it shouldn’t be a surprise

Yes it should. The working class is supposed to get compensated fairly for increases in productivity.

Through no fault of anyone

Billionaires are right there.

More specifically I think it’s important for Canadians to remember this is a working class vs capitalist issue. Not an American working class vs Canadian working class issue

I support decoupling as quickly as possible

Me too, we just differ on how quickly that can happen without driving average people into the arms of fascists.

30% of our population would be glad to see it, and 30% is all it took in the US this past election.

What are you even talking about? Engagement in local politics and mutual aid is at historic lows, in large part due to the influence of US central social media corporations.

Why do you think the only two options here are your narrow ideas or nothing at all?

To be clear: the approach you’ve outlined is incompatible with anti-fascism. Therefore you can’t claim that moral high horse. Your approach is fundamentally flawed in that it’s still dogmatically invested in capitalistic top-down power consolidation.

Please, dear god. Get off the internet and sign up to help your local mutual aid organizations. We can do so so so much more to combat fascism by reminding each other of our collective strength, compassion, and humanity. That really is the antidote to fascism, and we all need to be working toward that more than anything our federal government can do via tarrifs or trade bans.

There are effective ways to fight fascism.

These are based on showing people there is a better way, and in particular showing average people that the left is working for them.

And then there are ways that directly embolden fascism by senselessly cratering the lives of everyday people thereby driving the masses directly into the arms of the far right.

You can’t just disentangle overnight, unfortunately. And I’m sorry but if you don’t think backlash is something that can/should be mitigated by an effective strategy then you haven’t been paying attention.

A far more effective antidote to fascism is mutual aid.

That’s all well and good until the electorate revolts by putting the CPC in charge next cycle. No thank you, if only for the fact it’s politically incompatible with anti-fascism. You can’t make such broad moves and expect there won’t be backlash. Canadians are NOT immune to the same thing happening up here that’s happening south of the border.

Real talk: is there such a thing as a non-tariff response to what the US is doing that doesn’t amount to, essentially, rolling over while the US to curb stomps us? What’s the alternative? Because 70% seems low.

I always found it funny in the mid-2010s when the central bank was struggling to meet inflation targets why nobody seemed to suggest UBI could help fix that… seems to me that giving people money directly is at least as stimulating to the economy as dropping interest rates. Difference is one benefits capitalists, while the other benefits the working class…

In my opinion, this is an issue that can be avoided by implementing UBI gradually.

Shortages and inflation don’t just arise from people having more disposable income. If that were true, inflation would’ve been worse and supply chains would be facing shortages decades ago when everyone had more disposable income in real terms.

Rather, these issues are more a function of three factors:

• Rate of change in demand
• Price collusion among large companies
• Supply chain disruptions

During COVID, we saw all of the above, for example. Supply chains disrupted, people had more disposable income due to CERB and changed their consumption behaviours dramatically during lockdowns/work from home (rapid shift in demand), while large corporations such as Loblaw’s & Sobey’s engaged in well publicized price-fixing schemes.

This lead to the inflation crisis we are just now recovering from.

However, there’s no inherent reason why UBI needs to include any of these things. You could instead, for example:

• “Boil the frog” when it comes to demand, by starting with small payments and phasing them in so that consumption habits do not change too rapidly
• Promote anti-trust measures against large companies to prevent price fixing (bonus: proceeds can go toward UBI)
• Similar to point one, if you take the boil the frog approach it will be less disruptive to supply chains, as people leave jobs gradually & companies are slowly incentivized to pay their employees more in order to stay competitive

At the end of the day I don’t see it as all that different from setting interest rates, for example. Like YES the central bank COULD tank our economy by raising the interest rate 2000 basis points tomorrow. And YES they COULD also drive inflation through the roof by setting the interest rate to 0% as well. But they ain’t gonna, because it’d cause… inflation/deflation and supply chain shortages.

I don’t know these people but even just reading that already made me so tired. I’m so ready for everybody to forget we exist again.

2020-2030 is really making 2000-2010 seem like paradise out here, which is something I never thought I’d say, as a trans woman who barely survived 2000-2010. 🙃

As someone in a high income bracket, I’d gladly pay more in taxes in exchange for a low-overhead direct equalization program such as UBI.

Something that’s always bothered me about these discussions, however, is how it always seems to be treated as a binary choice. As if they only two options are to do nothing or flip on the UBI lightswitch. But this is IMHO stupid given the way economies work. Something like UBI would take 3-5 years to fully influence the economy, and anyway, economies tend to do better with stable long-term changes rather than sudden shocks.

So, if it were me, I’d instead implement a UBI program like so:

• Create a crown corporation similar to the Bank of Canada
• Mandate the crown corporation to set UBI rates with an eye out for the health of the economy and the population
• The UBI rate would imply a rate of taxation as well as set forth monthly payments to every Canadian citizen after deducting some (externally audited) operating budget (which should be relatively low given the program will never be means-tested)
• Begin UBI with some small-value sum such as $50/mo per person—enough to look nice hitting people’s accounts, enough to make a real difference to the poorest of the poor, but not enough to realistically cause economic problems
• Let the Crown corp adjust the UBI rate yearly and have collection handled by the CRA at tax/paycheck time

In my opinion, if the government did something like this, we’d have a long-lasting program that is agile enough to adapt to economic conditions or things breaking along the way. There is likely a sweet spot for UBI similar to that of an interest rate, and we’d be able to find where that line is empirically, without having to risk serious shocks to the economy, inflation due to supply chain shocks, etc.

I would expect such a program would gradually increase over the span of 10-30 years until basic needs like food and shelter are covered for everybody, but luxuries and “comfortable” lifestyles remain out of reach for those who are out of work. But, if I am wrong, it wouldn’t matter anyway… the UBI rate would just wind up settling higher or lower according to the needs of society.

I mean the other half of this is that working class people could take over the NDP leadership if there were more momentum but instead it’s just kind of withering with people buying into far right bs

I’m a millennial trans woman who sometimes fucks cishet Gen Z men I feel that’s pretty much spot on in my observation

There’s basically two generations of Gen Z: those who were adults pre-pandemic and take after millennials & those who were not.

The ones who came of age in the pandemic have a lot more hangups about social interaction, have consumed a lot more misinformation, and generally have baggage about being criticized for their (admittedly shitty and ignorant) views they’ve clearly been fed by the algorithm and their friends

These guys ARE NOT bad people but they caught serious brain rot during the pandemic and it’s gonna take time/empathy for them to fully recover. It does not help that there’s a certain type of moral superiority to millennial activism that they clearly are reacting to

It’s clear that PP is starting to go down the drain I think given all this recent polling. Idk wtf is going on with the NDP