A Canadian province is about to start trialling universal basic income

ponder said:
I see no dignity in handouts. Secondly there is that age old thing of supply & demand, you can choose to contribute to the economy and become part of it or you can live in lala land making dream catchers. Your reward is based on the value of your input, if your input has little value then reward is going to be proportionate.
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So, for example, what should we as a taxed-society do with the disabled and orphans who have no other support system?
 
cerebus said:
It is an interesting experiment, that's really how it should be viewed in my opinion. It might turn out to be a very bad idea, and Ontario becomes a slum of welfare mothers and yobs, but it needs to be might also be a welcome improvement to the current very broken welfare system. The conditionality of welfare is just as problematic as undirected assistance.
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My fear is that it will take much longer to generate positive change than negative. A person who channels the funds into enabling a profession or entrepreneurship is easy to miss from a metrics point of view. We have lots of systems to measure negatives....drug use, unemployment, crime etc.
 
Randhir said:
So, for example, what should we as a taxed-society do with the disabled and orphans who have no other support system?
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No one's saying don't give to charity, duh.

As we all know, charity is how the middle class was built, massive projects of poverty alleviation instituted and all social ills solved.

No government or taxes involved.
 
cerebus said:
It isn't necessarily wrong at all, nor is it really wrong for half the population to live in poverty. It might not make for the most stable and sustainable society though, or result in a very high overall standard of living.
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1% having 50% of the wealth doesn't equal 50% of the world living in poverty though. In fact, as more of the worlds wealth has been accumulated by fewer people, the average living standard has been improving. In fact it could be argued that because overall wealth is increasing, as the rich get richer the poor are also getting richer. Actually, because wealth is not finite, comparing how much money the poor have compared to the rich is meaningless. It says nothing about the living conditions of the poor.
 
Neoprod said:
My fear is that it will take much longer to generate positive change than negative. A person who channels the funds into enabling a profession or entrepreneurship is easy to miss from a metrics point of view. We have lots of systems to measure negatives....drug use, unemployment, crime etc.
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The article in the OP does talk about a lot of those metrics, which are actually quite well understood:

A study in the US also showed the health benefits of giving people 'free money' - poor children whose parents were given an extra US$4,000 each year were less likely to have behavioural and emotional disorders compared to their peers, and were also more conscientious and agreeable - traits that are linked to future success and happiness.
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And in Dauphin, the number of hours worked did decrease slightly during the five-year trial period. But instead of working so much, men actually spent more time in school, and women chose to stay longer on maternity leave, so there were still benefits to society.
What's more, when a similar system was trialled in Uganda, working hours increased by 17 percent, and average earnings increased by 38 percent.
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So far the data is quite positive about the results of a universal income.
 
Nick333 said:
1% having 50% of the wealth doesn't equal 50% of the world living in poverty though.
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I didn't say the two were equal. There isn't anything necessarily wrong about either situation. Those aren't questions that economists can really deal with.

In fact, as more of the worlds wealth has been accumulated by fewer people, the average living standard has been improving. In fact it could be argued that because overall wealth is increasing, as the rich get richer the poor are also getting richer. Actually, because wealth is not finite, comparing how much money the poor have compared to the rich is meaningless. It says nothing about the living conditions of the poor.
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There are plenty of historical precedents that disprove the correlation between improved living standards and the accumulation of wealth by a minority. The improvement of average living standards is due to a lot of factors, such as the progress of technology and universal education and healthcare.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Work_incentives_and_disincentives
While experiments have been conducted in the United States and Canada, those participating knew that their benefits were not permanent and, consequently, they were not likely to change their behaviour as much or in the same manner had the GAI been ongoing.
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There have been many of these temporary regional trials done already.

We aren't going to see the real effects of this strategy until a law is actually passed that enacts this strategy across an entire country, and it is no longer viewed as a trial.
 
Nick333 said:
1% having 50% of the wealth doesn't equal 50% of the world living in poverty though. In fact, as more of the worlds wealth has been accumulated by fewer people, the average living standard has been improving. In fact it could be argued that because overall wealth is increasing, as the rich get richer the poor are also getting richer. Actually, because wealth is not finite, comparing how much money the poor have compared to the rich is meaningless. It says nothing about the living conditions of the poor.
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The poor aren't getting richer, things are just getting cheaper and more accessible. That's not due to the 1%, that's due to the natural progression of society.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
No one's saying don't give to charity, duh.

As we all know, charity is how the middle class was built, massive projects of poverty alleviation instituted and all social ills solved.

No government or taxes involved.
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Jeez ... and there we all thought we knew it was industrialization .... one learns something new every day it seems :p
 
OrbitalDawn said:
No one's saying don't give to charity, duh.

As we all know, charity is how the middle class was built, massive projects of poverty alleviation instituted and all social ills solved.

No government or taxes involved.
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I would argue that economic expansion contributed more to poverty alleviation. The problem is that it often takes 1 extra generation to go from sweat jobs to industrialization.
 
The_Assimilator said:
The truth is simply this: most people want to work. They want to contribute, they want to give back. When you're unemployed, you can't do that.

A universal basic income gives the unemployed something vital: dignity. It gives everyone who is currently stuck in a dead-end, soul-destroying, 9-to-5 job something more important: a choice. The ability to choose to do what you're good at and what your heart says you should do. The ability to choose to give back to society in the best way that you can. Whether it's helping at a pet shelter instead of working a cash register, or carving wood instead of flipping burgers, or so many other things that will enrich humanity as a whole and bring us together again instead of dividing us along the lines of haves and have-nots, persons with jobs and un-persons without them.
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I concur.

A monthly stipend allows those who need it to purchase those extra's rather than having to go without.

For those who work, it changes the way many will view their positions, from humdrume existence of working to pay off bills to actually having just that little bit extra to pay their utilities, or rates, or transport costs, the little things that drain one over the month or the year.
Feeling one is just constantly in an uphill battle against paying money out with no reward whatsoever, wears people down, depression, anxiety, drug abuse , alcoholism etc , its all linked.
Psychologically people will change , there will be that little bit of hope where there is currently none, that extra bit of faith in government service and delivery, where this currently very little if none at all.

There are many many benefits over the long term, its a big picture, with many different facets to it.
 
cerebus said:
I didn't say the two were equal. There isn't anything necessarily wrong about either situation. Those aren't questions that economists can really deal with.



There are plenty of historical precedents that disprove the correlation between improved living standards and the accumulation of wealth by a minority. The improvement of average living standards is due to a lot of factors, such as the progress of technology and universal education and healthcare.
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I didn't say there was a correlation. In fact I would suggest that there may well be no correlation to be found when comparing the wealth of the rich and the poor.

Anyway, my interest is in finding out whether giving people free money is beneficial to society as a whole which is the only justification for doing such as far as I'm concerned. A sense of justice, parity and feeling good about ourselves is secondary.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
Like net neutrality, for the market to be free in any meaningful sense, it needs regulation to keep it that way. Counter-intuitive as it may sound at first.
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In some rare circumstances like net neutrality yes. In a lot of other circumstances such as service provision it's not true at all. The mobile voice and data industries in SA may have been far more competitive but for regulation.
 
Nick333 said:
In some rare circumstances like net neutrality yes. In a lot of other circumstances such as service provision it's not true at all. The mobile voice and data industries in SA may have been far more competitive but for regulation.
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Well, 'regulation' is not monolithic. It would certainly depend what kind of regulation we're talking about, and it can often be a constraint on a free market.

However, sans regulation you can also easily end up with a cartel situation where no competition is effectively possible, resulting in a decidedly un-free market.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
Well, 'regulation' is not monolithic. It would certainly depend what kind of regulation we're talking about, and it can often be a constraint on a free market.

However, sans regulation you can also easily end up with a cartel situation where no competition is effectively possible, resulting in a decidedly un-free market.
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Cough...DSTV. Perfect example of free market economics stifling competition...Multichoice has the biggest pocketbook so they effectively own the pay TV market.
 
Neoprod said:
Cough...DSTV. Perfect example of free market economics stifling competition...Multichoice has the biggest pocketbook so they effectively own the pay TV market.
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Lack of regulation leads to monopolies, which are self-interested and tend to be self-perpetuating.
Over-regulation may stifle competition, but also prevents monopolies from forming.

The latter is the lesser of two evils.
 
Neoprod said:
Cough...DSTV. Perfect example of free market economics stifling competition...Multichoice has the biggest pocketbook so they effectively own the pay TV market.
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Not exactly "free market" though, with a centralized regulator being the only authority that can hand out broadcasting licences that was certainly motivated back in the day to limit any competition for the SABC the situation gave MNET a significant opportunity to build over the years without direct competition until the barriers to entry just became insanely high.

If an eTV was launched at the exact same time as MNET and OpenView at the same time as DSTV for example things might look very different today, regulatory interference meant that could not happen. Similar situation exists with Telkom vs Neotel.
 
Neoprod said:
Cough...DSTV. Perfect example of free market economics stifling competition...Multichoice has the biggest pocketbook so they effectively own the pay TV market.
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Bad example. MultiChoice's monopoly was erected by the government. All competition was banned by force of law. For years. Later, once entrenched, the government 'deregulated'.
 
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