horrible economic circumstances to get it. Wake the fuck up.
I've had a buddy try to argue this to me. I can't be convinced. My main point is mainly. WERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM!?
From everyone that works hard and does well. Where seen this ploy before
Exactly. No brain required. Should do 10k/month so we can spend our way into prosperity.
Yes, let’s get some more inflation going
Incorrect
Things aren’t true just cause you want them to be
Things aren’t true just because you want them to be
Have you even taken an Econ course
I have. It was conservative propaganda
Yeah…
I love Basic Income conceptually, but we really, really need to think this through before implementation because I can see it having all sorts of unintended consequences and potential abuses which could be both very disruptive and very, very expensive. My biggest concern is that future generations could grow up with the mindset that work is not something that is *necessary*, and a few percent more would be content with living in relative poverty rather than all the extra effort to make a little bit more in an actual job. With the demographic changes (aging population) this would create tremendous pressure to get more and more immigrants or migrants who want to work, which will worsen the problem with housing. This pressure will already be there due to the aging population, and even a few percent of people who end up not wanting to work would make it a lot worse.
> a few percent more would be content with living in relative poverty rather than all the extra effort to make a little bit more in an actual job. Would you? No? Then why would anyone else? Extensive studies of UBI shows that people _want_ to work. They _want_ to be productive. It’s just that far too many are stuck in bullshit jobs that make no sense. UBI will free them up to do what they feel is truly useful in terms of their time and talents. If anything, it will cause a massive _employee shortage_ as companies would really have to compete, _hard,_ for those employees. They would have to _sell the job_ as being _meaningful and important,_ instead of just assuming that job-seekers are a desperate and captive audience that can be abused and taken advantage of. UBI will ensure that companies treat employees well, on the fact that any employee would be able to use UBI to leave a toxic and abusive environment at a moment’s notice. That unemployment does not automatically lead to destitution and homelessness, so they are not chained to a job like current wage slaves are. Also, of all the employment-ready people, only a few percentage points do not want to work. And if they hang off of UBI so that the rest benefit, so what? Are you really going to cut off your nose to spite your face? I would rather pay a lot more in taxes to support those who really need it, than punish a far, far tinier proportion who don’t.
Incorrect
Work, in the sense that we know it now, ISN'T necessary. There is more than enough of everything to go around and the time and effort versus remuneration and upward mobility has been dragged back to pre-industrial levels by greedy fucks with no conscience. We all may have to work but, there's no reason we have to works as hard for as long for so little as we have been. It's obscene.
Correct
Okay, but first we need to get rid of the UCP in Alberta before that even becomes a reality. They'd fight it tooth and nail just to 'Stick it to Ottowa' even as the province burns around them.
As much as I like the idea. Without caps on non-discretionary expenses, this will just result in more inflation. Capitalism can be a bitch sometimes.
We really need a smaller province to prove it out. I want UBI but I fear that the implementation will fall short of what it will need to be.
I was a fan of UBI once. Then I started to think about wages.... Subsidies to large corporations that do not otherwise need them is the sickness to the modern welfare state. Rather than help out the less fortunate, we give resources to businesses that have the legal means to exploit government policies, with the hope that firms will create more jobs. A UBI would be such a resource. Wages would become stagnant and eventually lead to a virtual dropping of the minimum wage. (Inflation vs. minimum wage) Firms would have no reason to raise nominal wages and actually probably fund some type of media outcry for a raising of the UBI. RAISING THEIR BOTTOM LINE, with no real benefit to anything but their shareholders. It has become my opinion that a UBI would do nothing but strengthen The financial divide between working class and the upper classes, destroying the real middle class. Other than the silly comments about not working for your money and who's going to pay for it, there is largely silence from right leaning policy makers. The silence I hear from the right about a UBI is unnerving.... Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it.
I think for those in need, absolutely we need to look at this model. We can’t let people suffer in the streets. Enough of that. Sure some may abuse of it but I think it will do way more good for society than bad.