by Sara Bizarro | Dec 2, 2017 | News
Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities of the Scottish government announced that a fund of £250,000 is available for feasibility studies of the Basic Income pilots proposed in Scotland. In addition to the fund, the government will also help the pilot authorities to assess cost and feasibility of their plans. The grant is to “help develop a research design and undertake a limited amount of community engagement, not to fund the pilots themselves.”
The Scottish Government does not have the powers over tax and benefits necessary to pilot a full Basic Income and the proposals need to be aware of “the legislative and practical basis for implementing a pilot including the consideration of reserved and devolved powers and administrative complexities”.
The Scottish government will provide further guidance to the pilot authorities in January 2018 and a deadline for bids will be set for late March 2018.
More info:
Kate McFarland, ”SCOTLAND: Fife and Glasgow to investigate Basic Income pilots”, Basic Income News, November 29, 2016
Kate McFarland, “GLASGOW, SCOTLAND: Basic Income pilot feasibility study approved by City Council”, Basic Income News, February 21, 2017
Hamish Macdonell, “£250,000 citizen’s income pilots a ‘shameless waste’”, The Times, November 24 2017.
by Kate McFarland | Feb 21, 2017 | News
The City Council of Glasgow has passed a resolution to proceed with a workshop on the design of a basic income pilot study in the city.
During a November 2016 meeting, the City Council of Glasgow decided to begin research into the design of a basic income pilot study in the city. An important step forward occurred on February 16, 2017, when the council unanimously approved a resolution to convene and fund a workshop dedicated to drafting and examining models for the pilot.
Under the terms of the resolution, the council will commit £5,000 (about 6,200 USD) to the two-day research workshop, which is proposed for spring 2017 and will be overseen by a cross-party working group. During the workshop, basic income experts will meet with councillors, community group members, and other representatives from both the public and private sectors. The objective is to design potential models for the pilot study, as well as to identify key stakeholders in the experiment and potential financial and political barriers to its execution.
The Royal Society of Arts (RSA), which published an award-winning report on a basic income model for the UK (“Creative Citizen, Creative State”), has partnered with the council for the purpose of researching the design of a pilot study for Glasgow. The RSA will prepare an initial document on approaches to basic income pilots, which the selected experts would then analyze in terms of their design, feasibility, and anticipated outcomes.
Jamie Cooke, Head of RSA Scotland, comments:
The decision by Glasgow City Council is an important moment for basic income in Scotland, and marks a significant step forward. The RSA is delighted to be working with the Council and other partners on the study, and welcomes the leadership the Council has shown. We now have the opportunity to move the basic income conversation forward and identify practical ways to run a trial which works locally and has global resonance.
At the end of the spring workshop, the working group will submit its proposals and recommendations to the Executive Committee of the Glasgow City Council. A second feasibility study, building upon these design recommendations, would take place during a second phase of the project, tentatively planned for summer 2017.
The full text of the Glasgow City Council resolution is available here.
See also:
“RSA Launches Study on Universal Basic Income Trial in Glasgow,” RSA, February 17, 2017.
“Basic Income pilot considered in Glasgow,” BBC News, February 16, 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: CC BY-ND 2.0 Robert Orr
by Tyler Prochazka | Oct 12, 2016 | News, Research
After many years writing scholarship on the citizen’s income (or basic income), Malcolm Torry was constantly asked about the feasibility of the policy. A new book by Torry, The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income, seeks to answer this question.
Below is an interview with Torry on he came to write the new book and some of the conclusions he made in his research.
What prompted you to write this book?
It was about two years ago that the Citizen’s Income debate started to become seriously mainstream. I had already published Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income (Policy Press, 2013), a general introduction to the subject. Although the book was designed to be accessible to the general reader, a number of people had said to me that something shorter and cheaper would be useful so I wrote 101 Reasons for a Citizen’s Income (Policy Press, 2015). Both of these books were designed to show that Citizen’s Income is a good idea. They might or might not have contributed to the increase in interest in Citizen’s Income among think tanks, political parties, and the press. (Both international developments and increasing concern about the future of the employment market were probably more significant causes.) I had frequently been asked questions about the feasibility of Citizen’s Income. At both BIEN and Social Policy Association conferences I had presented papers about feasibility that built on articles about political feasibility by Jurgen De Wispelaere and his colleagues; and then, following a presentation for Cambridge economists on different kinds of feasibility, Karl Widerquist, who was the other presenter at the seminar, asked me if I would turn my presentation into a book for the Palgrave Macmillan series that he edits. Some of us had already noticed that the Citizen’s Income debate was becoming at least as much about feasibility as it was about desirability, so I agreed to Karl’s proposal.
What was the most surprising and/or interesting element you discovered while researching for this book?
A combination of related elements: that the policy process (the process by which an idea finds its way to implementation through a variety of interconnected institutions) is extremely diverse; that understandings of it are equally diverse; and that ideas can sometimes achieve implementation without passing through what we might call a normal policy process: that is, that policy accidents can occur. The book therefore contains chapters on political feasibility and on policy process feasibility, as well as a final chapter, ‘From feasibility to implementation’, in which policy accidents are discussed.
Which aspect will be most challenging to overcome in achieving a citizen’s income: political or psychological barriers? Why?
It became clearer to me as I researched and wrote the book that political feasibility relies heavily on psychological feasibility. Only if a significant proportion of a population are convinced of the case for a policy change, and significant proportions of particular groups within populations (journalists, academics, policy-makers, etc.) are convinced of the case, is there any chance of political feasibility. Psychological feasibility therefore precedes political feasibility – except when political accidents occur, and even then potential psychological feasibility is required. Psychological feasibility will not be easy to achieve because in the UK we have been means-testing benefits for four hundred years, and it takes a significant paradigm shift to recognise that in the presence of a progressive income tax an unconditional payment can do the same job as means-tested benefits and can do it a lot more efficiently and without all of the side-effects of means-testing. Given the further popular ‘deserving/undeserving’ mindset, building psychological feasibility for a Citizen’s Income for everyone is going to be difficult. However, building psychological feasibility for such ‘deserving’ groups as elderly people, the pre-retired, children, and young people, would not be so hard: so a feasible implementation method might be to implement Citizen’s Income one age group at a time, beginning with those thought most deserving. This would eventually build the psychological feasibility required for a Citizen’s Income for working age adults.
Is a citizen’s income feasible just using current revenue? If so, would this be the most desirable way to implement basic income?
A Citizen’s Income certainly is feasible just using current revenue if income tax allowances (‘standard deduction’ in the USA; ‘Personal Allowance’ in the UK) are adjusted appropriately, and Income Tax rates and other aspects of a tax and benefits system are adjusted appropriately. We have shown that in the UK a Citizen’s Income of £60 per week for working age adults (less for children and young adults; more for elderly people) would require no additional public expenditure if Income Tax Personal Allowances were reduced to zero, Income Tax rates were raised by just 3%, and National Insurance Contributions (social insurance contributions) and means-tested benefits were adjusted appropriately.
Whether this would be the most desirable way to implement a Citizen’s Income scheme is of course debatable: but it would probably be the most feasible way to begin implementation.
What would the most significant effect of the citizen’s income be on households?
What would be the most significant effect must be a matter of personal opinion, because different households have different priorities: but among significant effects would be greater freedom to choose an employment pattern that worked for all of the members of the household; lower marginal deduction rates for all or many households, meaning that an increase in earned income would translate into a higher additional net income than under current means-tested benefits systems; and freedom from bureaucratic intrusion into the household’s relationships and circumstances.
What is the empirical evidence that universal programs are superior to means tested ones?
To decide whether one system is superior to another requires a list of criteria for a good benefits system, and then different systems need to be evaluated against those criteria. The book Money for Everyone contains a full discussion of the criteria for a good benefits system, discusses the ways in which the criteria are met or not met by different systems, and concludes that a universalist system meets the criteria more thoroughly than a means-tested one. The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income does not ask directly about the desirability of Citizen’s Income, but rather seeks evidence for Citizen’s Income’s ability to pass a variety of feasibility tests (although of course feasibility is required for desirability, and desirability for feasibility). Evidence is drawn from natural and constructed experiments, microsimulation results, and other empirical research.
What is the most desirable aspect of a citizen’s income? What is the main reason you support basic income?
Again, what is the most desirable aspect of Citizen’s Income will be a matter of opinion. Since we all have different preferences, the question then comes down to the second question asked: What is the main reason that I support Citizen’s Income? There is no main reason; there are lots of reasons: unconditionality; universality; lower marginal deduction rates; greater individual freedom; greater equality; decreased poverty; enhanced social cohesion; administrative simplicity; the absence of stigma, error, fraud, and bureaucratic interference in the lives of individuals and households.
What brought you to the citizen’s income movement?
From 1976 to 1978 I worked in the Department of Health and Social Security’s Supplementary Benefit office in Brixton in South London, administering means-tested benefits. We all knew how bad the system was, both for claimants and for the staff. The benefit that we and the claimants loved was universal Child Benefit, for its simplicity, its reliability, and the way that it reduced poverty, increased equality, and created social cohesion. Why shouldn’t the same principles and the same results be transferred to benefits for working age adults?
I was ordained, and served my first post in the Church of England’s ministry at the Elephant and Castle: the parish in South London in which the headquarters of the DHSS was located. I got to know people in the offices, and was invited to the department’s summer school. There I found the idea of a Basic or Citizen’s Income being seriously discussed. I was invited to join a group of individuals from a variety of backgrounds interested in the idea – the Basic Income Research Group, now the Citizen’s Income Trust – and have participated in its work ever since.
The motive has always been the same: to research the desirability and feasibility of an unconditional income for every individual as a right of citizenship. My new book concludes that Citizen’s Income’s implementation is feasible.
by Tyler Prochazka | Aug 19, 2016 | News
One of the biggest objections to the universal basic income, especially from libertarians and conservatives, is that it is far too costly to implement. Among OECD countries, however, this is largely untrue.
The Economist recently unveiled a Basic Income Calculator that can illustrate how much each person could receive under a UBI by scrapping existing non-health related welfare. The United States would be able to achieve a $6,300 basic income.
To reach a $10,000 basic income, the U.S. government would need to use an additional seven percent of GDP. This would still keep the United States at welfare spending below many other OECD countries as a percentage of GDP.
Seven countries already spend more than $10,000 per person on non-health welfare and could decrease their spending under a UBI.
To see the full Economist basic income calculator, click here.
Data Team, “Daily chart: Universal basic income in the OECD”, The Economist, June 3, 2016.
by Kate McFarland | Jun 18, 2016 | News
Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director of the UK’s Citizen’s Income Trust, has written a new book on basic income, The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income, published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee series.
(Note for readers who are not familiar with Torry’s preferred terminology: Torry defines a ‘Citizen’s Income’ as “an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid automatically to every individual as a right of citizenship” (p. vii), viz. a basic income paid to citizens.)
Torry has previously authored an extended defense of basic income in Money for Everyone: Why We Need a Citizen’s Income (published by Policy Press in 2013).
In his latest book, which draws from material presented at the 2012 and 2014 BIEN Congresses, he turns from the question of whether a citizen’s income is desirable — he maintains that it is — to the question of whether it is possible.
Recognizing that there are many components to this question, Torry assesses the feasibility of a citizen’s income along multiple dimensions:
• Financial feasibility, comprising two types. (“Is a basic income affordable?”)
• Psychological feasibility, which can be described, roughly, as the ability to secure widespread social acceptance (cf. p. 88). (“Would people buy into the idea of a basic income?”)
• Administrative feasibility. (“Would a government be able to administer a basic income program?”)
• Behavioral feasibility, defined as neither “producing perverse or counterproductive effects” nor “failing to produce key desired outcomes” (p. 143). (“Would a basic income not be that great for society?”)
• Political feasibility, or the ability to “cohere with mainstream political ideologies” (p. 167).
• Policy process feasibility, or the ability to “travel from idea to implementation” (p. 195).
The general ideas in this book are intentionally non-specific, pertaining to “any country and … any social and economic context” (p. vi), with each chapter containing a case study applying these general considerations to a particular country’s present situation (most often the UK).
Malcolm Torry (June 19, 2016) The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income, Palgrave Macmillan.
