In Canada, and likely in other countries as well, UBI has been in discussion, at least in some circles, for a long time. One result of the COVID pandemic is increased attention, in some cases, to the question of how to best manage unemployment, gig work etc, resulting in greater attention being paid to the question of implementing a federal UBI. To be clear, I can not say whether the Canadian federal government will implement UBI (or even whether they are considering it), or whether any provincial governments are seriously looking at the possibility. That said, there is strong evidence that supports the UBI as an effective option, along with other interventions, to help create stability and achieve numerous UN Sustainable Development Goals.
One of questions around implementing UBI – or other critical services – is around how to fund them. That leads us to the intersection between UBI and wealth inequality. Without getting into a lot of details here, basically, extreme wealth inequality is bad, by itself, for a wide variety of reasons, including ways in which it imbeds power imbalances into society etc. In addition to all of those, one benefit to higher wealth taxes is that the funds can be used to pay for things that are part of the common good, such as UBI, schools, health care etc.
Basically, what UBI and reduced inequality means is this:
Here are a few resources, for further reading:
Disclaimer: Some resources that I post are new to me ie found when researching for this page and/or contain a lot of resources, which I naturally don’t have the time to read through completely before posting the page. Therefore, while I hope that you will find them useful and valuable, I can not guarantee the quality of the research on any website that I post, especially for those that are, themselves, a collection of links and websites that they have collated. I hope that you find them valuable, and use your own discretion as you research and learn.
Is basic income a good idea? Here’s what the evidence from around the world says: Link
Green New Deal: universal basic income could make green transition feasible: Link
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Tied in closely with the UBI is the question of wealth inequality, and with that, the role of wealth distribution as it ties in to power and related structures.
UN chief slams ‘myths, delusions and falsehoods’ around inequality :Guardian
Super-rich call for higher taxes on wealthy to pay for Covid-19 recovery: Guardian
BBC News – Coronavirus: Disney heir and Ben & Jerry’s call for higher taxes
In a pandemic, billionaires are richer than ever. Why aren’t they giving more? Link
Billionaire Chuck Feeney achieves goal of giving away his fortune Link
Why would anyone argue against billionaires paying more tax? Just see Useful Idiot theory Arwa Mahdawi
“During the 1930s and 40s and 50s, the right had derided liberal writers and editors as communists’ ‘useful idiots’, unwittingly doing the communists’ propaganda work,” the American writer Kurt Andersen recently wrote in the Atlantic. “It looks in retrospect as if, starting in the 1970s, a lot of them – of us – became capitalists’ useful idiots.” A lot of educated liberal professionals got co-opted into helping the super-rich argue that their unconscionable wealth is well-deserved. It is not just economic policies that have led to extreme inequality, it is the normalisation of inequality and the gentrification of greed; the re-branding of robber barons as “philanthropists” and hard-working innovators. It is hard to Make Billionaires Pay when so many useful idiots are intent on pandering to them. (Italics mine).
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