Universal Basic Services solves the case better – directly providing services is more environmentally sustainable because it can direct services toward decarbonization, while a UBI gives the consumer the choice of how to use their money, which allows waste and inefficiency

Many arguments have been made for Universal Basic Income (UBI). This article summarizes an alternative case: for Universal Basic Services (UBS). The issue of their relationship is not directly considered here, but the argument is made that UBS is more egalitarian and sustainable than UBI, as befits the rethinking of eco-social policy in the face of dangerous climate change. Furthermore, it is argued that UBS is also politically more incremental and reformist than the case for a true UBI. UBS advocates a wider range of free public services enabling every citizen to meet their basic needs and achieve certain levels of security, opportunity, and participation. The core principles are: Universal: guaranteed entitlement according to need and not one’s ability to pay. Basic: sufficient rather than minimal, enabling people to meet their basic needs, participate in society, and flourish. Services: collectively generated activities that serve the public interest. In many countries, public health services and school to higher education are founded on these goals, despite cuts, attacks, and ongoing disputes over principles. UBS poses the question: can we extend these principles to other basic necessities, such as housing, care, transport, information, and nutrition (IGP, 2017)?[1] Clearly, these necessities are all very different things, so there can be no uniform formula to implement UBS. But entitlements to certain levels of provision can be guaranteed and these can be backed up by a menu of public interventions including regulation, standard setting and monitoring, taxation, and subsidies. This does not necessarily entail direct government provision – a plurality of collective and communal providers will be involved with appropriate support from government. But the unifying principle is to extend collective solutions, as opposed to providing income support and leaving provisioning to market forces. The case for collective provision to meet such needs can be made on two main grounds: equity and sustainability (though there are also strong arguments for efficiency and solidarity covered elsewhere but not here). Equity. Free public provision of necessities is always remarkably redistributive – even if the total tax system of a country is broadly proportional to income. On average, in OECD countries, existing public services are worth the equivalent of a huge 76 percent of the post-tax income of the poorest quintile compared with just 14 percent of the richest (Table 1). Public services also contribute to reducing income inequality by between one-fifth and one-third depending on the inequality measure. Free provision of necessities automatically targets lower income households without the disincentive effects that often result from money transfers. Sustainability. Climate heating and ecological breakdown now pose existential challenges to wellbeing. The urgent necessity to move away from unsustainable economic, social, and environmental practices provides a new justification for extending UBS. First, public provisioning systems for healthcare are more sustainable than market systems. For example, the per capita carbon footprint of health care in the USA is two and a half times greater than in the UK and three and half times greater than in several European countries (Figure 1). Second, public services can play a vital role in decarbonising the economy in a just way. For example, Green New Deal programmes to retrofit the vast bulk of the housing stock will require public planning, finance, and management. They will be needed to ensure a ‘just transition’ to lower carbon living, rather than one that will load costs onto the poorest people and communities. Third and relatedly, public consumption through UBS supports sustainable ‘consumption corridors’ (Coote, 2020). But does not a further extension of public services encroach upon peoples’ rights to choose how to spend their incomes? Money is fungible so social transfers including UBI permit people to spend income on whatever they want. The case for consumer sovereignty and market democracy needs to be addressed directly if the arguments for UBS are to prosper. I provide elsewhere a theoretical framework to justify this approach. In summary it depends on two things: a non-monetary conception of wellbeing and a disaggregated model of provisioning.