May 02, 2020 21:00:00

What is the history of 'basic income,' which provides all people with a fixed amount of money unconditionally?

As a result of the increase in unemployment due to the epidemic of the new coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19), attention has been focused on the '

basic income ', which provides unconditional and fixed amount of benefits as part of economic policy. Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), an American literary review magazine , and the United States to this day through ' Transfer State, ' a study of Cambridge welfare policy written by Cambridge historian Peter Slowman. It explains the economic and political history of England.

Free Money for Surfers: A Genealogy of the Idea of Universal Basic Income-Los Angeles Review of Books
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/free-money-for-surfers-a-genealogy-of-the-idea-of-universal-basic-income/

Since the epidemic of COVID-19, the demand for 'implementation of basic income' has been rapidly increasing. In April 2020, celebrities such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , the youngest female House of Representatives in American history, and economist Jim O'Neill, who was also known to have created the concept of BRICs , were left- and right-wing. We appealed for the realization of a basic income across the fence.

Among them, O'Neill said, 'Of the policies launched during the global financial crisis around 2008, policies such as interest rate cuts had only a small impact on the economy,' he said. Instead of forcing people to make extremely difficult decisions, we should implement a 'direct money transfer policy.' ' In fact, the Spanish government has announced that it is 'working towards the realization of a basic income' amid the epidemic of the new coronavirus.

It is clear that the Spanish government is aiming to implement `` basic income '' that you can get money even if you do not work as a countermeasure against the new coronavirus-GIGAZINE

Although it is a basic income that has been attracting attention in recent years, it was a concept that did not even exist in the time of the Great Depression around 1930. The US Right Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon at the time said, 'We should settle workers, stocks, farmers, real estate and so on. If corruption is eliminated from the old system, prices will be appropriate and new entrepreneurs will I will embark on reconstruction. ' The leftists appealed for comprehensive welfare policies such as public works, employment guarantee, and social security with the theme of national reconstruction, but did not come up with the idea of cash payment such as basic income.

Mr. Slowman's work traces the history that can be said to be the 'origin of basic income' that existed from the ' Forest Charter ' attached to Magna Carta to the present day, but LARB is among the modern American and British history. Focus on

According to Slowman, the origin of modern basic income was advocated by the Quaker engineer Dennis Milner and Mabel Milner Milner in 1918: `` Every individual always seeks life and freedom from the central fund. You should receive just enough allowance to maintain it. ' But Sloman points out that this type of claim was unacceptable to most people at the time.

It was

John Maynard Keynes, who was hailed as one of the best economists of the 20th century, to truly foster the debate about efficient wealth redistribution . Keynes and Thomas Humphrey Marshall promote a socialist approach where the government should provide services that improve the working standard of living, such as education, healthcare, parks and school meals. With the publication of a report by William Peverridge on ' Social Insurance and Related Services, ' Britain will embark on a path to a welfare state known as 'To the Yurikakogara Grave .'

On the other hand, the idea of becoming a prototype of the basic income that 'cash should be paid rather than providing social welfare services' appeared in the 1940s. Slowman cites Juliet Reese-Williams as one of the most prominent figures in the idea of wealth redistribution in the 1940s. Reese-Williams, a novelist and politician, advocated a ' negative income tax ' in which people without a certain amount of income do not pay taxes to the government, but instead receive benefits from the government. James Meade , who represents the Keynesian School and later receives the Nobel Prize in Economics , also discusses cash supply theory in his 1948 book Economic Planning and Pricing. However, according to Slowman, these claims were still unacceptable to the people at the time.

It was Milton Friedman, an American economist who was hailed as the neo-liberal flag bearer, who inherited the idea of Reese-Williams. Friedman argued that while working for the US Treasury from 1941 to 1943, he should introduce a negative income tax as an alternative to all other welfare and assistance programs. Friedman's argument is described by Slowman as 'an attractive alternative to socialist policy.'

According to the Suroman he said, is the 1950s and 1960s together,

laissez faire and the political parties to support the laissez-faire approach, which is known for, the principle of effective demand to focus on investment in the social infrastructure and public projects on the basis of It was a time of political confrontation in favor of the Keynesian approach. In the United States, President Lyndon Johnson has launched a series of social welfare policies called ' the fight against poverty ' since 1964.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom in the 1970s Margaret Thatcher 'has been promoted under the administration Thatcherism but has deployed a series of economic policy, called the' gap between the rich and the poor has expanded, the unemployment rate rose. However, Mr. Slowman argues that the subsidy movement flourished during the economic crisis, and as a result, the idea of basic income was approached.

In the 1990s, Prime Minister Tony Blair developed policies aimed at combining the advantages of conflicting ideas such as capitalism and socialism called the ' third way .' The goal was to transform the model of the welfare state, which was being dismantled under Thatcher and his successor, John Major , into equal opportunity. The Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Blair, focused on redistributing funds and resources to increase welfare benefits, rebuilding schools and hospitals that were just worn out during the Thatcher era, and refraining from military spending and increasing economic spending. .

In the 2010s , Prime Minister David Cameron undertook six years of austerity to move towards becoming a 'small government.' Although this move was distant from the basic income, measures such as tax credits were consistently inherited from the Blair administration, so it is said that tax deductions and benefits other than pensions will be integrated into a single system. Mr. Slowman argued that ambition survived through time, leading to later basic income.

As mentioned above, although ideas similar to modern basic income have appeared in various places throughout the times, they have not been realized due to political and social reasons. Regarding the basic income under the COVID-19 epidemic, LARB said, 'Large public works are impractical due to the nature of social distances. But lack of medical equipment and trained workers. Therefore, it is possible that the demand for the production of essential goods is rather high, and it is not possible to solve it with basic income. ”“ Even if a large amount of money is supplied to the city by “ helicopter money ”, the stockpiling will increase That alone is not an effective COVID-19 policy. ' As an alternative, we recommend raising temporary unemployment benefits to 90% of regular benefits and spending more on the group with the lowest income in the middle of COVID-19.