Pilots and their foundations
Post by ~ Jason Leman
The Sheffield UBI Lab proposal for pilots includes three different models of a Universal Basic Income for testing. Let’s call these ‘The Tweak’, ‘The Top-Up’, and ‘The Transformation’.
I’ll get onto what these different models are in a moment. However, as has been covered in this blog previously, we need to have foundations underlying our approach to a UBI. This blog explores the reasoning underpinning our pilot proposals, from moral principles through to research priorities.
Without principles to guide us, a UBI becomes an irretrievably wooly policy, being all things to all people. It’s great when looking for broad support to have something so undefined, but useless when it comes to gaining actual political movement. A ‘UBI’ could be anything from a scheme funded from a small directed tax that gives 50 pence a week to a specific age group, to a redistribution of income so large it effectively removes the current distinction between someone doing paid work and a welfare claimant.
The implied outcomes for society are massively different. Therefore, when we talk about UBI. We need to be clear about the ‘what’ and ‘why’, even if we leave arguments about the ‘how’ to further discussion.
After a round of seminars and debate, our pilot proposals have three key underlying moral principles:
Fair - protecting basic human rights;
Efficient - not imposing overly burdensome bureaucracy;
Democratic - enabling people to have more say over their lives.
These principles are open to a level of contest about, for example, which human rights are protected and the implications for taxation and spending. Because of this contestation, the final principle, of being democratic, is one that needs to be expressed through both the design and implementation of a UBI.
Having set our ground rules, we can now move to look at how the pilots should be structured. The assumed benefits of a UBI are sometimes narrowly politically defined, but this makes no sense for a research programme. Our pilots look to test a wide range of impacts upon:
Activity - what people are doing;
Wellbeing - how people feel about their lives;
Relationships - how people are with others;
Place - how people relate to the world around them.
To explore these, we need pilots capable of capturing a wide range of evidence. We also look to study aspects of UBI that have not been extensively explored within similar contexts. For this reason, where possible, our pilots look to:
Have enough people involved so that we can measure a range of effects over a timescale of 2-3 years;
Use mixed-methods approaches, from free-ranging personal diaries to closed interviews;
Study the impact of UBI on communities, not just individuals;
Explore the discourse and discussion around moving to a UBI.
Having set out the moral foundations and research priorities for the pilots, let's look at the summary for each and the specific reasoning behind their design.
‘The Tweak’
The Tweak would remove the conditions from a specific set of employment-related illness and disability benefits and these benefits would become a basic income that ill or disabled people would receive, regardless of whether they were working, their income or their savings. The reasoning behind this pilot proposal is that it would:
remove means testing and administrative sanctions that have been found to harm mental and physical health;
simplify the system and make it more efficient for people who are disabled;
enable people to move into and out of work, or undertake self-employment, without risking losing support;
provide wide evidence on the impacts of these changes for individuals and the bureaucracy that aims to support them.
‘The Top-Up’
The Top-Up would be a flat-rate payment made to all citizens, as it would be funded from a Sovereign Wealth Fund or similar. This would be on the order of £130 per month, paid to a whole community at the pilot stage. The reasoning behind this pilot proposal is that it would:
be simple and efficient to administrate;
provide a level of support that has been found to reduce poverty and inequality;
be paid at an individual level, to those in work and outside it, giving greater financial control;
pilot the scheme on a whole community, so that evidence on impact to both individuals and whole neighbourhoods can be gained.
‘The Transformation’
The Transformation would largely replace the current benefits system, with taxation changes equivalent to increasing income tax by 20 percentage points and abolishing the personal tax allowance. The pilot would involve a whole community, with a standard payment for working-age adults of £6,000, £10,300 for pensioners, and £5,700 for children. Disabled people would receive additional premiums equivalent to those in the current system.
The reasoning behind this pilot proposal is that it would:
be more efficient than the current means tested and conditional system;
provide a level of support that implies reductions in household poverty by approximately 40% and of child poverty by around 70%;
be paid at an individual level, to those in work and outside it, giving greater financial control;
pilot the scheme on a whole community, so that evidence can be gained on the impact to individuals, neighbourhoods and the bureaucracy that aims to support them.
These UBI pilots aim to explore a society that is fairer, with a less burdensome bureaucracy, and each person having more say over their own lives. They are designed to do so in a way that will gather a range of evidence that can inform the social scientific and political debate. They are also part of a wider debate democratic debate about how our benefit and taxation system works, and the social contract between individual and society.
Feedback is always welcome! Come along to one of our meetings or get in touch.
More about the author
Jason Leman - Sheffield Equality Group
Sheffield Equality Group is an autonomous group affiliated to The Equality Trust, which aims to reduce the gap between rich and poor in the city of Sheffield. We argue for this because research finds this will create a better society.