Finland is running a UBI experiment right now or it just finished. I think they took two cohorts of people to follow selected randomly and gave one UBI and then are monitoring things.
The issue is at what point will people quit working.
If we use CERB as an example of 2k per month for every adult indexed to inflation I would work another two or three years and retire at 40. With a paid off house 48k would be easy to live off of. So the CERB value of UBI is probably too much.
The other thing you would need to do is significantly raise income tax rates. Probably to 35%-50% federally for any dollar earned above the UBI rate. You would need all earners to be paying for this program maybe more.
You would also want to eliminate minimum wage at let the market determine what people are willing to work for which would be interesting given the high tax rate. You might be trying to convince people to work full time for $1000/month after tax.
I think there would be a big challnage in determining to correct UBI value. You also get rid of programs like EI / child benefits etc when you do this so weirdly it might encourage people not to have kids. Immigration becomes a challenge as the cost of an immigrant is even higher than now and you will need immigration to offset lack of growth of population.
So you need to avoid the Saudi situation of two classes of people.
Lots of challenges. I don’t by the argument that it’s required an EI/Welfare model that we have now is an option that would work indefinitely the question is whether UBI is more efficient of a program due to decreased administration and decreased lag in getting funds.
Currently our welfare system is a gurenteed minimum income rather than a Universal basic income.
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