To think a basic income/citizens wage is a blinding idea?

[Littlefluffyclouds81]

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is that each adult citizen, regardless of their working status, money in the bank etc, gets a basic amount of money for free, each month, for example £1000.

Sounds a bit nuts, but bear with me.

The benefits would be that everyone, whether they are homeless, or whatever, knows they have the security of this money coming in each month. There are no costly administrative procedures in determining whether someone is eligible for benefits, or sanctions for those who break the rules.

But, surely everyone will just sit on their arses and not work? Well no, because actually most people have an innate desire to be successful and do well, and let's face it no one is going to be living the high life on a grand a month. It would actually get people out of the benefits trap, because as it stands people are hesitant to come of benefits because if the job doesn't work out, they have to start their claim all over again, or they might have worked out that they would be hardly anything better off by working, so it's not really worth it. With a basic income, they could work as much as they liked knowing that they will still have this money behind them.

So how will it be paid for? Once you have removed the humongous costs of means-testing benefits, and assessing fitness for work with disability benefits, and all that, well that's the government a good few quid up, right there. Also bear in mind that the fund currently used to pay benefits would just be transferred to pay basic income. Raise corporation tax which the coalition sneaked down, and maybe a little bit more tax for the very highest earners, and that's job done.

The theory is, that as it stands, a lot of people have nothing. They are scraping by on the bare minimum of benefits, living in fear of sanctions and being forced into work fare. This way, people would have options, they would all of a sudden have opportunities in front of them to do courses, move to better accommodation, or whatever they needed. It would give people hope. The stigma of being 'on benefits' would be gone, as it would be universalistic. Equality would be massively improved, and with it so would would wellbeing, and health, which would also save the government millions.

I realise with the latest turn of political events there is approximately no chance of this happening, but I think it makes a bucket load of sense.

I like the idea. I wonder if people didn't have to work, it might actually make employers do things to make better working conditions, etc., such that people did want to work there?

A lot of the ideology behind a "citizen's wage" is joined-up thinking. On the face of it, paying a citizen's wage is expensive. But when you consider the amount of money which is spent on mitigating the effects of poverty; the cost of inequalities associated with poverty to public services; the negative impact on the economy generally, it actually starts to look quite cost-efficient.

We know that plenty of people work when they don't "need" to, and that people generally seek salaries which allow them more than the basic essentials of living so it's safe to assume most people would continue to do so.

The Dorchester expenses wouldn't be tax deductible though - they're not incurred wholly and exclusively for the purposes of your company's trade.

And unless all of your shareholders were at the meal you have almost certainly breached your legal obligations too.

I think it'd be a great idea.

However, I'd like it paid in vouchers which can only be used to pay for British made goods.

Now THAT would stimulate the economy....

It would never work - as mentioned several time previously prices would just go up so that £1000 would become the new £0

If you have public services a lot of the costs incurred in mitigating poverty are sunk costs, anyway.

Thank you CinnabarRed - I knew the numbers didn't add up and have seen analysis before but didn't have the time to find it.

The largest number that you could afford from the country's total resources to give to absolutely everybody (bearing in mind that once tax rates go above a certain level they bring in less because people either don't work or evade tax) would not be enough to live on. If you want everyone to have enough to live on there is no escaping a degree of means testing. Of course if you don't mind about people having enough to live on there's no problem...

Inflation is not the fundamental problem - the fundamental problem is making the real value of resources add up. Permanently spiraling inflation would be the result of trying to solve a fundamentally impossible sum.

But the fact that "enough to live on" varies so much round the country just means this can't work.

You can't base the amount on the average needed for people to live on - then you'll still have half of the people you were trying to help stuck in poverty.

You can't just expect anyone who can't/won't work and lives in eg London to relocate to, say, Middlesbrough.

Most people can't just drop everything and move hundreds of miles away. Moving is really expensive, apart from anything else. Poor people are less likely to be able to move.

It's not going to happen, so they'll just remain poor in London. Or worse, they will move and you'll end up with more inequality with people who can't or won't work all ghettoised together.

You'd have to give people living in more expensive parts of the country more - so you'd also end up giving more to the people who were earning the highest wages in the country. Or you'd have to give absolutely everyone more, and it would just be an unpayable amount - how would you possibly raise enough?

It would definitely benefit families with 2 parents living together. One could be a stay at home parent, and still benefit from the other parent's income, plus their own "citizen's wage".

I'm a stay at home parent anyway, it would be great for me.

I think it could work in a small country without much disparity of wealth, house prices, cost of living between different areas, not much immigration.

It's an interesting concept and I hope economists can come up with a workable solution... Perhaps some kind of middle ground between the citizens wage and our current system.

I don't for a moment believe the Daily Mail crap that people deliberately have 10 kids to rake the benefits in, or that families really enjoy sitting idle without a job between them, because fundamentally, I believe most people want to live a productive and full existence. Sitting on benefits every day isn't most people's idea of a fulfilling life

BUT... Ask people if they'd rather work part time rather than full time, or whether they'd rather remain underemployed, rather than take on the greater workload and stress of a job they are perfectly capable of doing, and the picture Changes.
I know (and no doubt many of us do) people who sit in both those camps, and they do it because they are topped up by tax credits so there is a disincentive for them to work longer or harder for only a small financial gain. I know several people who work the magic 16 hours but no more in order to get tax credits- and I'm not talking people with little children, I'm talking about people with kids in school or adult. I also know quite a few people who have the same qualifications as I do (degree plus professional qualification) who choose to be 'underemployed'- working in a less challenging low paid role where again, they get topped up by tax credits.

Now- I hasten to add there is nothing wrong with working part time, or choosing a lower status role IF you (or your partner) can fund it. When it becomes a lifestyle choice funded by tax credits it's really not a solution either economically OR in terms of helping people achieve their potential in the workplace

They voted against it last year in Switzerland, to answer that question, but I think it's going to be looked at again in their referendum next year.

I found a BBC article on the Swiss vote, I was interested in the following comment:-

A universal basic income sounds very radical, but it is not a new idea - Thomas More proposed it in his work Utopia in the 16th Century.

Thinking about the Manitoba experiment mentioned earlier by CanadianJohn.

The fact that an awful lot of people chose to take the minimum income, against expectation - perhaps it is to do with the stigma surrounding benefits, that more people would not choose to live on them here. If this idea about a basic universal 'wage' was to become reality then the stigma would no longer exist and that might make it very popular indeed.

This leads me to think that in order to maintain the society we have now, where most people want to work, we need to stigmatise benefits.

And then I find I have fashioned myself a brand new hat from tin foil, and am sitting in a bunker at the end of my garden.

...

Part of this discussion is over complicated. Since poverty is relative it depends what the starting assumptions are. If public housing is provided, then only a small sum is required to cover other each recipient's other basic needs. Having sold a great proportion of our public housing we would now need to replace it. Clearly doing that is expensive. Since Thatcher, Britain has been manufacturing poverty quite successfully.

I'm really not so sure about that, pipscina. I think in the current benefits trap people just have no prospect of things getting any better for them. A basic income would provide them with life chances, to use a sociological term.

I am only speaking for myself, but I really don't think we would all turn into work shy layabouts. Me and my dc could survive quite happily on the benefits and student finance I get. But I choose to work too, because that is the money that pays for the extra things - meals out, music lessons, swimming lessons, days out, holidays. I don't think people would stop wanting those kinds of things for themselves and their families.

A temporarily unemployed person is very different from a long term one. It's not all about benefits and stigma. This isn't about simple choices in all cases. That's partly why benefits stigma is just right wing bull. The other part is meaningful training and access to work. In the 1980s &90s there were several training schemes which did very little more than house people in warehouses typing at word processors for eight hours a day. In the north, where I lived, I saw no one helped by those.

When I was a young adult during Thatcherism, it was very easy to be unemployed and get a minimum income. But most people did want to work. Because having to survive on an absolute minimum is not what most people want to do.
But a citizen income would have to be a real minimum. So the reality is it would have to be less than some people currently get with benefits.

Where were you, morage? I remember what are today being called MacJobs, being popular. Of course unemployment figures generalise. But, I find unemployment a very personal issue. I don't see most people doing one thing or another thing at all.

I signed on in Leicester at the time. Some friends went on interesting YTA schemes with charities, and another was unemployed and spent all her time at the Unemployed Centre doing activities like learning to play the sax.
But most quickly got fed up of having no money, including me. So we went out and got jobs.
But I know people who chose to be unemployed for a bit. We were all able bodied and childless though, so dole was very very low. Enough to survive, but that was all. I remember the first pay packet I got after being on the dole and my delight at being able to afford to buy yoghurt.

Obviously a MacJob for a young single person living at home is far more attractive than the same job for someone needing to find rent. The other thing is, a person living at home may find it far easier to disappear to the next available opportunity than the comparable tenant, even if one of the aids is only a lift to the second interview from mum, or how about the semi permanent loan of mum's car?

I think lots of jobs we currently do are pretty pointless anyway. Most of us would be happier, nicer, more creative people if we had more free time

I agree happybubblebrain
although a cynic might say that our overlords would be most perturbed at the idea of happier, nicer, more creative people.
A cynic might add that to those in power we are pawns in the game and therefore need to be kept busy and stressed so that we are easy to control and don't think too deeply about things

DoraGora - I was not living at home, but in a shared house with friends. And some people are going to be low paid.

Touché, Suzanne!

However, I'd like it paid in vouchers which can only be used to pay for British made goods.Now THAT would stimulate the economy....

How do you define 'British made'? if it's made from aluminium smelted in Australia, can it be British-made? Or must it be from AL recycled in the UK.

Or cotton farmed in Egypt or a book printed in Germany?