Jan 022017

Basic Income:

Progressive Dreams Meet Neoliberal Realities

John Clarke


Raise the Rates



Neoliberal Version





Progressive Dreams

I said previously that proposals for redistributive or transformative models of BI are generally marked by a tendency to focus on the desirability of what is being advanced while paying much less attention to actual prospects for implementation. I’ve yet to see, quite bluntly, any serious attempt to assess what stands in the way of a progressive BI and what can be done to bring it into existence. It simply isn’t enough to explain how just and fair a given model would be if it could be adopted. In order to credibly advance BI as the solution, there are some questions that must be settled.






British Labour Party and BI




The struggle to expand and improve public services would have to, of course, be linked to workers’ struggles for living wages, workplace rights and real compensation for injured workers. Beyond this, let’s challenge as much as we can the ‘business decisions’ that deplete resources, pollute and threaten us with ecological disaster.




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 Posted by at 21:14

  6 Responses to “The potential reality of basic income schemes”

  1. I am against BI as it is a statist concept. The state is an instrument that is used by the financial/political elite to milk the wealth producing classes and BI will just reinforce and streamline that process. Statists see the world from a left/right dichotomy and miss entirely its real purpose i.e. the wealth stripping of the productive classes. Wealth stripping results from higher taxes from the better off producers and asset stripping of the poor which in turn makes them more dependent on the taxes of others. A better solution would be the implementation of dynasty funds which are held by individual family dynasties and the income generated from them used when needed to defray the costs of welfare for individuals within a family dynasty. Dynasty funds would be called “rolling dynasty trusts” in trust law and would be funded (if any individual so wishes) by pensions savings into the dynasty fund. Instead of buying an annuity an indididual simply takes the income generated by the fund and passes on the capital to his heirs dynasty funds on death. Currently the annuity is simply a means for the financial classes to asset strip the wealth producers and ensure they stay poor.

    Under this system the people who produce the wealth keep the wealth and protect their descendants from the banker controlled state and other wealth producers from claims being made against them.

  2. Perhaps Universal Credit is the step towards Basic Income but then Basic Income is not means tested.
    Does Universal Credit exist to encourage zero hour contracts with small top ups to those that lack job security?

    Does this not remove the incentive to ensure that employers pay the living wage?

    Disabled people who were on lower rate ESA are or are being transferred onto UC. This makes scrutiny of our tax directly linked to HMRC transparent!

    This makes sure that the poor pay their taxes!

    But what about the rich? Perhaps to ensure that they pay their taxes they should also be paid Basic Income using the Universal Credit scheme. This means that their hourly income can come under scrutiny and the tax that they pay can contribute to a Basic Income for all. They will not suffer as they will also receive their basic income – Anything they earn above that they can keep after they have paid their taxes.

  3. Segal has written a plan for a basic income pilot project for Ontario, which he expects will go ahead next year. The plan proposes that those aged 18 to 65, who are living under the low-income poverty line in Ontario, earn a basic income of at least $1,320 a month. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES WOULD RECEIVE $500 MORE. [emphasis mine to highlight the inequity of next year’s ESA WRAG cuts in Britain]

    Segal said in the pilot a random selection of welfare and disability payment recipients would be selected, along with some whole communities. In that way the impact on individuals and whole communities could be tracked.

    Excerpted from: ‘A rare opportunity’ for basic income pilot project on P.E.I. – Prince Edward Island – CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-basic-income-high-segal-1.3863517.

  4. BI should be universal for every Canadian citizen over the age of 18, and be based on the cost of living in different areas in the country; ie. the cost of living in Nunavut is much higher than elsewhere.

  5. So, it is possible to struggle for expanded and improved public services, a ‘living income’ and an end to the moral policing of welfare systems, but not to struggle for a basic income which provides all these things – because that, allegedly, means making peace with neo-liberalism. Certainly we should examine the Ontario proposals, and any others that come up, critically. Certainly we should be aware of BI-like proposals from the libertarian right, like Murray’s (which is worse even than John Clarke says being based on household, not individual, incomes). But I remain confused as to why, in the class struggle over welfare, we must rigorously exclude any version of universality from our alternative vision. I fail to understand why supporting the principle of BI necessarily involves abandoning struggles for social housing and free social care. Why isn’t any other system of reformed welfare provision we might advocate for also “nothing more than the means to be a customer in an unjust society that decides what is for sale”. There is no post capitalist capitalism as John rigorously points out but apparently reforms within capitalism are still possible; just not this one. So why is BI so uniquely wrong? Why does every tentative BI proposal require such comprehensive denunciation (this is by no means the first attempt to corrall such an unruly idea). One answer I am driven to, perhaps in an excess of cynicism perhaps not, is that opposition to BI reflects the class interests of those elements of the left who work, critically of course, in or around the sections of the state involved in welfare provision (interest declared – so did I until recently). Anyway, just a thought.

    • Having written the article, I don’t want to take liberties by wading in on the discussion too many times. However, Richard raises some important points that I think I need to answer. Firstly, on the question of why I think it’s valid to try to defend and improve present public services while I reject BI. It is a question of how best to take up defensive struggles and even win some reforms within capitalism. The ideas I put forward at the end of the piece were meant to suggest how we could shape demands and campaigns and were also in response to John McDonnell’s favourable view of BI. I’m very aware of the fact that winning victories under the neoliberal order is very tough and keeping what you’ve won even tougher. Even with much more powerful unions and social movements in place or a Corbyn Government with a greatly improved PLP, I would say that a new Keynesian Golden Age is not possible. So, I wasn’t trying to smuggle in my own brand of ‘post capitalist capitalism.’ However, I was pointing to the kinds of places we could draw lines and win victories and I do think that the universal payment is a notion that, in practice, serves the interests of neoliberal attack rather than any progressive alternatives. It’s not just, as Richard suggests, that there are some fringe ‘BI-like proposals from the libertarian right’ that we should be aware of but can dismiss. Guy Standing of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) just did an interview with CBC Radio (see link below). Standing advances all his rosy notions of ’emancipatory’ BI and candidly admits that he is in contact with the right wing Finnish Government and those behind the Ontario pilot. He helped to create the model in India that Modi is picking up on and he tells us that he will soon be off to Davos because the world’s richest and most evil bastards want to hear about BI at their annual gathering. The grandees of global capitalism are looking very seriously at BI and I think this is for the reasons I set out. It provides them with a measure of legitimacy. It, as Standing puts it, ‘removes disincentives to low wage work’. It also, provides a payment that can be used to replace public services. As the Finnish Government tests BI, it is also privatising the Country’s employment services.

      Finally and quickly, our organisation is not linked to any interests around welfare provision that Richard speaks of, except in that we fight those systems, so that’s not what’s motivating us in this debate. In any event, I propose we work for secure benefit systems without the scrutiny and regulation that exists at present. If this meant some functions carried out within the welfare state systems came to an end, there are a lot more useful things for these workers to be doing and no one needs to lose their job.


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