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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If you're a fellow Canuck, here's a petition to get this realised. It's not much, but it's something.
I'm not sure I want this to happen. I'll read the bill, but I'm not convinced they'll do it right. For example, UBI is supposed to replace other need-based social programs such as disability, welfare programs, government housing, etc. The entire point is that the money from those programs, which collectively have quite a lot of waste, goes into UBI so everyone can participate in society on a more fair level.
For example, I have a neighbour who is on some kind of government assistance. He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he'd get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
Yes.
This is the thing people don't understand about a ubi.
I had a coworker who's wife was a... Case manager? For welfare. Her whole job was determining whether or not people were lying/exaggerating about various elements of their claim.
First of all, government union paper pushers make decent money. There was an entire office full of people that covered cases in their region only.
Second, it's a soul sucking job. Her primary assumption was that everyone was cheating and lying and she needed to minimize everyone's payout.
UBI solves both of those things and by plugging it directly into the tax system people can be free to try to earn a better living, which studies have shown most people want when they are given a UBI.
Increased productivity, increased employment, increased entrepreneurship, increased mental health outcomes, there is literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich.
literally no downside except for needing to tax the rich
So literally no downside at all then?
Can't eat them and tax them at the same time 😞
There are downsides.
Some people require more income to stay alive than others. Think of people with decreased mental or physical capabilities.
Those would loose a big chunk, which need to be subsidised somehow.
But the upsides outweigh the downsides.
Not necessarily, that depends on how it shakes down.
It's a political downside, because anything involving taxes will turn some people against it.
The housing crisis needs to be addressed separately. There is 7 times the amount of housing needed to house the homeless
There shouldn’t be homeless in Canada at all regardless the income. This Airbnb bullshit breaking cities needs to stop.
Everyone tunnel visions on airbnb, when in reality the institutional single family rental industry (SFR) is the true evil.
Many people also say it's not x but y; however, both are true. It is an equation of multiple variables, some of which will have a greater effect on the outcome, some not so much.
Both issues need fixing. The point isn't to win the shit Olympics.
It's not about winning, it's about ensuring a spotlight is on the issue that is growing at an exponential rate and threatens private home ownership for majority of the population.
There is no spotlight when there's enough humans to make it ambient. Literally no one is setting a quota on empathy here but you. There is no good excuse to be kicking the legs out from underneath others. You're making problem solving harder than it should be.
UBI is supposed to replace other need-based social programs such as disability, welfare programs, government housing, etc.
Not necessarily, or, better put, some programs should be replaced, others not, and the general dividing line is "do people need approximately the same amount of money for this, or not". Blind people, for example, are always going to pay more for a basic computer setup with Braille readers and whatnot than sighted people, so such programmes shouldn't be axed. Housing and transportation costs might differ between cities, thus the amount you get paid out in UBI for it should probably differ by residence -- the difference doesn't need to fill the whole e.g. rural/city divide, but it should take the edge off. When it comes to e.g. food though prices are probably approximately the same pretty much everywhere (at least in places with supermarkets), and everyone's eating approximately the same amount, so everyone should get the same.
No, an UBI isn't going to slash administrative effort to zero, ever. But it doesn't have to. If you ask me all the people doing penny-pinching right now should be retained in the fist place, it doesn't harm to have an excess of social workers, and those that don't fancy that kind of work can move to the tax office and go after billionaires instead.
He gets very little money, and his rent for an entire house is $105/mo. With UBI, he'd get a full basic income, but his housing would no longer be subsidized, removing the need for a public housing corporation known for being awful and wasting money.
It sounds like there's some good and some bad that would come from that in his particular case. I don't live in Canada and haven't read the bill, but is the income he'd receive close to enough to afford housing? If not his current housing, then at least not slums or whatever?
The housing in Canada is a joke right now. They have homeless but there’s 7 times the amount of housing that could house them. Instead there’s a bunch of empty buildings owned by people who don’t even live in Canada hoarding housing. This should be addressed separately from this matter. Income doesn’t even matter at this point. They’ve pushed people into homelessness even people who have more than one job can’t even afford housing right now.
Not at all. Most people in the program still struggle, and still become homeless if they lose their spot to some inane policy. E.g. if you're on disability, it's voided the moment they find out you're living with a spouse. In the view of the administration, your spouse can now pay for everything. It is not their only source of income though, many of the people rely on support from various NPO's just so they can live, that too is not enough. This system often fails to help, as evidenced by the various encampments in Canada's cities, particularly in the warmer areas on the west coast.
It doesn't ask you any ID, even non-Canadians could sign this petition lmao.
There isn’t a person on the planet who will input their personal ID to sign an online petition. The number of non-Canadians who care enough to tilt the petition is probably relatively low. It’d be a huge barrier to participation.
I'm not Canadian and I did it, because wtf not. It doesn't ask for much, the hardest thing was the postal code.
Honestly the more countries there are with UBI, the better. If done right, more countries will follow suit. Good luck fellas 👍🏻
well, ukraine uses id verification (using digital signature or the Diia app) for it's petitions website and it just works (tm)
well it only asks for signature (jks keystore) which reduces chance of something going wrong to near zero.
Sending personal state issued ID and all its info, including your photo =/= writing a signature digitally. Especially not in the age of accessible AI/“Big Data.” God imagine if they coupled that with your telemetry.
Besides, almost any company with the scale and resources to properly store and secure that data for potentially hundreds of thousands if not millions of people is not a company I would trust with all that information. Because let me tell you, feel good petitions are not what drives their revenue lol. And if they’re smaller then a data breach is all but inevitable (large company is also a juicy target).
Look at porn, which far more people want to access online then petitions. With each state requiring ID verification it the US, VPN searches on google rise by orders of magnitude in the respective states.
Things are a bit different if it's a government asking you to authenticate yourself. You're proving you engaged in that particular transaction (which is presumably the point), but otherwise you're not revealing any information they don't already have about you.
If you have a link to a more official one, please post it, thanks.
I never sign petitions like this unless it is directly submitted to the government through it's own petition system. Everything else is just a way to hoover up information on the pretext of helping.
Is that a real petition that the government will actually look at or a meme one like all the others?
Depends on how many people sign it, I would imagine.
