Faun Rice, a former Basic Income News editor, has just posted an article on the new Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) (and the characteristics it shares with universal basic income). That article, called “The Global Turn to Cash Transfers”, starts with a lucid but provocative opening:

Before March 2020, the Canadian public probably would have rebelled at the idea of a program that delivered a full-time minimum wage to 20% of the population without requiring them to demonstrate that they couldn’t find a job. A global pandemic has created an ideological shift where many of us are suddenly very empathetic with the unemployed — and this gives Canada an opportunity to trial unprecedented policies and ask some never-before-possible questions, including: what happens when we just give people money?

More information at:

Faun Rice, “The Global Turn to Cash Transfers“, Medium (Digital Policy Salon), April 30th 2020