I came across a link to Europe's New Social Reality: The Case Against Universal Basic Income and thought to check which killer arguments the author was using. They turned out to be three:
1. Public support for higher spending,
2. Deservingness and the welfare state,
3. Social norms around work.
KCN No 1 is easily dealt with. No evidence is given that higher taxation would be necessary, apart from an unevidenced claim that CI would cost £34Bn (Hirsch (2015)estimates that even by abolishing most existing beneļ¬ts, an extra £34 billion would need to beraised each year.). There is no suggestion that CI could be implemented by removing the tax-free amount from claimants, for instance.
KCN No 2 is dealt with in the same way. Sure, the sight of the titled lady in her Rolls-Royce pulling up to the Post Office to claim the Child Benefit for her children was not a popular one, however, if CI is made conditional on the removal of the tax-free amount, then rich people would not be claiming it, they would have the tax-free amount instead.
KCN No 3 is the classic right wing argument that if you give poor people money, they won't work, completely ignoring the fact that it is abundantly obvious that this doesn't happen with rich people, who, whilst in receipt of more money that they know what to do with, still put in long hours.
In fact, from the short amount of time I spent reading the paper (I wasn't going to spend an estimated 78 minutes of my life reading the whole thing), it appears that it should really be titled, The Case for Universal Basic Income.
Sunday, 11 September 2022
Killer arguments against Citizens' Income, Not
My latest blogpost: Killer arguments against Citizens' Income, NotTweet this! Posted by Bayard at 08:14
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16 comments:
" the classic right wing argument that if you give poor people money, they won't work, completely ignoring the fact that it is abundantly obvious that this doesn't happen with rich people, who, whilst in receipt of more money that they know what to do with, still put in long hours."
That assumes that poor people and rich people are psychologically identical, and that the only reasons a person ends up rich or poor are factors entirely outside of their control. I would argue thats not the case - the wealthy are obviously driven people, and the money is just a way of keeping score for them. Its obviously not about their physical needs. And conversely I would argue that many (not all) of the poor are poor because of their poor decision making - often they lack the ability defer gratification, to not consume now, in order to be in a better position later. They live in the moment, so if they have money now it gets spent, even if there are very good reasons to hold on to it as a safety net. As an anecdote I offer the case of a chap I know of who collected his recent £150 'cost of living' payment from the Post office in the morning and had spent the lot in the pub by the end of the day.
So I don't think you can assume that if you offer people free money they will all continue to work regardless. Another bit of evidence is Universal Credit (and Working Tax Credits that preceded it). In order to qualify you need to work 16 hours a week. Guess how much everyone wants to work now? My friend runs a restaurant, getting staff is difficult and all the applicants want is 16 hours so they don't lose any benefits, they are completely open about it. They could all work full time and have a bit more money in their pockets at the end of the week, but choose not to. Also the example of the covid furlough scheme has shown that when people get given free money to do nothing it does sap work ethic appreciably.
B, it's the same old tired three arguments.
S, don't damn the unlucky majority for the stupid actions of a small minority. I know loads of low income people struggling to manage on what meagre honest crust they can earn.
"the wealthy are obviously driven people, and the money is just a way of keeping score for them. Its obviously not about their physical needs. And conversely I would argue that many (not all) of the poor are poor because of their poor decision making"
Unless you are proposing that the poor are a different species, Homo Pauperensis, then it is highly likely that being "driven" along with intelligence, is normally distributed and tharefore there are as many driven people who are poor as there are who are rich, ditto smart people. There are certainly plenty of thick, lazy rich people, and also of industrious, smart poor people. Most rich people in this world started out rich, or at least not poor. The millionaire who worked their way up from rags to riches is almost as much a mythical figure as the PWIM. Most poor people also started out poor. If poverty was down to faulty decision making, you would expect a reasonable proportion of the poor to have started out rich, or at least well-off. Again, these people exist, but they are very few.
B, by the same logic, all Chinese and Indians are lazy buggers - their GDP per capita is about one twentieth of Western levels.
Mark, oh dear, does not growing food for yourself count as GDP? If so, it shows what a shit metric it is.
B I was agreeing with you and taking S logic to its obvious conclusion. Btw, India does import a lot of rice and wheat.
I wasn't disagreeing, I was just wondering how as industrious a country like China or India could have such a low GDP per capita and, on the basis that, if a man marries his housekeeper, GDP goes down, I suspected that subsistence farming might be excluded from calculations of GDP.
"Sure, the sight of the titled lady in her Rolls-Royce pulling up to the Post Office to claim the Child Benefit for her children was not a popular one"
The flip side of 'dole scroungers' queueing there to cash their Giros.
Obvious answer, pay it automatically into people's bank accounts or credit their self assessment statements or adjust their PAYE codes or knock it off their Council Tax bills.
"Obvious answer, pay it automatically into people's bank accounts"
When this happened, the Post Offices, all those who were basically a village shop with a Post Office attached, suffered a big drop in revenue.
Personally, I see the introduction of UBI as major step in massively simplifying the bloated and ludicrously complex benefits system. Thanks in large part to New Labour's (undeclared?) policy to get everyone on some form of benefit, especially the middle classes, so that everyone becomes dependent.
But, to make UBI work, you must combine UBI with tax reform, the LVT thing, such that UBI is seen as a refund of rents (as it were). As IMHO most UBI will get swallowed up by rents for most people. Yes, there will be a few people who work out how to exist on UBI alone but they will 'enjoy' a pretty modest lifestyle. Most people want to better themselves, have a better house a better can and so on. They will not sit on their arses. Maybe UBI would be the death of welfarism?
The last necessary thing to make UBI work is to reform banking and money. Which, as the de facto as banking and money are a state monopoly, means that UBI will never happen as it won't be done properly.
Well, not until I'm dictator....
L: "Personally, I see the introduction of UBI as major step in massively simplifying the bloated and ludicrously complex benefits system"
That was originally my main motive, and still is.
MW - which is largely why UBI will be resisted by all those special interest groups that benefit from it - e.g. bureaucrats, governments, grievance mongers etc etc
L, those people have always been our enemies. F--- 'em.
MW - Y'know what? I really am really pleased that we have such enemies. It shows we must be doing something right...
L, that had been my main motivation my whole life - get rid of as many of the landlords, rent seekers, meddlers, bureaucrats, QUANGOs and regulators as possible. Let the little guy get on with his life. I declared war on them first and then worked out where the battle lines are as I went along.
MW. Extending that comment on for the nonce, it seems to me that we have had circa 250 years ish of the 'ascent of the Common Man'. Real freedom and wealth has arrived to all of us - at the expense (in many ways) of a ruling class. Certainly at their expense of power. my personal feeling is that the post WW2 settlement of welfarism and warfarism has been implemented to try and recover that power and make us all serfs again. The trouble, for those would presume to rule us, is that in the main we are all now fully capable of looking after ourselves. We just don't need 'them'. Hence, for example, the FCA goes out of its way to invent 'market failures' which it can then use to set each of us off against the other and extend its own power and privileges by appearing to ride to the rescue.
I'll see you on the barricades
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