Notable reprint

Globe and Mail

Annie Lowrey is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and author of Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World.

Last year, Ontario started distributing cash to thousands of lower-income adults, no strings attached. The recipients did not need to meet any conditions, save for not earning much and having lived in one of five target areas, including Hamilton, Brantford and Thunder Bay, for more than a year. They were free to use the money the government was sending them however they saw fit, whether spending it on groceries and other necessities, saving it for retirement or a degree, or frittering it away. “Our goal is clear,” said Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s then-premier, kicking offthe effort. “We want to find out whether a basic income makes a positive difference in people’s lives.”

CBC News

P.E.I.'s new Progressive Conservative minority government says it wants to introduce a new social assistance pilot program within the next six months.

Among the many priorities outlined's in Friday's Throne Speech was a commitment to implement a Secure Income Program Pilot. 

The Guardian

Sheffield has moved closer to becoming one of the first UK cities to trial universal basic income after the council formally lent its support to the idea.

Last month, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, confirmed a Labour government would pilot UBI if it won a general election, identifying Liverpool and Sheffield as potential areas for pilot schemes.

CTV News

A cross-party committee of MPs says it's time for the government to take a deeper look at a guaranteed minimum income to help workers caught in the tectonic shifts of the "gig economy."

The MPs' report on declines in traditional, full-time employment in favour of short-term contract work says the government needs to explore new types of income supports "that do not depend upon someone having a job."

BIEN

The wave of basic income experiments in the last two years was a positive development in giving Universal Basic Income (UBI) some level of attention and political legitimacy in Western countries.

It is time to recognize the experimental wave is coming to an end.

Basic income activists in the next wave of UBI political discussions should push for policy changes in the direction of basic income. There are ongoing and completed trials testing cash transfers in countries with different stages of economic development. It makes more sense to build a foundation for policy changes as these results trickle out over the next few years rather than pushing for yet another experiment.

Interesting Engineering

The nature of work has changed dramatically since the 1950s.

In that glorious post-war period, work was primarily a man's purview, while women did so-called "invisible" work - taking care of children, maintaining the home and cooking.

It wasn't unusual for a man to retire 40 years laterfrom the same employer he started with. That employer picked up the worker's health and life insurance, and some employers even paid school tuition for their workers' children. There was a sense of continuity. 

Windsor Star

“How do we have freedom if we don’t have options to choose?”

Floyd Marinescu, one of the founding members of CEOs for Basic Income, asked the audience at TEDxWindsor this question Saturday afternoon during his talk at the Chrysler Theatre.

CEOs for Basic Income is a group of 120 Canadian CEOs, business owners, and controlling shareholders that support a universal basic income.

A new website was created, and just launched, to provide updated news and information about UBI (Unconditional Basic Income), with the goal of furthering the discussion about how UBI impacts purpose, identity, and dignity. It will convey content from general news and include original material from the editor-in-chief and UBI activist, Scott Santens. The website is called Basic Income Today.

Basic Income Earth Network

Last Saturday, May 25^th 2019, an event took place in Maricá, a city on the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, where the mayor Fabiano Horta (representant from PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores), vice mayor Marcos Ribeiro and the secretary of Solidarity Economy, Diego Zeidan, announced that, from July 2019 onward, 50000 citizens, a third of its 150000 inhabitants, will receive a Citizen’s Basic Income of 130 Mumbucas, a local electronic currency, equivalent to 130 reais, or US$ 32,5 per month.

The plan is to have all Maricá’s citizens receiving this unconditional cash, at least until the end of the present city government legislature.