it would make a lot more sense to just reform welfare to something more reasonable. there's no use in sending the checks to people that have jobs, it's just going to drive inflation. but, if you set welfare payments to 50-75% of the minimum wage, you're getting all the good parts of it while losing the bad parts.

i want to add something about the question of incentivizing work, as well. it's less that it creates a disincentive. speaking from my own experience, my disincentive to work is the nature of work itself. there's not a thing you could do to incentivize me to really, actually want to be there. hate the tasks. hate the people. to me, it's literally slavery. the outcome is that i'd be - and have been - just about the shittiest employee you could imagine, because i would literally only be there because i was being forced to be there. i'd take any possible way out. in fact, i went back to school once (and racked up tens of thousands in debt) in order to avoid working at statscan. literally. i turned down the job and went back to school to study computer science, without any goal of getting a job when i came out. it was just to avoid the 9-5.

what does the system do with a person like me? i honestly, truly don't want to be there - you really have to drag me kicking and screaming, if not literally than coercively through market forces. and i could very well get up and walk out mid shift. nobody benefits from this.

see, but, i don't sit around watching oprah. i'm not avoiding labour for the sake of avoiding labour, i'm avoiding what i feel is unfulfilling labour to focus on what i actually want to do. you can see i spend a lot of time rambling; i've had a broken computer for some time. i'm a composer. that's where my heart is, it's what i love to do. i have a rather large body of work, in fact. hours and hours and hours. it's quite challenging sound art, though, with very little potential of being income generating; or, at least, that's my calculation of the reality of it for the course of my life time.

so, instead of talking about "disincentivizing work", i'd rather talk about creating conditions to fulfil true potential, and engage in work that is truly meaningful to the individual, even if the market may not really reward it.

i mean, love these ramblings or not, but it's a lot more productive than scanning items at a cash register or making people sandwiches.

that's a really dramatic social shift if done in the open. i get that. but, it's a lot less profound if you're just talking about boosting welfare rates to something people can actually live on, to give people the freedom to escape from the labour market. and, trust me - if somebody is going to choose to escape the labour market, employers are better off without them.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/minimum-income-basic-income_n_6370458.html