Canada's Ontario Government Ends Basic Income Project (www.cbc.ca)

Lisa MacLeod, Progressive Conservative member and Children, Community and Social Services Minister of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, said Tuesday that she would end the city's basic income pilot project, calling it expensive and "clearly not the answer for Ontario families." Few details are available as to how the project will come to an end, but MacLeod said her government will end the program "ethically" for anyone who is currently enrolled. Slashdot reader kenh shares an excerpt from a CBC.ca report: Close to 4,000 people were enrolled in the basic income pilot program in Thunder Bay, Lindsay, Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County. The pilot project started in April 2017. It was originally set to last three years, and explore the effectiveness of providing a basic income to those living on low incomes -- whether they were working or not. Under the project, a single person could have received up to about $17,000 a year, minus half of any income he or she earned. "A couple could have received up to $24,000 per year." People with disabilities could have received an additional $6,000.

Comments

Re: Clearly not the answer?

[catchingallspam]

I'm not convinced such a short and limited test would prove anything about UBI. Personally I oppose it on principle and am glad they cancelled it. I don't believe in giving people something for nothing. And it's not the cost of social programs which will bury this society, it's our massive healthcare system that will do it. So yeah..nobody wants to discuss the huge elephant in the room. They wanna throw free money at people who don't wanna put in anything but the absolute minimum effort in life. I don't think this results in a positive outcome for our society.

Re: Easy to dis

[ShanghaiBill]

Oh, I see. Yes. Instead of UBI, we can just gas anyone who is not smart enough to design a robot.

We don't need to gas anyone. Just make UBI contingent on agreeing to be sterilized. Or even agreeing to have only one child. In a generation or two, the problem will resolve itself. Patience.

Another solution would be to use Crispr-Cas9 to edit out the low IQ genes. With the right tech, there is no reason that dumb people need to have dumb kids. We can fix obesity the same way.

Re: Translation.

[dryeo]

I note that the tea party seems to have gone away now that the right team of criminals and traitors is racking up even larger deficits.

Re:Translation.

[BlueStrat]

We ran out of other people's money.

Translation:

Ontario just elected a dumber version of Trump, cancelling the project signals nothing more than it seemed like a "lefty liberal" idea.

Exactly! Stupid voters, don't they know that the Liberals are far smarter than they are and know what's best for them far better than they do?

Marx was right, all that democratic "let the people decide" horseshit was a bad idea. People rarely make the right choices because they tend to vote in their own self-interest rather than in the best interests of government and the collective. Most people (and particularly Conservatives) are no smarter than the average cow and we don't let cows elect leaders, enact laws, or set national policy. Just appoint leaders and enact laws, and leave the cow's opinions (especially conservative bovine opinions) one way or the other out of it, right? /s

Strat