Chris Goulden at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation betrays his deliberate lack of understanding.
He lists the main pro's and then plucks some con's out of thin air:
A citizen’s income would require two big principles to be accepted and supported by the public, namely that:
1. Everyone should get a baseline level of state financial support, even if they choose not to do anything to try to earn money for themselves.
2. The basic marginal tax rate should be much higher than it is now, otherwise almost everybody’s net income from the state would rise, and there is no obvious way to finance this. (Some do not assume UBI must be paid for through income tax and suggest a wealth / carbon tax instead, or bigger cuts to state spending elsewhere, for example. None of these are easy options either).
Most politicians in the UK (or in England at least) are likely to regard both of the above as unacceptable to voters - a view supported by long-standing evidence on public attitudes to welfare.
3. A third objection relates to support for housing (and other) costs. For UBI to achieve its goal of removing the complexity and disincentives involved in means-testing, it would also need to replace support for housing costs. But with largely market-based rents, it would not be easy to include a simple rent element in a UBI payment without creating shortfalls for some or large surpluses for others. The same applies to means-tested childcare support. This counter-argument is strong – arguably public attitudes towards benefits and taxation could change but differing needs will not.
4. So, a central problem is that advocates of UBI either unconsciously or wilfully fail to acknowledge that the current system is designed to provide specific payments for people in specific circumstances (e.g. caring, disability, high housing costs, high childcare costs). If you sweep all of that away, you either have to level up, giving a massive boost to people without those specific needs (at huge cost), or you create a fall in income for those with them. Neither is remotely acceptable in any real world.
1. Agreed.
2. Is complete crap. The actual effective tax rate for claimants (i.e. about half the population, if you include Tax Credits) i.e. the total of PAYE deducted AND means tested benefit withdrawal is stupendously high would fall considerably. There is no need to increase taxation at all, and certainly not the basic rate of tax, that's basic maths.
As to "unacceptable" to voters, this is not an argument AGAINST simplifying and harmonising welfare and tax systems, it is an argument FOR educating voters. He is simply providing the brain dead with ammunition.
3. Housing related welfare can be kept running in parallel for the time being. Welfare for landowners is bad; means testing is bad, but needs must. Saying that "we have to means testing housing relating welfare, therefore we must also means-test non-housing related welfare" is just crap logic, you might as well go on to say we should means test non-cash benefits (state schools, NHS, the right to vote or use a public library etc).
He clearly knows bugger all about "means-tested childcare support". There's the savagely means tested Childcare element of Tax Credits (progressive) and the equal and opposite, weird and wonderful tax breaks for employer payments (regressive); as well as Free Early Education vouchers and kids who get a 'free' Kindergarten place at a state school (flat rate and non-means tested). These all the actual cash amount/value that most parents get - regardless of the scheme(s) they benefit from - is pretty close to £90 per week per child
4. He then lists things which Citizen's Income proponents have always said should be left completely outside the system and continue to run in parallel (disability, which should be transferred to NHS budget anyway, and housing costs). We dealt with housing and childcare costs above; he mentions them twice just to make his list appear longer. He clearly doesn't know about "caring" either. I assume he means "Carer's Allowance" which is just another reason for paying people Income Support by another name, so recipients thereof would be better off with a Citizen's Income (which would be pitched at the same £ amount as Income Support to start off with)
Debate Magazine
