How do we pay for it?"
It is a question that has rung in the ears of basic income
supporters far and wide. Where some have written off the
feasibility of basic income, based on extortionate back-of- the-envelope
calculations, others have carefully shown how - through
a combination of progressive taxation and modifications to the
existing welfare system - a basic income with deep impacts is
perfectly achievable.
The basic income advocate Geoff Crocker takes neither approach.
His book, Basic Income and Sovereign Money, argues that states
can fund a basic income by creating currency, and that this might
be the only way to create a basic income that addresses the big
economic problems of our time. David Frayne talked to Geoff
about why theories of money are relevant to the basic income
debate, whether there is an alternative to austerity, and the ideal
place that work might have in our lives