‘Magic bullets’ don’t come around very often. Frankly, they don’t really exist. So why do so many people talk about a Citizens’ Basic Income as if it’s a one-stop shop for answers to all our problems? Firstly, they shouldn’t. In fact it is perfectly possible to create a dystopian version of a Basic Income in … Read more
One of the most common objections to a basic income is that it would increase inflation. Many people remember from history lessons at school the photos of children playing with huge piles of bank notes in East Germany, but it is essential that we confront the idea that introducing an equitable and fair welfare state would lead to … Read more
A basic tenet of Conservatism is that the individual ought to be able to get on through his or her individual efforts but that there should be a safety net in place. In part, that’s universally accepted. The debate is round the height of the net and how easy it is to climb out of … Read more
For me the most important thing about a universal basic income is that it begins to de-commodify our lives – it breaks the link between income and wage-labour. Experiencing life as a commodity to have the maximum possible profit squeezed out of us in competition with our fellow humans – like a Nokia or an … Read more
It was noticeable that there was near unanimous support for the idea of a citizen’s income replacing the current plethora of benefits and pensions amongst the 800 folk present at a recent meeting of the Scottish Independence Convention. My guess is that with enough explanation, support for this policy would unite folk across the constitutional … Read more
From time to time, reports from the financial sector highlight the fact that women are less able to shore up savings than men. (This is true, though the framing is often problematic, with the spotlight directed at women themselves. Yes, there is a savings gap, but there is nothing surprising about it.) One of these … Read more
If you had a blank sheet of paper and were asked to design a welfare system nobody, but nobody, would come up with the system that we have now. A universal basic income is an idea which has been considered in various forms for over two hundred years. Luminaries such as Abraham Lincoln and Dr … Read more
Local ‘citizen’s basic income’ (CBI) schemes are being launched across the globe, so it is useful to remind ourselves of some of the fundamental criteria we expect to see in any proposal. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (MS5) in the Italian city of Livorno, for example, is extending an initiative to provide a guaranteed basic … Read more