Living in the Future

Tag: Basic Income

  • Proposition 5: Basic Income

    I’ve been extremely vocal about my support for a basic income program in Canada. This question is quite straightforward, but I think it takes a certain (liberal) leap in thinking compared to how most people view this policy proposal. Most people hear about basic income and think about homeless people or ‘freeloaders’ on the system who will end up costing the country money.

    However, those same people will also complain about having to work 40 hours a week, or liberally use sick leave, EI, or pension in their careers/retirement, but not think about it the same way as with others. They see themselves as complex beings who deserve a break, but the homeless person who can’t get a job due to mental illness or not being able to afford a shower at the YMCA made too many mistakes in their life.

    I think giving each Canadian enough to ultimately bring them out of poverty, by charging what would be considered a very high relative tax rate, is a great way to let the most successful of us (read: the lucky ones) support those who haven’t had as many breaks in life. Nobody is suggesting billionaires need to live life poor, they will still be billionaires (just slightly less so).

    Summary: This question is quite straightforward, I think because it doesn’t rely on context or knowledge of the current plan in place (because there is none!). It’s a broad question about a proposal that some parties want to have in place, and lets people answer as they will.

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  • The ‘Time is Money’ Continuum

    When you’re a kid first getting their allowance, you would spend literally all the time you had in order to get literally any money. I would clean my room, mow the lawn and do yard work for a couple of hours in order to get a pittance (maybe $5). I had all the time in the world, and no money, so I would work as long and hard as I needed to in order to acquire even the smallest amount of money.

    At 15, I started working at McDonalds. I was in school of course, but it was no problem working 8 hours each day on the weekend and 2-3 nights a week. The only things I had to plan around were the occasional soccer practice/game, and spending time with friends (which I mostly did at school anyhow). I would work a ton because I barely had any money, but I still had lots of time and could use every extra dollar earned.

    By the time I hit 23 years old and finished school, I was working 40 hours a week, and trying to grow as a person, in order to gain experience and get a good, comfortable job. I was trying to pay off student loans, so I was working ‘full-time’, but I still had quite a bit of time on my hands, so I would do whatever I needed to in order to spend little to no money to do things.

    This meant that when I built a website, I did it on a free platform, even if that meant putting a TON of time and effort in to making it do what I needed it to. When I wanted to watch a TV show or movie(s), I would find them online and watch, even if doing all that required a precarious, legally dubious setup that took months to get working just right.

    When I was finding music or looking at online storage solutions, I used the free tier and navigated around in order to stay under every cap that would have required me to pay for anything.

    Fast forward a little bit to about 2 years ago. I’m now married, starting to build a career where I’m happy at work and doing things I love. The time/money balance is starting to shift more towards money. I’m making a comfortable living and helping to pay down a mortgage, and I’m not worrying about where my next paycheck or my next 20 paychecks are coming from.

    I’m still enjoying hobbies that are effectively free, but I’m starting to realize that the trade-offs I’d made when I was 23 just don’t really make sense any more. I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that I don’t have as much spare time as I used to, and it might make more sense to pay for some things to have them done now, rather than working for hours or days or weeks to have them done for ‘free’. Throwing money at a problem could make it go away, and would free up my time to spend with my wife, family, and the other people I care about.

    When it comes to making a decision at this time, I’ll spend $20-30 here or there, I’ll subscribe to a $10 a month service if it’s something I use. The time I save by spending that money is well worth it.

    This brings us up to today. I’m married, about 20% of the way through my career (probably), and I have an 8-month old daughter and a dog at home to take care of. Outside of sleep, commute, eating, work, making sure the baby has everything she needs, and things like making sure bills are paid, I get about 2-3 hours a day where I can even think about taking time for myself, or to potentially spend on hobbies (realistically, it’s more like 1-2 hours a day over an average week, not including weekends).

    I make a comfortable living, which I’m extremely grateful for, and more than ever before, I find myself inclined to pay money to get time back for myself and my family. For me, that means signing up for a meal plan to get food sent to my door to reduce grocery trips, or subscribing to cable TV and Amazon Prime to watch TV and movies without thinking about where they’re coming from, or buying a virtual private server to host my website so that I have control over it as opposed to being ruled by and wrestling with the free hosting solutions I had previously been using.

    On the time/money continuum, I have enough money that it’s worth it for me to spend it to get my time back in many situations, and I think a lot of people can take the time something takes for granted when thinking about how busy they are or what is most important to them. If the ultimate goal is retirement, is it really worth spending the most active 30+ years of your life constantly worrying if you’ll have enough money to make it through? I’m not sure everyone is truly considering the costs of that stress on their bodies when they make those calculations for themselves.

    I’ve spoken before (a LOT) about the concept of basic income, and how everybody should have the luxury of not worrying where their money for basic necessities should come from. The other side of basic income is that it would let families where parents have to work 2 jobs buy some of their time back, rather than spending it all earning just barely enough to survive in poverty.

    Giving every adult enough money to ‘need’ to work less would be a huge boon to the mental health and well-being of everyone in our society, and it would allow those of us who don’t have enough time to actually live their lives a little more flexibility to decide where they want to spend their time, and how they would like to spend their money.

    I know if anybody in my family was struggling to make ends meet, I would feel an obligation to help them out, and I think it would do all of us a great deal of good to think of the people around us in our cities as family, and supporting anybody who has fallen on hard times by giving them money with no strings attached, just like you would a family member.

    Everybody deserves to choose how they spend at least some of their time, and that requires money.

  • Seeds of Thought – Basic Income

    Seeds of Thought – Basic Income

    This past weekend, I sat down to put some of my thoughts about basic income in to words, and to share my proposal for a basic income plan that might work in a country like Canada.

    I made a video (embedded below) that discusses my idea in some detail, as well as going through some of the reasons I think it’s a good idea. The spreadsheet shown in the video can be found at this link* (cleaned up for ease of use compared to the one in the video): Basic Income Tax Plan.

    *The only cell you can adjust in the sheet is the green one at the top to adjust the basic income tax rate.

    I’d love to hear some thoughts or counter-arguments to the idea, or the concept of these brainstorming sessions in general. I really found it a useful way to crystallize what I was thinking on the topic, even though it may not make for the most exciting listening.

  • (More) Thoughts on Society
    Photo by: Alex Hayward

    (More) Thoughts on Society

    If the government raised my taxes 1% per year to give an increasing basic income until such a time that social programs and poverty improved until the point that the system supported everybody, we could fix this thing in 15-20 years, tops.

    Anything else is just irresponsible.

    Civilized society has to provide the basic needs for all its citizens to exist and develop. Education, health care, shelter, food, these should not be things anybody goes without.

    Anything else is second-rate.

    Retirees get a fixed income and many continue to work as long as they are able. Why is it so damaging for all of us to enjoy that same opportunity throughout our lives? Why do you have to work for 30 years before society deems you worthy of that respect?

    These problems have solutions *if* we can start worrying about money, power and status AFTER we have taken care of the poor, weak, and forgotten.

    If these are radical ideas to you, it may be worth considering what you value in life.

  • The Problem with Homelessness is Poverty

    I attended college pay-as-you-go for a couple years while working, then left because I couldn’t afford to continue and knew better than to take on student debt. My moderate savings was destroyed in my 30s by health care costs that insurance wouldn’t cover. Within the past several years, full-time work that pays a subsistence wage has been hard to come by.

    Another great reason why basic income would be super useful. There are plenty of jobs that don’t pay that much but are vital to the world continuing to run. And with a basic income and solid universal health care, so many of the issues that put people on the streets just don’t come up. This is a long piece but it’s well worth your time.

    > I’ve been homeless 3 times. The problem isn’t drugs or mental illness — it’s poverty. – Vox

  • Why Basic Income is so Important

    Canada’s prior experiment with a BIG [(Basic Income Guarantee)], the Mincome experiment in Manitoba in the 1970s, found that a BIG did not cause people to stop working — with two important exceptions. The first was women with infants at home, who effectively used the BIG to purchase maternity leave. We should expect a different response from women in modern-day Canada, where maternity leave benefits are much more extensive. But where child care and other supports for working parents are insufficient, we may see responses to a BIG that will show us those cracks in the system.

    The other group whose employment levels decreased under Mincome was teenage boys. A closer look reveals that with a basic income guarantee, male high school students were more likely to make the decision to stay in school until graduation. Given the Ontario government’s aim of increasing graduation rates and the need for a highly educated population, it will be important to understand how people’s labour market decisions interact with other important decisions, like the decision to improve their skills and buy a better long-term future for themselves and their families.

    > We Should Applaud Ontario’s Plans To Pilot A Basic Income Guarantee | Laura Anderson