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| The freedom to do what you want. |
Louis Shalako
I’m
just putting together my final income, mileage and expense report for the
Ontario Disability Support Program. I’m retiring after 30 years on ODSP.
I will drop that off downtown tomorrow morning with the greatest of pleasure.
And then, I will be free—
Maybe even rich.
I will actually get a raise of five hundred a month, just for going off of disability.
I earned $1.470.00, working part-time, for 21 days in August of 2024. Now, you wouldn’t want to live on the pension, and you probably couldn’t live on the earnings either. I also drove 1,558 k on business last month. Taken together, they seem to add up to something a poverty-stricken person could actually live on, assuming one has lived in a rent-controlled building for thirteen years, and assuming Landlordie McLandlordface doesn’t suddenly get some sort of a fucking brainstorm.
Even now, I’m still paying just under $10,000.00 a year in rent, and assuming I got renovicted, it’s pretty clear I couldn’t get anything under $20,000.00 or more per year.
The point is, that the disability pension represents a kind of basic income, providing an income floor, below which, a citizen is theoretically, not supposed to fall.
The ODSP pension was always a good thirty to forty percent below the poverty line. The guidelines for business and employment were always restrictive. The mileage rate, an allowable deduction, was for many years a ridiculous $0.17 per kilometre. You were only allowed to earn up to $200.00 per month, before they would apply a claw-back of $0.50 on the dollar. Yet you could receive a gift of up to $7,000.00 per year, with no penalty at all—no, the heinous crime was that you had earned it. The disabled, showing signs of independence, earning a little money, and clawing their way up out of poverty.
It was more than they could bear, what with all that stigma going around.
Staff worked their no-good, sorry asses off trying to prevent such a thing, and for the most part, they were very successful…so successful, that quite a number of us are currently residing in tents down at Rainbow Park.
You will forgive me if I choose not to be among them.
I have better things to do.
***
Nowadays, you can earn up to $1,000.00 per month without penalty and the deductible mileage rate is up to $0.40/k.
My point here, is simply the one word, ‘restrictive’. A no-questions-asked, basic income, for citizens who fall below a certain cut-off threshold, (one that tapers off with rising income), regardless of ability or disability, (and no bourgeois moral judgements), would be very desirable in terms of lifting hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of our fellow Canadians, not just out of poverty, but into the middle class.
It might even keep a few of us out of homeless encampments.
If having a strong middle class is a be-all and end-all for social policy, and it is one of the pillars of a strong democracy, no argument there, then surely a basic income (for those who qualify), would be a very good thing.
When I went to work for #superdough I was maxing out my credit card every winter and it would take half the year to pay it off again. Groceries and gasoline, right. I was fortunate, in that the job is out in the country, and I could deduct $0.40 per kilometre in mileage. So I earn maybe $60.00, then write off twenty. This means I could earn more, and the actual fuel costs are less than twenty dollars. You’re not making a profit. $0.40/k in no way reflects the true costs of vehicle ownership.
You’re just trying to stay ahead of some kind of a curve. It is about cash flow, and living on the margin—a very slim margin at times.
When I first began, I wasn’t getting too many hours. Ah, but we needed clean totes for our deliveries—and if no one else wanted to wash totes, then all the minutes or hours a week spent washing totes were mine for the taking. When no one else had the confidence to call the distributor, and order fifteen or twenty sacks of flour, well, I had the guts where maybe they didn’t. I took responsibility, ladies and gentlemen, and predictably enough, I ended up running the place. Where others saw it as a crappy job, or a chore, or an unwelcome obligation to the family business, I saw the opportunity, to make the most of what was there. And it can be a crummy job at times.
The Boss was getting older, and no one else wanted it…the Boss offered me a chance to buy in, all sweat equity, and now I own a little piece of the business. It’s what we call ‘free enterprise’, or maybe just freedom. The fucking freedom to do what we needed to do.
I have no illusions there, like when the mixing machine, all $12,000.00 of it, makes loud noises and isn’t working properly, and guess whose job it is to fix it? Mine. That’s why I downloaded all the drawings and parts sheets for the machine. I’ve studied them, and I could take that thing apart and put it back together if I really needed to. And when I take things apart and put them back together again, not only do they run, they run better than before…
(Hell, I might even run for city council next time around.)
Quite frankly, the service techs we’ve called in the past seem remarkably unwilling to take on that job, and I don’t blame them. It really would be one big, greasy mess and you never quite know what you might find in there…the machine, I mean. Not city council.
When it comes to city council, it's pretty obvious what we're dealing with. One big, greasy, fucking mess, ladies and gentlemen.
The point is, I took the base income, and built upon that income, to the extent, that I could invest not just time but money—my bank was only too happy to loan me $10,000.000 in order to purchase a good, used minivan. A minivan which I use to deliver our orders to our customer, which pays an hourly rate, it takes me back and forth to work, and it has more than earned its keep. I paid off a four-year loan in 31 months. And if I could do that, I might even be able to save up a little bit of cash…right?
Right.
The base ODSP disability pension does not cover such luxuries as good vehicles, or significant cash reserves. It barely pays the rent, food, and not much else these days. That’s especially true for singles, although for families, when the children ‘age out’ of the system, the expenses remain basically the same, and the income can take a real big hit—it’s a shocker for those experiencing it.
Maybe they should look up once in a while, rather than keeping their faces to the floor all of the time…you might have seen that one coming.
I won’t bore you with statistics, but if you’re into that sort of thing, there are a couple of story links below.
A basic income for low-income Canadians means they would have, and would generate, additional opportunities for education, starting a small business, save up for a car, maybe even a small house if they’re lucky enough to be able to see that far ahead, or maybe they just have a little more lifetime ahead of them as compared to an old crock like me.
I suppose that’s why the bougies are against it. It’s a threat to the established order, that much is true.
And when someone tells you a basic income means we have to give Bill Gates $1,000.00 a month, that person is not your friend.
They’re just lying to you.
Truth is, they’re full of shit and they know it.
The question is, do you know it?
END
Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and audio format.
Sam Altman's Study on Basic Income.
Thank you for reading.