Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland

[suffragette]

Source: The Guardian

Scotland looks set to be the first part of the UK to pilot a basic income for every citizen, as councils in Fife and Glasgow investigate trial schemes in 2017.

“Like a lot of people, I was interested in the idea but never completely convinced,” he said. But working as Labour’s anti-poverty lead on the council, Kerr says that he “kept coming back to the basic income."

~~~

Kerr sees the basic income as a way of simplifying the UK’s byzantine welfare system. “But it is also about solidarity: it says that everyone is valued and the government will support you. It changes the relationship between the individual and the state.”

The concept of a universal basic income revolves around the idea of offering every individual, regardless of existing welfare benefits or earned income, a non-conditional flat-rate payment, with any income earned above that taxed progressively. The intention is to provide a basic economic platform on which people can build their lives, whether they choose to earn, learn, care or set up a business.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/01/universal-basic-income-trials-being-considered-in-scotland

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Starting to look like an idea whose time has arrived.

[JCanete]

1. nice! I hope this works out.With the onset of automation and ai, we're looking at a fast shrinking

job market, and we're going to need to start looking at these options.

[suffragette]

4. Very good point and completely agree.

[TexasBushwhacker]

20. But since corporations will be the beneficiaries of automation

they will have to be the ones to pay for the UBI. We already have so much resistance here to raising corporate income taxes, I just don't know how it would all work out. Perhaps we need an alternative minimum tax for corporations.

[snort]

2. +1 KnR

[suffragette]

5. Thank you for your response.

[DonCoquixote]

3. The silver lining of brexit

is that the Celtic side of the UK may decide to give London the heave ho and join the EU, or failing that, get some real concessions and autonomy, not yesterday's dry dogbones. never forget the only reason Scotland did nto vote for independence was that they wanted to stay in the EU, now that England has left the proverbial band to go Solo, Scotland may very well join Europe in full.

[suffragette]

6. Interesting point. Break up with EU might mean break up of UK.

[Jimbo101]

7. "Enlightened" countries will do this

But I fear in the U.S. the vultures will steal and hoard what they can, leaving the rest of us to live in a 3rd world dystopia.

[suffragette]

10. That's certainly where we are right now. And I agree, it's likely to get worse before it

Gets better.

I hope we can someday get better.

[supernova]

8. Following with avid interest

Looking forward to the results of this experiment.

I really to think BI will be the way forward. I cringe at all the "Bring Back Jobs" talk in our politics. It won't ever be what it was post WWII. With BI we can go on and evolve into other areas of interest and productivity.

[suffragette]

9. Yes, the reality is some of those industries will never return, at least not in the way they

were before.

Development of new approaches and new systems is vital. With that will come new employment and productivity, probably in ways we can't anticipate or predict currently.

We need to think and speak of this as a foundation rather than a safety net, to build up society rather than a precarious landing for these who fall down. It's a major shift in thinking and approach.

[dhill926]

11. I do like this idea...

very interested to see how it plays out...

[suffragette]

15. Me, too. Will definitely be watching for more news on it.

[TomCADem]

12. The Atlantic - The Conservative Case for a Guaranteed Basic Income

Many Republicans have also embraced a universal basic income idea where the government simply cuts checks to Americans as a sort of individual block grant and, in return, cut all federal and state benefits for low-income Americans, which could include Medicare and Social Security.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/

Last week, my colleague David Frum argued that conservative welfare reformers need to focus on simplification. As a young crop of conservative policymakers announce a range of proposals, there’s some movement in that direction. Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s plan would move most of America’s existing welfare funding into a single “flex-fund” to be disbursed to the states. Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, partly inspired by the “universal credit” reforms of Britain’s Conservative government, proposes allowing states to combine different forms of federal anti-poverty funding—food stamps, housing assistance, and more—into a single funding stream. In a recent speech about fighting poverty, Utah Senator Mike Lee told the Heritage Foundation, “There’s no reason the federal government should maintain 79 different means-tested programs.”

Meanwhile, the intellectual wing of reform conservatism likes these plans because they reduce government and offer citizens more control, at least in theory. Yuval Levin, one of the authors of the reform-conservatism manifesto Room to Grow, has praised Ryan’s plan, saying it would “give people more resources and authority and greater freedom to find new and more effective ways up from poverty.” Liberal wonks, on the other hand, have claimed it’s actually a paternalistic program at odds with the traditional Republican desire for less-intrusive government, since it relies on providers who make decisions for beneficiaries.

In any case, these ideas are circumscribed by traditional boundaries. Neither is a truly radical small-government idea alternative. But one idea that Frum highlighted is more radical: a guaranteed basic income, otherwise known as just giving people money.

The idea isn’t new. As Frum notes, Friederich Hayek endorsed it. In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.” In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried to pass a version of Friedman’s plan a few years later, and his Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern, also suggested a guaranteed annual income.

[suffragette]

16. Wow. Thanks for this! Have to watch out for "means-tested" or similar conditional terms.

Also differentiate from Social Security so it can't serve as a sneaky gateway to cut those benefits here.

The article I posted also noted some Conservative support there for this.

[ileus]

13. If we could get this in the next 10 years I could live off it until retirement.

We need to work toward this...

10 years from now I'd be 56, house paid off and ready to retire. So I could draw this for 11 years and then retire with my pension and SS.

I need this to be reality.

[Yupster]

14. I'm pretty close to retirement too

I think I would take up this offer and coast for a few years.

[ileus]

17. Yeah I could do it now 2 kids soon to be in college and

several years left on the mortgage, but I'd get out of the workforce and let someone else have the position in about 10 or 12 years.

[KittyWampus]

18. It should be linked with public profit-sharing in large corporations.

[suffragette]

22. Interesting. How do you envision that process?

[tclambert]

19. When driverless trucks take over the trucking industry, and other robotic systems take over

most every other job, we're going to need this. "Working class people" is a dying idea. How are people gonna make a living when the machines take over the job market? Guaranteed basic income, or Social Security for All, is an idea that must come.

[killbotfactory]

21. People don't understand that automation and AI are coming for almost every job

It ain't just burger-flippers or the trucking industry. It's far too easy to for people dismiss those who have jobs that don't require higher education.

White collar workers won't know what hit them.

When they have to navigate our terrible welfare system to (sort of) make ends meet they'll want to blow their brains out.

Maybe then there will be the political will to establish a basic universal income, but I think the powerful and wealthy will be far to eager to just let us rot.

[suffragette]

23. Great points!