Basic Living Stipend

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Thor

Did anyone other than a few of you bother watching the video I posted on what motivates us?

I watched it. In fact, that is not the first time I've seen it. I am just not sure that I buy it. Sure, if you already have a very intelligent, creative person, offering them the flexibility to be even more creative is likely to be good for your business. But I keep looking at most of the folks doing the '####' jobs, and think "no end of self directed, creative anything is going to make this person a better worker, period." And that's the sort of person that the BLS would draw...and there are a lot of them out there.

[Nehkara]

I think just scraping by isn't enough for many people. People want things, to give gifts, to travel, to go out.

I would still work.

I honestly think it would be a better system. The Nordic countries seem to do well and do things similarly.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Thor

Did anyone other than a few of you bother watching the video I posted on what motivates us?

I will watch it once I'm home, but I'm curious as to what you are basing the statement that Iceland is considerably more socialist than Canada on.

As for unemployment, it's fairly high in Iceland:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/icel...mployment-rate

It also seems to fluctuate based on the season. I'm guessing that a seasonal employmetn such as fishing accounts for this.

I also don't see how Iceland, with a population of 320,000, is comparable to the much larger Canada in any way. Iceland has the benefit of extreme amounts of hydro-electric and thermal resources with very few citizens to support. They more or less have free energy.

Also, should I bring up the fact Iceland is bankrupt....

As for the general "socalism" of the nordic countries, in general, that's a complete myth. For the most part, the nordic countries have much laxer business policies than Canada. Some provide stipends for university students, but people, in general, are given much less opportunity to go to university or post secondary schooling.

Canada has the second highest proportion of university and college graduates in the world behind Russia:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._Federation_54

It might be cheaper in Sweden, but they also severly limit the number of spots available. It would be pretty easy to do the same in Canada. Yes it would be cheaper for students to attend university if we stopped letting so many people in.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

I watched it. In fact, that is not the first time I've seen it. I am just not sure that I buy it. Sure, if you already have a very intelligent, creative person, offering them the flexibility to be even more creative is likely to be good for your business. But I keep looking at most of the folks doing the '####' jobs, and think "no end of self directed, creative anything is going to make this person a better worker, period." And that's the sort of person that the BLS would draw...and there are a lot of them out there.

The reality of hte situation is that we need people to clean toilets, wash floors, wash dishes, move boxes, etc. etc..

It's not the creative and motivated people who are going to work less. It's the people who are forced, for whatever reason, to work the meanial jobs.

[Knalus]

Originally Posted by blankall

The reality of hte situation is that we need people to clean toilets, wash floors, wash dishes, move boxes, etc. etc..

It's not the creative and motivated people who are going to work less. It's the people who are forced, for whatever reason, to work the meanial jobs.

My thoughts exactly. At least, until we build proper robots that can do this. That's why I bought stock in iRobot.

[Cube Inmate]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

Hm, well, reading over my original post and the replies (and spending a day at work thinking more about it) I find that I sort of botched the question and didn't really lay out the premise.

First off, I was thinking of the system from David Weber's "Honor Harrington" books, hence the thread title.

Under this system, the BLS kept pace with or was slightly behind the rate of inflation for the most part.

The problem is that no matter what system you have in place, there's a segment of society (a.k.a. "bleeding heart liberals") who NEVER believe in the "SOL" philosophy. Therefore, even if you explicitly say that when you've burned through your BLS that you're SOL, there will be lobby groups demanding that we STILL take care of those people who did so. I can't disagree in one respect -- I could never watch a man starve to death if I had the means to help him. That said, I think that's an argument in itself AGAINST the "BLS" idea, since we have demonstrated as a society that we *don't* let our peers starve to death (when we're aware of the possibility). We already HAVE the BLS in place, and it's called "charity." Those on the left-wing don't believe in charity, so they assuage their guilt by forcing everyone (government) to take up the responsibility.

Quite honestly, dealing with these left-wingers is similar to dealing with a young child. You can give them ultimatum after ultimatum, but they still manage to cry and complain enough that eventually they get what they want. Reason doesn't apply.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by blankall

I will watch it once I'm home, but I'm curious as to what you are basing the statement that Iceland is considerably more socialist than Canada on.

Much higher taxes, a fully unionized country, way more social program benefits, longer mat leave, 5 weeks paid vacation for everyone, etc.. Its a long list, but I'm surprised you think we would even be close to a more reasonable and successful Canada

As for unemployment, it's fairly high in Iceland:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/icel...mployment-rate

It also seems to fluctuate based on the season. I'm guessing that a seasonal employmetn such as fishing accounts for this.

I thought my comments would be obviously not including the great depression crash of Iceland. We literally went bankrupt, have been utterly devastated by the crash of 2008, so yes unemployment is fairly high lol. Thus I said historically Iceland has had very low unemployment. The point being that I was making with that and also other nordic nations is people can be on welfare and live decently, yet these nations have had historically less unemployment than the US and Canada.

I also don't see how Iceland, with a population of 320,000, is comparable to the much larger Canada in any way. Iceland has the benefit of extreme amounts of hydro-electric and thermal resources with very few citizens to support. They more or less have free energy.

Its not, again why I mentioned nordic nations. But those massive projects to give us free energy take a LONG time for a small nation to pay off, we live on cheap energy, certainly far from free. We do however have a bloated tax system, high sales tax, and lots of entitlement programs and fat that costs a lot to keep going, and size of the country works against this because this is a lot easier to do in bigger nations in the nordic countries.

Also, should I bring up the fact Iceland is bankrupt....

Covered above.

As for the general "socalism" of the nordic countries, in general, that's a complete myth. For the most part, the nordic countries have much laxer business policies than Canada. Some provide stipends for university students, but people, in general, are given much less opportunity to go to university or post secondary schooling.

Wow thats quite a lot of statements, do you have some statistics to back up this? Iceland is very friendly to corporations, but we pay for that by having higher taxes, and a host of ways the government gets revenue from our people. Maybe your definition of socialism is the issue here, or mine, but to suggest nordic people have much less opportunity to go to university or post secondary is simply untrue. There is a host of help and ways for even destitute people to get through higher education without much fuss.

Canada has the second highest proportion of university and college graduates in the world behind Russia:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._Federation_54

It might be cheaper in Sweden, but they also severly limit the number of spots available. It would be pretty easy to do the same in Canada. Yes it would be cheaper for students to attend university if we stopped letting so many people in.

Iceland usually sits well over 30%, I think last 10 years its around 38% for post secondary, you can always check this on http://www.statice.is/ .

Are these studies including trades schools? These are very popular in Iceland, we churn out a lot of trades people, here you can make a very good living in trades.

But yeah Canada is awesome, I'm not trying to suggest Iceland is superior to it in things like economy, or education.

But also not sure what tangent brought you to all this, I never mentioned education at all, and my point was that with very good social nets in these nations people tend to work as much if not more than nations which offer much less like the USA. That there is more to motivating people to work than simply dollars and cents, again, this was my point and other than debating me on whether Iceland is more socialist than Canada (which I thought was pretty much case closed) I think we have gone off on a tangent here

[saskflames69]

Iceland sounds like an awesome country.

[Alberta_Beef]

I don't think there is a need for a Basic Living Stipend, but I would like to see the personal exemption for income taxes raised.

I believe this year's federal personal exemption is around $10,800, I really don't think they should be taxing people that can't afford the necessities in life. I think the exemption should be around $1500 per month or $18,000 per year.

[missdpuck]

This is an interesting. I wonder if the baby-mamas around here would still have so many kids if they didn't have to do so to get govt support.
I used to be far more liberal than I am now. But myfeelings, I'm sure, are largely based on the demographics of where I live.
I noticed in various threads that many of you in Calgary who use public transportation, are well educated, have good jobs etc.
Here, for the most part, public transportation is for the dregs of society, or those who hate the drive from West Palm to Ft Liquordale etc. But for the most part South Floridians with decent jobs avoid public transportation like the plague.
The conversations I heard about how to scam the welfare system, how many kids to have to get "x" amount of aid, how to get your kids into a different school by lying about where you live ( many African Americans here-please understand I say HERE-do not want their kids in school with Hispanics) put the torniquet on this bleeding heart. Then again, I must say, I don't know everything about these people or their other choices of course. What I did admire though, was how ambitious some of these folks are for their kids. I mention African Americans but I heard such stories from white people as well.
I guess what confuses me the most is the preoccupation with having so many kids you can't possibly afford-and this applies to all races. Not having several kids is considered to be almost sacreligious, and what I overheard on that subject is a book in itself.