I hope they have a 3 month waiting period to collect this free money, or they may have a lot of new residents ready to abuse the system..
Ontario's Basic Income Experiment Coming This Fall
- Thread starter B00Mer
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Four (more) arguments against real-world basic income
There are too many issues with the story that merit their own article, but just the headline has two glaring problems. First, the basic income amount in the pilot study will be a maximum of $17,000, which is still 25% below the poverty line, with most people in the pilot getting less. The pilot will only affect 4,000 households (compared to over 500,000 cases currently for Ontario Works and ODSP combined) and allow the government to leave already criminally-low welfare rates stagnant for another three years. Second, this is not a no-strings program. Any wages made in excess of the basic income amount will be clawed back at a 50% rate (hence workers subsidizing themselves). There is no pretension to universality on the part of the Liberals with their policy; this is a rationalization of welfare.
People are rightly fed up with poverty, low wages and growing inequality. The Ontario Liberals, like increasing numbers of politicians across the world, are adroitly exploiting these fears to push policy proposals that sound like a lot and do very little.
Let’s not be fooled again. The Ontario Liberals have used our own slogans against us in the past many times. See, for instance, how they commandeered “free tuition” in their last budget. What ended up to be little more than a rationalization of grants into one program was trumpeted as a progressive breakthrough. There are similar, very serious flaws with the basic income proposals being drafted and implemented by the Ontario Liberals and other right-wingers across the world. We need to be vigilant, have a clear idea of the enormity of the task ahead, and get organized rather than waiting for top-down policy to do the work of bottom-up politics.
Four (more) arguments against real-world basic income – Michal Rozworski
There are too many issues with the story that merit their own article, but just the headline has two glaring problems. First, the basic income amount in the pilot study will be a maximum of $17,000, which is still 25% below the poverty line, with most people in the pilot getting less. The pilot will only affect 4,000 households (compared to over 500,000 cases currently for Ontario Works and ODSP combined) and allow the government to leave already criminally-low welfare rates stagnant for another three years. Second, this is not a no-strings program. Any wages made in excess of the basic income amount will be clawed back at a 50% rate (hence workers subsidizing themselves). There is no pretension to universality on the part of the Liberals with their policy; this is a rationalization of welfare.
People are rightly fed up with poverty, low wages and growing inequality. The Ontario Liberals, like increasing numbers of politicians across the world, are adroitly exploiting these fears to push policy proposals that sound like a lot and do very little.
Let’s not be fooled again. The Ontario Liberals have used our own slogans against us in the past many times. See, for instance, how they commandeered “free tuition” in their last budget. What ended up to be little more than a rationalization of grants into one program was trumpeted as a progressive breakthrough. There are similar, very serious flaws with the basic income proposals being drafted and implemented by the Ontario Liberals and other right-wingers across the world. We need to be vigilant, have a clear idea of the enormity of the task ahead, and get organized rather than waiting for top-down policy to do the work of bottom-up politics.
Four (more) arguments against real-world basic income – Michal Rozworski
Maybe some of the freeloaders will leave BC and go back to where they came from.
A new government program. That will mean hiring a few thousand new government employees to ruin it. Thereby lowering the unemployment rate.
Love to, doc.... Can you undo all the shyte an on-the-job accident did? How about shaving ten or fifteen years off these 61?
Ontario's Basic Income Experiment Coming This Fall
TORONTO — A single paragraph buried in the Ontario budget could mean big changes in the lives of some of the province's most impoverished residents by giving them a guaranteed minimum income.
Last month's provincial budget promised a pilot project to test "that a basic income could build on the success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits by providing more consistent and predictable support."
The concept is on the radar of the federal Liberals, too — a Liberal-dominated parliamentary committee called on the Trudeau government to explore the concept of guaranteeing people a minimum income in a pre-budget report tabled Friday.
Charles Sousa, Ontario's finance minister, said the province has not decided which community will be the test site for a basic income guarantee.
"It's something that many people seem to have an interest in us testing out, so we're looking at something in the fall," he said. "Other jurisdictions are using it, and I want to see if it makes sense for us, so it's important for us to pilot, to test it out, and see what happens."
Proponents say a guaranteed minimum income, which would see families living below the poverty line topped up to a set level, would be more efficient and less costly than administering the existing series of social programs that help low-income residents.
They also say poverty is one of the biggest determinants of health, and a guaranteed minimum income could mean reduced health-care costs.
"Poverty costs us all. It expands health-care costs, policing burdens and depresses the economy," Sen. Art Eggleton said last month as he called for a national pilot project of a basic income guarantee.
About nine per cent of Canadians live in poverty, but the numbers are much higher for single mothers and indigenous communities.
If Ontario's basic income pilot project is designed correctly, it could help eliminate some of the "perverse incentives" that institutionalize poverty, said Danielle Martin, vice president of Women's College Hospital in Toronto.
"We want to design programs that will give people who need it income security, but will not discourage them from entering the workforce," said Martin.
"And it's entirely possible, if we design this pilot right, that we can actually have a major impact on the health outcomes for some of the most vulnerable people in the province, and that can save tremendous amounts of money in the health-care system down the road."
Canada experimented with a guaranteed minimum income in Dauphin, Manitoba in the early 1970s. The so-called Mincome project found it did not discourage people from working, except for two key groups: new mothers, and teenaged boys who opted to stay in school until graduation.
The Mincome project also found an 8.5 per cent reduction in hospital visits in Dauphin during the experiment, said Martin.
"People had fewer visits because of mental health problems," she said. "There were fewer low birth-weight babies, so very concrete and immediate impacts in terms of people's health."
The Income Security Advocacy Centre said care must be taken to ensure no one is worse off as a result of the Ontario pilot for a basic income guarantee.
People on social assistance in Ontario also get their prescription drugs and dental bills paid for, as well as help with child care, and they should not lose those benefits with a basic income guarantee, added Martin.
"It's called the welfare wall, a phenomenon where people, even if they could find part-time work or lower paying work — they're actually better off in some ways by staying on social assistance because of those other benefits," she said.
"For some people, that makes it basically impossible to get off of welfare."
People should not be concerned that a guaranteed minimum income would mean those on social assistance are suddenly living on easy street, said Eggleton.
"This wouldn't be the good life," he told the Senate. "It would provide a floor, a foundation that low-income people can then build upon for a better life."
Social programs should lift people out of poverty, not keep them there, and a basic income is a new approach that could work, added Eggleton.
"How we have dealt with poverty has failed," he said. "We need to test a different approach."
Source: Ontario's Basic Income Experiment Coming This Fall
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LOL who needs to work anymore.. just move to Ontario.. take not Liberals in Alberta, time to move back home...
Give us our Province back..
Such money giving to the poor and the needy who deserve it .. is indeed very good and excellent; and one should admire such act.
So Canada will be blessed and receive much bounties from God if this is true and done with justice.
This is the Liberals so this is how the scenario gets played out. If the Liberals win again, they'll announce that the program isn't feasible and cancel it. If they lose, well it won't matter because it'll likely be cancelled. Can you say bait and switch?
As I said elsewhere, I have grave doubts about the altruism of this. I have a hard time believing that the govt wants to give individuals more per month than a couple currently receives on basic ODSP. Why not make an effort to improve their situation considering that for 99% of ODSP recipients, they weren't exactly given the choice to be disabled.
As I said elsewhere, I have grave doubts about the altruism of this. I have a hard time believing that the govt wants to give individuals more per month than a couple currently receives on basic ODSP. Why not make an effort to improve their situation considering that for 99% of ODSP recipients, they weren't exactly given the choice to be disabled.
Basic income finds support on right as 'most transparent' form of redistribution
One might assume that the Ontario Liberal government's pilot project to provide a guaranteed basic income would be roundly dismissed by those on the political and economic right as yet another government-led social welfare scheme doomed to failure.
But the policy has adherents among some free-market economists and libertarian thinkers who believe this type of program is the most efficient way to provide assistance to the poor.
"If you accept the idea that there's going to be some sort of redistribution taking place in our system, then you want to do it in the most transparent and efficient way possible," said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "And you want it to actually benefit people. And our current welfare system does neither."
The financial assistance from this pilot project, based on a report delivered by former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, would come with no strings attached.
It's an idea that, in some form, was championed by Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, who wrote about "the assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or sort of floor below which nobody need fall."
Noted free-market economist Milton Friedman also supported a guaranteed national income — he preferred to call it a negative income tax, meaning those whose income falls below a certain level would receive cash benefits.
"A negative income tax provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely," he said.
Those on the left see it as a move toward social justice, wrote conservative social scientist Charles Murray, an advocate of the policy, in 2016. But its libertarian supporters, he said, "see it as the least damaging way for the government to transfer wealth from some citizens to others."
To free-marketers, basic income is preferable to market intervention measures such as minimum wage hikes.
Interfering in the price system is just about "one of the worst things you can do in an economy," said Matt Zwolinski, founder and director of the University of San Diego's Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy.
"If you want to help the poor, then giving them cash is simply a much more direct and effective way of doing that than forcing employers to pay people more than the market value of their labour," he said.
Basic income has also been embraced by many Silicon Valley business leaders, who predict increasing automation and artificial intelligence will eliminate low-skilled jobs at an increasing rate. Self-driving vehicles, for example, could cost millions of jobs for those who make their living transporting goods or people.
The fear is that the government, to stem that job loss, could intervene by implementing anti-technology measures.
"[Basic guaranteed income] would take care of those low-skilled wages replaced by technology in a way that would not limit innovation and advancements in computing and robots," Zwolinski said.
Basic income finds support on right as 'most transparent' form of redistribution - Business - CBC News
One might assume that the Ontario Liberal government's pilot project to provide a guaranteed basic income would be roundly dismissed by those on the political and economic right as yet another government-led social welfare scheme doomed to failure.
But the policy has adherents among some free-market economists and libertarian thinkers who believe this type of program is the most efficient way to provide assistance to the poor.
"If you accept the idea that there's going to be some sort of redistribution taking place in our system, then you want to do it in the most transparent and efficient way possible," said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "And you want it to actually benefit people. And our current welfare system does neither."
The financial assistance from this pilot project, based on a report delivered by former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, would come with no strings attached.
It's an idea that, in some form, was championed by Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, who wrote about "the assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or sort of floor below which nobody need fall."
Noted free-market economist Milton Friedman also supported a guaranteed national income — he preferred to call it a negative income tax, meaning those whose income falls below a certain level would receive cash benefits.
"A negative income tax provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely," he said.
Those on the left see it as a move toward social justice, wrote conservative social scientist Charles Murray, an advocate of the policy, in 2016. But its libertarian supporters, he said, "see it as the least damaging way for the government to transfer wealth from some citizens to others."
To free-marketers, basic income is preferable to market intervention measures such as minimum wage hikes.
Interfering in the price system is just about "one of the worst things you can do in an economy," said Matt Zwolinski, founder and director of the University of San Diego's Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy.
"If you want to help the poor, then giving them cash is simply a much more direct and effective way of doing that than forcing employers to pay people more than the market value of their labour," he said.
Basic income has also been embraced by many Silicon Valley business leaders, who predict increasing automation and artificial intelligence will eliminate low-skilled jobs at an increasing rate. Self-driving vehicles, for example, could cost millions of jobs for those who make their living transporting goods or people.
The fear is that the government, to stem that job loss, could intervene by implementing anti-technology measures.
"[Basic guaranteed income] would take care of those low-skilled wages replaced by technology in a way that would not limit innovation and advancements in computing and robots," Zwolinski said.
Basic income finds support on right as 'most transparent' form of redistribution - Business - CBC News
