abff08f4813c

Dang, by just one vote. Never let it ever be said again that a single vote doesn't make a difference.

Shout-out from a proud and satisfied Freedom Mobile user here!

I guess by that you were trying to explain the same idea as https://programming.dev/post/30075435/16842138 above. If that's right then I agree - that resolves the float issue.

The “float” cost is minimal

But how many "rich" people are in Canada? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? It might be minimal for any individual rich person, but it can add up to a significant cost to Canada (or the relevant provincial government). That's why we need it to get to zero.

Self-employed people are required to make quarterly installments, not annual.

So we can minimize this while still paying these their NIT quarterly.

The government constantly owes you 12 months worth of payments, and isnt paying you interest on your money.

But being paid these 12 monthly payments on a monthly basis has the potential to maximize the float issue.

AFAIK, taxes are withheld from wages and paid from every paycheck, not once a year.

This may not be accurate though. I'm thinking of BaristaFIRE types here - the part time coffee store worker earns such a low income from it, that they'd obviously qualify for the non-U BI or the NIT. But take into account their earnings from interest on their massive investment holdings, and that paints quite a different picture. Hence no BI or NIT until taxes are done. Which brings us to...

Indeed, I can eliminate it (and reverse it) merely by claiming the payments came out of the previous tax cycle, rather than the current one.

That is ... brilliant!!! Yes, this solves the problem quite nicely. Basically the rich are required to pay as part of their tax their own BI in advance, before the govt doles it back out to them. Only thing I'd add is to make sure that, for those who make above a certain income (the "rich"), any tax owing must be paid in full before the UBI is paid out. This prevents the float issue from coming back for those who pay late.

When you die, your estate receives the remaining 12 payments owed to you.

And if you have no heirs, it goes back to the gov't - where it can be redistributed to others. Again, brilliant!

But the biggest reason to apply it uniformly is, IMO, the social costs. Giving it to everyone, it is an entitlement. It is the dividend the citizen receives for their ownership share of their country.

Giving it only to the poor, it is a charity intended to help people who are unable to support themselves.

Agreed for the most part. I was writing earlier that a NIT should cover some middle class folks too. The idea is that we can be more efficient by excluding the rich from this scheme, but if everybody except the rich qualify, it's still an entitlement rather than a charity, since only the rich lack the entitlement.

Think of SALT in the US - https://archive.nytimes.com/economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/the-deduction-for-state-and-local-taxes/ - my recollection is that President Obama tried to push for a reduction of SALT but had to back away due to the outcry. SALT benefitted mostly folks living in blue states, which is why it was only capped in Drumpf's first term.

That said, if UBI is workable as per your idea above, then it's academic, since giving it to the rich actually doesn't cost anything anymore. I'm fine either way - the important part is to get it out there.

Thank you for the long and courteous reply. This is why I love it here.

The same. I learned a lot and am grateful to have had the chance to discuss this topic with someone clearly knowledgable on it.

As for my strange word choice, I meant deported (I was tired).
Sorry I conflated who I was replying to.

No worries. All cleared up now.

The ten day thing (which after researching is actually 14 days) is a requirement of the visa holder,

Ahh yes, that matches with the sources above that I found then.

but I thought companies were obligated to do it. Maybe they don’t have to? I know for a fact the company which I work for does. 

Yeah, that makes sense. I certainly didn't see anything suggesting that companies were forbidden from reporting this, or that Japan Immigration was not allowed to act on such reports (as would be the case in Canada, for example).

What you said made sense. I guess it could be likened to lying on a travel insurance application form. Declaring that you’re medically well, but then requiring treatment abroad. You wouldn’t be covered.

Yep, exactly this.

Universal: Everyone gets it, no means testing, no bureaucracy and the cost associated with that.

Basic: You are not buying caviar and exotic holidays, just enough to live and pay rent.
Agreed.
Income: Therefore taxed.
Minor quibble - technically a concept of non-taxable income does exist, see https://www.taxtips.ca/glossary/non-taxable-income.htm for some examples. But agreed on the main point (that UBI is and should be taxable).

E.g. If UBI is 1000 a month it will likely push people into a higher tax bracket therefore their after tax income will not be 1000 more

In fact it might all be taxed away for those who are actually rich.

and for the richest they should be taxed more than they ... [receive] ... from the UBI.

I'd go a couple of steps further. Those rich enough (so not just the richest but perhaps everyone who's even slightly rich) should have the UBI fully taxed away. Another way to put this is that their taxes after UBI should = taxes before UBI + cash value of UBI

Basically we need to sort out a proper taxation system before this can be implemented.

So if this was just some kind of accounting gimmick then this would be perfect.

The issue from what I understand is that real money - the 1000 in your example - has to be sent into the richest person's bank account (or equivalent money-receiving receptacle) before getting retrieved by being taxed back. Perhaps we could do something like saying UBI is paid out annually and only given the day before taxes are due to be paid in order to minimize the amount of time this money is floating out there - but the issue is that it still costs real money to pay everyone, even the richest of the rich, this UBI, only to claw it back again in full later. (At most, some higher middle class folks might gradually get less and less than the full amount of the negative income tax/basic income, until we get to zero.)

So it's not the most efficient way to handle money. By contrast, with a NIT we avoid needing to have that extra cash to move around - we'd only have to give the basic income to those who wouldn't qualify for this claw back. That frees up funds, real money. The catch is that we'd need some bureaucracy to deal with it - but by making it part of the income tax, the existing taxation bureaucracy can deal with it, hopefully minimizing this aspect of the cost. We'd likely have some costs here anyways as part of the "sorting out a proper taxation system" prereq for a true UBI, and the hope is that a NIT wouldn't cost more than that.

I had previously moved more towards a negative income tax approach rather than a universal basic income. The latter seems to be consistently found to be too expensive to implement universally, and how does it make sense to give the basic income to someone who's currently a billionaire or even a millionaire? (Ok, if a former millionaire loses it all and ends up deep in debt, that's a bit different, but that's why I'm limiting to current millionaires.)

That's why I found this,

which found it is possible to halve previously projected costs while maintaining or even increasing its poverty-reduction impact.

To be so intriguing. Alas,

The PBO, therefore, confirms the P.E.I. report’s conclusion that it is possible to roughly halve the cost of a basic income program for Canada and each province by using the economic family definition instead of the nuclear family.

Basically, the use of the artificial "economic family" standard is what justifies giving lower payments to these folks. So the proposal saves money by .. refusing to spend extra money.

Since housing is so expensive right now, many more are living together than we'd normally see otherwise, so I think today's "economic families" are a bit artificially inflated. If a UBI based on this did go through, I'd expect folks to start moving out of their parents homes to qualify for additional basic income - which would legitimately help them afford their new places, but also cause the programme's costs to skyrocket.

I don't think the above was accounted for properly. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a UBI or an NIT come to fruition, and Canada does have a working example of this from the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

But having a badly designed proposal tried and failed would hurt the movement, so we have to look at these ideas closely. Ultimately, I don't see that the "economic family" concept makes sense, and without it the cost of the programme doubles. Perhaps it still works, but be prepared to fund it at double the stated level, don't let that rise catch us by surprise.

This a good piece of work.

which I added a little to, so that flair can have colors.

Staying ahead of Lemmy once again! I remain amazed at how fast and easily pyfedi is able to maintain the lead here - truly talented devs are at work on this team.

t would be trivial to add a “flair” attribute onto posts too and have receiving instances read that. User flair shows up next to the author’s name on their posts so arguably it makes sense to send it then too. Let’s see how it goes.

Indeed. Following.

Was your friend currently employed when they lost their visa?

Not my friend. You're confusing me with someone else.

While timing from the original comment isn't clear, the phrasing of "That mental health diagnosis was enough for the Japanese government to cancel her visa" suggests that the visa getting cancelled came first (and loss of employment was due to no longer having a valid visa etc).

This is landing permission. This is you entering the country before the actual visa (residence card) is issued.

Ah, good point. So on the one hand it seems odd that it'd be a requirement to enter the country but not to stay, but on the other hand many rights are often won on technicalities like this one.

That being said... from https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/1934/en#je_ch4sc1at9

Article 22-4(1) Where any of the following facts are found with respect to a foreign national residing in Japan under a status of residence listed in the left-hand column of Appended Table I or Appended Table II ... the Minister of Justice may revoke the foreign national's status of residence
(i) The foreign national has received, by deceit or other wrongful means, a seal of verification for landing ... on the consideration that he/she does not fall under any of the items of Article 5, paragraph (1).

With Article 5, paragraph (1) being the landing procedures already referenced in my earlier comment. (You can also see the Appended Tables I and II here, https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/1934/en#je_apxt1 but these basically cover almost every visa imaginable status.)

Keep in mind that I don't understand the exact meaning of "wrongful means" here and I'm certainly not an expert in Japanese law - so I'm just assuming that it means "obtained it incorrectly" aka there was an unintentional mistake or unintentional omission (in contrast to "deceit" which is defined as requiring intent).

Basically though, if I'm understanding correctly, this means that the law in Japan allows revoking the visa/status if it's later determined that granting the status during landing should not have been done.

So it might have been enough if, after somehow learning about the hospital stay (perhaps the friend of the other commenter told immigration in case the "brief" stay ended up being more than three months - which from "brief", it probably wasn't, but perhaps the friend might have been trying to be helpful to immigration here and also forgot to double check with a lawyer first), that Japan Immigration determined that the depression was a condition that existed before the landing happened and thus should have been reported (even if the friend didn't know about it beforehand). One can imagine an even harsher scenario - where the friend was falsely accused of knowing about the depression before coming to Japan and deliberately hiding it (which would then qualify as "deceit").

I'm guessing and speculating too much here. The original tale remains plausible to me, but to really understand it, it seems like more details would be necessary (which the original commenter might not even know, as it happened to a friend).

if they lost their job, their employer is obligated to inform immigration within 10 days of this happening

Not doubting you, but just curious, as I wasn't able to find a source regarding this. In fact I found something else, https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0%2059619 , which suggests the opposite is true (that employers in Japan rarely inform immigration) - but that one is also 15 years old and might be significantly out of date.

and if they do not find employment within three months, then they could be depleted

"depleted" is an odd word here - I guess you mean having their visa/status cancelled or revoked?

I i did find other sources ( https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0%20132389 & https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0%20171354 & https://www.daijob.com/en/guide/expat-essentials/important-procedures-for-foreigners-living-in-japan-2-troubleshooting/ ) confirming this.

I'm not sure how easy for Japan's Immigration to have seen those medical records.

But from sources ( https://www.bn.emb-japan.go.jp/consular/criteria/_of/_visa/_issuance.htm and https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/en/laws/view/4235/en ) it seems like the following applies:

Article 5. Any alien who falls within any one of the following items shall be denied permission for landing in Japan :
(2) Any person who is mentally defective as prescribed by the Law Concerning Mental Health and Welfare For the Mental Disabled

And from that law,

Article 5 The term "person with a mental disorder or disability" as used in this Act means an individual with schizophrenia, acute addiction to, or dependency on, a psychoactive substance, intellectual disability, psychopathy or any other form of psychiatric disorder

(Dealing with different English translations of the Japanese originals likely explains the slight discrepancies in wording here.)

Finally, Google's AI overview confirms,

Depression, also known as major depressive disorder, is a psychiatric disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, loss of interest, and a range of other symptoms that can significantly affect daily functioning. It's a complex condition influenced by genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors.

Also, there's a forum thread over at https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0%20174499 which states,

Their main concern is that you aren't going to move to Japan and be hospitalised immediately (or drop dead).

But perhaps since a hospitalisation occurred in this case, that's why it was treated so strictly.

There's also https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0%20173504 which says,

If you work in Japan you’ll need to undergo a quite complete medical exam before starting your work (results are provided to your employer) and then do an other exam organized by your company or school on a yearly basis.

So while I'm still unsure about the exact mechanism of enforcement, it seems that Japan Immigration is supposed to know or be informed about these kinds of situations specifically because their laws require it to establish and maintain visa eligibility.

In other words, the tale that protist shared is at least plausible and I believe likely to be completely truthful.

Sure, bud, focus on imaginary possibilities and not the biggest problem with this shitbag,

You said,

Furthermore, he’s violated wildlife protection laws, one of the few things our government has done right, historically.

So I think you ought to defend it.

Any further comments from you that ignore what you originally wrote shall be taken as an admission from you that you were wrong.

Edit: (12 minutes later) Saw your edit, so you've responded. I accept your admission that you were wrong.

the biggest problem...the fact he’s attending BYU.

Well, think for a second. Perhaps it's because I ... agree with you on that?

Although I agree with this other comment, https://mander.xyz/post/29684110/19010812 (the implication being he might have been desperate and not seeing any other way to stay in the US with his kids - it's a complicated world out there).

Hmm... usually countries expand immigration when faced with a situation like this. But considering the current political climate, I'm not sure: what will the gov't of NZ choose to do next?