Looking the Basic Income Gift Horse in the Mouth
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- Published on Friday, 01 April 2016 02:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1240 .... April 1, 2016
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Looking the Basic Income Gift Horse in the Mouth
John Clarke
Both the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa and the Wynne Government at Queen's Park in Toronto have been making noises of late on the subject of Basic Income. The last Ontario Budget, in fact, declared an intention to carry out a pilot project in a community still to be announced. While no clear details are yet available, it is very likely that we will soon be dealing with a practical initiative that we will have to respond to. We will have to consider how we view the possibility of the Liberals moving in the direction of a Basic Income system.
After decades of intensifying austerity and the erosion of systems of income support, with... social assistance in Ontario now providing such wretchedly inadequate benefits that people are unable to feed themselves properly and retain their housing, the notion of a basic level of income that all are entitled to can't fail to generate a level of interest and raise some hopes. However, I am convinced that a good hard look in the mouth of this particular gift horse is well advised. What are the different notions of how a Basic Income system might work? Why are governments now considering it more seriously? What form would it be likely to take in the present economic and political context?
