http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/wynne-announcement-hamilton-1.4082476
The program will pay $17K for singles, $24K for families. That's definitely a modest amount but probably reasonable for a pilot program. Seems it will last 3 years of data gathering, then I suppose they will use that to either scrap it all together or I what I hope is to make it better.
Here's a good write up of this fascinating and ever more relevant topic...at the end of my "lecture" I point out some highlights from the link below, it's a bit long so you may prefer just to check that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
One of the most common complaints critics have is that UBI will create a disincentive to work, to some degree this is true (and there is data on this -- check the Wiki) what most people who are not in High Tech or at least very plugged into the scene (such as your humble correspondent ;-) don't realize is that this question will be moot in as little as 10 years! Sometime in the 2020's we will reach a true AI (as I've discussed in numerous posts!) at that point pretty much any job could be replaced by said AI. Now, this is a complex subject which I don't want to go off on too big a tangent but these AI should have rights and hence they may not want to do all those jobs etc. So how that will all shake out is hard to say. But don't get too hopeful, Nanotech and 3D printing are also on the rise, so between these 3 amazing technologies the future of most jobs, not just manufacturing jobs but also most types of Lawyers, Doctors and Quants (such as myself)...etc will all be taken!
The point I'm trying to make is that disincentive for work is irrelevant when there's no work! So it's really with good foresight that many countries are seriously testing out what form of this program (likely will require a multi-variable approach in the sense that we change/adapt the form every 5 years or so to adapt to the changes technology is making to society) works best now!
Also, related to this are the people who don't believe in UBI, they usually advocate "jobs for everyone"...I find this to be a very antiquated mode of thinking! It's like going back to the 1800's and outlawing textile looms because it put seamstresses out of a job (which incidentally what began the group called Luddites!). For people who understand where technology is going they can see this is not the answer, there's been a long trend of automation, going back to the very first types of work, agrarian in nature...look how many people it now takes to run a farm, just a few! As everything becomes more automated, we all have more free time (though parents to young children such as myself have trouble seeing that sometimes!) and will continue to do so as tech progresses. Simple example would be a Nanotech based Replicator, like in Star Trek, this actually isn't that hard compared to many of the other future tech on that show. No more shopping, no more cooking, cleaning up dishes etc. Think how much more free-time we'd have! My point is, if we force companies to keep human labor we will stifle this tech evolution, for instance we may not get to the stage where we have Replicators :-( If you think about it, do you really want to work or is the more basic thing you want...money? I know it's the latter for me so I certainly do not want to halt technology by handcuffing companies...UBI is the answer (what form is best?...that requires much research and experimentation!). I do want to point out that companies will pay a significant portion of UBI, not sure how the optimal details will work out but take for instance a company akin to Microsoft that may gain a monopoly on AI labor, and another on Nanotech...these 2 companies would make Apple look like a Ma N Pa operation! They would be ridiculously rich and so should pay their fair share to UBI! If they don't...they lose anyway as nobody would have any money to buy their products!
Some people also question...what would you even do if you didn't work? I think this is the ultimate 1st world problem! haha I personally could list dozens of things! But for those who lack imagination I'm sure we could run a variety of suggestions by you and at least a few of those would interest you! Also the size of the UBI would limit what you could do but that's just a transitional phase, as Nanotech leads to buildings for example being created for a few $, money will go the way of the DoDo haha. Even today with a modest UBI, you could study free online courses at great institutions like MIT on say M-Theory (potentially a Grand Unified Theory of Physics) or the collected works of Shakespeare or Mandarin...etc! You could take up painting, carpentry...any number of activities!
Finally, there's many more interesting tangents to explore in this topic, but I have to do more research myself so let's save it for a future post! I'll finish with a few highlights from the Wiki on UBI:
- Administrative Efficiency - The lack of means test or similar administration would allow for some saving on social welfare, which could be put towards the grant. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) describes one of the benefits of a basic income as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social welfare benefits,[9] and they have put forth proposals for implementation that they claim to be financially viable.[10]
- First, although most basic income supporters tend to be politically left, right-leaning supporters, at least since the 1970s, have argued that policies like basic income free welfare recipients from the paternalistic oversight of conditional welfare-state policies. Second, Philippe Van Parijs has argued that basic income at the highest sustainable level is needed to support real freedom, or the freedom to do whatever one "might want to do."
- Fox Piven holds the view that an income guarantee would benefit all workers by liberating them from the anxiety that results from the "tyranny of wage slavery" and provide opportunities for people to pursue different occupations and develop untapped potentials for creativity
Update: A story about San Fran mulling a proposal to tax robots that take people's jobs...the money can be used to retrain those workers etc.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/05/02/1958221/san-francisco-politician-jane-kim-is-exploring-a-tax-on-robots
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