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Universal Basic Income: a balanced view
What to make of the concept loved and loathed in equal measure by left and right? After the coronavirus it is time to take a less ideological and more realistic approach to UBI, argues BERT SCHOUWENBURG
UBI Universal Basic Income
Trump’s economic adviser has exposed the actual strategy: forcing other countries to provide financial support for US world hegemony
Activist Angie Zelter has been arrested more than a hundred times. She’s not stopping now, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Natalia Marques looks at last week's ruling that Khalil can be deported and its implications
We are not here to advocate for the arms industry or its CEOs, writes STEVE HANDFORD, and that means we must take a stand against the government’s spending on war
Educators must fight for an inclusive, creative system that values all children
Although our sector is hearing better things from the current government, the recognition that what we do is education in its own right, rather than just childcare, is still not reflected in policy, writes LUCY COLEMAN
THE economic shutdown occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing job losses have rekindled enthusiasm for the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI), a concept that manages to divide opinion not only between left and right, but within left and right circles too. Some of the reasons given for opposing UBI can actually be deployed in its favour, such is the range of positions adopted by its supporters and detractors.
In order to properly analyse UBI, it is important to define exactly what it is and in doing so dispel some of the myths surrounding it. Sometimes referred to as a “citizen’s income,” UBI is a flat-rate benefit paid to all, ideally at an amount equivalent to or greater than the prevailing poverty line, sufficient for one person to live on.
It would replace all means-tested benefits such as the hated universal credit but would leave in situ other material benefits related to housing, education and health. It is not, as one Morning Star correspondent erroneously claimed, the neoliberal scheme supported by Milton Friedman who posited the idea of negative income tax as a means of abolishing all welfare payments.
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