England will be trialing a universal basic income (UBI) scheme for the first time, where 30 individuals will receive a monthly stipend of 1,600 with no strings attached.
The Autonomy will run the pilot program think tank and will take place in Jarrow in the North East of England and the East Finchley area of North London. The scheme will also include a control group that will not receive the free cash, allowing researchers to measure the impact of the money on the participants' lives.
The director of research at Autonomy, Will Stronge, believes that the scheme would directly alleviate poverty and boost the well-being of millions of people. However, opponents of the scheme have expressed concerns that it could create perverse incentives that could have massive ramifications on the labor market.
Previous UBI trials have also indicated that wealth transfers could have the opposite outcome from the alleged noble intentions of proponents. For instance, in Finland, a UBI experiment failed to encourage recipients to find work, with the government finding that the "basic income experiment did not increase the employment of participants during the first trial year."
A review of the scheme by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claimed that to afford a nationwide UBI program; the Finnish state would have to increase taxes by 30 percent. The OECD also argued that the universal basic income would increase poverty in the country from 11.4 percent to 14.1 percent.
The implementation of a UBI scheme in England would require a significant overhaul of the tax and benefits systems, as well as putting a heavy strain on public finances, which have been in disarray in the UK following the spending spree during the COVID-19 pandemic during which the government paid businesses to remain shuttered and for workers to stay home. Despite these concerns, Stronge believes that the potential benefits of the scheme are too significant to ignore, as all the evidence shows that it would directly alleviate poverty and boost millions of people's well-being.
The idea of a wealth-sharing program was first mooted by English philosopher Sir Thomas More over 500 years ago in his book Utopia, which Communist Manifesto author Karl Marx and Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin praised. The UBI scheme in England will be closely monitored to determine its impact on the participants' lives and whether it could be implemented on a larger scale.
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