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I’m receiving plenty of messages about the thorn in every UBI advocate’s side: funding a UBI.

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Thomas Paine, the revolutionary mentioned in Volume 1, mentions poverty as a central theme behind the motivation for the dividend of his citizens, and it is the argument that has survived the test of time.
Proponents of UBI will say ‘UBI will reduce poverty,’ as much as Malcolm Tucker swears. The similarities between the fictional Tucker and the real UBI end here. While the former relies on spin and Machiavellianism, the ‘poverty-reduction’ defence of UBI makes headlines for its straightforward and intuitive nature - which does not rely on illusionary tricks.

The reasoning is simple: those experiencing poverty need money to get out of it, UBI gives them that money. Yet the evidence does not mean it is a foolproof argument that lacks opposition. Opponents ask why not just give targeted UBI (in other words, social benefits, or in the UK case, Universal Credit). It’s a fair critique: we could give more to those in need. Yet there are two reasons why a UBI is a better policy than Universal Credit.

The cost of administering targeted benefits is close to £200m as of 2020-21. £200m is a fraction of government spending on social security, but it is big-money on a local scale. Further is the administrative complexity. Means-testing can create an opening for fraud or overpayment of benefits. Losses from these sources amounted to £8.6bn in 2021-22 - a lot of money to miss out on.

UBI is far easier to administer, likely preventing the by-products of targeting.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report in 2010, discussing a three-pronged cycle of poverty. The initial stage is poverty and benefit-dependency. The next stage is finding a job, which gives you an income, but loses you your benefits payments. The third stage is you losing your job or the job not paying enough to sustainably live off. To no surprise, the JRF found that jobs secured in this stage tend to be non-permanent and low paying. You therefore return to the original stage of poverty. This is unsustainable, it doesn’t eliminate poverty, and remains a high human and financial cost to individuals and society.
By nature of being Universal, a UBI tethered to poverty would not be taken away - avoiding this problem.

Instead of finishing here, which may seem a good place to stop, I want to conclude by asking - what does a UBI linked to poverty look like? This is not only to generate a numerical value UBI (which I find useful for picturing how a UBI would affect our lives), but also to be used in Volume 4).

The UK government tends to use ‘less than 60% of the median income’ to determine poverty. The definition reduces poverty to a comparative measure, ignoring the bases of individual experience and lack of basic necessities. The Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation gives a good qualitative definition:

‘Poverty is about not having enough money to meet basic needs, including food, clothing and shelter.’

Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation (2009)

From this qualitative idea, we can create a quantitative estimate for the value of UBI, which requires us to work out the cost of food, clothing and shelter. Luckily, we have reports that give us these answers.

Average food at home is estimated at £28.90 per week, minimum clothing spending is estimated at £15 a week, and average local authority rent (in England) averages at £88.27 per week. All together, this adds up to £132.17 a week, or £6,872.84 per year (costing the government around £460bn a year).

Let me remind everyone that this is an estimate based on very general assumptions. There must be support for utilities, particularly during a cost of living crisis like the one we live in. There would be an opportunity for a decrease in UBI for those under 18. It’s clear that the exact value of a UBI to alleviate poverty would need high quantitative (and qualitative analysis), something I won’t do within #UBIwithUlysse to keep it short and sweet.

Hopefully, the estimate of £6,872.84 will help you, reader, imagine how UBI might affect your life and how you might use a UBI of this value.

As mentioned above, this value is useful for the next volume, where I attempt to deal with the strongest argument against UBI, and one that tends to be its downfall – at least until I attempt to answer it, of course – funding a UBI.

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This article discusses domestic abuse. Click here for a link to a government page that can direct victims, or those who may feel uncomfortable reading this article, to organisations that may support them. 

There is no shortage of Universal Basic Income (UBI)-centric discussion among Liberals. From Renaissance thinkers like Hobbes and Locke to contemporary political parties like the Liberal Democrats, Greens or Scottish National Party, UBI is generally supported. UBI is a social security scheme rivalling the existing Universal Credit, where all legal residents of a country get a set sum of money at regular intervals with no strings attached - regardless of demographics.

YouGov (2020) reported that 51% of the UK public supported a UBI. While their views may have been guided more by the onset of COVID than by an ideological backing of the scheme, the support makes sense.

Attractive arguments can be made with relative ease: obliteration of poverty, financial safety nets for all people, fairness across demographics, the simplification of social security. This begs the question of why UBI hasn’t been implemented yet – a question I won’t address in this article. 

Instead, I will direct attention to how UBI can reduce domestic abuse. Dedicated organisations, health experts and victims have created troves of insightful and moving articles and reports on the topic. If you are comfortable doing so, I strongly recommend you read them. So instead of discussing domestic abuse in its vast and complex entirety, I will focus on one element - financial abuse.

Refuge published an Economic Abuse Report in 2020, estimating that 8.7 million were victims of economic abuse. Nota bene, economic abuse differs from financial abuse, as it is a larger umbrella term, covering material deprivation.

So what is the link to a UBI? As your intuition may suggest, a UBI would remove the financial reliance victims have on their abusers. Severing this link would mean that victims can financially support themselves in the short term, say, rent a hotel room for a few days, while sorting long-term accommodation. Individuals can then pay back debts, which the Refuge report cites as a mechanism to tie people to their abusers. Eventually, victims can begin to have financially sustainable lives and break free of the vicious cycle they live in.

Of course, it’s not as easy as giving everyone free money and expecting financial abuse to disappear. As many critics of UBI proclaim, it can be exploited, and indeed, it is intuitive that those willing to financially abuse others are similarly willing to exploit their partners’ UBI income. 

Yet a system where any UBI recipient can walk into a bank or government agency to collect their UBI income would mean that, as long as victims can get to these points of contact, they can reliably gain access to UBI - with a law making it impossible to collect UBI on behalf of a spouses. In brief, there are tools we can use to make sure that exploitation doesn't occur.

Domestic abuse cases are on the rise, while charging rates for alleged perpetrators is decreasing. UBI would prove an innovative way to fight domestic abuse, and could transform lives for victims. A strong argument which should give momentum to the pro-UBI lobby.

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