Stumbling Towards Basic Income - The prospects for tax-benefit
integration
136 pages, paperback, ISBN 0953020507 is available from CISC price £5
for members, £10 for non-members, email [log in to unmask]
'I very much welcome this Report by the Citizen's Income Study Centre,
with its insightful review of the prospects for tax benefit integration
and its valuable comparison of political approaches in the UK and
Ireland.' - Tony Atkinson, Nuffield College, Oxford.
The study, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and a donation
from Lord Vinson, reassesses the prospects for tax-benefit integration
in the UK, in the light of the New Labour government’s high-profile
welfare reform programme.
Prof Bill Jordan, Research Director of Exeter and Hull Universities
explains, 'The government has some good ideas, but in some respects it
has too many ideas. It is the tension between too many complicated and
divergent systems that creates problems such as poverty and unemployment
traps. What people want is coherence and the conclusion of this report
is that coherence comes not from careful orchestration and control but
simplicity. A Basic Income is the most simple and inclusive
redistributive system there is.'
The report has three main parts. The first part draws on an extensive
interview programme of parliamentarians in the UK and Ireland to assess
the changes in political culture that have accompanied New Labour’s
welfare reform programme in the UK, and compares the cultural context
for tax-benefit reform with that of Ireland. Three separate groups are
identified, ‘technocrats’, ‘agnostics’ and ‘BI supporters’, the
following chapters show that a Citizen's Income has sufficient appeal to
be considered by all three.
The second section analyses the tax-benefit policies that could best
deliver New Labour’s goals - making work pay and tackling poverty. It
takes as its starting point the New Contract for Welfare’s principle
that redistribution should be conditional on active participation by all
those capable of work and demonstrates that a Basic Income is the
natural conclusion to a three-stage process.
The final section is an audit of current New Labour policy that examines
the array of initiatives on offer. The section accepts the policy aims
but points out the substantive problems attendant to the means.
Stuart Duffin, Director of the Citizen' Income Study Centre concludes,
'Our analysis shows that a CI has fundamental advantages, in terms of
equality, inclusion, opportunity and social cohesion, over the other
alternatives explored.'
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