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this will only worsen Canada's already-brutal housing crisis, and just be inflationary in general I mean...you're a landlord, and now everyone has $1000 a mont

this will only worsen Canada's already-brutal housing crisis, and just be inflationary in general I mean...you're a landlord, and now everyone has $1000 a month more...obviously you are going after some of that...what are people going to do, move? where? same with Canada's near monopolies on groceries and mobile networks...of course these folks are just going to raise prices to capture the free money, not hard given than there is no real competition to prevent this

unsupp0rted 3y ago
Rogers is competing with all the other carriers it allows to use its network... and Bell and Telus. That's it... that's the entire list.
cmiller1 3y ago
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3920748 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3920748 > Egger et al. find that there was less than 1% price inflation on average > Alaska has had a universal basic income via the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which has provided each resident between $500 and $3,000 per year funded by state oil assets, since 1982. Since implementing that program, Alaska has had lower inflation than the rest of the United States So let me guess, you just "feel like" it will cause inflation and based your opinion on your feels instead of data?
- yywwbbn 3y ago
  It should be more than obvious to everyone that at the very least it will further inflate housing prices because supply is heavily restricted (something that doesn’t apply to groceries and most other goods).
  - _3u10 3y ago
    In Canada there are quota limits for a lot of commodities, obviously not most groceries but many of them.
  - darepublic 3y ago
    Rent increases are capped and our housing market is already super inflated. I honestly don't know if the timing is right for ubi but I'm glad we are looking forward to it, as I think it is a logical step in our modern societal evolution
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  So there are several notable differences. Alaska payments have been about the same for the last 40 years (1-1.5k/yr). This means that payments are going down in real dollars. For inflation from Alaskan UBI would have to look at the difference before and after it was started in the 1970. Alaskan UBI is funded by real tax revenue, not printing currency or debt spending. Alaskan "UBI" is ~$1000/yr, not ~$1000/month, so you would expect the impact to be quite small on overall inflation, even if inflation used up %100 of the UBI
  - mckn1ght 3y ago
    It’s not even really funded by tax revenue per se, it’s the capital gains from investments made with revenues from corporations paying government land leases for natural resource extraction. It’s not tax revenue raised from civilians via something like a state income tax or sales tax–neither even exists in Alaska.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
      Fair point. It is revenue but isnt tax revenue. My point was that it is payed with dollars already in circulation that come out of the pocket for whoever is paying the interest or dividend. this is starkly different than money which is printed into existence and expands the currency in circulation
      - mckn1ght 3y ago
        Oh I only wanted to add more context to show how it’s not really comparable to Canada’s proposition. I think your point is sound, should’ve explicitly stated that.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tgv 3y ago
  Do you think Alaska is a representative sample? Or might the conditions there differ from Canada's conditions today? > between $500 and $3,000 per year Which is quite a bit below the figure mentioned in the article (16k-24k CAD per annum).
- Pigalowda 3y ago
  A non peer reviewed white paper by an “independent” author written in first person. And horribly written. Looking more into it the independent author is this person (Joshua Miller) “Joshua's research focuses on macroeconomic impacts of universal basic income. He also hosts the ThinkCritical Podcast and runs a blog called InTheAggregate. Joshua is a high school senior in New York.” https://www.ubicenter.org/about/our-team/ https://www.ubicenter.org/about/our-team/ Good for him for being a motivated high schooler. However, posting his essay as some kind of authoritative proof with Alaska as a generalizable example is absurd. There’s not enough data for stratification or identifying confounders. Alaska is not a typical American state in any way. UBI supporters, especially on that website, look like young academics living in wealthy urban areas in England and the US. That’s nice and all but maybe they should get out of their bubble. They’re just a bunch of stereotypes.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  Alaska does not have a universal basic income. Alaska has a state, and therefore resident, owned oil resource that pays dividends to it's shareholders, the Alaskan population. There's no money being created, no tax paid to find it, there is only revenue from real production, that money is paid to the state by consumers of it's oil. You may want to conflate the two concepts but they are qualitatively and fundamentally different beasts. Alaska's dividend is more like a corporation paying dividends to shareholders, in fact it's exactly like that.
millzlane 3y ago
>I mean...you're a landlord, and now everyone has $1000 a month more...obviously you are going after some of that...what are people going to do, move? where? I think Canada has laws against a landlord doing this type of thing, maybe up to a percentage. Also, Not all landlords are that shitty. >same with Canada's near monopolies on groceries and mobile networks...of course these folks are just going to raise prices to capture the free money, not hard given than there is no real competition to prevent this I wonder what the Competition Bureau of Canada would think of those near monopolies raising prices artificially? Unless there is price fixing going on, why would I raise my prices with the other groceries stores? Everyone would see the higher prices and instead shop at my store with normal pricing.
- yywwbbn 3y ago
  > I think Canada has laws against a landlord doing this type of thing, maybe up to a percentage. Also, Not all landlords are that shitty. Doesn’t matter. Prices would still go up over time as demand increases while supply stays the same.
  - jimnotgym 3y ago
    UBI plus build more houses. Excellent, any more problems with solutions that easy? Line em up and I'll knock them down
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Landlords set their rent at what the local market will bear. That is not just a trait of "shitty landlords": I have friends who inherited a flat or two and rent it out, but are bohemian types and not too concerned about making lots of money in real estate, and still their guide for how much to charge tenants is what the market in their town bears. Without targeted legislation, everyone getting some extra money absolutely will result in rent increases even from many chill landlords.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    Didn't this happen in the UK with housing benefit? The UK govt helps out with rent so landlords raised their rents accordingly to capture that added benefit. UBI will just be captured by Landlords. I believe the number of UK MPs who were landlords went up considerably. In Canada 20% of MPs are landlords and 40% are real-estate investors. Not surprising since Canada's economy is based almost entirely on resource extraction.
_3u10 3y ago
Canada is headed down the path of Argentina, obviously it’s a long way to go but this is how it goes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tharmas 3y ago
  I'm beginning to think so myself. The cracks are beginning to show from decades of poor management and de-industrialization. What does Canada make? Its mainly resource-extraction.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    I've heard Canada described as three mining companies standing on each other wearing an overcoat.
mempko 3y ago
So what you are saying is society should always have a population of destitute as a sacrifice so that companies don't raise prices 'because they can'. But wait, more profit means more taxes. Maybe raising taxes is a better approach then having a population of destitute people?
- _3u10 3y ago
  If the government kept tax rates flat and produced economic growth it would also raise taxes. I think what people are getting at is that in Canada there is an artificial limit enforced by government on house production, when vacancy rates are a 1% adding more money but not more housing will cause the price of houses to rise.
  - mempko 3y ago
    UBI is more than just housing right? Yes housing is a problem and there needs to be more of it. What I'm saying is if you raise taxes on profits, you incentivize reinvestment. Because it gives a business owner a choice. Either give the money to the government, or put it back into your own business by 1) paying workers more, 2) investing in equipment, and other capital. Taxes are a stick and their purpose is to guide behavior. If you want higher wages and reinvestment, you tax profits higher. If you want more luxury cars and yachts, you lower taxes on profits.
- prepend 3y ago
  I don’t think the exclusive options are UBI or destitute sacrifices.
standardUser 3y ago
Most proposed UBI programs are intended to replace the myriad other government welfare spending programs with a single program. Any theoretical inflationary impact wouldn't be more than the difference between the benefits produced by the UBI and aggregate benefits provided by the programs it replaces.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I havent seen a single UBI program tested or implemented that actually came alongside welfare reduction. Every one is additional in practice. Just look to this Canadian one for example.
steego 3y ago
You’re right that this would likely exacerbate the housing market in Canada, but it’s also worth pointing out that you’re looking at it from a demand perspective while the market suffers from an artificially constrained supply of housing. While Canada’s population has increased considerably in the last 30 years, housing and zoning has quite literally been constrained to accommodate it. Housing is being built, but not nearly at the pace it needs to accommodate growth, hence higher prices. In in places like Ontario, where there’s more than enough land, you can quite literally see on the map where dense housing developments literally stop at the 407 in Mississauga. On the other side of the highway is farmland. It’s been like that for 25 years now. I’m not advocating for suburban sprawl, but you would think one would see more dense neighborhoods on the other side of the highway by now.
- _3u10 3y ago
  Canada certainly has enough land to handle a little sprawl.
  - tharmas 3y ago
    Not as much as you think it does. Most of the land is in very undesirable climates. A good chunk of Ontario and Quebec is part of the Canadian Shield - very hard rock not suitable for agriculture. The land suitable for agriculture is where people want to live as well. And people have to go where the jobs are. Which is primarily in a small handfull of cities. This isn't the 19th Century pioneer days anymore.
frogpelt 3y ago
Yes, that's why this must be coupled with price controls.
PaulRobinson 3y ago
I suggest you read https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7 https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-... TLDR: there are many, many tests and experiments which show this not to be the case, because UBI is about circulating money, not creating new money. Redistributing money from all tax payers evenly across all citizens does not cause inflation. It just stops poverty.
- tharmas 3y ago
  One advantage of UBI is govts can streamline their social services division, as in eliminate them entirely. No means-testing and administration equals less bureaucrats needed to manage the money. You simply distribute it to ALL citizens regardless. Less pension obligations too. So in a sense UBI pays for itself. This why when they had a pilot project in Finland, govt workers were opposed to it. They saw the writing on the wall that they would be redundant.
reducesuffering 3y ago
Don’t cheapen the word monopoly, which obviously has the prefix mono, when there are four major companies and many regional chains. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...
andromeduck 3y ago
Fund the UBI with a land value tax.

unsupp0rted 3y ago

Rogers is competing with all the other carriers it allows to use its network... and Bell and Telus. That's it... that's the entire list.

cmiller1 3y ago

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3920748 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3920748 > Egger et al. find that there was less than 1% price inflation on average > Alaska has had a universal basic income via the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which has provided each resident between $500 and $3,000 per year funded by state oil assets, since 1982. Since implementing that program, Alaska has had lower inflation than the rest of the United States So let me guess, you just "feel like" it will cause inflation and based your opinion on your feels instead of data?

yywwbbn 3y ago
It should be more than obvious to everyone that at the very least it will further inflate housing prices because supply is heavily restricted (something that doesn’t apply to groceries and most other goods).
- _3u10 3y ago
  In Canada there are quota limits for a lot of commodities, obviously not most groceries but many of them.
- darepublic 3y ago
  Rent increases are capped and our housing market is already super inflated. I honestly don't know if the timing is right for ubi but I'm glad we are looking forward to it, as I think it is a logical step in our modern societal evolution
s1artibartfast 3y ago
So there are several notable differences. Alaska payments have been about the same for the last 40 years (1-1.5k/yr). This means that payments are going down in real dollars. For inflation from Alaskan UBI would have to look at the difference before and after it was started in the 1970. Alaskan UBI is funded by real tax revenue, not printing currency or debt spending. Alaskan "UBI" is ~$1000/yr, not ~$1000/month, so you would expect the impact to be quite small on overall inflation, even if inflation used up %100 of the UBI
- mckn1ght 3y ago
  It’s not even really funded by tax revenue per se, it’s the capital gains from investments made with revenues from corporations paying government land leases for natural resource extraction. It’s not tax revenue raised from civilians via something like a state income tax or sales tax–neither even exists in Alaska.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Fair point. It is revenue but isnt tax revenue. My point was that it is payed with dollars already in circulation that come out of the pocket for whoever is paying the interest or dividend. this is starkly different than money which is printed into existence and expands the currency in circulation
    - mckn1ght 3y ago
      Oh I only wanted to add more context to show how it’s not really comparable to Canada’s proposition. I think your point is sound, should’ve explicitly stated that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tgv 3y ago
Do you think Alaska is a representative sample? Or might the conditions there differ from Canada's conditions today? > between $500 and $3,000 per year Which is quite a bit below the figure mentioned in the article (16k-24k CAD per annum).
Pigalowda 3y ago
A non peer reviewed white paper by an “independent” author written in first person. And horribly written. Looking more into it the independent author is this person (Joshua Miller) “Joshua's research focuses on macroeconomic impacts of universal basic income. He also hosts the ThinkCritical Podcast and runs a blog called InTheAggregate. Joshua is a high school senior in New York.” https://www.ubicenter.org/about/our-team/ https://www.ubicenter.org/about/our-team/ Good for him for being a motivated high schooler. However, posting his essay as some kind of authoritative proof with Alaska as a generalizable example is absurd. There’s not enough data for stratification or identifying confounders. Alaska is not a typical American state in any way. UBI supporters, especially on that website, look like young academics living in wealthy urban areas in England and the US. That’s nice and all but maybe they should get out of their bubble. They’re just a bunch of stereotypes.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Alaska does not have a universal basic income. Alaska has a state, and therefore resident, owned oil resource that pays dividends to it's shareholders, the Alaskan population. There's no money being created, no tax paid to find it, there is only revenue from real production, that money is paid to the state by consumers of it's oil. You may want to conflate the two concepts but they are qualitatively and fundamentally different beasts. Alaska's dividend is more like a corporation paying dividends to shareholders, in fact it's exactly like that.

millzlane 3y ago

>I mean...you're a landlord, and now everyone has $1000 a month more...obviously you are going after some of that...what are people going to do, move? where? I think Canada has laws against a landlord doing this type of thing, maybe up to a percentage. Also, Not all landlords are that shitty. >same with Canada's near monopolies on groceries and mobile networks...of course these folks are just going to raise prices to capture the free money, not hard given than there is no real competition to prevent this I wonder what the Competition Bureau of Canada would think of those near monopolies raising prices artificially? Unless there is price fixing going on, why would I raise my prices with the other groceries stores? Everyone would see the higher prices and instead shop at my store with normal pricing.

yywwbbn 3y ago
> I think Canada has laws against a landlord doing this type of thing, maybe up to a percentage. Also, Not all landlords are that shitty. Doesn’t matter. Prices would still go up over time as demand increases while supply stays the same.
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  UBI plus build more houses. Excellent, any more problems with solutions that easy? Line em up and I'll knock them down
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Landlords set their rent at what the local market will bear. That is not just a trait of "shitty landlords": I have friends who inherited a flat or two and rent it out, but are bohemian types and not too concerned about making lots of money in real estate, and still their guide for how much to charge tenants is what the market in their town bears. Without targeted legislation, everyone getting some extra money absolutely will result in rent increases even from many chill landlords.
- tharmas 3y ago
  Didn't this happen in the UK with housing benefit? The UK govt helps out with rent so landlords raised their rents accordingly to capture that added benefit. UBI will just be captured by Landlords. I believe the number of UK MPs who were landlords went up considerably. In Canada 20% of MPs are landlords and 40% are real-estate investors. Not surprising since Canada's economy is based almost entirely on resource extraction.

_3u10 3y ago

Canada is headed down the path of Argentina, obviously it’s a long way to go but this is how it goes.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tharmas 3y ago
I'm beginning to think so myself. The cracks are beginning to show from decades of poor management and de-industrialization. What does Canada make? Its mainly resource-extraction.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  I've heard Canada described as three mining companies standing on each other wearing an overcoat.

mempko 3y ago

So what you are saying is society should always have a population of destitute as a sacrifice so that companies don't raise prices 'because they can'. But wait, more profit means more taxes. Maybe raising taxes is a better approach then having a population of destitute people?

_3u10 3y ago
If the government kept tax rates flat and produced economic growth it would also raise taxes. I think what people are getting at is that in Canada there is an artificial limit enforced by government on house production, when vacancy rates are a 1% adding more money but not more housing will cause the price of houses to rise.
- mempko 3y ago
  UBI is more than just housing right? Yes housing is a problem and there needs to be more of it. What I'm saying is if you raise taxes on profits, you incentivize reinvestment. Because it gives a business owner a choice. Either give the money to the government, or put it back into your own business by 1) paying workers more, 2) investing in equipment, and other capital. Taxes are a stick and their purpose is to guide behavior. If you want higher wages and reinvestment, you tax profits higher. If you want more luxury cars and yachts, you lower taxes on profits.
prepend 3y ago
I don’t think the exclusive options are UBI or destitute sacrifices.

standardUser 3y ago

Most proposed UBI programs are intended to replace the myriad other government welfare spending programs with a single program. Any theoretical inflationary impact wouldn't be more than the difference between the benefits produced by the UBI and aggregate benefits provided by the programs it replaces.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
I havent seen a single UBI program tested or implemented that actually came alongside welfare reduction. Every one is additional in practice. Just look to this Canadian one for example.

steego 3y ago

You’re right that this would likely exacerbate the housing market in Canada, but it’s also worth pointing out that you’re looking at it from a demand perspective while the market suffers from an artificially constrained supply of housing. While Canada’s population has increased considerably in the last 30 years, housing and zoning has quite literally been constrained to accommodate it. Housing is being built, but not nearly at the pace it needs to accommodate growth, hence higher prices. In in places like Ontario, where there’s more than enough land, you can quite literally see on the map where dense housing developments literally stop at the 407 in Mississauga. On the other side of the highway is farmland. It’s been like that for 25 years now. I’m not advocating for suburban sprawl, but you would think one would see more dense neighborhoods on the other side of the highway by now.

_3u10 3y ago
Canada certainly has enough land to handle a little sprawl.
- tharmas 3y ago
  Not as much as you think it does. Most of the land is in very undesirable climates. A good chunk of Ontario and Quebec is part of the Canadian Shield - very hard rock not suitable for agriculture. The land suitable for agriculture is where people want to live as well. And people have to go where the jobs are. Which is primarily in a small handfull of cities. This isn't the 19th Century pioneer days anymore.

frogpelt 3y ago

Yes, that's why this must be coupled with price controls.

PaulRobinson 3y ago

I suggest you read https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7 https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-... TLDR: there are many, many tests and experiments which show this not to be the case, because UBI is about circulating money, not creating new money. Redistributing money from all tax payers evenly across all citizens does not cause inflation. It just stops poverty.

tharmas 3y ago
One advantage of UBI is govts can streamline their social services division, as in eliminate them entirely. No means-testing and administration equals less bureaucrats needed to manage the money. You simply distribute it to ALL citizens regardless. Less pension obligations too. So in a sense UBI pays for itself. This why when they had a pilot project in Finland, govt workers were opposed to it. They saw the writing on the wall that they would be redundant.

reducesuffering 3y ago

Don’t cheapen the word monopoly, which obviously has the prefix mono, when there are four major companies and many regional chains. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_i...

andromeduck 3y ago

Fund the UBI with a land value tax.