9 ms·

UK government should give £10K to every citizen under 55, a report suggests

109 points by edward 9y ago

Legogris 9y ago
> Anyone receiving the "dividends" would not be able to claim any tax allowances, which the RSA says would act as a disincentive to wealthier earners wanting to apply for the handout. This is an obvious way to align incentives that I haven't seen before. Negative income tax (NIT) is also something that might be worth looking into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Implementa...
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  They'll need to also block this for people earning over £113k, as you start losing your tax free allowance at 100k and it's fully gone at 123k
  - rocqua 9y ago
    Maybe they meant tax deductible expenses? That feels like it hits the rich harder than just the flat deduction.
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  Does "tax allowances" just mean the tax-free Personal Allowance of £11500? No one pays £10000 of tax on £11500, so it doesn't seem like it would actually stop anyone from claiming. If the government is saying the cost will be £14.5B then they must think only 1.5M people will sign up, a tiny portion of the population. I don't quite see how they're expecting this to work.
  - djaychela 9y ago
    I think they mean more that if you're already above the tax threshold then you wouldn't get £10k, you'd get £10k minus the prevailing rate of tax - so if you already earned £11500-£34500 then you'd get £8000 (£10k-20%). If you earned £34500-£150,000 then you'd get £6000(£10k-40%), and over £150k you'd get £5500(£10k-45%).
    - OscarCunningham 9y ago
      Do they really mean "We're going to make this money so tedious and bureaucratic to apply for that a middle class person wouldn't bother to do it even for £6000"?
      - napa15 9y ago
        Wow, now that is out of touch. If you think 6000 isnt enough money to do some paperwork then you're exactly the kind of person that shouldnt be allowed to have the money.
    - GordonS 9y ago
      That's hardly 'universal' then, is it? It seems this is more a way of changing how benefits are paid to low earners, rather than a real attempt at UBI. Which is a shame; 10k could still make a significant difference to someone earning, for example, £35k (not a high earner by any stretch) - starting a business, paying for childcare etc.
    - amygdyl 9y ago
      The National Audit Office must publish the model for this system, forthwith. Only then can debate begin. And political parties must be compelled to publish their proposals both normalised to the NAO model specification and atomically for the inputs and outputs of specific effects of the rules, especially of housing rules. In this way I could throw about ideas like my"basement benefit" contribution to a ring fenced home deposit scheme for all mature children living with parents whilst in work. This could be extended for those with parents over the age of fifty five, to build a capital cushion cover for care for parents, meeting with needs such as home modification and such things as mobility. Specifically I like the idea of subsidy for a station wagon or similar practical vehicle, for the adult carer if parents who are willing to give up their driving license.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      That can't be it either. Giving 65 million brits even £5,500 would cost £357b EDIT: oh, what's a million or a billion between friends?
  - benashford 9y ago
    > If the government is saying the cost will be £14.5B then they must think only 1.5M people will sign up It's not a government proposal. It's not even a proposal of the opposition, or anyone who would potentially be in a position to actually enact it. The headline isn't wrong, but the prominence the BBC has given it could trick people into thinking its an official (or at least serious unofficial) proposal.
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
The article seems to contradict itself: > The idea sees two payments of £5,000 paid over two years, but certain state benefits and tax reliefs would be removed at the same time. > Payments would come from a British sovereign wealth fund in the form of two annual £5,000 dividends, the RSA proposes. It's not really Universal either: > applicants would only have to demonstrate how they intended to use the money
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  Yeah it says that we would have to demonstrate how we would use the money, but it doesn't say what a sufficiently good reason is.
- TomK32 9y ago
  I'm sure the DWP will come up with many ideas on the "intend to use the money", just like when cutting disability benefits. Can't walk more the 10 minutes to the shops? No money!
  - dazc 9y ago
    Friend of mine gets disability benefits and your comment is inaccurate.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      Several friends of mine and a family member get disability benefits and the assessment process is horrendous. We've encountered lots of variants of "if you're able to attend this interview there can't be anything wrong which would prevent you from getting a job, so no money for you".
      - gambiting 9y ago
        There's a semi-famous case where the person had a heart attack during the medical interview(in a way he was lucky that the attending nurse recognized the heart attack and called an ambulance straight away) - but because they had to stop the interview half-way through, he was declared no-show and had all his payments cut to zero.
OscarCunningham 9y ago
What's with the "sovereign wealth fund" idea? What's the advantage of raising taxes to pay for a sovereign wealth fund the interest on which pays for the UBI? Why not just pay for the UBI with the taxes? People don't seem to understand that you can't create money just by randomly moving it around.
- rtpg 9y ago
  Unlike with taxes , the sovereign wealth fund could invest the money it holds onto to earn some interest It's the same reason universities have endowments being managed as their own thing. Also if it's a fund, the money is pre-earmarked for this usage. Taxes -> UBI end up being more easily messed up by politics (see social security vs. your 401(k))
  - OscarCunningham 9y ago
    >Unlike with taxes , the sovereign wealth fund could invest the money it holds onto to earn some interest The people the money was taken from could also have invested it profitably. They know that their taxes will be higher down-the-line so it's up to them whether they want to save or spend it. >'s the same reason universities have endowments being managed as their own thing. University endowments also seem far to big to me (at least the largest ones do). I suspect it's mostly a prestige/signalling thing. It might be rational on the part of the university if it attracts more donors, but in that case it isn't rational on the part of the donors. They view saving money as the responsible thing to do because it is the responsible thing to do for a human who will eventually retire. The same logic doesn't apply to Harvard. > if it's a fund, the money is pre-earmarked for this usage. Taxes -> UBI end up being more easily messed up by politics (see social security vs. your 401(k)) I guess this is partly true, but it's easy to get the money out of there with accounting trickery. Just say "To make the fund's investments safer we are going to invest them in government bonds" and then as-if-by-magic you have the money.
  - shubb 9y ago
    In order to pay 10k a year from interested the funds would need lets say 1'000'000 under management per person. It is hard to say where that money would come from - will it be printed? Taxed? Borrowed (interest?)? To do any of these things at the required scale would surely have unintended effects. Also as ability to pay for unemployment during a crisis now depends on cyclical income from investments, rather than countercyclical government bonds, it feels like this would collapse when it is needed most.
bornonline1 9y ago
You shouldn't have used UBI in the title
seanhandley 9y ago
Rather sounds like a way to buy people off their benefits and tax reliefs. I don't see the financial sense in it.
latch 9y ago
"A low-skilled worker might reduce their working hours to attain skills enabling career progression." It this based on anything? Are we hoping they'll do this, or do we know how people typically use unexpected sources of income? Or, is it: "The more stitches the less riches" ? Appendix 1 of the paper is a hard-to-read "fictionalised accounts" of how the money can be used. I like #2, Kathryn the government debt collector who already felt a great sense of accomplishment is now able to provide even more help. (I did a quick google and found some analysis of how IETC is spent. It seems that transportation is the biggest thing, but that might be a US-specific pattern).
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Utopia for Realists has some well-cited discussion of how people used their money in the UBI tests of the Seventies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_for_Realists_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_for_Realists_(book)
- jenscow 9y ago
  It's a BS statement. More likely the fund will be squandered (if cash). If it's in the form of a voucher, it will be ignored. But let's say every low skilled worker actually wanted to become a skilled-worker, then who will perform the low skilled work?
evanphamilton 9y ago
" The report says the fund could help people: "A low-skilled worker might reduce their working hours to attain skills enabling career progression. "The fund could provide the impetus to turn an entrepreneurial idea into a reality. It could be the support that enables a carer to be there for a loved one." " I'm skeptical of the long term implications of this logic, and this reads as a very neoliberal solution. 416 pounds a month for two years is not a lot of money. Job training and child/elderly care are difficult, time consuming, and expensive. This seems to be why they are prime tasks to be run by the state. Giving people a small cash sum, and telling them to teach themselves new skills so that they're ready for the economy of the future feels ignorant and wasteful. If you're working a part time retail job that is about to be automated, what type of "job training" can this realistically provide. Or, if you're taking care of an elderly parent, or a young child, this is far from a replacement for more robust social services. I truly want to believe in a UBI in some form, but I find the language of "entrepreneurial idea[s]" to be a little repulsive. Not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur. Not every poor and middle class citizen can become a successful start up founder and small business owner. UBI could be fantastic but is not a replacement for the once robust social safety nets that are being chipped away at (or decimated) in the US/UK. I am not saying it is the case in this article -- I know little about the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce -- but anytime I see someone advocating for UBI I think it is worthwhile to interrogate their positionality and their imagination of the future. The silicon valley libertarian billionaire dream of a UBI seems different from someone with a genuine commitment to improving the quality of life for everyone. There are no quick fixes to poverty, skill gap, and the problems wrought by automation. Looking towards UBI as a panacea feels dangerous in that it can prevent addressing the more structural problems at play.
- Asooka 9y ago
  Or to put it in simple numbers, every startup founder needs ten employees, who themselves have to not be startup founders. Unless 90% of the people who reach age ~35 die, and then 90% of the survivors die at ~50, there is no way to guarantee an entrepreneurial career path to everybody. Or, I guess, robots waves arms. What I suspect will happen is that people will be able to leave dead-end jobs that are stressful and provide little to no value to them. Which in turn might crash the economy, because while not having the next Juicero isn't that big of a deal, not having anyone picking up the garbage on time is a real issue. Or, it might end up with employers offering a fair salary that fairly redistributes the gains in productivity afforded by modern civilization (I almost wrote this with a straight face). In any case, UBI is not just a money redistribution scheme, it's also a power redistribution scheme, because it gives you fuck-you-money, or at least the next closest equivalent.
tim333 9y ago
Bit rough on 55 year olds.
- dasmoth 9y ago
  Yep. But that somewhat matches recent UK policy (lifetime ISAs, for instance). I think the logic goes that the (currently) middle-aged have benefitted disproportionately from house price rises. Which might on average have a degree of truth to it, but such gains are far-from-uniformly distributed, and mostly still locked up in illiquid assets...
crdoconnor 9y ago
>Jonathan Reynolds MP, Labour's shadow Treasury minister, said: "This new report from the RSA raises the right questions about the future of work and the long-term challenges we face, including making sure automation and the changing nature of work deliver a fairer, more prosperous society." Instead of pretending that our iPhones were all just built by magic Chinese robots (or soon will be), the UK could instead decide to enact policy changes that grows rather than bleeds our manufacturing sector. I don't think policymakers understand the long term risks associated with trade and currency policy pushing manufacturing to places like China. Building a dense industrial ecosystem - exhibited in all its glory in markets like Huaquingbei - is simply impossible in the UK under current "free" trade policy. This means startups like OnePlus (which grew out of Huaquingbei) won't and can't work in the UK - which should worry people. One day we're going to wake up and find out that China can switch off the flow of hi tech goods to the UK overnight - components and finished goods alike - and the rude surprise will be that industrial ecosystems take decades to build. Neoclassical economic models buries this problem in assumptions, so most economists are just as blind to this risk as they were to 2008. The fact that we let our industrial ecosystem rot while they steadily built theirs up will come, if we get cut off, in the form of a highly inflationary shock and ultimately a shortage of hi tech goods. Perhaps then the notion that trade and currency policy created to appease banks and landowners ('unfettered trade'), rather than companies that actually make things and created jobs ('protectionism'), wasn't such a great idea. Enacting basic income (which will, by its nature, also be very inflationary) with those kinds of medium term risks hanging over us seems unwise when its impetus - the shortage of good jobs - was artificially driven by bank friendly trade policy that can't last forever.
jaclaz 9y ago
The report is here: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2018/02/pathways-towards-economic-security-and-universal-basic-income-new-rsa-report https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rs... Link to PDF: https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_pathways-to-universal-basic-income-report.pdf?visitorgroupsByID=undefined https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_pathway... Online (on Medium): https://medium.com/pathways-to-universal-basic-income https://medium.com/pathways-to-universal-basic-income Seemingly the path to UBI leads to UBOF: >The central proposition is the creation of a Universal Basic Opportunity Fund (UBOF): an effort to reimagine how society supports people to live meaningful, contributory lives. >Its premise is simple: fund every citizen under the age of 55 with a £5,000 opportunity dividend for up to two years, taken at a time of their choosing over the course of a decade. >The fund would initially last for ten years, with dependent children also eligible for the payment in the year a parent, or both, were receiving it. EDIT: I didn't see the direct link to the PDF in the original article, not that it is particularly visible, the first sentence is in bold (and is not a link, and the initial part of the second sentence is also bold, but it is a link) removed initial sentence that read: How nice of the BBC guys to provide not the source.
- GunlogAlm 9y ago
  > How nice of the BBC guys to provide not the source. The article's second sentence is the source - a link to the PDF - and it has been in the article since it was published.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    My bad, didn't see that it was a direct link to the PDF. Correcting my post.
    - GunlogAlm 9y ago
      :) The BBC are usually quite good with directly linking their sources, when it's reports or studies (or anything in PDF form). The Guardian are similarly good in that regard, too.
sambe 9y ago
The title should be changed. It’s not universal, and it’s not £10,000 per year.
- mrarjen 9y ago
  Exactly, this article is just one big disappointment when you read the title and actual article. It's basically some extra money to help it's citizens for the short term.
  - icc97 9y ago
    Whilst taking away a bunch of other regular income
  - amygdyl 9y ago
    Even being clear about what help is available, provided by simple and not retrospectively reviewed permission, as benefits are in the UK, would be a immense improvement. Little known, and I found this too late to help my friend, the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) is the only self declarable benefit available. You must have paid national insurance for the previous two years. But it is not exclusively the formal (de facto) gateway to disability benefits. If you're paid up to your contributions to the state pension, for six months you are able to forgo formalities. This sounds open to abuse, but in practice it's not: if you continued to claim after six months, supplying a medical certificate suddenly, the first six months would be still subject to review, when you are required to attend the popularly dreaded (for arbitrary and unknown application of rules) at which time the question about your illness will be simply, for what reason would you not attend a doctor, if symptoms denied you working capacity? I was very surprised by this self declaration option, and on visiting the employment buro to assist, the queue I briefly canvassed all strenuously advised me I am deluded. (Later a very helpful manager told me her biggest problem with claimants in disputes, is the reality she declared to be no claimant appears to think the documentation is higher authority than advice from friends. She humorously related a fantastic Chinese Whispers tale of woe and unreason. She paused somewhat shocked, however, and changed the subject when I asked if this was the clear sign that curriculum changes introduced to allow schools with English as pupils 1st:2nd:3rd language, in one Birmingham UK highschool I read being 5:80:15 percent, to not fail national examination standards. I was _terrible at English grammar in the same years,my Latin master grit his teeth "you're only good at Latin because the English language you learned from aged parents is sufficiently formal to provide you the grammar automatically." In this way, I later realised I was first introduced to the value of input type checking and implicit function declaration... Today, children lack the rigorous and emphatic teaching of less overtly strict language. (English is incredibly formally strict, my late co-founder was a nonsense poetry lover and expert, and musical arranger and manager, where deprecated grammars are essential to composition, and much art is long lost. -- here is a exceptional response to anyone who asks me why I wanted a non technical co-founder; there is always immense pleasure in the architecture of the humanities, but the sad fact is few universities have still the capacities, my co-founder at Cambridge in the sixties on scholarship and once housed in the same cottage on the Lambeth Palace grounds as I saw a Syrian refugee mother and child, was succoured by a most amazing system which is, to my view, necessary to rekindle if we are to re-establish the international respect our* country once was accorded and for generations rudely has presumed. *Co-founder and I both second generation immigrants) - - - But what purpose does a UBI pursue, if not then it must necessarily undo the travesty of Zero Hours Contracts? My father told me every night, how he watched silently while his mother cried over her sewing machine, ground down by Piece Work, the shoulder you've stitched in error of exhaustion made a debt for the final sale value, the reason my father understood when my grandmother made jokes and made up games to exhaust her two fatherless boys, why there was no dinner the following evening. Even the qualification that propelled my father into employability, the then city and guilds secretarial matriculation, was a embodiment of the formal capabilities required by grammar: the questions including manipulation of perfect participles in subordinate clauses couched in the safety of future perfect conditions, to assure your future employer that you should never misinterpret a letter of contract or possibility of variation. Today, I only know barristers who perform such work. My father's secretarial examination included actuarial tables for reduction to monthly premia. With only this one certificate of capability as a secretary, he was propelled eventually to only decline the top job at our largest savings and loan, due to serious sickness of his wife. Undeniably the popularity of great Britain to all comers was underpinned, not undone, buy the standards of qualifications available outside of university, then a dream for but very few lucky ones, but cemented by the accessibility thereto, because, although tutored by his elder brother of seven years, who was lucky enough and inventive enough to squeak through and pay his school matriculation fees, my father matriculated aged fourteen and seven months, in May of 1921. I mean by my family history, to reach directly from the miasma which appears to be present day education and employment conditions, directly to a world I imagine that for many here is at least two generations past, and therefore lacking in the visceral presence which is the hallmark which first hand accounts, such as I was raised to appreciate, deliver so effectively and in many more ways resonate with concerns that I am certain have been obscured to the point of disappearance from colloquial ascertainment, and thereby whether for political reasons or howsoever, depleted this modern debate of information entropy. No doubt can exist for the challenge of UBI for politicians who are faced with interests of large employers, wealthy from the subsidies of In Work Benefits, without which you could not entertain the kinda of non employment that Zero Hours Contracts promulgate. GBP£10,000PA cannot even pay the rent charged by homeless hostels managed and owned by The Salvation Army, at least in London. Opportunities exist for anyone who seeks a side project, in providing software to calculate UK social benefits. I understand that the unusable mess I was demonstrated running on a financial advisors laptop when we got chatting in the pub, costs thousands per seat per annum. If anyone is inclined to investigate the potential of a web version, I venture that I might be able to procure the most accurate portrayal of a avalanche, in terms of public interest, so many sore points does our bereft benefits system provoke. Nite about ESA, the version that is claimed if you are I'll and elect to not self certify: the payments made are only half the fullest rate permitted, until at some time about two years later, the bureaucracy performs the aforementioned review, and regurgitates the half they withheld. And at all times they may retrospectively rescind the approval of any decision, and adjust and claw money back. The possibility of needing to subsist on £68pwk, anywhere in England, let alone London, seems frightening enough to traumatize the desperate beyond reach of help. But what is anyone to know, when debate so long forwent all the pertinent data?
kaputsmack 9y ago
So Milton Friedman was wrong and Marx was right? There is such a thing as a free lunch after all? (It's easy when your central bank is free to print money while developing countries and the working class in large countries like India, Brazil, USA and China pay the bill. Globalization is a beauty indeed.)
FloNeu 9y ago
That's not universal basic income at all... Clickbait shit
icc97 9y ago
This is going to replace what was regular income with large one time payments. This is like giving small lottery wins. People will think they're rich in the beginning, blow it all and then have nothing to fall back on. Basic income should be the same as regular work income that comes in once a month for living off.
- croon 9y ago
  Income/salary is a large one time payment (once a month, or bi-weekly), for work you do every day. I don't disagree with your assessment of this being a problem, but increasing overhead by splitting up payments to solve an issue that's inherently behavioral seems counterproductive to me.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    A payment which is once a month is not a one time payment. A grant which is once a lifetime is. Someone squandering the former has an opportunity to rectify their mistake the following month. And more generally, if the once a lifetime universal grants are competing for budget and theoretical purpose with hardship funds, unemployment benefits and entitlement to free government services, the distributional effects are going to heavily favour the lucky and financially secure over the unlucky and financially insecure.
    - croon 9y ago
      > A payment which is once a month is not a one time payment. A grant which is once a lifetime is. What I responded to that you wrote, and what the article suggests, is: > This is going to replace what was regular income with large one time payments. If they are plural they are no longer one time. And if they are no longer one time, it's just a matter of scope size when discussing frequency. I'm not trying to sound robotic, but there's no functional difference between getting 6x twice a year and getting 1x 12 times a year. The difference is psychological.
      - icc97 9y ago
qwerty456127 9y ago
So great that there actually are influential politicians who understand that universal income is not a luxury but a necessity for a modern society.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Not sure I would describe the "RSA" as "influential politicians" - they haven't got anything to do with the government or civil service.
CalRobert 9y ago
"Anyone receiving the "dividends" would not be able to claim any tax allowances, which the RSA says would act as a disincentive to wealthier earners wanting to apply for the handout." It's also a disincentive from becoming a wealthier earner, which is _exactly_ what UBI is meant to address (among other things).
coroxout 9y ago
In addition to the contradictions already highlighted by many posters, I don't like the way the only economist they've quoted is Patrick Minford. Not because he says UBI won't work (I'm on the fence about this, because I'd love it to work, but I don't see how you can stop it triggering inflation to the point that the UBI sum becomes useless to live on - but I'm no economist), but because he's really quite far out of the mainstream of economists and it's as if they've picked him solely because he's the only big name pro-Brexit economist - and I'm sick of the BBC dragging pro-Brexit commentators on to speak unopposed regardless of whether they know anything about the subject or how out-there their views are. Some prior references on Minford: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-minford-economics_uk_599ae35be4b0e8cc855ee180 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-minford-economi... https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21727078-patrick-minford-thinks-gdp-could-increase-68-most-economists-say-brexit-will-hurt https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21727078-patrick-minf...
- bitL 9y ago
  > triggering inflation That's something I don't get either. But maybe thinking is that it would induce some needed inflation in deflationary times?
  - playworker 9y ago
    It's an illogical argument though - the concept of true UBI, not the thing cited in the article, is that everyone receives the living wage and can afford basics like food and housing. If everyone being able to afford food and housing changes the rate of inflation, then that's an acceptable side-effect of ending poverty, it's certainly not something to be feared or cited as an argument against UBI :)
    - nothrabannosir 9y ago
      The argument (which I don’t necessarily subscribe to, but I too, am no economist) would be that the inflation leapt by such bounds that it directly cancelled out the entire UBI grant. If that happens, then UBI is pointless.
thetruthhurts13 9y ago
This is a way of tricking the stupid and poor into lowering the population by taking away regular money and giving you a lump sum that you will blow leaving you with no way to survive. Most wont train or use it to make more money. Its a simple tactic for the government to elliminate the people the no longer need.
manoj_venkat92 9y ago
Those snobs are gonna get snobbier now.
pacificleo11 9y ago
One aspect of Universal Basic Income (UBI) debate which remain unanswered for me is the question of meaning & purpose. Most of us derive our sense of purpose from our jobs. In a future with UBI and Automation where will derive our purpose in life. I think this will dictate the future of UBI more than the intrinsic merit of the underlying idea.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  > Most of us derive our sense of purpose from our jobs. Most of "us", as in your peers, those visible to you. Nothing wrong with feeling a sense of purpose. Most of "us", as in bus drivers, bored security guards with nothing to do, McDonald's cashiers, cleaning personnel who clean in your office between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. so you never have to encounter them, would they be depressed and forlorn without the "purpose" of their awesome jobs?
- closeparen 9y ago
  Nothing's going to stop you from holding onto your job if it brings you meaning & purpose. We would merely stop forcing others to hold onto theirs when it doesn't.

109 points by edward 9y ago

> Anyone receiving the "dividends" would not be able to claim any tax allowances, which the RSA says would act as a disincentive to wealthier earners wanting to apply for the handout. This is an obvious way to align incentives that I haven't seen before. Negative income tax (NIT) is also something that might be worth looking into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Implementation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax#Implementa...

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
They'll need to also block this for people earning over £113k, as you start losing your tax free allowance at 100k and it's fully gone at 123k
- rocqua 9y ago
  Maybe they meant tax deductible expenses? That feels like it hits the rich harder than just the flat deduction.
OscarCunningham 9y ago
Does "tax allowances" just mean the tax-free Personal Allowance of £11500? No one pays £10000 of tax on £11500, so it doesn't seem like it would actually stop anyone from claiming. If the government is saying the cost will be £14.5B then they must think only 1.5M people will sign up, a tiny portion of the population. I don't quite see how they're expecting this to work.
- djaychela 9y ago
  I think they mean more that if you're already above the tax threshold then you wouldn't get £10k, you'd get £10k minus the prevailing rate of tax - so if you already earned £11500-£34500 then you'd get £8000 (£10k-20%). If you earned £34500-£150,000 then you'd get £6000(£10k-40%), and over £150k you'd get £5500(£10k-45%).
  - OscarCunningham 9y ago
    Do they really mean "We're going to make this money so tedious and bureaucratic to apply for that a middle class person wouldn't bother to do it even for £6000"?
    - napa15 9y ago
      Wow, now that is out of touch. If you think 6000 isnt enough money to do some paperwork then you're exactly the kind of person that shouldnt be allowed to have the money.
  - GordonS 9y ago
    That's hardly 'universal' then, is it? It seems this is more a way of changing how benefits are paid to low earners, rather than a real attempt at UBI. Which is a shame; 10k could still make a significant difference to someone earning, for example, £35k (not a high earner by any stretch) - starting a business, paying for childcare etc.
  - amygdyl 9y ago
    The National Audit Office must publish the model for this system, forthwith. Only then can debate begin. And political parties must be compelled to publish their proposals both normalised to the NAO model specification and atomically for the inputs and outputs of specific effects of the rules, especially of housing rules. In this way I could throw about ideas like my"basement benefit" contribution to a ring fenced home deposit scheme for all mature children living with parents whilst in work. This could be extended for those with parents over the age of fifty five, to build a capital cushion cover for care for parents, meeting with needs such as home modification and such things as mobility. Specifically I like the idea of subsidy for a station wagon or similar practical vehicle, for the adult carer if parents who are willing to give up their driving license.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    That can't be it either. Giving 65 million brits even £5,500 would cost £357b EDIT: oh, what's a million or a billion between friends?
- benashford 9y ago
  > If the government is saying the cost will be £14.5B then they must think only 1.5M people will sign up It's not a government proposal. It's not even a proposal of the opposition, or anyone who would potentially be in a position to actually enact it. The headline isn't wrong, but the prominence the BBC has given it could trick people into thinking its an official (or at least serious unofficial) proposal.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

The article seems to contradict itself: > The idea sees two payments of £5,000 paid over two years, but certain state benefits and tax reliefs would be removed at the same time. > Payments would come from a British sovereign wealth fund in the form of two annual £5,000 dividends, the RSA proposes. It's not really Universal either: > applicants would only have to demonstrate how they intended to use the money

OscarCunningham 9y ago
Yeah it says that we would have to demonstrate how we would use the money, but it doesn't say what a sufficiently good reason is.
TomK32 9y ago
I'm sure the DWP will come up with many ideas on the "intend to use the money", just like when cutting disability benefits. Can't walk more the 10 minutes to the shops? No money!
- dazc 9y ago
  Friend of mine gets disability benefits and your comment is inaccurate.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Several friends of mine and a family member get disability benefits and the assessment process is horrendous. We've encountered lots of variants of "if you're able to attend this interview there can't be anything wrong which would prevent you from getting a job, so no money for you".
    - gambiting 9y ago
      There's a semi-famous case where the person had a heart attack during the medical interview(in a way he was lucky that the attending nurse recognized the heart attack and called an ambulance straight away) - but because they had to stop the interview half-way through, he was declared no-show and had all his payments cut to zero.

OscarCunningham 9y ago

What's with the "sovereign wealth fund" idea? What's the advantage of raising taxes to pay for a sovereign wealth fund the interest on which pays for the UBI? Why not just pay for the UBI with the taxes? People don't seem to understand that you can't create money just by randomly moving it around.

rtpg 9y ago
Unlike with taxes , the sovereign wealth fund could invest the money it holds onto to earn some interest It's the same reason universities have endowments being managed as their own thing. Also if it's a fund, the money is pre-earmarked for this usage. Taxes -> UBI end up being more easily messed up by politics (see social security vs. your 401(k))
- OscarCunningham 9y ago
  >Unlike with taxes , the sovereign wealth fund could invest the money it holds onto to earn some interest The people the money was taken from could also have invested it profitably. They know that their taxes will be higher down-the-line so it's up to them whether they want to save or spend it. >'s the same reason universities have endowments being managed as their own thing. University endowments also seem far to big to me (at least the largest ones do). I suspect it's mostly a prestige/signalling thing. It might be rational on the part of the university if it attracts more donors, but in that case it isn't rational on the part of the donors. They view saving money as the responsible thing to do because it is the responsible thing to do for a human who will eventually retire. The same logic doesn't apply to Harvard. > if it's a fund, the money is pre-earmarked for this usage. Taxes -> UBI end up being more easily messed up by politics (see social security vs. your 401(k)) I guess this is partly true, but it's easy to get the money out of there with accounting trickery. Just say "To make the fund's investments safer we are going to invest them in government bonds" and then as-if-by-magic you have the money.
- shubb 9y ago
  In order to pay 10k a year from interested the funds would need lets say 1'000'000 under management per person. It is hard to say where that money would come from - will it be printed? Taxed? Borrowed (interest?)? To do any of these things at the required scale would surely have unintended effects. Also as ability to pay for unemployment during a crisis now depends on cyclical income from investments, rather than countercyclical government bonds, it feels like this would collapse when it is needed most.

bornonline1 9y ago

You shouldn't have used UBI in the title

seanhandley 9y ago

Rather sounds like a way to buy people off their benefits and tax reliefs. I don't see the financial sense in it.

latch 9y ago

"A low-skilled worker might reduce their working hours to attain skills enabling career progression." It this based on anything? Are we hoping they'll do this, or do we know how people typically use unexpected sources of income? Or, is it: "The more stitches the less riches" ? Appendix 1 of the paper is a hard-to-read "fictionalised accounts" of how the money can be used. I like #2, Kathryn the government debt collector who already felt a great sense of accomplishment is now able to provide even more help. (I did a quick google and found some analysis of how IETC is spent. It seems that transportation is the biggest thing, but that might be a US-specific pattern).

egypturnash 9y ago
Utopia for Realists has some well-cited discussion of how people used their money in the UBI tests of the Seventies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_for_Realists_(book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_for_Realists_(book)
jenscow 9y ago
It's a BS statement. More likely the fund will be squandered (if cash). If it's in the form of a voucher, it will be ignored. But let's say every low skilled worker actually wanted to become a skilled-worker, then who will perform the low skilled work?

evanphamilton 9y ago

" The report says the fund could help people: "A low-skilled worker might reduce their working hours to attain skills enabling career progression. "The fund could provide the impetus to turn an entrepreneurial idea into a reality. It could be the support that enables a carer to be there for a loved one." " I'm skeptical of the long term implications of this logic, and this reads as a very neoliberal solution. 416 pounds a month for two years is not a lot of money. Job training and child/elderly care are difficult, time consuming, and expensive. This seems to be why they are prime tasks to be run by the state. Giving people a small cash sum, and telling them to teach themselves new skills so that they're ready for the economy of the future feels ignorant and wasteful. If you're working a part time retail job that is about to be automated, what type of "job training" can this realistically provide. Or, if you're taking care of an elderly parent, or a young child, this is far from a replacement for more robust social services. I truly want to believe in a UBI in some form, but I find the language of "entrepreneurial idea[s]" to be a little repulsive. Not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur. Not every poor and middle class citizen can become a successful start up founder and small business owner. UBI could be fantastic but is not a replacement for the once robust social safety nets that are being chipped away at (or decimated) in the US/UK. I am not saying it is the case in this article -- I know little about the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce -- but anytime I see someone advocating for UBI I think it is worthwhile to interrogate their positionality and their imagination of the future. The silicon valley libertarian billionaire dream of a UBI seems different from someone with a genuine commitment to improving the quality of life for everyone. There are no quick fixes to poverty, skill gap, and the problems wrought by automation. Looking towards UBI as a panacea feels dangerous in that it can prevent addressing the more structural problems at play.

Asooka 9y ago
Or to put it in simple numbers, every startup founder needs ten employees, who themselves have to not be startup founders. Unless 90% of the people who reach age ~35 die, and then 90% of the survivors die at ~50, there is no way to guarantee an entrepreneurial career path to everybody. Or, I guess, robots waves arms. What I suspect will happen is that people will be able to leave dead-end jobs that are stressful and provide little to no value to them. Which in turn might crash the economy, because while not having the next Juicero isn't that big of a deal, not having anyone picking up the garbage on time is a real issue. Or, it might end up with employers offering a fair salary that fairly redistributes the gains in productivity afforded by modern civilization (I almost wrote this with a straight face). In any case, UBI is not just a money redistribution scheme, it's also a power redistribution scheme, because it gives you fuck-you-money, or at least the next closest equivalent.

tim333 9y ago

Bit rough on 55 year olds.

dasmoth 9y ago
Yep. But that somewhat matches recent UK policy (lifetime ISAs, for instance). I think the logic goes that the (currently) middle-aged have benefitted disproportionately from house price rises. Which might on average have a degree of truth to it, but such gains are far-from-uniformly distributed, and mostly still locked up in illiquid assets...

crdoconnor 9y ago

>Jonathan Reynolds MP, Labour's shadow Treasury minister, said: "This new report from the RSA raises the right questions about the future of work and the long-term challenges we face, including making sure automation and the changing nature of work deliver a fairer, more prosperous society." Instead of pretending that our iPhones were all just built by magic Chinese robots (or soon will be), the UK could instead decide to enact policy changes that grows rather than bleeds our manufacturing sector. I don't think policymakers understand the long term risks associated with trade and currency policy pushing manufacturing to places like China. Building a dense industrial ecosystem - exhibited in all its glory in markets like Huaquingbei - is simply impossible in the UK under current "free" trade policy. This means startups like OnePlus (which grew out of Huaquingbei) won't and can't work in the UK - which should worry people. One day we're going to wake up and find out that China can switch off the flow of hi tech goods to the UK overnight - components and finished goods alike - and the rude surprise will be that industrial ecosystems take decades to build. Neoclassical economic models buries this problem in assumptions, so most economists are just as blind to this risk as they were to 2008. The fact that we let our industrial ecosystem rot while they steadily built theirs up will come, if we get cut off, in the form of a highly inflationary shock and ultimately a shortage of hi tech goods. Perhaps then the notion that trade and currency policy created to appease banks and landowners ('unfettered trade'), rather than companies that actually make things and created jobs ('protectionism'), wasn't such a great idea. Enacting basic income (which will, by its nature, also be very inflationary) with those kinds of medium term risks hanging over us seems unwise when its impetus - the shortage of good jobs - was artificially driven by bank friendly trade policy that can't last forever.

jaclaz 9y ago

The report is here: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2018/02/pathways-towards-economic-security-and-universal-basic-income-new-rsa-report https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rs... Link to PDF: https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_pathways-to-universal-basic-income-report.pdf?visitorgroupsByID=undefined https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/reports/rsa_pathway... Online (on Medium): https://medium.com/pathways-to-universal-basic-income https://medium.com/pathways-to-universal-basic-income Seemingly the path to UBI leads to UBOF: >The central proposition is the creation of a Universal Basic Opportunity Fund (UBOF): an effort to reimagine how society supports people to live meaningful, contributory lives. >Its premise is simple: fund every citizen under the age of 55 with a £5,000 opportunity dividend for up to two years, taken at a time of their choosing over the course of a decade. >The fund would initially last for ten years, with dependent children also eligible for the payment in the year a parent, or both, were receiving it. EDIT: I didn't see the direct link to the PDF in the original article, not that it is particularly visible, the first sentence is in bold (and is not a link, and the initial part of the second sentence is also bold, but it is a link) removed initial sentence that read: How nice of the BBC guys to provide not the source.

GunlogAlm 9y ago
> How nice of the BBC guys to provide not the source. The article's second sentence is the source - a link to the PDF - and it has been in the article since it was published.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  My bad, didn't see that it was a direct link to the PDF. Correcting my post.
  - GunlogAlm 9y ago
    :) The BBC are usually quite good with directly linking their sources, when it's reports or studies (or anything in PDF form). The Guardian are similarly good in that regard, too.

sambe 9y ago

The title should be changed. It’s not universal, and it’s not £10,000 per year.

mrarjen 9y ago
Exactly, this article is just one big disappointment when you read the title and actual article. It's basically some extra money to help it's citizens for the short term.
- icc97 9y ago
  Whilst taking away a bunch of other regular income
- amygdyl 9y ago
  Even being clear about what help is available, provided by simple and not retrospectively reviewed permission, as benefits are in the UK, would be a immense improvement. Little known, and I found this too late to help my friend, the Employment Support Allowance (ESA) is the only self declarable benefit available. You must have paid national insurance for the previous two years. But it is not exclusively the formal (de facto) gateway to disability benefits. If you're paid up to your contributions to the state pension, for six months you are able to forgo formalities. This sounds open to abuse, but in practice it's not: if you continued to claim after six months, supplying a medical certificate suddenly, the first six months would be still subject to review, when you are required to attend the popularly dreaded (for arbitrary and unknown application of rules) at which time the question about your illness will be simply, for what reason would you not attend a doctor, if symptoms denied you working capacity? I was very surprised by this self declaration option, and on visiting the employment buro to assist, the queue I briefly canvassed all strenuously advised me I am deluded. (Later a very helpful manager told me her biggest problem with claimants in disputes, is the reality she declared to be no claimant appears to think the documentation is higher authority than advice from friends. She humorously related a fantastic Chinese Whispers tale of woe and unreason. She paused somewhat shocked, however, and changed the subject when I asked if this was the clear sign that curriculum changes introduced to allow schools with English as pupils 1st:2nd:3rd language, in one Birmingham UK highschool I read being 5:80:15 percent, to not fail national examination standards. I was _terrible at English grammar in the same years,my Latin master grit his teeth "you're only good at Latin because the English language you learned from aged parents is sufficiently formal to provide you the grammar automatically." In this way, I later realised I was first introduced to the value of input type checking and implicit function declaration... Today, children lack the rigorous and emphatic teaching of less overtly strict language. (English is incredibly formally strict, my late co-founder was a nonsense poetry lover and expert, and musical arranger and manager, where deprecated grammars are essential to composition, and much art is long lost. -- here is a exceptional response to anyone who asks me why I wanted a non technical co-founder; there is always immense pleasure in the architecture of the humanities, but the sad fact is few universities have still the capacities, my co-founder at Cambridge in the sixties on scholarship and once housed in the same cottage on the Lambeth Palace grounds as I saw a Syrian refugee mother and child, was succoured by a most amazing system which is, to my view, necessary to rekindle if we are to re-establish the international respect our* country once was accorded and for generations rudely has presumed. *Co-founder and I both second generation immigrants) - - - But what purpose does a UBI pursue, if not then it must necessarily undo the travesty of Zero Hours Contracts? My father told me every night, how he watched silently while his mother cried over her sewing machine, ground down by Piece Work, the shoulder you've stitched in error of exhaustion made a debt for the final sale value, the reason my father understood when my grandmother made jokes and made up games to exhaust her two fatherless boys, why there was no dinner the following evening. Even the qualification that propelled my father into employability, the then city and guilds secretarial matriculation, was a embodiment of the formal capabilities required by grammar: the questions including manipulation of perfect participles in subordinate clauses couched in the safety of future perfect conditions, to assure your future employer that you should never misinterpret a letter of contract or possibility of variation. Today, I only know barristers who perform such work. My father's secretarial examination included actuarial tables for reduction to monthly premia. With only this one certificate of capability as a secretary, he was propelled eventually to only decline the top job at our largest savings and loan, due to serious sickness of his wife. Undeniably the popularity of great Britain to all comers was underpinned, not undone, buy the standards of qualifications available outside of university, then a dream for but very few lucky ones, but cemented by the accessibility thereto, because, although tutored by his elder brother of seven years, who was lucky enough and inventive enough to squeak through and pay his school matriculation fees, my father matriculated aged fourteen and seven months, in May of 1921. I mean by my family history, to reach directly from the miasma which appears to be present day education and employment conditions, directly to a world I imagine that for many here is at least two generations past, and therefore lacking in the visceral presence which is the hallmark which first hand accounts, such as I was raised to appreciate, deliver so effectively and in many more ways resonate with concerns that I am certain have been obscured to the point of disappearance from colloquial ascertainment, and thereby whether for political reasons or howsoever, depleted this modern debate of information entropy. No doubt can exist for the challenge of UBI for politicians who are faced with interests of large employers, wealthy from the subsidies of In Work Benefits, without which you could not entertain the kinda of non employment that Zero Hours Contracts promulgate. GBP£10,000PA cannot even pay the rent charged by homeless hostels managed and owned by The Salvation Army, at least in London. Opportunities exist for anyone who seeks a side project, in providing software to calculate UK social benefits. I understand that the unusable mess I was demonstrated running on a financial advisors laptop when we got chatting in the pub, costs thousands per seat per annum. If anyone is inclined to investigate the potential of a web version, I venture that I might be able to procure the most accurate portrayal of a avalanche, in terms of public interest, so many sore points does our bereft benefits system provoke. Nite about ESA, the version that is claimed if you are I'll and elect to not self certify: the payments made are only half the fullest rate permitted, until at some time about two years later, the bureaucracy performs the aforementioned review, and regurgitates the half they withheld. And at all times they may retrospectively rescind the approval of any decision, and adjust and claw money back. The possibility of needing to subsist on £68pwk, anywhere in England, let alone London, seems frightening enough to traumatize the desperate beyond reach of help. But what is anyone to know, when debate so long forwent all the pertinent data?

kaputsmack 9y ago

So Milton Friedman was wrong and Marx was right? There is such a thing as a free lunch after all? (It's easy when your central bank is free to print money while developing countries and the working class in large countries like India, Brazil, USA and China pay the bill. Globalization is a beauty indeed.)

FloNeu 9y ago

That's not universal basic income at all... Clickbait shit

icc97 9y ago

This is going to replace what was regular income with large one time payments. This is like giving small lottery wins. People will think they're rich in the beginning, blow it all and then have nothing to fall back on. Basic income should be the same as regular work income that comes in once a month for living off.

croon 9y ago
Income/salary is a large one time payment (once a month, or bi-weekly), for work you do every day. I don't disagree with your assessment of this being a problem, but increasing overhead by splitting up payments to solve an issue that's inherently behavioral seems counterproductive to me.
- notahacker 9y ago
  A payment which is once a month is not a one time payment. A grant which is once a lifetime is. Someone squandering the former has an opportunity to rectify their mistake the following month. And more generally, if the once a lifetime universal grants are competing for budget and theoretical purpose with hardship funds, unemployment benefits and entitlement to free government services, the distributional effects are going to heavily favour the lucky and financially secure over the unlucky and financially insecure.
  - croon 9y ago
    > A payment which is once a month is not a one time payment. A grant which is once a lifetime is. What I responded to that you wrote, and what the article suggests, is: > This is going to replace what was regular income with large one time payments. If they are plural they are no longer one time. And if they are no longer one time, it's just a matter of scope size when discussing frequency. I'm not trying to sound robotic, but there's no functional difference between getting 6x twice a year and getting 1x 12 times a year. The difference is psychological.
    - icc97 9y ago

qwerty456127 9y ago

So great that there actually are influential politicians who understand that universal income is not a luxury but a necessity for a modern society.

arethuza 9y ago
Not sure I would describe the "RSA" as "influential politicians" - they haven't got anything to do with the government or civil service.

CalRobert 9y ago

"Anyone receiving the "dividends" would not be able to claim any tax allowances, which the RSA says would act as a disincentive to wealthier earners wanting to apply for the handout." It's also a disincentive from becoming a wealthier earner, which is _exactly_ what UBI is meant to address (among other things).

coroxout 9y ago

In addition to the contradictions already highlighted by many posters, I don't like the way the only economist they've quoted is Patrick Minford. Not because he says UBI won't work (I'm on the fence about this, because I'd love it to work, but I don't see how you can stop it triggering inflation to the point that the UBI sum becomes useless to live on - but I'm no economist), but because he's really quite far out of the mainstream of economists and it's as if they've picked him solely because he's the only big name pro-Brexit economist - and I'm sick of the BBC dragging pro-Brexit commentators on to speak unopposed regardless of whether they know anything about the subject or how out-there their views are. Some prior references on Minford: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-minford-economics_uk_599ae35be4b0e8cc855ee180 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/brexit-minford-economi... https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21727078-patrick-minford-thinks-gdp-could-increase-68-most-economists-say-brexit-will-hurt https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21727078-patrick-minf...

bitL 9y ago
> triggering inflation That's something I don't get either. But maybe thinking is that it would induce some needed inflation in deflationary times?
- playworker 9y ago
  It's an illogical argument though - the concept of true UBI, not the thing cited in the article, is that everyone receives the living wage and can afford basics like food and housing. If everyone being able to afford food and housing changes the rate of inflation, then that's an acceptable side-effect of ending poverty, it's certainly not something to be feared or cited as an argument against UBI :)
  - nothrabannosir 9y ago
    The argument (which I don’t necessarily subscribe to, but I too, am no economist) would be that the inflation leapt by such bounds that it directly cancelled out the entire UBI grant. If that happens, then UBI is pointless.

thetruthhurts13 9y ago

This is a way of tricking the stupid and poor into lowering the population by taking away regular money and giving you a lump sum that you will blow leaving you with no way to survive. Most wont train or use it to make more money. Its a simple tactic for the government to elliminate the people the no longer need.

manoj_venkat92 9y ago

Those snobs are gonna get snobbier now.

pacificleo11 9y ago

One aspect of Universal Basic Income (UBI) debate which remain unanswered for me is the question of meaning & purpose. Most of us derive our sense of purpose from our jobs. In a future with UBI and Automation where will derive our purpose in life. I think this will dictate the future of UBI more than the intrinsic merit of the underlying idea.

tom_mellior 9y ago
> Most of us derive our sense of purpose from our jobs. Most of "us", as in your peers, those visible to you. Nothing wrong with feeling a sense of purpose. Most of "us", as in bus drivers, bored security guards with nothing to do, McDonald's cashiers, cleaning personnel who clean in your office between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. so you never have to encounter them, would they be depressed and forlorn without the "purpose" of their awesome jobs?
closeparen 9y ago
Nothing's going to stop you from holding onto your job if it brings you meaning & purpose. We would merely stop forcing others to hold onto theirs when it doesn't.