“One might assume that the Ontario Liberal government’s pilot project to provide a guaranteed basic income would be roundly dismissed by those on the political and economic right as yet another government-led social welfare scheme doomed to failure,” wrote Mark Gollom for CBC News on April 25, 2017.
Gollom continued, “But the policy has adherents among some free-market economists and libertarian thinkers who believe this type of program is the most efficient way to provide assistance to the poor.
“If you accept the idea that there’s going to be some sort of redistribution taking place in our system, then you want to do it in the most transparent and efficient way possible,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “And you want it to actually benefit people. And our current welfare system does neither.”
In the U.S., all levels of government combined spend over $1 trillion a year on at least 126 anti-poverty programs, Tanner wrote in a piece for the Cato Institute in 2015. Yet these programs, he said, are doing little “to help the poor get out of poverty or become self-sufficient.”
“We spend a lot of money and get very little bang for the buck,” he said.
On Monday, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the province is launching a three-year pilot project to provide up to $17,000 to 4,000 low-income residents of Hamilton, Lindsay and Thunder Bay. The current welfare system in Ontario is designed to provide financial relief to low-income individuals, provided they are attempting to look for work or will take part in activities to help them find a job.”
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