A guaranteed income for Canadians would eliminate poverty

[oneh2obabe]

While a Canada without poor people may sound like a pipe dream, in fact it is an achievable goal.

So says Conservative Sen. Hugh Segal, who makes an argument for a poverty-free country in the Literary Review of Canada. It’s worth noting that Segal, a former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney appointed to the Senate by Paul Martin, is more Red Tory than Harper-style Conservative.

Accordingly, the Ontario senator argues, a guaranteed annual income is as worthy a Canadian project as Medicare.

He says it could be arranged by way of a tax credit through the income tax system, to top up income of anyone falling below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cutoff (LICO).

LICO for a single person is about $22,200; for a family with three children, roughly $47,000.

“In other words,” writes Segal, “being poor would become a problem we all buffered in the same way as we buffer all Canadians relative to health care.”

He estimates the annual cost at about $10,000 per person.

But when all the billions now spent on health care and heavily stigmatized welfare payments — to alternatively address needs of the poor — are subtracted, the net cost to government would be zero.

“The cost to our Canadian economy of poor Canadians dropping out of school, getting sick faster, staying in hospital longer and living shorter lives than the rest of us is in the billions.”

Imagine what a guaranteed income might have meant to the Downtown Eastside women murdered by Willie Pickton.

Wally Oppal, in a recent report on the murders, drew a direct link between poverty and the women’s plights.

Cost savings to governments would indeed be real, according to a study cited by Segal, carried out by University of Manitoba health sciences professor Evelyn Forget.

Forget tracked an 8.5-per-cent drop in hospital visits among a sample group of farm families in Dauphin, Man., who were part of a 1970s-era federal experiment guaranteeing minimum incomes in case of crop failures.

That experiment also rendered invalid a notion that guaranteed incomes prompt recipients to quit work to become couch potatoes.

“The efficient and humane thing to do is to take the example of Dauphin and learn from it,” writes Segal, noting Ottawa wouldn’t need a new bureaucracy to deliver guaranteed incomes.

“We have the (tax) system in place.”

That said, Segal tells me, when it comes to selling his idea, “I cannot report large progress with the present government or the provinces.”

That may be because promised cost savings to government treasuries aren’t precisely measurable, and wouldn’t be immediate. And the fiscal burden of a guaranteed income would be borne by Ottawa, through the Canada Revenue Agency, while savings would go to the provinces, which finance health and welfare programs.

Deficit-burdened governments aren’t likely to embrace the Segal proposal.

But the good news is that Canada’s poverty levels have been declining.

Statistics Canada, back in 1969, put the poverty rate as high as 20.8 per cent of Canadians. Today, it’s 9.4 per cent.

According to the CIA’s World Fact Book, poverty in the U.S. afflicts 15.1 per cent; in the United Kingdom, 14 per cent; in France, 6.2 per cent.

An October study by the University of Waterloo’s Canadian Index of Well Being Network, meanwhile, notes that in the two years following the 2008 recession, Canadian living standards dropped by 24 per cent.

Alas, a guaranteed income for Canadians is a lot like getting rid of the Indian Act, simplifying the Tax Code, or abolishing the Senate. All great ideas that governments never get around to executing.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Barbar ... z2Gv4qTpkc

[Captain Awesome]

That's pretty radical.

[SurplusElect]

So poverty costs society (taxpayers) but it makes the private sector profitable. Gee, I wonder why that won't fly.

The working stiff can keep footing the bill.

Longer lives? Who cares? Their kids can work at my factory.

[VitC]

removed off topic - Jennylives

[dogspoiler]

A similar idea was brought up years ago, one of the main things was the reduction in the existing bureaurocracies, D.I.A, U.I.C, Welfare, Old age pension, Disability could all be run out of one updated system. It would be harder for the cheaters and cut down on administration. There would be a lot of things to hammer out but there are some good points to consider.

[ticat900]

That's pretty radical.

well maybe be fairer to say "REDICULOUS" the downtown eastside hookers are there by personal choice more than by
bad wages.Give them a guaranteed income of 22K and they will still be downtown vancouver sniffing dope and hooking
Its more the nature of the beast.You become a drug addict and a hooker by (bad) personal choice.No one forced you there

[steven lloyd]

You become a drug addict and a hooker by (bad) personal choice.No one forced you there

Ya, remember the first day your daughter said to you: "Daddy , when I grow up I want to be a drug-addicted hooker"

[underscore]

This actually sounds like a good idea, it sounds like it would cut out a lot of redundant departments in the gov't as well as paperwork. As far as prostitutes etc working off the system, how would that be any different than them claiming welfare benefits or something similar? Obviously there will always be people trying to abuse the system, but since this sounds so much simpler so I think it would cut down on the number of people able to abuse it.

[Captain Awesome]

This actually sounds like a good idea.

Well, it sounds like an awesome idea. Say, everybody in Canada would be entitled to $20K as guaranteed income. The question is - where will this money come from? What will it do to our social structure? What will it do to our tax structure? What will happen to the economy and inflation?

[underscore]

From the sounds of it, the money would simply be redirected from welfare, etc, and all sent through one central organization. It sounds like it worked out just fine in their test city.