As an fella from that country right beneath Canada, I hope something like this works, would love to watch our neighbors in the north do something awesome while we fail to do it for decades and decades.
We legalized weed, which is cool af, but we made living otherwise impossibly prohibitively expensive.
Oh just you watch out we’re one Republican presidency away from oxygen and fresh water being a limited resource.
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Yeah I would love to see them do it. I mean hopefully it works and we can use it as a reference. If it fails, well that’s their program.
Unfortunately they will bungle this shit the same way the fucked up their healthcare and it will just be a disaster.
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I lived in the north my whole life. Never came across this situation. Is there a statistic for this?
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The part of the discussion you’re missing is that our governments have been sabotaging health care for decades in an attempt to bring back the political will needed to reestablish private health care. You Americans have had a similar experience with your public education: some of your governments are pushing for “education vouchers” rather than public schooling. Who is driving both of these pushes? As usual, you just need to follow the money.
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You know the way the funding system is designed is more-or-less destined to cause this exact effect, right? Struggling schools get less money, which leads to more struggling. The inner-city schools failing is by design.
Neat, thanks for the source. I’ll look into this more.
Small nuance compared to the title
The Senate’s national finance committee will study a bill on October 17 which would create a national framework for—but not actually implement—UBI, according to a press release
They’re considering thinking about talking about it.
Hey, any progress is progress. I’m not a fan of the liberal government right now but just the fact that they are talking about this and (hopefully) implementing some sort of structure for it is a big deal imo. I think UBI is a good idea but I would imagine implementing it successfully is going to be a very difficult task.
Is it? Count the # of people in the country, appropriate the money to cover them all + some additional % for those who slip through the cracks for x amount of years, and cut checks. Done.
But they need to discuss if those people really deserve to live.
And its looking like conservicrooks are gong to get back in soon which means all talk of this plan will die the second that happens
If Canadians are dumb enough to vote in conservicrooks after watching what happened to the USA, I wish them luck.
Im not much of a fan of liberals cuz they are corporate centrists basically, I tend to vote NDP as they align the closest to my ideology. What I do like is coalition governments that join together to opposite consevacrook policies
Just Canadian government things.
If you’re a fellow Canuck, here’s a petition to get this realised. It’s not much, but it’s something.
I’m not sure I want this to happen. I’ll read the bill, but I’m not convinced they’ll do it right. For example, UBI is supposed to replace other need-based social programs such as disability, welfare programs, government housing, etc. The entire point is that the money from those programs, which collectively have quite a lot of waste, goes into UBI so everyone can participate in society on a more fair level.
For example, I have a neighbour who is on some kind of government assistance. He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he’d get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
Yes.
This is the thing people don’t understand about a ubi.
I had a coworker who’s wife was a… Case manager? For welfare. Her whole job was determining whether or not people were lying/exaggerating about various elements of their claim.
First of all, government union paper pushers make decent money. There was an entire office full of people that covered cases in their region only.
Second, it’s a soul sucking job. Her primary assumption was that everyone was cheating and lying and she needed to minimize everyone’s payout.
UBI solves both of those things and by plugging it directly into the tax system people can be free to try to earn a better living, which studies have shown most people want when they are given a UBI.
Increased productivity, increased employment, increased entrepreneurship, increased mental health outcomes, there is literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich.
literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich
So literally no downside at all then?
Can’t eat them and tax them at the same time 😞
The housing crisis needs to be addressed separately. There is 7 times the amount of housing needed to house the homeless
There shouldn’t be homeless in Canada at all regardless the income. This Airbnb bullshit breaking cities needs to stop.
Everyone tunnel visions on airbnb, when in reality the institutional single family rental industry (SFR) is the true evil.
Both issues need fixing. The point isn’t to win the shit Olympics.
It’s not about winning, it’s about ensuring a spotlight is on the issue that is growing at an exponential rate and threatens private home ownership for majority of the population.
There is no spotlight when there’s enough humans to make it ambient. Literally no one is setting a quota on empathy here but you. There is no good excuse to be kicking the legs out from underneath others. You’re making problem solving harder than it should be.
He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he’d get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
It sounds like there’s some good and some bad that would come from that in his particular case. I don’t live in Canada and haven’t read the bill, but is the income he’d receive close to enough to afford housing? If not his current housing, then at least not slums or whatever?
The housing in Canada is a joke right now. They have homeless but there’s 7 times the amount of housing that could house them. Instead there’s a bunch of empty buildings owned by people who don’t even live in Canada hoarding housing. This should be addressed separately from this matter. Income doesn’t even matter at this point. They’ve pushed people into homelessness even people who have more than one job can’t even afford housing right now.
UBI is supposed to replace other need-based social programs such as disability, welfare programs, government housing, etc.
Not necessarily, or, better put, some programs should be replaced, others not, and the general dividing line is “do people need approximately the same amount of money for this, or not”. Blind people, for example, are always going to pay more for a basic computer setup with Braille readers and whatnot than sighted people, so such programmes shouldn’t be axed. Housing and transportation costs might differ between cities, thus the amount you get paid out in UBI for it should probably differ by residence – the difference doesn’t need to fill the whole e.g. rural/city divide, but it should take the edge off. When it comes to e.g. food though prices are probably approximately the same pretty much everywhere (at least in places with supermarkets), and everyone’s eating approximately the same amount, so everyone should get the same.
No, an UBI isn’t going to slash administrative effort to zero, ever. But it doesn’t have to. If you ask me all the people doing penny-pinching right now should be retained in the fist place, it doesn’t harm to have an excess of social workers, and those that don’t fancy that kind of work can move to the tax office and go after billionaires instead.
It doesn’t ask you any ID, even non-Canadians could sign this petition lmao.
If you have a link to a more official one, please post it, thanks.
How will I know now if Im better than someone else if they aren’t homeless or begging? /s
I wonder how UBI would affect homelessness and addiction. I imagine the mental health and housing crises would continue, but differently?
Capitalism will find a way to fuck it up
Human beings will always find a way to show they are better than everyone else.
The hexbears would be very upset about this if they could read.
Why?
Because liberals can’t beat Leninists to sustainable socialism
I have no idea what you mean by that, but okay.
Apparently any dumb post trying to dunk on hexbear will amass upvotes, no matter how nonsensical and sloppy.
I know this is just first small step but still excited to see it happening. Every wildfire needs a first spark, let’s just hope it spreads,
Every wildfire needs a first spark, let’s just hope it spreads
Still kinda too soon, didn’t have a different analogy?
Damn, sorry. It was the first thing that poped up in my head. We don’t really have wildfires here so didn’t really realize it might be sensitive phrase.
I was being more sarcastic than anything. I was just laughing to myself that wildfires was the analogy you chose.
I didn’t have any directly close to me, but boy did those smoky days mess up my allergies for months. Had one of the worst sinus infections since I had surgery years ago.
I am on ssi, which is as close as America has to a program like this, and I honestly don’t understand how people survive without the guarantee that there’s going to be money in the bank next month. I mean even if you have a job, job security is getting rare these days with all the jobs that get created being those with high turnover rates.
Walmart and Amazon are going to have to start taking people off of their hire Blacklist because they basically gone through the entire Workforce at this point.
Or at the very least drop the no felons policy, there are more legal crackdowns on those kinds of things anyway, and pretty much every human’s rights advocate worth their salt is eager to point out how punishing ex-convicts by denying the access to food, medicine, and a steady paycheck, is only going to encourage them to become better criminals, when the option ultimately boils down to rob a gas station or don’t eat.
Okay I am literally a published author, and that being a single sentence hurt me to write.
If you didn’t mention the lack of periods I wouldn’t have noticed.
Let’s go! To the future!
I’m an idiot, so please jump in here if I’m getting this wrong.
Per the article, predicted program cost is $88 billion per year. Divide by Canada’s adult population of ~33 million, so, ~$2700 per person per year, minus administrative costs and bloat, so, say $2k per year.
Well, I definitely wouldn’t turn down a cheque if I qualified for it, and I don’t want to come off as complaining about a program that doesn’t even exist yet. But, $2k doesn’t sound like an amount that any person could function on. That’s less than one month’s rent almost everywhere in this country. It’s like, a 6" subway sandwich per day. Something something middle class, I seem to remember a certain federal party saying during election time. Why not simply lower taxes in a targeted way?
In what way is this amount ‘basic’? What’s the point of embarking on this whole investigative song & dance over a few extra bucks per day? What actually is the minimum amount necessary to function as an individual in this country? I think I know why the government isn’t investigating that question.
I’m not against UBI as a concept. This $88b program, if that number is correct, seems like it’s not even worth investigating. Am I crazy?
The major problem is we need to nationalize a bunch of companies, take groceries for example. Were paying more than ever for the same stuff, workers wages are bare minimum and over working the staff as well so 1 person can get a multi million dollar wage? Let’s put that money back into the system instead of one assholes savings account in the Bahamas where it screws over the rest of Canadians
Why not just cap the prices of essential goods and services
Nationalize utilities and that problem solves itself.
Isnt this just going to lower the value of the currency aka inflation?
No. More people spending money doesn’t cause inflation.
No, when everyone gets a certain amount of money that money is valued the same as it was earned by only some individuals producing goods/service. /s
I’ve always been a big proponent of UBI. But after speaking with my communist brother recently he opened my eyes to something. If UBI get’s implemented, big corporations will just increase prices and completely/partially negate it.
What we need is a NEEDS income. We establish what are basic needs, housing, healthcare, food, etc… and make sure that all of these needs are met.
Canada’s LPC recently issued grocery stores to price their goods fairly otherwise they are going to step in and regulate.
The same could be the same with other companies.
The government would also need to put restrictions on how much companies can charge for basic needs . Food , power , rent etc.
Agreed. And start regulating and capping the prices of the needs like housing and healthcare
The fact that there are still no caps on medicine costs in America baffles me. And I am an american, do you have any idea how much a single bag of saline cost to produce? I’m not even sure it’s $5, but that won’t stop them from charging you thousands on the bill when you leave the hospital.
It’s absolutely insane what they charge. Another example is an MRI
I had an MRI done a few months back. I took probably max 30 minutes of the machine’s time. My bill was $5000. Fortunately insurance covered all but $200, but collectively it raises all of our insurance rates when a hospital charges $5000 for an hour test.
I did some math. A new MRI is 1 million to 3 million dollars. We’ll go on the upper end of 3 million.
Let’s say they do 8 MRIs a day.
They make $40,000 a day per MRI A 5 day work week they bring in $200,000/week $800,00/ month
That MRI is paid off in 4 months.
I get there’s other expenses. Rent is a few thousand a month. The techs probably made $20 a piece while I was there. There’s definitely maintenance on the machines. But come on? $5,000 for an MRI?
Let’s go a little deeper and see why the actual machines are so expensive. Are they actually that expensive or is GE, Siemens, Phillips making a huge markup?
I don’t hate capitalism like a lot on here, but I believe our needs health, education, housing, electricity needs to be highly regulated and it should not be for profit.
Also sorta unrelated but not really, but I love bringing up that Corporations should not own single family housing.
Capitalists should NEVER be put in charge of something essential for human survival
I’m so glad people are starting to see this.
In 2008 there was a first time home buyer credit announced, and suddenly overnight every house on the market went up by about 10 grand.
The market is only a measure of how much wealth can be squeezed out of the working class, and the market always goes up. If UBI became a thing, suddenly everyone has another 2 grand to spend, and everyone will want their cut.
Those prices were going to go up anyway. They’ve been doing so for years before and after that credit.
They raise prices knowing we aren’t making any more money, now imagine what they’ll do when they know everyone has a lot of extra money to spend?
But after speaking with my communist brother recently he opened my eyes to something.
I was certain this comment was satire at first, but now I’m not so sure.
How do they plan to finance this?
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The only way I can see this working is maybe with some sort of robo-tax (The more robots/AI a company uses, the higher their taxes). But right now it feels like chasing cars.
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Well if UBI is indeed a safety net, than it’s really just extended wellfare at that point. Seeing how wellfare is already a quite controversial topic. I do not see this going through political-wise. Unless there is an absolute massive wave of unemployment by the effects of automisation. Which could unify both ends of the political spectrum on this topic.
I am on your side. But I just don’t see this realistically happening (right now).
People already arguing for UBI specifically mention how taxes are already paying for them, through welfare systems.
Their argument is that it’s actually cheaper to pay people a lump sum than to go through traditional welfare services.
True, which is why this framework is doomed for failure:
“…participation in education, training or the labour market” is not required to receive UBI, and that funding for other social services are not cut.”
Other services must be cut to finance this. Pretending otherwise provides ammo to the nay-sayers.
We are currently spending the same amount of money (possibly more due to fraudulent claims) on things like AISH, EI, special credits, etc. THAT money will turn into a UBI and streamline everything through less hoops and agencies, saving taxpayers even more money.
It’s cheaper to do it this way but people slap a “welfare” tag on it and hand wave it away because I’d that stigma, much like you just did.
There have been a handful of studies done around the world already if you’re actually interested in it. Almost all of them are positive outcomes.
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It works by redistributing wealth from those who have more to those who have less.
I really, really, really hope they try it out. Maybe then when the economy is destroyed with inflation, those plebs will shut up and stop asking for it.
Though there’s always the fear that they make excuses to justify that it wasn’t “done right”. Who knows… where have I seen that before? 🤔
Imagine saying this when there was literally just a news story on Lemmy in the past day or two, about Oregon trialling a UBI dealio, with positive results. Oh and the like… piles of people who have disproven what you say a dozen times over.
Oh, yes. Go ahead and do it, you short-sighted child who believes every random link online that proves his ideology. Please go ahead, I’m begging you! Implement UBI and make my dream come true! I’m really tired of having these discussions with idiots who can’t do basic math.
When you can’t afford bread due to inflation, just remember that I’m on the other side of the world laughing my butt off.
Very creative name calling. I’m certain that gets you very far in life. Also, even if UBI was implemented, I live in one the single most expensive cities in the world so UBI still wouldn’t fix our issues. And I didn’t claim it would. I believe its a worthwhile shot, and there’s some interesting progressions happening, if you would only spend 2 seconds of your time to look at them and decide for yourself if theyre viable or not.
Also, when you’re “laughing your ass off” at people being unable to afford bread, why bother adding the conditional that UBI has to be in for that to be a thing? You can start laughing right this very second at all the people that can’t afford bread, without UBI! It matches your vibe almost 1-to-1.
You DESERVE being laughed at for voting for politicians that are dumb enough to think this might work. Just like Califrona has become a shithole and they deserve all their problems, and same for Newyork. You deserve to suffer, live in dirty allies, step on shit, be stepped on by police, and be treated like cattle, and more. You deserve every bit of it.
I do hope UBI gets implemented. I promise, you’ll become the laughing stock you deserve to be, even more. I learned not to care about your kind. I learned to only laugh. Enjoy your leftist dystopia, while I enjoy freedom and wealth from hard work.
So, you just plain stupid or only illiterate? I didn’t say I voted for ANYONE, much less politicians specifically working with UBI. The only laughing stock around for miles so far is you, from what I can tell.
I’m sure I could go on and on and on and on and on and on about how I didn’t say any of the shit you claim I did, but it’s pretty evident you would be none the wiser even if. You make a pretty good case for free healthcare though, I don’t need to be a US doctor to see how expensive your mental health coverage would be.
Of course you didn’t vote for anyone… of course none of this is “your fault”… don’t also forget to remind us of that when UBI is implemented and everything falls apart while the rich get even richer and the poor get poorer and inflation is sky-high. And never forget the classic “it wasn’t done right” afterwards to justify more destruction, after whoever implements your shitty socialistic UBI destroys whatever city that becomes California/Newyork 2.0.
I do hope you get what you wish for, and never forget. Never. I’ll be over here laughing at all your failures, you dumbass ignorant brainwashed plebs.
I’m committed to witnessing you be a trainwreck, keep going on about how I’m the one to blame in this fictional world you have manifested yourself into. Please. It’s just oh so hilarious to watch you argue with yourself. Spiral further! Spiral more spirally! It’ll be fun trust me 😉
Still waiting for the evidence that CERB caused the inflation and not global supply and demand issues. Considering most nations didn’t do their own version of CERB but still suffered inflation I think I’m going to be waiting forever.
I mean, you’re ignorant enough to fail to understand that most world debt is denominated in US dollars. You really think you understand shit about the world economy to make that statement? Do you even understand why the US dollar is called the “world reserve currency” and what the implications are? Probably not, yet you think you’re qualified to open your mouth and have a dumb opinion. Go read a book.
As suspected, I am going to be waiting forever.
You’re ignorant, stupid, and you can’t even research anything online because the best you can do is listen to your dumb commie friends who fill your head with nonsense. Take this paper and get fucked in the ass and learn to search for things online: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2022/12/22/demand-supply-imbalance-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-the-role-of-fiscal-policy/
But is this gonna change your mind? Absolutely not. You’re gonna find an excuse to question whatever information is delivered with this peer-reviewed paper, because you’re in a cult. You’re NOT ALLOWED to believe anything outside what the cult taught you. This is why discussions online is a waste of time. Because most people are just cultists.
I mean… you don’t even know how the US dollar affects other currencies… how much dumber can you get?! What the fuck do you even know in this world other than what you’re taught on mainstream media?
My last response is unchanged. Go read a book. I guess I’ll be waiting for that forever.
