by Daniele Fabbri | Sep 30, 2018 | News
Four Ontario mayors, with a letter addressed to Jean-Yves Duclos, who sits in the present Canadian federal cabinet as Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, appeal to the Federal Government for assuming oversight over the Basic Income Pilot project in their communities.
The letter from the Mayors of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder Bay follows the early end of the pilot, wich was announced on July 31st by the new center right government of the Ontario province. It was and abrupt end, just three months after the pilot program was fully subscribed, following its announcement by the previous government in April 2017.
For the pilot, the province had enrolled 6,000 people, 4,000 to actually receive the payments, the others to act as a control group. In order to be selected for the pilot, the requisites were: being between the ages of 18 and 64, and living on a low income, defined as under $34,000 per year for singles and $48,000 for couples. Participants were to receive, under a tax credit model, $16,989 per year for a single person, less 50% of any earned income, or $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50% of any earned income.
The communities of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder bay were among those to be chosen as the sites for the pilot test, and Ontario’s pilot was at the center of a diffused international interest for the concept of basic income, with delegations from the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and the Unites states visiting the communities in order to observe and learn from the experience. “We believe the results of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot would have provided crucial information that could enable not just the Ontario Government, but other jurisdictions around the country to determine the efficacy of such a program on a larger scale”, the mayors write.
The end of the project was justified by the minister of Community Social Services (CSS) because it supposedly provided a disincentive to work, ignoring that two thirds of pilot participants are currently working (some with part-time jobs), but nonetheless interested in contributing to the community and to upgrade their professional skills, the letter says.
The fallout from the Ontario government’s cancellation of the pilot is twofold, on the one hand it is detrimental to participants, and on the other one it is a step back in the research for a better, more comprehensive way, to assist citizens.
The pilot was in the first of the three scheduled years of duration, and its findings and level of success could not be determined appropriately, although many participants could already identify positive changes in their lives as a result of it. These reported having used the money to stabilize their housing, improve their health through better dieting and checking for opportunities to specialize themselves, going back to school and enhance their level of skills. The letter continues by saying that many participants reported an amelioration of their well-being and the regaining of confidence, self-esteem and dignity, as they become able to afford housing and improve their intake of healthy food. Futhermore, as a consequence of being able to afford the time for civic activities and volunteering, these people were becoming active members of their community.
The decision to stop the program is harmful the participants, as they made financial decisions having in mind the commitment of the Ontario government to supply them with a stable income over the next years. They were elected among the most vulnerable members of their communities and, once the pilot started, many incurred in expenses which are now irrecoverable. Planning ahead for the following three years period, some moved to safer rental accommodations, finding themselves locked in tenancy agreements they cannot afford, while others paid up-front to go back to school or to enhance their skills, and found themselves indebted.
In the letter, the mayors of the cities of Brantford, Hamilton, Kawartha Lakes and Thunder Bay say that they fear that many of the participant will “inevitably fall into situations of homelessness and significant financial distress” without any fault of their own, and those struggling with mental health will now need additional support.
The mayors thus request that the federal government assumes oversight over the Ontario Basic Income project for the following two years, in order to complete it. They provide three reasons in support for their request. Firstly, the pilot infrastructure has already been built, with many of the up-front costs having been paid, the participants chosen and a project staff in place with given timelines and an evaluation team at work. Secondly, information gathered through the pilot, which is the greatest such test in the world and the first in Canada since Mincome in the seventies (the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment, conducted between 1974 and 1979), would benefit the Federal Government, providing a bonanza of valuable data. And thirdly, one third of the total cost of the project, $50 million, has already been spent. There is no hope of recovering that amount, which considering the negative fallout produced by the premature cancellation of the pilot, is an expense that would end up only creating distress in the communities which were taking part in the experiment.
“Minister, when the program was launched, you said that you would be watching it closely and looked forward to seeing the results – as did we. Federal oversight of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot project would be the best option to revive the critical information that will be generated, protect pilot participants from crisis who entered into the program in good faith and ensure the funds that have already been spent on this program are not wasted.”
The termination of the pilot provoked turmoil and induced various reactions from the communities involved, and awaiting for an answer from the federal government, a judicial review has been requested over the cancellation of the experiment and a class-action lawsuit has been launched by Mike Perry, a social advocate for the program which is handling the cases pro bono, representing four pilot participants.
For more information:
Shawn Jeffords, “4 Ontario mayors asking feds to take over basic income pilot“, Global News, September 7th 2018
Chris Friel, Fred Eisenberg, Andy Letham and Keith Hobbs – Letter to Minister Duclos, September 4th 2018
Official Ontario Basic Income Pilot website
Kate McFarland, “ONTARIO, CANADA: New Government Declares Early End of Guaranteed Income Experiment“, Basic Income News, August 2nd 2018
Article reviewed by André Coelho
by Andrew Sanchez | Sep 19, 2018 | News
Sam Altman. Picture credit to: San Francisco Chronicle.
Y Combinator (YC) Research will begin its basic income study in 2019 after regulatory hurdles slowed a pilot program in Oakland, California.
The proposed study, entitled “Making Ends Meet,” will provide monthly cash transfers of $1,000 to 1,000 participants for three or five years. Another 2,000 people will serve as a control group and receive monthly transfers of $50 for the duration of the study. As reported by Wired , the experiment will take place across two states with the exact locations to be decided in the upcoming months.
As outlined in their project proposal , YC Research’s basic income study will assess the effects of unconditional cash transfers on a variety of factors including time use, objective and subjective well-being, and financial health. The study will be administered by staff at Y Combinator Research in collaboration with the University of Michigan Survey Research Center.
Y Combinator Research is the non-profit research arm of start-up accelerator, Y Combinator. In 2016, Y Combinator president Sam Altman posted a “Request for Research” in which he forecast the need for a universal basic income (UBI) in an increasingly automated future: “I am fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.”
In September 2016, YC Research initiated a pilot study in Oakland to evaluate experimental design in preparation for the full-scale study. Although the pilot was intended to enroll approximately 100 participants, it ultimately included fewer than ten people as bureaucratic obstacles slowed the study’s implementation. The researchers encountered difficulties in trying to ensure that participants would still receive means-tested support payments as their nominal incomes were increased through receipt of cash transfers.
Elizabeth Rhodes
YC Research’s study will go ahead even as other UBI trials have been cancelled in recent months. In Ontario (Canada), a new administration led by premier Doug Ford, prematurely cancelled a basic income trial earlier this year , and in Finland, a highly-publicized trial has been refused future funding.
Despite the cancellation and discontinuation of government-led trials in Canada and Finland, other studies in the United States are still on course. The Economic Security Project, led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, has plans for a basic income trial in Stockton, California and Greg Duncan, at the University of California, is organizing a long-term study of cash transfers to low-income mothers, under the name “Baby’s First Years.”
These trials will not be the first studies of UBI in the United States. Beginning in the 1960s, four Negative Income Tax (NIT) trials were conducted in the U.S. as new forms of welfare provision, attracted attention across the political spectrum. Although the trials represented a milestone in experimental social science at the time, their results were subject to differing interpretations by the media, politicians, and participating researchers. Some results, such as a reported increase in divorce rate – a result which was not replicated and has subsequently been disputed – were used to discredit basic income as a legitimate alternative to traditional welfare programs.
The current trials proposed by YC Research, the Economic Security Project, and Greg Duncan will mark a new chapter in the study of basic income in the United States. Unlike earlier studies and recent efforts in Ontario and Finland, the American studies will be privately funded and thereby insulated from changes in government policy which have hindered state-sponsored projects.
As UBI attracts increased attention in the political sphere, long-term studies like the proposed YC Research project will be necessary to assess competing claims about the effects of cash transfer programs in different social and economic contexts.
More information at:
Nitasha Tiku, “Y Combinator learns basic income is not so basic after all”, Wired, August 27th 2018
Kate McFarland, “Ontario, Canada: New Government declares early end of guaranteed income experiment”, Basic Income News, August 2nd 2018
John Henley, “Finland to end basic income trial after two years”, The Guardian, April 23rd 2018
Kate McFarland, “Stockton, CA, US: New details revealed in planned basic income demonstration”, Basic Income News, 23rd August 2018
Karl Widerquist, “The basic income guaranteed experiments of the 1970s: a quick summary of results”, Basic Income News, December 3rd 2017
by Andre Coelho | Sep 15, 2018 | News
Chicago’s City Hall building green roof. Picture credit to: Urban Matter
Earlier this year, the city of Chicago hit the news by introducing a resolution that would summon a taskforce to run and study a basic income trial within the Municipality. That resolution, put forth by Alderman Ameya Pawar, included the summoning of stakeholders, foundations, philanthropists and academics, to develop a basic income trial model providing an unconditional $500 /month to one thousand families in Chicago. This was in addition to the restructuring of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which will in itself be a subject of study.
That initiative received opposition from the Chicago Tribune, the most popular newspaper in the city. The paper published an editorial where it argued that the basic income trial was unaffordable and that Chicago officials should instead be finding ways to “raise incomes among working-class and poor residents”. Among the alternatives (to a basic income, experimental or full-fledged), the editorial referred to the deregulation of the private sector, which would “generate employment and boost incomes”.
Despite this opposition, Chicago leaders, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Ameya Pawar, just announced (through the Economic Security Project (ESP) the formation of the taskforce to which the resolution referred, having been called the Chicago Resilient Families Task Force. This cutting-edge group will explore and coordinate the basic income trial in the city, relying on an EITC modernization, which is how they will provide the monthly benefits to recipients.
The referred Task Force, in which the ESP is also investing, will be co-chaired by Tom Balanoff (Service Employees International Union President in Canada) and Celena Roldan (CEO of the American Red Cross of Chicago and Northern Illinois), and will include “civic, religious and community leaders in addition to elected officials and academics”. It will produce a report with specifications on the basic income trial, and put forward policies to reduce poverty and rise middle-class citizens incomes.
After Stockton, Chicago is now paving the way for furthering basic income in the United States, amidst a choir of opponents (including the above mentioned Chicago Tribune editorial and others).
More information at:
Kate McFarland, “CHICAGO, US: City Considers Resolution to Investigate Basic Income Pilot”, Basic Income News, July 24th 2018
Kate McFarland, “US: Chicago Tribune against basic income for the City”, Basic Income News, August 12th 2018
Peter Kotecki, “Chicago could be the largest US city to launch a basic income pilot — here are the other major experiments around the world”, Business Insider, July 23th 2018
Kate McFarland, “STOCKTON, CA, US: New Details Revealed in Planned Basic Income Demonstration”, Basic Income News, August 23rd 2018
Rowena Itchon, “Basic income comes to Stockton”, Pacific Research Institute, February 5th 2018
by Guest Contributor | Sep 10, 2018 | Opinion
Written by: Jonathan Brun
For many years basic income advocates have lobbied for pilot projects to demonstrate the power of giving money to all citizens. Advocates all seem to use the short-lived Dauphin, Manitoba project in the 1970s as an argument for further pilot projects. This lobbying by advocates of Basic Income led to two pilot projects – one in Finland and one in Ontario, Canada. Finland’s program will end as originally scheduled this year and will not be extended. The pilot program in Ontario was canceled before any data could be gathered. This marks a significant setback for the Basic Income movement around the world.
The purpose of these pilot projects was to gather meaningful scientific data on the effects of basic income and use that to convince the public, bureaucrats, and politicians that basic income was a feasible and logical idea. However, scientific reasoning rarely works in the public sphere. Instead, basic income projects are at risk of ending prematurely. The reason Ontario’s experiment was canceled and Finland’s pilot program was not extended was not due to financial or scientific concerns, but rather because of politics. Therein lies the problem, if basic income projects are launched by politicians, they will be shut down by political situations.
Both of these pilot projects made a fundamental mistake – they targeted poor people. The projects were designed to show the benefits of a basic income over the traditional welfare system. They were not designed to show the benefits of a basic income for a wider part of society such as students, taxpayers or elderly people. By restricting the projects to people on or near welfare levels, the projects positioned themselves as yet another welfare program for the poor. As in most countries, the hard working, tax paying middle class has limited patience for welfare recipients. This is partially due to both constricting disposable income and human nature. We have seen country after country downsize their social welfare programs in an attempt to balance budgets, gain votes or free up cash for other programs such as tax cuts. Almost no country in the past thirty years has increased the size of their welfare programs. This should be a (big) hint to basic income advocates.
It is actually quite simple, most taxpayers have limited patience for people who do not work (for money). To think otherwise is simply idealistic and not aligned with the average (voting) population. At a recent discussion on the basic income debate in Montréal, Québec, I asked the famed basic income expert Evelyn Forget how she thinks we should pay for a basic income. Her response was that we should raise taxes on corporations and on people. When I replied this seemed challenging in the current political and economic situation, she responded that it was the best way to do it and people would just have to “deal” with higher taxes.
I strongly believe that the way you finance a basic income is the defining feature of a basic income. If you finance it through taxes, it will be viewed as another social welfare program not terribly different from numerous existing programs. This is a major problem. The entire idea of basic income is that it is different from other programs. If you finance it in the same way, through tax and redistribution, you are undermining the argument that makes basic income so appealing. Basic income is supposed to break the mold, join the left and right, simplify bureaucracy and give more freedom for individuals to build up their lives. If you fund it through taxes on workers, it will be viewed (rightfully so) as a transfer from workers to non-workers.
As an analogy to basic income advocacy, we can look at advocates for affordable housing. Both groups of advocates believe that what they are proposing is a basic right and should be made readily available. In the first case, basic income advocates argue that all members of a developed nation should have a minimum level of income that assures the essentials in life. Affordable housing advocates lobby that housing is a right, not a privilege, and it should be affordable for all members of society. I agree with both, but the way you go about implementing either is fundamental to the perception of the project by the general public.
For example, affordable housing levels in most western countries has decreased as an overall percentage of the housing market. This is due to affordable housing advocates taking the same approach as many basic income advocates – namely that affordable housing is there to alleviate the stress of expensive housing and that the affordable housing should mostly benefit the less fortunate. By casting their lot in with the poor, they are severely limiting the base of their political support.
Contrast that with Vienna, Austria. In Vienna, about 50 percent of the housing stock is owned, managed and maintained by the City. Basically, 50 percent of the housing stock is a public good, not a private good. Rents are remarkably affordable for a world class city and this brings dynamism and diversity to all the neighbourhoods. However, the main reason this was possible was because both the middle class and lower economic classes have a vested interest in the success of this public housing. This much larger political base assures that affordable housing projects continue. Basic income needs to take the same approach and stop advocating for basic income pilot projects as welfare replacements or as a poverty alleviation tool. It may indeed be that, but that is not the best way to advocate for basic income.
Contrast the controversy around pilot programs with the Alaskan Dividend Fund, which was instituted in 1976. The fund remains tremendously popular and has little risk of disappearing. Why? Because everyone gets it! No pilot project was done prior to the institution of the Alaskan dividend fund and no negative effects have emerged post-implementation. If there is one path forward for basic income, it is through the implementation of a lower level of basic income, but that goes to everyone – especially hard-working taxpayers who vote.
Basic income should think strategically about how they plan to convince the average person to vote for a basic income. It may take a distinct political party (for another post) or a clear advocate of basic income such as Andrew Yang in the United States, who has placed basic income at the center of his presidential campaign. No matter how you look at it, trying to get basic income to become a reality through the path of replacing or supplementing welfare payments is a doomed idea that will never work. Get the middle class on your side and basic income advocates can win this political battle.
Jonathan Brun, Cofounder Revenu de base Québec.
Slight edits by Tyler Prochazka.
Originally posted here: Basic Income Pilot Projects Won’t Work
by Andre Coelho | Sep 5, 2018 | News
After reporting on the two first days of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in Tampere, Finland, 24th and 25th of August, a second and final part is here lay forth, covering for the event on the last day (26th). (Note 1)
Jamie Cooke, Sarath Davala, Evelyn Forget, Loek Groot and Olli Kangas all sat together at the University of Tampere main auditorium to speak and discuss basic income experiments. These stood for, respectively, the Scottish feasibility study (not yet a functional pilot), the Indian Madhya Pradesh basic income pilot (concluded – ran through years 2011 and 2012), Canadian experiments (past “Mincome” experiment and the interrupted Ontario pilot), the Netherlands transfer schemes (several Municipalities) and the Finish ongoing two-year experiment. The session was chaired by Phillipe van Parijs.
Jamie Cooke
The speakers were asked to freely describe each case. Olli Kangas assured the audience that the Finish experiment is going on as planned, and that results will start to be collected and organized after the ending date, in December 2018. He also confirmed that the studied variables were essentially related to paid work and related job market interactions, adding that survey data would be published at the beginning of 2019 at the latest. As for Evelyn Forget, she reminded that basic income experiments in Canada have been more focused on health outcomes, although work-related results have also been captured. She believes the Ontario pilot – six months into its planned duration – was cancelled for ideologic reasons (the new conservative government arguing that people should get jobs, instead of depending on unconditional transfers). In his turn, Loek Groot informed the audience that experiments in the Netherlands are not testing basic income, but several ways of managing people on benefits. He also added that the social benefits system in the Netherlands is decentralizing, hence the Municipalities initiatives to start these experiments which, generally, measure work-related variables, plus health and life satisfaction data. Finally, Jamie Cooke explained that the basic income idea in Scotland has very much gained from BIEN’s affiliate in the region (Basic Income Scotland) and its actions to spread the word about it. That and the work of RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), both in the United Kingdom and the local Scottish RSA, has helped in gaining traction for the (basic income) experiment. Jamie noted that the language used when presenting and discussing basic income must be clear, because people need to understand what is being done or planned.
At this moment, van Parijs introduced a provocative question: What, if any, would be the results of a basic income experiment that would lead you to give up on the basic income idea? Olli Kangas recognized that there could be such a result, taking on a cautious approach. However, he added, experimental results could always be “spun” politically in several directions, according to ideologic agendas. Evelyn Forget didn’t oppose to that view, although, contrary to Kangas, she thinks the outcomes of such experiments are already more or less predictable (drawing from past experiments analysis). Sarath Davala wouldn’t quite imagine himself not being a supporter of basic income, and so returned a more passioned answer: “I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it!”. He added, however, that basic income experiments also test if trusting people is good or not (he believes that it is good). Near the end of the session, Evelyn concluded that people love stories, caring much less about numbers and statistics. That is why she worries about eventual social destructive behaviours which may occur during (basic income like) experiments.
Parallel sessions during this last day of the Congress were widely varied, although only lasted through the morning period. Papers on freedom and (social) reparation, trade unions, work, rights, alternative currencies and the relation of all these with basic income were presented.
Evelyn Forget
The last Plenary Session was featured by Evelyn Forget, who explained in further detailed what happened with the Ontario experiment. She informed that first the new government argued that the experiment had “failed”, which could not be true since there was no data to justify that statement. In a subsequent argument (for having cancelled the experiment), the same government alleged that 25% of the recipients had dropped out, which was also false, for the same reason (no data). The true reason for slashing the basic income pilot finally came, when an official from the newly elected government stated that they did not believe in “free money”, but in people getting jobs. Forget was further concerned about this situation, aggravated by the fact that recipients were getting more or less twice then they would have from regular benefits (and now had to return to their original earnings, with no previous warning). The need to ease these recipients out of the experiment has motivated an insurgence of activity by Canadian social activists (mainly basic income advocates and anti-poverty organizations), to try and restart the experiment or at least to help people transition from their income support during the experiment to their former earnings.
Forget concluded the Plenary with more general considerations on income, welfare and basic income. According to her, income security is not only linked to precarious employment, but also with welfare bureaucracy, which has gotten so complex that people have difficulty in knowing what their earnings will be from month to month. Hence basic income would introduce a kind of income regularity that most people nowadays cannot really expect from the market nor from the State. She ended on the note that the goodness of basic income very much depends on its financing mechanism, which could turn an output of social solidarity into one of societal disintegration.
Closing the Congress, Annie Miller shared a few last words, emphasizing that BIEN Congresses have greatly expanded since their inauguration in 1986. All the same subjects are covered nowadays, as were before (ex.: poverty, social justice), but now including issues such as (basic income) experiments, environmental issues and cryptocurrencies. For her, the importance of research, dissemination of knowledge and activism for basic income cannot be overstated. Finally, Miller is confident that, although present-day world is (mainly) governed by sociopaths, the time has arrived to replace them with empathy, kindness and honesty.
Note 1 – Mistakenly, Lena Lavina’s Plenary Session was held on the 26th (first in the morning), but reported on part 1 as having been on the 25th. So now, the last Plenary held on the 25th, on basic income experiments, is reported on in the present article (part 2).
More information at:
BIEN Congress 2018 website
André Coelho, “BIEN Congress 2018 (part 1)”, Basic Income News, September 3rd 2018
