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HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism
Video of the “biggest question in the world” plays on one of the screens in Times Square in New York City May 2016 / Pic: Generation Basic Income/CC
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Basic Income: The Policy That Changes Everything
The Common Sense Policy Group, Policy Press, £9.99
AS automation and large language models continue to render ever-growing swathes of the working and middle classes redundant, capitalism is returning to its central concern — how to drive down wages but keep consumption up. One answer that now arises from both the left and right is a basic income.
In this book, The Common Sense Policy Group offer a moderate polemic arguing for a basic income, chiefly from a public health point of view.
Their vision is of a weekly payment made to individuals by the government. It is not intended to replace the need to work, but instead to provide a stable ground level below which one cannot fall.
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