
Poverty Reduction: Minimum Income in Canada - thrusong
http://winnipeg2016.liberal.ca/policy/poverty-reduction-minimum-income/
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zxcvvcxz
If it means drastically reducing government-provided welfare programs and
letting people "vote with their wallets", then I think minimum income can be a
great solution to the social safety net issue. Certainly better than a minimum
wage, which is really just good for us people working in robotics and AI...

There's a questionable point they brought up though.

> The ever growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in Canada will lead to
> social unrest, increased crime rates and violence. Research indicates that a
> guaranteed basic income can reduce this gap

I agree that a "mincome" can lead to less social unrest, but not from reducing
the income gap. The mechanism will more likely be _economic sedation_ ,
whereby having some minimum amount to survive will remove the incentive of
many to work, or work as hard as they might otherwise. But this will also mean
less incentive to steal, so there's that.

Here's the secret though. The top 1% will never stop working and competing and
earning. Your gap will never shrink. The producers will just come up with more
lucrative and efficient ways of earning money from the consumers. Like Paul
Graham says, the only way to really reduce income inequality (not counting
rent-seeking behavior, of which every reasonable person is opposed) is to stop
the top.

[http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html](http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html)

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cperciva
_There 's a questionable point they brought up though._

Not just questionable, but outright false: The fraction of income received by
the 1% of Canadians with the highest incomes has been dropping every year for
the past decade. Unfortunately the Liberal party policy process doesn't
include any mechanism for introducing evidence or debating facts; I'm hoping
that this will be corrected (a new party constitution was approved over the
weekend which will result in a new policy formulation process).

~~~
wux
Unfortunately, you're simply not correct. The fraction of income received by
the top 1% of Canadians did not decrease from 2012 to 2013, nor did it
decrease from 2010 to 2011.

Source: Statistics Canada
[http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&i...](http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2040001&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=31&tabMode=dataTable&csid=)

~~~
cperciva
Rounding.

~~~
gruez
Elaborate?

~~~
cperciva
Those numbers are rounded to one decimal place. Given the trendline, it's far
more likely that the actual numbers were 10.63, 10.58, 10.34, 10.26 rather
than 10.6, 10.6, 10.3, 10.3.

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hasenj
I don't know if this makes me sounds like a hard line right winger (I don't
consider myself as such) but doesn't it make way more sense to provide free*
programs to train people in skills that are actually needed by the market?

* It doesn't have to be free per se. Low interest student loan could do just fine.

My point is that the solution to poverty is skill acquisition, not charity
money. Like that saying, give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish.

~~~
fucking_tragedy
You can hand out a quality job skill education to every citizen but that
doesn't do much to solve the problem if there aren't enough jobs paying a
living wage that need to be filled.

~~~
jomamaxx
"You can hand out a quality job skill education to every citizen but that
doesn't do much to solve the problem if there aren't enough jobs paying a
living wage that need to be filled."

You are both missing the point.

Most people in the doldrums are 'socially broken'. They have extremely poor
attitudes, anti-social behaviour, addictions, anger etc. etc..

Many of them are untrainable.

There are a ton of crappy, service sector jobs available. Yes - they are crap
- and maybe they should pay more - but they provide easily enough to live on.

You can get a reasonable, safe, clean and small place in Montreal for $450 a
month. $12/hour is ballpark $24K a year, so $2K a month before taxes, say
$1600 after taxes.

It's possible to live a 'basic life' on near minimum wage.

There is absolutely no reason why a sane person of sound mind can't simply do
this.

Again - people at the bottom are 'low grade material' usually.

You know when you interview people and some are just 'much better than others'
\- well - some people are way down the Darwin chain. Obviously - hopelessness,
lack of opportunity etc compounds and puts people into the identity of
failure.

'Jobs' isn't quite the problem, and neither is 'lack of money'.

It's 'broken spirits' and dysfunctional people.

I would like to see minimum wage raised, however.

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anonbanker
I'm personally expecting a wave of legislation in 2017, starting with
Marijuana Legalization, and continuing on to ratification of the TPP.

Hopefully, basic minimum income is on the table as well; as the economy dries
out, and the jobs are all automated (software _is_ eating the world), we're
looking at maybe 5-10 years before this needs to be mandatory.

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cperciva
Note: Party policy != government policy. The Liberal party also approved a
policy demanding mandatory labeling on GMO foods; hopefully the government
will have enough sense to ignore that one.

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perilunar
Dr Evelyn Forget? She should be an archivist or a librarian.

