Yeah, you here business owners griping that they can't hire people because people are getting too much in benefits and so don't want to work.


I'm in Canada. When COVID hit last year and thousands of people lost their jobs, the gov't rolled out a benefit called the CERB which paid 2000 a month and they made it very easy to access it right away. Now 2000 / month is not a lot especially if you live in a big city but it was better than landing on welfare, which is like 700/month in my province. CERB has ended, but the gov't has enhanced and increased eligibility for employment insurance which it needed to do for years anyway. But it's still below what someone working full time at a minimum wage job.

Well what employers discovered and employees were saying was that it wasn't that people didn't want to work, it was that they didn't want to work in bad jobs - poor pay, no security, inconsistent hours, abusive employers etc. Employers offering better wages/benefits had no trouble hiring.

I'm not sure UBI is an answer to inequality, I've heard arguments both ways. I think targeted interventions work better. For example successive federal governments have done a fairly decent job in reducing child poverty and poverty among seniors through targeted tax credits and benefits and they work.


The one group that's completely ignored is the disabled. I'm on provincial disability insurance, and even with the maximum allowable help from family, I barely survive the month, and [part of my part time job salary is deducted from my benefits so while I want to work, I'm penalized for it. And I'm just not well enough to work full time.


A member of parliament was proposing a federal disability benefit, similar to what seniors have, but parliament was dissolved and now we're having an election, so who knows if something similar would be proposed by the next government, and if the provincial disability programs would want to claw it back.

I just hope they do something to address income inequality.