Comment on A Universal Basic Income Is Being Considered by Canada's Government
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months agoNo. I’m not trying to shit on welfare programs here as they are certainly better than nothing, but the universality is the entire reason basic income is something I am excited about and where I believe almost all of its social benefits come from. There are many reasons for this, but as someone who has been on various forms of means tested public assistance myself, my personal experience with the stigma, the stress and unapproachability of continually needing to navigate an arcane and dysfunctional bureacracy, and the paranoia about ending up worse off if I earn too much money, make it an issue I have a personal connection to and have strong feelings about.
There is certainly a place for debating whether a UBI or an expansive welfare program would be better, but I’m not trying to have that debate here. I am just asking for honest clarity of terms so that the public discourse won’t be hopelessly confused as to which is which. Universal means Universal.
Bonehead@kbin.social 11 months ago
If you actually paid attention to any of the pilot projects that have already taken place, you'd know that the means test isn't meant to keep people out of the program. It's just meant to ensure the people in the program actually need it. This can be easily determined by looking at tax returns. Much of the strangely detested bureaucracy is necessary to run a large government program. That's just exactly what governments are and will always be. That doesn't mean that it'll be on top of what exists today, and it doesn't mean it'll cost more than it does today. It will much much cost less, because both EI and welfare are covered by this program.
Again, it can work any way we want it to. If we want a simple means test to ensure people are over 17 and genuinely have no income or not enough income as evident by the reported taxes by your employer and your tax returns, then we can have that system. It doesn't need to be complicated. It doesn't need to be "universal", in that its just blindly given to every single Canadian regardless of needs. It can be "universal", in that it's available to every single Canadian that needs it. We can change the definition of "universal" to suit our needs. We can help people in need without having to worry about the rich getting a piece. We can make it all work...if we really wanted to.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Perhaps you can make it work, and maybe you are right in thinking that it is the best course of action. But please don’t co-opt the terminology used by people advocating for a program that is really very different both ideologically and practically. This is not an honest way to promote what you want to do. When I say UBI, I want people to understand what I am talking about, and what I am talking about is payments to every person regardless of their income. That is what people saying UBI have meant for a long time, and acknowledging this is just basic respect.
Bonehead@kbin.social 11 months ago
As long as you're honest about wanting to give rich people money simply so that you're strict definition of "universal" is maintained, I'll be willing to explain what the "universal" in UBI actually means is "universally available" as opposed to "universally applied".
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Just call it something else. It’s not UBI.