by Guest Contributor | Apr 3, 2017 | News
Photo: Crowd of over 950 people at the West Midlands Citizens Assembly (credit: Ravi Subramanian).
Mayoral candidates in the West Midlands have been challenged to take a position on running a pilot study of basic income in the region.
On Wednesday, March 29, the two mayoral candidate frontrunners, Andy Street (Conservative) and Sion Simon (Labour), were asked at a Citizens UK Assembly of 1,000 people from across the region about a range of proposals to make families better off. A basic income pilot was one of these ideas.
The candidates and the audience heard testimony from Shantella Pinnock, a nursery manager who said that basic income would have helped her team to feed their families while they were in dispute over unpaid wages. Sara Monaghan, caseworker for the UNISON West Midlands Community branch, said that this was not an isolated incident but in fact something she has dealt with repeatedly.
Pinnock and Monaghan give testimony in favour of a Basic Income pilot in the West Midlands region. (Photo credit: Becca Kirkpatrick)
Simon agreed to all of the proposals put to him by Citizens UK, including the basic income pilot, which also features in his manifesto. Street did not make a commitment to the basic income pilot proposal, but did say, “I’m fascinated, interested in this, I want keep my mind open to it. Let’s see the research from elsewhere and then let’s work towards it.”
A pilot of basic income has already made it into the West Midlands People’s Plan, a local manifesto for the future mayor, which was developed from a series of listening workshops last summer. UNISON West Midlands region also included it in their 20-point manifesto for the mayor.
James Burn, the Green Party candidate, has made clear his support for a basic income pilot in the local media. Basic income has been a Green Party policy for over 30 years.
Elsewhere in the UK, the councils of Fife and Glasgow are currently exploring the feasibility of running basic income pilots.
Citizens UK is a non-partisan civil society alliance of faith, education, trade unions and community groups.
Reviewed by Kate McFarland and Russell Ingram
by Kate McFarland | Apr 3, 2017 | Research
Photo Neil Conway/Flickr, CC BY
Psychologists for Social Change, a UK-based network of applied psychologists, academics, therapists and psychology graduates, publishes reports on topics at the intersection of psychology and public policy, such as the psychological impact of austerity policies and, now, basic income. It’s an important movement that could lead to significant social understanding and change for the better. Projects like this drive social advancement but rely on the bravery of individuals to start them. To do this you’d need leadership qualities amongst many other skills, but you can learn everything there is to learn if you have enough passion.
A briefing paper published in March 2017 examines the potential psychological effects of a universal basic income (described therein as “a regular, non-means tested, guaranteed income, delivered to every citizen of and beyond working age”) and offers recommendations for further research.
According to the report, there is evidence to suggest that basic income could increase five important psychological indicators: agency, security, connection, meaning, and trust. With respect to agency, the authors maintain that a basic income would allow individuals to “make meaningful choices about the kind of work they would like to do”. Additionally, they claim that the removal of sanctions on benefits would increase the sense of agency for recipients. With respect to connection, they note that a basic income is individual rather than household based, eliminating economic constraints on relationship formation, and that the policy could potentially allow individuals to work less, spending more time with friends and family. Meaning, according to the authors, would be promoted insofar as individuals are able to take advantage of the basic income to “prioritize spending time on creative projects, volunteering or other non-paid work (such as caring) that has meaning for them”.
At the same time, Psychologists for Social Change acknowledge that the effects of basic income are uncertain, and they call for more trials of the policy in the UK, which, in particular, would gather data on mental well-being and other psychological indicators.
Read the full report:
Psychologists for Social Change, “Universal Basic Income: A Psychological Impact Assessment” (March 2017).
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo CC BY 2.0 Neil Conway
by Sarah Harris | Apr 2, 2017 | News
Cardiff Garcia, a writer for the UK-based Financial Times, interviewed Martin Sandbu, a philosopher and economist who writes Free Lunch, a daily newsletter on global economic policy. As he describes in the interview, Sandbu believes that a background in philosophical logic enables one to identify and question assumptions that are inherent within normative economic policy. His own philosophically informed analyses of economic policy have led him to support the idea of basic income — another topic discussed at length in the interview.
Sandbu discusses basic income in the historical and current context of American political, social, cultural and economic challenges. Among potential outcomes of basic income, Sandbu highlights positive ones that include risk encouragement, higher bargaining power for rural people, and decreased resentment within low and middle-income groups.
Listen to the podcast episode here: Alphachat
Photo CC BY 2.0 Zhou Tong
by Kate McFarland | Mar 31, 2017 | Research
Luke Martinelli, Research Associate at the University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR), has prepared a new working paper that uses simulation techniques to analyze the effects of four different revenue-neutral basic income schemes. Martinelli’s analysis suggests that the design of a basic income falls prey to the “iron triangle of welfare reform” — wherein it is impossible simultaneously to meet the goals of keeping the program at a reasonable cost, meeting the needs of beneficiaries, and maintaining work incentives (see pp. 6, 44-46).
The paper was published as part of the IPR’s ongoing project Examining the Case for a Basic Income, which also includes a series of lectures, workshops, and other events.
Abstract:
In line with a dramatic resurgence of interest in basic income in recent years, there have been a number of studies analysing the fiscal and distributional consequences of specific basic income schemes. These ‘microsimulation’ studies use representative household surveys to examine the effects of hypothetical reforms at the national level and for specific demographics.
We make several original contributions to this burgeoning literature, modelling a number of original basic income schemes. These include a wide variety of schemes with full coverage and a number of schemes with partial coverage. We also carry out a detailed analysis of four revenue-neutral full schemes.
- Among systems with ‘full’ coverage, we have modelled four levels of generosity, and four types of compensatory tax and benefit reform for each.
- For the partial coverage schemes, we model how expansion of coverage could be sequenced in order to distribute the fiscal burden over a longer period of time.
- The revenue-neutral schemes assume that increases in expenditure must be broadly matched by increases in tax revenue. We suggest that besides the elimination of the personal income tax allowance and national insurance lower and upper thresholds, the income tax rate would have to increase by 4% (for a basic income set at the standard level of existing benefits) and 8% (for one with premiums for individuals determined as disabled) to pay for our schemes.
For each scheme, we discuss the fiscal implications and the implications for levels of poverty and inequality. For the revenue neutral schemes, we provide a more detailed breakdown of distributional effects, disaggregating changes in household income levels by income quintile, family type, number of children, and labour market status. The main argument of the paper is that we are faced with a series of trade-offs with respect to policy design, between the goals of meeting need / alleviating poverty, controlling cost, and eliminating means-testing. Our schemes aims to replace a large range of existing benefits with a basic income. The unavoidable reality is that such schemes either have unacceptable distributional consequences or they simply cost too much. The alternative – to retain the existing structure of means-tested benefits – ensures a more favourable compromise between the goals of meeting need and controlling cost, but does so at the cost of administrative complexity and adverse work incentive effects.
Paper
Luke Martinelli, “The Fiscal and Distributional Implications of Alternative Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK,” Institute for Policy Research, March 2017.
Photo: “lots of iron triangles” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 danna § curious tangles
by Kate McFarland | Mar 30, 2017 | News
The UK think tank Compass, which published the 2016 report Universal Basic Income: An idea whose time has come? by Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley, recently launched the blog series on the topic of basic income (“Universal Basic Income: Security for the Future?”).
Two pieces in the series are “Coming off the fence on UBI?” by Ruth Lister (chair of the Compass Management Committee and Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University) and, in reply to Lister’s contribution, “Basic Income and Institutional Transformation” by Louise Haagh (co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network and Reader at the University of York).
Lister expresses much sympathy toward UBI, in part due to its challenge to the “contemporary fetishisation of paid work.” At the same time, however, she questions the total lack of conditionality on benefits — on grounds of both ethics (is it fair to subsidize the “right to be lazy”?) and feasibility (would the idea garner enough political support?) — and notes a “participation income,” as defended by the late Tony Atkinson, as a potential compromise. In the end, though, she states that “for all my ambivalence, I am coming round to the idea of a UBI as a means of ensuring everyone a modicum of basic security in an increasingly insecure world.”
Haagh, writing in part in response to Lister, argues for UBI as a way to fundamentally reconceptualize the relationship between citizens and the state. She emphasizes that removing conditionalities on a basic level of economic support does not “entail a general separation of income from work” (since monetary remuneration for work would continue to exist). Neither, in her view, should a basic income be seen as a “challenge to the work ethic.” Instead, according to Haagh, the removal of conditionalities should be seen as a way to enable individuals to think and plan for the long term. Conditional income support, as she puts it, aims to “motivate people in the short-term, with a heavy dose of stick.” For example, beneficiaries risk losing their most basic support if they do not take the first job offered — regardless of the job. The punitive nature of conditional benefits encourages short-term thinking aimed at mere self-preservation. In contrast, an unconditional basic income provides a floor on which individuals can engage in long-term strategizing.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: “Welfare Office” CC BY 2.0 Jacob Norlund
