Giving away free money pays for itself…
what is welfare for and employment insurance?
I’m not opposed to a negative income tax (like a UBI but instead of giving it to every citizen, only those below a certain threshold get any funds) but it would be a very difficult process to enact and you seem to think it can just be done by taking money from some people and giving it to others.
You mean like welfare which in its current form doesn’t work.
I’d have to look up the numbers to be exact but even if you seized the wealth of all the top 10% and divided it evenly among the other 90% it breaks out like $150 per person.
Irrelevant and your math is wrong.
Heres the problem:
You have Joe, he works in a paper mill. Some downsizing happens or whatever and he gets laid off. He has a few options, welfare, employment insurance, maybe some savings but at the end of the day, his options will limit as time goes on.
Say it been over four months for poor joe, he’s on welfare now and takes home a nice even number to make this example simple for you. Say $1000 a month. Assuming he lives in a reasonable location and it takes care of his needs (which in reality isn’t always the case but for the sake of argument) let’s say he’s floating nicely. Nicely being he pays his bills and maybe has enough to treat himself to the movies once in a while.
Now Joe finds a job, not a great one but lest its full time. (Again in reality that isn’t always the case but the best example here.) It pays him $1100. One could get excited and argue ‘hurrah he’s free’ but we are forgetting welfare is tax-free. What he brought home before was protected in a sense by his status, now that’s he’s back in the system he losses a portion to covering benefits, taxes and other deductions.
Now he’s only bringing home say $750. Those bills he had before don’t shrink with his income now hes in danger, its almost better if he never worked at all.
How in the world is UBI going to “pay for itself”?
Welfare creates a ceiling for many people. If you don’t have the right job you can in effect make your problem worse by working harder to better yourself. It promotes passive behavior.
UBI creates a floor, you don’t lose it because you make money so you don’t hurt yourself by trying to better your lot in life. That allows you the breathing room to go back to school to upgrade yourself to those better jobs or to look and maybe relocate to one.
Not just take any job available no matter how bad the fit because your welfare worker demands it.
Universal basic income is a sweet idea, but it’s crummy economics.
Actually, the data collected both in the 70s trial in Manitoba Canada and the resent test (while cut short in Ontario) revealed some surprising finds.
