2NC---Solvency---Socialism

Jenny Formby, 9-2019, Jenny Formby is the general secretary of the Labour Party in London. (UNIVERSAL BASIC SERVICES: The Right to a Good Life, Labour UK, 9-2019, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/12730_19-Universal-Basic-Services_v5.pdf, 7-18-2023)//AAlmand

There are other benefits to collective provision. State provision can be more efficient than having lots of fragmented private providers. And when we take providing services out of the hands of the market that means not using tax money to subsidise shareholders. For all these reasons, universal public services, free at the point of use, will be one of three central pillars of the economic programme of the next Labour Government. Alongside the other two – structural reform to create good jobs, reduce the cost of living and broaden ownership and democracy, and social security to provide a cash safety net for those who need it – universal public services are how we will create an economy that serves us instead of making us its servants. An economy that not only reduces the poverty and hardship burgeoning under the Conservatives, but that also gives everyone the opportunity to lead a rich life. Our 2017 policy document ‘Alternative Models of Ownership’ made the socialist case for expanding alternatives to capitalist production: co-operatives, municipalism and democratic public ownership. We argue that not everything in our lives should be treated as a commodity. For example we believe that education is a gift from one generation to another, not a commodity to be bought and sold in the market place. Here we develop the argument for decommodification further, laying out the case for reducing or eliminating the role of the market in allocating what we use and consume as well as how it is produced. That case is not a new one, though it has not been made enough recently. For decades, public universalism fell out of favour as the political pendulum swung towards means-testing and privatisation. More recently, austerity has shredded our public sector and is posing an existential threat to some public services. Against this backdrop, it is high time the case for universal public services is revisited. But we want to do more that defend what we have. There is no inherent limit to where the principle of “free at the point of use” should extend, other than where we as a society set it, and the next Labour Government will extend the scope of our ambition in unprecedented ways. We have been helped in this by a recent groundbreaking report1 by academics at University College London, who make the case for an enhanced role for what they call ‘Universal Basic Services’ in the economy of the future. We owe a debt of gratitude to the report’s authors for sparking an important debate on what services we provide free at the point of use.