Spotted by Mombers in The Guardian:
You can see the attractions of a basic income for Silicon Valley. Firms such as Uber, whose drivers are classified as self-employed “partners” rely on this risk-shift model. Even as Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, heaps praise on a basic income, the tech giant does all in its legal power to avoid tax and dodge paying its fair share towards the social infrastructure it relies on.
The left must not allow itself to be seduced. A basic income is a distraction from these core issues of economic power; a radical-sounding excuse to look the other way from the less glamorous, more complex question of how to ensure labor market rights are properly enforced. Accepting a deterioration in employment rights and working conditions in exchange for a basic income could be dangerously counterproductive.
The tax credits that function as income top-ups for people in low-paid work have steadily been eroded by Conservative chancellors over eight years. Labour rights are more future proof: it’s impossible to imagine the government being able to cut statutory maternity leave, the minimum wage or limits on the working week without a much tougher fight – although if they are not properly enforced these rights can end up meaning little in practice for workers with unscrupulous employers.
The left will have to pick its battles. It must focus on winning the right to a decently paid job for all, not sell out by extolling a basic income as a panacea for the ills of the modern labor market. It must choose the fight for power, not the fight for a dribble of cash.
Jeez, that's the diagonal comparison from Hell.
The fair comparison is, would a Citizen's Income "work" better than the current welfare system? The answer depends on what you think the exact point of a welfare system is and what is wrong with the current one, but the answer is "Yes of course".
This is quite a separate topic from employment rights; working hours; the minimum wage; the taxation of employment income; improving training and re-training to help people get and keep a job; and/or how to deal with monopolies. We have to deal with those in parallel. Nobody said that we have to "accept a deterioration in employment rights and working conditions in exchange for a basic income", that's utter horseshit.
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