Even small basic incomes can make a different – it is not perfect, but it helps.

Maintaining a decent standard of living Giving people a bit more money may not be a panacea, but we do know it helps. Providing people with low incomes with more money — even relatively modest amounts — through simple cash transfers has been shown to have measurable improvements for people’s lives. In Manitoba, a small cash benefit to low-income pregnant women translated to healthier babies, as mothers could better afford necessities. Cash child benefits make a big difference in the lives of low-income families, as money supports basic needs and investments in children’s education. Randomized controlled trials testing unconditional cash transfers in the developing world have also shown that simple transfers of money to low-income households have strong benefits. When you give people who don’t have enough money more of it, no strings attached, it gets used well. It’s not clear, however, that a universal basic income would be likely to put more money in the hands of people with the lowest incomes. It depends on the level that it’s set at it, how it’s designed, and what it would replace. A basic income of even $800 per month ($9,600 per year) would be at least a modest improvement for most single “employable” people in Canada over the meagre “welfare incomes” that they get from provincial social assistance and federal and provincial tax credits — even more so if it were to come without the punitive rules of most social assistance programs. For others, losing other income supports (such as child benefits) or other benefits (such as extended health coverage) would quickly leave them worse off, even before taking into account the effects of higher taxes to pay for the program. This is particularly true if we look not just at income but at whether that income is sufficient to meet the costs of an acceptable standard of living.