A Universal Basic Income: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Early evidence suggests substantial health dividends

For four years in the mid-1970s an unusual experiment took place in the small Canadian town of Dauphin. Statistically significant benefits for those who took part included fewer physician contacts related to mental health and fewer hospital admissions for “accident and injury.” Mental health diagnoses in Dauphin also fell. Once the experiment ended, these public health benefits evaporated.1 What was the treatment being tested? It was what has become known as a basic income—a regular, unconditional payment made to each and every citizen. This ground breaking experiment, an early randomised trial in the social policy sphere, ran out of money before full statistical analysis after a loss of political interest.

The link between inequality and poor health outcomes is long established.2 The actual mechanisms behind that link are less understood. The data from the Dauphin study, re-examined by a team from the University of Manitoba in the 2000s, suggest there might be an association between income insecurity and poorer health.1 All adults in Dauphin earning below $13 800 (£11 000; €13 000) were eligible for the grant of $4800 a year. The researchers compared Dauphin with other similar towns and looked for relative improvements in outcomes using public health and schooling data from the time.

Recently, there have been increasing calls for dialogue on a universal basic income (UBI) from political parties, think tanks (including the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA)), civic activists, trade unions, and leading entrepreneurs such as Tesla chief executive Elon Musk. These calls are a response to growing income insecurity, some sense that welfare systems may be failing, and as a preparation for the potential effects of automation and artificial intelligence on employment prospects in industries that might be better served by machines.3 UBI-style pilots are planned in Finland, the Netherlands, and Canada as a potential answer to these questions and concerns.4

While the Dauphin study included just the poorest residents of one small city, if we assume that it indicates a causal link between extra cash and better health then three effects could have been in play. Firstly, the cash sum itself would have reduced economic inequality directly. Secondly, the unconditional nature of the payment could have reduced income insecurity. Thirdly, there is a positive social multiplier whereby positive behaviours associated with greater financial security tend to reinforce one another—for example, more teenagers staying on in school because they see their peers doing likewise. Taken together, these effects could mean that financial insecurity is a key vector through which inequality worsens health outcomes for the least advantaged. It is certainly a serviceable hypothesis.

Compass Online — Universal Basic Income: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

There are very strong arguments in favour of a UBI. Such a scheme would overcome many of the problems with the existing and increasingly complex, punitive and unpopular system of social security, which in multiple ways has become a weak tool for social protection but a strong tool for waste and the humiliation of those on the very lowest incomes. A UBI would provide a much more secure income base in an age of deepening economic and social insecurity and unpredictable work patterns.

It would offer much greater financial independence and freedom of choice for individuals between work and leisure, education and caring while recognizing the huge value of unpaid and voluntary work.

Central to the case for a UBI is the way it would help prepare us for a world in which the new technological revolution, driven by artificial intelligence and robotics, will, over time, transform the nature of work and the type and number of jobs. A UBI offers a powerful way of protecting all citizens from the great winds of change to be ushered in by the fourth industrial age, and of sharing the potentially massive productivity gains that it will bring

Posted Late 2016 — January 2017

Ontario Pilot Project Puts Universal Basic Income To The Test

“In Canada, Ontario is set to launch a C$25m (£15m) basic income pilot project this spring. In Scotland, local councils in Fife and Glasgow are looking into trial schemes that could launch in 2017, which would make them the first parts of the UK to experiment with universal basic income.”

Prince Edward Island, Canada: Legislature Agrees To Set Up Basic Income Guarantee Pilot

Indian Government Set To Endorse Giving All Its Citizens Free Money

Finland: Basic Income Experiment Authorized By Parliament

ITALY: Basic Income Pilot Launched In Italian Coastal City

Footnotes

(1) National Economic Security and Reformation Act/Global… etc. NESARA was a carefully-designed act of the American Congress, passed only by uncorrupted members and signed intro law by President Clinton.

Before it could be proclaimed from the World Trade Center at 10:00 am on Sept. 11, 2001, that complex was blown up by the alphabet agencies and rogue military units of the American government, aided by some foreign governments, the banking industry, some corporations, etc.