The Ecologist

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is demanding that the UK reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025. This is reasonable, but if we're going to get there so quickly we need to be talking right now about how we can achieve this.

XR is perhaps wise to avoid making detailed proposals – any specifics risk splitting the movement over the fine detail. Better to leave it to their third demand - a Citizen’s Assembly. 

Basic Income Early Network

In this new book, work, technology and society are discussed through a series of view points, given by several authors (e.g.: Matt Zwolinski, Michael Cholbi, Andrea Veltman, Evelyn Forget, among others). Universal Basic Income is a policy described at the center of this crucial societal challenge, analyzed by the authors in its wide implications. Michael Cholbi and Michael Weber are the editors.

Vox

Universal basic income. A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. These ideas may strike you as wild, fantastical, maybe even utopian. But that’s exactly the point.

Imagining utopia, writes Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.”

Marie Burge - The Guardian

Opinion

The P.E.I. Working Group for a Livable Income welcomes the recent motion No. 36 passed in the P.E.I. legislature, putting Basic Income Guarantee back on the government’s agenda.

This effort should produce more than just another report collecting dust. For this to be progress, the proposed Special Committee of the Legislature must see their mandate as the creation of a Basic Income Guarantee program for Prince Edward Island. Otherwise, their December 2019 report could be a rehashing of recommendations, which the working group has presented many times to former governments. At the passing of motion No. 36, Social Housing and Development Minister Ernie Hudson emphasized that a lot of work has already been done on poverty in P.E.I. He seemed to refer only to work for the 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy rather than that already done on Basic Income Guarantee.

We believe that the work on Basic Income Guarantee must include a statement of principles, such as that developed for P.E.I. by our working group in consultation with the community.

Lindsay Advocate

Four researchers from four Ontario universities have teamed up to explore the experiences of participants in the (now cancelled) Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP). The goal of this research is to add the voices of basic income pilot participants and their personal experiences with basic income to the public record, to continue to build the evidence to support a basic income social program.

The researchers are: Lorayne Robertson (Principal Investigator) of Ontario Tech University (lorayne.robertson@uoit.ca), Tracy Smith Carrier of the University of Western Ontario (tsmithca@uwo.ca), Elaine Power of Queen’s University (power@queensu.ca) and Joli Scheidler Benns of York University who were awarded a SHHRC Insight Grant to conduct the research.

CBC News

With a federal election coming and all parties in the P.E.I. Legislature agreed, Canada's leading basic income advocate says this is the right time for the province to lobby Ottawa for money.

Former Canadian senator Hugh Segal said with 3.5 million Canadians living in poverty Ottawa has a responsibility to deal with any province that wants to reform the welfare system. Segal is familiar with the Island, having started his career in the office of David MacDonald, an MP for the western P.E.I. riding of Egmont.

Basic Income Earth Network

Leah Hamilton and James P. Mulvale have researched into the implications of the truncated basic income pilot in Ontario, Canada. From a set of controlled, semi-structured interviews, five participants agreed to subject to the procedure.

These participants had experienced both conditional welfare programs such as the Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, and were beneficiaries of the Ontario basic income pilot until it was terminated by Doug Ford’s cabinet.

Basic Income Today

Organizations are coming together in a common alliance for all of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Gaspesie, and Îles-de-la-Madeleine, and are wanting to test a basic income guarantee in all of these regions for 20 years.

They would like to know if the health of the inhabitants will improve if everyone has access to a guaranteed basic income. It would replace social aid and would stack on top of retirement income for the elderly.

The Guardian

Opinion

Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), as a public policy and program, is designed to respond to the belief that all people have the collective right to an income which allows them to live in good health and with dignity.

The P.E.I. Working Group for a Livable Income works on Basic Income Guarantee as its central long-term program. Our work has involved consultations with the P.E.I. community, lobbying public decision-makers and maintaining contact with the national movements for Basic Income Guarantee. Meanwhile, we give close attention to the many ongoing conditions of low income in Prince Edward Island.

University of College Cork Ireland

Analysis: preliminary findings from Finland's experiment with basic income is largely encouraging for advocates of the scheme.

In a previous piece for RTÉ Brainstorm, I discussed the idea of basic income. The piece included data from the European Social Survey which indicated that well over 50% of the Irish population were in favour of the introduction of a basic income here.

Done right, basic income has the potential to (i) lift people out of poverty, (ii) promote social cohesion and remove stigma, (iii) allow people opportunities for self-development through things education and voluntary work and (iv) allow people the opportunity to choose to engage in meaningful work.