{"id":18667,"date":"2016-03-09T13:18:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18667"},"modified":"2016-03-09T13:18:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T18:18:43","slug":"basic-income-new-life-for-an-old-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18667","title":{"rendered":"Basic income: New life for an old idea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Basic income: New life for an old idea<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

A combination of economic uncertainty and political possibility is giving new life to an old policy idea<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A basic income policy could replace existing welfare programs by providing citizens with a guaranteed monthly paycheque. (Chris Wattie\/Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In Ottawa, a federal MP is\u00a0pushing for government\u00a0research on the subject<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ontario’s\u00a0provincial budget announced a pilot program to try it out. In Quebec, a cabinet minister has been assigned to study the topic.<\/p>\n

The mayors of Calgary and Edmonton are both on board. And the Manitoba Liberals\u00a0are promising\u00a0their own trial<\/a>\u00a0if they win the April 19 provincial election.<\/p>\n

Basic income is capturing political imaginations in Canada.<\/p>\n

Also known as guaranteed minimum\u00a0income, universal income, guaranteed annual income, or a negative income tax, basic\u00a0income\u00a0is\u00a0a social policy that would supplant various welfare programs by providing a baseline amount of money to all citizens, regardless of whether they work or meet a means test.<\/p>\n

‘I think part of it is the need to set up social programs for a very different kind of labour force than existed in the past.’<\/span>– Evelyn Forget, professor, University of Manitoba<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea is far from new, and it has even\u00a0been tried in Canada before,\u00a0in the town of Dauphin, Man<\/a>.,\u00a0during the\u00a01970s. Google Trends, which tracks the volume of\u00a0inquiries on the Google\u00a0search engine, shows\u00a0an increased number of searches for “basic income”<\/a>\u00a0and related terms in the past three years \u2014 and especially in recent months.<\/p>\n

A world without guarantees<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evelyn Forget, a professor with the department of community health services at the University of Manitoba who researched the Dauphin experiment, recently testified before federal pre-budget hearings on the topic of basic income.<\/p>\n

She\u00a0says the idea’s resurgent popularity\u00a0may have to do with an uncertain global economy.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Basic income: New life for an old idea A combination of economic uncertainty and political possibility is giving new life to an old policy idea A basic income policy could replace existing welfare programs by providing citizens with a guaranteed monthly paycheque. (Chris Wattie\/Reuters) In Ottawa, a federal MP is\u00a0pushing for government\u00a0research on the subject. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12850,103,3544,3000,12849,3013],"class_list":["post-18667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-basic-income","tag-canada","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-solomon-israel","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18668,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18667\/revisions\/18668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}