＂Universal Basic Income is a very, very, VERY bad idea.＂ - Brett Oland, Bow Valley Credit Union CEO
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Brett Schiller joins us to talk about the benefits of universal basic income (UBI) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDCs) and why they are a terrible idea.
Transcript
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It seems like these tools, as you increase inflation, and you have these economic pressures,
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it almost feels like, yeah, the solution is very obvious. We need more government,
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and we need the government to provide everybody with a universal basic income. The solution's
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always just, well, we've got to centralize things. There isn't enough of this, isn't enough of that.
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We need somebody to take care of us. And it gets tricky to get out of this mindset because
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when you decouple our sense of what money is actually worth from what it actually buys,
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you are shifting people's time preference. So if people are unable to really view themselves in
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a long term, they don't have the confidence 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from
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now, what their life will be like, they're operating on a short time preference. And now
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these instant solutions imposed by essential authority seem a lot more like, well, it's just
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going to remove the hurt right now. And often these immediate solutions also have long-term
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consequences that hurt more than whatever hurts right now.
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Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm glad you're recording this because I'm going to go on the record and say
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universal basic income is a very, very, very bad idea. But I honestly wouldn't blame people for
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going on it. So if you're a single mother or a single father or something like that, and you're
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struggling to put a roof over your head, put food on the table and make sure that you get the
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electricity bill paid, you're desperate. And it's like, how are you supposed to look after that kid
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and work three jobs just so you can pay your rent? Like it just doesn't work. And so really thinking
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it through that you're right, that instant gratification is almost a necessity in that case.
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And I think governments know that as well. And so they're basically right, walk right over here,
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sign up for your universal basic income. By the way, we're going to put it to your central bank
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Terrible, terrible idea. You know, I wrote a paper, I think it was in the spring of 2023.
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The Bank of Canada came out with a survey that basically was asking questions like,
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how would you use a central bank digital currency? Wouldn't it be fantastic if you could do this
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really easy? And so I wrote this paper basically describing that you're marching down to a dystopian
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nightmare. Thankfully, 90,000 Canadians responded and it was overwhelmingly bad towards a central
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bank digital currency. And so the Bank of Canada has since put it on ice, but I've also read a few
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papers of how it would be implemented. So the work hasn't stopped around a central bank digital
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currency, but effectively it's on pause until on the service.
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Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, like I say, once people get desperate, it's I don't blame them.
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That's another example. We've talked about it on the show before of how to another earlier point you
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made about how, you know, this is not necessarily a left or right issue or a liberal conservative
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issue, you know, we've been talking about. We use the example of when Trudeau was talking about
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implementing a national school lunch program. And I don't know how far that went or if it's
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implemented in any such way, but, you know, we describe it in the way of like, you know,
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if you're a liberal in favor of a national school lunch program, conservatives are not
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opposed to children eating lunch. You know, they just believe that there's a different
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way to achieve that in that you, you know, you empower the parents to have more powerful
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paychecks to, you know, to be able to buy their own kids lunches and not rely on a government
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program that should they end up, should their children end up relying on it and the government
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changes it in some way or it defunds it or it moves it to something else. Well, now what
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are you going to do? Because you haven't planned, you know, it's just a different mindset
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of where you believe the, um, the, uh, the, the source of the, of the, the goal should
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come from, you know? Yeah. And, and it just, if, if you connect the dots to those, uh, next
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levels, you come out with some pretty insidious outcomes, right? And it's like, is this kid
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going to grow up thinking he's going to get his lunch paid for and delivered and plopped
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on a tray everywhere he goes? And oh, where's my dinner and my breakfast for that matter,
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you know? So where's my bugs? So it, it, it doesn't set a great precedent with, with anything.
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And there's much better solutions that don't go down this dystopian nightmare pathway.