Communal approaches to solving inequality is comparatively better than private solutions

Abstract The case for Universal Basic Services (UBS) is a recent idea that is attracting much attention. This article provides a theoretical justification for extending the delivery of public services, as an alternative to the longer-standing argument for Universal Basic Income (UBI). It rests on human need theory and the concept of provisioning systems. Both recognise the irreducible heterogeneity of consumption, the multi-faceted nature of human needs and the variety of systems on which we all depend. Both recognise the importance of shared systems and mutual benefits. The final part restates the case for social rights or entitlements to the satisfaction of basic needs and for collective responsibilities to meet them to serve the values of equality, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability. Keywords: human needs, provisioning systems, foundational economy, social entitlements, collective responsibility, solidarity Introduction THE EXTENDED crisis of what we can still call the welfare state has provoked proposals for radical, encompassing reform. The gap between the rich and poor is widening, children go to school hungry and dirty, and life expectancy rates are beginning to fall. More people are in work, but work doesn’t pay and the so-called ‘social security’ system provides nothing of the sort. Since the financial crash, alternatives have increasingly encompassed economic restructuring. Following growing awareness of the climate crisis, some also include radical environmental reform. The present predicament can be summarised as fragmented and degraded welfare, plus financialised, short termist and unsustainable capitalism. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is perhaps the most all-embracing radical alternative. UBI has become increasingly popular on the left, right and centre as a unitary solution to the social and economic fractures and failures in modern society. According to the Compass group, ‘There is no single silver bullet policy to create a Good Society—but basic income is the closest there is’. 1 But it has also attracted growing criticism, both normative and pragmatic.2 I share many of the critiques but I do not rehearse them here. Instead I develop the case for an alternative —Universal Basic Services (UBS). The idea of UBS was originally developed by the Institute for Global Prosperity in 2017.3 It proposed a wider range of free public services that enable every citizen to live a larger life by ensuring access to certain levels of security, opportunity and participation. Here, services mean collectively generated activities that serve the public interest; basic means essential and sufficient rather than minimal, enabling people to flourish and participate in society; and universal means that everyone is entitled to services that meet their needs, regardless of ability to pay. The existing National Health Service (NHS) and state education are obvious examples. The original proposal for UBS advocated an extension of this model of provision to—at least—shelter, nutrition, transport and information. Yet money is fungible, so government money transfers including UBI permit people to spend income on whatever they want. Public services are not fungible, but deliver specific activities or provisions. UBS is less in tune with market ideology than UBI. Unless a robust justification is spelt out, the case for UBS will be continually undermined by appeals to respect consumer sovereignty and market democracy. The purpose of this paper is to ground the case for UBS in a broader conceptual and moral framework. The argument is in three parts. The first sets out a theory of the common human needs we all share and the satisfaction of which is necessary for a flourishing life. The second develops the idea of the ‘foundational economy’ as a provisioning system for meeting these needs. The final part restates the case for social rights or entitlements to the satisfaction of basic needs and for collective responsibilities to meet them. It makes the case for public provision across four goals: equality, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability. [continued] Collective responsibilities and social entitlements The essential argument for public provision of some kind is that markets and charity cannot guarantee the meeting of needs. Only public authority can provide equitable entitlements to need satisfiers. Since the Second World War, universal needs have provided an essential grounding for appeals to social rights: moral or legal claims possessed by ‘right-bearers’ that corresponding ‘duty-bearers’ must take seriously. It is usual here to distinguish ‘negative’ civil and political rights from ‘positive’ socio-economic rights. The former entail a duty of forbearance and protection, for example, rights to freedom of expression and against discrimination; the latter entail a duty of assistance and provision, for example, rights to education or healthcare. Both sets of rights can be traced back to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and have been elaborated and further specified since then. In the West, social rights have provided a fundamental moral argument for welfare states that recognise collective obligations to meet the basic needs of citizens for health, care, education, a minimum income and so on. Though they are subject to constant critiques and counter-movements, there is within them an enduring (if attenuated) sense of social obligation to meet the ‘needs of strangers’, whose unmet needs we do not directly witness and can do nothing individually to satisfy. At present these obligations end at national borders. Large flows of refugees and economic migrants are today questioning who counts as ‘strangers’ and placing new strains on national welfare systems. A process is underway to reimagine social citizenship, based on plural identities and rights conferred on residents rather than on passport holders. Social citizenship is anchored in both ethical and practical considerations. There is a moral dialectic in the ascription of rights and obligations. It is inconsistent to ascribe rights to persons in a social group without also ascribing responsibilities, duties or obligations to group members for realising those rights. And it is inconsistent to ascribe responsibilities to an individual or group without ensuring that they have the wherewithal to discharge them. Feminist revisions of the relationship between needs and obligations have recognised that people are vulnerable as well as capable. Dependence on others is a normal part of everyday life, so for significant periods we must depend on others to provide for us, as we must for them. Caring is the process of ‘responding to another’s needs by understanding their self-determined ends, adopting those ends as one’s own, and advancing them in an effort to cultivate, maintain, or restore their agency’. 13 Obligations thus involve not only avoidance from harm, but also the promotion of capacities for autonomy and self-determination. The argument thus far is that there exist a number of intrinsic, non-substitutable needs that have a high moral claim to satisfaction and that should be guaranteed to strangers via social rights of citizenship and residence. The guarantee of entitlements need not entail direct provision of services by state agencies. Indeed, since 1980 this system has been broken up in three main ways: non-state providers have been encouraged (both for-profit and not-for-profit), non-state sources of funds expanded, and decisions about what, how much and how to provide have been devolved to intermediate organisations or to end users. At the same time, much of the foundational economy, like energy, water, telecommunications and public transport, has been extensively privatised and outsourced. Much of this needs to be reversed to achieve UBS, but that does not require a return to a ‘pure public’ model. Entitlements to UBS can also be guaranteed using a menu of interventions, including regulation, standard setting and monitoring, taxation and subsidies. But the unifying proposal is to advocate directly collective solutions, as opposed to providing income support and leaving provisioning to market forces. To develop this argument the case for collective provision to meet needs can be made on four main grounds: equity, efficiency, solidarity, and sustainability. U NIVERSAL B ASIC S ERVICES 5 © The Author 2019. The Political Quarterly © The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2019 The Political Quarterly Equity and the ‘social wage’ The value of free and accessible public services to the individual recipient is frequently called the ‘social wage’ because it replaces costs that the individual would otherwise have to pay for out of personal income. In the absence of public provision, for individuals on low incomes, meeting basic needs is likely to consume the majority of their income. If not, basic needs go unmet, leading to both individual and social costs. If bought on the market, these goods and services take up a larger share of household income as we descend the income scale. This is a major argument for free public provision of necessities financed from taxation. Even if the total tax system of a country is broadly proportional to income, as is the current UK tax system, the overall result will be progressive—the relative size of net income plus services will increase as we descend the income scale. On average, in OECD countries, existing public services are worth the equivalent of a huge 76 per cent of the post-tax income of the poorest group compared with just 14 per cent of the richest. Public services reduce income inequality in OECD countries by an average of 20 per cent.14 Free provision of necessities automatically targets lower income households, without the disincentive effects that often result from money transfers. Allocation according to need and citizenship, not market demand, automatically serves redistributive social goals.