Universal Basic Services
Description
Ben Chapman:
"Instead of attempting to alleviate poverty through redistributive payments and minimum wages, the state should instead provide everyone with the services they need to feel secure in society, the report’s authors argue.
They say UBI is expensive. Paying all UK citizens the current Jobseeker's Allowance amount of £73.10 per week would cost almost £250bn per year - 13 per cent of the UK’s entire GDP.
By contrast, widening the social safety net through more comprehensive services would cost around £42bn, which can be funded by lowering the personal income tax allowance from £11,800 to £4,300, according to the IGP’s analysis.
The experts say an expansion of basic services to everyone is highly progressive because those who rely on them will be disproportionately the least wealthy in society." (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/universal-basic-services-idea-better-basic-income-citizens-social-housing-ucl-a7993476.html)
Discussion
1. Antony Painter:
"UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity alternative approach to UBI, their proposal is for universal basic services including access to mobile and internet, housing, food, and transport at a cost of 2% or so of GDP per annum. Would this be a better way to go than the politically challenging route of UBI?
On the face of it, it is attractive. The politics of giving people services rather than cash seems easier. The NHS is founded in just this way. The report finds that the maximum value of this approach is £126 per week. The same money distributed as a UBI would deliver just £12.47 a week. Slam dunk right? Not so fast.
On closer reading, it turns out that ‘universal’ basic services are no such thing. The maximum value would accrue to 1.5 million households - those who benefit from the free housing component. For the other tens of millions, the value is quickly reduced to £39 a week. And if you don’t or can’t use public transport, for example if you live outside of cities, then the value is a mere £18 per week. And if you don’t wish to take up the food support? Then the value to you is £5 of free broadband and mobile – the only ‘universal’ element.
It turns out therefore that ‘universal’ basic services is actually ‘targeted living cost support’. And this is why the politics would likely backfire, with a whole host of unintended consequences lurking in the shadows such as stigmatisation of food support claimants as is entrenched in the US. ‘Universal’ basic services feels very much like an expansion of welfare – along with the political barriers of that approach - rather than a different approach to supporting all.
There is an opportunity cost too. The £42bn a year cost is a sum that would unlocks UBI. It may be only worth £12.47 per week but it’s rather like broadband services: it’s the investment that connects the final mile to actually put in place a decent UBI. By turning personal tax allowances into a cash payment, merging in much of the welfare state (with the exception of disability, housing and childcare) plus this extra investment, we would have a full UBI and the greater freedom and security that goes with it.
The authors of the report are right to highlight that other things matter and not just cash support. Our housing needs are at emergency levels. Transport and digital infrastructure matter in support of economic opportunity. Food insecurity in a country as wealthy as the UK is shameful. A series of responses are needed; UBI is just one element of a possible new social contract." (https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2017/10/universal-basic-services-or-universal-basic-income)
2. Mary Murphy and Michael McGann:
“UBI is often advocated on the grounds that it promotes agency and choice, offering ‘income, free from stigma, sanctions and control’. The relationship between universal income and agency is however not straightforward, as individuals with the same basic income can have very unequal thresholds of functioning and encounter different costs in meeting essential needs. This has led to a focus on universal basic services (UBS) as a ‘less flashy’ reform for reconfiguring the welfare state. At the heart of the concept of UBS, Anna Coote and Andrew Percy argue, is a mission to transform the way services are provided, to put people in control and to build a new role for the state to nurture such changes—ensuring equal access, distributing resources, setting and enforcing quality standards and co-ordinating services across different areas of need.
These different needs can be examined through related theories of wellbeing. The theory of human need of Ian Gough and Len Doyal establishes fundamental autonomy and health preconditions for individuals to realise the goals of wellbeing and social participation. It also specifies resources and conditions required to meet these needs, including food and water, housing, healthcare and education. Closely connected is Martha Nussbaum’s account of central human functional capabilities.
Both coalesce around universal conditions for human flourishing and set important limits on economic growth and development. Both follow Sen in arguing that economic production and consumption must always be appraised from the perspective of its contribution to meeting basic needs and promoting capabilities for flourishing—not as having intrinsic value. Both point to our moral obligation to constrain patterns of consumption and production within ecological limits to safeguard the needs of future generations as well as those of our fellow global citizens.
Recognising this ‘entails a different conception of the economy’. In place of the market economy as a system for producing, exchanging and consuming substitutable commodities according to price, the idea of a ‘foundational’ economy emerges, as a network of provisioning systems to satisfy a plurality of non-substitutable needs. While some of this may remain within the scope of the market, the framework of UBS provides guiding principles, and an evidence-based rationale, for collective provision based on access to services as of right, citizen participation, local control and diverse models of ownership—a combination which yields far better results than market transactions in terms of equity, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability.
Proponents of UBS are regularly dismissed as paternalist Fabians, but insist this is a more effective means of meeting basic needs than UBI. John Weeks sees UBI and UBS as complementary: UBI, informed by a ‘progressive liberalism’, is comfortable with market intervention while UBS, informed by social democracy, seeks to limit the role of markets in favour of social provision. Others however find the stress on liberal individualism versus ‘public sector paternalism’ less compatible. We would rather reframe this debate by offering participation income as an immediate guide to significant welfare reform which is complementary to UBS but might also, in the longer term, leave open the door to UBI.” (https://www.socialeurope.eu/reconfiguring-welfare-in-an-eco-social-state-participation-income-and-universal-services?)