Quote:
Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen
I could make minimum wage working at a job with a lot less stress and responsibility. I don't though because I'm in a very small subset of people who like more money....
The idea that someone getting the absolute bare minimum, not even enough to support a family, would simply quit working is based on fear rhetoric and not reality. You're just perpetuating the offensive stereotype that poor people are lazy.
And then you double down on it by saying it will just cause inflation...and if that's the case, then the $1800 isn't even close to enough forcing someone to go back and clean toilets. Putting us back where we started, so worst case seems to be status quo.
Someone working full-time should be able to support themselves if not their family. And even in Alberta with our $15 minimum wage that's not the case where the poverty line is $17 in Calgary. And when you can't pay for diapers for your kid, you're not able to afford classes or training opportunities, of course you'll continue to make minimum wage and never be able to get out of poverty. Yet we still expect people to somehow pull themselves up by their bootstraps knowing they ripped a part a long time ago. UBI should be enough to close that gap, help end the cycle of poverty.
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I think all people are mostly lazy, not just poor people. If my wife and I were pulling in $2k each per month for zero work, I would retire a lot sooner. (~now, or certainly soon). That factor would meaningfully decrease the amount of productive labor contributed to the economy over time. Redistribution could help, but you can only spread the peanut butter so thin - ultimately as a group we can only consume what we produce. If we produce less, we consume less.
For all that, I wouldn't be opposed to it, especially if it replaced other social programs (EI, welfare, GIS, OAS, AISH, etc). If everyone gets a basic income, then means, age, and disability tested programs aren't necessary. The budgets (and admin costs) of those programs are significant, so that would be a big potential funding source. Interestingly, AISH and OAS+GIS are both about $1600/month, which seems like a potentially reasonable way of setting the payments.