Canadian COVID-19 News

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

For UBI to succeed , you need an honorable populaion, who believes in the work ethic as well as supporting the infirmed

UBIs have been trialled an a few places, and in most, this wasn't shown to be a problem; the numbers of people who couldn't or wouldn't work stayed roughly the same. Most able people enjoy doing meaningful work (and getting more income, and then paying tax), when it's available. Many do volunteer work when they can't find a job or they retire.

And the lazy find loopholes even now, without UBIs.

So the remaining big difference is that UBIs are much more efficient and have much lower overhead.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

If we look at Covid mitigaton in Canada it actually illustrates the dilemma of Democratic governance .
The public were given guidelines (not orders)
Many people felt they knew better, or were special and did not follow those guidelines.

In essence, the honor system failed as selfish intrests, laziness or plain stupidity, put others at risk!

Now apply UBI to a country where many thought it was cool to receive their unemployment checks at Whistler, and you see a similar dilemma .

For Covid to be beaten you need 100% commitment from the public.

For UBI to succeed , you need an honorable populaion, who believes in the work ethic as well as supporting the infirmed ,

But as long as your democracy allows for the lazy or scammers to feed off of Society, that honor system conflicts with the right to choose.
I would love UBI but this is where I see that same parasitic dilemma, feeding off of our freedoms

Well, to be fair, Canadians have generally done quite well through this pandemic compared to our fellow G-7 nations. And despite the noise of the dishonourable and selfish, they are really quite few in numbers. The vast majority of Canadians have done reasonably well at following guidelines and playing for the whole team.

With regard to UBI, there is no need to speculate regarding what might happen. We've had a number of trials. Generally the results show little parasitic free-riding. And on the other side, the positives are always quite significant.

This line of arguing ... that we'll just have a bunch of lazy bums who live off the teat of the public purse, is the same argument made against virtually all social support programs. The reality rarely bares this out.

Irrespective of all the above, UBI in some form will soon become a necessity. We are rapidly shifting to an economy without jobs -- certainly without jobs that pay very well. In market economies like ours, a job has two primary functions that need not be intertwined.

The first function is to do useful tasks; to be productive. The second is to distribute wealth the wealth created by this productivity. We've always intertwined these two, but we don't have to. As robotics and AI take over more and more of our production, we still get the productivity, but it is no longer done by humans (or as many humans). So we have the gains, but with no direct way to distribute these gains.

That's what UBI ultimately needs to do.

[Pelagic]

Mike, that does sound wonderful if A-I and Robotics can feed and care for the world, but we are not there yet.

I guess living in an impoverished country for the last 20 years has influened my feelings to be more in line with the Filipino's

That while you can be kind and generous to a few outsiders, sustainable survival requires a selfish devotion towards family success, despite the poverty of so very very many.

The irony of this country so full of character and resources is that under Marcos dictatorship , they were the envy of SE Asia, but under the Democratic coruption of those that followed, the people have lost faith in themelves.

Now they are ripe for Chinese picking
Sorry for the tangent....back to covid

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Mike, that does sound wonderful if A-I and Robotics can feed and care for the world, but we are not there yet.

Well, it's only wonderful if we can get over this problem of tying wealth distribution to a "job." Sadly, I think we've got a long way to go yet to bridge this political gap. But it is coming ... we have no choice.

Originally Posted by Pelagic

I guess living in an impoverished country for the last 20 years has influened my feelings to be more in line with the Filipino's

That while you can be kind and generous to a few outsiders, sustainable survival requires a selfish devotion towards family success, despite the poverty of so very very many.

Yes indeed, this is a very different reality compared to the affluent world I speak of. The shift I speak of will come much later to less wealthy areas of the planet. But as long as the Filipino economy is tied to global markets, the shift will come there eventually.

It is possible to disengage from this hamster wheel. All economies used to be local, and insular. And I've seen some localities rebuild this approach. But as long as we're tied to a capitalist market approach, the demand for increased efficiency pushes us inexorably to an economy without jobs for humans.

[Montanan]

UBI ????

Might you all be discussing this:

https://www.ubiworks.ca/

Clueless in Montana.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Montanan

UBI ????

Might you all be discussing this:

https://www.ubiworks.ca/

Clueless in Montana.

Yes, sorry. My bad . I hate when people assume everyone knows the acronym.

UBI: Universal Basic Income.

[flyingfin]

Ottawa is forcing everyone to stay home (again), so they can cure Covid. Canada will now be closed for another year.

Meanwhile, they are working on the solution to Climate Change. I cannot wait to pull money from my Carbon Savings Account!

[Pelagic]

Is this correct that Canada is only at 0.7% of first dose vaccination?

[Pelagic]

Comparisons

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Is this correct that Canada is only at 0.7% of first dose vaccination?Attachment 236619

Originally Posted by Pelagic

ComparisonsAttachment 236620

No, the Canadian data is daily average rate of total doses over the last 7 days (7 = per thousand people administered daily currently).

The world data is % of the population who have received at least one dose since vaccination commenced.

[danstanford]

re UBI
Mike, I applaud the idea that a system could exist that would take care of people who are disadvantaged in our society and that people would get enough to survive but still go out to work to improve their lot, but a lifetime of putting food on the table has not given me one shred of optimism that it would work. I have gone to work every day for my life and done the difficult things even when I didn't want to. Virtually all the underemployed people I have observed during that time would tell you they want a better job but they don't really go out and get one. Further, there are enough government support programs currently taking care of the vulnerable.
Finally, the math. The best analog I can think of is Obamacare. If you talk to people in the US, many in the middle income brackets will tell you they can no longer afford to carry health insurance which went from expensive to absurd with the introduction of their form of universal health care. The system was in stasis with everyone paying in enough health insurance premiums to support the health care costs they incurred. Once Obamacare was implemented they had now many people incurring health care costs without contributing to the system and premiums doubled and more for those making middle incomes to the point that they could no longer afford them. Two cases I listened to have family premiums just over $ 10k per year which went up to near $30k per year leading them to drop their coverage because they could not afford it.
As I imagine the proposal UBI describes, we will have a similar scenario evolve. Those working every day will see their income taxes rise dramatically to cover the new expense of UBI. If their is alternate math I would sincerely like to see it but it had better not involve magical money from printing it.
Sorry to be such a curmudgeon, but time has taught me these things though I am always ready to learn.

[GordMay]

Canada set another record for new COVID-19 cases Thursday, with daily infections surging past 9,500 [9,564], for the first time, since the pandemic began over a year ago.

Fifty-five new deaths, since Wednesday, brought the national death toll to 23,500. The country has seen a total of 1,096,722 infections to date, 990,080 of whom are considered recovered.
As of Thursday evening, 51,643 cases of all three new variants, identified in Canada, have been confirmed, mostly the ‘B.1.1.7' [UK] variant. The number of ‘P.1' [Brasil] cases has increased by nearly four times over the past two weeks. There are now 1,882 confirmed cases of ‘P.1' in Canada.
The variants are also driving up hospitalizations, with 3,691 people now receiving medical care for COVID-19. The number is approaching the peak of nearly 5,000 reported in January.
To date, over 9.2 million vaccine doses have been administered across Canada.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by danstanford

re UBI
Mike, I applaud the idea that a system could exist that would take care of people who are disadvantaged in our society and that people would get enough to survive but still go out to work to improve their lot, but a lifetime of putting food on the table has not given me one shred of optimism that it would work.

Hi Dan, I don't think we should get too deeply into this since it's a real drift from the actual topic of this thread. I'll just say, again, that we don't have to ponder or guess how people might respond to UBI. There have been a number of trials here in Canada, and in other places, which provide actual data. The evidence does not support your anecdotal observation.

If you do a search for UBI programs or experiments I'm sure you can find many of the examples. VOX did a nice overview feature on it recently which offers a quick summary of the various experiments. While not a scientific analysis, their conclusions are the same as others I've read:

Proponents of basic income argue it’s the best way to end poverty: Just give everyone money! Some also say it’ll help society cope with a coming era of automation-induced joblessness. And the evidence so far suggests that getting a basic income tends to boost happiness, health, school attendance, and trust in social institutions, while reducing crime.

But critics worry that it will disincentivize work, cheating economies out of productivity and cheating individuals out of the sense of meaning that work can bring. Plus, they say, it’s just plain unaffordable for the government to pay every citizen enough to live on regardless of whether they work. The evidence so far does not support these critiques, as you’ll see.

[Lake-Effect]

Also not intending to completely derail this thread, but...

Originally Posted by danstanford

re UBI
Further, there are enough government support programs currently taking care of the vulnerable.

Depending on the country, these programs are more or less a patchwork approach: identify a need or a gap, create a program for it complete with bureaucracy, criteria and rules. Repeat as needed... and it's always needed . UBI does away with most of that by simply saying that everyone is entitled to a set minimum amount to get by on. No bureaucracy, no criteria besides income. Then, job wages/salaries pay an amount on top of UBI, or there's some sort of clawback of UBI as a person's work income increases.

A UBI is also recognition that many people currently contribute economically without being paid: the grandmother who provides free daycare to her grandkids; the husband working less hours to take care of an ill wife, the senior volunteering at the library, the parent assisting the teacher at school, etc.

Finally, the math. The best analog I can think of is Obamacare.

Strange that you would go there, when you can simply look at Canada's single-payer healthcare: universal single-payer care at a lower overall cost. To me, Obamacare has proven once and for all that you cannot get to efficiency or universal care within the US's current private insurer regime.

As I imagine the proposal UBI describes, we will have a similar scenario evolve. Those working every day will see their income taxes rise dramatically to cover the new expense of UBI. If their is alternate math I would sincerely like to see it but it had better not involve magical money from printing it.

A UBI is not really 'new' aid. In many ways, it's simply moving to a more efficient and fairer way to do what we're already doing with several inefficient overlapping programs. So there should be no net tax increase.

A UBI is also preparing ourselves for the near future when there will not be enough decent-paying job options for everyone who wants one. It also provides a backstop for people doing job-sharing and gig jobs.

[GordMay]

On Thursday, Ontario reported a record-high of 1,932 people who are hospitalized with COVID-19, with an all-time high of 659 patients in intensive care units, and 442 patients in ICUs on a ventilator. New cases hit 4,736 which has never been seen before.