https://archive.is/uH4B6
There's all sorts of talk in the media that Finland is actually going to implement a 800 euro/month basic income policy and I actually thought this was the case. I supported this policy in social media and condemned the administration in my province for not following suit and for paying a comparatively paltry sum to workfare and disability benefit recipients. But then when I went digging further, I found out that this was not exactly true. They are going to be conducting pilot basic income experiments from 2017-2019 in Finland. And it won't apply to the whole country. Only select communities.
We have seen basic income pilots before. In Dauphin,Manitoba from 1974-1979 in Canada, in select regions in India, Namibia, etc. And they are just that pilots. They never resulted in permanent adoption of basic income as policy. I'm tired of "pilots". We've done pilots before and the results of these pilots were quite positive. Let's actually implement basic income policy that applies to an entire nation or province/state. And let's fight to get basic income implemented all across the world.
There's no reason why anyone in a developed country should be homeless, experiencing food insecurity or lacking access to needed health care, clothing, transportation, telecommunications, etc. In a world where you have millionaires and billionaires who acquire exorbitant amounts of wealth off the backs of labour. They are rent-seekers and usurers. And idle rich trust fund kids who were lucky enough to be born into a family where daddy is rich and has connections.
The idea of a basic income is that everyone would receive a basic amount every month that would be just enough to cover basic needs - both ongoing regular expenditures (ie. food, rent, etc.) and allowing people the ability to save some money to cover less frequent basic expenditures (ie. durable or semi-durable goods like clothing, household appliances, and services that you pay for less often than once a month). And then you would raise taxes in order to control for inflation. Like obviously we don't want the 1% to be a net recipient of a basic income. We want them to be a net contributor if anything and therefore see them pay more taxes. The purpose of making basic income universal is to prevent a welfare trap/cliff effect where people on welfare are discouraged from working.
I encourage my comrades to support politicians who advocate for basic income policy. Elizabeth May, Green Party of Canada leader and federal MP in British Columbia advocates for a $20k per year (Canadian dollars) "guaranteed livable income" (GLI). Which is really their way of saying basic income.
US Democrat Party presidential candidate and US Senator for Vermont Bernie Sanders likes the idea of a basic income. But doesn't advocate it as policy because he doesn't think it would be very popular in the classcucked United States. Where the notion that able-bodied adults between 18-64 (and they have a very loose definition of what constitutes able-bodied) should be forced to work full-time (40+ hours/week) in order to support themselves and their families is the dominant view. Because Americans buy into the Calvinist Work Ethic. Meanwhile they don't really say anything about the idle rich kids who are independently wealthy and were just simply lucky enough to be born into wealth…