A Canadian province is about to start trialling universal basic income

satanboy said:
Tell us how many heads of state in the world have a PhD in macroeconomics with 40 years experience?
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I exaggerate, but I'm trying to emphasise how important it is to have in depth knowledge of economics which is rather complicated than to bleat communism and socialism to please the masses even though the leaders don't understand a thing about them.

Take for example our supposed communism loving ANC members who love fulfilling their capitalistic needs.
 
As usual mybroadband is full of people who only care about "Me, myself and I" and wanting to make sure that the exploiters would suffer and the people who may need it, well who cares about them because its not you right ?
 
CataclysmZA said:
A family friend of ours is a registered nurse in Canada working at a retirement home, and earns more in a single day than I'd do in a week, yet she stays with her parents in order to keep up with debt repayments regardless. It's really crazy.
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Hence a better solution may be to look at ways to cut costs instead of handing out free money that, surprise surprise, will guarantee there is no downward pressure on prices given that more people can now "afford" things.

Mind boggling how some politicians expect that handing out free money will yield anything other than more fat in the system, you don't grow an economy by throwing free money at people, you only inflate, or help to support, bubbles.
 
KinsZA said:
As usual mybroadband is full of people who only care about "Me, myself and I" and wanting to make sure that the exploiters would suffer and the people who may need it, well who cares about them because its not you right ?
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This isn't about people who need it, it will be given to EVERYONE, whether they need it or not. Read the article.

Which is basically a long-winded way of the Canadian/Ontario government admitting they taxed people too much and are giving some of it back.
 
mintydroid said:
I exaggerate, but I'm trying to emphasise how important it is to have in depth knowledge of economics which is rather complicated than to bleat communism and socialism to please the masses even though the leaders don't understand a thing about them.

Take for example our supposed communism loving ANC members who love fulfilling their capitalistic needs.
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Generally a decent idea that those who make policies be qualified to understand them fully, but a PhD from where is what I'd ask when it comes to economics? The last three Federal Reserve chairs had/have economics PhD's ... and all it got them was the biggest credit bubble the world has ever seen, no thanks!
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
Hence a better solution may be to look at ways to cut costs instead of handing out free money that, surprise surprise, will guarantee there is no downward pressure on prices given that more people can now "afford" things.
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But where do you start, and how do you cut down things so that living standards improve? Everything's getting more expensive and Canada is a service-based economy, cutting costs isn't possible because the previous administration worked things to its favour to make oil investments instead of trying to diversify their economy and focus more on exports. I don't envy their current administration one bit, because they have a massive task on their hands now.
 
KinsZA said:
As usual mybroadband is full of people who only care about "Me, myself and I" and wanting to make sure that the exploiters would suffer and the people who may need it, well who cares about them because its not you right ?
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Nobody is saying don't give to the poor. Offer it as a subsidy, tax deduction, food vouchers or something else.

Giving people free money is never the solution. Even a no cost education centre for upskilling the poor would work. It's win win for everyone. The current situation will introduce malaise in general society and whack the economy risking jobs.

Use the money to diversify the economy, as someone mentioned that there was a lack off.
 
KinsZA said:
As usual mybroadband is full of people who only care about "Me, myself and I" and wanting to make sure that the exploiters would suffer and the people who may need it, well who cares about them because its not you right ?
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It's lovely, but just like France's 75% tax on the wealthy ended up chasing away high earners, and had to be abandoned, this left wing kind of thinking is, as always, flawed. If they can pull it off, then great, but what's more likely to happen is every lazy, unemployed or struggling person is going to make their way to Ontario, putting a huge strain on the system, while the people who have to fund it are going to get tired of paying for everyone else, and either leave, work less, or start rebelling.
There's a difference between thinking of everyone else, and living life with your head in the clouds.
 
mintydroid said:
Normally ends in the workers getting lazy.
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Here's evidence that they don't.

Okay, it's affordable... but wouldn't people stop working?

We studied this question in the 1970s here in the United States, back when Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) was a goal of President Nixon and the House even successfully passed a bill for it. The findings from the accompanying large-scale experiments done in cities like Seattle and Denver found that surprisingly, hardly anyone actually stopped working, and instead reduced their hours slightly, with men reducing their hours the least -- by a maximum of 8%. This slight reduction in hours was then replicated to even less of a degree in Canada's Minimum Income (Mincome) experiment, with men choosing to work as little as 1% fewer hours.
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And...

Basic Income Grants Alleviate Poverty in Namibia

The village of Otjivero-Omitara was chosen for the pilot program because it was a typical Namibian village, beset by poverty, AIDS, alcoholism, and crime. The results after one year of implementation have been remarkable. Before the pilot program, 42 percent of children in the village were malnourished. Now the proportion of malnourished children has dropped significantly, to 10 percent.

The village school reported higher attendance rates and that the children were better fed and more attentive. Police statistics showed a 36.5 percent drop in crime since the introduction of the grants. Poverty rates declined from 86 percent to 68 percent (97 percent to 43 percent when controlled for migration). Unemployment dropped as well, from 60 percent to 45 percent, and there was a 29 percent increase in average earned income, excluding the basic income grant. These results indicate that basic income grants can not only alleviate poverty in purely economic terms, but may also jolt the poor out of the poverty cycle, helping them find work, start their own businesses, and attend school.
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Do you have evidence that a universal basic income will do you what you say it will?
 
On a recent flight out of Dallas I sat next to a cloud/mobile/software business owner and entrepreneur from Asia. He had a year earlier launched his business in the USA, and it was "explodingly successful" he said.

I asked him when he plans to take his obviously successful business to Europe, and he said "Never". Why? "Because Europeans don't like to work. They're soft, with a sense of entitlement, and that will kill any business."

This is what Ontario's loopy plan will do. It'll infect the entire nation with "rich kids' syndrome", sap drive and vitality, kill effort and hard work. Without those, no society can survive long.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
 
KinsZA said:
As usual mybroadband is full of people who only care about "Me, myself and I" and wanting to make sure that the exploiters would suffer and the people who may need it, well who cares about them because its not you right ?
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I'm not in the business of giving to the poor, I'm in the business of helping myself. If more people start helping themselves and not waiting for free handouts far more will get done.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
Do you have evidence that a universal basic income will do you what you say it will?
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Speenhamland system, which was implemented in England 1795 and dismantled in 1834

Under the Speenhamland Law, a man was relieved even if he was in employment, as long as his wages amounted to less than the family income granted to him by the scale. Hence no laborer had any financial interest in satisfying his employer….Within a few years, the productivity of labor declined to pauper level, thus providing an added reason for employers not to raise wages above the scale.

www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the...-the-speenhamland-system.html#comment-2390120
 
Chris said:
Will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Probably take a couple of years to see the effect of the policy.
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Will have an inflationary effect, I figure. And will that inflation be restricted to the test area? Not, I think.
 
mintydroid said:
Speenhamland system, which was implemented in England 1795 and dismantled in 1834

Under the Speenhamland Law, a man was relieved even if he was in employment, as long as his wages amounted to less than the family income granted to him by the scale. Hence no laborer had any financial interest in satisfying his employer….Within a few years, the productivity of labor declined to pauper level, thus providing an added reason for employers not to raise wages above the scale.

www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/the...-the-speenhamland-system.html#comment-2390120
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That's not at all the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system

The system allowed employers, including farmers and the nascent industrialists of the town, to pay below subsistence wages, because the parish would make up the difference and keep their workers alive. So the workers' low income was unchanged and the poor rate contributors subsidised the farmers.
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Arthur said:
I asked him when he plans to take his obviously successful business to Europe, and he said "Never". Why? "Because Europeans don't like to work. They're soft, with a sense of entitlement, and that will kill any business."
.
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Let's assume this actually happened and isn't one of your famous porkies. Can you imagine anyone being stupid enough to #1 make that statement, and #2, agree with it? Are you telling me both you and he believe that there are no successful businesses in Europe, with European workers?

Guess every successful business in Europe must be staffed with immigrants then, Arthur?


Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid...
 
Randhir said:
Let's assume this actually happened and isn't one of your famous porkies. Can you imagine anyone being stupid enough to #1 make that statement, and #2, agree with it? Are you telling me both you and he believe that there are no successful businesses in Europe, with European workers?

Guess every successful business in Europe must be staffed with immigrants then, Arthur?


Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid...
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Heh, what I thought to. How convenient that he meets some anonymous uber successful Asian businessman that just so happens to share his ideology and carefully state as such with his ludicrously vague statement. :D
 
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