Kitchener Today

It's all about creating options for those without a source of income during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kitchener city council has endorsed a motion, asking the Ontario government to pursue a partnership with their federal counterparts to establish a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Ward 7 councillor Bil Ioannidis put the motion forward Monday, saying he wanted to get the conversation going, and wants a broader discussion on the topic.

CBC News

The next time the world is blindsided by a global emergency, the economy will better survive it if everyone is paid what they need to survive it -- before it hits, experts say.

And if employers don't cough up the cash, they say, governments should.

"It is now quite clear that virtually everybody in society has a profound interest in lower-income people having the purchasing power to buy food and pay their rent," said political scientist Ron Hikel. 

The Castlegar Source

COVID-19 has obviously changed our lives in the short term, and now there is a growing consensus that the pandemic will also bring more long-lasting changes to our society—how we value workers, how we treat our seniors, how we house the homeless, how we protect the environment, and more.

One topic that is surfacing more and more often is the idea of a basic income.  One of the first things we learned when the pandemic began was that Employment Insurance was completely inadequate to protect workers from lost income.  Sixty percent of workers do not even qualify for EI.

Maclean's

Opinion

The Great Depression of the 1930s gave us the Bank of Canada, Employment Insurance (EI) and federal equalization payments. The Great Recession of 2008 produced a revolution in monetary policy and a legacy of concern about household debt.

Will the Great Lockdown of 2020 bequeath us guaranteed universal income? Among the many unprecedented aspects of the global coronavirus pandemic is the sudden appearance of a widely available handout from Ottawa. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) provides $500 per week to anyone who’s out of work because of the virus, or the economic shutdown it precipitated.

Prospect Magazine

One side effect of the Covid-19 crisis has been a remarkable upsurge in interest in the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). In the UK, over 170 MPs and Lords across parties have called for an “Emergency UBI,” while 84 per cent of the public now back its introduction. Spain, especially heavily hit by the epidemic, is now looking seriously at the introduction of such a scheme.

A UBI is a guaranteed, unconditional payment made to all eligible residents. A key reason for this jump in interest is the potential of such a system to mitigate, at speed, the economic fallout of the epidemic on incomes and livelihoods.

CBC News

As every schoolchild knows, it was the First World War that brought Canadian women into the workplace (though of course, they had always been working). Even after the men returned from the front, women continued to work — and what was a temporary change turned into a new societal norm.

The Great War left us with another supposedly temporary measure: income tax. "I have placed no time limit upon this measure," said then finance minister Thomas White in 1917. "A year or two after the war is over, the measure should be reviewed."

We all know how that turned out.

Business Insider

Spain is moving to implement a permanent basic income as a measure to help workers and families battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Nadia Calviño, the country's minister for economic affairs, told the Spanish broadcaster La Sexta on Sunday evening that the government was planning to introduce the cash handouts as part of a barrage of policies meant to help people get back on their feet.

She said enacting basic income was "mostly aimed at families, but differentiating between their circumstances."

Business Insider

Pope Francis suggested that it might be time for countries to consider a universal basic wage to help ameliorate the worldwide economic disruption to workers caused by the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in an Easter letter to leaders of prominent social movements. 

The Pope, who is known for his focus and powerful advocacy on behalf of the world's poorest and most marginalized people, devoted significant portions of both his Easter address at the Vatican and his letter to social movement leaders to highlighting the plight of the working class in this crisis.

Quartz

As pandemic panic mounts worldwide and more people globally are being told to stay home, one conservative American politician is taking a decidedly progressive position, proposing interim Universal Basic Income.

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah today said that every American should get a $1,000 check to cover costs and keep the economy running, in addition to a slew of other measures to mitigate the pandemic’s fiscal fallout.