I don't know if I agree with the U.S. study in terms of direct funding the banks through deposits by printing money and giving it directly to citizens. I think that's a little bit pie in the sky, but I'm no expert. Plus the cost of creating a whole new government bureaucracy and defining the program would probably be insane.
In terms of the first part, are we talking about adding 7800 on top of the federal government spending of $9000 per person and the provincial govenrment spending of $10,000 per person in Alberta alone.
And your replacing an unemployment program that pays less then 10% of the population and old age security that I think pays less then 30% of the population with a program that pays about 70% of the population, I don't see how that would be in any way revenue and taxation neutral.
Even if you calculate $7800 per person by about 70% of the population then your talking about $191 billion in terms of spending and you still have to add on things like health care per person, infrastructure, policing and security, government costs etc. It would still increase our government spending by a massive number over what we're spending now in a deficit situation.
To me it doesn't make sense, at least the control with welfare and UI and even old age security they're designed to be short term and limited to certain parts of the population that really need it, and they're not general programs.
They're also making real broad assumptions that giving out $7800 dollars will decrease the need for law enforcement and tax revenue increases, if anything with a guaranteed basic minimum you might see a reduction in taxation revenue as people might supplement their income more easily under the table.
Like I said, I would need someone to lay it out, but I think its kind of a goofy idea.
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