2y ago

It's unanimous: Hamilton wants a basic income | rabble.ca

rabble.ca

It's unanimous: Hamilton wants a basic income

5 comments

David Shapiro has some interesting thoughts about how we could reach a place where Basic Income is a reality. https://youtu.be/zAvPf1GNhHs
Wouldn't work if only implemented locally. It's got to be provincially (at a minumum), but more likely federally. Like in the scenario where only one province had healthcare, people would move to take advantage of it, increasing the burden on one region while lightening another. Basic income needs to be universal (at least within ones region of free movement) for it to work.
I'm not strongly against ubi, but I've always found the argument that injecting people with cash in the greater context of free market capitalism simply leading to things becoming more expensive pretty persuasive. You could match it with some kind of network of price controls but that seems like a lot of administrative overhead with the strong potential for unexpected outcomes. Now, I'm not attached to capitalism at all, but if people really want to keep it while adopting something like a ubi, I've always found the concept of universal basic services to be a lot more sensible.
- What’s the difference between that wiki link and what we have already?
  Only differences I see are a few things like free public transportation and a free municipal wireless network
  
  Housing, food, and rolling for-profit post secondary education into the public system would be big ones. Also, health care is universal but our system has blind spots. Dental is being worked on but optical is another. Pharmacare as well.