Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1398-1400

The myth that basic income “would be extremely expensive” is often stated as fact without supporting evidence. To realize it fully in Canada could require an investment in the range of $32 billion, as Goar mentions. Such a number seems large but in 2013 it comprised but 1.7 per cent of the value of Canada’s gross domestic product, estimated at $1.82 trillion.

What must also be factored are (1) the efficiencies from redirecting the funds of ineffective and even harmful programs (notably stigmatizing welfare) into a basic income, and (2) the savings from avoiding poverty’s immense cost. A 2008 study estimated $72 billion to $86 billion as the price Canadians pay for health care, criminal justice and lost productivity costs associated with poverty. Poverty’s demand on health care alone may now approach $40 billion per year.
How can we not afford a ‘basic annual income’?
Rob Rainer Kelly Ernst
thestar.com[emphasis JS]

 The Citizens Income Trust has shown that by eliminating all welfare payments and the personal tax exemption, a Basic Income Guarantee can be made close to revenue neutral. But making Basic Income revenue neutral might obviate one of its most profound benefits. Since the financial crisis, central banks have tried to stimulate the economy mostly by creating money and giving it to banks, hoping that would entice them to lend. So far, the results have been mediocre. The Basic Income would instead “helicopter drop” money straight into individual’s bank accounts, thus enabling them to spend.

...

Traditionally, progressives have focused on stimulating employment and raising wages. But automation and software today are job killers. The “Rise of the Robots” threatens to destroy up to 47 per cent of all existing jobs within the next two decades. A robot may be able to build an iPhone but it cannot buy one. A Basic Income Guarantee will eliminate poverty, lessen inequality, destroy bureaucracy, and empower the most vulnerable among us but perhaps even more important, it would solve capitalism’s most basic and growing problem, lack of demand.

Should governments give away more money?
by Tom Streithorst
December 30, 2015
Prospect Magazine
[emphasis JS]


 

Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.
Martin Luther King Jr.