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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @01:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the Having-UBI-would-afford-more-time-to-spend-supporting-SoylentNews dept.

The fine folks at the CBC bring us the following report:

Participants in Ontario's prematurely cancelled basic income pilot project were happier, healthier and continued working even though they were receiving money with no-strings attached.

That's according to a new report titled Southern Ontario's Basic Income Experience, which was compiled by researchers at McMaster and Ryerson University, in partnership with the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.

The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.

That finding appears to contradict the criticism some levelled at the project, saying it would sap people's motivation to stay in the workforce or seek employment.

That's an interesting way of looking at it. An alternative viewpoint could be that over a quarter of the people who were working before the UBI trial stopped working. Unclear are the benefits that resulted from their new spare time — such as providing support to an ailing family member.


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  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday March 12 2020, @06:50AM

    by deimtee (3272) on Thursday March 12 2020, @06:50AM (#970129) Journal

    Inflation is due to increase in the money supply. Simplistically, money is backed by the assets of the state. Print more and you are dividing a set wealth by a larger number of dollars. The wealth doesn't change, the dollar gets smaller.

    There are many economists who think that a small steady inflation is a good thing, but mostly it boils down to a redistributive effect of reducing the value of debt and held cash, and encouraging investment rather than wealth hoarding.

    As long as the money supply isn't simply printed to fund it a UBI is not in itself inflationary. It is redistributive.

    Personally I think the initial effects of a UBI would be fiscally fairly neutral, but it would have huge social, cultural, and environmental benefits. Those benefits would flow on to have very positive secondary effects.

    Pushing to extremes, do you want to live in a society where a few trillionaires own everything and everyone else is in a brutal, wasteful, struggle for survival, a la Soylent Green(the movie) or one where people are free to contribute in whatever way they want, a la Star Trek?

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