Solving poverty through a UBI is a prerequisite to addressing larger systems

Some progressive critics of basic income advance arguments rooted in privilege, with an intent to control the narrative of the oppressed, the poor, the neglected, the forgotten, and the invisible. They encourage intellectual discussions about revolutions to overthrow systems of oppression while allowing piecemeal approaches for addressing poverty to continue. This self-righteous debate is borne on the backs of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), who have to continue to risk our bodies fighting on the frontlines for minimum human rights.

Even the criticism of neoliberalism is borne on the backs of the poor. John Clarke has referred to the  as an “ongoing project to create an ever more elastic and precarious workforce… basic income leads to a situation where a portion of the wage bill is now covered by general tax revenues.” But basic income is about human rights. Ample research has demonstrated the long-term benefits of a guaranteed income ensures that people have what they need to thrive, not just survive.

It is dangerous to engage in abstract discussions about which human rights should be tackled first. Individuals in power are picking and choosing what rights they wish to support: clean water, universal childcare, affordable housing, poverty reduction.

The lives of the people debating these rights do not depend on which policy agenda is the flavour of the day. They make decisions from a distance without being in the trenches of poverty, conveniently choosing to invoke the rule of law when it suits the economic narrative and pushing other rights aside when it does not. There is a lack of political will from those in power to resolve the poverty crisis.

This is apparent in government’s failure to go after offshore tax havens while having the political will to put in place laws that fine people living in poverty for loitering on the streets when their home is the streets. If someone can stay up all night figuring out how to make being unsheltered even more difficult, surely they could exercise the same intellectual imagination to figure out how to go after offshore tax havens in order to ensure affordable, accessible housing and a guaranteed livable income for all. After all, poverty is a violent human rights violation.