Would you accept a 30% income reduction to help your employer be more profitable?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

If every flight purchased in Canada had an extra $50-100 VAT tacked on (variable/progressive luxury VAT) that would alone raise tens of billions for UBI. At most UBI in Canada ($1000 a month for persons aged 25-65 who opt out of other welfare programs) would cost 150-200 billion. This is once you deduct the number of children , youth under age 25, and seniors, and disabled or welfare people out of the equation. People who are disabled or on welfare can choose to forgo their existing benefits for UBI or continue to recieve their existing benefits. At most 15,000,000 Canadians will be able to recieve UBI.

There were 149,000,000 flights in Canada (2017) https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=2310025301
Lets assume 2/3 of those are not claiming the flight as a tax deduction. That generates 4.5-9 billion dollars from flights alone (depending on whether each flight has a $50 or $100 surcharge. Then all you need to do is find 10-20 other sectors to slap on a 10 or 20% luxury tax. That would easily fund 100-150 billion of the 200 billion pricetag

You need to keep in mind, If I would run the country, people are not allowed to compliment existing benefits with UBI. It is very affordable if it is an opt-in UBI.

You're not going to die if you don't go on vacations or watch Netflix or order Amazon. Flights are the absolute worst thing for the environment. On the flip side, someone like me who is trapped working for low wages could suffer from a breakdown if they are forced to live in a shared living situation with strangers. If everyone has a $1000 UBI, they can afford to live alone as long as they are frugal . And they wouldnt have to be forced to live in a public housing complex full of roaches. UBI would act as the ultimate stimulus for the private sector. Milton Friedman was for it!

Basic income would take the economic boot off our throats and allow us to save and invest in our dreams.

UBI in Canada would easily be 30-40% funded by creating an opt-in system (slowly dismantling welfare and laying off all social workers and social service beurocrats) . The rest would come from a variable 10%-20% progressive VAT on all non essential items.


Most people who oppose UBI come from privileged wealthy backgrounds, work in white collar government jobs, are well-connected or are lucky enough to have high IQs required to succeed in STEM fields.

The GST/HST brings in about $40B a year. Is it only applies to “luxury items” it brings in maybe $20B at 5%. To get to $150B you estimate the program would cost the rate of the “luxury” tax would have to be over 40%. At a rate that high people would turn to the black market and actual revenues would be far below that.

Realistically, to raise $150B the feds would have to raise taxes across the board by about 50%.

At a $1000 it wouldn’t be better than most existing programs (if you have kids welfare is higher) so it won’t lure many people out of the welfare system.

The problem with UBI is there is pretty much a one-to-one ratio of people in the workforce to recipients, so every worker has to pay their own UBI cheque. The other problem with UBI is most of the money would just fuel inflation: if 15 million people have an extra 1000 in their pocket, what is going to happen to rent?

I understand that lower income people are struggling, but I don’t think UBI is a solution.