This City Eliminated Poverty, And Nearly Everyone Forgot About It
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/city-eliminated-poverty-mincome_n_6392126.html
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.
The True Costs of Corporate Welfare
▻http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28293-the-true-costs-of-corporate-welfare
Welfare programs in the United States include programs like the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) and food stamps.
And, as Lou Colagiovanni over at Examiner.com points out, in 2012, a married person with one child making $50,000 per year paid just over $36 in taxes for “food and nutrition assistance” programs like food stamps and WIC.
That’s just 10 cents per day!
While conservatives will never admit it, welfare is a mind-bogglingly small expense and a very small piece of the pie.
On the other hand, the nation’s biggest welfare recipients - rich people and big corporations - are making out like bandits, because the welfare they take isn’t for food or housing - it’s to increase their profits and wealth.
As Paul Bucheit points out over at Common Dreams, the average US family pays a staggering $6,000 each year in subsidies to big business.
Think about that for a second.
Each year, you’re forking over around $6,000 of your hard-earned money to big banks, fossil fuel giants and massive transnational corporations that already rake in billions and billions of dollars in profits.
But you don’t see conservatives arguing against that.
(...)
If we’re serious about going after “welfare queens” in the US, to use Ronald Reagan’s phrase, then let’s start by going after the corporations and industries that use the Walmart business model of paying such low wages that their employees qualify for welfare benefits.
