Inflation doesn’t exist in Gregory C Masons world: Transform CERB into a basic annual income program – June 30, 2020
Canada is a pretty damn good country and the fact that an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Manitoba can write an entire article about a basic annual income program without mentioning inflation or hyper-inflation once, is a testament to how lucky we are to be living in this great country.
The first thing to remind the readers about the article I point to in this post is that In Canada we DON’T already have a basic income for families with children in the form of the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). Because Children eventually become adults and hopefully as adults they contribute more than they consume.
We pay single moms and to a lesser degree single dads because economically the hope is their child or children in the future will be contributors to the Welfare State as adults, not consumers of it.
As an economist when you’re writing about a basic annual income program one would assume you’d mention Welfare that people in Canada already enjoy, like oh, I don’t know, Universal Health Care! These universal government programs are primarily financed by the Private Sector and most if not all Canadian provinces are running a deficit.
When Milton Friedman brought up a basic annual income program, he was smart enough to know that Austerity measures would be needed to make it sustainable. I don’t mind a basic annual income program if we allow the free market to function, I actually think fewer people would be stressed out if they didn’t have the government breathing down their necks for more taxes.
If the government were smaller and there was a basic annual income to get rid of many of these useless government agencies, I’d be all for it. The problem with a basic annual income program based on Gregory C Masons’ opinion is that he assumes there won’t be economic ups and economic downs, he assumes that the Private Sector in Canada which is already shrinking won’t shrink some more.
Gregory C Masons who again I have to remind the reader is an Economist at a very respectable university, completely ignores inflation, which could come in the rental markets, consumer goods, energy costs, and labor. I’m being honest with you, if there’s a basic annual income there’s no way as a minimum wage earner that I’m working for anything less double the annual amount earned from the basic annual income.
Are there price controls with a basic annual income? because in a market economy, especially as it relates to imports, prices for scarce goods can rise dramatically, and even in the world of Gregory C Mason a basic annual income doesn’t guarantee productivity in the economy, in Finland, that’s why their UBI model was scrapped. In homogeneous societies, common sense is more common.
If I was working and I saw another person who shares my race making the same amount of money for doing nothing, I don’t have to worry about being called a racist when I call that human a piece of crap, I also can run an entire political campaign explaining to people why UBI is horrible. It’s only in multicultural countries where this nonsense can’t be seriously debated.
I’ve worked with the homeless before, some of them do not want to work, there are a lot of Canadians who if given the option not to work WILL NOT WORK! As a full-time investor, the worst part of the article written by Gregory C Mason was what he had to say about Asset prices because this is where I can tell that he has no clue how things are done in Canada when it comes to assets.
Especially if I have family, I don’t have to have any assets under my own name, if I’m incorporated, but my child’s mother who I tell the government I’m separated from isn’t. Greg is clueless as to what’s happening in the provincial welfare systems right now, The federal government would know even less about the scams, because they’d have a whole lot more people to monitor.
I don’t know how intrusive the government will have to be in order to make a FEDERAL basic annual income possible, but as more Canadians find loopholes in the basic annual income, oh you better believe a whole new shadow economy will be derived off of the Gregory C Mason basic annual income model.
Honestly, I read a lot from people who want a universal basic income, but usually, those individuals aren’t economists. Gregory C Mason is an economist and the truth is he could have framed his version of universal basic income in any manner he wished, yet he opted to display his ignorance on the topic.
I’d like to say that I’m all ears with a universal basic income, it’s just I’d prefer these people take a look at countries like Argentina, Russia, Venezuela, and even Finland who also tried to UBI. You can not forget the market when you Univeralize anything.
Some humans genuinely trust the government, and when the market economy is diluted for a big government, a large segment of the population will think they’ve died and gone to heaven and they will not WORK, THESE HUMANS WILL BECOME LESS PRODUCTIVE, these humans will also have babies and teach their babies to have laissez-faire attitudes to everything economic and then one day there’s a recession, which quickly turns into a depression, because in a non-market based economy, people will get used to working at their own pace recession or no recession.
Union culture in Canada is very strong, people who work with a union have a lot of perks which allow them not to work as hard or as fast and in the event of an emergency, as we can see now, some employees simply don’t show up to work, because they don’t have too! This is still a volunteerism system.
None of us are slaves, being that I worked with the homeless, one thing I know to be fact is that if a free human being says they’re not working, there is nothing you can do about it!
Even in the best economies, recessions happen, maybe a future COVID-19 happens, even now, Canada outsourced jobs in favor of welfare to the point it had a shortage of medical masks for medical professionals?
We haven’t even tried UBI yet and Canada already had shortages, of course, all of this was completely ignored by Gregory C Mason, who wrote the article to sell the idea to people who don’t know any better, but again the only thing that disappoints me about his article is that he’s an economist at a respectable University
Interesting times ahead!