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Category: Ottawa

  • Ottawa group says there’s enough evidence to support a basic income program

    By: Kate F. Mackenzie

    An Ottawa group is advocating for a basic, livable income for those living below the poverty line. 
     
    Joe Foster, who is involved in the Basic Income Ottawa group, told The Sam Laprade Show on Sept. 20 that it would ensure people meet their basic needs regardless of their work status.

    He added that the recent spike in people accessing food banks in Ottawa indicates greater poverty problems. 
     
    Foster, whose background is in economics and engineering, said the concept of a basic income has been around for a long time, but people still know little about it. He explained that myths around providing a basic income include that people will be too lazy to find work and that the program would be too expensive.

    “If you look at the money we put into poverty from federal, provincial, municipal [levels], we’re pouring in lots of money… we’re putting a lot of money into poverty elimination, but we’re not really doing it properly,” he said. 
     
    Foster said there have been enough pilot projects to realize it’s a viable option, with countries including Finland and Brazil experimenting with it, and Canada testing it in Manitoba from 1974 to 1978.

    “Look at the facts. There’s enough evidence,” he said. 

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Far Right Truckers in “Freedom Convoy” Stopped by Ottawa Neighborhood Residents

    Fed up with far right truck drivers and other extremist supporters in their city, residents from a neighborhood in Ottawa, Ontario, confronted and disrupted several truckers who were on their way downtown to join the so-called “Freedom Convoy.”

    Upon learning that the route of some trucks was located nearby, Sean Burges, a senior instructor at Carleton University, posted in a neighborhood Facebook group about a plan to protest the truckers’ arrival, according to a report by Ottawa Citizen.

    Around two dozen residents of his neighborhood initially joined him at the intersection at Riverside Drive and Bronson Avenue at 9 a.m. on Sunday — but that number soon swelled to hundreds of people taking part in the protest, stopping trucks in their paths and causing them to remain unable to turn around for several hours.

    “My intent was to remind the people of Ottawa that we do have power and that we can stand up for ourselves,” Burges told Ottawa Citizen about his plan.

    What I hoped was that Sunday’s stand would at least raise the possibility of constructive people power in Ottawa and maybe across Canada. The goal was to provide a spark prompting Canadians to step in and make it clear to this very vocal and small minority taking us all hostage that we have had enough.

    The protest event, being hailed by many as a resounding success, is being described by local media (such as The Ottawa Citizen) as the “Battle of Billings Bridge,” named after a bridge near where it took place.

    The trucks that would have been part of the convoy could not get through the crowd of people until a “negotiated retreat” was struck between them and the protesters that stopped them.

    As per the terms of the retreat, the truck drivers had to remove signs, stickers and flags they had on their trucks in support of the far right convoy. They also had to surrender their jerry cans, making it more difficult for them to refuel once they reached downtown.

    “The look on their faces when they were taking down their flags was one of defeat, not of pride,” said protest participant Andrea Harden.

    “I don’t want to take away anyone’s right to protest, but I wanted them to hear that they’re having a negative impact on the citizens of Ottawa,” said another participant, Sean Devine.

    The convoy of truckers that have descended upon the city, calling themselves the “Freedom Convoy,” have indeed made life difficult for residents of Canada’s capital city. A number of reports have been made detailing harassment by truckers against individuals on a daily basis, and forcing businesses to close if they have rules on masks or vaccines.

    The convoy was initially organized after Canadian truckers were required by the federal government to get fully vaccinated if their routes took them into the United States. It has since devolved into a far right protest against any and all mitigation efforts against COVID-19 that the Canadian government has implemented, including rules on masking in certain areas.

    Residents in the city have been harassed for leaving their homes if they’re wearing masks. Participants in the convoy have also torn down pro-vaccination signs on people’s private properties, and some have even defecated on the lawns of residents who showed support for mitigation efforts.

    The “Freedom Convoy” itself is not representative of how most truckers in Canada feel about new vaccine regulations and other rules to quell the spread of coronavirus. Ninety percent of truck drivers in the country are already fully vaccinated, and the Canadian Trucking Alliance is opposed to the convoy disrupting life in Ottawa.

    Notably, much of the convoy that has come to the city includes far right, racist and fascist elements, as evidenced by the signage and other decor participants have donned. The so-called “Freedom Convoy” was “organized by known far-right figures who have espoused Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and other hateful views,” according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

    “Those who support the convoy movement have lost sight of the relationship between liberty and the greater good,” wrote Henry A. Giroux for Truthout. “The convoy movement is not a struggle over freedom, it is an attempt to destroy democracy in the name of freedom.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Convoy Movement Isn’t a Struggle Over Freedom, It’s an Attempt to Kill Democracy

    Protestors and supporters set up at a blockade at the foot of the Ambassador Bridge, sealing off the flow of commercial traffic over the bridge into Canada from Detroit, on February 10, 2022, in Windsor, Canada.

    The “Freedom Convoy” movement, consisting of hundreds of trucks, has ground to a halt the busiest border crossing between Canada and the United States and occupied Ottawa, Canada’s capital, effectively blockading the city and disrupting daily life for most residents in the core of the city. The convoy participants reject all vaccine requirements and mandates and support a decidedly anti-government discourse reminiscent of far-right ideology in the United States.

    The convoy participants lack the support of the general public, which is largely vaccinated. They also lack the support of most Canadian truckers, 90 percent of whom are vaccinated, and of the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA).

    The truckers are endorsed largely by leading U.S. Republicans such as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, along with some Canadian conservative politicians. Support has also come from powerful anti-democratic social media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk, and an array of white supremacist groups. Some of the more powerful right-wing groups in Canada include Action4Canada, which makes the false and conspiracy-riddled claim that the COVID-19 pandemic “was carried out, at least in part, by Bill Gates and a ‘New World (Economic) Order’ to facilitate the injection of 5G-enabled microchips into the population.” With the help of the social media, support for the Freedom Convoy protests snowballed globally with upcoming convoys being planned for the United States, France and all 27 European countries.

    The Freedom Convoy protests is the brainchild of James Bauder, who heads the Canada Unity movement, which launched the protests. Bauder believes in multiple baseless conspiracy theories and “has endorsed the QAnon movement and called Covid-19 ‘the biggest political scam in history.’” Bauder is no friend of organized labor and, as Jacobin has noted, two years ago he participated in another convoy called United We Roll that “planned an anti-union protest where convoy members threatened to dismantle the picket line and run over workers.”

    Other leaders in the movement include some hard right extremists such as Patrick King who, according to The Conversation, once “stated that he believes the vaccine was created to ‘depopulate’ the white race.” Another convoy leader named B.J. Dichter has a reputation for spreading Islamophobic sentiments.

    The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a nonprofit group, has reported that “The so-called ‘Freedom Convoy’ was organized by known far-right figures who have espoused Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and other hateful views.”

    The Ottawa protests have made clear that extreme elements supporting fascism and white nationalism are attracted to the movement, and visible in the appearance of neo-Nazi and Confederate flags and an abundance of QAnon logos emblazoned on trucks, signs and stickers. Moreover, some sources are suggesting that a significant amount of funding, over $8 million as of February 7, may have come from right-wing sources in the United States. Some of the highest individual donations have come from American billionaires. Funding from the states has so alarmed members of the New Democratic Party that they have called it “an attack on Canada’s democracy” and have asked the U.S. ambassador “to testify before the House of Commons foreign affairs committee.

    Jagmeet Singh, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, has stated that this is more than a protest movement. On the contrary, he argues that “the convoy’s stated intent is to “overthrow the government.” The convoy association “with hate groups … expressing racist and anti-immigrant sentiments … could explain why the Freedom Convoy is strangely silent on labor issues facing immigrant truckers who now make up over one-third of truckers in Canada,” writes Emily Leedham in Jacobin. She further notes “that many of the concerns of the protesters have little to do with workers’ rights or labor issues within Canada’s trucking industry. In fact, Convoy organizers have previously harassed workers on the picket line and ignored calls for support from racialized truckers fighting against wage theft.”

    Freedom, once again, has been hijacked in the interest of a counter-revolution whose purpose is to destroy the authority of the government to protect the common good, limit the influence of the financial and corporate elite, and protect civic structures crucial to a democracy. The Ottawa truckers are motivating right-wing convoy movements across the globe and their growing influence makes clear that they are winning the global information war.

    Indeed, it is not just convoy movements that are increasingly subverting the concept of freedom in the service of right-wing extremism across the globe. From the United States and Brazil to Turkey and Hungary, anti-democratic actors are reducing freedom to the realm of unchecked self-interest, a rejection of the welfare state and a flight from social responsibility. In the process, they are waging a war on democracy.

    Removed from the discourse of the common good, equality and social rights, individual freedom now aligns with the mob — positioning itself with those willing in the age of the pandemic to sacrifice other people’s lives in the name of a bogus appeal to personal rights.

    While former President Donald Trump has been the most prominent figure in maligning individual freedom as a vehicle for embracing a fascist politics and the discourse of hate and violence, his endorsement of authoritarianism in the name of freedom has legitimated anti-democratic acts across the globe. Not only has this movement become a flashpoint for global far-right protests, it has also developed a massive social media presence in which, as Politico has reported, the convoy movement has promoted the idea that “efforts to keep people safe from the coronavirus are, instead, anti-democratic restrictions on individual freedoms.”

    Elisabeth Anker argues that the right wing in the United States is increasingly using the language of “ugly freedoms” to promote an “anti-democratic politics [that] threatens to overtake freedom’s meaning entirely, harnessing freedom solely to projects of exclusion, privilege and harm.” She writes:

    ‘Ugly freedoms’ [are] used to block the teaching of certain ideas, diminish employees’ ability to have power in the workplace and undermine public health. These are not merely misunderstood freedoms, or even just a cynical use of the language of freedom to frame bigoted policies. They manifest, instead, a particular interpretation of freedom that is not expansive, but exclusionary and coercive.

    This notion of “ugly freedom” is certainly applicable to the convoy movement. Lost in its neoliberal view of freedom is any notion of an “inclusive freedom” that contests authoritarian and anti-democratic modes of suppression such as the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a financial elite, the rise of the punishing state, mass poverty, the rise of war culture, ecological devastation, and the criminalization of social problems such as homelessness. Convoy protesters are silent regarding a notion of inclusive freedom — one that would argue for universal health care, expanding workers’ unions, introducing regulations that ensure worker safety and paid sick days, and the need for social and wage benefits for unemployed workers. Under this form of capitalism, freedom is hollowed out, removed from any sense of social solidarity, forcing individuals to bear full responsibility for the problems they confront even though they are not of their own making. As Zygmunt Bauman rightly observes, existential insecurity is intensified as “individuals are now eft to find and practice individual solutions to socially produced troubles … while being equipped with tools and resources that are blatantly inadequate to the task.”

    The dangers of unchecked individualism cannot be separated from struggles over freedom, especially as it becomes a rationale for undermining human dependency, the common good and support for mutual solidarity. Freedom when wedded to neoliberal notions of individualism undermines human bonds and makes solidarity difficult to both recognize and practice. This danger has become clear as the appeal to freedom in the convoy movement is used as a call to resistance to COVID-19 vaccination efforts and mask mandates — a tactic which is code for an allegiance to the political right. Vaccine scientist Peter Hotez adds to this position, arguing that for the most part, the anti-vax, freedom-at-all-cost movement engages in “anti-science aggression” and “is a component of authoritarian rule [cultivated by] their own cadre of pseudo intellectuals.” Hotez makes clear that the appeal to freedom to buttress an anti-vax, anti-science movement has fueled its degeneration into a “killing force.” One can clearly apply this analysis to the convoy movement.

    What Hotez and other critics of the anti-vax movement, including the convoy protests, miss is how neoliberalism remakes the social into the biographical, further convincing individuals that they have no obligation to contribute to the health, safety and democratic institutions that shape the wider community. Those who support the convoy movement have lost sight of the relationship between liberty and the greater good. The convoy movement is not a struggle over freedom, it is an attempt to destroy democracy in the name of freedom.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • National organizations call for an end to thermal coal exports during COP26

    CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICIANS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, COUNCIL OF CANADIANS, ECOJUSTICE, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE, KEEPERS OF THE WATER, LEADNOW, STAND.EARTH

    The groups are delivering petitions today, with a total of 32,220 signatures, asking that the federal government ban all coal exports by 2023.

    Ottawa | Unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People – As world leaders  gather in Glasgow for COP26, the UN climate conference, organizations from across Canada are calling on the government to accelerate its promise to ban all thermal coal exports by 2023 instead of 2030.

    Today, these groups are delivering multiple petitions to the Prime Minister’s Office, with more than 30,000 signatories demanding immediate action to phase out thermal coal exports from and through Canada by 2023. (To view photos from the petition delivery, click here after 10am ET).

    The overarching aim for COP26 is to “keep 1.5 degrees alive.” Rapidly ending coal power — the single largest source of global temperature increase — is a critical step the world must take to achieve the 1.5-degree goal. 

    The petitions, collected and submitted by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, the Council of Canadians, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, Keepers of the Water, LeadNow, and Stand.Earth, call for the federal government to commit to an accelerated coal export ban during the COP26 conference.

    “Canada wants to be a global climate leader but continues to mine and export thermal coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel,” said Julia Levin, Senior Climate and Energy Program Manager at Environmental Defence. “Coal causes serious health impacts to people and communities where it is mined, transported and burned, while its massive emissions are terrible for the planet. With world leaders gathered at COP26, we are calling on the Government of Canada to honour their commitment to a greener future by making coal a relic of the past.”

    During the election campaign, the government pledged to end the export of thermal coal. However, the timeline they set for themselves – 2030 – is not commensurate with the urgency of the climate crisis. 

    “As a co-founder of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, Canada cannot credibly ask other countries to move beyond coal while it continues to export thermal coal overseas,” Fraser Thomson, lawyer at Ecojustice said. “Banning thermal coal exports by 2023 would show that Canada is serious about helping the world power past coal.”

    While the federal government has committed to ending coal-fired power generation by 2030, Canada continues to facilitate the burning of coal overseas through its exports. Each year, the country exports 15-18 million tons of Canadian and American thermal coal. Once consumed, this amount can produce between 33-40 million tonnes of CO2e every year, the equivalent of approximately eight million passenger vehicles.

    “As an Indigenous-led organization, we reject false solutions and delay tactics in addressing the climate crisis,” said Jesse Cardinal, Executive Director of Keepers of the Water. “Canada’s posturing as an opponent to coal while it continues to export this fossil fuel elsewhere is one such tactic. All parts of Mother Earth are interconnected. Burning coal anywhere is a threat to the health of the whole planet.”

    Thermal coal is the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, generating half of the world’s carbon emissions, accelerating the climate crisis, wreaking havoc on the environment, and causing at least 800,000 deaths every year.

    “We have recognized here at home that we should not subject communities to the health impacts from burning coal for electricity, which include asthma, cancer, brain damage, and premature death,” said Anjali Helferty, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “If we claim to value the health and lives of people around the world, we cannot continue to export coal overseas.”

    “Canada must stop enabling emissions through its coal exports,” added Christina Kruszewski, the Prairies-NWT Regional Organizer at the Council of Canadians. “We’ve already seen unprecedented grassroots opposition to coal mining over the last year and a half, particularly in Alberta. We know all about the impacts of coal mining on Indigenous rights, communities, water, and the climate. Now is the time to move Canada beyond coal for good.”

    – 30 –

    For media inquiries, please contact:

    Thais Freitas
    Communications Specialist, Ecojustice
    tfreitas@ecojustice.ca

    Alex Ross
    Senior Communications Coordinator, Environmental Defence
    aross@environmentaldefence.ca   

    Donya Ziaee
    Communications Officer, The Council of Canadians
    media@canadians.org

    Pamela Daoust
    National Communications Director, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment
    pamela@cape.ca

    ABOUT:

    The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) is a physician-directed non-profit organization working to secure human health by protecting the planet. Since its founding in 1993, CAPE’s work has achieved substantial policy victories in collaboration with many partners in the environmental movement. From coast to coast to coast, the organization operates throughout the country with regional committees active in most provinces and all territories.

    Since 1985, the Council of Canadians has brought people together through collective action and grassroots organizing to challenge corporate power and advocate for people, the planet, and our democracy. 

    Ecojustice uses the power of the law to defend nature, combat climate change, and fight for a healthy environment. Its strategic, public interest lawsuits and advocacy lead to precedent-setting court decisions and law and policy that deliver lasting solutions to Canada’s most urgent environmental problems. As Canada’s largest environmental law charity, Ecojustice operates offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax.

    Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.

    Keepers of the Water is comprised of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples; environmental groups; concerned citizens; and communities working together for the protection of air, water and land – and thus, for all living things today and tomorrow in the Arctic Drainage Basin.

    Leadnow organizes campaigns that build and defend a just, sustainable, and equitable Canada. We help hundreds of thousands of people take action at the times and in the places that matter most by providing non-partisan opportunities for digital and real life democratic engagement. 

    Stand.earth (formerly ForestEthics) is an international nonprofit environmental organization working to create a world where respect for people and the environment comes first. Our campaigns challenge destructive corporate and governmental practices, demand accountability, and create solutions that support all of us — and the environment and climate upon which we depend. 

    The post National organizations call for an end to thermal coal exports during COP26 appeared first on Environmental Defence.

    This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.

  • It is time for Ottawa to test Basic Income

    By Spectator EditorialThe Hamilton Spectator

    Hamilton is fortunate to have an organization like the Hamilton Community Foundation day in and out working to improve the life and health of the community. HCF’s work is important all the time, but rarely is it so visible and critical as when the foundation conducts its annual Vital Signs research and announces the findings, which it did in a special section in Tuesday’s Spectator.

    Of course the fact that we should feel thankful for the foundation and its work doesn’t mean it’s always a happy story. The release of this year’s Vital Signs data is, in fact, quite the opposite.

    Those of us who are passionate about the welfare, health and future of this community want to — even need to — feel like we are making progress. But based on this year’s Vital Signs data, progress is modest.

    The data are too comprehensive to deal with in detail here. To read the Vital Signs report go the thespec.com or the foundation’s website, hamiltoncommunityfoundation.ca.

    But to summarize, consider one of the main elements, headlined “We are not all in this together.” That headline really is worth a thousand words.

    Hamilton remains as it has been for too long, a city suffering from serious economic and social stratification. Whether you measure by neighbourhood, by postal code, by neighbourhood income and health outcomes, or ethnicity, all the answers come out the same. To an unhealthy degree, this is a community of people who have, and people who have not, and the pandemic has only magnified that reality.

    All of the work done by countless grassroots workers, community activists and advocates has made a difference, but not in a game-changing way. Hamilton would be infinitely worse off without the work of those people and organizations, including the community foundation. But the harsh reality is this: With a few exceptions, we are treading water.

    Why? The answers are not simple, but many of them lead back to the same central fact: Alone, this municipal government and all the dedicated people working on Hamilton are not big enough to generate adequate critical momentum. That is not to say there is a single magic solution, but it is to say that senior governments are essential partners to generate that essential critical mass.

    The Ontario government has not shown any indication of being a partner in this regard. But the federal government, this particular federal government, could. It has demonstrated the ability, with programs like the universal child benefit, CERB and the national housing strategy. But it must do more.

    It is time to correct the ideology-driven error made by the Ford government when it cancelled Ontario’s Basic Income pilot project two years ago. Even though the pilot was killed before it could be properly assessed, we know thanks to research from McMaster University that nearly…

    All the signs were pointing to BI making a dramatic difference in the lives of recipients. Better housing, education and health outcomes. Stereotypes about BI eroding work ethic were blown away when the opposite happened. The mental health of recipients improved with a new sense of self-determination and optimism.

    Thanks to other research from McMaster, we also know that people receiving CERB, as opposed to those struggling to get by on vastly inadequate social assistance rates, fared better during the pandemic.

    In spite of the premature death of the Ontario BI pilot, the international basic income movement has not slowed down. There is a reason for that: Basic Income makes sense. It has the potential to change the trajectory and stratification of communities like Hamilton. It just needs a government willing to allow Basic Income a chance to prove it.

    The post It is time for Ottawa to test Basic Income appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Basic Income isn’t just about reducing poverty

    At the heart of this concept is the idea of individual freedom and personal dignity, or more particularly, the means by which individuals can exercise their freedoms. Freedom from poverty is one such goal, but so is freedom to learn, freedom to do unpaid work, and freedom to be creative.

    By: Yuen Pau Woo

    From Greens to Conservatives, it seems everyone has a version of guaranteed basic income (BI) that they can support. There is confusion, however, over the objectives of BI, and very different views on what is feasible.

    The debate on BI has advanced with the recent publication of a study commissioned by the British Columbia government, and by tworeports from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).

    The B.C. report rejects BI on the grounds that it would be cheaper to achieve poverty reduction in the province through targeted measures. The PBO report suggests that the national poverty rate can be halved at no net cost, assuming the elimination of some tax credits and social assistance programs.  Who is right?

    Both are, but advocates and opponents of BI would be wrong to use either report as validation. That the PBO simulation was able to “force” revenue neutrality is simply a matter of accounting. While it is impressive that this scenario reduced poverty significantly, the authors of the B.C. report would surely counter that they could get as much poverty reduction using targeted measures, at lower cost. To the extent that the policy objective is poverty reduction, the B.C. report is solid.

    It should be obvious that if we throw enough money at the problem of poverty, we will make a big dent in poverty rates.  The question is always about trade-offs such as fiscal capacity, disincentive effects, administration costs and the distribution of benefits.

    That is why the case for BI cannot rest solely on poverty reduction. Basic income is not another anti-poverty measure. It is not employment insurance either. It is not even social assistance in the traditional sense of helping those with specific needs such as disability or homelessness. It is, rather, a different kind of social safety net for a different set of societal circumstances, including the changing nature of work.

    At the heart of BI is the concept of individual freedom and personal dignity, or more particularly, the means by which individuals can exercise their freedoms. Freedom from poverty is one such goal, but so is freedom to learn, freedom to do unpaid work, and freedom to be creative. There is a connection here to Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, on the right to life, liberty and security of the person.

    Basic income is not another anti-poverty measure. It is not employment insurance either. It is, rather, a different kind of social safety net for a different set of societal circumstances, including the changing nature of work.

    The B.C. report focuses on freedom from poverty and therefore advocates targeted interventions but worries that providing citizens with other freedoms through BI will create an unsustainable fiscal burden. On this, the PBO report is a useful corrective. One can quibble with the choice of tax credits eliminated to achieve revenue neutrality, but the point is that the fiscal cost of a BI is manageable – with decent poverty reduction to boot.

    What about philosophical objections to BI? The B.C. report suggests that a BI is “unjust” because it imposes undue burdens on certain taxpayers who will resent the fact that their fellow citizens are rewarded with cash even if they are not in poverty.

    Here again, the PBO simulation is instructive: The burden of a BI falls mostly on the third and fourth quintiles of the population, with each experiencing a modest net loss of two per cent of income that I believe can be mitigated by economic growth.

    The most efficient way of delivering BI is the tax system. Not everyone files taxes, though. But a BI program which on the one hand incentivizes individuals to register with the CRA and on the other hand spurs the CRA to enhance automatic filing is a reform that is long overdue.

    Furthermore, the elimination of some non-refundable tax credits as suggested by the PBO would simplify the tax system and make it less regressive. These improvements to our tax code may turn out to be even more important for productivity growth than BI itself.

    Both the B.C. Report and the PBO calculated work disincentive effects from a BI, but neither weighed in on the potential economic benefits of creative activity, innovation, lower health and criminal justice costs, and other pluses of BI that advocates point to. These are admittedly speculative, but any such benefits will only increase the upper bound in a cost-benefit analysis of BI.

    Since my framing of BI is more about liberty than it is about social supports, there is nothing to preclude targeted assistance for, say, disabled individuals. In fact, the PBO scenario assumes a universal disability payment of $6,000. While this amount is less than the federal Disability Tax Credit (DTC) that it replaces, the way it is applied means that disabled citizens with low income are better off than they would be under the DTC. It is, in effect, a progressive reform.

    In thinking about a post-COVID economy, it is commonplace to draw analogies to major post-war reforms in employment and health insurance, and social assistance. Basic income could be the major reform of our time, but only if it is grounded in expanding the liberties of citizens in society.

    The post Basic Income isn’t just about reducing poverty appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.