Similar to Ontario, shoud Vancouver launch Basic Income pilot project?

[Mustapha]

On 5/25/2017 at 11:05 AM, ForsbergTheGreat said:

No thanks, not quite how the economy works.

 

You want to get paid, then develop a skillset that has value and earn that money.  Competition for jobs is what grows the economy and pushes it to advance. 

 

This.

 

If one is an able-bodied person between 18-64, I don't see any reason why the government should be providing them with 'basic income'.

 

Government money is the taxpayers' money. Taxpayers pay tax to assist in paying for services that are used by taxpayers and society as a whole. It shouldn't exist to prop up people on a basic income who could otherwise be earning it.

 

Socialist philosophy seems to push the 'redistribution of wealth' crap all the time, but in order for the economy to grow and thrive, new products and services need to be created and provided. This is how wealth is created. Sure, automation will take some jobs. It always has. However, innovation also creates new opportunities. 

 

Honestly I believe that we are becoming victims of our own decadence. Yeah, sure its anecdotal, but my old man worked long hours for years and never complained. He later started his own business and did very well until he was diagnosed with MS. One day back in 2012, he called me up and told me that he was going back to work full time for a local company...the guy can barely walk. If he can get a job, then why shouldn't I expect able and healthy people to do the same? 

 

Is that the dream of people today? To be dependent on the state? In what universe does this NOT end with us in gulags? I guess as long as we have our porn and XBOX...

[Hamhuis Hip Check]

I like how you assume it should only be for vancouver, why not all of bc?

[Mattrek]

With the new government we will be having a basic income experiment. I'm excited to see what results it'll show. With automation taking over so many higher paying jobs it's going to be a necessity sooner rather then later. Also with the umpteenth number of programs geared towards putting money in people's pockets combining them all (if they do so) into one streamlines the assistance and will likely result in savings in administering the program.

[nucklehead]

6 hours ago, Mattrek said:

With the new government we will be having a basic income experiment. I'm excited to see what results it'll show. With automation taking over so many higher paying jobs it's going to be a necessity sooner rather then later. Also with the umpteenth number of programs geared towards putting money in people's pockets combining them all (if they do so) into one streamlines the assistance and will likely result in savings in administering the program.

The only reason the overlords would think it necessary would be to appease the masses and keep control.

[RUPERTKBD]

On 5/24/2017 at 7:44 AM, S'all Good Man said:

maybe? lets wait and see the results in ON.

 

It may be better for people with disabilities tho, as right now the system for them is very stupid. I know a guy who's a quadriplegic who can work, but if he does he loses his income assistance at a very low salary level and won't be able to afford the home care workers he needs for is basic daily needs, so he doesn't work. If a guaranteed income system comes in he'll be able to actually get a job. 

 

That would be my suggestion as well. It's easy to sit and speculate on whether it would work, or just be a big expense, but we have someone already running a pilot project for us. I think it's always a good idea to learn from Ontario's mistakes.

 

I am in favor of raising BC's minimum wage, however.

[JM_]

29 minutes ago, RUPERTKBD said:

That would be my suggestion as well. It's easy to sit and speculate on whether it would work, or just be a big expense, but we have someone already running a pilot project for us. I think it's always a good idea to learn from Ontario's mistakes.

 

I am in favor of raising BC's minimum wage, however.

yah me too, i'd like to see it closer to 17 or 18 bucks actually. 

[Mattrek]

3 hours ago, S'all Good Man said:

yah me too, i'd like to see it closer to 17 or 18 bucks actually. 

 

Agreed, I'm glad they said "at least" $15 minimum wage. The cost of living in BC is astronomically high. Oh and before someone chimes in with the tired argument "businesses can't afford it, jobs will be lost" hysteria I invite you to research Seattle's experiment.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/

 

Shockingly the Businesses that said prices will have to be raised to compensate haven't raised prices. Hmmm maybe this is all just a scare tactic that businesses use because they want to pay the least amount possible?

 

http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/18/early-analysis-of-seattles-15-wage-law-effect-on-prices-minimal-one-year-after-implementation/

 

Most Seattle employers surveyed in a University of Washington-led study said in 2015 that they expected to raise prices on goods and services to compensate for the city’s move to a $15 per hour minimum wage.

 

But a year after the law’s April 2015 implementation, the study indicates such increases don’t seem to be happening.

[GLASSJAW]

On 2017-5-25 at 10:05 AM, ForsbergTheGreat said:

No thanks, not quite how the economy works.

 

You want to get paid, then develop a skillset that has value and earn that money.  Competition for jobs is what grows the economy and pushes it to advance. 

 

human ingenuity and drive and nature is what drives advancement -- we have no innate drive competition for employment in the traditional sense. drive for notoriety? for sex? fame? attention? power? maybe, but there's virtually no indication that a universal basic income would negate or reduce ingenuity or competition, it would simply be displaced from its current COMPLETELY UNSUSTAINABLE trajectory

 

anyone who thinks the billions of living people right now need to develop a skill set so humanity can make up the ground we've already lost to technology are completely insane. like those idiotic Trump voters who think all those factory jobs will come back to the hard wurkin salt o the earth muricans. 

 

technology won. the future is automated. instead of leaving people behind after they've been lapped by progress, it's time to throw them a bone and see what they can come up with because, as it stands, circumstance dictates drive more than drive dictates drive

 

 

 

[JM_]

1 hour ago, Mattrek said:

 

Agreed, I'm glad they said "at least" $15 minimum wage. The cost of living in BC is astronomically high. Oh and before someone chimes in with the tired argument "businesses can't afford it, jobs will be lost" hysteria I invite you to research Seattle's experiment.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/

 

Shockingly the Businesses that said prices will have to be raised to compensate haven't raised prices. Hmmm maybe this is all just a scare tactic that businesses use because they want to pay the least amount possible?

 

http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/18/early-analysis-of-seattles-15-wage-law-effect-on-prices-minimal-one-year-after-implementation/

 

Most Seattle employers surveyed in a University of Washington-led study said in 2015 that they expected to raise prices on goods and services to compensate for the city’s move to a $15 per hour minimum wage.

 

But a year after the law’s April 2015 implementation, the study indicates such increases don’t seem to be happening.

Same in Australia. My brother owns a business there and the min wage isn't an issue there, its more finding people in the 1st place. 

[ForsbergTheGreat]

Just now, GLASSJAW said:

human ingenuity and drive and nature is what drives advancement -- we have no innate drive competition for employment in the traditional sense. drive for notoriety? for sex? fame? attention? power? maybe, but there's virtually no indication that a universal basic income would negate or reduce ingenuity or competition, it would simply be displaced from its current COMPLETELY UNSUSTAINABLE trajectory

 

Competition among business dives advancement.  It pushed the need for efficiency and advancement in technology.  Either a company advances or they get let in the dust, just look at blockbuster.  Competition among business also helps drive down prices.  This competition also advances human drive.  In order for a company to advance they need the best employees, best employees expect competitive wages.  Competitive wages drive people to develop those skill sets.  Win, win for everyone. 

 

Just now, GLASSJAW said:

anyone who thinks the billions of living people right now need to develop a skill set so humanity can make up the ground we've already lost to technology are completely insane. like those idiotic Trump voters who think all those factory jobs will come back to the hard wurkin salt o the earth muricans. 

 

No you're right it's better for  those people need to give up on live and live of other peoples hard work.....And you call me insane???  The world is evolving

 

 

Just now, GLASSJAW said:

technology won. the future is automated. instead of leaving people behind after they've been lapped by progress, it's time to throw them a bone and see what they can come up with because, as it stands, circumstance dictates drive more than drive dictates drive

Technology taking away jobs isn't a new thing.  50 years ago you need 6 farm hand to help farm 500 acres.  Now two people can farm 10,000 acres.  But guess what it forced people to move on to urban centers and we've experience growth and major advancements that benefit the quality of life.  Technology also opened up a whole wide range of new job market.

[Mustapha]

On 5/31/2017 at 2:26 PM, ForsbergTheGreat said:

 

Competition among business dives advancement.  It pushed the need for efficiency and advancement in technology.  Either a company advances or they get let in the dust, just look at blockbuster.  Competition among business also helps drive down prices.  This competition also advances human drive.  In order for a company to advance they need the best employees, best employees expect competitive wages.  Competitive wages drive people to develop those skill sets.  Win, win for everyone. 

 

 

No you're right it's better for  those people need to give up on live and live of other peoples hard work.....And you call me insane???  The world is evolving

 

 

Technology taking away jobs isn't a new thing.  50 years ago you need 6 farm hand to help farm 500 acres.  Now two people can farm 10,000 acres.  But guess what it forced people to move on to urban centers and we've experience growth and major advancements that benefit the quality of life.  Technology also opened up a whole wide range of new job market.

They can dress it up however they want, but the concept of 'basic income' is communist in nature.

 

Is capitalism perfect? Nope. Is there corporatist corruption? Yes.

 

Does that mean we should start abandoning capitalism in favour of communist practices? No.

 

Implementing a 'basic income' nationwide would be extremely expensive....even if 5 million Canadians received $18,500 per year, it would cost the taxpayer 90 billion dollars annually, which is around 7% of the country's GDP...

[Warhippy]

Argue the numbers, the science and the facts with opinion.

 

This should be fun.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/minimum-wage-analysis-1.4141311

 

Critics of Ontario's recently announced move to raise the province's minimum wage to $15 an hour say it will hurt businesses and lead to job losses. But an analysis of more than seven decades of data out of the U.S. suggests the opposite is more likely to happen.

On Tuesday, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced that the minimum wage will rise to $14 an hour in 2018 and $15 in 2019, which prompted howls of protest on behalf of businesses.

 

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that small businesses will be forced to cut staffing as a result, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce warns that the move will discourage investment from corporations, which grows the economy for everyone.

But a recent analysis from the Washington-based National Employment Law Project (NELP) says that more often than not, minimum wage hikes create far more jobs than they kill, about 12 months down the line.

"The negative impact on jobs is unlikely to be negative overall," said Yannet Lathrop, a researcher and policy analyst with the organization.

 

To reach that conclusion, Lathrop and others took official government data from between 1938 and 2009 — a period in which the U.S. hiked the federal minimum wage 22 times, from 25 cents to $7.25 an hour.

 

Rather than killing jobs, the analysis found that 68 per cent of the time, the employment rate was higher 12 months after the wage hike than it was before.

There's "no correlation between federal minimum wage increases and lower employment levels," the paper says.

 

Proponents of minimum wage hikes argue they are a net positive for the economy, as they give a large number of low-paid workers more money, which they are more likely to go out and spend. That, in turn, grows the economy enough to offset the added costs for businesses. Or so goes the theory.

NELP's number-crunching suggests that more often than not, the argument holds water.

 

During the 71-year period studied, an increase in the federal minimum wage led to job losses only eight times. And "those declines were likely driven by factors other than the higher minimum wage," the report found.

In five of those instances, the U.S. economy was in a recession at the time. Twice — including most recently, after the Great Recession in 2010 — it was still recovering from one. And once, in 1957, it was headed into one.

 

That's not to suggest that some businesses might not close up shop when faced with higher costs, or at least cut back on their hiring plans. But suggesting that wage hikes will be bad across the board is based on "a more simplistic understanding of economics," Lathrop said. "The numbers don't back it up."

Minimum wage hikes initially tend to disproportionately impact retail and restaurant workers. But NELP's analysis shows that, 12 months later, those two sectors tend to see even greater job gains — 82 per cent of the time in leisure and hospitality, and 72 per cent of the time in retail.

"There may be some businesses that you may see close down," Lathrop said. "But on net, the employment impact tends to be positive." 

 

Powering up productivity

Independent economist Armine Yalnizyan concedes that some job losses are to be expected, but those victims would just as likely have been pushed under by other factors, such as rising gas or electricity prices, or other input costs.

"Yes, it will add costs," she said, "and yes that will mean job losses at the edge." But even if the long-term impact on jobs is no better than "a wash," there are other sound economic reasons for Ontario to hike its minimum wage.

Almost one-third of the province's workers currently earn less than $15 an hour, she noted. That's bad for productivity, which is one of the key drivers of improvement when it comes to raising the standard of living.

 

"You get very poor productivity when you can coast on the fumes of just hiring cheap labour," Yalnizyan said. "Raise the cost of labour and you'll suddenly see businesses trying to do more with less."

And in contrast to the apocryphal mom-and-pop shop forced to shut down and fire workers because of higher costs, more than half of the minimum wage workers in Ontario work for companies that employ more than 500 people.

"This is big business," Yalnizyan said. "Why are we protecting these ... employers?"

 

Raising wages for workers at the lowest end of the pay scale is especially helpful, she said, as consumers shoulder so much of the economic load. Statistics Canada data released last week showed that more than half of Canada's economy is now powered by consumer spending, as business investment and exports have dried up.

"The people who spend virtually every penny they make are people at the bottom of the wage spectrum," Yalnizyan said. "If you boost minimum wages, you are boosting the economy from the bottom up."

[Duds]

4 hours ago, Warhippy said:

Argue the numbers, the science and the facts with opinion.

 

This should be fun.

 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/minimum-wage-analysis-1.4141311

What a steaming pile. To start with, the NELP organization that did this analysis exists to fight for things like higher minimum wages, so they are clearly starting from an opinion of bias.

 

They looked at past increases to minimum wage but never mentioned the size of these increases. To go from 11.40 an hour to 15 is a huge jump. If raising the minimum wage is such a beneficial thing, why stop at 15? Why not 20? 50? Heck, we could all be wealthy if we just bump it to $1000/hr! Obviously I'm being facetious, but if you think that any of those higher numbers is absurd you can also grasp that there has to be some relationship between the value of the work and the wage it pays. To arbitrarily raise the wage just before an election screams of bribing the electorate.

 

The above NELP study says that low wages lead to low productivity, but raise the mandatory wage and suddenly these previously unmotivated workers find another gear and increase productivity. Really Hippy? You're backing this farce of a study and referring to it as "the science and the facts?"

[Duds]

That NELP study also mentions that big business employs over half the minimum wage workers in Canada and then asks why we would protect big business. May I suggest it's because they employ a huge number of Canadians, both minimum wage workers and high paying jobs? And large companies like these are the best positioned to leave the country and bring their employment to other, lower cost areas. 

 

And that bit about boosting consumer spending since over half the economy is based on consumer spending... seems to me it would be wiser to focus the attention on supporting exporters in order to bring more wealth into the country instead of trying to cycle our continually dwindling supply of wealth through the hands of consumers at a faster rate. 

[taxi]

On 5/31/2017 at 0:10 PM, Mattrek said:

 

Agreed, I'm glad they said "at least" $15 minimum wage. The cost of living in BC is astronomically high. Oh and before someone chimes in with the tired argument "businesses can't afford it, jobs will be lost" hysteria I invite you to research Seattle's experiment.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/so-far-the-seattle-minimum-wage-increase-is-doing-what-its-supposed-to-do/

 

Shockingly the Businesses that said prices will have to be raised to compensate haven't raised prices. Hmmm maybe this is all just a scare tactic that businesses use because they want to pay the least amount possible?

 

http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/04/18/early-analysis-of-seattles-15-wage-law-effect-on-prices-minimal-one-year-after-implementation/

 

Most Seattle employers surveyed in a University of Washington-led study said in 2015 that they expected to raise prices on goods and services to compensate for the city’s move to a $15 per hour minimum wage.

 

But a year after the law’s April 2015 implementation, the study indicates such increases don’t seem to be happening.

My worry would bet that Vancouver businesses are under extreme stress from rent that they may not be able to deal with increased wages as well. Seattle, unlike, Vancouver, still has lots of affordable locations that you can rent office and retail fronts. Restaurants and retail locations are already having a very tough go at it. Any more pressure could simply push many businesses over the edge. 

 

Vancouver has artificially low office/retail space due to its incredibly restrictive zoning laws. Seattle also does not seem to have been hit by the real estate crisis as badly as Vancouver has. Quite frankly, it's not going to make a difference what wages are until the crisis is solved. If you increase wages, people will just increase rents accordingly. There aren't enough rental units in Vancouver being built and too many are empty. 

[Warhippy]

15 hours ago, Duds said:

What a steaming pile. To start with, the NELP organization that did this analysis exists to fight for things like higher minimum wages, so they are clearly starting from an opinion of bias.

 

They looked at past increases to minimum wage but never mentioned the size of these increases. To go from 11.40 an hour to 15 is a huge jump. If raising the minimum wage is such a beneficial thing, why stop at 15? Why not 20? 50? Heck, we could all be wealthy if we just bump it to $1000/hr! Obviously I'm being facetious, but if you think that any of those higher numbers is absurd you can also grasp that there has to be some relationship between the value of the work and the wage it pays. To arbitrarily raise the wage just before an election screams of bribing the electorate.

 

The above NELP study says that low wages lead to low productivity, but raise the mandatory wage and suddenly these previously unmotivated workers find another gear and increase productivity. Really Hippy? You're backing this farce of a study and referring to it as "the science and the facts?"

Where's your counter argument? 

 

I tend to lend my opinion towards studies backed by years of research.  Which this "farce" as you call it has done

 

I'll happily read any counter argument should one be present with the same level of research