A new report from the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) details how Canada could improve income security for everyone, with three options for a basic income for adults, while maintaining current child benefits for those under 18.
“We’ve seen interest in basic income grow far beyond theoretical debates. BICN is now frequently asked what it would look like in Canada,” said Chandra Pasma, a member of the BICN Advisory Council and co-author of the report. “Our report clearly shows there are multiple options Canadian governments could use to implement a successful basic income program.”
A basic income is an unconditional cash transfer from government to individuals to enable everyone to meet their basic needs, participate in society, and live with dignity, regardless of work status. The call for a basic income is growing, including from public health and environmental sectors, Nobel laureate economists, marginalized communities and people concerned about precarious work and technological disruption. The urgent need to reduce inequality and its costly consequences has led some researchers, advocates, and politicians to the conclusion that basic income is inevitable.
Statistics Canada’s Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (SPSD/M) was used to model the funding of the options, combining existing resources with changes to the tax/transfer system, including tax fairness measures. All options are based on BICN’s principles and goals–to reduce inequality, including inequality between women and men; prevent poverty; provide everyone with greater income security, including middle-income earners; and ensure the wealthiest individuals and corporations contribute their fair share. Each option in the report, Basic Income: Some Policy Options for Canada, meets these overall goals.
Option 1 is for 18-64 year olds based on household income, operating much like child benefits, with the $22,000/year ($31,113 for a couple) benefit amount gradually reducing as other income increases; seniors benefits remain in place.
Option 2 is similarly income-tested and is for all adults, including seniors.
Option 3 is a universal model, sometimes called a demogrant, that provides the same benefit amount to every individual adult.
“The options vary administratively so don’t get sidetracked by the size of the different up-front costs,” notes Sheila Regehr, Chair of BICN. “It doesn’t mean one is much more expensive than another. The options have similar results for people and they are all funded from similar sources.” The report also notes that other funding sources for a basic income are possible, as well as downstream savings that can help make it even more affordable.
“Basic income in Canada is not a question of possibilities, but of priorities,” said Regehr. “It is clear from child and seniors benefits that it works for many Canadians already. The federal government’s priority now must be to take leadership to make it work for everybody; we are all part of the future of this country.”
To download the full report, click here.
To download a summary of the report, click here.
The full title is “Exploring Universal Basic Income: A Guide to Navigating Concepts, Evidence, and Practices”, and it’s the most recent publishing of the World Bank on the specific issue of basic income, by the hands of editors Ugo Gentilini, Margaret Grosh, Jamele Rigolini and Ruslan Yemtsov. From the original World Bank webpage it can be read:
Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro–tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.
Contributors to the book include (but are not limited to) Francesca Bastagli (Head of the Equity and Social Policy Programme and Principal Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute), Jurgen De Wispelaere (Policy Fellow with the Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath), Ugo Gentilini (Global Lead for Social Assistance with the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank) and Tina George (Senior Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank).
The book is available as a free download, accessible the World Bank’s webpage dedicated to it.
Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. Picture credit: dailyO
Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer were awarded the Economics Nobel Prize this year. That alone would not represent a huge novelty, given the standard these professionals and scholars have set in the last few years. However, in an article as far back as June 2016, Banerjee had already defended the basic income policy for India, as a way to reduce poverty, cut through corruption and minimize bureaucracy. Later on, already in 2019, Indian voters got not to elect the party (Congress Party) which was more serious about implementing (a version of) basic income in India, favoring the BJP ruling party. That, however, did not end the discussion about basic income in the Indian continent, in part because Banerjee, Duflo and other respectable scholars like Thomas Piketty, have been thinking, writing and speaking about the issue at the highest levels.
This award comes right before the release of Banerjee and Duflo new book, entitled “Good Economics for Hard Times”, a forward-looking elaboration on society, economic problems and creative social solutions. In it, basic income features as an important, if not crucial policy, for reducing poverty, simplifying governmental aid programs and increasing universality in cash transfers. In the authors’ own words:
Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change–these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there–what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable.
Meanwhile, also, other heavy-weight economists like Angus Deaton, also a recent Economics Nobel Prize laureate, have come forward in defense of basic income-like type of policies.
“The justification for [basic income] is ethical, not instrumental,” states Guy Standing at the ShapingHorizons conference at Cambridge University, UK, on September 11, 2019. He goes on to assure his audience that basic income studies have revealed that it may reduce poverty and inequality, but that “the real reasons for wanting to support a basic income is a matter of common justice.” See his full speech.
For Guy Standing it is a clear case: everybody’s wealth and income are mainly due to the achievements and efforts of others, especially our ancestors. It is they who have created what we all enjoy in the form of, for example, public knowledge and social services. If we add natural resources to the list, we are looking at the three most important pillars of what people alive today have at most contributed minimally towards: the commons.
As it is common legal practice around the globe allowing “to receive something for nothing” in the case of private inheritance, Standing suggests extending this idea to the social inheritance of the commons. In contrast to private inheritance, the distribution of commonwealth should not be based on, e.g. family bounds. The entitlement to a share of public wealth should instead be based on the simple requirement to be human. However, instead of sharing our rich commons, they are “privatized and plundered […] in the name of rentier capitalism,” as Standing puts it.
In addition to stating ethical reasons for basic income, Guy Standing also took the chance to stress how the global debate about basic income has changed dramatically over the last few years. With participants from as many as 45 countries the BIEN congress 2019 in Hyderabad, India, at the end of August this year demonstrates the global significance of basic income.
The 41 minutes long documentary focuses on Universal Basic Income (UBI), retracing its history, explaining its rationale, and investigating why and how the idea has reached a much larger audience and unprecedented support in the last years.
It does so with though many poignant interviews with prominent exponents of the UBI community, as Van Parijs, Guy Standing, Daniel Raventòs, Scott Santens and many others. “UBI, our right to live” makes a compelling argument for the necessity of the measure, is a manifesto for UBI in the present day, and is an excellent introduction to the subject.
The documentary addresses two of the main drivers that are bringing UBI at the center of the public debate: economic inequality and technological development. The two themes are correlated, as economic inequality has reached unsustainable levels, and automation may make it even worse, if not handled in the proper way. The risk is the increase of unemployment and growing inequalities between high and low skilled workers.
UBI could eradicate poverty altogether, and if it were to be financed through progressive taxation, reduce inequalities. Moreover, it would provide an economic safety net for workers, and thus endorse them with more bargaining power when it comes to choose a job. People could decide how to focus productively their energies in order to contribute to society and give meaning to their live, rather than being forced in unfulfilling jobs just to survive. Nobody would be left alone, as it is bound to happen under the patchwork that present-day welfare is.
The fruits of technological advancement, if distributed via a UBI, rather than accumulated in the hands of the few, may help to shape a more just future, as this is what UBI is about (something that the documentary highlights): UBI is about justice and fairness, not charity.
It’s the instrument meant to redistribute what belongs to each and every person, the natural extensions of human rights in ensuring to everybody a standard of living adequate for a human being.
