A pensioner receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
A UBI recipient receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
It seems to me like a pretty similar situation. And what do most people do when they are eligible to receive a pension? They stop working. They may do a little volunteering on the side, but it’s not typically on the ballpark of what they did before.
Do early retirees act any differently? My kid’s teacher retired at 55 and she wasn’t talking of all the work she was planning to do afterwards. I know a couple other healthy early retirees and they don’t do anything productive either.
The funny thing is people in this thread are complaining that rich people contribute nothing to society, but they avoid saying that the reason rich people don’t work is because they don’t have to. We all know that if we didn’t have to work we would not do a fraction of what we do today.
If we reduce the number of people who actually work and contribute to our tax base, there will be not enough budget to fund UBI, healthcare, or anything else.
Note that you’re using the term “retiree” in this example, but were talking about pensioners previously.
You are right, I’ve been sloppy.
A lot of pensioners do keep working
Do you have any data on what percentage of them do, particularly full time? Based on the people I know, they spend most of their time with hobbies, chores and socializing. Not that there is anything wong with that, but as a larger percentage of our population becomes unproductive it will become harder to fund social services such as healthcare or the UBI.
I spent a bit of time digging about and couldn’t readily find information specifically about pensioners, but it was an interesting bit of digging to do, so thanks for the opportunity! I couldn’t find specific data for the number of Canadian pensioners who have jobs. There is plenty about people aged 65 and up that I believe supports my assertion.
A nice high level quick find was [this 2017 Canada Census analysis from statscan( https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016027/98-200-x2016027-eng.cfm). There’s a small section that includes some information that seniors with private income (savings or pensions) work less frequently than those with none but there’s not really hard data there and it wasn’t obvious to me which sources they were drawing from. A couple of the most relevant bits from the Highlights section are:
In 2015, one in five Canadians aged 65 and older, or nearly 1.1 million seniors, reported working during the year. This is the highest proportion recorded since the 1981 Census.
Employment income was the main source of income for 43.8% of seniors who worked in 2015, up from 40.4% in 2005 and 38.8% in 1995.
The link has the data filtered to those 65+, and the top row in the table shows that the total number of income recipients is 1,079,410. Per this 2022 report there are around 7 million Canadians who are 65+, which is somewhere around 14%.
You are asking me to disregard heaps of peer reviewed research because you ran into a lazy retiree once.
So a retiree that doesn’t work is now lazy? Does that mean by extension that a UBI recipient that doesn’t work is also lazy?
Re. the pilot studies, I don’t believe that the behavior elicited by a short term study automatically extends to a lifetime UBI.
As a counterexample I have suggested looking at pensioners, particularly healthy early retirees. If our working-age population experienced a fraction of the productivity loss that we see in healthy early retirees, we would not be able to fund our current expenses, such as healthcare, let alone a UBI on top of that.
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A pensioner receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
A UBI recipient receives a stable income for life even when they are not working.
It seems to me like a pretty similar situation. And what do most people do when they are eligible to receive a pension? They stop working. They may do a little volunteering on the side, but it’s not typically on the ballpark of what they did before.
I’d like to hear your counterpoint.
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Do early retirees act any differently? My kid’s teacher retired at 55 and she wasn’t talking of all the work she was planning to do afterwards. I know a couple other healthy early retirees and they don’t do anything productive either.
The funny thing is people in this thread are complaining that rich people contribute nothing to society, but they avoid saying that the reason rich people don’t work is because they don’t have to. We all know that if we didn’t have to work we would not do a fraction of what we do today.
If we reduce the number of people who actually work and contribute to our tax base, there will be not enough budget to fund UBI, healthcare, or anything else.
Note that you’re using the term “retiree” in this example, but were talking about pensioners previously.
A lot of pensioners do keep working. Many because they enjoy working. Many because they need the money. The government specifically publishes information on the rules: https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/retirement-planning/working-collecting-pension.html
You are right, I’ve been sloppy.
Do you have any data on what percentage of them do, particularly full time? Based on the people I know, they spend most of their time with hobbies, chores and socializing. Not that there is anything wong with that, but as a larger percentage of our population becomes unproductive it will become harder to fund social services such as healthcare or the UBI.
I spent a bit of time digging about and couldn’t readily find information specifically about pensioners, but it was an interesting bit of digging to do, so thanks for the opportunity! I couldn’t find specific data for the number of Canadian pensioners who have jobs. There is plenty about people aged 65 and up that I believe supports my assertion.
A nice high level quick find was [this 2017 Canada Census analysis from statscan( https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016027/98-200-x2016027-eng.cfm). There’s a small section that includes some information that seniors with private income (savings or pensions) work less frequently than those with none but there’s not really hard data there and it wasn’t obvious to me which sources they were drawing from. A couple of the most relevant bits from the Highlights section are:
One of the data sets published in 2023 is “Employment income statistics by industry sectors, Indigenous identity, highest level of education, work activity during the reference year, age and gender: Canada, provinces and territories, census metropolitan areas and census agglomerations with parts”
The link has the data filtered to those 65+, and the top row in the table shows that the total number of income recipients is 1,079,410. Per this 2022 report there are around 7 million Canadians who are 65+, which is somewhere around 14%.
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She retired last year, making her Gen X. I am younger than her.
Not that any of that makes any difference: people stop working as soon as they have the means to do so.
Since you have resorted to personal insults it is safe to assume that you have ran out of actual arguments. Thank you for the conversation.
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So a retiree that doesn’t work is now lazy? Does that mean by extension that a UBI recipient that doesn’t work is also lazy?
Re. the pilot studies, I don’t believe that the behavior elicited by a short term study automatically extends to a lifetime UBI.
As a counterexample I have suggested looking at pensioners, particularly healthy early retirees. If our working-age population experienced a fraction of the productivity loss that we see in healthy early retirees, we would not be able to fund our current expenses, such as healthcare, let alone a UBI on top of that.