Thank you very much.
I mentioned three examples from Ireland. Under that country's basic income program, $6 million was earmarked for $1,000 monthly stipends for up to 130 artists and cultural workers. The recipients received their first disbursements early this past year with monthly payments to continue for at least the next six months.
In Finland there was actually a two-year study of the treatment for basic income. A group of 2,000 randomly picked initially unemployed people received a guaranteed, unconditional and automatic cash payment, although it was only a modest 560 euros per month instead of the basic unemployment allowance of a similar amount. McKinsey did a report on this two-year study and released it earlier this year. The final results from that are in, and the findings are intriguing. The basic income in Finland led to small increases in employment, significantly boosted multiple measures of the recipients' well-being, and reinforced positive and social feedback loops.
In upstate New York they launched a pilot of universal basic income for 100 Ulster County residents, and those residents, who must make less than $46,900 annually, received $500 monthly cheques for a year.
The results are coming in on this kind of very basic need, and it's actually about the nets that are there to really support the work. I quoted an artist who talked about the impact of the CERB program here in Canada and what that actually did to free them up to create the work they wanted to create.