Job-guarantee program would work better than basic income

Re Basic income isn’t the panacea some thought, study finds, Jan. 29

Rather than guaranteeing income, the federal government should guarantee opportunities to work. This can be achieved by direct job-creation programs at the local level of the kind that have been successful in countries such as Argentina, India and South Africa.

Our society has children and elderly to care for, youth to educate, houses and buildings to retrofit, rivers and parks to tend, and neighbourhoods to beautify.

A job-guarantee program would not only assure that those able and willing to work could contribute to their communities, while maintaining income and self-confidence, but would also set a livable minimum wage (with benefits) that the private sector would match to retain a satisfied workforce.

(For those who cannot work because of sickness or disability, generous guaranteed incomes should, indeed, be provided.)

Larry Kazdan, Vancouver

How disappointing that the author didn’t bother to include the voices of any dissenting experts dismissing the relevance of a basic income to lift Canadians out of poverty.

Neither the author, nor the panel, spoke with any of the 4,000 experts who lived on a basic income for a short time before the Ford government cancelled the Ontario Basic Income Pilot.

Talking to a few of the people who lived on the pilot could have provided the panellists with evidence that might have given them pause.

No, basic income didn’t solve all of their problems. But having an income that could cover basic needs gave them better health, more dignity, more choices and, perhaps most importantly, hope for their futures. Why didn’t the panel consider their expertise?

The panellists don’t seem to have heeded the advice of political philosopher, John Rawls, who argued that, to create the most just society, you must imagine the world you want without knowing what your own social position would be in that world. In that case, Rawls argues that we would all choose to maximize the prospects of the least well-off and the most marginalized in our society.

I doubt anyone would choose to create the bureaucratic, paternalistic, moralistic system of inadequate supports that the panel wants to tweak.

In the meantime, the ultimate cost of inaction on the deep poverty endured by one in 10 Canadians is deaths, the premature and preventable deaths of many more of our neighbours and fellow citizens.

There is no time for tinkering with the social assistance system, creating incremental tweaks. People’s lives are at stake.

Elaine Power, Kingston