'Money for everyone...' Photo: Photo: Petras Gagilas / flickr CC.
Money for everyone
Chris Stapenhurst is impressed by a persuasive argument for a citizen’s income
A citizen’s income (CI) is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income paid by the state to every individual as a right of citizenship in addition to other forms of income. Money for Everyone: Why we need a citizen’s income by Malcolm Torry demonstrates how such a policy can solve many of the problems with our present benefits system and answers key objections – such as how our government could afford this, or why money should be given to idle people and rich people.
The title, Money for Everyone: Why we need a citizen’s income, isn’t as compromising as my ‘Quakerliness’ would like, but the author writes to bring this debate from academia to the public sphere, and makes a strong case in favour so as to provoke more discussion. As it is, I find it hard to object: a CI would make means-tested benefits redundant whilst being much simpler to administer. It would also remove the stupidly high marginal deduction rates (limited to seventy-six per cent by universal credit) faced by means-tested benefit claimants.
Torry examines the consequences for economic efficiency, the labour market, enterprise, informal economic activity (for example, caring, volunteering), household composition, personal relationships, inequality and injustice of a CI. He also devotes chapters to the history of the benefits system, other CI around the world, affordability, political feasibility and, admirably, problems that a citizen’s income cannot be expected to solve. CI is inhibited because political advisers in HM Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions stand to lose from administrative simplification.
Friends should be particularly interested in a CI since we recognise that ‘we do not own the world’ and that the circumstances into which we are born, our natural talents, our capacity and motivation to work, and our collective wealth inherited from previous generations are all gifts of God’s grace; and, as such, we have no particular right to these goods. A CI effectively allows everyone to enjoy a part of this wealth unconditionally.
I found the continual heroism of the CI a bit repetitive, but this seems to be deserved. Money for Everyone: Why we need a citizen’s income forms the prescriptive wing of the debate popularised by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s Spirit Level and Danny Dorling’s Injustice. Friends who enjoyed those books, and certainly anyone with the remotest interest in social/economic policy, should be excited by this offering, especially those of us needing a reason to be optimistic. Despite my initial hesitancy, I have become thoroughly persuaded that this is the single most effective policy proposal to improve our society. I look forward to the response.
Money for Everyone: Why we need a citizen’s income by Malcolm Torry, Policy Press, 2013, ISBN: 9781447311256, £24.99.
