Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,167
Explanation here Howard (of sorts). Would cause more problems than it 'solves' IMHO.
https://next.ft.com/content/6d328764-28d2-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
You have to take out a subscription to read that article but the main plank of the argument seems to be that technology will take over to such a degree that there will be very little work for us. They said that 20 years ago and today we have more people in work than ever before.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,167
Whoops. I forgot that there are some among us who do not subscribe to the FT!
Yer tis:-
Perhaps it is the paucity of other interesting ideas in politics; perhaps it is the thrill of an idea that appeals to idealists of both right and left. The basic or citizen’s income, by which multi-faceted welfare systems are replaced by an unconditional fixed payment per head, has been gaining a respectful audience across the developed world.
The basic income idea, which has been around for about a century, appeals to the kind of person who wants to stand above all the messy politics of who gets what and instead run things on clean, simple lines.
In theory, rather than encouraging idleness, handing out a fixed payment will provide an incentive to work more. Even if it is withdrawn as recipients’ wages rise beyond the minimum (the “negative income tax” variation on the same idea), effective marginal tax rates will be less steep than for those who at present would receive targeted means-tested benefits.
Eliminating a multiplicity of welfare programmes may reduce bureaucracy. But it will also require either politically improbable rises in taxation or a severe cut in the amount of help given to the badly off. In both cases, a pure basic income will remove support from groups in society in particular need of help.
Modelling shows that, if low-income households are not to lose out relative to the current arrangements, overall taxation will have to rise sharply. In the UK, if tax-free allowances are kept, this would probably mean pushing the combined tax and national insurance rate to 50 per cent across the range of incomes, compared with a basic combined rate of 32 per cent now.
Universal basic income
Amid anxiety over technological disruption, is a guaranteed payment from the state the future of welfare?
Of course, some would welcome lower payments instead, even at the cost of making the poor much poorer. The libertarian-leftist alliance in favour of a basic income would soon fall apart when it became clear that the Milton Friedmanites wanted to use it to turn the economy into a small-state paradise and the social democrats to create a Scandinavian welfare wonderland.
Even if rises in taxes or cuts in benefits were politically manageable, a BI might well result in a reduction in labour supply if households decide to cut back on hours of work in response to higher non-wage income. This would depress the amount of tax revenue available for redistribution, requiring yet higher tax rates. Reintroducing work requirements to prevent this would mean resurrecting the apparatus of coercion that the BI is supposed to eliminate.
Moreover, the payments that most societies make to particular groups — the long-term disabled, parents, the elderly — would either have to be ditched or separately added at extra expense. Some associated bureaucracy such as fitness-to-work requirements on the disabled would also have to be retained.
This gets to the heart of the problem with BI. The complexity in welfare systems directly reflects the fact that we, as collective democratic societies, have decided that we are going to support certain groups. To each, as the saying goes, according to their needs.
We compensate the long-term disabled because their lives are often more expensive and challenging, and their ability to work circumscribed. We give extra money to parents because having children is expensive and yet has general benefit in generating future taxpayers to fund public spending. We subsidise housing costs because rents differ so much across the UK and failing to do so will in effect drive out or impoverish lower-income families in the richer areas, such as London. We support the elderly because they are less able to work and because being old has often been associated with poverty.
Shifting from this to a basic income system is essentially saying that we consider the challenges of disability, old age, parenthood and prohibitive rent less important than administrative simplicity and the inefficiencies associated with means-testing. Handing out free cash to any old punter rather than looking after the elderly and disabled seems an unlikely political sell.
Declan Gaffney, a policy consultant who advised the previous Labour government, has put it best: basic income, he argues, is a thought experiment allowing us to imagine what kind of social welfare system we want. In reality, it will probably show us that the public desires something closer to the current arrangements than to the neat but highly problematic idea of a single unconditional income for all.
The system is messy but then so are people’s lives and needs. Throwing out that complexity in pursuit of a simple system ignores this fundamental fact of the human condition. The basic income is an idea against which the reality can be tested. It is not a replacement for it.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Certainly an interesting read and difficult to see how it would in practice, IDS has been trying to push the Universal Credit which no-one seems to understand. The vast majority like to work so inevitably they will pay a sky high tax rate. The voluntary sector would benefit enormously at present that sector is struggling as people are working longer. The biggest problem is likely to be the first country that goes for it will be inundated with people from the third world.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,167
howard mcsweeney1 wrote: The biggest problem is likely to be the first country that goes for it will be inundated with people from the third world.
And we are not??????
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Just think of the paper work it would save worth trying it over two years and see what happens.
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,167
More sensible news from Japan who like us have an ageing population.
Investment in AI/mechanisation/robots will allow shrinking workforce to increase productivity.
(NB In the UK post-war we invested heavily in false teeth and spectacles for people who are now dead whereas Germany invested in machinery which is why they are +20% more productive.)
The alternative is of course the cunning plan used in the UK of importing loads of cheap foreign labour, but the awful xenophobic Japanese (unlike we who daily embrace diversity, waving our post-national global citizen travel documents, and belonging to a single vibrant humanity where all cultures are equal - John Lennon, where are you now your country needs you?) don't particularly like foreigners, which is why Japan is still gloriously Japanese whereas we are turning into a polyglottal cess pit.
Banzai!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Guest 2804- Registered: 26 Aug 2018
- Posts: 1
Hi there I'm currently conducting university dissertation research on the implementation of Universal Basic Income and public perception on it, I would really appreciate if a few of you could take your time to complete my short questionnaire. Thanks in advance Elle
http://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4McIEjbhg3yNG5vhoward mcsweeney1 likes this
Reginald Barrington
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,259
elle-miah UBI wrote:Hi there I'm currently conducting university dissertation research on the implementation of Universal Basic Income and public perception on it, I would really appreciate if a few of you could take your time to complete my short questionnaire. Thanks in advance Elle
http://staffordshire.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4McIEjbhg3yNG5v
For those concerned.
Safe link, a 1 page survey and the only vaguely personal info required is postcode.
howard mcsweeney1 and Guest 2804 like this
Arte et Marte