A UBI for the Young?

The key to developing a programme of youth employment that respects the difficulties of the

contemporary school to employment transition is to understand the requirement to flourish and foster the development of skill (Hodkinson et al, 2012). It is fair to assume then that with this desire society would be well served by a system of a universal minimum payment that encourages individuals to feel a greater sense of security whilst giving them more time to pursue interests and economic opportunities that suit

67 their desires and skills. Indeed in a much smaller redistributional sense, the young have enjoyed some notable specific benefits which are widely available (though not fully universal) in the form of cash transfers. These include Educational Maintenance Allowance (Holford, 2015) and student maintenance grants (Round & Gunson, 2017). This often follows from what some have deemed a social investment state (Lister, 2003).

This does not mean to dismiss the concept of UBI however, for it is undoubtedly an idea whose time has come, yet at this moment there is insufficient data to suggest that it would allow the kind of emancipatory work forms that may lead to a system of work that better allows for the shocks that young workers in particular experience during periods of austerity. Furthermore, it does not create a fortuitous environment for to promote lifelong learning, when the current forms of UBI suggested are only redressing years of frozen wages and poor growth. In a situation predicated on another recession, something deemed quite likely by many notable economists (Streeck, 2016) it is probable that any UBI reform would be an early victim. Valiente et al’s (2019) research shows that youth unemployment has been prioritised as the main social problem to be addressed in Scotland, and most of the limited public resources for lifelong learning have been targeted towards youth at risk of unemployment at the expense of the rest of the adult

population. Despite this at the same time cuts to college places has meant avenues for formal education for the immediate post-school age group that is not higher education based has had a considerable knock on effect as shown by McMurray (2019). A UBI approach could theoretically alleviate this issue and give individuals more opportunity to pursue lifelong learning, yet the reality is that any improvement in standards will inevitably only cover sustained losses after years of frozen wages and increasing costs (O’Hara, 2015).

Advocates of UBI implictly accept automation as an inevitability, which comes into conflict with the established and stubborn human infrastructure that is prevalent, and automation will only be welcomed if it works in conjunction with that rather than against it (Carr, 2015). The assumed western conservative bias towards hard work and self-sufficiency (be it partially imagined or not) is not a throwaway factor that can be overcome simply by policy reform. There is further to this a considerable issue with the driving logic behind UBI and its adopters. As Jordan (2011:2) states a UBI “without a level of adequacy, and with

continuing work conditions for eligibility, could lead to further fragmentation of labour markets, and falls in wages.” In fact this is precisely what Universal Credit has been designed to do.

UBI allows for the subsidising of low paying employers and gives further justification for holders of capital not to pay workers correctly. This is a fear which has some historical precedent, most notably in the

Speenhamland reforms of 1795 in Berkshire (Pitts et al, 2017). This system, which has some similarities to a UBI, but is perhaps better termed a universal subsistence, was paid to those displaced by the technological

68 advancement in agricultural and weaving communities at the time. What followed was the preservation of unemployment with only a very basic level of safety net to catch those who fell victim to it, and no

advancement into formal work available beyond it. It does not take a great deal to imagine how a similar set of circumstances could afflict young people in the service industry, who struggle to find work

experience currently already. A way to address this would be to significantly increase the level of any given UBI remuneration, yet even in this case Martinelli (2017) has found that schemes based on more generous UBI payments, and so require slightly larger tax rises, still imply increases in poverty rates or only modest increases in overall poverty rates at considerable fiscal cost. Rather, UBI, and many similarly shaped reforms take these possibilities as a given and stride forward under that consideration. Unfortunately the results of various pilot studies have not been as positive as initial hopes would have suggested, and the questions surrounding the intentions of state UBI advocates are of considerable concern. Much of the appeals to a UBI are couched in the language of neoliberalism, seeking to make it palatable to an elite that stand steadfastly opposed to reform. This is well evidenced by Standing (2015:1) who states “A basic income would help people be more rational, more long-term in their outlook, and more prepared to take

entrepreneurial risk.”

Critics of UBI do not contest UBI is affordable in a fiscal sense, but remark that its costs are not worth its meagre outcomes (Goldsmith, 1998; Burczak, 2009). Where individuals have access to numerous targeted benefits (in the UK - housing benefit, employment support allowance etc.) they may well be forced to accept a one off lump sum payment as an alternative. Further critics have remarked that is difficult to imagine that such a reform would not be used by regularly re-elected neoliberal governments to cut back on other long constituted benefits, as has been a policy goal of successive governments in the UK (Smith & Jones, 2015; Hamnett, 2013).

2.5.4 Conclusion

Universal Basic Income is a considered response to the ills real or perceived of technological development. As reflected in Chapter 3, such responses often grow out of a desire for efficiency and resign themselves to the inevitability of a coming social or economic change. They are not designed to be a resistance to, but a reaction to. Despite this, the experimentation with UBI in the 1970s to the present day suggests a

resurgence of attempts to actually solve the associated problems of unemployment rather than ameliorate it, and this spirit can be traced back to the belief in the possibility of long lasting solutions to poverty and precarious work (Jordan, 2011). Despite this, UBI faces many problems that make it ill-fitting for the pursuit of purposeful transitions for the young. A remarkable factor of the aforementioned UBI trials has been the seeming disinterest in creating specificity to deal with youth unemployment in particular. It is after all undoubtedly the case that those sectors most under threat by technological development and growing

69 unemployment are those disproportionately staffed by the young. As Frey & Osborne (2013) found we are heading “towards labour market polarisation, with computerisation being principally confined to low-skill and low-wage occupations.”

UBI is not in its conception designed to weaken the position of labour but it is clear that is a concerning side effect of it. It is of note that trade unions are largely united in their resistance to it (Vanderborght, 2016), and not solely for reasons of self-preservation. There is an acceptance, albeit implicit, that the skills and purposeful employment, once a staple of trade union membership ranks, is dying out – and such a reform further threatens that phenomenon. Furthermore, UBI as a formulated policy struggles to overcome arising social and cultural narratives focused around the individual and the concept of indigenous communities, even in states where it seemingly has initial support (Bay & Pedersen, 2006). This conflict with working class concerns continues to be the downfall of many well-meaning reforms and one which politicised reform solutions regularly forget (Evans & Tilley, 2017). In relation to working class concerns, UBI fails to address the desire for skills based employment by simply rejecting it as a necessity. Fundamentally the barriers that face UBI are ones of structure, a structure that is not yet finished with the notion of labour as a key input. As Hum & Simpson (2005:283) state “the view that generous unconditional transfers should be given to able-bodied persons who simply choose not to work is too controversial in a market economy that must still rely on labour input to produce goods and services.”

There is a failure inherent in UBI projects, and particularly in the foundational work of Van Parijs (2003), that neglects the social dynamics that presently exist in many post-industrial economies. Despite this the reasons for UBI’s perceived failures at this point are largely political. Academically it is insufficient to say UBI has a limited future purely on the basis of political interference, but this is the environment within which reform must be considered. Can the utopian vision of early proponents truly match up to the disassembled and defunded experiments seen in Canada and Finland? The data is inconclusive to say the least. Such reforms however do not take into account significant aspects of this conclusion, which are the key variables of purpose and skill. Cash transfers and to a lesser extent basic income reforms are in essence direct redistribution with an aim to raise the basic level of prosperity, there is no commitment to

development of skill or to engender purpose in a generation that have come to learn that their future is by and large set to be worse than any their parents experienced.

70 2.6 Chapter Conclusion – Developing the Research Questions

In this chapter the key debates concerning what can be considered meaningful transitions have been critically assessed including varying discussions around social mobility, the lived reality for working class young people in Glasgow, and potential policy solutions to meet the concerns arising from the age of austerity. Though far from an exhaustive treatment of an issue as broad as it is vitally important, this does cover the key aspects of the debate surrounding austerity, the future of work in regards the transitions young people go through and how this relates to contemporary policy.

The insights drawn from the literature review suggest that the kind of work we as individuals perceive to be of value and in what aspects of work we place meaning on are still very much situated within the

predominant neoliberal perspective of individualised risk (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Korpi, 1997; Blyth, 2013; Hardgrove et al, 2015). Despite vigorous debate regarding the future of work and the varied radical reforms presented it is evidenced that a traditional localised and conservative attitude towards the value of work remains prevalent (Wight, 1993; Grasso et al, 2017; Snee & Devine, 2018). The cultural dimension of this concern is key, and many young people’s attitudes are shaped by their surroundings and the strong family connections that take up so much of their life (Hardgrove, 2015; MacDonald & Shildrick, 2018).

Further, the perceptions young people hold onto regarding what work is and their own understanding of where they might end up appears to be considerably influenced by education (Stahl, 2015; Weedon, 2016; Baars et al, 2016). This is particularly prevalent in working class communities where the perceived lack of educational advantage and accompanying diminished investment fosters the impression of a demographic ignored. Following that logic it is fair to begin from a point where the research assumes that those young people seeking to leave school post-16 and find work will have a particular context from which they can reflect and that in some way this has been influenced by their educational experience.

Further, there is a prevalent gap in the field regarding this particular group, who due to growing

educational opportunities and the diminishment of secure post-school career programmes and training are becoming less and less numerous. Where significant research has focused more generally on the transitions of young people across a specific cultural or geographic context, the research born out of this review encapsulates a specific economic period and focuses keenly on the group most likely to experience the deleterious effects of it.

71 These insights have led to the development of the primary research question:

1) How do young people, in particular the working class, imagine and negotiate modern employment