The importance of definition

A citizen’s basic income is an unconditional, automatic and non-withdrawable payment to each individual as a right of citizenship. It has other names: basic income, universal basic income, citizen’s income – but it’s always the same thing.

• • Unconditional: A citizen’s income would vary with age, but there would be no other conditions: so everyone of the same age would receive the same payment, whatever their gender, employment status, family structure, contribution to society, housing costs, or anything else.

• • Automatic: Someone’s citizen’s income would be paid weekly or monthly, automatically.

• • Non-withdrawable: Citizen’s incomes would not be means-tested. If someone’s earnings or wealth increased, then their citizen’s income would not change.

• • Individual: Citizen’s incomes would be paid on an individual basis, and not on the basis of a couple or household.

• • As a right of citizenship: Everybody legally resident in the UK would receive a citizen’s income, subject to a minimum period of legal residency in the UK, and continuing residency for most of the year.

It is essential to be clear about this definition. One of the results of the increasingly lively global debate is that terminology has proliferated, and so has its meanings. In the United States and in Canada ‘basic income’ sometimes means an income-tested benefit, and it can also mean one that varies with household structure. ‘Citizen’s income’ or ‘citizen’s basic income’ always means an unconditional, automatic and non-withdrawable payment to each individual.

The history of the debate in the UK

The two late 18th century advocates of citizen’s basic income, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence, were British (although by the time he was writing about the idea Paine was living in the United States); and since then the idea has occasionally emerged into public debate and then as quickly disappeared.