A Universal Basic Income Is Being Considered by Canada's Government
The Senate is studying a bill that would introduce a framework for a policy that would guarantee access to a livable income to everyone over 17.
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I keep seeing small scale UBI experiments 'proving' that recipients thrive more. But as I see it that's not the part that needs proving.
what's the part that needs proving?
That it can scale up to an entire society. That it can be sustained indefinitely, or can be made self-sustaining.
What proof would be satisfactory though?
All monetary policy is experimental to some extent... but you don't need to start with the big money.
Here in Australia average full time salary is $80k. I don't really know but maybe an appropriate UBI in a utopia might be half of that, or lets just say $3k a month. You wouldn't just start transferring $3k to everyone's bank account every month and see how it goes.
You'd start with a small refundable negative tax. We already have these in our tax system they're called rebates or offsets. You don't start with $3k a month, start with maybe $2k a year. So everyone pays $2k less tax every year, and people that pay less than that in a full year would get the balance refunded to them.
With something like this it would be fairly easy to measure whether or not it's providing the purported benefits.
Something other than a tiny pilot program that 'proves' people do better when they have more money, for starters. That's all we ever see, but if that's the best it can do then UBI is a pipe dream and we should focus our efforts elsewhere.
With something like this it would be fairly easy to measure whether or not it’s providing the purported benefits.
Again, that's not the part that needs proving in my mind.
I think what needs proving is that society at scale can work without this. So far as I can tell, it can't. At the same time, I'd rather not give anyone the "my 'whatever' supports you so get in line behind me" bullshit they like to say.
The state of Alaska has been doing this for some time with the Alaska Permanent fund. Just under a million people in Alaska. Seems rather significant to me.
That money comes exclusively from oil and gas export revenue, though. It's not a model that most other states can follow.
