Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 928-930

Federal and provincial governments have argued for decades that poverty is a complex problem. “Complex” is a code word for a problem no one wants to face directly. Poverty is a complex issue, but in the end it is about one thing—a person not having enough money to meet basic needs of food, shelter, clothing and transportation for self or family.
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It is time to look seriously at a guaranteed annual income.
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How we deal with the lowest income Canadians among us would be different.

They would not be “case load burdens”; they would be citizens.

They would not have to apply through Plexiglas for enough money to feed their kids.

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They would not occupy homeless shelters, prisons, court rooms and mental hospitals disproportionately to their percentage of the population, because they would be liberated from poverty-caused pathologies by having a basic income guarantee.
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…while MINCOME was administered, hospital visits including work-related injuries, domestic abuse and mental health visits dropped by about 8.5 percent. By her calculations, an 8.5 percent drop in hospital visits alone would save taxpayers $4 billion annually. If this were extrapolated to all healthcare spending ($200 billion), the savings could amount to over $17 billion.
Scrapping Welfare
Hugh SegaL
LRC
(emphasis & link JS)

 

 

 

The citizens of Spain have taken to the streets and squares in great numbers to demand their rights.
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The demand for a universal basic income is growing so fast that the Occupy movement is now working hard to explain its principles to the public.
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It all boils down to a simple empirical question: Is there, or is there not a waged job for everyone who wants one? The answer is a very clear no.
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Many people are beginning to reclaim the principle that society should guarantee and protect the inviolable rights of its citizens, and the first and foremost of these is the right to exist. As Robespierre pointed out more than 200 years ago, “The first social law is thus that which guarantees to all society’s members the means of existence …”

 A basic income could bring this law into effect.
Taking It to the Streets in Spain
by DANIEL RAVENTOS and JULIE WARK
CounterPunch
(emphasis JS)

Is the solution to poverty as simple as giving a little bit of money to a large number of people? We may be about to find out. On New Year's Day, India, the world's largest democracy, launched what may become the most ambitious anti-poverty program in history. Called the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), the initiative will directly provide cash to poor families -- at first more than 200,000 people, then potentially hundreds of millions -- via the banking system.

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The simplest reason: Direct cash transfers work. In diverse settings, poverty-targeted cash transfers have been proven to reduce poverty, improve child nutrition, increase school attendance, and increase the purchase of productive assets such as fertilizer and tools. Evaluations of large cash-transfer programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi show that the programs can be effective in increasing consumption, schooling, and nutrition, regardless of whether they are tied to such conditions as mothers keeping children in school. And a soon to be published study by Tufts University professor Jenny Aker shows that cash transfers in the near anarchic Democratic Republic of the Congo are both cheaper and better spent by the poor than in-kind subsidies.
Can India Defeat Poverty?
BY AMANDA GLASSMAN, NANCY BIRDSALL
FP
JANUARY 8, 2013

(emphasis JS)