internet of things is gonna allow us to do things faster, smarter and more

efficiently. But for the rest of us, the idea of not having a job can seem

absolutely terrifying. It raises serious questions about 'how

will I pay my rent?' 'How will I pay my mortgage?' 'How will I even pay for my next

meal?' Malcolm Torry seems to think he has the

answer to these questions. We asked Charles Barthold to go talk to him about his

promotion of a citizen's basic income.

What is basic income? Basic income is a very simple idea, it's sometimes called

by the name 'citizen's income', 'universal basic income' now some times 'citizen's

basic income', they all mean the same thing, they mean an unconditional income

for every individual. An unconditional means that the amount you get wouldn't

depend on your income, or your wealth, or your employment status, or your

relationships with anybody else, it will be exactly the same amount of money for

everyone of the same age. It could vary with somebody's age, so somebody who's

older might get more, somebody who's younger might get less, a child would get

less, but otherwise it remains entirely unconditional how much are we talking

about in there in this country in the UK? That's a very interesting question

because all kinds of different suggestions have, of course, been made.

The research that we've done suggests this, if you had a large citizen's basic

income, the tax rates required to pay for it would be quite high. That might not be

politically feasible. What we have proved is that a citizen's basic income of 61

pounds a week can be paid for by reducing to zero your

income tax person allowance and the lower earnings threshold for national

insurance contributions and raising all national insurance contributions to 12%

and income tax rates would only need to rise by 3%. By doing that we could

provide every single working age adult with a citizens basic income a 61 pounds

a week. Why is it important for you and why is it important in general? After I

left university, I worked for two years on the public counter in a means-tested

benefits office, it was called the supplementary benefit office then, and it

was part of what was then called the Department for Health and Social

Security. So for two years I was facing some quite often angry members of the

public and some quite stressed members of staff behind me trying to manage a

really difficult means-tested benefit system. And the system was

clearly bad for everybody. It was bad for the claimants in front of me, it was bad

for people behind me, and, at the same time, I realised just how useful child

benefit was, because the child benefit is an unconditional income for every child

it goes to the child's carer and it just kept on coming for everyone who was in

front of me complaining about mistakes in their means-tested benefits. And so

back then, I'd begun to think, well why can't we do things generally rather

differently, so that it all looks a bit more like child benefit. You mentioned in

basically a number of problems connected to administering benefits and that this

basic income would sort out, but there are probably as well benefits for

people and not only from the perspective of the government. Perhaps you

could mention a few things about this.

Although ministrative problems affect the claimants of benefits just as much as

they affect the government and the administrative simplicity of a citizen's

basic income is one of the most important things about it. Because of

its simplicity, you could completely computerise it, so it would start at your

birth, it would end at your death and nothing would need to be done to it

between those two points in time, it would just keep on coming. Very unlike

our present means-tested benefits system, which is complex, it requires constant

administration, it requires vast amounts of time and effort being put in by

claimants and by the staff administering it, and it's full of errors, their error

rates are huge and fraught as well, and because fraud can happen within such a

means-tested benefits system. Sometimes the difference between error and fraud

is quite a difficult line to find, because what is simply an error can in

fact legally be a fraud and so both the staff and public

suffer a great deal from the administration means-tested benefits and

none of that would apply to a citizen's basic income. For 400

years we've been means testing benefits, and therefore, we intuitively believe that

if the poor need money you should give money to the poor, which means that you

then take it away from them if they become less poor, which means it's quite

difficult for them to earn their way out of poverty. So that's something

that's deeply embedded in our minds and it means that an unconditional

income sometimes finds it quite difficult to lodge in our minds as a

sensible idea, because it's not something we're used to, it's counterintuitive

giving money to everybody, because people say 'the rich don't need it, why give it

to the rich, the poor need the money', but unfortunately, if you give money

just to the poor it becomes an inefficient means-tested

benefit. It is far more sensible to give money to everybody and then you're

taxing the rich more than they receiving in their citizens basic income anyway, so

what's the problem? Especially if it's very efficient to give everyone the

money. But there is still a problem with psychological feasibility. It seems to me

that this is connected, this psychological feasibility is related to

the fact that we tend to associate income with work and then this basic

income would be huge cultural and perhaps even anthropological change,

because then people would have to start realising that income is not necessarily

connected to work. One of the reasons why opinion may start, may now be shifting,

and it does seem to be, is that the employment market is becoming much more

problematic for more people. And so it's beginning to be understood. How could

basic income empower people? How could it be an opportunity for

people? One of the important effects of citizen's basic income would be to

increase people's choices. And that is an empowering thing of course, so

if you've got more choices in the employment market you might decide that

if you're in a couple one of you who's currently

working full-time may well work part-time or you may both get part-time

jobs instead of one of you getting a full-time job, for instance, you

would have choices to make. And, it's when people have choices that they start to

look at what they're doing with their lives, and so, yes you may well find that

people with caring responsibilities can put more time into them. You might also

find that because your marginal deduction rates have reduced, some people

might seek more paid employment, so it could go either way and the way it went

would be actually largely up to you, again so what I'm saying is that the

choices would be there, and we may see an increase in voluntary activity in the

community, I hope we would and there will be the option the opportunity for that,

we may see more people putting more effort and time into caring

responsibilities in relation to children, older parents, and so on, and there would

be people more able to make those choices. How they make choices, of

course, we don't know. It's up to them, that's the whole point of a citizen's

basic income, it gives people choices.

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