Mincome: Canada’s 1970s universal basic income experiment

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment

by rmason • 6 years ago

71 97 6 years ago

skybrian3• 6 years ago

Manitoba again. If you're paying attention to universal basic income, this is more like the experiment they keep reminding us about.

Kednicma• 6 years ago

How much bigger do UBI experiments need to be before we can be confident that these positive small-scale outcomes will also replicate on the scale of a USA-sized country?

jvm_• 6 years ago

There's some longer term unanswered/unanswerable questions as well. How do children do if their parents have never worked?

greiskul• 6 years ago

Which parents that never worked? If unemployment doesn't go up, but remains constant or goes down, and more children complete high school, what kids are you worried about? Right now we have a bunch of kids that don't finish high school and are born in unemployed families, how about we worry about them? We know the effect our current system is causing on them, a cycle of poverty that never goes away. Clearly our current approach is not working.

zozbot2342• 6 years ago

I don't know where this idea is coming from that UBI will incent people to drop out of the labor force. Any reasonable and currently-feasible UBI would do the opposite. And experiments bear this out - those who seemingly leave the workforce are actually doing something quite different: namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment to working towards human capital acquisition, or else providing care for others.

godelski3• 6 years ago

This is a great point, but at the same time how do we answer this question when all our experiments last 5 years or less? To answer this question you have to run an experiment for roughly 30 years, ensuring that people born into this system are taken through college (i.e. the dependent years, which is usually considered <25yrs of age) and that you have enough children being born during this period. We know that influences before the age of 8 have significant factors in establishing things like educational culture for children, and this is highly associated with socioeconomic status.

So if we're saying that an experiment has to run for at least 30 years: 1) why aren't we getting on that? 2) are short term studies enough to warrant bypassing the long term small scale study and precede to a large scale study?

Spooky23• 6 years ago

People want to work.

A better question is: why do we actively discourage single parents from marrying and working full time? In many places, full time employment with low skills is a ticket to disaster.

Synaesthesia• 6 years ago

Children of rich parents who never work do fine.

Having a child is hard work. It's just not valued by modern liberal society, which doesn't value people, only their value they can sell.

blahbhthrow3748• 6 years ago

A lot of people seem to think that having one stay at home parent is the ideal - surely both parents working and having no time to be involved in their kids' lives is not the solution?

mantas• 6 years ago

So far experiments are one-sided with outside money being used. Nobody is testing how a self-sustained society works in UBI. I'd be more interested in seeing a full-fledged test rather than bigger and bigger cherry picked tests.

arnaudsm• 6 years ago

I bet that after this recession, at least one western country will try UBI at large scale within 20 years. We'll learn a lot.

dang• 6 years ago

If curious see also these other Mincome threads:

2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287

2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192

alexashka• 6 years ago

This endless discussion of UBI or other programs in isolation is like trying to find treatment for an itchy toe, ignoring that the rest of your body is also itching.

nexuist• 6 years ago

Last I check itching cream worked on most parts of your body. Like UBI, being given any amount of itching cream can cure many itches at once.

artsyca2• 6 years ago

I understand what you're getting at. It's like you're trying to put out a fire in your kitchen when your whole house is on fire. It would work if you could get it all done at once but not when you try to do it piecemeal.

II2II• 6 years ago

That treatment for an itchy toe managed to reduce hospitalization rates by over 8% and increase high school completion rates (to the point where everyone at least started their final year). There were also indications that small businesses started appearing, presumably because people wanted to keep working yet also wanted more autonomy. The article states that was possible because financing was easier to come by.

There is a possibility that addressing financial insecurity will give people the freedom to address other social ills on their own accord. Yet we will never find out if people keep coming up with excuses to prevent wider scale trials.

aszantu• 6 years ago

without knowing anything about it I'd think that our system would be working better with UBI if it was randomized and switching between citizens, would make sense to exclude everyone who is already a millionaire or something. So if you pull it, you get 4-8 years to build a business with the money, or do whatever u want, and then the money goes to someone else. That way it wouldn't just be hyper inflationary. If you give everybody more money, nobody has more money. Capitalism is built on inequality.

HighlandSpring• 6 years ago

Oh there'll still be inequality, don't worry about it :)

tenebrisalietum• 6 years ago

Things are still unequal with UBI - if you get $2k a month, billionaires are still billionaries. It can make being poor less dangerous; e.g. homelessness, car repossession, lack of basic necessities can stop being a thing.

I sometimes think really that a good alternative would be Universal Protected Net Worth. Maybe things would be better if there was some floor of money and assets below which no court or legal proceeding could take from you, including taxes, fines, bail, judgements, seizures, forfeitures, etc. I don't know how that would work in practice.

winstonewert• 6 years ago

The Mosaic law actually has something kind of like this where you can't lose ownership of your allotted farmland. Thus, at minimum, everyone owns a valuable asset and thus some net worth. (Data is sparse on whether this law was every actually followed or the effects.)

fastball2• 6 years ago

Universal Protected Net Worth sounds unbelievably prone to abuse.

One of the best things about UBI is that it is unabusable (except with faking existence of people, which can be used to abuse literally any system).

tom_mellior2• 6 years ago

The Austrian Pirate Party's UBI model specifically states (or stated, last time I checked) that the monthly UBI payment should be unseizable.

skybrian3• 6 years ago

tldr: If you're worried about the high cost or the efficiency of UBI, you could fix it with taxes.

If we are just talking about giving cash as charitable donations, smaller-scale experiments about giving people cash tell us what we need to know about the effects. But at large scale, yes, we will have to also consider the effect of whatever taxes are used to counter the increase in the money supply. This isn't an immediate concern considering very low inflation, zero interest rates, and a depressed economy, but might eventually become an issue, someday.

The thing is, you could combine UBI with any tax, so that means there are a huge number of possible policies. My favorites are a carbon tax along with making income tax more progressive, but there are others.

If much of the benefit of UBI is earlier in life and the taxes are paid somewhat later (at higher income), then this has similar effects to a loan. If the benefits happen after peak income (in retirement) then it's more like forced savings.

It's also similar to an insurance scheme. On net, some people may never benefit due to always having a good income and paying more in taxes than they get back, but it still reduces your risk if you somehow lose your income.

core-questions2• 6 years ago

you could fix it with taxes

Someone still has to work to produce the food that UBI wastrels consume. Please, explain to me why we should feed everyone for free? What gives them the right to commandeer someone else's labour while they languish?

All of these schemes to shift taxes here and burdens there ultimately just have the effect of making it so that the people who do work and do produce value are shouldering the burden for everyone else. You can print money, but you cannot print calories.

fastball2• 6 years ago

Capitalism is built on private ownership, not inequality.

FreakyT• 6 years ago

I feel like there is a specific issue with the methodology of this and various other basic income experiments: it was time-limited.

If one goes into the experiment knowing that the basic income will end after N years, I suspect that may significantly affect one's behavior. For example, this study found that people typically did not quit their jobs (for 4 years of basic income). Would that result replicate with indefinite basic income? I'd like to see a follow-up study to test that.

godelski3• 6 years ago

While I agree with this, is there any long term experiment even in proposal? We'd really need at least 30 years to see how children develop through their dependent years (<25). I see "it was time-limited" often stated in response to UBI criticism (it is a legitimate complaint that these are time limited!) but I have yet to see a proposal that tries to remedy this. Is there one?

godelski3• 6 years ago

At this point of time I seriously think we only have a few conclusions: (Special note to 4, please address)

1) Recognize that we have sufficient "small" scale studies (note the quotes) that are short term, and providing similar results, which necessitate longer term studies. i.e. studies that are ~30 years, so that children can grow up completely under this environment and live through their dependent years (<25 years old) under these conditions.

2) The experiments provide enough evidence and this warrants attempting this on a much larger scale for the presumed future. i.e. institute a UBI (obviously we need to determine WHICH kind of UBI we would institute).

3) There are major flaws in the studies that need to be addressed and we need to refine them. (Personally with the many variations of these I've seen I do not think this is an accurate conclusion, but I am open to being wrong as I am not an expert studying this topic)

4) While the benefits are real, the cost is too much. This is one I'd particularly like to see addressed. Pretty much every time we see UBI experiments come up we see: 1) little to no earning wage increase (which is difficult to say if it is because the short time periods or not) 2) lower hospitalizations 3) higher sense of self worth 4) more children are finishing education 5) more children are reaching their dietary needs. The issue I see is that these have (unclear) economic values tied to them but are not discussed. I ALWAYS see the economic cost discussed, though understandably this is a much easier thing to calculate. But aren't economists supposed to be estimating these difficult concepts? As a voter I would like to know what the economic benefit is to these programs as well as the cost. This will allow me to make better judgments (e.g. even if UBI costs more economically maybe my personal moral utility value makes up the difference between the numbers). It is a shame that this is not discussed.

The issue of UBI and all its variations is complex but I believe that the conversation is frequently being framed in ways that is difficult to make real judgments on. We see the economic costs, but not the economic benefits. But we do see moral benefits, but this isn't enough. Legitimate excuses are given (for and against), but no one is making new experiments that address these concerns. We need a serious conversation with less surjection.

CuriousSkeptic2• 6 years ago

I think it could be simpler. Instead for means testing and all the administration that comes with it we could try much simpler schemes. Just give something to everyone, could be a negative tax, but a dividend is even simpler.

Since we are in the middle of various economic transitions where we need to introduce taxes to control over consumption the simpler experiment (instead of finding a region and allocating a budget) would be to introduce those taxes together with a public dividend.

abellerose• 6 years ago

Instead of the idea of universal basic income. I like to toy with the idea of somehow making it so people can work less. Such as a person works every other week and where someone else fills the role for the weeks the other person isn't working. I think it would increase job positions and better mental health. I'm unsure how it financially could work out but I assume money can come from somewhere because UBI is basically proposing income for no work at all.

oxymoran• 6 years ago

It is not for no work at all. You would be free to work and earn more money, so why wouldn’t you? It just guarantees a minimum income not a comfortable income. And it would encourage people to do exactly what you want, work less.

core-questions2• 6 years ago

This only really works for jobs doing more menial tasks - it will not work very well for longer term projects. Instead, we should focus those kinds of efforts on reducing the length of the work day, adding more flexibility to scheduling, and pushing hard to keep work out of home life.

refurb4• 6 years ago

I'd love for someone to explain how UBI won't just inflate prices. Obviously it comes down to exact implementation.

To me it seems it would be similar to the government intervention into housing - the gov't wanted more people to be able to own homes. So they create 30-year mortgages (for example). This was great because you could spread the payments out over more time, lowering your monthly payment.

Oh wait, the 30-year mortgage is open to everyone. So now everyone has more buying power. Prices rise and you end up in the same spot as before - a big chunk of the population can't afford a house.

Why wouldn't this happen with UBI? If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached, I would guess prices would generally rise until $10,000 wasn't enough to survive on.

danielheath• 6 years ago

Prices for scarce resources with high marginal costs (eg: desirable housing) rise. You can’t cheaply make more.

Prices for resources with high plant costs and low unit costs do not, to anything like the same degree - medicine, consumer electronics, food.

sdinsn• 6 years ago

If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached

What you are missing is that UBI is supposed to replace all existing entitlement programs, such as unemployment, disability, food stamps, social security, etc.

We already hand out tons of money, UBI is just a different way of handing it out money that is more efficient because there is less bureaucracy involved.

refurb4• 6 years ago

Right, but we don't hand out money to people who don't qualify for it (income > $X), so it's a different situation.

But to your point, I've heard a proposed UBI that gives money to everyone, but effectively claws it back in taxes for higher incomes. Actually it would claw 100% back and more in order to fund UBI.

In that case, I could see the inflationary pressure not being an issue since net-net, you're just giving cash to a set group of people.

tunesmith• 6 years ago

No it isn't. That's one possible approach for UBI but hardly the one that everyone agrees on.

mediaman2• 6 years ago

That's not the way price economics works.

In competitive markets, goods generally fall in price to the baseline level needed to get a competitive return on assets employed. While anti-market people often claim this doesn't happen, it actually does happen for most goods. Food, consumer goods, most computers, household staples, vehicles, etc., are dominated by fairly thin margin goods that are sold at just a bit above the total cost of production. (See grocery financials to see this in action.)

There are exceptions. Some products have constraints on supply. Some are natural constraints, some are government-created supply constraints.

Housing in big cities is mostly government-created supply constraints through zoning regulation implemented on the behalf of wealthy NIMBY landowners. In this case, yes, you could see some housing price increases, because municipalities restrict the ability of builders to respond to price signals. The price of land is a minor factor as well, but usually density can overcome that, and density is what the city NIMBY monopolists oppose.

However, this would be far less true outside of America's biggest cities. Much of the housing stock in the US is not nearly as exposed to tight restrictions in supply. And so an increase in income would result in increased housing supply, without an increase in price, because housing supply in most areas is restricted only by cost of construction.

The cost of production of all those other items - the household staples that is most of what we buy on a day to day basis - does not change if people receive a check from the government. Their price will still stay near the cost of production. Sellers of oranges still compete with each other on price to sell you fruit. Ford still competes on price with Toyota. If prices were to rise, then Ford would run their production line at a higher output to capture the excess profits, supply would increase, and then price would fall back until Ford no longer wants to run that extra shift.

And so the "prices will increase" argument against UBI is largely illusory. It could occur in certain monopolized areas of the economy, mainly expensive real estate in a few big cities. But most of America is not like that, and people who would benefit most from UBI (i.e., people with low income) mostly do not live in the highest priced real estate areas, so their real estate costs would not increase with the introduction of UBI. That inflation effect would be strongest with the wealthiest.

Perhaps that's why we hear the argument so often.

refurb4• 6 years ago

OK, I could see the impact not being consistent across all areas and all products.

However, if, as per your scenario, we only see housing prices go up in big cities, then we end up in the same place as before - people would need to leave in order to afford a place to live (where previously they would have received gov't housing).

dlkf• 6 years ago

...do you write a blog I could subscribe to?

jbay8083• 6 years ago

It won't inflate all prices equally.

Homes might get more expensive. Will they get $10,000 more expensive? Not everywhere.

Potatoes might get more expensive. Will they get $10,000 more expensive? Probably not.

As long as there's a class of products that don't increase in price by as much as the UBI, those products will become more affordable to the people that UBI is intended to help.

new_realist2• 6 years ago

I think what’s likely to happen is that the price of the inelastically-supplied products (housing, medical care, services) inflate to the point where there is no money left over to buy more of the elastically-supplied (optional) products. Thus, no net gain from UBI. If there were a net gain, expect UBI to cause service costs to inflate as labor supply is removed from the market, or the labor supply remains constant and the population grows in response to surplus resources which can be used for breeding (which then inflates the costs of inelastic goods, like housing).

bb2018• 6 years ago

No one would say that if you just taxed everyone 10,000 dollars a year that prices would fall in a way such that everything would carry on the same.

The US already has a fairly solid way to transfer money for those in need of food. I'm sure it inflates food prices some but clearly without food stamps more people would be hungry.

artsyca2• 6 years ago

I'd be inclined to view it more as a social safety net, an investment in society and a means to lubricate the wheels of the economy by facilitating spending.

amiga_500• 6 years ago

Property prices would be lower if they were not much of an asset. If we taxed land so the value of land was close to zero.

If we don't tax land and amenities and jobs remain concentrated in large urban areas, imho there is a risk ubi will be absorbed into land prices, meaning idle rentiers win yet again.

roenxi• 6 years ago

If there are 9 widgets and 10 people who want widgets then handing out money will cause inflation. The problem is a lack of widgets, and money shuffling games won't help.

If there are 11 widgets, 10 people who want widgets and one person has 3 widgets then UBI might help. It will definitely help if the biggest problem is an uneven distribution of widgets.

"Inflation" is a largely irrelevant metric that provides an accounting measure of how those situations play out. What matters is the production & distribution of goods.

The problem with 30 years mortgages isn't necessarily that they are given to everyone. It is that they create a situation where to own a home people have to agree to give years of their labour to a bank for essentially no reason.

snidane• 6 years ago

Goods with enough supply: no inflation even in case of UBI or printed money. This can be observed in present day measures of inflation which are based on cheap goods oversupplied by China

Goods with not enough supply: massive inflation in case of printed money or UBI. Examples are "good investments" with the only safe ones and available for common folks being real estate.

That's in case cities don't get destroyed by rioters and looters and people don't escape to safety out of the cities.

NOGDP2• 6 years ago

I'd love for someone to explain how UBI wouldn't just end up replacing part of people's salaries and turning into a wage subsidy for corporations.

canjobear• 6 years ago

Some see this as a feature, not a bug. It means that companies don't have to pay as much to hire people, because companies don't have to be on the hook for giving people enough money to survive. You wouldn't need a minimum wage, for example.

_v7gu2• 6 years ago

Wouldn't this create so many jobs? There are many jobs in Canada that can't exist because of how expensive it is to hire people (which coincides with how expensive it is to live in Toronto). Subsidise that, and many people will be able to be delivery drivers for restaurants and avoid paying rent to Uber, or hire help for their homes instead of having to go to specialized firms.

akvadrako4• 6 years ago

There will likely be some of that, but it will also put workers into a stronger negotiating position, so they can demand higher wages.

shitgoose4• 6 years ago

If government just printed this money, then there would be inflation. But this money is taken away from high earners and given to low earners. System is still balanced, just less fair (some may argue).

vl• 6 years ago

Well, didn't we just see what happens with UBI basically in the last two months?

akvadrako4• 6 years ago

I do think the risk of riots and social unrest due to idleness is the main unknown with UBI.

But its such a psychological issue, it’s hard to know how it’ll play out long term.

sameerds• 6 years ago

The article gives the impression of UBI as some sort of targetted scheme with the money of putting money in the hands of people who need it. At least in India, it is touted as an alternative to government subsidies. Seen that way, it's a system overhaul rather than a way to help all people at an individual level. Government subsidies will always be inefficient, no matter how well-intentioned a particular set of people are. Instead, a simple UBI scheme will dramatically reduce administration costs and plug all leakages.

danielfoster• 6 years ago

Prices definitely will go up with UBI, particularly for scarce goods like housing. You are absolutely correct. They did not go up in this experiment because it was just one town.

UBI won’t work unless we deregulate zoning, reduce the cost of higher education, and reduce the cost of healthcare.

jostylr2• 6 years ago

Competition for the money is what keeps inflation down and also having it be a modest floor. For housing, health care, and higher education, the money floating around is specifically for those sectors. When coupled with limited availability / restricted competition, inflation easily occurs.

But if I can spend my money on a variety of things, then there is a lot more competition for me to figure out the value per dollar of a purchase.

In the specific instance of housing, the increased ability to move helps. What can also help is the ability for banks to be sure that people can pay. In areas with less pricey housing, a $100,000 house can lead to a 30-year mortgage at about $600 a month leaving $400 for other living expenses. This is a guarantee to the lender that the person can pay regardless of employment. And so suddenly a bunch of houses for poor people that are not economically viable because there is no lending for it suddenly become so. Not everyone will support it, but some will and that will ease up on pressures for apartments lowering that rent cost. It also could end the housing blight in many, many places without the truly inflationary process of gentrification.

The UBI is a floor and I would bet that prices would adjust to reflect that. If the floor is set too high, inflation will happen (imagine giving everyone a million dollars a month, it would certainly torpedo the current economy, but, assuming society somehow survived, new prices would probably change so that a minimal lifestyle require a million dollars a month). By setting the UBI at the current poverty threshold, it allows the poor to finally feel secure, it allows for the middle to save a little and feel less anxious/dependent on the good will of their boss, and for the rich, it keeps society stable enough that they won't have a revolution challenging them. All of this without doing too much damage.

Some things could end up with a higher price if the current wages are too low to worth being done by people who can now choose to walk away. This could be the case in industries where there is little profit being made and the workers are being paid very little. If there is a lot of profit, then I would presume the competition pressures would lead to the profits being diverted into wages rather than prices being inflated. Being money that can be used for anything would help keep some competition even in sectors that are monopolized.

---

As an alternative approach, think of UBI as a dividend on our prosperity. Imagine that every American had enough ownership of stock to get a dividend pay out per year of $10,000. Would you ban the dividend pay out due to fears of inflation? The argument for the dividend approach is that prosperity comes from all of us contributing and so all of us should get a share of the profits of our society (private ownership is a creation of society and protected by society). And just like investors getting a dividend, the idea is that giving out that money is not only a useful reward for the lending of capital, but it also supports new investments and growth. The Citizen's Dividend does the same allowing each of us to invest in ourselves, and others, in ways to improve all of our lives.

A good narrative is that we are a species willing to be friends with one another and to be helpful to each other if we feel safe, secure, and supported. A CD (UBI) does just that.

foobar_• 6 years ago

Also read negative incometax. Same thing. At this point economics will make more sense if human cost is acually made quantifiable and counted in profit and loss.

tom_mellior2• 6 years ago

UBI is not the same thing as a negative income tax. I would be sure to get a UBI this month, and next month, and the month after that independent of what I do. With a negative income tax, I might be employed this month, then lose my job and barely scrape by next month, and starve the month after that. And then sometime next year, after filing tax papers, I would get some money to keep me alive... this year.

It's true that in the grand scheme of things, averaged over many years, I would get the same amount from a UBI and a negative income tax. But at critical points in life, where my employment status changes significantly, the delay from the negative income tax would not provide the security that a UBI does.

causality0• 6 years ago

They wanted to see whether a guaranteed basic income for those below the poverty line could improve quality of life

This is what drives me crazy about these experiments. Obviously, using straight donations to keep people above a certain poverty line will improve the lives of those particular people. What's always missing is the other half of the equation: the analysis of whether UBI is the most efficient way to spend that money. Every study seems laser-focused on the outcomes of people who received the benefit while ignoring the projected effect on the society as a whole. It's entirely possible UBI is a great choice but its proponents seem bound and determined not to prove it.

ghufran_syed• 6 years ago

If say, a liberal state in the US like California wanted to do a useful study on the subject, the way to do it would be to randomly choose a pair of nearby cities/counties with similar composition, then impose both a basic income stipend and the extra taxes needed to pay for it on one of the counties and not on the other, for a minimum period of 10 years. You could even choose the specific city/county pairs from only those that wanted to take part in the experiment and had voted to that effect in a ballot proposition. Then you could answer important questions regarding effects of the increased taxes as well as that of the payments. I'd be particularly interested in 2nd order effects, for example, if the voters can vote to keep increasing the basic income amount, would the increased taxes eventually drive out those who are taxed most heavily? And would that be net negative (reduced tax revenue to fund the program)? Or net positive (e.g. reducing housing prices?)

shitgoose4• 6 years ago

In Canada anyone who is out of job now unconditionally gets 500/week of Covid money. Pretty much same idea as UBI. The immediate effect that I observed was that all Filipino nannies quit. There is no incentive for them to work any more. I am not sure what they do with all the free time though. Maybe the life was different in rural Winnipeg in 70's (btw 11k was a shitload of money back then), but nowadays the UBI will immediately wipe out the low paying jobs. This may disrupt industries that rely on cheap labor. But what is much worse - it will create a class of people who are entitled to free money and have zero incentive to do anything with their lives, like get education, progress their careers, strive for better live. There is a need for a safety net in a society for those who slipped, but UBI is different. It is designed to make people regress, takes away any motivation.

_v7gu2• 6 years ago

It sucks that you are now unable to take advantage of poor immigrants because they are not in desperate need of money. It is nice that they have temporarily escaped their cycle of poverty. Instead of complaining about how they are wasting their lives by not working (and reciting the poem The Educated Man's Burden), you should instead pay them their actual worth.

shitgoose4• 6 years ago

Oh, I was not complaining:) I do not have a nanny neither want one. I clean my own shit. I was just observing. Nanny's salary is based on supply/demand. Until government interferes with Covid payments. When payments stop, nannies will go back to work. And, you are right, I believe that idling on Covid handouts is a waste of time. Any sort of idling is a waste of time.

akvadrako4• 6 years ago

Unemployment money discourages work because you lose it if you earn. UBI doesn’t discourage work because they stack.

shitgoose4• 6 years ago

If UBI is comparable with salary, many people will quit and live on handouts. If UBI is a fraction of salary, what is the point?

redis_mlc• 6 years ago

There is UBI in Canada, but it's called welfare.

In order to form the Canada federation, Ontario had to agree to pay residents of Quebec and the Maritime provinces for not working.

"Transfer payments" is the only reason Quebec hasn't become an independent country yet.

How it's handled in Newfoundland is that fishermen agree to fish for a few months, then they get "income support" for the remaining months of the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation

akvadrako4• 6 years ago

UBI is more like anti-welfare.

ficklepickle• 6 years ago

That is an interesting take. I'm not sure I would agree with the way you described it.

This is a more relevant link[0].

Technically, the money comes from the federal government. It is given to the poorer provinces as general revenue and it is used to balance their budgets.

It is not specifically used to pay Maritime fishermen not to work. The wealthier provinces essentially subsidize the poorer ones. It is just like society; wealthier people pay more tax and poorer people use more social services.

I'm not saying it is a perfect solution. But it does ensure a certain baseline level of services across the country.

Quebec is, by far, the largest recipient of equalization payments.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Can...

Mincome: Canada’s 1970s universal basic income experiment

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