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.
I got a good idea. How about mega corps actually start paying taxes?
UBI helps the most at need the most. Taxation reduction requires income.
Every successful social programme requires the proper taxation of rich bastards. That's a history thing.
If you can't figure that out, I don't need to read the rest. We do not applaud the tenor if he can't clear his throat.
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?
the lenghts people will go to keep capitalism.
$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.
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.
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]
For every dollar a participant earns through employment they lose 50 cents from their basic income payment. This means the basic income proposal would only apply to individuals earning less than 34,000 CAD ($24,380) a year, or couples earning less than 48,000 CAD ($34,420).
UNIVERSAL basic income is UNIVERSAL: It doesn't matter how much you earn.
Oh, you pulled in a billion dollars last year? Here's your check for $12,000. To save us postage, we're including it in the same envelope as your $450,000,000 tax bill.
The universality of the system is the single most important component. We convey to our government(s) our political authority. They use our political authority to provide essential services, such as roads and courts and rule of law. They charge the taxpayer for those services. UBI is how they compensate us, the shareholders of our government(s) for the use of the political authority we grant them.
UBI is not a social program. It is not charity. It is the government finally paying out dividends to its citizen-shareholders.
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.
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.
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