Ontario announces that it will begin a basic income trial in 2016
This basic income idea has been popping up a lot lately.  And there&#x27;s some merit to it, but there&#x27;s some major problems too.<p>The biggest problem I see is giving people cash.  Why not instead give each adult a voucher for housing (just barely adequate for cheap housing) and each person $5&#x2F;day food stamps (or something similar), regardless of income.<p>Everyone gets a lower stress level this way.  The risk of being homeless or hungry go to near zero.  It doesn&#x27;t matter if you&#x27;re unemployable, or starting a business, or between jobs.  You know you&#x27;re going to be okay.<p>While giving people cash seems to have the same effect, it doesn&#x27;t.  At least here in the US, money problems are (mostly) a money-management problem.  Many people use any cash they get to pay for whatever seems the most pressing at the moment - whether it&#x27;s rent or a big screen TV.  People buy the TV when they have money and rent isn&#x27;t due yet, then have a little unexpected expense and can&#x27;t pay rent. The stress level hurts them, hurts their families, causes increased expenses (e.g. payday loan).<p>My parents were like this, in six-figure-income years and in dead-broke years.  It hurt us quite a bit.  And &quot;loaning&quot; them money NEVER helped - they&#x27;d pay the mortgage today and then buy the TV when the next payday came in.  And there&#x27;s LOTS of people like this, which is why there&#x27;s a payday loan on every corner.<p>Now, we&#x27;ve taken care of my mom by covering her housing and utilities directly.  And her stress level is down a lot.  It works great.  This would have also helped me a lot when I was a student.  And it means more startups - since all startups would be &quot;ramen profitable&quot; by default. And in the US, we could fund this with about a 10% tax (probably less if we took some funds out of SS, disability, section 8, etc.).