Canada to trial basic income

[Quik]

All reasonable questions.

 

Citizens income shouldn't be enough to provide all the basics. It should be pitched at around the same level as unemployment benefit. There are no other benefits so people have to work to top up their income.

 

Tax wouldn't need to be any higher. The aim should be to make the system cost neutral compared to existing spend on welfare and administration of welfare/tax.

 

As for cleaning the bogs there will be no shortage of takers. People will need work to top up their basic income.

 

Surely that just means that everyone will get what is now the level of unemployment benefit, most of whom do not need it, and it will be paid for by getting rid if principally housing benefit. Won't that just lead to loads of unemployed people being homeless?

[I1L2T3]

Surely that just means that everyone will get what is now the level of unemployment benefit, most of whom do not need it, and it will be paid for by getting rid if principally housing benefit. Won't that just lead to loads of unemployed people being homeless?

 

You've spotted that housing is the fundamental issue with introducing this in the UK.

 

Even the Greens when they costed their plans recognised this and planned to keep elements of housing benefit. IMO that was wrong because it's a direct acknowledgment that they would have to kowtow to the Labour/Tory/BTL/Developer house price pantomime.

 

Any introduction of citizens income would be scuppered by artificially inflated housing costs and until those are controlled in the UK it won't work without government shelling out on housing benefit too. For a citizens income to truly work housing costs need to be brought down to within what is affordable on citizens income + 20 hours work at NMW level.

 

---------- Post added 10-03-2016 at 19:42 ----------

 

This is a fundamentally bad idea in my view. It is about as far removed from the original purpose of the British welfare state, as enunciated by Beveridge and others, as it is possible to be.

 

As well as being fundamentally flawed from an economic point of view (based as it is on the assumption that the state will generate enough tax revenues to pay each adult citizen a living income), it would also be disastrous for British society, in that it would increase the dependence of everybody on the state and thereby reduce individual incentives to generate personal income, or even to work at all.

 

A better solution in my view would be to reduce welfare dependency, which has increased by leaps and bounds in recent decades. The benefits system definitely needs to be simplified, but it also needs to be reduced in scale and scope, not increased as the 'basic income' moonshine would suggest.

 

It's counter-intuitive but it frees people from the state. Citizens just need to register for the income, collect it, work and pay their tax.

 

For the average low paid person it would reduce the number of touch points with the state and the complexity of their relationship with the state. For the middle and higher earners it's just something that gets paid out kind of in the same way child benefit does now. It just appears in your account but your main income comes from your work.

 

The benefits and taxes systems become massively simplified.

[NigelFargate]

Y

 

---------- Post added 10-03-2016 at 19:42 ----------

 

[/color]

 

It's counter-intuitive but it frees people from the state. Citizens just need to register for the income, collect it, work and pay their tax.

 

For the average low paid person it would reduce the number of touch points with the state and the complexity of their relationship with the state. For the middle and higher earners it's just something that gets paid out kind of in the same way child benefit does now. It just appears in your account but your main income comes from your work.

 

The benefits and taxes systems become massively simplified.

 

That's an interesting point about counter-intuitivity. However, by embedding the notion of welfare entitlement even more firmly in the minds of citizens, and by, in practice, making people even more dependent on government handouts than they are now, the reality is likely to be the reverse of counter-intuitive logic. It would strengthen the already too prevelant notion that people are entitled to 'free money' (in reality there is no such thing) without working or making any return contribution at all to society.

 

Moreover, I don't think that in practice that it would simplify the benefits system very much, because a system of welfare payments to those in need of income 'top ups' for various reasons would soon in all likelihood develop. If not, the system would simply be a poll tax in reverse, which of course was fundamentally inequitable, which was why it failed so ignominiously. Personally, I favour the 'get off your arse and get a job' approach to welfare, with concessions to those who genuinely cannot work.

[I1L2T3]

That's an interesting point about counter-intuitivity. However, by embedding the notion of welfare entitlement even more firmly in the minds of citizens, and by, in practice, making people even more dependent on government handouts than they are now, the reality is likely to be the reverse of counter-intuitive logic. It would strengthen the already too prevelant notion that people are entitled to 'free money' (in reality there is no such thing) without working or making any return contribution at all to society.

 

Moreover, I don't think that in practice that it would simplify the benefits system very much, because a system of welfare payments to those in need of income 'top ups' for various reasons would soon in all likelihood develop. If not, the system would simply be a poll tax in reverse, which of course was fundamentally inequitable, which was why it failed so ignominiously. Personally, I favour the 'get off your arse and get a job' approach to welfare, with concessions to those who genuinely cannot work.

 

All classic criticisms of the concept. It should be clear no system is perfect. The one we have now certainly isn't:

 

- Most new housing benefits claimants are workers

- Workers incomes are topped up with tax credits anyway

- The system is full of loopholes that can be exploited, by the poor and the rich too

- The system supports high housing costs

- It requires hundreds of thousands of people to administer it

- Welfare and tax are overly complex

- The system creates complete welfare dependency for too many people

etc... etc... etc...

 

Can citizens income and tax reform fix a lot of this? It would not be perfect of course but it could make things better

[buck]

The Canadian Prime Minister has relaxed the controls to welcome thousands of Syrian refugees which is many more than the UK plan to take.

Canada is the second biggest country on earth, with most of its small population living close to the USA. Plenty of room out there for new immigrants.

[Cyclone]

Sure, I bet that they send all the refugees to go and live in a lightly populated semi wilderness... Not in an area with support services and urbanisation!

 

Texas is pretty empty isn't it, maybe the US should take more refugee's and put them up in the desert?

[sutty27]

Sure, I bet that they send all the refugees to go and live in a lightly populated semi wilderness... Not in an area with support services and urbanisation!

 

Texas is pretty empty isn't it, maybe the US should take more refugee's and put them up in the desert?

 

The countries close to Syria also have lots of space and its more better for the environment if they are provided with everything they need close to their own country.

[Solomon1]

Canada are to trial a universal basic income. With several other European countries also considering the idea, it looks like there's a growing movement gathering pace.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-canada-is-trying-a-basic-income-britain-can-ignore-it-no-longer-a6919486.html

 

Great idea

[Cyclone]

The countries close to Syria also have lots of space and its more better for the environment if they are provided with everything they need close to their own country.

 

Very true, it's lucky that they have currently taken millions of refugees then.

Although there are a number of countries that have taken none. We tend to consider ourselves to be morally superior to countries like that though on a whole host of humanitarian issues.

[sutty27]

Very true, it's lucky that they have currently taken millions of refugees then.

 

I don't think luck had anything to do with it.