Toronto Life

In February 2018, Jessie Golem, a freelance photographer in Hamilton, found out she’d been selected to participate in Ontario’s basic income pilot project. She felt like she won the lottery. The three-year pilot, launched by the Wynne government, was meant to provide 4,000 low-income individuals in Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay with a maximum of $16,989 per year per person (or $24,027 per couple).

Basic Income Earth Network

The Universal Basic Income (UBI) Lab Sheffield, a campaigning group working from the city of Sheffield, northern UK, has written to all the 84 city councilors in the region, as a move to have them support a local basic income experiment.

The main driver behind the initiative is to “ensure that nobody is economically left out, and that nobody lives in poverty”, in the words of Sam Gregory. This basic income experiment, as proposed by the UBI Lab Sheffield, would be applied in one of three ways:

Basic Income Earth Network

Stimulus to work

Richard O., 43, is a father of nine children. The couple and the eldest son, aged 18, receive a basic income. Richard paid school fees for his children to study and bought goats, $150 and $200 USD each. He also bought a cow for $250, which provides milk for the family. Now he wants a bull, which costs $300. Richard says basic income has encouraged him to work harder: “when there is opportunity, ambition grows”, he explains. “The benefit has created the possibility for people to dream of a better life.” Richard is dreaming.

The Conversation

Governments around the world are declaring “climate and environmental emergencies” to highlight the unsustainable ways in which humans, over a few generations, have transformed the planet.

We’ve made enough concrete to cover the entire surface of the Earth in a layer two millimetres thick. Enough plastic has been manufactured to Clingfilm it as well. We annually produce 4.8 billion tonnes of our top five crops and 4.8 billion head of livestock. There are 1.2 billion motor vehicles, 2 billion personal computers, and more mobile phones than the 7.6 billion people on Earth.

Inverse

A major universal basic income trial could come to the United Kingdom, if the opposition Labour Party wins power at the next election.

The idea, which would see every adult receive a fixed monthly sum regardless of their situation, has been lauded by campaigners as the key to reducing inequality in an increasingly-automated world where robots and A.I. take on more roles. John McDonnell, the party’s finance spokesperson (or “shadow chancellor”), announced plans Sunday to trial the idea in three areas.

Calgary Herald

Alberta is a prosperous province, but our poverty rate has hovered around 10 per cent for decades, costing the government over $2 billion each year. Add to this context the looming spectre of automation and growing uncertainty about our economic future and it’s easy to understand why the idea of basic income is resurfacing in public discourse.

Though lack of income is only one dimension of poverty — a reality that necessitates a comprehensive system of social services, supports and community-based programs — there is Canadian evidence that shows that income transfers are an effective poverty reduction tool.

Halifax Examiner

Evelyn Forget has quite literally written the book on basic income for Canadians.  It’s called, you guessed it, Basic Income for Canadians.

As a health economist at the University of Manitoba, Forget re-discovered the Manitoba Mincome experiment of the 1970s, and undertook to analyze some 1800 cubic feet of data from the decades-old experiment. She found evidence of improved health and high school completion, and even an overall improved sense of community in the town of Dauphin, the one and only saturation site for the Mincome experiment.

In advance of her talk at this year’s Basic Income NS conference on Saturday at the Central Library,  I called up Forget to ask her about the basics of basic income.

Lindsay Advocate

When Ontarians from all walks of life took part in a ‘general strike’ to oppose cuts made by the PC government under Premier Doug Ford recently, Dr. Steve Oldridge of the Bobcaygeon Medical Centre was among them.

The physician is a champion for rural health care and the Ontario Basic Income Pilot program quashed by Ford’s government.

BBC News

Scrapping the current benefits system and replacing it with a basic income could eradicate destitution, according to a new report.

The RSA charity wants to see every adult in Scotland given a basic annual income of £2,400, rising to £4,800. Children would be paid £1,500.

It claims the move would improve health and wellbeing while removing the stigma of receiving benefits.

But some critics say it would encourage fecklessness.

The Vox

Gary Bloch became a doctor because he wanted to help people who were less privileged than him. For years, he tried his best to treat patients coping with poverty and homelessness.

But no matter how many blood tests he ordered and prescriptions he wrote, many of his patients’ health problems persisted. He realized it was because he wasn’t addressing the issue that most plagued them: poverty.