The term UBS was first given voice in October 2017 in a report from the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London.2 It offers an approach that is distinct from ‘universal basic income’ (UBI). The latter is a proposal to give regular, unconditional cash payments to everyone, rich and poor – ostensibly to reduce poverty and inequality, promote opportunities and solve problems arising from ungenerous, stigmatizing systems of income support. We wholeheartedly endorse the principle that everyone should have the right to a minimum income and that no one should suffer blame or stigma for falling on hard times. Radical reform of income support, although not the topic of this book, is extremely urgent. But the solution to the problem of inadequate social security is not ‘UBI’, universal, unconditional cash payments that are sufficient to live on, which is how it is defined by many of its leading advocates. We can find no evidence that UBI could ever live up to the more ambitious claims that are made for it.3
On the other hand, we are convinced that UBS holds out real promise for achieving similar goals. Instead of plugging into the neoliberal formula of individual consumption within a market-based system, UBS offers a collective approach that supplements – and reduces dependence on – individual monetary income. As we argue later, more and better public services can deliver far better results in terms of equality, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability.
Notes
1 1. A formal definition of a ‘service’, as distinct from a ‘good’, is a type of activity that is intangible, is not stored, does not result in ownership and is used at the point of delivery.
2 2. Social Prosperity Network (2017), ‘Social Prosperity for the Future: A Proposal for Universal Basic Services’, UCL: IGP.
3 3. A. Coote and E. Yazici (2019), ‘Universal Basic Income: A Briefing for Trade Unions’, Ferney-Voltaire, France: Public Services International.
1 Why We Need This Change
No one should have to pay for emergency health care or endure a three-week wait to see a local doctor. Every parent should feel confident that their children will be happy and well educated at the local (non-fee-paying) school. There should be no need for food banks or rough sleeping, no graphs showing widening health inequalities or rising levels of mental distress.
These are not outrageous imaginings, just reasonable expectations of anyone living in a modern democracy. Yet too many live with basic insecurities, too few parents are confident about local schooling, and too many doubt they will get decent health care when they need it. And while these worries are shared by people on average incomes, it is much worse for those who are poorer. Homelessness, extreme poverty and despair are all on the rise.
When the United Nations sent a Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights to the United States in 2017, he found that none of its manifestly superior wealth, power and technology was being ‘harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty’. He concluded that the persistence of extreme poverty was ‘a political choice made by those in power’.1 When the same Rapporteur visited the United Kingdom in 2018, he found, similarly, that it was ‘patently unjust and contrary to British values’ that so many people were living in poverty in the world’s fifth-largest economy; it was not an inevitable consequence of economic forces, he said, but the choice of a government committed to ‘radical social re-engineering’.2 The United States and the United Kingdom may have moved further in this direction than other rich countries, but there have been comparable shifts in government priorities, public attitudes and spending patterns across the rich world.
The case for UBS is about choosing another direction. It rests on two key principles: shared needs and collective responsibilities. These don’t belong to the neoliberal ‘common sense’ that has shaped our politics for too many decades. But they strike such a deep chord in our everyday experience and familiar feelings that, when you get to thinking about them, they are altogether more common and more sensible. They are also soundly anchored in political theory.
All human beings have the same set of basic needs that must be satisfied in order to survive and thrive, think for ourselves and participate in society. Theories of capability and human need converge around this point. Martha Nussbaum describes three ‘core’ capabilities: of affiliation, bodily integrity and practical reason.3 Len Doyal and Ian Gough identify health and critical autonomy as basic human needs that are prerequisites for social participation.4
These basic human needs are universal across time and space. Of course, the practical detail of how they are satisfied will vary widely, as norms, resources and expectations shift and change between generations and countries. But there are certain generic categories of universal ‘intermediate needs’ that are more enduring. These are the means by which we meet our basic needs. They have been listed by need theorists as water, nutrition, shelter, secure and non-threatening work, education, health care, security in childhood, significant primary relationships, physical and economic security, and a safe environment.5 Unlike basic needs, intermediate needs may evolve over time. For example, recent efforts to identify ‘a set of universal, irreducible and essential set of material conditions for achieving basic human wellbeing’ have found that access to motorized transport and to information and communications could be added the list.6
Needs are not like wants. Wants vary infinitely and can multiply exponentially. If you don’t get what you want, you won’t die or cease to be part of human society, but that could happen if you don’t get what you need. Needs cannot usually be substituted for one another (a lack of water and shelter cannot be offset by more education or health care). They are part of an essential package. And needs are satiable: there are limits beyond which more food, more work or more security are no longer helpful and could even do you harm. There comes a point where sufficiency is reached in the process of meeting needs. By contrast, there will never come a time when we all have everything we want.
Understanding the difference between needs and wants or preferences provides an enduring, evidence-based and ethical foundation for making decisions about what things are truly essential for the survival and well-being of everyone, now and in future. It doesn’t trap us in any kind of uniform determinism because we acknowledge that history, geography, politics and culture shape the specific ways in which needs are satisfied. But it helps us to set priorities that are more, rather than less, likely to be fair and sustainable.
As individuals today, we can meet some of our needs through market transactions, depending on our circumstances. Food and clothing are examples here: most of us expect to be able to buy these ourselves, and having enough money to do this is clearly important. There are other needs that most of us cannot meet without help and we depend on others for our capacity to do so. Health care and education are the most common examples but, as we shall argue, the range of needs requiring a collective response is much wider. If we are to live together in society, we are all responsible for ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met – through a combination of measures to support income and provide services. As the sociologist Emile Durkheim observed, people ‘cannot live together without agreeing and consequently without making mutual sacrifices, joining themselves to one another in a strong and enduring fashion’. This is not just a worthy option, but the ‘fundamental basis’ of social life.7
Roosevelt’s New Deal and post-war welfare states involved pooling resources and sharing risks through the institutions of government. Most post-war settlements aimed to achieve full (male) employment, to provide income support for those who could not earn and to supply necessities that people could not afford to pay for individually in the form of public services that were