The idea of eliminating poverty by giving everyone enough money to live on without conditions, has been around for a long time. The proper technical term for any grant given to every person in a country or community, is a demogrant. Groups have been organised in most advanced nations to promote a demogrant as a solution to various social and economic crises. International organisations are developing to promote the demogrant idea.
The demogrant is called many things by these different groups; Basic Income, Negative Income Tax, Guaranteed Liveable Income. These groups approach the demogrant idea from different philosophies. They have different models for administering a demogrant.
Citizen's Income Toronto (CIT) calls demogrant a Citizen's Income (CI), as do many other groups world wide. CIT believes that using the name 'Citizen's Income' frames the issue in a more effective way. We believe that a demogrant must be understood in relation to other developments in the modern world.
The world's dominant economic system depends on unlimited growth and is now running up against the limits of the earth. This is creating a growing world crisis. In reaction to this crisis, people all over the world are starting to want a more genuine democracy, a co-operative and ecologically balanced economy, and the personal security which would come from a demogrant.
These three fit together well; when people have their needs met, they have time to participate in a strong democratic government, a strong democratic government can allocate finite resources in a way seen to be fair, and people will accept that allocation when they are sure that their needs will be met. However, the point of a demogrant is not to make a stronger democracy and a fairer and healthier economy. It is to protect the lives and freedom of those who are at grave risk during economic and political upheaval and transformation.
The credo of the World Social Forums is, "another world is possible". There is an evident and growing world wide consensus about the main features of the post capitalist world order. However, the transformation to a post capitalist world is not going to be easy or predictable. Globally, there will be wars, famines, tyrannies, and degradation of the planet's capacity to support human populations.
This is why the issue of a demogrant is somewhat different in Canada than in many other countries. Especially in most European countries, social welfare systems are well established and provide much greater personal security than Canada's. There is a much stronger cultural acceptance of the right to live and the right to have one's basic needs provided by the state.
The Canadian establishment media uses every minor adjustment the stronger welfare states make to their social safety net, to make false claims that these country's economies are being ruined by their social programs and so they are dismantling them. The correlation these countries demonstrate, between strong democracy, strong social security, and strong economies, is very strong. In these countries, discussion of a demogrant is a discussion of how to make the welfare state more effective.
In Canada the discussion of a demogrant is about how to fully establish a welfare state to protect, not just the well being, but the very lives of poor and marginalised people. The underclasses here had some economic security when the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) of 1965 was in force. Since its repeal in 1995 the poor have been under attack by right wing, religious, and other fanatics, with encouragement from corporate interests in control of government.
Canada has always been a bad country to be poor in. It has never really outgrown being a colony, or gained true economic independence and from that, political independence. The social history of Canada is one of adopting whatever social welfare systems are favoured by whatever powers currently have hegemony over it.
Colonies or hinterlands under imperialism are places where wealth is extracted and exported somewhere else. People are brought in to work and produce, and if they do not, they are encouraged to go somewhere else. 'Useless eaters' increase social costs and reduce profits for business.
This antipathy toward people who would merely like to be able to live for their own sake is further driven by cultural memes which are prominent among British and protestant peoples. There is the hard core protestant religious doctrine of dispensationalism; that poor people are poor because they are bad people whom God disapproves of, and enabling their survival is interfering with 'God's will'. There is the pseudoscientific doctrine of 'social Darwinism'; that the poor are of inferior genetic stock, and enabling them to survive and even reproduce degrades the quality of the human stock. There is economism, 'liberal' economics as a political doctrine, which tries to claim that the poor are economic failures and morally responsible for their failures, and that helping them to survive allows them to 'free load' off other people's efforts, and reduce 'competitiveness'.
Canada is not really very democratic or tolerant. We are among the last countries on earth which continue with a 'winner takes all' political system. This limits public input into decisions and leads to clientelism or 'patronage' systems. This makes it harder to get and keep social programs which protect the socially vulnerable.
Canada's isolation and natural wealth should partly shield us from upheavals, but the coming years will still be difficult times. The nature of Canadian society and its institutions leave its under classes especially vulnerable to scapegoating and other victimisation.
We have already seen in recent times in Canada a scapegoating of the unemployed in response to economic stress. The wealthier provinces have generally treated social welfare recipients most vindictively, especially during sudden economic downturns after 'booms'. Jurisdictions within Canada have tried to drive unemployed people to other jurisdictions rather than support them.
Given the greater economic inequality in Canada, and the tendency to attack and scapegoat the underclasses during any economic upheaval, and the lack of democracy and local economic control, and the lack of basic rights, the issue of a Citizen's Income is about creating a defensive barrier around the vulnerable. It is about giving the underclasses some resources not only to look after their own needs, but with which to organise to protect their own interests.
Like every other developed country on earth, Canada is going to have to make a great economic and social adjustment to the century of scarcity and limitations. The tendency is there to keep expansion going by squeezing the population harder. Those who are working are forced to work longer and harder for less, and encouraged to blame their situation on those who cannot or will not participate in this kind of abuse. Elimination of social supports eliminates the 'useless eaters' and increases the share of the common wealth that can be diverted to profit taking. Going down this path would lead to a drastic social and economic decline for everybody; a downward spiral to a depression or a dark age.
A Citizen's Income would be a barrier to Canadian society going this way. If the incomes of all Citizens are protected, it would be very hard to solve economic problems in an easy and temporary way by forcing down wages and cutting the social infrastructure. Instead, real economic and political reform would have to be attempted. The productivity of the country would have to be restricted to what can be sustained, and distributed in a more democratic manner. The result would be a more secure and stable society and a less stressful life for everyone.
Hatred against the poor is the most vicious, cowardly, and destructive of all forms of bigotry. Other targets of hate have some resources with which to organise to defend themselves. They have articulate representatives among them who can refute slanders. They have the means to be able to shield themselves from the harm of malicious attacks, and recover from it. The poor are the safest and easiest targets.
The public is aware of the problem of people being forced into the street. Many are dying of the elements, or have their health severely compromised. Other persecutions of the poor are less visible and less known.
Much of it is administrative. People are found starved to death or suicides in their homes, after their sole income is arbitrarily removed from them. Normal welfare benefits are deliberately set too low for anyone to survive on, forcing people to find ways to cheat in order to survive.
Hatred against welfare and disability benefits recipients is deliberately fomented. This often leads to vigilantism; harassment and assault. Police are pressed to carry out neighbourhood sweeps of undesirables. Shops that accept the business of undesirable people are driven out of business. Homeless people sleeping outside have been kicked to death or set on fire.
People who are working at low pay are increasingly abused. Canadians have no enforceable rights whatsoever when at work. There is no way to collect wages owed if the employer chooses not to pay. In no province does the legal minimum wage keep a single person out of poverty, let alone a family.
The point of a Citizen's Income is to protect those vulnerable to social/economic upheaval, which is most people, by protecting their incomes. This should insure that such upheaval is responded to in a progressive, rather than destructive and retrograde, way.