Universal Basic Income: What is it?

Several big names like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have been talking a lot lately about a Universal Basic Income, but what is it? Is it a workable idea or just a pipe dream?

At its core, a UBI sounds like a really great idea. Every person in the country receives an income regardless of their employment status. Why would people argue about it?

Well, one of the more frequent responses is that if everyone is earning a basic income while sitting around at home doing nothing why would they bother working? No one would have a job, big businesses would crumble as all their employees packed up work, the economy would collapse leaving no money to pay the basic income in the first place and the entire world would fall into anarchy.

That’s something of an exaggeration, but does form the basis of some of the main complaints around a UBI, so would that really happen? To be honest it seems pretty unlikely. We’re all of us human and all of us have our own ambitions and drives and for every one of us that wants to sit at home and mooch off of the state there is another somewhere who’s ambition it is to become the head of a huge corporation somewhere so of course, they will still go out to work to try and build themselves a better career.

In actual fact, it will potentially help to drive productivity in businesses as well. As an example think of the retail sector. How often have you been to your local supermarket and as you approached the checkout noticed the difference between staff? On one checkout you’ve got someone who really doesn’t want to be there and is only there to pay the bills so doesn’t give two hoots if you wanted the out of stock strawberry milkshake, get a different one or go somewhere else, it’s not their problem. On the other checkout however you’ve got someone who does the job because they enjoy it, wanting to help you however they can and maybe even make themselves look good to their bosses so they can get a promotion. With a UBI the first checkout assistant wouldn’t be there, replaced by another like the second.

Now, of course, using this example there may be a struggle to fill all the jobs with people who REALLY want to be there, but in today’s climate that is becoming less of a problem. Several jobs these days are being taken over by automation, and in this example, there are the self-service checkouts that would replace the job of the staff who don’t want to be there. Meanwhile for that member of staff who didn’t want to be there, maybe they were a struggling artist or musician; by not being forced to work to pay the bills then they would have the opportunity to focus on their art and benefit society in another way. Who knows they could become the next Picasso or Mozart.

There’s a chance that a UBI could help to lower petty crime as well. With everyone receiving a basic income there would be no one living below the poverty line, and as such no need to steal just to eat. Of course, I’m not saying that crime would be eradicated, but a UBI would remove one form of motivation for crime. Furthermore, with a lower level of petty crime, the police force would be able to place more focus on larger scale crimes and potentially put more preventative measures in place, rather than being called out to deal with someone shoplifting for food or a homeless man being arrested for urinating in the street.

Think upon that for a moment too. With everyone earning a basic income, then a large proportion of homelessness should come down as well, everyone would be able to afford somewhere to live. True it’s not income alone that is the deciding factor on that, but when coupled with available affordable housing it again makes great steps in the right direction.

After the complaints about “anarchy,’s” the next biggest complaint is how to pay for it. Looking at the figures th are a lot of money that has to come from somewhere. With a UK living wage recommended at £9 per hour, on a 40 hour week that comes to £18,000 a year. If we were to give that to every single person of working age we’d be looking at over a trillion pounds, which would be an incredibly difficult figure to fill.

Now I must preface this next section by pointing out I am not a mathematician, and am only working with rough, speculated figures but: It’s speculated that there are over a million people living in the UK who currently earn over £100,000 a year, so we can exclude them from the UBI because they already earn five times more than that level of income. Furthermore the £18,000 a year is before tax, so the figure after tax (Which is what people would actually see) is more like £15,500. With all of this taken into account, the number comes down to somewhere in the region of £93 billion.

Yes, still a lot of money, but a large portion of this would get swallowed up as the UBI would replace a large percentage of the welfare benefits, a bill that in 2016 came to £57.9 billion. Even if only half the existing benefits were covered, our number is already down to around £50 billion additional spending, some of which would again potentially be absorbed by the pension bill which was over £150 billion. Factor in the savings to law enforcement that we discussed earlier, and the likely improvement to mental health by removing the stress of finance from peoples lives which would also reduce the healthcare bill.

Over all, it’s hard not to see it as a worth while system. As we all get that chance to spend more time with our loved ones and benefiting our communities in ways that we enjoy and are passionate about rather than getting bogged down in the mire of 9-5 employment. Not only would the majority of people be living happier, healthier lives, there’s a chance that more people would be doing more for their community and charities. Speaking from personal experience there have been numerous times I would have liked to have donated my time to various causes, but having to pay the bills has got in the way.

As with any radical change in our society, there will always be people who are happier with the status quo and resistant to an idea that might not work, but at the end of the day if we never try these radical ideas things will never change.