#Speaking as a former beneficiary of Quebec's Welfare Credit (UBI)

[leam1983]

As a Canadian, and as someone living in a country that has a UBI framework, I think a lot of people misunderstand just how basic Universal Basic Income is.

TL;DR: I agree on principle, but identifying greed as a problem doesn't solve deeper systemic issues.

I see some armchair social theorists on here say that UBI is enough to fight more pressing social battles; that it empowers you to demand better rights as a worker, as a citizen. I've been on UBI and, well - no. UBI is enough to allow you to survive. If you want to invest in a project, if there's a worthwhile cause you want to get involved in that requires some involvement or some capital injection (even something as simple as buying supplies to fashion picketing signs) - that's on you. In Canada, UBI is calculated based on median income, which means that it isn't enough to kickstart some people's Post-Work-Era Roddenberry-Powered Magical Socialism where nobody works and everyone contributes out of sheer passion and drive.

UBI is there so you can survive, and so you can eventually have the resources and skillsets needed to contribute to Society without UBI lining your pockets. More importantly, UBI is there to ensure that there are no "bad jobs" to speak of, because even the fast food joint's janitor who's on Minimum Wage starts with better conditions than a UBI beneficiary. In Canada, a kid with no diploma who makes a living manning a Tim Hortons' cash register doesn't have to fight with the system to obtain credits related to his living conditions. The real problem has three prongs:

Welfare kings and queens who make it harder for legitimate demands of financial assistance to go through;

The corporate world that's forgotten that the very first rung past UBI needs to be 100% livable and needs to allow for at least some measure of savings to be something that can be planned for. UBI should facilitate survival, what happens when even minimum wage doesn't allow you to live right?

Slum lords who buy off properties initially set aside for Affordable Housing programs and who drive market values so far high that entry-level workers have to settle with living several hours away from their place of work.

But Sweden and Norway - Hold it. Sweden and Norway are filthy fucking rich. Sweden and Norway are Petrostates. Canada? Not so much. Year after year sees Affordable Living programs or revisions to UBI being floated that would turn it from a lifeline to an actually workable form of remuneration, but year after year sees my local politicians butt their heads against the fact that any kind of serious Social Security net can't just pay for itself; and Canadians are already sadly renowned for living in a country choked by taxes - all because our already-present pro-Social infrastructure is complex, inefficient and sadly vital for most low-income residents.

Imagine how insane implementing it would be on a per-State level, on the American side. Imagine the work that needs to be done; not just in terms of greater education, but also in the sense that there's an entire infrastructure you guys never put in place. Some of my colleagues are American expats, and their first big shock came in the form of their first tax bill on Canadian soil. Free healthcare isn't free, the load is just spread across the country's residents. It also means that UBI and Free Healthcare programs can only cover so much, seeing as even if you put the load primarily on those above a certain income level, those below it are still going to feel the pinch. God knows I do, every tax season, and even if it's for a fundamentally good cause.

So. Beyond harping that UBI is a basic right and that we all deserve to rest, ask yourself how wealthy your State is, first. Try and model the kind of help you'd be getting. Try projecting it as a deferred hit on your salary or your savings - one that you need to account for year after year, forever.

The social model where none of us work and all of us effectively play with shelter and rest being in-built facets of our social contract would require a total upheaval of our current system - and something tells me most people wouldn't like the transitional period between the two. Would people really maintain power stations or work hospitals just because it's the right thing to do?

Call me cynical, but I've been alive long enough to really, really, seriously doubt that logic. Sooner or later, someone's going to want to look out for Number One. The USSR fell for that very reason, and my own country's very pro-Social policies are rife with examples of what happens when someone with good intentions gets unfettered access to a chequebook, supposedly for the good of all. Remuneration is a great control system, in that respect, especially when we know that in an Egalitarian system, there's always going to be one or two chucklefucks who think they're more Egalitarian than the rest.

Greed is in all of us; the only thing that keeps you or me honest is our lack of power. Money, as they say, is the root of all Evil. Remove money from the equation and something else will take its place. Social status, most likely.

Then let's make all of us equal! Communism FTW!

you're likely American if you're reading this, how do you think most people will react to that kind of assertion?

even in an ideal system, the Overseer would have more power. That, right there, is enough of an imbalance for unfair treatment to surface.

Again, we've seen what happened with Soviet Russia, and I'm not saying this to be a bootlicker. Open a history book: Lenin barely managed to approximate Marx's idea of an Egalitarian state and Stalin identified the cracks in the system and pushed them wide open, priming it for collapse.

UBI needs to happen. via antiwork