Sally Lerner wrote: > Bravo Ed and Thomas, for your explanations of how a Basic Income > might function.
...which both deviated fundamentally from your website's version... > While I support a version that would be universal and > unconditional (get rid of stigma and address increasingly insecure > nature of many jobs), it is just possible that we in Canada will move > toward a BI in stages, group by group: "relentless incrementalism" as > Ken Battle (Caledon Institute) calls it. And he is a Friend of Paul > (Martin), our new Prime Minister. It rather seems to me that Paul Martin (and provincial counterparts like Gordon Campbell) is an adherent of "relentless DEcrementalism", as far as social welfare is concerned... But then, if "relentless INcrementalism" refers to the number of foodbanks, Friend Paul can easily adopt it. At any rate, my point remains that tax money would be better spent on * minimizing (at the root causes, i.e. education etc.) instead of maximizing (as with BI) the number of people who depend on welfare money, and on * creating jobs that are not "profitable" by neoclassical economic criteria but are necessary/desirable for social and environmental improvements. You can't say "do both this and BI", because the money spent on a general BI will lack for these things, no matter how you slice it, and you can't count on individual BI recipients to voluntarily do these jobs (see the railways example in my posting of 13-Dec). The result is that BI is detrimental to a sustainable (societal & environmental) solution, and highly compatible to a sell-out of Canada. Might explain why Ken is a Friend of Paul. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
