The Welfare State and Social Wealth Funds
The social dividend provided by a social wealth fund is not about unemployment or welfare at all. It is a socialist answer to the question of what to do about capital’s share of the national income.
Workers decorating chocolates at the Meltis factory in Bedford, November 24, 1936.William Vanderson / Fox Photos / Getty
When I ask what topic people might want to read about, Andrew Yang’s universal basic income (UBI) and the usual job guarantee (JG) questions come up frequently. Here I try to offer a bit of a fresh take on it by trying to explain UBI and JG within the context of regular welfare state design and, to a lesser degree, within the context of socialist theory.
Cash Welfare State
Welfare states generally consist of services (childcare, education, health care) provided in-kind and cash provided to certain categories of people. Here I only want to talk about the cash welfare state because that’s the one relevant to UBI and JG.
A well-designed cash welfare state initially observes that there are three age groups in society: children, working-age adults, and elderly people. The first and last are not expected to work and so they should receive a cash benefit: child allowance for children and old-age pension for adults. These age-based payments are the easiest part of the welfare state because eligibility is clear and the only thing you need to fight about are the benefit formulas.
Sorry, but this article is available to active subscribers only. Please log in or become a subscriber.