Elizabeth May Quotes

We believe that the federal government is responsible to give every man employment or a guaranteed income.

Expanding the EITC can get us close to a universal basic minimum income.

The benefits of a universal basic income overall are huge.

The most important social welfare program in America is a job.

The minimum wage in Denmark is about twice that of the United States, and people who are totally out of the labor market or unable to care for themselves have a basic income guarantee of about $100 per day.

Let's means-test benefits - let's means-test Social Security and Medicare and make the rich pay more for these benefits.

We have to define and put into practice a better, more coherent and effective policy on income security.

The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.

We should be reforming our entitlement programs to empower people.

When America installs a minimum income, it's going to be doing it in a very different historical context than Switzerland or Sweden or Germany, or any other country might do it. And we're doing it in a context where it has the potential, I think, for much better consequences than in those other countries.

I'm a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.

I think it's fair to set limits, so that people cannot receive more than the equivalent of the national average wage while living on benefits.

Some people have proposed universal basic income, UBI, basically making sure that everybody gets a certain amount of money to live off of. I think that's a wonderful idea. The problem is, we haven't been able to guarantee universal healthcare in this country.

Instead of a universal basic income, we could have a basic income guarantee. Or, as economists prefer to call it, a negative income tax.

While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.

Now, you might say – “But why should we pay people for doing what they’re supposed to do?” It’s a fair question – but think of it this way: Every other anti-poverty program that’s been tried has failed to get the national poverty rate below 11 percent... Why shouldn’t we experiment with a program built around the one strategy that has proven time and again to work wonders – capitalism?

The automatic stabilizer is unemployment insurance, food stamps, additional coverage of Medicaid.

The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.

By common consent, most European countries support the maintenance of robust welfare states and are comfortable with taxation systems that support them.

The country will also need 'new forms of social welfare' instead of its current system which is excessively centred on pensions.

Because Social Security is specifically designed to boost the retirement income of low earners with a progressive benefit formula, the program has played an enormous and necessary role in keeping Latinas out of poverty.

As a result of the current universal benefit, the poverty rate for seniors in America is about 10%. Without the universal benefit, it would be over 50%.

What we're putting forward is the most radical reform of the welfare state... for 60 years. I think it will have a transformative effect in making sure that everyone is better off in work and better off working rather than on benefits.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

I knew that good people who wanted to be a part of the American dream have become trapped in dependency because the federal government and the state government had made it in their economic interest not to take a job because the benefits that they didn't work were better. I changed that.