Thread by @WillHayCardiff

The Welsh Government has announced its pilot of Basic Income (notice they have dropped the "universal").

It is hard to know whether to be pleased or disappointed with this.

Let's take a look:

[Thread]

#UBI #UniversalBasicIncome

So shortly after the Senedd election the Welsh Government announced they would be conducting a pilot of UBI.

In principle this is very exciting. UBI has the potential to tackle some of the massive issues we face (and will soon face) in Wales and the wider UK.

Essentially, the idea of UBI is that every adult in a country receives a set amount of money from the government, with no conditions attached, regardless of their individual resources.

If you set the amount above a certain level, you have the potential to eliminate poverty overnight.

The idea is that the amount is enough for a person to live on. They won't be shopping at Harrods but will have enough for basics.

There are other potential advantages as well...

There are too many to list here but let's look at four related to big challenges Wales faces.

1st - An aging population.

The UK as a whole is getting older and Wales is older than England (partly because old people from other parts of the UK like to retire here).

This will increase the costs of caring for elderly people. The amount of people with dementia is expected to increase significantly.

If people are given enough to live off, they would be able to devote more time to caring for elderly relatives - taking pressure off the state.

2nd - Poverty.

Simple this one.

Almost a third of kids in Wales live in poverty.

If UBI is set high enough, none will.

Though obviously on its own it won't tackle other deeply ingrained societal issues like substance abuse.

3rd - Encouraging entrepreneurship

Wales needs more income producing businesses that provide good quality, meaningful, well paid jobs. Starting a business is a risk, many fail, and many successful entrepreneurs have several failures to their name before getting it right.

Guaranteeing people enough money to at least get by allows people to take the risks required to get a business going.

The next Google, Amazon or Facebook could be started in Wales if people knew that failure didn't mean destitution.

4th - The rise of automation.

Keeping a complicated topic simple. More jobs are going to automated. Robots are going to be doing more and more of the roles humans occupy now.

Instead of seeing this as a threat, UBI could make it an opportunity.

It could make automation work for everyone. We now have less free time than ever despite the fact we no longer have to mangle our trousers dry.

Embracing automation & the increased productivity it brings, then taxing the profits for UBI could overcome the automation challenge.

Obviously the benefits of UBI haven't been proven yet, and this is where the pilot comes in.

It can help answer questions like "will everyone just stop working if they receive UBI?" and "will it improve people's health?".

But the issue with the WG pilot is that it won't answer many of the outstanding questions about UBI.

The participants will all be 18-year-olds who are just leaving care.

No one can begrudge support for care levers but if the aim is to test UBI then this limits the findings.

They are all the same age, their situations are not typical of wider society, they won't have not been in employment for many years and probably don't have children.

Plus care leavers already receive some support when they leave care.

It seems unlikely therefore that this will answer many of the outstanding questions about UBI, which was supposed to be the point of the exercise.

This isn't to say supporting care leavers is not a good thing - it clearly is.

Just that we are not likely to learn as much as we could about Universal Basic Income, and the potential societal benefits it could provide.

Clearly this is better than nothing. It adds to the evidence base & WG should be commended for at least exploring the issue.

But this is public money in a country with widespread poverty. Every £ counts and it's fair to ask if this is the most effect way to explore this issue.

effective*