to think we could solve poverty by simply giving everyone money?

[aufaniae]

This article makes a compelling argument for giving everyone a "mincome".

Why we should give free money to everyone

The basic idea is that poverty costs society money, and that it's cheaper, and of great benefit to society if everyone has a basic income, no questions asked - so no one ever drops below the poverty line. The intro says.

"We tend to think that simply giving people money makes them lazy. Yet a wealth of scientific research proves the contrary: free money helps. It is time for a radical reform of the welfare state."

They actually did a study in Canada where a whole town was on a mincome for some years, and it seems it was a great success.

I must say I find the idea compelling. What do you think?

(Please have a look at the article before responding if you can, there's some surprising and thought provoking stuff there).

aufaniae Yes, but it's based on a relative number - they give it an absolute number of course, but that number would leave you with servants and a wealthy lifestyle in much of the world, it's very much a relative measure of poverty.

A minimum income (and let's be clear outside of a few groups of immigrants people in the UK are already entitled to a minimum income it's just not called that but differing benefits depending on the situation) doesn't address any relative measure of poverty, just absolute ones. So I ask again, what groups in the UK are currently getting below an absolute measure (don't quote save the children etc. statistics at me as so much of the problems they're addressing are to do with failure to access and abuse, and that would be a problem with mincome too.

I've heard of this before. It's an interesting idea, although I doubt it could ever fly politically in the UK.

One of the questions I have is how this would work when replicated across an entire society. All these pilots mentioned are about relatively small numbers of people. Is there any country that has ever done this at a national level, and if so, what happens in terms of inflation?

OP keeps saying that this would be better than the tax credit system because there are fewer administration costs, but how much of a saving would that really be?

I also don't see this alone as being particularly effective with poverty that is inextricably linked with other social problems like addiction, abuse, MH problems, learning difficulties etc.

Caroldecker a whole host of conditions surround universal credit, such as being made to work for free in a dead end job (MWA) as I suspect you well know.

The point of mincone is everyone would get it no strings attached.

lljk, you don't need to read the thread to understand it necessarily, but it's well worth reading the article.

caroldecker back to your universal credit example, you assert that once people are in work conditionality stops, but that's entirely wrong.

Conditions are only dropped when people stop claiming universal credit. IIRC, the majority of people able tp work, who are on benefits, are already working. Housing benefit for example is given to many more people in work that out of work.

Under the new system of Universal Credit, anyone on a part time job who claims a top up will be treated as unemployed people are now - they will have to sign on and actively look for jobs with more hours, and be prepared leave their job to accept a job the DWP gives them even if it has worse prospects. Part time workers will also be subject to any conditions thf job centre chooses to add to their conditionality.

Anyone who is self employed and claiming UC will be subject to conditionality also.

I agree with the idea whole heartedly, our whole system needs a huge re-structure due to technological advancements which have permantly altered the labour market and demographic. I think its about time policy refelcted these changes instead of persuing an ineffective and redunant approach.

Jesus, I feel sick to my stomach.

In the news today.

Vulnerable man starved to death after benefits were cut
"44-year-old died months after sickness and housing benefits were stopped following Atos fitness-for-work assessment"

Mumsnet thread on it here.

FredFredGeorge, poverty is relative but not absolute in this country?
Still think so?

That's really upsetting.
The government and Atos should be made to stand to account for it.

I'd really love to see this in action to know for sure how it would work out. It does have a possibility of working.

From what I have read before the idea would be to give it to everyone. If you then choose to work you get the wage in addition to the mincome. I imagine you could give every citizen a basic bank account and a direct debit and forget about it.

Wages would be less I think by the amount of the mincome so those in work would be getting the same amount in total as they are now.

Since that would leave companies better off they would pay more tax to pass that saving back to the government. So in effect the mincome given to those working just goes around in a circle. That part costs nothing.

The mincome paid to those who can't work is in place of benefits so that's not really costing much more and the saving on administration is huge.

The only loss is if millions of people who could work decide that they are happy to just live on the mincome. The theory is that this would be too few to matter.

A complication is how you handle families. Do we have say a 1/4 mincome for each child paid to their parents? I think that could be worked out.

Has anyone ever worked out the true cost of administering benefits. Not just the money, but all the legislation, the job centre staff, ATOS, and so on? Training for people to work in those areas. Maintenance of the buildings, staff to investigate fraud and more people to train them.

All those working in that area might as well be on benefits themselves. All they can achieve in their careers is to move the money around. They don't add to the economy and their talents are wasted.

Aufanie thank you for the quote from Buckminster Fuller, that kind of thinking is right up my street! :o

This shows exactly how much this government cares about how the cuts are affecting the most vulnerable:

Shameful

^ Oops I meant to post that on another thread. (Although not totally irrelevant here.)

Why would wages be less the amount of mincome?

That would be an incentive not to work imo! Wages would have to be on top of the minc

On top of the mincome for it to be condition free.

I'd imagine that giving everyone a minimum wage in the form of a no questions asked lump sum would result in horrendous inflation. A lot of the money in our economy doesn't actually exist in physical form, printing off enough to pay everyone would result in rapid inflation rates, as supply and demand dictates that the more of something there is, the less it is worth. Money is only a piece of paper, people forget it's actually worth f all. This is what happened when Germany had to pay WWI reparations, and it crippled their economy, with people unable to afford even a loaf of bread.

It's a nice idea OP, but not one that I think would work in practice.

The idea that everyone can have a basic living 'for nothing' I think is currently just too revolutionary for many people.

rhetoric of 'state handouts' is very powerful, the demonization of those who get money for nothing has been very effective.

The truth is that we are prosperous and there is enough to go around
I think it would cause massive social & economic change, a shift in power away from large corporations

I'm a frugal sort of person so I think I'd just do the odd bit of toilet cleaning and enjoy having oodles of free time to study whatever took my fancy and generally pursue my own interests

YoureBeingASillyBilly, I think I just expressed that badly.

You would get the mincome which would have to be enough to live on without suffering. So the wages from working would be for extras and would be on top of that.

The mincome would have to be something like the minimum wage or even the living wage.

That means if you still got paid the same wage as you did before this came in you would be getting twice as much and I don't think there's enough money for that. So I imagined the wages for a job would be less than they are now.

I'm a frugal sort of person so I think I'd just do the odd bit of toilet cleaning and enjoy having oodles of free time to study whatever took my fancy and generally pursue my own interests

That's the thing we can't easily test isn't it. How many people would do that? If it's just a few then it wouldn't make much difference.

There are a number of possible outcomes and no easy way to predict.

#Perhaps that would mean companies would have to make work more attractive.

#Perhaps most people would find that unsatisfying and instead spend some time learning new skills.

#Perhaps you'd only get people working who were motivated and one of those might be better for a company than employing three people who only work when someone is pushing them.

A lot of people on here say that even if benefits were enough they would work anyway

Oh yes! I see what you mean now. So employers would resuce wages?

Yes- benefits will always only be enough for so much. Millions of people aspire to have a lifestyle far beyond that which benefits allow for. I believe the majority of people aspire to a higher standard of living. If so many people were happy with what benefits provided then there'd be more people on them and there would be no-one commiting benefit fraud to get more money.

The problem with this is that in this country you're more likely to be in poverty if you're working. A minimum basic income wouldn't solve the problems related to that in this country.

What we need is cheaper housing and better wages for the low paid.

I don't want the government subsidising companies which won't pay their workers a living wage, which is essentially what this is doing.

Proper wages is what we need, not the government subsidising poor pay.

It's very nice to be all clappy lets give everyone money but it will simply allow companies to pay lower and lower wages knowing the government will make up the shortfall.

It's always seemed to me a fundamentally sensible principle. It's similar to how pensions work: everyone is entitled to the basic state pension, but people who want to have a better standard of living when they're older, pay into private pensions too and get both. Once you start DISincentivising people by taking something away once they start working more and bettering themselves, it's difficult to motivate people. This is the fundamental flaw with the current system- there is nowhere near enough of a differential between not working and working in a low wage job. Not enough of a differential between working part time and getting top ups, or working full time.

The basic premise needs to be that the more you work, the more tangible reward you get for it. I completely understand that there is more to work than the pay cheque- working brings other rewards- but the bottom line is, there are also many jobs which are needed even though they may not be very attractive, and we need to give people incentives to do them

I still wonder how this would work in reality though... A civilised society cannot stand by and watch people suffer, so what would actually happen if people pissed their 'mincome' away...? Presumably there would have to be some kind of safety net to protect their children and suddenly we are back to a system rather like we have now which is open to abuse. It does seem though from the article that this system perhaps reduces the risks of abuse...

I agree there is no way to know how things would pan out, but I doubt that many would take my lazy low key option.

I'd imagine that people would be free to express their talents, to work on more efficient and effective ways of doing things we'd have more invention and innovation.

Then again I know that all sounds very idealistic and utopian.

Maybe we are actually headed for a modern form of feudalism where the masses are exploited for the benefit of an extractive elite.