http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/minimum-income-basic-income_n_6370458.html
To begin, so many of the arguments made in the article are the kind of trash you can only expect from journalists, but let me restate the premise and answer to that rather than saying anything specific about this article (my note will be shorter that way).
If I understand it correctly (and please correct me if I’m wrong), the idea is that we in Canada have a huge, complex, layered welfare apparatus that requires vast amounts of resources (labor and money) to operate. The results of that apparatus have been underwhelming (although I think this assessment too kind) which, given the enormous investment of resources, is extremely disappointing (even though it was entirely predictable). As a quick aside, have you ever wondered why the opinions of those schools of thought who predicted this outcome way back when these systems were implemented were neither identified in the article, nor were their adherents' enduring opinions specifically identified/weighted any more strongly than the others in spite of the empirically verifiable integrity of their earlier forecasts?
In any case, the solution: dismantle the cumbersome apparatus in favor of a streamlined, single program (the Basic Income) requiring perhaps a single bureaucracy to administer. The funds once allocated to the previous constellation of welfare programs are granted instead to the Basic Income Program, meaning huge savings because those other bureaucracies and the attendant overpaid bureaucrats with lavish benefits-packages will be nixed down to a fraction of their former size. In other words, the government gets a much-needed trimming and, as a result, the new program can now punch high above its fiscal weight on the poverty front.
If that’s the core premise then, given the system that we have, it’s absolutely an improvement. However, that’s assuming an “as-planned” outcome, which is likely myopic given the persistent refusal of social planners to square their ideas against basic, incontrovertible economic facts (rather than against shopping for economic theories that best suit their preferred, vote-garnering agendas). What will most likely happen in my opinion is that the (1) Basic Income will exist in tandem with most of the existing welfare programs, or (2) cut programs will be, overtime, reintroduced alongside the Basic Income that was supposed to supplant them, and (3) regardless of (1) or (2), the majority of bureaucrats will be re-shuffled and merged elsewhere into other government bureaucracies, rather than given their pink slips.
Just to be clear, I don’t support the system we have in Canada, but this can offer the prospect for an improvement on what remains a thieving political system. If we’re stuck with a band of lying, thieving mass counterfeiters (Canadian monetary policy carried through the Bank of Canada) who will slowly drive the citizenry into the ground no matter how we vote, then better that their sharing of that ill-gotten plunder be spread as efficiently and effectively as possible.
I won't hold my breath...
