“Universal income is more than a new form of welfare state”

Uni­ver­sal income pro­pos­als that are emer­ging today in developed coun­tries are sup­por­ted by dif­fer­ent intel­lec­tu­al groups. They all share ques­tions regard­ing the legit­im­acy of social pro­tec­tion and the way it has developed since the end of the 19^th cen­tury; to per­fect it, to replace it, or to begin a new chapter in history. 

Is the uni­ver­sal basic income (UBI) concept, that occu­pies a sub­stan­tial place in pub­lic debate today, left-wing or right-wing?

Juli­en Damon. Advoc­ates for UBI belong to sev­er­al intel­lec­tu­al and polit­ic­al groups. The best-known form of UBI, at the core of much debate today, con­sists of com­ple­ment­ing the wel­fare sys­tem to pre­vent people from slip­ping through the cracks. On the con­trary, anoth­er school of thought con­siders UBI as a way of com­pletely smash­ing the wel­fare state itself. For instance, Milton Fried­man put for­ward the idea of a neg­at­ive tax. In his opin­ion, fur­ther devel­op­ing the wel­fare state is a mis­take; yet, since it would be dif­fi­cult to get rid of, a solu­tion could be to estab­lish a neg­at­ive tax which would be less dam­aging over­all. In addi­tion to tra­di­tion­al lib­er­als, there are also liber­tari­an-con­ser­vat­ives like Charles Mur­ray. He pro­poses to put an end to all social policies by alloc­at­ing $10,000 every year to each adult to let them plan and pre­pare for retire­ment. So, as we can see, there is not only a great diversity of mech­an­isms for UBI, but also a lot of dif­fer­ent ideo­lo­gies about why it should exist.

All these ideo­lo­gies high­light the sim­pli­city of this concept. Is it just because the man­age­ment costs of our com­plex sys­tems today would be sig­ni­fic­antly reduced?

This goes much fur­ther. We’re talk­ing about a rad­ic­al sim­pli­fic­a­tion which ques­tions the very legit­im­acy of the whole edi­fice of social pro­tec­tion. Here again, both sides of the ideo­lo­gic­al spec­trum con­verge, though they do not include the same things in the pro­pos­al. The “social­ist” side is sens­it­ive to a great­er trans­par­ency of the wel­fare sys­tem; it is cur­rently so com­plex that the people most in need are often unaware that they are eli­gible to receive social bene­fits. This is trans­lated by the high rate of “non-take up of social bene­fits”. On the “lib­er­al” side, the object­ive of sim­pli­fic­a­tion would mainly be to lim­it the accu­mu­la­tion of fin­an­cial sup­port that can lead to state handouts. After all, the greatest form of sim­pli­fic­a­tion con­sists of dis­solv­ing everything.

The com­plex­ity of social wel­fare schemes stems from a very rich his­tory, with vary­ing mod­els of social pro­tec­tion. Are we wit­ness­ing the vic­tory of a mod­el or enter­ing a new phase?

His­tor­ic­ally, col­lect­ive or uni­ver­sal social pro­tec­tion is an exten­sion of pub­lic sup­port, which would oth­er­wise be con­sidered char­ity or phil­an­thropy. Over time, two main mod­els emerged. First, the so-called Bis­mar­cki­an mod­el was a con­trib­ut­ory and pro­fes­sion­al sys­tem. Employ­ees became “insured per­sons”, a.k.a covered by “social insur­ance”. The second, the Beveridgi­an sys­tem, was fun­ded by taxes and is more uni­ver­sal. In real­ity, these two sys­tems fused to pro­duce the hybrid form of social wel­fare that we have today. The French social secur­ity sys­tem, for example, is Bis­mar­cki­an in prin­ciple, but over time, peoples’ rights were expan­ded, and nation­al solid­ar­ity (i.e. taxes) gradu­ally became an import­ant part of its fund­ing; as is the case in oth­er developed coun­tries. One might con­sider that UBI, which is Beveridgi­an in essence, is an addi­tion­al phase in this evol­u­tion with the com­ple­tion of uni­ver­sal­isa­tion. But that would sug­gest it is a con­tinu­ity of cur­rent social wel­fare, while there is some­thing truly new in this pro­pos­al. In any case, UBI is not a magic wand you can wave to sud­denly repair his­tor­ic­al models.

The concept of uni­ver­sal basic income can also be in con­tra­dic­tion with a social com­pon­ent: social pro­tec­tion schemes are also social policies, and each one has a pre­cise aim. Could intro­du­cing a uni­ver­sal basic income chal­lenge this idea of actions tar­geted at spe­cif­ic social issues?

Yes, if we are talk­ing about a replace­ment. No, if the goal is to com­ple­ment the exist­ing sys­tem. We must under­stand that in developed coun­tries, even if we know that our social wel­fare sys­tems cause many prob­lems, they are so massive and inter­twined in our lives that a com­plete sub­sti­tu­tion would be truly revolu­tion­ary – although, very unlikely. Moreover, the ques­tion is dif­fer­ent in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, such as India or Kenya, where social pro­tec­tion has yet to be developed and in which UBI exper­i­ments are tak­ing place.

It is also anoth­er way of approach­ing the issue of amounts, often brought up with regard to this ques­tion. In a wealthy coun­try, it would be easy to intro­duce a uni­ver­sal income of €1 euro per year per cit­izen. But if we were to increase UBI to €500 per month, it would rep­res­ent a con­sid­er­able effort and require extens­ive arbit­ra­tion. Spe­cial­ists point out that it would have no impact for people who already bene­fit from exist­ing social aids (like the RSA, Revenu de Solid­ar­ité Act­ive, in France). At most, it would lim­it the rate of non-take up of social bene­fits. To put it simply, if the object­ive is to fight poverty, UBI is point­less because many tools already exist for that.

Is the object­ive really to fight poverty, then?

That is an excel­lent ques­tion which falls in a dif­fer­ent cat­egory. The wel­fare state was his­tor­ic­ally cre­ated to pro­tect people against the main risks in life: ill­ness, pen­ni­less retire­ment, unem­ploy­ment and so on. It is the reas­on why social secur­ity often takes the form of insur­ance. But with the UBI concept, as con­sidered by both its most rad­ic­al advoc­ates like Phil­ippe Van Par­ijs, the object­ive is entirely dif­fer­ent: it allows free­dom. The idea is to cre­ate a soci­ety in which every­one is free to choose between, let’s say, a bor­ing but well-paid job or a mean­ing­ful job with low wages. It is the reas­on why the amounts pro­posed for UBI are closer to the aver­age salary than social aids. The object­ive lies in the work itself. Moreover, the idea is not to even things out, but rather to offer indi­vidu­als the pos­sib­il­ity of a delib­er­ate choice. This pro­foundly ori­gin­al vis­ion of soci­ety raises many ques­tions. Clearly, it does not just con­sist of invent­ing the social secur­ity sys­tem of the future, to cre­ate a ver­sion 2.0 of the wel­fare state. The aim is to provide every­one with a means to access free­dom. This calls for reflec­tion, doesn’t it?