The United States of America needs a Basic Income Guaranteed, not just now during the pandemic, but moving forward. It’s been time.
Judgement-free Basic Income Guaranteed: The facts
How would a guaranteed annual income work?
“It would work the same way the Guaranteed Income Supplement works for seniors. Now, it’s based on your income. If you’re beneath a certain level you get topped up automatically. People would get a cheque or an automatic deposit to their account on a monthly basis if they’re beneath the poverty line and need to be topped up.
It means you get topped up between what your income may be now — could be zero, could be $600 a month — to about $1,300 or $1,400 a month which would get you to about 75 per cent of the poverty rate. But unlike welfare it would encourage people to work. And if you did work, you could keep a large part of what you earned. It wouldn’t be clawed back, as it is in all of the provincial welfare systems across the country now.
Let’s be clear — provincial welfare systems, however well-intentioned and supported by good-hearted and committed public servants, don’t pay more than 40 or 50 per cent of the poverty rate anywhere in Canada. So it doesn’t lift anybody out of poverty. It actually traps people in poverty because if they try to work — or earn a couple of hundred bucks a month — that all gets clawed back, dollar for dollar. Conrad Black doesn’t pay dollar for dollar on his highest level of income. Why would we ask our lowest income Canadians to be paying tax at that level?”*
*Excerpt from talk about Canadian’s struggle for Basic Income Guaranteed