Why not just cap the prices of essential goods and services
Nationalize utilities and that problem solves itself.
I really, really, really hope they try it out. Maybe then when the economy is destroyed with inflation, those plebs will shut up and stop asking for it.
Though there’s always the fear that they make excuses to justify that it wasn’t “done right”. Who knows… where have I seen that before? 🤔
Imagine saying this when there was literally just a news story on Lemmy in the past day or two, about Oregon trialling a UBI dealio, with positive results. Oh and the like… piles of people who have disproven what you say a dozen times over.
Still waiting for the evidence that CERB caused the inflation and not global supply and demand issues. Considering most nations didn’t do their own version of CERB but still suffered inflation I think I’m going to be waiting forever.
I mean, you’re ignorant enough to fail to understand that most world debt is denominated in US dollars. You really think you understand shit about the world economy to make that statement? Do you even understand why the US dollar is called the “world reserve currency” and what the implications are? Probably not, yet you think you’re qualified to open your mouth and have a dumb opinion. Go read a book.
As suspected, I am going to be waiting forever.
You’re ignorant, stupid, and you can’t even research anything online because the best you can do is listen to your dumb commie friends who fill your head with nonsense. Take this paper and get fucked in the ass and learn to search for things online: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/2022/12/22/demand-supply-imbalance-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-the-role-of-fiscal-policy/
But is this gonna change your mind? Absolutely not. You’re gonna find an excuse to question whatever information is delivered with this peer-reviewed paper, because you’re in a cult. You’re NOT ALLOWED to believe anything outside what the cult taught you. This is why discussions online is a waste of time. Because most people are just cultists.
I mean… you don’t even know how the US dollar affects other currencies… how much dumber can you get?! What the fuck do you even know in this world other than what you’re taught on mainstream media?
My last response is unchanged. Go read a book. I guess I’ll be waiting for that forever.
Please do this, and do it right, Canada, so your neighbors to the South can use you as an example in trying to push for the same.
This won’t work in the US because we NEED some sort of national health care system first.
We’ll be shoveling money into medical debt even with UBI.
While I agree with you overall, it’s not like it would be a bad thing if a whole bunch of folks who currently choose between healthcare and eating could start choosing both.
Are we going to tax the wealthy to pay for it?
Because otherwise this is basically corporate welfare at best, and inflationary at worst.
How on earth is this corporate welfare?
The only possible way I can see someone interpreting this as corporate welfare is if you’re already so corpo pilled that you think a corporation should be required to pay for an employee’s social services instead of thinking that a human’s basic needs shouldn’t be tied to their employment.
I’ll try to explain my concern with UBI, because I’m genuinely curious:
- It seems like it lets employers off the hook for paying a living wage; in this sense, it’s like food stamps in the US: we’re socializing the costs of underpaying people
- If it isn’t paid for by increasing taxes on the top earners, this would be even more the case, since everyone but the wealthy is pooling the cost?
- I’m also confused as to how it isn’t inflationary: without either price controls on necessary goods and/or public options for housing, wouldn’t this result in companies raising the floor on prices and eating up the benefits of UBI?
- And this is the part that worries me, as someone who knows people on ODSP (Ontario, Canada’s disability-payments system): what’s to stop some jackass right-wing politician from freezing, means-testing or cutting UBI when they want to “balance the budget”?
I like the idea of UBI in principle, but my concern is that it–especially without curbing runaway inequality on the top-end and a pivot away from neoliberal “the market does everything” policies–it doesn’t really solve much at best, and at worst it’s yet another way to transfer money to the wealthy and absolve government of actually providing services.
It seems like it lets employers off the hook for paying a living wage; in this sense, it’s like food stamps in the US: we’re socializing the costs of underpaying people
What about people who do not have employers? What about people who have disabilities that prevent them from working or building up an employment history that would let them work? What about the elderly? What about children?
Not everyone in society is an employee.
Making employers pay for basic human needs, like Healthcare in the US, means that if you lose your job and get sick you what, can just go die? In this situation it’s not employers underpaying employees, it’s the government acting as a buffer in the system that disconnects basic human needs from your employment status.
If it isn’t paid for by increasing taxes on the top earners, this would be even more the case, since everyone but the wealthy is pooling the cost?
Everyone but the wealthy is already pooling the cost of mass homeless and addiction crises, and people not having the social support and safety nets that they need to be able to meaningfully improve their lives.
I’m also confused as to how it isn’t inflationary: without either price controls on necessary goods and/or public options for housing, wouldn’t this result in companies raising the floor on prices and eating up the benefits of UBI?
Giving consumers money is not inflationary. Full stop.
Companies raising prices and price gouging is inflationary, and that does not happen in the face of consumers having more money, that happens in the face of inelastic demand or markets that are broken in other ways. A truly competitive market will still keep prices low even if consumers are wealthier since they are competing and undercutting the firm next to them to get your business.
Broken non competitive markets that are dominated by massive corporations will price gouge and do their best to suck up excess consumer profits, but that has nothing to do with UBI and by that logic why give consumers money at all or ever try and raise their standard of living? Two things need to happen, we need to empower regulators and competition laws to prevent corporate consolidation that causes inflation and sucks up excess money in the system, and we need to provide people with enough money to achieve a basic standard of living. Both need to happen and both cannot and will not happen simultaneously with one stroke of a pen so you may as well start working on one of them if not both.
Housing is slightly trickier and requires different solutions, since you don’t want to encourage limitless growth into nature (hence greenbelts), which constrains supply of inherently in demand resource (and might suggest that maybe capitalism, a system based on limitless growth, isn’t the best system of resource allocation when it comes to housing) but again, this is already an issue with corporations and landlords increasingly profiting off of consumers in the current market, giving consumers more money doesn’t change that.
And this is the part that worries me, as someone who knows people on ODSP (Ontario, Canada’s disability-payments system): what’s to stop some jackass right-wing politician from freezing, means-testing or cutting UBI when they want to “balance the budget”?
That’s a problem sure, but that’s a problem right now with all other social programs. ODSP has effectively been frozen since Doug Ford got into power / has slid backwards since those payments are not tied to inflation or cost of living.
Probably not.
It would be the solution, though. Redistribute excess to those who have less because there is no egregious excess without egregious poverty.
If they’re not planning on taxing the wealthy, where is the money supposed to come from?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Governments don’t raise taxes to pay for things.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=kFhKVCaadzE
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’ll watch that when I’ve been awake more than five minutes, but the question that immediately comes to mind is why do governments collect taxes at all? Sure, they could just print money to pay for everything, but I can see some problems with that approach.
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if the capitalist class isn’t up in arms about all this then there’s a very good, very profitable, reason.
They probably just don’t take it seriously. And they’re probably right.
I’m very curious to see how they roll this out. I’m a big advocate for UBI, so this is super uplifting news. I really think this will benefit a lot of people!
Well this is just the very first little baby step and would outline how we’d approach UBI. It isn’t necessarily going to lead to a usable widespread solution anytime soon… but hey, positive motion!
There’s the thing though - you know how drug trials get killed because they’re having too many bad effects? Experimental UBI projects have literally gotten killed off because they were so wildly effective across the board that certain groups lobbied to stop them
Once a “white”, “wealthy”, Western country (that can’t have an “accidental regime change”) actually tries out the idea at scale, the winds are likely to change pretty quick
This needs to happen and make it so some Conservative government can’t come in and undo it willy nilly. These current Conservative fucks want to attack the CPP and aren’t having much luck federally so they’re using Alberta to do it. Fuck Conservatives, never vote for them. We need electoral reform ASAP as well so we can stop having our Conservatives get radicalized like the shit political system south of us.
Good job making this about labels and blame!
I know this is just first small step but still excited to see it happening. Every wildfire needs a first spark, let’s just hope it spreads,
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UBI should have the best impact invocations with instability caused by wealth inequality and lack of job security. It is likely that includes the places where they are canceling it due to lack of financial sustainability that would most likely be more sustainable with economic stability for all.
You underestimate the need the liberals have to show they’re Doing Something^TM Since the only thing they really know how to do is sign checks, they’re going to do that.
Personally, I’m not looking forward to the day I get a check I didn’t ask for and then a year and a half later they ask for it all back.
Oh boy I love labels, blame, and bitterness with no clear purpose!
You should read about it.
I know you neeeeeeeeed to hate the non-conservative in power doing nothing for a 1% you may one day be, but get some details on it. So at least so you can rebut it point by point, and remember that you probably make way too much to get a cheque.
I’ve read plenty. I’m not talking about the good or bad of UBI, I’m talking about the certainty of the liberals fucking it up.
It’s not “Universal” if people are disqualified for earning too much or whatever. (The logic being that the administrative and enforcement overhead isn’t worth means testing, just accept that you’re getting more taxes from the rich to make up for it)
The hexbears would be very upset about this if they could read.
Why?
Because liberals can’t beat Leninists to sustainable socialism
I have no idea what you mean by that, but okay.
In plain English, people who support oppressive dictatorships do so a lot of times because they think that distributing economic output in a way that eliminates poverty is impossible in a democracy governed by the rule of law.
If Canada achieves the elimination of poverty without becoming autocratic, the dictatorical evils of the CCP or the USSR are shown to be unnecessary.
Holy shoehorn, Batman.
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Can someone explain to me how exactly doesn’t every corporation raise prices pretty much immediately? Like, they know that everyone has some cash extra every month, so they just raise their prices to get it into their pockets.
This is the one part of basic income I never quite understood.
Because of competition. Let’s say Company A makes widgets and, owing to people having more money, tries to raise prices. Along comes Company B, which also makes widgets, who recognizes that they can out-compete Company A on price. So, they either don’t raise their prices as much or they keep them the same. Company A is now stuck either accepting lower sales, or lowering prices to compete. Once Company A reduces prices (because they want to survive), they put Company B in the same situation until prices stabilize at some smaller profit margin.
So basically, the exact same supply and demand curves which keep prices stable now. It’s not like businesses aren’t already doing everything they can to separate you from your money.In the end, it such a system would likely lead to some inflation. With more money in the economy, there is likely to be more demand for goods. If supply doesn’t expand to match the new demand, prices will go up. At the same time, increased consumer spending is often a good thing, so long as it doesn’t expand so fast that it creates shortages. It may also push up wages for unskilled workers, and those positions may now be harder to fill, commanding higher wages. It may also drive even more automation of unskilled jobs, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Those jobs are almost certainly headed for automation anyways; so, it’s better for society if we get out in front of that trend and avoid having a large pool of young, unemployed and disgruntled people running amok in society. Much better to have higher taxes which are used to keep the unemployed youth at least mostly gruntled instead. But, that’s bad for rich, greedy assholes who would rather walk a tight-rope of just enough bread and circuses and full on civil unrest.
Because of competition
We don’t do that well in Canada
Canada doesn’t even give people on disability enough to afford rent, let alone groceries, power bills, car insurance, etc.
Maybe start there. Help the disabled survive.
My friend is on disability and bring home the equivalent of $20 dollars an hour in a province with a minimum of $15. From my understanding he is on one of the lowest tiers of the benefit. There are a huge variety of levels of disability benefits depending on the type of disability.
My aunt is on disability from the military and brings home over 6000 a month. We definitely need to cut the military budget.
LPC is at least forcing grocery stores to have fair pricing.
In Ontario, disability gets you $1200 per month if you are lucky and max out everything. Most people get $800-900.
For one person on disability, you get $497 for rent. You wont even find a ROOM for $497.
Tell me where you can even rent and pay utilities for less, let alone groceries, clothes, etc.
This is actually a big reason why there are so many opponents of the MAID law.
Too many people with disabilities are taking the euthanasia option simply because, they don’t have any way to live.
Which is simply despicable euthanasia has to be chosen, a sign of a broken system all the way around.
And God forbid you’re under 65 and disabled. Big load of “fuck you” from the government.
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.
Also read the reply to that comment for an example of the waste: https://lemmy.world/comment/4589897
There’s basically an entire industry dedicated to denying and minimizing payouts. With UBI, that entire industry becomes obsolete.
If UBI is done properly, it replaces those other social programs. The payouts are bigger and for more people, and the program administration costs are smaller.
I’ve always been a big proponent of UBI. But after speaking with my communist brother recently he opened my eyes to something. If UBI get’s implemented, big corporations will just increase prices and completely/partially negate it.
What we need is a NEEDS income. We establish what are basic needs, housing, healthcare, food, etc… and make sure that all of these needs are met.
That’s what they say about increasing minimum wage, and there’s actually research proving it’s not true in that case.
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.
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.
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.
Isnt this just going to lower the value of the currency aka inflation?
No, when everyone gets a certain amount of money that money is valued the same as it was earned by only some individuals producing goods/service. /s
No. More people spending money doesn’t cause inflation.
