This City Eliminated Poverty, And Nearly Everyone Forgot About It - HuffPo

[WillyT]

This City Eliminated Poverty, And Nearly Everyone Forgot About It
Zi-Ann Lum - HuffPo
Posted: 12/30/2014 9:44 am EST Updated: 3 minutes ago


An aerial view of the city of Dauphin, Manitoba. Forty years ago, a groundbreaking experiment provided checks to Dauphin’s poorest to raise their incomes to a livable wage. (Photo: Dauphin Economic Development/Facebook)

<snip>

On a December afternoon, Frances Amy Richardson took a break from her quilting class to reflect on a groundbreaking experiment she took part in 40 years earlier.

“Well, that was quite a few years ago,” she said. “There was a lot of people that really benefitted from it.”

Between 1974 and 1979, residents of a small Manitoba city were selected to be subjects in a project that ensured basic annual incomes for everyone. For five years, monthly checks were delivered to the poorest residents of Dauphin, Manitoba –- no strings attached.

And for five years, poverty was completely eliminated.

The program was dubbed “Mincome” -- a neologism of “minimum income” -- and it was the first of its kind in North America. It stood out from similar American projects at the time because it didn’t shut out seniors and the disabled from qualification.

The project’s original intent was to evaluate if giving checks to the working poor, enough to top-up their incomes to a living wage, would kill people’s motivation to work. It didn’t.

But the Conservative government that took power provincially in 1977 -- and federally in 1979 -- had no interest in implementing the project more widely. Researchers were told to pack up the project’s records into 1,800 boxes and place them in storage.

A final report was never released.

Richardson is now 87 and still lives in Dauphin. She says only three or four of the city’s original Mincome recipients remain among the prairie community’s 8,251 residents.

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/city-eliminated-poverty-mincome_n_6392126.html

[belzabubba333]

1. dont they have voting in canada? and if so

shouldnt this say But the Conservative government that was elected provincially in 1977 -- and federally in 1979

our conservative government would never allow something like this to get to the floor

[Kalidurga]

2. You know if minimum wages were much higher like they need to be...

it really might cut down on people's incentive to work. You know that second or third job.... I think that is the real fear. There is a certain segment of society that leaches off people who will work for very little and many of the people who work for very little hourly pay have 2 or 3 jobs and their partners might have 1 job if they still have children or that one job is full time. And there are couples where since they have no children both are working two or three jobs. What will happen if they all can meet their needs with one full time job each?

[niyad]

5. golly, they might actually have time to pursue other interests--art, culture, peace, for example.

just think what would happen if people had time to actually pay attention to what the powers that be are doing to us, and had the energy left over to act.

(I apologize if I failed to recognize the sarcasm icon)

[jwirr]

12. Other interests like taking time to do things with their family.

[negoldie]

26. Powers

The powers that be don't want a person to have time to contemplate say......what the fucking government and private enterprise is doing to them. Folks with time to think might just vote out the sorry fuckers that are in it just for the power or status they receive from their election. I personally would get rid of every sorry assed elected official in government and would start with the turtle and work down from there.

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. There is nothing inherently socially valuable about labor.

One labors for compensation. The harder the work, the more the compensation.

What is better about a community in which the people work an average of 60 hours a week compared to one in which they work 30?

[knightmaar]

22. People like to feel useful

You can't get past that.

If that weren't true, then the Mincome program would have shown that hundreds of people quit their jobs, put their feet on their front porches and sucked on the government supplement for the duration of the project, only returning to work when the program was cancelled.

There is a great value to the individual in being usefully engaged in work. As such, rewarding work has great social value in general.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. I "work" in the sense we are using the term here, about 20 hours a week.

I also have a home business in which the labor is irregular, and I volunteer and stay active in my community.

I feel quite useful and fulfilled. Doubling my compensated workweek would make me feel less so.

The fact that I don't feel a need to work long hours leaves some unfilled labor demand on the table for someone else.

[aspirant]

25. Nobody in their right mind wants to work

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2014, 03:44 PM - Edit history (1)

If you jump out of bed and can't wait to get to the job, it's called a career or a labor of love

Work is something you are forced to do to survive.

With an annual living income you have choices. You are free to choose to volunteer and/or invest your time in a lower paying job with regular or shorter hours in a place where you are happy.

"put their feet up on their front porches" implying laziness is a right-wing talking point.

[geardaddy]

28. +1

[knightmaar]

33. So "Work"

We have different definitions of "work" then, I guess.

Work, to me, is exerting energy for a goal. I can work on my deck, work on my hardwood floors, or go to an office and work at my job. Some work you get paid for, some you don't. Some you enjoy, some you don't.

Ideally, I want to have enough money safely and wisely invested that I will never be forced to do any work I don't want to do. Then I will call myself "retired". Retired doesn't mean "no work". It means "work" is decoupled from "money".

But, if we use your definition of "work", then I concede your point.

(And yes, "putting there feet up..." is a conservative talking point. I meant it derisively that way. That is explicitly *not* what happens when you help out poor people.)

[NewDeal_Dem]

3. Very interesting

In 2011, Forget released a paper distilling how Mincome affected people’s health using census data. She found overall hospitalization rates (for accidents, injuries, and mental health diagnoses) dropped in the group who received basic income supplements.

By giving a community’s poorest residents enough to lift their incomes above the poverty line, there was a measurable impact on the health care system. It’s this kind of logic that Forget hopes will propel the idea of basic income forward, four decades later.

“I’m enough of an optimist to believe that eventually we’re going to end up there. I think we already have part of the program in place,” said Forget, referring to existing supplements including the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors and the National Child Benefit.

“The one gap in the system right now is the working poor: people working in insecure and precarious jobs.”

Two years before the Harper government shut down its operations, the National Council of Welfare released a damning report criticizing how welfare rules are trapping people in poverty.

“Canada’s welfare system is a box with a tight lid. Those in need must essentially first become destitute before they qualify for temporary assistance,” said TD Bank’s former chief economist Don Drummond after the social agency’s report was released in 2010.

“But the record shows once you become destitute you tend to stay in that state. You have no means to absorb setbacks in income or unexpected costs. You can’t afford to move to where jobs might be or upgrade your skills.”

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. Exactly.

The main problem with poverty is the mental state it brings.

[aspirant]

16. The other side

The main problem with extreme wealth is the immoral mental state it brings.

Greed and selfishness must be defined as mental diseases, not an American dream

All men are created and live as equals should be our motto.

When we are truly equal, positive emotions will abound.

[NewDeal_Dem]

51. two sides of the same coin i'd say.

[Demeter]

29. The main problem with poverty is the Economic state it brings

Never able to save, always one crisis away from death or starvation. Kept on a leash of poverty.

[Boreal]

42. "a leash of poverty"

Well said. I believe the US social welfare system does just that and it may be intentional. Keep people enslaved, dependent but punish them for earning enough money to be less poor. Keeps people corralled and disempowered. If we had a generous "mincome", and I mean like 50K per year for everyone, there would be no need for housing assistance, food assistance, or anything else as each would be able to afford to meet their needs. From there, they would be free to earn more, if they chose, but that 50K bottom limit would raise everyone to middle class and wipe out poverty.

[Marrah_G]

47. That is something that most people don't think about

Being poor means living in a constant state of fear and stress.

[jwirr]

15. The trap idea is also what happens to most poor here also today. I hope that this can somehow

become part of what we do here but I suppose we might as well forget it in the next 2 years for sure.

There are some good side effects from a program like this. A parent could stay home to take care of a severely disabled child or an elderly parent and still be able to afford the things they need. Everyone would be able to spend more in the economy. I would guess that crime would go down. A care provider could go on to school to better their lives.

That is just the short list I can think of at the minute.


Do you have a link for Forget?

[knightmaar]

20. Nationalized Healthcare

When you have a national healthcare system, you take a more pragmatic view of these things.

What's cheaper? Giving poor people enough money to eat nutritiously? Or dealing with their health problems when they can't afford good food?
Ah. And suddenly the Conservative party economists are like, "Shit, we may as well feed the poor, then, huh? Not because we care though, because we totally don't."

I think this is what motivated that Teenager Driving Program in Australia, where kids can volunteer to have their driving tracked. They get points for driving carefully and the points are exchanged for movie tickets, cell phones, etc. It's cheaper, you see, to buy thousands of movie tickets than to repair teenagers at the hospital.

[Boreal]

43. Great program!

And carrots always work better than sticks.

[Victor_c3]

4. They could have just done what American cities are starting to do

i.e. make it illegal to be homeless (via the use of bans on sleeping in public places, feeding homeless people, etc). That way you force the really poor and destitute people out of everyone's immediate sight. If a problem is out of sight then it is usually out of mind too.

In our merritocracy everyone knows that if you aren't rich or even able to support yourself financially it's because you just aren't working hard enough or aren't smart enough. It has nothing to do with who's vagina your head pops out of. Everyone knows that!

** I shouldn't have to say this, but I hope my sarcasm here is VERY obvious

[KingCharlemagne]

10. Bravo! A further advantage to criminalizing poverty and homelessness is that it

allows the poor and homeless to be 'commodified' and turned into grist for the for-profit private-sector prison-industrial complex, exactly as a Karl Marx or Frederick Engels on LSD might have predicted.

Yay, capitalism!

[csziggy]

34. The take the next logical step - as proposed by Jonathan Swift in 1729

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

just as Jonathan Swift intended when he wrote his essay.

[Victor_c3]

55. seems like a reasonable suggestion

Geeze! I didn't think people had that sort of sense of humor or sarcasm back then!

Thanks for sharing that with me. I will certainly pass that on in my own political arguments.

[niyad]

6. thank you for posting this fascinating piece.

[WillyT]

7. You Are Quite Welcome !!!

[Octafish]

11. The GOP makes out that helping others doesn't work because hand-outs make people lazy.

Maybe they feel that way about others because that is how they know they are themselves?

Great post, WillyT! Science.

[niyad]

14. afriend here runs one of the local food banks. she wrote the other day that a person she had

regarded as a strong supporter is withdrawing support because she is "enabling the lazy". whining because there are people using that food bank who have been there for some time. I would explain to this jerk exactly how wrong he is, but it would not be pretty.

I figure he is one of those entitled, self-made persons who has never received any help from anyone--did and accomplished everything all on his own (or so he tells himself).

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. When in fact the opposite is true.

Refusing to help people when they first get into crisis is what creates the cycle of poverty from which they don't escape.

[WillyT]

38. Thanks fish !!!

[Boreal]

44. I'll bet a lot would change their tune on that

if we had a 50K mincome for every single person, no matter their circumstances.

[ancianita]

13. VERY cool. A great example of up-front investing in humans, which saves everyone lots of money and

bad karma in the long run. And seriously, fuck the profitability measures, because there is much about the improvement of life that just can't be quantifiable to capitalists.

The final report wasn't released probably because it proved the immeasurable improvement to the town via properly stewarded tax money.

Thank you for this OP. It's heartening. It represents the vision of many Millennials whom I know.

[WillyT]

39. You Are Quite Welcome...

[NewDeal_Dem]

52. Another benefit would be getting rid of the upper class people who get paid with tax money

to administer the welfare state.

In my town they are much of the upper class -- they run the schools, they run all the low-income helping agencies, they run the city government, etc.

They control the churches. They're all dedicated to helping the poor in every way -- but they insist on getting paid very well to do so. Because they're so fucking superior in every way, you know.

[underpants]

17. Incredible

[hunter]

18. A more generous welfare system makes it more difficult to abuse workers.

I'd guess more than half of all businesses use bullying, harassment, and physical abuse as "management" techniques. If low income workers didn't fear homelessness and starvation they would not tolerate that. This is the most overt form of wage slavery.

We ought to have a generous welfare system that not only provides for the unemployed and the unemployable, but also competes directly with the crappiest jobs and crappiest employers. Businesses that practice wage slavery ought to be severely punished, both directly by enhanced labor protections, regulations, and enforcement, and indirectly by creating an economic environment in which it is impossible to find workers who will tolerate sub-living wages and abuse.

[The2ndWheel]

19. Eliminated might not be the right word

If the money didn't keep coming, what would happen?

We won't do something like a basic income on any large scale until we have no other choice. If jobs keep getting automated, moved away, expensive to get, so specialized, there won't be much choice left after a while.

The bigger the scale, the more issues there will be though. Everyone won't become a self-actualized artist spending all their days traveling the world. I have little doubt there would be downsides to it, just like everything else in life.

[aspirant]

21. What is the true purpose in life?

Do you think we came to Earth to work for 30-40 years, retire and pass over?

When we are replaced by robots do you think we should all just curl up and die or is their more to this life than work?

If each human being is allowed to pursue their individual labors of love, would this be a better planet?

We can give banksters trillions at virtually no interest rates to gamble with but not give individual Americans an annual living income to exist and keep the economy moving?

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. Like wealth, labor demand should be allocated optimally.

It's not a good thing for 10% of the population to work 80 hours a week and everyone else work 20.

It's time to reduce the FLSA workweek to 32 hours.

[The2ndWheel]

30. I think one issue would be that our environmental issues would increase

Robots doing all the grunt work, and human beings doing even more work and consuming all the luxuries of production? That's just adding another layer.

I'm saying it will happen eventually. When the robots replace work, it's either going to be a basic income, or a lot of dead/starving/angry people. I'm just saying, no matter what we've ever chosen, there are downsides.

There are a lot of people on the planet. Each and every one of us won't simply pursue our labors of love as we blissfully co-exist and dance with each other and all of life. You give people even more free time, and you'll get some weird shit going on. Just look at what people can manage to do with the free time civilization has given us the ability to have over the last few thousand years.

And I don't know what the true purpose in life is. I doubt there is one. Different for different people. Which is why I would think not everything would be rosy with a basic income. Just look at what the banksters with trillions of dollars can do.

[aspirant]

32. True purpose

How about Free Choice, Do No Harm to Others and Yourself, The Pursuit Of Happiness, Heaven on Earth, Enlightenment just for a start.

Free time is wonderful because it means time doesn't have a price. There are many people here bringing karma and could be helped with the awareness of seeing happy people doing rewarding things.

The banksters and their comrades are damaged people and we depend on the wiser to help them or protect society from them.

[Boreal]

45. "Heaven on Earth, Enlightenment"

Erm, no. That sounds like something straight out British Israelism (batshit crazy religious cult). There is no Utopia so lets shoot for all to have a minimum income and let everyone worry about their own "enlightenment".

[seveneyes]

36. The true purpose of life is metaphysical adaptation and procreation

The bigger question is where the human mind will take life. The cosmological space for life to expand is unlimited by human imagination.

[aspirant]

37. Imagination moves the human mind to eventual cosmic reality

Earth is a lower middle planet and the masses are nowhere near the level of imagination to explore the cosmos.

In an adapted reality we are all Co-Creators, but today's Earth is just one of God's playpens.

I agree the cosmos is ours for the joy it offers but to move today's society needs more down to Earth metaphysical thinking.

[Thespian2]

59. Accurate post.

A method which works well is the kind of system that must be killed. America has many crappy systems in place, mostly devoted to keeping wealth under the control of the few. When systems like Social Security and Medicare, socialist systems both, are successful, and they are, then the "conservatives" must find ways to neuter or kill these systems.

[aspirant]

60. capitalism is a loser

peopleism (spelled correctly?) is our hope and change

[NewDeal_Dem]

53. "If the money didn't keep coming..." Money is a creation of the state, and used to maintain the

power of the state and those behind the state in the shadows (the superrich, elites, etc.).

[truebluegreen]

31. How odd that the conservatives buried the program and the data.

[aspirant]

49. The concept is getting more international interest

[True Blue Door]

35. Moderate wealth redistribution works. Period.

[Trillo]

40. Thanks! Very interesting. Made me think of a snark....

Only bankers deserve free money made up out of thin air.

Only corporations deserve government welfare.

Only humans deserve slave patrols law enforcement.

[WillyT]

41. Anytime, Trillo !!!

[Boreal]

46. lol

@ "slave patrol".

Years ago I had a discussion with a boyfriend about how when someone went through the job application process they were expected to explain gaps in employment as though that was 1) anyone's business and, 2) a crime. My boyfriend's reply to me was that the system saw anyone not working as a "slave on loose".

We are MUCH farther down that road now, being tracked like livestock.

[Boreal]

48. Just turned on the radio

to see what Clyde Lewis was talking about on Ground Zero and it's minimum income for all. YAY! Hope this is talked about more. Clyde's guest suggests creating the money to do it. Bad idea, imo (inflationary and defeats the purpose). Take it from the MIC.

[mackerel]

50. No matter how hard we try, we'll never compare to our fair cousins to the north.

[Enthusiast]

54. This cannot be true. I've never heard this on Fox News. You're making shit up.

[WillyT]

57. LOL !!!

[The Jungle 1]

56. Tax um

I still say any company who employs someone who needs public assistance should pay extra taxes to cover the cost.

We are picking up the tab for these companies who pay wages to low to live on.

[Dont call me Shirley]

58. So income "redistribution" really works? So the rich are wrong.

as usual. The rich are wrong about everything.

[aspirant]

62. Which wicked rich witch is wrong? It's the wonderful "Wizard of Oz"

If we only had a courageous heart there would be no need for Big Oil to lubricate our rusted souls.

[Dont call me Shirley]

63. Courage, a heart and a brain. So, fearlessness, compassion and wisdom. There were only 2

wicked witches, they were both wrong. Dorothy defeated both the wicked witch of the east with her innocence, then the west with her emotion.

[aspirant]

64. Can our dreams come true with these innate tools, too?

[Dont call me Shirley]

65. The ever present optimist in me says, yes.

[Stuart G]

61. k and r...nt