The Evils of Universal Basic Income
What topic can unite politicians, CEO billionaires, and hard-working, practical middle-class Canadians? Why, the ludicrous idea of Universal Basic Income, of course! An equal, free amount of money given to every Canadian (no matter what age, gender, ethnicity or skill set), every month, with no strings attached? And not just to hardworking businessmen sitting in suits playing Minecraft behind their desks all day, but to people who are at home “NOT WORKING” (like stay-at-home parents, the disabled, and people care taking for elderly or ill family members)?? Even to the homeless? Or ARTISTS???!!!! Gasp!
Today’s blog post is about the evils of Universal Basic Income.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a ridiculous idea, of course. I mean, the Canadian government is basically doing it right now through CERB, and so now we have clear proof of what such a system would bring about, which is lazy folks milking the system for all it’s worth. Like, $2,000 a month, just FREE like that?? David McKay would have had to work one whole hour for that much cash, and these people are getting it for doing absolutely nothing?!! Yes, yes, the president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada is making somewhere between $13,693,900 and $14.5 million per year, but don’t let that distract you from the FACTS. Sure, the government is telling Canadians to stay home, and that by doing so we are, in fact, lowering rates of COVID-19 across the country and keeping citizens alive and out of our hospitals. Sure, the average cost of a hospital stay in Canada is around $6,000. But just giving Canadians that money? What are we running, a charity or a country here?! People should have to work for that money, even if we have to give them completely meaningless tasks to do or useless meetings to attend. Come to think of it, we should give someone the meaningless job of coming up with meaningless jobs!
For starters, any responsible citizen should have a savings account for emergencies like this. Let’s look at Edmonton, for example. Goodness, minimum wage is a skyrocketing $15 an hour now! In 1984, the minimum wage was only $8.19. I don’t know if you’re any good at the maths, but that means the minimum wage has almost doubled in the past 36 years, my friends. It’s true that, according to the Canadian Real Estate Organization, the average cost of an Edmonton home in 1984 was $79,215 and it’s more than quadrupled to $370,010 now, but if you can’t afford a house in 2020 (i.e. millennials) you clearly don’t deserve one. At $15/hour, you’re making an easy $2,400 per month for a full-time gig. Once you’ve accommodated for rent ($1,000/month), heating & utilities ($150/month), phone & internet ($100/month), public transit pass ($100/month), groceries & household supplies ($500/month), maybe a t-shirt, some underwear or a birthday gift once in a blue moon ($100/month), and of course, taxes ($400), that leaves you with $50 whole buckaroos! Why, you invest $50 every month in one of Mr. McKay’s RBC Savings Accounts at a whopping interest rate of 0.050%, it would only take you less than 4 years to save up $2,000, and only 10 years to save up the full $6,000 CERB payout (barring any dental emergencies - ha! ha!). AND - ol’ McKay would be giving you $15.15 in interest for your ten year commitment. Put THAT on your avocado toast and eat it!
Now, I know what you’re thinking - if that minimum wage worker just picked themselves up by their bootstraps and got themselves a post-secondary education, they’d be able to earn a lot more than $15/hour, obv! The average Canadian student loan debt of $28,000 should be easily paid-off with the current unemployment rate of 13% (17.8% if you include the folks who stopped looking for work due to the fact that, well, no one is hiring).
But of course, the biggest barrier to implementing something as silly as Universal Basic Income is the outrageous price tag attached to it. Did you know that it’s estimated to cost as much as $79.5 billion? Huh, I mean look at the disastrous situation already happening with CERB – folks are talking about extending it into 2021, which would bring CERB’s total cost up to $100 billion! Who’s going to pay for all this, I ask you? Which programs are we going to cut to fund it? Which companies will we suck dry, like socialist vampires on a feeding binge, to make this work? For example, here’s a list of absolutely necessary Canadian costs and expenditures that we can’t possibly afford to cut:
$15 billion (or perhaps closer to $20 billion) towards “criminal justice” and policing (clearly, this money is 100% being well-spent and there are no issues with police violence, or nationwide calls to defund the police or anything like that).
$1.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies (those poor oil companies! They are so profitable, which is why they need so many Provincial and Federal subsidies and tax-breaks. Also their CEOs need their bonuses so they can guilt-buy their children expensive toys to make up for the inheritance of global catastrophe that they’re leaving them).
$2.8 billion in “dividend rental arrangements” to our 6 biggest banks (gaming the tax system? I like to call it “creative accounting”! Please, banks are always looking out for their customers and have their customers’ best interests in mind!).
$62.9 billion in corporate tax evasion. Sure, Canada’s 102 biggest corporations have “avoided” paying more than $62 billion in taxes over a 6-year period. These big corps pay on average 17.7% in taxes – about 8.9% below the 26.6% average official corporate tax rate in Canada – but listen. Their CEOs need and deserve their multi-million dollar salaries because they ARE 227 times more smart, talented and productive than their workers! I mean, that’s what they keep telling us, and they must be right because they are so white and so male.
$14.6 billion yearly tax dodging by wealthy Canadians. But is this even criminal? For example, surely our $20 billion criminal justice system would have by now (after 4 years of investigation!) laid criminal charges against the 900 Canadians named in the Panama Papers, right?
Finally, what will Canadians even do with their time if they don’t have to go to bullshit jobs? What, are we going to spend time with our family and friends? Engage in civic participation like protesting for #blacklivesmatter, equal rights and an end to police brutality; work on research projects because of their overall benefit to society rather than the profit interests of corporations; take care of our health; dedicate our collective time to solving the global environmental crisis; create life changing and delightful art; or ENJOY OUR SHORT TIME ON THIS BEAUTIFUL EARTH???
Please.
UBI supporters clearly live in a fantasy world, where they think post-secondary education can be free, police can walk around without guns, and where billionaires and corporations have to pay their taxes. As this ongoing pandemic has shown, our current system is doing just fine, thank-you-very-much.
Obviously, this post is facetious. I highly recommend this recent Walrus article by Max Fawcett about the many benefits of Universal Basic Income. I am 100% in support of a permanent program of UBI in Canada.
There are a unique combination of circumstances and experiences in my life that have led to this blog post. Specifically: I just finished reading (after almost 10 months) David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years (you can read my thoughts on that book here); I’m currently reading Bullshit Jobs by the same author (add it to your reading list, friends!); we are 3 months into a global pandemic and economic shutdown; there are Black Lives Matter protests happening every day across the world, with communities demanding that their cities defund the police. One thing that looms large behind so many of these conversations is financial desperation and the fear, pain, and injustice that this instability brings. Many of the wealthy have achieved their status through luck or theft. Our current system is clearly broken, but I do think we do have the power to change it.
