Let’s not conflate income and wealth. With a living wage you may not be able to accumulate wealth, but at least you will have your daily essentials covered.
My concern with a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing. So while in principle it helps some people who currently fall through the cracks of our welfare system, it also reduces the pool of people contributing to it through their taxes. Is it a net win? I don’t know.
A UBI program was implemented in a part of Ontario to study it’s impact.
Results showed that people were able to cover their basic essential needs and the vast majority were able to improve their career by finally being able to spend time getting training for better job opportunities and improve their living conditions as a whole. It also allowed them to get certain healthcare services that aren’t covered by OHIP like dental care.
It also allowed them to get certain healthcare services that aren’t covered by OHIP like dental care.
That sounds like a good reason to expand OHIP, which doesn’t require a UBI.
As for the rest, I wonder to what extent it went that way because the participants knew it was a short term experiment. Pensioners are not the epitome of productivity.
I have followed the UBI subject for the past ten or fifteen years. I used to be an advocate for it. It was precisely through reading and thinking about it that I started to question whether it really was a better alternative to our current welfare programs.
It stands to reason that if extending OAS to people over 60yo would lead to more people retiring early and stop contributing significantly to our tax base, then a UBI which essentially means extending OAS to every adult would have a similar effect, only multiplied. And with fewer workers, how do we pay for UBI and everything else?
I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement to our existing welfare programs, but that doesn’t automatically mean extending them to every healthy person is the only solution or the best one.
Are you opposed to giving everyone an equal opportunity in life?
Giving everybody a good opportunity in life doesn’t mean a UBI, and a UBI doesn’t mean giving everybody a good opportunity either. It’s a false dichotomy.
Heres a more pressing quandry. What are we going to do about the fact that Technology continues to kill more jobs than it creates, and is starting to do so at a faster rate. There isnt enough livable wage paying jobs left to allow everyone access to proper food and housing.
Edit: Also, UBI doesnt need to fulfill ALL needs, there are many luxuries and ways to better ones life and social standing that would provide enough of a carrot for enough of the population to seek ways to contribute. The flip side that people who are worried about societal contribution I have 2 points:
1: Do half of the highest paying jobs we do now contribute all that much to society? It really seems nowasays that the highest paying jobs include the highest levels of exploitation
2: If people are freed from being forced to work to pay their bills, more people would ve free to volunteer, our society is so work heavy its incredibly hard to convince oneself to donate what little time one has left afterwards to a volunteer organization
What are we going to do about the fact that Technology continues to kill more jobs than it creates, and is starting to do so at a faster rate.
Yeah, that is a big deal.
There isnt enough livable wage paying jobs left to allow everyone access to proper food and housing.
For starters I think that minimum wages are too low in North America. Anybody working full time should be able to afford a place to live without roommates. Housing cannot be an investment vehicle if we want it to be affordable.
If people are freed from being forced to work to pay their bills, more people would ve free to volunteer
Some pensioners do some volunteering, but on average the amount they contribute to society is a small fraction of what they did when they were working full time. Society needs enough full time workers to fund the ongoing cost of a first-world nation.
Ah wait hold on. You’re taking about UBI applying only to retired people?
I’m talking about it applying to everyone that’s independent. Whether it’s a 16 year old that is emancipated because they can’t live with their parents for whatever reason, anyone over 18, or even retired people.
a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing
Is it better for people to be in constant fear of poverty while being maximally productive or for people to choose to be less productive in a field they enjoy while being supported by taxes extracted from corporations and the ultra-rich?
Is it better for people to be in constant fear of poverty while being maximally productive or for people to choose to be less productive in a field they enjoy while being supported by taxes extracted from corporations and the ultra-rich?
If you were super rich and your taxes increased dramatically, what would you do? If you were a corporation and your taxes increased dramatically, what would you do? And where would this all lead? The real world doesn’t always work the way we would like it to.
My concern with a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing.
Every study I’ve heard of shows that is not what happens except in very narrow situations. For example, the study run in Dauphin, MB found that teenagers were less likely to work or to work less, but that was because they were choosing to focus on their schooling and, in some cases, actually stay in school. IIRC, there were also people who chose to stay at home with young children or care for infirm relatives rather than find other care options so they could go to low wage, “low skill” jobs. Those outcomes seem positive given the results of other studies regarding education and family care.
There is a general problem in mass psychology where people sitting around a table or in their armchairs try to imagine the impact of a policy without conducting a study or looking at historical results.
There is a general problem in mass psychology where people sitting around a table or in their armchairs try to imagine the impact of a policy without conducting a study or looking at historical results.
Let me present some more historical results: retirees. Do pensioners contribute more or less to society than before they retired? Are they a net contributor or a net drag? A UBI turns everybody into a pensioner.
The two situations are not identical, but they give me pause.
This may not apply everywhere, but around here (Saskatchewan), retirees are the lifeblood of service and community organizations. From the quilting club that generates revenue for brain injury research and food banks to the senior centre that helps people age in place, retirees are a critical component of the glue that holds us together.
Even if you have a fairly narrow economic view of what it means to contribute to society, there is no question that retirees are making those contributions. While actual money is required for most things, nothing happens without people putting in time and retirees have plenty of time and aren’t shy about using it.
This is something I became aware of as my older relatives retired. Now that I’m retired myself, I’m more active than ever in the community, despite having also retired from the volunteer fire and rescue service.
Even if you have a fairly narrow economic view of what it means to contribute to society, there is no question that retirees are making those contributions
How does their volunteering compare to the forty hour weeks they used to work, on average? How specialized is the work they do compared to what they used do do, on average?
When we remove the incentive for people to do something, they do it less.
Okay, so I do less computer programming for money, but it’s still a hobby and I contribute to a few open source projects.
But here are a few things that wouldn’t get done if I were still employed:
regular classes in internet security and privacy to help keep community members safe online.
volunteering at the school to help teach students both new technologies (3D printing, robotics, environmental data collection and analysis) and old (boat building, sailing, winter survival in nature) plus tutoring in everything from music performance to math.
serving with the emergency measures organization
That’s approximately where my list ends, but fellow retirees are helping less abled people stay in their homes and communities, showing up at social justice rallies, and a myriad of other things that are important both societally and economically. If it’s judged to be less important than employment, it’s also important to note that much of it wouldn’t be societally affordable without our free labour, yet has profound impacts on quality of life.
And I disagree that removing incentives leads to less being done. External incentives, like paycheques, are probably the least effective incentives there are. Most people are motivated by passion, desire, contribution, and satisfying results.
External incentives, like paycheques, are probably the least effective incentives there are
How many times have you seen people hop to a higher paying job? And how many switched to a lower paying job?
Most people are motivated by passion, desire, contribution, and satisfying results
And yet most people quit working as soon as they have the financial means to do so. How many of them spend 40hrs/week volunteering afterwards? People pursuing some hobbies part time is not going to sustain the financial necessities of a developed nation.
A pensioner receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
A UBI recipient receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
It seems to me like a pretty similar situation. And what do most people do when they are eligible to receive a pension? They stop working. They may do a little volunteering on the side, but it’s not typically on the ballpark of what they did before.
Do early retirees act any differently? My kid’s teacher retired at 55 and she wasn’t talking of all the work she was planning to do afterwards. I know a couple other healthy early retirees and they don’t do anything productive either.
The funny thing is people in this thread are complaining that rich people contribute nothing to society, but they avoid saying that the reason rich people don’t work is because they don’t have to. We all know that if we didn’t have to work we would not do a fraction of what we do today.
If we reduce the number of people who actually work and contribute to our tax base, there will be not enough budget to fund UBI, healthcare, or anything else.
So a person who has contributed heavily to society should have no expectation to reduce their contribution, except perhaps some of the wisdom they accrued over the years? Work til we die, or we hold no value? I question your worldview. For what other reason have we progressed technologically except to make life easier? The only other realistic options are to increase the rate of progress or to reward some few people excessively while the rest of us work ourselves to death. Perhaps it’s time to consider the middle ground.
Really hope these comments helped you reasses this crappy take
Insulting people rarely changes their minds.
I am aware of various pilot projects and remain unconvinced. Pensioners are the closest thing we have to an UBI, and to my knowledge their contribution to society falls off a cliff once their retire. Sure, some of them may volunteer here and there but overall they contributed much more through their taxes when they were working.
So you learned nothing and refused to accept criticism as anything other than a personal attack on your character. Not even gonna address your continued crappy defense of your crappy take.
Also, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. There’s your insult.
“People with a reasonable income aren’t poor.”
Fucking weird! Are you implying poverty is caused by a lack of money? That’s very hard to believe.
Yes, and no.
You can be a millionaire and end up broke.
Some people are “poor” because they have no idea how to manage their money and live well beyond their means.
But having a livable income still matters, obviously.
Let’s not conflate income and wealth. With a living wage you may not be able to accumulate wealth, but at least you will have your daily essentials covered.
My concern with a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing. So while in principle it helps some people who currently fall through the cracks of our welfare system, it also reduces the pool of people contributing to it through their taxes. Is it a net win? I don’t know.
A UBI program was implemented in a part of Ontario to study it’s impact.
Results showed that people were able to cover their basic essential needs and the vast majority were able to improve their career by finally being able to spend time getting training for better job opportunities and improve their living conditions as a whole. It also allowed them to get certain healthcare services that aren’t covered by OHIP like dental care.
Sources:
https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/cpp.37.3.283
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment
That sounds like a good reason to expand OHIP, which doesn’t require a UBI.
As for the rest, I wonder to what extent it went that way because the participants knew it was a short term experiment. Pensioners are not the epitome of productivity.
Why are you playing devil’s advocate? Are you opposed to giving everyone an equal opportunity in life?
Have you even read the links I provided to you? At least read the article?
I have followed the UBI subject for the past ten or fifteen years. I used to be an advocate for it. It was precisely through reading and thinking about it that I started to question whether it really was a better alternative to our current welfare programs.
It stands to reason that if extending OAS to people over 60yo would lead to more people retiring early and stop contributing significantly to our tax base, then a UBI which essentially means extending OAS to every adult would have a similar effect, only multiplied. And with fewer workers, how do we pay for UBI and everything else?
I’m sure there’s plenty of room for improvement to our existing welfare programs, but that doesn’t automatically mean extending them to every healthy person is the only solution or the best one.
Giving everybody a good opportunity in life doesn’t mean a UBI, and a UBI doesn’t mean giving everybody a good opportunity either. It’s a false dichotomy.
Heres a more pressing quandry. What are we going to do about the fact that Technology continues to kill more jobs than it creates, and is starting to do so at a faster rate. There isnt enough livable wage paying jobs left to allow everyone access to proper food and housing.
Edit: Also, UBI doesnt need to fulfill ALL needs, there are many luxuries and ways to better ones life and social standing that would provide enough of a carrot for enough of the population to seek ways to contribute. The flip side that people who are worried about societal contribution I have 2 points:
1: Do half of the highest paying jobs we do now contribute all that much to society? It really seems nowasays that the highest paying jobs include the highest levels of exploitation
2: If people are freed from being forced to work to pay their bills, more people would ve free to volunteer, our society is so work heavy its incredibly hard to convince oneself to donate what little time one has left afterwards to a volunteer organization
Yeah, that is a big deal.
For starters I think that minimum wages are too low in North America. Anybody working full time should be able to afford a place to live without roommates. Housing cannot be an investment vehicle if we want it to be affordable.
Some pensioners do some volunteering, but on average the amount they contribute to society is a small fraction of what they did when they were working full time. Society needs enough full time workers to fund the ongoing cost of a first-world nation.
Ah wait hold on. You’re taking about UBI applying only to retired people?
I’m talking about it applying to everyone that’s independent. Whether it’s a 16 year old that is emancipated because they can’t live with their parents for whatever reason, anyone over 18, or even retired people.
Is it better for people to be in constant fear of poverty while being maximally productive or for people to choose to be less productive in a field they enjoy while being supported by taxes extracted from corporations and the ultra-rich?
The last chapter of ‘Bullshit Jobs’ covers it way better than I can. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs#toc52
If you were super rich and your taxes increased dramatically, what would you do? If you were a corporation and your taxes increased dramatically, what would you do? And where would this all lead? The real world doesn’t always work the way we would like it to.
Yup, guess we should all be slaves then, don’t want to upset the rich.
Every study I’ve heard of shows that is not what happens except in very narrow situations. For example, the study run in Dauphin, MB found that teenagers were less likely to work or to work less, but that was because they were choosing to focus on their schooling and, in some cases, actually stay in school. IIRC, there were also people who chose to stay at home with young children or care for infirm relatives rather than find other care options so they could go to low wage, “low skill” jobs. Those outcomes seem positive given the results of other studies regarding education and family care.
There is a general problem in mass psychology where people sitting around a table or in their armchairs try to imagine the impact of a policy without conducting a study or looking at historical results.
Let me present some more historical results: retirees. Do pensioners contribute more or less to society than before they retired? Are they a net contributor or a net drag? A UBI turns everybody into a pensioner.
The two situations are not identical, but they give me pause.
This may not apply everywhere, but around here (Saskatchewan), retirees are the lifeblood of service and community organizations. From the quilting club that generates revenue for brain injury research and food banks to the senior centre that helps people age in place, retirees are a critical component of the glue that holds us together.
Even if you have a fairly narrow economic view of what it means to contribute to society, there is no question that retirees are making those contributions. While actual money is required for most things, nothing happens without people putting in time and retirees have plenty of time and aren’t shy about using it.
This is something I became aware of as my older relatives retired. Now that I’m retired myself, I’m more active than ever in the community, despite having also retired from the volunteer fire and rescue service.
How does their volunteering compare to the forty hour weeks they used to work, on average? How specialized is the work they do compared to what they used do do, on average?
When we remove the incentive for people to do something, they do it less.
Okay, so I do less computer programming for money, but it’s still a hobby and I contribute to a few open source projects.
But here are a few things that wouldn’t get done if I were still employed:
That’s approximately where my list ends, but fellow retirees are helping less abled people stay in their homes and communities, showing up at social justice rallies, and a myriad of other things that are important both societally and economically. If it’s judged to be less important than employment, it’s also important to note that much of it wouldn’t be societally affordable without our free labour, yet has profound impacts on quality of life.
And I disagree that removing incentives leads to less being done. External incentives, like paycheques, are probably the least effective incentives there are. Most people are motivated by passion, desire, contribution, and satisfying results.
How many times have you seen people hop to a higher paying job? And how many switched to a lower paying job?
And yet most people quit working as soon as they have the financial means to do so. How many of them spend 40hrs/week volunteering afterwards? People pursuing some hobbies part time is not going to sustain the financial necessities of a developed nation.
Wait what? This is not even close to true.
A pensioner receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
A UBI recipient receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
It seems to me like a pretty similar situation. And what do most people do when they are eligible to receive a pension? They stop working. They may do a little volunteering on the side, but it’s not typically on the ballpark of what they did before.
I’d like to hear your counterpoint.
They are not 67 years old for one.
Come on, this is not a serious argument and you know it.
Do early retirees act any differently? My kid’s teacher retired at 55 and she wasn’t talking of all the work she was planning to do afterwards. I know a couple other healthy early retirees and they don’t do anything productive either.
The funny thing is people in this thread are complaining that rich people contribute nothing to society, but they avoid saying that the reason rich people don’t work is because they don’t have to. We all know that if we didn’t have to work we would not do a fraction of what we do today.
If we reduce the number of people who actually work and contribute to our tax base, there will be not enough budget to fund UBI, healthcare, or anything else.
So a person who has contributed heavily to society should have no expectation to reduce their contribution, except perhaps some of the wisdom they accrued over the years? Work til we die, or we hold no value? I question your worldview. For what other reason have we progressed technologically except to make life easier? The only other realistic options are to increase the rate of progress or to reward some few people excessively while the rest of us work ourselves to death. Perhaps it’s time to consider the middle ground.
Really hope these comments helped you reasses this crappy take. Or at least ask yourself where this concern actually came from.
Insulting people rarely changes their minds.
I am aware of various pilot projects and remain unconvinced. Pensioners are the closest thing we have to an UBI, and to my knowledge their contribution to society falls off a cliff once their retire. Sure, some of them may volunteer here and there but overall they contributed much more through their taxes when they were working.
So you learned nothing and refused to accept criticism as anything other than a personal attack on your character. Not even gonna address your continued crappy defense of your crappy take.
Also, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. There’s your insult.