A Research Agenda for Basic Income (Elgar Research Agendas) 1803920955, 9781803920955

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A Research Agenda for Basic Income

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Forward-looking and innovative, Elgar Research Agendas are an essential resource for PhD students, scholars and anybody who wants to be at the forefront of research. For a full list of Edward Elgar published titles, including the titles in this series, visit our website at www​.e​-elgar​.com​.

A Research Agenda for Basic Income MALCOLM TORRY

Visiting Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, previously Senior Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics, Treasurer, Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), former Director, Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. Priest in the Church of England and currently Priest in Charge of St Mary Abchurch, City of London, UK

Elgar Research Agendas

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Malcolm Torry 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023935418 This book is available electronically in the Sociology, Social Policy and Education subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781803920962

ISBN 978 1 80392 095 5 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80392 096 2 (eBook)

EEP BoX

Contents

List of figuresvii Prefaceix A note on terminologyxiii Acknowledgementsxvii 1

Introduction to A Research Agenda for Basic Income1

2

What is a Basic Income?

11

3

How could we pay for a Basic Income?

41

4

Employment market effects of a Basic Income

69

5

Economic effects of a Basic Income

97

6

Social effects of a Basic Income

125

7

What do people think of Basic Income?

169

8

Can we justify paying everyone a Basic Income?

201

9

Is a Basic Income politically feasible?

229

10

How would we implement a Basic Income?

255

11

Conclusion to A Research Agenda for Basic Income281

Bibliography283 Index of names347 Index of subjects349

v

Figures

5.1

Indifference curves

101

5.2

Budget line, showing the relationship between the number of hours of leisure and the earned income

101

5.3

Utility is maximized where the budget constraint is at a tangent to an indifference curve

102

5.4

The utility that can be achieved with untaxed income is higher than the utility that can be achieved when income is taxed

103

5.5

Benefits and earned income with tax paid above y0/w and benefits withdrawn up to y1/w103

5.6

Indifference curves in relation to the budget constraints generated by the current UK tax and benefits system and an illustrative Basic Income scheme for an individual aged 40 living alone and with no rent to pay

105

If only full-time jobs at 40 hours per week are available, then utility is maximized at point A, and not at x

107

An upside-down U curve, representing a diminishing rate of return

115

5.7

5.8

vii

Preface

A Basic Income is an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual. It is sometimes called a Citizen’s Basic Income, a Citizen’s Income, a Universal Basic Income, or a Social Dividend. They all mean the same thing. The amount that someone receives might differ in relation to their age—with working age adults receiving a standard amount, younger adults less, less again for children, and more for elderly people: but age is the only conditionality permitted. Whatever someone’s employment status, income, wealth, relationships, household structure, gender, or anything else: everyone of the same age would receive the same amount, every week or every month. The amount might be uprated each year, but otherwise it would not change. Someone’s Basic Income could be turned on at their birth, it would adjust automatically with their age, and it would be turned off at their death. It would be the simplest possible social policy. The idea is simple enough, and the administration of an entire country’s Basic Incomes would be simple enough, but because the Basic Income would have to relate to a country’s existing tax and benefits system, implementation would not be entirely simple. A Basic Income would have to be paid for, either by adjusting existing tax and benefits systems, by implementing a new tax, by creating new money, or by some other method, and the question as to whether a Basic Income of anything like a significant amount could be paid for would have to be answered. An equally important question is whether an affordable Basic Income scheme could be found that would avoid imposing net disposable income losses on low-income households. Other feasibilities matter as well. The idea of Basic Income would have to be understood to be desirable and feasible by policymakers and the general public; it would have to cohere with deeply held values; and it would have to be able to navigate its way through a country’s complex policy process. Above all, the ways in which a Basic Income would affect a country’s society, economy, and employment market would have to be understood to be desirable. However simple a Basic ix

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A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

Income might be in itself, it raises a vast number of complex questions: hence the need for research. As far as we can tell, a genuine Basic Income was first described by Thomas Spence over two hundred years ago. That description was accompanied by research results; and since then there has been a long history of research on Basic Income, some of which will be found in this volume. But in a changing world new research will always be required in order to answer today’s questions about Basic Income’s desirability, feasibility and implementation; and then yet more new research will be needed to answer questions that might be asked in the future. The idea of a Basic Income had come and gone several times since Thomas Spence first described it, but during a minor upsurge in interest during the early 1980s the first modern organizations designed to perpetuate the debate by undertaking research and education about Basic Income were founded. Since then the debate has evolved from its early European focus into a worldwide and diverse debate, and now into what we can only call a single diverse and global debate. Much research has taken place, and the purpose of this book is to record and evaluate as much of that research as possible, and on that basis to outline the research that needs to be done now. The research for the book began with a consultation among readers of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) monthly newsletter as to the research topics that should be covered, and it closed with a further consultation at the 2022 BIEN annual congress during which participants discussed draft proposals for the research that is now required. Those who participated in the consultations are thanked in the acknowledgements. Until about ten years ago it was not difficult for someone to read almost everything published on Basic Income. That is no longer possible. The debate has increased in both extent and depth so rapidly that the literature is now vast, and there are now multiple books and articles describing research on Basic Income and suggesting research that is still required. For instance, two books recently published by Edward Elgar Publishing, A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income: A multidisciplinary approach (Torry, 2020a) and Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a), are full of descriptions and discussions of research. What is unique about this book is that previous and current research is discussed for a single purpose: to discover the state of research, and on that basis to propose the research that is still required.

PREFACE

xi

Given the speed with which the Basic Income debate is changing, any suggestions made here will be out of date before the book is published: but they might still help researchers to ask themselves what research they need to do and how they should do it.

A note on terminology

A ‘Basic Income’ is an unconditional, regular, automatic and nonwithdrawable income for every individual. A Basic Income is sometimes called a Citizen’s Basic Income, a Universal Basic Income, or a Citizen’s Income. A ‘Basic Income scheme’ is a Basic Income with levels specified for each age group, with the funding method fully specified, and with any changes to existing taxes and benefits also fully specified. A ‘revenue neutral’ Basic Income scheme is one that funds a Basic Income from within the current tax and benefits system by reducing tax allowances, increasing income tax rates, altering other deductions from earned income (such as National Insurance Contributions in the UK), and reducing social security benefits. A ‘strictly revenue neutral’ scheme is one that funds a Basic Income from within the current tax and benefits system by altering income tax rates, income tax personal allowances, and other deductions from earned income, and not such allowances as those for private pension contributions. ‘Means-tested benefits’ are benefits that are reduced as earned and other income rises. Such benefits are usually paid as a single payment each week or each month to one member of a household rather than to each individual, with the amount of the payment being partly determined by the structure of the household. The payment might be reduced if the household possesses assets of various kinds, and there might also be a work test: that is, benefits will only be paid to someone who is employed or is actively looking for paid employment. ‘Contributory benefits’ are paid on the basis of a record of regular contributions made to a government or other agency. The amount of benefit paid out, and the length of time for which it is paid, might or might not be affected by the number of contributions made or the amounts of those contributions.

xiii

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An ‘unconditional benefit’ or ‘unconditional cash transfer’—of which Basic Income is one—is an income that is paid to an individual (and is not affected by the structure of the household), is not means-tested (the amount paid out does not depend on the amount of other income or wealth), and is not work-tested (it is paid regardless of employment status, and does not depend on someone unemployed looking for paid employment or training for it). The one conditionality normally permitted is that the amount paid might depend on someone’s age. Age is permitted as a conditionality because whereas we can affect our household structure, wealth, income, or employment status, and detailed enquiry has to be made if the paying agency needs to know whether or not we fulfil such a conditionality, we cannot affect our age, and once a government or agency computer knows our date of birth, no further enquiry or interpretation is required and the amount of the unconditional benefit can be adjusted automatically as we grow older. Any other conditions—employment status, income level, wealth level, household structure, and so on—are conditions that we might or might not meet. Only our age is different: hence the consensus that an ‘unconditional benefit’ or ‘unconditional cash transfer’ can vary with someone’s age and still be termed ‘unconditional’. Sometimes the situation is made explicit by the terminology ‘an unconditional income for everyone of the same age’. A ‘universal benefit’ is one that is paid to every individual within a particular jurisdiction. However, the terminology is sometimes used differently to apply to a benefit that is universal within a particular age group, or to one that is potentially universal but that might be paid at different amounts, or might not be paid at all if certain conditions are not met. An unconditional income is by definition universal. A universal benefit might be unconditional for a particular age group, but if it is a benefit that might vary then it is not unconditional. So, for instance, the UK used to provide a Child Bond for every child, with higher amounts for children in poorer families. The Child Bond was universal for all children, but it was not unconditional (Pennings, 2013). A Basic Income is unconditional and is therefore universal. A ‘Marginal Deduction Rate’ is the total rate at which additional earned income is withdrawn by income tax, social insurance contributions, and benefit withdrawal. A ‘Participation Tax Rate’ is the Marginal Deduction Rate experienced by individuals moving from unemployment to employment, and an ‘Effective Marginal Tax Rate’ is the Marginal Deduction Rate experienced by individuals in employment whose earned income rises.

A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

xv

A ‘pilot project’ is the implementation for a defined period of time, and in a defined community, of a policy change that might subsequently be implemented permanently in a wider community. This means that what is implemented in the pilot project must be shown to be implementable in its totality and in detail across a wider community before the pilot project begins. So if an illustrative Basic Income scheme is tested—for instance, for two years in a particular community—then the project is only a pilot project if it would be feasible to implement exactly the same illustrative scheme permanently across the entire wider community envisaged. If the illustrative scheme could not feasibly be implemented permanently across the wider community, then the project might be a worthwhile ‘experiment’, but we ought not to call it a pilot project. This book will follow the normal convention that taxes and benefits will generally be lower case, but particular taxes and benefits in particular countries will be capitalized: so ‘income tax’ will mean any tax on income, whereas in a UK context ‘Income Tax’ will mean the UK’s Income Tax.

Acknowledgements

Fifty years ago my Uncle Norman invited me to work in Bexleyheath’s Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) office during my university holidays. The task was to file the cards on which employers stuck stamps to the value of their employers’ and employees’ National Insurance Contributions. That was my initiation into the UK’s benefits system. Following university, and before training for the full-time ministry of the Church of England, I was seeking a different educational experience, and so applied to work at the DHSS’s Supplementary Benefit office in Brixton. During the two years that I worked on the public counter I learnt more than I wanted to know about the effects of means-tested benefits on both claimants and administrators. The rules are more draconian now than they were then. I am grateful to all of the DHSS staff with whom I worked, and for the claimants whom we attempted to serve, for a thorough education in the UK’s benefits system. Following ordination, I worked as a curate at the Elephant and Castle in South London: the parish in which the DHSS then had its headquarters. I got to know some of the staff, and Sir Geoffrey Otton, the Permanent Secretary, invited me to attend a departmental summer school. One of the lecturers was Hermione (Mimi) Parker, who had prepared the illustrative Basic Income scheme that Brandon Rhys Williams was about to present to a parliamentary committee. Two years later she invited me to join the group that became the Basic Income Research Group, later renamed the Citizen’s Income Trust and now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. It was a pleasure to serve the Trust as its honorary Director for more than twenty years. I continue to be grateful to Sir Geoffrey Otton for inviting me to the summer school, to Mimi Parker for involving me in the Basic Income debate, to the trustees of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust for inviting me to be the Trust’s Director, and to successive Bishops of Woolwich for permission to undertake the task. I am grateful to all of those with whom I have worked in the global Basic Income debate, and particularly to members of the Executive Committee of the xvii

xviii A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) which I have served as General Manager and then Treasurer since 2016. In relation to this research agenda, I am particularly grateful to all those who have facilitated my own research on Basic Income: Professor David Piachaud, for supervising my research on the subject at the London School of Economics (LSE) during the mid-1990s; the LSE’s Social Policy Department for appointing me a Visiting Senior Fellow for eleven years; Professor Hartley Dean for supervising much of my work at the LSE; Professors Holly Sutherland and Matteo Richiardi and their colleagues at the Institute for Social and Economic Research for introducing me to the microsimulation programmes POLIMOD and then EUROMOD, and for publishing my work in EUROMOD working papers; and Professor Nick Pearce for inviting me to be a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. I am grateful to the publishers of my various books on Basic Income, and particularly to Edward Elgar Publishing for publishing A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income: A multidisciplinary approach (Torry, 2020a) and Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a), and for commissioning this Research Agenda on Basic Income. Catherine Elgar and her colleagues have all been most helpful. The section of Chapter 10 that deals with implementation draws on a report issued by the Institute for Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, How might we implement a Citizen’s Income (Torry, 2016c). I am grateful for permission to reuse material in the report. Chapter 2 draws on papers presented at the 2017 BIEN Congress in Lisbon and at the meeting of the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security held in Sigtuna, Sweden, the same year; and the section on feasibility in Chapter 9 draws on a paper presented at the 2014 BIEN Congress in Montreal. I am grateful to those who contributed to the discussions following the presentations. A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income (Torry, 2020a) studied the state of Basic Income research in relation to a variety of different disciplines, and the current book studies the state of Basic Income for the purpose of constructing an agenda for future research, so a certain amount of overlap between the two books is inevitable. Similarly, the first section of each chapter contains accounts of previous research, so readers will notice overlap with Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a). What will be distinctive about this book will be the way in which material is sought, selected and ordered for the purpose of discovering the current state of Basic Income research and suggesting the research that will need to be undertaken during the next few years. What is also distinctive is the consultation exercise that has been an important part

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xix

of the research for this book. An invitation to readers of the Basic Income Earth Network’s website and monthly newsletter to contribute suggestions for a research agenda resulted in a number of written submissions, for which I would like to thank Peter Knight, Matt Sanders, Jonathan Rhys Kesselman, Sten Grahn, John Rook, John Pozzi, Tom Mullan, Michael Mendelson, Bogdan Jugovich, Gabriel Barta, Partha Pratim Mitra, Sam Brokken, Alfred Lakwo, Benét Hermind, Neil Howard, Wayne Simpson, Mario Yaco, Jeffery Smith, Richard Caputo, Mark Pickard, Robin Harrison, Alan E. Dunnem, Jingwei Du, Mohammad Mollanoori, and Andrew White. A presentation of a draft agenda for research at BIEN’s 2022 annual congress gave rise to useful suggestions for revision, and I am grateful to those who took part in the discussion: Munly Leong, Shaun Cavanaugh, Helmo Pape, Tijs Laenen, Ibrahim Kuran, Imtiaj Rasul, Alexander Imig, Gudrun Kaufmann, Hiroshi Norikane, and Dave Quinn. The vast majority of the suggestions received during the written and discussion elements of the consultation will be found in some form somewhere in this volume. I am grateful to Professor Philippe Van Parijs for useful comments on a draft of the book, and for agreeing to write an endorsement; and to Professor Nick Pearce for his endorsement. I would also like to thank those thousands of people with whom I have discussed Basic Income during the past four decades, and the many people who have drawn my attention to relevant books and articles, many of which will be found referenced in the text and bibliography. All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN).

1

Introduction to A Research Agenda for Basic Income

Introduction A Basic Income is an unconditional income paid to every individual within a particular jurisdiction: a country, a region of a country, or a group of countries. The level of the Basic Income might vary with age, but it would not be affected by an individual’s income, wealth, household structure, employment status, or anything else. Throughout the now two hundred year history of what has become a global debate, research has been essential. It still is. This book will offer some of the history of that research, will outline the current state of research on Basic Income, and will suggest the research that is now required and how it should be done.

Definitions and research: requirements for high-quality debate As a World Bank report puts it: Universal basic income (UBI) is a hotly debated idea. In fact, few development topics elicit as much interest and controversy as UBI. There is literally a book published on the subject every month, with the concept being examined across the economics, sociology, governance, philosophical, and political science literature. It is prompting both curiosity and visceral reactions from policy makers in high- and lower-income countries alike, including playing a role in political discourse and elections. (Gentilini et al., 2020: 1)

There are at least two requirements for high-quality debate: clear and agreed definitions of terms; and robust research using the best available methods. Only if definitions are both agreed and adhered to will conversation partners understand each other accurately and will research results be accurately understood; and only if the best available research methods are employed will any 1

2

A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

facts being discussed be as accurate as possible. Because of the foundational importance of clear and agreed definitions to the conduct and understanding of research, Chapter 2 of this volume is entirely about definitions. Each subsequent chapter offers a brief history of a particular subfield of Basic Income research; describes the current state of research in that subfield; and makes proposals for future research.

Basic Income’s history An important research subfield is research into the history of Basic Income. This author has already explored in depth the different ways in which histories of Basic Income have been written (Torry, 2020a: 28–47). He has also written what can probably claim to be the first comprehensive history of Basic Income—being careful, of course, to title it Basic Income: A history, rather than ‘the history’ (Torry, 2021a). A number of more partial histories preceded that attempt at a more comprehensive treatment of the subject (Duverger, 2018; Sloman, 2018; Torry, 2013: 17–47, 65–80; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 51–98; Van Trier, 1995; Widerquist, 2017a; 2019a): and more histories will be needed because the debate changes all the time. Because this author and several others have already undertaken a significant amount of research on the history of Basic Income, no chapter about research on the history of Basic Income will appear in this volume. However, it might be worth offering brief summaries of conclusions that this author has drawn from both his study of others’ histories of Basic Income and from his own history-writing. At the end of the chapter about history-writing in A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income: A multidisciplinary approach (Torry, 2020a) the following conclusions are drawn: 1. Historians of Basic Income employ a variety of history subdisciplines— political, economic, social, philosophical, and biographical. 2. They bring a variety of agendas to their history-writing: academic, philosophical, social policy, and political. 3. Historians of Basic Income are to a greater or lesser extent committed to the Basic Income proposal and this commitment generates significant agendas as they write their histories. 4. A wide variety of different data are employed—primary and secondary literature, archive material, interviews, and personal experience—in dif-

INTRODUCTION

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

3

ferent proportions, depending on their availability and on the agenda to be pursued. Each history can be located somewhere along an ideas/practice spectrum. A history might be a history of ideas, a history of events, or both. The agenda pursued by the historian will generally determine where their history lands on this spectrum. A similar spectrum can be drawn between an author providing a history of a country’s benefits systems as a context of the Basic Income debate, and the author telling the story of Basic Income with very little reference to the benefits context. There might be more or less integration between the two stories. Some authors are clearer than others about the definition of Basic Income, and some are more careful than others to use terms consistently and in accordance with normal usage. All of the authors find themselves discussing alternatives to Basic Income, and some are better than others at distinguishing the alternatives from Basic Income and at distinguishing them from each other. A particular problem relates to the way in which Basic Income and Minimum Income Guarantee (with its accompanying means-tested benefits) are not always sufficiently distinguished from each other. Each of the authors that we have studied has in mind some agenda-driven pattern as they write their history, and such patterns, as well as the agendas, will have determined to some extent what is researched and written. So, for instance, a ‘several waves’ structure (Sloman, 2018; Van Trier, 1995; Widerquist, 2017a; 2019a) can lead authors to fill chronological gaps with material that has little connection with Basic Income. (Torry, 2020a: 45–7)

Perhaps the most important conclusion drawn at the end of Basic Income: A history is an understanding that ‘as the world changes, the Basic Income debate will continue to change. What must not change is the definition of a Basic Income’ (Torry, 2021a: 254). And in agreement with Sloman’s conclusions (Sloman, 2019: 230–31), the concluding chapter finds that three arguments for Basic Income have been ubiquitous throughout its history: firstly, that a Basic Income would provide a secure layer of income as other income sources become less secure in the context of a more flexible employment market; secondly, that existing benefits systems [are] degrading, divisive, opaque, and complicated, whereas a Basic Income would carry no stigma, would facilitate social cohesion, and would be simple to administer and easy to understand; and thirdly, that a Basic Income would provide every individual with the freedom to exercise their autonomy and creativity. (Torry, 2021a: 255)

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A final conclusion is that ‘the Basic Income debate is not going to go away’ (Torry, 2021a: 258). It is therefore essential that high-quality research should take place, which means that we must discover as much as we can about the current state of research.

A history of Basic Income research Some of what we have said about the writing of Basic Income history can also be said about the writing of the history of research about Basic Income. We shall bring a variety of subdisciplines to the task; the agendas that we bring to our history-writing will determine the information that we seek and the histories that we write; and we shall need to be clear about the definition of Basic Income, and how it differs from such mechanisms as a Minimum Income Guarantee (Torry, 2020a: 45–7). Research has been a vital component of the Basic Income debate from its very beginning. When Thomas Spence first described a genuine Basic Income, he offered justifications, implementation suggestions, and discussion of likely effects (Torry, 2021a: 36–43). Spence’s proposal was to some extent a reaction to Thomas Paine’s proposal for one-off capital grants for young adults and annual unconditional payments for elderly people: proposals backed by justifications and by research on their feasibility (Torry, 2021a: 33–6). Throughout the two-hundred-year debate that has followed Paine’s and Spence’s proposals we have seen research into the ethics of paying an unconditional income; into the likely social, employment market, and economic effects; into a variety of financial feasibilities; into implementation options; and much more. Different places have seen different research emphases. For instance: Belgium has seen frequent discussion of ethical justifications for Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 48–51, 161–3; Van Parijs, 1990; 1995; 1996; 2009; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017; Van Trier, 1995; 2019), whereas the UK has experienced a significant history of research on financial feasibility (Atkinson, 1995; Martinelli, 2017a; 2017b; 2017c; Milner, 1920; Milner and Milner, 1918; 1920; Parker, 1989; Reed and Lansley, 2016; Torry, 2016a; 2019a; 2020c; 2020d; 2021c; 2022b). One useful way to understand the research fields to which attention has been paid during the modern Basic Income debate is to read the titles of sessions at Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) congresses. For instance, the first BIEN Congress in 1986 tackled terminology, objections to Basic Income, Basic Income and women, Basic Income and young people, Basic Income and social change, Basic Income and the claimants’ movement, working time

INTRODUCTION

5

reduction, unemployment and job insecurity, small businesses, Basic Income’s relationships with a variety of political ideologies, Basic Income and trades unions, Basic Income and the commons, theories of justice, Basic Income as an inheritance, Basic Income’s relationships with existing welfare states, the financial feasibilities and redistributive and employment effects of illustrative Basic Income schemes, and implementation strategies. The BIEN congress in Hyderabad, India, in 2019, discussed employment, freedom and community, pilot projects, political action and the implementation of Basic Income, campaigning for Basic Income, the commons and public inheritance, sovereign wealth funds, blockchain technology, Basic Income and women, post-conflict scenarios, mental health, a caring economy and society, financial feasibility, Basic Income and the environment, modelling of illustrative Basic Income schemes, poverty and shame, definitions, complementary currencies, secular, religious, and other perspectives on Basic Income, and the state of the Basic Income debate in Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. As we can see, not much changed between 1986 and 2019 in terms of research fields and the issues debated. Subjects discussed in 2019 but not in 1986 included pilot projects, ecological concerns, cryptocurrencies, and post-conflict scenarios, all of which are understandable additions (Torry, 2021a: 193–4). An interesting indicator that Basic Income is now a mainstream element in social policy research is that for the first time the most recent edition of Understanding Social Security, published by the Policy Press, contains a chapter on Basic Income (Martinelli, 2018). There is now a significant volume of literature on Basic Income: introductory texts of various kinds, detailed studies of different aspects of the debate, discussions of Basic Income debates in particular contexts, and so on. Much of that literature might be properly regarded as description and evaluation of research on Basic Income. This book will try not to repeat what can be found elsewhere, and in particular it will attempt not to repeat its own author’s contributions to the literature: three introductions to the topic (Torry, 2013; 2015; 2018a); a book relating Basic Income to the Christian Faith (Torry, 2016b); a book specifically about the feasibility of Basic Income (Torry, 2016a); a multidisciplinary study (Torry, 2020a); a comprehensive history of Basic Income (Torry, 2021a); and a collection of previously published chapters and articles and unpublished conference papers (Torry, 2022c). All of these books are research-based, and so between them they offer a fairly comprehensive account of the history of research on Basic Income and also a reasonably thorough description of the current state of research. Working papers published by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex offer a comprehensive treatment of microsimulation research on the financial feasibilities of Basic Income (Torry, 2019a—which summarizes the findings of several earlier

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working papers; 2020c; 2021c; 2022b); and an article written for the LSE Public Policy Review contains a short history of UK research on Basic Income (Torry, 2020d). Particularly significant in relation to the current state of research is the Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income (Torry, 2019b): a collection of chapters on a wide variety of aspects of the Basic Income debate written by fifty-two authors from around the world. Much of this literature, and much more besides, will be referenced in the current volume, and in particular there will be multiple references to A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income (Torry, 2020a) and to chapters of the Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income (Torry, 2019b), not with the purpose of repeating what has previously been written, but in order to draw attention to aspects of the history of research on Basic Income, of the current state of research, and of existing suggestions as to the research now required, to be found in those volumes. However, there will be places where material found in those books will have to be summarized in this book in order to provide a coherent account of the current state of research. Such necessary repetition will of course be fully referenced. It would be quite impossible in a volume of anything like a normal length to offer a comprehensive description of the history of research on Basic Income and of the current state of research, let alone adequate evaluations of them: there has been too much research, too much reporting of it, and too much evaluation of it, for that to be possible. What the reader will find here will be quite selective, and the most useful elements of the book might be the references and bibliography. Equally important resources for researchers will be the references and bibliographies in each of the chapters in The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income (Torry, 2019b), and also the references and bibliographies in A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income (Torry, 2020a) and Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a). What the book does attempt to do is to provide a brief overview of various aspects of the history of research on Basic Income, and a fairly comprehensive description of the current state of research on those aspects, and on that basis to make some suggestions as to the research that will now be required if the increasingly widespread global Basic Income debate is to be intelligent. Research literature directly about Basic Income will be covered as comprehensively as possible, but as no author can now claim to be aware of all of the available research about Basic Income, readers will inevitably discover omissions, and possibly quite important ones. Also covered will be research literature closely related to the Basic Income debate: but here readers will encounter a significant problem. The Basic Income debate touches so many research fields that it is almost impossible to draw a boundary around the literature that might be regarded as somehow related to that debate: so inevitably

INTRODUCTION

7

the research that will be discussed here will be the literature that the author has found helpful in his own research on Basic Income. Other authors would have made different selections. Readers who wish to expand their own selection of literature to be studied in relation to a particular aspect of Basic Income research might wish to follow up the references in this volume and then search the bibliographies in the books, chapters and articles that they will then find themselves reading.

The structure of the book Each of the following chapters tackles a particular subfield of Basic Income research. As already suggested, clear and agreed definitions are essential to the intelligence of the Basic Income debate, and Chapter 2 outlines some of the history of research about such terms as ‘Basic Income’, ‘universal’, and ‘unconditional’; brings the history of Basic Income up to date; and suggests what research might now be required. Subsequent chapters tackle research on financial feasibility, employment market effects, other economic effects, social effects, what people think about Basic Income, ethical justifications for paying everyone an unconditional income, political feasibility, and implementation. Each chapter begins with some background history, and then describes the current state of research, by which is generally meant research conducted since the modern Basic Income debate began about fifty years ago. Discussion of the state of research will lead into suggestions as to the research that now needs to be done and the methods that might best be used to conduct it. It has not been easy to decide in which order chapters should be placed. As this is a research agenda, the order has to some extent been guided by the order in which feasibilities might be tackled if implementation of a Basic Income were ever to be considered: and so, for instance, financial feasibility is studied first because without that there would be no point in discussing any other feasibilities. Within that general trajectory, the order of chapters is sometimes determined by connections between them: and so, for instance, the chapter on economic effects is placed after the one on employment market effects because it contains a section that refers back to it. No doubt other authors would have ordered the chapters in different ways. It has also been difficult to divide material into chapters of fairly equal length, with each chapter tackling a reasonably coherent set of material. My last two books for Edward Elgar Publishing reveal two of the problems. In A Modern Guide to Basic Income: A multidisciplinary approach (Torry, 2020a), each

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chapter set out from a particular discipline, but then the difficulty arose as to where to place material on a particular aspect of the Basic Income debate when it clearly related to several different disciplines. In Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a), a basically chronological approach could be taken, but as the Basic Income debate had evolved differently in different places, geographical divisions were also required. Compromises were inevitable. In relation to this book, these problems and others have presented themselves. While it was clear that each chapter would have to be organized into three parts—a brief discussion of relevant history; then the bulk of the chapter on the current state of research; and finally suggestions of research now required—it has been far from easy to divide up the current state of research into coherent chapter sections, simply because there are so many connections between different aspects of the global Basic Income debate and the research related to them. Each chapter has been given a title, and on the whole the background material, material on the current state of research, and suggestions of future research required, will relate to that title, but much of the material in each chapter could easily have been placed in one or more different chapters, and some material so obviously belongs in more than one chapter that a certain amount of repetition has been unavoidable. This has been particularly true of the Basic Income pilot projects and other practical experiments that have been so much a part of recent research activity. Each pilot project and experiment offers evidence relating to many different aspects of the Basic Income debate: employment effects, social effects, economic effects, financial feasibility, the politics of the debate, and so on. For this reason, material about pilot projects and other experiments will be found scattered throughout the book, which is as it should be.

Conclusion Two histories have been entwined in this chapter: the history of Basic Income, and the history of the meaning of ‘Basic Income’. This too is as it should be. Given the importance of the definition of Basic Income to the now global debate about it, it is clearly essential that that definition should be researched, and therefore that both the history of Basic Income and the history of the meaning of ‘Basic Income’ should experience substantial and sustained research effort. Diverse historical methods should be used, and ideally the work should be undertaken by trained historians willing to immerse themselves in the Basic Income debates of the past, the present, and the future, and in the now vast Basic Income literature.

INTRODUCTION

9

What has also emerged from this chapter is an understanding of the diversity and complexity of the current Basic Income debate, evidenced by the now voluminous literature on the subject: so we can draw the conclusion that any future research will have to take into account that diversity and complexity and the substantial amount of research already undertaken. It must be multidisciplinary and employ a wide variety of research methods, and it will have to understand that research undertaken in one place and time might not be relevant in another. It will also have to know that as soon as a research project has been completed the world will have changed and the results will be out of date. As we shall see, it might not be quite true that ‘largely unknown is the interplay of UBI with the rest of the policy space’, but there are significant gaps (Crowley and Sevciuc, 2021: 8). The hope is that this book will fill some of them. One final conclusion: The Basic Income researchers of the future are in for a diverse, complex and fascinating adventure.

The research now required • Further research into the history of Basic Income, and into the history of the meaning of ‘Basic Income’, is essential, and should preferably be done by trained historians. • Any future research must be multidisciplinary, must use a wide variety of methods, and must be done in each different context.

2

What is a Basic Income?

Introduction In order to research a concept, we need a clear and agreed definition of what that concept is. It is therefore essential to begin this research agenda for Basic Income with discussion of the definition of Basic Income, an exploration of the history of the concept, notes on variants of Basic Income and of alternatives to it, an account of some existing research on the subject, and an outline of research that might now be required. We shall find that although there is a certain amount of consensus about the definition of Basic Income, there remains considerable scope for debate, so continuing research and discussion are essential.

A working definition of Basic Income I shall take as a working definition of Basic Income the definition published by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN): ‘A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’ (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022; Torry, 2021a: 1–5). BIEN is a membership organization, and so is representative of its individual members rather than of the global Basic Income debate, but as there is no other organization with any greater claim to represent a consensus on what a Basic Income is, we really have no choice but to employ BIEN’s definition as the basis for the discussion that follows. Sometimes other names are given to a Basic Income: Citizen’s Income, Citizen’s Basic Income, Universal Basic Income, Unconditional Basic Income, Social Dividend, Unconditional Grant … Adding ‘citizen’ emphasizes that the unconditional income would be a right of citizenship (somehow defined); adding ‘universal’ emphasizes the fact that everyone would receive the income; and adding ‘unconditional’ draws attention to Basic Income’s unconditional11

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ity. None of these additions is necessary because a Basic Income is by definition unconditional and is therefore both universal and a right of citizenship. If what is meant by any of the alternative names is ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’, then it is a Basic Income. In this chapter and throughout this book we shall be using ‘Basic Income’ terminology, but we could equally well have used any of the other terminologies listed (Torry, 2017a; 2017b; 2019b; 2019c; 2021a: 2–6, 9–12, 133–4). Any definition leaves questions unanswered, and that is certainly true of our working definition of Basic Income. And so, for instance, what does ‘to all’ mean? How often is ‘periodic’? And how much should the Basic Income be? (Torry, 2017b; 2021a: 2–6). It is therefore no surprise that there are many variants of a Basic Income, with different understandings of precisely who should receive it, how often it should be paid, and how much should be paid. This suggests that ‘Basic Income’ represents a set of meanings that share family resemblances with each other (Wittgenstein, [1953] 2001: §67, 27). Later in this chapter we shall discuss alternatives to Basic Income, and will discover that ‘Basic Income’ is sometimes used for mechanisms that are not necessarily definable as ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’. The meaning of language is its use (Wittgenstein, [1953] 2001: §66, 27; §180, 62; §179, 62: italics in the original), so nobody can say that an individual or an organization has no right to use the term ‘Basic Income’ to mean precisely what they wish it to mean. However, it remains true that if research is to be meaningful, then all of those involved in undertaking that research, and all of those who might discuss it, need to agree on the definitions of the terms employed, otherwise neither meaningful research nor rational debate can take place. So in this book we shall be clear that by ‘Basic Income’ we shall mean ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’; by ‘variant of Basic Income’ we shall mean a Basic Income with particular characteristics in relation to who should receive it, how often it should be paid, and how much should be paid; and by ‘alternative to Basic Income’ we shall mean something that is not a Basic Income. Basic Income schemes An essential distinction to keep in mind throughout the book is the distinction between Basic Income and Basic Income scheme. A Basic Income is always an unconditional income for every individual. A Basic Income scheme is a Basic Income with the different levels of payment for different age groups specified;

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with the jurisdiction within which it is to be paid specified, along with an understanding of who within that jurisdiction will receive the Basic Income; with the funding method fully specified; and with any accompanying changes to existing tax and benefits systems also fully specified. There is an infinite number of possible schemes, and different schemes will exhibit different feasibilities and different effects, so a scheme that might be feasible in one national context might not be in another. Now will follow not a history of the Basic Income debate (a comprehensive account of which can be found in Basic Income: A history (Torry, 2021a)), but a brief and necessarily incomplete history of the term ‘Basic Income’ and of its interpretation.

A brief history of ‘Basic Income’ and its interpretation This book is a research agenda, and because meaningful research requires agreed definitions, what we must discuss here is the definition of the term ‘Basic Income’: that is, the question as to what it means: so the history that we need to discuss is a history of the meaning of the term ‘Basic Income’, and also of other related terms that we might employ when we discuss research about Basic Income. However, it is clearly impossible to separate the history of the term ‘Basic Income’ from the history of Basic Income. We are now fortunate to have available to us an increasing literature on the history of Basic Income (Duverger, 2018; Miller, 2017: 261–68; Kovee and Priddat, 2019; Sloman, 2018; Standing, 2017: 9–18; Torry, 2013: 17–47, 65–80; 2020a: 28–47; 2021a; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 51–98; Van Trier, 1995; Widerquist, 2017a; 2019a), so what will be offered here will be a brief history of Basic Income with an emphasis on the history of the meaning of the term ‘Basic Income’. The early debate Who does not belong in this history? Thomas More imagined ‘Utopia’ as a community in which there would be no money and in which all property and resources would be shared: but this was not a money economy so there was no Basic Income (More [1516] 1995: 241, 247; Torry, 2021a: 27–8); and although Charles Fourier is sometimes regarded as an important participant in the Basic Income story, he probably intended by his ‘decent minimum’ (Fourier [1803] 1874: 20; [1803] 2004: 100) a Minimum Income Guarantee (a level of income

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below which a household is not permitted to fall, which implies a means-tested benefit) rather than a Basic Income. However, John Stuart Mill might have interpreted Fourier as suggesting a Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 51–3, 58–60), and it is possible that it was while discussing Mill’s interpretation of Fourier that G.D.H. Cole was the first to employ the term ‘Basic Income’ to mean an unconditional income for every individual: On this score [Mill] praised the Fourierists, or rather that form of Fourierism which assigned in the first place a basic income to all and then distributed the balance of the product in shares to capital, talent or responsibility, and work actually done. (Cole, 1953: 310)

Thomas Paine is often credited with being the inventor of a Basic Income at the end of the eighteenth century, but he suggested a single capital sum for each young adult, and an annual sum for everyone over the age of fifty, rather than a regular income for everyone, so it is probably Thomas Spence who should be credited with the invention of Basic Income, as his proposal was for an unconditional quarterly income for every adult: The number of parishioners, and the sum thus left to be divided among them being announced, each, without respect of person, is sent home with an equal share. (Spence, 1796: 12)

Spence’s proposed payments would clearly have been a ‘periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’, and so would have been a Basic Income according to BIEN’s definition of the term (Torry, 2021a: 33–43). Although we might normally regard quarterly payments as insufficiently frequent to count as the kind of regular income that a weekly or monthly payment would constitute today, a quarterly income was probably as universal, unconditional, and frequent as would have been administratively feasible two hundred years ago. Rents were generally due on the four quarter days of the year, and the quarterly distribution envisaged by Spence was to be financed by the quarterly collection of rents due on the land that had been ‘made the property of the corporation or parish’ (Spence, 1796: 8): so quarterly payments would have been both appropriate and inevitable. During the nineteenth century, the possibility of paying an unconditional income to every individual was occasionally discussed in the UK, the USA, and Belgium, with the funding method generally being a tax on land, an inheritance tax, or the expropriation of everyone’s property by the State on their death or before that (Torry, 2021a: 44–63). Following the First World War, the

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State Bonus League in the UK published what we should probably regard as the first fully specified Basic Income scheme (Torry, 2021a: 67–75): Every individual, all the time, should receive from a central fund some small allowance in money which would be just sufficient to maintain life and liberty if all else failed. a) That as everyone is to get a share from this central fund, so everyone who has any income at all should contribute a share each in proportion to his capacity. (Milner and Milner, 1918: 7)

Every week ‘every man, every woman, and every child’ (Milner and Milner, 1918: 7) would have received a tax-funded Basic Income of five shillings (£0.25): the equivalent of £15 per week today (Bank of England, 2022). The modern debate in the UK Discussion of genuine Basic Incomes reappeared in the UK at various points during the twentieth century. Family Allowance, implemented after the Second World War, was an unconditional income paid for all children except for the first child in the family, which during the mid-1970s became Child Benefit, payable for all children. Although the amount paid for the first child in a family continues to differ from that paid for the second and subsequent children, the main carer for every family of the same size receives the same amount every week (Torry, 2021a: 82–3, 129–30): so if we can stretch the definition of Basic Income to ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all carers of the same number of children, without means-test or work requirement’—which would be reasonable in view of the fact that we would be unlikely to be paying a Basic Income for children to the children themselves— then it might be legitimate to call Child Benefit a Basic Income. Interestingly, we would not be able to call Child Benefit a ‘Universal Basic Income’ because it would not be universal: it would be ‘categorical’—that is, for those individuals in the category ‘child’; or, more accurately in terms of the administration, for those individuals in the category ‘responsible for caring for children’ (Mabbett and Bolderson, 1999: 47). In 1943, Juliet Rhys Williams proposed something close to a Basic Income as an alternative to the 1942 Beveridge Report’s proposals for social insurance and means-tested benefits. Rhys Williams proposed a regular payment for every adult, conditional upon accepting any employment offered, and of slightly different amounts for men and women (21 shillings and 19 shillings respectively: £1.05 and £0.95, equivalent to £49 and £45 in 2020 (Bank of England, 2022)) (Beveridge, 1942; Rhys Williams, 1943: 139, 144–6, 163–4). Rhys Williams suggested that the levels of her proposed incomes should be calculated sepa-

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rately for each region in relation to the average cost of housing, so her proposal was in fact for a work-tested, household-tested, and region-tested income, and so some distance from being a genuine Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 85). The problem that differential housing costs presents to the construction of an illustrative Basic Income scheme today is generally solved by leaving in place existing means-tested benefits related to housing costs and local taxes (Torry, 2019a: 41–3). James Meade’s ‘social dividend’ proposal was for a genuine Basic Income, as it would have been paid to ‘the members of the community’, and although his 1935 publication of the idea did not stipulate either the frequency or the amount of the payment, he later wrote of Juliet Rhys Williams’ scheme that it would have provided ‘every man, woman and child’ with ‘his or her basic minimum’ (Meade [1935] 2016: 33, 53; 1948: 43). In 1982, Juliet Rhys Williams’ son Brandon, a Conservative Member of Parliament, submitted to a parliamentary committee a detailed and costed Basic Income scheme constructed by his research assistant Hermione (Mimi) Parker. The scheme’s ‘householder’ allowance did not fit the definition of a Basic Income, but most other elements of it did. The adult Basic Income, to be paid at £17 per week, would have been equivalent to £61 per week in 2020 (Bank of England, 2022; House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee Sub-Committee, 1982: 426). In 1984, the Basic Income Research Group (BIRG) (now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust) was founded to promote debate on Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 82–95, 131–7). An early definition of Basic Income included ‘an independent income sufficient to meet basic living costs’ (Parker, 1985), but by 1988 ‘sufficient to meet basic living costs’ had been dropped (Basic Income Research Group, 1988) because Parker, who by then was editing the BIRG Bulletin, had found that a ‘Full Basic Income … defined in terms of adequacy rather than bare subsistence, is not feasible and probably never will be. But a partial BI is feasible’ (Parker, 1988: 7). Parker hoped that a Partial Basic Income might be able to cover all basic needs apart from housing, so that means-tested benefits apart from housing benefit could be abolished. However, research conducted in 2012 and 2014 showed this to be too optimistic a scenario, and that it would be impossible to implement a Basic Income scheme in the UK that could be funded from within the current tax and benefits system and would contain a Basic Income high enough to enable means-tested benefits to be abolished without tipping large numbers of low-income households into deeper poverty (Torry, 2019a: 4–9; 2020b). ‘Full’ and ‘Partial’ terminology remains useful (Delsen, 2019: 4), but most researchers now understand that in a more devel-

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oped economy a feasible Basic Income might not be sufficient to live on on its own (Lansley and Reed, 2019; Martinelli, 2017a; 2017b; 2017c; Reed and Lansley, 2016; Torry, 2017b; 2018c) and that existing means-tested benefits would have to be maintained and recalculated to take account of claimants’ Basic Incomes and the changes in net earnings consequent upon the Basic Income scheme’s changes to the current tax system. In the short to medium term a Partial Basic Income is likely to be the only feasible option, although some Basic Income advocates continue to assume that a Full Basic Income might still be possible: that is, that the level of a Basic Income could lie above a poverty line, somehow defined (Pereira, 2017: 2; Torry, 2021a: 6). Such ‘subsistence level’ schemes have either been tested and found to impose substantial net disposable income losses on too many low-income households, have not been tested, or have been left with funding gaps (Reed and Lansley, 2016: 15, 27). Unfortunately a funding gap presents two major problems: First of all, filling it would normally require tax rises that would impact the incomes of low-income households, and so might tip more such households into deeper poverty; and secondly, because any method of filling the funding gap would affect household net disposable incomes, any research results on household net disposable incomes obtained during the initial evaluation of the proposed scheme would not represent its true effects and so would be misleading (Torry, 2021b). We can see that in the UK during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ‘Basic Income’ has usually meant ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’ (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022), but with occasional minor deviations; weekly or monthly regular payments have generally been assumed; and although it was initially assumed that Basic Incomes would be paid at ‘adequacy level’, that assumption soon gave way to an understanding that a Basic Income would have to be accompanied by a means-tested housing benefit, and then research on the financial feasibility of Basic Income schemes found that because a Basic Income at anything like ‘subsistence level’ would be impossible to implement, existing means-tested benefits would have to be retained and recalculated. A consensus had emerged that an unconditional income paid at a level below subsistence level (somehow defined) could be counted as a Basic Income, as BIEN’s definition in fact implies. The modern debate in continental Europe and beyond Two years after the Basic Income Research Group was founded, Philippe Van Parijs convened a conference in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium at which the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) was founded, later to become

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the Basic Income Earth Network when the debate globalized twenty years later. Van Parijs’s ‘terminological note’ for the 1986 conference contained no discussion of the level at which a Basic Income would be paid (Van Parijs, 1988); in an article written in 1986, van der Veen and Van Parijs ‘suppose’ that a ‘universal grant’ might be payable that would satisfy ‘fundamental needs’ (van der Veen and Van Parijs [1986] 2006: 13); and in 1995 Van Parijs wrote that the unconditional income should be paid ‘at the highest sustainable level, subject to the protection of everyone’s formal freedom’ (Van Parijs, 1995: 31). The hope was clearly for a Basic Income at subsistence level, somehow defined, but there was also a sense of realism that that might not be possible, and there was no suggestion that an income could not be called an ‘unconditional grant’ or ‘Basic Income’ if it was not at subsistence level. The debate on the continent of Europe had begun in Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, and had soon spread to other European countries (Torry, 2021a: 160–96); in 2004, Brazil legislated for a Basic Income, to be approached by stages, although the process has got stuck at an income-tested and otherwise conditional stage (Silva and Lima, 2019; Torry, 2021a: 198–200); and the Basic Income debate is now worldwide, in the sense that it occurs on every continent and in multiple countries; and it is global, in the sense that the connectedness of the world means that there is now a single Basic Income debate with local variations (Torry, 2021a: 197–254). Throughout, there has been an understanding that a Basic Income is a regular payment made to every individual, but there have been diverse understandings as to the level at which an income should be paid in order to count as a Basic Income. In 2017, a survey of organizations affiliated to BIEN found that: • some affiliated organizations did not mention the issue, suggesting that the amount to be paid was not integral to the definition; • some said that a democratic process would be used to decide the amount; • one organization mentioned a particular figure (South Africa); • and some offered a description of the kind of life that a Basic Income would be expected to fund (‘subsistence’, ‘dignity’, ‘participation’, ‘poverty line’) in relation to the national context, but without specifying the relevant level of Basic Income (Torry, 2017b). A recent successful citizens’ initiative in Austria asked that the Basic Income requested of the government should ‘enable every person with their main residence in Austria to lead a decent existence and genuine participation in society’ (Bundesministerium Inneres, 2022).

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The diversity that we have discovered, and the difficulty of defining any of ‘subsistence’, ‘dignity’, ‘decent existence’, ‘participation’, ‘poverty line’, and so on (Torry, 2013: 161–8; 2018a: 81–84; 2020a: 21–2), suggests that the only conclusion that we can legitimately reach is that an unconditional income of any level should be counted as a Basic Income: although, as we shall see, more recent discussion has questioned this. In order for debate about the definition of ‘Basic Income’ and about the term’s interpretation to be as intelligent and as useful as possible, research into the history of Basic Income, and into the history of the meaning of ‘Basic Income’, must go on: and also interesting would be research into the various terms used to denote a Basic Income, into when they were first used, and by whom. Research into how organizations affiliated to BIEN, and also other organizations and individuals, understand the meaning of ‘Basic Income’, should continue, as should research into what individuals and organizations think about the level at which an unconditional income should be set. Opinion surveys and focus groups are two research methods that might with profit combine to research how ‘Basic Income’ is understood, and the feasibilities and effects of a wide variety of variants of Basic Income.

Alternatives to Basic Income: Mechanisms with some similarities to a Basic Income An essential distinction is that between ‘variants of Basic Income’ and ‘alternatives to Basic Income’. Every variant of Basic Income is a genuine Basic Income—‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’—but each variant will have particular characteristics: it will be for a community with a particular boundary, or it will have a particular payment interval, or it will be paid at particular levels for each age group. An alternative to Basic Income is something that is not ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’, although it might share some characteristics with a Basic Income. Readers will need to be aware that what are here called ‘alternatives to Basic Income’ are sometimes termed ‘variants of Basic Income’ by other authors. It is always essential to check the detail of the particular scheme that is being discussed in order to discover whether it is ‘a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’. If it is that, then it is a variant of Basic Income, and if it is not then it is an alternative. The requirement to check detail does not only apply to mechanisms called ‘Basic Income’. One of

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James Tobin’s proposals for what he called a ‘Negative Income Tax’ was in fact for a Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 104–5). A distinction that relates to this discussion of alternatives to Basic Income is that between means-testing and income-testing. An income-tested benefit is one that falls when other income rises, and rises when other income falls. A means-tested benefit is one that is income-tested, but it might also be reduced if the household claiming the benefit possesses capital of some kind, and the calculation might also take into account various needs, such as housing costs, fuel costs, and so on. The relationship between means-testing and income-testing can be variously understood. We might decide that an income that is income-tested, but that does not suffer from any other tests, is not means-tested, because it is not reduced by some of the tests generally applied during means-testing (Madden, 2021); or because income-testing is part of the means-testing process, we might decide that an income-tested benefit is means-tested. For the purposes of this book, income-testing will be assumed to count as means-testing, on the basis that an income test is a test of a household’s means, even if no other tests take place, and also on the basis that a household that applies for means-tested benefits, and happens to be only income-tested because it has no capital or other resources, will still think that it is being means-tested. The importance of this decision is that if income-testing is counted as means-testing then an income-tested income is means-tested and according to our working definition is not a Basic Income. If we had decided that income-testing did not count as means-testing then we might have been able to count an income-tested income as a Basic Income. Given that an income-tested income is not unconditional, it would appear to be correct to count income-testing as means-testing, and an income-tested income as something other than a Basic Income: that is, as an alternative to Basic Income, and not as a variant of it. Particularly significant in relation to alternatives to Basic Income are a wide variety of experiments, proposals, and discussions in the United States and Canada (Chapters 4 and 6), for two reasons: the experiments that have taken place have been sizeable projects, and have delivered useful results; and almost none of them have been about Basic Income as normally understood. There are alternatives to Basic Income that share few or no characteristics with Basic Income. For instance, social insurance is constituted by benefits paid out, often for limited periods of time, on the basis of contributions paid by workers during previous employment. The income might or might not be income-tested, but it will usually be work-tested, and it will be conditional on a contributions record. Means-tested benefits might or might not be regular

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payments while they are in payment, but they will always be means-tested, will usually be work-tested, and the income will generally be paid on the basis of the household. Here are the most common alternatives to Basic Income that share rather more characteristics with Basic Income: A Minimum Income Guarantee—or simply a ‘Guaranteed Income’ (Sheahen, 1983)—is constituted by levels of household income that households are enabled to reach by the payment of income-tested benefits, with the levels of household income to be reached determined by household structure (Torry, 2021a: 14–15, 20). The USA and Canada have seen multiple Minimum Income Guarantee proposals and experiments (Torry, 2021a: 99–100). While a Minimum Income Guarantee is radically different from a Basic Income, because a Minimum Income Guarantee implies income-tested benefits and will be based on the household rather than the individual, neither a Minimum Income Guarantee nor a Basic Income are work-tested, and both can increase income security, which is why it is possible to argue that results from Minimum Income Guarantee experiments can predict some of the effects that a Basic Income would exhibit (Forget, 2011; Widerquist, 2019b: 308–316). It is of course equally possible to argue that the differences between Basic Income and Minimum Income Guarantee mean that there will always be a level of doubt as to the legitimacy of such results transfers. As readers might realise, a Basic Income would result in an individual Minimum Income Guarantee at the level of the Basic Income, but a Minimum Income Guarantee would not imply a Basic Income. A Negative Income Tax, proposed by Milton Friedman (Torry, 2021a: 101–102), has often been popular on the right of the political spectrum (Story, 2015), and has sometimes been understood as a kind of Basic Income that might be easier to recommend to the general public than an unconditional income paid to every individual (Hamilton, 2020: 129–31). A Negative Income Tax would pay to individuals an income proportional to the amount that their earned income fell below an income tax threshold, above which they would pay income tax in the usual way. Because a Negative Income Tax and a Basic Income could result in the same net income for the same earned income (something not always recognized: Camplin, 2013: 116–17), the same graph can be drawn to express that relationship, so the two have sometimes been confused with each other. They should not be (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 141). The administration of a Negative Income Tax would be extremely complicated (Meade, 1972; Parker, 1989: 149). In most developed economies, income tax is administered by employers on behalf of the government, so employers would have to admin-

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ister the Negative Income Tax as well as the usual income tax. Anyone changing jobs, experiencing periods of unemployment, being self-employed, earning from self-employment as well as employment, or having two jobs, would face significant administrative burdens, as would their employers. The identity of Basic Income and Negative Income Tax exists ‘only on paper’, because a Basic Income would provide an equal income to every individual (Camplin, 2013: 117) ‘ex ante, no questions asked’, whereas a Negative Income Tax would be given ‘only to those who turn out to have had, or provide adequate evidence that they now have, an insufficient income’ (George, 2002: 23). While a Negative Income Tax would not be work-tested, and would normally, but not necessarily, be paid on the basis of the individual rather than the household, the income-tested character of the income distances it from a Basic Income, and its complex administration would compare extremely unfavourably with the simple administration of a Basic Income (Clinton et al., 1994: 30–31). While a Negative Income Tax would constitute a Minimum Income Guarantee at the level at which the Negative Income Tax would be paid at zero earned income, neither of them would constitute or imply a Basic Income (Torry, 2016a: 127–30; 2021a: 15–17, 20–22, 96–9). It is therefore unfortunate that a Negative Income Tax is sometimes called a Basic Income, and that the administrative differences between them might not be discussed when they would be highly relevant to the question of the feasibility of any Negative Income Tax proposal under discussion (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2016; Delsen, 2019: 4–5; Sommer, 2016). Genuine Tax Credits (not the means-tested benefits sometimes called ‘Tax Credits’) are the same as a Negative Income Tax, except that the payment at zero earned income is specified rather than the tax threshold (Dilnot et al., 1984; Torry, 2016a: 126–7). Some mechanisms, such as the US Earned Income Tax Credit (Leff et al., 2019), are similar to Tax Credits, except that they are paid annually and according to a complex formula. The payment is made subsequent to the submission of an annual tax return, so the administration is feasible and not too onerous (Torry, 2021a: 17–18, 21, 101–110). It is fortunate that no genuine Negative Income Tax or Tax Credit scheme—such as US President Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, or the UK’s 1970s proposal for Tax Credits (Torry, 2021a: 106–8, 124–8)—has ever been implemented, because the complex administration required would have been a significant and unpopular burden for both governments and individuals. But having said that, and in relation to the subject of this book, the research that has gone into the structures of a variety of Negative Income Tax, Tax Credit, Participation Income, and Minimum Income Guarantee proposals remains a valuable

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resource, and this is particularly true of the experiments conducted in relation to some of the proposals, on which see Chapter 4. How confusing the situation can become is illustrated by the tax credits paid in the Netherlands since 2001. These are similar to a Negative Income Tax in that they are managed by the employer if there is one. The problem in which we are interested here is that individuals involved in the Basic Income debate in the Netherlands have credited the tax credits with being a form of Basic Income. There are similarities, in that one of the tax credits is not conditional on employment status, and both tax credits are paid to the individual rather than to the household (Groot and van der Veen, 2000: 199, 216), but they remain an income-tested benefit nevertheless, and so not a Basic Income. A clear signal that the tax credits are not a Basic Income is that the latter is radically simple to administer, whereas the tax credits are radically complicated. The formulae for calculating the General Tax Credit (algemene heffingskorting) and the Labour Tax Credit (arbeidskorting) are similar to that for the US Earned Income Tax Credit (Leff et al., 2019), which means that the payments are complicatedly income-tested; and the fact that the Labour Tax Credit is only available to people in employment means that at least part of the tax credit system is work-tested. It is difficult to see how the tax credits can be aligned very closely with Basic Income. In 1992, Tony Atkinson proposed a Participation Income (Atkinson, 1993): an income for each individual conditional on at least one of a series of ‘participation’ conditions being met, but otherwise unconditional. People who were retired, studying full-time, sick, disabled, or caring for others, would have been exempt from meeting any of the other conditions, but everyone else would have had to be in employment or self-employment, looking for employment, or undertaking approved voluntary work. A similar approach would be to apply a ‘participatory principle’ to a variety of benefits fields (Horton and Gregory, 2009: 209–14), and a simplified proposal, similar to the scheme proposed by Juliet Rhys Williams, would be a Participation Income conditional on accepting a part-time job (Delsen, 2019: 5). The consequence of implementing Atkinson’s Participation Income would have been widespread, complex and intrusive administration; and the fact that a Participation Income cannot be evaluated with a microsimulation programme because the participation conditions cannot be simulated in a computer programme (Atkinson et al., 2017: 308) clearly suggests that decisions as to whether the conditions had been met would have been at the discretion of ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), tribunals would have been required to hear appeals, and organizations would have offered spurious voluntary activity or part-time employment to enable people to meet participation conditions (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2007;

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2008; De Wispelaere and Noguera, 2012: 25–6). What research has been able to show is that only one per cent of the population of the UK would have been excluded from receiving Atkinson’s Participation Income (Atkinson, 1993: 10; 1996: 69; Torry, 2016a: 124–6, 134–8; 2021a: 18–19, 21-2, 136–9). In his thorough study of Participation Income, Heikki Hiilamo (2022) recognizes both the moral and political arguments for the proposal, and also the significant administrative challenges that it would face (Hiilamo, 2022: 89–93). His conclusion is that for a restricted group of people implementation of a Participation Income might be useful and feasible—he references the Netherlands and Barcelona experiments discussed in Chapter 9 of this volume—but that a positive outcome could only be achieved ‘when [Participation Income] is not rolled out as a universal programme’ (Hiilamo, 2022: 138). No government should ever dream of implementing such a complex and bureaucratically intrusive benefit as a Participation Income for its country’s population. Unfortunately, that does not mean that they would not do so. Civil servants, thinktank staff, and policy consultants, might not have sufficient understanding of how the administration of benefits actually works in practice: so they might launch into a Participation Income and find themselves engulfed by population-wide administrative complexity. All this goes to show that administrative detail really matters. Graphs can mislead policymakers into believing that a Negative Income Tax could behave in the same way as a Basic Income, whereas the differences in their administration make them very different from each other. A Negative Income Tax, a genuine Tax Credits scheme, or a Participation Income, would be either impossible or very difficult to administer, whereas a Basic Income could not be easier. The UK Government’s recent experience with ‘Universal Credit’ (a combined means-tested benefit) is a classic example of consultants proposing a system without taking sufficient account of the administrative complexities that the proposal would face (Centre for Social Justice, 2009). A Participation Income was proposed by an eminent academic who was either unable or unwilling to factor in the complex, wasteful, and demeaning administration that would be required. All of the above—Minimum Income Guarantee, Participation Income, Negative Income Tax, and Tax Credits—have been described as Basic Incomes when they ought not to have been (Hamilton, 2020: 35; Ontario, no date). They are alternatives to Basic Income, not variants of it. Experiments and research about these alternatives have sometimes been assumed to deliver results directly relevant to Basic Income, and sometimes vice versa (Atkinson, 2015: 297; Citizen’s Income Trust, 2015), without arguments being offered as to why

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results relating to research and experiments in one kind of benefit should be regarded as applying to another. ‘Minimum’ and ‘guarantee’ A particular problem is the use of ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ terminology in the United States (Torry, 2021a: 96–7). This term means a category of benefits that can include the Alaska Permanent fund, Basic Income (BI), Basic Income Grant (BIG), Citizen’s Dividend, Citizen’s Income, Daily Bread, Demogrant, Dividends for All, Guarantee Annual Income (GAI), Guarantee Adequate Income (GAI), Guaranteed Basic Income, Guaranteed Income (GI), Guaranteed Minimum Income, Guaranteed Minimum, Income Guarantee, Minimum Income Guarantee, Minimum Income, National Minimum, National Tax Rebate, Negative Income Tax (NIT), Refundable Income Tax Credit, Share the Wealth, Social Credit, Social Dividend, Social Income, Social Wage, State Bonus, Territorial Dividend, Unconditional Basic Income (UBI), Universal Allocation, Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal Benefit, Universal Grant, Universal Income Tax Credit. (Sheahen, 2012: 178)

Because the category includes Minimum Income Guarantee, Negative Income Tax, and Basic Income (Widerquist, 2018), experiments in all of these have been understood to be Basic Income Guarantee experiments, which in turn could lead too easily to the assumption that results obtained from experiments in one kind of Basic Income Guarantee might be directly relevant to another member of the category, which they would not be. It would be helpful if the ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ terminology could be retired, as it is too similar to ‘Basic Income’ to avoid confusion (Torry, 2020a: 22–3). Problems with the words ‘guarantee’ and ‘minimum’ started at least as far back as the early nineteenth century, when Charles Fourier asked for ‘a generous minimum, a guarantee of food and of decent maintenance’ (Fourier, 1829: 24), but how this was to be provided remained somewhat ambiguous (Torry, 2021a: 58–9). Joseph Charlier’s ‘un minimum garanti’, ‘a guaranteed minimum’ (Charlier, 1848: 44–7, 33; [1848] 2004: 114–15, 110), was similarly ambiguous. Charlier believed that it would eventually satisfy everyone’s ‘absolute or vital needs’ (Charlier, 1848: 24; [1848] 2004: 106): but was it a Basic Income or a Minimum Income Guarantee? The phrase ‘guaranteed minimum’ was subsequently replaced by ‘la garantie d’un minimum obligatoire pour chacun tout en laissant le travail facultatif’, ‘the guarantee of an obligatory minimum for all, leaving labour optional’ (Charlier, 1848: 33; [1848] 2004: 111), so we know that Charlier did not envisage a work test: but we still cannot decide whether an income-tested benefit was intended. The argument that

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each person’s right to life gives them ‘the right to demand from the land … his share of the fruits that he needs for his existence’ (Charlier, 1848: 20, 23; [1848] 2004: 103–4, 106) suggests an equal division of land rents (Charlier, 1848: 43; [1848] 2004: 116–17), but doubt remains (Torry, 2021a: 60–63). It would clearly be helpful if the words ‘minimum’ and ‘guarantee’ were to be used sparingly, and only in relation to means-tested benefits. An unusual example of accurate description by the UK Government was the ‘Minimum Income Guarantee’: a means-tested benefit for older people implemented in 1999 (Dornan, 2006: 1). It is in such terms that the words ‘guarantee’ and ‘minimum’ belong, and it would be best if they were to appear nowhere else, and certainly nowhere near the Basic Income debate. The problem with the word ‘guarantee’ is that to guarantee an income can either mean to guarantee that a particular income will be paid as a Basic Income, or that a stated income level will be reached by some means that might not imply a Basic Income. The two possible meanings of ‘guarantee’ in this context can result in ambiguities in the literature that can leave the reader not knowing whether what is being discussed is a guaranteed Basic Income or a Minimum Income Guarantee (Greve, 2017: 95, 127; Torry, 2021a: 7–9): and so, for example, a sentence such as ‘The idea is to guarantee every citizen in the country an unconditional income sufficient to meet some minimal threshold’ (Walker, 2016: 3) can be read either as meaning that an unconditional income is given to every individual, or that every individual or household is given an income-tested benefit to enable them to reach a prescribed threshold. If the reader is aware of the potential ambiguity then they might be able to work out what the author intends in a particular context, but if they are not, and they bring to the text a presupposition that to guarantee an income implies a Basic Income, then they might completely misunderstand what the author has in mind: for instance, if a Minimum Income Guarantee experiment is what is being discussed. Particularly problematic is the use of the term ‘Basic Income’ for something that is not a Basic Income. For instance, Pitts et al (2017) regard the Speenhamland reforms of 1795 as ‘a kind of Basic Income’, and argue that a Basic Income would encounter the same problems as those reforms, whereas the Speenhamland experiment was with household-based and income-tested payments that also varied with the price of bread (Block and Somers, 2005: 14): something so different from a Basic Income that no conclusions could legitimately be drawn from the 1795 reform as to how a Basic Income would behave (Torry, 2021a: 31–33). The Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis has used ‘Basic Income’ to denote a means-tested benefit coupled

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with an annual dividend (Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis, 2020), and the recent short-lived Ontario experiment called a household-based and income-tested benefit a ‘Basic Income’ (Mendelson, 2019: 3, 22; Ontario, n.d.). Duverger has called it a ‘revenu de base sous condition de ressources’, ‘a resource-conditional basic income’ (Duverger, 2018: 129): a valiant attempt to encompass what it called itself and what it was. A similar attempt to qualify the noun ‘Basic Income’ can be found in the Australian proposal for an ‘affluence-tested Basic Income’: a means-tested benefit that constitutes a Minimum Income Guarantee (Spies-Butcher et al., 2020). It is of course perfectly legitimate to qualify ‘Basic Income’ in relation to those characteristics that constitute variants: for instance, in relation to territorial area, amount, and periodicity. An example would be ‘a weekly partial European Basic Income’. What is not legitimate is to qualify it in relation to an unpermitted condition. A ‘means-tested Basic Income’ is not a Basic Income; a ‘household Basic Income’ is not a Basic Income; and a ‘work-tested Basic Income’ is not a Basic Income. Most of the experiments in the US and Canada have been with Minimum Income Guarantees—levels of household income below which households have not been allowed to fall, and so implying an income-tested benefit—and not with Basic Incomes, even though that terminology is sometimes used (Torry, 2021a: 8–9, 96–121). More popular books that argue from increasing automation to the need to maintain households’ incomes seem to be particularly prone to a rather flexible approach to the meaning of ‘Basic Income’ (Bregman, 2017; Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014). Brown means by ‘Basic income’ an income ‘linked to a contribution to society through work in the market and/or service to the public’ (Brown, 2017: 165), and so a Participation Income; and Brokken employs ‘Universal Basic Income’ to refer to a wide variety of experiments that do not fit the definition of Basic Income (Brokken, 2019: 84–5). It is particularly unfortunate that Thomas Piketty employs ‘basic income’ terminology to mean a means-tested and work-tested benefit (Piketty, 2020: 1002–3). This discussion shows that clear and agreed definitions are essential to rational debate about Basic Income and also to the appropriate use of research results: a point that applies not only to such terms as ‘Basic Income’, but also to each of the words used in the context of the Basic Income debate. So ‘unconditional’ means precisely that: without conditions—except that this is not quite the case. Most Basic Income schemes recognize that different levels of Basic Income would be paid to different age groups: a conditionality permitted because we cannot affect our age, so no risk of moral hazard emerges (that is, we cannot change our age in order to affect the amount of Basic Income that we would receive), the efficiency of the administration of Basic Income is

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not compromised, and no degrading or stigmatizing bureaucratic enquiry is required, because once a government computer knows someone’s date of birth it never needs to enquire about their age (Torry, 2020a: 26–7). So a shorter working definition of a Basic Income might be that it is the payment of the same amount of money, every week or every month, unconditionally, to every individual of the same age. What is not permitted is any conditionality over which we might have some control and about which enquiry would have to be made: so employment status, earned income, household structure, and so on, are not permitted conditionalities. It is therefore problematic when an income-tested benefit is termed ‘unconditional’. For instance, the report of a survey on experiments of various kinds is titled ‘Basic Income Experiments in OECD Countries’, and the researchers explain that by relaxing the definition of UBI to include schemes that are not necessarily universal, unconditional and non-withdrawable, we can include experiments undertaken with sub-sets of the population. In light of this decision, we also henceforth use the term ‘basic income’ rather than universal basic income. (Chrisp et al., 2022: 9)

Here, as in other reports (Hasdell, 2020; Young, 2018: 9, 22), ‘unconditional’ clearly does not mean ‘non-withdrawable’ or ‘without means test’, so presumably it means ‘not work-tested’; and ‘Basic Income’ no longer means an unconditional income paid without means test or work test to every individual. The report goes on to discuss multiple experiments in many of which the incomes are withdrawn as earned income rises (Chrisp et al., 2022: 28–37). During the 1990s, the French Basic Income debate experienced significant confusion as the Association pour l’Instauration du Revenu d’Existence (Association for the Implementation of an Existence Income) and its founder Yoland Bresson meant by ‘unconditional’ an income that was not work-tested but that could be income-tested (Duverger, 2018: 99–111). Similarly, in relation to recent Minimum Income Guarantee experiments in Barcelona, which to their credit labelled themselves as ‘B-Mincome’, and not as ‘Basic Income’, ‘conditional’ meant that those receiving the income-tested income had to participate in a variety of training, employment and community projects, whereas ‘unconditional’ meant that there was no obligation to participate in such activities, but that their incomes were still income-tested (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2019; Bollain, 2019). Language matters. Most of the social policy concepts we use as researchers are also key concepts in the political debate, which is why we need to be rigorous in the way we handle them. This intellectual rigour must feature a new historical and comparative awareness

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that enables us to understand the development of our social policy concepts and language, both over time and across time and space. This is why it is essential to map out the different meanings and understandings of popular social policy concepts. (Petersen and Béland, 2014: 305)

A Basic Income is the payment of the same amount of money, every week or every month, unconditionally, to every individual of the same age; and none of a Minimum Income Guarantee, Participation Income, Negative Income Tax, or Tax Credit, is a Basic Income. They are alternatives to Basic Income, and not variants of it. Basic Capital Thomas Paine’s proposal was for Basic Capital rather than Basic Income—that is, a single capital sum for each young adult: and similar ideas have been proposed since then, for instance in the UK by the Institute for Public Policy Research (Roberts and Lawrence, 2018: 11–13) and the Resolution Foundation (Bangham, 2018: 23–31). Both proposals were for unconditional capital sums for young adults, but whereas the Institute for Public Policy Research suggested that there should be no restrictions on the capital sum’s use, the Resolution Foundation, perhaps rather more realistically, suggested that expenditure should be restricted to ‘housing, education, training, pensions, and entrepreneurship’ (Bangham, 2018: 27): although given the difficulty of administering such restrictions, the suggestion that the grants should be accompanied by an education and mentoring strategy might be regarded as a useful compromise (Paxton and White, 2006). A practical attempt at a capital sum for every individual was attempted by the UK’s New Labour Government when it established a Child Trust Fund for every child. The Government paid an initial sum into each child’s fund, with a promise of a further sum at the age of seven, and relatives and friends were able to add to the fund. The accumulated sum was to be available to the child when they reached eighteen years of age. The initial sum was means-tested, but one of the proposal’s proponents later suggested that it ought not to have been (Le Grand, 2012: 152). Following the 2010 General Election, the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Government abolished the scheme. Wealthier families would have been able to maximize the value of their Child Trust Funds, meaning that the policy might have increased inequality rather than reduced it; and differences between the social capitals possessed by different recipients of Basic Capital would inevitably have resulted in different uses and therefore in different levels of utility, yet again increasing inequality. This would be far less of a problem with Basic Income, which would become the foundation for every individual’s regular disposable income rather than a one-off large addition to it. Van der Veen

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identifies further advantages of Basic Income over Basic Capital in terms of Basic Income’s ability to shift gender roles, job quality, and our understanding of work (van der Veen, 2003: 166); and a further and important argument for a preference for Basic Income over Basic Capital is that a basic income … would offer an incentive for citizens to think in wider terms about the institutions within which they live. It has the potential to assist in an institutional and cultural democratic transformation. (Pateman, 2003: 143)

Basic Capital would not have the same effect. ‘Universal Basic Services’ Universal Basic Services is the proposal that additional public services should be free at the point of use. A number of countries already have public services that fit this definition: for instance, the UK’s National Health Service, in which all medical services, apart from prescriptions for those deemed able to pay for them, are free at the point of need (Torry, 2016a: 130–31; 2018d; 2018e). In many countries, education is at public expense until late teenage years. A recent example of an extension of free public services is free public transport in London for young people and also for elderly people outside the morning rush hour. There is a clear case for governments to provide public services free at the point of need. For instance, because of the multiple knowledge asymmetries related to healthcare markets, the most efficient means of ensuring that everyone has access to sufficient healthcare is the tax funding of a public service free at the point of need; and no government-supplied income could substitute for the very different levels of healthcare provision that different people need during their lives (Schneider et al., 2021; Torry, 2018d; 2018e). However, in other expenditure fields there is also a case for government-supplied income to enable individuals and households to purchase those goods and services that are most efficiently provided by the market (Matsaganis, 2013). There are researchers on the left of the political spectrum who regard Universal Basic Services as an alternative to Basic Income, and who oppose the two to each other, on the basis that it would not be possible to afford both, and that additional free public services would reduce inequality faster than a Basic Income (Coote and Percy, 2020: 51–6, 125–6; Gough, 2021; Portes et al., 2017). First of all, care must be taken that what is being discussed is public services that are genuinely universal. For instance, a Scottish report categorizes free

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transport for those in receipt of means-tested benefits as a ‘universal basic service’, which it is not (Statham et al., 2022: 4). Secondly, it is not necessarily true that public services are better than cash benefits at reducing poverty and inequality (Matsaganis, 2013: 91); and thirdly, it would be perfectly feasible to implement both a revenue neutral Basic Income and additional free public services (Percy, 2019: 222). Basic Income and Universal Basic Services are not in principle incompatible, although particular illustrative schemes for both of them could be. Universal Basic Services is not a variant of Basic Income, and neither should it be regarded as an alternative. Whether additional free public services should be implemented is an entirely separate question, and should be treated as such, as is the question as to which public services should be universal and which should not be. A job guarantee A rather different proposal is a job guarantee, that advocates suggest would maximize an economy’s output and, if the jobs were paid at a National Minimum Wage, would provide a secure income for every working age adult (Mitchell and Watts, 2005). A related proposal is that governments should create additional new money, not tax it back, and spend it on a job creation scheme (Murray and Forstater, 2018; Piachaud, 2016: 18; Kelton, 2020: 244–54). Unfortunately, a job guarantee scheme would pose multiple difficulties: the cost of creating jobs not created by the market; the difficulty and cost of training and supervising the workers; the problem that the subsidized production would compete with firms that obtained their labour in the normal employment market; and the difficulty that job guarantee schemes trap individuals in a ‘minimalist, make-work, low-wage program’ (Tymoigne, 2013: 63), and have been shown to ‘have produced little in the way of useful output and have in some instances actually delayed job entry and subsequent job retention rather than promoted it’ (Gregg, 2009: 175). A Basic Income would be more efficient and more effective than a job guarantee scheme because it would be radically simple to administer, which a job guarantee scheme would not be, and it would incentivize employment and the formation of new businesses, and so would do the same job as a job guarantee without the coercion, cost, and other disadvantages of a job guarantee (Szlinder, 2019). However, whatever the advantages and disadvantages of a Basic Income and a Job Guarantee, there is no conflict between the two, and revenue neutral schemes of both could work happily alongside each other (Fitzroy and Jin, 2017).

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Current questions about the definition of Basic Income One mechanism that fits BIEN’s definition of a Basic Income like a glove is the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend: an annual dividend paid on the profits of a permanent fund into which oil royalties are paid. The dividend is received by every individual adult who has been an Alaskan citizen for at least a year, and it varies each year with the profits of the fund (O’Brien and Olson, 1991; Torry, 2021a: 118–19; Widerquist and Howard, 2012). While the dividend conforms to the Basic Income definition, it behaves very differently from an income paid at the same rate every week or every month. It is the Alaska dividend, among other proposed and actual policy instruments, that raises the question as to whether clarifications should be added to BIEN’s rather minimalist definition of Basic Income, or to the alternative working definition that we have formulated above. BIEN publishes the following list of expected characteristics of a Basic Income: 1. Periodic—It is paid at regular intervals (for example every month), not as a one-off grant. 2. Cash payment—It is paid in an appropriate medium of exchange, allowing those who receive it to decide what they spend it on. It is not, therefore, paid either in kind (such as food or services) or in vouchers dedicated to a specific use. 3. Individual—It is paid on an individual basis—and not, for instance, to households. 4. Universal—It is paid to all, without means test. 5. Unconditional—It is paid without a requirement to work or to demonstrate willingness-to-work. (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022)

This list of clarifications coheres with how ‘Basic Income’ has usually been understood. It assumes regularity of payment: once a week, or once a month (following an earlier period during which quarterly payments would have been the only feasible method); it assumes that payments would be made ‘to all’, but leaving ‘to all’ somewhat undefined; and it assumes that the payment should be unconditional (although it is not clear why ‘without means test’ is included under ‘universal’ rather than under ‘unconditional’). The fact that the payment would be made to individuals rather than to households is emphasized, and so is the assumption that the payment will be in cash rather than in vouchers, goods, or services. There is no mention of the level at which a Basic Income would be paid, as this is a legitimate variable. However, debate continues as to whether an unconditional income that is not at ‘subsistence’ level, somehow defined, should be called a Basic Income; gaps in the BIEN definition, and in its five clarifications, have encouraged further

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debate; and recent changes in the ways in which governments manage their financial relationships with their citizens have raised new questions about which payment methods might be permitted for a Basic Income. Recent debates In 2019, BIEN’s General Assembly—its Annual General Meeting—established a working group, the ‘Clarification of Basic Income Definition’ (CBID) group, to provide a context for continuing discussion of BIEN’s definition of Basic Income and of its clarifications. An open invitation was offered to BIEN’s members to join the group, and meetings have been held, including open forums to which all members of BIEN are invited. Several proposals have been discussed: for instance, whether the word ‘uniform’ should be added to BIEN’s definition of a Basic Income to make it clear that payment should be at the same level from week to week or from month to month, apart from an annual uprating; and also whether Basic Income should be stated to be ‘non-seizeable’: that is, that no court or agency should be able to seize someone’s Basic Income for the payment of fines or for any other purpose. Both of these proposals would be genuine clarifications of the existing definition of a Basic Income. A rather different proposal that has been debated at BIEN’s General Assemblies is that a Basic Income should be regarded as a human right (see Chapter 8). The relevant question here is not whether we ought to regard Basic Income as a human right: it is whether this is a debate about the definition of Basic Income. Whether or not a Basic Income is regarded as a human right tells us nothing about what a Basic Income is, nor does it tell us how we might best clarify its definition, so the ‘Should Basic Income be a human right?’ question is the subject of a completely separate debate that needs to be treated as such. The Clarification of the Basic Income Definition group has, as we might expect, discussed whether the definition of Basic Income should include a statement of the level at which it should be paid. As the title of Toru Yamamori’s paper for the 2021 BIEN congress asks: ‘Is a penny a month a Basic Income?’ (Yamamori, 2022). Yamamori finds, as we have, that at the beginning of the modern debate it was assumed that a Basic Income would be paid at a level somehow related to human need, but that now a greater diversity of assumptions is in evidence. It is of course true that few people would regard as a Basic Income a periodic unconditional payment of a penny a month; and it is also true, as Yamamori suggests, that there would be few who would want to see a small Basic Income replace existing means-tested benefits systems, as that could make poor households even poorer. The increasing availability of microsimulation research results (Chapter 3) makes it possible to avoid Basic Income schemes that

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would impose large numbers of significant losses on low-income households: but the involvement of microsimulation research also reveals that in a country with a more developed economy it would not be possible to implement a Basic Income scheme that would be sufficient to meet everybody’s basic needs, let alone one that would satisfy any published Minimum Income Standards that represent an acceptable standard of living (Davis et al., 2021; Torry, 2020b; 2021a: 147). As Paul Spicker suggests, that is not what matters. Basic Income is meant to be ‘basic’, not a replacement for every other income source. It will be delivered along with other benefits. It does not determine final income in itself. Basic Income cannot be ‘adequate’, but it does not need to be; it only needs to be basic. … BI will make a useful contribution because it provides part of a person’s income—a part that is secure, that is not stigmatized, that adds to social cohesion. It would be good if it could provide a larger part rather than a smaller one, but that is not crucial to the concept. (Spicker, 2019: 99)

Yamamori is clearly correct to suggest that an unconditional penny a month should not be understood as a Basic Income, so in many contexts we shall have to make the assumption that the level of a Basic Income will provide a secure basis but that it would not be sufficient to live on. Perhaps the feasible level should be described as ‘substantial’ or ‘significant’. This debate will continue, and it should. A further complex issue raised during the preparation of papers for BIEN’s 2021 Congress relates to the ways in which some countries, and particularly France and Canada, manage relationships between the government’s revenue collection function and individual citizens (Madden, 2021). The question is this: If the payment of a Basic Income is combined in some way with other payments, perhaps with other state benefits or with earned income, and perhaps with such deductions as income tax instalments, and a net figure is then paid into the individual’s bank account either by the government or by an employer, then has a Basic Income been paid? This can clearly be argued both ways. No separate payment of an unconditional income has been made, but as long as everyone receives the same Basic Income from the government, a universal and unconditional income has been paid. This is another debate that will no doubt continue. ‘To all’? One question that has not received as much attention as it might have done is this: What is meant by ‘to all’, or ‘every individual’? This is at least two questions: First of all, at what territorial level should a Basic Income be paid? And

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secondly, within any particular territorial level precisely who should receive a Basic Income? So firstly, should a Basic Income be paid to everyone living in a particular country? Or perhaps to everyone living in a state in a federal country, such as India or the United States? Or maybe a Eurodividend should be paid to every citizen in the European Union or the Eurozone (Cowen, 2002: 53; McKnight et al., 2016: 67–8; Torry, 2020a: 142–3; 2021a: 256–7) to provide a context within which national social security experiments could flourish? In Chapter 9 we shall find ourselves discussing the possibility of a single Indian state implementing a Basic Income: a possibility because of the considerable fiscal autonomy that the individual states enjoy. In the United States, each state runs its own welfare system, in a context of some federal funding and an element of federal control. This means that in India and the United States we might see individual states implementing Basic Income schemes, with perhaps other states then following suit, and eventually nationwide schemes being rolled out. Alternatively, it might be possible for a territorial unit larger than that of a nation state to implement a Basic Income scheme. Given the existing collaboration among European nation states, the whole of Europe, the European Union, or the Eurozone, might implement a European Basic Income. As well as providing all of the usual advantages of a secure layer of income for every individual, a Europe-wide Basic Income could redistribute purchasing power from wealthier nations to poorer nations, thus doing more efficiently what the European Union’s current attempts at redistribution are doing rather badly (Bonnemains et al., 2018); and it would enhance European integration, and also Europeans’ understanding of themselves as European citizens as well as citizens of their own countries: both somewhat lacking in the current state of the Union (Meade, 1991: 24–29; Sloman, 2019: 229; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 230–41). However, there is an institutional problem, in that tax and benefits policy is reserved to national governments, and they are unlikely to hand this competence to European institutions in the near future: although it is not impossible that national governments might be able to agree to a European tax on fossil fuels mined in or entering the European Union, and to the proceeds being used to fund an initial Eurodividend. A proposal for a regional Basic Income for Central America would offer the same advantages as a Eurodividend, and might encounter the same obstacles (Krozer and Lo Vuolo, 2013). The question as to precisely who should receive a Basic Income within any particular territory is not answered by simply offering the response that everyone would receive it. The problem is that there will always be people with a variety

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of different statuses living within a country’s, state’s or region’s boundaries. Should all of them receive the Basic Income? In some countries, there is a clear difference between citizens and those who are not citizens: for instance, in Estonia, 6.5 per cent of residents are not citizens (Aidnik and Rikmann, 2018: 9). Should only citizens receive the Basic Income, or should it be all legal residents? And if residents, after how long should a visitor be regarded as a resident? A working group asked to make proposals for the UK summarized its conclusions as follows: Anyone living in the UK with the right to do so indefinitely, and refugees with a defined number of years of legal residence, would receive Citizen’s Basic Incomes if they would be defined as resident in the UK by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and they have been resident in the UK for a minimum residency period. A national of another country which had implemented a Citizen’s Basic Income would be entitled to receive an individual Citizen’s Basic Income on arrival in the UK if their country gave the same right to UK nationals. (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018a)

However, that does not answer all of the potential questions: Should an asylum seeker with an undetermined status receive a Basic Income? Should prisoners retain their Basic Incomes? Should international students receive Basic Incomes? No universal answer can be given, because each country’s polity will be different, so any proposals will have to be context-specific. This means that what ‘to all’ and ‘every individual’ might mean should be regarded as a question for each individual country to discuss rather than being a question for the global Basic Income debate. An interesting related question is this: Might a useful compromise in relation to prisoners be to pay their Basic Incomes, perhaps for a limited number of years, into an individual account that they could access at the end of their sentence? If so, might it be possible for other people to defer receipt of their Basic Incomes, perhaps until retirement? And given that there would be gaps in receipt of the incomes, would such deferred payments still constitute a Basic Income? Illustrative clarifications of the Basic Income debate For what it’s worth, here is one individual’s attempt at a modification of BIEN’s published clarifications. I have aimed to make as few changes as possible, and at the same time to address some of the matters raised in this chapter.

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Needless to say, this attempt should not be regarded as the opinion of anyone other than the author. A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement. (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022)

Here are ten characteristics of Basic Income: 1. Periodic—It is paid at regular intervals (for example once a week or once a month). 2. Cash payment—It is paid in an appropriate medium of exchange, allowing those who receive it to decide what they spend it on. It is not, therefore, paid either in kind (such as food or services) or in vouchers dedicated to a specific use. 3. Individual—It is paid on an individual basis—and not, for instance, to households, or on the basis of household structure. 4. Substantial—The Basic Income should be paid at a level that provides a significant secure income platform, but not necessarily at subsistence level somehow defined. 5. Universal—The Basic Income is paid to all legal residents within the national or regional boundaries within which the Basic Income is implemented. 6. Unconditional—The Basic Income is paid without a requirement to work or to demonstrate willingness-to-work. It is paid without an income test, without a means test, and without any other condition being applied, except that different age groups might receive different amounts. 7. Uniform—The Basic Income is paid at the same rate, every week or every month, to everyone of the same age. The amount for each age group might be uprated once a year. 8. Non-seizeable—no court or government or other agency should be able to claim the whole or part of any individual’s Basic Income for the payment of fines, for the settling of civil claims, or for any other reason. 9. Funding method—A variety of methods for funding a Basic Income might be feasible. The definition of feasibility should always include the avoidance of household disposable income losses for low-income households. 10. Administration of the payment—payment will normally be as a separate amount received weekly or monthly into a bank account or in cash. If the Basic Income is paid along with other benefits or earned income, or along with an individual’s payment of income tax, so that a net figure is paid into the individual’s bank account, then as long as the Basic Income itself is unconditional and not income-tested, and is listed separately on the payment advice, and as long as everyone receives at least the stated amount of the Basic Income each week or each month, and nobody experiences breaks in the regular receipt of at least that amount, then a Basic Income has been paid. (Torry, 2022a)

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Conclusion As we have seen, it might not be quite true that ‘largely unknown is the interplay of UBI with the rest of the policy space’, but there are considerable gaps, for instance in relation to Basic Income’s interplay with ‘minimum wage, pensions, severance pay, and the broader social protection systems’ (Crowley and Sevciuc, 2021: 8). Whilst this chapter has been able to discuss much useful Basic Income research, there is still much to be done.

Future research New issues constantly emerge. The published clarifications of BIEN’s definition state that the Basic Income should be paid in cash and not in vouchers for particular uses (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022), which suggests that vouchers for health insurance, education or housing (Glennerster, 2010: 700–701) should not be regarded as Basic Incomes: but how should we view local currencies that can only be spent in prescribed locations? A regional unconditional quarterly income is now being paid in a local currency to twenty-four year olds in Gyeonggi Province in the Republic of Korea (Ahn and Kang, n.d.; Gyeonggi Research Institute Basic Income Research Group, 2019: 16); in Maricà in Brazil an unconditional income, again in a local currency, is approaching universality (Silva and Lima, 2019: 320–24, 327; Rocha, 2020); and in Berlin the Circles Project ‘aims at creating a basic income from the bottom-up, whereby people in different communities issue money equally and exchange with each other without the need for state cash’ (Cabaña and Linares, 2022). On the assumption that ‘cash’ implies a sovereign currency that has to be accepted as legal tender throughout a jurisdiction, do the local currencies received in Gyeonggi Province and Maricà function more like vouchers than like cash? And the related question: Should the clarifications be adapted to include the possibility of a Basic Income being paid in a local currency, perhaps on condition that that currency must be accepted as payment for any goods or services purchased within the jurisdiction within which the Basic Income is paid? This is a debate that must happen, and it must be informed by research on how local currencies function and on their economic and social effects. Every issue discussed in this chapter is a legitimate subject for ongoing debate, and if that debate is to be intelligent and useful then two requirements must be met: the debate must be informed by the best available research, based on the

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best available research methods; and words and combinations of words used in the debate must have agreed and consistently applied meanings. The global Basic Income debate is an important social fact, so it is essential that the terminology required by that debate should have clear and agreed definitions, that everyone involved in the debate should adhere to those definitions, and that anyone who diverges from them should explain the alternative meanings that they are allocating to the terminology and the reasons for them. Only if all of that happens can all participants in the global debate understand each other and can reports on research results be properly interpreted. In the absence of clear and agreed definitions to which everyone adheres, miscommunication will occur, and research results will be misunderstood and misapplied. The research that is now required is as follows: • Research into the history of Basic Income, to complement the material already available, must be a continuous process. The Basic Income debate is now diverse and worldwide, so any written history is immediately out of date. The debate would be well served by regular historical research to complement existing histories. • In particular, research is required on the histories of the various names given to Basic Income and of their interpretation. • Research should be conducted in as many countries as possible, and among as many individuals and institutions as possible, to discover the meanings that are given to a wide variety of terminologies. Translations between multiple languages will be required to achieve this; and usage of terminology by print and electronic media will also have to be understood to enable a full picture to emerge of the diverse meanings attributed to the terminology used in the Basic Income debate. • Widespread debate, perhaps facilitated by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), will be required to enable individuals and institutions that use terminology differently to fashion agreements as to how terminology should be understood. • Detailed research is required on variants of Basic Income, in order to understand the differences between them, the sources of those differences, the reasons for them, and the different effects likely to result from them. Particular attention should be paid to the different ways in which individuals and institutions discuss the level at which a Basic Income should be paid, how the terms used (such as ‘subsistence’, ‘dignity’, and so on) might be understood and researched, and how such particular variants might most usefully contribute to the global debate. Financial feasibility and

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administrative factors should be at the heart of this research, and practical experiments as well as theoretical discussions might be helpful. Widespread debate, perhaps facilitated by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), should take place to enable individuals and institutions that use terminology about variants of Basic Income differently, and that might have different understandings as to which variants might be feasible and legitimate, to fashion agreements as to how terminology should be understood. Detailed research is required on alternatives to Basic Income, in order to understand the differences between them, the sources of those differences, the reasons for them, and the different effects likely to result from them. Administrative factors should be at the heart of this research, and practical and laboratory experiments as well as theoretical discussions might be helpful. Widespread debate, perhaps facilitated by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), should take place to enable individuals and institutions that use terminology about alternatives to Basic Income differently to fashion agreements as to how terminology should be understood. Research on definitions, variants, and alternatives, should directly inform all other research on Basic Income: so, for instance, terms used in experiments, during research on experiments, and in reports on experiments, should be carefully studied in the light of the working definition of Basic Income employed in this chapter, in the light of the research discussed in this chapter, and in the light of the future research proposed here. Research is required in each context on precisely who within the jurisdiction’s boundaries should receive a Basic Income; on precisely how a Basic Income could be administered; and on feasible levels of Basic Income (Chapters 3 and 9 also ask for this research).

3

How could we pay for a Basic Income?

Introduction It might be thought that immediately following a chapter on the definition of Basic Income might not be the best place for one on paying for it. Should we not first consider the advantages that a Basic Income might offer to our society and our economy? The reason for this chapter being where it is is that if we cannot pay for a Basic Income then there is no point in discussing it any further. Many different methods have been proposed for paying for a Basic Income: from within the current benefits and income tax systems; by creating new money of various kinds; by using a dividend from a permanent fund; and by taxing carbon, land, data, consumption, and so on. This chapter will explore these different funding methods, will discuss existing research on them, and will ask what further research is required.

A brief history of funding options At the end of the eighteenth century Thomas Paine recommended the payment of a single capital sum for each working age adult, and annual pensions for older people, all paid for by taxing the value of land; and Thomas Spence proposed paying for his quarterly Basic Income by taking land into public ownership, letting it out for cultivation, and distributing a proportion of the rents after other public expenditures had been met (Torry, 2021a: 33–43). Similar proposals continued to be made, along with an inheritance tax charged at up to 100 per cent of the value of the property of the deceased individual (Torry, 2021a: 44–49, 56–63). Then during the twentieth century proposals were made to fund Basic Incomes by taxing industry’s profits or individuals’ earned incomes (Torry, 2021a: 67–95). More recently, all of these methods have been proposed, along with a carbon tax, various other new taxes, money creation, and sovereign wealth funds. We shall briefly discuss some of the 41

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history of these different funding options before describing recent research on all of them. From within the current income tax and benefits systems The credit for the first detailed costings of a Basic Income scheme funded by taxing individuals’ earned incomes should probably go to Mabel and Dennis Milner (Milner and Milner, 1918: 8). The aim of their proposed unconditional State Bonus was to provide everyone with a feeling of security, not to make an arbitrary addition to wages. It is, in short, a very comprehensive insurance scheme. Therefore, as with other insurance schemes, the contribution must be from all, while the benefit would be most felt by those in need. (Milner and Milner, 1918: 8)

In order to show that a State Bonus would not constitute a major ‘transfer of money from rich to poor’, what we would now call a ‘typical household’ calculation was offered that showed that a particular family would be very little better off under the scheme (Milner and Milner, 1918: 10). Significant research effort has been expended on studying the funding of a Basic Income by reorganizing the existing tax and benefits system, particularly in the UK (Torry, 2019a; 2020d; 2021a: 131–42, 178–9; 2021c; 2022b). As well as the detailed scheme published by the Milners, we have already in Chapter 2 encountered the scheme proposed by Juliet Rhys Williams, and also the scheme prepared by Hermione (Mimi) Parker for Brandon Rhys Williams MP (Torry, 2021a: 65–87, 131–7). Parker published further schemes during the 1980s and early 1990s, often in collaboration with other researchers; and in 1990 Samuel Brittan, a Financial Times columnist, and Steven Webb, who later became Minister for Pensions, published a detailed costed scheme that would have constituted a Basic Income scheme if it had been constructed on an individual rather than a household basis (Brittan and Webb, 1990; Parker, 1988; 1989; 1994; 1995; Parker and Dilnot, 1988; Parker and Sutherland, 1994; 1995; 1996). Money creation Money is an institution: that is, a socially constructed network of ideas, symbols, and relationships. Every transaction contributes to this network, and money is created and destroyed all over it. When I spend money on a credit card, I create money, which is then destroyed when I pay my credit card bill and the balance of my bank account goes down. Banks create money when they

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make loans, and that money is destroyed when the loan is repaid. Governments create money, either by simply printing it—in the form of banknotes, or in the form of digits in the national accounts—or by creating limited-term bonds and selling them to investors. The money created by issuing bonds is eventually destroyed when the value is repaid to the holder at the end of the bond’s term, but money that is printed and then spent on public services of various kinds remains in the economy unless extracted again in the form of taxes. This means that taxation can be understood in two different ways: either as one of the ways in which a government funds public services, public infrastructure, state pensions, and so on, or as the extraction of money already spent into the economy in order to control the total amount of money circulating in the economy and keep inflation under control (Jackson and Dyson, 2013: 47–80). During the 1930s, Clifford Douglas and Charles Hattersley suggested that governments could pay a Basic Income—a ‘national dividend’—with a total cost up to the value of the gap between industrial output and the labour share of income on the basis that inflation would only be a risk if there were to be more spending power in the economy than there were goods and services available for purchase (Douglas, 1920: 115–17; 1933: 206–207; 1951: 35–6; Hattersley, 1931: 32–4). A carbon tax The planet is heating up, and if we don’t do something about that then much of its surface will eventually become uninhabitable, coastal cities will be under water, migration flows will be unmanageable, and war and poverty will be endemic. Given that carbon and methane emissions are the main cause of planetary heating, and that taxation of an activity can reduce its incidence, an obvious contribution to rescuing the planet and its inhabitants must be a tax on the use of fossil fuels. Many countries experience taxes on the use of fossil fuels, and increasing them would not be administratively difficult. The difficulty results from the political consequences of net household disposable income losses, as increased taxes increase the costs of transport, goods, services, and heating our homes, as industries pass on their increased taxation costs to their customers. Substantial carbon taxes are relatively new, so any history related to them is recent. Canada has successfully implemented new carbon use taxation by employing 90 per cent of the proceeds to pay an income-tested dividend to households to protect their disposable incomes (Government of Canada, 2018), and a similar mechanism has been researched for the Republic of Korea (Yoo et al., 2020). President Macron’s attempt to increase carbon taxation

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failed because he did not at the same time protect the disposable incomes of low-income households. The result was the gilets jaunes protests and a government climbdown (Willsher, 2018). A Land Value Tax Most of the earliest proposals for a Basic Income envisaged funding it by taxing land, or by taking land into community ownership and renting it out: this latter option representing the equivalent of a 100 per cent tax on land (Torry, 2021a: 33–56). More recently, Henry George proposed a Land Value Tax to provide for ‘common wants’ (George, 1884a: 287): ‘It is not necessary to divide the land, when you can divide the income drawn from the land’ (George, 1884b: 14). George proposed ‘a single tax’ (George [1891] 1947: 94) constituted by ‘a tax upon the value of land’ (George, 1884a: 276) in order to create a fund for ‘public use’ (George [1879] 1907: 403), although his prolix style leaves us in some doubt as to precisely how ‘common wants’ (George, 1884a: 287) would be met and whether a Basic Income might have been intended (Torry, 2021a: 56–8). Consumption taxes Consumption taxes are often charged when goods or services are purchased, generally at a standard rate on most items, with lower or zero rates on such essentials as food and heating fuel, and higher rates on goods that governments wish to discourage, such as tobacco. So that consumption taxes are only charged once, consumption taxes paid by a company can generally be reclaimed from the government at the same time as tax charged on items sold is declared and sent. In 2013 Philippe Van Parijs proposed that an increase in Europe’s Value Added Tax should be used to fund a Eurodividend: a Basic Income for the whole of the European Union (Van Parijs, 2013). Sovereign wealth funds The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, a variable annual payment, and so ambiguously a Basic Income, is paid out of the dividends on a permanent fund into which oil extraction royalties are paid (Torry, 2016a: 47; 2021a: 118–19; Widerquist and Howard, 2012). Countries that already possess such funds, such as Norway, could use the proceeds to pay for Basic Incomes, and any

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country that managed to create such a fund in the future would also be able to do that. As Meade puts it, a sovereign wealth fund would provide a very solid base for the introduction of a true Social Dividend. [This scenario] presents a vision of a future society in which private competitive enterprise is the ruling mode of production, but in which the state receives a substantial share of the yield on the nation’s real capital resources, thus enabling it to fulfil its proper social role without the immoderately high rates of taxation which would destroy private enterprise and initiatives. (Meade, 1990)

A variety of other possibilities A variety of additional proposals have been made for the funding or part-funding of Basic Incomes. • James Tobin suggested that a tax on currency exchange transactions could reduce the proportion of such transactions made for purely speculative reasons while not preventing those transactions required for international trade. Such a tax could fund a Basic Income (Torry, 2016a: 43–4). • A wealth tax might offer possibilities that an income tax could not, and in particular could be more progressive because wealth is more unequally distributed than income: although the ease with which wealth can be moved to lower tax jurisdictions will always be a problem until a universal tax treaty becomes a possibility (Morel and Palme, 2013: 408). • A number of new tax bases have emerged during the past few decades, including the data that companies obtain from us when we use the internet (Andrade et al., 2019: 185–88). Taxing this vast potential tax base at quite a low rate could raise considerable sums of money that could be used to fund a Basic Income. • Another new possibility would be a tax on robots, on the basis that they will be earning the revenue previously earned by human workers (Bruun and Duka, 2018). The presupposition underlying this proposition is flawed, as robot density correlates positively with the level of paid employment (Hudson, 2019: 83–4), but that does not mean that a robot tax would not be a possibility. • And finally, the global Basic Income debate has sometimes become entwined with growing interest in cryptocurrencies: electronic currencies stored in blockchains—that is, distributed computer networks that maintain the anonymity of currency ownership, ensure the uniqueness of every crypto coin, and record every transaction on every computer in the network (OECD, n.d.).

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The state of research Funding a Basic Income from within the current income tax and benefits systems The difficulty faced by any approach to funding a Basic Income that assumes that the money supply would not increase, is that the complexity of most tax and benefits systems means that some households would gain money, others would lose money, and total gains would match total losses. In such a situation it would be essential to ensure that as few low-income households as possible would lose money, and that as few households as possible would lose significant sums of money (Torry, 2021c; 2022b). An early method for ensuring that the total cost of the Basic Incomes matched additional tax revenues plus savings from existing benefits was the ‘national accounts’ method. This used census data to discover the total cost of the Basic Incomes, and the national accounts to find out how much money could be saved by abolishing particular existing benefits, and how much additional tax revenue could be generated by increasing tax rates and reducing income tax allowances: that is, levels of income on which tax is not charged (House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee, 2007; Miller, 2017; Pereira, 2017; Painter and Thoung, 2015; Widerquist, 2017b). The problem with this method is that it cannot calculate the change in the cost of retained existing benefits if they are recalculated on the basis of households’ receipt of Basic Incomes and changes to their net earned incomes caused by the changes to income tax rates and allowances; and if means-tested benefits are abolished then the method cannot tell us whether low-income households would suffer disposable income losses. Now that a method is available that can provide the missing information, it is disappointing that illustrative Basic Income schemes tested only by the national accounts method are still published (de Ruyter and Hearne, 2020; Miller, 2017; Pereira, 2017; Painter and Thoung, 2015; Widerquist, 2017b) because readers of those schemes will be unaware that to implement these Basic Income schemes might tip large numbers of low-income households into deeper poverty. It is almost as problematic when researchers use a national accounts method to research Basic Income schemes that abolish rather than retain means-tested benefits, understand from this author’s research that their schemes will impose net household disposable income losses on low-income households, and still publish their schemes (Kőműves et al., 2022: 41–7). No researcher should now be using the national accounts method (Torry, 2016a: 49–50; 2019a: 4–9).

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A method frequently used in tandem with other methods is the ‘typical households’ method (Morgan, 2016; Morgan et al., 2019: 205–9). This chooses a range of households, with particular household structures, levels of earned incomes, housing costs, and so on, and calculates those households’ net disposable incomes in relation to both the current tax and benefits system and the illustrative Basic Income scheme. This method generates entirely accurate figures for the particular households chosen, and can be useful as an educational tool, but it cannot tell us either the net cost of a Basic Income scheme or how many low-income households might lose money on its implementation. The only research method that can tell us all that we now need to know about illustrative Basic Income schemes is microsimulation (Tanton and Phillips, 2016), developed in the UK from the 1980s onwards to calculate the costs and numerous effects of tax and benefits reform proposals, and now used throughout Europe in the form of EUROMOD and UKMOD (the UK section of EUROMOD extracted from EUROMOD following the UK’s departure from the European Union), both of which are still maintained at the University of Essex in the UK. Microsimulation programmes can now be found elsewhere in the world (Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis, 2022; Immervoll et al., 1999; Lelkes and Sutherland, 2009; Morgan et al., 2019; Statistics Canada, 2022). The method has probably been used most intensively in the UK, but microsimulation has also been used to evaluate illustrative Basic Income schemes in a variety of European countries, and useful comparative work has sometimes been undertaken (Callan et al., 1999). A microsimulation programme is a computer programme into which is programmed all of the tax and benefits regulations of a country. Financial data from a statistically significant sample of the country’s population is then passed through the programme to discover a range of statistics: for instance, the net disposable incomes of the households in the sample, poverty and inequality rates, and the numbers of households on particular benefits. The programme can then be amended by adding new benefits, and changing existing taxes and benefits, and run again to generate a new set of statistics that can then be compared with the statistics generated from the current tax and benefits system. Crucially, this method can evaluate Basic Income schemes that retain and recalculate means-tested benefits, and can tell us how many low-income households would suffer net disposable income losses at particular levels if a particular Basic Income scheme were to be implemented (Morgan et al. 2019; Parker, 1989; Sutherland, 2016; Torry, 2016a: 50–51, 67–84; 2019d; 2020c; 2021c; 2022b).

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Two different methods are employed. Some researchers select several schemes and then test them to discover their effects (Badenes-Plá et al., 2019; Çakmak Şahin and Kılıç, 2021; de Siqueira and Nogueira, 2021; Ghenis et al., 2021; Martinelli, 2017a; 2017b; 2017c; Raventós and Wark, 2018; Reed and Lansley, 2016; Reed et al., 2022; Richiardi, 2022; Widerquist and Arndt, 2020). Most of the proposed schemes are tested for significant net household disposable income losses among low-income households, and those losses are reported. It is problematic when that does not happen. It is equally problematic that the reporting of significant net household disposable income losses among low-income households for a particular illustrative scheme is taken to mean that Basic Income is infeasible, whereas all that has been shown is that that particular scheme is infeasible (Badenes-Plá et al., 2019; OECD, 2017). It is also problematic when microsimulation researchers suggest that the problem of significant household net disposable income losses among low-income households can be solved but then fail to show how that could be done (Raventós and Wark, 2018: 24), or that they publish Basic Income schemes that deliver massive reductions in poverty and inequality but rely on entirely infeasible income tax rates that would be bound to generate net disposable income losses for far from wealthy households (Çakmak Şahin and Kılıç, 2021). A suggestion that a ‘hold harmless’ mechanism could be implemented to prevent net income losses among low-income households would mean reintroducing the means-tested benefits that the author’s scheme has just abolished, thus rendering unreliable any results obtained by microsimulation of a scheme that does not contain such benefits (Widerquist and Arndt, 2020; Torry, 2020f). The second research method is that followed by this author, who sets a number of criteria: the net cost of the scheme has to be within £2bn of zero per annum; poverty and inequality indices must fall; fewer than 2 per cent of low income households should suffer net disposable income losses of over 5 per cent at the point of implementation; as few households as possible should suffer unmanageable losses; Income Tax rates should rise by no more than 3 percentage points; and significant numbers of households should be removed from means-tested benefits, and more households should be brought within striking distance of coming off them. A trial and error method is then used to test a wide variety of schemes until one is found that fits the criteria (Torry, 2019; 2020c; 2021c; 2022b). Such a scheme has always been found, proving that an illustrative Basic Income scheme exists that it would be feasible to implement in the UK, which in turn proves that Basic Income is feasible in the UK (Torry, 2016a: 39–60; 2019a; 2022b). Statements that Basic Income would either be unaffordable or would impose large losses on lots of households cannot now be made, and should not have been made when they were (Knight, 2017: 146; Sage and Diamond, 2017: 26); and it is simply not true that ‘the present debate

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has failed to make clear the winners and losers under an unconditional basic income regime’ (Wehner, 2019: 4). It has of course been suggested that it might be politically feasible to loosen somewhat the requirement for strict revenue neutrality assumed by some microsimulation evaluations of illustrative Basic Income schemes (Major, 2016; Špeciánová, 2018), and it is true that ‘there is no logical reason why a Basic Income should be funded by the Income Tax or National Insurance systems alone without supplement from other funding sources’ (Painter et al., 2019: 31). However, the problem with microsimulation evaluation of Basic Income schemes that leave a funding gap unfilled is that in the real world that gap would have to be filled from somewhere, and wherever it was filled from would be likely to impact household disposable incomes. This would render any microsimulation results relating to the illustrative scheme inaccurate and therefore misleading if published (Painter et al., 2019). The conclusion that we can draw is that only strictly revenue neutral illustrative Basic Income schemes should be evaluated; that they should be evaluated using microsimulation and not with previous research methods; and that a set of criteria should be constructed before the research project begins, and that the aim of the research should be to discover an illustrative Basic Income scheme that conforms to those criteria. Given that microsimulation tools are now available, and the statistical functions related to them can provide us with all of the information that we need in order to determine a Basic Income scheme’s effects on poverty, inequality, household net disposable incomes, and so on, it is problematic if it is not clear in a research report whether or not a microsimulation evaluation has been carried out and what its results might have been if it had been (Murphy and Reed, 2013); and it is even more disappointing when respected scholars prove that a particular Basic Income scheme would be financially infeasible because infeasible increases in income tax rates would be required, and then conclude that Basic Income is financially infeasible (Blix, 2017: 160–61; Centre for Social Justice, 2018; Clinton et al., 1994: 39; Rothstein, 2018; Torry, 2018d). The logic is flawed. To find a particular illustrative Basic Income infeasible is only to find that particular scheme infeasible. It proves nothing in relation to Basic Income. On the other hand, to find just one illustrative Basic Income scheme to be feasible in a particular context would be to find Basic Income feasible in that context. To generalize the point: to find a particular Basic Income scheme lacking in any particular respect is not to find Basic Income lacking in that respect (Disabled People Against Cuts, 2019; Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2019b). Conversely, to find just one Basic Income scheme to be feasible in any

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particular respect is to find Basic Income to be feasible in that respect (Torry, 2020a: 156–9). An International Labour Organization report published in 2018 correctly stated that: the adequacy of a UBI [Universal Basic Income] depends not only on its level, but also on the other benefits and services which would be available alongside the UBI … These considerations point to the complexity of integrating a seemingly simple UBI into the existing system and call for further research on its impacts on the prospective recipients. Moreover, such considerations also raise serious concerns regarding UBI proposals that assume that all or most existing social protection benefits could be replaced by a UBI without significant welfare losses. (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2019a; Ortiz et al., 2018: 7–8)

It is odd that the same report restricts its attention to proposals and experiments that abolish all or most current benefits, that little attention is paid to schemes that retain and recalculate existing benefits, that the authors research the gross costs of Basic Income schemes rather than net costs, and that there is little recognition that plenty of research already exists on illustrative Basic Income schemes’ ‘impacts on the prospective recipients’. Microsimulation is as good as it gets. The programme contains real-world tax and benefits regulations, and the data sources contain real-world financial data, so the results of microsimulation research can be expected to predict fairly accurately the real-world effects of illustrative Basic Income schemes. But there are limitations. Results represent the changes in poverty and inequality, numbers of means-tested benefits claimants, and so on, on the day after a Basic Income scheme is implemented. This is extremely useful, but what traditional microsimulation programmes cannot take into account is the fact that the changes introduced at implementation will affect a variety of factors, such as labour market activity, and these changes will generate new changes in poverty and inequality rates, numbers of claimants on means-tested benefits, and so on (Delsen, 2019: 16). We are now seeing new developments in microsimulation programmes, such as the ability to predict dynamic effects of tax and benefits system changes and to combine labour market models with microsimulation programmes (Melzochová and Špeciána, 2015: 557), although: there is a trade-off between the increasing theoretical sophistication of labour supply models … and their flexibility in interacting with other models representing different segments of the economic system. (Aaberge and Colombino, 2018: 27)

A further recognized problem is that adding a model that relies on assumptions, such as the assumption that an employment market model constructed

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from algorithms that are constantly corrected by real-world labour market behaviour can generate reliable predictions of the labour market effects of tax and benefits changes, to a model that does not, such as static microsimulation, results in a total model that relies on the labour market model assumptions being more or less accurate (Boulanger, 1988; Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis, 2022). A complicating factor related to any dynamic model is that it will be able to predict fairly accurately the dynamic effects of tax and benefits system change across a short timescale, but that the longer the timescale becomes the less accurate will the predictions become. The ability to handle such complexities, along with learning to use the complex research tools and then to interpret their outputs, will prove challenging to already expert researchers. Getting to grips with the new research tools will be particularly daunting for the often amateur researchers evaluating the likely effects of illustrative Basic Income schemes. However, the Basic Income community—or at least a sufficient number of people within it—has made good use of microsimulation, and it will be important for the next generation of researchers to learn how to use newly available research tools so that they can research the dynamic labour market and other effects of illustrative Basic Income schemes. A significant issue that now needs to be faced by researchers using such reliable tools as microsimulation is the question as to what to research and what to publish. One might have thought that responding to every question asked about Basic Income funding options would be the obvious approach. However, an incident in the British Parliament suggests that matters might not be quite so simple. In response to a question as to whether a Basic Income at Minimum Income Standard levels could be funded from within the current tax and benefits system, and whether existing means-tested benefits could then be abolished, this author employed microsimulation to show that this would require an increase in Income Tax rates of 28 percentage points and that one of the outcomes would be significant numbers of poorer households tipped into greater poverty. The working paper in which the results were published made it clear that this scheme was clearly infeasible, and published alongside it a Basic Income scheme that would have paid a Basic Income at a lower level, raised Income Tax rates only slightly, retained means-tested benefits, and avoided household net disposable income losses for poorer households (Torry, 2019a: 13). During a parliamentary debate, a government minister and another member of parliament argued that a Basic Income was infeasible because the working paper showed that a huge Income Tax increase would be required and that poorer households would become even poorer. They did not say that the paper had declared that scheme to be infeasible, nor that it contained an entirely feasible scheme that would have exhibited none of the

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effects of the infeasible scheme. Following this incident, the trustees of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust decided that no further infeasible schemes were to be published (Hansard, 2016; Torry, 2021a: 149). This is of course entirely unscientific, because in the social sciences, as in any sciences, it is as important to publish negative results as it is to publish more positive ones. The fact that it would not be feasible to fund a Basic Income for the UK at Minimum Income Standard levels from within the current tax and benefits system is an important social fact, but if that fact will be misrepresented and employed as an argument against Basic Income—which of course it is not—then what should a researcher do? A less serious problem, but a problem nevertheless, is the exclusion of evidence from consideration by policymakers, for instance by the chair of a parliamentary committee inviting those who have published research that employs the inadequate national accounts method, and so cannot answer questions about numbers of poorer households that might experience net disposable income losses, and not inviting microsimulation researchers whose research results would have been able to answer those questions (Hansard, 2017; Torry, 2021a: 150; Work and Pensions Committee, 2017). The motive is the same—a politician wishing to prove Basic Income infeasible—but the tactic is different: the exclusion of evidence rather than its misrepresentation, the former probably being less unethical than the latter, but the effect can be the same. The integrity of the government of a country requires lawmakers to have available to them the best possible evidence, and it is always a pleasure when that happens, as has occurred in subsequent UK parliamentary committee evidence sessions (Torry, 2020c; 2021d; Welsh Affairs Committee, 2021; Work and Pensions Committee, 2020). Money creation The reason given for money creation being a viable option for the funding of a Basic Income is that there is a growing gap between Gross Domestic Product and the labour share of income because increasing automation is increasing the proportion of the proceeds of production going to capital and reducing the proportion going to labour, with the result that household debt is increasing to enable sufficient consumption of the goods and services produced to sustain standards of living. A major reason for the increasing gap between Gross Domestic Product and the labour share of income is that increasing capital expenditure on information and communication technology, in a context of the declining cost of such technology, is reducing the labour share of income at the lower end of the skills range, and increasing it at the higher end, with the aggregate effect being an overall reduction (Garcia-Lazaro and Pearce,

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2021). To fill the gap between Gross Domestic Product and labour income with a Basic Income paid for with new money would replace household debt with government expenditure and so would not increase the amount of money circulating in the economy and would not increase inflation (Crocker, 2019; 2020: 3–52; Torry, 2016a: 45–7; 2021a: 75–9). We can either view this proposal as a government creating new money in order to fund a Basic Income, or we can think of it as an increase in the money that the government creates all the time in order to pay for benefits and services and that the government then chooses not to extract in the form of taxes (Mellor, 2019; Weeks, 2020: 52–81). In relation to the proposal that a government could create additional new money in the form of a Basic Income to fill the gap between labour income and the value of production without creating inflation, two responses might be offered. First of all, research at the Resolution Foundation has suggested that it is not obvious that there is a significant gap between Gross Domestic Product and labour income if deferred income in the form of occupational and private pensions is taken into account, particularly in the UK (Whittaker, 2019): although it has to be said that deferred income is a complex issue, because income deferred from the past might be available for current consumption, whereas income deferred from the present will only be available to fund consumption at a later date. Secondly, once any gap has been filled with newly created money, that money will remain in the economy unless extracted again, which means that if the process is repeated each year then the amount of money circulating in the economy will continue to rise and either money will have to be extracted in the form of increased taxation or inflation will rise. While there might be more scope for increasing the amount of money circulating in the economy than some governments have recognized—the ‘quantitative easing’ that followed the 2008 financial crisis, along with the wage support offered by the UK Treasury during the pandemic, rather prove this point—there will always be a limit to money creation beyond which money declines in value in order to rebalance the value of the money circulating in the economy and the value of goods and services available for purchase. And so, to take the UK as an example, while additional government expenditure during the Covid-19 pandemic has not created as much inflation as might have been feared, largely because much of that money was extracted from the economy by the government selling newly-created bonds, at the time of writing inflation is rising and the government is carrying a larger debt on which interest must be paid (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2022): a situation significantly exacerbated since then by rising energy prices. On the other hand, research shows that there is a correlation between Gross Domestic Product per capita and a country’s debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio (Crocker, 2022). Whilst correlation does not necessarily represent causality, this result does suggest that there might

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often be scope for increasing a country’s national debt, and raises the question as to precisely what the difference might be between a country increasing its national debt and the same country’s government adding new debt-free money to the economy. Recent research employing a computer model of the economy has shown that if an economy remains below full capacity then a Basic Income funded by a government creating new money can stimulate additional economic activity and would not necessarily increase inflation (Kőműves et al., 2022: 33); and research on economies with different characteristics has shown that such a Basic Income scheme could be appropriate as a response to the declining labour share, with the most obvious case for it in consumption-driven economies, with liberalized markets. Here technology does seem to be related to a reduction in the labour share and high levels of household debt have proved unsustainable, contributing to crisis and then stagnation. There is also the possibility that a UBI could facilitate a transition from shrinking manufacturing economies that have increasingly large precarious workforces and/or an over-reliance on exports. However, we argue that it is unlikely to serve Nordic regimes … because their economies are heavily geared towards social investment and coordinated labour markets. (Chrisp et al., 2022: 32)

Experience during the Covid-19 pandemic has not only revealed that it might be more politically feasible than we might have thought for governments to provide substantial regular incomes for their populations (Manji, 2022), but it has also provided some useful research results that might help to inform the debate as to whether a Basic Income could be sustainably funded either by government borrowing or by governments creating new money. For instance, for six months from March 2020 the Government of Argentina employed newly created money to pay an otherwise unconditional income to every household without a pension or formal labour market income. Researchers using a dynamic microsimulation model—that is, one that calculates the effects of a policy change over a period of time by running a series of microsimulation calculations for subsequent time periods, with each one taking into account the economic situation resulting from the policy change during the previous period—have shown that if the incomes had been continued then they would have reduced both poverty and inequality, they would have cost nearly 1.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product initially, the proportion would have decreased over time, and there would have been scope for the reduction of existing benefits. Whilst the payments were made only to households with no pension or formal labour market income, and so to only 31.6 per cent of the Argentinian population, and therefore did not constitute a Basic Income, the result that the net cost would have decreased over time is an important result because it sug-

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gests that the net cost of an Argentinian Basic Income as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product would also decrease over time (Calcagno, 2021). We might conclude that if at any point it is clear that there is a sufficient gap between Gross Domestic Product and labour income to enable sufficient new money to fill the gap in the form of a Basic Income without creating inflation, then that could be a useful context in which to initiate a Basic Income by creating new money without increasing either taxation or government borrowing. However, in subsequent years it is likely that if both inflation and additional government borrowing were to be avoided, then increased taxes, the reduction of expenditure on existing benefits, or both, would be required if the Basic Income were to be funded in the longer term. A carbon tax An obvious combination would be to use the proceeds of a carbon tax to pay a Basic Income. That way households would be incentivized to reduce their use of fossil fuels, and to replace diesel- and petrol-driven cars with electric vehicles, without seeing their net disposable incomes compromised; public transport companies would be incentivized to electrify; and because renewable energy production would become relatively cheaper in relation to fossil fuels, more renewable energy infrastructure would be built, and renewable energy would become even cheaper (Barnes, 2014; Cato, 2010; Fitzpatrick, 1999: 201; Howard et al., 2019: 126–7; Piketty, 2020: 1004–7). While there is now a massive research effort in relation to planetary heating and climate change, there is rather less research into the relationship between carbon taxes and Basic Income, which is somewhat surprising given that a Basic Income would be a good candidate for making carbon taxes feasible for households and therefore for politicians: although presumably any redistributive effect would have to be fairly minor to ensure political feasibility (Pierson, 2021: 135). However, one research result that might give pause for thought is that any reduction in inequality is likely to increase carbon emissions. This is because low-income households have a higher propensity to consume than higher-income households: that is, for every £1 transferred from a rich household to a poor household, more of that £1 would be spent on goods and services rather than saved, so production would increase and so would carbon emissions (Sager, 2017). A Basic Income would always reduce inequality because it would constitute a higher proportion of the income of a low-income household than of a higher-income household; and while it would be perfectly possible to implement a Basic Income scheme that would increase inequality rather than reduce it, it is to be hoped that no government would

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wish to implement such a scheme. While initially the research finding that a Basic Income would reduce inequality and therefore might increase carbon emissions might look as if it would pose a problem for the implementation of a Basic Income, and in particular for a Basic Income scheme that would reduce inequality, it is in fact a positive encouragement to implement both a carbon tax and a Basic Income at the same time. The Basic Income would protect households from the increased costs of a carbon tax, and the carbon tax would mitigate the carbon use consequences of an inequality-reducing Basic Income scheme (Fremstad, 2021). To reduce subsidies on fuel can be interpreted as the implementation of a carbon tax, so Iran’s experience of replacing fuel subsidies with unconditional ‘cash subsidies’ in 2010 can provide us with evidence for the feasibility of implementing the combination of a carbon tax and an unconditional income (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 353–54; Torry, 2016a: 48–9). One significant problem related to employing a carbon tax to fund a Basic Income is this: The whole point of taxing the use of fossil fuels is to reduce their use and increase the use of renewable energy. We must therefore assume that the carbon tax would reduce its own tax base, so that each year the revenue from the tax would be less than for the year before. If that does not happen then the tax will not be working and it would need to be increased until it began to reduce the use of fossil fuels. This suggests that there might be a period during which the revenue from the tax might be fairly stable: but there would come a time, and hopefully it would not be long coming, when proceeds from the tax would drop rapidly. All one can say is that that would prove the carbon tax/ Basic Income strategy to have been a success, and that a new funding method would have to be found for the Basic Income. A useful piece of research by the UBI Center combines databases in order to simulate household fossil fuel use and create a microsimulation programme that can evaluate illustrative Basic Income schemes that include a carbon tax as well as changes to existing tax and benefits systems (UBI Center, 2022). Given the obvious usefulness of the combination of a carbon tax and Basic Income, it would be useful to see far more research of this kind. A Land Value Tax Land taxation and expropriation were the earliest proposed Basic Income funding methods, and we are now seeing a resurgence of serious consideration of a Land Value Tax (Arnold et al., 2019). One advantage of a Land Value Tax is that it cannot suffer from a reduction in its tax base. We tax things that might be bad for people or for the environ-

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ment in order to discourage or control their use: obvious examples are taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and petrol. A main purpose of such taxes is to reduce their tax bases: but the downside for the government is that that will reduce its tax revenue. We also tax earned income. Earned income often represents a large proportion of a country’s economy, so taxing it is the only way to raise sufficient income to enable a government to fund public services and to redistribute income in any significant way: but the problem with taxing earned income is that it can disincentivize productive activity, whereas productivity is something that we might wish to encourage, and to disincentivize it inevitably reduces earned income, which in turn reduces tax revenue. Apart from rare events of permanent massive inundation, and the rather more common gradual coastal erosion, the extent of a country’s land mass will always remain fairly stable, and however much land is taxed, the tax base will remain the same, meaning that the same tax rate will always bring in the same revenue. All of this makes a Land Value Tax look like an attractive option for funding a Basic Income (Torry, 2016a: 44–5; Wadsworth, 2008). There is, however, a significant question to be asked in relation to a Land Value Tax: How should land be valued in order to determine the amount of tax that each landowner should pay? We already have a similar problem in the UK in relation to Council Tax: the local property tax collected by local authorities to enable them to run such public services as street cleaning, street lighting, refuse collection, education, and police and fire services. In England, the tax is based on a series of bands relating to property values that have not been updated for something like 30 years; because the top band is extremely broad, owners of valuable properties can find themselves paying the same tax as owners of extremely valuable properties; and because there is little separation between the bands, the owner of an extremely valuable property can be paying not much more tax than the owner of a far less valuable property. Unfortunately, there are problems with every conceivable method of valuing land, and discussion of how land should be valued go back to the early years of the Basic Income debate at the end of the eighteenth century. Should land be valued at the inflation-adjusted value at its last sale? Unfortunately this would leave swathes of land unvalued, because vast amounts of it have been passed down in wealthy families or institutions and not sold for centuries. Should land be valued at its rental value? Possibly: but any land not currently rented out would have to have its rental value estimated, which would require complex administration, and tribunals to hear appeals. Should land be valued at the same rate per square metre? No, because then a square metre of a Welsh hillside or a Kent orchard would be valued at the same rate as a square metre in London’s West End, which would make farming unviable. An early argument

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for a standard square metre valuation was that any ‘improvements’ in the land should be discounted because the owner would have had to make them: but the obvious response is that rarely would a current owner have made the improvements themselves. A calculation that took into account both the value of someone’s land and their other wealth might reduce the salience of problems with a Land Value Tax, but even more complexity would be the result (Nell, 2013: 179). Whatever the difficult of valuing individual plots or a whole country’s land might be, a Land Value Tax of some kind would always be feasible, the proof being that various countries already collect them (Copley, 2016: 14). However, feasibility does not mean that a significant amount of revenue would be available to fund a Basic Income. For instance, in the UK, the existing Council Tax pays for local authority services, so much of the revenue from any Land Value Tax that replaced the Council Tax would have to be paid to local authorities, leaving relatively small amounts for funding a Basic Income; and a further obvious problem is that those tracts of land currently not taxed or only lightly taxed, such as farmland, are either owned by small-scale farmers who could ill afford a new tax, or are owned by wealthy landowners who have substantial political influence. The prospects for a Land Value Tax to fund a Basic Income are not looking good: but that does not mean that research on its feasibility should not be carried out. Consumption taxes Because the same consumption tax is charged whatever the income or wealth of the individual experiencing the effect of the tax on the prices of goods and services, and a low-income household might therefore spend a higher proportion of its disposable income on the tax than a higher-income household, a Basic Income funded by a new or increased consumption tax might be accused of being regressive (Delsen, 2019: 13–16). There are two responses to this. Firstly, zero or lower rates of consumption tax are generally charged on such essentials as food and clothes, which form a high proportion of low income households’ purchases, and a consumption tax that retained or reduced even further the lower rates of consumption tax on essential goods could end up being progressive. Secondly, the Basic Income itself would be progressive, because it would constitute a higher proportion of the disposable income of a low income household than of a wealthier household, so the package as a whole—the Basic Income, and the consumption tax to fund it—could be either regressive or progressive. It should therefore be perfectly possible to implement a Basic Income funded by consumption taxes in such a way that the scheme as a whole would be progressive (Brake, 2017; Slavov and Viard, 2020).

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It is now possible to include consumption taxes in microsimulation programmes, so illustrative Basic Income schemes that fund the Basic Incomes with consumption taxes can be tested for their overall effects on poverty and inequality. If a Basic Income were ever to be paid for by this method, then it would be essential to test the proposed scheme for its effects on poverty and inequality, and for changes to be made if the increase in inequality as a result of an increase in consumption tax rates was found to outweigh the reduction in inequality resulting from the payment of a Basic Income. An unavoidable objection to funding a Basic Income by adding or increasing a consumption tax is that in developed economies consumption taxes are already charged at quite high rates in order to raise the revenue required to run public services. Proposing an increase sufficient to fund a Basic Income at any useful level could be politically difficult; and doing so would also limit politicians’ ability to raise consumption tax rates to fund additional public services if they wished to do so. One of problems that affects many funding proposals, and that certainly affects this one, is that additional tax revenue can be used for a variety of purposes, and would not necessarily be available to fund a Basic Income. For instance, in the UK it has sometimes been suggested that restricting to the Basic Rate of Income Tax the tax allowance related to private pension contributions could provide additional government revenue that could assist with the funding of a Basic Income. This would be a possibility: but before the 2015 General Election the Labour Party suggested restricting the allowance to the Basic Rate in order to increase expenditure on education. The only additional government revenue that would have to be used to fund a Basic Income would be revenue from increasing income tax rates, reducing income tax allowances, and adjusting existing means-tested benefits. This is because reductions in personal tax allowances (levels of income on which tax is not charged), increases in income tax rates, and reductions in means-tested benefits, would substantially reduce household net disposable incomes if the revenue was not then used to fund a Basic Income: so the additional revenue raised from these sources could only be used for a Basic Income or something similar. As we have seen, similar considerations apply to a carbon tax. In general, any proposal of a funding method for Basic Income would have to be tested for the likelihood that the money raised would be used to fund a Basic Income rather than some other public purpose.

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But having said all of that, a small increase in consumption taxes could make a contribution to the funding of a Basic Income that was mainly funded in other ways if that was what a government decided that it wanted to do. Sovereign wealth funds The potential for governments to establish sovereign wealth funds (or ‘social wealth funds’ if they are established at arms-length from government) and to employ the proceeds to pay a Basic Income has benefited from a certain amount of research recently (Lansley, 2016: 41–54; Lansley, 2019; Lansley et al., 2018). There are two problems with this proposed funding method. First of all, it would take a long time for a country to create a sovereign wealth fund if it did not already have one, and it would require sufficient consistent political will to ensure that the proportion of the nation’s annual income promised to the fund actually reached it rather than being spent on current consumption: a difficult condition to meet, because public expenditure provides an electoral benefit to the governing political party, and to lock away government revenue would not offer such an advantage. The second problem is that the proceeds of a sovereign or social wealth fund could easily be spent in any way that the government might decide. There would be no requirement, nor necessarily any incentive, to spend it on a Basic Income. There are now over 50 countries with sovereign or social wealth funds of some sort, and only Alaska’s pays a dividend to citizens (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 95). A variety of other possibilities A variety of additional proposals have experienced a degree of research effort. As we have seen, an early argument for Basic Income was that the commons belongs to all of us, so if individuals exploit them then the rest of us are owed rent: and that argument is still made (Flomenhoft, 2017: 81–2). Global heating is a sufficient reason for a carbon tax, but if another justification were required then an obvious one is that the oil and gas in the ground belong to all of us, so we should all be compensated by private companies that extract them, so to tax the companies in order to pay a Basic Income would be a logical step. The principle that the carbon fuels in the ground belong to all of us has been recognized in Alaska, where a proportion of oil extraction royalties is placed in a fund out of which a dividend is paid to every citizen (see above on sovereign wealth funds). The same argument that we have now made in relation to land and the carbon fuels underneath it can also be made in relation to such commons as minerals, the radiowave spectrum, water, patents, and so on: that those who benefit from them should be required to compensate the rest of us in the form of a Basic Income (Flomenhoft, 2017: 84–96). A tendency

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for governments to sell the commons into private ownership—selling water companies and their drilling rights into private ownership is a particularly egregious example—raises the important question as to how the value of such privatized commons can be extracted from company profits and distributed to the population to which the commons belong. Governments remaining major shareholders would be the obvious way to achieve this. The problem with a financial transaction (‘Tobin’) tax is that because currency exchange can take place anywhere in the world, a financial transaction tax at a level high enough to fund a Basic Income could drive currency exchange out of the country and drastically reduce the tax base. In the UK, a 0.5 per cent tax is imposed on share transactions, and such transactions still take place in London, suggesting that a financial transaction tax at that rate would not necessarily drive currency exchange transactions abroad. However, a tax at that rate would make only a small contribution to the funding of a Basic Income at anything like a useful level (Torry, 2018a: 163): and even a tax at such a low rate might be prevented by successful lobbying by the financial industry (Kastner, 2017). A tax on data that companies obtain from us has raised some recent interest, and there is occasional research on the possibility, but perhaps not the level of research effort that the proposal might deserve (Andrade et al., 2019: 185–8). This is a pity, because to pay for a Basic Income by taxing the profits of companies that harvest and use the data that we give to them would deliver a Basic Income scheme that focuses more on taxing the surplus wealth generated by digital technology rather than on a dwindling number of employees’ hard toil[. This] would make it an attractive proposition for politicians and the general public. (White, 2019: 75)

A wealth tax can look like a good idea, and is often recommended (Piketty, 2014: 515–34; 2020: 975–1004): but while it is often clear where someone has earned their income, it is often less clear where their wealth is stored and whether any particular country’s tax authorities has the right to tax it, or could tax it in practice if it had that right. The only substantial store of wealth that cannot be moved is land: hence the attraction of a Land Value Tax (Torry, 2021a: 251). However, one solution proposed for the problem of wealth being shifted across boundaries would be to impose both a wealth tax and a transaction tax, with the latter at a higher rate than the former, in order to disincentivize the shifting of wealth (McCain, 2017: 84; Schneider et al., 2016: 138–45); and another solution would be to tax gifts received during a lifetime (Roberts et al., 2018). A further disadvantage of a wealth tax as a funding

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mechanism for Basic Income is the same as that for most of the other methods of taxation: a wealth tax could be used for a variety of public purposes, and not necessarily to pay for a Basic Income. The only kinds of tax that do not suffer from that problem are those that would immediately impact household disposable incomes, meaning that the proceeds would have to be spent on providing incomes to households. The two taxes that most clearly fulfil this criterion are income tax and carbon tax (Torry, 2021a: 252). While it is true that in principle a cryptocurrency could be constructed and distributed to every member of a population, significant problems would be that not everyone uses a computer, so some people would not be able to receive the cryptocurrency; cryptocurrencies are accepted by relatively few companies for the payment of goods and services; and because cryptocurrencies cannot be used to pay taxes, there is no government guaranteeing their value, which is why exchange values can gyrate wildly. A Basic Income paid in a currency that had no stable value in relation to other currencies would mean a Basic Income that would not constitute a uniform payment each week or each month and would not provide an individual or household with a secure platform on which to build, which is the whole point of a Basic Income.

Conclusion Two general points should be made here. The choice of funding method for a Basic Income will always be context specific. If the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend were ever to be turned into a monthly payment of a stable amount then the Alaskan Basic Income would be at least partially funded by oil extraction royalties, whereas a Basic Income in the United Kingdom would be more likely to be funded largely by changes to the current tax and benefits system, or perhaps by a carbon tax. Where possible, the funding method employed should generally be non-distortionary. The problem with income tax is that it taxes something that we might wish to encourage—paid labour: so increases in income tax rates should be kept to a minimum so as not to distort the employment market more than necessary. However, there are markets that we might wish to distort, such as the market in carbon fuels, which suggests that any initial funding of a Basic Income from within current tax and benefits systems should be replaced as soon as possible by taxes that would distort markets in beneficial ways.

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Future research Funding from within the current income tax and benefits systems It is clear that some Basic Income funding methods have been more thoroughly researched than others, and that the method most thoroughly researched is the funding of a Basic Income from within the current tax and benefits system. This is entirely appropriate, because in the short to medium term that could be the most feasible method both politically and administratively, even if other funding methods were also to make contributions; and because in any country with a more developed economy, any other funding method would require changes to be made to the existing tax and benefits system, and the tax and benefits system would inevitably contribute to funding the Basic Incomes, so research on the funding of Basic Incomes from within the current tax and benefits system would be required alongside the research required to evaluate any other funding method. Dynamic microsimulation research tools, and labour market models now associated with microsimulation programmes, are daunting prospects for Basic Income researchers who have slowly evolved their microsimulation skills over sometimes quite long timespans: but the use of these expanded research tools will be essential for future Basic Income research, and the next generation of researchers will have to learn how to use them. • Microsimulation research will be required in every country, using both traditional static microsimulation programmes and the survey data that they require, and the now extended research tools that can handle consumption taxes, dynamic effects, and employment market effects. • The Basic Income community will need to do all it can to ensure that academics with the necessary skills are using them to research feasible Basic Income schemes for dynamic labour market and other effects, and a body of researchers skilled in the new methods will need to come from within the Basic Income community. Constant reskilling will be essential for the Basic Income community as a whole, particularly in the microsimulation field. • Those countries that already possess microsimulation programmes will need to ensure that they are retained and maintained, and that the required data sources remain available; and those countries that do not currently have microsimulation programmes, and the data sources required to run them, should obtain them whenever possible. • The typical household method will still be useful for educational purposes, but that is all that it should be used for; and the national accounts method should be abandoned, because it cannot respond to such essential questions as ‘How can we ensure that a revenue neutral Basic Income scheme

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does not make poorer households poorer?’ and because the only illustrative schemes that it can research would almost certainly tip large numbers of low-income households into deeper poverty if implemented. • The question of research ethics needs to be addressed, and in particular the question as to how Basic Income microsimulation researchers might be able to publish a broad range of results, some of which will represent infeasible illustrative Basic Income schemes, without those results being misrepresented by politicians and journalists. What we do not need is practical pilot projects and experiments to reveal the financial effects of Basic Income schemes (Torry, 2021e). Microsimulation can do that for us. What we need pilot projects and similar experiments for is to provide information on the likely employment market and other economic and social effects of Basic Income. Funding a Basic Income with newly created money Research into the possibility of newly created money funding a Basic Income is in its infancy, and the research that is taking place is in a public policy silo somewhat distanced from mainstream economic research. This means that research into whether a Basic Income could be funded with newly created money is not sufficiently benefiting from a close relationship with research expertise in economics, and that research into monetary theory and its relationship with real economies is not benefiting from research into whether a Basic Income could be funded with newly created money (Torry, 2018a: 164–5). • Rigorous macroeconomic research into the feasibility and effects of money creation as a means of funding a Basic Income is required. This will entail research into monetary theory; the possibility of funding an initial Basic Income using newly created money; the possibility of funding a long-term Basic Income using newly created money; and how these different research projects might relate to each other. • Research into different monetary theories, and into their relationships with actual economies, is crucially important in today’s complex economic and political world, and research into whether and how a Basic Income might be funded by newly created money needs to learn from contemporary research in this field and should also contribute to it.

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Funding a Basic Income with a carbon tax While research into planetary heating and climate change now has considerable resources allocated to it, there are far too few resources allocated to research on an obvious candidate for making carbon taxes politically inviting: the implementation of a Basic Income funded by the proceeds of a carbon tax. What research is being done in this field is being done by skilled amateurs, again working in a silo. This is far from being adequate to what is required. • The kinds of microsimulation research into this option currently being undertaken by expert amateurs working in a silo needs to enter mainstream economic, social policy, and climate change research. • Microsimulation tools that can handle carbon taxes should continue to be developed, and they should be used separately in each country to evaluate illustrative Basic Income schemes funded by carbon taxes as well as from within the current tax and benefits system. • Dynamic microsimulation research techniques should continue to be developed in order to predict the longer-term effects of funding a Basic Income with the proceeds of carbon taxes. • The effects of existing carbon taxes and their associated dividends, as in Canada, should be researched in relation to both their economic and political effects. • Every research project undertaken in this field will have to factor in the fact that a successful carbon tax will reduce its own tax base, so how any Basic Income funded by the proceeds of a carbon tax will be able to transition to a different funding method will also have to be researched (Torry, 2018a: 162). Funding a Basic Income with a Land Value Tax Small amounts of mainly amateur research effort have been expended on Land Value Tax and on how it might be administered, and an even smaller amount on how such a tax might fund a Basic Income. Recently the UBI Center has found a way to combine databases and thereby include a Land Value Tax in microsimulation valuations of illustrative Basic Income schemes part-funded by a Land Value Tax. This is a task in need of widespread development. • Microsimulation programmes that can include a Land Value Tax as a means of funding a Basic Income scheme should continue to be developed for each country, and Basic Income researchers should learn how to use them. • Further research is needed on instances in which databases have been combined so as to include Land Value Taxes in microsimulation projects,

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and particularly research on the extent to which it is possible to reduce the number of assumptions that have to be made when databases are combined. Research into existing Land Value Taxes would be useful to discover feasible and justifiable ways to value land. While a Land Value Tax would not be able to alter the amount of land in a country, it might affect what is done with that land, and those potential effects should be researched. The political feasibility of a Land Value Tax would have to be researched differently in each national context, as would the feasibility of funding or part-funding a Basic Income with a Land Value Tax, and the effects that such funding would have on household net disposable incomes, poverty and inequality rates, and so on. As a Land Value Tax would probably have to be combined with other funding sources if a Basic Income were to be implemented that would provide anything like a useful financial platform on which to build, it will be important to run microsimulation and other research projects on the dynamic effects of Basic Incomes funded by combinations of different kinds of taxation and not just on the effects of Basic Incomes funded by single revenue streams (Torry, 2018a: 162).

Funding a Basic Income from consumption taxes Microsimulation programmes can now handle consumption taxes as well as personal income tax and state benefits, so illustrative Basic Income schemes that part-fund the Basic Incomes with an increase in consumption taxes can now be evaluated for their effects on household net disposable incomes, poverty, inequality, and so on. However, almost no research effort has been expended in this direction; and almost none on whether an increase in consumption tax rates to fund a Basic Income would be politically feasible. • More use should be made of the new microsimulation capacity to evaluate illustrative Basic Income schemes that part-fund Basic Incomes by increasing consumption tax rates, in particular to discover whether schemes can be discovered that would not impose household disposable income losses on low-income households. • Research is required on the public acceptability and political feasibility of increases in consumption tax rates that would be sufficient to fund a Basic Income, or that would contribute to such funding. • Because an increase in consumption tax rates would automatically increase prices and therefore inflation, the dynamic effects of changes caused by an increase in consumption tax rates used to fund a Basic Income would be

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important to research if the required research methods were to be available (Torry, 2018a: 164). • An increase in consumption taxes has been suggested as a means of funding a Eurodividend. This possibility should be submitted to all three of the research projects just described. Sovereign wealth funds Sovereign wealth funds come in two varieties: those that exist, and those that do not. • In relation to existing sovereign wealth funds, the financial and political feasibility of employing the dividends to fund Basic Incomes should be researched. • In relation to countries that do not currently possess sovereign wealth funds, research should be applied to the political feasibility of such funds being established, to the lengths of time by which they are likely to have grown sufficiently large for their dividends to provide realistic funding levels for Basic Incomes, and to the political and financial feasibilities of employing the dividends to fund Basic Incomes. Funding a Basic Income in other ways A certain amount of research has taken place in relation to financial transaction taxes, data taxes, and cryptocurrencies, but far more is needed if these mechanisms are to be regarded as realistic funding or part-funding options for a Basic Income. • Research is needed into the extent to which a financial transaction tax would be able to fund a useful Basic Income without driving currency exchange transactions out of the country. • Research is needed into the institutional and political feasibilities of an international financial transaction tax that would be sufficiently comprehensive to prevent financial transactions from escaping the tax. • Research is needed into the feasibility of a data tax, and on the amount of revenue that it might be able to contribute to funding a Basic Income. Research would also be needed into the extent to which companies that harvest data would pass the cost of the tax on to the users of their platforms, into whether a single country would be able to establish a data tax that could capture every instance of data capture in that country, and into whether an international data tax would be institutionally and politically feasible.

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• Research is required into whether a robot tax would be feasible and would be likely to be spent on a Basic Income. • Research is required on the feasibility and usefulness of a cryptocurrency Basic Income, and on the feasibility of administering it. • Research is also required to discover yet more funding options for Basic Income. New options can emerge at any time, and it will be important for Basic Income researchers and others to engage with new options and to research them as thoroughly as possible. • Early in the Basic Income debate both a Land Value Tax and inheritance taxes were proposed as funding mechanisms. Research on the feasibility of new kinds of inheritance tax to fund a Basic Income might be useful. Combinations • Microsimulation and other relevant research that can handle different combinations of funding mechanisms would be particularly helpful and might enable a feasible Basic Income scheme to be found in each context that would provide larger Basic Incomes than a single funding source could generate while at the same time fulfilling the usual financial feasibility criteria. Generally • Potential funding methods should be tested for the ways in which they would distort markets. • Research will always have to be understood to be context specific, and results achieved in one context should not be assumed to be relevant to another.

4

Employment market effects of a Basic Income

Introduction An important question frequently asked about Basic Income is ‘Would people still work?’ That is, if everyone were to receive an unconditional income, then would the tasks that a functioning society needs to have done still find people willing to do them? The relationship between the employment market and Basic Income can be studied in two different ways: How a Basic Income might change individuals’ relationships with the employment market; and how a Basic Income might affect the employment market understood as an important constituent of a country’s economy. This chapter will study the former aspect, and the following chapter the latter: and a further difference between the two chapters is that this chapter will take a more empirical approach to the subject, whereas Chapter 5 will rely more on economic theory. The first part of this chapter will set the scene for both this chapter and Chapter 5 by recounting some of the history of research on the relationship between Basic Income and employment and by offering a brief description of the ways in which employment markets are changing. It will then discuss pilot projects and other experiments, and the lessons that we might be able to learn from them; and it will discuss employment motivation, and how a Basic Income might relate to that. A terminological note is required: A pilot project is the implementation for a defined period of time, and in a defined community, of a policy change that might subsequently be implemented permanently in a wider community. This means that what is implemented in the pilot project must be shown to be implementable in its totality and in detail across a wider community before the pilot project begins. So if an illustrative Basic Income scheme is tested—for instance, for two years in a particular community—then the project is only a pilot project if it would be feasible to implement exactly the same illustrative scheme permanently across the entire wider community envisaged. If the 69

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illustrative scheme could not feasibly be implemented permanently across the wider community, then the project might be a worthwhile experiment, but we ought not to call it a pilot project.

A history of research on employment effects The argument that automation would destroy jobs and therefore require a Basic Income to be implemented goes back at least to the 1920s: As the years pass, and scientific invention and discovery succeed still further in replacing human energy by the power of machines, increasing unemployment will render an already inadequate system more and more so. So much the more necessary does it therefore become with every advance made in this direction to devise some means of distributing purchasing-power to those for whom Industry has no longer any need. (Hattersley, 1922: 102)

Hattersley also made the more general point that ‘a person’s power to claim goods and services must in future be less and less dependent on his or her direct contribution to production’ (Hattersley, 1937: 195): and James Meade similarly pointed out that investment could now mean fewer jobs rather than more, as it had in the past; that because we now live in a globalized economy, governments can no longer fix prices and wages, except in nationalized industries; and that a country’s increasing spending power could as easily be spent in other countries and so would no longer translate into demand for domestic goods and services (Meade, 1984: 130; Torry, 2021a: 90–91). If we understand ‘work’ to mean purposeful activity, and ‘employment’ to mean purposeful activity for which payment is received, then history is replete with arguments for Basic Income based on its potential effects on both work and employment. We shall study the potential effects of Basic Income on our understanding of work below. Here we shall discuss some of the history of the early twentieth century UK debate about how it would change paid employment. The argument has often been made that because means-tested benefits are withdrawn as earned income rises, they disincentivize employment, whereas a Basic Income would not be withdrawn and so would increase employment incentives for anyone currently on means-tested benefits: so Charles Hattersley explained that if only people who were not employed were to receive benefits from the State, then they would always have an incentive to remain unem-

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ployed (Hattersley, 1922: 144), and Dennis Milner that a State Bonus would not only keep people ‘fit for the next work’, but it would also ensure that because no deductions are made from this maintenance on account of employment, each job brings a return comparable with [the worker’s] effort, adds to their self-respect, and this in turn makes them more capable of doing useful work. (Milner, 1920: 78)

Juliet Rhys Williams, who had been a member of the committee chaired by William Beveridge and charged with reforming the UK’s social insurance system, wrote a minority report that objected to the time-limited nature of Beveridge’s proposed National Insurance benefits because it would mean too many families on National Assistance benefits that would be reduced as earned incomes rose, which would impose a significant employment disincentive and would result in coercion being used to get workers to accept employment if it was offered (Rhys Williams, 1943: 13, 45, 141). Once the power of the State is made use of as a means of making a man work against his will, there is no certainty that … ancient methods of coercion will not sooner or later be resorted to … . The hope of gain is infinitely preferable to the fear of punishment and the fear of want as a motive for human labour … The real objection to the Beveridge scheme does not lie in its shortcomings in respect of the abolition of want, which could be made good, but in its serious attack upon the will to work … the rewards of idleness will approximate very nearly to the wages of the regular worker, particularly after the various contributions, taxes, subscriptions and other impositions required from him, but not required from the unemployed man, have been deducted from his pay. (Rhys Williams, 1943: 13, 45, 141, 142: italics in the original)

Rhys Williams was correct: as the number of households on means-tested benefits increased, a significant ‘unemployment trap’ emerged (Parker, 1995: 27). Bertrand Russell recognized that a Basic Income might enable workers to refuse exploitative, difficult or degrading employment, and that ‘if men had to be tempted to work instead of driven to it, the obvious interest of the community would be to make work pleasant’ (Russell [1918] 2006: 87). The State Bonus league, too, expected their proposed unconditional income to improve both employment conditions and the condition of employees: No one should be driven by the threat of destitution into accepting work which is underpaid, unhealthy, or even dangerous. Therefore destitution must not exist. (Milner and Milner, 1918: 6) The [State Bonus] is … an attempt to secure capability for work by abolishing destitution … and an attempt to encourage willingness to work in an atmosphere devoid of Industrial Compulsion. (Milner, 1920: 19)

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A more general argument from the need for efficient workers was offered in a booklet for which Dennis Milner wrote a foreword: Every man, woman and child should have the legal right to an income from the State of a sufficient sum to maintain a national minimum standard of physical efficiency … the removal of all cause for worry on account of the actual necessities of life would make enormously for increased efficiency in all directions: (Price, 1920: 8, 9)

an ‘increased efficiency’ that would enable employers to benefit from ‘the general satisfaction of all the workers, and the consequent reduction in strikes’ as well as from an increase in demand (Milner and Milner, 1918: 12). An important element of the history of research about a Basic Income’s employment effects is a series of experiments that were not about Basic Income—they were experiments in a Minimum Income Guarantee: but because the results have so often been employed in the Basic Income debate we ought to discuss them here. When President Richard Nixon first proposed his Family Assistance Plan (Chapter 2), a number of practical experiments were established that for a while survived the shelving of the plan and the implementation of the Earned Income Tax Credit as an alternative (Leff et al., 2019). Each household type was allocated a level below which their annual income would not be allowed to fall, and at the end of the year the government made a payment to each household to bring its annual income up to the prescribed level. Different experiments applied different minimum income levels, and control communities that were not allocated minimum income levels were also selected for study. What politicians and researchers were particularly interested in was the effect that the promise of the topping up to a prescribed level would have on employment incentives. A problem with the United States experiments was that minimum income levels were only allocated to poorer households, which meant that the payments to meet those levels were proportionately more substantial than would have been the case if they had been paid to entire communities, which meant that any employment incentive reductions were likely to be larger among the selected households than would be the case if national minimum income levels were to be prescribed. However, a community-wide experiment did take place in Dauphin in Canada, so the results of that experiment have often been regarded as more significant than those of the US experiments. On average across the US experiments male employment hours fell between 0.5 per cent and 9 per cent, married women reduced their employment hours by between 0 per cent and 27 per cent, and single women reduced their

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employment hours by between 15 per cent and 30 per cent. The saturation site experiment in Dauphin exhibited far lower reductions in employment hours (Torry, 2021a: 110–111; Widerquist, 2019b: 308). Recent study of the archived survey results from the Dauphin experiment have shown that average employment hours reduced slightly. The reasons appeared to be people who found themselves unemployed taking the time required to find the right job rather than just any job (Widerquist, 2019b: 308–10), new mothers re-entering the employment market more slowly so that they could spend more time with their children, and young adults remaining longer in education (Forget, 2011: 286): all arguably useful changes in behaviour. What was not researched was whether the wage rate increased due to the reductions in employment hours: an increase that would have increased the funding for the scheme at the same time as reducing the cost (Widerquist, 2005). If ever similar large-scale experiments are attempted then it would be useful to research this aspect of the changed situation.

The state of research A changing employment market A discussion of the changing employment market belongs both here and in the following chapter on the economy. Here enough will be said to provide the necessary context for discussion of Basic Income pilot projects and employment motivation. A major factor in the increase in interest in Basic Income is clearly the rapid change that is occurring in the employment market. A perfect storm of globalization and automation in more developed economies (Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014: 232–3; Cholbi and Weber, 2020; Gilbert et al., 2019; Greve, 2017: 94–7; Torry, 2020a: 140–43; Waters, 2001) has divided a former coherent working class into a shrinking group of unionized workers in still relatively secure occupations and a growing ‘precariat’: workers with insecure employment. Those employed part-time are more likely to belong to the precariat than those working full-time (Kavli and Nicolaisen, 2019: 317); and it now includes middle-income as well as low-income workers, and even such professions as university teachers (Alakeson, 2013; Standing, 2011; Torry, 2013: 131–47; University and College Union, 2021). Whether the 47 per cent of US jobs vulnerable to computerization will actually disappear we shall have to wait and see (Frey and Osborne, 2013; OECD, 2018), but we do seem to be facing

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‘insecurity cubed’, by which is meant ‘technological change, an increasingly flexible labour market, and an intrusive welfare state’ (Painter, 2016: 71). Whilst there are still low-wage occupations in which human labour remains cheaper than automation, and previously high-skilled tasks are increasingly taken over by artificial intelligence (Skilton and Hovsepian, 2016), increasing capital expenditure on information and communication technology, in a context of the declining cost of such technology, is reducing demand for some low-skilled employment, which in turn reduces the wages on offer, and also increases demand for some higher skills, thus increasing wages for those who possess them (Garcia-Lazaro and Pearce, 2021). An interesting research result is that the greater the density of robots, the higher the employment level (Hudson, 2019: 63–86), so increasing automation does not necessarily mean that there will be less paid employment in the future. All of this means that we must plan not for a period of unemployment, but for a period of turbulence and employment insecurity (Dobbs et al., 2015: 149–64; Shildrick et al., 2012: 125–41), and for an employment market in which we might no longer be able to assume that learning new skills will necessarily provide a route to a better paid job (Turner, 2016). The picture is complex and still changing fast, and is at least as much about the diversification of paid employment as it is about job loss (Eichhorst and Marx, 2015; Florisson, 2022: 5), with work for online platforms such as Uber, Clickworker and Upwork forming part of a continuum of casual, on-call, temporary or other forms of contingent work [that] is usually combined with at least one other form of income generation (Huws et al., 2017: 10)

and is particularly susceptible to the micro-control of the worker (Gilbert et al., 2019: 48–51). Where low- and medium-skilled workers are unionized, the income share of the proceeds of production does not decline at the same rate as in non-unionized workforces, and governments amenable to increasing the national minimum wage can have the same effect (Garcia-Lazaro and Pearce, 2021). This suggests that trades unions and progressive governments might see themselves as complementary in their efforts to secure higher wage levels and income security for low- and medium-skilled workers, and that both might recognize that a Basic Income would be complementary to their efforts and an idea ‘whose time has come’ (Gregory, 2017: 37). Because of its radical simplicity a Basic Income would contribute to the efficiency of the employment market however that market might change in the future, and it would at the same time contribute to the security of workers’ incomes: an unusual and

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welcome dual effect of a social policy. The result would be ‘flexicurity’ (Gilbert et al., 2019: 56–7; Goodin, 1992; Huws, 1997: 50; Torry, 2016b: 13–15; Tros and Wilthagen, 2013). As with previous technological revolutions, the digital revolution requires a paradigm change in the organization of the economy, which in turn will bring about new social structures and the need for new institutions. (Fernández-Macías, 2018: 1)

The rapid change that we are already experiencing, and that we shall no doubt continue to experience, means that a country’s tax and benefits system needs to be structured not just so that it is serviceable within the current new context, but also so that it will continue to be serviceable however technology and the employment market change. While it might be thought that we could adapt a tax and benefits system each time the employment market changes, this is rarely practicable, because policy change takes time, meaning that the tax and benefits system will always lag behind what is required. Because a Basic Income would suit any configuration of the employment market, it would constitute at least one element of the complex benefits and tax system that would always be useful without needing to be changed. Both this consideration, and the likelihood that increasing automation will increase the gap between labour income and the proceeds of production, mean that a Basic Income is the obvious direction for income maintenance (Hudson, 2019: 121–2). Pilot projects: employment market effects There have been just two genuine Basic Income pilot projects: in Namibia and India. In both cases, every individual in entire communities was given an unconditional income for periods of eighteen months or two years. While during the recent two year-experiment in Finland the incomes were unconditional once they were allocated, only currently unemployed individuals were eligible to receive them, and those individuals were scattered across the country. The results of the Finnish scheme could therefore predict only the effects of an unconditional income for isolated currently unemployed individuals (De Wispelaere et al., 2019). The Namibian and Indian projects, because they involved all of the individuals in entire communities, can predict the effects of a Basic Income on entire communities in those contexts. Namibia The pilot project in Namibia ran from January 2008 to December 2009 in a single community, Otjivero-Omitara, and was supported by a coalition of trades unions, churches, and voluntary organizations, and eventually by the

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International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as well (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2006; Insight, 2006a; 2006b). The Basic Incomes of N$100 (US$12) per month given to 398 individuals in 52 households were funded by donors (Haarmann et al., 2019: 357–8). Data was collected on the weights and heights of children, clinic attendance, household incomes, and educational and crime statistics. A benchmark survey was carried out in November 2007, an interim survey in July 2008, and a final survey in November 2008. Because the Basic Incomes had understandably encouraged inward migration, by the end of the project in 2009 only qualitative data and case studies were being collected (Torry, 2021a: 203–8). Results relating to the employment market were as follows: • The proportion of people engaged in economic activity rose from 44 per cent to 55 per cent, often through own-account work of various kinds: and especially through such initiatives as the tending of vegetable plots and the building of latrines, which directly led to an increase in the community’s health; • far from leading to idleness and a decrease in economic activity, the economic security that a Basic Income offered to people gave them the confidence to take the economic risks necessary for new productive activity; • average income rose in every earnings quintile, and proportionately more for lower quintiles; • average income rose a staggering 200 per cent in the lowest quintile excluding the N$100 (US$12) Basic Income, because people could now purchase the means for earning an income, and they did; • low-wage employment was in many cases replaced by better-paid self-employment; and • economic activity rose fastest among women. (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009: 13–17; Torry, 2009; 2018a: 131–3) The project clearly refuted a common criticism of Basic Income: Far from encouraging dependency, the Basic Income increased economic enterprise and employment market activity; and the project showed that this could be achieved by a mechanism that was not paternalistic, was based on rights and not charity, benefited most the most disadvantaged, facilitated dignified work, and did not damage the environment (Standing, 2017: 232). A number of criticisms were levelled at the project: • The project was externally funded by institutional and individual donors, which meant that additional money was being injected into local economies,

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whereas a nationwide Basic Income scheme would require permanent government funding. This meant that the pilot project could not unambiguously predict the economic and employment outcomes of a nationwide Basic Income. We can generalize this objection: The results obtained from the Namibian pilot project would not be able to predict the effects of any Basic Income funded from within the existing tax and benefits system (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 139–40). There is some logic to this objection, but in the context of a resource-rich country such as Namibia, in which a high proportion of national income is generated by extractive industries, the results of the pilot project can be regarded as predictive of the effects of a Basic Income of the same value paid to the whole population. To roll out the pilot project Basic Incomes to the whole country would have cost between 2.2 per cent and 3.8 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2006; Insight, 2006a; 2006b), so would have been eminently affordable without affecting the country’s existing unconditional pensions, and without affecting the rudimentary tax and benefits system that was in any case of little economic relevance to the pilot community. In this case, the pilot project can claim to have replicated in just one community the economic and employment effects that a nationwide Basic Income would deliver for the entire country. The same claim could not be made for a pilot project in a country in which the net cost of rolling out the pilot project Basic Income scheme to the whole country would be much more than 3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (Torry, 2021a: 213–14). • As well as the funding mechanism, a number of aspects of the experiment’s methodology were criticized. There was no control community with which the data collected from the pilot project community could be compared, because it was thought unethical to put a community through the research required to turn it into an effective control community without its inhabitants receiving the Basic Income that the pilot community residents would be given. One of the problems with no control community being researched is that it was difficult to refute the objection that improvements in child nutrition experienced during the pilot project, and also the reduction in poverty, reflected a general improvement across Namibia rather than the effects of the Basic Income given to the community during the pilot project. However, during the period of the project there had been no national increase in per capita income, and child nutrition had generally deteriorated, which strongly suggests that the improvements in Otjivero-Omitara were the result of the Basic Income being paid. (Haarmann et al., 2019: 363–5; Osterkamp, 2013a; 2013b).

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• One question that the researchers were aware of, and that really is difficult to answer, relates to the extent to which the outcomes of the project might have been the result of the interest being shown by external observers (the ‘Hawthorne effect’: Mullins, 2005: 79). For instance, Otjivero-Omitara developed local democratic structures that ensured the closure of shebeens on the day of the monthly distribution of Basic Incomes, because inhabitants knew that one of the criticisms of unconditional incomes is that they might be wasted on socially damaging purchases. Only a nationwide roll-out of a Basic Income would tell us the extent to which this and other similar social changes were the effects of the Basic Incomes, the effects of external observation, or both (Haarmann et al., 2019: 366). Interviews conducted ten years after the completion of the project found that even though the Basic Income had ceased to be paid at the end of 2009, significant effects continued (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2019). Unfortunately, in spite of the significant volume of evidence for the effectiveness of an unconditional regular income, the Namibian Government was still proposing an income only for unemployed individuals (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2019: 56–9). It is of course true that the effects of a short-term unconditional income would not necessarily be the same as those of a permanent Basic Income, and that until a country implements a Basic Income for working age adults we shall not know whether the long-term change in poverty levels and other social and economic factors that we might hope for would actually be achieved (Papadopoulos and Valázquez Leyer, 2016). This will be particularly true of employment market decisions, because during a short pilot project workers’ minds will be on the situation following the project and not only on the situation during the project itself (Torry, 2021a: 213–14). India The large Indian pilot project that started in 2011 was organized by the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)—a large trade union that organizes street vendors, home-based workers, agricultural workers, domestic workers, and construction workers—and was supported by the Indian Government, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNICEF India. It was divided into three parts: an urban project in Delhi, eight rural communities, and two tribal villages. Residents in the rural pilot project communities received unconditional incomes of 200 Rupees per month—worth about 30 per cent of subsistence income—and 100 Rupees per month for each child; and a hundred households in West Delhi received 1,000 Rupees per month and were deprived of the ability to buy products in the subsidized ration shops. Matched control groups that did not receive the unconditional

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incomes were also surveyed during the period of the project, so the experiment was a genuine randomized controlled trial (John, 2016). Whilst in this sense the method of the Indian pilot project was an improvement on that of the Namibian pilot project, a randomized controlled trial will not necessarily provide the kind of robust result that might be delivered by a randomized controlled drug trial. Such social experiments as Basic Income pilot projects take place in ‘complex, open systems’ (Greener, 2013: 428), so it will never be possible to discover a genuine match between contexts, making any control comparison flawed in an unpredictable and unknowable way. As in Namibia, baseline, interim, final, and follow-up surveys were carried out, case studies were researched, key players in the communities were interviewed, data was collected on children’s weights, school attendance, and so on, and broader surveys captured community-wide effects (Davala, 2019: 374; Davala et al., 2015: 34–46; Sewa Bharat, 2012; 2014). The following were some of the results relating to the employment market: • Economic activity increased, especially among individuals with low earnings; • new businesses were established, especially by women; • in the tribal villages, small farmers were spending more time on their own farms and less on wage labour; and • especially where the Self-Employed Women’s Association was involved, communities pooled some of their unconditional incomes to create roads, water supplies, drains and toilets for the benefit of the community (Davala, 2019: 375–8; Davala et al., 2015: 73, 76, 92–5, 153–5, 158–80; Sewa Bharat, 2012; 2014; Torry, 2013: 69–73; 2018: 134–5). The project concluded in 2013, but in 2017 a legacy survey in the tribal villages found that many of the effects of the project had persisted, mainly because assets purchased during the project were still producing incomes. Researchers were able to conclude that a short-term Basic Income can be permanently transformative (Davala, 2019: 379–81; Davala et al., 2015: 2–3). Pilot projects in countries with developing economies Whilst there have been inevitable problems posed for researchers by some of the characteristics of the pilot projects in Namibia and India, and particularly the fact that both of them had no choice but to be externally funded, the data obtained makes a strong case for the benefits that nationwide Basic Incomes would offer to the two countries. This conclusion coheres with the

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results of research conducted for the World Bank into both Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers that found that unconditional schemes could be particularly effective (Garcia and Moore, 2012: 8). More recent research by UNICEF, which helped to fund the Indian pilot project, has reached the same conclusion: Taking eight experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations on large-scale government UCTs [Unconditional Cash Transfers] in subSaharan Africa (SSA), conducted in collaboration with the Transfer Project, we summarize evidence around six common perceptions associated with cash transfer programmes in resource-poor settings. Specifically we investigate if transfers: 1) Induce higher spending on alcohol or tobacco; 2) Are fully consumed (rather than invested); 3) Create dependency (reduce participation in productive work); 4) Increase fertility; 5) Lead to negative community-level economic impacts (including price distortion and inflation); and 6) Are fiscally unsustainable. We present evidence refuting each of these claims. … We conclude that these perceptions are myths, and that they present a distorted picture of the potential benefits of these programmes. Since such perceptions are utilized—or inform underlying assumptions—in policy debates, they constrain governments’ policy decisions in the area of poverty reduction. (Handa et al., 2017: 6)

There is now a significant amount of evidence, from multiple unconditional and conditional cash transfer programmes, that cash transfers can increase purposeful economic activity in countries with developing economies, and that in countries with more developed economies they cause hardly any change in employment market participation rates or in hours per week spent in paid employment (Gilbert et al., 2019: 61–4). More experiments are now taking place: for instance, a large Basic Income randomized controlled trial paying small Basic Incomes to 20,000 individuals across 197 entire rural Kenyan villages. A further 100 villages are acting as a control group. A variety of methods are being tested: lump-sum transfers, long-term Basic Incomes designed to last for twelve years, and short-term Basic Incomes. Results similar to those reported in Namibia and India have been obtained, with the changes being more pronounced in the villages looking forward to twelve-year Basic Incomes, as we might expect. Other smaller scale projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Uganda also exhibit similar effects (Banerjee et al., 2020; Douillard, 2017; Duverger, 2018: 127; Eight, 2021; GiveDirectly, 2020; 2021; Torry, 2021a: 221). Iran Policy accidents happen (Torry, 2016a: 238–43). An obvious example is unconditional child allowances in the UK: Eleanor Rathbone wrote a book (Rathbone [1924] 1947; 1930), and William Beveridge read it and tried the idea out on the staff of the London School of Economics, where he was Director,

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and then wrote the idea into the preface of a report that was supposed to be about tidying up the UK’s social insurance system. Members of Parliament found that they had reasons to vote for the proposal, so it happened. If this chain of events had not happened then the UK would not now have unconditional incomes for children (Torry, 2021a: 82–3, 214). A different kind of accident occurred in Iran in 2010. The Government of Iran had planned to replace subsidies on food and fuel with payments—‘cash subsidies’—for poorer families. The blunt means test employed to allocate different levels of payment to households in different economic circumstances proved highly unpopular, so the government withdrew the test and allocated every household to the category in which the total amount of the cash subsidy would be paid. Although the payments were calculated on an individual basis, they were paid to the head of the household, which was usually a man, so in that sense they were not a Basic Income; and they were also not a Basic Income in the sense that Afghan refugees living in Iran were not included in the scheme: but because the payments were not means-tested and not work-tested, those restrictions remained the only two respects in which the payments were not a Basic Income (De Wispelaere, 2016b: 625; Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 339–45; Salehi-Isfahani, 2014; Tabatabai, 2011a; 2011b; 2012a: 295; 2012b; Torry, 2021a: 214–15). Unfortunately, rapid inflation caused the value of the payments to fall from close to two thirds of the minimum wage to less than 20 per cent of its value by 2017, and the payments will now be worth less than that, so even if initially there might have been some effect on employment patterns, it is doubtful whether that has remained the case (Torry, 2021a: 216; World Bank, 2022). The rapid inflation, and multiple other changes in Iran’s society and economy during the past ten years, have made it difficult to research the effects of the cash subsidies on employment and social factors because it would be difficult to distinguish between the effects of the cash subsidies and the effects of all of the other changes (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 352), but the research that has been possible has shown that in most age groups employment market activity did not change immediately following the implementation of the cash subsidies in 2011, although young adults were more likely to remain in higher education than to enter employment. This mirrors a similar outcome of the 1970s Dauphin and other Minimum Income Guarantee experiments. It is arguably a positive outcome that young adults were better able to invest in their own future prospects rather than having to enter employment as soon as possible (Forget, 2011: 286, 291; Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 346–9, 351–3; Salehi-Isfahani and Mostafavi-Dehzooei, 2017; Torry, 2021a: 217; Widerquist, 2019b: 308–10).

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Finland A Basic Income in a country with a more developed economy would have to be funded from somewhere. Chapter 3 offers a number of options, and recognizes that in the short to medium term the most likely funding source would be changes to the current tax and benefits system. This poses two significant problems for those planning Basic Income pilot projects: first of all, it is very difficult to alter a complicated tax and benefits system for a single community, so a genuine pilot project would be almost impossible to achieve; and secondly, any effects would be as much the result of the changes made to the tax and benefits system as they would be of the Basic Income, so all we could say would be that the effects would be of the particular Basic Income scheme and not only of the Basic Income. These constraints would be sufficiently different from those experienced in Namibia and India that we probably ought not to extrapolate from the results of the Namibian and India pilot projects to the likely effects of a Basic Income being implemented in a more developed economy (Torry, 2021a: 214). Between January 2017 and December 2018 an experiment in Finland made unemployment benefit unconditional for two thousand unemployed individuals randomly selected from across the country (Kangas et al., 2021a). The government wanted to know whether Basic Income ‘would be an effective policy device to combat monetary and bureaucratic disincentives in the current Finnish income transfer system’ (Kangas and Jauhiainen, 2021: 16). Whether the experiment could be regarded as a pilot project is debatable. It was restricted by lack of political will, time constraints, and administrative possibilities, to two thousand randomly selected currently unemployed individuals, so wider community effects could not be studied; and when the selected individuals’ unemployment benefit was made unconditional for two years the rest of the existing tax and benefits system was not altered, so the package would have been financially infeasible to implement across the whole of the country’s population. A further problem was that only one model was tested, so it was not possible to distinguish between the effects of the financial and unconditionality aspects of the change experienced by the unemployed individuals chosen (Kangas, 2021a: 33). Given the limitations of the project, and particularly the fact that many of the individuals in the target group would have experienced multiple barriers to employment, it is significant that the experiment found that employment market confidence rose substantially during the experiment, and that employ-

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ment market engagement increased during the second year (Blomberg et al., 2021: 166; Ylikännö and Kangas, 2021: 68): During the observation period from November 2017 to October 2018, days in employment increased, on average, about six days more in the group that received basic income than in the control group. However, no significant employment effect was observed during the first year of the experiment. (Kangas et al., 2020: 188)

Perhaps as significant as the additional number of days of employment experienced during the second year was the stated employment market experience of participants. Interviewees revealed enhanced ability to decline meaningless or exploitative employment; to remain in poorly paid employment; to undertake meaningful own-account paid work; and to spend more time on voluntary community and care work, and in that context to understand themselves as workers rather than as unemployed (Blomberg et al., 2021: 165). However, participants knew that the experiment was time-limited, and so would have had their eyes on the context to which they would return in January 2019 (Ylikännö and Kangas, 2021: 68), and the change in that context might have increased employment incentives in the sense that recipients of the unconditional benefits might have felt more of an incentive not to find themselves subject to even more conditionality than they had left behind in January 2017. This suggests that the uplift in employment market engagement might indeed have been a joint effect of both the unconditional incomes and the more extensive conditionality in relation to the normal benefits system (Kangas et al., 2020: 188). If a policy change is being tested on a treatment group and a control group, then it is essential that no other change should be made during the period of the experiment, because if that happens then it is no longer clear whether the treatment group’s experience is the result of the policy change being tested or of the additional changes taking place in other parts of the system. The Finnish Government was either not aware of this problem, or they knew about it and had little interest in the experiment that they had established (Jauhiainen et al., 2021: 52–3). Ontario and Alaska The recent experiment in Ontario was a Minimum Income Guarantee (Chapter 2) experiment that employed an income-tested and household-tested benefit to enable households to reach prescribed household minimum incomes, and so with similarities to the Mincome experiment described above. Calling itself a ‘Basic Income’ experiment (Mendelson, 2019: 22; Ontario, n.d.) has misled rather too many people into believing that it was a Basic Income pilot project (Hamilton, 2020: 35), which it was not. It was also unfortunate that a new

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Ontario Government closed the project early and did not evaluate it. However, a detailed online survey was circulated by McMaster and Ryerson University and was completed by 217 former recipients. Most people who were employed before being enrolled in the experiment continued in employment, many of them moved to better-paying and more secure jobs, and it was those who were initially in employment who showed higher than average improvements in wellbeing measures (Ferdosi et al., 2020: 4; Hamilton, 2020: 35–7). The important question here is whether results from the Dauphin and Ontario Minimum Income Guarantee experiments can be regarded as relevant to the Basic Income debate. The answer has to be that they can be. In relation to employment: a Minimum Income Guarantee would provide every household with the security of knowing that by the end of the year its total income would reach a known amount of money. The problem with this is that as earned income rises, the amount that the government pays falls, thus reducing the incentive to seek new employment, to learn new skills, or to find a higher-paying job. A Basic Income, on the other hand, would provide a known secure income platform every week or every month, and the amount would not fall as earned income rose. Any household enabled by their Basic Incomes to come off means-tested benefits would experience a higher employment incentive, so for those households, not only would employment incentives not fall: they could rise, and employment hours could increase. There would always be an incentive to be employed, to be self-employed, or to start a business; and anyone within striking distance of coming off means-tested benefits would have every incentive to earn additional income so that they could come off them (Torry, 2021c: 9, 14). Both Minimum Income Guarantee experiments and Basic Income pilot projects increase workers’ income security, but the latter would normally generate a higher employment incentive than the former, so we could legitimately argue that a Basic Income would have more of a positive employment market effect than a Minimum Income Guarantee. It is in this sense that whatever positive employment market results a Minimum Income Guarantee experiment might generate can be legitimately extrapolated to predict even more positive employment market effects for a Basic Income, suggesting that either a Minimum Income Guarantee or a Basic Income could help to end ‘welfare to work’ programmes (Hamilton, 2020: 37). A similar issue arises in relation to the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend: a varying annual dividend paid out of the proceeds of a permanent fund into which oil revenues are paid (Chapters 2 and 3; Widerquist and Howard, 2012). Research has shown that the dividend causes the rate of employment to increase in non-tradable sectors (that is, sectors in which international trade does not take place), and to fall in tradable sectors (that is, sectors subject to

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international trade). Presumably the reasons for this are that the universal annual grants have enabled Alaska’s citizens to increase their expenditure on local goods and services and to reduce their employment hours. This latter effect is evidenced by an increase in the proportion of part-time employment. Overall, there has been no change in the rate of employment, suggesting that the opposite trends in the different trade sectors are balancing each other out (Jones and Marinescu, 2022). While the Alaskan dividend is a varying annual payment and not a consistent weekly or monthly one, and so is more likely to be spent on settling debts, on Christmas gifts and festivities, and on larger items such as domestic appliances, than on normal domestic consumption of food, energy, and so on, we can theorize that the employment market changes evidenced in relation to the dividend are likely to bear some resemblance to those that would occur if a Basic Income were to be paid, although the extent to which each of the trends would occur would probably be different, meaning that the overall effect might be a higher or a lower employment rate rather than no change as in the Alaskan case. What this discussion of the Ontario experiment and the Alaskan annual dividend shows is that the results of research on the effects of regular incomes that are not Basic Incomes can be relevant to the Basic Income debate. The same of course has to be said of research on different Basic Income schemes. Because research on the likely effects of a particular Basic Income scheme will not necessarily tell us anything about the effects of a different scheme, we might find that research on an experiment that is not a Basic Income pilot project might tell us more about a Basic Income scheme with similarities to that experiment than would research on a different Basic Income scheme. Pilot projects in more developed economies The Namibian and Indian pilot projects are the only genuine Basic Income pilot projects so far, and it is not insignificant that they happened in countries with developing economies. They were able to happen in those contexts because there were either no social welfare systems in place that needed to be adapted in order to implement a Basic Income scheme that could feasibly be rolled out across the whole country, or there were only rudimentary existing systems that would not have to be altered if a nationwide Basic Income were ever to be rolled out. What we are lacking is a genuine Basic Income pilot project in a more developed economy (Hasdell, 2020: 18) in which complex tax and benefits systems would have to be adapted if a Basic Income were to paid across the country, so for a genuine pilot project to take place the same Basic Income scheme would have to be implemented in a single community or several communities, which would mean the country’s tax and benefits systems being

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changed just for the pilot communities, which would be almost impossible to achieve (Torry, 2021a: 116–17). In some contexts we might be able to replicate to some extent the conditions for a genuine pilot project (Torry, 2022b), but there would always be a question as to whether results obtained could predict the effects of a nationwide feasible Basic Income scheme. Minimum Income Guarantee schemes, on the other hand, and particularly those constituted by annual means-tested payments to bring household incomes up to specified levels at the end of the financial year, are easy to implement in a single community or in several communities. Each household would have to declare their total income, and if that was below a specified level then a payment would be made to bring the household’s total income up to that level. It is therefore no surprise that Minimum Income Guarantee pilot projects take place in more developed economies, and that Basic Income pilot projects do not. While a major reason for seeking to hold genuine Basic Income pilot projects would be to study a Basic Income’s employment market effects, and in particular to discover whether a shift towards own-account economic activity might be likely to occur in more developed economies as was found to be the case in the Namibian and Indian pilot projects, a further reason would be to test whether a smooth transition could be achieved from the current tax and benefits system to that of the Basic Income scheme being tested. While the recent experiment in Finland was not a saturation site randomized controlled trial because it was among a randomly selected sample of unemployed individuals from across Finland, it was at least an experiment with a mechanism that was a Basic Income within the dispersed pilot community (De Wispelaere et al., 2019; Halmetoja et al., 2019: 325). The municipal experiments in the Netherlands were not of this character: they were with a variety of mechanisms, none of which conformed to the definition of a Basic Income (Groot and Verlaat, 2019). A further problem with pilot projects in relation to the employment market is that by definition a pilot project has to be of limited duration so that it can be stopped and evaluated. This means that pilot project participants would make employment market decisions with the employment market conditions associated with the period following the pilot project in mind rather than the conditions associated with the period of the pilot project. Given that a major reason, and perhaps the main reason, for holding pilot projects would be to test the effects of a Basic Income that cannot be tested by microsimulation (Chapter 3), and because arguably the most important such effect is that of employment market change that we now know cannot be properly tested by a short-term pilot project, we might have to say that because the main reason often given for holding pilot projects can no longer apply, we ought not to hold

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Basic Income pilot projects but instead predict effects in other ways, perhaps by studying natural experiments (Atkinson and Sutherland, 1988a: 14; Torry, 2013: 149–60; 2016a: 148; 2021a: 116). One such experiment was reported in 2005 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: A reduction of marginal effective tax rates by 20% … implies a rise in the probability of moving from unemployment to employment by nearly 10% … The strongest effects are found for the unemployed with a working partner, whose reemployment probability would increase by seven percentage points, from 51% to nearly 58%. (OECD, 2005: 127)

A further research method that avoids the nonreplicability of pilot project results is laboratory experiments: a somewhat neglected method in relation to Basic Income (Füllbrunn et al., 2019: 182; Noguera and De Wispelaere, 2006). One experiment is reported in which participants were given small Basic Incomes and were then offered assets at different risk levels. The researchers discovered that ‘[Basic Income] does not result in a higher frequency of risk-taking in our sample’ (Füllbrunn et al., 2019: 191). Another single-day laboratory experiment found that a Basic Income scheme generates more work supply than a comparable Negative Income Tax scheme, and that in the context of a Basic Income, individualistic and competitive personalities were particularly prone to increase their work effort (Kawagoe, 2019: 218). Motivation A research field of relevance to the Basic Income debate, and that relates strongly to the pilot projects and experiments that we have already discussed, is that of motivation, a subfield of psychology. In a household-based means-tested system, depending on the detail, a second earner might find that the household gains almost no financial benefit from their entry into employment (Cory, 2013; Torry, 2008). However, that does not mean that someone would not seek employment, as there are many reasons why someone might seek or remain in employment: It can generate self-esteem, colleagues can become friends, and skills can be developed. Financial reward is not the only motivator, so we find that full-time employment is fairly inelastic in relation to marginal deduction rates: that is, as the proportion of earned income withdrawn by income tax, other deductions, and the reduction of means-tested benefits, changes, employment hours do not change very much. However, there is an effect, especially in relation to part-time employment: if one worker in a household loses their job, and the household finds itself on means-tested benefits, then another earner might

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give up their job or reduce their employment hours (Atkinson and Mogensen, 1993: 191; Emmerson et al., 2014: 161). Someone seeking employment might not be aware of the effect of the unemployment trap (the high marginal deduction rate that applies to someone leaving unemployment and entering employment), and someone in employment might not be aware of the poverty trap (the high marginal deduction rate that applies to additional earned income), so the traps might not influence someone’s decision to seek employment or to seek a higher-paying job. However, the more such transitions take place, the more someone will be aware that increasing earned income does not necessarily translate into increasing household disposable income. Such effects can be cumulative. Here some natural experiments in Belgium have provided some useful information. Research into the employment effects of policy reforms that changed the Participation Tax Rate (PTR) (the marginal deduction rate experienced by unemployed individuals considering taking employment) or that changed the Effective Marginal Tax Rate (EMTR) (the marginal deduction rate experienced by individuals in employment) showed that a 10 percentage point increase in the PTR (i.e. if work paid less) had a negative average marginal of around 4 percentage points on the probability of taking up work. This effect is sizable considering that the baseline probability of transitioning to more than half a year of employment was 9 per cent. Changes in EMTRs did not have a statistically significant effect on hours worked by part-timers. (Collado, 2018: 1)

Governments might choose to assist poor families by increasing the level of means-tested benefits. They then have a choice: either to increase marginal deduction rates, or to extend an existing marginal deduction rate further up the earnings range. The Belgian research result suggests that the latter approach would cause the least damage to employment incentives: but it would also impose on more households the difficulties related to means-tested benefits (Chapter 6). Alternatively, a government might reduce benefit levels in order to incentivize employment: but that would deepen existing poverty (Adam et al., 2006: 1). The problem is a ‘wicked’ one: that is, difficult or impossible to solve (Kangas and Jauhiainen, 2021: 16), so employment demotivation would appear to be inevitable; and because the problem is ‘wicked’, it is also an embarrassment to governments. A symptom of this is that in the UK the Department for Work and Pensions used to publish tables and graphs showing the marginal deduction rates for different earned income levels for different kinds of household. In 2003, the tables showed that some marginal deduction rates reached 89.3 per cent (Department for Work and Pensions, 2003). After that date the tables went online, and then they ceased to be published.

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While a Basic Income scheme that took households off means-tested benefits would clearly improve employment motivation for those households, how labour supply would change on the implementation of a Basic Income would depend on the current situation (tax rates, existing social security system, existing marginal tax rates, and so on) and on decisions made in relation to the funding of the Basic Income, which could affect tax rates, marginal tax rates, and the social security system. In general, the more we depend on labour income taxation to fund a Basic Income, the more likely it will be that labour supply will be reduced. (Gilbert et al., 2019: 66)

If a personal tax allowance were to be reduced, then workers would pay tax on more of their earned income, some workers would be brought into paying income tax for the first time, and those workers would experience an increase in their marginal deduction rate and therefore a potential reduction in employment motivation. The overall effect would be a more equal experience of marginal deduction rates across workers with different earned incomes rather than the very unequal picture that we experience today. A question is inevitably asked: Would giving everyone an unconditional income compromise their motivation, and in particular their motivation to seek paid employment? This is a more difficult question to answer than that related to demotivation related to the high marginal deduction rates imposed on households by the withdrawal rates associated with means-tested benefits: so it is this question that has made the study of motivation of such relevance to the Basic Income debate. Motivation is ‘an internal process that influences the direction, persistence, and vigor of goal-directed behavior’ (Smith, 1993: 367), so a relevant research question is about ‘why human … organisms think and behave as they do’ (Weiner, 1992: 1). At least four factors are involved in any employment market decision: 1. factors over which someone has no control, such as age; 2. factors over which someone has no control at present, such as educational achievement; 3. factors that someone can change in the near future, such as place of residence; and 4. factors that someone could change easily, such as doing voluntary work. Following a study of which of these factors might apply to a group of unemployed workers, Burchardt and Le Grand conclude that ‘just 1 in 10 of

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non-employed men, and a similar proportion of non-employed women, can be unambiguously classified as voluntarily out of work’ (Burchardt and Le Grand, 2002: 24), by which they mean that none of the factors listed are relevant to those individuals. A Basic Income would not change someone’s age, would not immediately alter someone’s educational achievement (although it might do so in the longer term), and might or might not enable them to change their place of residence, but it could provide them with the freedom to undertake voluntary work or in other ways to improve their skills and experience; and it could provide many workers with the ability to take part-time employment and come off means-tested benefits: an option that might not have been so available to them before. Additional options for the use of time will generally facilitate new opportunities and at the same time increase motivation (Palermo Kuss and Neumärker, 2018). A larger Basic Income would enable some people to leave the employment market, but because employment motivation is not entirely related to the provision of disposable income, many would stay in their existing employment, the conditions of which might have improved, or they might seek a better job. With a smaller Basic Income we would see the increased motivation discussed above in relation to both paid and voluntary activity. Even if means-tested benefits had to remain in place, a lot of households could be floated off them, or would be able to come off them if they found part-time or occasional employment: so they would do that. No benefits system can cope well with self-employment, and a transition from employment or unemployment to self-employment can be particularly difficult to navigate. The gyrating financial returns relating to the early stages of self-employment can result in no means-tested benefits at all or in time-consuming benefits administration on the part of both the government and the claimant. A Basic Income would provide the ideal financial platform for launching into self-employment: a theory-based conclusion which as we have seen is well supported by evidence from pilot projects and other experiments. The same would apply to workers’ ability to combine with others to form co-operatives in order to benefit themselves, their families, and their communities. Such enterprises can be highly motivating (Carmen, 2000). An important distinction to draw is that between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. ‘Intrinsic motivation’ is ‘the energy source that is central to the active nature of the organism’ (Deci and Ryan, 1985: 11), it is enhanced when psychological needs for ‘competence, autonomy, and relatedness’ are met (Ryan and Deci, 2000), and it is ‘vulnerable to the continued encroachment of environmental forces’ (Deci and Ryan, 1985: 43). We might therefore expect

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the uncertainty, intrusion and stigma connected with means-tested benefits, and the insecurity of employment, to reduce motivation, and a Basic Income to enhance it because it would enhance autonomy (Hilton, 2014; Reeve and Deci, 1996). Other factors that enhance motivation are the strength of one’s expectation that an activity will result in a particular goal being met, the value ascribed to the goal, the difficulty of the task, and the individual’s skill level (Brehm and Self, 1989; Smith, 1993: 369; Weiner, 1992: 219). So, for instance, if a worker seeks new skills in the hope of increasing their disposable income and then finds that because of benefit withdrawal their new job with higher pay results in almost no financial gain, their expectations will be reduced, as will be their motivation. In an identical situation, any household taken off their means-tested benefits by a Basic Income scheme would see their marginal deduction rate reduced, so expectation of higher income would be realised in practice. ‘Extrinsic motivation’, on the other hand, is generated by external forces rather than by internal needs (Pittman and Heller, 1987). A classic example of extrinsic motivation is that ‘children who are expected by their teachers to gain intellectually in fact do show greater intellectual gains after one year than do children of whom such gains are not expected’ (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1992: 121). However, intrinsic and external motivation can be connected. We need an income, and so are intrinsically motivated to seek paid employment; and the income functions as an extrinsic motivation to seek paid work (Bryson and MacKerron, 2013). If we are intrinsically motivated to do something for which we are then rewarded, then the reward can function as an additional motivation, but if the reward is then taken away, motivation might drop below its original intrinsically motivated level: although some of the research underlying these conclusions has proved to be contentious (Brehm et al., 1999: 62; Cameron and Pierce, 1994; Eisenberger and Cameron, 1996; Lepper and Greene, 1978: xi; Smith, 1993: 369–70; Tang and Hall, 1995). What does appear to be the case is that widely differing external constraints will undermine creativity, as long as those constraints can lead people to view their work as extrinsically motivated rather than intrinsically motivated. … positive effects of reward … appear when intrinsic motivation is kept salient, when extrinsic motivation becomes less salient … and when rewards signify competence or enable performance of interesting new activities— rather than signifying external control of behavior … A considerable body of … evidence suggests that constraint placed on task engagement has consistent negative effects on creativity. (Amabile, 1996: 171, 177)

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This rather suggests that creative intrinsic motivation would thrive in the context of a Basic Income, but that a Participation Income dependent on the performance of prescribed ‘voluntary’ activity (Chapter 2; Atkinson, 1996; Torry, 2016a: 124–26, 134–9) would stifle any intrinsic motivation usually related to such community and caring activity. An additional research result is also relevant to this discussion. Olafsen et al. have found that the level of someone’s pay is not a significant motivator, and that ‘only procedural justice [is] related to intrinsic work motivation … how people’s compensation is determined and communicated has implications for employees’ need satisfaction’ (Olafsen et al., 2015: 455). This suggests that if changes to earned income or other factors cause changes in in-work means-tested benefits (such as the UK’s Universal Credit) that are experienced as unjust, which will be particularly the case if a repayment of benefits is demanded, then motivation will suffer. A Basic Income could never be overpaid or underpaid, and repayment could never be demanded, so it could never damage motivation. We can see that research into the factors related to motivation—whether for paid employment or voluntary activity—is highly relevant to the Basic Income debate. The overall conclusion that we can draw is that a Basic Income would be positive for motivation, and no longer would governments feel that the entire benefits system had to be designed to control workers by imposing benefits sanctions (Dean, 2012a: 51). The solid financial floor that a household’s Basic Incomes would provide would increase employment motivation and reduce the level of government control over workers, and a Basic Income of any feasible size would not reduce employment motivation. Empirical research backs up this finding by showing that almost no withdrawal from employment takes place when workers are given unconditional incomes (Gilbert et al., 2018; 2019; Torry, 2020a: 95–100). Expected effects on motivation To what extent are we able to predict the effects of a Basic Income on the employment market? The long-term effects of policy changes can sometimes surprise us (Spicker, 2014: 241–2; 409–27): so how reliable might the outcomes of pilot projects and the results of theoretical research be as predictors of what would happen if a nationwide Basic Income were to be implemented, however carefully planned the experiments might be? (Widerquist, 2018) Some predictions can be made with a fair degree of certainty. Because changes to tax allowances and rates on the implementation of a Basic Income might

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mean more households on means-tested benefits in spite of their receipt of Basic Incomes, it would be important to regard a significant number of households coming off means-tested benefits as an important criterion for a feasible Basic Income scheme (Torry, 2022b). Any household on means-tested benefits at the point of implementation of a feasible Basic Income scheme would come off them completely or would receive less of them, and they would find themselves with a secure financial floor on which to build. We can predict that useful and interesting changes could take place for such households: but precisely what they would be would have to wait for the implementation of the Basic Income scheme; and much would of course depend on the details of the scheme, and not only on the fact that a Basic Income would be part of it. If new opportunities proved to be advantageous, in terms of work-life balance, reduced marginal deduction rates, new businesses, and so on, then we would be able to say that Basic Income will have been behaviourally feasible: but we would not have been able to demonstrate that in advance. A useful connection would be that between behavioural and psychological feasibilities: that is, between a Basic Income scheme being shown to exhibit predicted employment market and other effects, and Basic Income being understood and regarded as desirable and feasible by the general public. If a Basic Income were to be rolled out sequentially to different demographic groups, then the behavioural feasibility evidenced following implementation for one group could enable the next stage of the implementation to be psychologically feasible. So if a Basic Income were to be paid to young adults, then a large number of older adults would know people with Basic Incomes, and would understand the beneficial changes that recipients might have experienced, and they might want to see similar changes for themselves. A further reason for studying the effects of implementation for a particular age cohort is that we would be able to see whether any of the details of the Basic Income scheme might be causing problems, and those could then be changed in preparation for implementation for the next age cohort. For instance, the balance of income tax allowance reduction and income tax rate increase might be changed in the light of experience. Testing for behavioural feasibility would be a continuous activity. What would not be reviewed, of course, would be the definition of a Basic Income. That is set in stone. Although Basic Income could only be tested for behavioural feasibility after the implementation of a Basic Income, we would need to have some assurance that Basic Income, and the particular scheme to be implemented, would be likely to be behaviourally feasible: but we would also need to launch into implementation without being certain that the predicted beneficial behavioural changes would follow. An interesting corollary follows. If behavioural feasibility cannot

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be tested until after implementation, then perhaps psychological feasibility testing can be postponed until after implementation as well. Just as we can proceed without proof that the predictions of new behavioural possibilities will be accurate, so we can predict psychological acceptability once Basic Incomes are in payment, and we can therefore proceed without a psychological feasibility test having been passed prior to implementation (Torry, 2016a: 143–66; 2020a: 162–3).

Conclusion In this chapter we have employed evidence from pilot projects and other sources to predict some of the potential employment market effects of a Basic Income. A recent review of the evidence from experiments finds labour supply increases globally among adults, men and women, young and old, and the existence of some insignificant and functional reductions to the system such as a decrease in workers from the following categories: Children, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, women with young children to look after, or young people who continued studying. These reductions do not reduce the overall supply since it is largely offset by increased supply from other members of the community. (de Paz-Báñez et al., 2020)

Here we shall raise a somewhat broader possibility to which the evidence adduced here might lead us. We have recognized that there are currently significant differences between developing and developed economies in terms of their employment markets and also in terms of how a Basic Income might be paid for. If Basic Incomes were to be implemented in both developing and developed economies then the characteristics of those economies would converge, as would the characteristics of their associated employment markets, and as would some of the characteristics of their associated societies. The ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ divide would begin to dissolve. And if Basic Incomes were to be implemented in developing economies and not in developed economies, then in some respects previously developing economies would become more developed than previously developed economies. While Basic Income might sometimes appear to be a fringe economic and social issue, it is not impossible that it could generate significant geopolitical effects.

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Future research We are fortunate that so much useful research has already been done in relation to the subject matter of this chapter. What is now required is both more of the same, and developments of what has already been done. This suggests the following agenda for future research on the employment market effects of Basic Income. • To provide a basis for discussion of the employment market effects of Basic Income we need research on the research available on short, medium and longer term employment market scenarios in a wide variety of contexts, and on the reliability of such research. • Robustly social scientific Basic Income pilot projects are required in a wide variety of contexts. Pilot communities must be matched with control communities, and as far as possible the Basic Income scheme tested in a pilot community must be one that could be rolled out in every detail across the entire country. If possible, a variety of experiments with different feasible levels of Basic Income should be carried out in each context. • We are particularly in need of genuine Basic Income pilot projects in countries with more developed economies (Torry, 2022b). • Whenever possible, pilot projects should be longer than two years, and wherever possible compulsory participation should be required in order to avoid selection bias in the results (Betkó et al., 2019). • Minimum Income Guarantee experiments and Basic Income pilot projects should always be carefully distinguished from each other; research is needed on the applicability of Minimum Income Guarantee experimental results to Basic Income research; and on that basis research results relating to employment market behaviour obtained from Minimum Income Guarantee experiments should be carefully evaluated for their applicability to the Basic Income debate. • Results from different experiments need to be well shared across territorial and disciplinary boundaries (Crowley and Sevciuc, 2021: 8). • As already mentioned in Chapter 3, Basic Income researchers should follow closely the development of employment market models and should learn how to employ them in connection with dynamic microsimulation research on a wide variety of Basic Income schemes, and in relation to other research on possible future employment market scenarios. • Laboratory experiments might usefully be employed alongside pilot project and theoretical research methods, and where possible the results of the different methods should be compared with each other.

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• Additional natural experiments should be sought, such as the policy accident in Iran, and they should be subjected to rigorous detailed research. The Iranian cash subsidies might usefully be researched using the Iranian Household Expenditure and Income Survey (IRHEIS), social surveys, and focus groups. • Basic Income researchers and psychology and social psychology academics could usefully collaborate over research on motivation. • Microsimulation research, whether static or dynamic, might usefully include careful studies of the marginal deduction rates that would be experienced by workers in different circumstances, with those marginal deduction rates calculated in relation to the current tax and benefits system and in relation to the systems that would follow the implementation of feasible Basic Income schemes. • We need as many methods as possible. There is no hierarchy (Füllbrunn et al., 2019: 195).

5

Economic effects of a Basic Income

Introduction As the employment market is a significant aspect of a country’s economy, and is the mechanism by which a Basic Income would have much of its economic effect, this chapter must contain a section on the subject, which means that there will be a certain amount of overlap between this chapter and the previous one. However, there will be differences in the two treatments. Chapter 4 has asked mainly about individuals’ relationships with the employment market and how a Basic Income might change those, whereas this chapter will be more about how a Basic Income would relate to the employment market understood as an element of the economy; and Chapter 4 has taken a mainly empirical approach to the subject, whereas this chapter will rely more on economic theory. However, the employment market is not the only constituent of an economy, and because a Basic Income would affect a country’s economy in other ways it will be important to understand what some of its other effects might be. Following a brief historical section, this chapter will outline a number of research fields that might help us to understand some of the effects that a Basic Income might have on the economy. Indifference curves, an aspect of classical economic theory, will be employed to study possible employment effects; a Basic Income’s possible effects on wage levels will be discussed, and in particular how it might function as a wage subsidy. Consumption theory will provide insights into possible economic effects, as will related economic theory; the subfield of welfare economics will be explored, and in particular the concept of welfare efficiency; and how a Basic Income might relate to inflation and economic growth will be debated. The issues tackled in this chapter will relate to short to medium term considerations. A longer term and rather more important factor that will largely determine the market efficiency and the welfare efficiency of economies is the economy’s climate efficiency, on which see Chapter 6. 97

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As always, discussion of the state of research will inspire a list of research still required.

History of research on the economic effects of a Basic Income We have related some of the history of research into employment market effects of Basic Income in Chapter 4. Here we shall offer some further history of research into employment market effects of Basic Income, in this case from a more theoretical point of view; and also two examples of previous discussions of the economic efficiency of a Basic Income. Economic efficiency Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Spence suggested that his quarterly dividends would cause ‘domestic trade’ to be ‘at an amazing pitch because there would be no poor’ (Spence, 1797: 13–14); and in 1945 James Meade reviewed a book published by Abba Lerner, The Economics of Control (Lerner, 1944): Mr. Lerner argues … that the total satisfaction achieved from any given income will be maximized if that income is so divided among individuals that its marginal utility is the same for everyone; but he adds an interesting and elegant proof of the proposition that (on the assumption that the marginal utility of income declines in the case of each individual) the maximization of probable total satisfaction is attained by an equal division of income, even though we cannot directly compare the satisfactions of different individuals. (Meade, 1945: 48)

This is one of the bases on which Meade argued for a ‘social dividend’: an equal and unconditional income paid for by taxing industrial profits, although increasing Income Tax or taxing inheritances were also regarded as viable options (Meade [1935] 2016: 53; [1936] 1938: 212, 267, 246). Sixty years later, Meade was listing a Basic Income as a control variable by which the economy might be managed (Meade, 1995: 85). Theoretical perspectives on the employment market In Chapter 2 we recognized the importance of clear definitions, which gives us a particular problem in relation to the word ‘work’, which might mean paid employment, digging one’s own garden, caring for a child, political campaigning, and much more. In 1935 Bertrand Russell suggested that his ‘vagabond wage’, which would have constituted a Basic Income, would have enabled the

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lower amount of paid work required in a more automated world to be shared out more equally, thus making space for different kinds of work (Russell [1935] 1996: 14–15); and early in the modern debate, the German artist Joseph Beuys argued for an unconditional income as an ‘elemental human right’ (Beuys [1978] 2019) on the basis that it would enable work and income to be disconnected from each other. The sociologist Claus Offe also recognized that a Basic Income would release individuals to do a wide variety of kinds of work, although he then suggested that some kind of ‘participation’ in society would be required (Offe, 1992; 2000), not recognizing the administrative morass that such a condition would impose on governments and every individual citizen (Chapter 2). The extent to which work and income belong together is a question discussed by the French ecosocialist André Gorz, who was particularly interested in the boundaries between the State, the market, and the ‘autonomous sphere’ that is constituted by work controlled neither by the State nor by the market (Van Parijs, 2009). For Gorz, income and work were initially inextricably connected (Gorz, 1992), so if automation meant that less work was needed, then what was required was a higher hourly wage to ensure that a shorter working week still paid a living wage in order to ensure le droit de chacun et de chacune de gagner sa vie en travaillant, mais en travaillant de moins en moins, de mieux en mieux, tout en recevant sa pleine part de la richesse socialement produite. (Gorz [1990] 2013) [translation]the right of each person to earn a living by working, but by working less and less, and better and better, while still receiving their full share of the socially produced wealth.

However, by 1997 Gorz had changed his mind and moved in the opposite direction to Offe (Van Parijs, 2009; Van Trier, 2019): Le revenu social garanti n’était plus un salaire. [Cette formule] était cohérente avec l’appropriation et la maîtrise du temps. Mais elle n’était pas cohérente avec les perspectives ouvertes et les changements introduits par le postfordisme. Je l’abandonne donc … Défense de l’inconditionnalité (Gorz, 1997: 24) The guaranteed social income was no longer a wage. [This formula] was consistent with taking back, and gaining control of time. But it was not consistent with the perspectives opened up, and the changes brought about, by post-Fordism. I am therefore abandoning it … In defence of unconditionality (Gorz, 1999: 85)

Still today ‘work’ usually means paid employment, and because the employment wage remains the main means of obtaining an income, and a globalizing employment market has forced earned incomes downwards, governments

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have looked for policies that attempt to ensure full employment and at the same time prop up earned incomes that are falling in real terms. During the 1990s, the intuitive option was means-tested and work-tested benefits such as the German proposal for a Bürgergeld (‘Citizen’s Income’) and the UK’s plethora of means-tested benefits (Lessenich, 2000: 247–50, 253; Liebermann, 2012: 18–81; Mitschke, 2000: 111), although a little logic might have suggested that a Basic Income would have broadened the definition of work at the same time as improving employment conditions (Duverger, 2018: 94–5; Sloman, 2019: 228–9).

The state of research Indifference curves Classical economic theory is based on a model of the economy that assumes that each individual has a clear set of preferences for different resources; that preferences for different resources are commensurable (that is, they can be compared with each other); and that hours spent not in paid employment are a resource, whereas hours spent in paid employment are a resource only in terms of resultant earned income. From this point of view, hours not spent in paid employment (‘leisure’) are useful to us (they have utility); and consumer goods, and thus earned income, also have utility. Each combination of leisure and earned income will yield utility, or satisfaction, and the theory assumes that an individual can evaluate a variety of different combinations of earned income and leisure hours as having the same level of utility: that is, the individual will be indifferent as to which of the combinations they are presented with. We can plot those points on a graph and draw an ‘indifference curve’ through them. If the presuppositions of the theory are accepted, then we shall be able to draw a series of curves, each representing a different level of utility (Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 108–15). In Figure 5.1, if at the three combinations of leisure and earned income represented by points a, b, and c, our utility is equal, then we can say that along the indifference curve U1 our utility is constant, and that the curve U2 represents a series of combinations of leisure hours and earned income at a higher level of utility than those on U1. For a given wage rate w, we can draw a line (a ‘budget constraint’), as in Figure 5.2, showing what our earned income will be for each number of hours worked: that is, for each number of hours subtracted from our leisure time.

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Notes:  At every point on each of the curves the combinations of the levels of leisure and income provide the individual with equal levels of utility. The level of utility along curve U2 is higher than the level of utility along curve U1. Source:  Torry, 2008.

Figure 5.1

Indifference curves

Note:  Points above the line are not feasible. Source:  Torry, 2008.

Figure 5.2

Budget line, showing the relationship between the number of hours of leisure and the earned income

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If the wage w is the maximum wage that we can earn, then the combinations of earned income and leisure hours represented by points to the right of the budget line are unobtainable, so our utility will be maximized where an indifference curve is at a tangent to the budget constraint, as this will be the highest utility available to us under the circumstances, as in Figure 5.3.

Source:  Torry, 2008.

Figure 5.3

Utility is maximized where the budget constraint is at a tangent to an indifference curve

However, we never receive the whole of any income that we earn, as it will be taxed. If w is the hourly wage, and h is the number of hours worked, and if we assume that on all earned income above an amount y0 tax is charged at rate t, then net income will be y0 + (hw - y0)(1 – t) for earned income greater than y0, and for earned income below y0 it will be hw. In Figure 5.4, with this normal tax system, the worker experiences a lower utility. However, if means-tested benefits are withdrawn as earned income rises, then the situation becomes more serious. If between zero earned income and earned income of y1 benefits are withdrawn, and if from y0 tax is charged, then not only does the budget constraint fall further below where it was before, resulting in a lower utility, but the lower utility curve might then touch

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Source:  Torry, 2008, amended.

Figure 5.4

The utility that can be achieved with untaxed income is higher than the utility that can be achieved when income is taxed

Note:  The withdrawal of means-tested benefits can result in utility being maximized at a lower number of employment hours. Source:  Torry, 2008, amended.

Figure 5.5

Benefits and earned income with tax paid above y0/w and benefits withdrawn up to y1/w

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the budget constraint at a low number of hours of employment as well as at a higher number. Because the worker’s utility will be the same at both points, they might work at the lower rather than the higher number of hours. This is the situation shown in Figure 5.5, where earned income divided by the wage gives the number of hours worked. For any specified tax and benefits system, and for any particular type of household, we can create a graph to show the household’s net income for a variety of numbers of hours of work. Figure 5.6 shows net income for the very simple case of an individual with no partner or children, no housing costs, and receiving the UK’s National Living Wage and the means-tested Universal Credit (the darker budget constraint). Because the horizontal axis is now showing hours worked rather than hours of leisure, the budget constraint has a positive slope rather than the negative slope generated by a horizontal axis showing leisure hours as in previous graphs. Notional indifference curves can now be drawn— again, reversed. The graph reveals a poverty trap for someone with a particular indifference curve. We can see that for this individual, as in Figure 5.5, the same amount of utility is generated by being employed for 10 hours per week as would be generated by being employed for 17 hours per week. This suggests that any individual who experiences the relationship between leisure and net income represented by this utility curve will gain no utility by increasing their employment hours from 10 to 17 so they might choose 10 hours per week. The grey budget constraint shows a financially feasible Basic Income of £70 per week paid for by reducing to zero both the Income Tax Personal Allowance and the National Insurance Contributions Primary Earnings Threshold. Not only can a higher utility curve be drawn at a tangent to the budget constraint, but there is no longer a poverty trap. For 13 hours of employment a higher utility is available than would be possible with the current system, and no longer would it be an advantage to reduce employment hours (Atkinson and Flemming, 1978; Brown and Levin, 1974; Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980: 282; Deaton, 1992: 193; Shone, 1981: 1–24; Torry, 2018b). The graph shows that this particular Basic Income scheme would not only offer to individuals with low earnings an increase in utility, but it would also release the previously trapped individual from their poverty trap. Whatever the shape of an individual’s indifference curves, the Basic Income scheme would not impose a poverty trap because there would always be just one number of hours of employment at which the individual would maximize their utility, and, for much of the working hours range utility would be higher than under the current system (Atkinson and Flemming, 1978; Brown and Levin, 1974; Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980: 282; Deaton, 1992: 193; Shone, 1981: 1–24).

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Source:  Graph constructed by the author.

Figure 5.6

Indifference curves in relation to the budget constraints generated by the current UK tax and benefits system and an illustrative Basic Income scheme for an individual aged 40 living alone and with no rent to pay

Graphs can be deceptive, as they might suggest that an economic situation might be represented by the graph and that the situation might therefore be stable. However, the levels of utility related to any combination of leisure and income might be far from stable: they will be affected by multiple factors, and particularly by other people with various kinds of relationship with the worker. Utility curves should therefore be regarded as dynamic rather than static. This makes the poverty traps revealed in Figures 5.5 and 5.6 more important than ever. If utility curves were stable then we could hope that if a worker’s utility curve did not fall into the poverty trap then it would not do so in the future. However, if utility curves are in fact dynamic, then if at time t1 someone’s

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indifference curve does not fall into the poverty trap, at time t2 it might do so (Torry, 2008). The radical diversity of society and the economy, and therefore of the utilities that we experience in relation to different resources, means that it is impossible to design a benefits system that would suit every individual in a population; and the complexity of the policy process means not only that careful design is essential (Peters, 2018), but also that only a system with minimal design features is likely to prove useful. The nearest benefits system to one without design features has to be a Basic Income. Whatever else might result in a poverty trap, a Basic Income never could. As well as implying static situations, the graphs presented so far assume that any position along the budget constraint is available to the worker, so the combination of leisure and income located where the budget constraint is at a tangent to the budget constraint can be chosen. However, matters are not so simple if employment only for a specified number of hours might be available. For instance: if only full-time 40 hours per week jobs are available in a community, then only one point on the budget constraint is available, and this might not be where the budget constraint is at a tangent to a utility curve, as in Figure 5.7. Rather than being at x, the worker must accept the combination of leisure hours and income found at point A where the worker is employed for 40 hours. This is just one of what might be multiple factors that would affect the combination of leisure hours and income that the worker would have to accept (Mideros and O’Donoghue, 2015). Indifference curves are at the heart of classical economic models, but they are not necessarily accurate reflections of a complex and dynamic world. However, in the context of the Basic Income debate they might provide some insight into why people make the employment market decisions that they do, and further research on the factors that affect individuals’ utility might be helpful (Torry, 2016a: 156–63; 2020a: 70–77). Consumption theory In a study published in 2019 Meghnad Desai and Ana Helena Palermo (Desai and Palermo, 2019) employ economic theory to evaluate the effects that some selected Basic Income schemes might have on the consumption of goods, the amount of paid work that someone might choose to undertake, and the effects that the Basic Income schemes might have on a society’s aggregated consumption and income distribution. Two different funding methods are studied: an additional income tax, and an undefined source of revenue from outside the current tax and benefits system; and they study Basic Incomes paid at three different levels: a ‘partial’ Basic Income that would not meet basic

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Source:  Torry, 2008, amended.

Figure 5.7

If only full-time jobs at 40 hours per week are available, then utility is maximized at point A, and not at x

needs; a ‘freedom-enhancing’ Basic Income that could meet the most basic of needs, but would still require most people to seek additional income; and an ‘emancipatory’ Basic Income that would be sufficient for life in society, and would enable people to choose whether or not to participate in the employment market. The authors make the reasonable assumption that consumption and unpaid (leisure) time have ‘subsistence amounts’ for an individual: that is, there are levels below which the two goods cannot fall. They then find that people’s consumption of goods and their choice of unpaid time will depend on the subsistence amounts of consumption and leisure time, and that each of leisure and consumption will be negatively correlated with the subsistence amounts of the other. For the emancipatory Basic Income, the Basic Income equals the subsistence level of consumption by definition, and Desai and Palermo find that consumption depends on the level of the Basic Income and on how much paid work the individual chooses to do. Because with a Basic Income equal to the subsistence level of consumption the subsistence amounts of both consumption and

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leisure time can always be met, the amount of unpaid leisure time becomes independent of the level of the Basic Income. However, if the Basic Income was to be funded by an additional income tax, then the additional taxation could negatively affect both consumption and unpaid time: something that the authors claim would not occur if funding were to be external to the income tax system: although some kinds of taxation, such as a carbon tax, would in fact negatively affect the subsistence amounts of consumption (Chapter 3). In relation to aggregate economic effects, Desai and Palermo assume that the marginal propensity to consume—that is, the proportion of additional income that a household spends on immediate consumption (Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 413)—declines as income rises: that is, poorer people spend more of any additional income than wealthier people do, which means that if a Basic Income scheme were to redistribute from rich to poor then aggregate consumption would rise, potentially contributing to higher carbon emissions if the Basic Income was not to be paid for by implementing a carbon tax (Chapter 3; Howard et al., 2019; Sager, 2017). Desai and Palermo (2019) find that a Basic Income funded by an additional income tax would be likely to redistribute from rich to poor, whereas one funded externally would not necessarily do so, although it would of course depend entirely on the details of the Basic Income scheme implemented as to precisely how redistribution would occur at the point of implementation. We might add that if a Basic Income were to be paid for by implementing additional consumption taxes then inequality could increase. Careful research into illustrative Basic Income schemes will always have to be done to ensure that there would not be unfortunate side effects, and in particular that redistribution from poor to rich would not occur. A more recent similarly theoretical exercise has found that a revenue neutral Basic Income scheme, with the Basic Incomes funded by repurposing money spent on current welfare programmes, results in additional savings and therefore investment and output growth, whereas a Basic Income of $1,000 per month funded by consumption taxes results in lower labour supply and lower economic growth, and that in both cases disposable income and consumption are more equally distributed across the economy (Luduvice, 2021). The results of both exercises suggest that it would be the Basic Income scheme as a whole that would determine the macroeconomic effects, and not the Basic Income on its own.

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Effects of information and communication technology Increasing capital expenditure on information and communication technology, in a context of the declining cost of such technology, is reducing demand for low skill employment, which in turn reduces the wages on offer, and it also increases demand for some higher skills, thus increasing wages for those who possess them. Research using a model of the economy (the Levy model) finds that when investment in such technology rises, demand for low-skilled labour falls and demand for high-skilled labour increases (Garcia-Lazaro and Pearce, 2021). We examine three versions of unconditional cash transfers: $1,000 a month to all adults, $500 a month to all adults, and a $250 a month child allowance. For each of the three versions, we model the macroeconomic effects of these transfers using two different financing plans—increasing the federal debt, or fully funding the increased spending with increased taxes on households … Our findings include the following: • For all three designs, enacting a UBI and paying for it by increasing the federal debt would grow the economy. … • When paying for the policy by increasing taxes on households, the Levy model forecasts no effect on the economy. In effect, it gives to households with one hand what it is takes away with the other. • However, when the model is adapted to include distributional effects, the economy grows, even in the tax-financed scenarios. This occurs because the distributional model incorporates the idea that an extra dollar in the hands of lower income households leads to higher spending. … Thus, even when the policy is taxrather than debt-financed, there is an increase in output, employment, prices, and wages. (Nikiforos et al., 2017: 3)

Economic growth Economic growth that increases carbon emissions might not be a good idea (Chapter 6), but the economic growth represented by such goods and services as wind turbines and online conference facilities can reduce carbon emissions, so economic growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is still a subject that we ought to discuss (Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 373). Economic growth matters because earned incomes and government revenue are drawn from the proceeds of production. The economy might one day work differently, but that is how it works now. Multiple factors affect economic growth, but two particularly important ones are the amount of money available to pay for goods and services, and the level of innovation. Goods and services will be produced if people and organizations have sufficient money to pay for them, and if both consumers and producers are confident that money will be available in the future, because only then will consumers be willing to spend current income and will producers invest in

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production facilities. Rising wages will stimulate economic growth, as Henry Ford discovered when he doubled his workers’ wages so that his factory would suffer from less absenteeism and fewer resignations, and so that the workers could purchase the cars that they were producing (Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007: 424). Whilst this tactic is not so feasible in a global employment market, statutory minimum wages can have a similar effect on economic growth, although that effect will be blunted in an employment market increasingly characterized by short-term and zero-hour contracts (Westerveld and Olivier, 2019) and in which self-employment is less a source of autonomy than a route to exploitative contracts with internet platforms (Conen and Schippers, 2019). We might not have seen a significant reduction in the total number of jobs as occupations have been automated, but we are seeing less secure employment (Daugareilh et al., 2019: 29), particularly for workers with fewer skills (Bruun and Duka, 2018; Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2014; Greve, 2017; Lund, 2019; Mowshowitz, 1994: 267; OECD, 2018; 2021), and this cannot help generating both actual and perceived loss of economic security and therefore less incentive to spend on goods and services. The employment insecurity generated by Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the like, is well understood by some of those who gave birth to those companies (Clifford, 2017; Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007: 424; Hughes, 2018: 41). They face the same question that Henry Ford faced: how to ensure that people have sufficient income to buy their products. While one method for injecting immediate purchasing power into an economy might be to increase the level and extent of means-tested benefits, this can trap people in low disposable incomes and so can apply a long-term brake to low income households’ ability to consume goods and services (Torry, 2016a: 3–6). Unemployed individuals in an ‘unemployment trap’ (Parker, 1995: 27), and employed individuals in a ‘poverty trap’, suffer high marginal deduction rates, but whether these disincentivize employment is debatable, because full-time employment is relatively ‘inelastic’: that is, if someone has a job with a defined number of hours each week then their engagement with the employment market might not change very much as their marginal deduction rates change; but there can still be effects, particularly for workers in part-time employment and for those in employment whose partners lose their jobs. The reality of the situation emerges when a wage rise generates little additional disposable income (Atkinson and Mogensen, 1993: 191; Emmerson et al., 2014: 161). Disincentive effects can be cumulative. Unfortunately, the unemployment and poverty traps are not the only ones. Hermione Parker lists seven of them: the unemployment, poverty, invalidity, part-time, lack of skills, savings, and lone parent traps: the last of these constituted by the household basis of means-tested benefits incentivizing parents to

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live apart (Parker, 1995; Torry, 2013: 113–21; 2016a: 3–8). And there is now a precarity trap in which a means-tested benefits system cannot cope with the rapid changes in weekly income caused by complicated mixtures of short-term employment contracts, self-employment wedded to internet platforms, and occasional casual earned income (Torry, 2018a: 41–2). The problem for governments is that if they increase the incomes of poorer households by raising means-tested benefits then they can push disincentive effects further up the earnings range (Adam et al., 2006: 1). Alongside increased wages and higher means-tested benefits, a further method for increasing consumption capacity is to implement an unconditional layer of income. Any household taken off means-tested benefits would experience a greater ability to turn additional earned income into disposable income (Torry, 2022b: 3, 8, 14, 20). If the unconditional income were to be funded by reducing tax allowances and raising income tax rates, then households not in receipt of means-tested benefits would experience increases in their marginal deduction rates: but low-income households’ increased ability to increase their disposable incomes could significantly increase their employment market incentives, and it is these poorer households that have the highest propensity to consume: that is, they are more likely than wealthier households to spend additional income on goods and services (Ehrenfreund, 2015; Hobijn and Nussbacher, 2015; Irvin et al., 2009: 15; Martinelli, 2017b: abstract; Sager, 2017; Van Parijs, 1990: 12). This third method of improving the consumption capacity of an economy does not assume that additional money will be available for the purchase of goods and services. It is the enhanced security that a Basic Income would contribute that would make a difference to a household’s ability to turn additional earned income into consumption income, which shows that economic growth does not rely on anybody receiving additional net income on average. As well as altering the relationship between earned and disposable income, the security of the Basic Income would increase a household’s confidence to spend current income on goods and services, as they would know that at least the Basic Income would be received each week or each month. There would thus be two mechanisms whereby a Basic Income would increase demand in the economy (Torry, 2020a: 234–8). A further means by which a Basic Income would stimulate economic growth is that it would encourage more diverse economic activity. At the moment, any household on means-tested benefits, particularly if they are also employed on short-term or zero-hour contracts, risks disruption to their household budget if their circumstances change, because either their benefits will be stopped

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and then restarted at a different rate, or repayment will be demanded if they have been paid more than they were due. Changes to household employment patterns are therefore disincentivized. However, if a household’s members were to receive Basic Incomes, and either no means-tested benefits, or smaller amounts that could be abandoned if earned incomes rose slightly, then new options would present themselves. Basic Incomes would provide a secure floor on which to build, so, for instance, part-time employment alongside the creation of a new business could become more feasible. This effect was noticed during the Basic Income pilot projects in Namibia and India. Significant amounts of new economic activity were stimulated, particularly among the lowest paid (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009: 13–17; Davala et al., 2015: 73, 76, 92–6, 113, 134, 153–5; Haarman and Haarmann, 2007; Standing, 2017: 232, 236). While more developed and less developed economies cannot always be compared, the same factor of a secure financial floor would be operating in both, and in countries with more developed economies the additional factor of lower marginal deduction rates would be relevant, so we can legitimately predict that the innovation effect might be even larger in more developed economies. Wherever unconditional incomes were able to replace all or parts of the means-tested benefits system we would expect to see more new businesses founded, more self-employment, more co-operative enterprises, and so on, all because individuals and households would have solid financial floors on which to rely. It is from such new enterprises that innovation flows, and therefore economic growth. Although some new businesses would fail, households’ and individuals’ Basic Incomes would continue, so not everything would be at risk as it can be now, and entrepreneurs would be more able to pick themselves up and start again (Torry, 2020a: 238–9). We can understand the situation using economic theory. The ‘demand equation’ is PQ=VM, where P is price; Q is the quantity of production; V is the velocity of money: that is, the number of times that the same money is spent each year; and M is the quantity of money. PQ is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP): so, from the equation, if the velocity of money rises, then because the rate of change of GDP is equal to the rate of change of the velocity of money (Galbraith, 1976: 221; Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 499), economic growth occurs (Torry, 2020a: 239–40). A more secure layer of income would increase the velocity with which some households would be willing to spend their money on consumption, constituting a further process that would enhance economic growth.

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The economic growth that a Basic Income would stimulate would have an additional effect: increased incentives to earn additional income would increase the income tax base, and additional consumption would increase the consumption tax base, so government revenue would rise, government expenditure would rise, production would increase, more people would be employed, and so on. Virtuous cycles could emerge: and even more of them if proportions of the proceeds of production could be effectively taxed (Piketty, 2014: 182). What would then be necessary would be to ensure that the additional economic growth did not create additional carbon emissions (Chapter 6; Torry, 2020a: 240–41). Wage levels and employment market activity In Chapter 4 we studied pilot projects and motivation theory in order to study employment market effects of Basic Income. Here we discuss some economic effects of Basic Income that relate closely to employment. Both prevailing and particular wage levels are affected by multiple social and economic factors (Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 259–61, 267–82), so we might be interested in whether a Basic Income scheme would affect them. As always, a lot would depend on the nature of the Basic Income scheme implemented, and not just on the character of the Basic Income itself. We might think that because a Basic Income would provide everyone with a secure financial platform it would give to workers in ‘lousy jobs’ (jobs with terrible working conditions (Goos and Manning, 2007)) or ‘artificial’ or ‘bullshit’ jobs (pointless jobs created for political or internal institutional reasons (Graeber, 2018; Lemieux, 2014: 135–50; Piasna, 2017)) a greater ability to leave them than they might have had in the absence of a Basic Income (Handler, 2005: 120). The Basic Income would also provide individuals with more choice as to how they spent their time—on employment, self-employment, voluntary and care work, and so on. We have already recognized that employment incentives might be higher in the context of a Basic Income scheme than would be the case without one. However, caveats need to be entered. Job choice is often limited, both by the availability of jobs of different kinds, and by the skillsets available, so moving from a lousy or bullshit job to a good job might or might not be an option; and job configuration in relation to wage level and hours of employment might also be quite constrained, so a household’s ability to transition to different work patterns might also be limited; and while the number of routine jobs might be declining in some contexts, the amount of routine work within jobs is increasing, which suggests an increase in the number of lousy jobs (Bisello and Fernández-Macías, 2016). If the only jobs available

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are those that are lousy full-time jobs that pay only a statutory minimum wage, then options will be limited. While the Basic Income itself would not be withdrawn as earned income rose, it would be the effect of the Basic Income scheme as a whole that would determine the marginal deduction rate for any particular household. For instance: if a Basic Income were to be funded by reducing to zero an income tax personal allowance, then before the scheme was implemented any earned income below the tax threshold would not have been withdrawn by the tax system, but after the scheme’s implementation it would be withdrawn, meaning that in a household not on means-tested benefits anyone earning below the threshold would experience a higher marginal deduction rate than before. The situation is complicated, whether in relation to employment exit, household work pattern, or employment incentive. What we can say is that a feasible Basic Income scheme would be likely to reduce marginal deduction rates for some households; would provide some households with new work pattern options; and would enable some people to leave lousy or bullshit jobs and find good ones: although we shall only know how much of such an effect might materialize once permanent Basic Incomes are established in a variety of different contexts. What we can say is that there would be at least some pressure for wage increases and some employment conditions might improve, particularly in the least desirable jobs, and that on the basis of the pilot projects discussed in Chapter 4 the existence of a secure financial platform would enable at least some workers to choose self-employment, or to work with others to establish new co-operative enterprises, simply because no longer would the whole of their incomes be at risk if financial returns were initially absent or poor. This consideration might also mean that in desirable jobs wages might fall because no longer would the job need to provide workers with the whole of their subsistence income (Pech, 2010). It might be thought that in a context of existing means-tested benefits for people in employment this effect might not be very widespread. However, there is a significant difference between a totally secure, unconditional, and administratively simple income, and one that comes with multiple conditions, insecurity, and complex bureaucratic interference in people’s personal affairs. Complicated means-tested benefits do not fit well with the varying incomes related to new self-employment or co-operative enterprises because of the multiple enquiries and changes to which recipients are inevitably subjected, whereas a Basic Income would find rapidly changing income levels no problem at all. So far we have assumed that the Basic Income would reduce the marginal deduction rate for workers taken off means-tested benefits, and we have also recognized that if the Basic Income were to be funded by reducing income tax

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personal allowances then previously untaxed earned income would be taxed and so for some individuals the marginal deduction rate might increase. What we have not considered is the probability that as a Basic Income grew it might enable workers to leave employment completely, or to scale back the number of hours for which they were gainfully employed. The situation can be represented by the upside-down U-shaped curve in Figure 5.8. A small Basic Income might reduce marginal deduction rates and enable employment incentives to rise, but as the Basic Income continued to rise this effect would eventually be overwhelmed by people’s ability to leave employment. A useful aim would be to fix the Basic Income and other elements of the scheme so that maximum employment market activity could be achieved. In order to discover where that point might lie, the Basic Income would have to be slowly increased and employment market change evaluated until it began to fall. It would then be important not to increase the Basic Income any further (Parker, 1991: 23–4, 30–32; Torry, 2020a: 70–77, 241).

Source:  Graph constructed by author.

Figure 5.8

An upside-down U curve, representing a diminishing rate of return

Wage subsidies Because a Basic Income would contribute towards a household’s subsistence, would it have a subsidy effect on wages and enable employers to reduce them?

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(Parker, 1991: 26; Pitts et al., 2017). As always, what matters is the context, and crucially the detail of the Basic Income scheme implemented. In-work means-tested benefits rise as wages fall, so they constitute what we might call a ‘dynamic subsidy’. Such a subsidy is an encouragement to employers to reduce wages because they would know that in-work means-tested benefits would fill at least part of the gap left in household disposable incomes and so would reduce workers’ incentive to resist real or nominal wage reductions. A Basic Income, on the other hand, would not change if wages were to fall, so although it would have a subsidy effect, it would be a ‘static subsidy’. Employers would know that the Basic Income would not fill any gap left in household disposable incomes by a fall in wages, and that workers would therefore have an incentive to resist both nominal and real wage reductions, and that they would have an incentive to exert pressure for increasing wage levels (Torry, 2016a: 177; 2018c). Any Basic Income would be implemented in the context of an existing tax and benefits system, so the extent to which there would be an overall subsidy effect would depend on the extent to which the Basic Income scheme shifted the benefits system away from means-tested in-work benefits to the Basic Income. The more workers were taken off means-tested benefits, the more the character of the overall wage subsidy would shift from dynamic to static. Whether a Basic Income would ever make a statutory minimum wage redundant is rather doubtful. It might be true that a Basic Income would not function as a dynamic subsidy, and it would no doubt enable some workers to leave undesirable jobs and form their own businesses: so workers would have more ability to resist wage reductions and to press for higher wages, and employers would have less incentive to reduce wages. However, the complexity of current tax and benefits systems means that the Basic Income would never be the only factor involved in wage-setting, so there is no reason to think that the implementation of a Basic Income would mean the redundancy of statutory minimum wages. What we can say is that a Basic Income and a statutory minimum wage would in no way conflict with each other, and would work perfectly happily together (Dolton et al., 2010; Gilbert et al., 2019; Parker, 1991: 25–30; Parker and Sutherland, 1988; 1996: 8; Torry, 2020a: 77–9). Inflation The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend—an annual and varying dividend paid out of the proceeds of a permanent fund into which oil revenues are paid (Widerquist and Howard, 2012)—has been shown to be anti-inflationary (Goldsmith, 2012). While the permanent fund dividend is not a Basic Income,

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we can theorize that because both incomes are unconditional, and therefore go equally to all individuals, whatever their income or wealth, a Basic Income would be likely to have an anti-inflationary effect in much the same way as the Alaskan dividend on condition that the Basic Income scheme as a whole did in fact redistribute at least slightly from rich to poor. An inflation spike did occur in Iran when a policy accident resulted in unconditional incomes—‘cash subsidies’—being paid to all households (Chapter 4), but that spike was a result of the withdrawal of government subsidies on food and fuel against which the cash subsidies were designed to protect household disposable incomes: and the fact that inflation then fell back to its previous level shows that the cash subsidies were not themselves inflationary (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 349–51). The rapid inflation that then followed was the result of international sanctions, and not of the cash subsidies, which because of sanctions-induced inflation lost 70 per cent of their value between 2010 and 2017 (Torry, 2021a: 216). As always, much would depend on the detail of the Basic Income scheme implemented. If Basic Incomes were to be funded by rearranging the current tax and benefits system then no additional money would enter the economy and there would be no risk of adding to inflation; but if they were to be funded by sizeable additions to the money supply then we can envisage inflation being a problem, at least eventually. Research in this field using a computer model of the economy has shown that in relation to schemes funded by money creation, as well as schemes funded by rearranging the current tax and benefits system, basic income can serve a stimulus function in an economy operating below full capacity. Below full capacity, there is little evidence of strong inflation although the extent of that inflation is sensitive to scheme design. At scale, basic income may serve an important purpose in a possible high automation future with similarly limited inflationary effects; at least for the [money creation] scheme considered. (Kőműves et al., 2022: 33)

Welfare economics A highly practical economics field is that of ‘welfare economics’, or ‘wellbeing economics’, which evaluates the social welfare aspects of economic activity. At the heart of this research subfield is a recognition that some kinds of economic activity are better for human welfare than others. Dalziel et al. (2018) argue that wellbeing economics requires attention to seven different types of capital: human, cultural, social, economic, natural, knowledge, and diplomatic, and that the economy should be designed to

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maximize these capitals at every level from the individual to the global (Dalziel et al., 2018: 10–11). Different kinds of capital relate to the different levels: and so, for instance, decisions about human capital should be taken mainly at the personal level, and decisions about cultural capital should be taken mainly at the household level (Dalziel et al., 2018: 13). Unlike classical economic theory, wellbeing economics would prioritize parents’ ability to spend time with their children over time spent on potentially polluting manufacturing and resource extraction (Dalziel et al., 2018: 24). As John Bowlby puts it: Man and woman power devoted to the production of material goods counts a plus in all our economic indices. Man and woman power devoted to the production of happy, healthy and self-reliant children in their own homes does not count at all. We have created a topsy-turvy world. (Bowlby, 1988: 2)

The extent to which economic measures—and in particular the provision of money, time, and services (Saraceno, 2013: 389)—might facilitate ‘the production of happy, healthy and self-reliant children’ might be a useful metric for measuring the welfare efficiency of an economy; and because a Basic Income could provide parents with greater choice over their allocation of time to paid and unpaid work, it might prove to be of far more benefit to society than any of the economic growth that we might measure by calculating Gross Domestic Product. A particularly relevant theory within welfare economics is ‘club theory’: the study of the economies of groups of people rather than the economy of the individual or the economy of society as a whole. At the heart of club theory are the terms ‘private goods’, ‘club goods’, and ‘public goods’. Private goods are such physical objects as machinery, financial assets, and intellectual property, which are owned by individuals and private sector organizations. They experience maximum exclusion: that is, only those individuals or organizations who own them can benefit from them. Club goods are owned by clubs: that is, defined groups of individuals: so, for instance, a social club might only allow paid-up members to use the building that it owns. Club goods thus experience both inclusion, of club members, and exclusion, of everyone else. Public goods exclude nobody, and include such goods as the oceans, the atmosphere, and streetlighting (Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 143–69). Some goods have to be club goods because they cannot be either private goods or public goods. Take the example of an angling club that buys a lake so that its members can fish in it. No individual would have been able to afford the lake, so the club members have to ‘club together’ in order to purchase it: but if they were to allow everyone to fish in the lake then the members who had paid for it would find that there would be no fish left for them. The balance between exclusion

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and inclusion relating to a club good such as the fishing lake means that it will always lie somewhere on the spectrum between private and public goods. A membership-based service that rescues broken down cars, such as the UK’s Automobile Association, will be closer to the ‘public’ end of the spectrum, whereas five people clubbing together to buy a boat that they take turns at using would be closer to the ‘private’ end (Buchanan, 1965: 13; Cornes and Sandler, 157–243; Foldvary, 1994: 62–5, 69). As Bill Jordan has suggested, what look like public goods can easily be or become club goods. For instance, leisure centres will often charge for membership and for admission (Jordan, 2008: 92), which is only fair if not everyone uses a leisure centre, and if the fee equals the marginal cost (Wicksell, 1958: 98). Not all clubs are formal organizations. A nation state can include privileged communities that exclude more deprived communities in order to monopolize resources, often by building physical barriers around their housing areas, or by voting for policies that have the effect of excluding more vulnerable groups (Dean, 2016: 16; Jordan, 1996: 9, 161–88); and employees can find themselves as ‘communities of fate’, whereas their employers might be ‘communities of choice’, both in relation to the employment relationship and in relation to national governments. In relation to education policy, a community of choice might be able to afford private education for their children, whereas those excluded from that club might find themselves as a community of fate putting up with whatever state education is available. Arguably, education should never be a club good. We all need an education, so it should be a public good. Similarly, we all have subsistence needs, so arguably a subsistence income should be a public good and provided by governments out of general taxation, and it should not be a club good owned by those fortunate enough to be able to gain access to private wealth or a high earned income. Additional income beyond the meeting of subsistence can then legitimately be either a club or a private good (Torry, 2020a: 80–82). Welfare efficiency Related to the research subfield of welfare economics is the concept of ‘welfare efficiency’, which we might define as the economy’s ability to provide every individual with the resources that they need for a dignified life in society. The mechanisms by which that dignified life might be obtained might be diverse, but what matters is whether or not the private, public and voluntary sectors of the economy, all working together, are able to achieve the universal human dignity required.

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To take just one example: The UK’s economy is struggling to achieve welfare efficiency. Before the economic crisis of 2008, consumption fuelled by household debt was increasing living standards, whereas after the crisis the level of debt reduced consumption (Harari, 2018: 23). The government’s income support schemes of various kinds during the Covid-19 pandemic prevented an even worse living standards crisis, but the picture remains somewhat bleak (Cribb et al., 2021; Handscomb et al., 2021), and the recent increase in fuel costs, and the resulting inflation, are making matters considerably worse. A significant longer-term factor is that although the cause of the financial crisis was the banks bundling bad debt into valueless financial commodities, governments blamed the crisis on the level of public debt and used the crisis as a pretext for imposing severe cuts on public expenditure: cuts that were bound to reduce the living standards of poorer households. Before 1979, inequality in the UK had been stable for thirty years, but between 1979 and 1990 a significant increase took place (Cribb et al., 2018: 30). During the same period the share of national income going to labour decreased, so that by 1995 it was below the level of Gross Domestic Product (Crocker, 2019; Piketty, 2014: 199, 216–20). An additional factor is the increasing proportion of labour income now spent on pension contributions and so unavailable for immediate consumption (Van Reenen, 2011; Whittaker, 2019). This combination of factors has meant that consumption was bound to drop, or household debt was bound to increase. The latter happened, which was one of the causes of today’s lower demand, fragile living standards, and increased inequality (Lansley, 2011a: 12; 2011b), the last of these being a particularly important cause of welfare inefficiency: Sufficient equality in the distribution of income, within a country, is a proper goal of efficient economic policy, and is part of a strategy for shared prosperity and full employment; it is both effect and cause. (Galbraith, 2002: 224)

So how is welfare efficiency to be achieved? What is required is an economy that is itself efficient—that is, markets will be efficient—and for every individual to receive sufficient of the resources available in those markets to ensure a dignified life in society. If we make the assumption that markets will operate efficiently in an economy without taxation or government income maintenance provisions—that is, the price mechanism will balance supply and demand—then we can argue that such an economy will be efficient. One way to eliminate any gap between income available for consumption and the value of the goods and services that an economy can produce is for the government to create new money. This it can do until the gap is closed: but not beyond that point, or inflation will accelerate. Previous methods of injecting

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new money into an economy have been public services and infrastructure, and the purchase of government bonds. Not only would a Basic Income be a more immediate and efficient method for increasing consumption capacity (Crocker, 2019; Galbraith, 1976: 221; Jackson and Dyson, 2013: 201–18; Lipsey and Chrystal, 2004: 499; Mencinger, 2017), but the economy would function much better if individuals have the security of knowing that at every stage of their lives they will receive basic protection. (Gamble, 2016: 108)

However, no amount of economic efficiency would necessarily imply welfare efficiency, so redistribution via taxation and the provision of public services and means-tested and other benefits will always be required. If a tax were to enable human behaviour to affect markets, then the economy would no longer be efficient: so, for instance, an income tax reduces employment incentives, and the consequent reduction in labour supply makes the employment market less efficient. The only kind of tax that would not affect markets in this way would be a lump sum tax: the same amount from every individual (Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 38–39, 373–80). Such a tax would not necessarily increase welfare efficiency, because to collect it from poor households could impoverish them further. This means that taxes that would be less economically efficient will always be required. However, what would be feasible would be a reverse lump sum tax: a Basic Income. This would not be affected by our behaviour, and so could not compromise market efficiency. It would appear that a Basic Income would be the most efficient way of redistributing resources so as to obtain the highest possible welfare efficiency. Efficiency requires that demand should match supply, which suggests that the Basic Income might be set at subsistence level, somehow defined (Spicker, 2000: 169). However, we have found in Chapter 3 that it would not be possible to fund such a level of Basic Income from within the current tax and benefits system, so means-tested benefits would still be required, and this, along with the necessity for market-inefficient taxation, means that welfare efficiency and market efficiency might not be compatible. What we can say is that at least the Basic Income would be efficient, both economically and as a contribution to welfare efficiency, whereas in a system based largely on means-tested benefits neither the benefits nor the taxation to pay for them would be market-efficient and might turn out not to be welfare efficient either. In this respect a Basic Income could improve both the efficiency of the economy and welfare efficiency (Zelleke, 2005: 14–15). We can also say here the same that we were able to say in relation to the changing employment market. Because of its radical simplicity, a Basic Income

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would contribute to both economic and welfare efficiency, whatever the state of the economy. This is important. The rapid economic change that we are already experiencing, and that we shall no doubt continue to experience, means that a country’s tax and benefits system needs to be structured not just so that it is serviceable within the current system, but so that it will continue to be serviceable however the economy changes. While it might be thought that we could adapt a tax and benefits system each time the economy changes, this is rarely practicable, because policy change takes time, meaning that the tax and benefits system will always lag behind what is required. Because a Basic Income would suit any configuration of the economy, it would constitute at least one element of the complex benefits and tax system that would always contribute to both market and welfare efficiency without needing to be changed. The presuppositions on which we have built this argument are precisely that: presuppositions; and they are highly likely to be flawed. For instance, with any withdrawal rate applied to earned income, an employment market cannot be efficient, because the price that the employer pays for labour will be higher than what the worker receives; and because of the complexity of the tax and benefits system it will not be possible for either party to know what the difference will be before the event: but inefficient markets do not necessarily mean welfare inefficiency, nor do they necessarily mean an inefficient economy. When we allow for real-world phenomena like incomplete information and the absence of markets, it is conceivable that the payment of basic incomes, and the levying of the associated tax, may improve the allocation of resources. (Atkinson, 1989: 13) Many versions of the ‘equality-efficiency trade-off’ … do not survive closer scrutiny; … abdication of the insurance function of the welfare state produces efficiency losses in our second-best world … progressive redistributions may not entail efficiency losses or higher costs because the alternative system of order maintenance, namely disciplinary enforcement, is also costly; … distributive policies … produce dynamic efficiency gains if, by reducing poverty and inequality, they positively influence the welfare and the cognitive abilities of children and hence human capital formation; … the under-provision of [care] services acts as an ‘inactivating influence’ on market participation and employment, particularly for women …. (Costabile, 2008: 225–31)

If Atkinson and Costabile are correct, then a Basic Income in tandem with a progressive tax system would appear to be more likely to improve economic and welfare efficiency than a system in which income maintenance is achieved almost entirely via earned income and means-tested benefits. A means-tested system contributes to inequality, has to pay for coercion and surveillance, and disincentivizes both paid and voluntary work, whereas a Basic Income

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could facilitate informal care and community work, increase equality, and reduce the level of coercion and surveillance. This argument does not depend on the ability of the combination of the Basic Income, progressive taxation, and retained means-tested benefits to provide households with significant additional disposable incomes, because any funding gap would have to be met from somewhere, and meeting it could compromise both economic and welfare efficiency: but what it does show is that a layer of unconditional and therefore completely secure income could increase welfare efficiency, and that if the Basic Income scheme were to redistribute somewhat from rich to poor, then poorer households in particular would experience increased welfare efficiency and would therefore be better placed to contribute to market efficiency. Everyone would benefit from the generally more efficient economy that would result from the Basic Income functioning as a reverse lump sum tax. Crucially, welfare efficiency for children will only be improved if it is achieved for the households in which they live: so a Basic Income that improved welfare efficiency for working age adults would result in an immediate improvement in welfare efficiency for children and in a reduction of child poverty (Levitas, 2012: 451, 464, 469; Rathbone [1930] 2012; 1940; Torry, 2020a: 82–5).

Conclusions What is particularly of interest in relation to this chapter is that apart from a brief mention of the pilot project evidence contained in Chapter 4, the entirety of the above argument has been conducted on the basis of the logic of the situation. We have been conducting what we might call narrative economic theory. There has been no mathematics, and only a handful of graphs: but we have still been doing economic science. It is all to the good that some of the conclusions that we have drawn find empirical support in the outcomes of pilot projects and other experiments: but we can also say that economic theory alone can be sufficient to enable us to draw some clear conclusions as to the likely economic effects of a Basic Income, with the proviso that all of the relevant factors of the situation should always be included in the narrative. This is what we have attempted to achieve.

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Future research • Further research on Basic Income from within the subdiscipline of classical economics will always be useful, as long as the limitations of that subdiscipline are always recognized. • Welfare economics will be a particularly important research subfield for the Basic Income debate, and further research in that subdiscipline is essential. • A wide variety of economics subdisciplines should be plundered for research methods, including those regarded as heterodox. • The division of material between this chapter and Chapter 4 is indicative of a more general silo mentality that keeps separate the sociological methods applied to pilot projects and the classical and welfare economics methods represented here. Interdisciplinary research would be particularly helpful to the Basic Income debate. For instance, longer pilot projects in a variety of contexts might be able to test the theoretical predictions that a Basic Income would enable workers to leave lousy jobs for better ones, that low wages might rise, and that poor employment conditions might improve. • In general, as many economic science methods as possible, and as many relationships between them as possible, should be applied to Basic Income research.

6

Social effects of a Basic Income

Introduction Some questions about the effects that a Basic Income would have will be difficult if not impossible to answer before a genuine Basic Income is implemented somewhere in the world, and preferably one in a more developed economy and one in a less developed one. However, we have already seen two genuine Basic Income pilot projects, and lots of experiments with incomes that share characteristics with a Basic Income, and all of these can predict the effects that we would be likely to see if a genuine Basic Income were to be implemented. And there are some effects that we can confidently predict on the basis of the structure of a Basic Income. This chapter will recount the early history of research on the social effects of a Basic Income; it will discuss the two genuine pilot projects that have taken place, and draw lessons from them; it will then study various other experiments and ask what we can learn from them; and finally it will ask what additional social effects of a Basic Income we can predict on the basis of its structure. A variety of research methods will continue to be useful, and in relation to all of them it will be particularly important to recognize that it will be particular Basic Income schemes that will be causing social effects, and not simply a Basic Income. Employment market effects of Basic Income have already been discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, and they will only be discussed here in relation to their social effects.

Early predictions of the social effects of Basic Income We have seen in Chapters 4 and 5 that some thought was given to employment market and economic effects during the early debate on Basic Income. The longer historical section of this chapter represents the fact that the early debate 125

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was full of suggestions as to the social effects of a Basic Income or something similar. In Chapter 2, we credit Thomas Spence with having been the first to describe an unconditional income for every individual: a quarterly distribution of a proportion of the rents from land taken into public ownership fairly and equally among all the living souls in the parish, whether male or female; married or single; legitimate or illegitimate; from a day old to the extremest age; making no distinction between the families of rich farmers and merchants … and the families of poor labourers and mechanics. … This surplus [after public services have been funded], which is to be dealt out again among the living souls in a parish every quarter-day, may be reasonably supposed to amount to full two-thirds of the whole sum of rents collected. (Spence, 1797: 8–9)

Spence goes on to describe the advantages that he foresaw his scheme offering to society: • The people will receive, without deduction, the whole produce of their common inheritance. • The people will be vigilant and watchful over the public expenditure, knowing that the more there is saved their dividends will be the larger. • The people will be all intent upon the improvement of their respective parishes, for the sake of the increased shares of the increased revenues, which on that account they will receive. • Universal suffrage will be inseparably attached to the people …. • The government must of necessity be democratic …. • There will exist only the robust spirit of independence mellowed and tempered by the preference and checks of equally independent fellow citizens …. • There can be no taxes nor expences of collecting them, because the government would be supported by a poundage from the rents which each parish would send quarterly to the national treasury, free of all expence, thus leaving the price of commodities unencumbered with any addition but the price of labour …. (Spence, 1797: 11–12)

The quarterly dividends would also have meant that after experiencing financial difficulties anyone would be able to ‘start again’ in the economy; ‘as both young and old share equally alike of the parish revenues, children and aged relatives will … be accounted as blessings’; the dividends would provide the means to enable people to be educated (Spence 1797: 13); and • What with the annihilation of taxes and the dividends of the parochial rents … the people will rarely be driven to the dire necessity of using a substitute for bread …. • The people’s oppressors must either submit to become undistinguishable in the general mass of citizens or fly the country.

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• Domestic trade would be at an amazing pitch because there would be no poor. • The quarterly dividends, together with the abolishment of taxes, would destroy the necessity of public charities; but if any should be thought necessary, whether to promote learning, or for any other purpose, the parochial and national funds would be found at all times more than sufficient. (Spence, 1797: 13–14)

As well as being the first to describe something very close to a genuine Basic Income, Spence was also the first to predict its social effects: and those predictions were prescient, as we shall see when we discuss the Basic Income pilot projects in Namibia and India (Torry, 2021a: 40–42). Eighty years later Paul Voituron discussed an unconditional income as an ‘economic emancipation’ that would result in work being disconnected from ‘the tyranny of both need and salary’ via a ‘generalization of individual property’ (Voituron, 1876: 165, 173); and half a century later than that, Bertrand Russell was content with the idea that his proposals might result in ‘idleness’: In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving … medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine … above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia … Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. (Russell [1935] 1996: 14–15)

So why do governments not promote such ‘ease and security’ by implementing a Basic Income? Charles Hattersley’s interesting argument from a hundred years ago is that it was government policy to ensure that employment income should be ‘practically the sole mechanism for providing people with the power to claim the goods and services they need’ so as deliberately to limit ‘the leisure and energy available for creative efforts of mind or muscle outside the regimented and disciplined activity of industrial production … leisure only presents a problem when unaccompanied by the means of livelihood’ (Hattersley, 1937: 187, 190). A further social effect of Basic Income now much discussed is the additional social cohesion that it would offer: an advantage already recognized by the State Bonus League, whose ‘State Bonus’ was intended to introduce a fundamental change in our social relationships. It appeals to the family unit by making for a juster proportioning of money payment to the needs of the family, and by so doing will re-establish confidence, not only in the State organization, but between all classes. (Milner and Milner, 2018: 4)

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No longer was a Basic Income justified on the basis of everyone’s right to land: now it was the social effects that justified a government paying unconditional incomes. The Milners’ proposal for a State Bonus can legitimately claim to be the first modern fully specified and feasible illustrative Basic Income scheme, and their discussions of the social effects of a Basic Income have a very modern ring to them (Torry, 2021a: 72–3). The most important effect was the income security that it would offer. The need for a subsistence income is a continuous need, and much injury to health and steadiness of habits has resulted from it being met discontinuously. (Milner, 1920: 29)

Family size varies, both within families and between families, so there is no reason to suppose that a single wage would always be of the correct amount to meet a family’s subsistence needs. A Basic Income for every individual was clearly required (Milner, 1920: 44–7, 77). The same argument was employed in the UK to argue for unconditional Family Allowances during the early 1940s (Harris, 1981: 249). A Basic Income’s effects on gender relations, and particularly the way in which it could improve the economic and social position of women, is another important element of the modern debate that we find discussed right at the beginning of the Basic Income debate, again by Thomas Spence: Though I have only spoke of parishioners receiving dividends which may be understood as if men only were meant to share the residue of the rents, yet I would have no objection, if the people thought proper, to divide it among the whole number of souls, male and female, married and single in a parish, from the infant of a day old to the second infantage of hoary hairs. (Spence, 1796: 12)

Fifty years later, Joseph Charlier discussed whether women should receive amounts different from men, and whether children should receive less than adults, and in both cases he decided for equality, and that ‘an equal minimum for all has to be acknowledged as the invariable rule based on the equal, uniform, indivisible rights of everyone’ (Charlier, 1848: 46; [1848] 2004: 118); and in 1918 Bertrand Russell recognized the emancipation that would result from such a policy: Women in domestic work, whether married or unmarried, will receive pay as they would if they were in industry. This will secure the complete economic independence of wives, which is difficult to achieve in any other way …. (Russell [1918] 2006: 145)

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Until Juliet Rhys-Williams decided that women should receive less than men (Rhys Williams, 1943: 145, 163–4), there appears to have been consensus that women and men should receive the same amount of any proposed unconditional income. Thomas Spence’s community-based approach to the ownership of land and the distribution of the rents assumed that once a quarter the entire community would gather to decide on the shares to be allocated to public services, poor relief, and so on, and therefore on the amount of the residue to be divided equally between the community’s population. One of the important effects of the proposal would therefore have been to enhance democracy. Universal suffrage will be inseparably attached to the people both in parochial and national affairs, because the revenues, both parochial and national, will be derived immediately from their common landed property. (Spence, 1797: 11–12)

As we can see, it has long been recognized that a Basic Income would deliver some significantly positive social effects. As the State Bonus League recognized a hundred years ago, a Basic Income would ‘increase the bargaining power of the “worker”’, enhance the status of women, enable the children of all classes to benefit from ‘higher education’, ‘foster the spirit of co-operation’, enable the low-paid worker ‘to demand fair value in return for his services’, enable people to start their own businesses, and cause wages for undesirable jobs to rise (Pickard, 1919: 33–6, 40, 61).

The state of research Changing societies The first thing to say is that nothing definitive can be said about the effects that a Basic Income would have on society. Every society is different, and every society changes all the time; and because a Basic Income would never be implemented on its own, but would always be accompanied by other changes—and particularly by changes to existing tax and benefits systems—the effects on society would be as much the result of those accompanying changes as of the Basic Income itself. But having said that, it might be helpful to recognize some of the longer-term changes that we are experiencing in today’s societies as a current context for Basic Income research. A particularly important one is that whereas previously we might have been able to divide the world into developed and developing

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countries, the markers that used to define the two categories are now not as clear, so the categories are now not as clear. For instance, the advent of mobile banking has meant that whereas previously it might have been possible to divide countries into those with developed money economies and those without, increasing numbers of countries now operate with well-developed money economies. At the same time, we are seeing more countries with better developed social protection floors (Deacon, 2013; International Labour Organization, 2022) and with more complete electoral registers. Both the spread of money economies, and the increasing coverage of population registers, means that the implementation of a Basic Income is becoming more of a practical possibility in an increasing number of countries. Further changes would be relevant to the effects of a Basic Income, but not in such a direct way. For instance, household structures are becoming more diverse and more fluid, which is making existing household-based social security systems more cumbersome and less relevant; and because a Basic Income would be paid to each individual, the increasing diversity and fluidity of household structures is making Basic Income increasingly relevant because it would make no assumptions whatever about the structure, income, or anything else relating to a household (Goodin, 1992). Social effects noticed during the 1970s United States and Canadian experiments The selective experiments in the United States and the saturation site experiment in Dauphin in Canada during the 1970s were with a Minimum Income Guarantee and not a Basic Income (Chapter 4), but the results might still be relevant to the study of the likely social effects of a Basic Income. School attendance and results improved; young people stayed in education for longer; more adults participated in continuing education; the number of low birthweight children dropped; the nutritional quality of diets improved; and there was less mental illness and domestic abuse. Particularly interesting in this respect are the survey results from the Dauphin experiment. A change of government caused the survey results to be archived without having been properly evaluated, but forty years later Evelyn Forget studied the results alongside available information on hospital admissions for the period of the experiment and found that hospital admissions for accidents, injuries and mental illness had declined: so there is a clear case for further research on the likely health impacts of a Basic Income, and for a strong relationship between Basic Income research and research on health indicators. Forget found that the birth rate did not change during the experiment, there was no change in the family dissolution rate, and young people remained in full-time education for longer.

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We have already discussed the useful employment market changes (Chapter 4; Forget, 2011: 291–2, 299–300; Haagh and Rohregger, 2019: 24; Torry, 2021a: 111). David Calnitsky, who has also studied the survey results, has found that no stigma was attached to the payments (Calnitsky, 2016: 27). While initial published results from one of the United States experiments suggested that the rate of marriage dissolution had risen, this was later found to have been a mistake and that there had in fact been no increase (Cain and Wissoker, 1990: 1235). The Dauphin experiment exhibited a reduction in marriage dissolution (Widerquist, 2019b: 312). Two caveats have to be entered when discussing Minimum Income Guarantee experiments carried out fifty years ago. First of all, these were not Basic Income experiments, so using the results in Basic Income debate and research will always have to be argued for. Secondly, these experiments took place in a context very different from our own, so the transferability of the results to today’s context will always be in doubt (Delsen, 2019: 18–19). Recent pilot projects and other experiments, and what we can learn from them So far there have been two genuine Basic Income pilot projects. In Chapter 4 we described the projects in detail and discussed the employment market effects studied during the projects. Here we shall concentrate on the social effects. Namibia The Namibian pilot project ran from 2007 to 2009 and paid unconditional incomes of one hundred Namibian dollars (then worth £7 or US$12) to every working age adult and for every child in a single community. (Namibia already has an unconditional pension for elderly people.) The results of the project, presented at a seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in January 2009, and in a report on the project, were significant. • Household poverty fell. In November 2007, 76 per cent of residents of the two villages fell below a food poverty line. Within a year, this was reduced to 37 per cent. Those households that were not joined by family members from outside the project community (an understandable migration) saw poverty levels reduced from 76 per cent to just 16 per cent;

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• child malnutrition fell. Children’s weight-for-age improved in just six months from 42 per cent of underweight children to just 10 per cent by the end of the project; • before the pilot project, almost half of the villages’ children did not attend school regularly. Pass rates were 40 per cent and drop-out rates were high. This was mainly because parents had to pay fees for their children to attend school. By the end of the project, 90 per cent of parents were paying school fees, and most children now attend school. Drop-out rates fell from 40 per cent to almost zero during the project; • the clinic, like the school, is funded by fees charged to attendees. During the project, clinic use increased six-fold, and the income of the clinic increased fivefold; • during the first year of the project, average household debt fell from N$1,215 to N$772. Savings increased, as did ownership of livestock; • crime rates fell by 42 per cent during the project. Theft of stock fell by a similar amount, giving people the confidence to invest in assets; • the Basic Income gave to women a new economic independence, and paid-for sex was reduced accordingly; • there was no evidence that the Basic Income led to an increase in alcoholism; • administrative costs were just 3 per cent to 4 per cent of the total outlay; • the villages of their own volition elected an advisory committee of 18 residents, and among its achievements are the opening of a post office, the establishment of savings accounts, and the closure of shebeens (public houses) on the day of the monthly distribution of the unconditional incomes; • new shops opened; • the number of people experiencing daily food shortages fell from 30 per cent to 12 per cent of the population in just six months; • the number of people who rarely experienced food shortages rose from 20 per cent to 60 per cent of the population; • average income rose in every earnings quintile, and proportionately more for lower quintiles; and • average income rose a staggering 200 per cent in the lowest quintile excluding the N$100 (US$12) Basic Income, because people could now purchase the means for making an income. (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009: 13–17; Torry, 2009) The pilot project exhibited the following characteristics: • It was based on rights, not charity; • it was not paternalistic;

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• it benefited the poorest most; • it promoted dignified work; and • the kind of activity that it promoted cares for the environment. In addition, the project refuted the critics of unconditional cash transfers: • Far from leading to waste of resources, it encouraged productive use of them; • and far from being unaffordable, the level of Basic Income employed in the pilot project would cost just 2.2 per cent to 3.8 per cent of Gross Domestic Product if extended to the country as a whole, and the increased economic activity generated by the Basic Income would have paid the entire cost. India The more recent pilot project in India (see Chapter 4 for details) delivered results similar to those listed above for the Namibian project: • Democratic structures to control aspects of the local economy; • money was pooled to enable such infrastructure as toilets to be built; • women, people with disabilities, and elderly people experienced emancipation and respect; • children were better cared for; • greater social cohesion was experienced; • crime was reduced; • no unwanted economic effects occurred; • school attendance and results improved; • people’s health improved; and • nutrition improved. (Davala, 2019; Davala et al., 2015; Standing, 2013; Torry, 2013: 69–73; 2018: 134–5) In Chapter 4 we discussed a number of aspects of the Namibian and Indian pilot projects that raise questions about how pilot projects should be conducted. The same questions arise in relation to the social effects as we raised there in relation to employment market effects, and the same response can be offered: that both the employment and social results of the pilot projects are significantly positive, and, as the researchers suggest, are more significantly positive than might have been expected: The basic income’s emancipatory value exceeds the monetary value, and as such could be expected to have a bigger impact on other issues than might be imagined from just considering the modest amount that was paid out. (Davala et al., 2015: 69)

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Iran In 2010, largely by accident, Iran implemented ‘cash subsidies’ that were very close in character to a Basic Income, the only difference being that they were paid to the head of the household rather than to each individual (Chapter 4). To that extent, they were not in any sense emancipatory for women, and there is unfortunately evidence that the payment method strengthened Iran’s patriarchal gender norms (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 349; Salehi-Isfahani, 2014). The rapid inflation that Iran has suffered following the imposition of international sanctions means that the cash subsidies have lost most of their value, and robust research into the effects of the cash subsidies has been difficult to achieve: but early on, when the value of the cash subsidies was still around half that of the minimum wage, some useful social effects were evidenced. At the time of the policy’s implementation the number of households with bank accounts rose rapidly, as bank accounts were required for the receipt of the cash subsidies; and there was also a new sense that the provision of income was a proper responsibility of government. Increases in household disposable incomes, not the whole of which were negated by the simultaneous reduction in subsidies on fuel and food, along with the equality of the payments to every household of the same structure, meant that both poverty and inequality declined: although poverty and inequality levels bounced back to their previous levels after 2011 as subsidies continued to be cut at the same time as rapid inflation eroded the value of the cash subsidies. A social as well as employment effect was the higher probability of young adults remaining in continuing education following the implementation of the cash subsidies, as the additional secure income enabled them to delay employment market entry in order to invest in their future prospects (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 346–9, 351–3; Salehi-Isfahani and Mostafavi-Dehzooei, 2017; Torry, 2021a: 216–17). The Netherlands An important connection between academic research and a practical experiment was made when social psychological research was used to formulate the different conditions that would be imposed on different groups of people taking part in a series of Minimum Income Guarantee experiments in the Netherlands. Research has shown that poverty, and having to deal with complex and intrusive bureaucracy, impose considerable costs on claimants, and in particular they reduce cognitive functioning (Bennett et al., 2009; Mani et al., 2013; Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), so the experiments reduced poverty by providing additional income-tested income, and also reduced bureaucratic intrusion, in order to test the extent to which cognitive capacity

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might increase. Secondly, research suggests that fairness can be motivating (Fehr and Schmidt, 2003), meaning that generosity can stimulate reciprocal generosity, and harm can generate revenge, which in turn means that punitive sanctions might be counterproductive, so the experiments reduced or eliminated sanctions. Thirdly, research has shown that intrinsic motivation can be compromised by attempts at extrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2000), so conditionalities were reduced. It is unfortunate that among the diverse treatments offered by the experiments no room could be found for a genuine Basic Income experiment: that is, one that would have reduced every conditionality to zero (Groot and Verlaat, 2019). Finland and Korea In Chapters 4 and 9 we discuss the experiment that took place in Finland between January 2017 and December 2018, particularly in relation to its employment market and political aspects. Two thousand unemployed individuals randomly selected from across the country had their unemployment benefit made unconditional for a period of two years, and participation was compulsory in order to avoid selection bias (Betkó, 2019). Significant results were that employment market activity improved slightly during the second year of the experiment (De Wispelaere et al., 2019; Kangas et al., 2020: 188; Torry, 2021a: 185–6) and in both years individual wellbeing indices improved (Lassander and Jauhiainen, 2021: 99; Simanainen and Tuulio-Henriksson, 2021: 84–6). In relation to social effects, the survey results showed significant differences between the groups on key indicators representing different aspects of personal well-being. In general, basic income recipients who responded to the survey assessed their well-being more positively than respondents in the control group. Basic income recipients experienced less stress and symptoms of depression and better cognitive functioning than the control group. In addition, the financial well-being of basic income recipients was better. They reported to be more often able to pay their bills on time. Trust and confidence were stronger among basic income recipients. The treatment group reported that they trusted other people and social institutions more than the control group. Moreover, they had higher confidence in their future possibilities. Basic income recipients also experienced less bureaucracy than the control group …. Some interviewees also felt that the experiment had provided them with a larger variety of legitimate modes of participation outside of paid labour, such as informal care … strengthened autonomy through enhanced possibilities of longterm financial planning, lessened stress related to bureaucracy and activation demands, and improved possibilities of doing meaningful things …. (Kangas et al., 2020: 188–9)

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The increase in trust might be regarded as a particularly important result, because of the ways in which increasing trust in institutions and individuals is correlated with multiple other social advantages (Allas et al., 2020). Similar results to the Finland experiments were noted during a survey of recipients of the unconditional incomes paid in local currency to 24 year olds in Gyeonggi Province in the Republic of Korea: First, the overall level of well-being of young people improved after receiving the [Youth Basic Income]. Second, (i) young people in Gyeonggi Province had a statistically significant increase in their working hours per week compared to young people in other regions … Third, … the follow-up survey found that the economic activities of the Gyeonggi [Youth Basic Income] group improved. Fourth, … the [Youth Basic Income] group showed a significant change, with a statistically significant increase in trust—in laws and institutions, in politicians, and in the media—after receiving basic income. (Yoo, 2020: 198)

Ontario The misnamed ‘Basic Income Pilot’ in Ontario was, like the project in Dauphin, a Minimum Income Guarantee experiment (Ontario, n.d.), and that too was left unevaluated after it was closed by a new state government. However, a detailed online survey circulated by McMaster and Ryerson University and completed by 217 former recipients showed social and individual wellbeing improvements similar to those exhibited by the Dauphin Mincome experiment. • Many recipients reported improvements in their physical and mental health, labour market participation, food security, housing stability, financial status and social relationships; • basic income also had a noticeable impact on the use of health services, with many of the survey respondents indicating less frequent visits to health practitioners and hospital emergency rooms; • for a significant number of participants, basic income purportedly proved to be transformational, fundamentally reshaping their living standards as well as their sense of self-worth and hope for a better future. (Ferdosi et al., 2020: 4) The important question here is whether these results from Minimum Income Guarantee experiments can be regarded as relevant to the Basic Income debate. The answer has to be that they can be. While the Minimum Income Guarantee tested during the US and Canadian experiments of the 1970s provided a guaranteed household income by the end of the year, a Basic Income would pay to every individual an income at a known level every month or every week.

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Depending on the detail of the Basic Income scheme, young adults could find themselves with a secure unearned income for the first time, which would encourage them to pursue higher education or occupational training; parents would have a financial platform that would enable them to be more flexible with their employment patterns; and because the reason for the beneficial mental and physical health effects during the period of the Dauphin experiment was clearly the increased financial security granted by the Minimum Income Guarantee, the regular totally predictable income constituted by a Basic Income would arguably have an even more significant effect, as was evidenced during the Namibian and Indian pilot projects discussed above. Similarly, the lack of stigma associated with the Dauphin Mincome experiment would be even more in evidence in the context of a Basic Income because everyone would actually receive the Basic Income rather than only those whose earned incomes fell below the level of the income guarantee (Torry, 2021a: 115–16). However, as always, the precise social effects of a Basic Income would be those of the Basic Income scheme and not simply those of the Basic Income that it contained. A variety of other experiments A wide variety of experiments with payments with characteristics similar to those of a Basic Income have all evidenced positive social effects: In 2009, thirteen homeless men in London were given £3,000 each, and most of them used it to obtain accommodation, learn a skill, or in other ways to provide themselves with the basis of a healthier, less stressful, and more interesting life (Bregman, 2017: 25–7). In 2016, three British families were given £26,000 each on condition that they came off unemployment benefit. Television cameras followed their progress. A second series followed a new group of people. The consequences of giving large sums of money to randomly selected families were more positive than we might have feared (IMDb, 2017). A natural experiment is one that simply occurs without being planned and that enables research conclusions to be drawn. For instance, an annual distribution of casino profits to Cherokee Indians has resulted in health and education benefits similar to those experienced during the Indian and Namibian pilot projects, and an increase in parenting quality has also been evidenced (Akee et al., 2015; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 152). Another example is a short-lived unconditional grant to expectant mothers in the UK: Increases in birthweight were largest for younger mothers aged 25 and under (29g average increase) and mothers living in areas with high levels of deprivation (20g average increase). While younger mothers experienced a reduction in the probabil-

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ity of low birthweight by 0.9 percentage points (12 percent in relative terms), low birthweight did not fall for the population as a whole. (Reader, 2021: iv)

This is interesting evidence for unconditional provision being of most benefit to poorer families. A number of small experiments are still taking place in the United States (Altman, 2016; Duverger, 2018: 128; Tiku, 2018) including one in Stockton, California, funded by Chris Hughes, a Facebook founder (Hughes, 2018: 160–80). One hundred and twenty randomly selected residents from poorer neighbourhoods have received $500 per month (Emison, 2020). Experiments similar to Stockton’s have taken place in St. Paul, Minnesota; Compton, California; and Richmond, Virginia (Kingson, 2021). There are now so many experiments with different kinds of income, and organized in different ways, that it is difficult to keep up (Standing, 2017: 260–74): but it remains true that only a permanent Basic Income will have the effects of a Basic Income. Every experiment or pilot project will end—indeed, it has to end so that it can be evaluated—so it will never entirely replicate a real Basic Income’s effects (Widerquist, 2018). It is useful that a longer-term project is now being tried in Kenya (GiveDirectly, 2020; 2021), and it would no doubt be helpful for longer-term genuine Basic Incomes to be trialled in entire diverse communities in countries with more developed economies (Chrisp et al., 2022: 3). The social effects that Thomas Spence predicted for his proposed Basic Income have been evidenced by the Namibian and Indian pilot projects (Torry, 2021a: 41–4) and by implication by other experiments. We can therefore reasonably expect them to be evidenced by a genuine nationwide Basic Income. Psychological research In 2017, a group of psychologists reviewed a variety of what they called ‘Basic Income-oriented experiments’—that is, both Basic Income and such Minimum Income Guarantee experiments as Ontario’s—and concluded that Evidence from previous Basic Income-oriented experiments indicates the potential for UBI [Universal Basic Income] to increase all five psychological indicators of a healthy society: agency, security, connection, meaning and trust. The security and flexibility of a UBI is likely to give citizens a stronger sense of agency, greater personal mastery, and more control over their lives, which evidence shows would lead to an increase in life satisfaction. The population could have more time to spend

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with friends, family and in their communities and would experience higher levels of social support as a result, which is incredibly important for well-being. People might gain a renewed sense of purpose and meaning through activities outside of currently constructed ‘paid’ employment, leading to a weakening of the current over-importance placed on paid work as part of the ‘good life’. UBI is likely to lead to a general increase in social trust and a lessening of the shame, humiliation and devaluation that comes with relying on means-tested welfare benefits or being occupied in unpaid caring. In the light of all these positive social impacts of UBI, its introduction has the potential to be a hugely significant and beneficial public health intervention. (Psychologists for Social Change, 2017)

Control over our own lives is crucial. A welfare state that has to inquire into the details of people’s lives, and that attempts to control their behaviour, as so many welfare states currently do (Gough, 1979: 4), implies a loss of control. Any unconditional element of a welfare state, such as a Basic Income, would reduce the levels of bureaucratic surveillance and control, and to the same extent would enhance our own control over our lives. Johnson and Johnson (2019) propose two mechanisms: The first is based, broadly, on its impact on behaviour, highlighting the ways in which present socio-economic conditions, including needs and means-based welfare systems, disincentivize healthy choices and activity. The second is based, broadly, on its impact on the endocrine system, holding that UBI serves to protect individuals from a range of stress-related illnesses induced by socio-economic conditions associated with hierarchy and inequality. (Johnson and Johnson, 2019: 1)

Psychologists for Social Change have employed the science of psychology to draw conclusions about the individual psychological effects of implementing a Basic Income. Their predictions cohere well with Thomas Spence’s; are well borne out by the outcomes of the experiments that we have discussed (Torry, 2020a: 92–5); and echo a conclusion already reached by McKay and Sullivan in 2014: The pro-anxiety approach to welfare sees welfare payments as a one-stop-shop approach—cut or withdraw welfare to make unemployment as painful as possible short of destitution and thereby encourage employment. The ‘social security’ approach instead looks at each of the causes of insecurity and seeks to tackle these as part of a coordinated strategy—one which does not require the vilification of any group of citizens. (McKay and Sullivan, 2014: 1)

They recommend that means-tested benefits should be replaced by a Basic Income (McKay and Sullivan, 2014: 2–3).

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Cash transfers There is now a substantial volume of research on cash transfers, both conditional and unconditional (Cobham, 2014). In Chapter 4 and this chapter we have already discussed research on the Unconditional Cash Transfers represented by the Namibian and Indian Basic Income pilot projects. Conditional Cash Transfers can also have many positive outcomes: increased economic activity, higher net incomes, higher educational achievements, less child labour, and improved nutrition (Orton, 2009; Standing, 2017: 228–9). However, Jones (2016) has shown that the benefits can often be short-term, and that Conditional Cash Transfers do little to reduce intergenerational poverty transmission. Unfortunately, comparative research is impossible to carry out because there are no genuine long-term Basic Incomes with which to compare longstanding Conditional Cash Transfer programmes (Torry, 2018: 135–6). However, as Orton suggests, ‘the results of social pensions and a number of other unconditional transfers support the expectation that a [Basic Income] could generate similarly positive social and micro-economic effects’ (Orton, 2011: 6), and a survey of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers has found that Unconditional Cash Transfers for children and elderly people ‘have proved an effective means to combat poverty and income insecurity while promoting livelihoods and work’ (Standing, 2017: 228): a finding corroborated by results of the Namibian and Indian pilot projects and by a survey of sixteen countries that have implemented universal and mainly unconditional incomes for elderly people or for children (Ortiz et al., 2016). Stress We have found that in both the Dauphin experiment of the 1970s and the recent Finland experiment stress was reduced, and similar effects have been found during a Kenyan experiment (Haushofer and Shapiro, 2016). Stress occurs where the personal resources available are unable to meet the situations of complexity that face us (Bekker et al., 2000; Smith, 1993: 466). A particularly damaging modern example is the stress related to the poor quality of jobs. Support from colleagues, management, and trades unions, makes almost no difference. Only changing the job can help (Dekker and Schaufeli, 1995; Paterson and Neufeld, 1989: 8). Another major cause of stress is poverty, which can affect families’ wellbeing and therefore children’s wellbeing (Jones et al., 2013: 4; Murali and Oyebode, 2004); and the World Health Organization has found that ‘the greater the inequality, the higher the inequality in risk’ (World Health Organization, 2014: 9), at least partly because inequality results in failure to satisfy psychological needs, which can result in further poverty and therefore greater inequality (Di Domenico and Fournier, 2014).

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Similarly, poverty can cause unemployment, employment insecurity, underemployment, and poor quality jobs, which in turn result in greater poverty and therefore increasing inequality. In general, situations of uncertainty and ambiguity cause psychological needs not to be met, which is bound to affect both physical and mental health, and is therefore likely to increase poverty and therefore inequality; and conversely, poverty is likely to increase the frequency of periods of uncertainty (Butterworth et al., 2011; Dooley, 2003; Fryers et al., 2003: 236; Murphy and Athanasou, 1999; Paterson and Neufeld, 1989: 8; Sverke et al., 2002). As we can see, there are multiple circular processes at work here. This does not mean that wellbeing is too vague a concept to be useful in policymaking (White, 2014; 2016: 88–90), but it does mean that wellbeing is a complex phenomenon, and in particular that ‘subjective financial wellbeing’ (a psychological function) and ‘objective financial wellbeing’ (having sufficient money) must both be achieved, and that they are connected, because ‘predictable income transfer may enhance [subjective financial wellbeing] through facilitating individual financial management and decreasing financial stress’ (Lassander and Jauhiainen, 2021: 101). This strongly suggests that both of them should be studied together (Lassander and Jauhiainen, 2021: 99–100), and that in general poverty, inequality, employment conditions, and much more, should all be researched together. Potential realities as well as actual realities have been shown to create stress. For instance, someone facing the possibility of insecure employment or unemployment might experience stress related to insecure employment or unemployment; and if benefits are inadequate then someone who might need them in the future might experience the stress related to their inadequacy (Carr and Chung, 2014; Quinlan et al., 2001). Because someone in poverty has to expend time and cognitive energy on coping with resource constraints and the complex administration and ‘daily hassles’ of means-tested benefits, poverty reduces cognitive function, so less attention is available for other cognitive tasks: so again poverty generates more poverty (Kohn et al., 1991; Mani et al., 2013; Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013: 47, 64–7; Smith, 1993: 467). If the stressors relating to poverty and benefits administration overwhelm cognitive resources then ‘alarm, resistance, and exhaustion’ can cause ‘persistent psychological distress, reduced task performance, and, over time, declines in cognitive capabilities’ (Taylor, 1999: 200–201), which can permanently damage psychological and physical wellbeing (Cohen and Edwards, 1989: 235; Cohen and Williamson, 1991; Epstein and Katz, 1992; Smith, 1993: 474–5). So, for instance, the knowledge that benefits will be stopped or reduced if yet again a sick child makes attending an interview at the benefits office impossible can be highly stressful when there is a family to feed, rent to pay, and

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a loan shark at the door demanding money. The cognitive capacity for coping strategies such as reappraising the situation and developing behavioural skills (Smith, 1993: 487) might not be available. If a situation cannot be changed, avoided, or reinterpreted, then controlling one’s feelings can become impossible; and an entire community in poverty might not have the capacity to provide the required practical and emotional support (Smith, 1993: 477). The ability to cope can enhance wellbeing, and not being able to cope can do the opposite (Folkman and Lazarus, 1988). The only solution for stress is to change the situation that is causing it (Meichenbaum, 1985: 12, 52), so in an unequal society in which ‘the social gradient in health is influenced by such factors as social position; relative versus absolute deprivation; and control and social participation’, the only solution is to ‘change society’ (Marmot, 2003: S9, S21; cf. Marmot, 2013: 24, 32–3; Yuill, 2009). In particular, risk must be reduced (Dean, 2012a: 119–20). ‘A simple perception that one is in control of a situation is sufficient to reduce stress levels’ (Neufeld and Paterson, 1989: 64): so if a Basic Income were to take a household off means-tested benefits, then their situation will have changed, and reappraisal and other cognitive tasks will have become more feasible. If a change to a less stress-inducing employment pattern were also to become possible then stress levels might be even further reduced (Lundberg and Frankenhaeuser, 1999); and particularly stress-reducing might be more flexible working arrangements (Maitland and Thomson, 2014) and the shorter working week that the ‘radical restructuring of state benefits’ (Coote et al., 2010: 4) might make possible. A further connection between Basic Income and health should also be mentioned here: subjective wellbeing, and in particular trust and confidence, are influenced by both health and income, and the significant increase in trust and confidence evidenced among the treatment group during the Finland experiment suggests that it is the combination of the security of income facilitated by Basic Income, and the positive health effects of a Basic Income, that generate this positive effect (Kangas et al., 2021b: 129). A particularly important result of stress was discovered during an evaluation of data from experiments in various adaptations of the benefits system in municipalities in the Netherlands (Groot and Verlaat, 2019; Muffels and Gielens, 2019). Participation in the stress-reducing experiments was voluntary, and research showed that higher levels of stress could be ‘a reason for people not to participate and to drop out’ because ‘stress impedes people’s ability to make long term decisions (in their own interest). In that sense, this outcome is logical’ (Betkó et al., 2019: 165).

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Families and households How families and households are structured changes all the time (Dean, 2012a: 94–6; Giddens, 2001: 172–93), and during the past fifty years there has been a significant increase in the diversity of family structures (Starting Point Centre, 2021). There are clearly multiple factors underlying this trend, but one significant factor might be a less secure employment market (Brittan, [1995] 2013; Florisson, 2022). Not only does this leave families economically vulnerable (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2021), but it can also result in ‘whole communities in which it is very difficult to establish and maintain families, with almost insuperable obstacles to family formation at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder’ (Morgan, 1995: 61). The myth of the nuclear family might survive, but the reality will often be different (Bittman and Pixley, 1997: 14–15). Children benefit from their parents living together, having sufficient time to care for them, and being gainfully employed (Cusworth, 2009: 195–7), but the current benefits system can reduce parents’ incentive to live together (Griffiths, 2017: 555; Miller, 2017: 68), tends to treat parents as workers rather than as parents (Muijsson and Liebermann, 2018), and reduces employment incentives (Chapter 4). Most income tax systems are now individualized, and individualizing benefits systems would be a step in the right direction (Esam and Berthoud, 1991: 71; Millar, 2003), but a Basic Income would do more to recognize the needs of families as well as being more coherent with today’s social trends, and crucially it would remain relevant in the context of any currently unknown future social trends (Torry, 2013: 99–111). Gender effects In the UK, Juliet Rhys Williams’ proposal would have treated women and men more equally than Beveridge’s 1942 report, but not equally (Chapter 2); a ‘wages for housework’ campaign can be understood as a precursor to advocacy for Basic Income (Chapter 9); and research on the effects that a Basic Income would have on the lives of women has been a frequent feature of research and debate in the UK (Carlson, 1997; Parker, 1993). The feminist economist Ailsa McKay was an early facilitator of the Basic Income debate in Scotland (Campbell and Gillespie, 2016: 3–12; McKay, 2005; 2013; Miller, 2019); and the Namibian and Indian pilot projects have revealed the emancipatory potential of Basic Income for women (Chapters 4 and 6; Miller et al., 2019: 134–6, 147). The status of women in society has changed radically during the past century, and continues to do so (Giddens, 2001: 104–23; Gosling and Taylor, 2005: 192–211), and although women still give more hours to unpaid work than men, the gap is declining (Addabbo et al., 2010: 138–9). However, women

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remain the higher proportion of the precariat that they have always been, and just as benefits systems have not kept pace with changes in the structure of the family, so they have not kept up with changes in the status of women (Torry, 2013: 104–9). Most countries provide more by way of childcare and parental leave than they did, and this is particularly true of Nordic countries (Bryson, 2007: 86–91; Kangas and Kvist, 2013; Shaver, 2013: 103), but in the UK and elsewhere benefits systems still regard a male partner as the main breadwinner and as the benefits claimant: so if there is already a power imbalance in favour of a male partner (Bittman and Pixley, 1997: 42, 144, 170, 209) then means-tested benefit payments into a single bank account over which he might have more control than a female partner will mean that the woman will have no access to an independent income and the imbalance will be exacerbated (Adelman et al., 1999; Miller, 2017: 66–7; Pahl, 1983). Because intrahousehold transfers can usually only be studied using qualitative research methods— that is, structured interviews with household members (Karagiannaki and Burchardt, 2022)—research is usually into household poverty. However, disaggregation using quantitative methods is occasionally attempted. For instance, the marginal deduction rates related to the withdrawal of benefits can be formulated differently in relation to different assumptions about intrahousehold transfers. One method ‘assumes that in every household every individual adult has complete knowledge of the household’s financial resources, that all household members possess equal power in relation to household resources, and that each individual’s employment motivation is a function of household disposable income’, and another ‘does not assume equal knowledge or sharing of a household’s financial resources within the household, but it does assume that each individual’s motivation is a function of the payments that they receive’ (Torry, 2019a: 17, 18). The resulting patterns of marginal deduction rates, and therefore the conclusions that can be drawn about employment incentives, can look very different. A particularly interesting conclusion from a piece of research on intrahousehold transfers is that ‘poor men and women engage in economizing behaviours in largely equal measure … Gender inequality affects the non-poor to a greater degree, with more women taking the lead in economizing’ (Dermott and Pantazis, 2018: 98, 110). Research has also shown that if unconditional benefits for children continue to be allocated to the mother, then a fairly modest [Basic] Income scheme that leaves in place means-tested benefits and recalculates them by taking into account each household’s total [Basic] Incomes achieves a significant reallocation of resources from men to women. (Torry, 2016e: 9)

Because a Basic Income would be paid to each individual, and not to just one member of a couple or household, it would shift the balance of power within

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any household currently in receipt of household-based benefits paid to just one individual within the household, and it would also shift the balance of power within any household with one main earner and one non-earner or secondary earner, because in relation to the Basic Income neither the woman nor the man would be financially dependent on the other (Miller, 2016: 173; Pahl, 1986; Parker, 1993: 63–4; Zelleke, 2008). The evidence suggests that benefits systems have little effect on marriage, cohabitation or divorce rates, or on the number of children that people decide to have (Stafford and Roberts, 2009: 6), but the difference between existing systems and Basic Income is that the latter would never constitute a disincentive for relationship-formation, and it would be unlikely to cause separations, although we might expect a minor upward effect on the birth rate. While a social policy will often privilege a particular set of options in relation to a household member’s use of their time, whether for paid employment, care work, voluntary community work, leisure, and so on, a Basic Income would never do so, and could therefore make available a broader set of options for each household member, and particularly for women. Interview responses during the Finland experiment revealed enhanced abilities to undertake voluntary community and care work (Blomberg et al., 2021: 165). As the researchers put it: Our results seem to lend some support to claims … that basic income (experiments) may obscure perceptions of the division between ‘work’ and ‘non-work’, in our case clearly affecting people’s self-identity in positive ways. (Blomberg et al., 2021: 165–6).

A potential problem sometimes identified is that unpaid care work could become more financially viable for women, which might cause employment market withdrawal and loss of career progression, as has happened to some extent in Nordic countries in relation to their more generous childcare and parental leave provisions (Bryson, 2007: 90). Whilst this might occur, a woman in any household enabled by its Basic Incomes to come off means-tested benefits would find that paid employment would become more financially worthwhile. The outcome would be an increasing number of options, the choice of which would depend less than before on the character of the means-tested benefits system (Bittman and Pixley, 1997: 114, 209, 268; Elgarte, 2008; Gheaus, 2008; Hakim, 2003). The unconditional and individualized character of Basic Income could also provide each couple with additional choices, so both partners might find that they were more able to share both employment and caring roles (Gamble, 2016: 108; Vollenweider, 2013). Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma asks the question: Should women be treated the same as men, or differently? If we define men primarily as workers, and as

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parents in a secondary manner, then should women be treated primarily as carers, or should they be treated primarily as workers? In many contexts the ‘male breadwinner model’ remains predominant, which implies a caring role for women. For gender equality, should we now be seeking a gender-neutral ‘universal breadwinner’ model, or a gender-neutral ‘caregiving parity with breadwinning’ model? (Miller et al., 2019). In the context of a more developed economy, a Basic Income could enable women to say ‘no’ to undesirable jobs, to say ‘yes’ to voluntary caring or community roles, and to leave the employment market: or it might enable them to reduce their employment hours in order to spend more time caring for children or other dependents. This would reduce further women’s ability to obtain positions of social and economic influence, and in particular would make it more difficult for women to reach the higher echelons of their professions (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 186–7). On the other hand, if the same range of options were to be available to both men and women, then both would be equally able to be carers and workers, no longer would there be a dilemma to resolve (Bambrick, 2006; Parker, 1993: 10, 21; Widerquist et al., 2013: 141–88), the whole of what women currently contribute to society and the economy could be properly recognized (Campbell and Gillespie, 2016: 205), and the definition of ‘work’ might start to shift away from ‘paid employment’ and towards ‘purposeful activity’ (Gilbert et al., 2019: 59). Because it is possible to view the situation in these two quite different ways, Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma remains to be resolved. No kind of cash transfer on its own would transform the current gendered division of labour (Enríquez, 2016: 46–7; Levasseur et al., 2018; O’Reilly, 2008). Provision in at least three dimensions will be required: ‘Time—working time and time to care; money— cash to buy care, cash for carers; and services—for child and elder care’ (Lewis, 2006: 20). In relation to cash, the pilot projects in Namibia and India have shown that a Basic Income could begin to make a difference to women’s emancipation in countries with developing economies, and in a country with a more developed economy any household taken off household-based means-tested benefits by their Basic Incomes would see an immediate change in the options open to them (Davala, 2019; Fitzpatrick, 1999: 174; Haarmann et al., 2019; Miller et al., 2019; Mullarney, 1999: 32; Parker, 1993: 61; Yamamori, 2014). Women tend to live longer than men, and because they need pensions for longer, and their employment income is on average lower than that of men, women tend to have less adequate social insurance and private and occupational pension contribution records than men, so their relative poverty is likely to continue into old age (Alstott, 2001; Ginn, 1993: 47; 2003; OECD, 2021; Rein and Schmähl, 2004; Twine, 1996: 16–17). A Citizen’s Pension—an equal and unconditional state pension of a reasonable size for every older individual, as is currently paid in New Zealand (O’Brien, 2008: 30–31)—would go a long way

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towards remedying the problem of poverty among elderly women: something that defined contribution funded pension schemes will always fail to achieve (Glennerster, 2003: 157–8; Hinrichs, 2013; James et al., 2008: 30, 195; National Association of Pension Funds, 2004; Parker, 1993: 61–2). Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma is not the only dilemma faced by women. As we have seen, the news that the Minimum Income Guarantee experiments in the United States during the 1970s had facilitated a significant increase in the divorce rate was inaccurate, but it is still true that Basic Income might enable some women to leave failed or abusive relationships which their previous financial dependence on their partners might not have permitted them to do. Whether an enhanced ability to leave an abusive or failed relationship is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion: but it might be true that if the only thing holding a relationship together is financial dependence of one partner on another then maybe the relationship ought to end (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 185–6). A Basic Income can only increase the social and economic freedoms available to women, so wherever in the world discussion takes place about women’s status in society, that discussion will now have to take account of the Basic Income debate; and conversely, the Basic Income debate will have to take account of the highly diverse social and economic contexts of women around the world. People living with disabilities A Basic Income could have particularly beneficial effects for people living with disabilities. At the level of the individual, to the extent that a Basic Income would replace means-tested benefits, it would reduce the stigma associated with them, and would itself be entirely without stigma; at the level of the community, it would contribute to social cohesion, solidarity, and a sense of community; and at the societal level it would offer an inclusive and egalitarian vision of a democratic society (Mays, 2019). By valuing all kinds of work, a Basic Income would contribute to the necessary transition, and it would help anyone incapable of paid employment by virtue of disability, illness or old age to experience themselves as full members of society, and as having just as much of a right to citizenship rights as those able to contribute to the resources that enable the rights to be exercised (Purdy, 1990). Paid employment provides a range of benefits to a worker quite apart from the wage, and a Basic Income would also provide new options for individuals with less or only occasional ability to engage with the employment market. For instance, means-tested benefits can make it difficult to be employed for varying numbers of hours

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each week, which might be a pattern appropriate for someone living with a disability that frequently restricts their ability to engage with employment. A Basic Income, on the other hand, could positively encourage the kind of flexible working that someone living with a disability might be able to cope with and might want (Hvinden, 2013: 375). Additional services and benefits might still be required, and those would remain complicated to deliver: but the Basic Income itself would never change, and so would provide a solid basis for all of the other changing benefits and services (Torry, 2013: 266–8). The Basic Income might also make it possible to consider other positive change. For instance: in the UK, people living with disabilities have to relate to both local and national government offices and staff. By providing a solid financial platform on which to build, fewer additional benefits would be needed, or perhaps none if occasional employment could fill the gap between the Basic Income and subsistence costs. This might enable all other services and benefits to be located in one place—for instance, the Local Authority—rather than scattered across a variety of disconnected local and national departments. Environmental effects In Chapter 3 we raised the possibility of employing a carbon tax to fund a Basic Income. Here we shall ask the broader question as to how Basic Income and the necessity to tackle climate change might relate to each other. Green Party enthusiasm for Basic Income has been fairly consistent across Europe and elsewhere for forty years (Torry, 2021a: 239–41), although the caveat must be entered that ‘the intensity and clarity of [green party] endorsements seem to be inversely correlated with the probabilities of their governmental participation’ (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 206), which means that Green Party enthusiasm might be an example of the ‘cheap’ enthusiasm for Basic Income characteristic of minority political parties (De Wispelaere and Noguera, 2012: 22): although it ought to be said in defence that minority parties that enter coalition governments often have little ability to implement previous policy commitments, however much they might wish to do so. The arguments offered by Paine and Spence—that the land belongs to everyone, so if it is expropriated by certain individuals then everyone is due proportions of the proceeds in compensation (Chapter 2)—are ecological arguments

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(Torry, 2021a: 239–40). A more directly ecological argument for Basic Income is that full-time, full employment is neither sustainable nor desirable … the system is organized around the employment ethic and, by extension around the growth-oriented productivism of industrial capitalism. (Fitzpatrick, 2002: 141–2)

A Basic Income would contribute to breaking the link between income and production and so might reduce employment and therefore economic growth as measured by Gross Domestic Product, leading to a ‘post-productivist’ world that would enable us to live within the economic field that provides sufficient for people to live on and at the same time avoids climate change (Fitzpatrick, 1999: 186; Raworth, 2017; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 201–202; Widerquist et al., 2013: 259–310). A Basic Income at a level sufficient for people to live on would break completely the link between income and production, but it would also risk necessary production drying up and the tax base required to fund the Basic Income disappearing. What is required is an ‘optimal’ Basic Income: ‘one that slows growth down to an environmentally sustainable extent without the economy having to contract’ (Fitzpatrick, 2002: 145). However, the kind of ‘degrowth’ economy that the situation requires would not be easy to achieve, because a market economy will always tend to produce the products that consumers demand, and any gap between labour income and the value of the products is likely to be filled by consumer credit. The contribution that a Basic Income would make would be to reduce the inevitable turbulence in household disposable incomes if ever a degrowth economy were to be achieved; it would provide a level of economic security that might reduce the felt need to pursue as much income as might be sought in a less secure disposable income context; and it might begin the shift to the new economic paradigm that we shall need (Lord, 2003: 58, 85–95). Unfortunately, there might be potentially negative relationships between a Basic Income and the needs of the planet as well as more positive ones. A Basic Income could make a productivist economy more efficient, and thus more damaging to the planet (Chapter 5); if a Basic Income were to enable people to be employed for fewer hours, then there is no guarantee that the new activity that they could undertake during their additional free time would be environmentally friendly (Fitzpatrick, 2002: 147–9); and because a Basic Income could reduce marginal deduction rates, increase net incomes, and therefore increase consumption, carbon emissions might rise and make it more difficult to tackle climate change (Sovacool et al., 2014: 3). A further difficulty would arise if a Basic Income scheme were to reduce inequality. Any reduction in inequality, even in the absence of economic growth, could increase carbon

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emissions, because a poorer household’s propensity to consume is on average higher than that of a wealthier household, so any Basic Income scheme that reduced inequality would be likely to increase carbon emissions (Sager, 2017). However, as we saw in Chapter 3, if a carbon tax were to be implemented as a means of tackling climate change, then a Basic Income or something similar would have to be implemented in order to protect household disposable incomes (Pierson, 2021: 135). A different way of tackling the problem would be an increase in consumption taxes, but only if the increase were to be imposed on goods that generated significant levels of carbon emissions and not on goods and services that did not. The difficulties that a Basic Income without an accompanying carbon or consumption tax would pose for the planet suggest that while implementing a Basic Income scheme on the basis of funding from within the current tax and benefits system might be a feasible way to begin implementation, as soon as the Basic Income was established, any increase ought to be paid for by implementing a carbon tax or an additional consumption tax (Barnes, 2014; Cato, 2010; Fitzpatrick, 1999: 201; Howard et al., 2019: 126–7; Piketty, 2020: 1004–7). As Ian Gough puts it, ‘the goal must be to respect biophysical boundaries while at the same time pursuing sustainable wellbeing: that is, wellbeing for all current peoples and for future generations’ (Gough, 2017: 37); and, as he recognizes, a Basic Income would provide more freedom of choice over citizens’ life courses; it would promote a better work-life balance, enhance gender equality and expand choices between paid and unpaid work. It might enable more people to contribute to the ‘core economy’ … [it would] reduce division and stigma and enhance social solidarity … [it would contribute to] a realistic transition strategy from the present to a post-growth society. (Gough, 2017: 184, 185, 186)

As carbon use declined, the tax base would shrink, and so would the revenue available to fund the Basic Income. Additional funding would then be required. An intriguing possibility would be a global carbon tax accompanied by a global Basic Income (Paul, 2021) as a way of ensuring that carbon emissions would fall globally and that resources would be shifted to where they were most needed: intriguing, but probably infeasible to implement. The final connection between ecological concerns and Basic Income to mention here might be psychological. Someone who values nature might want time to enjoy it and to work politically and otherwise to protect it, and so might wish to see a Basic Income implemented (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 201–2).

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It is a foundation of green thinking that economic and environmental justice are indivisible, and UBI [Basic Income] as a policy is a perfect illustration of that. Fear of want, of poverty, and even of destitution is an important driving force in causing people to seek more and more wealth and resources in search of security. Take away the fear of want, and very few people lie on their deathbed saying: ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office’. Research regularly shows that what is of most benefit to wellbeing, once a certain basic level of subsistence is met, is not extra money, but time with friends and family, a varied life, a balanced life. UBI can help make that possible. (Bennett, 2019: 10) Such a shift might reduce carbon emissions, suggesting that the current relationship between lower inequality and higher carbon emissions might not be all there is to be said. Stigma Stigma is an individual and social psychological reality that occurs when one individual or group ‘others’ another in relation to perceived character flaws or other characteristics (Goffman, 1969: 13, 65–6, 147, 223–4; 1990: 13–14; Lister, 2017; Spicker, 2014: 39): for instance, when politicians label benefits recipients as ‘skivers’ (Chapter 7). Socially constructed narratives and institutions might reinforce the othering, resulting in the othered individual or group internalizing the judgement and experiencing the stigma that has been imposed on them. A significant motive for the stigmatizer is that their self-esteem might increase if they can make others feel ashamed (Golding and Middleton, 1982: 244), so people who feel economically insecure are those most likely to stigmatize others (Knight, 2013: 16). In the case of means-tested benefits claimants, the othering of a ‘tribe’ of claimants is facilitated by ‘deindividuation’, which makes it easier to impose the ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’ of ‘psycho-policy interventions’—‘active labour market policies’—on individuals depersonalized by being placed in a category (Adler, 2018; Festinger et al., 1952; Friedli and Stearn, 2015; Goffman, 1990: 13–14; Handler, 2005: 117; Mullen, 1986; Nordlund, 2013; Partners in Salford, 2014: 6–7; Prentice-Dunn and Rogers, 1982). Stigma and the resulting shame can emerge in a wide variety of different contexts and welfare state regimes (Pellissery et al., 2014), they can be generated by policy structure, policy framing, and policy delivery, they can be directly correlated with the level of conditionality, and the more individualized the provision the greater we can expect the stigma to become (Gubrium and Lødemel, 2014: 206–11, 214). In the UK, the benefits system is seriously

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‘broken’. Sanctions-infested ‘active labour market’ policies are counterproductive (Haagh: 2019a: 26–27; Hamilton, 2020: 50; Royston, 2017) because their sanctions provisions cement demotivation (Rabindrakumar and Dewar, 2018; Welfare Reform Team, Oxford City Council, 2016: 51) and ‘may have zero or even negative impacts on work-related outcomes’ for disabled people as well as for unemployed individuals (Baumberg Geiger, 2017: 107). There is a contradiction at the heart of sanctions—‘external surveillance and sanctions, and encouragement to internal motivation and effort … [whereas] genuine empowerment can only come from freely exercised choice’ (Carpenter et al., 2007: 5, 6). In addition, claimants can be expected to divulge intimate personal details to a public servant (Greener, 2018: 174–6), to whose ‘discretion’ they can then be subjected (Hill, 1990: 10). The claimant is a supplicant (Wagner, 2007: 196). Not only do public, political and media attitudes stigmatize benefits claimants: the ‘indecency, humiliation, stigma, and depression’ (Fryer and Fagan, 2003: 94) associated with the system itself entrenches the stigma, confirms the stigmatizer in the sense of their own virtue (Smith, 1993: 576–7; Walker and Chase, 2014), and increases the sales of the newspapers that peddle the ‘them and us’ myth (Coughlin, 1980: 117; Hills, 2014; Whiteford, 2015a; 2015b). Because individuals and families on means-tested benefits experience stigma, the benefits themselves do so as well (Baumberg et al., 2012: 4, 11; Larsen, 2006: 141), which makes it easy for a government to reduce the levels of benefits, apply sanctions to their recipients (Hirsch, 2015: 4–5), and construct regulations that communicate a derogatory verdict on recipients (Tonkens et al., 2013), which enables yet more claimant stigmatization. In particular, the regulations communicate the assumption that recipients are unwilling to contribute to society unless they are pushed into doing so, so a verdict of moral weakness is communicated both to claimants and to society at large. This can only be demotivating (Patrick, 2017a: 123–44; Welfare Reform Team, Oxford City Council, 2016: 51). In this respect the UK’s replacement of separate means-tested benefits for those in full-time employment and those not in full-time employment with a single means-tested benefit might have been a mistake because it fails to allow those on the previous in-work benefit to regard themselves as virtuous workers being provided with a ‘Tax Credit’ that they could regard as their due, and instead includes them in the same stigmatized category as other means-tested benefits recipients (Baumberg, 2016: 196; Dean, 2012b: 355). In contrast, no stigma attaches to such universal services as the UK’s National Health Service (NHS): a service free at the point of use and that protects the vulnerable without attaching any stigma to them (Dean, 2012a: 65; Spicker,

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2014: 39–40; Torry, 2018a; 2018b). There is no ‘tribe’ that receives the service, nor a majority that do not; and there is no scrutiny of intimate personal details by an official, unless required for medical reasons. None of the stigmatizing characteristics related to means-tested benefits characterize the NHS, and none would characterize a Basic Income either. Although the Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Canada, during the 1970s was not a Basic Income pilot project (Torpey, 2017: 73), the Minimum Income Guarantee that it represented did not produce social stigma … The social meaning of Mincome was sufficiently powerful that even participants with particularly negative attitudes toward government assistance felt able to collect Mincome payments without a sense of contradiction. By obscuring the distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, universalistic income maintenance programs may weaken social stigmatization and strengthen program sustainability. (Calnitsky, 2016: 27)

Additionally, Baumberg, Bell and Gaffney have found that ‘international evidence suggests that countries with benefit systems based on contributions or on citizenship, rather than on a means test, are less likely to see high levels of benefits stigma’ (Baumberg et al., 2012: 3). This suggests that a completely unconditional Basic Income would be entirely free of it, and would begin to repair the damage done to income maintenance mechanisms by means-testing, work-testing, and the associated stigma (Staerklé et al., 2012: 111; Torry, 2016a: 8–9). No longer would ‘deserving/undeserving’ or ‘them and us’ distinctions be relevant to households enabled by their Basic Incomes to leave means-tested benefits behind, so for them stigma would be impossible and their Basic Incomes would ‘replace structural guilt with a universal structure of acceptance and forgiveness’ (Walter, 1989: 133). For those still unable to come off means-tested benefits, at least their Basic Incomes would be stigma-free, so the overall effect would be a reduction in stigma and a consequent improvement in individual and social self-worth and wellbeing (Birnbaum, 2012: 48–51; Gough, 2017: 185; Jones et al., 2010; Jordan, 2010; Lundvall and Lorenz, 2012: 347). A ‘social multiplier’ effect would enhance and perpetuate the positive outcomes for individuals and households (Glaeser et al., 2002); and the absence of stigma, along with Basic Income’s simplicity, would ensure almost 100 per cent take-up (Darton et al., 2003: 33; Spicker, 2011: 14–15; Torry, 2020a: 113–17, 138–9). Research has shown that means-tested benefits reduce levels of the interpersonal trust essential for maintaining cohesive societies, whereas universal benefits increase them (Gamble, 2016: 109; Hyggen, 2006: 507; Mulligan,

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2013; O’Hara, 2014: 5, 15; Searle, 2008: 129; Svendsen and Svendsen, 2016; Taylor-Gooby, 2009). Guy Peters draws an obvious conclusion: Means-testing can stigmatize potential recipients and prevent their taking up the [means-tested] benefit. The take up of means-tested benefits is often low because of that stigmatization and because of administrative complications in qualifying for the benefits. In some instances it may be more effective for governments to provide universal benefits and then claw back the money from the more affluent through taxation. (Peters, 2018: 97)

Poverty ‘Poverty’ is multidimensional (Spicker, 2014: 90–91; Torry, 2013: 161–8): for instance, qualitative research in the UK has identified six ‘dimensions of poverty’: • • • • • •

Disempowering systems, structures and policies Financial insecurity, financial exclusion and debt Damaged health and well-being Stigma, blame and judgement Lack of control over choices Unrecognised struggles, skills and contributions. (ATD Fourth World, 2019: 4)

This multidimensionality suggests that there will always be multiple causes of poverty: for instance, poor housing or inadequate healthcare (Alkire et al., 2015; Donnison, 1982; Seebrook, 1985). However, research has shown a close correlation between indices of multiple deprivation and income poverty (Sevinc, 2020: 851), so both for our purposes here and more generally we shall concentrate on income poverty: itself not a simple matter (Abel-Smith and Townsend, 1965). A family might be described as in poverty, whereas one of its members might not be; and a family might not be categorized as poor, whereas one or more of its members might be (Pahl, 1983); and however much we might be able to measure the income, wealth and so on that might be available to a household, researchers cannot know the full extent of available resources, particularly in relation to the informal economy (Jordan et al., 1992). W.G. Runciman has shown that we compare our circumstances with those of people in social and geographical situations similar to ours, rather than to people in very different situations (Runciman, 1966: 18); and Stouffer et al. (1949) have found that our feelings about poverty do not necessarily relate to any objective measures of it. We are here understanding poverty as ‘exclusion from ordinary living patterns’ (Townsend, 1979: 131) rather than in relation to some objective measure (Fahey, 2010): hence the alternative terms ‘social

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exclusion’ (Hills et al., 2002; Pierson, 2013) and ‘social disadvantage’ (Dean and Platt, 2016). A now common approach to the measurement of poverty is to ask focus groups what they regard as essential to a decent life in society, and to regard as being in poverty anyone unable to afford the goods and services listed by the groups (Alkire, 2007: 91; Bailey and Bramley, 2018; Davis et al., 2021; Dermott, 2018; Lansley and Mack, 1983; 2015; Mack, 2018; Reader, 2006) or unable to exercise a list of capabilities generated by the same process (Otto et al., 2018; Sen, 2009: 225–52, 370–71), although this latter approach has been criticized for not sufficiently taking income and wealth into account when discussing poverty (Fitzpatrick, 2014: 34). A superficially more objective approach, that calculates the cost of an adequate and healthy diet in different contexts, is employed to recommend the levels of ‘living wages’ (Anker and Anker, 2017); another apparently more objective method is John Rawls’ definition of poverty as that level of income that ‘together with the whole family of social policies, maximizes the life prospects of the least advantaged over time’ (Rawls, 2001: 129–30; cf. Barrientos, 2016: 154–6); and a similar approach starts from a normative understanding of human need (Maslow, 1943: 376–82; Spicker, 2014: 88–108; Townsend, 1979: 32–4). However, the concept of life prospects is as socially constructed as the focus groups’ prescriptions, and so is the concept of human need. There is nothing objective about poverty (Dean, 2010: 46–7; Spicker, 2014: 89), and given its socially constructed character we might even say that social policies calculated to relieve or prevent poverty in fact perpetuate and shape it (Dean and Melrose, 1999: 27, 48). A consequence is that means-tested benefits tell claimants that they are in poverty, whereas unconditional incomes and services dissolve the ‘poverty’ category. A further argument for abandoning the term ‘poverty’ is that there is no shortage of resources: it’s simply that they are not equitably shared, as the proposition that the planet and every other commons belongs to all of us rather suggests. This means that there is a case for replacing the term ‘poverty’ with the term ‘injustice’. However, the problem with getting rid of the term ‘poverty’ is that we might then be tempted to ignore the many different challenges that so many people face today: challenges that when operating together can turn life into a journey of misery (O’Hara, 2014). One response is to qualify the term ‘poverty’ as ‘housing poverty’, ‘health poverty’, ‘income poverty’, and so on. We can more easily measure each type of poverty than we can measure poverty in general—for instance, we can define income poverty as an income below 60 per cent of the median wage (Cantillon et al., 2019); and to abolish a particular kind of poverty is easier to conceptualize and then to do than it would be to abolish poverty in general. The term ‘poverty’ might then be useful

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as an expression of the multiple deprivations that many families suffer, so that abolishing poverty becomes the abolition of poverty’s constituent poverties, just as the reduction of inequality requires reductions in a variety of inequalities (Fée and Kober-Smith, 2018: 3–14). Distinguishing between different kinds of poverty can have other useful consequences. We often hear the irrational complaint that a Basic Income could do nothing about the housing shortage. There are lots of things that a Basic Income could not achieve: it could not sort out a healthcare funding crisis or fuel poverty any more than it could solve a housing shortage or housing costs crisis. However, a Basic Income would make some difference to everything, simply because it would provide a totally secure layer of income for every individual and family (Torry, 2013: 265–71). It might be true that a revenue neutral Basic Income scheme might have to retain existing means-tested benefits or replace them with new ones (Kay, 2017), so that in some respects the Basic Income scheme might exhibit similarities with the social security scheme that it replaced: but the difference would be the totally secure layer of income contained in the Basic Income scheme: something that not all authors seem to appreciate (Kay, 2017; Piachaud, 2016). It is that secure layer that would make a different to everything. The rapidly changing economic circumstances that many households now experience (Hills, 2014; Tomlinson, 2018) suggest that the rather static concepts of relative and absolute poverty might not be as useful as they were, and that we might need a more dynamic concept that asks whether individuals and households are able to climb out of low incomes and other kinds of poverty: so perhaps we should define poverty as ‘perceived lasting social insecurity’ (Duvoux and Papuchon, 2019): a definition that coheres with the lived experience of the insecure incomes provided by existing benefits (Barker et al., 2018: 2). The security of income is clearly as important as its level. The abolition of poverty therefore requires us to ask how we might provide a substantial layer of income security at the same time as removing the blockages to people’s ability to improve their situation (Lister, 2004: 94–7, 145–6, 178–83; Saunders, 2013: 69). This is intuitively correct. If we are able to climb out of various deprivations, then we are less likely to call ourselves poor than if we are unable to do that; and we are more likely to be able to climb out of poverty if we have a secure financial platform on which to stand. With this understanding, social exclusion is an inability to achieve social inclusion.

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Because a Basic Income would give to working age adults a secure financial basis and more ability to say no to poor quality jobs, job quality would improve, wages in many less desirable and low-wage jobs would rise, it would be easier to start a co-operative or small business, and anyone no longer on means-tested benefits would be more able to increase their disposable income by increasing their earned income, all of which would make climbing out of income poverty a lot easier (Taylor-Gooby et al., 2014). Unconditional incomes and services would also help to prevent people from falling into poverty in the first place (Berghman et al., 2013; Burchardt and Vizard, 2007; Rosner, 2003: xiv–xv). However, a Basic Income would not be able to provide a route out of poverty on its own. It would always be a Basic Income scheme that would be implemented, so it would be the package as a whole that would have to be constructed to enable individuals and households to climb out of poverty (Piachaud, 2016: 15; Dean and Melrose, 1999: 172; Sen, 2009; Stapenhurst, 2014; Torry, 2020a: 209–13; 2022b; Walter, 1988).

Inequality Before the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend was paid, Alaska experienced higher inequality than any other US state, whereas by 2018 it was the state with both the lowest inequality and the lowest inequality growth (CNBC, 2018; Goldsmith, 2012: 53; Sommeiller et al., 2016). While the Alaskan dividend is not exactly a Basic Income, as it is an annual payment rather than a weekly or monthly one, and its amount varies from year to year with the proceeds of the permanent fund, the fact that both the dividend and a Basic Income go equally to every individual, and that a Basic Income, like the dividend, would constitute a higher proportion of the total income of a poorer individual or household than it would for a wealthier individual or household, we can legitimately assume that in relation to poverty and inequality growth a Basic Income would have an effect similar to that of the permanent fund dividend. Inequality matters because it results in lower economic growth (Rowlingson, 2011: 35–6), higher economic turbulence (Lansley, 2018), poverty (Hills et al., 2019), lower social mobility (Dickens and McKnight, 2008; Dorling, 2012: 47–8), and lower levels of wellbeing (Searle, 2008: 115). The share of income going to the top 1 per cent has increased from 5.7 per cent to 7.8 per cent since the 1990s (Atkinson, 2015: 105; Cribb et al., 2018: 34; Dorling, 2018). Globalization and technological change have resulted in an increasing proportion of the proceeds of production going to capital rather than to labour (Crocker, 2019; Piketty, 2014), and in an employment market divided between

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high-skilled, well-paid and fairly secure jobs, and low-skilled, badly paid, insecure, and often pointless and soul-destroying jobs. Globalization has resulted in similar wage levels for low-skilled workers across the planet; production facilities move across borders to low-wage countries, causing wage levels elsewhere to fall to attract back the employment; those who can secure positions where financial decisions are made, on trading floors and in transnational corporation board rooms, can pay themselves significant sums of money; and unpaid internships increase inequality of opportunity, which increases income inequality. Until the 1970s, large manufacturing companies gave to trades unions the ability to bargain for wages that constituted significant proportions of the value of production, but today’s fractured employment market means that trade union power has retreated to the large workforces still to be found in such public services as transport, where strikes can damage less secure workers’ livelihoods and increase inequality. Skills training at the lower end of the earnings range can change none of this (Turner, 2012), and resistance to tax rate increases among better off voters reduces redistribution of incomes and exacerbates the inequality (Atkinson, 2015: 82; Evans and Williams, 2009: 313; Graeber, 2018). According to research, one of the methods frequently suggested for reducing inequality and poverty—increasing the levels of means-tested benefits—would reduce inequality rather less than additional universal provision would: We find that within countries during periods when net cash transfers have been more closely targeted (concentrated) on lower income households the reduction of income inequality and the incidence of poverty is generally lower. (McKnight, 2015: 29)

Additional means-tested benefits would in fact exacerbate inequality because they would bring more households into mean-testing and therefore into high marginal deduction rates and employment disincentives. More people would be buried in poverty and unable to climb out of it (Garthwaite, 2017), and the social rift would widen. Implementing additional unconditional provisions, and particularly a Basic Income (Brown, 2017: 165), would start to repair the rift (Dorling, 2010: 245), and would create an emancipatory social citizenship (Patrick, 2017b: 301). We can conclude that in company with a progressive tax system, a Basic Income could reduce income inequality, increase income security, reduce employment disincentives, provide more employment market choices, encourage skills acquisition, and increase social cohesion, so it could reduce inequality of opportunity, increase social capital in both its individual and its social aspects, enhance the social ladder as a whole (Heywood, 1999:

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290–92; Lo Vuolo, 2015: 35), and deliver a particularly significant improvement in all of these for minorities (Wolf and Willis, 2018: 3). Rising inequality is more important than the fact that on average we are better off than we used to be (Evans and Williams, 2009: 315), and tackling it will require multiple policies (Atkinson, 2015) that attend to the roots of inequality in deep social structures (Dore, 2001: 84; Dorling, 2017): so what needs to change is not the levels of existing benefits, but rather the structure of the benefits system (White, 2007: 84, 93). A Basic Income would not be the answer to all of our global social and economic inequalities (Haagh, 2015; Lo Vuolo, 2015), but it could reduce household disposable income inequality, and could begin to change the deeper structures of society. It would reduce both income inequality and a variety of other kinds (Torry, 2020a: 213–16), would ‘underpin either a substantively or a formally egalitarian society’ (Dean, 2015: 93), and would enhance both social solidarity and the right to individual dignity (Dean, 2015: 165). Does income inequality cause other social ills, as Wilkinson and Pickett have suggested in their book The Spirit Level? They offer no proof for the causal link (Bergh et al., 2016: 48–71; Torry, 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009), and depending on the mechanism employed to reduce income inequality we could in fact argue that income inequality could under some circumstances be inversely correlated with other social ills. For instance, if inequality were to be reduced by increasing the levels of means-tested benefits, then more households would find themselves on means-tested benefits, and therefore in poverty and unemployment traps, which would reduce their ability to earn their way out of poverty. But simply to argue that a proposed causal link might not be correct is never sufficient. What is required is a rational and evidenced proposal for alternative causal connections, and there is one available: The structure of a country’s welfare state might be a significant cause of both income inequality and other social ills. A list of European Union and European Economic Area countries starting from those with the lowest income inequality and ending with those with the highest, with income inequality measured as the ratio of total income received by the 20 per cent of the population with the highest income (the top quintile) to that received by the 20 per cent of the population with the lowest income (the bottom quintile), looks like this: Slovakia, Slovenia, Czechia, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, Hungary, Cyprus, France, Croatia, Malta, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Estonia, Greece, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania,

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Table 6.1

Three types of welfare regime

Type of welfare regime

Character

Represented by

Social democratic regime/​‘socialism’

The State is committed to full employment, generous universalist welfare benefits, income redistribution, etc.

Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden

Conservative/​ corporatist regimes

Occupationally segregated benefits

Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, and Italy

Liberal welfare regimes

Private provision, selective provision, and a residual safety net for the poor

Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States

Source:  Table constructed by the author on the basis of Esping-Andersen, 1990: 73–5.

Bulgaria, Turkey (Eurostat, 2022). (Although the UK has left the European Union and is not in the European Economic Area, it has been included, its position based on a 2018 figure.) An interestingly similar list emerges from Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s research on welfare state regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 69–77; Dean, 2012a: 30–31; van Kersbergen, 2013). Esping-Andersen scores welfare states for corporatism (the number of large occupationally distinct public pension schemes), étatism (expenditure on pensions for government employees), means-tested poor relief, private pensions (as a proportion of total pensions), private health spending (as a proportion of the total), universalism (social security benefits available to every citizen, excluding income tested schemes), and average benefit equality (the ratio of the legal maximum benefits possible to the guaranteed minimum income). He then uses these scores to score countries for conservatism (corporatism), socialism (universalism and equality), and liberalism (private provision, with a residual, means-tested welfare state). Some clear clusters of countries emerge, and Esping-Andersen is able to categorize their welfare states as in table 6.1. The countries listed in the right hand column of table 6.1 are those which score ‘strongly’ for each of the welfare regime types. The same countries will also score ‘medium’ or ‘low’ for the other welfare regime types. Some countries do not score strongly for any particular type (Dean, 2012a: 31): for instance, the UK scores ‘low’ for conservatism (corporatism), and ‘medium’ for both liberalism and socialism.

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Even more interesting is the list that emerges from research conducted by Hofstede in International Business Machines (IBM) factories around the world (Hofstede, 1980; Brehm et al., 1999: 67). Among the countries that he studied, he found a close correlation between the country’s Power Difference Index (PDI) and the inequality index employed by the Eurostat research quoted above. The correlation coefficient is 0.85 if just one outlier, Japan, is removed. (The nearer to 1 the correlation coefficient is, the closer is the correlation) (Hofstede, 1980: 147–8). Power difference is ‘the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect that power is distributed unequally’ (Hostede, 2001: 98), and Hofstede measured it by asking IBM’s employees to answer a series of questions that would reveal their attitude to managers (Hofstede, 1997: 27). Hofstede found that ‘43 per cent of the variance in PDI can be predicted from the geographical latitude of the country’s capital alone … 51 per cent can be predicted from a combination of latitude and population size’ (Hofstede, 1980: 122). He also found that wealth was a factor, and that latitude, population size and wealth together predict 56 per cent of the variance in power difference (Hofstede, 2001: 79, 115). This suggests that how we experience ourselves in society has roots deep in history, with those roots related to the kinds of social organization required to enable a population to survive in a colder climate. A pattern has emerged: a population’s concept of itself, its income inequality, and its welfare state regime type, appear to be strongly correlated with each other. Whereas there might be mutual causality between income inequality and how we see ourselves, the structure of the welfare state is rooted in history and must be causal of income inequality and the concept that we have of ourselves rather than those being causal of the structure of the welfare state. Take the United Kingdom as an example: it is not difficult to see how a predominantly means-tested system exacerbates inequality by trapping claimants in poverty, nor is it difficult to see how means-testing can affect someone’s concept of themselves as subordinate (Torry, 2018a: 41–5; Welfare Reform Team, Oxford City Council, 2016). A more universalist welfare state is more likely to instil a sense that there is rather less power difference between members of a population (Gregory, 2018: 92). We can therefore argue that a primary cause of the various correlations that we have found are the deep social structures of our societies (Dorling, 2010; 2017: 262; Spicker, 2014: 50–57), and particularly the welfare regime type; that welfare regime types have deep historic roots; that welfare regime types influence both today’s Power Difference Index and today’s income inequalities; and that a country’s capital’s latitude and its population size might be the root cause of all of this.

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We cannot change the latitude of our country’s capital, nor its population size: but we can change the structure of the welfare state. If a liberal welfare state, characterized by widespread means-testing, moves in a more universalistic direction, then we would expect to see a positive change in the Power Difference Index and a reduction in inequality. A Basic Income would reduce means-testing, and would provide a significant financial floor on which to build, and would therefore move a liberal welfare state in a more universalist direction, would reduce income inequality, and would improve our collective and individual Power Difference Indices (Torry, 2016a: 148–53). The causal link suggested by Wilkinson and Pickett might be questionable, but their prescription of a Basic Income would be entirely appropriate (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009: 263–4).

Redistribution The amount of income redistribution taking place in society is decreasing (Corlett et al., 2018: 7), and because new taxation always meets resistance it is not entirely obvious how the trend could be reversed (Atkinson, 2015: 5–11). Those who dread a dead-level of income or wealth, which is not at the moment a very pressing danger in England, do not dread, it seems, a dead-level of law and order, and of security for life and property. (Tawney, 1964: 86)

Additional redistribution will only happen if a sufficient number of individuals want it to (George and Wilding, 1984: 117), which is a possibility, as increasing redistribution could potentially garner sufficient public approval and political support once the unfortunate effects of increasing inequality are understood (Harrop, 2012: 9). Whether a Basic Income could result in increasing redistribution would depend on the Basic Income scheme implemented. There are Basic Income schemes that would reduce redistribution: for instance, those that funded Basic Incomes by adding Value Added Tax to food and clothes: but there are also feasible schemes that would increase redistribution from rich to poor without imposing significant losses on low-income households or unsustainable losses on any households (Parker and Sutherland, 1994: 6–13; Torry, 2019a; 2022b). Poorer households exhibit a greater propensity to consume in the local economy than wealthier households, so increased redistribution along with the secure financial floor that a Basic Income would provide would contribute to

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economic growth that could benefit everyone (Ehrenfreund, 2015; Hobijn and Nussbacher, 2015; Irvin et al., 2009: 15; Van Parijs, 1990: 12). Just as we have understood poverty to be dynamic rather than static, so we can understand redistribution as the redistribution of the ability to climb out of poverty. For instance, in the UK those who earn the highest incomes pay a maximum tax rate of 47 per cent on additional income, constituted by a 45 per cent Income Tax rate and a 2 per cent National Insurance Contributions rate. For poorer households, a marginal deduction rate of 75 per cent or more, made up of Income Tax, National Insurance Contributions, and means-tested benefits withdrawal, is not uncommon, so for every additional £1 of earned income, the household increases its disposable income by only 25p. This disparity between the effective tax rates paid by the wealthy and those paid by poorer workers is unjust (Standing, 2017: 36; Torry, 2018a: 4, 11). For the marginal deduction rates to be reversed would reap additional tax revenue among households able to afford it, and would enable poorer households to escape from poverty more easily. Depending on the details of a Basic Income scheme, we might or might not see immediate redistribution from rich to poor (Torry, 2019a: 26–7; 2022b: 9, 15, 21): but whether we did or not, we could see a significant number of households escaping from means-testing, and therefore from the high marginal deduction rates, stigma, and bureaucratic intrusion associated with them (Torry, 2020a: 216–20).

Conclusions There are far too many households on means-tested benefits. The last safety net includes large population groups in many countries, consisting in some cases of more than 10% of the working-age population or more than 20% of older persons. Such high figures indicate a deliberate ‘overstretching’ of [Minimum Income Protection]’s role within social security systems … It is … questionable whether [Minimum Income Protection] can reasonably close the huge gaps in general social protection systems because it was not originally designed to handle these gaps. (Bahle et al., 2011: 233)

This is a problem because of the deleterious effects of means-tested benefits that we have encountered throughout this chapter. On the other hand,

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researchers who interviewed participants in the Finland experiment offer a useful summary of some of the effects of a Basic Income: Most participants emphasized increased economic predictability and greater degrees of freedom of action as positive aspects of the income. However, for people engaged in (some) gainful employment, the basic income also presented the opportunity to increase living standards, and thus to move from a life of plain ‘survival’ [to] somewhat closer to ‘normal’ consumption levels. (Blomberg et al., 2021: 166–7)

The outcomes of the Namibian and Indian pilot projects can only be regarded as highly positive, and in particular they have shown that unconditional incomes can incentivize economic activity rather than diminish it, and that such incomes are routinely applied to socially responsible expenditure and are not wasted in any sense (Hamilton, 2020: 55). Research by the McKinzey Global Institute has identified four ‘disruptive forces’ that between them add up to ‘no ordinary disruption’: the shifting locus of economic activity and dynamism—to emerging markets like China and to cities within those markets … the acceleration in the scope, scale, and economic impact of technology … the human population is getting older … the degree to which the world is much more connected through trade and through movements in capital, people, and information. (Dobbs et al., 2015: 4–7)

Perhaps the researchers should have added a fifth disruptive force: the effects of climate change, which can only exacerbate the disruption that our societies, employment markets and economies face. We are going to need as many stabilizing factors as we can get, and a Basic Income is an obvious, feasible and immediately implementable choice. It is becoming increasingly clear that the gains in social cohesion, lower inequality, and high trust, overcoming many of the divisions which weaken the current welfare state and political support for it, make [Basic Income] an appealing arrangement … The biggest obstacles holding back the development of the welfare state are the divisions and resentments between citizens over who is entitled to benefits, who is deserving and who is undeserving. Going back to the original impetus behind the welfare state—the creation of a democratic citizenship based on equal civil, political, and social rights—will help renew the political coalition for its preservation and extension. (Gamble, 2016: 109, 111)

In relation to a Basic Income’s ability to facilitate social cohesion, particularly important might be current research on how it would promote reconstruction, development and peace in post-disaster and post-conflict situations (Bashur, 2019; Bashur and Matzner, 2022; Molina and Ortiz-Juarez, 2020); and research in 132 countries has shown that a Basic Income implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic could have informed ‘a larger conversation about how

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to build comprehensive social protection systems that make the poor and near-poor more resilient to economic downturns in the future’ (Molina and Ortiz-Juarez, 2020: 1). A survey of many of the pilot projects and experiments explored in this chapter confirms the results of the research that we have discussed, and finds that beneficiaries have experienced ‘less stigma and shame, financial stability, societal trust and improved health and wellbeing’ (Brokken, 2019: 55). These are the social effects that we could look forward to if ever a genuine Basic Income were to be implemented. The theoretical and empirical evidence is sufficient to suggest that UBI [Universal Basic Income] might be a viable alternative, or a complement, to selective and conditional social assistance policies. UBI appears to be an especially sound approach for redistributing the gains from automation and globalization, by building an efficient and transparent buffer against global volatility and systemic risks, generating positive incentives, and avoiding recurrent risks of falling into poverty. (Colombino, 2019)

Much research has been done, but there is still much to do, for instance on societal agendas (e.g., [Basic Income’s] gendered effects, links to care work, impacts on inequalities or political participation) and international frameworks (e.g., if and how UBI feeds into the Sustainable Development Goals or climate commitments) are under-analyzed. All require stronger, contextual knowledge to inform comparative analysis and debates on trade-offs. (Crowley and Sevciuc, 2021: 8)

Future research We have studied pilot projects and a range of other experiments in order to discover the likely social effects of a Basic Income, and we have also discussed the social effects of a Basic Income that we might be able to predict on the basis of its structure. However, our societies continue to change, so the research task will never be complete, and new methods, new experiments, new logic, and generally a lot of new research, will be constantly needed. In particular, we shall need at least the following kinds of research in the future; and given that pilot projects have constituted important research in relation to both the employment market and social effects of a Basic Income, it is no surprise that this list is not dissimilar from that at the end of Chapter 4. • Robustly social scientific Basic Income pilot projects are required in a wide variety of contexts. In particular, pilot communities must be matched with control communities, and as far as possible the Basic Income scheme tested in a pilot community must be one that could be rolled out in every detail across the entire country. If possible, a variety of experiments with different feasible levels of Basic Income should be carried out in each context.

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• We are particularly in need of genuine Basic Income pilot projects in countries with more developed economies. • Whenever possible, pilot projects should be longer than two years, and wherever possible compulsory participation should be required in order to avoid selection bias in the results. • Minimum Income Guarantee experiments and Basic Income pilot projects should always be carefully distinguished from each other; research is needed on the applicability of Minimum Income Guarantee experimental results to Basic Income research; and on that basis research results relating to the social effects of the tested incomes obtained from Minimum Income Guarantee experiments should be carefully evaluated for their applicability to the Basic Income debate. • A wide variety of natural experiments should be researched to discover whether and how research into them might offer insights applicable to the Basic Income debate. • Experiments with shorter working weeks should be researched, and in particular we need research on how a feasible Basic Income scheme might facilitate or otherwise a trend towards shorter working hours. • There are now numerous Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers around the world, and they all need to be thoroughly researched to discover research results that might apply to Basic Income, and in particular to our understanding of the different effects of different Basic Income schemes. • Laboratory experiments might usefully be employed alongside pilot project and theoretical research methods. (For instance, groups of individuals in laboratory conditions provided with choices, for instance whether to accept a country’s current benefits scheme or a financially feasible Basic Income scheme instead (Delsen, 2019: 19)). • Additional natural experiments should be sought, such as the policy accident in Iran, and they should be subjected to rigorous detailed research. • Basic Income researchers could usefully collaborate with sociologists, psychologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists, and also with thinktanks and other research and advocacy organizations, particularly in relation to the social effects of a Basic Income relevant to people with disabilities, younger people, older people, and so on, and also in relation to the gender effects of different Basic Income scheme configurations. • An urgent need is increased research effort on the relationship between climate change and Basic Income. • Basic Income’s ability to promote social cohesion, peace, reconstruction and development in post-disaster and post-conflict contexts should be thoroughly researched by establishing pilot projects and studying natural experiments.

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• Where possible, the results of different research methods should be compared with each other. • Again, we need as many methods as possible. There is no hierarchy (Füllbrunn et al., 2019: 195).

7

What do people think of Basic Income?

Introduction Although policy accidents do happen, if ever a genuine Basic Income is to be implemented then political acceptability and preferably enthusiasm will have to have been achieved, which in turn requires that there will at least have to be the potential for public understanding, acceptability, and enthusiasm. Sufficient public understanding of Basic Income—of what it is, and of its likely effects—will therefore be required, and understanding among policymakers and the media will be particularly important. Also required will be research showing that a Basic Income would be feasible to implement, which means that a particular Basic Income scheme would have to pass a number of different feasibility tests. We have already discussed in Chapter 3 how we might show that a Basic Income scheme would be financially feasible in two different ways: that it would be possible to pay for the Basic Incomes, and that no significant net disposable income losses would be imposed on low-income households (Torry, 2016a: 39–84). A further feasibility that would have to be demonstrated would be administrative feasibility: that is, could a Basic Income be administered, and would it be possible to administer the transition to a Basic Income scheme. Our description of the administrative methods related to different kinds of income in Chapter 2, and a recognition of the radical simplicity of a Basic Income—the same amount to every individual of the same age every week or every month—suggest that the administrative feasibility test would be the easiest feasibility test for Basic Income to pass (Torry, 2016a: 119–39). An equally essential feasibility is what we might call psychological feasibility. A Basic Income would be psychologically feasible if the general public, journalists, and policymakers, were to understand the concept of a Basic Income and understand the advantages that a Basic Income would offer. Because politicians cannot wander too far from public opinion, it is probably true that if Basic Income is to be politically feasible and also policy process feasible— that is, it would be possible for a feasible Basic Income scheme to navigate its way through a country’s complex policy process—then it will already have to have passed the psychological feasibility test (Torry, 2016a: 87–111, 167–226). 169

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A further feasibility test is the behavioural feasibility test: that is, would a Basic Income deliver the social, economic and employment market outcomes that we might expect it to deliver? (Torry, 2016a: 143–63). This test can only be applied after a Basic Income scheme has been implemented, but that does not mean that it is pointless. If a Basic Income for a particular age cohort were to be implemented, and the implemented Basic Income scheme generated the expected effects, and therefore passed the behavioural feasibility test, that would enhance the psychological feasibility of the Basic Income to be rolled out to the next age cohort. And for a Basic Income scheme to pass a behavioural feasibility test would increase its ability to pass an ongoing psychological feasibility test which would in turn make it more likely for the scheme to survive (Chapter 4; Torry, 2021a: 245–6). It is therefore clear that the psychological feasibility of Basic Income is at least as important as its financial feasibility. This chapter will offer a brief history of opinion about Basic Income, discussion of opinion surveys, and exploration of how Basic Income has been understood in the media. Social norms are an important constituent and driver of public opinion, so relevant norms will be discussed; behavioural insights will be explored; and the ways in which minds can be changed will be studied. Finally, the chapter will ask what research is now required in this field.

History This is a chapter for which it was never going to be easy to provide a historical section, simply because opinion surveys are a relatively modern phenomenon. However, how Basic Income is framed in the media is as much the subject of this chapter as is public opinion, so there is one particular historic event that might be of particular interest. Less than thirty years after Thomas Spence’s description of a Basic Income, a discussion broke out in The Republican between its editor, Richard Carlile, and Allen Davenport, who did more than anyone else during the early part of the nineteenth century to publicize Spence’s proposal. Davenport’s argument for Basic Income was that a ‘community of property’ (Davenport, 1826: 356) would enable the State to lease out land and other capital and pay the proceeds as an equal income to every individual: The working man … would not only enjoy the whole fruits of his industry, untaxed, but an equal share, in every respect, of the elements and spontaneous productions of nature also …. (Davenport, n.d.: v, 12)

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Carlile’s first objection was that an equality of property was ‘impracticable’, whereas a tax on land might not be. Davenport’s response was that many things seem impracticable, and impossible too, until they are attempted … I contend that an equality of property in land is practicable. (Davenport, 1824: 394)

Even if we were to agree that Carlile’s proposal could be more practicable than Davenport’s, Davenport’s riposte to Carlile remains relevant to the Basic Income debate. Davenport then himself describes a further possible objection to Spence’s Basic Income: that if such a plan was to be acted upon, many of the working people, knowing that they would have something whether they were industrious or idle, would cease to labour, and the consequence would be, that the land would run to waste, and not produce enough of the necessaries of life for the general support of the population; which would produce discontent, anarchy, and every species of petty warfare …. (Davenport, 1824: 398)

He offers his own response: Those who are afraid that the people would become idle, the land cease to be cultivated, and every thing thrown into confusion, have only to look around them; let them look at the East India Company, the Banking Company, or any other Joint Stock Company, and see if they can discover any idleness, any inactivity, or any confusion among them; or whether they are not the most prosperous, the most wealthy, and the most powerful people, according to their number, of any people on the earth. (Davenport, 1824: 398–9)

The same objections to Basic Income that were made in the nineteenth century are still made today, and essentially the same responses remain relevant (Torry, 2021a: 53–6), although we might seek different examples among recent Basic Income pilot projects and other experiments in order to prove that a Basic Income of any feasible amount would enhance work incentives rather than reduce them (Torry, 2018a: 151–9). An objection heard often today is that a Basic Income would either be impossible to fund or would be too small to be worth having. The argument rather too often consists of the construction of a particular Basic Income scheme that is then shown to be infeasible: but this is always a failure of logic, because all that the objector will have shown is that their particular Basic Income scheme would be infeasible. All that is required to prove the feasibility of Basic Income is the discovery of a single Basic Income scheme that would be financially feasi-

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ble at the same time as providing a substantial secure layer of income for every individual and household (Blix, 2017: 160; Clinton et al., 1994: 39; Rothstein, 2018; Torry, 2018b). Davenport’s nineteenth century verdict on those who objected to Thomas Spence’s plan for a Basic Income might still be relevant: It is the want of reflection, and entertaining that readiness of doubt of every thing that does not spring from our own brain, that keeps us continually in the dark, and makes us cherish the very system that destroys us. (Davenport, 1824: 398)

A hundred years ago the State Bonus League encountered another objection that is still heard today: that discussion of Basic Income distracts us from studying other reform options regarded by some as both more feasible and more useful, and that to implement a Basic Income scheme would mean less money for solving social problems by reforming the existing welfare state (Gough, 2017: 185; Lawrence and Lawson, 2017: 72; Piachaud, 2016: 19). This argument is frequently made by proponents of what they see as alternative proposals, such as an increase in public services free at the point of use (a proposal often erroneously titled Universal Basic Services) (Coote and Percy, 2020; Gough, 2021). However, a Basic Income, just as much as a new ‘universal’ public service, exhibits ‘low administration costs; promotes social integration; promotes egalitarianism … reduced stigma so high take-up rates; avoids poverty trap’—and some ‘disadvantages’: ‘relatively expensive so seen by some as a drain on the economy’ (Dwyer, 2003: 10), which of course is only true of the gross cost and not necessarily of the net cost. It is true that ‘benefits go to those who do not need them’ (Dwyer, 2003: 10), but that is hardly a problem if they pay more additional tax than they receive in their Basic Income. An objection that applies to public services that would not be true of a Basic Income is that they are ‘not used equally by all—better-off make much greater use of health and educational services’ (Dwyer, 2003: 10). As the Milners pointed out, their State Bonus scheme was ‘not antagonistic to other methods of reform’ (Milner and Milner, 1918: 6), and it was ‘not an alternative, but [was] an additional method of tackling a small part of all these problems’ (Milner and Milner, 1920: 11): an argument that has been recognized as legitimate by some proponents of additional free public services (Percy, 2019: 222).

The state of research Opinion surveys Both referenda and opinion surveys are significant because they can tell us something about what people think about a policy proposal, and their results

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can influence political decision-making. However, what people choose to say about Basic Income to a researcher cannot always be assumed to reflect what they might have said if they had been provided with a comprehensive education in the desirability and feasibility of Basic Income; and what people say will always be influenced by a wide variety of factors with little to do with the questions asked (Delsen, 2019: 17). In 2015, a survey undertaken in the UK asked whether respondents would support the introduction of the Basic Income scheme described by the Green Party in its General Election manifesto. The scheme, which aimed to abolish existing means-tested benefits, had been criticized in the press and elsewhere for being liable to increase poverty among low-income households, but even so, 36 per cent of respondents said that they supported the proposal against 40 per cent who were opposed, with 50 per cent supportive and 31 per cent opposed in the 25 to 34 age bracket (ComRes, 2015). In six European countries, opinion polls held during 2017 showed that both understanding and approval of Basic Income were increasing, and were already at high levels, with 63 per cent of polled individuals being familiar with the idea of a Basic Income (up 5 percentage points on the previous year), and 68 per cent of the sample saying that they would vote for it in a referendum (up 4 percentage points on the previous year, with growth fastest in the United Kingdom at 7 percentage points). Fifty-two per cent of respondents thought that Basic Income would help to alleviate financial insecurity, and the same proportion thought that it might encourage people to stop working, while 37 per cent stated that it would not affect their own employment choices. Only 8 per cent said that they would work less (Dalia Research, 2017; Delsen and Schilpzand, 2019: 57). So perhaps a Basic Income does not need to be rolled out gradually after all, and implementing an unconditional income for every legally resident individual might not be as difficult as we might have thought. However, although a UK survey and another European opinion survey, both also held during 2017, showed that public support for Basic Income was at 50 per cent, when it was pointed out that taxes would have to rise to pay for the Basic Incomes, interest in the idea fell (Fitzgerald, 2017; Ipsos MORI, 2017; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 172–4; Young, 2018: 3): although a different picture has emerged in the Republic of Korea, where more than half of a 2021 opinion poll respondents were happy to pay additional taxes to fund the Basic Income (Gyeonggi Research Institute, 2021: 18). It is no surprise that how a Basic Income would be funded is as important to members of the public as the Basic Income itself, and that responses are context-specific.

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A survey of opinion polls has revealed that individuals who experience employment market insecurity are more likely to support Basic Income than those with more employment market security, and that social norms (discussed below) are also a significant factor, with individuals for whom individual deservingness is a significant value being less keen on Basic Income that those who blame societal factors for the situations in which individuals find themselves (Lee, 2018; Simanainen and Kangas, 2021: 145). None of this is a surprise. In connection with the Finnish pilot project (Chapters 4 and 6), an opinion survey delivered similar results, and also found that supporters of political parties that promote basic income seem to report higher levels of financial difficulties and insecurity in the labour market compared to the supporters of other parties. (Kangas et al., 2020: 190)

A significant reason for neither politicians nor general publics in Scandinavian countries showing much interest in Basic Income would appear to be that their current social insurance systems and public services have proved effective and are therefore popular, and a Basic Income can easily be spun to represent an attack on the existing schemes (Shin et al., 2021: 323; Torry, 2021a: 181–2). A further factor is that an obligation to work, by which is meant paid employment, is both felt and expected. The process is at least partially circular: a popular and effective social safety net requires workers to work hard to pay the taxes required to sustain it, and the strength of public services, such as accessible childcare and the social insurance system, motivate and make possible a high level of engagement with the employment market (Andersson, 2000: 224–7, 233–4). The fact that a Basic Income would complement and strengthen the existing safety net is not as easy to understand as a claim that it might replace a valued system. The only Scandinavian country to have experienced sustained debate as well as an experiment is Finland, perhaps because it has experienced rather more economic and social disruptions than other Scandinavian countries (Torry, 2021a: 183–5). Recent research from Spain provides the kind of deeper analysis of opinion survey results that will be particularly useful for the Basic Income debate: The results show that the universality of [Basic Income], i.e., the fact that it is given to everyone, is what generates opposition. On the other hand, its unconditionality or the idea that it does not attach any conditions to recipients, is not particularly unpopular. However, the results also reveal that progressive funding mechanisms and restricting eligibility criteria to citizens only, can boost approval for this policy. (Rincón, 2021)

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Given the importance of parliaments in the policy process, particularly useful might be surveys of members of parliament. A significant example took place at the end of the 1990s when researchers interviewed twelve UK Members of Parliament, ten Irish Teachtaí Dála (members of the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish Parliament), and four others involved in the Republic of Ireland’s policymaking partnership, in order to understand the extent to which current tax and benefit changes in the two countries might be ‘stumbling towards Basic Income’ (Jordan et al., 2000), particularly in relation to the possibility of the UK’s Income Tax Personal Allowance rising to the same monetary value as means-tested benefits, which would provide the opportunity to turn both into a Basic Income (Jordan et al., 2000: 8; Torry, 2022b). The researchers conclude by arguing that the internal logic of the reform path chosen by the [UK’s] New Labour government … leads towards a Participation Income, and we set out the possible sequence of adaptations that could lead (circuitously) to a [Basic Income] … We drew on the interviews with Westminster MPs in identifying the political forces driving the sequence of stages in this process. Of course there are other paths that tax-benefit reform might take, some of which lead towards [a Basic Income]. (Jordan et al., 2000: 126)

As the researchers admit: ‘we have said little about the important issues of administrative simplicity …’ (Jordan et al., 2000: 89): a rather significant omission in relation to their mention of a Participation Income (Chapter 2). In 2004 the Citizen’s Income Trust surveyed members of the UK’s elected legislating parliament, the House of Commons, and in 2007 a survey of the appointed revising chamber, the House of Lords, was carried out. For the House of Commons, seventy-one completed questionnaires and eleven letters were returned. The level of support for a Citizen’s Income [Basic Income] was considerable. Forty-one respondents were in favour, and only eleven against; and of particular interest … was the level of support for a Royal Commission: forty-six in favour, and only sixteen against. (Citizen’s Income Trust, 2007)

For the House of Lords, one hundred and thirty-four responses [were received]. Again the level of support for a Citizen’s Income has been considerable: seventy-three respondents were in favour and only fourteen against. And this time support for a Royal Commission on income maintenance was even higher: eighty-three in favour and only twenty-seven against. (Citizen’s Income Trust, 2007)

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These are significant results, to which we shall return in the conclusions of this section of the chapter. In Chapter 2 we have discussed the complexity of administering a Negative Income Tax: a factor of which a Japanese public opinion survey took no account when it asked people whether they would prefer a Basic Income or a Negative Income Tax. More people wanted to see a Negative Income Tax implemented than wanted to see a Basic Income (Takamatsu and Tachibanaki, 2014: 205): but if information on the administrative complexities of a Negative Income Tax had been conveyed before the survey questions had been asked then the outcome might have been different. An additional problem with that particular survey is that questions about Negative Income Tax were only put to people in employment (Takamatsu and Tachibanaki, 2014: 201), whereas questions about Basic Income were put to members of the public regardless of their employment status. It is difficult to see how a legitimate comparison can be made between the two sets of figures. An earlier example of a research project being hampered by a lack of public understanding of tax and benefits systems—but this time one in which the problem was understood—was a series of focus groups conducted in 1990 in different parts of the country in order to understand how the British public might evaluate a proposal to implement a Basic Income. Group members were selected and distributed into groups so that the sample as a whole represented as closely as possible the UK’s population at the same time as each group sharing a particular characteristic. Each group was given the same information and asked the same questions. The researchers’ conclusions are informative. In relation to questions designed to elicit group members’ understandings of the current system, the research showed that few respondents had a clear understanding of the current UK system of pensions and benefits … Respondents believed that there must be a better system, but felt the whole subject was too large for them to be able to offer suggestions as to how to improve it. Importantly, there was little evidence that people drawn from particular socio-economic groups were more knowledgeable than others. The lack of knowledge about the current system of pensions and benefits was a general problem that ran across all the groups included in the research. (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 13–14)

And in relation to questions designed to elicit group members’ opinions about Basic Income, ‘the concept was new to all the respondents taking part in the

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group discussions’ (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 15), which would probably not now be the case. The concept was not always fully understood … The most prominent immediate reaction when the concept was first introduced was to query the funding …A second concern raised … was that such a system might discourage people from working … Respondents also admitted to being confused about what was actually being suggested. However, in the group composed of women, the immediate reaction was that such a system might well be simpler than the current arrangements, and that it would also be fairer … Concerns were expressed about respondents’ personal position, with many fearing they would be worse off under such a system … Some respondents believed that a system of Partial Basic Income would not be very different to the system currently in place, while any advantage of simplicity the full Basic Income system might have enjoyed would be lost … It was possible to identify a more positive view towards the concept among women, but looking across the other groups taking part in the research there was no clear cut pattern, even among potential gainers from the new system. (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 15, 27–8)

The researchers comment that One particular problem centres on communicating the concept with adequate supporting evidence on funding, while at the same time not overcomplicating the issue for those new to the notion with too many facts and figures … It is doubtful whether the most careful explanation of the concept would change many opinions … certain respondents objected to the concept of Basic Income on ideological grounds, claiming that nobody is entitled to something for nothing. (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 29–30, 32)

A particularly interesting finding is that many respondents believed that a substantial barrier to the implementation of such a system would be the lack of a major political champion, in terms of one of the two main political parties. (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 32). Leading up to the UK’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union, the ‘leave’ campaign benefited from some highly persuasive political champions, whereas the ‘remain’ campaign did not. The UK has left the European Union. Few people are able to understand the complexities of the tax and benefits system of a country with a more developed economy, so it is difficult to see how most people would be able to respond in a well-informed manner to focus

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group or opinion survey questions about any alternative income maintenance mechanism: a point made by DVLSmith & Associates: We would not recommend widespread opinion polling to produce percentages in favour of, or against, the concept. We believe that this type of research would be inappropriate at this stage because of the low levels of awareness of the concept: such research would not give a true reading of attitudes towards the potential of the concept, it would simply play back the fact that there is currently much confusion about the proposals. (DVLSmith & Associates, 1991: 37)

There is clearly more understanding of Basic Income now than there was then, but although the concept of a Basic Income might now be understood, there is still likely to be little understanding of the funding options and likely employment, economic, and social effects related to different Basic Income schemes. A significant educational project is still required. The Swiss referendums Although we might be tempted to discuss referenda separately from opinion surveys, might it be better to regard them as variants of the same thing? An organization to research and promote debate about Basic Income in Switzerland had been established in 2001, and Switzerland had hosted the 2002 BIEN congress, but in 2006 Enno Schmidt, an artist, and Daniel Häni, a coffee shop entrepreneur, started something rather different: a highly visual campaign, with a website (Initiative Grundeinkommen, 2020), a full-length film—‘an income is like the wind beneath your wings’ (Schmidt and Häni, 2008); a world record breaking massive poster (Initiative Grundeinkommen, 2016), and a lorry-full of coins tipped out in front of the parliament building to represent a financial floor for Swiss society (BBC, 2013). In 2012 Christian Müller and Daniel Straub suggested that a Federal Popular Initiative should be attempted. If 100,000 Swiss citizens’ signatures can be collected on a petition during a period of eighteen months, then the Swiss Federal Government has to hold a referendum and then take notice of the result. The text of the initiative ran as follows: Federal Popular Initiative ‘For an unconditional basic income’: The Federal Constitution of 18 April 1999 is amended as follows: Art. 110a (new) unconditional basic income 1) The Confederation shall ensure the introduction of an unconditional basic income. 2) The basic income should enable the entire population to live in dignity and participate in public life.

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3) The law regulates in particular the financing and the amount of the basic income. (Schmidt, 2019: 429)

The petition target was reached, and in 2016 a referendum was held. The Federal Council, Switzerland’s governing body, recommended that parliament and the Swiss population should oppose the Initiative. They did. Of those who voted, only 23.1 per cent voted for the proposition. It is unfortunate that even though the proposition had been clear that the amount of the Basic Income would be decided by the Swiss Government, in 2012 Müller and Straub had suggested an illustrative Basic Income scheme that would have given 2,500 Swiss Francs per month to every adult (Müller and Straub, 2012: 47, 56–65): equivalent to £1,765 per month (Agence France-Presse, 2016). This figure enabled those opposed to the proposition to declare it infeasible. A Basic Income of 2,500 Swiss Francs per month for every adult probably would have been infeasible. (The €1,000 per month suggested by Werner and Goehler (2010) for Germany, which would have constituted about half of the amount suggested by Müller and Straub, would have been a more realistic suggestion.) However, that does not mean that either Basic Income or the proposition were infeasible. They were not. This was a case of the rather too common problem of a particular infeasible Basic Income scheme being employed to argue that Basic Income is not feasible (Chapters 2 and 8): a clear and perhaps purposeful failure of logic. In 2010 Basic Income Earth Network—Switzerland / BIEN-CH (Dommen-Meade, 2010) had published costings of feasible Basic Income schemes, and following the referendum a further costings exercise confirmed that a smaller Basic Income would be financially feasible in Switzerland (Jörimann, 2017). These careful feasibility studies received rather less publicity than the unfortunate Müller/Straub proposal. While the referendum failed, it put Basic Income on the Swiss political map (Liu, 2020: 236–7), so that following the referendum 69 per cent of the Swiss population expected a second referendum on Basic Income to be held. Press interest in the vote contributed to a heightened level of discussion about Basic Income throughout Europe and beyond (Schmidt, 2019: 430), and no doubt contributed to the now permanent global interest in the idea. We might legitimately regard a referendum as an extreme case of an opinion poll, and perhaps also as suffering from an extreme case of the problems that can afflict such polls. In the case of the Swiss Basic Income referendum, and also in relation to a rather different referendum, also in 2016, that resulted in the UK leaving the European Union, simple questions were asked about

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complex issues, and politicians and journalists misrepresented the facts. While a Basic Income is a simple concept, the level at which it should be set, how it could be funded, and the ways in which it would interact with existing tax and benefit systems, the employment market, and so on, are extremely complicated. Similarly, while the UK’s 2016 referendum offered a simple choice, ‘leave’ or ‘remain’, multiple issues relating to a country’s membership of the EU are highly complex, and the important reasons for countries pooling their sovereignty were not easily understood. In both cases it was easy for politicians and various media to sway public opinion by employing misleading or erroneous slogans that played into existing prejudices. Social norms An important factor in relation to whether Basic Income is or is not understood to be desirable is social norms, sometimes termed the moral economy or understood as hegemonic moral discourses perpetrated by groups with the motivation and power to do so (Gramsci, 1971: 145, 373, 507; Rowlingson, 2019; Torry, 2016a: 88–90). Social norms are powerful things, even within small groups, as some college students found during an experiment in which they were allocated the roles of prisoners and guards and began to behave in very different ways. Not only do ‘social systems exert profound influences on our thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behavior’ (Smith, 1993: 570), but in a situation of uncertainty our behaviour will conform to the emerging norms of a group and will further embed those norms (Haslam and Reicher, 2012; Zimbardo, 1972). Social norms in a small group can evaporate as soon as the group is disbanded, but social norms prevalent in a society can become very deeply embedded. They are culturally transmitted through such ‘reference groups’ as families, colleagues, and so on, and we conform to them and perpetuate them because they enable us to navigate a complex world (Newcomb, 1963; Sherif, 1935: 53; Staerklé et al., 2012: 81–3). The reciprocity norm is a shared conviction that reciprocation is required. Reciprocity can be either ‘ante’: that is, we have to contribute something before we can receive something from society, or ‘post’: we might reciprocate after we have received; and it can be ‘required’ or ‘expected’, which means that there are four kinds of reciprocity: ante/required, ante/expected, post/expected, and post/required. The reciprocity norm most commonly understood in relation to means-tested and work-tested benefits is of the ante/required kind. A full discussion of the relationship between Basic Income and the social norm of reciprocity can be found in Chapter 8 on justifications for Basic Income because reciprocity is an ideological commitment: but it is also a social norm that can determine how people might view Basic Income, so the section on

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reciprocity could have been in this chapter instead. What has to be in this chapter is a discussion of how people perceive themselves to be taxpayers or benefits recipients. Benefits recipients will occupy roles that other benefits recipients occupy, and they will share that group’s norms and resulting behaviours. Similarly, taxpayers will behave like taxpayers, and people who are both taxpayers and benefits recipients will conform to two sets of norms that they will sometimes find to be inconsistent, which means that they will fulfil roles that will often conflict with each other. However prevalent they might be, social norms are socially constructed, which means that they will be found to different degrees in different sections of society, and also that they can be contested. To argue for a Basic Income would be to contest the social norm of ‘benefits recipient’, because an unconditional income fails to divide society into opposing groups. To take a similar example: The unconditionality of a free at the point of need National Health Service like the UK’s means that the only behavioural norm is turning up, using it, and not paying when we do, so there can be no distinct social groups with distinctive norms and roles in relation to it (Torry, 2016a: 130–31; 2018d; 2018e). The same is true of the UK’s Child Benefit, which is now subject to a significantly unjust tax charge implemented following a Conservative Party proposal in 2010. (The additional tax has to be paid by a household with a single worker earning over £50,000 per annum, but not by one in which two workers earn £49,999 each (Byrne and Ruane, 2017: 126).) The tax charge has somewhat complicated attitudes both to Child Benefit and to the social norms relating to it. Mothers living with high-earning men who are not the fathers of their children are tending to withdraw their Child Benefit claims, in the process creating a new social norm. (The author bases this knowledge on families that he has known. He is not aware of any research on the issue.) (Torry, 2020a: 108–9). This discussion of social norms is particularly important because the most common objections to Basic Income are based on them. For instance, a long history of means-tested and social insurance benefits has left us with two social norms in our minds: To reduce poverty we need to give money to the poor; and if you give money to the poor then they might not seek paid employment. To respond that it is more efficient to give money to everyone and then to tax the rich (Torry, 2018a: 175), and that both logic and the evidence show that a secure financial platform is more likely to increase employment incentives than to reduce them (Torry, 2018a: 151–9), might have little effect because the ‘give money to the poor’ and ‘they might not work’ presuppositions are so deeply embedded. We might attempt to circumvent the objections by asking people to consider the situation in which we had a Basic Income, and to decide whether they would like to have it replaced by a means-tested benefit.

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We might find that they would. A further strategy might be to ask people to replace questions that set out from the current situation with questions related to a situation in which we had a Basic Income: so instead of asking ‘Does it give more to the poor than to the rich?’, which a Basic Income would not and a means-tested benefit would, we might suggest asking ‘Does it encourage people to look for paid employment?’ and then point out that a Basic Income would not be withdrawn as earned income rose but a means-tested benefit would be. However, if, contrary to the evidence, people already believed that giving people money unconditionally would reduce employment incentives, then they would still vote for means-testing (Torry, 2013: 9–12, 149–60). The crucial question therefore becomes: Is it possible for sufficient numbers of people to be persuaded that, in the context of a progressive tax system, a universal and unconditional benefit is a more constructive way of targeting money on the poor than means-testing could ever be; that in general universal services remain more effective for the poor than services targeted at the poor (Mackenzie et al., 2018); and that unconditional benefits make people more likely to work, and not less? A response to that question on the basis of Serge Moscovici’s research will be found near to the end of this chapter. What might be worth saying here is that governments do not always wait for public opinion to arrive at majority approval before implementing a policy proposal. What matters is the direction of travel. Governments around the world might sometimes have been ahead of public opinion when they legislated for same sex marriage, but they were not ahead of where public opinion was heading. Where societies already experience unconditional benefits—as in the UK, with Child Benefit and the National Health Service—there might already be a silent majority in favour of unconditional benefits, so to implement a Basic Income, perhaps for young adults (Martinelli and Pearce, 2019: 273; Torry, 2016a: 131–2; 2019a: 10, 13, 15), might propel public opinion even faster in a direction in which it is already going. The silent majority will have become conscious of their approval of unconditional provision and might become vocal about it; and the minority willing and able to express the advantages of Basic Income will have converted the rest of society of their view (Torry, 2014; 2016a: 87–117; 2020a: 159–61). There is a precedent in the UK. It was a slow and somewhat fraught process, but during the 1970s Child Tax Allowances were abolished and Family Allowance for the second and subsequent children in every family became Child Benefit: an unconditional benefit for every child. A tax allowance had been abolished in order to extend an unconditional benefit. The change was achieved with almost no public opposition (Torry, 2013: 22–5). There is no reason for thinking that a tax allowance could not be turned into an uncondi-

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tional cash payment for every individual, particularly if the first age group to experience the change were to be an age group considered by the public to be ‘deserving’ rather than one harbouring ‘undeserving’ individuals. We have employed ‘social norm’ terminology in this section because it signifies the diversity of such norms rather better than ‘hegemonic discourse’ terminology does: but one important reason for employing ‘hegemonic discourse’ would be that it emphasizes the fact that there might be a single overarching discourse within which norms evolve. In today’s society, that discourse might be termed ‘neoliberalism’: a discourse that ‘reproduces and transforms society in an antagonistic interplay with other discourses’ (Christensen, 2008: 8). This understanding reveals Basic Income to be a ‘heretical discourse’, particularly in relation to the now prevalent ‘activation’ employment market discourse (Christensen, 2008: 11–12). To be heretical is a good position for Basic Income to be in, because to be neither within the current hegemonic discourse, nor totally divorced from it, means that it has the potential to transform the current hegemonic discourse (Christensen, 2008: 17). The deserving and the undeserving There is no ‘them and us’, because all of us contribute to society, and all of us receive from it. On the whole, we receive when we are young and when we are old, and we give during the years in between. The idea that there is a clear division between families that receive from the State, and others that pay for it, is a myth, even in the UK: but it is persistent (Blomberg et al., 2012: 75–7; Hills, 2014; McKenzie, 2015: 13; Pellissery et al., 2014: 183–4; Staerklé et al., 2012: 86; Svallfors, 2012: 222–6; van Oorschot et al., 2017; Walker and Chase, 2014: 152), and the mythical nature of the division does not stop various media from publicising individual abuses of social security benefits as if they were the behaviour of claimants generally. There are very few people who would choose to remain on means-tested benefits for any longer than necessary (Shildrick et al., 2012: 221–3), but rarely do media channels suggest that inequality, insecure employment, and low pay, are the main causes of poverty rather than personal moral failings; nor that inefficiency, errors, and disincentives are bigger problems than fraud, idleness, and the criminality generated by benefits system rules, all of which are so easily employed to attack the benefits system as a whole and benefits claimants in general (Baillie, 2011; Golding and Middleton, 1982: 129; Jordan et al., 1992: 277). It is particularly unfortunate that politicians as well as the media have framed poorer individuals as ‘scroungers’ (Morrison, 2019) and have perpetuated the ‘deserving/undeserving’ myth in terms of ‘strivers’ and ‘skivers’ (Golding and Middleton, 1982: 67, 75, 129; Mau, 2003: 127; Morrison, 2019: 179–213; van Oorschot and Meuleman, 2012: 51–3), possibly

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as a means of diverting attention from the real causes of poverty and inequality in the policies that they have implemented (Dwyer, 2019: 4, 177; O’Hara, 2014: 252). It is even more unfortunate that those most likely to buy into the deserving/undeserving myth are those in the most precarious economic situations (Golding and Middleton, 1982: 168, 181) whose counterproductive espousal of ‘them and us’ is unfortunately no surprise, as Runciman has shown that it is the inequalities closest to our own situations that we feel most keenly (Runciman, 1966). One of the psychological mechanisms that enables so many people to believe that there is a clear deserving/undeserving divide is ‘confirmation bias’, or the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’: our tendency to choose and interpret evidence in such a way that it confirms what we have already been told (Darley and Gross, 1983; Murdock-Perriera and Sedlacek, 2018). Means-tested benefits claims often follow difficult times in people’s lives—unemployment, disability, illness, family break-up, and so on—that have already left them feeling vulnerable, and the process of claiming is degrading and stigmatizing, so it can be easy to believe that you are undeserving and a member of a class apart from the rest of society. The constant ‘skivers’ messaging embeds that conviction, and the deserving/undeserving myth is then internalized and causes further psychological damage (Dean, 2012a: 104–6; Walker and Chase, 2014). Factors underlying the demotivation experienced by many people who receive means-tested benefits are inequality, inadequate or absent parents, skills deficits, the loss of traditional industries, debilitating benefits sanctions, and so on—but the message that demotivation is a personal moral failure is easy to believe. This is an example of the ‘fundamental attribution error’, now often called ‘correspondence bias’ (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014: 93; Smith, 1993: 60, 609; Weiner, 1992: 232–6). Because the deserving/undeserving divide is so deeply embedded in our social psychology (Meuleman et al., 2017: 341), and the related reciprocity norm (Chapter 8) is generally understood as ante/ required—that is, conditions must be fulfilled before a payment can be made; and because such attitudes can be found right across the social class spectrum (Coughlin, 1980: 123–4), they will be difficult to dislodge (Taylor-Gooby and Leruth, 2018): and although opinion polls might tell us that people think that Basic Income is a good idea, once the results are interrogated a little more closely we find enthusiasm diminishing once the reciprocity implications become clear (Chrisp and Martinelli, 2019; European Social Survey, 2017; van Oorschot et al., 2022: 207). An important connection between the reciprocity norm and the deserving/ undeserving divide is that we do not expect the reciprocity norm to apply to

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those deemed ‘deserving’, by which is generally meant children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. ‘The deserving’ are understood to be ‘personally responsible … people with greater need … closer to “us” … likeable, grateful, compliant and conforming to our standards … who have contributed … or who may be expected to be able to contribute in future’ (van Oorschot, 2006: 26; cf. Larsen, 2006: 47–8); and we might also count as deserving those who live in the place that we count as home, whether that be a town or a country: which suggests that a European level Basic Income might be difficult to establish even if the legal and political difficulties could be overcome (Berg, 2007: 100–6, 126–7; Levy et al., 2013; McKnight et al., 2016: 67–8, 80; Torry, 2013: 61–3; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 230–41). The deserving/undeserving divide and normal deservingness criteria mean that unemployed working age adults are not ‘deserving’ unless they fulfil some fairly rigorous conditions, or unless they are older, disabled, or looking after young children (Saunders and Pinyopusarek, 2001: 161). An obvious implication is that the implementation of a Basic Income might have to begin with such ‘deserving’ demographic groups as older people and children, and perhaps also with individuals between the ages of 16 and 21 whom we expect to be in education or training (van Oorschot and Meuleman, 2012: 51). An important symptom of a general trend towards greater conditionality is that the UK’s Child Benefit, although still unconditional, was threatened with means-testing by the Conservative Government in 2010. Such a means test would have been impossible to administer, so a tax charge on high earners living in households receiving Child Benefit was implemented instead (Coughlin, 1980: 124; Torry, 2018a: 19–20). Although Child Benefit is intended for children, it is paid to households that might contain ‘undeserving’ unemployed working age adults, and it also compromises the wealthy’s self-concept as deserving of the entirety of their income and wealth. We might therefore find that increasing Child Benefit might be more difficult to achieve than we might have thought. Similarly, we might find that elderly people and young adults are no longer as ‘deserving’ as they once were, although it might still be worth attempting initial Basic Incomes for those demographic groups: that is, a genuine Citizen’s Pension—an unconditional pension for every older person—and a Basic Income for individuals between their sixteenth and twenty-first birthdays, or perhaps between their eighteenth and twenty-fifth birthdays. Because young adults are not already enmeshed in the existing tax and benefits system, in the UK they could be charged Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions on all of their earnings, and paid a Basic Income of the same value as the Income Tax Personal Allowance and the National

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Insurance Contributions Primary Earnings Threshold. The net cost would be minimal (Torry, 2016d; 2019a: 14–16). The language that we use for social policies—for instance, ‘welfare state’, ‘social security’, and so on—‘is an integral part of the political processes that make and remake social programmes’ (Petersen and Béland, 2014: 305), so understanding the language used is an essential element in any understanding of current and potential future policy change. How policy change is framed will affect both policymaker and public attitudes (6, 2018), so framing policy in terms of such widely held attitudes as ‘them and us’ and ‘deserving and undeserving’ can increase the public acceptability of policy and embed the social norms even more firmly in the public psyche (Botterill and Fenna, 2019: 151). An important characteristic of Basic Income is that there are many ways of framing it—as redistribution, incentivization, security, and so on (Perkiö, 2012)—but it would be impossible to frame it in terms of ‘them and us’ or ‘deserving and undeserving’. Two consequences follow: it might be difficult to implement it; and if it were to be implemented then it would begin to dissolve the ‘them and us’ and ‘deserving/undeserving’ social norms. This suggests that if a Basic Income were to be implemented for one age cohort, then it might become more possible to implement Basic Incomes for currently ‘undeserving’ groups. Not only might implementation of Basic Incomes reduce the saliency of ‘them and us’ and ‘deserving and undeserving’, but it might also embed the existing ‘unconditional’ social norm that occasionally emerges from its submersion beneath other norms, as it did when the UK’s National Health Service was founded after the Second World War (Torry, 2016a: 130–31; 2018b). A general lesson to draw is that we are more likely to see a Basic Income implemented if it can be framed in terms of current social norms: hence Rutger Bregman’s suggestion that in Nordic countries to frame it as ‘venture capital for the people’ (Bregman, 2018) might be helpful. As we would expect, Basic Income is framed differently in different media and in relation to the different attitudes that authors might wish their readers to take to the idea (Drew and Fahey, 2018; Legein et al., 2018; Perkiö et al., 2019; Tiffen, 2018); and it is also no surprise that how Basic Income is framed in opinion polls can make a difference to how people respond to it (Chrisp, 2018; Pulkka, 2018; Rincón, 2018). This suggests that if a Basic Income scheme is to navigate its way through a country’s complex policy process, then choosing the right terminology might be essential. For instance, if policymakers have experienced the term ‘Basic Income’ in relation to infeasible Basic Income schemes, then framing Basic Income as a ‘Weekly National Allowance’, a ‘Fair Allowance’, or ‘an individual credit’, might be helpful (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b; Harrop, 2016: 139–45; Pollard et al., 2022; Stirling and Arnold, 2019). What is required is

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a narrative acceptable to public opinion so that once a Basic Income has been implemented, such social norms as ‘them and us’ and ‘deserving/undeserving’ will be dissolved by experience of the unconditional and therefore universal incomes (Botterill and Fenna, 2019: 151; Lejano et al., 2018; Torry, 2020a: 108–13). Behavioural insights The research to be discussed in this section of the chapter is often called ‘behavioural economics’, so perhaps it should be in Chapter 5 on economics; much of it relates to the employment market, so maybe Chapter 4 would have been more appropriate; or perhaps it is more about how society behaves, so Chapter 6 could have been a relevant location (Egan, 2017: 58–61). However, at the heart of behavioural economics is the question ‘How is our behaviour changed by the way in which something is presented to us?’, suggesting that a chapter about how people understand Basic Income might be the best place for what might be better termed ‘behavioural insights’. Our decisions are at least to some extent determined by the way in which choices are presented to us. A clear example is sweets in supermarkets. We might not have them on our shopping lists, so if the shop locates them in one of the aisles then we might not buy them. However, if they are in a rack by the checkout, then as we stand in the queue we cannot help looking at them, we find that we want to eat them, and we put them in the basket and pay for them. On the other hand, a supermarket might wish to profit from behaviour change that would improve its customers’ health, and so might place fruit by the checkout with accompanying labels stating that eating it would contribute to the ‘five a day’ that we need. A social norm might be further embedded by this nudge, and the customer might buy some fruit, benefiting both themselves and the supermarket (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018c; John, 2018a; White, 2016). Similarly, governments might decide that a policy would be good for society, and if the implementation of the policy requires individuals to change their behaviour, then rather than mandating new behaviour, which might meet resistance, a government might nudge individuals towards the required behaviour change. For instance: instead of telling people to keep their doctors’ appointments, adverts might state that more money would be available to the National Health Service if everyone kept their appointments; and rather than telling people to pay their taxes on time, adverts might explain that nine out of ten people have already paid their taxes. In order to encourage workers to contribute to private pensions, the UK Government has changed the ‘choice architecture’ from ‘opt-in’ to ‘opt-out’: that is, every new employee is automatically enrolled in a pension scheme but has the option to opt out if they wish.

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Inertia means that more people end up paying contributions than would be the case if workers had to opt in to a pension scheme. A clear case of how an issue is framed can partly determine how someone might react to it is that someone is more likely to agree to a medical operation if they are told that 90 per cent of people survive than if they are told that 10 per cent of people die (Thaler and Sustein, 2009: 37). Framing works because people tend to be somewhat mindless, passive decision makers. Their Reflective System [as opposed to their Automatic System] does not do the work that would be required to check and see whether reframing the question would produce a different answer. One reason they don’t do this is that they wouldn’t know what to make of the contradiction. This implies that frames are powerful nudges, and must be selected with caution. (Thaler and Sustein, 2009: 40)

While this insight is non-controversial, the active employment of nudges that are not explained to the nudged, and particularly those that might benefit the agenda of the nudger rather than that of the nudged, is perhaps legitimately accused of being a ‘new paternalism’ (Abdukadirov, 2016; Rizzo, 2016). Further legitimate questions might be that government employment of nudges might divert attention from evidence-based social policy and legislation (Egan, 2017: 44–7, 65; Thierer, 2016); that governments might not be aware of the ways in which they are being nudged, most notably by media owners and wealthy donors with ideological agendas (Williams, 2016: 326); and that it is less easy to hold surreptitiously nudging governments to account than those that issue mandatory legislation and regulations (Smith and Zywicki, 2016: 245; Thaler, 2015: 50). A particularly relevant behavioural economics finding is the ‘endowment effect’: that the loss of something already possessed is felt more keenly than a gain of the same value (Thaler, 2015: 33–4; Thaler and Sustein, 2009: 36–7). So, for instance, a loss of income from benefits withdrawal is felt more keenly than the additional taxation of earnings, even if the monetary values are the same, because the loss of benefits will be experienced as a net loss whereas the additional earnings less the additional tax will be experienced as a net gain (Avram, 2015). The problem that this poses is that while a new Basic Income would be experienced as a gain, if it were to be paid for by an increase in taxation then the loss of net earned income would be experienced more keenly than the new Basic Income even if they were both of the same monetary value. On the other hand, a further finding is that a certainty of not losing something is preferable to uncertain gain or loss, so a new Basic Income, which by definition could not be lost, would be preferable to uncertain amounts of means-tested benefits or uncertain tax deductions. A third relevant research result is that small gains that have no noticeable effect on our wellbeing have

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little impact on us, whereas larger gains that increase our wellbeing do. This suggests that the small net household disposable income gains that occur when earned income rises in the context of means-tested benefits will have little effect on our wellbeing, whereas larger gains resulting from the lower marginal deduction rates experienced by households no longer on means-tested benefits would act as motivators (Thaler, 2015: 20–30, 33). Which of these three factors might predominate could determine whether or not the public might find Basic Income to be acceptable (Thaler, 2015: 33–4). A particularly interesting result is that we are not always consistent: so, for instance, an individual might approve of a Basic Income funded by a higher rate of income tax, and also of means-tested benefits along with lower rates of income tax (Thaler, 2015: 47–9). This is fortunate, because any feasible Basic Income might have to be funded initially from within the current tax and benefits system, in which case existing means-tested benefits might have to be retained for those households that would still need them. We might have some concerns about the ways in which behavioural economics findings might be employed, but some of the theories and research results that we have discussed might prove to be useful as we study how people might receive the idea of a Basic Income (Torry, 2020a: 100–103). Media framing of Basic Income What various media think of Basic Income can have significant effects on the debate. For instance, before 2014 it had been many years since there had been any discussion of Basic Income in the mainstream press. In 2013 the Policy Press published this author’s Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income (Torry, 2013): the first general introduction to Basic Income for more than ten years. Larry Elliott, a journalist, read the book and wrote an article about Basic Income in The Guardian newspaper (Elliott, 2014). Thinktanks began to take an interest: first the Royal Society of Arts (Painter and Thoung, 2015), and then the Adam Smith Institute (Story, 2015) and the more left-wing Compass (Lansley and Reed, 2019; Reed and Lansley, 2016). Further press articles followed. Additional factors relating to the increasing interest in Basic Income following 2013 were clearly the Swiss Referendum in 2016 (Schmidt, 2019) and the Finnish experiment in 2017 and 2018 (De Wispelaere et al., 2019); and the Namibian and Indian pilot projects might have been factors as well (Chapters 4 and 6; Sloman, 2019: 225, 237). A longer-term factor is almost certainly the anxiety caused by increasing automation and the turbulence that it will cause as jobs disappear, jobs change, new jobs are created, and a globalizing employment market causes employment terms and conditions

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to deteriorate: effects that are already being felt in multiple occupations, along with an apparently unstoppable acceleration in inequality (Breemersch et al., 2017; Sowels, 2018; Standing, 2011; Torry, 2020e: 194–5). A Basic Income is so obviously a useful response to such changes that it is no surprise that during a pandemic that both revealed and exacerbated existing employment market changes a significant upturn in interest in Basic Income has taken place (Torry, 2021a: 151). An important difference between the current upsurge of interest in Basic Income and previous periods of interest, such as that of the early 1980s, is that previous upturns have generally been during periods of high unemployment, whereas the current now quite persistent interest has occurred when in most developed economies unemployment rates are quite low: a pattern particularly clear in the Netherlands Basic Income debate. Poorer households’ experience of earned income insecurity, and an understanding that that might now be a permanent state of affairs, are today’s significant drivers of the debate (Groot and Van der Veen, 2000: 197, 217, 219; Sloman, 2019: 224–5, 238). Causality is always impossible to prove, especially when it might be circular, as when increasing interest results in more articles and books being published, and new books and articles result in greater interest in Basic Income: but something happened around 2014, and the way in which a respected journalist took Basic Income seriously might have been important. What was certainly important was some problematic but ultimately useful media interest in an experiment in Finland (Chapters 4 and 6). From January 2017 to December 2018, two thousand randomly selected unemployed individuals from across Finland had their unemployment benefit made unconditional. This was not a genuine Basic Income pilot project because the Finnish Government would not have been able to afford to implement such a policy for the whole country; the random selection from the entire country meant that no community or overall employment effects were going to be experienced; and the brevity of the trial meant that workers’ minds would have been on the situation that would follow termination of the project rather than on their employment options during it. However, the experiment showed some positive results, in relation to wellbeing throughout the experiment and employment incentives during the second year (De Wispelaere et al., 2019; Kalliomaa-Puha et al., 2016; Kangas, 2016; Kangas et al., 2020; Kansaneläkelaitos Kela/Social Insurance Institution of Finland Kela, 2016). Media interest was intense, and was carefully evaluated by the researchers (Mäkkylä, 2021): Media coverage on the Finnish experiment has been remarkable before, during and after the experiment … By applying [a] media framing analysis, five different frames were identified: the economic frame, the future frame, the conflict frame, the human interest frame and the political frame. The most prominent frame in the data is the

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economic frame. Personal stories were a new and remarkable feature in the media coverage. (Kangas et al., 2020: 189–90)

Researchers found that Finnish and international media mostly employed similar frames within which to report the experiment and its results, but there was one significant difference: The international media represented the experiment and its results as significant to the changes in working life and explored its consequences, whereas the Finnish media approached the issue from the perspective of social security reform. (Mäkkylä, 2021: 181)

When the experiment was being planned, news media in the UK began to say that Finland was planning to implement a Basic Income for all of its citizens. This author’s research suggests that ambiguous phrasing in an article in the New Statesman (Penny, 2016) might have been where the misunderstanding started: but there might have been several sources of what we might now call fake news. Wherever it started, it could not be stopped, however much some of us tried to correct the misapprehension. Among the useful outcomes was one of the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust’s trustees appearing on BBC 2’s Newsnight programme, a BBC radio Money Box Live programme dedicated to Basic Income, and other requests for radio and press interviews (Torry, 2020c: 190): but it has to be somewhat problematic that this media interest was provoked by a misunderstanding. While positive press comment can create and contribute to useful debate about Basic Income, and misunderstandings can also provoke positive media interest, it is unfortunate that journalists who work for apparently reputable journals can be unfair to Basic Income by suggesting that a Basic Income would ‘destroy incentives’ and would be ‘horrendously expensive’ without offering any evidence for such statements (Lynn, 2016); and it is particularly unfortunate when a journalist’s poor treatment of Basic Income has roots in some other political agenda (Torry, 2021a: 147–8; Wintour, 2015). Journalists and other workers in various media can have considerable influence, particularly in the context of a social policy debate in which many people are speaking from a position of ignorance because they cannot understand the complexity of modern western tax and benefits systems.

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An interesting project conducted by researchers in Finland, Spain, and Canada studied how Basic Income was framed in a number of academic books and in the main newspapers in each country. While the three books that we consulted emphasized more abstract notions of social justice and individual freedom, the newspaper articles often framed Basic Income as a pragmatic solution to certain problems, such as poverty, or flaws in current welfare systems … In all three [countries], automation was a key frame which accompanied the other topics that were specific to each country context. This adds credence to the case that fears relating to automation and artificial intelligence taking jobs away from humans have helped to put Basic Income on the global agenda … The most common anti-Basic Income frame in all three countries concerned its alleged negative effects on work incentives … From the perspective of legitimising Basic Income, the most interesting aspect was the rising frame that concerned the effects of automation on the labour market. (Perkiö et al., 2019: 247–8)

Basic Income organizations’ framing of Basic Income and related mechanisms Basic Income advocates and researchers might have limited influence on wider public and media debate, but that influence might not be negligible. One strategy that they might employ would be to regard a policy change as a step towards a Basic Income. This can have three consequences: it can encourage constructive debate on making further changes in the direction of a Basic Income; problems relating to the current policy change can result in reputational damage to Basic Income; and a country can end up with ‘something like a basic income, though by then no one may remember what the term was supposed to mean’ (Groot and Van der Veen, 2000: 197, 217, 219). And so, for instance, The Citizen’s Basic Income Trust recognized that in principle the UK’s new ‘Universal Credit’, which has brought together several means-tested benefits into a single means-tested benefit, might be regarded as a step towards a Basic Income: a view that has been heard less often as serious administrative and other problems have been identified with Universal Credit, and the regulations have been changed to make the benefit more onerous and stigmatizing (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2020; Citizen’s Income Trust, 2010; Sloman, 2019: 213–16). A useful lesson is offered by the lively Basic Income debate that has been facilitated since the 1980s by the Conference of Religious of Ireland’s Justice Commission and its successor Social Justice Ireland, and more recently by the more campaigning BIEN Ireland. There is a long history of engagement between the Irish Government and the Basic Income organizations, and at one point the Conference of Religious of Ireland’s Justice Commission struggled to communicate the double message that a high Basic Income funded by a high

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income tax rate would not be feasible, whereas a small Basic Income would be (Healy and Reynolds, 2000: 241): but the organization persisted, and employed a variety of educational methods to communicate the message that some Basic Income schemes are feasible while others are not. The organization subsequently found it useful to support a government proposal for what amounted to a Negative Income Tax as a step on the way to a Basic Income (Clark, 2002: 41–9; Clark and Healy, 1997; Healy and Reynolds, 2012: 159–63). There is still a lively Basic Income debate in Ireland. Why might people change their minds about Basic Income? Our attitudes are shaped by social norms (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014; 152–3; Smith, 1993: 580; Staerklé et al., 2012: 114), and although such norms can be deeply embedded in our psyches, they can also be changed either by rational argument or by credible, simple and emotionally based persuasion (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014: 192–206; Millar and Millar, 1990; Smith, 1993: 581). Both religious and secular conversion experiences can occur (James, [1902] 2012; Sargant, 1976), and Moscovici has shown how a minority can sometimes persuade a majority to change its mind (Moscovici, 1985: 348–9). Individuals will often conform to majority opinion because they are seeking public approval, or because the opinion accepted by the majority originated with a recognized authority figure (van Avermaet, 2001: 408–10). If our private thoughts have moved in a different direction then initially we might be unwilling to go public with our changed minds because we might not be confident that we would be able to argue convincingly for a minority opinion (Moscovici, 1980: 211). When a majority of the group is behaving like this, an act of courage on the part of one member can enable others to speak up and reveal that a widespread conversion has taken place, that a social norm has been revealed and then broken, and that what might have been a shallow majority opinion has been displaced by a more committed conviction (Moscovici, 1980: 214–16; Nemeth et al., 1990; Ulmer, 2018). For the widespread change of view to occur, the minority’s message must be consistent, persistent, flexibly expressed, and not too far from the former majority’s current understanding, so that the original majority are encouraged to turn over the options in their minds and to test whether the new ideas can be integrated with their overall belief systems (Migny, 1982: 84–5; Moscovici, 1976: 81, 401; Nemeth et al., 1974: 61; Petty and Cacioppo, 1986: 7–9; Turner, 1991; van Avermaet, 2001: 418). While Moscovici’s research was conducted among groups of individuals rather than across whole societies, there is evidence that the same process operates in larger communities, as when scientific paradigms change, and also at societal level in what often look like rapid changes in public opinion, a recent case

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being the apparently rapid change in relation to same sex marriage (Kuhn, 1962; Torry, 2013: 56–61). We can therefore see how a consistent definition of Basic Income, alongside a diverse debate about different Basic Income schemes, might enable public opinion to change, and how a political party, a government, or a whole society, might change its opinion on the desirability and feasibility of Basic Income. Such changes might appear to have been rapid, but they will in fact have been occurring under the surface for some time (Torry, 2016a: 95–8). The extent to which public opinion actually influences policy change is of course debatable. The structures of welfare states have deep roots in élite ideologies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Coughlin, 1980: 54, 156), and public opinion, which is particularly ill-informed about complex tax and benefits systems, rarely engages with social policy change, which is why the UK ended up with the problematic Universal Credit after almost no public debate. If the UK or any other country does ever implement a genuine Basic Income, then it might be because a number of policy process factors have arrived together to create that effect, or perhaps because of a policy accident (Torry, 2016a: 195–246). Public attitudes, and attitude conversions, might have been crucial: but they might not have been. If we were to extend our conclusions from Moscovici’s research beyond individual country boundaries, then we might wish to suggest that no country has implemented a genuine nationwide Basic Income because no other country has done so. However much debate about the possibility has occurred within governments and political parties, that debate has remained within carefully controlled boundaries. If just one country were to implement a genuine Basic Income scheme, then other countries would follow (Dunlop et al., 2018). Policy effects We have discussed research on how minds might be changed by evidence and persuasion, but there is also research that shows that changes in social policy can change people’s minds. Institutions—organized patterns of norms and roles— can affect people’s attitudes and behaviours (Kumlin and Stadelmann-Steffen, 2014; Mau, 2003: 28–35): so a contributory benefits system will encourage participants to espouse an ante/required reciprocity (Chapter 8), even if the contributory benefits bear almost no relation to the contributions made (Golding and Middleton, 1982: 243); and means-tested benefits will encourage ‘them and us’ attitudes and behaviours (Coughlin, 1980: 51; Larsen, 2006: 4–5, 23, 141; Taylor-Gooby and Leruth, 2018: 21).

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Louise Humpage has found that the welfare state retrenchment associated with neoliberalism promotes ‘a generally negative impact on public beliefs about the social right to economic and social security … the public rolled over and accepted the need for further social security reform’ (Humpage, 2015: 143). In multiple countries it is possible to identify a consistent trend away from universal services and benefits and towards governments and public servants creating ‘target publics for welfare policies’ (Barrault-Stella and Weill, 2018: 9, 14): that is, the construction of categories within which services and incomes are provided for segments of a population. In such a context, means-tested benefits recipients do not feel themselves to be legitimate recipients (Humpage, 2015: 228), whereas recipients of unconditional benefits do believe themselves to be entitled to the payments. ‘The public tend to support universal social programmes more than targeted ones because they are visible and proximate to a wider range of citizens’ (Humpage, 2015: 240; cf. Svallfors, 2012: 6). So the UK’s National Health Service receives strong support (Coughlin, 1980: 118–19), and although objections tend to be raised if new unconditional and universal benefits are proposed, once implemented they prove to be more popular than means-tested and work-tested provisions, and they remain resilient in the face of pressure for their dissolution (Esping-Andersen, 1996: 266). All of this suggests that because a Basic Income would shift the benefits system away from ‘targeting’ and means-testing and towards universal provision, we would see resistance from governments, and initial resistance from general publics, but that if implementation were ever to be achieved then the general public would approve, and we would see a reduction in ‘them and us’ behaviours and attitudes. Commitment to reciprocity would continue to relate to any remaining contributory benefits, and ‘them and us’ to households still on any retained means-tested benefits, but we would also see a movement towards more solidaristic public attitudes that would last beyond the initial transition period (Kellow, 2018: 469; Larsen, 2006: 57). Research shows that at least two further institutional factors might also argue for the implementation of a Basic Income: 1. Growing up in poverty can lead to financial success being more highly valued than social relationships, which is problematic because materialistic attitudes are negatively correlated with wellbeing (Kasser et al., 1995; 2014). However, if economic security increases, attitudes become less materialistic and wellbeing increases (Kasser, 2016: 502). So not only would the security of a Basic Income improve wellbeing, but the attitude change that it would foster would enhance the effect.

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2. Jane Gingrich has found that as individuals pay more direct taxes, they are more likely to vote based on their redistributive preferences. Receiving tax breaks, by contrast, actually reduces the weight that individuals attach to their preferences, even though they have important distributive implications. (Gingrich, 2014: 109)

A related research result is that the local currency Basic Income paid in Maricà in Brazil has resulted in ‘a substantive increase in voter turnout … Besides turnout, the [Renda Básica de Cidadania] is also associated with a reduction of invalid votes’. (Araújo, 2021: 1) Because an initial Basic Income scheme is likely to be funded by reducing income tax allowances and raising tax rates, more households would be brought into income tax, and households would pay more tax. Individuals would therefore be more likely to vote, and more likely to vote according to their redistributional preferences. A further significant research result is that ‘welfare conditionality reduces political and civic participation, political interest and efficacy, and personal efficacy’ (Watson, 2015: 645): so a Basic Income scheme that was funded by reducing income tax allowances and took a significant number of households off means-tested benefits could have a significantly positive effect on civic and political engagement. It is clear that a Basic Income could have a profound effect on the way that we think. Not only would a Basic Income be likely to be popular once it was implemented: it would also shift public opinion in a more universalist direction, which would lay the foundations for further Basic Incomes and other unconditional provision.

Conclusions Public opinion is a complex matter, it can change rapidly, and it is always context specific. It is no surprise that opinion survey data and the tracking of European media and academic interest have shown that ‘the debate on basic income took a leap forward’ during the Covid-19 pandemic (Raittila and Bollain Urbieta, 2021: 12): although ‘one must be wary of … survey results because support for basic income is very sensitive to the framing of the survey questions’ (Raittila and Bollain Urbieta, 2021: 13). This would suggest that the most useful kinds of research might be focus groups and the study of media framing, with further opinion polls being paused until it is clear that the concept of a Basic Income is generally better understood along with the

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advantages that it would offer. For that to happen, a global, substantial and sustained educational programme is clearly required. Perhaps in the interim a mixed method, containing both opinion surveys and focus groups, could be employed (Greener, 2013: 423–5). There is no way of knowing whether [Basic Income] is viable independently of the prevailing culture. All we can say is that some cultures are [Basic Income]-friendly and others not. This is why, in the case of [Basic Income], the issues of desirability, viability and achievability, though logically distinct, must ultimately be considered together. Until and unless [Basic Income] is actually tried, its advocates can only speculate about how people would respond to its introduction … But it seems plausible to suppose that parties and voters will be prepared to embrace [Basic Income] only if they are convinced … that [Basic Income] is better for everyone—both each individual and society as a whole—according to standards that command widespread acceptance. (Purdy, 2007a: 24–5)

Sometimes public opinion matters in ways that we might not expect. The way in which public rejection of a rather blunt means test in Iran in 2010 resulted in ‘cash subsidies’ that were almost a Basic Income delivers an important message: that it might still be possible for a Basic Income to be implemented whatever debate has or has not occurred, simply because it would be preferable to what it might replace; that public ignorance and a lack of debate might enhance the probability of a Basic Income being implemented (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 353–4); and—as we have seen in relation to the Finland experiment—press and public misunderstanding can contribute positively to Basic Income debate. Research in relation to the Finland experiment, in combination with a survey of opinion polls, has led researchers to conclude that on the one hand, socio-economic characteristics and labour market statuses of respondents are important explanatory factors for basic income, but on the other hand, attitudinal dimensions in general and deservingness criteria in particular are even more relevant. (Simaneinen and Kangas, 2021: 145–6)

While it might be objectively true that the current normative combination of social insurance and means-tested social assistance would not on its own be the best way to enable the population of a country to navigate the growing turbulence that will be created by future rounds of automation and globalization, and that to add the secure layer of income that a Basic Income would provide would be an appropriate response, the relative complexity of that argument means that it will not necessarily be persuasive for either the general public or for policymakers. This means that even though the roots of public opinion might be highly diverse, one-stage arguments for Basic Income that address

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immediate conditions might be required: for instance, that a Basic Income would provide the financial security that would enable households to weather the current employment market turbulence; that a Basic Income would make the employment market more efficient; and negatively, that means-tested benefits are degrading and insecure, whereas a Basic Income would be the opposite (Sloman, 2019: 243, 250, 253–5). What is particularly interesting about the survey of the UK’s Members of Parliament discussed in this chapter is that legislators appear to be ahead of public opinion. The difference might be because Members of Parliament cannot help paying attention to the tax and benefits system because they encounter them both in parliament and in their constituency surgeries. They might therefore be more aware of the current system’s flaws and of proposed remedies. What appears to be happening is a combination of two tendencies discussed earlier in this chapter. Firstly, parliamentary opinion is ahead of public opinion only in the sense that it is further along the opinion trajectory than the rest of the public, which will soon catch up; and secondly, individual Members of Parliament appear to have a more positive opinion of Basic Income than their parliamentary parties, suggesting that hidden conversions have been taking place: so it would only take significant figures in their parties to state that a Basic Income might be both desirable and feasible for lots of individual Members of Parliament to reveal their conversions and for parties to make Basic Income a manifesto commitment. In 2014 Oliver Burkeman suggested that some ideas are not paid sufficient attention simply because they are too obvious: so obvious that ‘it’s hard to remember they’re options in the first place … sometimes, the surprising truth about the truth is that it isn’t surprising at all’ (Burkeman, 2014: 45). He suggested that this might be the case with a Basic Income: giving everyone some money is so obviously a sensible idea that we don’t consider it as an option. As he also suggests: we are not always rational. This is clearly a field in which a great deal of further research would be useful and interesting.

Future research Although there are occasional policy accidents when social policy changes without any account being taken of public opinion, for most of the time public opinion, and particularly media, academic, thinktank, and policymaker

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opinion will be factors in determining which proposals reach implementation and which do not. This means that further research in the field covered by this chapter will remain essential. • Continual study of how various different media are framing Basic Income will. • Continual study of how such other players as academics, policymakers, and thinktanks, are framing Basic Income will also be important. • Focus group research, although expensive, could be rather more important than opinion polls in understanding how different groups—the general public, journalists, thinktank staff, civil servants, and so on—understand Basic Income, the arguments for and against it, its different feasibilities, and various other issues relating to the global Basic Income debate. • On the basis of such research on Basic Income framing and on focus group understandings and opinions, a substantial global educational project is required to improve recognition of the Basic Income concept, and to increase understanding of its definition, its variants and alternatives, its different feasibilities, the arguments for and against it, and so on. • Only then should further opinion poll research be attempted; and when it is attempted, thorough educational explanations of all of the issues related to each question should be offered before the questions are put. • Focus groups and opinion polls among government ministers, members of parliaments, and civil servants, would be particularly useful. • Further study of social norms, and in particular of how they might be changing, would assist Basic Income advocates to frame Basic Income according to useful directions of travel: for instance, if a ‘fairness’ norm were to extend its influence, then the unfairness of tax allowances and the greater fairness of turning them into cash payments might be a useful way to frame an advantage of Basic Income. Appropriate terminology for Basic Income might both reflect and assist useful social norms. • Such an approach applied to policymakers might be usefully understood as a ‘nudge’, and might be studied as such. • Research might be carried out about when and how social policy change has been understood as steps along the way to a Basic Income, whether the tone of each such discussion has changed over time, and how such discussions have affected public and policymaker attitudes towards Basic Income. • Study of occasions on which publics have changed their minds about significant issues might help us to understand how a widespread conversion to approval for Basic Income might take place.

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• Policy feedback mechanisms should be studied in order to understand how the implementation of a Basic Income might change other aspects of a polity, and whether such changes would or would not embed the Basic Income.

8

Can we justify paying everyone a Basic Income?

Introduction Do we need to justify the payment of an unconditional income? Given that the idea is somewhat counterintuitive, we probably do. This chapter will discuss a wide variety of justifications offered since Thomas Spence first proposed a Basic Income; will recount more recent political, philosophical, ethical, and theological research on the subject; will touch on the economic, employment, and social justifications already discussed in previous chapters; will explore such current debates as whether a Basic Income should be regarded as a human right; and will ask what future research is required.

An early history of justifications The history of arguments for paying unconditional incomes goes back to the very early days of the Basic Income debate. In 1796, and again in 1797, Thomas Spence argued for a Basic Income on the basis of fairness and social justice (Torry, 2021a: 36–43): That property in land and liberty among men, in a state of nature, ought to be equal, few, one would fain hope, would be foolish enough to deny … Let it be supposed then, that the whole people in some country, after much reasoning and deliberation, should conclude that every man has an equal property in the land in the neighbourhood where he resides. They therefore resolve … that every one may reap all the benefits from their natural rights and privileges possible. (Spence, 1796: 5, 8)

Those benefits were to be reaped by every individual receiving a share of the rent from the letting out of land taken into community ownership: Such share of the surplus rents is the imprescriptible right of every human being in civilized society, as an equivalent for the natural materials of their common estate, which by letting to rent, for the sake of cultivation and improvement, they are deprived of. (Spence, 1797: 9) 201

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Thomas Paine argued for a one-off payment for every young adult on the same basis, but with an additional theological motive (Torry, 2021a: 33–6): Land … is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of Society; and it is impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of Society, as it is for him to make land originally … All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came. (Paine, 1797: 29–30)

A few years later, Cornelius Blatchly (Torry, 2021a: 44–5) was arguing on purely religious grounds: Man, created a little lower than the angels, had dominion given to him (not in his individual, but in his aggregate capacity) … If individuals usurp what is the divine right only of the aggregate, they deprive man (a term including all men and women) of his rights and privileges granted to him in the beginning by God, his creator, and the sole proprietor of angels, men, beasts, birds, fishes, serpents, insects, vegetables, minerals, lands, seas, air, and heavens … All men should therefore esteem themselves as deriving their titles from him, for general use and benefit, and not for individual aggrandizement and oppression of the multitude. (Blatchly, 1817: 199)

And then halfway through the nineteenth century what might be termed an eschatological justification was offered for Basic Income: that is, an argument that the ‘last things’, or the permanent future state of affairs, that we might wish to see, should be regarded as a justification for the Basic Income that would facilitate its achievement. A quiet and necessary state of mind will prevail to keep every one mentally busy with the extension and improvement of the powers of reason. By allocating to every one his precious portion of the inheritance of all, everybody can therefore get his share of the moral or immaterial treasures: erudition, wisdom and sciences. (De Keyser [1854] 2004: 60)

Since then, multiple justifications for Basic Income have been offered, but because we encounter most of them, at least in essence, right up to the modern debate, and because the state of research in this field is largely the state of research into the history of justifications for Basic Income, we shall now embark on a discussion of the state of research and as we do so we shall find ourselves encountering more of the history of justifications for Basic Income.

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The state of research On mapping the Basic Income debate, researchers have found that supporters and opponents both draw on core principles of justice and freedom, focusing on need and poverty, discrimination and inequality, growth, social opportunity, individuality, and self-development. From an economic perspective, they both appeal to business concerns about efficiency, risk, flexibility, and consumption, as well as labour interests on work fulfilment, working conditions, remuneration, and bargaining. Likewise, they focus on political questions around welfare state reforms, redistribution, taxation and funding sources, democratic citizenship, and the prospects for cross-party policy coalitions. (Afscharian et al., 2022a)

We have already encountered many of these themes, by the end of the book we will have touched on all of them in one way or another, and later in this chapter we shall find ourselves discussing ‘the core principles of justice and freedom’. Ethical theories One possible approach to the study of the ethics of a proposal is to measure it against a list of ethical theories. Immanuel Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’—‘Can you will that your maxim should become a universal law?’ (Kant [1785] 2002: 202–3)—understands actions as good in themselves if the criterion of the categorical imperative is met. Aristotle’s ‘how we are to become good’ (Aristotle, 1987: II, 2) is an ethics of a life well lived. John Stuart Mill’s ‘utilitarianism’ understands actions as good in relation to good outcomes—‘Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness’ (Mill [1861] 2001: 7). Levinas’s ethics is one of responsibility towards the absolutely other: ‘the meeting with the other person consists in the fact that … I do not possess him’ (Levinas, 1998: 9); and for the social scientist Richard Titmuss, it is the ‘gift relationship’ that is ethical (Titmuss, 1970). Kant’s categorical imperative might look as if it could only apply to an individual’s decision-making rather than to social policy, but Scanlon’s ‘nonrejectability’ variant might prove to be helpful to the Basic Income debate: An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any system of rules for the general regulation of behaviour which no-one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced general agreement. (Scanlon, 1982: 110)

If it would be difficult to argue that a government should be able to withdraw from a worker more than 50 per cent of the value of any additional earned

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income, then many means-tested benefits systems would have to be classed as ethically wrong. Given that society expects governments to provide for the needs of anyone who cannot provide for their own needs or for the needs of their dependents, a Basic Income becomes the ethical choice (Torry, 2021a: 49–51). Similarly, Aristotle’s ‘virtue ethics’ has clear institutional relevance, because it requires governments to create contexts in which members of society can ‘live well’ (Aristotle, 1987: I, 8). Because they withdraw so much of the value of additional earned income as earned income rises, means-tested benefits discourage workers from seeking employment, additional employment, higher earned incomes, education, and training. They discourage saving for old age, the formation of permanent households, and honesty—because to declare small occasional earned incomes can cause benefits to stop, so to declare them would be irrational (Parker, 1995). Means-tested benefits are therefore likely to facilitate a ‘bad life’ rather than a ‘good life’. An unconditional income, on the other hand, would encourage workers to seek additional employment, training, and education, and would not exhibit the deleterious effects of means-tested benefits. A Basic Income would therefore offer to any household that they enabled to come off means-tested benefits a better life than they would have had on them; and because every individual and every household would for the first time experience a secure layer of income, anxiety would be reduced, life would be better, and behaviour to make life better still would become more possible (Torry, 2020a: 54–5). A more pragmatic ethical argument, and one that we might regard as utilitarian, is that aiming to eradicate or reduce poverty is an ethical argument in itself, particularly if the method used would also reduce stigma, anxiety, and stress, and would enable people to improve their financial situation. However, employing a Basic Income to achieve these things cannot escape the usual objections: that to provide a Basic Income is to give money to wealthy people who don’t need it, when giving all of the money to the poor would have an immediately greater impact on their poverty; that giving money to everyone is bound to mean giving it to people who don’t deserve it; that recipients might stop working; that Basic Income is infeasibly expensive; and that people would spend the money on harmful activity (Blix, 2017: 160). The objections are of course easily countered: to give the money to everyone is efficient and is what would generate many of a Basic Income’s useful effects; if the wealthy are paying additional tax of a greater value than their Basic Incomes then there really is not a problem; that the commons belong to all of us, and to understand Basic Income as providing everyone with a share of what is theirs anyway means that the question of who deserves it is irrelevant; to pay an uncondi-

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tional income would be likely to incentivize useful work effort on the part of many of those previously disincentivized by means-tested benefits; that perfectly feasible illustrative Basic Income schemes would not necessarily provide people with additional money but would provide a secure layer of income; and that as no additional money is envisaged there would not be money for anyone to spend on additional harmful activity (Birnbaum, 2019: 507–12). The problem with utilitarian ethics is that while it might make sense for an individual to compare the utilities of two different courses of action in relation to their own utility or wellbeing, it is impossible for one individual to compare the utility that a course of action would offer to them with the utility that it would offer to someone else. Such proxies for the measurement of utility as questionnaires asking people to locate the utilities of courses of action on a scale of one to ten do not solve the problem of incommensurability. The problem is compounded by the fact that we can never entirely predict the outcome of a course of action, which makes it difficult for an individual to choose a course of action that they can be sure will benefit themselves, let alone one that might benefit someone else. Perhaps all that we can legitimately aim at is the avoidance of choices that would reduce utility or welfare for those with little of it already. This again suggests that as far as possible we should replace means-tested benefits with unconditional incomes. This approach is supported by another argument that flows naturally from the incommensurability of individual utilities: Given that we cannot know the effect of a course of action on someone’s overall utility, we should avoid attempting to match individual or institutional actions to individuals’ individual utilities, but instead should regard treating everyone the same as the only safe option (Torry, 2020a: 51–4). Levinas’s ethics as responsibility towards the other who is absolutely other drives us immediately to the same conclusion; and a ‘gift relationship’ ethics takes us immediately to the conclusion that unconditional incomes should be the default mechanism for income maintenance: a conclusion that Basic Income’s earliest proponents based on the gift of the earth and its resources to the human race as a whole (Torry, 2020a: 55–9). We can conclude that a list of traditional ethical theories, whilst initially seeming to be somewhat lacking in their ability to provide an ethical basis for Basic Income, can in fact provide a series of ethical arguments for Basic Income, and might arguably work well together to offer a cumulative ethical argument for its implementation.

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Justice as fairness One important justification for Basic Income that echoes arguments propounded by Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence and was emphasized in the nineteenth century is an argument for fairness on the part of the State. As Orestes Brownson put it (Torry, 2021a: 47–8): ‘What we ask is, that society shall, in the distribution of that which none of the generation it concerns have had any hand in producing or accumulating, should treat all alike, for thus far the claims of all are equal’ (Brownson [1840] 1978: 78). A more contemporary way of putting the argument is that ‘the rich have grabbed a lot of income from the rest of the population thanks to laws that they have managed to push through’, so ‘a basic income financed by way of a tax reform that would entail a redistribution of wealth from the richest segment to the rest of the population’ (Raventós and Wark, 2018: 213) is required: an equal payment by right, and so the very opposite of ‘charity’ (Raventós and Wark, 2018). Brownson’s argument for the State having to distribute the common wealth equally was echoed in the United Kingdom during the twentieth century by Juliet Rhys-Williams (Torry, 2021a: 83–7): The State owes precisely the same benefits to all of its citizens, and should in no circumstances pay more to one than to another of the same sex and age, except in return for services rendered … the State … should consequently pay the same benefits to the employed and healthy as to the idle and sick. … The prevention of want must be regarded as being the duty of the State to all its citizens, and not merely to a favoured few. (Rhys Williams, 1943: 139, 144, 145: italics in the original)

John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, might be described as ‘a theory of justice as fairness’, as it envisages members of society located behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, not knowing the position in which they would find themselves. Rawls proposes that they would all want a society in which they would regard social arrangements as just, or fair, regardless of the position that they would find themselves in in that society. If we can assume that everyone would evaluate social arrangements in the same way, then we find that the society that everyone behind the veil of ignorance would choose would be one that would grant a Basic Income and charge tax on earned incomes in order to pay for it (Torry, 2020a: 60–63). Rawls came to something like that conclusion (Rawls, 1971: 128): although not every Rawlsian has agreed that it is the only option available on the basis of Rawls’s presuppositions (Fukuma, 2017; Waldron, 1986; Weale, 2013).

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As well as his ‘veil of ignorance’ argument, Rawls offered two ‘principles of justice’: First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all. (Rawls, 1971: 60)

Dworkin suggests that the second principle implies that ‘inequalities in power, wealth, income and other resources must not exist except in so far as they work to the absolute benefit of the worst-off member of society’ (Dworkin, 1977: 150). We might choose to offer this stronger implication of the principle: ‘Inequalities in power, wealth, income and other resources must not exist except in so far as they work to the absolute benefit of every member of society’, or at least that nobody should be able to find themselves in a less desirable position. However, for positions in society to be ‘open to all’, everyone must be able to reach any position in society. There are two implications. Firstly, ‘poverty’ must be defined not as a lack of resources, but as the inability to increase one’s resources: a dynamic rather than a static definition of poverty (Lister, 2004: 94–7, 145–6, 178–83) with which we hope those behind Rawls’s veil of ignorance would agree. This again implies an unconditional income rather than means-tested benefits, because of the latter’s tendency to high marginal deduction rates. And secondly, the ‘real freedom’ discussed below will have to be available, again suggesting a Basic Income. Here we must raise again the complexity that means that utilitarianism could never be a useful ethical theory in practice. Society is highly complex, and causal relationships will be difficult to uncover. For instance: a variety of inequalities—in income, mental health, and so on—can be correlated with each other, and a conclusion might be drawn that income inequality causes inequalities in mental health. However, it is equally likely that mental illness might reduce the probability of a high income; and it is equally possible that some third factor might be causing both of the inequalities rather than one causing the other. This appears to be the case, because there is evidence that the structure of a country’s welfare state might underlie a variety of social and economic inequalities (Chapter 6; Bergh et al., 2016; Torry, 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). Given the complexity of the situation, perhaps the most practical ethical approach remains Scanlon’s, which, as we have seen, implies the implementation of a Basic Income in much the same way as the other ethical approaches that we have studied so far in this chapter.

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An interesting question relating to the fairness of a Basic Income is that of generational equity. We are increasingly aware that in many countries it is no longer the case that subsequent generations will be better off than their predecessors. One consequence of this is a reduction in generational trust (Birnbaum et al., 2017). If the same amount of Basic Income were to be paid to every individual, whatever their age, then it would be one social policy that would not contribute to generational unfairness. Most illustrative Basic Income schemes assume different levels of Basic Income for different age groups, the justification for this one conditionality being that our age is something that we cannot affect and about which no enquiry has to be made once a government computer knows our date of birth. If generational fairness is something that those who implement a Basic Income scheme were to wish to enhance, then the levels of Basic Income could be inversely correlated with the average wealth of the generation. This would suggest that, counterintuitively, smaller amounts might be granted to older people and larger amounts to working age adults (Torry, 2022b). Other redistributive mechanisms might still contribute to generational unfairness, but at least the Basic Income would not do so. Reciprocity Sometimes what looks like an argument against Basic Income proves to be a potential argument for it. Earlier in his career the socialist academic George (G.D.H.) Cole argued that the ‘ordinary worker in industry’ thought it vital to earn their own income because he ‘wants to reward each according to his works’ (Cole, 1929: 200). Charles Hattersley had already pointed out that ‘production by industry to-day is the result of the combined effort of three distinct factors … Capital … Labour … the Common Cultural Inheritance of the Community’ (Hattersley, 1922: 104–6), so that although work should be financially rewarded, unconditional incomes ‘should be distributed irrespective of whether the recipient is employed or not, or of his or her financial status’ (Hattersley, 1922: 106: italics in the original). Cole eventually agreed with Hattersley that incomes should be distributed partly as rewards for work, and partly as direct payments from the State to every citizen as ‘social dividends’—a recognition of each citizen’s claim as a consumer to share in the common heritage of productive power. (Cole, 1935: 235)

Here we can see both Hattersley and Cole circumventing the question of reciprocity by locating the traditional view of it in the employment relationship and removing the accompanying Basic Income from any relationship with reciprocity (Torry, 2021a: 79–81).

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However, the idea that nobody should receive any income before they have done something to deserve it remains a salient social norm or ‘moral repertoire’ (Dean, 1998: 150) in many if not all cultures (Svallfors, 2012: 10): a norm that might be expressed as ‘the link between rights and responsibilities that is a central aspect of citizenship’ (Dwyer, 2003: 209). However, there are two ways of operationalizing this ‘reciprocity norm’, and not just one. Either a government can require something from someone—financial contributions in the past, job search, training for employment, and so on—before an income is provided; or an income can be provided in the expectation that the recipient will then contribute something to society. A further division might be proposed between expected and required reciprocation. We can therefore posit four different types of reciprocation between the State and an individual: 1. ante/required; 2. ante/expected; 3. post/required; and 4. post/expected. Means-tested benefits that apply sanctions if prescribed conditions are not met are an example of ‘ante/required’ reciprocity: as Hartley Dean points out, this is a clear example of social control (Chapter 7; Dean, 2012a: 51). In the same category would have been Tony Atkinson’s proposal for a Participation Income that would have expected recipients to fulfil one or more participation conditions before the income could be received (Chapter 2). This was an explicit attempt to take account of the widespread feeling that someone in receipt of an income from the government should have done something for society before they received it. A similar proposal was made in the Netherlands around the same time, again with the aim of taking account of what Groot and van der Veen refer to as ‘the most entrenched of all conditionalities, the “reciprocity” requirement of willingness to do (un)paid work’ (Groot and van der Veen, 2000: 214). Stuart White describes what might be interpreted as a ‘post/expected’ reciprocity: Where institutions governing economic life are otherwise sufficiently just, e.g., in terms of the availability of opportunities for productive participation and the rewards attached to these opportunities, then those who claim the generous share of the social product available to them under these institutions have an obligation to make a decent productive contribution, suitably proportional and fitting for ability and circumstances, to the community in return. I term this the fair-dues conception of reciprocity. (White, 2003: 59)

The ‘social product’ needs to be produced, so work is required; if anyone who can reciprocate chooses not to do so then they impose additional burdens on those who do reciprocate; and only if the social product is produced will there be a civic minimum of healthcare, education, and so on, to provide the basis for the ‘institutions governing economic life’ to be ‘sufficiently just’ and there-

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fore to provide the basis for ‘fair-dues reciprocity’. ‘In a context of otherwise sufficiently fair economic arrangements, everyone should do their bit’ (White, 2003: 18); and conversely, if the context is not sufficiently just, then reciprocation will falter: for instance, if employment opportunities have disappeared from a community, or if job opportunities are unequally distributed, in which case the intuitive requirement for reciprocity in relation to Basic Income might have to understand White’s ‘otherwise sufficiently just’ at least partly in terms of non-exclusion from the employment market (De Wispelaere, n.d.). What is not required is a reciprocation that matches in value some proportion of the social product consumed, for the reason offered by Basic Income’s earliest proponents: some resources are properly seen as belonging to a common citizens’ inheritance fund, and it is implausible that the individual’s entitlement to a share of this fund is entirely dependent on a willingness to work. (White, 2006: 13)

White argues that even if a Basic Income might compromise ante/required reciprocity, it would encourage post/expected reciprocity, and so would satisfy the reciprocity norm (White, 2006: 14); and it would strengthen that norm by contributing to the just context required for reciprocation to be expected (White, 2003: 168). An important set of convictions relating to how a Basic Income might be implemented is this: We recognize that society has a responsibility to provide for the wellbeing of its members, and also that anyone who can contribute the work required to ensure that that should happen should be expected to do so. This suggests that the reciprocity norm applies to some groups within society, mainly working age adults; and that it does not apply in relation to others, such as children, elderly people, and people living with disabilities that prevent them from engaging in relevant kinds of work. This suggests that it might be helpful for a Basic Income to be implemented first for those groups to whom it is thought the reciprocity norm does not apply, and only then to move on to those to whom it does, whilst recognizing, as we have, that a post/expected reciprocity would be the kind of reciprocity required (Torry, 2016a: 92–4, 102–8). Because a Basic Income would contribute to the ‘sufficiently just’ institutions that reciprocity requires, and because it would encourage a post/expected reciprocity, reciprocity is a justification for Basic Income and not an argument against it.

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Republican and real freedoms A hundred years ago Charles Hattersley suggested that everyone who received a Basic Income would be better able to resist ‘tyranny’ (Hattersley, 1922: 108) (Torry, 2021a: 78). More recently, Widerquist has advocated for a Basic Income on the basis that it would give to workers and citizens generally the power to resist attempts at exploitation by an institution or individual, for instance by refusing or leaving a ‘lousy’ or ‘pointless’ job (Goos and Manning, 2007; Graeber, 2018: 9; Piasna, 2017), and so would grant a genuine ‘republican freedom’ (Widerquist, 2013: 187–8). The extent to which a Basic Income might enable someone to exit undesirable employment has to be a matter for debate, particularly if income-generating work is in short supply (Birnbaum, 2019: 519; Birnbaum and De Wispelaere, 2016), but the concept still represents an important aspect of what a Basic Income would achieve, at least to some extent: and that concept might be able to achieve traction as an argument for Basic Income among trades unions, socialists and libertarians (Burczak, 2013), although some among them might not wish to recognize that a diversity of ideologies can value the individual’s ability to avoid attempts at coercion. Similar, but expressed in positive rather than negative terms, is the ‘real freedom’ that is an ability to choose what to do with our lives, and then the ability to fulfil the plans that we make. This too requires the provision of resources—and typically a Basic Income: hence real freedom’s relationship with a ‘left libertarianism’ that values both individual liberty and collective provision (Van Parijs, 1995) and within which we can understand that a Basic Income could generate both individual freedom and social cohesion (Pressman, 2005: 97). A question arises as to whether Van Parijs’s ‘real freedom’ implies the ability to spend one’s days surfing (Reeve and Williams, 2002; Van Parijs, 1995: 2, 89, 96, 133; Widerquist et al., 2013: 1–37). First of all, would that be desirable for either the individual or for society? Reciprocation—contribution to society in response to society’s contribution to us—is both a source of self-esteem for the surfer, and the means of ensuring that society can continue to provide surfers with the resources that they need. Secondly, in the short to medium term it is likely that Basic Incomes would have to be paid for by adjusting the existing tax and benefits systems, or perhaps by implementing a new tax, and that the feasible level of Basic Income would not be sufficient to live on (Chapters 2 and 3). However, a Basic Income at any level would begin to provide a secure layer of income on which everyone could build in a variety of ways, so additional choices would become available: to reduce the number of hours of employment; to increase them; to spend more time on community and caring work; to spend less time on community and caring work; to spend more time surfing; and so on. In particular, employment terms and conditions

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could improve, and wages might have to rise in some occupations in order to attract workers, so further options for allocating our time might become available. While it is not difficult to find objections to Van Parijs’s ‘real freedom’ argument understood as enabling everyone to spend their lives surfing (Piachaud, 2016), it is more difficult to reject an argument for Basic Income on the basis of White’s post/expected reciprocity. The two arguments might best be regarded as complementary, and as providing a good cumulative argument for Basic Income (Henderson, 2017). Widerquist’s republican freedom and Van Parijs’s real freedom might be framed quite differently, but once practical measures are taken to operationalize them we can see that they are in fact the same. The kind of ‘pre-distribution’ that a Basic Income would represent would facilitate both non-domination and a positive ability to choose a way of life and then follow it, at least to some extent (Birnbaum, 2019: 512–16). The extent to which both republican and real freedoms could become ways of life would depend on the level of the Basic Income, on its funding method, and on the ways in which the existing tax and benefits systems would be altered when the Basic Income was established: but whatever the level of Basic Income that might be feasible, new opportunities would emerge for every individual and household. A question has been raised, however, as to whether relying on the promotion of freedom as a justification for Basic Income might neglect the importance of the societies in which we are all embedded. In order to take that into account, Moreira suggests an adaptation of the ‘freedom’ argument that relies on a concept of individual development that ‘recognises that individuals act in a particular social context that provides them with the resources to develop themselves, and requires from them the fulfilment of individual obligations’ (Moreira, 2008: 30). If those obligations are post/expected, then this is an argument for Basic Income consistent with both the ‘real freedom’ and ‘republican freedom’ justifications for Basic Income. If the obligations are ante/required, then it is not. A human rights justification for Basic Income Around the same time that De Keyser was offering his vision of the dignified human life that might be possible if a Basic Income were to be paid, Paul Voituron was proposing a ‘rights’ basis for the unconditional income (Torry, 2021a: 48–9): Three indissolubly linked rights derive from the fact of man’s existence on earth. These three rights are: the right to live, the right to work, and the right to instru-

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ments of labour. They form each other’s condition. The first cannot be exercized legitimately without the other two. That is why they form one single right that we shall call: the right to live by one’s labour. The right to property is intimately linked with this right. (Voituron [1848] 2004: 49)

The right to property was a condition for the other rights: hence Voituron’s agreement with Thomas Paine that every young adult should be provided with the ‘economic emancipation’ of an unconditional capital sum (Voituron, 1876: 165, 173). But do we have a right to an income? According to John Stuart Mill, primary utilities are ‘physical nutrient’ and ‘security’ (Mill, [1861] 2001: 53–4), and Skorupski suggests that if a person has a right to such and such primary utilities, then providing them for him and protecting him in the possession of them is a requirement … which has priority over the direct pursuit of general utility, or the private pursuit of personal ends. (Skorupski, 1989: 328)

Does this compromise the maximization of aggregate utility, which is the principal criterion for Mill’s ‘utilitarianism’? (Mill, [1861] 2001) No, it does not, because autonomy as well as happiness counts towards utility, which means that providing for basic necessities is compatible with maximizing general utility. However, as Ryan suggests: justice is a principle independent of, and in some ways opposed to, that of maximising general happiness. To desire an equal, or a fair, distribution of goods is not the same thing as desiring to maximize goods. (Ryan, 1987: 229)

The logic of rights prioritizes provision for individual needs over the maximization of aggregate utility (Skorupski, 1989: 334). Whether a Basic Income can be regarded as a human right is a question that has been debated in meetings of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) General Assembly and elsewhere. The problem is that human rights, generally defined as those described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations General Assembly, 1949), aim to prevent the worst oppressions and to guarantee human dignity, whereas social citizenship rights, such as the maintenance of various social minima sufficient to ensure social inclusion, require the financial resources and detailed legislation and regulations that only nation state governments can provide (King, 2017; Piachaud, 2019). Only nation states can enforce co-operation from members of the population, and in particular the payment of taxes. There is no global government with the

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ability to extract and apply the resources required to enable the entire global population to exercise social or economic rights (Lister, 1997: 65): hence the likelihood that only nation states, relatively autonomous regional governments within federal states, or municipalities with their own local currencies or taxation, would be able to implement a Basic Income; that a global Basic Income must be a long way in the future; and that the only possible exception would be a Eurodividend if the European Union’s member states were to grant a limited level of competence to the European Union institutions in the fields of taxation and social security benefits (Afscharian et al., 2022b; Bannister and Harnett, 2019; Cowen, 2002: 53; Dean, 2011b; Goedemé et al., 2019; McKnight et al., 2016: 67–8; Torry, 2020a: 142–3, 260–61; 2021a: 256–7), although whether the same amount should be paid in each country would be a complex question to answer (Goedemé and Van Lancker, 2009; Van Parijs, 2013). (A slight complication is that nation states within the European Union would have to take account of European law relating to the free movement of labour and possibly other relevant European legislation and regulations if they were to implement Basic Incomes: but it would appear that at the time of writing any such constraints could be easily navigated (Kangas, 2021b: 188, 191)). The United Nations, which is the nearest we have to the kind of global institution that would be required if a global Basic Income were to be implemented, has to rely on nation states’ conformity to treaty commitments, and on their willingness to provide their citizens with legal means to exercise the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration. That will only be a realistic expectation if human rights are framed in very general terms, and precisely how national governments will ensure that individuals resident in their territories will be able to live lives of human dignity must be up to them. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights grants to an individual a right to a ‘standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family’ (United Nations General Assembly, 1949; cf. Copp, 1992: 231): but that does not amount to a right to an unconditional income (Piachaud, 2016: 18; 2019). Articles 22 and 23 grant rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, and to social security, with the social security mechanism undefined. Under conditions of full employment, the rights granted by Articles 22 and 23 should be sufficient to ensure a ‘standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family’: but we can no longer assume full employment—hence the suggestion sometimes heard that Basic Income itself should now be regarded as a human right (Rogan and Alfers, 2019) and that in today’s circumstances the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides at least a sound basis for legislating for a Basic Income. If a Basic Income might increase both incentives to seek employment and the

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availability of employment, then a Basic Income would better enable a government to meet the requirements of both Article 25—the right of an individual to a ‘standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family’—and Article 23—the right ‘to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment’. As Piachaud points out, the right to paid work is crucial (Piachaud, 2019), which suggests that a Basic Income scheme tested for its ability to incentivize the taking of employment and to provide opportunities for employment might be crucial too (Torry, 2013: 198; 2020a: 257–61). The experiment in Finland that made unemployment benefits unconditional for two years for two thousand randomly selected individuals not only increased employment market activity during the second year of the experiment (Chapter 4), but it also had a significant effect on participants’ experienced wellbeing (Chapter 6; Simanainen and Tuulio-Henriksson, 2021: 84–6). This suggests that a Basic Income could enable the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be met, but it still does not turn Basic Income itself into a human right. A further justification for a Basic Income stems from Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Michael Adler accuses the sanctions related to the UK’s current means-tested benefits of being ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’, and therefore contrary to Article 5; and also of being ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’, and therefore contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which in 1998 was incorporated into UK law. The right granted by Article 3 of the ECHR is ‘absolute’, and so cannot be qualified by any other right; it refers to ‘treatment’ as well as to ‘punishment’; and the ‘or’ between ‘inhuman’ and ‘degrading’ implies a low threshold. Adler’s argument is that social and economic rights are being denied to claimants by sanctions that are both punitive and ineffective, by the inadequate nature of hardship payments, and by the denial of civil rights due to a lack of due process and the replacement of a juridical model of administrative justice by a bureaucratic model within which ‘violations of economic and social rights—including the right to social security … are not currently subject to any effective remedies in the UK’ (Adler, 2018: 112). The fines are ‘disproportionate to the seriousness of the offence and they cannot be adjusted to take account of claimants’ changing circumstances’ (Adler, 2018: 127). In the Netherlands, a similar sanctions regime has been found by the courts to constitute fines, and on that basis the levels at which sanctions have been set has been challenged, and the challenge has been upheld (Pennings, 2019). Adler concludes that ‘in terms of justice, the UK benefit sanctions regime undoubtedly fails the [human rights] test’ (Adler, 2018: 151). A Basic Income would exhibit none of these human rights violations. It would function as a civil, political and social right, and it would enable national governments

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to conform to the human rights to which they have committed themselves (Torry, 2020a: 259–60). Although it is not experienced as having the same level of authority as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a United Nations Treaty agreed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, and it reflects many of the concerns of the Universal Declaration and the European Convention as it recognizes rights to work, to ‘social security’ and ‘social insurance’, and to ‘an adequate standard of living’ (United Nations General Assembly, 1966). Again, whether these can be adequately met today without a Basic Income must be debatable, leading Kobak to suggest that Basic Income and human rights obligations are ‘congruent’ (Kobak, 2016: 67–8). A further question relates to the relationship between rights discourse and pragmatic policy change. In 2010, a means-testing system implemented by the Iranian Government to direct ‘cash subsidies’ to poorer families to compensate them for the withdrawal of subsidies on food and fuel rapidly collapsed, resulting in unconditional incomes being paid to every household. The policy was regarded by both the government and the population as entirely pragmatic, and there was no sense in which anyone regarded the cash subsidies as in any sense a right. It is unfortunate that due to the rapid inflation resulting from international sanctions the cash subsidies have now lost most of their value, so their status has become something of a non-issue: but it remains an interesting question as to whether the law-enshrined cash subsidies will come to be regarded as a citizenship right, and therefore whether they might help to generate a rights discourse in Iran. Unfortunately, the many Afghan refugees living in Iran do not receive the cash subsidies, which might compromise the purely pragmatic basis for the payments and so might inadvertently contribute to a rather exclusive citizenship rights understanding of the cash subsidies rather than a human rights understanding of them (De Wispelaere, 2016b: 625; Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019: 340, 344–5; Tabatabai, 2012b; Torry, 2021a: 215–16). Political ideologies Implementation of a Basic Income would require politicians, political parties, and governments, to engage with the question of whether they could justify paying a Basic Income: hence existing research into actual and potential relationships between a variety of political ideologies and Basic Income, the study of which will also require us to ask about relationships between political ide-

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ologies and alternatives to Basic Income. One of the unusual aspects of Basic Income is that right across the ideological and therefore political spectrum arguments are expressed both for and against the idea, which suggests that in this concept we have a representative of a new kind of politics that is neither Left nor Right, but is something else: which perhaps is what we should expect given that the society and economy in which the Left/Right spectrum evolved is now changing so fast that there is little reason to think that the ideological and political divisions of a previous era are likely to be relevant either today or in the future. In Chapter 1 we recognized that the division of material into different coherent chapters was always going to be difficult in this book. The material here is a case in point, as it could just as well have been in Chapter 9 on research into the political aspects of the Basic Income debate as in this chapter on justifications for Basic Income. Libertarianism For the classical liberal or libertarian tradition, the overriding consideration is the liberty of the individual (Garner et al., 2009: 117–18). ‘It is individuals who feel, exult, despair and rejoice. And statements about group welfare are a shorthand way of referring to such individual effects’ (Brittan, 1998: 11). This means that the role of the State is to ‘ensure internal and external security and to ensure that private property rights are enforced’ (Garner et al., 2009: 117); and that it is not a government’s role to decide what makes for citizens’ happiness or wellbeing, and certainly not to nudge them in that direction, but rather to ensure that they can meet their own needs and goals (White, 2016). A liberal ideology also expects the market rather than the State to be the best method for meeting human need (Spicker, 2014: 196): although the contemporary liberal also recognizes that the State might also have to fulfil additional functions if individuals are to pursue personal goals and if markets are to be efficient and useful. Because ‘there is nothing inherently right about the pattern of rewards produced by the combination of inheritance and the market’, what is needed is ‘a framework of rules—including, if necessary, redistributive taxation and transfers—by which a market economy can be induced to serve broader objectives’ (Brittan, 1998: 42). In practice, ‘the key problem … is how to obtain the benefits of a flexible US style labour market, without US poverty or US ghettoes’ (Brittan and Webb, 1990: 5). A commitment to the liberty of the individual might suggest that the State should not be imposing taxes and paying incomes of any kind, and although

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that is where some libertarian arguments might start and finish, it is not how John Locke, arguably the originator of libertarianism, saw the matter: Whatsoever, then, [someone] removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property … Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use, so that, in effect, there was never the less for others because of his enclosure for himself. (Locke [1690] 1884: 204, 207)

However, we are some way from the ‘state of nature’, so ‘enough and as good’ is no longer automatically available to every individual, which means that the ‘Lockean proviso’ no longer applies. A Basic Income would be the most efficient way of ensuring that ‘enough and as good’ is available to everyone (Fleischer and Lehto, 2019: 442–5; Layman, 2011: 9; Torry, 2021a: 28–9). A similar argument is made by John Rawls, who recommended a Negative Income Tax (Rawls, 1971: 275) on the basis that ‘the market is not suited to answer the claims of need’ and so cash transfers is the ‘way of dealing with the claims of need [that] would appear to be more effective than trying to regulate income by minimum wage standards, and the like’ (Rawls, 1971: 277). Anything beyond the meeting of needs and providing sufficient for ‘an appropriate standard of life’ should be provided by the market in labour (Rawls, 1971: 277). Libertarian thinkers have generally preferred a Negative Income Tax to a Basic Income. An early advocate was Milton Friedman, because a Negative Income Tax would do efficiently and humanely what our present welfare and social security system does inefficiently and inhumanely—namely, provide an assured minimum to all persons in need regardless of the reason for their need without destroying their character, their independence, or their incentive to better their own conditions. (Cohen and Friedman, 1972)

Libertarians have argued that a Negative Income Tax that enabled means-tested benefits and public services to be abolished would provide for individuals’ needs in a way that would avoid the government interference in people’s lives inevitably associated with public services and means-tested benefits (Sloman, 2019: 95–6); that it would make the efficiency of the price mechanism available to poorer households; and that it would function as a macroeconomic regulator by increasing household incomes during recessions (Sloman, 2019: 47–8). However, the historic and current preference for Negative Income Tax rather than Basic Income (Story, 2015; Fleischer and Lehto, 2019) is somewhat

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difficult to understand. Friedman understood that there might be ‘problems of administration’ (Cohen and Friedman, 1972: 45; Friedman [1962] 2002: 192), but he did not recognize the extent of these, or that administering a Negative Income Tax would involve both government and employer interference in individuals’ lives (Chapter 2), and that a Basic Income would have served a libertarian agenda far more effectively than a Negative Income Tax. The only conclusion that we might be able to draw is that a Basic Income might have looked socialist because it taxes everyone and pays an income to everyone, whereas a Negative Income Tax taxes some and pays incomes to some. It is a pity that libertarians have not always been able to see that generalized conflicts with other ideologies are irrelevant to a libertarian evaluation of Basic Income; that the income security that a Basic Income would contribute would enhance individual liberty; and that the radical simplicity of a Basic Income’s administration would reduce government and employer interference in individuals’ lives. However ‘libertarian’ or ‘neoliberal’ a nation state might appear to be, either democracy or public pressure will generally ensure that some notice will be taken of poorer people in need of income, education, and medical care, and the Lockean proviso provides ideological sanction for such concern: so in practice states tend to be characterized by ‘redistributive market liberalism’ (Sloman, 2019: 29). However, an important division within libertarianism is between those who recognize that public services can enhance individual freedom, and those who espouse the neoliberalism that would like to see the majority of public services replaced by a Basic Income rather than complemented by one (Murray, 1984; 1994; 1996; 2006; 2008) in the hope that ‘we would see an increase in mutual aid and other “social insurance” without the State monopolies crowding out voluntary cooperation … we would see an increase in entrepreneurial activity and economic well-being’ (Weber, 2013: 93). The neoliberal complaint that means-tested benefits are ‘a deterrent to hard work’ (Joseph and Sumption, 1979: 19; Minford, 2002) and that they ‘create dependency’ (Mead, 1992: ix) is valid. ‘One of the main findings’ of a European research project was that close targeting and low benefits create a population of beneficiaries characterized by a high degree of vulnerability and difficulty in becoming completely autonomous from social assistance. (Saraceno, 2002: 246)

Because it is the system that imposes dependence on claimants, and not the claimants who generate their own dependency, it is entirely legitimate to see a Basic Income or Negative Income Tax as a useful replacement that would assist the employment market to become something closer to a classical market

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because it would free people to create their own prosperity and would not interfere in the market in the way that means-tested benefits do (Saraceno, 2002: 247): but that does not mean that a statutory minimum wage and existing means-tested benefits could be dispensed with (Murray, 1984: 227, 230; 1996: 50; 2006), and neither does it mean that cash could ever replace public services. Neither a Basic Income nor means-tested benefits would be able to take account of the very different levels of healthcare that different individuals need throughout their lives, and because a market in healthcare provision will always suffer from multiple information asymmetries and therefore market failures, tax-funded public provision will always be more efficient than any insurance-based system (Matsaganis, 2013; Schneider et al., 2021; Torry, 2018d; 2018e). By 2008, Murray had recognized that a Basic Income would be more efficient than a Negative Income Tax (Murray, 2008: 4). As always, the overall effect of the Basic Income that Murray recommends would depend on the scheme within which it was implemented, and an important criterion for such a scheme would be that poorer households should not find themselves worse off. No illustrative revenue neutral Basic Income scheme has been discovered for the UK that could abolish means-tested benefits at the same time as ensuring that poorer households would not become poorer (Torry, 2019a), and the same is likely to be true for other countries. Murray’s plan to replace tax-funded healthcare and all means-tested benefits with a Negative Income Tax or a Basic Income was never a realistic proposition, but his instinct was right: a Basic Income would make the employment market more efficient, it would enhance individual autonomy, and it would reduce government interference in lots of people’s lives. Thinktanks have been important locations for libertarian discussion of Basic Income. In the UK, the Adam Smith Institute published a paper on Negative Income Tax in 2015, and another on Basic Income in 2018 (Lehto, 2018; Story, 2015; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 196–7); and Van Parijs and Vanderborght suggest that wealthy US business leaders support thinktank activity in relation to Basic Income because of the proposal’s administrative and economic efficiency (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 197), although a further reason might be concern that the employment market turbulence caused by the job losses and job change related to globalization and automation will mean fewer people buying their products, which gives them a personal interest in finding new ways of distributing purchasing power. The fact that a Basic Income might look rather socialist appears to be no problem to those further towards the libertarian end of the spectrum who can see that the proposal could well make capitalism more efficient. This engagement should

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encourage those with influence on the left of the political spectrum to take a positive interest in Basic Income, and particularly in Basic Income schemes that would reduce inequality. Murray’s Negative Income Tax or Basic Income scheme would have been likely to increase it. Somewhat different from the neoliberalism of Murray and Mead is classical liberalism, sometimes represented in the UK by the Liberal Democrats. This recognizes that collective services can enhance individual liberty, and that government interference in the economy might be required if individual liberty is to be maximized (Brittan, 1998). Such interference might take the form of ‘a means of subsistence independent of needs’, as this would ‘separate the libertarian, free choice aspects of capitalism from the puritan work ethic’ (Brittan and Webb, 1990: 2–3): although instead of a means of subsistence independent of needs it might be better to seek a means of subsistence that contributes to the meeting of common needs (Ferguson et al., 2002: 180). Similarly, the ‘modern Conservatives’ Dominic Hobson and Alan Duncan ask for a Basic Income as a means to promote ‘liberty, property and prosperity’ (Hobson and Duncan, 1995a; 1995b). As Van Parijs suggests, ‘If we are serious about pursuing real freedom for all … what we have to go for is the highest unconditional income for all’ (Van Parijs, 1995: 1, 33: italics in the original). A Basic Income would enable people more easily to choose their employment pattern, how to spend their time, and how to form households, so it would enhance individual autonomy, which is the chief aim of a liberal ideology. The ‘ladder of opportunity’ is often rather shaky, and a Basic Income would ameliorate the poverty and unemployment traps and enable people to pursue their economic and occupational goals more easily. As Brittan suggests, ‘it is positively desirable that people should have a means of subsistence independent of needs’ (Brittan and Webb, 1990: 2) as this would cohere with a liberal concern for property rights. Brittan sees Basic Income ‘not as a handout, but as a property right’, and as a ‘return on the national capital’ (Brittan and Webb, 1990: 3) (Torry, 2016a: 168–70, 173–6). Socialism Perhaps the clearest argument for Basic Income from a socialist point of view is made by Alex Callinicos: One of the attractions of the idea that every citizen be granted as of right a basic income set, say, at a level that would allow them to meet their socially recognised subsistence needs is that it could help to emancipate workers from the dictatorship of capital. Such a basic income would radically alter the bargaining power between

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labour and capital, since potential workers would now be in a position, if they chose, to pursue alternatives to paid employment. Moreover, because all citizens would receive the same basic income … its introduction would be an important step towards establishing equality of access to advantage. (Callinicos, 2003: 134; cf. Dean, 2012a: 125–6)

Here we can see in a fairly stark form the difference between assumptions underlying socialism and those underlying libertarianism. The libertarian is aware of the ways in which the State might be able to constrain individual liberty, and so wants to restrict the influence of the State, but is unfortunately unaware of the ways in which capital constrains individual liberty. The socialist is aware of the ways in which capital can constrain individual liberty, and so wants to restrict the influence of capital, which requires an active State. The interesting thing is that a Basic Income could constrain the influence of both the State and capital and could therefore function as a potent means of individual liberty. To the extent that socialism remains relevant in a society in which social classes are extremely fluid, and national economies are no longer self-contained, it must be of interest that researchers who have found themselves to the left of the political spectrum have divided over whether Basic Income should be advocated or fought: a division more extreme than the similar division that we find among trades unions (Chapter 9). We have also seen some understandable mind-changing. From regarding a requirement for ante/required reciprocation to be a reason for rejecting Basic Income, G.D.H. Cole came to appreciate its value; and more recently the left-leaning academic Ruth Lister has left behind her initial scepticism and has understood that a Basic Income could be useful in a socially and economically turbulent era such as ours (Dobbs et al., 2015: 149–64; Lansley and Reed, 2019; Lister, 2017). UK thinktanks on the left of the political spectrum have also been significantly divided on the issue, with some offering classic objections—‘It would discourage work, perpetuate inequality, would be expensive and politically extremely unpopular … it is antithetical to the values of most British people, who believe in the value of work’ (Cruddas and Kibasi, 2016); ‘it is not enough to help those in severe need but is a generous gift to the wealthy who don’t need it. It is … regressive … The estimates of funds required to provide a UBI at anything other than token levels are well in excess of the entire welfare budget of most countries’ (Coote and Yazici, 2019). Bizarrely, this second quotation, from the New Economics Foundation, is immediately contradicted in every respect by an illustrative Basic Income scheme referenced in the publication, and by a paper published by the same organization a month earlier that recommended

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turning the UK’s Income Tax Personal Allowance into a cash payment that would have been a Basic Income if it had not been withdrawn from the highest earners (Pollard et al., 2022; Stirling and Arnold, 2019). The ambivalent attitude towards Basic Income on the left of the political spectrum has much to do with left-leaning political parties’ historic relationships with trades unions rather than with any socialist ideology: and in many cases the division over Basic Income mirrors that between the socialist and the social democrat, or labourist, wings within political parties to the left of the political spectrum, with socialists recognizing Basic Income as socialist, and labourists, for whom paid work is foundational, regarding Basic Income as a threat, even though it is not one (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 189–94). The lack of enthusiasm for [Basic Income] among social democrats is based on the misconception that a basic income will harm people’s motivation to work, their self-respect, the social economy and the principle of justice: (Kildal, 2021)

but such misconceptions are deep-rooted, and are not always amenable to appeals to logic or evidence. An interesting recent development is thinktanks developing proposals very similar to a Basic Income but with different names—for instance, ‘National Weekly Allowance’ (Pollard et al., 2022; Stirling and Arnold, 2019) and ‘Individual Credit’ (Harrop, 2016: 139–43)—because the name ‘Basic Income’ might still be toxic even if the idea is becoming less so in the context of a more turbulent employment market. The Citizen’s Basic Income Trust recently followed suit when it published illustrative draft legislation for a ‘Fair Allowance’ (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b). An outlier in this field is the UK’s ‘Compass’ thinktank, which for almost ten years has advocated and researched a Basic Income and has used that terminology for it. This represents the increasingly visible ‘progressive’ policy that is content to cross the boundaries between existing political parties and ideologies towards the left of the political spectrum in order to develop, research, and advocate policy designed to serve a society very different from the society in which the older party and ideological divisions evolved (Lansley and Reed, 2019; Reed and Lansley, 2016). In Brazil, it was the Workers’ Party that legislated for a Basic Income to be implemented by gradual steps (Chapter 9), and across Europe socialist, workers’ and green parties are deciding to make Basic Income party policy, although such commitments can sometimes slide into the implementation of means-tested benefits (Chapter 9; Torry, 2021a: 229–30). An increasing trend among more socialist researchers is to continue to see paid and other work as

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essential to human identity, but also to see that freedom to choose what kind of work we do might be equally socialist—a freedom that Basic Income would help to grant—and that Basic Income’s contribution to the meeting of basic needs should make the idea particularly attractive to socialists (Callinicos, 2003: 134; Casassas et al., 2019: 468, 472). At the very end of the socialist part of the political spectrum we find that variant of socialism that would like to see capitalism abolished. There are different versions of this position, from the totally planned economy to a vision of the entire economy being composed of worker co-operatives, and Basic Income could fit into all of them (Breitenbach et al., 1990: 33; Shutt, 2010: 122–7). Basic Income is an unusual social policy, as it can attract supporters from almost all across the political spectrum, and can both facilitate the survival and greater efficiency of capitalism at the same time as transforming it into something else. However, different political contexts could result in very different Basic Income schemes being implemented (Fouksman and Klein, 2019). A scheme in which the Basic Income was funded by a progressive income tax, and in which the Basic Income complemented a wide range of public services, would have very different effects from one in which the Basic Income was funded by a regressive tax and in which public services were abolished (Raventós and Wark, 2018: 220–21). (Funding a Basic Income with a flat tax might look as if it could result in a regressive outcome, but that is not necessarily the case: de Siqueira and Nogueira, 2021; Ghenis et al., 2021.) There are therefore two reasons for those on the Left, socialists and labourists alike, to make common cause over Basic Income. First of all a Basic Income could provide both greater bargaining power and individual freedom to workers, and a secure income that would contribute towards the meeting of everyone’s basic needs and the birth of a new kind of economy (Delsen, 2019: 12–13; Devine et al., 2013: 47–50; Jordan, 1987: 161; Kingston, 2017: 138–9; Sherman and Judkins, 1996; Torry, 2013: 214–16; 2021a: 227–32); and secondly, it would be very easy for a libertarian government to implement a regressive Basic Income scheme and then use it as an excuse to abolish aspects of the existing welfare state. If labourists do not want to see that happen, then they will have to advocate for a progressive Basic Income scheme that would complement both statutory minimum wages and the existing welfare state. This will require labourists to join in the research effort related to such Basic Income schemes (Torry, 2016a: 170–73).

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We can agree that the narrowness of existing visions of reform is striking. Neo-liberal discourses are dominant—they are the ‘common sense’ of our era and penetrate our lives in ways we do not even realise. (Daly, 2011: 157)

At the same time we can recognize that there might be reform options available within the current paradigm that signify a broader vision. One of those options might be a Basic Income. Religious perspectives The relationship between religious perspectives and Basic Income is an under-researched field. This is particularly true in relation to Islamic perspectives (Al-Shami and Bullock, 2019: 30), although it ought not to be, as Islam already has well-developed methods of sharing wealth in society. A review of some of the main themes [of Islamic law] demonstrates that while the rationale and revenue streams of the Western concept of Basic Income might not be the same as those offered in Islam, there is much symmetry between the two concepts, and further research is needed to explore their similarities. (Al-Shami and Bullock, 2019: 48)

Here just a single more detailed example will be offered of a religious perspective on Basic Income—a Christian one—in the hope that this will inspire those who are committed to and knowledgeable about a variety of other religious traditions to research connections between their own traditions and the meaning and effects of Basic Income. Basic Income reflects many of the aspects of the Christian Faith. It would celebrate God-given abundance, be an act of grace (that is, of unconditional generosity), recognize our individuality, recognize God’s equal treatment of us, provide for the poor, constantly forgive, never judge, ensure that workers would be paid for their work, be the basis of a covenant, inspire us to be co-creators, understand both our original righteousness and our original corruption, recognize our mutual dependency, facilitate a more just society, promote liberty, both relativize and enhance the family, facilitate the duty to serve, be welcoming and hospitable, and be an act of love (Torry, 2016b). In particular, the Christian Faith does not permit a distinction between deserving and undeserving poor (Charlesworth and Williams, 2014). It will be these connections between Basic Income and their faith that motivate practising Christians to participate in the Basic Income debate. This is particularly true of Quakers, for whom practical application in the public sphere has always been

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important; but members of other denominations have also been involved. The Justice Commission of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, staffed by Seán Healy and Brigid Reynolds, both members of Roman Catholic religious orders, drove the Irish Basic Income debate for thirty years; and the same two religious now run the independent Social Justice Ireland (Reynolds and Healy, 1994; 1995; 2016; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 203–4). The South African Council of Churches was a member of the Basic Income Grant Coalition established in South Africa in 2002; and the Lutheran Church in Namibia was instrumental in organizing and staffing the pilot project there (Chapter 4). Books, chapters and articles have been written by a number of Christians (Meireis, 2004; Preston, 1992; Reynolds and Healy, 1994; 1995; 2016; Torry, 2016b), although some authors have not sufficiently distinguished between Basic Income and a Minimum Income Guarantee (Tanner, 2005; Wogaman, 1968). The ‘(more or less secularized) Christian-democratic parties’ (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 203) in Europe have shown little interest in Basic Income, and those political parties without ‘Christian’ in their names but that have Christian roots, such as the British Labour Party, will often show enthusiasm for means-tested and work-tested benefits. Lying behind this relationship might be a rather too generalized interpretation of Paul’s ‘Anyone unwilling to work should not eat’ (2 Thessalonians 3: 10: New Revised Standard Version). A broader understanding of the Christian Faith would understand Basic Income as representing in the social sphere the unconditional love of God in the theological (Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 205–6). This religious bifurcation parallels the secular bifurcation into labourist and socialist tendencies on the left of the political spectrum, and the related bifurcation into competing enthusiasms for means-tested benefits and Basic Income.

Conclusions There are possible objections to all of the justifications for Basic Income that we have discussed, so in relation to each of them we are left with the question as to whether a Basic Income can be regarded as ethical. An interesting question is whether a variety of ethical arguments can be cumulative (Birnbaum, 2019: 520). Perhaps what we can say is that the more ethical justifications we can list for Basic Income, the less easy it is to regard the proposal as unethical.

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Future research Just as in this chapter the history of justifications for Basic Income has merged with the state of research, any future research will represent an evolution from the state of research today. The research now needed is as follows: • Further study of a wide variety of ethical theories and of their relevance to the Basic Income debate. • Further study of a wide variety of political and other ideologies and of their relationships with the Basic Income debate. • A study of a wide variety of religious traditions and of their potential relationships with Basic Income and the global Basic Income debate. • Further research on the concept of reciprocity, in particular in relation to a variety of social scientific disciplines such as psychology, social psychology, economics, and so on. • Twentieth century continental philosophy, and particularly its debate about ‘the gift’ could provide a useful starting point for an exploration of Titmuss’s ‘gift relationship’ (Derrida, 1992; Marion, 2002; Titmuss, 1970). • Research into the different meanings of freedom and of fairness could enhance the Basic Income debate. • Further exploration of the question as to whether a Basic Income should now be regarded as a human right would be a useful contribution to the global Basic Income debate.

9

Is a Basic Income politically feasible?

Introduction This chapter will offer a brief history of political engagement with Basic Income; will discuss more recent political engagement and the research to which it has given birth; and will ask about connections between political engagement, public opinion, and the justifications discussed in Chapter 8. The roles of thinktanks and trades unions will be of particular interest. Legislative issues will be discussed, and the research now required will be listed.

A brief history of political engagement In this chapter the historical section will again be brief, and this time research undertaken during the twentieth century will be regarded as belonging to the state of research because lessons learnt during that century remain salient in the modern debate. Thomas Spence’s Basic Income scheme was ‘political’ in the sense that it constituted a policy proposal; and a local political consequence of its political character is that the printing of the lecture in which Spence first described expropriation of land as the funding method for public services and poverty relief, and eventually for his Basic Income, led directly to his expulsion from the Newcastle Philosophical Society (Torry, 2021a: 36). Thirty years after Spence’s pamphlet, unconditional incomes became entangled in party political controversy in the United States. Orestes Brownson proposed unconditional one-off grants for every individual once they reached maturity, rather like those that Thomas Paine had proposed, except that the funding method would have been closer to Spence’s, in that Brownson proposed that when someone died all of their property should pass to the State. Brownson thought that his proposal would assist the Democratic candidate in the upcoming presidential election. It achieved the opposite. Even though the 229

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party and its candidate distanced themselves from Brownson and his ideas, the election was lost to a Republican, possibly because Republicans had publicized Brownson’s proposal (Torry, 2021a: 47–8). We might choose to regard as an early political intervention John Stuart Mill’s understanding of Charles Fourier’s ‘decent minimum’ as a Basic Income, but once in Parliament Mill supported the 1834 changes to the Poor Law that embedded the deserving/undeserving distinction in English law and gave birth to the workhouse. His more universalist prescriptions were expressed in the vaguest of terms (Torry, 2021a: 51–3). Significant political engagement with Basic Income would have to wait until the twentieth century.

The state of research Political activity in the United Kingdom during the twentieth century The first properly political Basic Income event in the UK during the twentieth century was the Labour Party’s discussion of the Milners’ proposal for a State Bonus in 1920. The party’s Executive Committee rejected the proposal, and among its arguments were that the proposal was ‘to raise money without any regard to ability to pay and to distribute it without any regard to need’; that existing policies would solve the same problems ‘without upsetting the machinery of production on which we subsist’; and that a ‘cautious’ approach to change towards a socialist society was what was required (Labour Party, 1921: 60, 62; Torry, 2021a: 72–4). It is generally true that governments prefer incremental change because the outcomes will be more predictable than those likely to occur if system change is attempted. This will be a problem unless it can be argued that a Basic Income would be a minor rearrangement of the current system. A Basic Income scheme that would turn an income tax personal allowance into an unconditional cash payment for every individual would fulfil such a criterion (Torry, 2022b). Also in the UK, Juliet Rhys Williams was a member of the committee whose Chair, William Beveridge, gave birth to the 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services (‘the Beveridge Report’) (Beveridge, 1942). Rhys Williams’s minority report, which opposed Beveridge’s proposal for a combination of social insurance and means-tested benefits, and as an alternative proposed something close to a Basic Income, was later published as Something to Look Forward To (Rhys Williams, 1943). While a number of economists, including James Meade, and also a few individual Members of Parliament, treated her

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ideas sympathetically, the Beveridge Report had already garnered substantial political, trade union, and public approval, and Rhys Williams’s proposals were easy to dismiss on the basis of the higher Income Tax rates that would have been required. Henderson’s and Quiggin’s verdict is probably correct: that Rhys Williams’s failure to get her proposal anywhere close to implementation highlights the limitations of being an individual policy entrepreneur, the strong support within the bureaucracy and the political class for Beveridge’s model of social insurance and targeted welfare, and Rhys Williams’ personal hostility towards socialism, which prevented even the possibility of an alliance with the labour movement. (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 495)

What did get onto the UK’s statute book was an unconditional income for children—‘Family Allowance’—that was initially paid for the second and subsequent children in every family, and was later extended to every child (Torry, 2021a: 82–3, 129–30). There is now a long history of parliamentary committees seeking evidence about Basic Income. In 1982, Juliet Rhys Williams’s son Brandon presented a Basic Income scheme to a parliamentary committee. As he put it: ‘Every British Citizen should be awarded a personal allowance of a value related to personal status, not to resources’ (House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee Sub-Committee, 1982: 423, 425. See also Parker, 1982; 1989: 224–53; 1995; Rhys Williams, 1989). The parliamentary record shows how the committee’s final discussion with Brandon Rhys Williams concluded: Chairman 942. There seem to me to be many benefits of this system.   There are. 943. Clearly you are expressing them very eloquently. Clearly they would go a long way toward easing the unemployment and poverty traps.   There would not be any unemployment under these schemes. You would not need to register as unemployed. There would be people who were not in full-time work but they would not need to have themselves labelled as unemployed. If they got an opportunity of work or casual work they could take it and nobody would have to know. 944. Are you saying that the unemployment benefit trap would be virtually eradicated by this?   Certainly. 945. Also it would be administratively much simpler.   Yes, it would. 946. I wonder what degree of redistribution of resources there would be or is that one of the matters that could be flexible within the system?   This is optional. This is why I have not put figures in my paper because you could make the scheme do what you liked. If you want to help people on low

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wages or low incomes you can tilt the tax and benefit structure in such a way that it is redistributive in certain directions. Chairman: May I say that you will observe that owing to pressure of other engagements we have lost our third member and are now therefore non quorate. Thank you very much. (House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee Sub-Committee, 1982: 459)

The committee recommended that Basic Income should be regarded as a serious option for reform, and that ‘the Government should put … work in hand … Meanwhile, it is desirable that changes to the present system should be compatible with an eventual move to an integrated structure of tax and social security’ (House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee, 1983). A General Election then occurred, and nothing was done about the recommendation. However, the exercise had given rise to a certain amount of interest in Basic Income, and there were now enough people engaged with the issue to enable an organization to be formed to undertake research (Sloman, 2019: 165; Torry, 2013: 32–6). This was not the end of political interest in the UK. In 1994 the Labour Party’s Social Justice Commission treated Basic Income as a serious contender for reform of the benefits system: It would be unwise … to rule out a move towards Citizen’s Income in future: if it turns out to be the case that earnings simply cannot provide a stable income for a growing proportion of people, then the notion of some guaranteed income, outside the labour market, could become increasingly attractive. (Commission on Social Justice, 1994: 263–4)

Basic Income has been a consistent theme in the UK’s Green Party’s manifestos, as in the manifestos of other green parties; the Scottish National Party has shown a consistent interest, perhaps partly motivated by a desire to distance itself from social policy made by the UK Government in London; and the proposal has appeared in occasional Liberal Democrat manifestos. A Basic Income can be described and justified in a wide variety of ways, political parties are often broad coalitions, and ideologies can be capacious, so it is no surprise that a survey of political interest in Basic Income across Europe has found the proposal scattered across large parts of the political spectrum (Chrisp and Martinelli, 2019; Torry 2016a: 182–4; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 194–6).

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1970s political activity in Canada and the United States of America During the 1970s, both US and UK governments and politicians actively discussed proposals for alternatives to Basic Income: in the UK, genuine Tax Credits, and in the United States, Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan: a proposal for a ‘Guaranteed Annual Income’ (Steensland, 2008: 79–181). Neither proposal was implemented: in the case of the UK because a General Election resulted in a new Labour Party administration that objected to the flat Income Tax rate that the Tax Credit scheme would have required, which would have prevented the government from maintaining the existing more progressive tax system. It might have been fortunate that neither of the proposals were implemented, as both of them would have imposed complex administrative burdens on both governments and individuals (Torry, 2021a: 106–8, 124–8). What is interesting about Senator George McGovern’s proposal for a ‘demogrant’ when he ran against Richard Nixon for the presidency in 1972 is that the description was ambiguous and the demogrant could have been interpreted as a Basic Income or as a Minimum Income Guarantee: an ambiguity that might have been designed to enable voters to read into the proposal what they wanted to hear (Torry, 2021a: 108–10). A particularly unfortunate political incident occurred when the interim results from United States Minimum Income Guarantee experiments were discussed in the US Congress. Researchers reported that the marriage dissolution rate had risen, and even those who had been enthusiastic supporters of the proposal for the Family Assistance Plan that had given birth to the experiments ceased to believe that a Minimum Income Guarantee was a viable option for benefits reform. The marriage dissolution rate was later shown not to have changed during the experiment (Cain and Wissoker, 1990: 1235). This incident reveals multiple problems. Firstly, it can be a mistake to publicize hastily calculated interim results. Secondly, it will often be possible to interpret the results of an experiment in multiple directions. The US Minimum Income Guarantee experiments could be positively interpreted as reducing poverty at the same time as having such useful employment market effects as allowing unemployed workers to take the time to find the right job rather than just any job, or negatively as reducing employment incentives and risking disastrous social effects at considerable cost. Thirdly, taxation and benefits systems are complicated, so the general public, journalists, and politicians are unlikely to understand the details of either current systems or reform proposals, and are unlikely to have available to them all of the detailed survey results, or to understand the variety of ways in which they might be understood. This means that they are likely to construct or repeat simple messages that can only

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misrepresent a complex reality. ‘Low-information discussion’ (Widerquist, 2019b: 315) will be the result: an effect that we have seen in a variety of other recent contexts, and an effect that can only worsen as attention spans contract, we increasingly absorb over-simple messages from social media and the internet, and governments, corporations, thinktanks, and so on, constantly find new ways to impose simple messages on us. This raises the question as to whether it can ever be wise to propose pilot projects and experiments, especially as a change in government can quickly bring an experiment to an end, as has happened twice in Canada: once when the 1970s ‘Mincome’ Minimum Income Guarantee experiment in Dauphin and Winnipeg was closed down prematurely and the survey results archived without being properly evaluated, and again when the recent Ontario Minimum Income Guarantee experiment (Ontario, n.d.) was rapidly closed by a new government. We shall return to this subject when we discuss the recent experiment in Finland. In spite of the difficulties relating to the 1970s experiments, political interest in Basic Income did not completely disappear in Canada and the USA. In Canada, the MacDonald Commission studied the possibility of free trade with the United States and suggested that a more flexible economy needed a ‘Universal Income Security Program’. Two options were suggested: an income-tested benefit, and ‘a universal demogrant-based delivery system’, with the income taxed back from wealthier families through the tax system. The commission recommended the latter, which would have constituted a Basic Income if an individual rather than a ‘family unit’ implementation had been proposed (Minister of Supply and Services, 1985: 794–5, 800). The Federal Government pursued the free trade recommendations in the report but not the Universal Income Security Programme (Pasma and Mulvale, 2014: 8). In 2000 the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, floated the idea of a Guaranteed Income, but soon dropped it when it came in for criticism (Pasma and Mulvale, 2014: 8): but in the United States political interest revived when Andrew Yang, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, proposed a ‘Freedom Dividend’ (Stevens and Grullón, 2020): this time a genuine Basic Income. Wider European political activity The Netherlands Unlike in the UK, where it was a Conservative Member of Parliament who was largely instrumental in provoking the modern Basic Income debate, in the Netherlands it was the Social Democratic Party that in 1983 adopted Basic

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Income as party policy under the influence of the trade union Voedingsbond FNV. A government-supported report then advocated a Basic Income on the pragmatic grounds that it would simplify the social security system and incentivize improvements in employment conditions. Unfortunately, a further report offered no costings, recommended that the Basic Income should be administered by employers, and suggested that it could enable the statutory minimum wage to be abolished. Unsurprisingly, Voedingsbond FNV joined other trades unions in rejecting the report. Groot and van der Veen draw the lesson that detailed costings, and a clear description of effects on households, are essential elements of any proposal that wants to be taken seriously (Groot and van der Veen, 2000: 200–206; van Berkel, 1994a; 1994b: 4). Unfortunately, when detailed costings did appear they were for a Basic Income scheme funded by a flat tax that would have reduced employment market activity by 5 per cent (Jongen et al., 2015: 10–11), and would not have been ‘efficient as a redistributive system’ (de Mooij, 2006: 68). A properly scientific approach would have been to set feasibility criteria—for instance, that at least some redistribution should occur from rich to poor—and then to test illustrative Basic Income schemes against them (Torry, 2016a: 184–7), with the recognition that a Basic Income by itself would redistribute less than means-tested benefits, so ‘redistribution, which is hindered on the expenditures side, needs therefore to be strengthened on the revenues side’ (Richiardi, 2022: 15) by a more progressive income tax. In 1995, both the Minister of Economic Affairs and the Minister of Finance, members of a ‘social liberal’ coalition government, expressed sympathy for the idea of a Basic Income, but again path dependency resulted in tinkering with the existing social security system, and in work tests and subsidized jobs. During the 1990s trades unions and the Green Left Party (GroenLinks) made a variety of proposals more or less like a Basic Income, including a proposal similar to Atkinson’s Participation Income (Chapter 2) designed to introduce an element of ante/required reciprocity (Chapter 8) in order to make the idea acceptable. No account seems to have been taken of the near impossibility of administering such an income. At the same time, the Labour Party was moving in a similar direction by proposing that the definition of ‘work’ should encompass unpaid community and care activity, and that the benefits system should facilitate that shift (Groot and van der Veen, 2000: 213–15). Very different are two unconditional incomes already payable in the Netherlands: the child benefit, paid unconditionally for every child, and the old age pension, paid unconditionally to every older person who satisfies a residency condition. These are real Basic Incomes according to the definition (Belastingdienst, 2020; Groot and van der Veen, 2000: 200).

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France Individual events can sometimes have political significance. In France, André Gorz’s conversion from regarding paid work as the only legitimate route to an income to thinking the security of a Basic Income to be essential in the current fragile employment market inspired the substantial modern Basic Income debate in France, and also Benoît Hamon, the socialist candidate in France’s 2017 presidential candidate, to include a Basic Income—a ‘Revenu Universel d’Existence’—in his manifesto. Hamon did not even get past the first round, and during the election campaign had suggested that the proposed income should only be paid to poorer households, but his initial support for a Basic Income stimulated a significant increase in interest in the idea (Chapter 4; Torry, 2021a: 163–6). Spain and Italy In Spain, in 2011, the Indignados added a Basic Income to their demands, and in 2014 a Podemos Member of Parliament sponsored a petition asking for a Basic Income, and the party proposed that one should be implemented. However, when in 2019 Podemos contributed ministers to a coalition government, it took fright at media criticism of Basic Income, and although it was still calling its proposed income a ‘renta básica’, ‘basic income’, it was not one: it was income-tested and household-based, and amounted to a Minimum Income Guarantee, the administration of which seized up when it was implemented (El Español, 2019; Martinez Lopez and San Juan, 2014: 11; Mason, 2020; Noguera, 2018: 291–2; Rincón, 2020; TheLocalES, 2020). The same happened in Italy. The Five Star Movement promised a Basic Income, but what was implemented was an income-tested and work-tested benefit. Unfortunately, this was called a Reddito di Cittadinanza, a ‘Citizenship Income’, which could be understood to be a Basic Income. Again, it was not one (BBC, 2018; Giuffrida, 2019; Jessoula et al., 2019; O’Neal, 2019). Minimum Income Guarantee experiments While genuine Basic Income pilot projects have not taken place in Europe, apart from the Finnish experiment that might be described as ambiguously a Basic Income pilot project, Minimum Income Guarantee experiments have proliferated. A diverse experiment in Barcelona, ‘B-Mincome’, was similar to those in the USA and Canada, and delivered equally positive social and individual wellbeing effects (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2019; Bollain, 2019; Laín, 2019: 37–9). Similarly diverse Minimum Income Guarantee experiments have taken place in a number of Netherlands municipalities (Groot

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and Verlaat, 2019). These experiments might best be described as variants of a Participation Income, and as characterized by a capabilities and social investment approach rather than as an activation policy (Chapter 2; Muffels and Gielens, 2019: 110, 134–5). Given the diversities of treatments in both the Barcelona and Netherlands experiments it is a pity that a genuine Basic Income was included in neither of them. To have tested the extreme case of unconditionality would have provided important research evidence. As it is, as with the US and Canadian Minimum Income Guarantee experiments, we are left to extrapolate the positive social and individual wellbeing outcomes to the limit case of a Basic Income (Groot, 2004: 93), and to argue that a Basic Income would be even more likely than the mechanisms tested in Barcelona and the Netherlands to resolve the challenges of rising inequality and dualization of the labour market with the aim of improving trust, free choice and personal autonomy, and creating wider opportunities to disadvantaged people. (Muffels and Gielens, 2019: 136)

The Finland experiment Finland is the Scandinavian outlier, in the sense that it is the only Scandinavian country that has experienced significant and sustained political, thinktank, and academic interest in Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 183–4), including the kind of financial feasibility research that has characterized the UK debate (De Wispelaere et al., 2019: 393). It has also experienced a unique experiment: Two thousand unemployed individuals randomly selected from across the country had their unemployment benefit made unconditional for a period of two years, with the result that employment market activity improved slightly during the second year, and wellbeing measures improved across both years (De Wispelaere et al., 2019; Kangas et al., 2020: 188; Torry, 2021a: 185–6). As always with such experiments, it was what was politically acceptable and could fairly easily be implemented that was done, and although the experiment could not be called a Basic Income pilot project because the government would not have been able to pay every Finnish resident the €560 per month paid to the selected unemployed individuals, it was highly productive in terms of the debate that it inspired in Finland and beyond. For this experiment, as with many others, it is possible to extrapolate the results to suggest that a genuine Basic Income would have even more of a positive effect on wellbeing and employment market activity. The experiment also showed that without cross-government enthusiasm and engagement—which the Finnish experiment did not achieve in the Finance Ministry—only a limited experiment will be possible, and not a genuine Basic Income pilot project (De Wispelaere et al., 2019: 400–401).

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A significant political event was the delay caused by a reference to the Constitutional Law Committee (De Wispelaere et al., 2019: 396). It was eventually decided that it was legitimate to treat a group of Finnish citizens differently from the rest for the sake of a short experiment: but the reference and the debate reveal an important factor related to any such experiment. Someone in the test sample kept their €560 if they found employment, whereas someone not in the sample did not. This was a clear injustice: just as we might legitimately say that during the Indian and Namibian experiments those communities not part of the pilot project suffered an injustice relative to communities experiencing the Basic Income. In a country such as Finland, the only way to ensure that such an injustice does not occur would be to reduce other benefits and tax allowances, and to increase income tax rates, for the selected individuals, so that nobody receiving the Basic Income would have more money than anyone not receiving it, so that the only difference between recipients and non-recipients of the Basic Income would be that the former would experience a secure layer of income for the duration of the experiment (Soininvaara, 2017; Torry, 2021a: 186–7). However, if that is not possible then the Constitutional Law Committee finding that different treatment of members of a pilot project sample might be legitimate for the duration of an experiment might serve as a useful precedent. De Wispelaere makes the important general point that political interest in Basic Income can be ‘cheap’: that is, a political party or a politician with no ability, and often no willingness, to implement a Basic Income scheme, might find it convenient to advocate a pilot project; or support might be ‘superficial’: that is, engagement with Basic Income can be in vague terms that mask controversies over the detail of Basic Income schemes (De Wispelaere, 2016a). For instance, the Finnish Government might have wanted to see what effect a Basic Income might have on employment levels, but the lack of deep commitment across government departments, and particularly the Finance Minister’s lack of enthusiasm for the project, meant that even though the experiment produced some positive results, no further government analysis or proposals emerged and there were no further experiments. As we know that support might be cheap, we shall always need to be aware that governments might propose an experiment in order to signal electorally useful support for Basic Income at the same time as intending to take no steps towards implementing one. By simply proposing empirical trials, actors can influence agendas, benefit from public demands, or reduce public pressure without having to take on the risks associated with implementing a fully-fledged policy proposal. We conclude that empirical trials can be understood as buffers against risks that might be used strategically by politicians. (Afscharian et al., 2022b: 1–2)

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However, this does not mean that Basic Income educators, researchers, and campaigners should refuse to engage with proposed or actual experiments, because even if a flawed experiment of some kind is all that is on offer, ‘basic income advocates may have little choice but to grab the opportunity that is on offer, warts and all’ (De Wispelaere et al., 2019: 404). The political benefits that accrue from a project will generally correlate with the level of political engagement with it, which means that researchers and campaigners should not reduce their engagement once government agreement to an experiment or pilot project has been achieved, but should rather increase it in order to hold the government to account as it conducts the experiment, and so that results can be accurately and intelligently communicated (De Wispelaere et al., 2019: 404) (Torry, 2016a: 178–80). Worldwide political engagement Brazil Since the turn of the millennium, in the context of a rapidly spreading worldwide debate on Basic Income, political engagement with the subject has increased rapidly (Torry, 2021a: 197–223). In 2004, Brazil legislated for a Basic Income to be approached by stages. The process has stalled, the current stage being the Bolsa Família, an income-tested benefit with other conditionalities attached: but occasional extensions to the Bolsa Família take place, and local experiments continue. One of these, in Maricà, is close to being a Basic Income (Lavinas, 2013: 44; Silva and Lima, 2019: 320–24, 327; Rocha, 2020; Suplicy, 2003: 408–16), although whether the fact that the unconditional income is given in a local currency means that it is not a ‘cash’ payment, as required by the BIEN definition’s clarifications, is an interesting question (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022). Large countries that devolve substantial powers to relatively autonomous regions, states, cities, and municipalities, can experience social and economic innovation more easily than countries with more centralized governments. Brazil is a clear example of this, as is Mexico, where Mexico City has implemented an unconditional pension (Yanes, 2013; 2019). Other examples are the United States, Canada, and India, all of which have seen experiments with Basic Income or mechanisms with some similarities to it (Kline, 2022). South Africa and Namibia It was political interest in Basic Income in South Africa that resulted in the Namibian pilot project. In 1997 the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) commissioned research on a social security system for the country

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(Haarmann and Haarmann, 1998; Seekings, 2020). A Basic Income was proposed, and COSATU took the idea to a Jobs Summit in 1998. The Minister for Social Development supported the idea, but then ceased to do so when the Minister of Finance and the President rejected the proposal (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2020). Trades unions continued to argue for a Basic Income on the grounds that it would stimulate employment and economic growth, but the South African Government again rejected the idea, and trade union interest declined. It was at the 2006 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) congress in Cape Town that the initiative migrated to Namibia when Bishop Kameeta, a bishop of the Lutheran Church in Namibia, expressed enthusiasm (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 496; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 175; Seekings and Matisonn, 2012). Following the pilot project (Chapters 4 and 6), Namibia’s government showed no interest in the very positive results. A common objection was offered: that money should not be given to people who do nothing. Guy Standing speculates that the real reason for the government not wanting to see a nationwide Basic Income is that it would be emancipatory, as it would allow people to make their own economic decisions without government interference (Standing, 2015). Initially the National Union of Namibian Workers joined the government in its criticism of Basic Income and withdrew from the consortium that had planned the pilot project, but a membership backlash forced the leadership into reengaging with the project and its clearly positive results. This was the first time that trades unions had found themselves opposing the government. During the subsequent five years or so Basic Income reappeared in government proposals, but no action followed (Haarmann and Haarmann, 2012; Haarmann et al., 2019: 367–9; Standing, 2017: 232; Torry, 2018a: 133). In 2019, the Namibian Government proposed a work-tested and income-tested unemployment benefit even though its social protection policy had recognized the efficiency of Unconditional Cash Transfers (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2019: 57; Torry, 2021a: 206–9). India Sometimes a pilot project can become an immediately political event. This happened in India, where the 2011 pilot project (Chapter 4) faced significant opposition from Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) involved with existing welfare schemes. Leaflets were delivered in the West Delhi slum communities where unconditional incomes were being paid, warning residents that the pilot project might lead to the ration shops being closed; and representatives of the NGOs disrupted meetings held by the Self-Employed Women’s Association: the trade union responsible for the pilot project

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(Standing, 2012a). Perhaps it is no surprise that reactions occur when personal and organizational interests are threatened by the possibility of a Basic Income being paid, especially when existing welfare systems are easy to corrupt, as are India’s subsidized ration shops and its various make-work schemes. The transparency of Basic Incomes, along with India’s efficient population registration system, means that a Basic Income would be far more difficult to corrupt than existing welfare systems (Davala et al., 2015: 1–18; Standing, 2012b). The Self-Employed Women’s Association wanted a Basic Income pilot project to happen because its officers and members wanted to see if an unconditional income could contribute to the emancipation and wellbeing of women. The Indian Government’s interest was different: to see if a Basic Income might be able to replace the country’s many inefficient and corrupt welfare programmes. The results of the project suggested that it could do so (Standing, 2012b; 2013). Throughout the project, the researchers stayed in contact with both the national and state governments: but then in 2014 the Bharatiya Janata Party replaced the Congress Party in government, so contacts had to be rebuilt, often with new civil servants as well as new government ministers. The new Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramanian, was sympathetic to the idea of cash transfers, and in 2016 the Government engaged with the India Network for Basic Income (INBI), founded in 2015 to promote research and debate on Basic Income in India. In January 2017, Subramanian included a chapter on Basic Income in his annual Economic Survey, in which he wrote that Basic Income is a ‘powerful idea whose time even if not ripe for implementation is ripe for serious discussion’ (Liu and Nemana, 2020: 278–9). Public and political debate followed (Mehta, 2019: 14–16), and again fears were expressed that the implementation of a Basic Income would lead to the abolition of the existing welfare system, along with the common objections that a Basic Income would be unaffordable, and that giving money to poor people would make them lazy. Those arguing for the implementation of a Basic Income emphasized its administrative efficiency and India’s need for social justice. In 2018, in the state of Telengana, an unconditional income was paid to farmers at the rate of 8000 Rupees (US$120) per acre per annum. Arvind Subramanian called this a ‘Quasi Universal Basic Income’ (Subramanian, 2018). Neither the farmers nor the general population regard the scheme as welfare payments, but rather as investment; and the unconditionality of the payments within the single conditionality that recipients must be farmers has reinvigorated interest in Basic Income. In January 2019, the scheme for farmers was extended to the whole of India (Mehta, 2019: 16–18). Also in 2019, a political party in the northern state of Sikkim proposed the implementation of a Basic Income just

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for that state. The party failed to win the state government election, but the attempt represents the potential of a country with highly devolved government such as India’s to implement a Basic Income state by state rather than for the whole country in one go (Davala, 2019: 382–6), and it also represents the possibility of a longer term state-wide Basic Income pilot project that would be something approaching a random controlled trial if a state with a similar demographic and a similar economy could provide the control community. The pilot project has proved that a Basic Income could be transformative for India, and both India’s significantly devolved government, along with its active civil society organizations, widespread economic insecurity, considerable inequality, and the inefficiency of its current welfare provision, mean that India might find itself as the first country in which a state implements a genuine Basic Income (Davala, 2019: 378; Davala et al., 2015: 195–214; Liu and Nemana, 2020; Standing, 2017: 237). The Republic of Korea The Republic of Korea (South Korea) has seen particularly strong political engagement with Basic Income during the past twenty years or so. Initial interest emerged to the left of the political spectrum, largely as a result of the weak existing social security system, and Basic Income remains a policy commitment of the Labour Party. In 2009, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions published a report that expressed enthusiasm for Basic Income and included costings for a feasible scheme; and the same year the Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN) was established (Nam and Park, 2020: 219; Yi, 2020). Then in 2016 Jae-myung Lee, Mayor of Seongnam City, implemented a Youth Dividend: quarterly unconditional incomes for twenty-four-year-olds paid in a local currency that has to be spent in the city (Ahn and Kang, n.d.; Yi, 2019). The incomes are funded from the city budget, and the proposal was agreed by just two votes after a vigorous debate during which the usual objections were heard: the rich don’t need it; poverty should be tackled by giving money to the poor; people would waste the money; it would be better to provide jobs. The usual responses were also heard—that if the dividend went to everyone, then everyone would be interested in maintaining its value; the money would foster autonomy and would encourage wise consumption; the money would enable young adults to seek good jobs rather than having to accept not so good ones; and a new advantage was expressed, related to the payments being in a local currency: that the scheme would benefit the local economy. President Park’s government threatened to cut the City’s grant if the dividend was paid, so the payments were initially halved in value: but Park was then impeached, which resulted in questions being asked about her government’s neoliberal policies

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and in enhanced appreciation of Basic Income. Park’s successor supported the Seongnam dividend. In 2016, surveys were conducted among recipients of the dividend and the local businesses that were benefiting from the infusion of the local currency. Nearly 100 per cent of those surveyed approved of the scheme, and an interesting additional result was evidence of an increase in interest in politics. Sales in local businesses had increased by 20 per cent. A further survey the same year found the same level of support for the dividend, along with an approval rate of 84.5 per cent for the payment’s unconditionality (Ahn and Kang, n.d.; Yi, 2019: 419). In 2017, Jae-myung Lee failed to be elected President of the republic; but in 2018 he was elected Governor of Gyeonggi Province, Korea’s largest, and introduced a province-wide youth dividend paid in a regional currency. In 2022 he again failed to be elected President of the country. A survey of recipients of the provincial dividend found an approval rate of 80.6 per cent, with dissatisfaction being expressed about the restriction to a single year cohort and about the requirement that the regional currency could not be spent in supermarkets, department stores, or entertainment stores. The obligation to apply afresh for each quarterly payment was also a source of disapproval (Ahn and Kang, n.d.; Gyeonggi Research Institute Basic Income Research Group, 2019: 16). Interest in Basic Income remains strong in Korea, and a number of additional minor experiments of various kinds have taken place (Torry, 2021a: 220–21; Yi, 2019: 420–21). A Basic Income party established in 2020 managed to gain a seat in the National Assembly, and political calls for research and discussion about Basic Income continue (National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, 2020). Korea is a good example of how a committed politician, a vigorous national Basic Income organization—which organized the annual BIEN congress in 2016 and is to do so again in 2023—and a variety of other organizations and individuals, have between them instigated payments that are as close as they could get to a Basic Income and have maintained a high level of public debate and related research. It would be no surprise if Korea were to become the first country to implement a genuine Basic Income.

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Thinktanks and Basic Income organizations Related to government and parliamentary political activity will often be thinktanks and other organizations and movements. For instance, in the UK during the 1970s the somewhat informal claimants’ unions that evolved in response to stigmatizing means-tested benefits and a deteriorating employment market demanded an ‘adequate income without means test for all’ (Jordan, 1988: 259). Feminists were split between a ‘wages for housework’ campaign and the rejection of it on the grounds that it promoted the gendered division of labour, and they were also split over Basic Income, with some arguing that it would distract from the campaign for equal wages and employment rights (Miller et al., 2019: 138–42; Torry, 2021a: 130–31). Ecological movements and Green parties have often argued for a Basic Income on the basis that it would provide essential income security during the turbulence that transition to a more sustainable economy would generate (Lord, 1993). Some organizations, such as political parties, parliaments, and governments and their departments, are explicitly political, in the sense that they make policy. We might also call political such organizations as thinktanks (Chapter 8), trades unions (see below), and pressure groups, to the extent that they intend to influence government policy. This raises the question as to whether organizations established to research and educate about Basic Income should be labelled as political. The early twentieth century State Bonus League was clearly political in the sense that it wished to influence government policy and tried to influence Labour Party policy in particular. The first organization established since then with the express purpose of researching and educating about Basic Income was the Basic Income Research Group—now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust—founded in 1984; and the second was the Basic Income European Network: now the Basic Income Earth Network, and so still ‘BIEN’ (Torry, 2021a: 133–4). Both organizations are registered with the UK’s Charity Commission and so experience strict limits on active political campaigning: so the important question is whether education and research are political. To take a specific example: Are the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust’s submissions of evidence to a parliamentary committee, or its invitations to Members of Parliament to speak at its conferences, political acts? However we answer that question, there are now many organizations around the world researching, educating about, and actively campaigning for, Basic Income, and all of them exist in a political field in which they relate through their activities, officers, members, staff, and volunteers, to other organizations, including such explicitly political organizations as governments and parliaments. It has been helpful that a variety of different kinds of organization are now emerging. For instance, a growing UBI Lab network of organizations in larger cities is

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bringing together universities, local authorities, and other organizations, to campaign for local Basic Income pilot projects (UBI Lab Network, 2020). In Scotland, where a devolved government has been increasingly interested in Basic Income as a means of tackling inequality and poverty, and perhaps also as a way of distancing itself from the UK Government in London, and where, leading up to the independence referendum in 2014, Basic Income was proposed as an important element in the ‘good society’ that an independent Scotland would wish to be (McKay, 2013), it has been helpful to the debate that the Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland was established in 2015 with the full support of the UK’s Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. Following several municipal authorities expressing interest in organising Basic Income pilot projects, an additional organization was set up to work with the Scottish Government on a feasibility study for a Scottish Basic Income pilot project. The group’s report had to recognize that without UK Government support, or further devolution of taxation and benefits regulations to Scotland, a genuine pilot project would not be possible: but that has not stopped Scotland’s still lively Basic Income debate (Citizen’s Basic Income Feasibility Study Steering Group, 2020: 7–8; Danson, 2019; Miller, 2019; Painter et al., 2019: 41–50; Torry, 2021a: 153–5). In Ireland, the Conference of Religious of Ireland’s Justice Commission, its successor Social Justice Ireland, and BIEN Ireland, have at various times engaged with the Irish Government’s discussions about reforms to a benefits system that is similar to the UK’s. This engagement has involved co-operation with proposals for something like a Negative Income Tax, collaboration on a discussion paper, discussion of the various pathways by which a Basic Income might be implemented, and more recent discussions about the possibility of a pilot project (Clark and Healy, 1997; Healy and Reynolds, 2012: 151–2; 2000: 241; Steering Group on Basic Income, 2002). One reason for such long-term constructive engagement with government is that Ireland is a small country. Another is that Ireland has experienced consistent research and educational activity by a handful of individuals committed long-term to the Basic Income debate (Torry, 2021a: 156–8). Following the initial trade union inspired debate in the Netherlands, in 1987 fourteen organizations, including trade union sections, political parties, claimants’ unions, and voluntary organizations, established the Workshop on Basic Income, which became the Vereniging Basisinkomen (Basic Income Association) in 1991. Costed illustrative Basic Income schemes were published, and differences between Basic Income, Negative Income Tax, and other methods for providing an income, were discussed. This similarity with the approach of the UK’s Basic Income Research Group was matched by the simi-

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larity of the normative illustrative Basic Income scheme that emerged: a small Basic Income, accompanied by means-tested benefits, to be implemented by stages (De Roo, 1990; Douben and Dekkers, 1988). Germany has seen a rich mixture of organizations: Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (‘Basic Income Network’) in 2004; in 2014, Mein Grundeinkommen (‘My Basic Income’), that crowdfunds for individual Basic Incomes that are then allocated by ballot for short periods (Duverger, 2018: 123; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 138); and in 2016, a political party, Bündnis Grundeinkommen (‘Basic Income Alliance’), with the sole aim of establishing a Basic Income. The party has gained few votes at elections, and in 2017 the Social Democratic Party called its own proposed work-tested and means-tested proposal a Solidarishes Grundeinkommen (‘Solidarity Basic Income’), which made it a lot harder for Bündnis Grundeinkommen to make its case (Liebermann, 2020: 213–15), just as the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer calling the National Minimum Wage a National Living Wage has made it more difficult for the Living Wage Campaign to campaign for a genuine Living Wage. Germany has perhaps seen the greatest diversity of approach to the Basic Income debate of any European country: poster campaigns, crowdfunded Basic Incomes, a political party, and costed and detailed illustrative Basic Income schemes (Blaschke, 2017; Howard et al., 2019). An informative comparison might be with Belgium, which has benefited from Philippe Van Parijs—a significant contributor to the European and global Basic Income debate since the early 1980s—living in Brussels, and from the first BIEN congress in 1986 being held in Louvain-la-Neuve, but in which little national debate about Basic Income has occurred, probably because there has been no consistent national Basic Income organizational infrastructure (Torry, 2021a: 161–3). A significant new aspect was added to the Basic Income debate’s organizational infrastructure to promote a European Citizens’ Initiative. If one million citizens of the European Union (EU), with sufficient numbers from seven EU member states, sign a petition, then the European Parliament has to hold a debate about the proposition. In order for the initiative to be registered, the subject of the petition has to conform to European law, which is what makes formulating a petition about Basic Income problematic (European Commission, 2019). Competence in relation to tax and benefits systems is reserved to member states, so the ways in which the European Parliament might debate a Basic

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Income will be limited. In January 2013 the European Commission agreed to an initiative worded as follows: Asking the Commission, to encourage cooperation between the Member States (according to Art 156 TFEU) aiming to explore the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) as a tool to improve their respective social security systems. In the long run the objective is to offer to each person in the EU the unconditional right as an individual, to having his/her material needs met to ensure a life of dignity as stated by the EU treaties, and to empower participation in society supported by the introduction of the UBI. In the short term, initiatives such as ‘pilot‐studies’ (Art 156 TFEU) and examination of different models of UBI (EP resolution 2010/2039(INI) §44) should be promoted by the EU. (European Commission, 2014)

Unconditional Basic Income Europe was established to facilitate the petition-signing, and national organizations were also established in different European Union countries to co-ordinate each country’s petition-signing campaign (for instance, Basic Income UK). Over 300,000 statements of support were collected, which did not reach the threshold but was still a considerable achievement. UBI Europe has affiliated to BIEN and continues to hold conferences; and its affiliated national organizations continue to campaign in their own countries, often alongside other Basic Income organizations. In the UK, Basic Income UK and the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust have worked well together for nearly a decade. A second European Citizens’ Initiative has now been attempted, and again the one million signatures threshold was not reached. A significant difference is that Basic Income UK was an active participant in the first initiative, but because the UK has now left the European Union it can no longer take part in European Citizens’ Initiatives (European Commission, 2020; Torry, 2021a: 190–92). In one sense BIEN, the Basic Income Earth Network, is just one Basic Income organization among others, as it is a membership organization with individual members. However, the fact that national and regional organizations around the world affiliate to BIEN, that BIEN holds regular international conferences (biennially until 2016, and annually after that), and that its purpose is to educate the general public about Basic Income … to serve as a link between the individuals and groups committed to, or interested in, Basic Income; to stimulate and disseminate research about Basic Income; and to foster informed public discussion on Basic Income throughout the world: (Basic Income Earth Network, 2020)

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there is a case to be made for BIEN being in a category of its own, and it is entirely appropriate that BIEN should find itself the focus of research and discussion related to the most important issues facing the global Basic Income debate. Lists of the subjects tackled at BIEN’s congresses from 1986 to the present day provide us with an accurate representation of the issues facing the global debate at each point in time; and the current BIEN working group on the clarification of the definition of Basic Income is providing a focus for discussion on an issue that is increasingly important as the Basic Income debate expands globally (Torry, 2021a: 192–5). A complex network of Basic Income organizations has now emerged, with myriad connections with thinktanks, political parties, local authorities, and so on. Such a dense organizational ecology of politically connected organizations must now be taken seriously as an important political fact alongside the occasional thinktank interest in Basic Income (Torry, 2021a: 143). Whatever the political role of such organizations as the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, BIEN, and other national, regional and global Basic Income organizations, their educational role has been crucial to the modern global debate, mainly in relation to their officers, volunteers, websites, social media channels, and conferences, functioning together as communication hubs for the collection and dissemination of news, opinion, and research (Torry, 2021a: 136–7). Extremely wealthy entrepreneurs are now recognized as the political players that they are, and some of them understand that it is their automation of previously labour-intensive industries that risks a future of unemployment, and that if that happens then a Basic Income might be essential to provide households with an income sufficient to generate the purchasing power to maintain their own industries and profits. Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Guy Standing’s recent book, Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income now (Duverger, 2018: 128; Standing, 2020), and Chris Hughes, another Facebook founder, has funded Minimum Income Guarantee experiments through his Economic Security Project (Hughes, 2018: 160–80). The organizations founded by such wealthy individuals might prove to be significant players in the Basic Income debate of the future. Political ideologies For a Basic Income to be implemented would normally require a series of feasibility tests to be passed, and in particular tests for financial, psychological, behavioural, administrative, political, and policy process feasibility (Torry, 2016a). However, policy accidents do happen (Torry, 2016a: 242): that is,

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policy change can be made by accident, as happened when Iran managed to implement something close to a Basic Income when a means-testing system collapsed: an interesting example of no feasibility tests having been passed (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019). More normal would be the kind of policy accident that gave birth to the UK’s Family Allowances, when at least a financial feasibility test had been passed, and a political feasibility test was rapidly passed as the idea was debated in parliament (Chapter 4; Torry, 2018a: 16–17). It is difficult to see how in the normal course of events a political feasibility test could be completely circumvented: that is, there would have to be at least some understanding among government ministers and members of parliament that Basic Income was in some way both desirable and feasible. In Chapter 8 we studied the relationships between libertarianism and Basic Income, between socialism and Basic Income, and between republican and real freedoms and Basic Income. To some extent political parties might line up with those ideologies: for instance, in the UK, the Conservative Party with libertarianism, the Labour Party with socialism, and the Liberal Democrats with republican freedom. However, political parties always contain wide varieties of political opinion, so there will never be a simple answer to the question of a political party’s attitude towards Basic Income. This means that in relation to whether Basic Income can be politically feasible in a particular context, the question has to be this: Within the political parties in that context, can the different streams of thought provide sufficient support for the proposal for sufficient political energy to be generated for implementation of a Basic Income scheme; and are there any objections specifically related to those streams of thought that could prevent implementation? If there was sufficient support for Basic Income, and if there were no objections that could not be sufficiently answered, then political feasibility might be a possibility. Research undertaken at the London School of Economics for this author’s Money for Everyone (Torry, 2013: 211–30) found that the main political ideologies in the UK—the New Right, Socialism, One Nation Conservatism, Liberalism, Social Democracy, New Labour’s ‘Third Way’, Old Labour (and the Co-operative movement), a post-war consensus, and a Green perspective—all generated arguments for a Basic Income. Arguments for a Basic Income had been formulated by proponents of the different ideologies with reference to those ideologies; and any arguments against a Basic Income had been generic: that is, whatever the ideology to which the objector adhered, the objections were all the same: ‘The country could not afford a Basic Income’, ‘We should not pay people for doing nothing’, ‘Rich people do not need it’, and ‘A Basic Income would discourage people from working’ (Torry, 2013: 211–30).

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However, the immediate objectives of a government might not be deeply connected to one of the listed political ideologies, or to anything between them. Objectives will relate to the social and economic context, electoral calculations, the objectives of other parties, and public opinion. For instance, governments connected to a variety of ideologies might all be able to encourage enterprise in a free market context, promote the extension of choice, tackle discrimination on grounds of gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability, and so on, and want to see reductions in poverty and inequality. It would be important for anyone educating or researching about Basic Income to take note of the concerns of the government of the day and to tailor education about Basic Income accordingly, while at the same time never compromising the definition of a Basic Income (Torry, 2013: 231–7). No two countries are the same, so Basic Income’s ability to pass a political feasibility test in one country would be no guarantee that it would be able to pass one in another; and because political ideologies change all the time, Basic Income passing a political feasibility test at one point in time would be no guarantee that it would pass it at another. However, the broad range of political ideologies tested for the UK at least suggests that political feasibility might be generally possible, and that any arguments against Basic Income offered by politicians are likely to be only loosely attached to their political ideologies, if at all, and therefore that changing politicians’ minds about those objections might be more possible than it would have been if their objections had been deeply embedded in their ideological commitments (Torry, 2016a: 167–93; 2020a: 163–4). The same would probably be true for other countries. Trades unions An important early player in the modern Basic Income debate was a trade union. In 1981, the food workers’ trade union in the Netherlands, Voedingsbond FNV, promoted the idea of a Basic Income as a means of redistributing paid employment. The union’s membership was less enthusiastic for Basic Income than its leadership was, and most trades unions argued that a Basic Income would compromise the right to work, erode the social insurance system, and require increased tax rates that could increase production costs and damage exports. However, Voedingsbond FNV’s support for Basic Income stimulated a wider Basic Income debate in the Netherlands, which remains a rare example of a public debate about Basic Income being led by a trade union (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 496; Hogenboom and Janssen, 1988; Van Oijen, 1988: 269–70; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 174).

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Research into the history of trade union engagement with Basic Income reveals a rather mixed picture. Following initial trade union interest in Basic Income in the Netherlands, South Africa and Namibia, Henderson and Quiggin have found that more recently the predominant attitudes have been rejection or disinterest, even though trade union members have recorded levels of approval similar to those of other participants in opinion surveys (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 497–8; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 174–5). A recent survey has discovered four causal channels. First, unions’ propensity to support a UBI depends on the degrees of socio-economic insecurity. In contexts characterized by high levels of poverty, unemployment and precariousness, UBI proposals look more attractive in the eyes of union leaders. Secondly, welfare regime generosity is a strong explanans of trade unions’ support. Less encompassing welfare systems encourage trade unionists to regard UBI as a legitimate policy alternative. Third, trade unions’ attachment to the work ethic and the insurance principle affects their preferences for unconditionality and universality in policy settings. Fourth, their role in the industrial landscape, and their degree of organizational inclusivity, have a strong influence on UBI support. (Cigna, 2020)

A Basic Income would increase workers’ bargaining power relative to their employers, so we might expect to find greater approval of Basic Income among trades unions than we do. Common objections are that a Basic Income would make it easier for governments to abolish statutory minimum wages and valued elements of existing welfare states. The obvious responses are that no feasible Basic Income scheme could replace such public services as healthcare and educational systems, because individuals’ healthcare needs are radically different from each other so unconditionality of provision cannot substitute for unconditionality of access at the point of need; and that no feasible Basic Income would provide sufficient to live on, so statutory minimum wages would still be required and would work happily alongside a Basic Income. The objection that a Basic Income would threaten collective bargaining is also heard. Arguably a Basic Income would increase trade union leverage over employment terms and conditions because workers and therefore whole workforces would have a greater ability to walk away from bad employers and to sustain strikes; and what is often not remembered is that there would be just as much of a wage to bargain over, as the Basic Income would be funded by an increase in taxation and not by a reduction in the wage level. Trade union bargaining power would increase. However, the arguments that Basic Income would threaten the welfare state, statutory minimum wages, and collective bargaining, and that Basic Income belongs with a jobs reduction agenda, are intuitive, so trade union rejection

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of Basic Income is comprehensible during a period in which trades unions are seeing membership numbers collapse. Less intuitive is the argument that technological change results in employment market turbulence and not job loss, so trade union members would benefit from a secure layer of income. We can understand that a trade union’s officers and staff might be more interested in the survival and influence of the organization, and in its hold over its members, than in the financial security and individual freedom of its members, so where the intuitive arguments against Basic Income are salient we might expect rejection of the proposal. However, where trades unions have taken a broad view of their members’ interests, support for Basic Income has sometimes emerged, as it has on occasions in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, South Africa, Namibia, and a variety of other countries (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 498–500; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 181). An argument is sometimes heard that a Basic Income would act as a subsidy to wages and would therefore cause employers to reduce them (Esam et al., 1985: 53). This would be a valid argument in countries with no existing income tax allowance: but any country with such an allowance already operates a wage subsidy. The proof of this is that a tax allowance—a level of earned income on which tax is not charged—is worth the value of the allowance multiplied by the tax rate. If the allowance was to be abolished and the same value paid as a cash sum, then both the government and the worker would be in the same financial position. The cash sum would operate as a wage subsidy, which means that the tax allowance functions as one as well. The argument that a Basic Income would act as a subsidy to wages would also be valid in countries with no existing means-tested benefits. Means-tested benefits function as dynamic subsidies: that is, they rise as wages are reduced, and so provide employers with a significant incentive to lower wages. A Basic Income would be a static subsidy, and would not rise if wages fell, so in any country with means-tested benefits as a significant element of its welfare state, a Basic Income would function as less of a subsidy than the existing benefits system and ought therefore to be supported by trades unions (Chapter 5; Van Parijs and Vanderborght, 2017: 176–81). All of this means that in any country with both a tax allowance and means-tested benefits, a feasible Basic Income scheme would either leave the country’s wage subsidy effect in the same position as before, or it would turn a proportion of the dynamic subsidy into a static and therefore less problematic subsidy. Henderson and Quiggin suggest that a Basic Income scheme that combines a ‘Basic Income with minimum wages at a realistic level and a commitment to full employment’ (Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 501) could help trade union leaders to see the benefits of a Basic Income. The main problem with

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a job guarantee is that it can cause ‘lock in’: that is, workers get locked into the created jobs and find it difficult to enter the normal employment market. Additional problems are the high cost of creating the jobs, and the ways in which artificially created jobs can destroy existing jobs or cause their terms and conditions to deteriorate (Chapter 3; Szlinder, 2019). While a combination of Basic Income and job guarantee could work (Fitzroy and Jin, 2017; Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 502–4), a Basic Income on its own could achieve everything that the combination could achieve. What is now required is research, education, and wide consultation with trade union leaders in order to reduce the salience of intuitive arguments against Basic Income and to increase understanding of the usefulness of Basic Income to trade union members and to trades unions as organizations (Torry, 2021a: 224–6).

Conclusions During this chapter we have come across two aspects of the Basic Income debate that have encountered legal hurdles. The Finland experiment required a decision by a constitutional court that it was legitimate for the purposes of an experiment for different citizens to be treated differently. The decision could have been different, and there are legitimate arguments to be made that it should have been: although it is of course helpful to Basic Income research and education that the court permitted the experiment. And we have also encountered the limited ability of the European Parliament to involve itself in discussion of Basic Income. If ever a Basic Income is to be implemented, then legislation will have to be passed, and at least one example exists of illustrative draft legislation (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b). All of this is clearly political. We have discussed a wide variety of political ideologies and organizations, and have found pilot projects and other experiments to be political events (Chrisp and De Wispelaere, 2022). Politics, whether national or regional, is complicated, and largely for this reason the cards are very much stacked in favour of the welfare state status quo … This is nonetheless quite problematic since … a major overhaul of the existing welfare state edifice must occur if it is meant to produce a positive-sum kind of welfare for postindustrial society. The vast popular majorities in favour of the welfare state that opinion polls and election results regularly identify are essentially conservative ones because they rely on, and wish to perpetuate, a benefit structure that was put in place

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more than a generation ago. The political problem today is how to forge coalitions for an alternative, postindustrial model of social citizenship and egalitarianism. (Esping-Andersen, 1996: 267)

But having said that, Iran’s ‘cash subsidies’, that would have been a Basic Income if they had been paid to each individual, were a policy accident (Chapter 4; Torry, 2021a: 217). Such accidents deliver an important message: that however thorough our research on political feasibilities, we shall never be able to predict where the first genuine Basic Income will be implemented.

Future research Just as politics is complicated, so is research into the political feasibility of Basic Income. We are presented with a morass of ideas, organizations, individuals, events, and so on, and there is very little that is usefully quantifiable. This makes further research more important than ever. Research now required is as follows: • Further historical research on the history of political engagement with Basic Income by governments and other political organizations. • Constant research on the political ideologies prevalent in a wide variety of countries; on the relationships between those ideologies and political parties, thinktanks, and so on; and on the arguments both for and against Basic Income that might be coherent with the ideologies, and arguments for and against propounded by adherents to different ideologies and members of different political parties. • Research on the histories of thinktank engagement with Basic Income, and of Basic Income organizations’ educational, campaigning and research activities, and the influence of all of that activity on such organizations as political parties, governments, parliaments, and trades unions; and research on how those organizations might better relate to each other in the future in relation to the Basic Income debate (Torry, 2016a: 98–102). • Research on attitudes towards Basic Income among trade union members, and separate research among elected and employed trade union officers. • Research on how politicians have changed their minds, and particularly on how they have changed their minds over Basic Income. • Research into legislative possibilities for Basic Income implementation and the constitutional barriers that might be encountered.

10

How would we implement a Basic Income?

Introduction This chapter will discuss historic and current proposals as to how a Basic Income might be implemented; will study feasibility, the constraints imposed by the ways in which social policy is made, and complexity theory; will explore administrative considerations, and the particular question as to who precisely should receive a Basic Income; and will ask what research is now required.

A history of research on implementation As we have discussed the history of research on Basic Income in previous chapters we have already encountered a number of proposals for how a Basic Income might be implemented, such as Thomas Spence’s proposal for a quarterly payment administered locally (Spence, 1796: 12; Torry, 2021a: 33–43). As in that case, the detail has always been a function of the constraints imposed by the context: in the eighteenth century, records were local and not national, and rents were collected on a quarterly basis, so it is unlikely that any other kind of implementation would have been possible or considered. What mattered to Spence and those who followed him during the nineteenth century was the justification for paying an unconditional income and countering objections to the possibility. It is during the twentieth century that serious consideration was given to how a Basic Income might be implemented. The problem here is that there have only been two implementations of anything like a Basic Income for working age adults, and just two or three genuine pilot projects, so there is little actual implementation to research. During the 1970s the Governor of Alaska, Jay Hammond, established the Alaska Permanent Fund into which oil revenues are paid and out of which are paid equal but not uniform annual dividends to every Alaskan who has been a citizen for at least a year. The fund is written into the constitution, but the dividends are not. The entire exercise 255

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was the inspiration of the Governor (Torry, 2021a: 118–20; Widerquist and Howard, 2012). Rather different was the implementation of the Iranian ‘cash subsidies’, that would have been a Basic Income if they had been paid to every individual rather than to the head of the household. The cash subsidies were a political accident resulting from the collapse of an unpopular blunt means test (Torry, 2021a: 214–17). Different again were the implementations of the Namibian and Indian pilot projects and the Finnish experiment, which were implemented by organizations working in partnership with each other, with government interest in the case of India, and direct government involvement in the case of Finland (Chapters 4 and 6). The lesson that we can draw from these implementations is that we shall have to wait and see whether the first nationwide Basic Income will be the inspiration of an individual, a political accident, or a carefully researched and planned implementation by organizations working in partnership and with government involvement. Apart from that handful of implementations of a Basic Income or something like it, we have seen unconditional child allowances and pensions implemented in a number of countries—that is, Basic Incomes for particular age groups: and there has of course been research on those (O’Connell, 2004; Torry, 2021a: 82–3, 129–30, 139, 197). Otherwise, we are left researching the possible future implementation of currently unimplemented proposals for Basic Income schemes. Much of that research has been into the financial feasibility of illustrative schemes, and we have already discussed that in Chapter 3; so what we must discuss here is research into a number of issues that will have to be faced if proposed Basic Income schemes are to be implemented.

The current state of research Feasibility What would we mean by the statement ‘Basic Income is feasible’? Presumably that in a particular context there is at least one Basic Income scheme that could travel from idea to implementation. However, the process whereby that happened would be complex, so feasibility could not be a simple matter, and there could not be just one feasibility test to be passed. Once we look at the process by which implementation might occur, we can see that there would be at least six different feasibility tests that would have to be passed, and possibly seven once we recognize that the financial feasibility test is constituted by at least two separate tests. The following list is adapted from one proposed by

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De Wispelaere and Noguera (2012) and subsequently employed by Kangas (2021b) and by this author (Torry, 2016a: 27–31). • financial (Would it be possible to finance a Basic Income? Would implementation impose substantial financial losses on any households or individuals?) • psychological (Is the idea readily understood, and understood to be beneficial?) • administrative (Would it be possible to administer a Basic Income? Would it be possible to manage the transition?) • behavioural (Will a Basic Income work for households and individuals once it’s implemented?) • political (Would the idea cohere with existing political ideologies?) • policy process (Would the policy process be able to process the idea to implementation?) (Torry, 2014; 2016a: 31–2; 2019d) Financial feasibility: In one sense Basic Income will always be financially feasible, because a government would always be able to provide every individual with an unconditional income: but there will always be affordability criteria to be met (Torry, 2022b). It would also be essential to ensure that low-income households would not suffer household net disposable income losses, and that poverty and inequality levels would not rise. These are all financial issues, so all of them would have to be part of a financial feasibility test. In the UK it would be possible to pass these various parts of a financial feasibility test (Chapter 3; Torry, 2016a: 39–86; 2022a; 2022b). Psychological feasibility: There are some public policy fields in which public opinion plays only a small part in policymaking (Richardson, 1969): but in the benefits sphere public opinion matters. The psychological acceptability of Basic Income is a complex matter (Chapter 7; Torry, 2016a: 87–117). Administrative feasibility: We study this question briefly in this chapter. The administrative feasibility test would probably be the easiest one to pass in any context (Torry, 2016a: 119–42). Behavioural feasibility: Behavioural feasibility is a post-implementation test that we discuss later in this chapter (Torry, 2016a: 143–66). Political feasibility: We discuss political feasibility in Chapter 9 (Torry, 2016a: 167–93).

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Policy process feasibility: We study the policy process later in this chapter (Torry, 2016a: 195–236). Following the two-year Finland experiment, during which two thousand randomly selected unemployed individuals had their unemployment benefit made unconditional, Kangas employed De Wispelaere and Noguera’s similar categorization of feasibility components (De Wispelaere and Noguera, 2012) to assess the feasibility of a Basic Income being implemented in Finland. In terms of political and policy process feasibilities (De Wispelaere and Noguera’s ‘strategic’ and ‘institutional’ feasibilities), the verdict is that Basic Income proponents ‘form a diffuse group and lack the political power and organization to translate their advocacy into powerful social action’ (Kangas, 2021b: 193), and that the institutional context in Finland, in which the social security system is strongly influenced by a number of social partners, including municipalities, would make the implementation of a Basic Income difficult to achieve (Kangas, 2021b: 191, 193–4). Psychological feasibility is fragile because ‘cheap’ public approval related to the Basic Income idea cannot stand up to ‘the prevailing discourse surrounding social policy’ (Kangas, 2021b: 194) characterized by deservingness norms. Because during the experiment more attention was paid to the limited employment market effects than to the considerable positive wellbeing effects, it looked as if the experiment had offered little evidence for the behavioural feasibility of Basic Income. As Kangas points out, if the burden of proof could be shifted towards social rather than employment market effects then a behavioural feasibility test would be easier to pass (Kangas, 2021b: 194). In relation to other experiments: the same categorization of feasibilities, data from the 2016 European Social Survey, and an unfortunately somewhat lax approach to the definition of Basic Income that results in different kinds of experiment being evaluated together, have led researchers to conclude that there is ‘widespread support and signs of feasibility in a number of European contexts’ (Shanahan et al., 2019: 77). We have already discussed the importance of clear definitions (Chapter 2), so what needs to be said here is that a feasibility test passed by something other than a Basic Income does not necessarily mean that it would be passed by a genuine Basic Income. While the Covid-19 pandemic has propelled the Basic Income proposal to greater prominence, the way in which existing tax and benefits systems have protected most people’s incomes, at least to some extent, has meant that interest in changing income maintenance systems has quickly been submerged by such urgent concerns as climate change, Putin’s war on Ukraine, and inflation. Kangas’s verdict is that ‘for the time being universal basic income is not a realistic policy option. However, never say never’ (Kangas, 2021b: 194). The

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corollary must be that if at some point in the future the social and political context makes it possible for the policy process to implement a Basic Income scheme, then implementation will be easier to achieve if as many feasibility tests as possible have been passed as often as possible. Relationships between feasibilities Ivan Steiner has identified three types of group task: • Additive: all group members do the same thing. The outcome is the sum of contributions (as in a tug of war). • Conjunctive: the performance depends on the performance of the least talented. All members’ contributions are needed for success, and the links between the elements are often crucial (as in a relay race). • Disjunctive: here accomplishment depends on the performance of the most talented member. The group remains better than that individual because even the best at something does not necessarily know all of the right answers (as in a pub quiz). Here the major requirement is that less talented members of the group should not be able to hold back the most talented member (Steiner, 1972). We might employ this categorization of group tasks analogically to discuss the relationships between the different kinds of feasibility that we have discussed. The argument of this chapter suggests that if one of the feasibilities is absent or weak then it is difficult to see how implementation is likely to be possible. This means that the relationships are not disjunctive. Some of the feasibilities relate to each other (for instance, psychological, political and policy process feasibilities form a circular, or possibly a spiral, process), so here an element of additivity might be present: but generally the feasibilities will be independent of each other (Pasquali, 2012: 60, 188), and because, unless a political accident occurs (Torry, 2016a: 238–39), they are all likely to be required, it would appear that we are looking at conjunctive feasibilities. Normally financial and administrative feasibilities and a certain amount of psychological feasibility would need to be in place before political and policy process feasibilities could be constructed; and behavioural feasibility would then need to generate the next tranche of psychological feasibility so that the next stage of the implementation could be tackled. This means that the order in which the feasibilities are established is important, which makes the relay race analogy even more relevant. The conjunctive nature of the feasibilities that we have been studying has practical importance because it means that for implementation of a Basic Income to be feasible, even for an individual demographic group, sufficient work needs

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to have been done on all of the feasibilities, and that none can ever be neglected (Torry, 2014; 2016a: 241–3). How does policy change happen? In order to ask the question ‘How would we implement a Basic Income scheme?’ we first of all have to ask ‘How does change in social policy come about?’ Any policy change process will involve participants, perspectives, situations, values, strategies, outcomes, and effects, but it will also be very dependent on the detailed institutional context (Blomquist, 2018; Dunn, 2018: 115). So, for instance, for the implementation of a Basic Income scheme in the UK, Parliament, the Government, thinktanks, the civil service, trades unions, and a wide variety of other institutions, would have to relate to each other in complex ways (Bartels, 2018; Birkland, 2005: 97–103; Ham and Hill, 1984: 124; Hill, 1990: 4; Hodge and Lowe, 2009: 160; Smith, 1993; Spicker, 2014: 137–50; Torry, 2016a: 226; Zahariadis, 1999: 74). We would also see conflicting pressures, such as politicians’ ‘heroic’ policymaking, and civil servants’ ‘humdrum’ contributions to policy change (Page, 2018), although the infiltration of political advisors into what used to be appropriately bureaucratic civil service roles is blurring this boundary (Diamond, 2018: 13, 31–3). An added complexity is that the problems that policy change are attempting to address will always be changing, diverse and socially constructed, and the policy solutions offered will be changing, diverse, socially constructed and subject to multiple social, political and economic pressures (Anglund, 1999: 151; Dean, 2012a: 99; Gregory, 1997: 189; Minogue, 1997: 12, 15; Spicker, 2014: 63–9; Turnbull, 2018). The system is more like a ‘primeval soup’ (Hill, 2009: 88, 108, 157) than a rational system (Gordon et al., 1997: 5, 7), and the whole tangled web of individual and institutional players constantly evolves in complex and often unpredictable ways (Colebatch, 2018b; Morçöl, 2012: 90). Two of the consequences of this situation is that any part of the system can block change (Hill, 2009: 68, 73), and that neither the media nor anybody else can adequately understand the complexity of policy change (Jacobs and Shapiro, 1999: 136; Hill, 2009: 159): hence the tendency among policymakers to resist any change that is not a minor evolution (Barkai, 1998; Hill, 2009: 58–66, 156–9, 164, 188; Hodge and Lowe, 2009: 155, 160–61; Jacobs and Shapiro, 1999: 136; Marin and Mayntz, 1991: 16; Richardson, 1999: 67; Rose, 2006: 51, 57; Smith, 1993: 56–65; Smith and May, 1997: 166), resulting in ‘muddling through’ (Botterill and Fenna, 2019: 82), ‘path dependency’ (Majone, 1989: 77; Zahariadis, 1999: 90), and also the tendency to ‘satisfice’ (Richardson and Jordan, 1979: 21–2):

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that is, policymakers study only a narrow range of possible changes, all of them close to the status quo, and choose the one that looks the safest. A factor that applies particularly to Basic Income implementation in countries with more developed economies is that countries with a more developed public sector and therefore a greater capacity to legislate change, such as the Nordic countries, can be prevented from doing so by social insurance institutions, whereas countries with lower capacity to legislate change, such as the UK, will be less able to legislate for Basic Income (Haagh, 2019b: 252–3, 259; Martinelli and Pearce, 2019: 269). The UK has been means-testing benefits for four hundred years, so it continues to do so (Martin, 2016), and the way in which the UK legislated for ‘Universal Credit’, a combined means-tested benefit, on the basis of a thinktank report, was a symptom of path dependency, low governance capacity, and satisficing, and was not an indication of competent governance. A further consequence of path dependency, low governance capacity, and satisficing, and a significant contributor to the complexity of tax and benefits systems, is the tendency to add new mechanisms without removing the old ones. So in the UK we added social insurance to means-tested benefits, and then added universal Child Benefit. This means that genuine change will only be possible if a proposal can be understood as an addition to existing provision: so a Basic Income would have to be added to the mix rather than removing any of it, which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially as a Basic Income could be understood as an extension of Child Benefit. The UK might experience future multi-layered reforms to our tax and social security system with tiers of financial support working in combination: universal as well as means-tested; unconditional as well as conditional; non-contributory as well as contributory. Along the way, these reforms should embrace elements of the UBI [Basic Income] idea—and modest, partial basic incomes may have their place in the eventual toolkit. (Harrop and Tait, 2017)

However, path dependency, satisficing, and governance capacity are not the only factors involved in the policy process, as values widely held in a society can sometimes create genuine change (Botterill and Fenna, 2019: 63, 78, 96, 110; Grin, 2018; Hoppe, 2018). This happened in the UK in 1942 when the Beveridge Report both conformed to the British social policy tradition by tidying up existing means-tested and contributory benefit provisions, and employed values that had evolved during the Second World War to recommend unconditional Family Allowances for the second and subsequent children in every family, which led eventually to unconditional Child Benefit for every child (Beveridge, 1942; Harris, 1977; Torry, 2016a: 32–5): a process made possible by the different parts of the policymaking process lining up behind the proposals (Colebatch, 2018a; Hill, 2009: 87; Kenis and Schneider,

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1991: 48; Presthus, 1974: 67; Wu et al., 2010: 4, 13, 18). This can be less likely to occur if more than one government department is involved and the balance of power is shifting between them (Basu, 1980: 44, 86; Marinetto, 1999: 7, 10–11; Richardson and Jordan, 1979: 28; Torry, 2016a: 197–226). An important element of any policy community will be thinktanks. Because these are institutions, they can relate to other institutions, such as the civil service; because Members of Parliament and civil servants often move to work in thinktanks and vice versa (Hill, 2009: 88; Stone, 1996: 1, 47–48) there will often be close personal connections between thinktanks and governments; and because debate within political parties can be accused of representing disunity, politicians will often use thinktanks to discuss policy options (Abelson, 2002: 163–4; Birkland, 2005: 88–9; Day, 2000: 132; Zahariadis, 1999: 75). It is these connections and functions that enable thinktanks to insert ideas into the policy process, although it will only be ideas that conform to the interests of those at the heart of the policy community that will ever come to anything (Birkland, 2005: 191; Denham and Garnett, 1998: 195; Majone, 1989: 76; Natili, 2019; Presthus, 1974: 209; Torry, 2016a: 241). A particularly successful strategy to employ thinktanks to shift public policy started life in Paris in 1938 at a meeting at which the term ‘neoliberal’ was coined. The Second World War intervened, but then in 1947 a meeting at the Swiss village of Mont Pelerin gave birth to the Mont Pelerin Society. The aim was to establish thinktanks to propagate neoliberal ideas, in the knowledge that thinktank staff might become politicians and public servants with the ability to implement the policies discussed and disseminated by the thinktanks. A further thinktank task was to establish new thinktanks. The aim of the strategy was to ensure that whenever a crisis occurred in the prevailing Keynesian economic paradigm, both a structure of ideas and a critical mass of policymakers loyal to it would already be in place. The strategy worked. Keynesianism hit a crisis at the end of the 1970s, politicians and policymakers already persuaded of neoliberal ideas were already in place, particularly in the US and the UK, and neoliberalism rapidly became the new paradigm (Arthmar and McLure, 2017: 65–6; Barber, 1967: 242–51; Berry, 2018: 5–8; Dow, 2017: 38; Keynes, 1939; Mirowski and Plehwe, 2015: 15; Russell and Milburn, 2018: 45–8). Another significant aspect of the policymaking process is the civil service: the bureaucratic structure that implements policies made by governments. However, the process is more circular than that, as it is often civil servants who are the policy experts, which means that they are in a position to influence ministers who often have little experience in the field for which they have responsibility. Civil servants will always have their own interests in mind to

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some extent, so they might brief ministers in favour of policies that it would be possible to implement and that might enhance their own careers, and against policies that might be unravelled by another party in government or that might be difficult to implement and so could damage their careers (Ham and Hill, 1984: 124, 146; Hill, 2009: 186; Majone, 1989: 76; Natili, 2019). It is no surprise that a survey of proposed benefits policy changes in the UK has shown that those proposals that would have reduced the number of civil servants were never implemented, and those that would not have reduced their number, or would have increased it, often were implemented: a policy-making factor that was recognized as contributing to the failure of Juliet Rhys Williams’ proposals for something close to a Basic Income, and that has clearly been relevant ever since (Harris, 1981: 258; Torry 2013: 45–6). Similarly, a thinktank’s main aim is to survive and thrive, so senior staff members might support ideas that only they had developed, and might denigrate ideas promoted by other organizations (Hill, 2009: 19, 90, 102, 105). All of this means that policymakers and thinktank staff might ask themselves how much ‘credit’ they might gain or lose by advocating or implementing a Basic Income (Natili, 2019); and if ever a Basic Income were to be implemented, then policymakers might be asking themselves how much credit they would gain by abolishing it. The survey of UK proposals for policy change that told us that proposals that might reduce the number of civil servants were unlikely to be implemented came to two additional conclusions: that proposals that have been implemented have always been for identifiable groups of people—for instance, children, or elderly people, or people with disabilities; and that proposals that have been implemented have generally benefited from longstanding and widespread debate and a reasonable level of public understanding of both the proposals and the reasons for them (Torry, 2013: 29–47). By itself, ‘simplicity may not be a vote catcher’ (Walter, 1989: 59), and the presuppositions that we have lived with for so long—‘to reduce poverty we need to give money to the poor’, ‘the rich don’t need it’, ‘if we give money to the poor then they won’t work’, ‘we shouldn’t pay people for doing nothing’, and so on—mean that we cannot expect the idea of giving everyone some money to be attractive. This suggests that the better the general public, journalists, and policymakers understand both the proposal and the reasons for it, the more likely we are to see it implemented. The constraints also mean that a Basic Income, which in principle is for every individual, might have to be implemented for one age group at a time, beginning with those age groups regarded as somehow ‘deserving’, such as

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young adults, elderly people, and the pre-retired (Torry, 2013: 91–2; 2016a: 102–6, 243–4; 2018a: 145–75): although there would be a risk of the process stalling in the attempt to progress to universal coverage due to the limited psychological feasibility of expanding to more controversial or less ‘deserving’ population segments. (Shanahan et al., 2019: 76)

A more recent factor that now needs to be considered is that to the more traditional members of policy communities we must add the manufacturers, installers, and programmers of computers. These possess expert power, and once a contract has been signed they possess economic power, so we can now find computer companies determining policy in computer-intensive policy areas such as tax and benefits systems (Hill, 2009: 191; French and Raven, 1959). Computerization of existing benefits systems can end up seriously flawed because computerization finds it difficult to handle the combined complexities of the systems themselves and of the complex and changing households and their financial and other circumstances (Campbell, 2010; Craig and Brooks, 2006: 7–11). The greater the difficulty of computerizing existing systems, the higher the probability that companies that win contracts will suggest changes to the system that would make it easier to computerize. Once a contract has started, it can be difficult for the client, the government department, to resist pressure for such changes, particularly if the department possesses little expertise and the computerization company suggests that the changes are necessary to enable the project to stay within budget. This is problematic because it poses a threat to the democratic process. One exception to problematic computerizations is the UK’s Child Benefit, with which there have been no computerization problems (Craig and Brooks, 2006). A Basic Income would be as easy to computerize as Child Benefit, and the simplicity of the computerization would provide computer companies with a lot less leverage than they would have in relation to more complex projects (Torry, 2020a: 183–4). There will always be contemporary trends in policymaking. In 2007 researchers in the UK identified these: that policymaking should be forward-looking, outward-looking, innovative, flexible, creative, evidence-based, inclusive and joined up; that policy should be reviewed and evaluated; and that lessons should be learned from policy experience (Bochel and Duncan, 2007). In relation to Basic Income, it is the first of these that might be both the most important and the most challenging: important, because a Basic Income would cohere with any future employment market, economy and society; and challenging, because contexts change, forecasting is difficult, and political decisions are inevitably governed by the election cycle and so will always be influenced more by short-term considerations than by attempts to predict the

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future and plan for it (Bochel and Shaxson, 2007: 43–4). The problem is that ‘major reforms of the social security system take longer than the life-time of a government’ (Donnison, 1982: 143), so added to every other political feasibility consideration will be a requirement for sufficient cross-party agreement to ensure that a decision to implement a Basic Income would not be reversed if a General Election intervened. It rather looks as if an infeasible number of pieces of a policymaking jigsaw would have to come together to ensure the implementation of a Basic Income scheme. The idea would have to be understood and acceptable among a sufficient number of the general public; and government ministers, Members of Parliament, senior civil servants, trades unions, civil society interest groups, thinktanks, the media, academics, and computer companies, would have to be positively engaged (Baggott, 2000: 6, 80; Botterill and Fenna, 2019; Deeming and Smyth, 2017: 324; Dowding, 2018; Heyman, 2008: 114–17; Hogwood and Gunn, 1997). Such a confluence of interest would require that Basic Income would be understood to be in continuity with existing social policy, coherent with different political parties’ stated convictions, and a valid response to the needs of both the present and the future: that is, the ‘problem stream’ and the ‘policy stream’ would have to coincide (Hill, 2009: 291; John, 2018b; Ritter and Lancaster, 2018; Strassheim, 2018), perhaps brought in touch with each other by a ‘policy entrepreneur’ able to leverage an understanding of policymakers’ motives (Cairney, 2018). A particular difficulty facing Basic Income is that in some policy areas a certain amount of compromise can be both permitted and useful (Richardson, 1969: 107; Spicker, 2014: 237–8), but in the case of Basic Income compromise would not be legitimate. To compromise on the definition of Basic Income would mean that something other than a Basic Income would be implemented: for instance, a proposal from Australia for an ‘affluence-tested Basic Income’ (Spies-Butcher et al., 2020) is for a means-tested benefit that would deliver a Minimum Income Guarantee. Any compromise would be difficult to implement and administer, and it would not deliver the social and economic benefits of Basic Income; and because the term ‘Basic Income’ might be attached to the mechanism implemented, it would be difficult to discuss a transition to a genuine Basic Income. What would have to be actively discussed around the policy community would be different Basic Income schemes in order to discover a financially feasible scheme that would be acceptable to all of the members of the policy community (Torry, 2020a: 148–54). What should never be under discussion is the definition of a Basic Income. Paul Spicker asks the question: What can go wrong? (Spicker, 2014: 240). What could go wrong with the implementation of a Basic Income scheme is that we could find that it was not a Basic Income that was being implemented, but something else entirely (Torry, 2020a: 189–90).

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Complexity theory If a Basic Income were to be added to the existing tax and benefits system, and particularly if a new tax were to be implemented to fund it, then would it not create greater complexity rather than the greater simplicity that its proponents promise? It is perfectly true that if significant numbers of households were to remain on means-tested benefits in addition to their Basic Incomes, then the administrative burden might in fact become slightly heavier for both the implementing government and the individual recipient (Simanainen, 2021: 114). This possibility is sometimes employed as an objection to Basic Income (Piachaud, 2016: 3–4, 10–11; Parker, 1988). Two responses can be offered. Firstly, at the level of the household, complexity is an experienced reality. Any household no longer on means-tested benefits because its Basic Incomes had taken it off them would experience less complexity; any household still on means-tested benefits would be on less of them, so would be more able to come off them, and would therefore be closer to experiencing the simplicity that Basic Income would offer; and any household that remained on means-tested benefits would not experience their Basic Incomes as an added complexity, but rather as a new secure layer of income with rules that they entirely understood. ‘Simplifying the benefits system shouldn’t be the goal—simplifying it for the claimant should be’ (Royston, 2017: 350). Secondly, at the level of the tax and benefits system as a whole, a research field that social and economic researchers can no longer neglect is complexity theory, which is about the ways in which physical systems and living organisms can experience both chaos and self-organization (Davies, 1989: 4; Kauffman, 1993: 642; Nicolis, 1989: 316–47; Prigogine and Stengers, 1984; Torry, 2002). This suggests that if such disciplines as economics and social policy are to evolve along with the complex evolving realities that they study, then they too must remain complex (Hodgson, 1999: 13). It also suggests that we should treat tax and benefits systems as complex adaptive systems. Social security systems are complex, because means-testing, work tests, and so on, involve complexity; and if a number of different government departments are involved in the administration of benefits and taxes then even more complexity is generated. Governments tend to amend existing legislation rather than replace it, which might require the amendment of other existing legislation, and so on, resulting in yet more complexity; and if governments wish to constrain the discretion available to the street-level bureaucrats who administer taxes and benefits, then additional regulations have to be imposed, adding yet another layer of complexity. In such complex adaptive systems we should expect unpredictable outcomes, so we should expect attempts at simplification

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to result in further complexity (Harris, 2006; 2015), as the UK Government has discovered in relation to its attempt to roll a number of means-tested benefits into a single means-tested Universal Credit. Rather than treating a tax and benefits system as a single complex system (Harris, 2015: 218–19), it might be better to understand it as a mixture of simple and complex elements: with the simple unconditional benefits providing efficiently for needs that we all have in common, and complex means-tested benefits providing for needs that we do not all share. This would enable us to maintain and manage complexity in one of those systems, and vigorously to pursue simplicity in the other. And so, for instance, in relation to the UK’s benefits system, it would be perfectly possible to extend the simple unconditional element from Child Benefit to a Basic Income for every individual (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b). Counter-intuitively, complexity theory suggests that simplification of the system as a whole is not what is required, and that a combination of universal provision, private provision, and means-tested provision, is what is needed if the total tax and benefits system is to develop creatively. Complexity theory also suggests that no part of the social and economic system should closely control other parts of it: so disincentives and coercion should be reduced to a minimum, and the number of elements that might enable the system to develop freely should be increased (Torry, 2002; 2020a: 182–3, 255–6). Basic Income is an obvious candidate because it has the theoretical possibility to facilitate flexible, bottom-up innovation, since a) it embodies the ‘rule of law’ principles of generality, nondiscrimination, simplicity, and transparency, and b) it grants people widespread freedom to experiment, innovate, and deviate from established practices and norms …. (Lehto, 2022: 2)

When we are discussing the complexity of a country’s tax and benefits system, and whether proposals for change would increase or reduce complexity, it will be important to study what might happen in practice rather than what might appear to be immediately intuitive. For instance: It might be intuitive to implement a Negative Income Tax (Chapter 2) rather than a Basic Income, because the two mechanisms offer the same relationship between earned and disposable income, and the single mechanism of a Negative Income Tax might look as if it would be easier to implement than a Basic Income along with a retained existing income tax system. However, as we have seen in Chapter 2, a Negative Income Tax would be complicated and perhaps impossible to administer, whereas a Basic Income would be radically simple. Complicated

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and complex are not the same. Counter-intuitively, a radically simple Basic Income alongside an existing income tax would be simple to administer. A factor related to complexity theory is that a Basic Income could contribute to the self-organization of the complex tax and benefits system, whereas a Negative Income Tax could cause it to seize up. What complexity theory requires is that a variety of parts of a system can evolve in relation to each other. To attempt integration between the parts can stop that from happening, whereas to increase the number of parts can contribute to useful evolution of the system as a whole (Atkinson and Sutherland, 1988a; 1988b; Parker and Dilnot, 1988; Torry, 2013: 85–93). The path dependency that we have already discussed is one brake on a complex system’s ability to evolve towards self-organization: another is the feedback loops that embed the positional advantage of some players in the system and also embed the disadvantage of others (Room, 2011: 7, 209–210). Given sufficient room for manoeuvre, households are agile institutional entrepreneurs, finding their way around the social policy landscape (Jordan et al., 1992), but in the employment market ‘agile creativity accrues disproportionately to the advantaged’ (Room, 2011: 265). A Basic Income would contribute towards an equalization of opportunities and therefore the flatter entrepreneurial landscape required for creative evolution towards self-organization. Initially a Basic Income would be added to the existing structure, and the existing tax and benefits systems would be adapted to pay for it; and because policy change always carries a risk of unintended consequences, a gradual implementation might be advisable, perhaps with a Basic Income implemented for one demographic group at a time (Capano et al., 2019): but however extensive or large the Basic Income might be, it would contribute to complexity, and therefore to creative evolution and self-organization; and because the Basic Income itself would be extremely simple, it would relate to the complexity of the system as a whole in a predictable way and could help the whole system to pass a ‘creative complexity’ test as well as a ‘simplicity’ test (Torry, 2020a: 154–5). Administrative considerations A Basic Income is an unconditional income for every individual, and so would be easier to administer than any other income paid out by governments. To take a similar example: The UK paid Family Allowance to every family with more than one child from 1946 to the mid-1970s; and it has been paying Child Benefit for every child since the mid-1970s: and so since 1946 families in the UK have received an unconditional income for their children. Administration

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is simple and efficient, almost no fraud occurs, and error rates are negligible (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, 2021: 65): unlike claimants’ experience of existing means-tested benefits (Department for Work and Pensions, 2020: 180–81; Torry, 2013: 22–5, 93–6). This suggests that errors and fraud in relation to a Basic Income would be almost impossible, and that the criminalization that can occur when it is rational for claimants not to follow the regulations, and that can so easily be weaponized against a benefits system by the press, would also be almost impossible (Baillie, 2011: 67–70; Dean, 2012a: 106–8; Jordan et al., 1992: 277; Noteboom [1987] 2013; Torry, 2013: 95–6; 2020a: 185–7). The radical simplicity of Basic Income means that almost all of the material on ‘the administrative process’ in Paul Spicker’s Social Policy would be irrelevant to it (Spicker, 2014: 218–19, 353–77). However, at the point of implementation of a Basic Income it would be a Basic Income scheme that would be implemented, and the complexity of that would relate to how the Basic Incomes were to be paid for. This means that the administrative questions that require to be answered are those that relate to a Basic Income scheme as a whole and not just those that relate to the Basic Income. During the Indian pilot project, pilot village residents could choose whether to buy food from the subsidized ration food shops or to use mainstream markets and shops. Fewer used the subsidized ration food shops, and more used the markets and mainstream shops. Nutrition improved (Davala et al., 2015: 32, 91), and there would have been a certain amount of subsidy revenue saved. In Iran, subsidies on food and fuel were reduced, and unconditional incomes were paid to heads of households (Tabatabai, 2012a: 290). Any country that funded a Basic Income by reducing subsidies would not find the transition difficult to administer. Alaska’s Permanent Fund, into which oil extraction royalties are paid, pays an unconditional annual dividend to every citizen (Widerquist and Howard, 2012), the administration of which remains separate from existing tax and benefits systems, and is therefore easy to achieve. If the proceeds from a social wealth fund were to be paid out as a Basic Income (Lansley, 2016; Lansley et al., 2018; Lansley and Reed, 2019; McCain, 2017; Reed and Lansley, 2016), then administration would again be easy to achieve, because any changes to the existing tax and benefits system would occur automatically: for instance, by people’s Basic Incomes being taken into account when their means-tested benefits were recalculated. However, in most countries it would be several decades before a social wealth fund would be large enough to pay Basic Incomes of useful amounts, so the mechanism would not be a live option in the short to medium term.

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Automatic adjustments in existing benefits would also occur if government money creation were to be employed to fund a Basic Income (Crocker, 2015; 2019), or if new kinds of taxation, unconnected with the existing tax and benefits system, were to be employed: for instance, financial transaction taxes, which are already collected on share purchases (New York State, 2022; UK Government, 2022c) and might one day be collected on currency transactions; or perhaps a tax on robots, on the basis that they will be earning the revenue previously earned by human workers (Bruun and Duka, 2018). In relation to all of these, the only changes elsewhere in the tax and benefits system would take place automatically as taxes and benefits adjusted in relation to the payment of Basic Incomes (Torry, 2020a: 175–77). Complications would only occur if Basic Incomes were to be funded by making savings in existing tax and benefits systems: by reducing tax allowances (the amounts of earned or other income on which tax is not charged), by raising tax rates, or by reducing the levels of existing means-tested or other benefits (Torry, 2022b). Making such changes would never be too much of a problem, and, as we have seen, administering the Basic Incomes would not be a problem either. However, making a number of administrative changes all at the same time can be a problem, both for government departments, and for households having to manage their domestic budgets while income sources are changing. It would therefore be important to make as few changes as possible to the existing tax and benefits systems, and for the changes that were made to be as simple as possible; and it would also be important to ensure that for low-income households the combination of paying the new Basic Incomes and changes to the existing tax and benefits system did not result in household net disposable income losses, and that for no household would any net loss be unmanageable. This is bound to be difficult to achieve if a revenue neutral constraint is imposed, because in that context every household net gain must be balanced by a household net loss, and the complexity of existing tax and benefits systems can make it difficult to keep all net losses at manageable levels. However, the requirement remains essential, and only Basic Income schemes that make as few changes as possible to the existing tax and benefits systems, that do not impose net household disposable income losses on low-income households, and that do not impose unmanageable losses on any households, should be attempted (Torry, 2017d; 2018c; 2019a; 2020a: 177; 2022b). The one condition required for the easy administration of a Basic Income would be a database containing the names, contact details, date of birth, and bank account details for every individual within the jurisdiction in which it would be paid, the construction and maintenance of which would not be unproblematic anywhere as it would raise both administrative and political

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questions (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2013: 927). Not every country currently possesses such a database. For instance, the UK has databases relating to passports, driving licences, National Insurance Contributions, the local council tax, income tax, bank accounts, means-tested benefits, the National Health Service, local and national elections, and so on, and although between them these databases must contain most of the information that would be required to pay to every individual a Basic Income, they would need to be combined, and the resulting database then completed and checked. What would be essential would be to ensure that the resulting list would be a list of individuals, and not of households or of heads of households somehow defined. In some cultures there has been understandable resistance to the creation of complete lists of residents of a country: but a list designed to ensure that everyone eligible would receive their Basic Income would be for a clearly positive purpose and so would be unlikely to meet with overwhelming public disapproval. Once the initial database had been completed, keeping it up to date would be no problem as it would be in everyone’s interests to do that. Computerization would be unproblematic (Torry, 2016a: 118–42; 2020a: 161). Even if minor difficulties were encountered when constructing the required database, Basic Income would avoid an entire administrative problem that faces any other kind of social security benefit: the claiming process (Spicker, 2014: 333–40). Once someone’s Basic Income had started, whether at the point of implementation, at birth, or maybe at age sixteen or eighteen, the Basic Income would simply keep on being paid until the individual died. No further active administration would be required (Torry, 2020a: 172–5). An interesting possibility is that to relate the receipt of Basic Incomes to the electoral register could be good for democracy. In countries such as Australia where voting is compulsory, electoral registers are more likely to be both accurate and complete. In countries where voting is not compulsory, there will always be some doubt as to how accurate and complete the registers are. A natural experiment occurred in the UK during the referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union in June 2016. A lot of people registered to vote for the first time, because although they were not interested in voting in local and general elections, they did want to vote in the referendum. In December 2016 there were one million more entries than in December 2015: an increase of 2.3 per cent of the adult population eligible to vote (Electoral Commission, 2017: 12). This suggests that the electoral register is normally inaccurate by more than that amount. If receipt of a Basic Income were to be related to the electoral register then there would be far more of an incentive to have one’s name on the list (De Wispelaere and Noguera, 2012: 26; Torry, 2016a: 132).

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Whilst a national database would be the major requirement, it would also be essential to ensure that everyone would be able to receive their Basic Income, which would require every individual to have a bank account to which only they had access. Couples might be able to opt for their Basic Incomes to be paid into a joint account, but that should not be the default position. The problem is that not everyone has a bank account. However, this might present more of an opportunity than a problem (De Wispelaere and Noguera, 2012: 26). In a Basic Income pilot project in India that involved six thousand men, women and children, every adult in the pilot communities had to open a bank account within weeks of the experiment starting. Ninety-eight per cent bank account coverage was achieved (Davala et al., 2015: 34, 38). This suggests that in any country that chooses to implement a Basic Income, providing every individual with a means for receiving the income would not be difficult. In the UK, 97 per cent of the population have a bank account of some kind (Boyle, 2021), so it would not be difficult to ensure that every individual had some kind of account into which their Basic Income could be paid. If both the UK and India could easily achieve nearly one hundred per cent bank account coverage, then every other developed and developing country should be able to do so, and there is evidence that financial inclusion is advancing rapidly globally (Andrews et al., 2021). To require that Basic Incomes should be paid into individual bank accounts and not into joint accounts would go a long way to meeting this challenge (Torry, 2016a: 133–4; 2020a: 175). We can confidently predict that a Basic Income would be simple to administer, and that once it was in payment it would provide a secure financial basis for every household. If there is an administrative problem then it would relate to the transition period, as the different elements of a Basic Income scheme would have to align with each other. For instance, if the Basic Income were to be paid for by reducing an income tax personal allowance, then there would have to be certainty that the Basic Income would already be in payment before the allowance was reduced, because the reduction would cause an increase in income tax and therefore a reduction in net earned income. It might therefore be wise to begin the Basic Income payments before the allowance is reduced, and one-off funding might have to be provided for that. Similarly, any reductions in other benefits would have to take place at the same time as the Basic Income was implemented, so again it might be wise to implement the Basic Income before the benefits reductions take place. None of this should be difficult to achieve. Additional plans would have to be made to mitigate effects in other policy areas. For instance, in the UK, receipt of means-tested benefits grants access to free school meals, and the number of children receiving free school

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meals influences the amount of money that the school receives. If fewer households were to receive means-tested benefits, then fewer households would receive free school meals, and schools in more deprived areas would receive less money. Mitigation would have to be in place. Similarly, receipt of means-tested benefits gives access to free prescriptions and dental care, and to free or reduced-price access to leisure centres, so if fewer households received means-tested benefits then more households would have to pay for their prescriptions and dental care, and fewer households would be able to attend the leisure centre (Miller, 2012). The problem here is not the Basic Income: it is the cliff-edge that households face when they come off means-tested benefits. It can already be the case that earning just enough not to be able to receive them can mean losing free school meals and free prescriptions and being unable to afford the local leisure centre. A household can end up a lot poorer. An obvious response would be to make school meals, prescriptions and dental care free for everyone, and to recoup the cost by increasing tax rates. Families at the lower end of the earnings range could benefit, while families at the upper end might find themselves paying a little more income tax. A further benefit of this approach would be that making school meals free for every child could be a useful way to wean children off packed lunches full of crisps, chocolate biscuits and sugar-saturated drinks. And it would not be difficult to find a different and rather better way to ensure that schools in more deprived areas received additional funding. In any country in which a Basic Income was to be implemented, careful consideration would have to be given to the policy areas that the implementation might affect (Torry, 2018a: 166–7; 2020a: 188–90). While additional benefits and services would still be required to provide sufficient for people with disabilities and their carers, other benefits would be at lower levels, and because local authorities provide a variety of incomes and services for people with disabilities there would be a case for remaining and perhaps new disability benefits being administered by local rather than central government (Leaper, 1986; Fenger et al., 2016: 169–267). The one thing that must not happen is people living with disabilities and their carers receiving amounts of a ‘Basic Income’ not available to others (Martinelli, 2017a: 15; 2017b: 9–10), as that would mean something other than a Basic Income being paid. The Basic Income has to be kept unconditional, otherwise it would not offer the social and economic advantages that a genuine Basic Income would offer. Any additional income thought necessary for various groups of people should either be new separate benefits, or enhanced versions of relevant benefits in the current system (Basic Income Research Group, 1988; Howard and Lawrence, 1996; Torry, 2020a: 190–91).

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To what extent would a Basic Income scheme reduce administrative costs? (Stirton and De Wispelaere, 2009; Miller, 2009). The saving or additional cost would of course depend entirely on the details of the particular scheme implemented. If the Basic Income were too small to take a significant number of households off means-tested benefits, then it would be likely to increase administrative costs (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2011: 122): which is why it is important that one of the tests for the feasibility of a Basic Income scheme should be that it would take a significant number of households off means-tested benefits, and should also bring a significant number of households within striking distance of coming off them (Torry, 2020a: 183; 2022b: 3, 8, 14, 20). Whilst what we have said so far in this section of the chapter has been of a fairly general nature, and most of it could be applied in any context, precisely how a Basic Income would be implemented would be highly context specific: not because a Basic Income would be different from place to place, but because the context within which it would be implemented would be different. Wide consultation among policy experts would be required, as occurred in the UK in 2016 when the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales commissioned a report on the implementation of a Basic Income and then held a half day consultation on it (Torry, 2016c; 2020a:192–7). What will be essential will be careful research into precisely how particular Basic Income schemes could be implemented in particular contexts. Generalities will be of limited usefulness. Who precisely should receive a Basic Income? One administrative matter would require particular attention: the question as to precisely who should receive a Basic Income. Most countries categorize people in various ways: as citizens, asylum seekers, refugees, legal residents, illegal immigrants, and so on (Carmel et al., 2011; Gardner, 1990: 63). The categories themselves, as well as the criteria that determine who should be placed in which category, will often be quite fluid, because they will be significantly determined by public, media, and political opinion (Goodin, 1988: 85): so each country would need to make a political decision as to precisely who should receive a Basic Income, and then that decision would have to be constantly reviewed. Categories can sometimes overlap, as with European and national citizenships (Dean, 2011a: 25–6; European Commission, 2018; Fitzpatrick, 1999: 15; Handy, 1994: 101; Oliver and Heater, 1994: 7); and, in a country with a federal structure that grants to regional governments a fair degree of fiscal autonomy, each regional government might have to decide to whom Basic Incomes would be paid. A longstanding example of such a decision is

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that Alaska pays the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend to everyone who has lived in Alaska for at least a year and intends to remain a resident (O’Brien and Olson, 1991: 5). Who should receive a Basic Income would never be a new question to answer, because similar decisions will have to have been made about eligibility for existing benefits, healthcare, and so on. For instance, in the UK there are already regulations to determine who should receive unconditional Child Benefit, and it would not be difficult to extend these to cover payments to every individual (UK Government, 2022b). A further question to answer would be whether someone normally resident in a country should continue to receive their Basic Income if they were to move abroad. Again, existing rules might apply, and bilateral agreements might be made between countries that pay Basic Incomes to their legal residents (UK Government, 2022a). In 2018, the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust convened a working group to discuss who precisely should receive a Basic Income in the UK. It decided that the following should receive Citizen’s Basic Incomes • All those with the right to reside in the UK indefinitely …; • refugees with a defined number of years of legal residence (usually five years extendable); • in both cases, on condition that a) they would be defined as resident in the UK by [HM Revenue and Customs] and b) they have been resident in the UK for two or three years; • a national of another country which had implemented a Basic Income would be entitled to receive a Basic Income on their arrival in the UK on condition that their country gave the same right to UK nationals. (This mirrors Child Benefit provisions.)

The following should not receive Citizen’s Incomes • Students and foreign workers resident on the basis of visas; • asylum seekers (that is, people who are seeking refugee status but do not yet have it); • convicted prisoners. (Prisoners on remand would continue to receive their Basic Incomes; and Basic Incomes would be paid to ex-prisoners immediately on release.) (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018d)

Would a Basic Income become a magnet for unmanageable immigration? (Howard, 2006; Torry, 2018a: 148–51). The question as to which newly arrived individuals should be able to access the country’s public services and state benefits is already a live question in relation to existing benefits and services, so this is not a question purely about who should receive a Basic Income. And the problem with such questions is that they can be framed in ways somewhat at a distance from existing information (Perkiö et al., 2019). For instance, in the UK, debate about immigration before the 2016 Brexit referendum frequently

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mentioned European citizens claiming benefits in the UK, without recognizing that far more Britons were claiming benefits in other EU countries (Nardelli et al., 2015). Debate about immigration since the referendum has been more diverse, but it still rarely recognizes the net positive economic and social contributions that immigrants make (Fwd.us, 2022). It will now be clear that simply to say that a Basic Income is ‘a right of citizenship’ (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018a: 3) is only the beginning of a discussion (Lewis, 2004) as citizenship becomes ever more diverse and complex (Aneesh, 2016: 197; Newman, 2013). A variety of citizenship rights have evolved through history: civil, welfare, political, economic, and social rights (Dwyer, 2003: 31–50; Golding, 1972: 135–6; Heywood, 1999: 210–13; Lister, 1997: 65; Marshall, 1950: 10-11), with economic and social rights providing the resources required to enable us to exercise civil and political rights (Coote, 1996; Heywood, 1999: 213–15; Melden, 1981: 276; Reynolds and Healy, 1993: 8; Roche, 1992: 4, 16, 167; van Gunsteren, 1978). Within this framework we can understand Basic Income as an economic and social right that makes possible the exercise of civil, welfare and political rights and other social and economic rights (Barry, 1990): a foundation that stigma-inducing and divisive means-tested benefits cannot deliver (Twine, 1994: 97). In such a citizenship rights context we can also understand Basic Income as a rolling back of the current trend towards the privatization of social rights (Dean, 2015: 15) and as a way of aligning theoretical and practical rights. A theoretical right to means-tested benefits does not always translate into a practical right, whereas in relation to a Basic Income theoretical and practical rights would coincide (Dwyer, 2019; Watts and Fitzpatrick, 2018). To be granted a right assumes that the resources will be available to enable the right to be exercised (Culpit, 1992; Plant, 1988: 73), so a fundamental citizenship duty must be to pay the taxes required to fund the goods and services required to enable rights to be exercised. In a world of full employment it made sense to regard a requirement to seek and accept gainful employment as a citizenship duty (Heywood, 1999: 216–18). However, short-term and zero hour contracts are becoming more common, and new investment can now result in a loss of employment, so the duty to seek and accept employment has become problematic (Chandra, 2010: 7–9; Sherman and Jenkins, 1995: 57; Standing, 2009; Twine, 1994: 167). Our citizenship duty must now be ‘work’ understood as beneficial activity that encompasses both paid and unpaid work (Pettinger, 2019: 39–47; Reynolds and Healy, 1993: 69; Sherman and Jenkins, 1995: 156), although this transition will not be easy for those whose sense of self is bound up with their ability to provide the whole of their family’s livelihood.

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Whilst there are ways in which the concept of citizenship can represent a useful network of rights and obligations, the more recent concept of the ‘active’ citizen—‘the worker citizen, the participating citizen, the citizen consumer, the responsible citizen’—can provoke and embed ‘the current programmes of welfare state retrenchment’ (Newman, 2013: 45). On the other hand, a Basic Income ‘would … institutionalize citizenship principles and the social rights of citizenship’ (Roche, 1992: 185) by facilitating the practical fulfilment of citizenship duties and the production of the resources to enable citizenship rights to be met. In particular, the implementation of a Basic Income would force a country to address the question of citizenship, and it would encourage precisely the kind of cohesive and diverse citizenship that we now require: one ‘marked by situated, emergent and … expansively connective practices that seek to bridge difference in making solidarities’ (Clarke et al., 2014: 179) (Barrientos and Pellissery, 2011: 6; Dahrendorf, 1974; 1991; 1995; Lister, 1996: 193; Roche, 1992: 178; Sherman and Jenkins, 1995: 159; Torry, 2020a: 220–26, 256; Young, 1989: 251). Legislative considerations In 2017, a seminar held in Oñati in Spain tackled the subject ‘Specifying and securing a social minimum’ from legal, sociological, and social policy perspectives, and, following a further gathering of authors a book emerged (Kotkas et al., 2019). The chapters throw useful light on a number of questions about legislation for a Basic Income by showing that legislation in the benefits field reveals social norms (Stendahl and Swedrup, 2019); economic and social rights, and an obligation to provide a social minimum, can be written into a country’s constitution (Boyle, 2019; Pillay, 2017); constitutional and human rights courts can deal with such questions only indirectly, and only in relation to the process by which governments make decisions, because only national legislation can deal with taxes and benefits directly (Kotkas, 2019; Leijten, 2019); although governments frequently state commitments to socio-economic rights, the feeling that they are somewhat indeterminate means that governments are hesitant to legislate (O’Cinneide, 2019); and such concepts as a ‘minimum core’ can become problematic as political realities and resource levels change (Warwick, 2019). This suggests that legislation ought to be framed so that it reflects norms. For instance, calling a Basic Income a ‘fair allowance’ (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b) would reflect a social norm of fairness and would reveal the extent to which unconditional provision was felt to be fair. It also suggests that it might be possible to write Basic Incomes into constitutions as well as into legislation; that the radically determinate nature of a Basic Income would facilitate the passage of legislation, on condition that the definition of a Basic Income was never compromised; that the only

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questions relevant to constitutional and human rights courts would be those related to who should and who should not receive a Basic Income, for instance in relation to residence requirements; that governments should legislate for a Basic Income, rather than to provide itself with the ability to do so; and that the level of the Basic Income should be stated in regulations rather than in the legislation (Torry, 2020a: 261–63). Further legislative considerations apply to Basic Income pilot projects and experiments. The limited Finland experiment encountered significant constitutional and legislative complexities (Tuovinen, 2021); and because in a more developed economy the existing tax and benefits systems would have to be altered for the pilot community if a genuine pilot project were to be held, the legislative requirements could be particularly onerous.

Conclusion Does Basic Income belong to a world that has undergone or is undergoing a complete transformation (Devine et al., 2013: 47–50; Srnicek and Williams, 2015: 129–32), or is it a minor change to the world in which we live? The answer has to be both. However, the fact that a Basic Income would fit into whatever economy, society, and employment market that we might see in the future does not mean that it is not a viable option today. In any context in which a financially feasible illustrative Basic Income scheme both exists and might pass sufficient other feasibility tests, Basic Income is feasible now: although as we have seen, what is feasible in the short term, for the UK and perhaps for other countries as well, might be a gradual implementation for one age group at a time. This is not a problem. Even if, for the time being, progress towards a desirable long-term goal is blocked by an adverse balance of forces, it is usually possible to devise short-term policies which, if implemented, would help to bring the goal closer to the horizon of possibility. Conversely, where short-term policies are framed in the light of a long-term project, they are more likely to sow the seeds of social change rather than simply managing the established order. (Purdy, 2007b: 65)

The word ‘context’ that we have encountered so frequently in this chapter is important, because although the Basic Income debate is now global, and there is much about that debate that will be relevant anywhere on the planet, there is always a great deal that is necessarily context-specific: and that is particularly true of feasibilities and implementation methods. We cannot assume that a feasibility test passed in one place could be passed in the same way in another;

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and we should not assume that an implementation method that might work in one country could be used without adaptation in another. Feasibility tests will need to be designed and passed differently in every country; and implementation methods will have to be researched differently in every country. There is already a considerable amount of context-specific research (Klein et al., 2019; Lo Vuolo, 2013; Mays et al., 2016; Torry, 2016a; 2021d; 2022b; Vanderborght and Yamamori, 2014). We need a lot more of it. I hope that the list at the end of this chapter, and the lists at the ends of the other chapters in this volume, will contribute to that process.

Future research While the administration of a Basic Income scheme would present a number of complexities, and the construction of the database required to pay Basic Incomes might also present some initial challenges, what matters is the difference between the simplicity of the administration of Basic Incomes and the complexity of the administration of other kinds of benefit, and also the complexity of frequently proposed alternatives to Basic Income such as a Negative Income Tax or a Participation Income (Chapter 2). The future research required in relation to the implementation of a Basic Income might be as follows: • In each country it will be essential to research a wide variety of illustrative Basic Income schemes to find out which of them might have some chance of passing all of the feasibility tests listed in this chapter. • Research will constantly be required on the administrative detail of Basic Income schemes that can pass the feasibility tests. • Particularly important will be research in each context to discover how the database required for Basic Income administration might be constructed. • Research will be needed on the levels of financial inclusion in different contexts, particularly in relation to bank account coverage and to future possibilities for extending individual access to bank accounts. • In each context research will be required about precisely who should receive a Basic Income. • Up to date research on legislative considerations will be required in each different context. • Potential implementation pathways should be researched in each context, particularly in relation to whether it would be viable to implement a Basic Income for one age group at a time.

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• The policy process should be researched in each context to discover the constraints that implementation of a Basic Income scheme might encounter, and whether it might be possible to alleviate the constraints. • In every different context, a wide range of research will be required in relation to every aspect of research discussed in this book. The assumption should never be made that because a feasibility test has been passed in one context, the same feasibility test could necessarily be passed in the same way in another. • Up to date research on the administrative differences between Basic Income and such alternatives as a Minimum Income Guarantee, a Negative Income Tax, and a Participation Income, will always be required, and it would also be useful to research how Basic Income and a job guarantee might or might not be administratively and otherwise compatible. • Complexity theory is relatively under-researched in relation to tax and social security systems, and this deficit should be remedied. • Research should be applied to the possibility of what we might call a ‘Mont Pelerin strategy’: that is, would it be possible to establish a global network of thinktanks with the aim of establishing an unconditionality paradigm able to step in when the neoliberal paradigm hits a crisis from which it is unable to recover: a paradigm in which a Basic Income would be very much at home?

11

Conclusion to A Research Agenda for Basic Income

Introduction An online appendix brings together in a single document the lists of future research to be found at the end of each of the chapters of this book (https://​www​ .e​-elgar​.com/​textbooks/​torry). What readers will find here is not a summary of the content of the book, but a proposal for a strategy to ensure that the research is carried out.

A proposal The increasing extent and depth of the global Basic Income debate makes a significantly enhanced research effort essential, which means that those institutions currently involved in research, and particularly the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and its affiliated organizations, along with academic institutions with significant current interest in Basic Income—the Institute for Public Policy Research at the University of Bath, the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies at Freiburg University, and the Basic Income Lab at Stanford University—and also various UBI Labs and thinktanks with a significant interest, such as Compass, need to be far better resourced and also need to work closely with each other so that all of the future research listed in this book can be divided up and then undertaken in a coordinated manner. BIEN’s annual congresses and its website and also the journal Basic Income Studies already contribute to the dissemination of research on Basic Income, but also useful would be a central archive to which all of the organizations involved in Basic Income research could submit their research results. One aspect of such a central research hub would be a register of academics interested in Basic Income so that multidisciplinary teams could be constructed to tackle the particular issues that emerge from the now widespread debate. Consideration might also be given to the establishment of a Mont Pelerin strategy as described above: that is, a network of thinktanks able to work together on a new unconditionality paradigm that will encompass Basic Income research but will also 281

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give attention to researching how an unconditionality paradigm might relate to other social policy fields. If the Basic Income debate is to be intelligent and useful, it requires clear definitions constantly adhered to, and it requires research that employs the best available methods and the results of which are competently communicated.

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Index of names

Aristotle 203–4 Atkinson, Anthony B. (Tony) 23–4, 122, 209, 235 Beuys, Joseph 99 Beveridge, William 15, 71, 80, 143, 230–31, 261 Blatchly, Cornelius 202 Brownson, Orestes 206, 229–30 Charlier, Joseph 25–6, 128 Cole, George D.H. 14, 208, 222 Davenport, Allen 170–72 De Keyser, Napoleon 212 Elliott, Larry 189 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 160 Forget, Evelyn 130–31 George, Henry 44 Gorz, André 99, 236 Häni, Daniel 178 Hattersley, Charles Marshall 43, 70, 127, 208, 211 Healy, Seán 226 Hofstede, Geert 161 Hughes, Chris 138, 248 Keynes, John Maynard 262 Lee, Jae-myung 242–3 Lévinas, Emmanuel 203, 205 Lister, Ruth 222

Locke, John 218–19 McGovern, George 233 McKay, Ailsa 139, 143 Meade, James 16, 45, 70, 98, 230 Mill, John Stuart 14, 203, 213, 230 Milner, Dennis 42, 71–2, 128, 172, 230 Milner, E. Mabel 42, 128, 172, 230 More, Thomas 13 Moscovici, Serge 182, 193–4 Müller, Christian 178–9 Nixon, Richard 22, 72, 233 Offe, Claus 99 Paine, Thomas 4, 14, 29, 41, 148, 202, 206, 213, 229 Park, Geun-hye 242 Parker, Hermione (Mimi) xvii, 16, 42, 110 Piketty, Thomas 27 Rathbone, Eleanor 80 Rawls, John 155, 206–7, 218 Rhys Williams, Brandon xvii, 16, 42, 231 Rhys Williams, Juliet 15–16, 23, 42, 71, 129, 143, 206, 230–31, 263 Russell, Bertrand 71, 98, 127–8 Schmidt, Enno 178 Spence, Thomas x, 4, 14, 41, 98, 126–9, 138–9, 148, 170–72, 201, 206, 229, 255 Standing, Guy 240 Straub, Daniel 178–9 Subramanian, Arvind 241 347

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Sutherland, Holly xviii Tobin, James 20, 45, 61 van der Veen 18, 29, 209, 235 Van Parijs, Philippe xix, 17–18, 44, 211–12, 220–21, 246 Voituron, Paul 127, 212–13

Webb, Steven 42 Werner, Götz 179 Widerquist, Karl 211–12 Yang, Andrew 234 Zuckerberg, Mark 248

Index of subjects

active labour market policies 151–2, 183, 237 administration 40, 169, 266 see also Basic Income, administration of; Child Benefit, administration of; feasibility, administrative; income tax, administration of; Land Value Tax, administration of; means-tested benefits, administration of; Negative Income Tax, administration of; Participation Income, administration of administrative burden 22, 233, 266 administrative costs 132, 274 adult 14–16, 32, 94, 109, 128, 130, 144, 179, 271–2 older 93 see also elderly person working age ix, 31, 41, 78, 123, 131, 157, 185, 208, 210, 255 young ix, 4, 14, 29, 73, 81, 93, 134, 137, 182, 185, 202, 213, 242, 264 age cohort/group xiii–xiv, 12, 19, 27, 37, 81, 93, 170, 183, 186, 208, 256, 263, 278–9 see also demographic group agency xiii–xiv, 33, 37, 138 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend 25, 32, 44, 60, 62, 84–5, 116–17, 157, 255, 269, 275 allowance see child tax allowance; Fair Allowance; tax allowance Argentina 54–5 asylum seeker 36, 274–5

attitudes 152–3, 161, 178, 180–81, 184, 186, 193–5, 199, 223, 249, 251, 254 Australia 27, 160, 265, 271 automation 27, 52, 70, 73–5, 99, 117, 165, 189, 192, 197, 220, 248 autonomy 3, 35, 90–91, 99, 110, 135, 213–14, 219–21, 237, 239, 242, 274 bank account 34, 37, 42, 134, 144, 270–72, 279 bargaining power 129, 158, 203, 211, 221, 224, 251 Basic Capital 29–30, 41, 213 Basic Income administration of ix, 3, 22–4, 27, 31, 37, 40, 63, 82, 114, 132, 169, 172, 175, 219–20, 231, 235, 241, 255, 268–74, 279–80 alternatives to 3, 11–12, 19–28, 40, 199, 217, 233, 279–80 amount of 1, 16–18, 21, 27–9, 34, 37, 43, 107–8, 121, 129, 133, 179, 208, 211–12, 278 arguments against 52, 171–2, 199, 208, 217, 230, 250–54 see also objections to Basic Income arguments for 3, 25, 30, 60, 70, 72, 122–3, 128, 148–9, 170, 197, 199, 201–2, 204–12, 215, 217–18, 221, 226, 249, 252–4 automatic ix, xiii–xiv, 66 cash payment of xiv, 11–12, 14–15, 17, 19, 31–2, 37–8, 56, 80–81, 146, 183, 199, 220, 223, 230, 239, 252 see also cash subsidies; cash transfer 349

350 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

debate about x–xi, xvii, 1–9, 11–13, 15–19, 23, 26–28, 32–4, 36, 39–40, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, 68, 70, 72, 80–89, 92, 95, 97, 99, 106, 124–5, 128, 131, 136, 143, 147, 166, 171, 174, 178, 190–99, 201–3, 211, 213, 217, 226–7, 234, 236–51, 253–4, 278, 281–2 definition of 1–5, 7–8, 11–20, 27–8, 32–3, 38–40, 86, 93, 188, 194, 199, 235, 239, 248–50, 258, 265, 277, 282 desirability of ix–x, 93, 173, 180, 194, 197–8, 207, 249 economic effects of 4, 7–8, 38, 41, 64, 77–8, 97–125, 133, 140, 170, 178, 265, 273 effect on poverty see poverty, effect of Basic Income scheme on emancipatory 107, 127–8, 133–4, 143, 146, 158, 221, 240–41 see also emancipation employment market effects of ix, 4–5, 7–8, 63–4, 69–98, 100–106, 113, 125, 131–7, 148–9, 170, 178, 180, 190, 204, 238, 240, 258, 264, 278 European see Eurodividend feasibility see feasibility freedom-enhancing 107 Full 16–17 funding of see funding of Basic Income global 150, 214 implementation of see implementation individual basis of see individual level of see Basic Income, amount of national 13, 35–7, 43, 186, 223, 275, 277 nonwithdrawable ix, xiii objections to see Basic Income, arguments against Partial 16–17, 177 periodic payment of 11–12, 14–15, 17, 19, 27, 32–3, 37 regular payment of xii, 14–15, 17–18, 29, 32, 37, 54, 78, 85, 137

scheme see Basic Income scheme subsistence level 16–19, 32, 37, 39, 78, 107–8, 114, 119, 121, 128, 221 unconditional see unconditionality uniform payment of 33, 37, 62, 128, 255 universal see universality variants of 11–12, 19–20, 24, 27, 29, 31, 39–40, 199 Basic Income European/Earth Network (BIEN) x, xviii–xix, 4–5, 11, 14, 17–19, 32–4, 36, 38–40, 178–9, 213, 239–40, 243–4, 246–8, 281 Basic Income Guarantee 25 Basic Income Research Group xvii, 16–17, 244–5 Basic Income scheme ix, xiii, xv, xvii, 5, 12, 15–17, 27, 33–5, 42, 46–51, 54–6, 59, 61, 63–6, 68–7, 69, 77, 82, 85–7, 89, 91, 93, 95–6, 104–6, 108, 113–14, 116–17, 123, 125, 128, 137, 144, 149–50, 156–7, 162–3, 165–6, 169–73, 178–9, 186, 193–4, 196, 205, 208, 215, 220–22, 224, 229–31, 235, 238, 245–6, 249, 251–2, 256, 259–60, 265, 269–70, 272, 274, 278–80 transition to 169, 195, 257, 265, 269, 272 behaviour, control of 139, 203 behavioural feasibility, see feasibility, behavioural behavioural science see economics, behavioural Belgium 4, 14, 17, 18, 88, 159–60, 246 benefits dependency 76, 80, 219 in-work 92, 116, 152 means-tested see means-tested benefits social insurance see social insurance state see state benefits system xvii, 3, 33, 83, 90, 92, 106, 111–12, 116, 142–5, 151, 159, 183, 194–5, 204, 232, 235, 245, 252, 264, 266–7, 269 see also tax and benefits system; tax system Beveridge Report 15, 230–31, 261

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 351

B-Mincome 28, 236 Bolsa Família 239 Brazil 18, 38, 196, 223, 239 budget constraint 100–106 domestic 111, 270 government 222, 242, 264 bureaucracy 215, 231, 260, 262, 266 bureaucratic disincentives/enquiry/ intrusion 24, 28, 82, 114, 134–5, 139, 163 bureaucrats, street-level 23 businesses 5, 203, 220, 243 new 31, 79, 84, 93, 112, 116, 129, 157 Canada 20–21, 27, 34, 43, 65, 72, 130, 153, 160, 192, 233–4, 236, 239 see also Mincome experiment capabilities freedom see freedom, capabilities capital 4, 14, 20, 45, 52, 74, 109, 117–18, 157, 164, 170, 186, 208, 221–2 cultural 117–18 human 117–18 social 19, 117, 158 see also Basic Capital capitalism 149, 220–21, 224 carbon 60 emissions 43, 55–6, 108–9, 113, 149–51 tax see tax, carbon care work 83, 113, 145, 165, 211 cash subsidies 56, 81, 96, 117, 134, 197, 216, 254, 256 Cash Transfer 140, 146, 158, 218, 241 Conditional 80, 140, 166 Unconditional xiv, 80, 109, 133, 140, 166, 240–41 categorical benefits 15 categorical imperative 203 categorization 30, 154, 160, 258–9, 274 causality 53, 161, 190 child(ren) ix, xiv, 15–16, 29, 72–3, 76–9, 91, 94, 98, 104, 118–19, 122–3, 126, 128–33, 140–41, 143–6, 181–2, 185, 210, 231, 261, 263, 268, 272–3 child allowance 80, 109, 144, 235, 256 Child Benefit 15, 81, 181–2, 185, 235, 261, 264, 267–8, 275

administration of 15, 185 see also Family Allowance Child Bond/Trust Fund xiv, 29 child tax allowance 182 childcare 144–5, 174 Christian Faith 5, 225–6 Citizen’s Basic Income see Basic Income Citizen’s Basic Income Trust xvii, 16, 52, 191–2, 223, 244–5, 247–8, 275 Citizen’s Income see Basic Income Citizen’s Income Trust xvii, 175 Citizen’s Pension 146, 185 citizenship 153, 276–7 democratic 164, 203 diverse 276–7 duties see duties, citizenship European 274 rights see rights, citizenship social 158, 213, 254, 277 civic minimum 209 civil rights see rights, civil civil servants/service 24, 195, 199, 241, 260, 262–3, 265 civil society 242, 265 claimant xvii, 17, 50, 90, 134, 144, 151–2, 155, 161, 183, 215, 219, 266, 269 see also couple; individual claimants unions 4, 244–5 climate change 55, 65, 97, 148–50, 164–6, 258 club theory 118 coercion 31, 71, 122–3, 211, 267 cognitive capacity/function 122, 134–5, 141–2 collective bargaining 251 commons, the 5, 60–61, 155, 204 community 5, 13, 16, 19, 38, 44, 51, 63, 71–2, 90, 94, 106, 129, 139, 142–3, 147, 190, 193, 201, 208–10 activity see voluntary community activity control 72, 77, 95, 165, 238, 242 of choice 119 of fate 119 pilot xv, 69–70, 72, 75–80, 82, 85–6, 95, 131, 138, 165, 238, 240, 272, 278 policy see policy community project 28 complexity theory 255, 266–8, 280

352 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

compromise 8, 29, 36, 213, 250, 265, 277 computer(-ization) xiv, 23, 28, 45, 47, 54, 62, 73, 117, 208, 264–5, 271 Conditional Cash Transfer see Cash Transfer, Conditional conditionality ix, xiv, 15, 18, 20, 23, 27–8, 80, 83, 135, 140, 151, 165–6, 185, 196, 208–9, 239, 241, 261 see also unconditionality confirmation bias 184 conservatism 160, 253 Conservative Party 16, 29, 181, 185, 221, 234, 249 constitution 178, 238, 253–5, 277–8 consumer credit consumption 52–4, 60, 85, 97, 106–8, 111–13, 120–21, 149, 164, 203, 242 tax see tax, consumption 41, 44, 58–60, 63, 66–7, 113, 150 contract 264 temporary 111, 276 zero hour 110–11, 276 contributions record see social insurance; National Insurance Contributions contributory benefits xiii, 194–5, 261 see also National Insurance; social insurance conversion experiences 193–4, 198–9, 236 co-operatives 90, 112, 114, 129, 157, 224, 249 coping strategies 141–2 corporations 14, 158, 234 correlation 53, 154, 161 correspondence bias see fundamental attribution error couple 144–5, 272 see also claimant creativity 3, 91–2, 127, 264, 267–8 crime 76, 132–3 criminalization 183, 269 cultural capital see capital, cultural currency, local see local currency Dauphin see Mincome experiment debate about Basic Income see Basic Income, debate about debt 52–4, 85, 109, 120, 132, 154

definition of Basic Income see Basic Income, definition of degrowth 149 deindividuation 151 demand 70, 72, 74, 109, 111, 120–21, 149 equation 112 see also supply democracy 18, 30, 78, 126, 129, 133, 147, 164, 203, 219, 264, 271 demogrant 25, 233–4 demographic group 93, 185, 242, 259, 268 see also age cohort/group demotivation 88–9, 152, 184 see also disincentive; incentive; motivation Denmark 159–60 dental care 273 Department for Work and Pensions 88 dependency 70, 145–7, 204, 225 see also benefits dependency; path dependency depression 135, 152 deprivation 119, 137, 142, 154, 156, 201–2, 273 deserving/undeserving 153, 164, 174, 183–7, 197, 204, 209, 225, 230, 258, 263–4 dignity 18–19, 39, 119, 159, 178, 213–14, 247 disability 94, 133, 147–8, 152, 166, 184–5, 210, 250, 263, 273 discourse 1, 216, 225, 258 hegemonic moral 180, 183 see also frame/framing discretion 23, 152, 266 disincentive 57, 61, 70–71, 82, 110–12, 122, 139, 145, 158, 183, 205, 219, 222, 249, 263, 267 see also demotivation; incentive; motivation disposable income see net disposable income distribution 14, 41, 61–2, 70, 78, 106, 109, 120, 126, 129, 132, 137, 161, 206, 208, 212–13, 220, 230 intra-family/household 144 see also inequality; redistribution dividend 27, 41, 43, 65, 67, 98, 126–8, 234, 242

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 353

see also Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend; Eurodividend; Social Dividend; Seongnam Youth Dividend duties, citizenship 209, 276–7 Earned Income Tax Credit 22–2, 72 economic activity/growth 31, 54, 76, 79–80, 86, 97, 108–13, 117–18, 133, 136, 140, 149, 157, 163–4, 240 effects see Basic Income, economic effects of efficiency 98–100, 121–3, 149, 220 independence see independence paradigm 149, 262 research 64–5, 227, 266 rights see rights, economic security see security theory 97, 106, 118, 123 economics behavioural 121, 142, 144, 170, 180–81, 187–9, 194–5 classical 97, 100, 106, 118, 124 heterodox 124 welfare 97, 117–24 wellbeing 118, 219 economy 5, 43, 50, 53–4, 57, 64, 69, 75, 81, 97–8, 106, 108–11, 117–23, 126, 150, 172, 209–10, 217, 221, 223–4, 234, 242, 264, 267, 278 degrowth see degrowth developed 17, 21, 34, 59, 63, 73, 80, 82, 85–6, 94–5, 112, 118, 125, 129–30, 138, 146, 164, 166, 177, 190, 261, 272, 278 developing 79–80, 85, 94, 112, 129, 146, 272 flexible see flexibility global 70 informal 154 local 76, 133, 162, 242 market 54, 149, 217 moral 180 national 222 planned 224 productivist 149 sustainable 244

education x, xvii, 29–30, 38, 47, 57, 59, 63, 73, 76, 81, 89–90, 119, 129–30, 134, 137, 140, 172–3, 178, 185, 193, 197, 199, 204, 209, 219, 244–5, 248, 250–51, 253–4 efficiency 27, 30–31, 35, 72, 74, 97–8, 121–2, 149, 165, 181, 198, 203–4, 218, 220, 224, 235, 240–41, 267, 269 see also economic efficiency; inefficiency; market efficiency; welfare efficiency elderly people ix, 4, 30, 94, 131, 133, 140, 146–7, 185, 204, 210, 235, 263–4 elections 1, 29, 59, 173, 229–30, 232–3, 236, 242, 246, 253, 264–5, 271 see also voting electoral register 130, 271 emancipation 127–8, 133–4, 143, 146, 158, 213, 221, 240–41 see also Basic Income, emancipatory employer 21–3, 34, 72, 115–16, 119, 122, 219, 235, 251–2 employment xiv, 5, 15, 22–3, 50–51, 63, 109, 208 choices 78, 86, 88–90, 106, 113–14, 118, 145–7, 150, 158, 164, 173, 190, 211–12, 214–15, 221, 237 conditions 71, 90, 100, 113–14, 124, 141, 189, 203, 211, 214, 235, 251 decisions see employment choices disincentive see disincentive exit 114–15, 145–6, 211 flexible see flexibility full 100, 120, 149, 160, 214, 252, 276 full-time 73, 87, 106–7, 110, 149, 152, 231 hours 72–3, 80, 84–5, 87–8, 100–104, 106–7, 110, 113, 115, 127, 136, 143, 146–7, 149, 166, 211 incentive see incentive insecure 5, 73–4, 91, 110, 114, 141, 143, 174, 183 see also financial insecurity/ security; job security low skilled 74, 109, 158

354 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

market 3, 27, 31, 50, 62–4, 74–5, 89, 97–9, 107, 110, 113, 121–2, 136, 147, 157–8, 164–5, 174, 187, 189–90, 192, 197–8, 210, 217–20, 232–3, 235–7, 244, 253, 264, 268 see also Basic Income, employment market effects of options see employment choices occasional 90, 93, 111, 147–8, 204 opportunities 90, 158, 164, 175, 209–10, 212, 215, 231, 268 paid xiii, xiv, 45, 62, 70, 74, 79–80, 83, 89, 91–2, 98–100, 135, 139, 145–7, 164, 174, 181–2, 222, 250, 276 part-time 23, 73, 85, 87–8, 90, 110, 112 patterns of 81, 112–14, 137, 142, 148, 221 precarious 54, 73, 111, 144, 184, 251 rights see rights, employment self- 22–3, 28, 76, 78–9, 84, 90, 110–14, 240–41 status ix, xiv, 1, 23, 28, 176, 197 turbulence 74, 189, 197–8, 220, 223, 252 withdrawal from see employment exit see also unemployment; work empowerment 152, 247 endowment effect 188 enquiry (into personal circumstances) xiv, 28, 114, 208 equality 120, 123, 128, 134, 146, 150, 160, 171, 222 see also inequality errors 183, 269 ethics 4, 7, 52, 64, 77, 149, 201, 203–7, 221, 226–7, 251 Eurodividend 35, 44, 67, 185, 214 EUROMOD xviii, 47 see also microsimulation Europe x, 17–18, 27, 35, 47, 148, 173, 179, 196, 214, 219, 223, 226, 232, 234, 236, 246–7, 258, 274, 276 European Citizens’ Initiative 246–7 European Commission 247

European Convention on Human Rights 215–16 European Economic Area 159–60 European Parliament 246, 253 European Social Survey 258 European Union 35, 44, 47, 159–60, 177, 179, 214, 246–7, 271 Eurozone 35 experiment xv, 8, 20–21, 23–8, 35, 40, 50, 64, 69–70, 72–3, 75, 77, 79–88, 90, 92, 94–6, 123, 125, 130–31, 134–40, 142, 145, 147, 153, 164–6, 171, 174, 180, 189–91, 197, 215, 233–4, 236–9, 243, 248, 253, 256, 267, 271–2, 278 see also pilot project Fair Allowance 186, 223, 277 fairness 135, 119, 126, 129, 135, 177, 191, 199, 201, 206, 208–10, 213, 227, 277 family 42, 127–8, 130, 139, 141, 151, 154, 156, 184, 214–15, 225, 234, 276 distribution within see distribution, intra-family nuclear 143 structure 143–4 Family Allowance 15, 80, 128, 182, 231, 249, 261, 268 see also Child Benefit Family Assistance Plan 22, 72, 233 feasibilities ix–x, 7, 13, 19, 199, 258–60 additive 259 conjunctive 259 feasibility xv, xviii, 4–5, 22, 24, 31, 40, 56, 85–6, 95–6, 110, 164, 172–3, 193–4, 245, 255, 258–9, 278–80 administrative 14, 22, 32, 58, 85, 169, 248, 257, 259, 279, 256, 259 behavioural 92–4, 114, 170, 248, 257–9 financial 4–5, 7–8, 16–17, 34, 37, 39–40, 48–52, 58, 63–4, 66–70, 82, 93, 104, 121, 128, 150, 162, 165–6, 169–71, 179, 186, 189, 193, 204–5, 211–12, 235, 237, 242, 248–51, 256–9, 265, 274, 278 policy process 169, 248, 258–9

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 355

political 7, 49, 54–5, 66–7, 93, 169, 198, 229, 248–50, 254, 257–9, 265 psychological 66, 93–4, 169–70, 248, 257–9, 264 financial crisis 53, 120 dependence 145, 147 feasibility see feasibility, financial floor 92–3, 112, 162, 178 inclusion 272, 279 insecurity/security 137, 154, 156, 173, 198, 252 see also employment, insecure; job insecurity; job security Finland 75, 82–3, 86, 135–6, 140, 142, 145, 159–60, 164, 174, 190–92, 197, 215, 234, 237–9, 253, 256, 258, 278 flexibility 3, 74, 137–8, 142, 148, 203, 217, 231, 234, 264, 267 flexicurity 75 focus group 19, 96 fossil fuels 35, 43, 55–6, 60, 62 see also tax, carbon frame/framing 151, 170, 183, 186, 188–93, 196, 199, 212, 214, 275, 277–8 France 18, 28, 34, 99, 159–60, 179, 236 fraud 183, 269 freedom 3, 5, 18, 90, 107, 147, 150, 164, 192, 203, 219, 224, 227, 252, 267 real 207, 211–12, 221, 249 republican 211–12, 249 Freedom Dividend 234 fuel costs 20, 44, 56, 81, 117, 120, 134, 156, 216, 269 see also tax, carbon fundamental attribution error 184 funding of Basic Income xiii, 13–17, 35, 37, 41–6, 49, 51–68, 73, 76–7, 79–80, 82, 89, 106, 108–9, 111, 114, 117, 121, 123, 126, 138, 148–50, 162, 171, 173–4, 177–8, 180, 189, 192, 196, 203, 210, 212, 222, 224, 229, 235, 242, 246, 251, 266, 269–70, 272–3

gains and losses (household) ix, 17, 34, 37, 43, 46–8, 51–2, 66, 87, 162, 169, 188–9, 257, 270 gender ix, 30, 128, 134, 143–7, 150, 165–6, 250 gendered division of labour 146, 244 Germany 99–100, 159–60, 179, 246, 252 gift relationship 203, 205, 227 global Basic Income see Basic Income, global global warming see climate change globalization 18, 70, 73, 99, 157–8, 165, 189, 197, 220 goods 30, 32, 38, 43–4, 52–3, 55, 58, 62, 70, 85, 100, 106–7, 109–11, 118, 120, 127, 150, 155, 213, 276 club/private/public 118–19 government xiii, xiv, 18, 21–2, 24, 26, 28–31, 33–5, 37, 43–4, 52–5, 57, 60–62, 70, 72, 74, 77–8, 80–84, 88, 90, 92, 99, 111, 117, 119–21, 126–8, 130, 134, 136, 148, 152–4, 160, 175, 178–9, 182, 185, 187–8, 190, 192–5, 203–4, 208–9, 213–21, 224, 230, 232–42, 244–5, 250–52, 254, 256–7, 260, 262–8, 270, 273–5, 277–8 deficit 55, 60 expenditure 53, 113 minister 51, 199, 241, 249, 265 revenue 34, 59, 60, 109, 113 green parties 148–51, 173, 223, 232, 235, 244, 249 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 52–5, 77, 109, 112, 118, 120, 133, 149 Grundeinkommen 178, 246 guarantee 3, 25 see also Basic Income Guarantee; Job Guarantee; Minimum Income Guarantee Gyeonggi Youth Basic Income 38, 136, 243 see also Seongnam Youth Dividend happiness 127, 203, 213, 217 see also wellbeing health 71, 76, 118, 128, 130, 133, 137–9, 142, 154–5, 165, 187, 206, 214–15 insurance 38 mental 5, 136–7, 141, 207

356 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

physical 137 see also illness healthcare 30, 136, 154, 156, 160, 172, 209, 220, 251, 275 see also National Health Service (NHS) hegemonic moral discourse see discourse, hegemonic moral Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) 36 history x, xviii, 1–9, 11, 13–19, 28, 39, 41–5, 69–72, 97–100, 125–9, 161, 170–2, 181, 192, 201–2, 218, 223, 227, 229–31, 251, 254–6, 276 House of Commons 175 household 30, 32, 37, 47, 55, 72, 81, 84, 86, 108, 112–15, 118, 134, 142–6, 153–4, 156–7, 172, 185, 189, 195–8, 204, 212, 216, 235, 248, 256, 264, 266, 268–74 claimant unit xiii, 14, 16, 20–21, 26–7, 42–3, 83, 87–93, 110, 236 debt see debt formation 204, 221 higher-income 29, 55, 58, 111, 150, 157, 162, 234 low-income ix, 16–17, 33–4, 37, 44, 46–8, 51–2, 55–6, 58, 64, 66, 72, 110–11, 120–21, 123, 150, 157–8, 162–3, 169, 173, 190, 218, 220, 236, 257 net disposable income see net disposable income structure ix, xiii–xiv, 1, 21, 28, 37, 47, 130 typical 42, 47, 63 see also individual housing 29, 38, 119, 136, 154–6 costs of 16, 20, 47, 104, 156 Housing Benefit 16–17 human capital see capital, human human rights see rights, human ideologies 117, 180, 188, 211, 227, 232 élite 194 political 5, 216–25, 227, 248–50, 253–4, 257 see also political parties idleness 71, 76, 127, 171, 183, 206

illness 23, 94, 130, 139, 141, 147, 184, 206 mental 130, 207 see also health implementation ix–x, xv, xviii, 4–5, 7, 15–17, 22–4, 26, 28, 31, 34–7, 43, 46–8, 50, 55–6, 58, 64–6, 69–70, 72, 78, 81–2, 85–6, 89, 92–4, 96, 108, 111, 113–14, 116–17, 125, 127, 129–30, 134, 139–40, 148, 150, 157–8, 162, 164–5, 169–70, 172–3, 176–7, 181–7, 190–91, 194–7, 199–200, 205, 207–8, 210–11, 214, 216, 220, 223–4, 231, 233–4, 236–9, 241–3, 245–6, 248–9, 253–63, 265–9, 271–5, 277–80 incentive 30–31, 55, 60, 70, 72, 83–4, 88, 110–11, 113–16, 121, 143–4, 164–5, 171, 181–2, 186, 190–92, 205, 214–15, 218, 233, 235, 252, 271 see also disincentive; demotivation; motivation income disposable see net disposable income distribution see distribution earned xiii–xiv, 17, 21–3, 28, 34, 37, 41–2, 46–7, 57, 70–72, 76, 79, 84, 87–9, 92, 99–104, 109, 111–12, 114–15, 119, 122, 132, 137, 157–8, 163, 182, 185–6, 188–90, 204, 206, 232, 252, 272–3 insecure see financial insecurity/ security labour 53, 55, 75, 89, 120, 149 low 73 , 156, 232 see also household, low-income net disposable see net disposable income redistribution see redistribution secure 31, 37, 84, 123, 134, 224 income tax xiv–xv, 21–2, 34, 37, 45, 62–3, 66, 87, 89, 106, 108, 113, 121, 143, 196, 234, 268, 271, 273 administration of 21 allowance 46, 59, 93, 196, 252 personal allowance 114, 230, 272 progressive 224, 235

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 357

rates xiii, 46, 48–9, 59, 93, 111, 189, 193, 238 threshold 21 Income Tax xv, 48–9, 51, 59, 98, 163, 185, 231, 233 Income Tax Personal Allowance 104, 175, 185, 223 income-tested benefits 18, 20–23, 25–8, 37, 43, 83, 134, 234, 236, 239–40 see also means-tested benefits indendence 16, 108, 126, 128, 132, 144, 218 India 5, 35, 75, 78–80, 82, 85–6, 112, 127, 133–4, 137–8, 140, 143, 146, 164, 189, 238–42, 256, 269, 272 indifference curves 97, 100–106 individual ix, xiii–xiv, 1, 3, 11–12, 14–15, 17–19, 21–3, 26, 28–32, 34–37, 42, 62, 69, 75–6, 78, 80–82, 86, 88, 90–91, 97–101, 104–7, 110, 112–13, 115, 117–21, 126–8, 130, 135–6, 139, 141, 143–8, 151–3, 156–9, 162, 166, 169–70, 172–4, 183, 185–7, 190, 192–3, 196–7, 201–5, 208, 210–15, 217–22, 224–5, 229–31, 233–4, 236–8, 246–7, 251–2, 254, 256–60, 263, 266–8, 270–72, 275, 279 responsibility 15, 185, 203, 205, 209, 212, 262, 277 see also household individualism 87 inefficiency 120–22, 183, 218, 241–2 see also efficiency inequality 29–31, 45, 47–50, 54–6, 59, 66, 108, 120, 134, 139–41, 144, 149–51, 156–9, 161–2, 164–5, 183–4, 190, 203, 207, 210, 221–2, 237, 242, 245, 250, 257 see also equality inflation 43, 53–5, 57, 66, 80–81, 97, 116–17, 120, 134, 216, 258 infrastructure 43, 55, 121, 133 inheritance 5, 14, 126, 202, 208, 210, 217 see also inheritance tax injustice 155, 215, 238 see also justice innovation 109, 112, 239, 264, 267 insecurity

employment see employment insecurity financial see financial security/ insecurity job see job security Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales xviii, 274 institutions 30, 35, 39–40, 42, 57, 67, 75–6, 113, 135–6, 151, 161, 194–5, 204–5, 209–11, 214, 258, 260–62, 268, 281 see also organizations intrusion see bureaucratic intrusion invalidity trap see trap, invalidity investment 54, 70, 108–9, 237, 241, 276 Iran 56, 80–81, 96, 117, 134, 166, 197, 216, 249, 254, 256, 269 Ireland, Republic of 159, 175, 192–3, 226, 245 Islam 225 Italy 18, 159–60, 236 Japan 160–61, 176 job 22–3 bullshit/pointless 113–14, 158, 211 change 220 creation 189, 253 desirable 74, 114 destruction 70, 73–4, 110, 189, 192, 220, 251–3 full-time 106–7, 110, 114 good 71, 90, 113, 242 higher paid 84, 88, 91 insecurity 5 see also job security lousy 113, 116, 124, 157 quality 30, 157 right 73, 233 search 209–10 security 84, 158 see also job insecurity subsidized 235 undesirable 129, 140–41, 146 see also employment Job Guarantee 31, 242, 253, 280 see also trap, job guarantee justice 5, 151, 202–3, 213, 215, 223 as fairness 206–8 procedural 92 social see social justice

358 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

see also injustice Kenya 80, 138, 140 Keynesianism 262 labour 25, 71, 74, 122, 126, 203, 208, 213, 218, 221, 248 child 140 high-skilled 109 low-skilled 109 market see employment market movement of 214 share of income 43, 52–5, 75, 120, 149, 157 supply 50, 89, 94, 108, 121 see also employment; work Labour Party 29, 59, 175, 226, 230–33, 235, 242, 244, 249 Labour Tax Credit 23 labourist 223–4, 226 Land Value Tax 44, 56–8, 61, 65–6, 68 administration of 65 law 52, 136, 160, 162, 179, 185, 206, 214–16, 225, 230, 246, 253, 267, 277 Left, the 30, 217, 221–4, 226, 242 legal resident see resident, legal 36–7, 173, 274–5 legal system see law leisure 100–108, 127, 145 leisure centre 119, 273 Liberal Democratic Party 29, 221, 232, 249 liberalism 54, 160, 162, 217, 219, 221, 235, 249 see also neoliberalism Local Authorities 16, 57–8, 78, 148, 245, 248, 271, 273 see also Municipal Authorities local currency 38, 136, 196, 214, 239, 242–3 see also economy, local; money London School of Economics and Political Science xviii, 80, 249 lone parent trap see trap, lone parent losses see gains and losses macroeconomics 64, 108–9, 218 male breadwinner model 146

marginal deduction rate xiv, 87–9, 91, 93, 96, 110–12, 114–15, 144, 149, 158, 163, 189, 207 marginal propensity to consume see propensity to consume 108 market 30, 54, 62, 68, 99, 120–23, 149, 164, 217–20, 250, 269 economy see economy, market efficiency 97, 121–3, 217 employment see employment market marriage 145 dissolution 131, 233 same sex 182, 194 means test 11–12, 14–15, 17, 19, 28, 32, 37, 81, 153, 185, 197, 244, 256 means-tested benefits xiii, xvii, 3, 14–17, 20–22, 26–7, 29, 31, 33, 48, 50–51, 59, 70–71, 86–93, 100, 102–4, 110–12, 114, 116, 121–3, 139, 141, 144–5, 147, 151–61, 163, 173, 175, 180–84, 188–9, 192, 194–5, 197–8, 204–5, 207, 209, 215, 218–20, 223, 226, 230, 235, 244, 246, 252, 261, 265–7, 269–74, 276 administration of xvii, 24, 90, 114, 141, 154, 215, 236, 265–6 escape from 48, 84, 89–91, 93, 111, 114, 116, 142, 145–6, 153, 196, 204, 273–4 over-/underpayments 92 retained 16–17, 46–7, 50–51, 123, 144, 156, 189, 195 see also income-tested benefits media 39, 136, 152, 155, 169–70, 180, 183, 186, 188–92, 196, 198–9, 234, 236, 248, 260, 267, 274 microsimulation xviii, 5, 23, 33–4, 47–56, 59, 63–8, 86, 95–6 see also EUROMOD migrants/migration 43, 76, 131, 274–6 Mincome experiment 72–3, 81, 83–4, 130–31, 136–7, 140, 153, 234 Minimum Income Guarantee 4, 13, 21–9, 72, 81, 83–4, 86, 95, 130–31, 134, 136–8, 147, 153, 160, 166, 226, 232–4, 236–7, 248, 265, 280 Minimum Income Standards 34, 51–2 see also standard of living money

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 359

creation ix, 31, 38, 41–42, 52–5, 64, 117, 120–21 quantity of/supply 46, 76, 109, 111–12, 117, 130 supply 46, 117 velocity of 112 see also local currency Mont Pelerin Society 262, 280–81 moral hazard 27 moral repertoire 209 see also norms, social motivation 69, 73, 87–92, 96, 113, 135, 144, 152, 174, 180, 189, 223, 225, 232 see also demotivation; disincentive; incentive multidisciplinarity x, xviii, 2, 5, 7, 9, 281 Municipal Authorities 86, 142, 214, 236, 239, 245, 258 see also Local Authorities Namibia 75–80, 82, 85–6, 112, 127, 131, 133, 137–8, 140, 143, 146, 164, 189, 226, 238–40, 251–2, 256 national accounts 43, 46, 52, 63 National Health Service (NHS) 30, 152–3, 181–2, 186–7, 195, 271 National Insurance Benefits/ Contributions/Number xiii, xvii, 49, 71, 104, 163, 185, 271 see also contributory benefits; social insurance National Living Wage 104, 246–9, 104, 155, 246 National Minimum Wage 31, 38, 74, 81, 110–16, 124, 134, 143, 218, 220, 224, 235, 246, 251–2 needs 20, 91, 127, 139, 143, 149, 204, 213, 217–18, 247, 251, 265, 267 basic 16, 18, 25–6, 34, 106–7, 119, 128, 221, 224 psychological 90, 140–41 subsistence see needs, basic Negative Income Tax 20–25, 29, 87, 176, 193, 218–21, 245, 267–8, 279–80 administration of 21–2, 24, 176, 192, 219, 267, 280 neoliberalism 183, 195, 219, 221, 225, 242, 262, 280 see also liberalism

net disposable income ix, 17, 29, 37, 43–9, 51–2, 55, 58–9, 62, 66, 88, 90–91, 108, 110–11, 116–17, 123, 134, 144, 149–50, 157, 159, 163, 169, 189, 257, 267, 270 Netherlands, the 18, 23–4, 86, 134–5, 142, 159–60, 190, 209, 215, 234–7, 245, 250–52 New Economics Foundation 222 New Zealand 146 non-contributory benefits 261 see also contributory benefits; means-tested benefits nondomination 212 nonwithdrawable benefits ix, xiii see also Basic Income; Child Benefit norms 134, 155, 197, 246, 267 social 170, 174, 180–87, 193–4, 199, 209–10, 258, 277 see also reciprocity Norway 44, 159–60 nudge see economics, behavioural objections to Basic Income 4, 59, 77, 171–2, 181, 195, 204, 212, 222, 226, 240–42, 249–51, 255, 266 see also Basic Income, arguments against old age see elderly people Ontario 27, 83–5, 136–8, 234 opinion surveys 19, 170, 172–80, 196–7, 251 opportunity 90, 93, 164, 203, 209–10, 212, 215, 221, 231, 237 equality/inequality of 158, 210, 268 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 28, 87 organizations x, 11–12, 18–19, 23, 75, 109, 118–19, 127, 161, 166, 178, 192–3, 232, 241–8, 251–4, 256, 263, 281 see also institutions othering 151 paradigm shift 75, 149, 193, 225, 262, 280–82 parents 118, 132, 137, 143–6, 184 living apart/together 110–11, 143, 184

360 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

lone see trap, lone parent parliament xvii, 16, 51–2, 175, 178–9, 198, 231, 244, 246, 249, 253–4, 260 member of 16, 81, 175, 198–9, 230, 234, 236, 244, 249, 262, 265 Participation Income 22–4, 27, 29, 92, 175, 209, 235, 237, 279–80 administration of 23–4, 99, 175, 235 partner 87, 104, 110, 144–5, 147 paternalism 76, 132, 188 path dependency 235, 260–61, 268 pension 29, 38, 41–3, 53–4, 77, 146–7, 160, 176, 187–8, 235, 239, 256 contributions xiii, 59, 120, 131, 140, 146–7 see also Basic State Pension; Citizen’s Pension; Single Tier State Pension philosophy 1–2, 201, 227, 229 pilot project xv, 5, 8, 64, 69–70, 73, 75–80, 82–7, 90, 92, 94–5, 112–14, 123–5, 127, 131–3, 136–8, 140, 143, 146, 153, 164–6, 171, 174, 189–90, 226, 234, 236–47, 253, 255–6, 269, 272, 278 see also community; experiment policy 29, 32, 35, 38, 64, 82, 100, 119–20, 127–8, 134, 148, 151, 154, 159, 165, 172, 182, 184, 187, 190, 203, 229–30, 237–8, 240, 242, 244, 257–9, 272, 278 accident 80–81, 96, 117, 134, 166, 169, 194, 198, 248–9, 254, 256, 259 change xv, 54, 69, 75, 83, 88, 92, 122, 186, 192, 194, 198–9, 216, 249, 260–65, 268 community 262–5 debate 80, 191 effects 194–6 makers ix, 1, 24, 52, 141, 169, 175, 186, 197–9, 231, 257, 260–65, 274 process ix, 106, 151, 169, 174–5, 186, 194, 200, 248, 257–9, 261–2, 280 see also feasibility, policy process progressive 223

see also active labour market policies; social policy political parties 59–60, 148, 174, 177, 179, 181, 194, 197–8, 203, 216, 223, 226, 229–30, 232–6, 238, 241–6, 248–50, 254, 262–3, 265 political spectrum 21, 30, 217, 221–6, 232, 242 politics 8, 24, 28, 43, 52, 55, 58–61 , 64–5, 72, 82, 94, 98, 113, 135–6, 150–52, 162, 164–5, 169, 173–5, 177–80, 183, 185–6, 190–91, 196, 201, 203, 229–54, 257–62, 264–5, 270, 274, 277 see also feasibility, political; ideologies, political; rights, political Poor Law 230 poor relief 129, 160 poverty 5, 31, 43, 54, 77, 80, 88, 122, 134, 140–42, 147, 151, 154–9, 181–4, 192, 195, 203–4, 217, 233, 242, 250, 263 absolute 156 child 123 definition of 154–6 dynamic definition of 156–7, 163, 207 effect of Basic Income scheme on 16–17, 46, 48–51, 59, 64, 66, 78, 131, 134, 140, 163, 165, 172, 173, 221, 245, 251, 257 indices 47–8, 131 line 17–19 relative 146, 156 trap see trap, poverty power bargaining see bargaining power difference 161–2 expert 264 imbalance 144–5, 207 purchasing 35, 43, 70, 110, 118, 127, 208, 220, 248 state 71 precariat/precarity see employment, precarious pre-retired 264 prescriptions 30, 273 price 26, 53, 58, 66, 70, 80, 109, 112, 120, 122, 126, 218, 273

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 361

prisoners 36, 180, 275 production 31, 45, 55, 70, 110, 112–13, 118, 127, 149, 158, 208, 230, 250, 277 proceeds of 52, 74–5, 109, 113, 157 value of 53, 158 profits 19, 32, 41, 61, 98, 137, 187, 248 propensity to consume 55, 108, 111, 150, 162 property 13–14, 41, 57, 118, 127, 129, 162, 170–71, 201–2, 217–18, 221, 229 rights see rights, property tax see tax, property psychologically feasible see feasibility, psychological Psychologists for Social Change 139 psychology 87, 90, 93, 96, 134, 138–41, 150–51, 166, 184, 227 public expenditure see government expenditure opinion see opinion surveys policy see social policy sector see sector, public servants see civil service/servants services see services, public punishment 71, 215 quantitative easing 53, 144 quintile 76, 132, 159 reciprocity 135, 180–81, 184, 194–5, 208–12, 222, 227, 235, redistribution 5, 35, 55, 57, 108, 117, 121–3, 158, 160, 162–3, 165, 186, 196, 203, 206, 208, 217, 219, 231–2, 235, 250 see also distribution referendum 173, 177–80, 189, 245, 271, 275–6 refugees 36, 81, 216, 274–5 regulations 47, 50, 152, 188, 192, 203, 213–14, 245, 266, 269, 275, 278 relationships ix, 127, 136, 145, 147 republican freedom see freedom, republican resident 18, 36, 89–90, 214, 235, 237, 271, 275, 278

legal see legal resident resources 13, 20, 45, 77, 80, 100, 106, 118–22, 133, 140–41, 144, 147, 150–51, 154–5, 205, 207, 210–14, 231, 276–7, 281 responsibility see individual responsibility retirement 23, 25, 36 revenue neutrality xiii, 31, 63, 108, 156, 220, 270 strict xiii, 49 Right, the 21, 217 New 249 rights 76, 132, 202, 206, 209 Basic Income 213–14 citizenship 11–12, 147, 209, 213, 216, 276–7 civil 215 cultural 216 dignity 159 economic 214–15, 276–7 human 33, 99, 201, 212–16, 227–8 land 128 legal 72 liberty 207 natural 201 political 215, 276 property 213, 217, 221 social 164, 195, 213–15, 276–7 subsistence 26, 128, 214–15, 247 work 99, 212, 214–16, 244, 250 risk 76, 87, 140, 142, 165, 203, 238 robots 45, 68, 74, 270 safety net 160, 163, 174 sanctions 92, 135, 152, 184, 209, 215–16 satisficing 260–61 savings 132, 204 trap see trap, savings school 79, 130, 132–3, 273 meals 272–3 Scotland 143, 245 scroungers 183 see also strivers/skivers sector private 118–19 public 119, 261 tradable/non-tradable 84–5 voluntary 119 security

362 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

financial see financial insecurity/ security income see financial insecurity/ security job see job security self-concept 185 Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) 78–9, 240–41 self-employment see employment, selfself-esteem 87, 151, 211 Seongnam Youth Dividend 242–3 see also dividend; Gyeonggi Youth Basic Income services 38, 43–4, 52–3, 55, 62, 70, 85, 109–11, 118, 120, 127, 150, 155, 276 public 30–32, 37, 43, 50, 53, 57–9, 121–2, 126, 129, 136, 146, 148, 152, 157–8, 172, 174, 182, 195, 218–21, 224, 229, 251, 273, 275 simplicity 74, 121, 153, 169, 175, 177, 179, 219, 263–4, 266–9, 279 skills 52, 63, 65, 74, 84, 87, 90–91, 109–10, 113, 137, 142, 154, 158, 184 social advantage/disadvantage 136, 155 assistance 165, 197, 219 capital see capital, social change 4, 78, 129–30, 278 citizenship see citizenship, social cohesion 133, 147, 158, 164, 166, 211 conformity 185 construction 42, 151, 155, 181, 260 control 209 democracy 160, 223–4, 246, 249 exclusion 156 inclusion 156, 213 insurance xiv, 15, 20, 71, 81, 146, 174, 181, 190, 197, 216, 219, 230–31, 250, 261 see also contributory benefits; National Insurance benefits justice 192, 201, 241 ladder 158 minimum 213, 277 mobility 157 norms see norms, social

policy ix, 2, 28–9, 65, 75, 145, 155, 186, 198–9, 203, 208, 224, 232, 255, 258, 261, 265–6, 268, 277, 282 evidence-based 188 research 5, 9 see also policy problems 172 protection 38, 50, 130, 163, 165, 240 rights see rights, social security xiii, 35, 89, 130, 139, 156, 160, 163, 183, 186, 191, 195, 214–16, 218, 232, 235, 239, 242, 247, 258, 261, 265–6, 271, 280 solidarity 150, 159 structures 75, 159, 161 wealth fund 60, 269 see also sovereign wealth fund Social Credit 25 Social Dividend ix, 11, 16, 25, 43, 45, 98, 208 Social Justice Ireland 192, 226, 245 socialism 160, 221–5, 231, 249 society ix, 5, 18, 27, 41, 45, 69, 81, 94, 99, 106–7, 118–20, 126, 129, 138, 142–3, 146–7, 150, 152–3, 155, 159, 161–2, 164–5, 175, 178, 180–84, 187, 189, 193–4, 197, 201–2, 204, 206–7, 209–12, 217, 222–3, 225, 229–30, 242, 245, 247, 253, 261–2, 264–5, 278 civil 242, 265 South Africa 18, 226, 239–40, 251–2 sovereign wealth fund 5, 41, 44–5, 60, 67 standard of living 34, 214–16 see also Minimum Income Standards state 14, 35–6, 43, 45, 66, 70, 72, 99, 119, 127, 136, 146, 157, 160, 170, 183, 206, 208–9, 213–14, 217–19, 222, 229, 239, 241–2, 246–7 benefits 34, 38, 142, 275 see also welfare state State Bonus (League) 15, 25, 42, 71, 127–9, 172, 230, 244 stigma 3, 28, 34, 91, 131, 137, 147, 150–54, 163, 165, 172, 184, 192, 204, 244, 276 stress 135, 137, 139–42, 204 strivers/skivers 183

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 363

see also scroungers subsidy see wage subsidy subsistence 16–19, 32, 37, 39, 78, 107–8, 114–15, 119, 121, 128, 148, 151, 221 see also Basic Income, subsistence level supply 87, 89, 120–21, 211 see also demand; labour supply; money supply surveillance 122–3, 139, 152 Sweden 159–60 Switzerland 159–60, 178–80 targeting 158, 182, 195, 219, 231 tax allowance 46, 59, 89, 92–3, 111, 182, 196, 199, 238, 252, 270 base 45, 56–7, 61, 65, 113, 149–50 carbon 41, 43–4, 55–6, 59–60, 62, 65, 108, 148–50 consumption 44, 58–60, 63, 66–7, 108, 113, 150 financial transaction 61, 67, 270 income see income tax inheritance 14, 41, 68 land value see Land Value Tax lump sum 80, 121, 123 progressive 123, 158, 182, 233 property 57 redistributive 217 wealth 45, 61–2 tax and benefits system ix, xiii, 13, 16, 41–2, 46–7, 50–52, 56, 62–3, 65, 75, 77, 82, 85–6, 96, 104–6, 116–17, 121–2, 129, 150, 176–7, 185, 189, 191, 194, 198, 211–12, 233, 246, 258, 261, 264, 266–70, 278 see also benefits system; tax system Tax Credits 22–5, 29, 72, 152, 233 tax system 17, 41, 75, 102, 108, 104, 122, 143, 158, 182, 233–4, 267 see also benefits system; tax and benefits system technology 5, 52, 54, 61, 74–5, 109, 157, 164, 252 theology 201–2, 226

thinktank 24, 166, 189, 198–99, 220, 222–3, 229, 234, 237, 244, 248, 254, 261–3, 265, 280–81 trades unions 5, 74–5, 140, 158, 211, 222–3, 229, 235, 240, 244–54, 260, 265 training xiv, 28–9, 31, 137, 158, 184, 204, 209 transparency 241, 267 transport, cost of 30–31, 43, 55, 158 trap invalidity job guarantee 31 lack of skills 110 lone parent 110, 143 part-time 110 poverty 88, 104–6, 110, 161, 172, 221, 231 precarity 111 savings 110 unemployment 71, 88, 110, 159, 221, 231 treaties 45, 214, 216, 247 trust 135–6, 138–9, 142, 153, 164–5, 208, 237 typical household see household, typical UKMOD 47 uncertainty 91, 141, 180 Unconditional Cash Transfer see Cash Transfer, Unconditional unconditionality ix, xiii–xiv, 1, 4, 7, 11–12, 14–15, 17–21, 23, 26–9, 32–4, 37–8, 42, 49, 54, 56, 69, 71, 75, 77–83, 89, 92, 98–9, 109, 111–12, 114, 117, 123, 126–9, 131–3, 135–40, 144–6, 153, 155, 157–8, 164, 166, 173–4, 178, 181–2, 185–7, 190, 195–6, 201, 204–5, 207–8, 212–16, 221, 225–6, 229–31, 235, 237, 239–43, 247, 251, 254–8, 261, 267–9, 273, 275, 277, 280–82 see also conditionality underemployment 141 undeserving see deserving/undeserving unemployment xiv, 5, 22, 70–71, 73–5, 78, 83, 86–90, 110, 135, 139, 141, 152, 184–5, 190, 214–15, 231, 233, 237, 248, 251, 258

364 A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR BASIC INCOME

trap see trap, unemployment see also employment unemployment benefit 82, 135, 137, 190, 215, 237, 240, 258 United Kingdom (UK) xiii–xv, xvii, 4, 6, 14–17, 22, 24, 26, 29–30, 36, 42, 47–8, 52–3, 57–6, 61–2, 70–71, 80–81, 88, 92, 100, 104–5, 119–20, 128, 137, 143–4, 148, 151–2, 154, 159–60, 161, 163, 173, 175–7, 179–83, 185–8, 191–2, 194–5, 198, 206, 215, 220–24, 230–34, 237, 244–7, 249–50, 252, 257–8, 260–64, 267–8, 270–72, 274–6, 278 United Nations 78, 213–16 United States of America (US) Universal Basic Income see Basic Income Universal Basic Services 30–31, 152, 172 Universal Credit 24, 92, 104, 192, 194, 261, 267 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 213–16 universality xiv, 7, 11–12, 14–15, 18, 24, 28, 30–32, 34, 37–8, 45, 85, 119, 126, 129, 140, 146, 152–4, 158, 160–62, 165, 172, 174, 182, 187, 195–6, 203, 230, 234, 251, 261, 264, 267 uprating ix, 33, 37 utilitarianism 203–7, 213 utility 29, 100–106, 205, 213 maximization 102–4, 107, 213 Value Added Tax 44, 162 see also tax, consumption values ix, 91, 133, 150, 174, 195, 211, 222, 260–61 voluntary community activity 23, 83, 89–90, 92, 122–3, 145–6, 211, 235, 244, 248 voluntary sector see sector, voluntary voluntary work see voluntary community activity voting 81, 119, 158, 173, 179, 182, 196–7, 233, 242, 246, 263, 271 see also elections

wage 42, 53, 70–71, 74, 79, 97–9, 102–4, 109–10, 113–14, 128–9, 147, 157, 244 low 31, 74, 76, 157–8, 252 median 155 rate 73, 99–100, 110 subsidy, dynamic/static 115, 128, 252 see also National Living Wage; National Minimum Wage wages for housework 143, 244 waves of support/enthusiasm 3 wealth ix, xiv, 1, 29, 35, 45, 48, 57–8, 61, 99, 108, 117, 119, 150–51, 154–5, 157, 161–3, 171, 185, 188, 204, 206–8, 220, 222, 225, 234, 248, 269 tax see tax, wealth welfare efficiency 97, 118–23 regime see welfare regime state see welfare state see also wellbeing welfare regime 160–61, 251 welfare state 5, 74, 122, 139, 151, 159–62, 164, 172, 186, 194–5, 203, 207, 224, 251–3, 277 wellbeing 84, 135–6, 140–42, 150–51, 153, 157, 165, 188–90, 195, 205, 210, 214–15, 217, 236–7, 241, 258 see also happiness; economics, wellbeing withdrawal rate see marginal deduction rate Wollstonecraft’s dilemma 145–7 women 4–5, 15, 72, 76, 78–9, 90, 94, 122, 128–9, 132–4, 143–7, 177, 202, 240–41, 272 work 14, 27, 30–31, 69–72, 74, 76, 80, 83–4, 87–8, 92, 98–100, 106–7, 113–14, 118, 127–8, 139–40, 143, 145–8, 150, 152, 173–4, 191, 203, 205, 208–12, 214–16, 221–6, 231, 235, 241, 250–51, 259, 276 test xiii–xiv, 11–12, 14–17, 19–23, 25, 27–8, 32, 37, 81, 100, 153, 180, 195, 226, 235–6, 240, 246, 266 see also care work; disincentive; employment; incentive; voluntary community activity

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 365

worker 20, 31, 45, 54, 71–4, 78, 83–4, 87, 89–92, 94, 96, 102, 104–6, 110, 113–14, 116, 122, 124, 129, 133, 143, 145–7, 152, 158, 163, 170–71, 174, 181, 190–91, 203–4, 208, 211–12, 221–5, 233, 251–3, 270, 275, 277 working age adult see adult, working age working hours/week 100, 102–4, 136, 142, 146

shorter 4, 99, 127, 142, 166 Working Tax Credits work-life balance 93, 150 World Health Organisation 140 zero hour contract see contract, zero hour Zimbardo prison study 180