The case for Basic Income Guarantee

The welfare system is a poverty trap (see previous post). The system won't help you unless you're destitute; it won't cushion you if you happen not to have supporting parents, and if you didn't land that permanent, full-time, decently paying job with sick leaves and benefits. It won't provide security if you want to pursue higher education, if you want to leave an unsatisfying job and look for alternatives, or if you need time off to take care of ailing parents, or children.

Basic income Guarantee is the idea of ensuring every person has money to cover basic living expenses, no questions asked. About a third of our population is already receiving such financial protection (the elderly, children, and people with disability). Our society could, and should, extend the protection to working-age adults.

Economist and professor Evelyn Forget on the Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba:

Toronto physician Gary Bloch's: If You Want to Help Me, Prescribe Me Money.

• The Canadian Medical Association submitted a letter of support of basic income to the House of Commons (2013).
• In the book Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts (2010) Juha Mikkonen and Dennis Raphael show how poverty negatively affect the health of Canadians (watch the video introduction).

Read this comprehensive article: Scrapping Welfare - The case for guaranteeing all Canadians an income above the poverty line. by Hugh Segal, former Conservative Senator (2012). Basic Income Experiments:

• India: Cash transfers can work better than subsidies (2014)
• Mexico and Brazil: To beat back poverty, pay the poor (2011)
• Summary of the evidence from cash transfer programs and pilots around the world, compiled by Rob Rainer

Watch this great Oxford-style Debate Video on Basic Income with Chandra Pasma, James Mulvale, Mike Moffatt, and Margot Young (2016). Further reading:

What will happen to the labour force?
USA experiments in the 60s and 70s: A failure to communicate: What (if anything) can we learn from the negative income tax experiments? by Karl Widerquist (2005)

Will the poor just use the money for alcohol and tobacco?

• Cash Transfers and Temptation Goods: A Review of Global Evidence
• The truth about Canada's low-income benefits: They work

Articles on the Basic Income Canada Network site.