<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">The idea is not new, and our two business parties have to work hard to smother it. <div><br></div><div>Business of course opposes it furiously because of its empowerment of workers: they wouldn't have to take any job on offer, on any terms employers demand. <div><br></div><div>{From <<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income</a>>.}A basic income is granted independent of other income (including salaries) and wealth, with no other requirement than citizenship. This is a special case of GMI, based on additional ideologies and/or goals. While most modern countries have some form of guaranteed minimum income, a basic income is rare.</div><div>A basic income is a proposed system of social security, that periodically provides each citizen with a sum of money that is sufficient to live on. Except for citizenship, a basic income is entirely unconditional. There is no means test; the richest as well as the poorest citizens would receive it.</div><div><br></div><div>A basic income is often proposed in the form of a citizen's dividend (a transfer) or a negative income tax (a guarantee). A basic income less than the social minimum is referred to as a partial basic income. A worldwide basic income, typically including income redistribution between nations, is known as a global basic income.</div><div><div><br></div><div><div>The idea of guaranteed minimum income is not new...</div></div></div><div><br></div><div>American revolutionary Thomas Paine advocated a basic income guarantee to all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property" (Agrarian Justice, 1795).</div><div><br></div><div>French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte echoed Paine's sentiments and commented that 'man is entitled by birthright to a share of the Earth's produce sufficient to fill the needs of his existence' (Herold, 1955).</div><div><br></div><div>In 1963, Robert Theobald published the book <i>Free Men and Free Markets</i>, in which he advocated a guaranteed minimum income (the origin of the modern version of the phrase).</div><div><br></div><div>In his final book <i>Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?</i> (1967) Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income" [from the chapter entitled "Where We Are Going"].</div><div><br></div><div>In 1968, James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, John Kenneth Galbraith and another 1,200 economists signed a document calling for the US Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.</div><div><br></div><div>In 1973, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote <i>The Politics of a Guaranteed Income</i> in which he advocated for the Guaranteed Minimum Income and discussed Richard Nixon's GAI proposal.</div><div><br></div><div>[For the purposely ignored legislative history of the idea in the most liberal US administration since WWII, see <a href="http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/nixon/essays/biography/4">http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/nixon/essays/biography/4</a>>; see also links at <<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax</a>>.] --CGE</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Sep 25, 2011, at 9:10 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Thank you for posting this, Carl!<br><br>On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 03:33:44AM -0500, C. G. ESTABROOK wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">[I've written about guaranteed income in "'Taxed Enough Already': A Case <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">for the Tea Partiers" <a href="http://newsfromneptune.com/index.php?s=taxed+enough">http://newsfromneptune.com/index.php?s=taxed+enough</a> <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">--CGE]<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A Town Without Poverty?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Canada's only experiment in guaranteed income finally gets reckoning<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">by VIVIAN BELIK<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">WHITEHORSE, YK—Try to imagine a town where the government paid each of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the residents a living income, regardless of who they were and what they <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">did, and a Soviet hamlet in the early 1980s may come to mind.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">But this experiment happened much closer to home. For a four-year period in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the '70s, the poorest families in Dauphin, Manitoba, were granted a <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">guaranteed minimum income by the federal and provincial governments. <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Thirty-five years later all that remains of the experiment are 2,000 boxes <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">of documents that have gathered dust in the Canadian archives building in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Winnipeg.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Until now little has been known about what unfolded over those four years <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">been collected and prevented it from being analyzed.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">But after a five year struggle, Evelyn Forget, a professor of health <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">sciences at the University of Manitoba, secured access to those boxes in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">2009. Until the data is computerized, any systematic analysis is <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">impossible. Undeterred, Forget has begun to piece together the story by <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">using the census, health records, and the testimony of the program's <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">participants. What is now emerging reveals that the program could have <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">counted many successes.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Beginning in 1974, Pierre Trudeau's Liberals and Manitoba's first elected <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">New Democratic Party government gave money to every person and family in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Dauphin who fell below the poverty line. Under the program—called <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“Mincome”—about 1,000 families received monthly cheques.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Unlike welfare, which only certain individuals qualified for, the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">guaranteed minimum income project was open to everyone. It was the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">first—and to this day, only—time that Canada has ever experimented with <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">such an open-door social assistance program.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In today’s conservative political climate, with constant government and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">media rhetoric about the inefficiency and wastefulness of the welfare <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">state, the Mincome project sounds like nothing short of a fairy tale.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the poverty <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no questions <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through school and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">low-income families weren't scrambling to pay the rent each month.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">For Amy Richardson, it meant she could afford to buy her children books for <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">school. Richardson joined the program in 1977, just after her husband had <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">gone on disability leave from his job. At the time, she was struggling to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">raise her three youngest children on $1.50 haircuts she gave in her living <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">room beauty parlour.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The $1,200 per year she received in monthly increments was a welcome <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">supplement, in a time when the poverty line was $2,100 a year.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“The extra money meant that I was also able to give my kids something I <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">wouldn't ordinarily be able to, like taking them to a show or some small <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">luxury like that,” said Richardson, now 84, who spoke to The Dominion by <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">phone from Dauphin.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">As part of the experiment, an army of researchers were sent to Dauphin to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">interview the Mincome families. Residents in nearby rural towns who didn't <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">receive Mincome were also surveyed so their statistics could be compared <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">against those from Dauphin. But after the government cut the program in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">1978, they simply warehoused the data and never bothered to analyze it.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“When the government introduced the program they really thought it would <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">be a pilot project and that by the end of the decade they would roll this <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">out and everybody would participate,” said Forget. “They thought it <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">would become a universal program. But of course, the idea eventually just <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">died off.”<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">During the Mincome program, the federal and provincial governments <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">collectively spent $17 million, though it was initially supposed to have <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">cost only a few million.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Meant to last several more years, the program came to a quick halt in 1978 <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">when an economic recession hit Canada. The recession had caused prices to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">increase 10 per cent each year, so payouts to families under Mincome had <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">increased accordingly.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Trudeau's Liberals, already on the defensive for an overhaul of Canada's <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">employment insurance system, killed the program and withheld any additional <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">money to analyze the data that had been amassed.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“It's hugely unfortunate and typical of the strange ways in which <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">government works that the data was never analyzed,” says Ron Hikel who <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">coordinated the Mincome program. Hikel now works in the United States to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">promote universal healthcare reform.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“Government officials opposed [to Mincome] didn't want to spend more <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">money to analyze the data and show what they already thought: that it <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">didn't work,” says Hikel, who remains a strong proponent of guaranteed <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">income programs.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“And the people who were in favour of Mincome were worried because if the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">analysis was done and the data wasn't favourable then they would have just <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">spent another million dollars on analysis and be even more embarrassed.”<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">But Forget has culled some useful info from Manitoba labour data. Her <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">research confirms numerous positive consequences of the program.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">people would still work.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">It turns out they did.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Only two segments of Dauphin's labour force worked less as a result of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">families.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">choose what type of work they did.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“People didn't have to take the first job that came along,” says Hikel. <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“They could wait for something better that suited them.”<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">For some, it meant the opportunity to land a job to help them get by.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">When Doreen and Hugh Henderson arrived in Dauphin in 1970 with their two <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">young children they were broke. Doreen suggested moving from Vancouver to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">her hometown because she thought her husband would have an easier time <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">finding work there. But when they arrived, things weren't any better.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“My husband didn't have a very good job and I couldn't find work,” she <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">told The Dominion by phone from Dauphin.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">It wasn't until 1978, after receiving Mincome payments for two years, that <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">her husband finally landed janitorial work at the local school, a job he <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">kept for 28 years.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“I don't know how we would have lived without [Mincome],” said <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Doreen.“I don't know if we would have stayed in Dauphin.”<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Although the Mincome experiment was intended to provide a body of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">information to study labour market trends, Forget discovered that Mincome <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">had a significant effect on people's well being. Two years ago, the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">professor started studying the health records of Dauphin residents to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">assess the impacts of the program.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">It's not hard to see why, says Forget.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“When you walk around a hospital, it's pretty clear that a lot of the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">time what we're treating are the consequences of poverty,” she says.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Give people financial independence and control over their lives and these <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">accidents and illnesses tend to dissipate, says Forget. In today's terms, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">an 8.5 per cent decrease in hospital visits across Canada would save the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">government $4 billion annually, by her calculations. And $4 billion is the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">amount that the federal government is currently trying to save by slashing <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">social programming and arts funding.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Having analyzed the health data, Forget is now working on a cost-benefit <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">analysis to see what a guaranteed income program might save the federal <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">government if it were implemented today. She’s already worked with a <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Senate committee investigating a guaranteed income program for all <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">low-income Canadians.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The Canadian government's sudden interest in guaranteed income programs <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">doesn't surprise Forget.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Every 10 or 15 years there seems to be a renewed interest in getting <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Guaranteed Income (GI) programs off the ground, according to Saskatchewan <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">social work professor James Mulvale. He's researched and written <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">extensively about guaranteed income programs and is also part the Canadian <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network, a worldwide organization that <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">advocates for guaranteed income.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">GI programs exist in countries like Brazil, Mexico, France and even the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">state of Alaska.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Although people may not recognize it, subtle forms of guaranteed income <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">already exist in Canada, says Mulvale, pointing to the child benefit tax, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">guaranteed income for seniors and the modest GST/HST rebate program for <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">low-income earners.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">However, a wider-reaching guaranteed income program would go a long way in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">decreasing poverty, he says.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Mulvale is in favour of a “demo-grant” model of GI that would give <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">automatic cash transfers to everybody in Canada. This kind of plan would <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">also provide the option of taxing higher-income earners at the end of the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">year so poorer people receive benefits.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A model such as this has a higher chance of broad support because it goes <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">out to everybody, according to Mulvale. GI can also be administered as a <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">negative income tax to the poor, meaning they'd receive an amount of money <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">back directly in proportion to what they make each year.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“GI by itself wouldn't eliminate poverty but it would go a heck of a long <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">way to decrease the extent of poverty in this country,” says Mulvale.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Conservative senator Hugh Segal has been the biggest supporter of this kind <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">of GI, claiming it would eliminate the social assistance programs now <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">administered by the provinces and territories. Rather than having a <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">separate office to administer child tax benefits, welfare, unemployment <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">insurance and income supplement for seniors, they could all be rolled into <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">one GI scheme.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">It would also mean that anybody could apply for support. Many people fall <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">through the cracks under the current welfare system, says Forget. Not <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">everybody can access welfare and those who can are penalized for going to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">school or for working a job since the money they receive from welfare is <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">then clawed back.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">If a guaranteed income program can target more people and is more efficient <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">than other social assistance programs, then why doesn't Canada have such a <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">program in place already? Perhaps the biggest barrier is the prevalence of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">negative stereotypes about poor people.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">“There's very strong feelings out there that we shouldn't give people <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">money for nothing,” Mulvale says.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Guaranteed income proponents aren't holding their breaths that they'll see <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">such a program here anytime soon, but they are hopeful that one day Canada <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">will consider the merits of guaranteed income.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">The cost would be "not nearly as prohibitive to do as people imagine it <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">is," says Forget. “A guaranteed minimum income program is a superior way <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">of delivering social assistance. The only thing is that it's of course <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">politically difficult to implement.”<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100">http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/4100</a><br></blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">_______________________________________________<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Peace-discuss mailing list<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">Peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss</a><br></blockquote></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></body></html>