Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
hmm, you still have to make a distinction between the working person and the non-working person. If everyone's on UBI and less people are working who's paying for it? Taxes taken from where? You said yourself you would not be working and early retired. I would be as well.
And does an employee pay for CPP and EI anymore? Or are those programs now non-existent and a laid-off person gets zero more than the UBI they already had?
Is it all income tax now?
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CPP is a savings/pension program, so changing that is unfair. But OAS/GIS/AISH are social programs, and so anyone who gets UBI about the same doesn't have much to complain about imo.
If you had UBI you could abolish EI. Would need the tax room from no more EI contributions to pay for UBI. Probably would need to pay the replacement tax on all income, not just up to the current insurable earnings cap.
I agree with you that UBI is probably not fiscally sustainable, and with oling that it is probably the right thing to do.
I should say - my understanding of UBI is that the U stands for universal. Everyone over 18 gets a payment every month, even rich people etc. Taxes would have to go up considerably, so on net the wealthy would be worse off. That isn't what the PBO used, so it would be more expensive than what they assumed.
I don't like clawbacks (especially at low income levels) because that will make people choosing to not work a bigger problem. If you are getting UBI and they reduce it by fifty cents per dollar you earn, plus you have to pay taxes, there isn't much incentive to work. Better to pay for it with increases in taxes (including the GST).