Mark Drakeford, First Minister of the Government of Wales (center), Beth Winter, Labor MP for Cynon Valley, and Guy Standing, co-president of BIEN, at the Labor Party Conference
There will be a basic income experiment in Wales in 2022. The First Minister in the devolved Welsh government, Mark Drakeford, has announced his full commitment to rolling it out in the Spring. Following an opinion poll showing that 69% of Welsh people wanted their government to conduct a basic income pilot, the Future Generations Commission arranged for a background report to be prepared, and at an event at the Labor Party Conference in the seaside town of Brighton, Mark Drakeford said he intended to devote the remainder of his time in office to advancing basic income in Wales. He was sharing the platform with Guy Standing, co-president of BIEN, who is advising the Government and Commission on the design of the proposed experiment. Coordinating the plans is the Taskforce for Tackling Poverty in the Welsh Government, headed by Sarah King.
At present, the main proposal is to give basic incomes to “care leavers”, that is, young people emerging into adulthood from care homes. If restricted to those, it would not be a proper basic income pilot, which requires everybody within a geographic community to be covered. In effect, it would be a test of an individual, unconditional modest cash transfer. Given the UK government’s rigid adherence to strict conditional means-tested benefits, which is causing widespread deprivation and a regime of sanctions, the proposed pilot could still prove valuable. However, discussions on the design, sampling and duration are still ongoing. Everything depends on resource constraints.
I’m a big fan of UBI as a social lever but we should link it to things like social behaviour, certain basic expectations of each other as responsible and caring citizens. I’m sure it’s well within our intelligence to make it work.
I do think that it has to be a blanket stipend given to all regardless of personal means.
I would also link it to your age. So you reach 16 you receive £16k ubi you reach 20 you receive £20k pa and this is in addition to what you may earn in your normal day to day helping life aka working life.
I also think it should be on condition that you do actually do some kind of job perhaps even charity work community assistance keeping the streets where you reside tidy, anything which helps make our lives better safer and happier.
There’s a dream world in the future where we would all like to be one day. Perhaps this is the direction we need to go. I hope so.
Good Luck Wales and all other nations determined to make this a fairer world for all humanity
Welcome to another small and positive step towards the understanding of UBI!
Regardings G Stanley’s response: I do not think that s/he has fully penetrated the meaning and purpose of UBI: Making UBI dependent on the social behaviour of an individual recipient clearly contradicts its very concept – maybe the person presenting unacceptable social behaviour (how is this defined?) does that because s/he lacks the basic resources for a decent life? It also is a principal concept of UBI that it is granted to any legal resident/citizen WITHOUT ANY conditions attached.
The level of UBI – relative to age – already is a recognized issue in the proposal.