A little Sowell food will cure that ailment

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Nov 20

RE: Ottawa should accept the call to test basic income.  Spectator editorial 4 Nov 20.  Basic income has been a hobby horse for the People's Daily ever since Premier Doug Ford cancelled the test program a couple years ago.

I don’t understand this fixation on “universal basic income,” as if the idea hasn’t been tested and studied thoroughly before.  It has been tested thoroughly, and American economist Thomas Sowell has written extensively on its adverse social impacts.  We have around us many examples of guaranteed basic income.

The Great Society programs broke up the Black family because of its perverse economic incentives.  Single mothers got more money raising kids without a father in the house.  The result is single parent Black families living in poverty and with no example of a man working for a living.  Now, 71 percent of Black children in America are born out of wedlock.

A person living on Canada Pension is more likely to adapt his or her lifestyle to the income rather than go out and find work.

The purpose of the CERB money was to quench the desire to look for work after the government put people out of work.

Look at the many social ills of aboriginal bands which survive on government money.  Poverty, crime, drugs, trouble all arise because the need to work for a living is eliminated.  Canada’s aboriginals are classic examples of the perverse consequences of guaranteed income.

Examples of universal basic income abound, there are studies aplenty, and there is no reason to create more examples.  Digest a little Sowell food: the social consequences of guaranteed income are not good.

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