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Comment by trothamel | Hacker News Reader

As much as I like the idea of a basic income, it's hard to make the numbers work.

Canada has 34,880,000 people in it, so a CAD 20,000 basic income would cost CAD 697,600,000,000.

According to http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2013/report-rapport-eng.asp#a3, Canada's total government revenue (at the federal level) was CAD 256,600,000,000.

So Canada would have to raise taxes by 170% to provide this basic income, and raise them again if they want to provide any of the services they do today. (National Defense, Healthcare, etc.)

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You're including people who do not need the wage - people who already have a job that pays higher than the $20k would not receive it.

Is that the plan? Because that's not what basic income is. What you are describing also exists, but it has a different name (Welfare, Earned income credit, to list two examples).

Well, it seems it'd be impossible to literally pay every person in Canada $20k a year.

It's called Guaranteed Minimum Income, which is what this article was talking about, in contrast to Universal Basic Income.

And kids and retirees above the threshold and immigrants who don't qualify and and and...

That population number dwindles when all these people are taken into account.

Remember Canada has the youngest population in the G8 and could be the best candidate for this type of experiment.

Is it per person of per family?

If it's per person then 20K is WAY too much. A family with 3 kids making 100K per year?

If they actually did that watch the birth rate in Canada skyrocket.

Per adult, I suspect. A family with 3 kids would be $40k/yr

So a family with 7 kids would get the same amount as a couple with no kids?

Something seems off here.

Sounds right to me. You don't make more in a professional career because you have more kids.

Completely irrelevant. They qualify for more welfare under the current system. Why should a couple with no kids get $40K while a family with 7 kids get the same amount?

The goals are different.

Welfare is intended to provide necessities. A family with seven kids clearly has more needs, and thus needs more money.

Minimum income, on the other hand, is intended to provide a minimum income. A baseline you can rely on, no matter what kind of situation you find your life in.

Each approach has strengths and weaknesses. It would appear that you favour a welfare system, and that is fine. I'm not sure why we would want to shoehorn minimum income back into welfare though? Why not just stick with welfare if it better fits the needs of society?

Ok, kids get $3k/yr.

A basic income, like welfare, would likely increase less than linearly with family size. For example, a household might receive an amount in proportion to the square-root of family size to account for the cost-savings of living together.

Keep in mind if you gave everyone 20k/yr, a lot more money would be spent in the economy, and a lot more money would be coming into the government through taxes.

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