Basic Income for Canadians - Evelyn L Forget

This is a long form look at many studies on basic income. Overall, people use the money to improve their lives and continue to work. They don't get lazy, but employers may complain because it gets harder to find people willing to work for low wages as they now have more financial freedom and don't need to keep a crappy job with a bad boss.

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• Scarcity

- to explore the meaning of basic income and it’s feasibility in the Canadian context. Page 10
- basic income must be unconditional so that there is no requirement for work or to have worked a certain number of hours. People must be free to decide how to use their time as they get the money. Page 11
- with AI and robots why do we work anyway 250420210743 Page 13
- people without enough resources to meet modest needs need a secure predictable income. It’s an insurance policy to help deal with Scarcity 180920201044 Page 16
- because scarcity captures the mind 180920201045 it also gives them bandwidth to make better decisions
- many people on income assistance in Ontario find it difficult to extract themselves from it in large part because they loose their extended health care and then have to pay for it, but they don’t make enough money for that and head back into income assistance land Page 25
- the actual income needed to pay for your own extended health care is far above the level at which they remove the government support
- they may even want to work, but fear loosing the benefits they get Page 29
- poor dental health (which is expensive) often means you present poorly in the job market and are paid less despite any skills you may have which makes it harder to escape poverty and become self-supporting Page 31
- we do a bad job at supporting the working poor, which says that living pay cheque to paycheque is acceptable to society Page 27
- a 2016 census showed that 49.8% of people in their peak working years (25 - 44) were in full-time, full-year work, although 87% were in the labour market. Page 27
- so they’re trying to work but can’t get full-time work
- more Canadians than ever are employed at lower wages with 61% of Canadians earning less than the average wage. Page 27
- this seems to be a feature of the changing Tags/gig economy
- when you regulate how many assets you can have to be on income assistance, you also reduce incentive to save for the future Page 32
- in poorest neighbourhoods in Canada men die 4 years before their counterparts who live in the wealthiest neighbourhoods. For women it’s 2 years Page 51
- this is due to underlying medical conditions they can’t afford to treat that simply wear them out faster
- plus is harder to purchase healthy food because it’s more expensive Page 54
- income inequality is growing because the top 5% of earners is growing far faster than anyone below that. Page 57
- and 1% is growing even faster
- so the poorest aren’t reaping the same benefits
- we use productivity not for more leisure 250420210745 Page 65
- one of the biggest fears is that people will stop working, or work substantially less if they have basic income Page 79
- all the studies here show that it is barely the case. Most people work almost as much and may just refuse the worst jobs and times because it’s not being compensated properly
- specifically the one in the 1970’s show this Page 89
- also Page 90
- Tags/incentivizing labour Page 79
- people feel better about themselves and their lives when they work Page 82
- basic income gives badly treated workers to reject demeaning work which is not a problem, it’s a feature of basic income Page 91
- much of the work that [[Tags/women]] do is not part of the traditional paid economy and yet is crucial to it’s function Page 91
- like Tags/parenting or caring for an aging relative
- most of the great achievements in the past centuries were done by people who essentially had basic income in the form of Tags/generational wealth Page 93
- they had the Tags/mental bandwidth to investigate avenues that were interesting to them
- as women have worked more men haven’t stepped up to the table and taken on the same amount of household work Page 98
- this means that women are just working more
- an adult living alone faces a much higher risk of Tags/poverty than adults living together and sharing the earnings Page 105
- mothers on Tags/income assistance can’t have a bad parenting day because they’re relentlessly supervised and face loosing income and their kids for a single bad day that is observed Page 108
- we’ve all had bad days as parents and many of us don’t have someone watching us all the time like that
- some groups that face higher risks of poverty are those with Tags/disabilities, Tags/first nations, [[Tags/single mothers]], people aged 45 - 65, Tags/immigrants Page 111
- income supports do not keep up with Tags/inflation Page 129
- In 1992 it was the equivalent of $12k (in 2013 dollars) vs $8k in 2013 so income went down by $4k
- the root cause of Tags/poverty is a lack of money and nothing else Page 137
- The War on Normal People 130920201110 185

> The idea that poor people will be irresponsible with their money and squander it seems to be a product of deep-seated biases rather than emblematic of the truth. There's a tendency for rich people to dismiss poor people as weak-willed children with no cost discipline.

But scarcity captures the mind 180920201045 and then we fall into the scarcity trap 180920201111. Those without enough juggling turns predictable events into schocks 180920201113 and then can't deal with the stuff that comes up because they don't have enough in the first place to make better decisions. They litterally don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with the extra stuff that rich people can think about.

### Resources Mentioned

- The Spirit Level - Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger 190420211645 Page 56
- Predictably Irrational 190420211653 Page 83
- Creating Capabilities - The Human Development Approach 190420211657 Page 93