What is Universal Basic Income and Why does it Matter?
It's time to take the mid-week deep dive.
On December 16, 2021, mid-Covid meltdown, identical bills were introduced to Canada’s Senate and House of Commons, instructing ministers to develop a national framework for the introduction of a Livable Basic Income for everyone living in Canada: citizens, residents, temporary workers, and refugee claimants alike. Those bills were C-223, and S-223.
As you can see below, the preamble (which sets the context for a bill) laid out the justification for Livable Basic Income. The aim is to ‘eradicate poverty’, to promote ‘income equality’ and to raise health and education outcomes.
Notably, it also states that Livable Basic Income will protect the most vulnerable in society “while facilitating the transition to an economy that responds to the climate crisis and other current major challenges.”
What a weird thing to say, don’t you think? Is our current economy not able to respond to climate crises (should they ever arise) and other major challenges? And while we’re on the subject, what are those ‘other current major challenges’, exactly?
That sentence is the key to understanding Universal Basic Income and why it’s now being rolled out by Western governments worldwide. But we’ll get to that. Here’s that preamble:
The rest of the bill deals merely with the logistics: it instructs the minister to develop the framework for all residents of Canada over the age of 17, details who he or she must consult with in setting out the framework (departments of health, social development, and disability, indigenous leaders, etc), and sets four parameters for the framework. It must decide how much money is to be given and how often; create national health standards to complement the basic income; ensure there are no prerequisites for receiving payments, such as being in work or education; and to ensure that disabled people won’t be worse off on the basic income. It also instructs the minister to deliver their framework within one year of the bill becoming an Act of Parliament (which hasn’t happened yet).
So that’s the ‘mainstream’ take on this: it’s nothing, it’s innocent, it’s merely a plan to ensure no one lives below the poverty line. That’s what the media will tell you, when people start to wonder out loud what this is all about.
But, just to be clear, what we’re looking at here is a bill which, if passed, will instruct Canada’s Minister of Finance to put in place a central pillar of the economic framework required for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset to be rolled out in Canada.
And not just Canada. The UN is backing it. Pope Francis wants to see it rolled out globally. These are the countries currently looking at rolling out Universal Basic Income. Some already have pilot projects up and running. See if you can spot a pattern here:
So what are we actually dealing with here?
What is a Livable or Universal Basic Income (UBI)?
Why is it being used to facilitate the transition to a new economy? What are the ‘challenges’, climate and otherwise, that our current economy can’t respond to in its current form?
What will the new economy be?
How will UBI be funded?
And, of course, the elephant in the room: can’t this all be tied to social credit?
All these questions and more will be answered in this, the first of our new Midweek Deep Dives, brought you to by How to Survive the Apocalypse.
Let’s start at the very beginning, with a definition.
What is Universal Basic Income (UBI)?
The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)**, which lobbies for global adoption of UBI, defines it as follows:
“A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.”
According to BIEN, “Basic Income has the following five characeristics [sic]:
Periodic: it is paid at regular intervals (for example every month), not as a one-off grant.
Cash payment: it is paid in an appropriate medium of exchange, allowing those who receive it to decide what they spend it on. It is not, therefore, paid either in kind (such as food or services) or in vouchers dedicated to a specific use. [Note, it is not necessarily cash. More likely it will be a digital deposit in a bank account]
Individual: it is paid on an individual basis—and not, for instance, to households.
Universal: it is paid to all.
Unconditional: it is paid without means test and without a requirement to work or to demonstrate willingness-to-work.”
The idea here is that the payment will be set just above the poverty line. All adults will receive it, and parents or guardians will get extra for each child in the household, so no-one in society will be below the poverty line. Those who don’t work for whatever reason (like, for example, automation having destroyed their industry and career prospects), will have enough to live on, and those who do work can earn more without being penalised.
The idea has been around for decades now, and in principle is not terrible. Until now, it was mostly championed by people on the right who wanted to solve the problem of welfare dependency. Milton Friedman floated the idea all the way back in 1968, in the form of a negative income tax:
It also shares characteristics with Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit payments. That policy was introduced in the UK by the coalition government in 2010, having been first outlined as a concept the year before in a paper titled Dynamic Benefits, published by Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice.
Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader, spent time in some of the poorest sink estates in Britain examining how the benefits system traps people in poverty by disincentivising work. Under the old system, money earned through work was deducted from welfare payments making claimants no better off – and often significantly worse off – if they chose to work. Universal Credit aimed to taper deductions, so that welfare recipients could keep more of the money they earned by moving into work.
But there were problems. Duncan-Smith’s idea, while well meaning, has not delivered on its promise. According to the House of Commons Library, some 14.4million people in the UK are currently living in poverty, defined as an income that is less than 60% of the median. Millions of those people can’t afford the basics in life.
In addition, the current welfare system requires a vast bureaucracy required to means-test welfare recipients. Governments have bad track records with projects requiring large computer systems and databases.
Universal Basic Income deals with these problems by setting a universal base rate of living, un-means-tested. All that would be essentially fine in a capitalist economy such as ours, in which we’ve collectively agreed that mass welfare systems are the best way to provide a safety net to the bottom layer of society, while still offering ample opportunity for work and wealth creation to everyone else.
But – as the Canadian bill indicates – we are leaving our current economy behind and moving to something new. Something much more… managed.
**A quick aside on BEIN’s funding. Between 2018 and 2021, BIEN, which is registered as a charity in the UK, had an annual income ranging between just £2,451 and £12,628. Given that the country operates in 34 different countries, including Russia, Malawi, Turkey and Taiwan, they must be masters of efficiency, which is perhaps why in 2022 their income jumped to £54,014. A quick look at their accounts reveals that at least £47,511.60 of this came in the form of a grant from the Mustardseed Trust. The grant was awarded so that BEIN could set up regional hubs in Africa to promote UBI.
What is the Mustardseed Trust? It is another British charity set up for philanthropic purposes by Bela and Ellen Hatvany. Their daughter-in-law Lauren Hatvany took a role as Managing Director. The Trust states on its website that its purpose is to create “A world in which all beings live in partnership with the web of life for all to thrive. We work towards a world where ecosystems are restored, money systems serve the well-being, and human relation systems cultivate partnerships rather than domination.” So, Communism.
If you’re wondering who the Hatvanys are, Bela Hatvany is listed on Wikipedia as “a pioneer in the automation of libraries and the information industry,” and a “co-founder of the touch screen”.
In December 2013, Hatvany collaborated with like-minded others to launch 'The Change Enquiry', with a mission to focus on “how to shift from combative, competitive, dominating, patriarchal culture to a culture of harmonization, collaboration, and listening for what connects us.” (Hold that thought – we’ll be returning to this theme later). One of their enquiries was into how humanity could “create a new economy which eradicates the fear that surrounds money.” I don’t know what that means. I wonder if anyone does.
Why is Universal Basic Income being used to facilitate the transition to a new economy?
There are a number of reasons why the economy is now changing. The World Economic Forum, an advocate of Universal Basic Income, sets out some of them:
“Rising inequality, decades of stagnant wages, the transformation of lifelong careers into sub-hourly tasks, exponentially advancing technology like robots and deep neural networks increasingly capable of replacing potentially half of all human labour, world-changing events like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump – all of these and more are pointing to the need to start permanently guaranteeing everyone at least some income.”
Brexit and Donald Trump, huh? Why would the election of Donald Trump require a new economy?
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