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Thanks Ed. Much better said that my brief rant.
Darryl
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 9:29
AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW Basic Income
sites
Chris:
> For Canada, that would be over $300 billion (about 5 Bill
Gateses worth --
> how many Bill Gateses does Canada have, btw?), that
is ~80 % of present
> tax revenues. (So I guess the schools,
hospitals, roads, sewage system,
> army etc. will have to be maintained
by unpaid volunteers then.) But
> since the BI would be an
incentive not to work, the tax revenues would
> fall
significantly. Bye bye Canadian forests and gas reserves...
It would not be like that, Chris. A basic income would likely
require a net budgetary expenditure, but what should happen, and probably
would happen is that many currently existing social programs would be
rolled into it. Nationally Canada has an Old Age Security program and a
Guaranteed Income Supplement, which provinces may top up. We have a
National Child Tax Benefit, with a significant amount for the first child and
only a little less for each additional child. So, leaving aside, for the
time being, the question of whether these expenditures are too little or
too much, we do in fact already have basic income programs for the elderly and
for children. Nationally also, we have pensions for the disabled, and an
insurance program for the unemployed. Where we may be at our
weakest is in the area of the various welfare/workfare programs operated by
the provinces. With a rightward shift in provincial governments during
the past couple of decades, people needing to access these programs have come
under considerable duress.
One would also have to consider the costs of operating and stocking all
of those food banks, shelters for the homeless and other charities directed at
the poor. While these facilities and programs currently operate out of
the voluntary sector, they do have to rent facilities, pay professional
administrators and occasionally doctors and lawyers, and buy food and other
goods and services. This would perhaps be one of the trickiest
and most sensitive areas to deal with because if you did anything that
threatened to close down charities you would be seen as depriving middle class
people of something they can rightly feel good about. You could
have a political storm on your hands. I think governments would be
better to leave this whole area alone until they could clearly demonstrate
that there was no longer a need for food banks, shelters, snow suit funds and
so forth.
A basic income program would have to look at all of the foregoing
initiatives and programs to see how many of them could be rolled into a single
BI program. The design of a program would have to consider several
matters:
- the value of a BI - most probably, low income cut-offs adjusted for
family size and location (rural/urban etc.) would come into play here;
- eligibility: a governing principle would very likely be that anyone
having an income higher than the established LICO values would not be
eligible;
- the extent to which a BI might consist of a direct payment versus
something like a negative income tax;
- the possibilities of making the BI, or aspects of it, premium based;
- making recipients feel that a BI is something they get as an entitlement
because they are a part of a good and caring society;
- yet making sure people didn't cheat because some inevitably will;
- etc.
As the foregoing suggests, I see an BI not as something everyone would
get, but as a top-up for people and families who cannot afford a relatively
decent lifestyle in a wealthy country. However, only after matters like
the above had been given thorough study would we know whether a BI would be
affordable or not. My guess (a matter of faith at this point) is that it
would be affordable without having to find five Bill Gates and without having
to chop down more trees that we are already chopping down.
I believe I've listed some to the benefits of a BI in a previous posting
that I can't find right now, but they would include families better able to
cope, children better able to handle education, etc. If I have time over
the next few months, I may look at the BI question a little more deeply.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christoph
Reuss" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 11:30 AM
Subject: Re:
[Futurework] FW Basic Income sites
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
> Well, Chris, you got me - sloppy analogy. Let me try a different
one.
We
> > have a benefit for children called the Child Tax
Benefit. Depending on
the
> > age of the child and the
number of children in the family - every parent
is
> > eligible
and I would say there is a 99% participation rate. Now
note
that
> > their is no income eligibility. The
millionaire's child is as eligible
as
> > the pauper's
child. However, this has to be declared as income on the
> >
yearly income tax filing and for low income families they get to
keep
all
> > the benefit of about $2000 per child while the
affluent having to add
this
> > to their income find that the
benefit is taxed back. The end result is
the
> > poor get
the benefit and the rich - while they are rich and it is not
always
>
> a permanent state, end up not getting the benefit.
>
> The BI
Canada website (recommended by Sally) says:
> "Income tax
would be paid from the first pound, dollar, franc or mark
of
> extra income, but the basic income itself would
not be taxable."
> This sounds like everyone, rich or poor, can fully
keep the BI (untaxed).
>
>
> > I see a way for a Basic
Income to work in which everyone gets a monthly
> > cheque or weekly
and for the poor, they get to keep the Basic Income,
while
> > the
more affluent find that it is revenue neutral in the sense they
get
the
> > benefit on a monthly/weekly basis to use but at the
end of the year,
they
> > would repay the benefit while paying
there taxes
>
> But even if you change the rules as described
above, this system ends up
> penalizing work (taxing work but not the
BI). How can you solve the
> production problem --and keep it
solved-- with a society of non-workers ?
> Worse: who, if not workers,
is supposed to pay the taxes to fund the BI ?
>
>
> > I
think a Basic Income does represent going to the root of the
problem
which
> > is an adequate redistribution of wealth so that
all citizens benefit
from
> > the wealth of the country - not just
the successful capitalists or
overpaid
> >
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
executives.
>
> Now I understand why you said it's a Canadian
solution... "The wealth of
> the country" probably refers to
timber, oil&gas, and in the sell-out of
> natural resources, you
want to distribute it to all Canadians instead of
> just a few managers
of the sell-out.
>
> However, plundering forests and fossil fuels
is not a sustainable
solution,
> and it offers no model for countries
who lack natural resources to
plunder.
>
>
> > >
Going back to school or building a house with a GBI ?? How
many
thousand
> > > dollars per month are you thinking of
?
> >
> > If you follow the Basic Income web addresses that
Sally posted a few
days
> > ago and went to the United States web
site, you will see them talking
> > $25,000 a year. A few years
ago, I worked out a Basic Income based on
the
> > governments
budget with a figure of $10,000 per person per year.
>
> For
Canada, that would be over $300 billion (about 5 Bill Gateses worth --
>
how many Bill Gateses does Canada have, btw?), that is ~80 % of
present
> tax revenues. (So I guess the schools, hospitals, roads,
sewage system,
> army etc. will have to be maintained by unpaid
volunteers then.) But
> since the BI would be an incentive not to
work, the tax revenues would
> fall significantly. Bye bye
Canadian forests and gas reserves...
>
>
> > I know the
average knee jerk reaction to the family of eight in that
many
> >
women would opt for 8 children and $80,000 a year. So what? It is
damn
> > hard work to raise eight children and I have read statistics
that each
child
> > costs the parent $250,000 to raise a child in
a middle class environment
and
> > through
University.
>
> Including through University, i.e. you're talking
about the first 25 years
> of life, times the BI of $10,000/year gives
exactly $250,000 ! But who
said
> that they'll send all
children to University, especially if the kids can
> live on the BI
without working anyway ? So you'll end up with an
incentive
>
to breed like rabbits and produce school drop-outs with no incentive
or
> desire to work or go to University. In a society of
uneducated mostly
> non-working people, plundering the country's natural
resources is indeed
> the only option that remains... Canada the
Saudi-Arabia of the North ?
>
>
Chris
>
>
>
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