DeafTourette
Perpetually Offended
All comes down to where someone lives as a start. £1600 is about $2300 CDN and that will get you nowhere in the Toronto area. A half decent one bedroom, one bathroom condo rental will probably be around $1,800 minimum. So that leaves only $500 for everything else. Most low end condos go for $2000 or so which is basically all of the $2300. If you go to Hamilton or Kitchener, it'll be a bit cheaper. Looks like checking HouseSignma you can get places for $1500-1800. Ottawa seems to trend lower than Toronto GTA too.
The thing about a UBI payout is my interpretation of it is it's supposed to be treated as supplemental income, not sole income. Anyone trying to live of it sitting at home is going to have a tough slog. But $2300 equivalent is pretty much the same as CDN unemployment insurance max payout which is I think about $500 or so per week. So at that amount, it would be like someone in Canada living off unemployment payouts per week forever..... (I dont know how good £1600 is over there, but going by your impressions it seems decent).
If you got the report, I wouldnt mind checking it out too. But if your impression was it didn't really improve peoples lives I'm not surprised. My prediction was when Andrew Yang was blabbing about USA $1000/mth UBI the theory was if you give everyone some extra cash, it helps the people at the bottom feel more secure with extra bucks for sake of living life, or taking side classes at night to improve education, or give some safety money so they can now get a job by buying new clothes for interviews etc.... My prediction was that most people in life are self serving and it doesn't really matter if someone is rich or poor getting an extra $12000/yr. A lot of people will just blow it or not give a shit anyway. Or they treat it as perpetual income and there's no point working min wage jobs anymore. Good intentions assuming people act responsibly. But reality is different.
To me, the best way to implement some kind of UBI bonus bucks is to add it to people who work. If you dont work, you get nothing. If you work, then the gov will give you extra money or the company will get subsidized to pay you more. It's like when I was a summer student in the 90s. My shitty min wage job was funded by government summer student incentive perks for companies. Even though I didnt get bonus bucks, the company at least did so they hired me. It's not like the gov said "Hey, lets just give every summer kid $3000 direct no strings attached". Nope. This would take it a step further that if you are working, you get your pay PLUS extra UBI money on top of it. If I didn't work and preferred to stay home watching reruns of Saved by the Bell or Fresh Prince I get zero. And thats how UBI should work.
We... Agreed on something?!? We're actually on the same page!?!?!? *Mind blown*