Jane Dodds and Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson. Picture credit to: The Week
Over fifty candidates for the UK’s Liberal Democrat party (Lib Dem) have signed a personal commitment to back basic income pilots in the next parliament, if elected.
The intention to run these basic income pilots, which would be implemented by removing conditionality rules from the standard element of the main Universal Credit benefit system, is already an official part of the party platform, voted for by Lib Dem members this autumn as part of the party’s ‘A Fairer Share For All’ package of anti-poverty proposals. With social security issues low on the agenda in the election overall, however, a number of the party’s candidates signed a separate declaration to bring attention to the policy.
The Liberal Democrats have a comparatively long history with minimum income as an idea, with citizens’ income proposals forming part of the party’s platform in its 1992 manifesto, and in recent years their proposals to abolish the sanctions system for social security, which they adopted in 2016, have seen them move back towards unconditional income policies. This comes alongside the Lib Dems’ wider pledges to spend more money on social security, abolish benefit sanctions, and end many of the other restrictions and claim delays that have caused problems with the Universal Credit system since its introduction. Lib Dems have been recognized by the Resolution Foundation to have progressive policies on welfare issues.
The backers of the minimum income statement, which was organized by a group of party activists, come from across Britain, covering all nations and regions and both urban and rural areas. Notable signatories include Andrew George, James Cox, Jasmine Sakura-Rose and Jane Dodds (Welsh Liberal Democrat), who has publicly spoken out in favor of the idea.
Quotes from signatories:
“I support a minimum income because it gives people the power to say no to exploitative jobs and a base from which to work to better themselves. Only with a minimum income or UBI in place can we begin to support real freedom for all.” – Oliver Craven, candidate for Sleaford and North Hykeham
“We can’t carry on with a system that doesn’t ensure that people have a stable, reliable minimum level of income. The instability people face under the current social security system badly impacts on their health and wellbeing, and we have to find a way out of that.” – Josie Ratcliffe, candidate for South West Norfolk
“As a Lib Dem I believe in empowering people, and one of the most important parts of that is ensuring they can care for themselves and their communities and pursue their own paths and goals without the constantly looming threat of income insecurity that so many people currently face.” – Charley Hasted, candidate for Eltham
This twenty-minute podcast features Reverend Liz Theoharis, a long-time advocate and activist for poverty reduction and elimination. She had led a campaign called the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival”, a direct revival of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” in the 1960´s. In the podcast, she argues that poverty is not only a matter of lack of resources (to live), but a more encompassing issue which involves climate change, workers’ rights, housing, and economic empowerment. To her, poor people are at the center of society’s driving force, which means that something like basic income would change the name of the game in economic and societal terms. Other issues, like universal healthcare, quality education and housing are also discussed, as parallel policies to which basic income would be a complement, but not a replacement.
Groups across the UK are calling for pilots of a radical alternative to the current welfare system.
With more people losing jobs to automation and the Devolution in the North East that’s currently happening, groups are worried that if this continues, the whole of the UK will be facing serious consequences in the future.
A Universal Basic Income (UBI) would see all citizens given a guaranteed income regardless of their eligibility for benefits or their employment status.
Finland, Kenya, India, and cities across the United States have recently piloted the revolutionary idea.
Supporters of a basic income, such as the University of London’s Professor Guy Standing, believe that it would guarantee minimum living standards and basic economic security across the UK.
The movement started in South Yorkshire with the founding of UBI Lab Sheffield in 2017. This is a grassroots group formed of researchers and activists exploring the potential impact of a basic income through calling for pilots in local areas.
In recent months, UBI Labs have launched in Liverpool, Leeds, Kirklees and the North East.
UBI Lab Liverpool was founded by Councillor Patrick Hurley, who introduced a motion supporting a UBI pilot at Liverpool City Council.
Artist Toby P Lloyd, whose work explores the liberating potential of a basic income, is leading UBI Lab Newcastle.
There are also ongoing discussions with groups interested in launching UBI Labs in Belfast, Hull, Birmingham, Derry/Londonderry, Exeter, Lancaster, Portsmouth, Manchester, Norwich, and West Sussex.
The UBI Lab network allows groups to share resources, promotional materials, advice, and experience.
In May, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced that a Labour government would pilot basic income in Sheffield, Liverpool, and the Midlands.
Pilots in Canada, Namibia, and Finland have shown significant health benefits. Researchers found that a basic income reduced stresses associated with economic insecurity.
The pilot proposal produced by UBI Lab Sheffield is designed to measure the impacts on health and wellbeing as a key outcome of any basic income trial.
Members of the UBI Lab network have started conversations about basic income with council leaders, councillors and directly-elected mayors across the country.
The network wants to encourage more local authorities to lobby Westminster for a basic income pilot in their area and people interested in setting up new groups across the UK.
A recent Gallup poll found that 77% of UK adults favour the introduction of a basic income as a way to support workers who lose their jobs to automation.
In Spring 2020, the UBI Lab Network will host the second edition of UBI North in Sheffield. This will be the biggest conference on basic income in the UK.
Tchiyiwe Chihana of UBI Lab Sheffield said:
“Piloting a Universal Basic Income is an essential aspect of exploring potentially viable responses to the urgency of ever-expanding social and economic disparities. Consultative in approach, UBI Lab Sheffield ensures that multiple options reflecting the needs and experiences of people at micro and macro levels can be factored into a pilot while being adaptable. This also means that as many people as possible also have insight into the development of a potential UBI pilot in the city. Collectively, the raw data being developed has added to the resources of our city and has contributed to a sustainable knowledge pot for future use. The networking and the spin-off discussions that have developed out of UBI Lab Sheffield cannot be overstated.”
Cllr Erin Hill of UBI Lab Kirklees said:
“At a time when society seems very divided, the one thing most of us can agree on is that the current system isn’t working for anyone. Universal Basic Income – a regular payment made to everyone regardless of income or behaviour – isn’t a magic solution to all our problems, but it is a vital part of creating the better society we so clearly need. UBI doesn’t leave anyone behind. It provides basic security and opportunity for all citizens; protection for working people; a lifeline for those with caring responsibilities; better health and life chances for our children and grandchildren; support for marginalised groups, and so much more.
Right now, we have local people doing six or seven zero-hour contract jobs and still having to claim benefits; nurses and teaching assistants relying on food banks; people caring for relatives and being financially punished for it, and most people in poverty also being in work. Something has got to change. Across the world we have seen UBI transform lives and communities – I want us to be part of that transformation too.
Here in Kirklees we have a rich history of ordinary people standing up and demanding change for themselves, their families, and their communities – from women’s fight for the vote to the recent campaign to save our local hospital. I’m really proud that UBI Lab Kirklees has made a commitment to engage with local people, to make your voices central to the debate about what kind of society we want to be.”
Cllr Patrick Hurley of UBI Lab Liverpool said:
“The Basic Income is an idea whose time has come. Paying a wealth dividend to each citizen in order to help them make the best of their lives could be transformational for our country. People who want to take a chance on a change of career, or want to care for family members, or need a helping hand to smooth out life’s rough edges, would all benefit massively from something like this. At UBI Lab Liverpool, we think a series of demonstrations and pilots across the country could show the benefits to the wider population with limited downsides. That’s why we’re working with colleagues from across the city and across the country to promote Basic Income and see how best to implement it at a national level.”
Toby P Lloyd of UBI Lab Newcastle said:
“Critics of Basic Income say that it would make people lazy and they would all stop working. This argument has a very narrow view of ‘work’, defining it only as paid employment. Society relies on a huge amount of unpaid ‘work’ for it to function, most of this is done by women. Basic Income would not solve this, but it would be a first step in rewarding this unpaid labour and recognising its value. Basic Income would also be a way of investing in people, giving them more control over their lives and how they use their time, enabling them to reach their full potential. This is not possible for many people under the current system, because they are trapped in exploitative jobs which leave them with no time or energy to do anything else.”
Notes for editors:
– UBI Lab Sheffield is a collaboration between multiple organisations and individuals, seeking to explore the potential of a Universal Basic Income and the possibility of a pilot in the city. Organisations involved include Opus Independents, Sheffield Equality Group, The Centre for Welfare Reform and the University of Sheffield. https://www.ubilabsheffield.org/
– A feasibility study launched by the Scottish Government and supported by NHS Scotland is currently looking at the practicalities of a pilot in Scotland.
This whole program is voluntary…The men don’t have to…if they don’t want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don’t.
–“Milo Minderbinder,” Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Basic Income does something virtually no other policy in the modern economy can do: it protects your status as a free person.
What does it mean to be a free person? Consider an answer given by someone who experienced chattel slavery. Garrison Frazier was the spokesperson for a delegation of former slaves called “freedmen” (although many were women) who met with General Sherman on January 12, 1865, before the end of the U.S. Civil War.
Asked what he understood by slavery, Frazier replied, “Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent.”
He defined freedom as, “taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor [and] take care of ourselves.”
Asked how best to secure their freedom, Frazier said, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.”
The story of what happened after the meeting has come to symbolize broken promises to African Americans, but it has much greater significance for everyone. Sherman distributed land seized from former slave owners to freedmen in a large area of the southeastern coast, sometimes along with surplus army mules. Rumors spread that all freedmen would receive 40 acres and a mule. Less than a year later, the Federal Government reversed Sherman’s order, restored the prewar property rights of former slaveholders, and forcibly evicted the freedmen, many of whom had to work for their former masters, taking the least desirable jobs and the lowest pay. Some descendants of slaves continue to serve the holders of those property rights to this day.
The significance of Frazier’s request for land to secure his freedom is not that freedom requires the opportunity to become a subsistence farmer; it requires the freedom from indirectly forced labor. Frazier recognized that the legal self-ownership slaves were granted at the close of the war was not enough to make the fully free. It does not free an individual from the “irresistible power” to do the bidding of others. Individuals who are prevented from working for themselves alone (and not sufficiently compensated for being denied that option) are forced to work for someone who controls access to resources. Forced labor is unfreedom whether that force is direct or indirect.
The freedom from indirectly forced labor has been taken away from the vast majority of people in the world today—when governments forcibly took control of the resources of the Earth to give them to their most privileged citizens. These newly established “property rights” not only gave privileged citizens control over resources: it gave them control over people. People who had shared access to those resources for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years were now forced to provide services for the wealthy to maintain their most basic subsistence. Eliminating indirectly forced labor is not all there is to ensuring everyone is fully free, but it’s an essential step.
We have owed each other a Basic Income since we enclosed the commons, since we abducted the slaves, since we killed the Buffalo.
With an article on medium, Scott Santens, long time Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate, has explored in depth Andrew Yang’s proposal of a Freedom Dividend (FD).
The Freedom Dividend, one of the pillars of Andre Yang’s campaign for the democratic nomination for the 2020 American presidential election, is a $1,000 UBI for every American. Santen’s article discusses in detail the implications the proposal would have if introduced, and defends it against claims that it would end up increasing inequality or destroying the safety net. In Santen’s words, “The freedom dividend would be the single most progressive policy advance ever signed into law in America history”.
In order to clarify how and why the Freedom Dividend would work as a progressive measure to enhance freedom and as an instrument against poverty and inequality, Santens provides answers to two questions regarding its design:
1) Why to provide people with a choice between existing programs and the Freedom Dividend and not let people keep everything?
People would need to voluntarily opt out from some assistance programs, based on low income, whilst other contribution-based programs would continue to exist on top of the FD (health care remaining a separated issue, not connected with the FD). Santens’ article points out that this is done in order to maximize unconditionality and the incentive to work by avoiding welfare traps.
2) Wouldn’t the funding of the FD through a 10% value added tax –as proposed by Andrew Yang- make it a regressive measure, thus disproportionately disadvantaging the poor?
Even though a tax on consumption is usually considered regressive, as those with lower incomes tend to spend more of it in consumption when compared with those having higher incomes, the VAT-UBI design ends up making it a progressive instrument. That is, those on the lower part of the distribution would end up receiving more than what they lose because of the VAT, which would be rebated by the FD. Santens quotes a distributional analysis by The UBI Center, that concludes “that the bottom 10% (of the income distribution) would see their disposable incomes increased by almost 120% while the top 10% would see their disposable incomes reduced by 4%.”
Moreover, Santens says, the FD would strongly reduce poverty with “74% fewer households would have disposable incomes that fall under the federal poverty line” and impact heavily on inequality, causing a drop of 15% in the American Gini index.
UBI would fill the holes in the existing safety net, a “welfare mess” that leaves many people behind, and which design is far too complex, inhumane and not efficient, as Santens explores in depth in his article.
“Is it progressive to not support the greatest reduction of poverty and inequality — and greatest increase in freedom and dignity — ever proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?”
