The ins and outs of Hugh Segal’s basic income pilot

The ins and outs of Hugh Segal’s basic income pilot

Jonathan Kates

Earlier this month, Hugh Segal, former Canadian Senator, current Master of Massey College and Ontario’s Special Advisor on Basic Income, released his discussion paper Finding a Better Way: A Basic Income Pilot Project for Ontario . In the paper Mr. Segal recommends that Ontario introduce a three-year randomized control trial pilot to test various ways in which a guaranteed basic income could address the “welfare trap” that exists for recipients of Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

Recipients of these two programs are the perfect participants for Segal’s pilot in two ways. First, pre-existing recipients […]

International author rallies Scotland behind Basic Income revolution

International author rallies Scotland behind Basic Income revolution

Campaigners gather to plan an overhaul of the welfare and work system in Scotland

ACADEMICS, economists, charities and campaigners will state that a basic income is the best way for Scotland to deal with its issues of unemployment, poverty and work/life balance.

Professor Guy Standing, co-founder of the Basic Income (BI) Earth Network and internationally renowned author will set out his stall for why BI would improve standards of living in Scotland. At a conference on [Sunday 26th November] a new Scottish Organisation, Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland (CBINS) will launch itself promoting the idea of Basic Income (BI) […]

BIEN Celebrates Thirty Years: Basic income, a utopia for our times?

BIEN Celebrates Thirty Years: Basic income, a utopia for our times?

Written by Bonno Pel & Julia Backhaus

On Saturday October 1st 2016, the Basic Income Earth Network celebrated its 30th anniversary at the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). The picture shows the founding meeting in 1986, but is also quite applicable to BIEN 30 years later. The conference was held at the same location and many of the founders and their fellow militants met in good atmosphere to commemorate the early beginnings of the network. Together with other scholars and generally interested people, they discussed current developments in science and policy and ‘the way forward’ for the basic […]

Universal Basic Income

Fortunately the idea does seem to be gaining traction. It was recently reported that in Canada, Ontario will do a test run of basic income in some areas, and some of the local politicians on the west coast are discussing it too.
Now all we have to do is see if the corporate sector approves or disapproves. Hey, its more money for people to buy their shit with, and it means they can further automate and outsource with less backlash from the people losing their jobs.

Which kind of casts UBI in a negative light, maybe, but I see it […]

Introduction to VIVA : A Price Stable Crypto Currency with Basic Income (that’s not Hypothetical)

I was saving this until the whitepaper was ready for human consumption.
But @dantheman just posted an excellent article on the concept of a coin intended to
produce a universal basic income
So I felt now would be a good time talk about what we’ve been working on for the past couple of years with the VIVA project.
To understand VIVA you need to understand its history. VIVA attempts to answer the question, How do you provide for everyone in a world where the only thing scarce are jobs? As our technology and automation increase, the cost of production […]

The Pragmatic Case for a Universal Basic Income

But it has pragmatic advocates (including me) who believe that a UBI offers a better compro- mise than do other income-support programs among the mutually incompatible criteria of effectiveness in reducing poverty, mainte- nance of work incentives, administrative effi- ciency and accurate targeting.

The most encouraging sign is that the live- liest debates over a UBI today are taking place within, rather than between, the main ideo- logical camps. At a time when macroeco- nomic forces and the politics of big money are leading to ever-greater inequality, perhaps America is still capable of finding common ground for a pragmatic antipoverty effort. m

How A Universal Basic Income Would Transform Society

How A Universal Basic Income Would Transform Society

Is Abundance Possible for All? A universal basic income has the potential to unleash unimaginable amounts of human time, energy, creativity, and passion that has the potential to radically transform society. No child’s dream is to make lots of money.

A universal basic income could spawn all kinds of alternative living arrangements. Certainly, there are mobile home parks where you could live a decent quality of life on your own if that’s the way you want to live. But five people could also pool their basic income and have access to $100,000/year of guaranteed income. That’s enough to buy a house together. Those huge suburban houses full of empty bedrooms could become communal living accommodation, helping people meet the universal need we all share of feeling like we belong to a community, of being needed and mattering to others.

How To Fund A Universal Basic Income Fairly

How To Fund A Universal Basic Income Fairly

A properly constructed UBI would be based on the idea that the resources that weren’t created by human labor – the land, the airwaves, our public spaces, the skies, and even money itself – belong to everyone. And therefore, if you want exclusive access to any of these resources either to live or to start a business, you should have to compensate the rest of humanity for their reduced access. These economic “rents” already exist in the form of property taxes, licenses, and interest payments. But instead of sharing this wealth (that no human being created) with everyone, the wealthy elites appropriate it all to themselves. This is what must change.

Universal basic housing: could it work?

Universal basic housing: could it work?

But all of these schemes are ultimately trying to address the same underlying problem: if a household doesn’t earn enough, it won’t be able to afford accommodation. The solution, therefore, is to ensure that – regardless of how low non-housing income is – every household in Ireland can access good quality accommodation.

UGANDA: Two-year basic income pilot set to launch in 2017

UGANDA: Two-year basic income pilot set to launch in 2017

Eight, a charitable organization based in Belgium, is preparing to run a basic income pilot in Uganda (as previously announced in Basic Income News ). The two-year pilot is set to launch in January 2017, and will form the basis for a documentary.

Eight does not only plan to publish the results of the pilot study in journals. In addition, it will create a cinematic documentary, Village One, which will trace the story of the introduction of the basic income and its effects on the community over the course of the study.