Jay: This time we're going to talk about a universal basic income and some of you
might be thinking what the heck is that? Jane: A universal basic income is an income
paid to individuals as a right of legal residence without means testing or
requirements to work. The payment is non-taxable and should be sufficient to
cover basic needs. Everyone who qualifies for the payment will
receive it from birth till death. Having a basic income in place will provide a
secure floor for people to build on rather than a safety net with holes so
big many fall through. Jay: That's true. Welfare state, that system for example, loads of people fall
through that. It's almost set-up for people to fail. So my old-school point of
view was, I was one of those people that used to, as you know too well, would stand
and stay in line and queue for the check out with a person working at it, because I
saw the self-checkout stuff as, you know, taking away somebody's job. So I'd
be like: well you don't want to be taking away somebody's job because, you know, so I'll
stand in line and the longer queue and wait to be served even rather than use
the self-checkout that's right there; which obviously seems counter-intuitive.
And we spoke to that guy once in one of the supermarkets who was like, oh
well I'm like, it will take your job away and he was like well I'm a photographer
actually, I don't really want this crummy job, and I can't just quit the job 'cause I'll not get
any social security. So I'm stuck in this lousy job, this BS job, that I don't even
like. That was his view, he was like I'd rather be doing something else. So it was
like, actually we're keeping people in jobs that computers can take just for the
sake of that, as almost like we're creating work, you know, work supposed to
be a means to an end, not the end itself, isn't it? So that made me realise, not
just that guy, but a few other pieces of information out there about automation is
actually a part of progress. That if a computer can take your job you
probably shouldn't necessarily be doing the job in the first place. Jane: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So that's one of the biggest reasons I think for a basic income,
is the level of technological development and the fact that we have
enough kind of technological change to take a lot of the jobs but we
have to change the way that society and the economy's structured so that isn't
damaging and people have got no money. So this is a way that we can actually
address that: a basic income. Other reasons for a basic income include
the benefits of reducing working hours and sharing jobs that are left that need
to be done, that can't be done by robots, amongst everybody else. There's a
report that's just come out today, well on Friday, I don't know it depends if you're
a Patreon member if you get this on Friday, this video, which is by Autonomy.
Which is basically arguing for a shorter working week, it shows about how the,
how that basically could result in benefits for people's mental health and especially,
well as long as it's, you get the same amount of money. You couldn't like have a
shorter working week and people aren't paid as much, that obviously wouldn't
result in these benefits. Jay: Yeah, they're skint enough as it is at the moment. Jane: Exactly. And that's the key thing about basic
income, it obviously would supplement income that would be lost from not working
as much. And then obviously there's the benefit of environmental sustainability
of reducing jobs, especially bullshit jobs and managerial feudalism having all
these people working underneath you and they don't need to. Jay: I have a secretary.
Jane: Yes. Jay: I don't Jane: I'm important!
And then obviously productive workforce as well, because if you work less you're
probably gonna be more enthused to get your stuff done. More free time as well,
which also relates to the benefits of being able to be creative, which is an
advantage of basic income. As Jay said, somebody wanted to be a photographer and
we've all got creativity in us, it's just often not economically viable to do
it as a job. And then also other things, good reasons for basic income: better
working rights. So basically if, you know, trade unionism has been attacked and
especially since Thatcher onwards; she saw it as a political thing that was all
about supply economics making it, supply-side economics, making it easier
to attack the workforce and make more money for the 1%. So if you had a basic income
you would be less scared of being sacked and which would increase the power of
collective bargaining. There's also, so trade unions should be getting behind
this as well because it actually would benefit them. Jay: Some of them are, I think Unison are aren't they. So like my dad always used to tell me that story
where, well he'd be like, well I used to leave work, leave a job, quit my job on
the Friday and by Monday I just walk into another job because we all
had power because there were that many jobs available. It turned the tables and
workers, this was post-war, the people had options. Well you'd have that if you had a basic
income, you know you're gonna be alright anyway, so you've got that bargaining.
Jane: It's like works a top-up isn't it then. You know what I mean. It's something that you
do to be able to go on holiday. Other reasons for why basic income
is a good idea is there's a lot of valuable unpaid work that is done mainly
like child care or housework, that you know, that is really valuable but people
don't get paid for. And it takes a lot of time as well; so that would be helped by
a basic income. It also improves democracy because you're more likely to get
involved in your local community or politics. I mean a big reason people
don't get involved in politics is it takes a lot of time and money to be able to run a
campaign or also, you know, people might, you know, a lot of people are just so
fried by their job, they're working so many hours, you know, to come back home
and go out and do a campaign it takes a lot of time. But also there's a massive
problem with means-tested benefits. There's more unclaimed benefits because they're
means-tested, then there are like fraud; which you wouldn't know because of the
media constantly talking about 'scroungers' or producing a new Channel
4 doc, show about it or whatever. But you know this would be
transparent, it be universal, which would be a massive plus of it. I really like
David Harvey's work who's studied Karl Marx for many years and he did a
podcast recently about Karl Marx's view on freedom; is that you know you can only
really have true freedom, it should be, you know the right, the right wing,
the free market advocates have like taken freedom as something that is
like theirs. But actually it should be a democratic socialist, it should be a socialist
concept because freedom can only be really achieved when you have basic things
covered. So you know you can only have proper freedom if you have a house, if
you can eat, if you have time to do things, like we were talking about democracy or creativity
you know freedom should be seen as a socialist thing.
It should be something we are talking about on the left in terms of all these issues and basic income, if
framed properly, could be key to that. Jay: Yeah. On that, in one of my documentaries years ago
I talked about the ideas of, you know, I was talking about, a big part of it was the
prison system, Doncatraz, where I am from, Doncaster. So
the idea of, the concept of freedom, to be all like theoretical and philosophical
about it, but freedom's role inside different levels of prisons if you've, if
you're in poverty or you can't, you know, you have no access to clean water in
certain parts of the world, you know, that's a form of imprisonment anyway.
That restricts your freedoms anyway, so that's a really important
thing that we think of freedom as a person's ability to do things, do stuff,
like basic income would be a big part of that. One of the main things that
people always say, because just wait a moment, we know some of you might even
be thinking this. Oh well hang on, if you're just given money, you've not got any
incentive, if you're just given money, you know, what are these people gonna do? They're just
gonna sit around, sit around all day, and not do anything. Oh thanks, right there we go. Jane: Are you just gonna sit around with that are you? Jay: Not with a tenner, I'm probably not!
So one of the things is, is that when people have been asked, according to a lot of the
research that's been done around this. When people have been asked: what would
you do if you had a basic income. And they go: oh, well I'd do this,
I'd set-up a local community group, I'd get involved in art workshops or
whatever. All this stuff. But when you ask them what they think somebody else would
do, it's like: oh somebody else, they'd just spend it on cigs and booze.
Somebody else would just do that. And actually people at their heart are really good, most
people are pretty nice as Rutger Bregman said. So it's like, you know, actually a lot of
people would do, well most people would do something really cool, if they
had the freedom to do all the things that they want to pursue but can't.
Because they're in that sort of, in that trap. The other main criticism,
I mean there's quite a few criticisms, misguided criticisms, a lot of them around this. One of them is:
where would you get the money from in our country to just give
everyone a basic income? There's a couple of things on that. The first one is, actually
a lot of the costs of the sort of the welfare system, the health care system,
all those things that are impacted by people being in such poverty all
the time. Those costs will go down anyway. And the other thing is, is that, you know
nobody asked: well where are we gonna get the money from to bomb Iraq? Or whatever.
Or to renew trident? And it comes to these bankers who then give themselves big
bonuses, they find money for it. So of course, this is a simple thing, the
returns on that investment will be huge anyway so you'd save a lot of money
anyway. But even if you didn't save money, the fact that you can find money for all
these things, as a government, but not this, it just shows you that it's a
choice. It's a choice that we could make. Jane: Absolutely, totally agree. Jay: Oh and so one of the other
concerns around it is that if people had a basic income, and it's kind
of a valid concern, okay you've got your basic income but then your rent
goes up. Or the cost of food goes up. Or they start implementing costs on health
care services and things like that. Well you've got a basic income so if you've got some
money, and you're guaranteed, it's a guaranteed universal basic income, then we'll start
charging you for all these little things. And, you know, so that's a valid concern
but that's why, you know, it'd have to be structured within a wider framework
wouldn't it. Jane: Yeah and ideally that would be a democratic socialist programme, which is
becoming increasingly, you know, backed in mainstream, by mainstream politicians, and
political parties such as Corybn's Labour Party. And basically that would mean
that you would have things such as rent controls bought in, you'd need capital
controls as well on an international level because you'd also want to be
bringing in, you know, like wealth taxes and maximum wage.
Maximum wage is to reduce inequality. Wealth is the biggest source of
inequalities; it's not always income, it's also wealth - what you own - so you'd obviously
have to address that. But you need capital controls to make sure that, you know, we
have democratic control over that ability to bring that political program
in. You'd also, you know, things such as cooperatives and public ownership
of transport and energy and all those kind of things, those vital services,
would need to, you know, would be an important part of it as well. 'cause
basically without all that, basic income could become something that,
you know, could be abused, it could do. You've got to address that issue
that, it could be a way of getting rid of the welfare state and then just giving
people barely anything to live on. And that is a concern that people have but
that's why it's got to be seen in a broader framework of it basically being
part of a post-work society really where we accept that technology is developed
so much that we can have it to help us rather than it being seen as a problem.
It's something that can like aid us to become more creative, something that
people like Keynes even, they didn't imagine we'd be working like the hours we are
and that links to the concept of bullshit jobs being, you know, which is our obsession
with work in society. The idea of value and worth comes from what you do
even if you know that that job probably isn't that valuable.
You know least you're getting, you know, that tick: I do a job. So we've got to question
everything and basic income is part of that I think,
isn't it? And that's why we are big advocates of it but within that
framework. Jay: Yeah and again it comes down to work, you know, work is a means to an
end, not the end itself. Jane: So, if you liked what we were saying there and you would like to
support what we do, please consider checking out our Patreon and potentially
become a Patron of ours. We're also on all forms of social media, aren't we? Jay: We are. We're on Instagram,
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Jane: You can also subscribe to our YouTube, that helps.
Jay: And you can subscribe to our newsletter, as well, through our website. Jane: Yes, lots of ways
to keep in touch.
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