What Could a Minimum Income Do For Canadians?

"Money doesn't buy happiness" is something rich people say to keep poor people in their place. 

I dare say, there are lots of unhappy rich people. But their grievances are so far higher up Maslow's hierarchy of needs as to be completely unrelated to the grievances of the poor. 

To be poor, to be truly poor, is stressful beyond anything anyone with a comfortable income can imagine if they have never been there. I have been there. I have been homeless. I have been so poor the scraps people leave on their trays in food courts looked pretty good. 

And later, when I had housing, I was still juggling which bills could get paid and which ones would be put off and then being afraid to answer the phone for the month because the collection agencies were calling. 

Being afraid to answer the door, lest you were being evicted for whatever reason. A noise complaint? The landlord wants you out so they can renovate and charge more rent? We always paid our rent on time, btw.  

When you are poor, you have no voice. You have no say in what happens to you. The stress level is intense. I am 5'2" and I weighed less than 100 lbs. Not because of an eating disorder, but because there was never enough food and there was so much stress. 

Being afraid all the time that the rug is going to literally be pulled out from under you, is something many people, fortunately, have no familiarity with. Is it any wonder that individuals and families living in this situation are prone to aggression, depression, substance abuse? 

The Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba in the 1970s showed that with a minimum basic income domestic violence decreased markedly. Admissions to the psych ward at the hospital decreased markedly...

Workplace accidents declined. Seems like people not distracted by financial worries are safer workers. Who'd a thought?  

Suicides were down. And the very few people who stopped working or looking for work were new mothers wanting to spend more times with their babies, people with elder care responsibilities, and people who wanted to go back to school to upgrade their skills. 

The benefits in mental health alone were worth the cost. Ask anyone who has someone close to them commit suicide and they will tell you, something needs to change. Access to mental health care needs to improve immensely. 

And the underlying systemic sources of stress also need to be addressed. Hiring multiple people to fill one full-time position because then the employer can dodge having to provide benefits, like vacation, or sick leave... 

If you can't afford to pay your employees a living wage. then you are not an entrepreneur. You have a hobby that you are asking people who you consider your inferiors to help you with. 

It is time, Canada. We need a national basic minimum income. Let's eradicate homelessness and poverty. 

And for all the pearl-clutching right-wingers, the costs to society of poverty, homelessness, and precarious income far outweigh the costs of just making sure no one is living in poverty.