The latest from Gareth Morgan – advocating a basic universal income

OPINION: Gareth Morgan is certainly never short of “new” ideas whether they are genuinely new or old ideas recycled. And good for him. Ideas are the stuff from which good political debates are fashioned.

In this case, it is a really old idea. The idea that everyone should be given a basic income – to cover the basics of life and get them started on whatever they wish to do – is as old as the hills. It is surprising really that it has not been progressed further, probably because of the difficulties of selling the policy to politicians and some voters.

Personally, I think it is a good idea.

Politically, National particularly have always opposed such a policy on the grounds that it would be a disincentive for people to seek employment or to reduce their dependence on welfare payments. For sure there would be some people in that category. But the likelihood of this is much reduced if the universal income is indeed universal, i.e. not means tested, which means it becomes genuinely additional to any other income. And as several commentators have already pointed out we already have universal income for those aged 65 and over (National Superannuation) and I don’t think this has produced adverse effects or deterred people from continuing to work if they wanted to.

Such a universal income would also replace and get rid of one of our most vexing problems in university education – the student loan. So instead of having a loan, you get a grant equal to the universal income.

The challenge I think would be to set the universal income at the right level – enough to make a difference but not so much as to encourage people not to bother with work. And there are probably a whole lot of other unwanted consequences that would have to be thought through before any policy was implemented.

There would undoubtedly be people who would abuse such a universal income by spending it on illegal or undesirable activities but this happens already with welfare payments and I think has to be accepted as one of the inevitable downsides. For example, trying to penalise people for such activities by reducing their basic income would be quite counterproductive and would simply undermine the concept and complicate the process.

It will be interesting to see if the idea gets any traction this time around. In logic, it should. But it is hard to convince politicians to give away money without getting something back in return, in part because of the risk of making themselves vulnerable to people opposing the policy.

By Bas Walker

This is another of Bas Walker’s posts on GrownUps.  Please look out for his articles, containing his Beachside Ponderings.