Wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, a tax on financial transactions and a tax on robots have all been mentioned as possible sources of finance for a basic income. Another suggestion is for Google, Facebook and other corporations to pay for the data users now provide for free, from which they make the bulk of their profits, which could then be shared out as a basic income.

[...]

In the UK, Stewart Lansley has suggested paying a basic income from a 'social wealth fund' financed by a charge on share ownership. He calculates that a 0.5 per cent annual levy on ownership of shares in the top 100 companies quoted on the UK stock market would raise over £8 billion [...] More than half these sums would be a charge on overseas owners. This writer has proposed a levy on rental income from private ownership and exploitation of all types of property--physical, financial and intellectual--that would be used to build the fund.

Meanwhile, the amount of other, very real but unpaid work is extensive and rising. In the UK--and it is similar in other countries--the unrenumerated economy (caring for the children and the elderly, housework, voluntary work in the community and so on) is estimated to be worth well over half the size of the money economy.

Even these estimates do not count the 'work' we all do in our dealings with government (filing tax returns scarcely counts as 'leisure'), as consumers (self-service checkouts) and in what I have called 'work-for-labour', unpaid work around jobs or job seeking, which has expanded with 'always on' connectivity. The precariat in particular must do a lot of work (in their eyes) that is not counted or renumerated--hunting for jobs, enduring complex time-consuming recruitment processes, waiting for on-call labour, queueing and form-filling for meagre benefits of some kind.

At best, they showed small cuts in paid labour for some groups, notably mothers with young children and teenagers still at school. In the Canadian Mincome experiment, 'mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating'.

Similarly, the US experiments found that people took the opportunity to better their lives, including studying or a degree and setting themselves up in business. There were double-digit increases in high-school graduation rates in New Jersey, Seattle and Denver. [...]

[...]

Opinion polls in a number of countries have found that when people are asked if they would reduce work and labour if they had a basic income, the overwhelming majority say they would not. However, when asked if other people would reduce work and labour, they tend to say others would. Other people are lazy, but not me! There is also a presumption on the part of critics that people on low incomes will reduce labour and work in response to a basic income, whereas they presume no such thing for richer people. After all, billionaires such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg still work, though they certainly do not need the income!

A basic income paid to everybody would enable caregivers, mostly women, to replace their own work with paid labour if they wished, and would enable 'care-recipients' relying on the gift work of relatives to purchase care labour services. [...]

Ever since debates on poverty and basic income began, some have argued that income support should be conditional on 'making a contribution to society'. The late Tony Atkinson was a longstanding proponent of a 'participation income', while something similar was proposed earlier by Andre Gorz. In his recent writings, Atkinson proposed that everybody should receive a basic income, but that in return they should do at least thirty-five hours of 'recognized' work activity per week.

The obligation might look fair, but in practice would not be. The condition would not affect those already in full-time jobs and earning a good income, whereas for others who could only do or obtain jobs involving hard manual labour or paying very low wages, the obligation would be arduous, costly and difficult to maintain. The condition would also distort the labour market, pushing wages down at the lower end by increasing the supply of labour, and so impoverishing others who have done nothing to 'deserve' it. That too would be unfair.

The administrative costs of monitoring such a scheme would be enormous, unless it were treated as merely a gesture to gain popular approval and not enforced. And it would leave awkward questions about what activities would count and how they would be counted. Would caring for a frail grandmother count as recognized work? If so, how would the bureaucratic official determine whether someone was caring for her or watching a football match on TV? Would a report from the person receiving the care be required to vouch for it?

First, measuring income is complicated and involves arbitrary cut-off rules. Taking and 'wealth' into account encourages dis-saving, which reduces resilience at times of financial stress.

Second, applying means tests entails high costs, both for the administration and for claimants who must travel to benefit offices, wait, queue, fill in lengthy forms, produce supporting documents and so on, all of which take time and often hard cash.

Third, means testing involves intrusive questions, including about claimants' intimate personal relationships, that may be followed up by home visits, for example, to check that there is no live-in partner earning an income. It is a regime of prying, invasion of privacy, and presumption of guilt rather than innocence, which demeans the staff running it as well as claimants.

Fourth, as a result, the process and the prospect of it are stigmatizing. This is often deliberate, to reduce the cost of welfare by deterring claimants. [...]

This leads to the fifth failing, low-take-up. [...]

[...]

Sixth, means testing undermines social solidarity, separating 'us' from 'them'. We, who support ourselves, pay taxes to support them, the scroungers. [...]

The seventh and most well-known failing is the notorious poverty trap [...] people on benefits who take a minimum wage job would lose money [...]

This leads to the eighth failing, the inevitable drift to workfare [...] the state is left with little choice but to force people to take low-paid labour.

A ninth failure is that means-tested social assistance deters stable household formation. [...]

A tenth failing relates to income-tested Jobseeker's Allowance, which is determined on the basis of family income. If one of a couple is unemployed, the couple loses financially if the other is doing a small amount of paid labour. [...]

[...] A job guarantee would be a deception. What sort of jobs would be guaranteed? At what rate of pay would they be provided? What would be the consequence for declining the specific job being 'guaranteed'? Since it is completely unrealistic to guarantee everyone a job that suits them, makes use of their skills and pays well, in practice the job would be low-level, low-paid, short-term and 'make-work', or at best low-productivity labour. Cleaning the streets, filling shelves in supermarkets and similar menial activities are an unlikely road to happiness. Those arguing for a job guarantee would certainly not want those jobs for themselves or their children.

Tax credits are a subsidy to capital, whatever impact they have on poverty and the incomes of wage workers. One US estimate suggests that for every dollar spent on the EITC the low-wage worker gains 73 cents while the employer gains 27 cents by paying lower wages. In the similar finding for the UK, researchers have concluded that about three-quarters of the value of tax credits goes to workers, the rest to employees.

Although an NIT would be a useful anti-poverty device, it would do little to advance republican freedom or provide assured economic security, nor would it be a vehicle for social justice. It would not apply to people without jobs or with incomes too low to pay tax. [...]

Charity is based on the sentiment of 'pity' and, as the philosopher David Hume noted, pity is akin to contempt. Private charity as a central feature of social policy may satisfy libertarians, but it profoundly offends the central idea of republican freedom, that of non-domination. Being dependent on the good will of offers is not consistent with full freedom On the contrary, it compromises the freedom of the giver as well as the supplicant.

[....]

The fact that so many people in modern society are going to food banks and shelters demonstrates social policy failure. Private philanthropy should be marginalize again; it is an undemocratic way of shaping society and the selective well-being of individuals, groups and communities.