Monday 28 June 2021

To each according to need...

 

In the last few weeks, the Conservatives-in-Wales have turned their faux anger on the Welsh Government’s proposal to trial a Universal Basic Income in Wales, with their Finance spokesperson telling us that it would hand money to the wealthy and the MS for Aberconwy adding that it’s a step towards Wales becoming a communist state. They succeed only in demonstrating how utterly clueless they are. There’s nothing new about the idea of a UBI – in one form or another, the idea has been floating around for the last 4 or 5 centuries. And there’s nothing particularly left-wing about the idea either; there are some good right-wing arguments in favour as well.

It’s true, though, that in broad terns, the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ approach the idea from different perspectives. I can sort of see how Finch-Saunders almost has half a point about the relationship with communism. But only almost, and only half. Marx did indeed utter the phrase “…to each according to his needs”, implying that goods and services should be distributed on the basis of need rather than ability to pay, something which is anathema to modern-day Tories. It was, though, based on the questionable assumption that a developed economy could produce such an abundance of good and services that there would be no need to ration them on price (which is the basis on which capitalism works). And the first part of Marx’ phrase is omitted, because he also assumed that all in society would be making a contribution, or as he put it: “From each according to his ability”. It’s an important caveat.

From a more ‘left-leaning’ perspective, UBI is about ensuring that society provides at least the basics for all its members, and therefore inherently conveys a sense of what ‘society’ is or should be. Supporters of UBI who lean to the right tend to see it more in terms of simplicity and efficiency. A single fixed payment to everyone gets rid entirely of an overcomplicated benefits system and all the bureaucracy associated with it. (And if the same sum is also paid to pensioners, it removes another over-complicated system and the costs of administering it.) It’s true that it also involves the state paying money to millionaires, but that’s a complete red herring; a progressive tax system on all income over and above the level of UBI would mean that the wealthy simply pay more tax. And I very much doubt that the suggested target group for the Welsh trial – care leavers – contains a large number of millionaires.

Whether UBI discourages people from seeking work or not is an open question. Freed of the need to work in order to pay for food, shelter etc., there may well be some who will decide not to work at all, but then there are some who do that at present anyway. They’re more of an exception than the media would have us believe, though: most people living on benefits are either unable to work, or unable to find suitable work, rather than have taken a positive decision not to bother. It depends to a very large extent on how the level of UBI is set and how ‘basic needs’ are defined, but most people’s ‘wants’ go way beyond their ‘needs’. UBI could equally increase the incentive to find work for people freed of the daily worry about how to meet the basic costs of simply staying alive.

The bigger concerns with the proposed pilot in Wales are firstly its necessarily limited scope (given the lack of power of the Senedd) and secondly that it is being viewed as a way of simplifying the benefits system for the target group. Not only does that look more like a conservative argument for UBI, it is also likely to be of limited use in judging whether it should, indeed, become truly ‘universal’. It’s in danger of being a trial which contains the seeds of its own destruction, to adapt another of Marx’ sayings.

3 comments:

Jonathan said...

OK, avoiding the left v right trigger...
Get rid of overcomplicated system - yes, simplification is good
A limited experiment on care leavers - yes, hard data would be good (if not spun!)

Couple of questions
(1) What is the next cohort after care-leavers? I suspect that there is very large cohort out there, who have a genuine predicament with 'work/life balance' ie women. I have a theory that this cohort is "submerged" ie is not vocal or open and even self-concealing but a very significant unseen political current, a sort of Gulf Stream. For example, I think the US Democrats have ridden this stream in using Covid as too good an emergency to waste and are slipping in UBI ie "Stimulus Checks" exactly because of this.
Do you agree you have to keep control on the experiment? Might it not escape from the lab?

(2) Freed of the need to work in order to pay for food, shelter etc., there may well be some who will decide not to work at all, but then there are some who do that at present anyway. They’re more of an exception than the media would have us believe, though: most people living on benefits are either unable to work, or unable to find suitable work, rather than have taken a positive decision not to bother. It depends to a very large extent on how the level of UBI is set and how ‘basic needs’ are defined, but most people’s ‘wants’ go way beyond their ‘needs’."
Ok, this will be tested in the experiment. And lets hope that the results are not spun, that any downside is acknowledged as well as any upside. I get it that this particular social experiment (like feminism) is based on some fact but also simple hope and faith and may not work 100%. Again, don't we need to be sure that this does not turn out like Brexit ie loudly trumpeted as a success by proponents, with the evidence of our eyes pointing the other way?

"Marx...assumed that all in society would be making a contribution." Doesn't Wales have a particular problem here? To be a net contributor in the UK you have to earn over about £67k pa, I believe. Not many in Wales do. Interesting question whether Members of the Senedd are in fact net contributors, or takers.
Doesn't Wales have the problem that noone really wants to increase the tax base in Wales, as we will need, not enough to roll their sleeves up anyway? Isn't it just too easy to get the money from London? Isn't rot or loss of dynamism going to be a particular danger in Wales?

John Dixon said...

Jonathan,

I agree that there is a danger that the results will be 'spun', although I suspect that the greater danger is that there will be no agreed definition of what 'success' looks like, leaving those ideologically predisposed to support the idea claiming success whilst those ideologically predisposed to oppose it claim failure.

On your first question, I'd turn that round completely, and ask whether any trial of 'universal' basic income on a limited group or groups can ever really trial the idea in a fully meaningful way, because by definition such an approach is not 'universal'. It seems to me that trialling it in a defined geographical area would be a better approach; identifying target groups looks more like treating it as a replacement for benefits. More of a 'rightist' perspective than a 'leftist' one, to put in cruder terms.

I admit that my support for the idea is based more on the idea that any 'society' should provide, as a basic, for all its members than on UBI being an efficient replacement for a complex benefits system, and that that predisposition on my part colours my attitude to the way it should be trialled and introduced. That, in turn, depends on seeing 'society' as a meaningful collective human construct rather than simply a conglomeration of self-interested individuals. It's also a way of breaking the link between 'work' and access to the means of fulfilling needs. I'm not convinced that people yet understand the degree to which automation and AI are going to replace the need for 'work' - maybe not immediately, but certainly over the next few decades (although, saying that, I've consistently underestimated the speed of technological change in the past - it could happen sooner). It isn't just lower-skilled types of work which are going to be displaced, and the idea that there's a future for everyone writing computer code is fanciful. Some tasks will be harder to replace, true, but how are we going to cope with a future in which many needs can be met with little human intervention in the production process? Capitalists require 'customers' to buy their products, for which the 'customers' need 'money'; without breaking the relationship between 'money' and 'work', they will have very few. We can either use that leap in technology and productivity to create a highly divided society or a more cohesive one - and the current trend is towards the former. It's tomorrow's problem rather than today's, but we need to prepare for it. UBI, or something similar is one potential response - perhaps the only one. My bigger concern is that the limited, cohort-specific trial being proposed won't really tell us whether it works or not; or, rather, what we need to do to make something similar work.

I don't think that Marx would have seen 'making a contribution' in such stark fiscal terms as you seem to suggest. 'From each according to his ability' implies to me a much wider definition of 'ability' than simply the 'ability to pay', but more generally, your final paragraph touches on a debate we have had before about what money is, where it comes from and how things are paid for. The gulf between your apparent assumption that 'tax pays for government spending, and we need to tax before we spend' and mine that 'government spending never depends on taxation revenue, and taxation always follows spending' is a larger one than it is sensible to address here.

dafis said...

Simple question - On UBI or indeed any other matter, does anyone in the Senedd or in their entourages think about the matter in any depth or do they push "fashionable" issues, topics or theories without preliminary appraisal. To test something like UBI on a small segment of the population is way too abstract as the findings will become exposed to the spin of its proponents and opponents.

Drakeford being an Unionist could have gone to Boris and suggested a bigger roll out,at a cost,and suggested that London coughed up to cover that cost as this experiment would have benefits for the whole of UK, just like HS2 is supposed to benefit us all here in Wales.