Should governments abolish their welfare states and replace them with a Universal Basic Income (UBI), paid to everyone, even billionaires, regardless of means? Such payments would be designed to cover essential living costs, leaving individuals free to make the choice of whether they wished to work in order to gain themselves a better lifestyle.
It is an idea which until yesterday seemed to be in the ascendant. Bernie Sanders has advocated it. John McDonnell has launched a study to determine whether it should become Labour policy. It hasn’t just attracted the Left – Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have declared themselves in favour, seeing a UBI as a means of softening the mass job losses they expect as a result of technological advance. It has attracted some British Conservatives, too – Alan Duncan wrote a book advocating it as long ago as the 1990s.
One country even put the idea into practice – Finland.
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