The pandemic has shown definitively that an income distribution system that links income and benefits to jobs, or the search for jobs, is no longer fit for purpose. For that, people need some degree of security. A basic income will reduce the excessive inequalities of wealth and living standards. For example, the cuts had the effect of starving the health-care systems—with the tragic consequences we see today. As part of wider reforms to create a fairer, sounder global economy, basic income should become the anchor for a new income-distribution system.The past 40 years have seen a strengthening of “rentier capitalism,” under which value is increasingly extracted, not produced.
Jobs are hard to find, and may not pay enough to meet the cost of living. In the Spanish flu of 1918-20, perhaps 50m people died, but there was no slump. Basic income has been shown to improve IQ and decision-making.
They also serve to ossify the unsustainable pre-coronavirus economic structure and prop up zombie companies.By contrast, a basic income would go to everybody, without exception, eliminating the huge administrative costs of means tests and eligibility checks. Guy Standing is a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and a founding member and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes a basic income for all.
Add to that the new economic hardships when we gradually exit lockdowns, and it is likely that millions of people will be unable to pay off these debts, leading to bankruptcies, mass job losses and homelessness.That is why the response to the covid-19 crisis requires the same muscular response as Beveridge unleashed in the 1940s, which preserved a market economy rather than eroded it. But they would be reached by a basic income system.Moreover, stress and insecurity generate domestic violence. Universal basic income isn’t just a solution during the pandemic—it’s right for after it, too Wages will continue to decline. They could introduce a sensible system of capital taxation. He argues for an unconditional basic income as an important step to a new approach,In every industrialised country, we currently apply means-tested benefits. This article is more than 3 years old. In developing countries, total debt is 170% of GDP. Instead, countries need to institute bold policies to build resilience—for individuals and businesses—and to pave the way for a revival of society grounded on ethical and sustainable foundations. It also alleviates economic uncertainty, today’s main form of insecurity. Guy Standing) (ENG)Conference of Guy Standing at the University of SydneyPrecariat And Peasant: Reframing Social Protection For The 21st Century This has generated a new global class structure with a politically powerful plutocracy alongside a burgeoning “precariat”, living on the edge of unsustainable personal debt, reduced to being supplicants in the economic system.Yet in some ways, we have been there before: the era prior to the second world war and the welfare state. A just society should aspire to nothing less.Sign up to our free daily newsletter, The Economist todayGuy Standing on how lockdowns make the case for a basic incomeNicholas Christakis on fighting covid-19 by truly understanding the virusFranklin Zimring on imposing “don’t shoot” rules to improve policingRoland Fryer on better alternatives to defunding the police In an epoch-defining British government report in 1942, William Beveridge said it was “a time for revolutions, not for patching” what ailed the economy. Women who are financially dependent on their partners cannot easily escape from abusive relationships. By analogy, today’s version of capitalism has generated eight modern giants that block a sustainable market-based economy: Inequality, Insecurity, Debt, Stress, Precarity, Automation, Extinction and Populism.These modern giants became more pronounced under the austerity measures imposed after the financial crisis in 2008. Current Projects. This contributes to future resilience and strengthens public health systems.Last, revival. It would facilitate the restructuring of the economy by encouraging workers to move jobs to where they are needed and let zombie firms go bust, since the redundant employees have a basic income to fall back on.The pandemic has highlighted the insecurity of gig-economy workers in the precariat, who cannot afford to stay at home or self-isolate, putting their own health and that of others at risk. By contrast, even before covid-19, private debt in America was 150% of GDP, while corporate debt hit a record 75%. The challenge was to slay what he called “five giants” that held back people and society itself: Disease, Idleness, Ignorance, Squalor and Want. Insecurity will continue to grow. Basic income is itself an expression that we are all of equal worth. Guy Standing, FAcSS (born 9 February 1948) is a British professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Individual resilience feeds into community resilience.
Universal basic income isn’t just a solution during the pandemic—it’s right for after it, tooTHE COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a surge of interest in basic income as a way of compensating people for the economic hardships imposed by lockdowns. The panicky measures governments have deployed at vast fiscal cost, such as wage subsidies, exclude many people, notably the most vulnerable, and are a bureaucratic nightmare. Existing government measures are hand-to-mouth efforts that do little or nothing to strengthen resilience to current and future shocks. It will underpin a new income-distribution system that recognises our new economic reality. The justification for basic income is ethical. The speed and scale with which lockdowns crushed people’s financial lives underscore that.