frostbiker @ frostbiker @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

And when governments ignore the economic needs of everyone except the rich for too long, the result tends to be violence

Only at extremes far beyond of what we are seeing today. Other places in the world have substantially larger Gini coefficients and that hasn't translated into violence.

The US is perilously close to that now, and we’re not doing much better

What basis do you have to assert that?

D’you really want a revolution, with all the blood-in-the-streets nastiness that entails?

A false dichotomy.

We need to change the game somehow, and UBI is one way of doing it. Not the only way, granted, but the political will doesn’t seem to be there for any of the others either

You are assuming that a UBI would be beneficial to the working class. I have presented multiple reasons why that is questionable, and you haven't addressed any one of them.

Okay, I'll put it in simpler terms: when governments implement unsustainable policies, it is the working class that ultimately pays the price. Just look at history.

I don’t think there’s much of an argument for UBI to not be means-tested

That would make it a basic income, but not a universal basic income. Just to clarify the terms.

Something similar to what you are describing is called a negative income tax, in case you want to learn more about that.

Dude, they did it for an entire town in Manitoba for four years in the 1970s

The experiment did not apply to everybody in the village, but to a small subset of people.

none of the horrors some people seem to love to predict with respect to UBI ever materialized

The experiment did show a reduction in the number of hours worked in the house, as expected.

The experiment wasn't in any way self-sufficient. The funds came from the wider province, and thus the cascade of "fewer people working leading to a loss of tax revenue, making it harder to continue funding the UBI" couldn't have materialized.

This isn't idle speculation: this loss of revenue is the reason why the age at which people are eligible to receive a public pension has been increasing in developed countries.

Lastly, the experiment didn't attempt to measure inflation in the prices of goods and services provided in the village, so we can't tell whether it materialized or not.

How big and long-lasting would a pilot program have to be to convince you that yes, this does work?

I don't know. The specific concerns about the ramifications of a UBI and hasn't been addressed properly by any UBI advocates. I would like future pilot projects to be designed specifically to address them.

You imply that taking people out of the labour market is a bad thing, but how?

First, it decreases the production of goods and services, which leads to price increases.

Second, it decreases the tax base from which the UBI is funded in the first place. In other words, a UBI undermines itself.

Receiving some extra money benefits people who get it, all other things being equal. Water is wet.

The question is what happens when you implement such a program widely. All things will not be equal then. How would it affect inflation, the labor market, etc.?

One might expect that even if it was implemented in a way that didn't increase the money supply, which would be difficult, it would increase inflation for at least two reasons. First, because working class people are more likely to spend it, increasing consumer demand. Second, because people who were approaching retirement would be incentivized to retire earlier, decreasing labor supply and production output. All these effects are inflationary.

This is a complex subject and I wish people saw beyond the simplest first-order effects.

I think that if they are charging them with that, it must mean it's an indictable offense according to our current laws. You can't charge somebody with being a poor Elvis impersonator, for example.

In the article they describe the charges for each of the accused and all of them are accused of what to me look like much more serious crimes, so at the end of the day I'm glad they caught them. It's just that specific charge which I find odd.

As ewww as that sounds, I don't get why the law sees that as an indictable offense. To my uneducated eyes it appears like a victimless crime.

Like, I wouldn't want people who work with children to read or write stuff like that, but given that we allow the publication of novels that talk about all sorts of crimes, why should this be any different?

So... eww but at the same time meh?

The carbon captured by the tree will be released when it eventually rots or burns. That's why it's called the "carbon cycle".

If you want to reduce carbon in our atmosphere, you need to capture and store that carbon in a way that won't be released again for thousands of years or more.

How much of this is due to real estate costs? I'm both wondering about how much it costs to rent commercial real estate for a restaurant, as well as observing that if would-be customers are spending tons of their income just to have a place to sleep, then they have to cut down on non-essentials.

So this poor traveller at least had sufficient mobility left to be able to drag himself out of the airplane, undignified as that is. What would have happened if he didn't? Don't they have procedures for e.g. unresponsive patients?

And trying to blame a subcontractor doesn't cut it. The passenger was an Air Canada customer and Air Canada should have resolved the issue one way or another without forcing a disabled man to drag himself out of an airplane like an extra in The Walking Dead.

Some people don't drive at all. And some never have.

Guess what, if you banned all personal cars from a city while retaining access for trucks (as no city would survive without them), the road damage would not be reduced in any noticable manner

The majority of the fuck cars crowd doesn't want to ban all personal motor vehicles. We want our streets to be pleasant to live and walk around, and car-centric urban planning is incompatible with that.

As for the deliveries of commercial goods, you only need to look at how it is achieved today in cities that are designed around people instead of cars. If you live in North America you may be picturing your shopping as a weekend highway trip to a big box store with a massive ground-level parking. Such large stores practically require large semi trucks to bring goods in.

A different way of doing things is possible, and indeed not only it was done that better way in North America before the popularity of the car, but is still done that way in most places around the world.

Instead of hopping in your car once a week, you walk or use other means of transportation on your way home from work. Yes, walking is fine because your destination isn't far away any more: mixed-use buildings mean that you live not far from where you shop. Shops are smaller and they are not surrounded by an ugly sea of car parking -- it isn't needed when people arrive to the shop by foot.

"But what about bringing goods into the shop?", you say. "Don't you need trucks for that?". Yes, small ones, not semi trucks. Remember: it is not a huge big box store by the highway. It's a neighborhood grocery shop, or furniture shop, or whatever else it is that you are buying.

Small delivery vans and trucks are all that is required. And often times, they are only allowed to deliver within certain hours of the day to reduce the amount of disturbance to the neighbors, who want to enjoy their streets with as little motor vehicle traffic as possible.

This isn't some new experimental idea. It's how it already works in most of the developed world.

I suggest a single-family-only-zoning premium. AKA a tax rate increase based solely on the zoning

I don't understand. Zoning is determined at the municipal level, not decided by the people who own the lot. If municipalities wanf to encourage mid-density housing, all they need to do is to change the zoning laws to allow for it in areas where only low density housing is allowed today.

My beef with the recent zoning laws is that they still prevent the construction of mixed use buildings by default, which makes car-free living a challenge. People need to be able to buy their daily necessities within walking distance if we want to reduce the amount of traffic, noise and pollution in our streets.

I saw the effects of a real estate bubble in Spain 25 years ago, whose effects still ripple today. It started with young people feeling squeezed out of the housing market, staying with their parents for longer and either having child's late or not at all. Then came the lines at the food banks.

This appears to be where we are today in Canada.

Next, foreclosures and a major recession. It is hard to overstate how painful this was to watch even as a bystander, you will see why in a moment. In most cases it goes smoothly and simply contributes to raising rent prices. In other cases, the police would get involved to evacuate people from their (former) homes. Tightly-knit communities would rally around the home that was being foreclosed to stop the police and delay the inevitable.

Sometimes the people whose home was being foreclosed, especially older people, would jump out of their windows to their death as the police were entering. This happened dozens of times, to the point where you become numb to the horror.

Sooner or later extremist political parties emerge and gain popularity, both extreme left, extreme right and regionalist. They offer "obvious" populist solutions to the crisis, from wealth redistribution to clamping down on immigration and a return to "traditional values". The status quo parties may form temporary coalitions with the extremists in order to form a government.

Once they reach power and and are still unable to solve the underlying economic crisis with their "obvious" solutions, citizens become disillusioned and revert to the former status quo parties.

Nothing lasts forever, and over time the economy starts to limp forward again. It can take a decade or more -- see what happened in Spain and Japan at different points of the last forty years. The lasting result is a long period where few babies are born while the remaining population continues to age as usual, placing public pensions in a tight spot unless immigration is increased. The country's infrastructure, education and healthcare will have seen better times.

Will things unfold somewhat differently in Canada? Without a doubt. But history tends to rhyme, and what I've described above is hardly unique to one country.

I get what you are saying. Do you have a better solution? It's my understanding that in some areas in China you would only be allowed to drive on certain days of the week based on the number on your driving license.

The fewer people driving, the better. Still, I wish EV subsidies applied to pedal-assist e-bikes.

Not without funding they can’t

A big part of why our cities are broke is because they have to maintain roads, sewers and other infrastructure in areas that give back very little tax revenue in relation to the amount of infrastructure they require. Those cost centers are are low-density suburbs with single-family homes.

Once mid-density housing is allowed to flourish, especially mixed-use buildings, funding and other problems disappear: tax revenue increases in relation to liabilities, frequent public transit is economically feasible, traffic is reduced as more people are able to go about their daily lives without a car, and the reduced car traffic means streets become quieter and safer.

It's great that you have found a term you like. Other people may prefer a different one, and that's also okay.

Hello, fellow human.

I am not learning an acronym long enough to singlehandedly win a game of Scrabble

Nobody is forcing you to use any term you don't like. You can use whatever term you want and other people can also choose whatever they prefer. If you find people choosing their own labels troublesome, imagine how you would feel if people started forcing you to call yourself something different.

Also, being friendly on the internet costs nothing. Yes, even to people with other viewpoints.