Two reasons to look again at a citizens’ income — Owain Williams
The idea of paying each citizen a regular citizens income or universal basic income has been gathering momentum for several years now, though its roots reach back through centuries of social radicals and reformers. Now, two forces — the COVID-19 crisis and the growth of automation — mean that we should seriously consider what it would take to make it work in Wales.
First, the COVID-19 crisis has brought home the disconnect between the market’s definition of someone’s value (expressed through their wage), and the social value of their contribution. Many of the people on who we depend most are, as Keir Starmer puts it, “overlooked and underpaid”. This goes beyond the heroes of our NHS. There are, for example, over 370,000 unpaid carers in Wales, which is more than 10% of our population. These people are disproportionately likely to be women, and three in five of us are likely to become carers at some point in our lives. As life expectancy grows, we will only need more, higher quality care. But left to the market, carers will be undervalued and undersupplied.
Second, we now need to prepare for a future in which there may well be less work for humans to do, because of the remarkable advances in technological change that are taking place. More than 40% of the tasks done by workers today are already automatable using existing technology — and this number is even higher in many industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and transportation, that are the backbone of employment in many parts of Wales. This isn’t just a distant problem for our children and grandchildren to deal with. Research suggests that up to 30% of workers’ jobs could be threatened within the next 12 years in the USA, and we should be prepared for a similar scenario in Wales.
The COVID-19 crisis and the challenge of automation both challenge us to look again at what we’re collectively willing to pay for and what we value. The market can be a powerful force for human progress and wellbeing. But it has serious limitations, most obviously that it doesn’t measure so many of the things that make life worth living: the beauty of our beaches and mountains, the strength of our families, the health of our children.
Even today, some of our fellow citizens still don’t have enough money to guarantee the basics of a dignified life: food, a home, clothes to wear and the technological means to interact with the world. There is already a good case for a minimum under which we will not allow any Welsh citizen to fall. But these two forces are likely to make that need even more urgent.
A citizens’ income would let us do this by paying a regular income to each citizen, regardless of whether or not they are employed. People would be free to supplement this with additional income, and many would choose to do so.
As with any great social reform, winning the argument won’t be easy. Many of the voters I’ve spoken to on the doorstep during the last few elections seem pretty suspicious of unconditional handouts. So we should think hard about whether society asks for anything in return. One solution is what the economist Daniel Susskind has suggested: a “conditional basic income”, where citizens are expected to make some kind of community contribution in return for their income. Contribution could be defined broadly — not proving that you’re searching for a job, but other things that we value and that the free market undersupplies: caring for a relative, raising children, cultivating the environment, or chronicling local history.
To be clear — a citizens’ income is not a substitute for a thriving private sector. We need that too, after all, a citizens’ income has to be funded by the citizens, collectively. Doing even more to help our citizens to succeed with the skills needed in today and tomorrow’s workplace is as important as ever.
There are some serious objections to a citizens’ income, which we shouldn’t dismiss too easily. But they won’t be resolved around the seminar table. We in Wales should grasp the opportunity to experiment, while guaranteeing that no one who participates will be worse off. At the same time, we should start asking how we could fund a citizens’ income at scale.
Piloting a citizens’ income was one of the truly radical ideas in the 2019 Labour General Election manifesto. The 2021 Senedd manifesto should now commit to working with the UK government to bring a pilot to Wales. We can’t say with certainty that it will work, but we will learn nothing by not trying. After all, the radical ideas of one generation so often become the common sense of the next.
Owain Williams
