Putting our money where Rudd’s mouth is

The reason it must avoid doing these things is that they destroy the morale of unemployed people, thereby making it more likely they will become homeless or have to rely on crime to survive. In the e-book Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative, I expand on the socially destructive effects of existing social security payments and argue for a flat-rate universal “basic income” for all permanent residents irrespective of their marital, economic, or employment status. If we are to escape the economic stagnation which is about to descend upon us we must all (or as many as possible) pull together and we will only do that if we first build a social unity among all our citizens.

Putting in place a basic income is the first step in building the social solidarity necessary to have everyone working together. In the absence of a basic income, people willing to engage in and capable of doing whatever work was available under a job guarantee would be provided with a secure income. Those who are not willing to do that work or who are judged (by the job guarantee administrators) to be unsuitable would not be assured of a secure income. Basic income advocates argue that applying conditions to income support erodes freedom and that there is an ever-present danger that some people will be unjustly excluded in any conditional scheme.

It may seem a semantic debate as to whether the introduced scheme is a job guarantee scheme supplemented by a basic income, or a universal basic income supplemented by a job guarantee (for all who want to work) but I think it is more important than that.

If the basic income is not of central importance the job guarantee becomes the driving ideological force. This leaves the labourist/production ideological position in the box seat. We have witnessed how the Howard government used the work ethic to justify the exclusion of some very poor Australians from the social security system. The ideological message can be distorted by the suggestion that work has to be compelled when the central focus is on work and the job guarantee.

With a basic income as the central focus, the emphasis is on income security provided as a right of citizenship and quite different ideological forces come into play. Thomas Paine’s Agrarian Justice, published in 1797, gave birth to the idea that the right to a basic income stems from our right to use the commons. The ideological emphasis which a basic income brings is inclusive citizenship: the duty that each of us owes to all and the equally pressing duty that all of us owe to each.

With a basic income in place, the duration or depth of the recession will be less drastic than if the nation perseveres with the existing social security and industrial systems. This is so because a basic income provides sufficient money to each individual to ensure that no one starves, whereas under the existing system of social security many poor underemployed people are refused assistance and become destitute. In addition, the money provided by a basic income ensures that grocery and other stores supplying household necessities continue to generate income and in turn help power the wider economy.