I am asking this question, because there does not seem to be a modern logical solution.
I hear a lot of people say that socialism might solve a lot of problems, but I don’t think it has any practicality.
Looking at jobs hiring trends, a lot of businesses are almost stopping their hirings, in favour of investing in automation. Which means 5-10 years down the line, “worker owned” might be closer to fiction.
AI is replacing a lot of jobs now and while the trend that new technologies create jobs, I think that jobs might come after 15-40 years.
Are humanity hopeless?
Replace all the social services your country has with a guaranteed basic income. Everyone gets it and it doesn’t run out like unemployment benefits. Another benefit, unlike welfare, is the person can keep working.
This has been studied a lot of times and mostly there is usually 2 concerns:
Now, for the first concern: I had never seen anyone even answer it theoretically.
For the second concern: there is a mixed results, some studies suggest that people productivity gets lower, others suggest otherwise.
I don’t see this even applied in a small village.
Just to be clear, I am talking about the widely known UBI, there is NIT and even other universal welfare schemes. IMO, even other universal welfare schemes has their own set of unsolved issues, and very experimental and idealistic in nature.
UBI is funded by taxes, it’s actually not has hard as it seems because people always do the math in the “logical” way and it isn’t actually the right way to consider the cost.
If you give a UBI of say $10,000 a year to everyone (let’s just keep it simple) for every citizen in Canada (let’s say 40 million people) you’d think that the total cost would be $400 Billion dollars a year, right?
Except that’s not how it actually works, what you’d do at the same time is raise taxes (preferably on property, but stupid politicians gonna put it on income instead) so that it balances around a specific income level getting nothing, with people above that level paying in, and people below that amount receiving a benefit. So if you’ve got a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) with a median family income of say $80k (again, just keeping it simple) you’d raise their taxes by $30,000 a year, and then give them $40,000 a year in basic income. Then you’ve got a well-to-do family making $150,000 a year that pays $60,000 more in taxes, and only gets $40,000 a year back.
The total “cost” of the program is actually only the net amount transferred. It’s easy to understand this if you think through a situation, when you tax someone $40,000, then give them $40,000 the total cost of that transfer is zero.
If you tax one person $20,000, give them $10,000, tax another person $10,000, and give them $10,000, and tax a third person $0 (not working) and give them $10,000 then the ACTUAL cost for the whole program is only $10,000, despite total taxes being $30,000, and total payouts being $30,000. So instead of costing $400 Billion for all of Canada, depending on what number they balance the whole thing around, it could be a reasonable amount and still cost under $100 billion a year.
There’s actually a study from the Parliamentary Budget Office of Canada that outlines the more realistic cost.
This would apply similarly to any other country attempting to implement such a policy.
Right away it would be significantly less than $400bil. Only adults would recieve UBI, and there would be savings from eliminating EI, Disabilty, Income Assistance, and OAS.
Why only adults?
Yes, you’re right about the savings on other programs assuming the amount for the basic income is high enough to cover those people.
It’s generally accepted UBI wouldn’t go to children, barring some special circumstance maybe, though not that I’ve come across. Kids don’t get income assistance or disability cheques either. Throwing $1000 a month to a 10 year old would be insane haha.
Think about that critically for a moment. Do children not have needs? Shelter, food, clothing?
Why should they not get a basic income?
Of course they have needs, that’s what the parents are meant to provide for. It’s illegal for a child to earn an income in developed countries already, 10 year olds are not allowed to have a job.
Are you suggesting the gov’t give $1000 a month to every 4,5,6 etc year old? Or is it meant to go straight to the parents? $1000 per kid is insane, and couples would be popping out as many kids as possible. Imagine getting $10k every month because you had 8 kids. The system would be abused significantly more than child benefit programs already are, and the kids would suffer the most.
Canada for example gives out child benefits every month to help with child needs. There’s a UBI pilot program starting in 2026, and you need to be 18 to apply. $1200 for singles, $2000 for couples, and $1800-$2400 per month for couples with kids. Generally, most UBI proposals that I’ve scome across have a couple of things across the board, namely being over 18, and making less than X amount per year (the Canadian pilot is less than $30k). Throwing that much money at kids is a recipe for disaster.
It could be adjusted to age to prevent “farming” your children.
That being said, the costs of having children being downloaded only to parents is the root cause of why first world countries are having such severe issues with birth rates right now.
Fewer children means fewer people in the future, and less future economic potential. I’m not saying we need to keep growing at a stupid rate, but declining population is a huge problem.
Just look at what’s happening in Japan right now.