To basic income's credit, a large percentage of the spending for welfare and disability programs like Ontario Works and ODSP gets swallowed up by bureaucracy instead of going to the actual recipients' pockets. It's far more cost efficient to just send a direct deposit to millions of bank accounts and mail out millions of cheques. I used to do payroll for a corporation. With our software we'd upload an excel file to our business bank account to direct deposit money to 5,000+ bank accounts. It's a very labour efficient process these days.
I would rather we scrap means-tested welfare, take the means-tested welfare pot and divvy it up evenly to every Canadian adult 18+ who applies for basic income. And then for every person who enrolls, tax the benefit back at a 40% ratio if they earn income.
So if basic income was say like $800/month ($9,600/year), you need to make less than $24,000 per year in order to even qualify. And if you accidentally or maliciously apply for it if you don't qualify anyways, you're going to get a tax bill from the CRA. If you make like $15,000 per year working part-time/casual for example, you'd only get $200/month basic income. This would give low-income people an incentive to work while providing a safety net.
Now there are some people in the system who do make more than $800/month already who are going to complain: people on disability. So we'd have to top them up more while decreasing the pay out for everyone else. And we'd need to employ some barebones staff to assess whether someone qualifies for disability.
The system I'm proposing is actually very similar to what libertarian economist Milton Friedman suggested. In fact if you post this proposal on OGFT, there would be major push back on there. Because there are probably lots of social workers on that forum who'd be out of a job. And some people on means-tested welfare do get a better deal than ours and they'd be paranoid at the possibility of getting a worse deal than what they have now.
There's no way the government is going to lay off a half a million employees.
Yeah there is going to be push back from government employees about this. Which is why the politicians don't want to fix the problem. The Liberals and NDP know that the poor have nowhere else to go and take their vote for granted. Toronto and Vancouver keeps voting Liberal and NDP. And look at how many homeless people are in those cities. The Liberal and NDP are poverty pimps who pay lip service to the poor and then give a bunch of government money to the bureaucrats and skim some cream off the top for themselves too. The Karen bureaucrats treat people in the welfare and disability office like shit (this is well-documented) and these Karen bureaucrats' labour unions give money to the NDP and Liberals.
But, that's based on the assumption that basic income would be more efficient to administer. The government still cannot seem to pay thousands of people on its Phoenix pay system.
It's really not that difficult for a web developer to have user-inputted bank routing information (people have already inputted this information in their Service Canada account to get those CERB/EI deposits and tax refunds) exported to an Excel spreadsheet in bulk. I can't recall how many rows are allowed in Excel but you can have multiple spreadsheet files. And then upload Excel files to an online business bank account. It's literally that easy.
That is far more efficient than hiring unionized social workers with great pay and benefits to run Ontario Works and ODSP. Do you have any idea how much labour is involved in what social workers do now? Let's say you're a welfare recipient. You go to the office to apply for welfare. Some unionized bureaucrat with great pay and benefits has to evaluate whether you qualify or not, ask you a bunch of intrusive questions, ask you for bank statements, copies of job applications, etc. They make you go through a workplace, resume and job interview workshop. They make you come in regularly. All this shit costs money. Money that is going to some bureaucrats instead of in your pocket.
The greatest stumbling block to basic income is that so many more people (every student, every stay at home mom/dad and retired person) would qualify for the monies that the costs would dwarf the present system and any theoretical savings. We've run into massive debt just with CERB, EI, rent subsidies and wage subsidies. That alone shows that a 100 billion dollar basic income program is infeasible.
Thats why you just take the present pot and just divvy it up equally between every 18+ Canadian who applies. And tax it back at 40% of earned income. I'd rather the money go to the people as much has possible than over-paid stiff upper lip bureaucratic Karens. Have you ever dealt with government employees? They treat people like a piece of shit. I'd rather empower the poor to make decisions with the money than give all this money to power-tripping Karens.
the government is incompetent at this sort of thing. it remains very costly.
Whether the government or a private enterprise hires a web developer to do the job or not, what difference does it make? So as long as you hire someone who knows how to do the job. This isn't hard. I could do this job if I upgraded my web development skills. They could hire a Pajeet in India to do this if they wanted to. lol.
the cost would still be 100 billion yearly, which is beyond unaffordable.
You just take the present pot or pick a budget that sounds reasonable and divvy it up evenly and tax it back at 40% instead of giving a huge cut to bureaucratic Karens like we do now.
To basic income's credit, a large percentage of the spending for welfare and disability programs like Ontario Works and ODSP gets swallowed up by bureaucracy instead of going to the actual recipients' pockets. It's far more cost efficient to just send a direct deposit to millions of bank accounts and mail out millions of cheques. I used to do payroll for a corporation. With our software we'd upload an excel file to our business bank account to direct deposit money to 5,000+ bank accounts. It's a very labour efficient process these days.
I would rather we scrap means-tested welfare, take the means-tested welfare pot and divvy it up evenly to every Canadian adult 18+ who applies for basic income. And then for every person who enrolls, tax the benefit back at a 40% ratio if they earn income.
So if basic income was say like $800/month ($9,600/year), you need to make less than $24,000 per year in order to even qualify. And if you accidentally or maliciously apply for it if you don't qualify anyways, you're going to get a tax bill from the CRA. If you make like $15,000 per year working part-time/casual for example, you'd only get $200/month basic income. This would give low-income people an incentive to work while providing a safety net.
Now there are some people in the system who do make more than $800/month already who are going to complain: people on disability. So we'd have to top them up more while decreasing the pay out for everyone else. And we'd need to employ some barebones staff to assess whether someone qualifies for disability.
The system I'm proposing is actually very similar to what libertarian economist Milton Friedman suggested. In fact if you post this proposal on OGFT, there would be major push back on there. Because there are probably lots of social workers on that forum who'd be out of a job. And some people on means-tested welfare do get a better deal than ours and they'd be paranoid at the possibility of getting a worse deal than what they have now.
Yeah there is going to be push back from government employees about this. Which is why the politicians don't want to fix the problem. The Liberals and NDP know that the poor have nowhere else to go and take their vote for granted. Toronto and Vancouver keeps voting Liberal and NDP. And look at how many homeless people are in those cities. The Liberal and NDP are poverty pimps who pay lip service to the poor and then give a bunch of government money to the bureaucrats and skim some cream off the top for themselves too. The Karen bureaucrats treat people in the welfare and disability office like shit (this is well-documented) and these Karen bureaucrats' labour unions give money to the NDP and Liberals.
Man your posts are usually bang on.
It's really not that difficult for a web developer to have user-inputted bank routing information (people have already inputted this information in their Service Canada account to get those CERB/EI deposits and tax refunds) exported to an Excel spreadsheet in bulk. I can't recall how many rows are allowed in Excel but you can have multiple spreadsheet files. And then upload Excel files to an online business bank account. It's literally that easy.
That is far more efficient than hiring unionized social workers with great pay and benefits to run Ontario Works and ODSP. Do you have any idea how much labour is involved in what social workers do now? Let's say you're a welfare recipient. You go to the office to apply for welfare. Some unionized bureaucrat with great pay and benefits has to evaluate whether you qualify or not, ask you a bunch of intrusive questions, ask you for bank statements, copies of job applications, etc. They make you go through a workplace, resume and job interview workshop. They make you come in regularly. All this shit costs money. Money that is going to some bureaucrats instead of in your pocket.
Thats why you just take the present pot and just divvy it up equally between every 18+ Canadian who applies. And tax it back at 40% of earned income. I'd rather the money go to the people as much has possible than over-paid stiff upper lip bureaucratic Karens. Have you ever dealt with government employees? They treat people like a piece of shit. I'd rather empower the poor to make decisions with the money than give all this money to power-tripping Karens.
Whether the government or a private enterprise hires a web developer to do the job or not, what difference does it make? So as long as you hire someone who knows how to do the job. This isn't hard. I could do this job if I upgraded my web development skills. They could hire a Pajeet in India to do this if they wanted to. lol.
You just take the present pot or pick a budget that sounds reasonable and divvy it up evenly and tax it back at 40% instead of giving a huge cut to bureaucratic Karens like we do now.