22 February 2017. A Point to Ponder From HH

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Ontario to Test Universal Basic Income This Year

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The Liberal Party rolled out a universal basic income (UBI) scheme to combat poverty in three cities in the Canadian province of Ontario. A discussion paper drafted by former Canadian Senator Hugh Segal laid out what it’d look like, and recommended testing it a rural area populated by indigenous people:

There’s no reason why a coherent pilot project testing the net benefits of a Basic Income to society in general, and to those living in poverty in particular, couldn’t be launched before the end of the present fiscal year in Ontario. Testing a Basic Income is a humane and useful way to measure how so many of the costs of poverty (in terms of productivity, health, policing, and other community costs, to name only a few) might be diminished, while poverty itself is reduced and work is encouraged.

Once instituted, the UBI would almost double the annual basic income adults receive under the province’s current welfare programme. In Ontario, 1.7 million people live below the poverty line, which is 20,676 CAD (908,000 Roubles. 108,000 Renminbi. 1.05 million INR. 15,700 USD. 20,450 AUD. 14,950 Euros. 12,600 UK Pounds) annually for a single person. Many lost their jobs in 2000-07 when manufacturing and auto jobs disappeared. Social planner Ben Earle, with the Durham Workforce Authority, said:

My area lost up to 4,000 jobs in the last fifteen years, and the prospects of them coming back are doubtful. People left behind are forced into positions that are lower paying, contract-based, [and have] lower benefits… if they have benefits at all.

Economists believe that this new policy can help drive change from jobs in manufacturing to areas including finance technology, medical research, and other “knowledge-based” jobs. Chris Ballard, who heads the initiative, remarked:

It’s time [we] start considering some kind of basic income because of the changing nature of work due to automation.

Some critics believe that officials are using UBI to avoid dealing with other pricey measures that could affect poverty, like raising the minimum wage, whilst others claim that they’d have to cut other social programmes to foot the bill of the initiative. In a 2016 interview with The Guardian Segal defended the proposal:

This isn’t something that is in any way, in my view, the precinct of the left. In fact, it’s the precinct of rational people when looking to encourage work and community engagement and give people a floor beneath which they’re not allowed to fall.

22 February 2017

Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/world/201702221050926204-ontario-to-roll-out-ubi/

Editor:

“Conservatives” oppose this. Not on any coherent grounds… their gazillionaire paymasters oppose it. They might have ONLY 50 million instead of 100 million! POOR BABIES. All “conservatives” are either dupes or mercenaries. They oppose UBI because it’d decrease the discretionary spending of their rich masters… nothing more, nothing less. Keep that in mind when you hear the rants of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rod Dreher. They’re whores… paid handsomely for their prostitution. They all have incomes ABOVE the average. You see it, of course. If we have UBI… then, these media whores would get less (but still above the average). If you needed proof that greed and pride, not abortion or homosexuality, were the capital sins, this is that.

BMD

The Ukraine Blocks Commemorative Resolution for Russian Representative V I Churkin at the UN

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Minister of Foreign Affairs S V Lavrov said of the Ukraine’s decision to block a commemorative resolution by the UN Security Council dedicated to late Russian ambassador V I Churkin:

I know how the UN works. I believe that [the Ukrainian] permanent representative wouldn’t do this on his own. This means that they ordered him to do it. This goes against Christian values. It’s beyond good and evil. Thanks to the current Ukrainian authorities, however, we’re accustomed to the fact that someone in their country treats Russians, and anyone else who refuses to dance to the tune of the neo-Nazis, precisely like that.

The Ukraine, which chairs the UN Security Council this month, cited “lack of precedent” as the reason for blocking a commemorative UN Security Council resolution for Churkin. As a result, it only released and published a press statement. If in explaining its decision, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs meant to imply that former UNSC ambassadors didn’t have commemorative resolutions passed after their death, then, it clearly missed differences in circumstances. V I Churkin wasn’t only the longest-serving ambassador in the UN Security Council but the UK’s Ambassador to the UN Matthew John Rycroft noted that he was “a diplomatic giant” who “stood out amongst all the other 193 ambassadors”. Churkin died unexpectedly whilst on active duty, this has never happened before in the history of the UNSC, and if not for anything else (including Churkin’s enormous accomplishments), this reason alone warrants a special commemorative resolution. Sputnik reported the following details:

Earlier today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman M V Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page that this decision is “the essence of the current Ukrainian authorities”. Kremlin spokesman D S Peskov also commented that the Ukraine’s behaviour “isn’t at all as important as the loss that Russia’s diplomacy suffered”.

Russian ambassador to the UN V I Churkin passed away on Monday 20 February in New York. Churkin was the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN and its representative in the UN Security Council from April 2006. The diplomat would have been 65-years-old on Tuesday 21 February.

21 February 2017

Sergei Gladysh

The Duran

http://theduran.com/breaking-ukraine-blocks-commemorative-resolution-vitaly-churkin-un/