Letter to Stephen Hume, Vancouver Sun columnist
reprinted with permission

From Dr. Saul Arbess
Oct. 2009

Dear Stephen Hume,

I am impressed by this article and the justification for the GAI,sometimes called a Guaranteed Livable Income or social wage. There are many ways of delivering this and one of them is to remunerate work in the third or voluntary sector.

Opportunities can be provide to the unemployed, unpaid or poorly-paid workers in this sector to perform work that is of benefit to the community. The social wage does not have to come with any stigma especially if it is simply assessed on one's income tax and the difference between the social wage and actual net income is provided to any taxpayer taking into account their dependents, etc. In some schemes, socially-useful work is a requirement.

From an economic point of view, there have been studies that have indicated it would be less costly for governments to deliver a social wage than the patchwork of programs that exist now and with their administrative, not to mention their investigative costs to look for "cheaters,', actually far more rare than in the corporate sector as we know too well. In social assistance, it is less than 6% and a lot of time is spent trying to disallow benefits. I believe that the last time the GAI was seriously considered was in the Trudeau years. I wonder if Justin, as a Trudeau and an MP, might be interested, especially given his interest in youth policy.

My favorite of all these ideas came from Buckminster Fuller who called for an R and D grant to every person as a start up on one's career path. He thought that the creativity unleashed would pay dividends far in excess of the costs of such a program.

It would be timely to look at the design of various schemes and do a series on this topic that would certainly find resonance in society today. Just today (Oct. 18) Michael Enright discussed this topic on CBC radio "the Sunday Edition", and makes the case that a GAI would be less expensive than the current, unfair and unwieldy system. An important site is: www.livableincome.org.

Again, gratitude for raising this timely subject.

Dr. Saul Arbess, Victoria, BC
(Canada)