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The Liberal premier of Ontario announced details of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot. The provincial government issued a press release saying
Three regions will take part in the study. Pilots will start in late spring in Hamilton, including Brantford and Brant County; and in Thunder Bay and the surrounding area. The third pilot will start by this fall [autumn] in Lindsay.
The Basic Income model Ontario has developed will ensure that eligible participants receive:
Up to $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50 per cent of any earned income
Up to $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50 per cent of any earned income
Up to an additional $6,000 per year for a person with a disability.
[...] The three test regions will host 4,000 participants eligible to receive a basic income payment, between the ages of 18 to 64. By late spring, people in these areas will begin receiving information about the pilot and how to participate. The province is partnering with these communities and other experts to make sure that the Ontario Basic Income Pilot is fair, effective, and scientifically valid.
additional coverage:
- Canoe (editorial)
- The Globe and Mail
- globalnews.ca
- The Guardian
- Business Insider
- BBC News
- Canadian Press via City News
- Reuters via NASDAQ
- Toronto Star
- CHCH-TV
- CBC
- CNN Money
related story:
Ontario is Starting a Universal Basic Income Pilot
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 25 2017, @10:34PM (13 children)
How about--this is really revolutionary, you guys--how about people get it through their heads that the economy is for humanity, not humanity for the economy, and pass some simplifying laws.
Easy ones. Things like "For any publicly-traded company, if you can't pay your workers enough that they can stay off government assistance, the difference comes out of the capital gains, assets, and income of the highest-paid members of the company, in order, starting from the CEO and working down." That's a start. Would sure as shit constrain those fucking obscene seven-figure bonuses. Because hey, guess what? When your employees need government help, *it means the taxpayers are subsidizing your profits.*
Ooh, here's another one: "No employee of any publicly-traded company shall make more than 25 times the income of the lowest-paid worker, including company stock options, bonuses, expense accounts, &c."
In before "Butbutbutbut no one will WOOOORRRRRRK as hard as those poor CEOs you're victimizing if you do thatttttt!" Eat shit and die.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:32PM (5 children)
The economy isn't for humanity.
The economy is a side effect of humanity.
Without humanity, what passes for an economy is what we call ecology (yes, the words have related roots).
As for the rest of your post, you seem really unhappy about the idea that companies work within the regime in which they find themselves. I can only recommend that you alter the regime. Apparently, this will start with a much, much higher minimum wage, where the base effectively makes part-time employment financially inviable (because otherwise your greeter who works 2 hours a week might end up getting welfare - so you'd darned well better pay them $1k/hour just in case). I think that you may find this something of a tough policy to push through, in the era of global competition, but what do I know? You do you! You go, girl!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:39PM (1 child)
We need another world war in which you get a nuke to the face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:11AM
That would indeed change some regimes. However, it's unclear that it would result in regimes of which Azuma Hazuki approves.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:38AM (2 children)
Do you really want to go there? Ecology is often squeezed out in the name of economic growth. The fauna generally have no ability to sue for damages.
With Basic Income, you don't actually need minimum wage anymore. As an AC pointed out, a 50% tax on the working poor is not Basic Income.
Welfare depresses wages, because the poor are not allowed to turn down potential employment: else they risk getting cut off. mhajicek [soylentnews.org] pointed out that a minimum wage job can easily cost as much as it brings in.
Might as well stay home and play video games at that point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:24AM (1 child)
What the hell does that have to do with anything? GPP was pointing out that the economy is basically what we call people dealing with each other. In the absence of people (say, after we wipe each other out with face-targeted nuclear devices) whatever's left isn't an economy, it's an ecology.
Granted, UBI on a society-wide basis does tend to render a minimum wage moot. However, to describe what's going on as a 50% tax on the working poor is disingenuous at best. "Here's a fat wad of cash! Oh, we'll give you a bit less if you actually have income." It's more like a means-adjusted UBI, which actually comports quite well with some of the proposals for UBI, in which it simply scales linearly with income tax as people earn more, thus rendering each incremental dollar (or pound or peso or whatever) of income equal up and down the income scale, but establishing a social floor. Speaking of which ...
Sure! You're right! Totally dead, spot on, not a hair off the mark! ... with what you're saying. What you're missing is the reason why the USA ended up with workfare programmes. It was Clinton's plan to save them in the teeth of growing middle-class resentment at the outlay involved in welfare. A politically toxic welfare programme is just living on borrowed time, at which point it does not adequately serve its purpose of being a social safety net.
Now this bums a lot of people out because they don't like, or simply refuse to believe that the average american (or brit, or mexican, or whatever) might get cranky about subsidising open-ended welfare, but the ugly fact is that angry middle class politics created welfare, not a conspiracy of moguls.
The upshot of all this is that if you can't come up with a UBI proposal that the middle class is willing to shoulder (because let's face it, that's where most of the taxes are borne, once you include the whole tax menu) then it's a dead letter.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @05:09AM
One way of implementing basic income is a negative tax rate below a certain income level.
The reason I was arguing that a 50% percent claw-back does not count as basic income is that the top (federal) tax bracket in the US is only 40% [bankrate.com]. In Canada, the top tax bracket is only 33% [cra-arc.gc.ca]
While both of those exclude state/provincial tax, a 50% claw-back is clearly punitive. That is to say, the working poor are actually punished for finding work: with all of the extra expenses that implies.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 25 2017, @11:51PM
Result: All those minimum wage workers at Walmart and McDonalds are replaced with robots. The stores are supplied by robotic trucks. Their lowest paid worker is the technician responsible for maintaining a dozen locations. After a little dip from the initial development costs, profits go up and management gives itself a raise.
(BTW this will happen regardless; they've been working on the tech for a while and it's almost ready.)
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:02AM (4 children)
Again, misunderstanding of basic economics abounds here.
The minimum wage is best understood as the floor below which it is illegal to hire an American. So because the work isn't worth the minimum it must be outsourced, done off the books by an illegal or replaced by a robot. What will not happen longer than it takes to arrange for one of those other options is pay someone more than the work produces in value to the employer. Just won't happen. You are not required to like this. Reality is what is still there after your best efforts to disbelieve it, to not like it, etc. Math is a bitch like that.
The question is why we want to ban people from trading with each other? It is not required that every single job pay a 'living wage'. Students should be encouraged to work, at least part time for example. Will they earn enough to even pay for their school? Probably not, but that isn't the point. Earning beer money is. Greeters at Walmart are typically retired and only wanting to get out a bit and still feel like they are part of the world. If you force Walmart to pay them $15/hr they will just eliminate the greeters. Stay at home moms often want a part time job when the kids enter school, they can't all be school teachers.
Let people be free to offer their labor on the market for what the traffic will bear. If the welfare state insists that redistribution must take place, that is an entirely unrelated question. Your employer is NOT your mom, it isn't taking you to raise when it hires you. How many children you have does not impact what they are willing to pay you in the slightest, other than down since your work schedule is almost certain to be less reliable if you are a single mom. How much school debt you accumulated isn't going to make them want to pay you more either, what you learned that was useful might make them pay more. Moral is to learn something useful.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @01:01PM (3 children)
So we have X number of people, and Y number of jobs that pay a living wage of Z. If X is greater than Y, what is your answer for the sum of X - Y?
I'm honestly interested, because I have thought about this many times. My personal favorite is "workfare" where the government provides an essentially unlimited number of jobs building infrastructure for people who are willing to work for the amount Z. Not a perfect solution by any means, but its the best I came up with.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:29PM
I'd like that too. Especially because the infrastructure has gone to shit. Time for another CCC if you ask me. J-Mo, of course. doesn't actually want this solved; he wants to see people suffer because somehow it vindicates him.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 26 2017, @08:52PM (1 child)
So many things wrong with the premise it is hard to even see where to start.
Let us begin with 'living wage.' Define it. Most of the inhabitants of Planet Earth live on a lot less than I suspect you will define the term as. Provide your logical argument for why your greatly expanded definition should be considered a requirement for someone else to provide it to you gratis.
Now we can question your assumption that there are only Y jobs, that they come from some mysterious and unknowable place and that unless this strange power offers you a job that you are doomed to wander the wilderness as a homeless bum. No, the number of jobs is not fixed, they do not have to involve some stranger offering you money in exchange for labor. YOU can create jobs, somebody created every existing job so why can't you? And if the economic situation where you are at is truly so terrible why are you still there? Show me the graven tablets saying you have an absolute right to live exactly where you are and that if there isn't a job for you there then damnit somebody has to cut you a check!
You are not special. You are not entitled to anything beyond Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Catching happiness is all your problem.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Monday May 01 2017, @02:00PM
I didn't define living wage, you just assumed that I did. I simply proposed it as a variable. Since you seem pretty hung up on it, lets define it as enough money to feed, house, and clothe two persons (yourself, and one child) along with transportation for one to work. This transportation could be bus, a horse, a car; whatever you want that is cost effective for the distance traveled.
Also, I never said gratis. I never backed any type of basic income or welfare. I specifically mentioned workfare, in fact.
I also never assumed the number of jobs was "fixed." However, at any given point in time there are X number of people and Y number of jobs. That is simply a fact. My question is, if X is substantially greater than Y, what is your solution. My long term fear is that automation is driving our society towards a state where the demand for jobs is greater than the demand for the output from those jobs, which would seem to lead to the situation where X is greater than Y.
BTW Jmo, I have moved for work. I have taken a job outside my chosen field of study. I have done what I consider necessary to reach my definition of success. My concern is for those less fortunate than myself, and those who come after me who won't can't follow the same route I did due to the work I have done automating in my field. Your questions to me quickly display the broad brush you use to paint everyone who even so much as asks you a question.
(Score: 2) by driven on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:32AM
Interesting but you need to factor in at least two more points:
1) robots and AI will replace more and more human workers.
2) companies can simply move to other countries/states where the laws/taxes are more profitable for them.