canada to experiment with universal basic income

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The Puritan work ethic had its time and place, but those things are no more. I think we as a society need to break away from it. Unfortunately, that may not happen any time soon since we have an aging population, at least in Canada.

I find that it is traditional conservatives who have a big fear of segment of "free-loaders" being a burden on everyone else. It isn't as much of a concern for pragmatic libertarians who are more interested in parsimonious solutions than the Randian swim-or-sink mentality of hard-line right-wingers.

Yeah, also I think that if you are against a big, nanny government with oodles of "alphabet soup" agencies, this could be the way to go. You'd replace a huge welfare beaucracy of overlapping agencies, the Social Security Administration and so forth. You'd just have one system to run it and perhaps another for the medical size and that could be it. When a child is born, they would get half the UBI for the family to help raise them and the other half would be held in escrow for a nest egg when they reach maturity, it would be put in an interest bearing account do it would grow. Also, higher education would be available without worry of how to pay for it, but one also should demonstrate an aptitude and desire for it as well. I think where the both sides of the debate get it wrong is with people, there are some people who will over achieve, others will be bum, other will be inbetween and many will never realize their dream or at least try to because they are stuck economically and so on. I think this idea will help out with that. I'd like to give it a try and see what happens. I'd also toy with the idea of a 20 or 30 hour work week as well with same pay, that;s a little OT but still we might have to do that down the line.

^^^

We're going to raise your taxes for it...

a wall street transaction tax would pay for it, easily.

Here is something to consider concerning a scarcity of jobs in the near future.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr ... d18b5d79c9

bad link.

It just now worked for me. It's titled Why Everyone Must Get Ready For 4th Industrial Revolution. You must wait 3 seconds to click to the article. It's what Forbes does...

page locked up puter. reset, now page loads, must've been outta memory.

47% of jobs to vanish due to automation. fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

And they aren't even counting 3D printing. I've heard it said that 3D printing is the first step toward Star Trek replicators. How accurate that last statement ism I don't know. But, it sure sounds feasible.

I support a universal wage or a supplement wage simply because the wages paid to labor are not sufficient to clear the market of the goods and services produced by labor. This is one of the basic flaws of capitalism. It is true that exploiting backward countries and paying substandard wages under substandard health conditions can offset the disadvantages of labor in the advanced countries but the basic problem is arithmetic. As long as wages are the main sources of consumer income there will always be a glut of goods and services. Other means have to be found to distribute this overage besides purchase by income paid to labor.

The Universal Wage is one method of taking care of this overage. I am not in love with it because it will encourage some lazy folks not to be productive. However it is a small price to pay to "keep the kettle boiling".

I prefer Dirty Harry to the Zodiac Killer look.

First off, when left to their own devices, pure capitalism and pure socialism/communism do have the seeds of their own destruction planted into their systems. The Capitalist side will veer towards the cheapest labor and costs thus putting people out of work in societies where we have a higher standard of living and must pay for it. People need to pay for things like shelter, food, medical care and so on along with what most of us need to live in a technicial society such as utilities like gas, electric, phone, water plus many of us need to get around meaning a car and what it takes to have one. People in poor countries only have a fraction of that, basically their societies they only need food and shelter plus electric to run a few sundry things. They might be like us when they catch up at some point. Think about it, 20 years ago, the internet was a novelty, 10 years ago, it was established, but still one can generally live without it. It is a necessity now for us who live in North America, Europe and a huge part of Asia. Heck, try to job hunt without the internet, good luck. It does make it easier though but I'm just saying that even the internet is a necessity now.

As to pure socialism/communism, especially the latter, it tries to make people the same, all of us are different. Outside of small communes where people generally know and could trust each other and maybe even up to small countries with a cash cow and a relatively small population along with genrally same climate, it could work relatively well, but when you get into large, diverse nations, not as well.

I think there are times, we need to pick and choose what works an d experiment as well, we need to keep the economy free so people will innovate and use the free market to find and achieve their desires and find a niche but we also need a system as a safety net for those who need help and/or guidance while they can find their way.

You're position is pretty close to mine on UBI. We might have to do so as a pragmatic measure. It should be enough for a basic apartment as well as cover living expenses plus one can have a basic car perhaps. It will give people who want to improve themselves by going to school/college a chance to do so and/or to find what they can do to make more to supplement the UBI.

IIRC, the Great Depression was a result of a glut of good where there were too few people to buy them, like you said, this could help keep things going.