The basic minimum income is an idea long waited for. Manitoba ran a test program called Mincome from 1974-1979 in Dauphin, Manitoba, to see the effects of a basic minimum income on overall levels of work, and the impact on society.
Directly from the recent Huffpo article on it:
"For five years, poverty was completely eliminated.
The project’s original intent was to evaluate if giving cheques to the working poor, enough to top-up their incomes to a living wage, would kill people’s motivation to work. It didn’t. But the Conservative government that took power provincially in 1977 – and federally in 1979 – had no interest in implementing the project more widely. Researchers were told to pack up the project’s records into 1,800 boxes and place them in storage. A final report was never released."
So there you go. Conservative economics and principles once again prevented a progressive solution to poverty from being presented. I am reintroducing the basic minimum income in my fictional Republic of Star Island. It would allow unemployed people to be able to afford the following:
-a place to live, shared with another ($300 a month for rent, with two people sharing a $600/month unit)
-$400 per month to cover food costs (purchases of alcohol, tobacco and other "entertainment" restricted)
-a monthly public transit pass (listed at $40 in my model, but adjustable)
-a land phone line or cell phone line ($40 per month for a basic plan)
This totals $780 a month, or $9,360.00 per year.
There are 1,325,000 unemployed Canadians who are members of the labour pool, according to Statistics Canada. If we use my numbers for a Canadian Basic Income, that would mean that the cost of the program for just one year would be $12.4 billion.
Canada's national budget is regularly in the neighbourhood of $300 billion, so an additional $12 billion could be accomplished by simply raising the corporate, after-expenses tax rate (the tax on profits) by a couple of percentage points.
The resulting reductions in necessary healthcare spending, for one, would be of tremendous benefit to any future budgets, as the number of people using emergency shelters in cold weather would immediately drop almost to zero.
Having money to buy nutritious food will also help people maintain their health while employed, resulting in a net benefit to society. More business will be done, and more products will be sold, making the bosses happy as well.
We need a basic minimum income in Canada. Check out this spreadsheet to see how Canada could implement it.
Directly from the recent Huffpo article on it:
"For five years, poverty was completely eliminated.
The project’s original intent was to evaluate if giving cheques to the working poor, enough to top-up their incomes to a living wage, would kill people’s motivation to work. It didn’t. But the Conservative government that took power provincially in 1977 – and federally in 1979 – had no interest in implementing the project more widely. Researchers were told to pack up the project’s records into 1,800 boxes and place them in storage. A final report was never released."
So there you go. Conservative economics and principles once again prevented a progressive solution to poverty from being presented. I am reintroducing the basic minimum income in my fictional Republic of Star Island. It would allow unemployed people to be able to afford the following:
-a place to live, shared with another ($300 a month for rent, with two people sharing a $600/month unit)
-$400 per month to cover food costs (purchases of alcohol, tobacco and other "entertainment" restricted)
-a monthly public transit pass (listed at $40 in my model, but adjustable)
-a land phone line or cell phone line ($40 per month for a basic plan)
This totals $780 a month, or $9,360.00 per year.
There are 1,325,000 unemployed Canadians who are members of the labour pool, according to Statistics Canada. If we use my numbers for a Canadian Basic Income, that would mean that the cost of the program for just one year would be $12.4 billion.
Canada's national budget is regularly in the neighbourhood of $300 billion, so an additional $12 billion could be accomplished by simply raising the corporate, after-expenses tax rate (the tax on profits) by a couple of percentage points.
The resulting reductions in necessary healthcare spending, for one, would be of tremendous benefit to any future budgets, as the number of people using emergency shelters in cold weather would immediately drop almost to zero.
Having money to buy nutritious food will also help people maintain their health while employed, resulting in a net benefit to society. More business will be done, and more products will be sold, making the bosses happy as well.
We need a basic minimum income in Canada. Check out this spreadsheet to see how Canada could implement it.
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