Ahead of the launch of a new organisation in Scotland, campaigner Ben Simmons says a basic income would have a positive knock-on effect in the economy and society
LAST WEEK, BBC Scotland ran a series of articles on #unequalscotland, which is of course good to see, including an interview with Professor David Bell who has written about basic income previously.
When I first heard about basic income I thought about it as a fairly narrow idea around reforming benefits to make them simpler, but it actually makes more sense to me to think of it as a foundation that benefits lots of other causes.
For those interested, there is even a new organisation launching in Scotland this coming Saturday in Glasgow which is aiming to build a national movement raising awareness of basic income and the social benefits that it could bring.
When I first heard about basic income I thought about it as a fairly narrow idea around reforming benefits to make them simpler, but it actually makes more sense to me to think of it as a foundation that benefits lots of other causes.
A great example is gender equality. If we introduced a basic income into Scotland it would mean that unpaid care work would essentially become paid care work, providing care givers (predominantly women) with an income that is currently unavailable to them, counteracting lopsided power relationships and financial dependency.
Even when women are in work, more women work part time than men and this can bring with it a punishing marginal deduction rate (taking benefits away as you earn, so that you actually earn a fraction of the minimum wage).
If we had a basic income then part-time work would bring with it much greater benefit to the worker and the household, which would disproportionately benefit women.
All-in-all, having your own income enables personal freedom; many women currently lack an income, and thus we have a society where women are generally less free than men – which sucks, but can be changed if we see more support for a basic income from pro-equality organisations.
There is a new organisation launching in Scotland this weekend aiming to build a national movement raising awareness of basic income and the social benefits that it could bring.
Another example of inequality is health inequality which is what it sounds like, people getting sick more frequently and dying younger in the poorer parts of Scotland.
That might sound obvious and "just one of those things" but it’s the scale of the difference that is truly shocking. That previous link will show you that healthy life expectancy (how old you are before you are basically unwell until you die) in the poorest 10 per cent of Scotland was 48 years. That is 24 years lower than in the top 10 per cent.
Considering that there are areas of Glasgow in both those brackets, it is mind-blowing that two people in the same city could have such different expectations from life.
A basic income would both reduce poverty, which would eliminate a major cause of poor health (and bring with it big savings to the NHS), and reduce stress-related mental health problems which cost the economy about £3bn per year.
So even if you ignore the moral and ethical arguments, anyone wanting to protect the NHS should be thinking about whether pushing for a basic income should be part of that.
Read more – International author rallies Scotland behind Basic Income revolution
Finally, two wee comments on zero-hours contracts as the BBC has brought it up. The employer in that article is talking about how she can’t guarantee minimum hours because she can’t rely on constant demand.
One, if we had a basic income then zero-hours contracts wouldn’t be so damaging as workers would still be able to pay rent and bills and buy food if they weren’t given work.
Two, she says herself that if basic wages were higher across the population then she would see more customers and be able to give more hours to her staff. A basic income would have an even greater effect on generating demand than a higher minimum wage because it would not only be the employed who had an income.
This is why a basic income would be a more effective way of stimulating local economies and creating work rather than making unemployment even more unpleasant through the current practice of benefit caps.
Picture courtesy of RachelH_
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