New Economics Foundation: Weekly National Allowance’s effect on Universal Credit

In March, the New Economics Foundation published a report that recommended that a cash payment, a Weekly National Allowance (WNA), should replace the Income Tax Personal Allowance. The WNA was close to being a Citizen’s Basic Income. (To read the report, and our review of it, click here).

Alfie Stirling, Sarah Arnold and Lukasz Krebel have now published new research that shows how the WNA would relate to Universal Credit. Click here to see the new research.

If the New Economics Foundation continues to research the effects of schemes close to being Citizen’s Basic Income schemes on means-tested benefits recipients then it might choose to extend the research reported in the recent article. The article shows percentile-level aggregated redistribution results. It would be equally important to know the extent of individual household losses for low income households. This is an important factor to consider when policy changes are proposed. (For examples, see pages 24, 29, 33 and 38 in a recent Institute for Social and Economic Research working paper.)  It would also be important to know how many people would be taken off means-tested benefits entirely. (For examples, see pages 25, 30, 34 and 39 in a recent Institute for Social and Economic Research working paper.)

It is a pleasure to see research so relevant to the Citizen’s Basic Income debate being published by the New Economics Foundation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

One thought on “New Economics Foundation: Weekly National Allowance’s effect on Universal Credit

  1. Is it not time that we stop thinking of UBI in terms of tax and benefit and start seeing it as a rightful sharing of a part of our Gross National Income (GNI) which is not only created by the efforts of those working today but also results from the efforts and achievements of those that created our common heritage of systems and technologies. We cannot go on producing more and more inessential stuff just for the purpose of creating jobs in order to distribute income and destroying our environment as we do so. We need to set up a system for the long term future based on a sharing of the first tranche of GNI. If, for example, the first 25% of all incomes were pooled those with a national average income of £28,000 would pay into the pool £7,000 and receive the same amount from it as a basic income, thereby having an account with the pool fund that is in balance. Those with a less than average income would have their net income increased and those with higher than average incomes would have their net incomes reduced. An individual’s income for tax and benefit purposes would be their net income from this process. Looked at this way the level of basic income is not limited by what is affordable but by what we are prepared to share.

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