In my opinion, the main appeal of UBI over other forms of support is that
the absence of means testing ensures no one falls through the cracks, and
you never earn less by working harder.
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?
Unless I’ve misunderstood, what OP proposed is just increasing the tax rate of the existing system.
A progressive tax doesn’t result in earning less for working harder; it’s only the marginal income that’s taxed at the higher rate. So a worker who goes from making $50,000 to $60,0000 only pays 15% tax on $10,000 and has a net take home increase of $8,500.
I’m talking about various social benefits like welfare or disability that would ideally be replaced by a UBI.
I hear a lot of stories about this but I don’t remember if they’re Canadian or not; There’s a lot of people who are on disability and are still capable of doing part time work or taking care of their kids for an hour every day for example, but they can’t because if they’re found doing anything, they lose all of their disability benefits. We want a system that allows them to do what they can and be rewarded for contributing to the best of their abilities rather than punishing them for it.
It’s the same deal with welfare. You need to hit a certain income threshold before your take-home income surpasses what you’d get through welfare. Until then, you’re putting a bunch of energy into working to make less money when you could be lounging at home and making more. This actively discourages people from bettering their lives.
The idea of UBI is a great one, and I agree with it in principle, but I have yet to run any numbers that make it viable and that is my number one issue.
I just finished an edit to my original post going into more detail with the numbers. If you have any data that can show how the money can be made so that “you never earn less by working harder” and “everyone gets an even payment” I would be really interested to see it because I have not found anything realistic.
The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That’s 20% of its annual budget. Source
The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we’re not even talking about tax reforms here.
The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That’s 20% of its annual budget. Source
The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we’re not even talking about tax reforms here.
Three points.
This is about Canada.
From my earlier post: “UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.”
You just paid for 1 month of UBI cutting the entire military budget for a year, which took 20% of the annual budget, leaving another 4 months of payment before the country has no budget left.
You keep pretending all over this thread that you would be increasing the income of everyone. You’re ignoring completely that you change the tax system so that wealthy people pay more than at present so it’s not inventing money, it’s redistributing it. You also cancel a bunch of social security programs that it replaces.
Your sums are based on false assumptions and you’re just spreading your FUD which is itself based on ignorance and fear. Stop trying to sound like you know something about it when you keep multiplying the population by the payment as if that was relevant in isolation of everything else that’s part of UBI.
If you want to sound knowledgeable, first so the reading work of learning.
But I think you don’t want to learn you just want to criticise because you don’t like the idea of money going from rich to poor.
This assumes that people wouldn’t take the same job for less pay if they were guaranteed a fixed amount that more or less made up the difference. If I work a job where I make $50,000/year, and I went to a world where I made $20,000/year UBI and $30,000/ year from my job, I could end up ahead under this scheme with the only additional cost to the economy being my possibly lowered taxes. Under this plan, raising taxes and lowering minimum wage/wage expectations means there would be at most a slight change to corporate taxes (and some jobs would have to pay more when you factor in UBI because desperation would be less of a factor for what people are willing to put up with).
So, realistically, the only cost would be whatever is required to get whoever is below the set line up to the set line, for individuals, corporations, and the government. This would also depend on people who are already making more than UBI to take a “pay cut”, and for corporations to not resist paying more taxes to balance the lower payroll costs. So it’s never really going to happen.
“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”
That has no bearing on what your income from your job is. Pretending this won’t have any impact on the value of jobs to both employers and workers can only be intentionally obtuse. That’s like saying that raising minimum wage will have an equal impact on the hourly wage of all employees.
Once again, misleading to the point of being intentional. A implies B is not the same as B implies A. Having UBI be guaranteed regardless of income is not the same as income being guaranteed regardless of UBI. So why do you keep insisting that it must? At this point I have to assume intent rather than ignorance.
I haven’t seen any numbers either for or against it, so I can’t say anything about viability. If anyone knows enough to run the numbers, I’d like to see it. The problem with the calculations you show above is that you assume the value of money doesn’t change when the world around it changes, but it does. Especially so if you make a large change like implementing UBI. We need to think about this in terms of resources. The question you should be asking is whether there’s enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyone’s basic needs.
I haven’t seen any numbers either for or against it, so I can’t say anything about viability. If anyone knows enough to run the numbers, I’d like to see it. The problem with the calculations you show above is that you assume the value of money doesn’t change when the world around it changes, but it does.
Especially so if you make a large change like implementing UBI. We need to think about this in terms of resources.
My calculations don’t assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
Feel free to provide data on your claim about this massive shift you assume I didn’t account for. Preferably which countries have instituted UBI and demonstrated this outcome.
The question you should be asking is whether there’s enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyone’s basic needs.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet, let alone a small country. There is enough housing if we factor in how many empty units, houses, and the like exist because of high cost; What we don’t have we have ways of providing. There is enough labour to go around when Citizens and residents take the available jobs. The reason why we need TFW’s and things of that nature is because citizens and residents refuse to work on farms even though that is constant seasonal work. The labour is there, the willingness doesn’t seem to be.
I don’t need to ask a question like that, because it has nothing to do with my point that the cost of UBI is excessive, unmanageable, and there are better ways to do things. We already have social safety nets that need improving for people in need. Every single person doesn’t need help, but the social services required by others do.
My calculations don’t assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
I don’t think you understand what it means to make an assumption. Unless you have true population data (as opposed to sample data), you’re making assumptions. True population data does not exist because we don’t have UBI in Canada.
You’re using the numbers from the study along with stats from past years to justify how things will look when you implement UBI. You can either assume that implementing UBI does not affect the distribution of these stats in any way, or you can assume that they change following a certain model. You do not adjust these stats in any way, therefore you assume that these stats will remain unchanged.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet […]
If there’s more than enough for every single person, how does it make sense to say that that the cost UBI is excessive? If we take enough food to feed everyone in the country and just distribute them to each person to ensure that everyone is fed, would that work? The food is there, so we can do it. What if instead of distributing the food, we give everyone vouchers to get their daily food? Is that any different? How about we instead give them a fungible voucher (i.e. money) that they can choose to use on food or anything else? Ditto with every other need.
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.
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.
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 told you earlier that I don’t have numbers. My assessment is that the numbers you provided aren’t valid and I explained why in the last two comments. You can respond to those if you like. Repeating what you’ve said word for word does not add any new information. If you don’t want to continue the discussion, that’s fine, but if you have insight on why my reasoning might be wrong, I’d like to hear it.
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?
Unless I’ve misunderstood, what OP proposed is just increasing the tax rate of the existing system.
A progressive tax doesn’t result in earning less for working harder; it’s only the marginal income that’s taxed at the higher rate. So a worker who goes from making $50,000 to $60,0000 only pays 15% tax on $10,000 and has a net take home increase of $8,500.
I’m talking about various social benefits like welfare or disability that would ideally be replaced by a UBI.
I hear a lot of stories about this but I don’t remember if they’re Canadian or not; There’s a lot of people who are on disability and are still capable of doing part time work or taking care of their kids for an hour every day for example, but they can’t because if they’re found doing anything, they lose all of their disability benefits. We want a system that allows them to do what they can and be rewarded for contributing to the best of their abilities rather than punishing them for it.
It’s the same deal with welfare. You need to hit a certain income threshold before your take-home income surpasses what you’d get through welfare. Until then, you’re putting a bunch of energy into working to make less money when you could be lounging at home and making more. This actively discourages people from bettering their lives.
The idea of UBI is a great one, and I agree with it in principle, but I have yet to run any numbers that make it viable and that is my number one issue.
I just finished an edit to my original post going into more detail with the numbers. If you have any data that can show how the money can be made so that “you never earn less by working harder” and “everyone gets an even payment” I would be really interested to see it because I have not found anything realistic.
The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That’s 20% of its annual budget. Source
The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we’re not even talking about tax reforms here.
Three points.
This is about Canada.
From my earlier post: “UBI isn’t the best solution out there, it is a highly polarized idea, and funding for a program on scale would cost Billions, requiring trillions in revenue to be a viable option.”
You just paid for 1 month of UBI cutting the entire military budget for a year, which took 20% of the annual budget, leaving another 4 months of payment before the country has no budget left.
You keep pretending all over this thread that you would be increasing the income of everyone. You’re ignoring completely that you change the tax system so that wealthy people pay more than at present so it’s not inventing money, it’s redistributing it. You also cancel a bunch of social security programs that it replaces.
Your sums are based on false assumptions and you’re just spreading your FUD which is itself based on ignorance and fear. Stop trying to sound like you know something about it when you keep multiplying the population by the payment as if that was relevant in isolation of everything else that’s part of UBI.
If you want to sound knowledgeable, first so the reading work of learning.
But I think you don’t want to learn you just want to criticise because you don’t like the idea of money going from rich to poor.
This assumes that people wouldn’t take the same job for less pay if they were guaranteed a fixed amount that more or less made up the difference. If I work a job where I make $50,000/year, and I went to a world where I made $20,000/year UBI and $30,000/ year from my job, I could end up ahead under this scheme with the only additional cost to the economy being my possibly lowered taxes. Under this plan, raising taxes and lowering minimum wage/wage expectations means there would be at most a slight change to corporate taxes (and some jobs would have to pay more when you factor in UBI because desperation would be less of a factor for what people are willing to put up with).
So, realistically, the only cost would be whatever is required to get whoever is below the set line up to the set line, for individuals, corporations, and the government. This would also depend on people who are already making more than UBI to take a “pay cut”, and for corporations to not resist paying more taxes to balance the lower payroll costs. So it’s never really going to happen.
That has no bearing on what your income from your job is. Pretending this won’t have any impact on the value of jobs to both employers and workers can only be intentionally obtuse. That’s like saying that raising minimum wage will have an equal impact on the hourly wage of all employees.
That is a false equivalency.
I am also arguing against UBI, so thank you for adding additional points to my argument.
Take care.
Once again, misleading to the point of being intentional. A implies B is not the same as B implies A. Having UBI be guaranteed regardless of income is not the same as income being guaranteed regardless of UBI. So why do you keep insisting that it must? At this point I have to assume intent rather than ignorance.
I haven’t seen any numbers either for or against it, so I can’t say anything about viability. If anyone knows enough to run the numbers, I’d like to see it. The problem with the calculations you show above is that you assume the value of money doesn’t change when the world around it changes, but it does. Especially so if you make a large change like implementing UBI. We need to think about this in terms of resources. The question you should be asking is whether there’s enough food / housing / labour within the country to fulfill everyone’s basic needs.
My calculations don’t assume anything. I literally used age statistics, the Ontario framework for the payout, and net revenue of the Federal Government to demonstrate the cost of UBI. Find me more data, I will give you better calculations.
Feel free to provide data on your claim about this massive shift you assume I didn’t account for. Preferably which countries have instituted UBI and demonstrated this outcome.
There is more than enough food from waste alone to feed every single person on the planet, let alone a small country. There is enough housing if we factor in how many empty units, houses, and the like exist because of high cost; What we don’t have we have ways of providing. There is enough labour to go around when Citizens and residents take the available jobs. The reason why we need TFW’s and things of that nature is because citizens and residents refuse to work on farms even though that is constant seasonal work. The labour is there, the willingness doesn’t seem to be.
I don’t need to ask a question like that, because it has nothing to do with my point that the cost of UBI is excessive, unmanageable, and there are better ways to do things. We already have social safety nets that need improving for people in need. Every single person doesn’t need help, but the social services required by others do.
I don’t think you understand what it means to make an assumption. Unless you have true population data (as opposed to sample data), you’re making assumptions. True population data does not exist because we don’t have UBI in Canada.
You’re using the numbers from the study along with stats from past years to justify how things will look when you implement UBI. You can either assume that implementing UBI does not affect the distribution of these stats in any way, or you can assume that they change following a certain model. You do not adjust these stats in any way, therefore you assume that these stats will remain unchanged.
If there’s more than enough for every single person, how does it make sense to say that that the cost UBI is excessive? If we take enough food to feed everyone in the country and just distribute them to each person to ensure that everyone is fed, would that work? The food is there, so we can do it. What if instead of distributing the food, we give everyone vouchers to get their daily food? Is that any different? How about we instead give them a fungible voucher (i.e. money) that they can choose to use on food or anything else? Ditto with every other need.
Not even the slightest interest in figuring out the truth?
Explain it to me. Preferably with your own numbers, and assessments.
I told you earlier that I don’t have numbers. My assessment is that the numbers you provided aren’t valid and I explained why in the last two comments. You can respond to those if you like. Repeating what you’ve said word for word does not add any new information. If you don’t want to continue the discussion, that’s fine, but if you have insight on why my reasoning might be wrong, I’d like to hear it.