Why tradespeople, small business owners and the self-employed can benefit from UBI
The Spanish Government has committed to introducing a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This is a regular payment to all adult citizens intended to provide security and predictability to recipients. The first response of many hard working people is that this is just another example of idleness being rewarded.
But this is different. This is a citizens’ dividend for hardworking, entrepreneurial and inspirational people, including those who need some extra support. It’s for people who want to get ahead, but don’t have money from their parents to fall back on. Basic Income gives us certainty and stability. Unless we commit crime, it will always be paid. The importance of this is demonstrated by two stories from our family history.
In 1927, our great, great, great granddad Peter was working as a joiner at Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. in Walker. At the end of his shift, he had to work on insecure staging which carpenters were too busy to fix. Because Peter was paid a set price for the work, he would lose out if he had to wait. This would mean his family going hungry. He climbed the staging and it collapsed. He died from an infected wound because of the absence of decent healthcare before the NHS. He left behind a destitute family. That was a bad risk to take, but he had to take it because he had no money to fall back on.
In 1956, our granddad Tommy, was a gas fitter for the Gas Board. His foreman recognised his talent, skills and hard work and offered him a unique opportunity. If he resigned his job, he would be offered a monopoly on cooker repairs at the Gas Board yard. He would become self-employed – his own man. This would offer a higher income and a chance to expand. It was the opportunity to create a business that would give work, not just to him, but eventually to his son and other relatives.
But he had no family wealth to support him from his last wage to his first invoice. And with two growing kids, he simply couldn’t risk his kids going without food, so he turned the foreman down. Which responsible father could risk not feeding his family? For the rest of his life, he regretted not taking this risk and spent his last two decades fighting industrial-related diseases on a council estate that went from bad to worse. That was a good risk to take, but he couldn’t take it because he had no money to fall back on.
These aren’t just cases from history. These things still happen, every day and to so many hardworking people. Now, more than ever, tradespeople are subcontracted for price work. They take risks they shouldn’t. They perform less well than they know they can because they have to work as quickly as possible, even if it means cutting corners. But the biggest problem is that people in the trades are flogging themselves into the ground, with no possibility of things improving.
For younger workers, often on zero hours contracts, it is getting harder and harder to do what Tommy wished he’d done and make things better for their families. It’s just not possible to train or start businesses when you don’t know if you’ll have a roof over your head next week.
The irony is that some people do have a Basic Income: the descendants of the likes of Armstrong and Whitworth. They are the people who profited from Peter’s decades of poorly paid labour. They know they can take risks because they have their families’ wealth to fall back on.
That’s not just unfair, it’s also bad for our economy and society. It means that talented people in our communities are denied the opportunities that they have earned. How many good ideas and how many talented people would develop in our communities if people could take good risks? At a time of Pandemic-induced recession, introducing UBI may be the only means we have of supporting dynamism in the economy.
More about the author
Dr. Matthew Johnson
Dept: Politics, Philosophy and Religion - Lancaster University
My research interests broadly converge around the relationship between culture, public policy and wellbeing, leading me to examine such diverse topics as: Universal Basic Income and its effect on public health; national identity and austerity and their contribution to Brexit; and Widening Participation and Higher Education outreach.