Category Archives: Basic Income Guarantee

Almost two thirds of people in Yorkshire believe the Universal Credit system is not fit for purpose and should be scrapped, according to a survey by YorkshireLive.

Out of more than 2,500 people who responded to the survey, 63% said they believe the system should be scrapped while only 24% believe it should remain in place.

The remaining 12% were unsure.

Click here for more benefits news from Yorkshire Live.

The survey had 2,686 responses across Yorkshire.

Universal Credit was first legislated for in 2012 and was designed to replace and simplify a number of benefits like Employment and Support Allowance and Child Tax Credit.

The new system has proved controversial with many claiming it was impossible to live off the benefit.

Late last year, the governments 20 uplift on Universal Credit payments ended leading many people to protest to their MPs.

Other changes to the system which came early this year including an increase in line with the consumer price index of 3.1%.

The time allowed for jobseekers to search for employment in their preferred sector while on Universal Credit has also been cut from three months to four weeks.

In January of this year, the Commission on Social Security called for a massive rework of the entire benefits system.

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They called for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to be paid to all adults in the UK of 163.50 a week.

UBI would be unconditional amount of money that every adult would receive no matter what they earn., creating a'minimum income floor' which supporters believe will reduce poverty.

It is an idea which has been gaining in popularity around the world with a trial of 2,000 people in Finland showing people who received UBI went on to get jobs anyway and reported better mental wellbeing, less stress, a greater ability to concentrate and they were more likely to successfully manage their financial situation.

Both the Scottish and the Welsh governments have publicly supported the idea, with the Welsh government set to trial UBI and the Scottish government planning to introduce a form of UBI they call a 'minimum income guarantee'.

Calls for a basic income increased during the pandemic with more than 170 MPs and Lords calling for it in 2020, although the government did not introduce the system as they said it could provide a disincentive for people to work as well as being expensive.

The majority of people in Yorkshire also support this with 60% of replies to our survey in favour of UBI, compared to just under a third against and eight percent unsure.

As oil prices hit record highs alongside gas prices, the cost of living has been rising to record levels in recent days, especially the cost of energy.

Inflation is also the highest it has been since 1992, leading to massive increases in the cost of food and other essentials.

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Two thirds of people in Yorkshire support scrapping Universal Credit - Yorkshire Live

Sandra Edwards, whose home was so damaged by Harvey that she was displaced for two years, only had one liveable room by the time temperatures started to drop below freezing last February. Taken on Feb. 1, 2022.

The first night of Winter Storm Uri, when temperatures went below freezing, Sandra Edwards woke up on her bedroom floor, soaking wet, lying on her back.

Edwards, a community activist who lives with her two cats in Fifth Ward, has no idea what knocked her unconscious, but believes she stepped out of bed and slipped on ice that formed on the ground.

"I had icicles hanging from my ceiling," Edwards said. "I had ice on the floor."

Physically Edwards recovered, but one year after the freeze her house is still just as vulnerable to damage.

For many like Edwards who live in underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods across the region, the winter freeze just exacerbated home damage from previous disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

Now many of those Houstonians are still waiting for disaster aid and have few resources if another storm were to hit, making them even more vulnerable than when the winter storm came through in February 2021 and have no real assurance the situation would be better if a storm happened tomorrow. In fact, they're in worse shape.

A year ago, temperatures across the state plummeted, in many cases to below freezing. Many Texans had snow flurries in their backyards, and millions lost power for days or even weeks. People also went without water in major cities, including Houston, which had a boil water advisory for three days. According to a report from the Texas Department of State Health Services, 246 Texans died as a result of the storm. Harris County had 43 deaths, the most of any county in the state.

Texas has its own electric grid, which is different from how other states get power. That grid wasnt designed with winter weather in mind. When Texans started to crank up their heat during the freeze, it threatened the grid's stability. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) manages the grid and implemented rolling blackouts to keep it from shutting down.

After the outages, Texas lawmakers enacted legislation they said would improve the state's electricity system. Still, experts say the grid is vulnerable.

Some people already entered Winter Storm Uri at a disadvantage. Edwards, whose home was so damaged by Harvey that she was displaced for two years, only had one liveable room by the time temperatures started to drop below freezing last February.

It was in that one room where she found herself cold and wet and on the floor. Edwards says because of existing damage, water seeped into her house and onto her floors, and froze over when temperatures plunged.

Like many Houstonians, she also lost power. In Edwards case, her house was without electricity for four days.

"Its crazy because our system has failed us left and right," Edwards said. "We dont know what to do no more, so its just like we're playing Russian roulette."

For two of the four days she spent without power, Edwards said she relied on a generator for heat and electricity. She was concerned about more water leaking into her home, which one year later still has mold damage.

"I stayed in here and I endured," Edwards said. "I cleaned as much as I could, I bought gallons of bleach and ammonia, and did what I could."

Edwards said a lot of her neighbors have the same issues, and some have stopped even looking for assistance, making do with homes in disrepair.

On top of that, billions of dollars in debt that companies incurred from the storm will be passed onto Texas ratepayers over the next 20 years.

Edwards says that isn't right.

"If you catch hell, dont pass it on to us," she said. "Were already catching hell here. Why would you pass your problem onto us and make us pay for it? If you fixed the grid, we wouldnt have this problem."

She hopes electricity providers will have some grace for people who are unable to pay some or all of their bills after being hit by multiple disasters like Harvey and Winter Storm Uri.

But electricity bills are going up for Houstonians: As the economy began to rebound from the pandemic thanks to increasing COVID-19 vaccine availability, consumer electricity prices started to rise by the end of the year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Wholesale prices went up across the country, according to the EIA, but were especially volatile in the ERCOT market last year because of the freeze. In hopes of enticing more power generators to contribute electricity to the grid during the storm, ERCOT allowed the price of wholesale electricity to reach its maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour, or $9 per kilowatt hour. Texas residents normally pay between 12 and 20 cents per kilowatt hour.

Although the Texas electricity market works differently than the rest of the country mostly thanks to the now disgraced company Enron pushing state lawmakers to deregulate the market in the 1990s Texas is still the country's main supplier of natural gas used to generate electricity, according to the EIA.

The freeze in February 2021 disrupted that natural gas supply, and from there it was basic economics: less supply met with more demand people turning on the heat meant prices went up, and natural gas prices have largely stayed elevated since then. That's translated to increased electricity bills across the country.

Texans face even higher prices in the coming decades due to the storm. State lawmakers approved $6.5 billion in ratepayer bonds to pay back losses some utilities and generators experienced during the freeze. Essentially, companies that incurred major costs are able to pass on those costs to residents on their electricity bills over the next 20 years.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said passing on those costs to the customer is a great fleecing of American consumers. Incurring that cost, he said, could be damaging for people still trying to fix their homes after repeated storm damage. Meanwhile, generator companies stand to make billions off of energy consumers, with charges likely to start showing up on electric bills next month.

The costs will hit all Houstonians, but Hirs said the greater burden will fall on the shoulders of Houstons poorest residents similar to how the citys poorest residents suffered more acutely because of a lack of access to food, fuel and insulation that the citys wealthier residents have.

The folks in River Oaks, they have tremendous resources, he said. "Folks who are poor are not living in well-insulated houses. There are many, many more of them in Harris County than there are people in River Oaks."

Tenants of Northside Houston's Coppertree Village Apartments, an affordable housing complex that rents units based on a percentage of the tenants income, were already in an ongoing legal battle with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over their living conditions: Tenants say they are living with mold, sewage, crime, and other hazards.

Coppertree was also hit hard by the winter storm, and Erica Bowman, a community organizer at Texas Housers who works with tenants there, said dealing with its impacts on top of those dangerous living conditions was devastating.

When storms come and they go, it does just add onto the struggle that theyre already facing, she said. But they have equipped themselves with figuring out ways of coming together to try to make it through.

Tenants said last year's intense cold front knocked power out at Coppertree for two weeks. Cheryl Potts, who lives in a two-bedroom unit there with her 17-year-old grandson, said the power would cut in and out during the second week. The first week didnt have any power at all.

After going hungry for a day when the power first went out, Potts said she cooked her food on her barbecue pit outside.

I didnt want all of my food to go bad, so I cooked as much as I could, she said.

Kenneth Hawkins, who also lives in Coppertree, said he cooked chicken and rice on his grill. When the power came back on for good, Hawkins said he felt like he had won the lottery.

I was so happy, he said. I was running out of charcoal and wood for my barbecue pit.

Then, he got his electric bill.

Even though Hawkins didnt have power for two weeks, he said the bill for his one-bedroom unit doubled from the usual $60 charge.

For people with limited incomes like Potts and Hawkins, an increase in their electric bill has a major impact on their budget. Hirs, with UH, said the financial burden of rising electricity costs disproportionately falls on the poor.

But paying for electricity doesnt guarantee reliability. Under the ERCOT model, consumers are only paying for electricity, not reliable power.

The residents at Coppertree say the reliability of the electricity is volatile; Potts and Hawkins both said outages are common at the complex. Every month or so, the power will go out for a couple of hours or more. The tenants say nothing has been done to fix the issue, so theyve come to expect it.

Residents also fear another weeks-long outage. When temperatures dropped down to freezing earlier this month, Potts bought candles just in case.

"I really am worried," she said.

Houston didnt end up experiencing any major power outages when the city had freezing temperatures for a few days at the beginning of this February, but Hirs said if it had been a storm of the same magnitude as Uri, we would have likely seen another round of widespread outages and other damage.

Although the governor and legislature said fixing the grid was a top priority in 2021, Hirs says 20% of power generators in the state are probably not ready for another Winter Storm Uri.

Legislation to fix the grid did call for weatherization, but wasn't specific enough, he added. And on top of that, he said the changes made to ERCOT and other aspects of the electricity market puts more control in the hands of the governor.

"These are the guys who got you into trouble in the first place," he said. "And now with the board of ERCOT comprised of political appointees, I'm very concerned about the direction."

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Low-income Texans are still reeling from the winter storm. Theres no guarantee the next time will be better - Houston Public Media

We are concerned that the public is not sufficiently aware of what has been happening with regard to the Ontario governments Poverty Reduction Strategy launched over a year ago. An American consortium, FedCap, has been hired to replace the services previously offered by Employment Ontario in 12 regions of Ontario. This change began as a pilot in Peel, Hamilton Niagara and Muskoka-Kawarthas in October 2020 and was expanded to nine more regions in June 2021. Part of this organizations mandate is to help people receiving benefits from the Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works find employment. The problem is this organization does not have a good track record, and advocates for people with disabilities are sounding the alarm.

The focus of the Poverty Reduction Strategy is to increase the number of people moving from social assistance to employment. On the surface this may seem like a positive goal but we are talking about many people who have been medically declared unable to work because of a disability. FedCap may be able to find a short-term job for some people with disabilities, but when the measure of success is simply the number of people placed in jobs, the incentive for this organization is to ignore the reality that many of these job placements are for very short-term work that will leave the recipient returning to social assistance again and again. And it is likely that people will be pressured to accept employment for which they are very unsuited.

It also appears that the government has determined that this model works before it has even been tested. The pilot, run in the three districts of Peel, Hamilton-Niagara and Muskoka Kawarthas was not completed or evaluated before the same model was rolled out in nine additional regions.

This model is similar to a failed program tried over two decades in Australia called Jobactive. A 2019 report to the Australian Senate entitled Jobactive: Failing Those it is Intended to Serve, made 41 recommendations including several that recipients of the services should be included and consulted in the planning process. Stakeholder consultation has not occurred in Ontario. Those who will rely on this program have not had an opportunity to comment or critique the changes to these services.Historically, we know that privatization in Ontario has not gone well. Think of the privatization of highway maintenance services, highway 407 itself and long-term care facilities. These things have not saved money in the long run and have resulted in inferior service delivery.

Social services should be provided by the government with the goal of providing services to those in need while maintaining dignity. The title Poverty Reduction Strategy sounds good. However, there is a much better doable, affordable solution to virtually eliminate poverty and to facilitate people being able to live in dignity in Ontario and Canada. It is a Basic Income Guarantee. Many studies have demonstrated that when people receive a Basic Income Guarantee they do not stop working or looking for work. In fact, in many cases, recipients use the benefit to upgrade their skills or education so that they can find better employment and improve their quality of life.

We encourage you to find out more about the changes to the delivery of these services to some of our most vulnerable citizens. Contact your MPP and ask where they stand on this important issue.

Colleen Cooper and Carol Stalker are members of Basic Income Waterloo Region.

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Opinion | Basic Income Guarantee is the best way to improve lives - TheSpec.com

Pioneering places: 10 hotspots of positive change in 2021 - Positive News

A new year is nearly upon us, but theres still just enough time for a whistle-stop tour of the UK and Irish places that made Positive News headlines in 2021. Buckle up and enjoy the ride

A new year is nearly upon us, but theres still just enough time for a whistle-stop tour of the UK and Irish places that made Positive News headlines in 2021. Buckle up and enjoy the ride

This former crucible of the industrial revolution is going full steam ahead with the UKs first large-scale urban rewilding project. Plans were given the green light by Derby city council in November. A public consultation will help shape the proposal, but ideas for the 320-acre Allestree Park (pictured) mooted by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust include new habitats and the reintroduction of key species such as water vole and harvest mouse.

Image: Derby city council

Part of a global push-back against the intrusive brouhaha of street advertising, activists from Bristol-based group Adblock have been arming city dwellers with the skills to oppose billboard planning proposals, then helping them reimagine the freed-up space for a brighter, ad-free future. Trees, climbing walls and community-led art projects in place of a noisy barrage touting junk food and chain stores? They get the thumbs-up from us.

Image: Colin Moody/Rising Arts Agency

Some 2,000 Irish creatives can expect a very happy new year following the announcement of a novel scheme the first of its kind in the world to support arts sector workers which will pay a basic income of around 325 (275) per week. Applications open next month, with a rollout planned for the spring. 25m (21.2m) has been set aside for the first 12 months of the three-year pilot project.

Image: Melanie Van Leeuwen

Although still very much at the ideas stage, Holyrood is mooting plans to introduce a minimum income guarantee (MIG) scheme by the year 2030. Rather than a universal basic income, which is given to everyone regardless of means, the MIG would target people on low incomes. Welfare payments would be supplemented through employment and other support services. The concept isnt supported by everyone, but The Scottish National Party is already delivering on election promises by setting up a MIG steering group.

Image: Nicholas Chester Adams

Once the heart of Britains automotive industry, Birmingham has performed a spectacular U-turn by approving plans to drive out cars for good. The Midlands city Britains second largest will be transformed into a large-scale low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN), with zero-emission buses and many roads closed to motorised traffic. Zoning the city into traffic cells will give priority to walking, cycling and public transport.

Image: Emilio Georgiou

Irelands capital lay scene to a David and Goliath battle for the heart and soul of its musical heritage in recent weeks. Property developers unveiled plans to demolish much of the citys iconic Cobblestone pub and Irish Music School, replacing it with a hotel. Following a spirited campaign and street demos, the city council told them: No. Dublins Green MEP Ciarn Cuffe branded the proposed development: An over-scaled, crude, and soulless monument to greed. Buy that man a pint of Guinness.

Image: William Murphy

The Northern Forest Initiative got a welcome 15m boost from the UK government in September, furthering plans to plant a leafy, coast-to-coast corridor of 50m trees linking Liverpool with Hull, via Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. The area is one of the most denuded in the UK, with just 8 per cent tree cover. The money will enable the planting of 1m trees over the coming year, adding to the 3m already planted under the guidance of the Woodland Trust.

Image: Johannes Plenio

Two new schemes championing pedal power rolled out in the capital this year. In Hackney, a rental scheme for e-cargo bikes has enabled residents to swerve the high cost of forking out for one and make light work of shuttling goods across a busy city. Meanwhile in Tower Hamlets, Londons most deprived borough, a pop-up bicycle library began loaning bikes to locals for free, as well as providing expert cycling advice.

Image: Jon Bewley/Sustrans

Another high five to Scotland, this time for its commitment to rewilding. Trees for Life broke ground on the worlds first rewilding centre, located on the Dundreggan estate near Loch Ness. The attraction will act as a gateway to the estates 10,000 acres, where a decade of reforestation has seen the return of golden eagles for the first time in 40 years. Meanwhile, the Affric Highlands initiative will see peat bogs, wildlife habitats and river corridors restored across 500,000 acres, making it one of the largest rewilding projects in Europe.

Image: Grant Willoughby

Edible playgrounds may sound like settings for a dystopian take on Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory, but environmental charity Trees for Cities began making them a reality in 10 Cardiff schools, giving kids access to greener playground spaces. In another case of thinking ahead, Wales flagship Future Generations programme gained international recognition, with the UN announcing plans to adopt the Welsh approach. Plans are afoot to create a UNSpecial Envoy for Future Generations.

Image: Trees For CitiesMain image: Jon Bewley/Sustrans

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Pioneering places: 10 hotspots of positive change in 2021 - Positive.News

It is unfortunate but true that liberalisation and economic reform appear to have benefited only a small fraction of the population. It is truly disturbing that there is a growing concentration of income and wealth among the top 10% of the global population. That cannot be a healthy trend; it could damage the social fabric and trigger a political backlash like the Occupy Wall Street movement not so long ago.

The top 10% of the population takes 52% of global income while the poorest half earns 8.5%. Disparities in wealth are more striking as the top 10% owns 76% of all wealth while the bottom 50% owns barely 2%, according to the World Inequality Report 2022.

The report is published by the World Inequality Lab, under the leadership of Lucas Chancel and coordinated by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. Hundreds of researchers have contributed to building a database to generate internationally comparable estimates of income and wealth disparities for long periods of time.

India is one of the extremely unequal countries with the top 10% garnering 57.1% of national income while the share of the bottom 50% is 13.1%. The top 10% earns 22 times the average income of the poorest half of the population. Income inequality in India is higher than in China where the top 10% takes 41.7% of national income while the bottom 50% earns 14.4% and even the US where the top 10% takes 45.5% of national income while the share of the bottom 50% is 13.3%.

On the wealth front, disparities are much worse as India has the dubious distinction of the largest number of billionaires per trillion dollars of GDP. The ranks of millionaires and billionaires are growing every year, especially since the mid-1980s. The frothy stock market boom during the coronavirus pandemic, despite weak economic fundamentals, further contributed to their accumulation of wealth.

According to the World Inequality Report, income inequality in India existed in the past as well based on information from income tax returns, surveys and other sources, and tracked a U-shaped curve. Under the British colonial rule, the income share of the top 10% was around 50%. After Independence, socialist-inspired five-year plans contributed to reducing this share to 35-40%. Since the 1990s, this share has gone up to 57.1%. While the top 10% has largely benefited from economic reforms, the full brunt of this growing concentration of income has been borne by the poorest half of the population.

However, recent trends are provisional as the report notes that, over the past three years, the quality of official inequality data has deteriorated.The big question naturally is what can be done about making the world less unequal.The report forcefully argues that disparities are not inevitable as they reflect political choices.

The report reviews policy options that are open to governments for redistributing wealth through progressive taxation and investing in the future. After all, the rise of modern welfare states in the 20th century was linked to the rise of steep progressive taxation. Even with a modestly progressive wealth tax, 1.6% of global incomes could be generated and reinvested in education, health and ecological transition.

In India, such revenues can sustain a quasi-universal basic income scheme for farmers or the national employment guarantee scheme, among others. The urgent need is to act before the cumulative concentration of incomes and wealth seriously strains the countrys social compact.

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Need to address Indias growing disparities - Financial Express

Indias first attempt at looking at its poverty problem through a multi-dimensional lens paints a mixed picture of progress and failure. The nations first multi-dimensional poverty index, released by the NITI Aayog, underlines the fact that when poverty is viewed from a holistic perspective, rather than through the sole prism of income, a substantial part of the population continues to be both economically and multi-dimensionally poor.

Multi-dimensional poverty measures not only track income and consumption but look at deprivation in three equally weighted dimensions health, education and the standard of living. These, in turn, are tracked by indicators for nutrition, access to healthcare, education and access to basics such as safe drinking water, sanitation, housing etc.

It is now half-a-century since the late Indira Gandhi came up with the slogan garibi hatao during the 1971 election campaign. At that time, the slogan was understood as one of her governments deliverables if elected to power presumably, within a five-year period. But more than ten such quinquennia later, poverty remains stubbornly entrenched in India, despite the tremendous strides made over the past decades in lifting people out of poverty.

Although India has emerged as the country with the highest rate of poverty reduction in recent years, with 271 million people lifted out of poverty between 2006 and 2016 according to the UNs Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2019, the pandemic and the resultant recession have caused a massive setback to poverty alleviation efforts. While the UN has been releasing a multi-dimensional poverty index since 2010, this is the first time that India has attempted to track it.

The Indian index uses two more indicators access to ante-natal care and financial inclusion, as measured by bank accounts. This may perhaps account for the difference in overall multi-dimensional poverty incidence as measured by the UN, which estimated the population in poverty at 364 million in 2019, or 28 per cent of the population and the NITI Aayogs estimation, which pegs it at 25 per cent of the population as being multi-dimensionally poor.

The studys findings do not surprise. Bihar, with 51.91 per cent of the states population multidimensionally poor, is the worst performer, followed by Jharkhand (42.16 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (37.79 per cent). The district-level numbers also point to stark inequalities even with states with a high level of poverty. Bihar has as many as 11 districts with a poverty ratio of over 60 per cent while UP has three with a ratio of over 70 per cent. In contrast, nine out of Keralas 14 districts had a poverty ratio of less than one per cent.

The findings should provide the framework for a completely revamped approach to poverty eradication. It is not simply a question of money. Along with direct financial support (such as a universal basic income or an employment guarantee scheme), our approach has to focus on enhanced outcomes on the related dimensions of health, education and standard of living.

Sustainable poverty reduction can only be achieved when the focus is on improving household incomes through a multi-pronged approach of education, skilling and job creation, along with provision of healthcare and financial inclusion. Otherwise, garibi hatao will continue to remain a mere slogan.

(To receive our E-paper on whatsapp daily, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)

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FPJ Edit: Garibi Hatao - NITI Aayogs multi-dimensional poverty index takes a holistic view of the - Free Press Journal

Employees holding worker rights banners at protest.

Theres been an unanticipated upside to the pandemic. The shutdown altered our most basic assumptions about the nature of the workplace. Millions of workers, and thousands of employers, discovered that they dont need lavish, extensive, and centralized offices to get the job done. As it turns out, far more people than anyone expected can work perfectly well at home. Technology made this possible many years ago, but it took a socially enforced period of isolation to prove how effective remote working can be.

That was the first beneficial reset.

The second is that wages are going up. We face a worker shortage, even though the economy is surging back to life. This is going to have a lasting effect on what people earn, maybe into the foreseeable future. As relief for laid-off workers, the government provided ample unemployment benefits. An unintended outcome of this subsistence-level income is that workers are reluctant to go back to actual jobs since it would mean a lower income, compared to unemployment. The result: employers are raising wages, trying to incentivize the lazier among us who are smart enough to do the math and wait until wages rise enough to make it worth going back to work. This will end in September, when unemployment benefits cease, but wages are sticky. The uptick in pay will have rippleeffects for a while.

As George Bailey said, when he found himself in a powerful bargaining position inIts a Wonderful Life,This is a very interesting situation!

It's been a long, long time since workers have had more power than employers when it comes to establishing a wage workers may not have had this power since the heyday of labor unions.

As CNBC reports, Chipotle is raising wages an average of $15 per hour. Bank of America BAC is up to a minimum of $25 per hour.

The question is whether employers will take advantage of the coming labor surpluswhen everyone floods back into the job marketby offering lower wages and/or freezing wage growth. As the New York Times NYT puts it: Theres a big caveat. If the millions of workers who are currently sidelined start searching for jobs, they could flood the market with a new supply of workers, holding back pay.

Higher wages traditionally are a harbinger of inflation.Inflation is already virulent in the financial markets and especially real estate. Its seeping into the prices of consumer goods normally used to measure the cost of living. Anyone who shops for food sees it. In the automotive sector, inflation is at around 7 percent now.

However, rising wages are not likely to be a contributing factor. More money chasing a comparative scarcity of goods will push prices higher. But for more products now, productive capacity is, in general, as high as it has ever been in human history and its scalable. Nearly everything is commoditized: lower prices and better customer service have become the only way to create a competitive advantage. This downward price pressure is here to stay. If thats the case, then workers are in a good position to get ahead of the curve, economicallythe pandemic has demonstrated how crucial human labor is and how valuable it can be to any companys ability to earn higher profits.

All of which means we may be at an inflection point where some employers will be forced, against their will, to recognize something quite pleasing: the lavish return on investment they get from paying their people a fair wage. Happy workers are devoted and creative workers who contribute ideas for better products and new ways to delight customers. Those are two sure ways to expand markets and increase revenue. Higher wages are thus an investment in the future, not a cost of doing business.

But so far wage increases are very small encouraging, but insufficient. Ezra Klein had a smart, but misguided Op Ed in the New York Times recently, a well-argued but partly clueless case for a Universal Basic Income. To narrow income inequality and eliminate poverty in the U.S., he approved of proposals to guarantee around $12,000 each year to every American citizen. It would essentially be Social Security for everyone, not just the retireda sort of nest egg around which a worker would have more power to choose better work to supplement this foundational income.

It's a fine ideamaking sure everyone has a fair and viable income. But routing money through the government and then back into the pockets of workers is a dismal proposal. A universal basic income is something corporations and most profitable employers should see as their own responsibilityhaving the government take care of it is essentially to let the private sector off the hook. The pressure should be on every American employer to find a way to pay workers all they need to have a life that gives them a chance for a better future.

Why not have the government take control of this? Look at the numbers from the Government Accountability Office (GOA). In a chart on the second page of the report, the GOA lists various federal programs to help lower income families, from Medicaid to Food Stamps. The chart shows the total budget for the program and the percentage of that budget dedicated to administrative costs: salaries of federal workers and other costs rather than funds directed to American citizens who need the help.

Here are the percentages of total budget for a program going to the federal government itself. Medicaid spend 59 percent of its total budget simply to process the payments going to American citizens; the food stamp program devotes an unbelievable 91 percent of its budget to its own administration, and the Child Care Development Fund spends 73 percent of its budget on itself rather than in the form of payments to help provide childcare to workers who require it in order to go to work.

This alone demonstrates why the private sector should take on the responsibility for creating an analog to the Universal Basic Income in the form of higher compensation. It would save taxpayers billions of dollars. Ezra Klein makes a good point: For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isnt among our priorities.

But it should be a priority in the private sector rather than in Washington D.C. All the companies who have embraced stakeholder capitalism have proven that it can be done. Companies like Costco, Home Depot HD , Microsoft MSFT , and dozens of others have already established a living wage for all their workers and have enjoyed remarkable returns leading eventually to higher profits.If this kind of sensible business governance could become universal, proposals for a UBI would wither away. People would already be making enough to build a good life without help from Uncle Sam.

In a way, UBI is a taxation on most working people. They will be subsidizing shareholder profits. In other words, businesses pay workers less, so shareholders can make higher profits, while the government makes up the difference between existing wages and fair wages. Taxpayers pay the government to enable the government to do what the private sector should already be doingpaying people what they deserve.

And why are businesses refusing to pay workers a living wage by sharing with them the value of what they produce? Shareholders are only one of the multiple stakeholders crucial to the success of a company. And they arent the owners of the company.

This insanity must stop. Not paying workers an incremental share of the value they create is simply bad businessbut its also bad economics. Having the government and taxpayers step in to essentially boost profits and enable average workers to pay their bills is unfair, inefficient and dumb.

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A Universal Basic Income Is The Private Sectors Job, Not The Taxpayers - Forbes

The end of the 20 uplift to Universal Credit this week represents the biggest overnight cut to the basic rate of social security since the Second World War at a time when the effects of the pandemic are still being felt.

This, combined with the end of the furlough scheme, will plunge millions of families into poverty over the next few months. Politicians, activists and civil society leaders agree there is still an urgent need to provide economic support that protects everybody.

Welcome as the furlough scheme and the uplift to Universal Credit were, their targeted design meant that many fell through the cracks, and the government spent much of last summer rushing through loans, grants and add-on schemes to catch those who didn't qualify for one reason or another.

A crisis that affects everyone needs a response that protects everyone.

That's why, at the UBI Lab Network, we're proposing that the government put in place what we call a Resilience Universal Basic Income (UBI). This is a new and fully costed proposal that we're proud to launch today in openDemocracy.

We want to give every working-age adult (16-64) resident in the UK 400 a month for a year no strings attached.

We also want to give all children and pensioners 200 a month. This would be without any changes to existing benefits or the State Pension.

Unlike the small mountain of paperwork generated by the furlough scheme and Universal Credit, receiving the payments (which we're calling a COVID Dividend) would be straightforward. All you would have to do is show that you're a permanent resident of the UK to claim your money. Everyone would receive the COVID Dividend, regardless of income, wealth or work.

The Resilience UBI would initially last for a year, but it could be extended depending on the circumstances of the pandemic. In our full proposal paper, we've also outlined how it could be transitioned into a permanent Universal Basic Income for everyone.

Our Resilience UBI would guarantee economic security for every household in the UK, and would give citizens the crucial spending power needed to revive our struggling communities and high streets. It would build up resilience, both in individual households and the economy as a whole, to protect against future shocks like COVID.

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We want to give everyone in Britain 400 a month no strings attached - Open Democracy

Food security is about more than keeping the cupboards full.

For the last decade, the Kawartha Lakes Food Coalition made up of individuals interested in local, national and global food systems, organizations that serve those who sometimes do not have enough food and stakeholders that produce, process and distribute food has been working to address the issue of food insecurity in the Kawartha Lakes by fostering initiatives within the community.

The Food and Agriculture Organization declared food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

The level of food insecurity in the Kawartha Lakes region is one of the highest in Ontario. Household food insecurity in the Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County sat at 14.4 per cent in 2019 and has become even higher as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the provincial average of 13.3 per cent.

During the past year, the Coalitions Food Security Working Group has continued to focus on the root causes of poverty and food insecurity through advocacy for income-based solutions such as a basic income guarantee, safe and affordable housing and accessible and quality child care and transportation.

Some of the initiatives undertaken include:

Participated in the provincial prebudget consultation and provided recommendations for income-based solutions to help address the root causes of food insecurity;

Participated in Kawartha Lakes Zoning Bylaw Review Project and submitted bylaw suggestions to help support the local sustainable food system and increase access to healthy and local food;

Participated in Food Secure Canadas advocacy campaign, Growing Resilience And Equity: A Food Policy Action Plan in the Context of COVID-19;

Advocated to enact legislation for a basic income guarantee as an effective long-term response to the problem of persistent poverty and household food insecurity, as well as the short-term consequences of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic;

Updated and revamped the Food Security Action Plan of the Poverty Reduction Strategy for the City of Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton in collaboration with Haliburton Harvest, Haliburton County FoodNet and Ending Poverty Roundtable for CKL and Haliburton;

Implemented the free Summer Outreach Lunch program in collaboration with community partners, providing 453 lunches to children, 125 lunches to A Place Called Home and 112 lunches to BGC Kawarthas.

For more information about the Kawartha Lakes Food Coalition, contact Heather Kirby at heather@kawarthalakesfoodsource.com.

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Kawartha Lakes ranked one of highest in province in food insecurity - ThePeterboroughExaminer.com

(Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Brendan Croft)

Intellidex, a financial services research firm, recently entered the debate on the issue of a Basic Income Grant/Guarantee (BIG). Around half of its report Is a basic income grant sustainable? commissioned by Business Unity South Africa and Business Leadership South Africa is spent critiquing three existing BIG-related research reports.

These reports come from Deloitte (commissioned by Nedlac), DNA Economics (commissioned by the IEJ), and the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) the latter referring to a recent policy brief, Financing Options for a Universal Basic Income Guarantee. In this brief, the IEJ put forward 19 tax-related financing options for a BIG. The IEJ comes in for special consideration, receiving an Appendix all of its own, and sharp criticism from Intellidex.

In this article we respond to three aspects of those criticisms, showing how the Intellidex report misrepresents the work of the IEJ, contains mistakes of its own, and fails to live up to the standard it sets for others.

Misrepresenting the IEJs work

Two of the most important criticisms, levelled repeatedly, are that the modelling by the IEJ fails to account for any interactions between the taxes proposed and that the economy-wide impacts of these taxes are not appropriately modelled. These omissions, it is argued, result in a lack of clarity on how the tax measures impact each other or the economy.

While both these elements may be absent from the IEJ brief, the brief neither seeks, nor claims, to undertake such modelling.

In any fair reading of the IEJ brief, this is immediately obvious.

Regarding the interaction between tax options, the brief makes clear its objective is to place on the table a series of financing options as appears in the title for further consideration. These are not exhaustive and are not presented as necessarily constituting a combined package; as the conclusion notes: the array presented is not necessarily a package, allowing for further consideration and subsequent selection. There are hundreds of ways in which these 19 options can be combined, and to expect the brief to have explored the interaction between the taxes in each of these scenarios is manifestly unreasonable.

Similarly, the brief makes no claims to model the macroeconomic impact of these taxes. In fact, the conclusion notes that [a] further Policy Brief looking at the impact of a UBIG (Universal Basic Income Grant) on poverty, inequality, and macroeconomic indicators will be released by the IEJ. This further policy brief one of two under production draws from the already-published Fiscally Neutral Basic Income Grant Scenarios: Economic and Development Impacts by Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS), a leading macroeconomic modeller of the South African economy. That Intellidex bemoans the lack of macroeconomic modelling and then studiously ignores the ADRS work is curious.

If it is reasonable for the IEJs brief to do some things and not others, is it not also fair for Intellidex to point out these missing elements?

Unfortunately, this is not what the Intellidex report does.

Rather, it incorrectly implies that the IEJ has undertaken modelling and that this modelling is poorly done. This is used to discredit the proposals.

As any economist will know, what the IEJ offers is a series of calculations, not a modelling exercise. Intellidex deliberately implies otherwise, referring throughout to the IEJ model and, at times, lumping the IEJs work together with the critique of Deloittes modelling their models, a flaw in the models used, the outcomes are entirely predictable but are not evidence in the modelling done by Deloitte, DNA Economics and IEJ, and so on.

If the IEJ had undertaken modelling, then failing to consider the interaction between tax options would be a serious oversight, rather than simply being beyond the scope of a particular output.

Similarly, Intellidex implies that the IEJ is making claims as to the macroeconomic effects of its funding proposals something explicitly not done and that these claims are poorly substantiated. On this fallacious basis, the work is rejected, summed up clearly here:

As described in some detail in Section Two, the evidence presented by Deloitte, the IEJ and DNA Economics about the macroeconomic effects of a BIG is unpersuasive. Their models are not designed to test the effect of a large rise in tax rates on a range of critical macroeconomic variables which are assumed by those models to be fixed. No reliance can be placed on the conclusions proffered in those reports, which we believe should be discounted.

The IEJ presents no such evidence and offers no such model, fixed or otherwise.

One might be tempted to read this as one giant misunderstanding. And, arguably, a fair criticism could be that the IEJ should have done more to expressly state the limitations of that particular brief we had assumed this was obvious.

However, we find it hard to consider the above as a genuine misunderstanding, given that the Intellidex report is filled with other distortions that can only be read as intended to discredit the IEJ. For example, the report implies the IEJ takes a maximalist position, citing a grant of R3,500 at a cost of R1.4-trillion a scenario expressly included in the IEJs work as illustrative, given its appearance in the public domain, and considered by the IEJ, at the outset, as unaffordable.

Mistakes of its own

The third central criticism levelled is that the IEJs work contains mistakes and misstatements.

On some issues, Intellidex offers some useful critiques. We are in agreement that the broad category of irregular expenditure is a poor way of judging wasteful and unnecessary expenditure, and concede that our estimate of VAT recouped from the spending of the BIG may be overstated to the extent to which it is financed from lowering the expenditure of higher-income earners on VATable items. (It is, however, obvious that, contrary to Intellidex, the net receipts will increase somewhat as some taxes particularly on wealth are levied on pools of funds that wouldnt otherwise enter the real economy.)

On some other issues, we are not at loggerheads on the substance. For example, it is common cause that a wealth tax is a complex instrument, with wealth being difficult to value and hard to estimate. This does not, contrary to Intelledixs implication, make it unreasonable to pursue. In fact, Intellidixs contention that this tax is undesirable, as it would fall so disproportionately on the extremely small number of major wealth holders in South Africa, can easily be read as an argument in its favour that it would tackle extreme wealth concentration.

But there are other instances where the Intellidix report is simply wrong.

Most glaring of these is with regards to a Resource Rent Tax. The IEJ and DNA consider a resource rent as windfall profits made by resource firms, most commonly on the back of commodity price booms. Using a World Bank study, we calculate a 25% tax on rents worth R154-billion. Intellidex contends the World Bank methods means this R154-billion is not a rent at all, but that some of these are funds that must be distributed as wages and taxes. However, the World Bank reports source document shows this is false, and the R154-billion is arrived at after already taking into account the cost of both harvesting and extracting the resource including paying taxes and wages. Supplementary available explanations imply it also excludes normal returns.

Others include basic errors, like misstating that the IEJ projects over R350bn can be raised by 2023/24 to fund a BIG when the IEJs options total R270-billion for that year, and sleight-of-hand distortions of what the IEJ brief actually says. That Intellidex makes a fuss about purported IEJ errors and then makes basic errors like this is notable.

Failing to live up to its own standards

Perhaps most bizarrely, Intellidex appears to feel no compulsion to hold itself to the same standard as it holds others.

According to Intellidex, the inexcusable flaw, discussed above, of DNA and the IEJs work is that they present policy options in the absence of adequately modelling the macroeconomic impact of the BIG and associated tax measures.

Intellidex, however, does little to provide any evidence modelling or otherwise for its extremely strong, and repeated, macroeconomic claims. Intellidex, the report notes, strongly believes that the macroeconomic consequences of implementing a BIG would lead to deepening poverty, rather than its alleviation. It goes so far as to say that a BIG represents an existential threat to SAs macroeconomic stability. Strongly believing something to be the case just doesnt cut it in policy debate.

These claims are substantiated only on the basis of recounting the sort of macroeconomic theoretical assumptions that one would find in orthodox undergraduate economics textbooks that higher taxes lead to a fall in consumption expenditure, a drop in savings, a reduction in investment, and various growth-retarding behavioural changes.

We should view these assertions with extreme caution, both theoretically and empirically.

Theoretically, the world in which investment is a function of savings, for example, is, as the Bank of England pointed out, a fiction. Investment is, in large part, driven by bank lending, itself not constrained by some pre-established pot of prior savings.

Empirically, we must consider the South African context in the concrete. Is the extraordinary wealth held by a tiny elite in South Africa being invested in productive job-creating enterprises, or in speculative financial assets seeking capital gains? Where are pension funds investing? What percentage of investment by non-JSE-listed non-financial enterprises in sectors most likely to create jobs is financed via bank credit versus bonds and equity? What goods and services do the wealthy and poor buy and what is the relative weight of domestic goods versus imports in these? And so on.

This is not the place to attempt to answer these questions, but the answers will play a critical role in determining the macroeconomic impact of taxing in order to finance a BIG. To our knowledge, the most detailed modelling, ignored by Intellidex, where these relationships are estimated based on historical data, is that by the ADRS referred to above. In that modelling, the macroeconomic impacts of a BIG are positive.

The alternatives

Intellidex places on the table a few alternatives to the BIG. These are not very detailed but, presumably, this was not the focus of their report. Some of the issues raised for instance on eligibility, or the interaction with public employment schemes are covered in the IEJs forthcoming work. Others bear further debate. It is clear, for example, that Intellidexs public employment proposal is far more expensive when a similar number of beneficiaries is targeted.

Intellidexs presumption, however, is clear South Africa cannot afford an ambitious poverty-alleviating social transfer programme such as a BIG.

This is an unhelpful starting point and one we hope the business associations that commissioned the report will reject.

The presumption that not a cent more can be raised through increased taxes or borrowing is patently absurd.

The IEJs work and presumably that of Deloitte and DNA Economics is neither perfect nor comprehensive. But what the country needs is a coming together of stakeholders, including researchers, driven by the question of how do we design and fund the most ambitious programme to address our deep crisis? Having been forced to set the record straight through this op-ed, this is the question that the IEJ would rather participate in answering. DM

Dr Gilad Isaacs is Director at the Institute for Economic Justice. He is also an economist at Wits University, where he coordinates the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative and lectures.

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'A hatchet job' A response by the Institute for... - Daily Maverick