Everyone should get (oh all right!) "a" cheque in the mail

Politics International Politics
21

There it is. Have a look at the inflated rental rates on so called “affordable housing” in any big Canadian city (the states are likely as bad) and ask yourself who really benefits from the welfare system. If you come to any other conclusion than the landlords (and those employed in the “welfare ministry”) and I’ll be amazed. I knew landlords in Vancouver who would only rent to people on welfare because… you guessed it. It meant a steady rent cheque as it is not possible to collect welfare without a rental agreement. Working stiffs, especially those at the lowend of the pay scale were just too liable to go tits up on account of some firing or laying off and it would take a couple of months for them to go through the process of demonstrating to welfare that they were truly destitute and so qualified for assistance. Once qualified though they could sit there forever, as long as any income that came in did so well under the radar, in other words through drug dealing, prostitution, a bit of casual labour or, of course, private language tutorials.

So in all of this the one who suffers big time is the low wage earner. He pays exorbitant rent, if he can find housing, and is left with barely enough to live on. The middle class also suffers inflated rent and has to deal daily with a class of permanently unemployed who frequently, shall we say, show little respect for the society that supports them.

The people who benefit of course are the landlords. Laughing all the way to the bank that lot is. Of course they sometimes suffer the inconvenience of kicking whole families out in the snow but by golly this is a tough world after all and if you can’t make the rent this month well, that just shows you need a little toughening up. Three weeks in January camped in your car with the wife and kids will teach you…

22

Ok, I’m having a hard time seeing how this reduces corruption and beaurocracy. It seems to me that with a massive influx of people into the welfare system, the beaurocracy expands. As for corruption, if people abuse current systems why won’t they abuse this one?

23

Giving money to people who aren’t working does not work, bob. I didn’t read anything else. If you want to elaborate on how this could work, I won’t read it because it’s silly and I’m too lazy.

You can give too much cash to people who are laid off/quit/get fired/are on welfare, but the fear of no more money coming gets them off their collecitve feet.

24

I got checks (cheques) from the government to the tune of 50,000 NT/month clear for 10 months on employment insurance. My rent and everything else utility wise added up to maybe 5500-6000 NT/month. Nice vacation.

25

This is not entirely correct (I might be missing the tone of it, but for the sake of argument, I’ll take it at face value). A badly structured welfare net will indeed incline people to ‘sit down’ - in fact, that’s just what many aboriginal Australian’s call their monthly welfare check (i.e. ‘sit-down money’). But it is not inevitably like this. I read an article about a year ago now (sorry, the piece is locked-up in storage back in Oz and I can’t remember the reference) that was basically a test of two different welfare philosophies. The researchers took two groups of unemployed people in Chicago and did this to their welfare payouts (1) kept one group the same (i.e. a status quo control group with a cut-out date after 6 months), (2) gave the second group the standard 6-month payout, but offered a generous lump sum reward for those that found a job. Low and behold, the ratio of successful job seekers was higher in the second group than the first. They took the incentive and ran with it. Interestingly, the total payouts per group were significantly less for the second than the first, even though the second had a lump sum reward thrown in - the unemployed people in the second group got busy early and found work, reducing the total welfare expenditure through the 6 month period. What this test didn’t do was see what happens when you get rid of unemployment payouts altogether - there are, of course, ethical problems with running such a piece of research… Anyway, the point is, the way you structure your welfare system can have BOTH a negative and positive effect on work incentives. Handing money to people per se is not necessarily a disincentive to work.

26

In Belgium as a head of the family you can get unemployment money forever as long as you go out once in while and do a job interview and proof you are looking for work, currently this should be like around 35-40,000 NT$/month
Add some child support money for 2-3 children and you could get more than 40-50,000 NT$ monthly

Who wants to go out and look for job or work … if you do some moonlighting you could make more money and pay less taxes than in a regular job.

Some large families (mostly immigrants from north africa) can get around 100,000 NT$/ month in the system.

A bonus is that you also qualify for public/housing and that’s far from what you see in the US, in belgium a lot are one family homes with garden and garage.

27

35 - 40,000 a month is outrageous. It reminds me of the unemployment insurance system in Canada where the amount you collect is a percentage of the amount you made while working. Those who had good paying seasonal jobs would continue to collect pretty reasonable amounts of money the rest of the year and would frequently do this year after year. If the guy who worked at a low paying job quit or got fired he would have to wait six weeks or something to collect and then all he would get would be a percentage of what was already not enough money. Basically what it meant was that if you weren’t in a Union the boss had you by the balls and could abuse you at his leisure. If you were in a Union (especially a government Union) you were probably a bit lazy, got paid a little too much and had your UIC cheque waiting for you if things went south.

In any case the unemployment insurance model is definitely not what I am talking about. What I AM talking about is a bare subsistence amount NTD10-15,000 given to everybody over eighteeen. People with good salaries would pay all or a portion of that money back in taxes and the people who really needed it would have it. There would be no disincentive to work, no waiting periods, no degrading interviews with half witted social workers, no extortionary contracts with landlords. The minimum wage could be lowered or eliminated altogether giving small businesses especially a running chance. People could go to school if they wanted, live in a tent if they wanted, go to school AND live in a tent if they wanted…

28

[quote=“bob”]35 - 40,000 a month is outrageous. It reminds me of the unemployment insurance system in Canada where the amount you collect is a percentage of the amount you made while working. Those who had good paying seasonal jobs would continue to collect pretty reasonable amounts of money the rest of the year and would frequently do this year after year. If the guy who worked at a low paying job quit or got fired he would have to wait six weeks or something to collect and then all he would get would be a percentage of what was already not enough money.

In any case the unemployment insurance model is definitely not what I am talking about. What I am talking about is a bare subsistence amount 10-15,000 given to everybody over eighteeen. People with good salaries would pay all or a portion of that money back in taxes and the people who really needed it would have it. There would be no disincentive to work, no waiting periods, no degrading interviews with half witted social workers, no extortionary contracts with landlords.[/quote]

Ok, I see where you’re coming from, I think. Give 'em some money to live but provide incentives to find work. For that though, there actually has to be work. But, the thing is, is there is work out there, but the problems come about when you’re looking for specialized, higher-paying work that you’re qualified for.

Yes, 40000 NT is outrageous. And, yes, it was in Canada. I happened to have a well-paying job and the company moved. I didn’t quit or get fired so I qualified for EI. I got 60% of my salary for 40 weeks. It was sweet but I was out of the market for quite a while. Then I moved to Taiwan and now I’m in Korea. I even tried to find work in Montreal (I was working in my Fredericton. My hometown where jobs are lucky to come by for certain skills). That was a big no go. Fucking umpteen hundred people applying for the same job. Then I was deemed over qualified for lower skilled jobs (but paid well).

People can work at Tim Hortons or whatever (Moncton has like a thousand of them), but people are all too aware that these type of jobs are deemed the low class jobs. But they pay much better than the same type of jobs in Taiwan. I can’t believe what they pay people here. It’s ridiculous.

It’s amazing what one can do with a dollar, but people choose, on the most part, to not be smart with their money. Other people smoke pot or spend their money on booze or fast food. It’s complex.

All I know that there has to be some sort of reform. I mean, you could get government grants in Canada to start your own business or get training. But there’s so much fucking red tape and other BS involved.

29

Interesting idea bob.

I caught John Ralston Saul speaking on healthcare once, and one of his aruments in favour of a universal system was that the management costs of anything other are ridiculously out of line with what’s delivered. Another time, I caught a guy from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives speaking against cutting gov’t benefits (seniors’ benefits, I believe) to the richest Canadians on the basis that a universal system, even if it doesn’t actually benefit everyone ('cause at a certain level of income, you’re paying in more than you get out), enjoys the virtue of being seen to be there for everyone. (Much the same argument often used in favour of a no-loop-holes, no exceptions, flat rate income tax.) Such systems enjoy huge savings on management and administration because they’re universal, and enjoy significant support because they’re there for all.

From a (un)employment insurance standpoint, it’d also be nice because there’d never be any ridiculous waiting period. There are silly buggers like myself, who simply refuse to apply on principle. I know that work will be forthcoming, and it also has come up, but it can take awhile. I’ve had friends not file papers because they’d rather look for work, only to file much later when there was no work to be found. Then, because they’d tried to got out and do the right thing, they’re benefits were significantly reduced thanks to the forumla used.

And the seasonal ski-team workfare scam is ridiculous. Like the fishermen who get maybe 3 or 4 days a season, but manage to qualify for year-round EI/UI. All because the gov’t let out too many licenses and now finds too many boats and too few fish in the water. :loco:

30

[quote=“spook”]What would be the result if one day we agreed that henceforth corporations could no longer own any portion of America’s vast natural resources and an individual could only own that portion necessary for personal use?

The vast balance would become assets of America Inc. and every American citizen would by birthright become a shareholder in those assets and receive monthly dividend checks. The corporations would be hired and fired to manage and exploit the minerals, energy sources, arable and habitable land, water and other considerable natural assets of the nation and generate the dividends to distribute to shareholder-citizens. A small portion of these dividend payments would be held back as taxes.[/quote]
I believe they tried that in Russia for about seventy years. When it all fell apart at the end, some people got shares in Yukos, and other people got shares in the local dildo factory they worked in. Rather than cash, the latter often were paid in excess dildo production. Of course, Russian dildos aren’t worth a hell of a lot, so they basically got screwed.

I wish I had a copy of the story about that Russian dildo factory, but this was Before The Web in about 1992, I believe in the Chicago Tribune, and the article discussed how these impoverished Russians would have to go door to door trying to sell their monthly dildo dividend so they could buy vodka.

31

[quote=“MaPoSquid”][quote=“spook”]What would be the result if one day we agreed that henceforth corporations could no longer own any portion of America’s vast natural resources and an individual could only own that portion necessary for personal use?

The vast balance would become assets of America Inc. and every American citizen would by birthright become a shareholder in those assets and receive monthly dividend checks. The corporations would be hired and fired to manage and exploit the minerals, energy sources, arable and habitable land, water and other considerable natural assets of the nation and generate the dividends to distribute to shareholder-citizens. A small portion of these dividend payments would be held back as taxes.[/quote]
I believe they tried that in Russia for about seventy years. When it all fell apart at the end, some people got shares in Yukos, and other people got shares in the local dildo factory they worked in. Rather than cash, the latter often were paid in excess dildo production. Of course, Russian dildos aren’t worth a hell of a lot, so they basically got screwed.

I wish I had a copy of the story about that Russian dildo factory, but this was Before The Web in about 1992, I believe in the Chicago Tribune, and the article discussed how these impoverished Russians would have to go door to door trying to sell their monthly dildo dividend so they could buy vodka.[/quote]

In a communist system, the state owns everything and private property is outlawed. I’m envisioning an America run like a corporation owned by its citizens exactly as a capitalist entity with true share dividends and with true private property including zero income tax on income from employment. Rather than the Soviet Union, the state of Alaska is a distant approximation of what I’m talking about. I’m only talking about limiting private ownership of natural resources to personal use and common shares but it would be absolute ownership by birthright and not conditional ownership as in the U.S. today or meaningless communal “ownership” as in Marxist-Leninist states.

If the central idea is to go to the heart of the inequities which make poverty in even wealthy nations endemic and to come up with a solution which ends the inherently unfair indenturement of the productive class to the underclass then something somewhere else will have to give. It’s just unavoidable and not necessarily the Trojan horse of repackaged socialism.

32

If there really is no work then you really need some sort of safety net. You need people with a little money to spend and sometimes, especially if you are running a small company, need affordable help. What I’m suggesting would supply all three.

A lot of people take pride in their work ethic and self relience and take great pleasure in criticizing UI and welfare recipients. The truth though, I suspect, is that if the numbers were bigger, and if the welfare bashers could collect it they probably would. Honestly, who would turn down say, 3-4000 CND a month for doing nothing? Not many of the welfare bashers I suspect and not many of the rest of us either. It is just human nature to take something if it is offered for free. The problem with welfare especially (unemployment insurance less so) however is that it isn’t free. It is offered on the condition that you DON’T work, that you DON’T go to school, that you DON’T start a business. Take one honest, open step up from abject poverty and BANG they’ll knock you down again. Of course people seek to cheat a system like that. It is the only way to survive for a lot of people.

It should not be forgotten though that it is also human nature to be enterprising and to take pleasure in contributing to one’s community. What is needed is a system that recognizes both of these tendencies (discouraging one and encouraging the other) while providing a universally available subsistence that is automatically available. From this base level people would have a chance to work towards something better, rather than just to keep the wolves from the door, or scamming for exactly the same purpose. A rich, technologically advanced economy should be able to provide at least this basic assurance. Instead what we have is this nightmare compromise between the right who can’t see that we are in this thing together and the left who thinks that money grows on trees.

33

We learned in ECON 1113 that the reason we have money is that there is not enough stuff to go around. So it has value and we exchange for it.
I don’t know if that’s true anymore. It’s not only if we have enough, but if we have the transportation system to distribute it, and if people would do the work if there was no reward system.
I always thought it best to work at getting the necessities to everyone. I trust democracy more than I do capitalism. They seem to go together though.

34

That’s certainly true in liberal democracies… which are liberal (capitalistic free-market) before they are democratic. Doesn’t exhaust the spectrum of possible democratic alternatives, though. Well, at this point, perhaps it does.