I'm very glad to see Ontario is thinking about giving UBI a trial. Not
only is a trial needed to see what the snags are, but the concept is so
alien to the GOP that right now they would never consider it. There has
to be some way of taking care of those made unemployed by AI and
robotics. I don't know of a better way of doing that.
On 11/22/2016 8:20 PM, H LV wrote:
From The Belleville Intelligencer
'Ontario is on the precipice of a three-year pilot to test out the
concept of a guaranteed basic income and residents have been invited
to share their views on the proposal online, as well as during several
public consultations ...
'It’s a consultation Ruth Ingersoll, executive director for Community
Development Council of Quinte, certainly plans to get in on.
'
“I like the model and the idea of a basic income,” said Ingersoll,
adding it would relieve many of the barriers surrounding the complex
Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and social assistance
programs. “I think basic income is a more dignified and respectful way
to give people money and it would give everybody an income floor.”
'Ingersoll also said she believes it would eliminate chronic cycles of
poverty exacerbated by the systems currently in place — having to
liquidate assets and prove they’re poor in order to receive assistance.
'... A basic income would also open up more opportunities to those
living below the poverty line, like getting a post-secondary education
or to supplement part-time “precarious” work.
'... It goes beyond just money in the bank for Ingersoll, it also
removes a lot of anxiety and stress in people’s lives.
'“Our poverty isn’t just with people on social assistance and ODSP,
our poverty is with the working poor as well. People are only able to
find part-time minimum wage jobs.
'“We have people coming in our doors working two to three jobs just to
make ends meet.”
'A common argument against basic income is the worry it will
incentivize people to stay unemployed and live off the government.
'It’s a worry Ingersoll doesn’t share, saying she feels the opposite
is more likely.
'Part-time work, added to a basic income, would allow people currently
on social assistance to live above the poverty line.'
Read more ...
http://www.intelligencer.ca/2016/11/18/can-guaranteed-basic-income-work?
On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com
<mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Quoting the article:
"Yet figuring out how such a system [Universal Basic Income]
could be afforded -- and not turn a country into a nation of
slackers -- is unclear."
As usual the author misses the point. If robots do all the work
why should anyone care whether people turn into slackers?
This sort of thinking has always been common. When writing was
invented the ancient Greeks supposedly complained that young
people no longer memorized The Odyssey. Now that we have
computers, people complain that grade school students no longer
learn how to write in script. I suppose that when automobiles
became common, elderly people fretted that young people no longer
knew how to ride horses.
You cannot expect people to know how to use obsolete technology
they do not use. Someday that will include all technology. People
will hardly know how to tie their own shoes, never mind cooking or
building a house. That will be a problem for our grandchildren.
See Arthur C. Clarke's masterpiece "Profiles of the Future,"
chapters 12 and 13. Here is the end of chapter 13, describing a
world in which all material goods are available in unlimited
quantities for free:
It is certainly fortunate that the replicator, if it can ever
be built at all, lies far in the future, at the end of many
social revolutions. Confronted by it, our own culture would
collapse speedily into sybaritic hedonism, followed
immediately by the boredom of absolute satiety. Some cynics
may doubt if any society of human beings could adjust itself
to unlimited abundance and the lifting of the curse of Adam—a
curse which may be a blessing in disguise.
Yet in every age, a few men have known such freedom, and not
all of them have been corrupted by it. Indeed, I would define
a civilized man as one who can be happily occupied for a
lifetime even if he has no need to work for a living. This
means that the greatest problem of the future is civilizing
the human race; but we know that already.
So we may hope, therefore, that one day our age of roaring
factories and bulging warehouses will pass away, as the
spinning wheel and the home loom and the butter churn passed
before them. And then our descendants, no longer cluttered up
with possessions, will remember what many of us have
forgotten—that the only things in the world that really matter
are such imponderables as beauty and wisdom, laughter and love.
- Jed
