Universal Basic Income—or simply basic income—is a monthly payment given to all people, regardless of age, gender, race, status or salary. It is an economic principle based on the idea that no person should struggle to feed themselves or find shelter, and that there should be a basic standard of living, below which no human should fall.
To me, this sounds pretty reasonable—fair, even. But I know that to many, particularly to those residing in that mass of land between Canada and Mexico, this idea may sound ridiculous, enough to get you labelled a possible communist, at the very least a socialist (though why this is a bad thing, I am still unsure).
Free money? Preposterous! Everyone being treated like equals?? I won’t hear of it!!
There are a few assumptions held—not just by the United States, but by other, similarly capitalistic nations too—about wealth and work and values, that make UBI a hard pill to swallow. For example, there is the idea that hard work leads to high wages, so if you want to make some money, all you need to do is work a little bit harder. But as anyone who has worked in hospitality over the holiday season knows, working more does not always mean earning more.
There is also the idea that wealth leads to happiness, so it follows that a society structured around the accumulation of wealth will also be a happy one. And it is true that up to a certain point, having more money will probably make you happier, because you don’t have the stress of wondering if you will make rent or be able to feed your family.
But a well-known Princeton study shows that, after a certain threshold, more money has no positive impact on health and happiness. And it is no secret that there are plenty of unhappy, lonely, rich people.
Finally, we have built a society around the notion that work is valuable, full stop—that there is something innately beneficial about working. In fact, the 21st century is so obsessed with work, that, it’s likely that your identity as a human—as a friend, lover, family member and individual—is overshadowed by your identity as a worker.
It’s a capitalist world, baby, and you’re just here to work.
Today, it seems being lazy is about as bad as being a criminal—at least if you’re poor. But why should only those lucky people born into a rich family get to be lazy leisurely? And what is so great about work, anyway?
I’m so sorry if that was a shocking sentence to read. We so rarely talk about that elephant in the room, which is that work sucks. Or perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘work,’ rather ‘unfulfilling work,’ which I think they also call ‘jobs.’ You see, humans have always worked in order to live: growing food, raising babies, making things to trade; life has always involved work of some kind.
But now we have these things called jobs, which we try really hard to keep separate from our lives, because they are so incredibly boring. And within these jobs, we have this thing called work-life balance, as if you are not living your life while you are working, but rather abandoning it somewhere on the bus or the subway, and only picking it up again at the end of each 8-, 9- or 10-hour stint helping a corporation make—and usually keep—money.
Perhaps you are rolling your eyes. Perhaps you are one of those people who says, “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” My darling, I applaud you, and if this is how you feel about your job, I say you are lucky (also, are you hiring?). But for most of us, this is not the reality.
Depending on where you grew up it was probably expected that you head straight to university at 18, whether you knew what you wanted to study or not. Maybe you figured it out along the way, but then again, maybe you didn’t.
And then you graduated and needed to find a job, and you felt like you should be able to take a little time and figure it all out, but you couldn’t, because you live in a city of sky-high rents with tiny, dark apartments and you’d like for one day to have a window in your bedroom and a table upon which you can eat your toast.
And you probably have student loans that you need to pay off because education is one more thing we have commodified in a land of increasing privatization and inequality (in case it wasn’t clear, I grew up in the United States).
And so we take that job in media or finance—a job we probably didn’t even know existed, and one we definitely didn’t dream about when we were kids—because it pays well and offers health insurance and promises security, unlike the job we thought we wanted, in art or education, the one that barely pays enough to cover basic living expenses, let alone clear your debt or allow for any kind of hobbies or general life enjoyment.
So here you are: accepting a job that you hate (or at least, will grow to hate; right now, you’re telling yourself there might be something interesting about it) so that you might be able to enjoy your life.
Which brings me back to my point: universal basic income (if you’d forgotten this is what we were talking about, don’t worry, you’re not alone).
So, why UBI? It’s simple: equality is cool, the American Dream is dead, and we will all become better people.
The primary thing Basic Income addresses is inequality, something that the privileged rarely think about, and the disadvantaged are all too aware of. I would hasten to guess that the majority of people that might oppose basic income would do so on the basis that it disincentivizes work, and that money should be earned, not simply given.
The thing is, we don’t earn our privileged places in society; they are randomly assigned to us at birth and they give us all kinds of legs up in this world. There is a very good chance that where you are now is more a result of where and how you grew up—what you were given, told, and encouraged to do—than it is of any kind of innate talent within you. We don’t all start out on equal footing. But shouldn’t we?
Even with a program like UBI, we would still have a broad distribution of wealth—there would still be rich and poor—but the gap would be smaller, and we would be taking a stand against severe poverty. If the United Kingdom were to take on a full UBI, it would reduce the percentage of people living below the poverty level from 16% to 4%, and virtually eliminate poverty in children and the elderly.
A Basic Income project launched in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 2010 by pro-UBI economist Guy Standing and Unicef showed incredible results, across a variety of key indicators. Funds from the basic income were used to improve conditions in housing, latrines, and to protect against malaria. The program helped families and individuals improve their nutrition with the extra money that allowed them to shop at markets, rather than ration shops; nutrition particularly improved in lower caste communities, and for women and children. Better diets were linked to better health and an increase in school attendance. Furthermore, work actually increased under UBI, because people could invest in small-scale advancements and machinery, with a shift towards self-employed work. There was a reduction in bonded labor, and overall, there was a greater positive effect on historically disadvantaged populations.
But I know there are many welfare-skeptics out there, who still believe in some version of the “American Dream.”
The what now? The American Dream! You know, that thing, where, even if you’re poor and discriminated against and have all the odds stacked against you, you can still just put your head down and work really hard and keep climbing that ladder until one day, absolutely exhausted, you look around and realize, I’m rich! Right.
The American Dream might have existed for a sliver of the population in the past (read: white, probably male), but it has been slowly receding, and in the wake of the Great Recession, the share of income going to workers is only 57%, down about 10 percentage points from 1974. And rather than the 15-hour work week that Keynes predicted back in the 1930s, families are actually working more hours in order to earn the income they need. Though women are working and earning more than in the past, men in the US have seen their wages dropping since the late ‘70s—by 1.4% for white men and 8% and 9% for Latin and black men, respectively.
Today’s economy is highly specialized, technological and skills-based; it requires continuous learning and the ability to acquire new skills through training and ongoing education. The problem is, in a society comprised of people who can barely stay afloat as it is, who has the time or money to keep up? Today in the US, workers at the top of the earnings and education distribution continue to see their pay increase, because they have the resources and the network to keep climbing the achievement ladder. But in a country that under-funds and devalues community colleges and other public education institutions, touting a “lifelong learning” mantra is, quite honestly, offensive.
Maybe I still haven’t convinced you—maybe you don’t see anything wrong with the way that the US and England and countless other countries continue to punishes their poor and reward their rich.
But doesn’t everyone want to be a better person?
With UBI, we gain time—to reeducate, explore, ask questions, and try new things. With a padding to cover our basic costs of living, we might be able to take a job we couldn’t have otherwise; we might be able to work because we want to, not because we have to. Doesn’t that sound like something that might put a little spring in your step?
So much of our stress would also be lifted if we had this extra bit of freedom and flexibility. One study in Canada shows a decrease in hospitalizations and fewer incidences of mental health issues when income security goes up. Mark Maslin, a professor of Earth System Science at University College London, also believes that the health of the environment would improve in a UBI economy, as priorities and consumption patterns change. UBI gives people income security, and let’s face it, income security makes us better people.
And before someone says something dumb like, we can’t afford it, let me just tell you that you’re wrong. In the United Kingdom, the cost of a full Universal Basic Income (which means all people would receive enough money from the government to reach the poverty level, without any kind of work), would be £67 billion per year, or 3.4% of the GDP. To put this into perspective, the UK currently spends around £93 billion every year giving subsidies and tax breaks to corporations.
It is well within the government’s reach to finance a basic income and still have over £20 billion kicking around for corporate subsidies. And perhaps if we all had a little extra pocket money, we’d have more time for learning, thinking, experimenting, maybe even starting businesses of our own, rather than simply joining one of the many big companies vying for our soul in exchange for a regular paycheck.
So, what do you think? I, for one, think it is high time we changed our priorities, got a little kinder, and started investing in our people—each and every one.
