by Kate McFarland | Jul 18, 2017 | News
Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and former minister of the Church of England, has published Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy.
The book’s publisher (Darton, Longman, Todd) provides this summary:
Citizen’s Basic Income – often called ‘Universal Basic Income’ or simply ‘Basic Income’ – is an act of grace. It is an unconditional income paid automatically to every individual as a right of citizenship and operates on a similar principle to the National Health Service – free at point of use for every legal resident.
As a national social policy, reforming the UK’s benefits system, Citizen’s Basic Income would recognise God’s equal treatment of every person while recognising individuality and celebrating God-given abundance. It would provide for the poor, be non-judgemental and recognise our mutual dependency. It would facilitate liberty, the duty to serve and a more just society, while both relativising and enhancing the family and inspiring us all to be co-creators.
The idea of an unconditional payment for every citizen has been around at least since the eighteenth century. In the modern day Malcolm Torry and the Citizen’s Income Trust have promoted debate and understanding of its feasibility. In this book Torry explains the models by which Citizen’s Basic Income could work, and demonstrates the association between Citizen’s Basic Income and Christianity. He calls for greater Church involvement in a wide-ranging debate on the subject.
In addition to his work with the Citizen’s Income Trust, Torry is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and, as of May 2017, General Manager of BIEN.
September Launch Event in Birmingham
While Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy was published in September 2016, its launch event will take place in September 2017: Torry will speak on Tuesday, September 12, at St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.
The event is open individuals of any faith or none.
Tea, coffee, and biscuits (US English: cookies) will be served at the beginning of the event.
More information is available on the event’s Facebook page.
Photo: Detail of “The Adoration of the Magi” in St Martin in the Bull Ring, CC BY-NC 2.0 KotomiCreations
by Andre Coelho | Jul 13, 2017 | Research
Malcolm Torry. Credit to: The Back Road Café
In a partnership between the Citizen’s Income Trust and the London School of Economics, Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and General Manager of BIEN, authors and presents a new study on the implementation of a basic income in the UK.
This study, referred to as a working paper, details two potential implementation models for a basic income, and looks into their consequences with respect to several social and economic indicators, including “poverty and inequality indices, tax rate rises required for revenue neutrality, household disposable income gains and losses, household’s abilities to escape from means-testing, and marginal deduction rates.”
The implementation models examined were, first, a basic income to all UK citizens, funded by the existing tax and benefits system, which would maintain the means test but introduce new thresholds and, second, a program that would be phased in by increasing the UK’s Child Benefit and allowing all new sixteen-year-olds to keep that benefit for life.
According to Malcom’s analysis, both models are feasible and beneficial in terms of the above indicators. Notably, estimated losses would be insignificant to households in the lowest quintile, and still relatively insignificant when considering all households. Additionally, in both cases, income tax rates would not need to be raised more than 3% in order to finance the basic income scheme roll-out.
More information at:
Malcolm Torry, “A variety of indicators evaluated for two implementation methods for a Citizen’s Basic Income”, Euromod Working Paper Series, May 2017
by Kate McFarland | Jul 2, 2017 | News
Louise Haagh (formerly co-chair of BIEN) has become Chair of BIEN following Karl Widerquist’s resignation as co-chair.
This marks the first time in BIEN’s 31 year history that the organization has been under the leadership of a single chair rather than two co-chairs. As previously announced, Widerquist will temporarily assume the newly created position of Vice Chair until BIEN’s 2018 Congress.
Haagh is a Reader in Politics at the University of York and co-editor of the journal Basic Income Studies. Prior to her appointment as Chair, she had served as co-chair of BIEN since 2014. Haagh has recently been nominated as a fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of Arts (RSA) for her contribution to the public debate about basic income. Her recent publications on the topic include an article in the journal Nature (“Basic income as a pivoting reform”), and she is currently working on a book titled Basic Income, Welfare Systems and Human Development Freedom for Palgrave MacMillan. Among other activities, Haagh spoke on basic income at the annual convention of the Danish political party Alternativet held at the end of May. Earlier in the year, she served as a witness at an oral evidence session on basic income convened by the Work and Pensions Committee of the UK’s House of Commons.
Malcolm Torry
Coincident with Haagh’s appointment as Chair, Malcolm Torry (formerly co-secretary of BIEN) has assumed the new position of General Manager.
In this capacity, Torry will undertake tasks delegated to him by the Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary. Torry has simultaneously withdrawn from his role in BIEN’s Executive Committee, making Julio Aguirre the organization’s only current Secretary.
Torry is the Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, a UK-based affiliate of BIEN, which he cofounded in 1984. His recent publications on basic income include Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy and The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income.
The appointments of Haagh as Chair and Torry as General Manager were approved at a meeting of BIEN’s Executive Committee on May 23, 2017.
Post reviewed by Dave Clegg.
Top photo: Louise Haagh at the 2016 UBI-Nordic Conference.
by Kate McFarland | Jun 4, 2017 | News
With the UK’s General Election taking place on June 8, 2017, two green political parties–the Green Party of England and Wales and the Scottish Green Party–have included calls for basic income in their election manifestos.
As its first point on economic policy, the Green manifesto calls on the UK to “[t]ake steps towards the introduction of a universal basic income, including a government sponsored pilot scheme, as a means to increase security and avoid the poverty trap.”
The Scottish Greens’ manifesto includes a similar call for the government to take steps towards a UBI. Additionally, a section on protection of public services includes the comment, “Green voices will help deliver the change needed to end our reliance on fossil fuels, deliver millions of green jobs, and begin the transition to a universal basic income.”
Support for basic income from the Green Party of England and Wales is not new: the party’s sole current member of the House of Commons, Caroline Lucas, tabled an early day motion in June 2016, which calls on the central government to “fund and commission further research into the possibilities offered by the various basic income models, their feasibility, their potential to guarantee additional help for those who need it most and how the complex economic and social challenges of introducing a basic income might be met.” To date, the early day motion has gathered 38 signatures from MPs.
Meanwhile, none of the UK’s major parties have incorporated basic income into their election manifestos. The Labour Party has recently shown interest in basic income, and even established a working group to research its potential and feasibility. However, despite some earlier speculation that basic income might appear in Labour’s election manifesto, this prediction has not been realized. Additionally, Scotland’s largest party, the Scottish National Party, has not endorsed basic income in its manifesto, despite its past support for motions on UBI.
Further Reading
Jonathan Bartley, “The Greens endorse a universal basic income. Others need to follow,” The Guardian, June 4, 2017.
Jonathan Bartley is co-leader (with Lucas) of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: Polling place in London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 Cory Doctorow
by Kate McFarland | Jun 3, 2017 | Research
The Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath published its latest report on the effects of basic income — titled “Exploring the Distributional and Work Incentive Effects of Plausible Illustrative Basic Income Schemes” — on May 18, 2017.
Authored by IPR Research Associate Luke Martinelli, the report builds upon the working paper “The Fiscal and Distributional Implications of Alternative Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK” (March 2017), in which Martinelli used simulation techniques to model four different types of basic income schemes (varying according to the amount of the benefit and accompanying changes in the tax and benefit system) and their effects on poverty and inequality.
The new report carries out a more detailed analysis of basic income schemes set at the three levels found to be most plausible in the earlier report: the level of the tax saving implied by the UK’s personal income tax allowance (which it would replace); the level of the UK’s existing social assistance benefits (many of which would be replaced); the level of existing benefits plus premiums for the disabled.
In this new contribution, Martinelli examines the predicted impact of these schemes on financial work incentives, including both financial incentives to work at all and incentives to increase work marginally. Martinelli looks in greater detail at the distributional consequences of the basic income schemes, including the effect on women and disabled individuals.
According to Martinelli, “Both of these elements are crucial to efforts to evaluate whether basic income has desirable effects and what types of design features would help make the policy politically feasible. The models we examine in this paper present a number of issues that basic income advocates will have to address as they think about implementation and policy design more closely.”
The report concludes that, with respect to distributional consequences, each scheme results in both winners and losers, stating, “Our core insight is that for the most part, even when particular groups gain (lose) on average, there are usually still non-trivial numbers of individuals and households who are worse off (better off).”
Concerning work incentives, each scheme sees a reduction in financial work incentives for most individuals. However, the distribution of effects was such that “we can imagine the effects of stronger work incentives on particularly sensitive groups to outweigh the more generalised effect of weaker work incentives over the wider population.”
Download the full report from IRP’s website:
“IPR Report: Exploring the Distributional and Work Incentive Effects of Plausible Illustrative Basic Income Schemes” (Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath).
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo: “Rough sleeper” in Taunton, England; CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Neil Moralee
