Canada is betting on a universal basic income to help cities gutted by manufacturing job loss

Quartz ^ | 20 February 2017 | Rebecca Fortin

[Lorianne]

Of all the ideas to pull people out of poverty, one of the more contentious is also the simplest: governments should just hand out monthly checks to the poor, no strings attached.

That’s exactly what the Canadian province of Ontario plans to do, and it’s already causing a ruckus. The Liberal Party currently in control of the provincial government aims to roll out a pilot for a “universal basic income” program in what could be three cities in the spring of 2017. While it has yet to identify the guinea pigs, hints of what the system will look like can be found in a discussion paper authored last August by Hugh Segal, a former member of the Canadian Senate and now head of the University of Toronto’s Massey College.

[Little Ray]

I am glad someone is testing this.

[soycd]

I’m sure the people cleaning toilets and picking up garbage don’t mind working harder and paying more tax to support the lazy filth drawing a check for free.

[i_robot73]

>
Believe it or not, there are some conservative/libertarians who have brought up this possiblility. I believe it was Charles Murray, for one. His idea is to replace all welfare system payments with a basic guaranteed income. Would come out cheaper than the current welfare system, plus it would encourage better behavior economically. I would like to see it implemented somewhere else for a while, just to see what happens.
>

The 5th/13th, A1S8, 9th/10th say otherwise.

Welfare, of ANY sort, is out of the purview of govt.

[BwanaNdege]

“It works because everyone gets a government check, and there are no bureaucracies to determine if people are elegible.

Everyone simply gets the same amount no matter what.”

And, human nature being what it is, on different days, different people will run out of money before they run out of month.

That way the “Feed Me, I’m Hungry” demonstrations can have a different Protest Crew for each of the last 10 days of the month!

Isn’t that wonderful!

/s

[dfwgator]

One word, “Inflation”.

[i_robot73]

False dichotomy, as said automation will require skilled persons to program, update, repair, improve, etc.

IE: No machine built can last forever.

[ronnie raygun]

the idiot parade, government dishes out other peoples money until it runs out

[Laser_Ray]

I’ve championed it for exactly the same reason. At the absolute least we end up with what we have now, at best we get rid of all the Democrats ‘employed’ running the welfare distribution system and possibly slightly better behavior from the great unwashed. Yes a GBI is not Constitutional or Biblical...but folks, let’s be brutally honest with ourselves: at the point our system is at we can’t sink much lower. It’s at least worth a shot.