Here ‘feasible’ means ‘capable of being done, effected, or accomplished’. So the question that we are asking here is this: is a Citizen's Basic Income capable of being legislated and implemented? – which implies that context has to be prescribed. As with the other chapters in this book, the context that this chapter will assume will the UK. Readers in other countries will need to adapt the material to their own contexts and then make their own decisions about feasibility.

The question ‘is Citizen's Basic Income feasible?’ requires a complex answer because there will always be multiple feasibilities to consider:

• • Financial (Would it be possible to finance a Citizen's Basic Income? And would implementation impose substantial financial losses on any households or individuals?)

• • Psychological (Is the idea readily understood, and understood to be beneficial?)

• • Administrative (Would it be possible to administer a Citizen's Basic Income? And would it be possible to manage the transition?)

• • Behavioural (Would a Citizen's Basic Income work for households and individuals once it was implemented?)

• • Political (Would the idea cohere with existing political ideologies?)

• • Policy process (Would the political process be able to process the idea through to implementation?)

An important question is whether the feasibilities are 1. additive, 2. conjunctive, or 3. disjunctive: that is, 1. will the strength of each feasibility contribute to the strength of a more generalised feasibility? 2. will the strength of the feasibility with the least strength determine the strength of a more general feasibility? or 3. will the strength of the strongest feasibility determine the strength of a more general feasibility? (Analogies: a tug of war team is additive; a relay race is conjunctive; and a pub quiz team is disjunctive.)

I shall draw conclusions relating to each of the feasibilities and to the relationships between them.

Financial feasibility

The obvious answer to the question ‘would a Citizen's Basic Income be financially feasible?’ is of course ‘yes’ if we mean by the question ‘could a Citizen's Basic Income be funded by reducing tax allowances and means-tested and contributory benefits?’ The appendix contains an illustrative scheme of this nature. With different kinds of scheme, the answer might be more problematic.