An Unconditional Citizen's Income | The Bullet No. 1065
In these straitened times, the idea of a basic
income, granted unconditionally to every citizen, from cradle to grave,
feels utopian. How on earth could it be paid for, we wonder. Wouldn't
everyone just stop working? Where would we be then?
I first came across it, in the optimistic late 1960s, in a form that materialized in the so-called ‘fifth demand’
of the Women's Liberation movement (formulated in 1971) that called for
‘financial and legal independence’ for all women. This had an enormous
appeal: not only is it degrading for anyone to have to beg or manipulate
someone else for their means of subsistence, and materially damaging to
that person if the money is not forthcoming; it also destroys the
character of human relationships if they are embedded in relations of
dependency. Unequal power relations like those between a husband and a
dependent wife, parents and dependent teenagers, able-bodied providers
and their disabled dependents can lead to a festering mess of guilt,
gratitude and unexpressed anger. The results can range from dishonesty
and depression to emotional and physical abuse. In a money-based
society, an independent source of income is a pre-condition for human
dignity.
