Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

The citizen's income is the only solution to inequality/ the poverty trap/ social immobility.

191 replies

weatherall · 15/06/2014 12:37

The concept of the citizen's income is a universal benefit everyone receives.

It provides a basic standard of living eg housing/food/clothes/fuel.

Any income earned above this is kept. There is no taper.

OP posts:
MrsTerryPratchett · 15/06/2014 16:13

My first job paid me 8K. I didn't think that I was set for life and just stop looking. I worked hard, studied and moved jobs. Most people wouldn't think 10K is enough. Some would and we could stop arguing about that and just let them.

Obviously people with additional needs would get more.

MooncupGoddess · 15/06/2014 16:35

Aside from the not-insignificant 'who would do the crap jobs' issue, it would cost a bloody fortune... which would mean that tax rates for earned income would have to be really high.

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 16:40

But Mooncup the difference between say 10k and 20k a year would be motivating enough to persuade someone to do a so called 'crap job' surely?

caroldecker · 15/06/2014 16:46

sashh But I assume it would replace all benefits, so housing allowance etc -how much would it need to be to stop people being worse off? Some people (very few) get £26k a year in benefits, so would have to be at least this level else you have losers.
At this level, the marginal tax rate for working would be huge

MooncupGoddess · 15/06/2014 16:49

But where would you set the level of the citizen's income? Would it be enough to live off, to replace the basic pension and income/housing-related benefits? In which case the earned income tax rate would have to be enormous, like well over 50%.

Or would it be lower, meaning that pensioners, the disabled etc would still receive top-up benefits, thus defeating the whole point of simplifying the system and removing means testing?

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 16:56

Well I'm not an economist, but whenever I have heard/read it proposed the idea was not to replace ALL benefits (certainly not to the level of replacing housing benefits for example).

Or would it be lower, meaning that pensioners, the disabled etc would still receive top-up benefits, thus defeating the whole point of simplifying the system and removing means testing?

I'm not sure the point is to remove all means testing. I think the point is to give everyone some level of solid, dependable income that is neither means-tested nor dependent on employment.

Which would make it much easier to move between employment, or to get off benefits, or to get into work by taking temp or zero hours work for a while, or for a SAHM to leave an abusive relationship, or for a skint graduate with no family support to pay for rent and fares and two suits.

It aids social mobility and income stability and labour market fluidity.

OTheHugeManatee · 15/06/2014 17:15

By my reckoning you could afford to pay every adult in the UK £10,000 a year out of current tax receipts, provided you abolished all other forms of government spending. So no NHS, no schools, no road maintenance, no army, no civil service. No-one to collect the tax in the first place.

If you wanted to keep those other things too you'd need to double taxation. Let's say 50% on all earned income plus the same in corporation tax. Businesses relocate abroad, jobs become scarcer, and of course there's a growing sense of resentment between those with jobs and those without, with one lot envying the greater spending power and the other lot sneering at the scroungers and slackers whose lifestyles are being funded by their hard work.

Then of course inflation goes up, because there's all this unearned money sloshing around. Suddenly £10,000 is enough to live on for six months, not a year. They propose putting up taxes again to pay for it and the brain drain of high earners begins in earnest.

After a couple of generations the only people left are those too idle or vulnerable to hold down jobs and the tax take implodes. Under pressure from the IMF the citizens' income is abolished. There are riots and extremist parties start to gain popularity.

In short it's a stupid idea that would result in disaster. The Greens come up with this sort of nonsense policy because they know they'll never be elected.

Objection · 15/06/2014 17:26

Well I think Manatee summed the whole thing up really.

caroldecker · 15/06/2014 17:40

A significantly better idea would be to make benefits more responsive to changes in circumstances in real time, ie enable someone to do short-term work for a week, lose the relevant amount of benefits for that period and get them back straight after, rather than having to re-apply and wait for the money to turn up.

MooncupGoddess · 15/06/2014 17:44

Agree, carol. I think we should also have a system like Germany's where people who lose their jobs are entitled to a transitional benefit of say 50% of previous salary up to a set limit for a few months to help them get another job, rather than going straight onto basic JSA.

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 17:46

carol no-one ever seems able to manage that reliably well. Besides, it is startling expensive.

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 17:52

Mooncup so the middle class unemployed do rather well and the working class unemployed bump along at starvation levels? That kind of arrangement is more viable in Germany because their whole education, training and labour market is structured differently (a lrage and well funded apprenticeship system, for example)

MooncupGoddess · 15/06/2014 17:56

No - I would set the bar pretty low (so max benefit would be, say, £1000 per month, ie 50% of a £24,000 salary). Everyone who had previously been employed would do better than they do now and it would smooth over the gap between losing one job and finding another.

But of course it would be expensive so no political party will go for a policy like this while we still have a deficit.

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 18:02

Oh I see - capped. The thing is, I think you'd also need to top up a lot of claimants.

FT NMW is approx £13kpa so half that is about £545pcm - for any claimant with housing costs or dependents you'd be topping it up to around the £1kpcm mark anyway surely?

The more I consider comparative European Social Policy, the more I fancy emigrating tbh.

MooncupGoddess · 15/06/2014 18:11

Capped, that's the word! Sorry.

In my plan they would still get housing benefit as they would under the current situation - the transitional unemployment benefit would be extra. I think the state should give more support to someone who may have been working for decades and has the associated commitments (spouse/family/house/lifestyle) than to an 18-year-old straight out of college. Given the government is so keen on a flexible labour market, they should be more sensitive to the lives of people who suffer the inevitable job insecurity that results.

FraidyCat · 15/06/2014 18:11

I've suggested something similar before. It could be implemented in such a way that people, whether currently in work or on benefits, were on average not better or worse off as a result. Therefore the apocalyptic consequences suggested by Manatee need not follow.

shockinglybadteacher · 15/06/2014 18:15

Objection "and similar concepts" doesn't cut it. What similar concepts, when and how?

Capitalism is a system whereby the means of production are in private hands. That's not the same as trade, it wouldn't have even been possible or made any kind of sense pre-industrialisation, and it is certainly NOT how humanity has organised itself throughout time. You want to defend capitalism, sure, but accept that it is a recent development and time and tradition are not on your side however much you want them to be.

In fact if we were going to play that card, I'd be doing better with primitive communism as something which has been around since the dawn of time - granted, it is fairly different from the type of communism I advocate, but it still makes more sense than saying capitalism has been around since the middle ages!

FraidyCat · 15/06/2014 18:16

Although the government revenues net of benefits need not change to implement this, leaving people on average no better or worse of, individuals would be winners/losers. The effective marginal rate of tax of low earners would be lower, probably in the region of 50%, I think those on benefit currently lose nearly 70% of each extra pound they earn?

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 18:17

I think the state should give more support to someone who may have been working for decades and has the associated commitments (spouse/family/house/lifestyle) than to an 18-year-old straight out of college.

I can see why you'd say that, but it's storing up massive trouble for the future if we don't get the 18 year olds off to a decent start. Grindin them into poverty at 18 because there is a jobs shortage is just demotivating.

I agree Fraidy. You just recalibrate the whole tax/benefit system until it balances right? My used envelope isn't big enough to do the job this afternoon but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

Jux · 15/06/2014 19:44

If you had a basic amount coming in every week from the Government, then you could afford to pay higher income tax surely? And if everyone paid that higher tax in earned income then no one would have reason to complain?

Fideliney · 15/06/2014 22:06

Exactly.

weatherall · 16/06/2014 10:28

Hi sorry I was out for the rest of the day yesterday.

Re: carers and disability, this group isn't homogenous so no one solution will fit. The examples I know of would benefit from CI. Carers allowance atm disincentivices pt work which could top up household income. We also need to do more to encourage employers to employ disabled people. Often disabled people can't work under the current system because of the unpredictability if their condition. Under CI they could work as and when they were able or do very few hours. I think our system is foolish to assume that disabled : unemployable. Afaik the rate of disabled people in employment in Sweden is far higher than here.

I don't think CI would be any more inflationary than our current tax credits system.

OP posts:
dawndonnaagain · 16/06/2014 11:29

The thing is Weather we have to take into consideration those that really can't work, and their carers. If we're introducing new fiscal policies it's got to work right the way through society.

weatherall · 16/06/2014 12:28

There is a big difference between people who are too disabled/ carers to do a 40 hour week every week and those who can do some hours/self employment some times.

OP posts:
dawndonnaagain · 16/06/2014 12:39

You're still missing the point. Yes there is a difference, but there are some people who are simply too disabled to work. A plan is needed for those people.