Doug Ford's New Poor Laws Replace Basic Income

Details: Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1651 ... August 16, 2018
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Doug Ford’s New Poor Laws Replace Basic Income

John Clarke

The decision of the new Tory Government in Ontario to terminate the basic income (BI) pilot project that their Liberal predecessors had set in motion, confirms that the right is as divided as the left on this issue of social policy. The Doug Ford Tories form part of an international right wing opposition to BI that does not share the view of the Silicon Valley billionaire set, the World Bank and a range of others within the neoliberal order that this form of income support could serve the needs of capitalist exploitation.

The right wing skeptics are bothered by the element of reduced conditionality that basic income contains and Ford and his crew, as... meat and potatoes reactionaries, are especially hostile to the notion of giving poor people income without keeping the boot firmly on their necks. It’s instructive to compare the reasoning of Ford’s Minister of Community and Social Services, Lisa MacLeod, with that of the UK Tory secretary for work and pensions, Esther McVey. Separated by an ocean but united in a commitment to war on the poor, the two Tories both view basic income as a ‘handout’ that prevents the corrective treatment they believe must be administered in order to create an industrious poor.