UK government should give £10K to every citizen under 55, a report suggests
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The report says the fund could help people: &quot;A low-skilled worker might reduce their working hours to attain skills enabling career progression.<p>&quot;The fund could provide the impetus to turn an entrepreneurial idea into a reality. It could be the support that enables a carer to be there for a loved one.&quot;
&quot;<p>I&#x27;m skeptical of the long term implications of this logic, and this reads as a very neoliberal solution. 416 pounds a month for two years is not a lot of money. Job training and child&#x2F;elderly care are difficult, time consuming, and expensive. This seems to be why they are prime tasks to be run by the state. Giving people a small cash sum, and telling them to teach themselves new skills so that they&#x27;re ready for the economy of the future feels ignorant and wasteful.<p>If you&#x27;re working a part time retail job that is about to be automated, what type of &quot;job training&quot; can this realistically provide. Or, if you&#x27;re taking care of an elderly parent, or a young child, this is far from a replacement for more robust social services.<p>I truly want to believe in a UBI in some form, but I find the language of &quot;entrepreneurial idea[s]&quot; to be a little repulsive. Not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur. Not every poor and middle class citizen can become a successful start up founder and small business owner. UBI could be fantastic but is not a replacement for the once robust social safety nets that are being chipped away at (or decimated) in the US&#x2F;UK. I am not saying it is the case in this article -- I know little about the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce -- but anytime I see someone advocating for UBI I think it is worthwhile to interrogate their positionality and their imagination of the future. The silicon valley libertarian billionaire dream of a UBI seems different from someone with a genuine commitment to improving the quality of life for everyone.<p>There are no quick fixes to poverty, skill gap, and the problems wrought by automation. Looking towards UBI as a panacea feels dangerous in that it can prevent addressing the more structural problems at play.