The academy is always several steps ahead of politics to give ideas on how to transform reality. In Catalonia, the movement to establish a universal basic income, which is mostly academic but which already has different experiments in several countries, was about to materialize its proposal with a very ambitious pilot plan. But on Friday, in the Budget vote, this project fell, after the PSC and Junts approved an amendment last Friday, with the votes of Ciudadanos, Vox and PP, to suppress this pilot plan, which was contemplated in the Article 58 of the Budget Accompaniment Law. The Catalan executive does not renounce the plan, designed for a year and a half, and assures that he will carry it out with other parliamentary partners and looking for mechanisms to finance it.
What was the pilot plan?
The electoral programs of the ERC and the CUP already included the commitment to move towards a universal basic income, so it was not surprising that, in the investiture pact, one of the agreements was to create an office to design a pilot plan. This office, created in July 2021, has deployed the proposal to grant a benefit of 800 euros for two years (out of 300, for minors) to a group of 5,000 people: half randomly selected, and the other half would be the inhabitants of two entire municipalities, of about 1,200 inhabitants. The objective is to see what happens to random beneficiaries, what impact it has on the microcosm that would be the two towns, and how they compare with another group of 5,000 people who do not receive this benefit. The measure would be evaluated by the Catalan Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (Ivàlua).
Is universal basic income for everyone?
Yes. The universal basic income is a measure to redistribute wealth and seek equal opportunities that is conceived as individual (not for households, as other benefits can be), unconditional (it is not subject to any requirement) and universal (for the entire world, not just poor people). This is the big difference between the universal basic income and benefits such as the guaranteed citizenship income or the minimum vital income: the focus is not to give aid only to those who have less, but rather that everyone has, on a basic basis, an equivalent income to the poverty line, to meet basic needs. One of the arguments is that aid for poor people does not end up reaching all those who would be entitled to it, in addition to the fact that the large bureaucratic apparatus that is needed to define who deserves it costs money. In a universal basic income, the richest would also receive this benefit —in the Government’s pilot plan, the richest 10% of the population would be left out, those with an income of more than 45,000 euros gross per year—, and so that If it were to work, it would have to be accompanied by other measures: a tax regime in which the richest pay more, and possibly price regulation measures to prevent universal basic income from pushing up inflation.
How much would the pilot plan cost?
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Despite the fact that the project does not have a budget allocation, article 58 of the Budget Accompaniment Law, which is what knocked down the PSC and Junts amendment, does set the amounts of the benefit, and indicates that the Government will approve the The necessary economic endowment to carry out the project when the regulations are deployed. The forecast is that it will cost about 40 million euros.
What similar experiments have been done?
Beyond other academic proposals to redistribute wealth (such as Thomas Piketty’s to give 120,000 euros to everyone when they turn 25, with the risk of not getting a second chance), various pilot plans, experiments and even real approximations to a universal basic income that delight sociologists. This is the case of Alaska, where the State created a foundation to distribute part of the benefits that oil gives to all citizens, who since 1982 have received about 2,000 dollars a year each. “Nobody dares to touch it, not even Sarah Palin, who was its governor. It has caused it to be one of the States with the least inequalities, and it has been shown that it has very good effects”, explains Sergi Raventós, head of the Government’s Pilot Plan office. He also highlights other experiences such as a casino in an Indian reservation in the US, which distributes the benefits throughout the community, or the Nordic countries: “Some, like Denmark, have a very important social protection network, and it is practically as if It was a basic income. But there are also “dozens” of pilot plans similar to the one designed by the Government: South Korea, Namibia, Kenya, Wales, Canada, Finland… Although in many of these countries the experiment has not been carried out universally and unconditionally. : it has been done only with young people, with the elderly, with unemployed people, or with people at risk of poverty, as was the pilot plan in Barcelona.
Who is for and against?
This week, the researchers who are part of the scientific committee of the pilot project, including the most important theorist on this measure, Guy Standing, have published an open letter to defend the opportunity to test this benefit in Catalonia. In 2020, activists from all over Europe collected 300,000 signatures to launch a European legislative initiative. Although it was not achieved, because a million signatures were needed, in countries like Germany, Italy or Spain, more support was obtained than was necessary. According to a recent survey by the Generalitat, 79% of the Catalan population would approve an implementation of this measure. Paradoxically, from the most liberal sectors, especially in the United States, they also agree with the universal basic income if in exchange the welfare state is dismantled. “It is not our model, the measure has to strengthen the welfare state,” says Raventós.
Those that have not yet positioned themselves are the social entities in Catalonia, which work to serve the most vulnerable sectors of the country. In a statement, the Third Sector Taula explains that it is still not clear if the solution to poverty would come with a universal basic income or if it would be better to strengthen benefits for the most vulnerable sectors. But he asks that the pilot project be carried out to have evidence. Against is the PSC, which affirms that there are other priorities at the moment, and that the pilot project could not be implemented in a real way for the entire population due to its high cost (between 55,000 and 90,000 million, according to their calculations, while other experts point at which it would cost about 7,000 million). Junts is also against it because it believes that without having an independent country or having full control over taxes, it could not be implemented.
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