A Canadian province is about to start trialling universal basic income

[falcon786]

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.

I look at Germans and think how naive and stupid that Asian guy was because that sounds nothing like any German I've ever met lol but then again I also realize how easy it is to get rich in America if somebody that believes rubbish like that can have an exploding business there.

 

[mintydroid]

I see a similar Universal Basic Income is being proposed by New Zealand amongst others.

It will be a very interesting model for economists to study in practice.

 

[Nicodeamus]

This doesnt sound much different than social security.

 

[Arthur]

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...

Boy are you clouded up with ideology. You just can't see the connections.

Of course there are some successful businesses in Europe. But very considerably less than there would otherwise be were there a greater freedom to fail. How is this connected to doling out free money to citizens (ie thread topic)? That's something neither you nor the European pols who erected the fail-safe Europe can see.

But you'll get an answer from the 50 000+ young Germans in Silicon Valley, or the 500 French startups in the San Francisco Bay area alone.

Here's what you seem to miss: The same mentality and worldview that takes money from its most productive and creative and redistributes to others almost always creates a system of labour and other laws that crushes initiative, stifles entrepreneurism, disincentivises hard work, and generally spreads economic ennui. Why? Because when people become risk-averse they deteriorate.

European risk-aversion - understandable after the disastrous wars of the 20th C - now manifests itself in a buysiness environment that lags way behind the USA, China, India, Brazil, and other places for the level of entrepreneurial activity. Tough labour laws make layoffs six or seven times more expensive than in America or say China, insolvency laws harshly punish failures much longer than in freer economies, access to capital is a fraction of what a free market enables (as in USA, India, China for example), and workers are themselves more nonchalant and uncommitted because they have a 'social' large safety-net, to name just the main effects of trying to play it too safe.

The sad thing is, your fellow ideologues are now trying to do the same in America. This proposal in Canada is part of a much larger raft of 'social' policy and legislation that increasingly contaminates the New World.

 

[RanzB]

Boy are you clouded up with ideology. You just can't see the connections.
.

Or maybe you just talk nonsense repeatedly.

 

[Arthur]

Or maybe you just talk nonsense repeatedly.

Of course it's nonsense in your view. That I happily acknowledge.

 

[RanzB]

Of course it's nonsense in your view. That I happily acknowledge.

In anyone's view. Except maybe you and fictitious flight companions. It's so absurd you can't even keep the story straight from one post to the next.

 

[Arthur]

In anyone's view. Except maybe you and fictitious flight companions. It's so absurd you can't even keep the story straight from one post to the next.

No, Randhir. It's views like yours, when implemented, that stifle and crush.

Here's the Economist (key points highlighted for your convenience)

... Data show that continental Europe has a problem with creating new businesses destined for growth. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which compiles comparable data across countries, in 2010 “early-stage” entrepreneurs made up just 2.3% of Italy’s adult population, 4.2% of Germany’s, and 5.8% of France’s. European countries are below—in many cases well below—America’s 7.6%, let alone China’s 14% and Brazil’s 17%.

Few in number, European entrepreneurs are also gloomy about their prospects. A study by Ernst & Young, an accounting firm, showed last year that German, Italian and French entrepreneurs were far less confident about their country as a place for start-ups than those in America, Canada or Brazil. Very few French entrepreneurs said their country provided the best environment; 60% of Brazilians, 42% of Japanese and 70% of Canadians thought there was no place as good as home. Asked which cities have the best chance of producing the next Microsoft or Google, Ernst & Young’s businesspeople plumped for Shanghai, San Francisco and Mumbai (though, to be fair, London got a look in too).

For all this, Europe produces plenty of corner shops, hairdressers and so on. What it doesn’t produce enough of is innovative companies that grow quickly and end up big. In 2003, analysing Europe’s entrepreneurial gap, the European Commission cited a study which showed that during the 1990s, 19% of mid-sized firms in America were classified as fast-growers, compared with an average of just 4% in six European Union countries. The Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship around the world, argues convincingly that one reason America has outstripped Europe in providing new jobs is its ability to produce new, fast-growing companies such as Amazon, an online retailer, or eBay, an online auctioneer. And in terms of jobs, new small firms have an added advantage. They are less likely than existing giants to outsource a lot of their labour to cheap providers in Asia.

...

If Europe were more entrepreneurial, says everyone from the commission down, it would not have been such a poor producer of big businesses. And it would have produced more successful new technology firms. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be channelled through the tubes of the internet, but over the past few decades a great deal of it has been. That an economy so copiously provided with the technically educated as Germany’s has not produced a single globally important business-to-consumer internet company suggests a big problem with entrepreneurship.

 

[RanzB]

Haha and now you want to change the implication of your first post so that we can forget you lied. Interesting strategy, going from 'Europeans don't work hard enough', to "Europeans don't produce enough entrepreneurs". I guess those that run those crappy little corner shops and hairdressers don't work hard, only entrepreneurs do

But please, spin more.

 

[Arthur]

Oh, and then you can read what young European entrepreneurs themselves say.

I gladly acknowledge it's a minority view, perhaps even a fringe view. That's part of its virtue. Once people realise they can vote themselves other people's money, the downward spiral begins.

As I said, you just can't see how the (laudable) desire for a social safety-net actually works out into a regime of laws and controls that diminishes people. Over time the regime becomes a climate, and the climate becomes a culture.

 

[RanzB]

Oh, and then you can read what young European entrepreneurs themselves say.

Literally not one mentions fellow-Europeans not working hard enough as a reason. Not one. How's that attempt to pivot away from you imaginary Asian flight companions' view going?

I gladly acknowledge it's a minority view, perhaps even a fringe view. That's part of its virtue.

Of course it is Arthur

 

[Arthur]

Haha and now you want to change the implication of your first post so that we can forget you lied. Interesting strategy, going from 'Europeans don't work hard enough', to "Europeans don't produce enough entrepreneurs". I guess those that run those crappy little corner shops and hairdressers don't work hard, only entrepreneurs do

But please, spin more.

Catch a wake up.

That Dallas plane anecdote is emblematic of the much larger point I and others are making - a point you cannot see and still refuse to see because you wear ideological blinkers.

A random encounter on a plane, of course. But it is emblematic of a perception about European rigidity and stagnation that is unattractive to many entrepreneurs. This is something many Europeans are also saying.

 

[RanzB]

Catch a wake up.

Haha, catch an honest personality.

That Dallas plane anecdote is emblematic of the much larger point I and others are making - a point you cannot see and still refuse to see because you wear ideological blinkers.

an·ec·dote
ˈanəkˌdōt/
noun
noun: anecdote; plural noun: anecdotes

a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
"told anecdotes about his job"
synonyms: story, tale, narrative, incident; More
urban myth/legend;
informalyarn
"amusing anecdotes"
an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay.
"his wife's death has long been the subject of rumor and anecdote"
the depiction of a minor narrative incident in a painting.

I know which I'm going with.

A random encounter on a plane, of course. But it is emblematic of a perception about European rigidity and stagnation that is unattractive to many entrepreneurs. This is something many Europeans are also saying.

Can you paste the exact paragraph that shows Europeans are less prone to hard work? Or are you talking out your anus as usual?

 

[Arthur]

Literally not one mentions fellow-Europeans not working hard enough as a reason. Not one. How's that attempt to pivot away from you imaginary Asian flight companions' view going?

Of course it is Arthur

Hehe, you are a real hoot. I have the guy's business card right here on my desk.
But of course for you that's a fictitious world, because for you, Randhir, views that don't comport with yours are lies. You're in deep denial, which is why your only retort is "lies, lies".

I couldn't give a rat's ass.

 

[RanzB]

Hehe, you are a real hoot. I have the guy's business card right here on my desk..

Then please, post it.

But of course for you that's a fictitious world, because for you, Randhir, views that don't comport with yours are lies.

No Arthur, lies are lies. We've shown this before. You've been caught before. So many times. And then here comes your usual refrain "No but guys, that's just your wordview "

You're in deep denial, which is why your only retort is "lies, lies".
.

Come now, credit where it's due. I have more retorts than that.

I couldn't give a rat's ass.

Of course not. You're a pro at lying. Silly things like getting caught shouldn't stop you.

 

[Arthur]

Haha, catch an honest personality.\
I know which I'm going with.

And how studiously you ignore the first and most obvious meaning of anecdote in your very own quote!

Your pretension at omniscience is astounding! Of course you know better than I do who sat next to me in Seat 1A on Qatar Airways from Dallas to Doha on 10 Jan 2016!

 

[RanzB]

And how studiously you ignore the first and most obvious meaning of anecdote in your very own quote!

I didn't ignore it. I considered the source and chose accordingly.

Your pretension at omniscience is astounding! Of course you know better than I do who sat next to me in Seat 1A on Qatar Airways from Dallas to Doha on 10 Jan 2016!

I didn't say I knew who sat next to you. I said I call BS on your conversation. Since, you know. It's you who said it. And it sounds like a lie.

 

[Arthur]

I didn't ignore it. I considered the source and chose accordingly.



I didn't say I knew who sat next to you. I said I call BS on your conversation. Since, you know. It's you who said it. And it sounds like a lie.

I'll leave it to Providence to make that judgment, Randhir. It's an office you currently think you occupy. But I suspect you're in for a sharp surprise.

 

[RanzB]

I'll leave it to Providence to make that judgment, Randhir. It's an office you currently think you occupy. But I suspect you're in for a sharp surprise.

That's just, like, your worldview. Since of course you can't actually post any proof or pertinent links. I suspect you'll be going on about rendering to Caesar in a moment.

 

[Arthur]

OK, I'll indulge your little Thomas moment.