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Deeming 17 (Deeming, Christopher. Senior Lecturer in Social Policy @ Strathclyde University, PhD from the University of Bristol. “Defining Minimum Income (and Living) Standards in Europe: Methodological Issues and Policy Debates” School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. Social Policy & Society (2017) 16:1, 33–48, Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147474641500041X. Accessed 7/13/23)

Most European countries have a comprehensive set of income support programs to protect households from income shocks and poverty. These include both social insurance and social assistance transfers. Social insurance programs, such as unemployment benefits, protect workers from loss of income due to unemployment, and eligibility is typically time-limited and requires individuals to have made sufficient contributions while employed. Social assistance (or income support) transfers are typically not linked to contributions but tend to be categorical, such as universal child benefits, or means tested, and aim to protect households from poverty or compensate for higher expenditures (e.g., child benefits). At the center of means-tested benefits are Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) schemes, which play the role of last-resort income support programs aimed at protecting working-age households from poverty. Such schemes become increasingly important in the context of economic shocks and have played an important role in in protecting households from the economic consequences of lockdowns in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic.1

“Guaranteed income” refers to a regular cash payment accessible to certain members of a community, with no strings attached (ie, unconditional). Guaranteed income redistributes wealth to people who need it most and who’ve historically been impacted by lack of opportunities—largely people of color.

In contrast, Universal Basic Income (UBI) refers to all people getting a set amount of regular cash regardless of their income or need.

Universal basic income (UBI) is often used to describe any instance in which a government or organization hands out some form of cash with no strings attached. The nearly two dozen programs sprouting up around the U.S. that have been associated with UBI, however, are actually not all that universal.

These trials, better described as tests of guaranteed minimum income, tend to be limited to single parents, families who live above the poverty level but still can't afford basic necessities like housing or childcare, or teens aging out of the foster care system.

A Basic Income is an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual as a right of citizenship. It is as simple as that. Basic Income has a number of different names: Citizen’s Income, Basic Income, Citizen’s Basic Income, Universal Basic Income. They all mean exactly the same: an unconditional income paid to every individual. The amount paid to an individual would not depend on their income, it would not depend on their wealth, it would not depend on their household structure, it would not depend on their employment status, and it would not depend on anything else. Every individual of the same age would receive exactly the same: the same amount, every week or every month, automatically. Older people might receive more than working age adults, younger adults less, and less for children. Does adjusting the amount with someone’s age compromise Basic Income’s unconditionality? No, it does not. What is unique about Basic Income, what matters, and what makes it work, is that it can be turned on at someone’s birth, and turned off at their death, that no active administration is required in between, and that nothing that anyone can influence, or that requires enquiry of any kind, can affect it. Once the computer knows someone’s date of birth, it never needs to ask about their age: it can seamlessly adjust the amount that an individual is paid as their age changes. Everyone of the same age would receive exactly the same income, unconditionally.

What Is Basic Income? Basic Income Defined and Introduced The idea that states should provide a means-tested guaranteed minimum income for citizens who are unable to meet their basic needs is widely shared and has been a central component in the evolution of social citizenship rights. However, proposals for a basic income represent a different and more inclusive strategy for income support. They suggest that a firm income floor should be established for all members of society without any form of behavioral conditionality, means test, or other procedures that may be perceived as intrusive or stigmatizing. The Basic Income Earth Network defines basic income as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.” Notably, this definition, which is (with slight variations) the most common used in the literature, remains silent on the level of such a regular payment. The “basic” of basic income is thus meant to capture that it provides a reliable economic foundation upon which incomes from other sources can be freely added, not that it is “definitionally . . . tied to some notion of ‘basic needs’” (Van Parijs, 1995, p. 30). While some authors prefer to define a basic income as being high enough to satisfy basic needs (Wright, 2010), this article sticks to the standard definition. It usefully reflects the diversity of proposals for unconditional and individual forms of income support in both affluent and developing countries, and it provides an inclusive basis for ecumenical debates on their role and value in different ideological settings and in different types of economies. It follows from this definition that basic income is not necessarily a more radical or redistributive form of income support relative to more traditional safety nets. The redistributive potential of basic income depends entirely on the details of the particular proposal advanced and the wider set of measures with which it is combined.

In its purest form, a basic income is an unconditional, periodic cash payment that the government makes to everyone. It is not based on means-testing, which means that a hedge fund manager and a homeless person receive the same amount.3

There are no strings attached with a UBI, so there are no requirements to work, attend school, receive vaccines, register for military service, or vote. It is not paid in kind—housing, food—or in vouchers. Instead, it is a floor below which no one's cash income can fall.3

Each of these organisations has the authority to construct its own definition, but because each organisation’s definition reflects common usage, and because the organisations are in network relationships with each other, and also with numerous writers on the subject, we might expect a certain amount of consistency. Quite often, ‘unconditional’, ‘nonwithdrawable’ and ‘individual’, or similar words, will be found, and the five assumptions (regularand frequent payment, payment incash, permanence, nonvarying but upratable payments, and possibly payments varying with age) will also be found.

Because BIEN is a global organisation with affiliated organisations, its own definition of Basic Income will need to reflect current usage, and in particular it will need to reflect current usage among its affiliates. This is not difficult to achieve. The wording on BIEN’s website runs as follows:

A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.

Universal basic income is an income support mechanism typically intended to reach all (or a very large portion of the population) with no (or minimal) conditions.

Discussions around universal basic income can be heated, both in a scholarly context and in public discourse, and there is no established common understanding. Very different income-support programs are often labeled "universal basic income," even when they have little in common or do not aim at the same goal.

A basic income is an income unconditionally paid to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.1 In other words, it is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries through its being paid

(1) to individuals rather than households;

Malcolm Torry, London School of Economics, A Research Agenda for Basic Income, Elgar Publishing, 2023

The problem with the word ‘guarantee’ is that to guarantee an income can either mean to guarantee that a particular income will be paid as a Basic Income, or that a stated income level will be reached by some means that might not imply a Basic Income. The two possible meanings of ‘guarantee’ in this context can result in ambiguities in the literature that can leave the reader not knowing whether what is being discussed is a guaranteed Basic Income or a Minimum Income Guarantee (Grevc, 2017: 95, 127; Torry, 2021a: 7-9): and so, for example, a sentence such as The idea is to guarantee every citizen in the country an unconditional income sufficient to meet some minimal threshold’ (Walker, 2016: 3) can be read either as meaning that an unconditional income is given to every individual, or that every individual or household is given an income-tested benefit to enable them to reach a prescribed threshold. If the reader is aware of the potential ambiguity then they might be able to work out what the author intends in a particular context, but if they are not, and they bring to the text a presupposition that to guarantee an income implies a Basic Income, then they might completely misunderstand what the author has in mind: for instance, if a Minimum Income Guarantee experiment is what is being discussed.

The Job Guarantee provides a platform for developing the national skills base, by comparing the observed skills and competencies of the Job Guarantee workforce with the emerging skills requirements of each regional labour market. This would inform the provision of accredited training (both in-house and via external providers such as TAFE), the indenturing of apprentices, and the design of job guarantee activities so that they include experiential development of skills expected to be in local demand. In this way the Job Guarantee would restore the role of the public sector as a net trainer of skilled workers, minimising the likelihood of inflationary bottle-necks in the labour supply.

Third, training and education must be part of a JG program, as proponents have always advocated, though these were mostly absent from the 1930s work programs. Training is all the more important if private businesses stop providing on-the-job training. Not only will training and education help tackle structural unemployment, they will also improve the productivity and flexibility of the pool of JG enrollees. However, training and education alone are not enough and are a waste if no job is available at the end, so employment availability is also a central component of any unemployment policy. By working, individuals will be able to use their skills and improve their productivity. Indeed, while labor productivity is partly determined by an individual's skills and knowledge of, it is also heavily influenced by the ability to use them.

Kaboub 07 (Kaboub, Fadhel. PhD from UMKC in Econ & Social Science C consortium. Research affiliation with the Levy Economics Institute. “Employment guarantee programs: a survey of theories and policy experiences. Working Paper No. 498, Levy Econ Institute of Bard College. Econstor. Pages 11-12, https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/31495/1/571694519.pdf.)

In the C-FEPS/CofFEE version of ELR, the government guarantees a real job opportunity for anyone ready, willing, and able to work at a fixed socially-established basic wage (plus benefits), thus exogenously setting the price of labor. With ELR, the government will provide a price anchor and establish greater price stability. During a recession, the size of the ELR pool increases to absorb workers displaced from the private sector, and when the economy booms it automatically shrinks when ELR workers find employment in the private sector, hence it operates as a buffer stock employment program. The ELR wage is fixed, while the quantity of labor in the buffer stock fluctuates. Private sector employers can obtain labor at a mark-up over the ELR fixed wage; hence the price-stabilization feature of the program. Furthermore, ELR reduces the depreciation of skills caused by unemployment, it contains a training component to prepare participants for private sector employment. ELR also gives more opportunities and freedom of choice for both workers and employers. Participation in the program is voluntary, so it is not a “make work” program. In addition, ELR does not displace private sector jobs since it offers jobs which are undersupplied or not supplied at all by the private sector, including companions to the elderly, public school classroom assistants, safety monitors, low-income housing restoration engineers, environmental safety monitors, daycare assistants for ELR workers, community and cultural historians, and ELR artists or musicians (Wray 1998).

Establishing a new career can be overwhelming. It might be challenging to comprehend the best career choice with so many educational options open and available. Job guarantee program courses can assist you to learn the necessary skills to begin a new career, and offer a job guarantee to help recompense for high tuition prices. Job guarantee courses are skills-based programs that provide comprehensive, intensive training to prepare you to work in diverse fields.

In sum, there are three critiques presented here: (1) there is a fundamental tension in the way income in a monetary production economy is generated, the manner in which BIG wishes to redistribute it, and the subsequent negative impact of this redistribution on the process of income generation itself. The BIG policy is dependent for its existence on the very system it wishes to undermine; (2) The macroeconomic implications of BIG for contemporary economies that use modern money are devastating, whereas the JG stabilizes both the macro-economy and the currency, while helping transform the nature of work; and (3) the version of the job guarantee in Standing’s piece is not an accurate presentation of the modern proposals. Additionally, there are several real-world examples that, although not universal, illustrate many of the benefits of job guarantee programs. I shall focus on one such example, the Argentinean job guarantee program Plan Jefes y Jefas and its subsequent replacement by Plan Familias (a?type of income guarantee) to evaluate their relative merits.

Marie Hasdenteufel, Modelling a Job Guarantee for Germany using a Job Search Model, November 2021,

There exist various approaches to define the group of eligible persons. At this point, the literature can clearly be divided into two fields: those, proposing a Job Guarantee to anyone willing to work (Tcherneva, 2020b); and those defining eligibility criteria such as age, duration of unemployment spell or other factors and proposing a Job Guarantee as a sociopolitical instrument to the unemployed (e.g. Picek, 2020; Lietzmann et al., 2018). In any case, the more restricted the criteria are, the bigger the threat of excluding potential candidates (Lietzmann et al., 2018), and consequently, the smaller the aggregate effect. Previous work argues that the number of people joining the public labor force would be higher than the number of officially registered unemployed: Sawyer (2003) puts emphasis on the “hidden unemployment” (Sawyer, 2003, p. 889)16 and concludes that the number of real unemployed workers is much higher.17 However, there are contrary opinions in the literature. Although there might be more unemployed persons than officially reported, the Job Guarantee is likely to have a stabilizing effect on the overall economy which would downsize the pool of workers in the public program (Tcherneva, 2018).

A job guarantee program is one in which government promises to make a job available to any qualifying individual who is ready and willing to work. Qualifications required of participants could include age range (i.e. teens), gender, family status (i.e. heads of households), family income (i.e. below poverty line), educational attainment (i.e. high school dropouts), residency (i.e. rural), and so on. The most general program would provide a universal job guarantee, sometimes also called an employer of last resort (ELR) program in which government promises to provide a job to anyone legally entitled to work.

Sawyer (2003: 894) asks “how does … [the ELR wage] … compare with the productivity of the workers involved?” He then proceeds with a surprisingly neoclassical-inspired human capital analysis of three situations each of which compares the implied productivity of the JG job (q) to the ‘true’ productivity of the worker in an alternative job (Q). Where q < Q, the general case according to Sawyer (2003: 894) because “ELR jobs are low-skill, low-productivity jobs”, “underemployment replaces unemployment”. The design of jobs under a JG has to ensure the positions are accessible to the most disadvantaged workers in the labour market, for it is they who typically bear the brunt of unemployment. In that sense if productivity resides in the individual (as in human capital theory) as opposed (more realistically) to being the outcome of a complex mix of individual characteristics, team-based collaboration, on-the-job training, and job design and management, then it is highly likely that q will approximate Q, for most individuals who will rely on JG employment for anything other than short transitional unemployment.

The JG serves the function as a “public option for work” because it is open to all, irrespective of income or labor market status. Whatever work and pay conditions it offers will become the standard for the economy as a whole. Under special circumstances someone may prefer lower-paid private sector work, but as a rule the proposed JG wage ($15 per hour, plus benefits) will become the effective minimum wage. There is some empirical evidence that illustrates this effect (Tcherneva 2012).