IPPR Progressive Review最新文献

In this article, we present new evidence of broad public support for higher benefit levels in the UK, in line with a more generous Minimum Income Standard. Benchmarking entitlements against a publicly agreed Minimum Income Standard could build on this support and better engage with questions of human need in our social security system. Provision of this would contribute towards a so-called ‘civic minimum’ that serves as a transformative basis on which to redefine the social contract between citizens, the state and markets.2

Beyond the current cost-of-living crisis, welfare reforms and austerity measures introduced since 2010 mean the real terms value of non-pensioner benefits has fallen considerably. For example, the value of Child Benefit has fallen by more than a fifth (-22.7 per cent) since 2010 and Universal Credit has fallen by 15.5 per cent in value since its introduction in 2013 (See Figure 1).5 As the value of benefits has fallen, reliance on crisis support and charitable food aid has risen sharply, with food bank use being strongly linked to problems with or inadequacy of social security payments.6

As the value of benefits has fallen, the risk and depth of poverty has increased considerably.7 Progress made towards reducing child poverty has stalled significantly, and children, larger families and black and minority ethnic communities are more likely to be in deeper forms of poverty than they were a decade ago.8 In response, there have been growing concerns about the adequacy of social security payments and their capacity to mitigate against the causes and consequences of poverty.9

Proponents of a social contract rooted in ‘fair reciprocity’ argue that the “institutions governing economic life” have a duty to provide a “sufficiently generous share of the social product” to all citizens.12 They argue that if a set of “core commitments” is not fulfilled, those disadvantaged have a “proportionately reduced obligation” to perform the duties prescribed by the state.13 Such an argument reframes debates about the permissiveness of welfare, to refocus attention on the duties of economic citizenship held by the government and the legitimacy of welfare contractualism when adequate protection is missing.

What the public think benefit payments are is one question. What they think they should be is another. Historically, low benefit levels have often been politically justified as necessary to discourage ‘welfare dependency’ and encourage people to work. These sorts of arguments respond to and reinforce hackneyed caricatures of ‘skivers’ and ‘strivers’ and are often assumed to reflect the intuitions of the wider public.21 However, the level at which benefits are set or should be is often left ambiguous and rarely specified in public debates and discussion. When asked about the specific level at which benefits should be set, the majority of the survey respondents supported more generous payments. Specifica

Analysis of basic income – a cash grant paid individually, monthly, unconditionally and universally in a population, and permanently – has been shaped by concerns about the grounds for and the implementation of the scheme that inevitably come up against each other in practical terms. This paper accordingly first examines the present constrained context, then champions a developmental justice case for basic income against distributive alternatives, and finally highlights risks in implementation debates linked with bending to prevailing welfare norms and crises.

However, while The Economist got it right when arguing that public ‘customers’ get less for more cost, and that in Britain, following austerity, “[o]nce-generous legal aid became miserly; in-work benefits fell; [and the] police solved fewer crimes”, rather than emphasising distributive and tax trade-offs between generations (see the ‘Feasibility’ section below), I will argue that deeper issues are at stake, linked with choice of development governance based on following the market.3 ‘Shrinkflation’ – paying (and, we might add, working) more for less – has become embedded in the workings of contemporary private and public economies. Meanwhile, global corporates hiking up inflation on the back of war and global shortages are listing huge windfalls.4 The government response in the form of windfall taxes has been too accommodating (in the UK, 90 per cent are effectively returned via subsidies), and neither this measure nor government schemes for households have been made permanent.5 The problem of establishing grounds and measures for government to subsidise household budgets encapsulates a dissonance between ideal and reality that pertains to the case for basic income as well. We need not only a new social contract, but also a new social construct, in which concerns of justice inform the design of institutions and the economy follows.

When questions about the justification for and feasibility of basic income are set together, this can generate productive insights about wider reasons and conditions for basic income, which test more theoretical arguments. In this paper, rather than looking at principled arguments in terms of fairer distribution, I focus on the institutional and democratic innovation within the political economy that a basic income can contribute by inculcating the idea and form of developmental justice.

The modern classical defence of basic income by Philippe Van Parijs focusses on the scope for free lifestyle choices involving personally set trade-offs between employment, care and leisure in a globalised economy, in which basic income as a form of distributive justice secures freedom.6 While debates have begun to shift towards anti-poverty, health, personal development, and choice of work, the notion that – with basic income – individuals can attain control over their lives and wellbeing remains quite influential.7 However, looking at freedom or well

Work in the UK is broken. We work too hard, too long, are not getting paid enough and are not productive enough.1 What is more, our labour market is largely exclusionary. The work devotion we are asked to show is not compatible with other life commitments, resulting in the exclusion of large pockets of society. It also requires untenable levels of work commitment and overwork, especially from those whose work capacities are already questioned – namely, marginalised workers such as minority ethnic workers. The current way of thinking about work is not helping us as workers, us as a society and also our climate. It doesn't even make economic sense as it doesn't make the most of human contributions, especially considering the challenges we face in the future of work.

One of the main problems with work culture is that of the ‘ideal worker’,2 namely, that you need to prioritise work above all else in your life, work very long hours to show dedication and commitment to work and be productive. “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”, to quote Elon Musk.3 The chief executive of Goldman Sachs expects his junior analysts to work 100 hours a week to provide value for their clients.4 Alongside the rise of digital technology, and ironically with the rise of flexible working, workers are expected to work all the time and everywhere. You have to be “always on”,5 to the point where it feels like your work now has the prerogative to demand all your waking hours and possibly your unconscious hours when we consider how much we think about work.

Not only is working such long hours detrimental to workers’ and their families’ wellbeing – for example, by not allowing parents to spend time with their family – it also largely excludes workers with any responsibilities outside of work. This includes caring for children, family or friends and self-care – namely, anyone with a disability or long-term illness, and those with responsibilities to their community, friends, pets or any other aspect of life that can collide with the long-hours work culture. Any indication that you may have responsibilities outside of work is likely to result in doubt of your work commitment and productivity, regardless of what you actually produce.6 This long-hours working can be especially detrimental for marginalised workers whose work capacity is already questioned – such as mothers, disabled people, minority ethnic workers and LGBT+ workers – as many already overwork and go above and beyond to prove their worth. In the UK, 88 per cent of workers experienced burnout recently, costing the UK £28 billion yearly,7 with burnout and other mental health problems being especially high for marginalised workers. What is worse, we are not burning out to enhance the world or bring forth a new future for humanity. Two out of five Britons feel that their work is not making any meaningful contribution to the world8 and 69 per cent report that they are burning out precisely because

We are all aware that we live in societies with heightened diversity and that aspects of that are being used divisively. So a response is that we need to bring people together by making some kind of deal amongst ourselves, or with the state – some kind of social contract. Social contract thinking – originating in the religious divisions of the 17th century – usually emerges when trust is breaking down and society is becoming a jungle (famously for Hobbes, “nasty, brutish and short”). Yet the remedy, a contract between self-interested individuals (or between groups), may pacify but it is not enough to make people care for each other. We need something stronger than transactional thinking to deal with the stresses and strains of diversity, and to tackle the rampant polarisation we are seeing today. We need respect and belonging, a sense of the public or national good, not just contracts. I believe that multiculturalism has a contribution to make here. This may sound preposterous – for some people, multiculturalism is the problem! Well, yes, if you think that multiculturalism is all about singular identities, separatism, the privileging of minorities, racial binaries, unprovoked militancy, fundamentalism, ethnic absolutism, anti-nationalism and so on. But that is a caricature. I know of no multiculturalist theorist – as opposed to liberal globalist, aka a cosmopolitan – who has advocated any of these things. In any case, let me offer you a different vision of multiculturalism.

The subtitle of my 2007 book, Multiculturalism, was A civic idea.1 My argument was that multiculturalism was derived from a political ethics of citizenship that includes but goes beyond rights, representation, rule of law and so on, namely not just a liberal citizenship. All modes of integration should be analysed in terms of their interpretation of the triad of liberty, equality and fraternity/solidarity.

Multiculturalism is specifically concerned with the right to a subgroup identity and that subgroup identity is treated in an equal citizenship way. This means symbolic recognition but also institutional accommodation and the remaking of the whole, namely of the citizenship identity itself. This leads to a second feature, namely the recognition of the subgroup identity as part of or at least consistent with full membership, a form of inclusion that allows all citizens to have a sense of belonging to their national citizenship; sometimes expressed as fraternity or solidarity. Minorities, especially marginalised or oppressed minorities, have this right to group identity recognition because the majorities do; or, if you like, all subgroups, including the majority, have this right.

If, as I believe, multiculturalism is trying to provide minorities with what majorities have or seek to have, namely their own national or cultural identities folded into their citizenship, I also have come to appreciate that parts of majorities have become identity-a

In the case of care, two needs are assumed in progressive political spaces: the need of the person receiving care to be supported, and the consequent structural need of society to have a state-provided socialised service which meets that first need. This is the logic underpinning calls for a universal care service kindred to the NHS and the general sense that, if the ‘burden’ of care is falling on unpaid family and friends, it's due to the under-resourcing of state provision. Those 6 million unpaid carers are labelled as either a vestige of past and archaic arrangements that need to be removed, or a worrisome harbinger of things to come, in which social spending dips even further. Under this ‘need interpretation’, care is construed as impinging on the natural order of our capitalist lives – taking us away from productive activities – that is, wage labour – and preventing women from pursuing freedom, located in the notion of the career.

Second, many care receivers do not accept support from people outside of their family unit. One study that sought to understand caring relationships between neighbours and frail older people asked why and how the former were stepping in to support the latter.8 It found that, in some instances, it was because the older people had refused offers of government services, even lying to avoid being deemed needy. Others had simply refused support or cancelled it once it was in place. When we forget that people with care needs are people, and therefore have preferences and claims to self-determination, we fail to design a system that is truly human.

These four factors add up to one truth, which is absent from current policy prescriptions and how we understand our need for care: however good our services become, it won't change whether most of those 6 million people are carers. Instead of ignoring carers, or treating them as an unfortunate afterthought, we must take a systemic approach that addresses the now-revealed need – the right to provide care to our loved ones in ways which don't undermine our mental, physical, social and financial health.

We can see this in the example of the Older Women's Co-Housing (OWCH) project in north London. Twenty-five women aged 50 and over live ‘together but alone’ in a smartly designed complex of private apartments and shared spaces. While they must have care arrangements in place for intensive care needs, there is also a lot of interpersonal care taking place, as within a family. They have health buddies and, when needed, have created rotas to provide support.13 Importantly, there are 25 of them, a far broader base for care than provided by the nuclear family. Theirs is the kind of collective care we need but which sits uneasily with current policies. We lack a way to articulate this kind of arrangement: for example, if the OWCH residents were completing a census, they would tick the box for living alone because they have private apartments. But they don't; th