It's a crime to not have universal basic income at this point. People aren't only unable to afford basic living expenses, but they're losing jobs to automation and AI already. What are these people supposed to do? Go beg on the streets?
No, Mr Citizen, I expect you to die.
Idk, I feel like landlords would just jack prices by whatever the ubi payments are. Ubi is a good idea for sure, but it's only a piece.
Controlled rent would also be fantastic and has worked in economically diffuclt times like COVID. I don't see why it wouldn't work again during the recession we are spiralling towards.
City-owned housing works great here in Vienna. The City owns like somthing like 20% of all apartments and rents them out at basically non-profit rates. It works fantastically! It does not only offer lower rents, but it makes people realize that landlords often charge unnecessarily high prices and makes people demand better from landlords, so these lower their prices as well to compete with the city apartments.
Edit: for reference, i'm paying 500€/month (roughly $600/month) on rent and it's already a private-owned apartment. In the city apartments, the rent is even lower still.
Controlled rent is better than uncontrolled rent, but it suffers from the same problems as minimum wage. And why should landlords even exist? I'm not convinced private rentals should be legal at all. If you're not using a property for personal use or a place of business, why shouldn't it be seized and auctioned or rented publicly?
Explain to me why landlords didn't just jack rent payments in 1960s. Why did people back then have money left at the end of the month?
UBI isn't the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost ~~trillions~~ Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.
I think a better idea is a reform of taxation.
First $50,000 of income is not taxed.
$50,001-$100,000: Taxed at 15% $100,001-$500,000: Taxed at 25% $500,001-$1,000,000: Taxed at 40% $1,000,000-$10,000,000: Taxed at 50%
$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%
This would essentially create the conditions of UBI, help to increase funding for support for those who cannot work or are unable to work full time, and the rich finally get to pay their share.
These are also really rough numbers just as an example for the idea.
Edit:
For those who do not believe that UBI is unsustainable on scale:
The idea of UBI: "Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a social welfare concept that proposes providing all citizens or residents of a particular country or region with a regular, unconditional sum of money, regardless of their income, employment status, or wealth"
There are 32,708,656 Canadians as of 2024 aged 20 or older according to population estimates.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501
The 2023-2024 total revenues for Canada was $459.5 billion.
The article cites the experiment where the participants received either $16,989 CAD/year as a single person or $24,027 CAD/year. UBI is supposed to be the same payment regardless of any status, so I am going to use the single person amount for scale.
32,708,656 * $16,989 = $555,687,356,784
$555,687,356,784 - $459,500,000,000 = $96,187,356,784
Canada would need to make almost $100 billion more in revenue every year just to cover UBI, and that does not include anything else Federal revenue is used for.
UBI is not sustainable on scale, and there are better options.
Ubi is just a reform of progressive taxation so that it goes slightly negative as you get closer to zero income instead of stopping at zero percent.
Also most of the studies of ubi show it doesn’t cost all that much because it allows a reduction in expensive to administer social programs - obviously less of an effect in the USA that doesn’t have those.
In my opinion, the main appeal of UBI over other forms of support is that
That's not to say that you can't design a support system that doesn't have these issues, but with UBI, they're just trivially non-existent. No need for extra work in figuring out how to fix these problems.
I don't see how funding would be an issue unless you count the savings from letting people fall through the cracks. Shouldn't it cost the same to effectively support people in need regardless of how you distribute the money?
$10,000,001+: Taxes increase by 10% per $10,000,000 earned to a cap of 80%
You are too kind.
Because wealth hoarders would still make HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, even if you taxed 80%.
The tax rate should be 100% past a certain amount of wealth. We should de-incentivize wealth hoarding, and encourage people to retire once they've made enough to sustain their family for a lifetime. If they choose to keep working, it should basically be volunteer work after a certain point, and wealth should be redistributed back to everyone else.
If we put a hard cap on wealth, everyone would be in a position to retire young and not struggle through their entire life. This is what we should be striving for.
Canada would need to make almost $100 billion more in revenue every year just to cover UBI, and that does not include anything else Federal revenue is used for.
UBI means a net tax reduction, with clear quality of life improvements, as long as the obvious social spending programs are eliminated. The higher the UBI, the more programs are obvious elimination candidates. UBI is simply tax credits offsetting tax debits. As obvious examples, the basic tax exemption means rates above the exemption need to be higher to raise the same revenue as if there were no basic exemption. When investment income gets tax breaks and no payroll taxes, employment and business income needs to be taxed higher for same revenue. Lower business income tax rate? = higher employment taxes.
UBI always costs 0. Just net credits and debits that equal 0. Drastic discretionary budget savings means net tax cuts.
If you did work in some reasonable proportion of married couples, it might get close to break even. Then remember that CPP, OAS and EI all disappear, and whatever funds they have would contribute to UBI. CPP at max draw by itself is almost as much UBI.
Then, for people that also have some other form of income, some quantity of the UBI would be taxed back.
I'm not saying that it really does scale up, but your analysis is overly simplistic.
Every study of UBI has been overwhelmingly positive also every study of UBI has ended without enacting UBI. They will continue to study it until they get the answer they want.
Until it is peer reviewed and points out the glaring errors, which will promptly be ignored.
Why don't you stop and smell the roses?
Jumping to such a conclusion, then blaming the hypothetical reaction, displays ignorance or malice.
I’m pretty sure they meant that “the result they want” (“UBI is bad”) would be peer reviewed and shown to be bunk, but the people who wanted that result will ignore the peer review results.
They weren’t disagreeing with the original comment, just adding to it.
You are correct, this is what I was going for.
If so, then my reaction was ignorant and I retract it :)
I probably should have made it more clear that that is what I was going for.
Tax the rich > fund the working class and social services > economic boom. We Know.
But! Maybe we could not tax the rich and the money would trickle down, have you thought of that?
This calls for another study!
Funny how people hoarding all the money and preventing it from getting back into the economy are choking out the economy and crippling the country.
Who knew parasites did this to their hosts?
TL;DR - The document discusses the results of a universal basic income (UBI) trial in Canada, which was conducted in Southern Ontario between 2017 and 2019. The trial, which was cancelled prematurely, showed that participants experienced improvements in mental health, housing stability, and social relationships, as well as reduced visits to hospitals and doctors. The UBI payments, which were designed to reduce poverty and encourage work, were found to have a positive impact on participants' physical and mental well-being, with many reporting decreased use of alcohol and tobacco. The trial also dispelled concerns that UBI would lead to unemployment, with only 17% of participants leaving their jobs and nearly half of those who stopped working returning to school or university to up-skill. The report suggests that UBI could be a useful public health strategy and that the safety net provided by the UBI project helped participants find better jobs with higher wages and improved working conditions. [AI Summary]
To be real about it. Who is going to say it was bad receiving extra money a month? I understand the health data portion. Question remains is it sustainable and how would it be paid for?
I'd be happy to receive money every months that I payback in full on my tax deductions. If I suddenly stop working, the check just keep coming in. It becomes a safety net available to all, that doesn't mean you are actually giving it to all, all the time. You can get rid of other program that become redundant. Welfare, employment insurance, hell student loans too could be splified this way.
...the ~~check~~ cheque just keep coming in.
I would rather see socialized housing, food, and (better) medical coverage than UBI. UBI could (maybe) cause the prices of essentials like housing to increase.
What's going on Canada?
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
🏙️ Cities / Local Communities
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
🏒 Sports
Hockey
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
💻 Schools / Universities
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales
🗣️ Politics
🍁 Social / Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca