Towards Unconditionality in Social Policy

Unconditional
Unconditional
Towards Unconditionality in Social Policy
Malcolm Torry
Visiting Fellow, Institute for Policy Research, University of
Bath, UK
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Malcolm Torry 2024
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Contents
Acknowledgementsvi
Prefaceviii
Introduction to Unconditionalix
1 The meaning of unconditionality 1
2 Social policy regimes 22
3 Is unconditional giving possible? 43
4 Arguments for unconditionality 57
5 Arguments for unconditionality in healthcare and education 87
6 Some of the arguments for unconditionality in income

maintenance107
7 More of the arguments for unconditionality in income

maintenance127
8 Arguments against unconditionality 145
9 A trajectory: Snapshots in history 168
10 Quite simply, unconditionality works 185
11 The ethics of unconditionality 196
12 Prospects for unconditionality 215
Bibliography227
Index256
v
Acknowledgements
Fifty years ago my Uncle Norman invited me to work in Bexleyheath’s
Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) office during my university
holidays. The task was to file the cards on which employers stuck stamps to the
value of their employers’ and employees’ National Insurance Contributions.
That was my initiation into the UK’s benefits system. Following university,
and before training for the full-time ministry of the Church of England, I was
seeking a different educational experience, and so applied to work at the
DHSS’s Supplementary Benefit office in Brixton. During the two years that
I worked on the public counter there I learnt more than I wanted to know
about the effects of means-tested benefits on both claimants and administra-
tors. The rules are more draconian now than they were then. I am grateful to
all of the DHSS staff with whom I worked, and for the claimants whom we
attempted to serve, for a thorough education in the UK’s benefits system and
its conditionalities.
Following ordination, I worked as a curate at the Elephant and Castle in
South London: the parish in which the DHSS then had its headquarters. I got
to know some of the staff, and Sir Geoffrey Otton, the Permanent Secretary,
invited me to attend a departmental summer school. One of the lecturers was
Hermione (Mimi) Parker, who had prepared the illustrative Basic Income
scheme that Brandon Rhys Williams was about to present to a parliamentary
committee. Two years later she invited me to join the group that became the
Basic Income Research Group, later renamed the Citizen’s Income Trust and
now the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust. It was a pleasure to serve the Trust as
its honorary Director for more than twenty years. I continue to be grateful to
Sir Geoffrey Otton for inviting me to the summer school, to Mimi Parker for
involving me in the Basic Income debate, to the trustees of the Citizen’s Basic
Income Trust for inviting me to be the Trust’s Director, and to successive
Bishops of Woolwich for permission to undertake the task.
Following my curacy, I worked for five years as an industrial chaplain. In
that capacity I was a chaplain at London’s St Thomas’s Hospital: not to the
patients and medical staff, but to the many other staff members who make
a hospital function. That experience, and discussion with my wife Rebecca,
who worked as a General Practitioner and medical educator for nearly forty
years, has given me at least some understanding of the UK’s National Health
Service; and while I was Team Rector of the Parish of East Greenwich, gov-
vi
Acknowledgements vii
ernorships of two different schools gave me some insight into how the UK’s
education system works.
I am grateful to all of those who have provided me with an understanding
of how social policy works in the UK, and most recently to members of the
Executive Committee of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) which
I have served as General Manager and then Treasurer since 2016. I remain
particularly grateful to all those who have facilitated my social policy research
during the past thirty years: Professor David Piachaud, for supervising my
research on the subject at the London School of Economics (LSE) during the
mid-1990s; the LSE’s Social Policy Department for appointing me a Visiting
Senior Fellow for eleven years; Professor Hartley Dean for supervising much
of my work at the LSE; Professors Holly Sutherland and Matteo Richiardi and
their colleagues at the Institute for Social and Economic Research for introduc-
ing me to the microsimulation programmes POLIMOD and then EUROMOD,
and for publishing my work in EUROMOD working papers; and Professor
Nick Pearce for inviting me to be a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy
Research at the University of Bath. An important stimulus to my more recent
exploration of the concept of unconditionality has been a postgraduate course
in continental philosophy at Staffordshire University. I must thank Professor
David Webb, Dr Patrick O’Connor and Dr Bill Ross for any understanding that
I now have of the philosophy discussed in Chapter 3.
I am grateful to the publishers of my various books on Basic Income, and
particularly to Edward Elgar Publishing for publishing A Modern Guide to
Citizen’s Basic Income: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Torry, 2020a), Basic
Income: A History (Torry, 2021a) and A Research Agenda for Basic Income
(2023). Catherine Elgar and her colleagues have all been most helpful.
My academic interests have now moved in a more philosophical direction
(https://torry.org.uk/) so this is the last social policy book that I am planning
to write. I am enormously grateful to those thousands of people who for more
than forty years have enhanced my understanding of social policy, and particu-
larly to those who have inspired a desire to see policy increasingly character-
ized by unconditionality.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible:
Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the United States of America. Used with permission. All rights
reserved worldwide.
All royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Basic Income
Earth Network (BIEN).
Preface
Is a gift ever unconditional? Can anything ever be truly unconditional? Can

a public service, such as healthcare or education, be unconditional? And can
an income ever be unconditional? This book responds to those questions with
a qualified ‘yes’, and with a suggestion that an unconditionality social policy
regime might be a good candidate to replace neoliberalism when that damag-
ing and tired ideology finally runs out of steam.
‘Unconditional’ means ‘without conditions’, and there are good examples
of social policy characterized at least to some extent by unconditionality. The
UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is one obvious example: if we have an
accident then we will be treated, no questions asked, and no invoice to pay.
Apart from some glitches in the unconditionality, such as prescription charges,
healthcare is unconditional in the UK. Social policy characterized by uncondi-
tionality is not as common as conditional social provision, but there are other
examples, and there is now a lively global debate about the possibility of an
unconditional income for every individual: a Basic Income.
As far as we know, this is the first book specifically about unconditionality
in social policy. It will explore what we mean by ‘unconditional’; ask how
social policy characterized by unconditionality might fit within the spectrum
of welfare state regimes; and discuss what some philosophers have said about
the possibility of unconditional giving. Arguments for and against uncondi-
tionality will be followed by a history of unconditionality in social policy, and
then by a chapter on how and why unconditionality works. The penultimate
chapter will discuss the ethics of unconditionality; and the final chapter will
ask whether there is any prospect of an unconditionality regime replacing
neoliberalism.
Keynesianism served both society and economy tolerably well for forty
years. Neoliberalism has now dominated society and economy for forty years.
Might it be time for unconditionalism?
viii
Introduction to Unconditional
This book is about a single word, ‘unconditional’: about its meaning, about
how it applies to social policy, and about how it might apply to social policy
in the future.
The book will begin with a discussion of the definition of ‘unconditionality’,
and how the term relates to other concepts such as universality and reciprocity.
This will lay the basis for an understanding of what an unconditionality regime
or paradigm in social policy might look like: so the words ‘regime’, ‘theory’,
‘ideology’ and ‘paradigm’ will also have to be discussed.
In order to place unconditionality within a constellation of social policy
regimes, such economic theories as Keynesianism, liberalism, neoliberalism,
and so on, will be discussed and related to each other; Esping-Andersen’s
welfare state regimes will be related to those theories; and the ways in which
an unconditionality regime might relate to those different regimes will then be
discussed.
There is now a substantial literature on Basic Income – an unconditional
income for every individual – but apart from that there has been little dis-
cussion of unconditional giving in social policy circles. The situation is very
different among continental philosophers, among whom givenness, the given,
the gift and giving, have been important ideas to explore. A chapter will
therefore be given to what Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Marion
have written about these concepts, and what their work might have to offer to
a discussion of unconditionality in social policy. Interdisciplinary study that
relates continental philosophy to social policy is rare, so this chapter might
serve as a model for future such work.
Then will follow five chapters of arguments: four of arguments for increased
unconditionality in social policy, and one of arguments against. The first of
these chapters will list and explore more general arguments for increasing
unconditionality in social policy; the second will concentrate on arguments
for unconditionality in healthcare and education; and the final two chapters
of arguments for unconditionality will argue for increasing unconditionality
in income maintenance: the first concentrating on employment and economic
effects, and the second on other social effects. A chapter on objections
often levelled against unconditionality will find that such objections can be
ix
x Unconditional
answered, and that some of them can be turned into arguments for increasing
unconditionality rather than reducing it.
The next chapter will offer a brief history of conditionalities and uncondi-
tionalities in social policy; and the following chapter will suggest that we need
to increase unconditionality in social policy because it works. The penultimate
chapter will ask about the ethics of unconditionality, and the final chapter
about the prospects for increasing unconditionality in social policy.
This book needed to be written because as far as we knew there was no book
specifically about unconditionality: and it needed to be written because we
desperately need a new social policy regime.
While the current global debate about the desirability and feasibility of
providing every individual with an unconditional income continues to increase
in extent and depth, that debate has not yet spilled over into a broader debate
about unconditionality in social policy more generally. It needs to do so
because the wider social policy world needs to benefit from the high-quality
research and discussion that constitutes much of the Basic Income debate,
and because the Basic Income debate needs to be opened up to broader social
policy research and debate: but chiefly because we need a new vision for our
society and its economy, and an unconditionality regime – which we might call
unconditionalism – might be exactly what we need.
Many of the examples that the reader will find discussed throughout the book
are from the United Kingdom (UK). This is for two reasons. First of all, the
UK’s welfare state is diverse in relation to conditionalities and uncondition-
alities and so provides a useful testing ground for the ideas in the book; and
secondly, the UK’s welfare state is the one that I know best, so I can be fairly
confident that the examples that I discuss are accurately expressed. In relation
to examples drawn from other countries, research literature is never a substi-
tute for deep personal experience over many decades, so readers in countries
other than the UK might wish to use the book as an invitation to ponder on the
relationship between social policy and unconditionality in their own context.
The book is wide-ranging, so arguments are sometimes quite compressed.
Further detail will often be found in the works that I reference; and in relation
to unconditional incomes, readers might wish to consult the books that I have
written about the global Basic Income debate. A further characteristic of the
book is that the reader will encounter a certain amount of repetition. This is
because the argument sometimes needs to repeat material already encountered
elsewhere in the book if all of the steps of the argument are to be available to
the reader without that reader referring to other chapters. While there will be
some readers who will want to read the whole book, there will be others who
choose to read a single chapter, so each chapter is self-contained in the sense
Introduction xi
that a reader should not have to refer to other chapters in order to understand
the argument.
1. The meaning of unconditionality1
INTRODUCTION
‘Conditional cash transfers’, ‘Unconditional cash transfers’, ‘unconditional

benefits’, ‘conditionalities’ … What do these terms mean? How should they be
defined? Are those two questions the same? And does it matter?
To answer that last question first: Only if different participants in a con-
versation understand similar things by a particular word or group of words
will mutual comprehension be possible, will rational discussion occur, and
will collaborative research be productive. If we mean different things by such
terms as ‘unconditional cash transfers’ then researchers might think that they
are understanding each other when in fact they are not. While ‘definition’ and
‘meaning’ do not mean the same thing, and, as we shall see, two people can
mean different things by the same words with the same definitions, for two
people to agree on a definition of a term can help both of them to have some
idea about what the other one means, and can therefore enable useful dialogue
to occur.
This chapter will ask how definitions are made and how we might define
‘unconditional’; will explore how the term might relate to other concepts such
as universality and reciprocity; and will ask about the relationship between
unconditionality and social policy. We shall also explore the definitions of
‘universal’, ‘reciprocity’ and ‘Basic Income’: all terms that often accompany
‘unconditional’ in social policy debate; and brief discussions of ‘guarantee’,
‘allowance’ and ‘efficiency’ will also be offered. Such terms as regime, para-
digm, and so on will be discussed in the next chapter.
THE DEFINITION OF ‘UNCONDITIONAL’
We shall explore a variety of ways in which words are defined: according to

current usage; on the basis of normative considerations; by a legitimate author-
ity on the basis of current usage; or via a prototype.
1
Part of this chapter is based on a paper presented at a Foundation for International
Studies on Social Security conference held at Sigtuna, Sweden, in 2017.
1
2 Unconditional
Current Usage
Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that we discover the meaning of language by

studying how language is used (Wittgenstein, 1967: § 1), and, as the same
word might be used in different ways in a multitude of different contexts,
he offered the image of ‘family resemblances’ to describe the relationship
between one use of a word and another (Wittgenstein, 1967: §§ 66–7).
By ‘definition’ we generally mean a set of words that indicates the meaning
of a word or group of words. A potential problem is that the use of the new set
of words, and of each of its component words, will be specific to a particular
context: so even if we employ the same definition, in the sense of the same set
of words in the same order, it will have different meanings in different con-
texts. However, there really will be a family resemblance between the different
usages, and it is on this that dictionaries rely when they define a word or group
of words. So in relation to each word or group of words, the Oxford English
Dictionary lists a variety of usages and groups those usages under one or more
definitions: that is, under one or more sets of words that in the mind of the
editor represent the meaning of the word or group of words.
Defining ‘Unconditional’ in Relation to Its Use
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘unconditional’ as
Not limited by or subject to conditions or stipulations; absolute, unlimited, com-

plete. (Oxford English Dictionary)
The entry on ‘condition’ contains the following:
… Something demanded or required as a prerequisite to the granting or performance

of something else; a provision, a stipulation. … In a legal instrument, e.g. a will,
or contract, a provision on which its legal force or effect is made to depend. …
Something that must exist or be present if something else is to be or take place; that
on which anything else is contingent; a prerequisite; (Oxford English Dictionary)
and the entry on ‘stipulation’ includes
The action of specifying as one of the terms of a contract or agreement; a formulated

term or condition of a contract or agreement. (Oxford English Dictionary)
The dictionary gives as one of its examples of the use of ‘unconditional’,

‘The Kuwait authorities insisted that the [hijackers’] surrender was “uncon-
ditional”’; and as a use of ‘condition’ it offers a quotation from John Wesley:
The meaning of unconditionality 3
‘The word condition means neither more nor less than something sine quâ non,
without which something else is not done.’
If usage is the key to a word’s meaning, then we must seek examples of
usage. Take these examples of uses of the words ‘conditional’, ‘condition’ and
‘unconditional’ drawn from an International Labour Office publication:
Improvements in schooling are not restricted to conditional cash transfer pro-

grammes. Positive effects on schooling can also be observed for unconditional
transfers or workfare programmes. … Brazil’s Bolsa Família provides income
transfers to poor households, on condition that they regularly send their children
to school and that household members attend health clinics. … In Chile, Programa
de Pensiones Asistenciales, a non-contributory and unconditional social pension
programme, is found to have reduced poverty amongst people in old age by about
9.2 per cent. (International Labour Office, 2010: viii, 2, 11)
This passage provides a useful case study in how the word ‘unconditional’ is
used. In relation to its first use, ‘unconditional’ is employed in direct contrast
to ‘conditional’, where the conditionality is clearly ‘something demanded
or required as a prerequisite’: in this case, that parents send their children to
school. The second use of ‘unconditional’ is interesting. The author appears to
think it necessary to add ‘non-contributory’. This suggests that in the author’s
mind ‘unconditional’ does not necessarily mean ‘recipients do not have to
have paid social insurance contributions of some kind’. Also, the pension is
presumably paid only to individuals above a certain age, which suggests that
it is conditional on the recipient’s age: but this does not appear to compromise
the payment’s description as ‘unconditional’. In this single paragraph we find
diverse definitions of ‘unconditional’, and a reader would be forgiven for not
understanding what the author means by the word.
Definition by Characteristics
What is sometimes called the ‘classical’ way of defining a word is to envisage

a category defined by a list of characteristics. For instance, the category ‘rec-
tangle’ contains those four-sided figures with opposite sides parallel and all
of their angles right angles. Squares are in the category, and so are rectangles,
whereas circles and triangles are not in the category and are not rectangles.
However, many categorizations are far from simple. If the category ‘bird’ were
to contain all animals that can fly then a bat would be in it and an ostrich would
not be: so an ostrich would not be a bird, and a bat would be one. Similarly,
if the category ‘table’ were to contain all horizontal surfaces supported on
four legs, then a folded drop-leaf table would not be a table, whereas a stool
would be one. Perhaps we should understand that some entities might be on
the boundary of a category, whereas others would be clearly in or out. A robin
4 Unconditional
is clearly in the category ‘bird’; a cat is not; and a bat and an ostrich might be
on the boundary (Rosch, 1999; Rosch and Lloyd, 1978). Eleanor Rosch points
out that in practice we define categories in terms of prototypes and then ask
which entities might be similar to the prototype and therefore in the category.
We might choose to regard a robin as the prototype of ‘bird’. Mark Johnson
(1993) has suggested that we might have in our minds a prototype lie and then
ask whether other actions are more or less like it.
So is there a set of characteristics by which we can decide whether some-
thing belongs in the category labelled ‘unconditional’? There are a number of
ways to approach this:
• Each user of the terms ‘unconditional’ could select their own preferred
characteristics. The individual’s autonomy would thus be honoured, but at
the risk of losing mutual comprehension.
• We could study a wide variety of actual usages of the term and work out
a list of characteristics either stated or assumed by the term’s users. If we
could find characteristics employed in all actual usages, then we would
have discovered the ‘family likeness’ and would be able to list a definitive
set of characteristics. However, it would take just one user of ‘uncondi-
tional’ to insist that they understood a characteristic not in the list to be
essential to the definition of the category for the definition to become
contestable.
• An authority of some kind could decide on the list of characteristics that
would qualify something as belonging to the category ‘unconditional’.
A Recognized Authority
If a field has related to it an organization that those involved in that field

believe to have some standing or authority, then participants might look to
that organization to supply definitions of terms. In order to avoid the chaos of
multiple definitions, participants might be willing to enter a social contract in
which they would forego their autonomy and grant authority to the recognized
organization in order to ensure mutual comprehension.
There are a number of ways in which the organization might construct an
expected definition. It might construct a list of characteristics that something
has to have in order to be included in the named category; or it might collect
examples of the use of the term and on that basis decide on a definition; or it
might employ a mixture of those methods, constructing a list of characteristics
and testing the list against current usage. There might be various ways in which
an organization might go about the task. There might be an individual with the
authority to make such a decision about a list of characteristics; a small body
of people might be elected or appointed to decide; or the entire membership
might decide on a definition by a democratic process, although this method

might in practice mean an individual or a small group wording a resolution on
which the membership might vote.
We might take as an example of an authoritative organization in the social
policy field the Foundation for International Studies on Social Security. The
theme of its 2013 conference was ‘The nature and impact of recent trends
in universalism versus selectivity in social security (including targeting,
conditionality, and the balance between rights and responsibilities)’, and one
of its 2015 conference themes was ‘The nature and impact of recent social
security reforms (including targeting, coverage, conditionality, and the balance
between rights and responsibilities)’. In both of these quotations ‘condition-
ality’ is in a list alongside ‘coverage’ and ‘targeting’. In the social security
context ‘targeting’ generally means either means-testing or some other
method for directing resources at the worst off. ‘Targeting’ therefore implies
conditionality, suggesting that means-testing is not included in the meaning
of ‘conditionality’ as it is used here, implying in turn that in relation to this
quotation an ‘unconditional’ benefit might be a means-tested one and so not
unconditional (Torry, 2017a).
DIFFERENT UNCONDITIONALITIES
The word ‘unconditional’ is found in multiple language games. An important

example is the word’s use in relation to the sciences, as Friedrich Schelling
explained at the end of the eighteenth century, a period during which we shall
encounter a further important example of unconditionality later in the book.
The axiom of each science can not be conditioned by the science itself, but must be
unconditional in regard to that science. (Schelling, 1980: 41)
This means that each science must be based on a single axiom, and that that
axiom will determine the form of the science. Because philosophy conditions
sciences it cannot be conditioned by a science, so philosophy’s axiom must be
‘absolutely unconditional’ (Schelling, 1980: 41). Schelling chooses ‘the orig-
inally self-posited I’ (Schelling, 1980: 45) as the axiom on which philosophy
and therefore the sciences are based, and therefore decides that
the I can be determined in no way except by being unconditional, for it is I owing to

its sheer unconditionality, since it cannot become a thing at all. (Schelling, 1980: 83)
Schelling’s conclusion is that everything is conditioned by the I: although it

has to be said that other philosophers have chosen very different axioms for
philosophy and therefore for the sciences, with Being as a ubiquitous choice.
6 Unconditional
This book’s task is to ask about unconditionality in relation to social policy,

so rather than asking about the unconditional in relation to philosophy and
the sciences, we shall be exploring another aspect of the diverse meanings of
‘unconditional’: the possibility of unconditional giving. However, within this
restricted field we shall continue to discover diverse meanings of the word.
Even if a single definition of a term such as ‘unconditional’ can be con-
structed by one or more of the methods described above, the word might still
represent a diversity of meanings. Take the paragraph from the International
Labour Office that we discussed above:
Improvements in schooling are not restricted to conditional cash transfer pro-

grammes. Positive effects on schooling can also be observed for unconditional
transfers or workfare programmes. … Brazil’s Bolsa Família provides income
transfers to poor households, on condition that they regularly send their children
to school and that household members attend health clinics. … In Chile, Programa
de Pensiones Asistenciales, a non-contributory and unconditional social pension
programme, is found to have reduced poverty amongst people in old age by about
9.2 per cent. (International Labour Office, 2010: viii, 2, 11)
We recognized that the first use of ‘unconditional’ means ‘without conditions’,

whereas the second might mean ‘without conditions except perhaps a require-
ment to have paid social insurance contributions’.
A categorization might be helpful. There will be
• conditions that we cannot affect (such as our age);

• conditions that we have affected and that relate to events in the past (such
as the payment of social insurance contributions); and
• conditions that we can affect and that relate to future or current events
(such as paid employment).
The first use of ‘unconditional’ in the International Labour Office paragraph,

in ‘unconditional transfers’, might suggest that none of these kinds of condi-
tions apply, or it might imply that one or two of them do, with ‘unconditional’
applying to a type of condition that does not apply. Without a clear definition
of ‘unconditional’ being offered we cannot be sure. The second usage of
‘unconditional’ is more explicit. Here a particular condition that we cannot
affect, age, does apply. The author is clear that a conditionality related to past
events (paying contributions) does not apply: but that is stated separately, so
‘unconditional’ might mean ‘unconditional apart from contributions being
required’. We can reasonably assume that in neither case does the author
intend that conditions that relate to present or future events and that we can
currently affect should apply.
It would appear that ‘unconditional’ used in a strict ‘without conditions’
sense represents an ideal position, and that we might therefore be able to speak
of degrees of unconditionality, or conversely of degrees of conditionality. We

might regard a means-tested social security benefit as further towards the ‘con-
ditional’ end of a spectrum; a contributory benefit as around the centre; and an
unconditional pension (that is, a pension subject to the single conditionality of
the recipient’s age) as closer to the ‘unconditional’ end. We might not be able
to speak of measurable degrees of unconditionality, but we can certainly speak
of more or less unconditionality.
A further diversity of unconditionalities will be experienced later in the
book. A free at the point of need health service, such as the UK’s National
Health Service, exhibits what we might call an unconditionality of access,
whereas a non-means-tested and non-contributory benefit exhibits an uncondi-
tionality of provision. Healthcare is unconditional when it is required, whereas
the benefit would be a permanent unconditional provision. Because the uncon-
ditionalities are different, it would never be possible to substitute one uncondi-
tional service for the other: a possibility sometimes suggested (Murray, 1984:
227, 230; 1996: 50; 2006). If an unconditional benefit were to be substituted
for unconditional healthcare, then some individuals would be in profit whereas
others would not be able to afford the healthcare that they needed. A complex
picture has emerged that we might represent by a matrix, with one variable
being the types of unconditionality relevant in different social policy fields,
and the other whether the conditionalities that do not apply are those that we
cannot affect, those that we could affect in the past, and/or those that we can
affect in the present or in the future.
The existence of all of these different kinds of conditionality, and therefore
of different meanings of ‘unconditionality’, might appear to be a somewhat the-
oretical matter: but this is theory with behavioural implications and therefore
relevant to social policy formulation. Conditionalities relating to factors that
we might be able to influence, such as household structure and labour market
status, can result in both disincentives and moral hazard: that is, our behaviour
can skew resource levels and outcomes. Someone whose means-tested benefits
depend on them not being employed might be hesitant to seek employment
if their employment income and any remaining means-tested benefits would
offer them little additional net income, or might even leave them with a lower
net income if they have to pay fares to work. Moral hazard will be a risk; and
there will certainly be a higher level of employment disincentive than would
otherwise be experienced.
Factors relating to events in the past, such as paying social insurance contri-
butions, do not act as a direct disincentive, and they exhibit no moral hazard:
and a disability, however originated, does not do so either. However, both the
payment of contributions and the existence of a disability require bureaucratic
enquiry. This inevitably generates stigma, and certainly creates complexity
8 Unconditional
and administrative cost. So while it might look as if conditionalities relating to

events in the past should not be a problem, they can be.
Conditionalities relating to factors over which we have no control, such as
age, cause no problems at all. No enquiry is required, except when a child is
born, so the operative factor would appear to be not so much the nature of the
conditionality, but whether or not enquiry has to be made into an individual’s
situation. The same can be said of conditionalities related to events in the
present or future. Enquiry has to be made into labour market status, household
structure, and so on, so ‘making enquiry’ here acts as a proxy for conditional-
ities to be avoided.
This all suggests that when social policy is made, conditionalities about
which enquiry has to be made should be avoided, whereas conditionalities that
require no enquiry to be made are not a problem (Torry, 2017a).
An Example of Unconditionality
A useful example of the meanings of ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ that

we shall encounter frequently in this book is provided by an article on the
convergence or otherwise of economic growth rates. Dani Rodrik finds that in
relation to whole national economies
whatever convergence one can find is conditional: It depends on policies, institu-

tions, and other country-specific circumstances. … If growth rates are characterized
by conditional instead of unconditional convergence, economies will tend toward
different levels of income in the long run. … In contrast, I show in this article
that unconditional convergence does exist, but it occurs in the modern parts of the
economy rather than the economy as a whole. In particular, I document a highly
robust tendency toward convergence in labor productivity in manufacturing activ-
ities, regardless of geography, policies, or other country-level influences. The
coefficient of unconditional convergence (beta) is large – 2.9% a year in my base-
line specification that covers 118 countries – and estimated quite precisely, with
more disaggregated specifications generally yielding somewhat higher estimates.
(Rodrik, 2013: 165–6)
The convergence that Rodrik discovers is not strictly unconditional as it relies

on different countries’ ‘identical technologies’, on an ‘open global economy’,
and on ‘access to foreign capital and foreign markets (which removes finance
and market size as constraints) …’ (Rodrik, 2013: 165). However, conver-
gence in the manufacturing sections of modern economies is not conditional
on ‘geography, policies, or country-level influences’, whereas convergence
between whole national economies is conditional on those. What we are
looking at here is differential conditionalities, with one convergence depend-
ing on fewer conditionalities than another convergence. During the course of
this book we shall rarely encounter social policies or anything else that are
entirely unconditional. What we shall find are social policies that exhibit more
or less conditionality, with some policies subject to more conditionalities than
others.
‘UNIVERSAL’
A term frequently confused with ‘unconditional’ is ‘universal’. For instance,

social security benefits that are not means-tested and not based on prior con-
tributions are sometimes called ‘universal benefits’ – for instance, the UK’s
Child Benefit – when it would be better to call them ‘unconditional benefits’.
Such benefits are unconditional in relation to any condition that we can affect,
although not usually in relation to the recipient’s age. They are not universal,
except in the limited sense that they are received by every individual in a par-
ticular age group and in a particular place.
Defining ‘Universal’ in Relation to Its Use
Just as we have defined ‘unconditional’ in relation to its use, so we can define

‘universal’ in relation to the ways in which it is used. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines ‘universal’ as follows:
Extending over or including the whole of something specified or implied, esp. the
whole of a particular group or the whole world; comprehensive, complete; widely
occurring or existing, prevalent over all. … Affecting or involving the whole of
something specified or implied. … Modifying an agent noun, personal designation,
or title, indicating that the role of the person concerned extends over or to all people,
nations, etc. … Originating from the whole body or number of people specified
or implied; done, given, made, etc., by all without exception. … Of a service or
facility: extended to, provided for, or accessible to all members of a community,
regardless of wealth, social status, etc. … (Oxford English Dictionary)
I have italicized this last entry because of its particular relevance to social secu-
rity. The most recent example given is from the South China Morning Post:
‘By last year, 94 per cent of the mainland’s populated areas had provided nine
years of universal compulsory education’ (Oxford English Dictionary). As we
would expect, any use of the word ‘universal’ requires the specification, either
explicitly or implicitly, of the community within which something applies,
from which it comes, or to which it is supplied. ‘All without exception’ in the
dictionary quotation above means ‘all without exception within the specified
community’.
10 Unconditional
We shall employ as a case study another passage from the same International
Labour Office publication that we quoted above:
But despite the progress made in the materialization of the universal right to social
security, very important gaps remain. … Non-contributory schemes include a broad
range of schemes including universal schemes for all residents, some categorical
schemes or means-tested schemes. … Categorical schemes could also be grouped
as universal, if they cover all residents belonging to a certain category, or include
resource conditions (social assistance schemes). They may include other types of
conditions such as performing or accomplishing certain tasks. (International Labour
Office, 2010: 1, 39)
Here we find three different uses of ‘universal’. The first use applies to every-
one, globally; and the second and third to everyone within a particular country.
However, the second and third uses have different meanings, and we can
only deduce these from the context. The second use implies that a ‘universal’
scheme is neither means-tested nor related to a particular category of people,
and therefore that it pays the same income to everyone, whereas the third use
implies that universal schemes can be restricted to a particular category of indi-
viduals or can be means-tested. While ‘universal’ always means ‘extending
over or including the whole of something specified or implied’, the different
uses here warn us to be clear about what precisely is universal: Is it the provi-
sion of an income? Or is it the provision of an income on certain conditions?
The UK’s ‘Universal Credit’ is the provision of a means-tested and work-tested
income to everyone who fulfils the conditions (and would probably be better
designated ‘Unified Benefit’), whereas in the context of ‘Universal Basic
Income’ ‘universal’ means that ‘every individual unconditionally receives an
income as a right of citizenship, independent of labour-market status’ (Painter
and Thoung, 2015: 18). (‘Independent of labour-market status’ is strictly
redundant, but is presumably added to emphasize the point.)
As with ‘unconditional’, the meaning of ‘universal’ is determined by its
particular use, and care must be taken not to make untested assumptions about
the word’s meaning in a particular context (Torry, 2017a).
We have discussed the possibility of defining something by asking whether

it has the characteristics that would include it in a particular category, and we
have suggested how such a definition might be achieved for ‘unconditional’.
The same might be attempted for ‘universal’. Again, there are a number of
ways to approach this:
• Each user of the terms ‘universal’ could select their own preferred char-
acteristics. The individual’s autonomy would thus be honoured, but at the
risk of losing mutual comprehension.
• We could study a wide variety of actual usages of the terms and work out
the lists of characteristics either stated or assumed by users of the terms. If
we could find characteristics employed in all actual usages, then we would
have discovered the ‘family likeness’ and would be able to list a definitive
set of characteristics. However, that does not mean that everyone would
agree with the list. It would only take one user of the term ‘universal’ to
insist that they understood a characteristic not in the list to be essential to
the definition of the category for the definition to become problematic in
relation to attempts at mutual comprehension.
would qualify something as belonging to the category ‘universal’.
We have suggested that in the social policy field the Foundation for
International Studies on Social Security might be regarded as an authoritative
organization able to decide on definitions of term. As we have seen, the theme
of its 2013 conference was ‘The nature and impact of recent trends in univer-
salism versus selectivity in social security (including targeting, conditionality,
and the balance between rights and responsibilities)’. This assumes that
‘universal’ implies non-selective social security benefits rather than selective
ones open to everyone who fulfils the conditions. This in turn suggests that
‘universal’ is being used to mean something close to ‘unconditional’, and
there is some sense in this. If a public service is provided unconditionally then
it is universal within the jurisdiction in which it is offered. The reverse is not
necessarily the case, because a conditional service can be universal but not
unconditional: for instance, public transport might be universal within a city,
but that does not mean that riding on it will be unconditional.
‘UNCONDITIONAL’ AND ‘UNIVERSAL’
Given the ubiquity of the words ‘universal’ and ‘unconditional’ in social

security discourse, and given the diversity of meanings of both of them that
we have discovered, there would be a case for an organization such as the
Foundation for International Studies on Social Security (FISS) researching
and disseminating definitions of the two terms. It could do this by studying
12 Unconditional
usage and drawing up definitions on that basis; or it could construct draft lists
of characteristics that would need to be satisfied by social security benefits if
they were to be included in the ‘unconditional’ or ‘universal’ categories, and
then test those lists against usage, or it could draw up lists of characteristics
and put them to a vote of FISS members.
One approach that FISS could take would be to treat both ‘unconditional’
and ‘universal’ as ideal positions and then promote the idea of degrees of
unconditionality and degrees of universality. Clearly quantification of such
degrees would not be possible, but qualitative evaluation might be useful,
particularly in relation to the different kinds of conditionality that we have
discussed, and in relation to the two kinds of unconditionality that we might
call ‘unconditionality of provision’ for incomes or other services offered
equally to everyone within a jurisdiction, and ‘unconditionality of entitlement’
or ‘unconditionality of access’ for an unconditional right to a benefit or other
service if such circumstances as ill health demand it. Similarly, ‘universal’ in
the sense of provision or entitlement for every individual on the planet might
be regarded as an ideal position, with universality within a particular territory,
and universality within an age group, understood as further away from ideal
universality and so further towards the particularity end of the spectrum.
If such evaluation is to be considered, then it will need to be undertaken
separately for the different kinds of conditionality and for different grades
of universality. An income or some other service provision would need to be
evaluated separately in relation to whether it was conditional on factors that we
cannot affect, factors relating to past events that we could have affected then
but not now (such as paying social insurance contributions), and factors relat-
ing to current and future events that we can affect now (such as labour market
status and household structure); we would have to evaluate the uncondition-
ality of the service provision in relation to whether it was unconditionality of
provision, unconditionality of entitlement, or neither; and we would have to
evaluate the service in relation to the territorial and age-group extents of its
universality.
Just as we have understood ‘unconditional’ to be an ideal position at the
end of an unconditionality/conditionality spectrum, and have now understood
‘universal’ to represent an ideal position at the end of what we might call a uni-
versal/restricted spectrum, the question will be asked as to whether we might
legitimately speak of degrees of universality in a way similar to that in which
we speak of degrees of unconditionality: and, if so, whether levels of uncondi-
tionality and universality can be quantified. If so, levels of conditionality will
need to be measured separately for each kind of conditionality, and levels of
universality will need to be separately measured in relation to territory and age
group.
‘RECIPROCITY’
Another word intimately related to ‘unconditionality’ and ‘conditionality’ is

‘reciprocity’. This expresses the fact that we experience as a social norm or
‘moral repertoire’ (Dean, 1998: 150; Svallfors, 2012: 10) an expectation that
people will reciprocate. Marshall Sahlins identifies three forms of reciprocity:
‘balanced reciprocity’ refers to direct exchange where what is reciprocated
is the customary equivalent of the thing received and is given without delay;
secondly, ‘negative reciprocity’ is the attempt to get something for nothing
with impunity; and thirdly, close kin tend to share goods and service with each
other in what we might call generalized exchanges (Sahlins, 1972: 194–6).
Wilk and Cliggett suggest that market exchanges are balanced reciprocity,
gambling is negative reciprocity, and caring for children is generalized
exchanges (Wilk and Cliggett, 2018: 162–4). A spectrum emerges, from ‘the
assistance freely given’ in ‘generalized exchanges’ among close kin at one
end, to ‘self-interested seizure, appropriation by chicanery or force’ (Sahlins,
1972: 191) at the other, with ‘balanced’ reciprocity in the middle (Torry,
forthcoming, ch. 1).
An additional categorization of reciprocities is offered by Hartley Dean who
suggests that four different types of reciprocation operate between the state
and an individual: 1. ante/required; 2. ante/expected; 3. post/required; and
4. post/expected. Work-tested benefits are an example of ante/required reci-
procity, and so of an explicit attempt to control benefits recipients’ behaviour
(Dean, 2012a: 51), whereas the expectation that someone might contribute to
society following the implementation of an unconditional income would be an
example of post/expected reciprocity. An example of post/required reciprocity
might be a state’s obligation to care for police officers and members of the
armed forces injured in the course of duty, and ante/expected reciprocity might
be represented by an expectation, but not a requirement, that someone about
to start a prescribed training course will have read the preparatory material
offered to them.
‘BASIC INCOME’2
An increasingly significant factor in research and discussion about social secu-

rity benefits is the now global debate about the desirability and feasibility of
a Basic Income: an unconditional and non-withdrawable income paid to each
individual. Given the connection between the Basic Income proposal and the
2
This section of the chapter is based on a paper presented at the 2017 Basic
Income Earth Network (BIEN) congress in Lisbon, Portugal.
14 Unconditional
unconditionality that this book is all about, it is as important to be clear about

the definition of ‘Basic Income’ as it is to be clear about the definitions of
‘unconditional’, ‘universal’ and ‘reciprocity’.
First of all, a number of different terms all mean the same thing, although
each one emphasizes a different aspect of it: ‘Citizen’s Income’, ‘Universal
Basic Income’ and ‘Citizen’s Basic Income’ all mean the same thing as ‘Basic
Income’: an unconditional income for every individual. But that is only the
beginning of the discussion that we shall pursue here by employing the same
definitional methods as we have employed for ‘unconditional’ and ‘universal’.
Current Usage
There is no entry for ‘Basic Income’ or ‘Citizen’s Income’ in the Oxford

English Dictionary (which is interesting), but we do of course find both ‘basic’
and ‘income’. ‘Basic’ used as an adjective is given a wide variety of defini-
tions, the first two of which are as follows:
a. Of, pertaining to, or forming a base; fundamental, essential: … b. That is or con-

stitutes a standard minimum amount in a scale of remuneration or the like. (Oxford
English Dictionary)
The dictionary also offers the following definition:
Providing or having few or no amenities, accessories, functions, etc., beyond the

ordinary or essential; of or designating the lowest standard acceptable or available;
rudimentary. (Oxford English Dictionary)
An example is offered: ‘Pastries and other sweets in the north can be pretty
basic.’
English as spoken in the United States of America (USA) exhibits similar
meanings:
a. being the main or most important part of something … b. very simple, with
nothing special added: ‘The software is very basic.’ (Cambridge Essential American
English Dictionary, 2023)
Whether the derogatory undertones are understood by someone reading the

words ‘Basic Income’ will depend on the reader’s previous experience of
the word ‘basic’ and the context in which the word is being used. It is in
relation to such undertones that meaning and definition can diverge. When
we hear the term ‘Basic Income’ we might define it as ‘an unconditional and
non-withdrawable income for every individual’, but we might also understand
the term to mean that the income will not be a very good one – an aspect of
our understanding that might not appear in the stated definition. We should
therefore expect a wider variety of meanings than any variety of definitions
of ‘Basic Income’ that might be offered. Family resemblances might be some-
what distant.
In relation to the global debate about Basic Income, a significant additional
question has to be that of the transferability of definitions between different
languages. The German ‘Grund’ means ‘foundation’, so ‘Grundeinkommen’
means a foundational income. There is no sense that the income is not of good
quality. ‘Basiseinkommen’ has a similar meaning to ‘Grundeinkommen’: it
represents an income that provides a foundation on which people can build.
An English speaker might translate ‘Grundeinkommen’ as ‘Basic Income’
and understand some derogatory undertones that a German speaker would not
understand when they heard the same word. If the global Basic Income debate
is to be rational, careful exploration of both the definitions that participants
employ, and the meanings that they understand, will be essential.
Is there a set of characteristics by which we can decide whether something

belongs in the category labelled ‘Basic Income’? As usual, there are a number
of ways to approach this:
• Each user of the term ‘Basic Income’ could select their own preferred
characteristics. The individual’s autonomy would thus be honoured, but at
the risk of losing mutual comprehension.
• We could study a wide variety of actual usages of the term ‘Basic Income’
and work out the lists of characteristics either stated or assumed by users
of the term. If we could find characteristics employed in all actual usages,
then we would have discovered the ‘family likeness’ and would be able
to list a definitive set of characteristics. However, that does not mean that
everyone would agree with the list. It would only take one user of the
term ‘Basic Income’ to insist that they understood a characteristic not in
the list to be essential to the definition of the category for the definition to
become contentious and thus problematic in relation to attempts at mutual
comprehension. This is what occurred in Ontario when an experiment took
place with an income-tested and household-tested income that the Ontario
government called a ‘Basic Income’ (Ontario, no date).
would qualify something as belonging to the category ‘Basic Income’. As
before, this is our third definitional strategy.
16 Unconditional
Two organizations could lodge legitimate claims to be recognized authorities.

In 1984 the Citizen’s Basic Income Trust (formerly the Basic Income Research
Group) was established to facilitate the Basic Income debate in the UK; and
in 1986 the Basic Income European Network (BIEN) was established to
facilitate the debate across Europe. The latter organization globalized in 2004
as the Basic Income Earth Network, and a number of national Basic Income
organizations are affiliated to it, so we might now choose to regard BIEN as
the debate’s primary authoritative organization and therefore its published
definition of ‘Basic Income’ as reflecting current usage.
A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an

individual basis, without means-test or work requirement. That is, basic income has
the following five characteristics:
1. Periodic: it is paid at regular intervals (for example every month), not as
a one-off grant.
2. Cash payment: it is paid in an appropriate medium of exchange, allowing those
who receive it to decide what they spend it on. It is not, therefore, paid either in
kind (such as food or services) or in vouchers dedicated to a specific use.
3. Individual: it is paid on an individual basis – and not, for instance, to households.
4. Universal: it is paid to all, without means test.
5. Unconditional: it is paid without a requirement to work or to demonstrate
willingness-to-work. (Basic Income Earth Network, 2022)
A shorter form, last amended at the Seoul General Assembly in 2016, reads
like this:
A periodic cash payment delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test
or work requirement.
Defining Basic Income
Some additional characteristics rarely appear in stated definitions of Basic

Income but are generally assumed:
• That the income will be paid monthly, fortnightly, or weekly (or perhaps
daily?). The annual Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (Goldsmith, 2012:
49–50) is therefore not a Basic Income.
• That the income will not vary, although regular annual upratings will
be expected. Again, the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which is the
payment of a varying dividend, is not a Basic Income.
• That the income will vary with the recipient’s age. This assumption might
appear to breach the ‘unconditional’ requirement, and strictly speaking it
does: but because this conditionality is one that we cannot affect, and that
therefore requires no bureaucratic interference and does not compromise
the universality or ease of administration of a Basic Income, it can be
permitted.
These three assumptions are generally understood to belong to the definition of

a Basic Income, but they are rarely stated. If ‘definition’ means a set of words
that give some indication of the meaning of ‘Basic Income’, then the definition
will rarely include these three assumptions. If by ‘definition’ we mean the
understood meaning of ‘Basic Income’, then they do belong to the definition.
If we look for the words that generally accompany ‘Basic Income’ then we
will often find the words ‘unconditional’, ‘non-withdrawable’ and ‘individ-
ual’. We might find ‘regular’, or a statement that the payment will be weekly
or monthly, which can encapsulate the first assumption above; we might
find ‘uniform’, reflecting the second assumption; and we will generally find
different levels of Basic Income for different age groups, reflecting the third
assumption. So in the case of ‘Basic Income’, usage delivers a fairly consistent
set of characteristics and our first two definitional methods converge.
Basic Income and Basic Income Schemes
An essential distinction is that between ‘Basic Income’ and ‘Basic Income

scheme’. A Basic Income is always an unconditional income for every indi-
vidual, whereas a Basic Income scheme is a Basic Income with the levels of
payment stipulated for each age group, the funding method specified, and any
changes to existing tax and benefits systems fully specified. There is one single
definition of a Basic Income, but there is an infinite number of Basic Income
schemes. The distinction is important because scholars have sometimes argued
from a particular infeasible Basic Income scheme to the infeasibility of Basic
Income, when all that they have proved is the infeasibility of a particular
scheme. All that is required for the feasibility of Basic Income in a particular
context is to prove just one Basic Income scheme to be feasible (Torry, 2022a:
43–53).
The Amount of the Payment
There would appear to be just one issue over which national Basic Income
organizations disagree: the amount of the payment. For some national organ-
izations, only an unconditional, non-withdrawable, regular, uniform and indi-
vidual income at ‘subsistence level’ can qualify as a Basic Income, whereas for
other organizations an unconditional, non-withdrawable, regular, uniform and
individual income of any amount can count as one (Torry, 2017b: 10–17). This
18 Unconditional
is not a problem for BIEN: its definition of Basic Income does not include any
mention of the level at which a Basic Income would be paid, so its affiliated
organizations are free to publish illustrative Basic Income schemes of their
own choosing. But having said that, there will clearly be a level of payment
below which a Basic Income would not function as a foundational income, and
debate continues as to whether and how such a consideration might be incor-
porated into a definition of Basic Income or in a list of clarifications related to
the definition (Torry, 2023: 33–7).
‘GUARANTEE’
During the early 1980s, at the beginning of the modern debate about Basic
Income, Hermione Parker and Brandon Rhys Williams MP called a Basic
Income a ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ (House of Commons Treasury and Civil
Service Committee, 1983; House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service
Committee Sub-Committee, 1982; Parker, 1989). The word ‘guarantee’ was
confusing because to guarantee an income is not necessarily to provide one,
and a means-tested benefit can guarantee someone an income by filling a gap
between other income and a specified minimum income. Because ‘guarantee’
can imply means-testing, the British debate soon dropped the word, preferring
‘Basic Income’, then ‘Citizen’s Income’, and now ‘Citizen’s Basic Income’,
with ‘Basic Income’ remaining a common description. The North American
debate, however, retains the use of ‘guarantee’, causing occasional misunder-
standing as to what is intended. Take, for instance, the wording on USBIG’s
website:
The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a government ensured guarantee that no one’s
income will fall below the level necessary to meet their most basic needs for any
reason. … The Basic Income gives every citizen a check for the full basic income
every month, and taxes his or her earned income, so that nearly everyone both pays
taxes and receives a basic income. (USBIG)
Here ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ can mean a means-tested benefit, whereas

‘Basic Income’ does not. Because ‘Basic Income’ appears in both designa-
tions, this is potentially quite confusing, because someone could easily think
that ‘Basic Income’ and ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ mean the same thing when
in fact they do not. My recommendation would be that anyone using the term
‘Basic Income Guarantee’ should instead employ the term ‘Minimum Income
Guarantee’, because that is more descriptive of what is intended, and it cannot
be confused with ‘Basic Income’.
‘ALLOWANCE’
A brief note on the word ‘allowance’ will help to avoid confusion. ‘Allowance’
used in combination with a word indicating to or for whom the allowance
is to be paid always denotes a payment allocated to the payee. So ‘child
allowance’ means an income for children. ‘Tax allowance’ means a layer of
earned or other income on which tax is not charged: so ‘Income Tax Personal
Allowance’ means that UK Income Tax will only be collected on earned or
other income above the level of the allowance. Another way of putting this is
that there is a ‘tax threshold’ below which income tax is not charged. There
is a sense in which the two meanings of ‘allowance’, although apparently
different, might imply the same practical outcome. A ‘child tax allowance’
has a value equal to the amount of the allowance multiplied by the tax rate,
as that is the tax that the allowance enables the taxpayer not to pay. A ‘child
allowance’ is an income paid for a child to its main carer. The child allowance
and the child tax allowance could have the same value. However, there might
be a difference in practical outcome, because a child tax allowance would
benefit one taxpayer in the household, who might not be the child’s main carer,
whereas a child allowance would be paid to the main carer.
‘EFFICIENCY’
The relevant definition of ‘efficient’ in the Oxford English Dictionary

is ‘productive of effects; effective; adequately operative’ (Oxford English
Dictionary). This suggests that ‘efficient’ can never stand alone. We always
need to know the particular effect that is intended before we can decide whether
something is efficient at producing it. In relation to institutions, an institution
will always be efficient or inefficient in relation to a particular desired social or
individual outcome, whether that be happiness, wealth, income, health, safety,
educational attainment, and so on. So in relation to a particular institution, we
might ask about its economic efficiency (Is the cost as low as possible?), its
outcome efficiency (Does it do what it’s supposed to do?), its administrative
efficiency (Are administrative costs as low as possible as a proportion of total
costs?), its ethical efficiency (Are its activities and outcomes as ethical as pos-
sible?), its access efficiency (Is everyone for whom the institution is designed
able to access its activities?), its personal efficiency (Does the institution treat
people with dignity and compassion?), its social efficiency (Does the institu-
tion facilitate a just and cohesive society?), and so on. There is no such thing
as efficiency. There are only efficiencies.
In the following chapters of this book we shall be studying a variety of insti-
tutions characterized by unconditionality in the sense now defined, and we shall
20 Unconditional
be asking whether they are efficient in relation to a range of intended effects.

But if our study is to result in practical outcomes then we shall also need to
ask about other kinds of institutions and their efficiencies so that we can judge
the relative efficiencies of unconditional institutions. So, for instance: there is
a variety of ways of structuring a country’s health services, some systems will
be characterized by more unconditionality than others, and some will be more
efficient than others in various respects. The policy-relevant question has to
be: Is constructing a less conditional institution the most efficient way to run
a health service? As we now know, this question breaks down into a number of
different questions: Is a healthcare system that is characterized by more uncon-
ditionality the most cost-efficient way to provide healthcare? Is it the most per-
sonally efficient way? and so on. If all of the verdicts are favourable, then we
shall be able to say that to create a maximally unconditional healthcare system
is the most efficient thing to do. If none of the verdicts are favourable, then we
shall be able to say the opposite. If some of them are favourable, and some are
not, then whether we regard an institution characterized by unconditionality as
the best way to do things will depend on the personal weightings that we apply
to the different kinds of efficiency (Schneider et al., 2021).
CONCLUSION
Definition is a complex field, but it is one that anyone involved in the social
sciences needs to understand. Definitions matter. The more clarity we can
achieve, the more useful will be our research results, and the more productive
will be the debate. In this chapter we have discussed the definition of ‘uncondi-
tional’ as an essential first step in our exploration of unconditionality in social
policy. We have also discussed the definitions of ‘universal’, ‘reciprocity’,
‘Basic Income’, ‘Basic Income scheme’, and a few other concepts: all terms
that we shall encounter later in the book. What matters more than the particular
treatments that we have given to these definitions is the pursuit of clarity rep-
resented by this chapter. Nobody can enforce a definition on anyone else, and
readers might legitimately disagree with the particular definitions and mean-
ings offered here: but what we can legitimately require of our conversation
partners is clarity: that is, that terms should be defined as clearly as possible,
that any doubts relating to definitions should be discussed and resolved, that
any unstated meanings not explicitly stated in definitions should be explored
and wherever possible stated, and that agreed definitions should be adhered to.
We can also conclude, on the basis of the definitions discussed here, that
unconditionality implies universality, that universality does not necessarily
imply unconditionality, that unconditionality is compatible with post/expected
reciprocity but not with ante/expected, ante/required or post/required reci-
procities, and that Basic Income is unconditional, and therefore universal,
and therefore compatible with post/expected reciprocity but not with ante/
expected, ante/required or post/required reciprocities.
2. Social policy regimes
INTRODUCTION
The ideas underlying the way in which the UK economy was run during the
1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and arguably until 1979, is sometimes described
as ‘Keynesianism’, after John Maynard Keynes, the author of The General
Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes, 1936); and the ideas
underlying the way in which it has been run since 2010, and arguably since
1979, is sometimes called ‘neoliberalism’. Many other economies have experi-
enced the same ideological shift: because it is ideologies that we are discussing
here – that is, relatively coherent bundles of ideas on which practical policies
are more or less based. The more general ideas underlying the ways in which
most European and many other economies have functioned are often termed
‘capitalism’: a bundle of concepts to which the idea of markets in goods and
services is foundational. Somewhat different are the centrally planned econo-
mies of ‘communism’; and ‘socialism’ has been something of a communist/
capitalism hybrid.
This chapter argues that ‘regimes’ is a better term than ‘paradigm’ for this
group of ideologies, and then explores four regimes: capitalism, communism,
Keynesianism and neoliberalism.
PARADIGMS OR REGIMES?
‘Paradigm’
The way in which the State supports household incomes in the USA is some-
what different from the way in which it happens in Sweden; and the way in
which the UK’s economy was managed during the 1950s was somewhat dif-
ferent from the way in which it is managed today: so what terminology should
we use to describe and understand those differences?
Might the ‘paradigm’ concept that Thomas Kuhn used to describe the way in
which sciences evolve be useful to us? Kuhn studied the way in which science
22
Social policy regimes 23
has developed, and discovered smoother accumulative processes interspersed

with revolutions, with each revolution necessitating
the community’s rejection of one time-honored scientific theory in favor of

another incompatible with it. Each [revolution] produced a consequent shift in the
problems available for scientific scrutiny and in the standards by which the pro-
fession determined what should count as an admissible problem or as a legitimate
problem-solution. (Kuhn, 1996: 6)
Each revolution ‘transformed the scientific imagination’ and so also ‘the world
within which scientific work was done’ (Kuhn, 1996: 6). Scientific revolutions
might begin with the application or discovery of new mathematics, or change
might be driven by experimental results that fail to support existing theories,
or by new experimental techniques (Bachelard, 2006; Smolin, 2013: 247): but
always there will be revolutions. If previous theories can no longer explain
the evidence, and a period of ‘thought experiments’ (Kuhn, 1981) has given
rise to new theories, one or more of which can explain experimental evidence
sufficiently to attract the confidence of a scientific community, then we might
be looking at a whole new ‘paradigm’:
Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set

of recurrent and quasistandard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual,
observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community’s paradigms,
revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. (Kuhn, 1996: 43)
However, a scientific revolution delivering a new paradigm can enable a sci-

entific community to
agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting

to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpre-
tation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding
research. (Kuhn, 1996: 44)
The transition from Newtonian to quantum mechanics ushered in a new para-

digm from which members of a diverse scientific community would continue
to work, but there remain questions that the paradigm cannot resolve (Kuhn,
1996: 48, 162): and it is those questions, along with new experiments that
generate results that theories within the quantum paradigm cannot explain,
that will drive the next revolution. But in the meantime, the paradigm enables
useful scientific progress to take place, because
the reception of a common paradigm has freed the scientific community from
the need constantly to re-examine its first principles, [so] the members of that
community can concentrate exclusively upon the subtlest and most esoteric of the
24 Unconditional
phenomena that concern it. Inevitably, that does increase both the effectiveness and
the efficiency with which the group as a whole solves new problems. (Kuhn, 1996:
163–4)
The question that this scientific understanding of paradigms poses for a social
scientist is whether it would be legitimate to employ the concept of a paradigm
to express the ideological and methodological configurations through which
we commonly understand societies and economies: for instance, the social
and economic consensus that emerged in the UK and elsewhere following the
Second World War, or today’s neoliberalism: on both of which see below.
Kuhn’s scientific paradigms are attempts to understand how sciences shift
between one understanding of the world and another: for instance, the shift
from a nineteenth-century worldview that saw objects as realities between
which relationships are hypothetical, to a twentieth-century worldview in
which relationships are realities, phenomena are hypothetical, and the world
is a ‘working phenomenology’ (Kuhn, 1981: 77). Gaston Bachelard believed
changes in mathematics to be a crucial factor in scientific change (Bachelard,
2006), and Michel Foucault showed that the way in which we study and
understand society creates the social facts that we discover, and suggested
the concept of a ‘regime of truth’, by which he meant that a particular way of
understanding a science, an ideology, or a religion,
constrains individuals to a certain number of truth acts … [it] is that which deter-
mines the obligations of the individuals with regard to procedures of manifestation
of truth. (Foucault, 2014: 93)
Regimes of truth change from time to time, from place to place, and from
person to person; the power relations underlying regimes of truth change
constantly; and history changes constantly as we ‘fabricate’ it (Foucault, 2007:
56). Looking back, we can identify what we might properly call ‘paradigm
shifts’ (Hall, 1993: 280, 284), during which ‘social learning’ (Hall, 1993)
has taken place: but politics has also been happening, and it is the purposeful
politics, constituted by competing interests, and designed to shape the future
(Hall, 1993: 289), along with activity across a complex policymaking network
(Oliver and Pemberton, 2004), that is more difficult to fit into the concept
of a paradigm shift, especially once we recognize that ideas and practices
change all the time (Oliver and Pemberton, 2004: 435–6). Presumably to the
extent that such configurations of ideas as Keynesianism and neoliberalism
can be understood as theories that explain how economies and societies have
functioned in the past, or function today, they might legitimately be termed
paradigms, but to the extent that they are purposeful policy configurations it
is difficult to see how they can be aligned with the scientific paradigms that
Kuhn has discussed. We have still not found the right terminology to express
the purposeful policy change, affected by multiple factors, that we experience

all around us.
‘Regime’
If the concept of a paradigm might be problematic as a way of describing the

bundles of social and economic ideas and practices to which we might give
such names as ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, ‘neoliberalism’ and
‘Keynesianism’, might the concept of a ‘regime’ be useful? Foucault means
by ‘regime of truth’ an imposed way of understanding the world. The concept
of a ‘regime’, as Gøsta Esping-Andersen uses it, is employed somewhat dif-
ferently, but as we shall see, connectedly. Esping-Andersen lists a variety of
different ‘welfare state regimes’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 26–9): that is, the
different ways in which nation states organize healthcare, education, income
maintenance, and so on. He first of all scores welfare states for corporatism
(the number of large occupationally distinct public pension schemes), étatism
(expenditure on pensions for government employees), means-tested poor
relief, private pensions (as a proportion of total pensions), private health
spending (as a proportion of the total), universalism (social security benefits
available to every citizen, excluding income-tested schemes), and average
benefit equality (the ratio of the legal maximum benefits possible to the guar-
anteed minimum income). By combining these scores, each country is then
scored for conservatism (corporatism), socialism (universalism and equality)
and liberalism (private provision, with a residual, means-tested welfare state)
(Esping-Andersen, 1990: 69–77). Some clear clusters of countries emerge, and
Esping-Andersen is able to characterize their welfare states as in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1 Three types of welfare regime
Type of welfare Character Represented by

regime
Social democratic The State is committed to full employment, generous Denmark, Finland,
regimes/‘socialism’ universalist welfare benefits, income redistribution, etc. Netherlands, Norway and
Sweden
Conservative/ Occupationally segregated benefits, a low degree Germany, France, Austria,
corporatist regimes of State involvement in welfare provision, and so Belgium, Spain, Portugal,
unequal outcomes (Ferrera, 1996: 17) Greece and Italy
Liberal welfare Private provision, selective provision, and a residual Australia, Canada, Japan,
regimes safety net for the poor Switzerland and the USA
Source: Table constructed by the author mainly on the basis of Esping-Andersen (1990: 73–5).
The countries listed in the right-hand column of Table 2.1 are those which
score ‘strongly’ for each of the welfare regime types. The same countries
26 Unconditional
will also score ‘medium’ or ‘low’ for the other welfare regime types. Some
countries do not score strongly for any particular type (Dean, 2012a: 31): the
UK, for example, scores ‘low’ for conservatism (corporatism), and ‘medium’
for both liberalism and socialism. The precise characteristics of any particular
country’s welfare state are clearly the result of a wide variety of factors, with
a particularly interesting one having been shown to be the latitude of its capital
city (Torry, 2020a: 124–8). Some factors will be circular: for instance, a liberal
welfare state, by imposing high marginal deduction rates through its ubiqui-
tous means-testing, is likely to exacerbate income inequality, which in turn
is likely to cause social rifts and therefore an even more liberal welfare state:
‘liberal’ in the sense of private and selective provision and a residual safety
net, not liberal in the sense of generous.
Esping-Andersen has chosen ‘western’ countries to study. There are
other welfare state models that he might have chosen, such as the Chinese
family-based and social network model (Ka, 1999); an East Asian model of
‘community, firm and family’ that is diverse, but with an emphasis on social
insurance, and characteristics of low state expenditure, few social rights and
fragmented systems (White and Goodman, 1998: 13–16); an Islamic model
funded by religiously mandated annual donations of 2.5 per cent of surplus
wealth (Hewer, 2006: 106–10); African welfare provision: diverse, unrelia-
ble, and in challenging social, political and economic contexts (Mkandawire
and Soludo, 1998); and post-communist welfare states in Eastern Europe,
characterized by ‘no comprehensive ideological or institutional blueprints’
(Kuitto, 2016: 36) but with tendencies towards the privatization of pensions
and healthcare, away from state-funded unemployment benefits and towards
contributory benefits, and away from unconditional family benefits and
towards means-testing, thus risking a dualization between employment market
insiders and outsiders (Kuitto, 2016: 36, 175–6, 183–4). In relation to those
that Esping-Andersen did study, and in relation to those that he did not, we
can conclude that no country has established an ‘unconditional’ welfare state
regime, although healthcare provision is often unconditional or close to being
so, and unconditional child allowances and pensions are sometimes available.
Listing the different ‘regimes’ implies that a country might have a choice
as to how it might organize a variety of social and economic functions: but if
Foucault is correct, and it is power relations within a society that determine
the regimes of truth available to us – hence the requirement for ‘critique’
(Foucault, 1989: 242; 2007: 65) – then it is the different histories of power
relations within any particular society, and the social norms that they generate
(Ka, 1999), that will largely determine a country’s welfare state regime: and
in practice the ‘welfare state regime’ will be a ‘regime of truth’ in Foucault’s
sense, suggesting that ‘regime’ terminology might indeed be appropriate for
the ideologies that control so much about our societies and economies, includ-
ing their welfare states.
Just as Esping-Andersen employs ‘regimes’ terminology to describe the dif-
ferences between welfare state configurations, I shall employ ‘regime’ to indi-
cate bundles of social and economic ideas and practices such as those to which
we might give such names as ‘capitalism’, ‘communism’, ‘neoliberalism’ and
‘Keynesianism’. Because ‘regime’ can encompass social policies implemented
by and imposed upon individuals and institutions, ‘regime’ is more appropriate
than ‘paradigm’, which represents configurations that are more explanatory
than purposeful: although in the context of the social sciences the explanatory
will always have a significant relationship with policy formation and imple-
mentation. However, ‘regime’ will not be used entirely in Foucault’s sense.
We shall assume that a ‘regime’ is not only something that we experience: it is
also something that we can create – that is, we shall assume that neoliberalism
was created by institutional and individual planning and effort, as in fact it
was; and we shall assume that new regimes might be created in the same way.
A ‘regime’ is not simply what has been or what is: it is also what might be in
the future: and the particular question that this book will be asking is whether
we might one day see an ‘unconditionality’ social policy regime.
There is of course a significant connection between the concept of a ‘para-
digm’ and that of a ‘regime’: one that is best expressed by the word ‘regime’.
There is something hegemonic about a paradigm. Once a new theory or set of
theories has been accepted as explanatory by a scientific community, the para-
digm represented by that theory or set of theories will function hegemonically:
that is, it will to a considerable extent control the discourse and activity of the
scientific community. Theorists and experimenters will employ the paradigm
to theorize and to design experiments in order to extend the understanding of
reality represented by the paradigm. Only if experiments deliver results that
the paradigm cannot explain will any questions be raised about its legitimacy.
And similarly, such a regime as neoliberalism controls to a considerable extent
the discourse about our societies and economies and the social and economic
practices within them. Rarely are the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism
questioned. As with the scientific paradigm, if sufficient evidence builds up
against a social and economic regime then thought experiments might give rise
to additional candidates and eventually a new one might become hegemonic,
as neoliberalism did when Keynesianism lost legitimacy at the end of the
1970s. If that were to happen to neoliberalism, and another viable candidate
were to appear, then we might find a different regime functioning hegemoni-
cally in relation to social and economic discourse and practice.
The concept of a ‘regime’, understood as a configuration of social and eco-
nomic discourse and practice that for the time being is hegemonic in a society,
would appear to be the appropriate means of expression for asking whether
28 Unconditional
unconditionality might one day function hegemonically in a society’s social

policy and therefore in its economy and society. This is not to say that calling
bundles of ideas and practices ‘regimes’ means that every regime will function
in the same way or will exhibit the same or similar characteristics. While both
neoliberalism and Keynesianism were sets of ideas that were then put into
practice, there is a sense in which the ideas propounded by John Maynard
Keynes had evolved in response to wartime circumstances and therefore
reflected the ethos of the time, suggesting that social and economic practices
generated the ideas as much as the ideas inspiring subsequent practice and
ideas, whereas neoliberalism broke into the public square as a set of ideas
somewhat at odds with existing practice and that then bent practice in the
direction of the ideas. If ever we were to see an ‘unconditionality’ social policy
regime then it would have characteristics all of its own, and it would relate to
the economy and to society in its own way and not necessarily in the ways in
which other regimes have done.
We shall be using the term ‘regime’ on its own to express any set of social and
economic ideas and practices that is hegemonic in a society and its economy;
‘economic regime’ to express ideas and practices that together are hegemonic
in an economy; ‘social regime’ to express ideas and practices that together
are hegemonic in a society; and ‘social policy regime’, ‘welfare state regime’,
or simply ‘welfare regime’, to express ideas and practices hegemonic in the
context of public service provision and government provision of income. The
different regime contexts are of course interconnected: for instance, research
has shown that the welfare state regime of a country substantially shapes the
employment market and therefore both the economy and the society (Kolberg,
2019); and both Keynesianism and neoliberalism are sets of economic ideas
and practices that inevitably impose particular effects on the welfare state and
on society: so it will always be legitimate to express by ‘regime’ any combi-
nation of social, economic and welfare ideas and practices that is hegemonic
in a society. While it might look as if the capitalist, Keynesian and neoliberal
economic regimes are together different from the universalist, corporatist and
liberal welfare state regimes described by Esping-Andersen, they cannot be
separated. Welfare state regimes influence economic regimes, and economic
regimes can determine welfare state regimes: for instance, neoliberalism and
a liberal welfare state regime will cohere with each other, as will Keynesianism
and a more universalist welfare state.
REGIMES
Different regimes relate to each other, and the ways in which they relate to
a large extent determine the extent to which they are hegemonic. Capitalism
is an economic regime that is so hegemonic that we hardly notice that it is
a particular bundle of ideas and practices, none of which are in any sense inev-
itable. The once equally hegemonic communism proves that; and socialism,
which draws ideas and practices from both communism and capitalism, is
a recognition that communism and capitalism might best be regarded as two
ends of a spectrum which contains a wide variety of configurations of ideas
and practices along its length. The real political, economic and social world is
radically diverse, so nowhere can we find an ideology in a pure form, and this
goes as much for political parties as for anything else (Chrisp and Martinelli,
2019); but that does not mean that there is no value in debating the pure the-
oretical forms at the ends of a spectrum, because the ideas that they represent
inevitably inform everything on the spectrum.
Capitalism1
Capitalism is
the possession of capital or wealth; an economic system in which private capital or

wealth is used in the production or distribution of goods and prices are determined
mainly in a free market; the dominance of private owners of capital and of produc-
tion for profit. (Oxford English Dictionary)
This definition of capitalism requires us to ask about the effects of an individ-

ual or organization owning capital and/or wealth, and then, with capitalism
understood in this way, about the effects of contemporary capitalism on social
and economic life.
Capital is
real or financial assets possessing a monetary value; the stock with which
a company, corporation, or individual enters into business; the total sum of share-
holders’ contributions in a joint-stock company; accumulated wealth or goods, esp.
as used in further production. (Oxford English Dictionary)
Wealth is
prosperity consisting in abundance of possessions; ‘worldly goods’, valuable pos-

sessions, esp. in great abundance: riches, affluence. … Abundance of possessions or
of valuable products, as characteristic of a people, country, or region; the collective
riches of a people or country. … A collective term for those things the abundant
possession of which (by a person or a community) constitutes riches, or ‘wealth’ in
the popular sense. (Oxford English Dictionary)
1
This section of the chapter is partially based on a paper presented at a conference
organized by the Gyeonggi Research Institute in the Republic of Korea in September
2020, and subsequently published as Torry, 2022a: 57–76).
30 Unconditional
If ‘capitalism’ is understood as ‘the possession of capital or wealth’ by certain

individuals, and by implication not by others, or by certain organizations, and
by implication not by others, then wealth inequality is inevitable; and because
capital and wealth can generate income, and can provide access to other goods,
such as higher education and good-quality housing, then wealth inequality
can result in income inequality, and potentially poverty for people with little
or no wealth, little education, few skills, and poor housing. There will always
be some people or organizations with more capital and/or wealth than others,
and with more income than others. The differences in wealth and capital levels
might be slight or they might be extreme, and differences in income levels
likewise. Contemporary capitalism is global in extent, and it exhibits increas-
ing levels of inequality in relation to both income and wealth. This matters,
because research by the United Nations has found that inequality stifles eco-
nomic growth and poverty reduction, undermines social cohesion and stability,
and negatively impacts the environment (Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, 2013).
Ever since a spear was used to kill an animal, a rudimentary basket was
used to collect fruit, and fruit was exchanged for a share of the kill, capitalism
understood as ‘an economic system in which private capital or wealth is used
in the production or distribution of goods and prices are determined mainly in
a free market’ has existed. However, the kill would generally have been shared
with the whole community, as the fruit would have been, regardless of who
had worked to obtain those goods. And ever since then, alongside capitalism,
collectively provided services have been an essential element in satisfying
society’s needs. The pendulum has often swung, either towards the distribution
of goods in a free market and away from collective provision, or away from
distribution in a free market and towards collective provision, but always
there has been an element of both. For instance, defence of the community,
whether local or national, has always been by collective provision; and food
and clothing have generally been distributed through relatively free markets,
although not always.
Contemporary capitalism has seen a significant swing of the pendulum
towards the provision of goods and services by the market, and away from
collective provision: in two senses, and not just one. In relation to individual
households, we have seen a trend away from free public provision and towards
provision in a market (Marshall et al., 2018); and in relation to the State, ser-
vices that were previously provided by state agencies are being contracted out
to organizations in the private or voluntary sectors. If government contracts
are awarded to non-profit voluntary organizations, then the organizations
tend to become more like state agencies, any profits are not distributed, but
are recycled into the service, and in practical terms people’s experience of the
service will be very like the experience of provision by the State. However,
where contracts are awarded to private organizations, profits are distributed

to shareholders, short-term financial interests can dominate, and outcomes for
service users can vary with the context, depending on the effectiveness of the
state agencies that had previously managed the services. An important motive
for governments intent on privatizing services is that they can find it politically
easier to reduce costs by privatizing a service than to reduce the costs of state
provision, so if we want to compare the relative effectivenesses of public ser-
vices provided by private organizations and by government agencies then it is
important to compare the privately provided service with a publicly provided
service with the same budget. Some state services have been successfully con-
tracted out for many decades, and sometimes for centuries. For instance, private
provision of hospital laundry services can reap economies of scale unavailable
to individual hospitals, and for a public service to create the management
structure and physical plant that would be needed to reap similar economies of
scale might be difficult and expensive to achieve. But some privatizations have
been a disaster, both in terms of private providers being unable to provide an
adequate service within the budget allocated, and in relation to the quality of
the service. Some privatizations have had to be reversed (British Broadcasting
Corporation, 2019; Lethbridge, 2019; Ministry of Justice, 2019; Odendaal et
al., 2018). As Anwar Shaikh describes capitalism:
Seen from afar, it is the system’s order, its internal coherence, which stands out. Yet
the closer one looks, the more haphazard it all seems … Private and public spheres
are entwined throughout, as are wealth and poverty, development and underdevel-
opment, conquest and cooperation … Agency and law coexist within a multidimen-
sional structure of influences. But this structure is itself deeply hierarchical, with
some forces (such as the profit motive) being far more powerful than others. The
stage on which history plays out is itself moving, driven by deeper currents. (Shaikh,
2016: 3, 5, italics in the original)
Capitalism, like any economic arrangement, is a complex evolving system

(Kauffman, 1993: 642; Nicolis, 1989: 316–47; Prigogine and Stengers, 1984)
in which ‘turbulent regulation’ drives the system to gravitate around ‘centres of
gravity’, resulting in such ‘pattern recurrence’ as competition between capital
and labour (Shaikh, 2016: 5), but in which the complexity of the vast number
of factors involved in any single transaction compromises the relevance of any
particular regime, such as Keynesianism and neoliberalism, that concentrates
on a mere handful of variables (Kindleberger, 1985: 315).
The third part of the dictionary definition of ‘capitalism’ offered at the
beginning of this section has capitalism defined as ‘the dominance of private
owners of capital and of production for profit’. This denies the word ‘capital-
ism’ to those examples of private ownership of capital and of production for
profit where dominance is not so much an issue. However, there is a sense in
32 Unconditional
which all ownership of capital implies dominance of those who own less or
no capital; it would appear that production for profit will always dominate
other modes of production; capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to invade new
areas of economies and societies in search of labour and other resources;
and if companies become dominant monopolies or oligopolies then they can
strangle smaller companies at birth (Elsenhans, 2015: 73–4; Wu, 2012). This
has certainly been contemporary experience, and it is probably inevitable that
global companies operating in a context of national governments will always
dominate economies and societies. There might still be a sense in which soci-
eties have ‘non-trivial alternatives with respect to how they [want] to run their
respective capitalisms, and, by implication, what kind of society they [want]
to be’ (Crouch and Streeck, 1997: 1), and governments working together, as in
the European Union, can exert some control over multinational companies, but
because global corporations can move production wherever labour is cheapest
and taxes are lowest (Harvey, 2010: 20), global companies and their capital-
ism will inevitably dominate the economy, society and politics (Crouch and
Streeck, 1997: 11; Harvey, 2010: 15). Nation states now exist within a global
economy rather than economies existing within nation states, and as a result
democracy has frequently become ‘oligarchic neo-feudalism’ (Streeck, 2016:
22, 35).
Randall Holcombe suggests that
political capitalism, in which the political and economic elite control the system
for their own benefit, is not market capitalism and should be analyzed as a separate
economic system. (Holcombe, 2018: ix)
However, given capitalism’s dominance of politics, political capitalism is

now the only form of capitalism in the real world, so it might be better to call
political capitalism simply ‘capitalism’. Holcombe’s practical point is that the
remedy for political capitalism is not to give governments more control over
the economy, but rather to reduce the power given to elites (Holcombe, 2018:
250). However, absent a revolution, which in any case would only establish
a new elite, existing elites will remain in power, and so will capitalism. Quite
simply, capitalism – one of the characteristics of which is its capture of poli-
tics – is hegemonic. Capitalism is not simply an economic system with such
characteristics as ‘property rights … widespread commodity exchange and
markets using money … widespread private ownership of the means of pro-
duction … widespread wage labour and employment contracts … a developed
financial system’ (Hodgson, 2015: 259): it is those things, but more relevantly
it is ‘a novel mode of life (or culture) whose novelty consists in its necessarily
totalizing, expansionary dynamic’. The result is a ‘worldless (unsociable,
unintelligible) world’ (Dean, 2003: 43).
Capitalism is a bundle of ideas and practices that is hegemonic in relation to

the economy, society, politics and the welfare state. It is a regime.
Communism
At the opposite end of the spectrum from capitalism we find communism,

which in its modern form was inspired by Karl Marx’s philosophy. For Marx,
human beings cannot help alienating or negating themselves in their work
(Bernstein, 1972: 40–2):
The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but
to the object. … The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his
labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, inde-
pendently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own con-
fronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts
him as something hostile and alien. (Marx, 1844 [1959]: xii; 1844 [1968a]: xii)
Because in a capitalist society it is the owner of capital – of the machinery

and other means of production – who has control of the worker’s product, the
worker cannot repossess the product of their labour. To produce from nature
is the authentic activity that is intrinsic to being human (Holt, 2009: 11), so
for someone else to have the use of what we produce prevents a dialectic from
completing itself in a reintegration of what has been alienated, and our very
humanity is compromised. Capital
compels the working class to do more work than the narrow round of its own
life-wants prescribes. As a producer of the activity of others, as a pumper-out of
surplus labour and exploiter of labour-power, it surpasses in energy, disregard of
bounds, recklessness and efficiency, all earlier systems of production based on
directly compulsory labour. (Marx, 1867 [1968b]: ch. 9; 1887: ch. 11)
Marx theorizes that the alienation or negation that builds up will finally
overcome itself when the working class seizes the means of production from
capitalists (Marx, 1867 [1968b]: ch. 24; 1887: ch. 32; Singer, 1980: 72–4),
leading to ‘the transformation of the whole immense superstructure’ (Marx,
1859: foreword; 1977: preface) and
the abolition of private property … The first step in the revolution by the working
class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of
democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all
capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands
of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the
total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. (Marx and Engels, 1888 [1967]:
96, 99, 104)
34 Unconditional
Marxism is both a practical programme and a critique of capitalism, and in his

Marxist political economy of the welfare state Ian Gough sees the welfare state
as a ‘constituent feature of modern capitalist societies’ (Gough, 1979: 3, italics
in the original). He understands that
some writers see the welfare state as a functional response to the needs of capital
(whether its economic needs or its political needs to absorb potential unrest
and threats to stability); others see the welfare state as the unqualified fruits of
working-class struggle, as concessions wrested from an unwilling state: (Gough,
1979: 56–7)
but his own starting point is the ‘elements of control and service provision’
(Gough, 1979: 4, italics in the original) that characterize the modern welfare
state, so that it
simultaneously embodies tendencies to ensure social welfare, to develop the powers

of individuals, to exert social control over the blind play of market forces; and
tendencies to repress and control people, to adapt them to the requirements of the
capitalist economy. (Gough, 1979: 12)
In relation to practical attempts to establish communist states, Gough might

equally well have written about ‘tendencies to repress and control people, to
adapt them to the requirements of the communist economy’: but his critique
of the capitalist welfare state is no doubt valid (Torry, 2020a: 249–50), in par-
ticular because it understands the Keynesian roots of the modern welfare state
as firmly embedded in capitalism.
Keynesianism
John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

was
a study of the forces which determine changes in the scale of output and employ-
ment as a whole … our method of analysing the economic behaviour of the present
under the influence of changing ideas about the future is one which depends on the
interaction of supply and demand … (Keynes, 1936: vii)
Keynes had found that the ‘classical economics’ in which ‘the wage is equal
to the marginal product of labour … [and] the utility of the wage when a given
volume of labour is employed is equal to the marginal disutility of that amount
of employment’ (Keynes, 1936: 4–5), had led him to the conclusion that it
was essential for a government to establish ‘certain central controls in matters
which are now left in the main to individual initiative’ (Keynes, 1936: 377–8),
and that in general it was perfectly legitimate for governments to influence
economies (Coddington, 1984: 15). As Arthmar and McLure summarize

Keynes’s prescription:
A long-run policy towards full employment, with some redistribution of income …

progressive taxation, easy money, and the socialization of a number of investment
possibilities, would be the most appropriate mix of policies to bring the economic
system to its maximum potential by avoiding waste and poverty through a constant
state of full employment. (Arthmar and McLure, 2017: 65–6, summarizing Keynes,
1936: 372–84)
For Keynes, economics was a branch of moral philosophy, and arguments

were of the form of the balance of probabilities (Harcourt, 1995: 219).
The requirements of practical application determined the methodology of theory

development and, given the open-system nature of the subject matter, that method-
ology was pluralist (Dow, 2017: 38)
and had to take account of uncertain expectations (Coddington, 1984: 6). As

Michael Lawlor puts it: ‘Modern competitive systems, naturally and without
policy interference, need not … equilibrate efficiently at full employment’
(Lawlor, 2006: 4): so the pragmatic Keynes offered a variety of economic
models, the most appropriate of which recognized uncertainty in relation to
the outcomes of investment and asset holding (Lawlor, 2006: 5; Mann, 2017:
8). A particularly important factor in the models was the rate of interest.
Keynes called the rate of interest that was compatible with full employment
the ‘natural rate’, and crucially recognized that it was not an ‘attractor’: that is,
the financial markets would not necessarily deliver the natural rate, so govern-
ments would have to intervene in the markets in order to achieve the natural
rate of interest and thus full employment (Lawlor, 2006: 298).
The resulting ‘Keynesian’ economic consensus of the time assumed that
governments should closely manage their countries’ economies by national-
izing what they regarded as crucial industries, managing exchange rates and
capital flows, spending on infrastructure projects during economic downturns
in order to manage demand (and permitting budget deficits in order to achieve
that), and establishing substantial welfare states funded and managed by
government (Barber, 1967: 242–51). Strong trades unions, and government by
consensus, went largely unquestioned. This was a political economy regime:
an integrated set of ideas along with associated government policy, legislation
and regulations (Torry, 2020a: 246–7), and with prescriptions tested against
empirical data (Moggridge, 1993: 159). During the mid-twentieth century,
Keynes’s General Theory might have acquired ‘scriptural authority’, but as
societies have aged, and governments have shifted funding from the young
to the elderly, at least partly for electoral reasons, the welfare state has
36 Unconditional
ceased to serve capitalism’s need for healthy and educated workers (Neal and
Williamson, 2014: 543).
Keynes’s approach was finally defeated during the 1970s by both unem-
ployment and inflation rising at the same time, and it was conquered by
‘inflation targeting’ (Leeson, 2000: 3) rather than ‘unemployment targeting’.
We might also say that Keynes was defeated by Milton Friedman, ‘the front
man of the Chicago School’ and ‘a publicist with an agenda steeped in prior
ideological predilections’ (Clarke, 2009: 15). In a globalizing world in which
governments have little control over employment markets, Keynesianism is
a regime to which it is impossible to return (Elsenhans, 2015: 152).
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is ‘(1) an ideology; (2) a mode of governance; (3) a policy

package; (4) a particular form of capitalism’ (Steger and Roy, 2021: 12), and
theoretically, but only partially in practice, it favours free markets, compe-
tition, self-interest, uncontrolled capitalism, deregulation and privatization
(Steger and Roy, 2021: 12–15).
In 1938, a gathering of intellectuals in Paris coined the term ‘neoliberalism’:
The figures who gathered in 1938 saw the point of ranging widely over the tradi-
tional preserves of philosophy, politics, theology, and even the natural sciences.
Neoliberals started to recognize the growing need ‘to organize individualism’ in
order to counter what was perceived as an unfortunate but irreversible politicization
of economics and science … To achieve their goal of the ‘Good Society’, neoliberal
agents agreed on the need to develop long-term strategies projected over a horizon
of several decades, possibly to involve several generations of neoliberal intellectu-
als. … (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2015: 15)
And then in 1947 Friedrich von Hayek and other like-minded economists
established the Mont Pelerin Society, named after the village in the Swiss
Alps where the first meeting took place, to pursue the neoliberal agenda. The
Mont Pelerin Society wanted to see a political economy very different from the
one espoused by Keynes and his colleagues: one more based on free markets,
private rather than public ownership, the curbing of trade union power, and the
freedom and responsibility of the individual: an individualism not balanced by
the ‘moral sentiments’ characteristic of a previous British individualism, which
it displaced (Fevre, 2016; Hayek, 1972: 16, 21, 84). To that end, the members
of the Society developed a strategy largely based on the establishment of
thinktanks tasked with propagating what became known as neoliberal ideas,
and with circulating their staff members into academia and governments, so
that eventually there would be a critical mass of influential individuals with the
alternative paradigm embedded in their minds. The aim of the strategy was to
ensure that whenever a crisis occurred in the prevailing paradigm, it would be

possible to shift governments into a new one (Berry, 2018: 5–6).
That is how the story is often told: and the way in which the neoliberal
paradigm began to take over from the previous Keynesian one during the late
1970s and early 1980s, and in which it had become the paradigm by the end
of the 1980s, might lead us to think that the strategy put together by the Mont
Pelerin Society worked seamlessly from beginning to end. The privatization
of public assets and services, the weakening of trades unions, uncontrolled
exchange rates and capital movements, the individual’s responsibility for their
own economic and social destiny, and so on, are now the prevailing mindset
(Russell and Milburn, 2018: 45, 47–8), and the ‘monetarism’ that seeks to
control inflation by controlling the money supply, regardless of other conse-
quences, has been a dominant political strategy (Clarke, 1988: 6; Kindleberger,
1985: 41). However, the transition from a discussion of ideas in 1947 to a new
economic and social paradigm was not in fact as seamless as we might now
think it was. As the transition between paradigms slowly took place, there
appears to have been little coherent strategy among those closest to the heart
of government in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere (Berry, 2018: 8). The
Mont Pelerin Society’s strategy was no doubt a crucial element in ensuring
that directions were set and maintained, and it might be true that the meeting
in a Swiss village in 1947 ‘redirected the course of Western civilization’
(Turner, 2008: 2): but other factors were also important. Above all, it was the
social and economic context of the 1960s and 1970s that made the transition
possible. Those two decades saw the post-war configuration of social class
relations fracture, which enabled the carefully constructed social wage to be
dismantled in favour of competitiveness in a global market (De Angelis, 2000:
149). The Keynesian model failed to cope with rapid oil price rises during the
1970s; trades unions’ sometimes undemocratic behaviour, and their subse-
quent weakening by governments via deregulation and deindustrialization was
also a significant political factor; inequality gave rise to wealthy groups with
political influence, which weakened egalitarian attitudes; the welfare state was
abandoned by those who had become wealthy because of it, so it lost much of
the middle-class support on which its funding relied; and
as a way of managing the social dislocation and dissent engendered by the neoliberal
restructuring of welfare and of the state more generally, states have increased their
coercive surveillance and disciplining of the poor. (Cahill and Konings, 2017: 92)
Increasing home ownership increased support for marketization; markets

in everything, including education and healthcare, became the norm; the
collapse of communist societies made it look as if there was no alternative to
the existing form of capitalism; automation and computerization have given
38 Unconditional
rise to powerful transnational companies able to move production anywhere

in the world, and to isolated and notionally self-employed workers subject
to onerous conditions imposed by the computerized platforms that they work
for (Woodcock, 2021: 6); and the growth of a largely unaccountable financial
sector might have caused more turbulence than all of the other factors put
together (Cahill and Konings, 2017: 73, 77, 79; Mau, 2015: viii, 13, 73). Vast
amounts of money now flow through the casino that the financial sector calls
hedge funds (Harvey, 2010: 21). The outcome is that not only is capitalism
hegemonic, but that the neoliberal version of it is too (Cerny et al., 2005: 30).
Many of us – from the political elites to average citizens – now accept at least tacitly
that we must grant the market ever greater scope, that private solutions are prefera-
ble to public ones, and that more competition is necessary in order to unleash growth
and innovation; (Mau, 2015: vii)
and, somewhat strangely, that neoliberal academics and policymakers have

wanted to see trade union monopolies defeated but have appeared perfectly
happy both to permit and to favour the large and often global monopolies
facilitated by price competition that excludes new market entrants, thus
compromising the free market economy and directing resources to the owners
of capital rather than to the society that policymakers say that their policies
are designed to serve (Hayek, 1972: 118–19; Turner, 2008: 213; Wigger and
Buch-Hansen, 2012: 35).
One understanding of Keynesianism and neoliberalism suggests that the
former conforms to how economies operate in the short run, in which con-
sumption and investment rise or fall together, whereas the latter conforms to
how economies operate in the long run, in which growth in investment reduces
consumption, and vice versa. However, the long run is a series of short runs
(Cochran and Glahe, 1999: iv), so we still have to say that Keynesianism and
neoliberalism are fundamentally opposed to each other. The Keynesian regime
lasted a generation, and the neoliberal regime has now lasted for the same
length of time. Are we due for another transition? We might have expected the
turbulence created by the 2008 global financial crisis, and the questions that
it raised about neoliberalism, to have created the conditions for a widespread
search for a new policy regime. Instead,
it transpired that [the neoliberal] State’s economically rational role is to offer an

irrationally large guarantee to maintain the status quo … To the extent that neolib-
eralism has now become a ritual to be repeated, not a judgement to be believed, the
fact that its tools no longer function is by the by … Crisis and critique have been
strategically deferred or accommodated. (Davies, 2014: xiii, 185)
It is increasingly clear that neoliberalism is
an unruly, polymorphic, and discrepant social formation … a mode of regulation

wrapped in (self) delusion and (purposeful) misrepresentation, and … an historical
and geographical process (re)produced through uneven development. (Peck et al.,
2018: 13)
Neoliberalism has evolved through ‘endemic policy failure, emergency gov-

ernance, and pathfinding exploration … for all of their dysfunctional and dis-
ruptive consequences’ (Peck et al., 2018: 13), and perhaps its least understood
and most common characteristic is its absorption of ‘alternative social and
institutional arrangements’ (Peck et al., 2018: 14) such as government subsidy,
public services providing the human capital on which global corporations
feed, and markets that are anything but free. Economic and therefore social
restructuring has always been ‘profoundly shaped by political choices and
morally charged discourses’ (Cahill and Konings, 2017: 71, 87) as well as by
contingent global contexts. Neoliberalism is no exception, and neither would
be any new variant of capitalism. It is not theoretical coherence and societal
usefulness that maintain neoliberalism’s dominance, but the fact that there
is no obvious viable alternative that has not already been captured, used and
subordinated by neoliberalism.
There are those who see municipal and co-operative enterprises as a sign of
things to come (Russell and Milburn, 2018: 46), but these are probably best
seen as throwbacks to a Keynesian paradigm that remains the presupposition
underlying what is left of the widespread welfare states to which it gave birth;
and the strikes conducted by precarious workers in the gig economy, and the
occasional legal battles that have increased their employment rights, have been
‘resistance’ rather than a return to the ‘worker power’ of the 1960s (Woodcock,
2021: 88) simply because the global working class is not organized globally
(Streeck, 2016: 27). We might ask whether ‘the world can change materially,
socially, mentally and politically in such a way as to confront not only the dire
state of social and natural relations in so many parts, but also the perpetuation
of endless compound growth’ (Harvey, 2010: 259) that generates climate
change, but we know that ‘capital must go on expanding in order to survive,
which is why its sustainable development is antipathetic to every ecological
equilibrium’ (McQueen, 2001: viiii). It is difficult to see how the momentum
of capital accumulation can be slowed and stopped, how the neoliberal version
of capitalism can service both our societies and the planet on which we live, or
how we could return to a Keynesian prescription in a globalizing world.
In one sense there was nothing new about Keynes. For centuries there had
always been some state involvement in the economy (often military in charac-
ter), state policy on employment (if only conscription into the armed forces),
40 Unconditional
and welfare policy (from the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 onwards in the
UK). And governments had always controlled the issuing of money when they
could. The Second World War and John Maynard Keynes ushered in a new
bundle of emphases, not something entirely new. This was inevitable, because
anything new always has to be implemented by institutions as they are. And
similarly with what we now term neoliberalism. Largely unregulated private
firms are hardly new; and there has always been private sector involvement
in public services: for instance, in the UK, General Practices have always
been private partnerships under contract to the National Health Service.
Neoliberalism represented a change of emphasis: again, the only option,
because institutions as they were had to implement the changes. Similarly, any
new regime will need to set out from the institutions of neoliberalism and those
still characterized by Keynesian traits (Torry, 2020a: 246–8).
CONCLUSIONS
The twentieth century saw some valiant attempts to establish communist

regimes, by which is meant here not communist governments but rather com-
munist economies and societies. The dictatorships that emerged quickly ceased
to be dictatorships of the proletariat, even if they could legitimately be called
that in the first place. The attempt at centralized planning for every aspect of
the economy – the only option if capitalist markets were to be avoided – has
always sunk into inefficiency and often into corruption, leading inevitably to
capitalist dictatorships. The regime that has been truly hegemonic is capital-
ism: truly hegemonic because all other economic and social regimes, and par-
ticularly Keynesianism and neoliberalism, have operated within an atomizing
capitalist regime rather than being alternatives to it (Dean, 2003: 162), and
both have acquiesced in the dissolution of society in favour of the capitalist
economy. We can thus envisage a layered reality, with capitalism as the foun-
dational layer, and the next layer being such subregimes as Keynesianism and
neoliberalism. But where should we place the bundles of ideas that we call
‘monetarism’ and ‘co-operativism’?
Monetarism
maintains that the money supply (the total amount of money in an economy) is
the chief determinant of current dollar GDP in the short run and the price level
over longer periods. Monetary policy, one of the tools governments have to affect
the overall performance of the economy, uses instruments such as interest rates to
adjust the amount of money in the economy. Monetarists believe that the objectives
of monetary policy are best met by targeting the growth rate of the money supply.
(Jahan and Papageorgiou, 2014: 38)
And co-operativism is an economy based on co-ops, where
a co-op is a business or organisation that’s owned and controlled by its members, to

meet their shared needs. The members can be its customers, employees, residents or
suppliers, who have a say in how the co-op is run. (Co-operatives UK, 2023)
Monetarism belongs within neoliberalism, and a Keynesian economy might

be regarded as a scaled-up co-op, so we might decide that monetarism and
co-operativism might be understood as subsubregimes of neoliberalism and
Keynesianism respectively.
Capitalism always faces the dilemma that ‘insecure workers’ have to be
constantly turned into ‘confident consumers’ (Streeck, 2016: 3), but now
there is a more intense crisis because too little of the proceeds of production is
finding its way into households’ incomes, resulting in debt-fuelled consump-
tion followed by inevitable financial crises and subsequent restructurings of
capitalism (Elsenhans, 2015: 150; Harvey, 2010: 17).
No economic law dictates the nature of such restructuring, which can take various
directions, and could lead to a different form of capitalism or even a transition
beyond capitalism. The outcome will be determined by struggle among various
groups and classes over how to resolve the crisis. (Kotz, 2018: 444)
So the question to which we shall turn our attention later on is whether neolib-
eralism might one day give way to a new economic and social regime (Dean,
2003: 166, 175; Mau, 2015: 102). If it does, then that regime will be likely to
be a new non-neoliberal variant of capitalism, and therefore best understood as
a subregime within a continuing capitalist regime.
Effective political action and coalition-building in the twenty-first century will inev-
itably involve political, social and economic actors attempting to develop political,
alternative normative projects – ones that do not simply take neoliberalism as given
in its starker 1980s manifestation, but that attempt to manage, reshape, transcend
and/or reform it. (Cerny et al., 2005: 30)
If the challenges currently facing capitalism are not to result in its collapse,
followed perhaps by ‘a lasting interregnum – no new world system equilibrium
… but a prolonged period of uncertainty and indeterminacy’ (Streeck, 2016:
13), then two clear requirements for a viable and sustainable new version of
capitalism will be a sufficiently secure income to enable every household to
remain ‘confident consumers’, and sufficient incentives to ensure that the work
that society needs to be done gets done.
One option might be an unconditionality social policy regime that would
serve these two requirements and would also enhance both individual auton-
omy and ‘social interest criteria’ (Dawson, 2013: 4, 178; Wigger and
42 Unconditional
Buch-Hansen, 2012: 43). Whether such a new regime could alter capitalism
sufficiently to enable us to regard unconditionality as a foundational regime
rather than a subregime is rather doubtful.
Capitalism is
a virtual intensity, continually harvesting ideas, renewing people, reworking com-

modities and recasting surfaces - for the sake of profit, of course, but also because
capitalism is now in the business of harnessing unruly creative energies for its own
sake: (Thrift, 2005: 16–17)
so we ought to envisage an unconditionality social policy regime as a sub-

regime within capitalism. What matters is that it would be rather different
from neoliberalism, from which it would set capitalism free. As to how to
implement such an unconditionality subregime, we should learn from Keynes
the ‘reformist’ and ‘collaborationist’ (Mann, 2017: 19) to be ever mindful of
the uncertainty at the heart of economics, however confident some economists
might appear (Cochran and Glahe, 1999: 195), and to seek to establish new
unconditional social policy elements within capitalism’s current complex
configuration, with the aim of extending the influence of unconditionality
until it becomes the dominant social and economic regime, and eventually
a global subregime within capitalism: for in a globalizing world a new subre-
gime developed only by one nation state will always be unstable (Crouch and
Streeck, 1997: 17). In our complex world we are going to need a wide variety
of economic strategies and therefore of economic theory. An increasingly
important one might be social policy characterized by unconditionality.
At the very least, the possibility of an unconditionality subregime must be
kept alive by implementing as many local and national examples as possible,
and by pursuing the idea through thinktanks and the academy.
Locking the door and throwing the key away is not advisable in a world of financial
crises … Keep the key. (Kindleberger, 1985: 319)
Peter Hall says of Keynesianism that
the adoption of Keynesian policies is one of the firmest measures of the influence
of Keynesian ideas … those ideas acquired influence in other ways as well … they
transformed the intellectual environment of economics … they altered the terms of
political discourse in such a way as to legitimate a variety of policies and make new
combinations of political forces possible. (Hall, 1989: 7)
Might we one day be able to say that of unconditionality? Ideas have reshaped
economies and societies before (Kenway, 1994), and they might do so again.
3. Is unconditional giving possible?
INTRODUCTION1
There is now a substantial literature on Basic Income – an unconditional

income for every individual – but apart from that, and Richard Titmuss’s The
Gift Relationship (Titmuss, 1970) about blood donation, there has been little
discussion of unconditional giving in social policy circles. The situation is
very different among continental philosophers, among whom givenness, the
given, the gift, and giving, have been important ideas to explore. This chapter
will therefore be given to what Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and
Marion have written about these concepts, and what their work might have
to offer to discussion of unconditionality in social policy. We shall also study
what the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament might have to
contribute. The reader must judge to what extent such interdisciplinary study
on the boundaries between philosophy, theology and social policy might make
a useful contribution to social policy research and debate.
EDMUND HUSSERL’S GIVEN PHENOMENA
In the second of a series of lectures given in 1907 Edmund Husserl, the

inventor of the phenomenological school of philosophy, proposed an epoché,
a ‘cessation’: that is, that we should bracket out our assumptions about the
natural world and perform a ‘phenomenological reduction’ that restricts our
consciousness to phenomena, that is, to appearances: to the ‘sphere of absolute
givenness’ (Husserl, 1999a: 26) internal to our consciousness (Husserl, 1983:
§32, 61; Kidd, 2021: 169; Moran, 2000: 147–8, 150; O’Connor, no date: 1,
3–4).
We accept nothing here but what we find actually given (and, at first, quite imme-
diately) in the field of the ego cogito, and … accordingly we assert nothing we
ourselves do not ‘see’. (Husserl, 1999b: 24)
1
Parts of this chapter summarize material in Malcolm Torry, An Actology of the
Given, Resource Publications/Wipf and Stock, forthcoming.
43
44 Unconditional
Every intellectual experience, indeed every experience whatsoever, can be made

into an object of pure seeing and apprehension while it is occurring. And in this
act of seeing it is an absolute givenness. (Husserl, 1999a: 24, italics in the original)
In immanent time-consciousness we have the stream of givennesses in
lived-experience, givennesses that are strung together temporally with their antici-
pations which have the character of an anticipatory believing that is directed-ahead.
(Husserl, 2001a: 293)
Our experience of phenomena might subsequently lead to an indirect belief in

an external world (Stefano, 2021: 56), but as Gail Soffer puts it,
the category of the given serves to thematize the subjective elements of experience
(the immanent) and to show how what is taken by us to be knowledge presupposes
and emerges out of these subjective elements. (Soffer, 2003: 310)
Husserl’s ‘epistemological principle’ states that
in every epistemological investigation, into whatever type of knowledge, the episte-

mological or phenomenological reduction must be performed, that is, all transcend-
ence that comes into play here must be excluded, (Husserl, 1999a: 64)
including any sense of an objective psychological reality:
to every psychological experience there corresponds, by way of the phenomeno-

logical reduction, a pure phenomenon that exhibits its immanent essence (taken
individually) as an absolute givenness. (Husserl, 1999a: 34, italics in the original)
The more general ‘principle of all principles’ states
that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition,

that everything originarily (so to speak in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in
‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only
within the limits in which it is presented there. (Husserl, 1983: 44 (§24), italics in
the original)
From a number of different phenomena we might perform an ‘ideational

abstraction’ and reason towards ‘universals, universal objects, and universal
states of affairs’, and these too will contribute ‘to absolute givenness’ (Husserl,
1999a: 39), and therefore to certain knowledge, because they are immanent to
our consciousness (Moran, 2000: 130), as logic and mathematics are as well.
We are concerned with a phenomenological origin … we are concerned with insight

into the essence of the concepts involved, looking methodologically to the fixation
of unambiguous, sharply distinct verbal meanings. (Husserl, 2001b: 153–4)
Is unconditional giving possible? 45
‘Absolute givenness is an ultimate.’ Whether given in perception, in

‘re-presentation’ by memory, or by universalizing the given appearing objects,
such universals as ‘temporal content in general, duration in general, change
in general’ can be posited (Husserl, 1999a: 44, 49, 51). Everything is given:
a ‘given world’; the givenness of what is thought, including what is ‘re-lived
in a fresh memory’; ‘the unity of appearances persisting in the phenomenal
stream’; ‘the change in such a unity’; ‘the thing in “outer” perception’; ‘the
different forms of imagination and recollection’; ‘manifold perceptions and
other kinds of representations that are synthetically unified in correspond-
ing connections’; the ‘experienced Other, given to me in straightforward
consciousness’; ‘universality’; mathematics; logic; and the ‘structure of the
Ego (for example, the immanent temporal form belonging to the stream of
subjective processes) … I exist for myself and am continually given to myself,
by experiential evidence, as “I myself”’. Above all, ‘we stand on the footing
of the world already given as existing’. As we study these many different
givennesses, the ‘essence of givenness’ can be discovered, and different kinds
of objectivity can be understood, such as ‘real spatial-temporal actuality’, ‘the
objectivity of the objective sciences’ (Husserl, 1999a: 54–5; 1999b: 34, 28, 68,
82, 90), and above all the self-givenness of the meaning-giving subject (Luft,
2007: 368; Rotenstreich, 1998: 36, 53).
So is everything simply given? Not exactly.
Perfect evidence and its correlate, pure and genuine truth, are given as ideas
lodged in the striving for knowledge, for fulfilment of one’s meaning intention. By
immersing ourselves in such a striving, we can extract those ideas from it. (Husserl,
1999b: 12)
Essential to our relationship with given phenomena is the ‘intention’ that we

exercise as we ‘strive’ for knowledge: an intention that compromises the given-
ness of phenomena and at the same time problematizes the epoché, because
any intention will inevitably assume a natural attitude to the world (Peterson,
2018: 27, 71). A circular process might be in mind: an intentional seeking of
given phenomena of which reception might be ‘inadequate’ (Husserl, 2001a:
57) but that nevertheless inform subsequent intentions (Huang, 2022: 20).
However compromised givenness might be by our intentions, and however
mind-constructed the knowledge extracted from phenomena might be by
‘ideational abstraction’, phenomena are still genuinely given: but because they
are conditioned by our intentionality, and knowledge beyond the phenomena
themselves is conditioned by the human mind, we cannot say that either phe-
nomena or knowledge are given unconditionally.
46 Unconditional
MARTIN HEIDEGGER’S ‘ES GIBT’, ‘IT GIVES’
Martin Heidegger’s Dasein, ‘being there’, understands Being as my Being,

because that is the Being to which we have access; and because I cannot extract
myself from the world in which I live, my Being is a ‘Being-in-the-world’. It
is this that is the primary given.
But is it not contrary to the rules of all sound method to approach a problematic
without sticking to what is given as evident in the area of our theme? And what is
more indubitable than the givenness of the ‘I’? And does not this givenness tell us
that if we aim to work this out primordially, we must disregard everything else that
is ‘given’ – not only a ‘world’ that is, but even the Being of other ‘I’s? The kind
of ‘giving’ we have here is the mere, formal, reflective awareness of the ‘I’; and
perhaps what it gives is indeed evident. This insight even affords access to a phe-
nomenological problematic in its own right, which has in principle the signification
of providing a framework as a ‘formal phenomenology of consciousness’. … Our
investigation takes its orientation from Being-in-the-world – that basic state of
Dasein by which every mode of its Being gets co-determined. (Heidegger, 1962:
151, 153)
Heidegger’s philosophy was a phenomenological study of Dasein, ‘being

there’, and so an attempt to understand human being as it gives itself to us
unabstracted from the world (Moran, 2000: 191, 194, 227–8).
What is more indubitable than the givenness of the ‘I’? And does not this givenness
tell us that if we aim to work this out primordially, we must disregard everything
else that is ‘given’. (Heidegger, 1962: 151)
The same goes for time: ‘It is simply there; its givenness must be acknowl-
edged’ (Heidegger, 1982: 268). However, even though Dasein is clearly
‘given’ ‘ontically’ because it is ‘that which is closest’, and time is given as a
‘now-sequence’, because they are ‘in the world’ they cannot be ontologically
closest (Heidegger, 1962: 36). Heidegger employs the term das Man, usually
translated ‘the They’, to represent what he calls our ‘ontic’ being-in-the-world:
that is, the complex relationship between ourselves and the world in which we
live.
In terms of the ‘they’, and as the ‘they’, I am ‘given’ proximally to ‘myself’.

Proximally Dasein is ‘they’, and for the most part it remains so. (Heidegger, 1962:
167)
However, it is the ‘ontological’ that interests Heidegger: my Being understood

as my Being-in-the-world – a Being that functions as a rather Platonic Idea or
Form that remains untouched by the world in which it is immersed. It is only
Dasein as my Being-in-the-world that is the absolutely given; and ‘the history

of be-ing’ is a history of ‘whether be-ing gifts or refuses itself’ (Heidegger,
1999: 64).
The German es gibt, ‘it gives’, means ‘there is’ in the sense of ‘the there,
the context or world within which entities can present themselves’, or perhaps
more generally our experience of ‘the something’ (Polt, 2005: 376, 379).
Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in
presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the ‘there is’ [im ‘es
gibt’]. (Heidegger, 1962: 26)
As Jacques Derrida puts it:
The enigma is concentrated in the … es … which is not a thing, and in this giving
that gives but without giving anything and without anyone giving anything –
nothing but Being and time (which are nothing) (Derrida, 1992a: 20; 1992b: 177)
– ‘nothing’ because Being is not a being, and so does not exist, and time is not
temporal, and neither is it a ‘thing’, so time cannot exist either (Derrida, 1992a:
20; 1992b: 177). We are left to draw the same conclusion: Being and time are
ontological and unconditional realities, but nothing is given, whereas anything
that is actually given is conditioned by the world, by the They.
Heidegger only occasionally uses ‘givenness’ to express his ‘ontological
ontology’, but he frequently employs the similar ‘disclosure’.
‘Disclose’ and ‘disclosedness’ will be used as technical terms in the passages that
follow, and signify ‘to lay open’ and ‘the character of having been laid open’.
Thus ‘to disclose’ never means anything like ‘to obtain indirectly by inference’.
(Heidegger, 1962: 105)
To the Dasein there belongs essentially a disclosed world and with that the disclos-
edness of the Dasein itself. (Heidegger, 1982: 18)
Everything is ‘disclosed’, whether ontological or ontic: Being in the world,

things ‘present-at-hand’, things ‘ready-to-hand’, the world, understanding,
significations, space, Dasein, the Dasein-with of Others, the Other, authentic
Being, Dasein in its thrownness, the ‘there’ … (Heidegger, 1962: 85, 105,
106, 118, 121, 145, 151, 156, 167, 175, 176). ‘Dasein is its disclosedness’
(Heidegger, 1962: 171, italics in the original), but because the disclosure is
in the world in which we are embedded, we can say with Wrathall that ‘the
disclosure of being consists in our being disposed in a particular way for the
world’ (Wrathall, 2005: 354), and David Webb can conclude that ‘“fundamen-
tal” ontological thought is no longer necessarily insulated from the vicissitudes
of experience, the changing forms of cultural life and so forth’ (Webb, 2009:
48 Unconditional
5). However much we might attempt to distinguish the ‘ontological’ from the
‘ontic’, disclosure, and therefore givenness, cannot escape being conditioned
by the world from which we cannot extract our Being.
In a later work, Heidegger does employ ‘giving’ to express a continuing
unconditionality in relation to Being:
To think Being explicitly requires us to relinquish Being as the ground of beings in

favor of the giving which prevails concealed in unconcealment, that is, in favor of
the It gives. As the gift of this It gives, Being belongs to giving. As a gift, Being is
not expelled from giving. Being, presencing is transmuted. As allowing-to-presence,
it belongs to unconcealing; as the gift of unconcealing it is retained in the giving.
Being is not. There is, It gives Being as the unconcealing; as the gift of unconcealing
it is retained in the giving. Being is not. There is, It gives Being as the unconcealing
of presencing. (Heidegger, 1972: 6)
There might be a fundamental unconditionality related to Being and time, but

in relation to those ontological realities ‘nothing’ is given. Everything that is
actually there – everything that ‘it gives’ – is conditioned by the complexity
of the They.
EMMANUEL LEVINAS’S ‘THE OTHER’
Emmanuel Levinas uses l’autre (‘other’) to mean what can be incorporated

into a relationship with us, and L’Autre or Autrui (‘Other’) to express some-
thing or someone that cannot be incorporated into a relationship. There is
a gulf between l’Autre and l’autre rather like Heidegger’s between ‘Being’ and
‘being’. This suggests that the approach of the Other cannot be a phenomenon
alongside other phenomena, and what really matters to Levinas is the gulf
between the self and the Other. The ‘Other’ is one who makes a claim on us
that we can only answer in terms of responsibility, and our relationship with
the Other is ‘the invocation of a face and already speech’ (Levinas, 1989: 128)
that calls us to ‘responsibility’ (Levinas, 2002: 181):
the face [of the Other] imposes on me and I cannot stay deaf to its appeal, or forget
it, what I mean is I cannot stop being responsible … Consciousness loses its first
place. (Levinas, 2006: 32)
Levinas understands any ‘work’ that we might do in response to the Other to

be characterized by ‘total gratuity’ (Levinas, 2006: 28). It is a pure giving in
response to the Other, just as the Other is a pure giving in which nothing is
given and so nothing conditional is given.
The Other … reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock of negating the I, but as the
primordial phenomenon of gentleness. … The Other is revealed in its ‘withdrawal’
as well as in its ‘breaking through’. (Levinas, 1991: 150, 155)
There is constant giving and receiving from the Other to the Same (myself), and
from the Same to the Other, although never a reciprocity, which would imply
a relationship rather than ‘a relation without relation’ (Levinas, 1991: 79–80).
The call of the Other, and our response in responsibility, are completely uncon-
ditioned: but as Levinas recognizes, as soon as there is anything that we might
call a relationship, my actions are conditioned by the call of the Other and
the Other is conditioned by my response. Ethics is indeed ‘first philosophy’
(Levinas, 1989): but ethics requires action in the world of relationships, and
so action conditioned by the Other as well as by ourselves. The Other might
be an unconditional giving, but in the context of anything that might resemble
a relationship it is the conditional giving of the other that we experience and to
which we respond with conditional giving. However, this does not negate the
vital importance of the unconditional giving of the Other, or our unconditional
giving of ourselves in responsibility of the Other. It is these that preserve the
otherness of the other and make a genuine relationship possible.
JACQUES DERRIDA AND THE GIFT
Jacques Derrida’s book Given Time is an exploration of the meaning of ‘the

gift’ that sets off from a discussion of ‘giving time’ (Derrida, 1992a: 1–3).
For there to be ‘giving’, ‘some “one” [must] give some “thing” to some “one
other”’ (Derrida, 1992a: 11), but Derrida argues that immediate, eventual, or
even potential, reciprocation of a gift means that no gift has been given and no
gift can be given.
Now the gift, if there is any, would no doubt be related to economy. … But is not
the gift, if there is any, also that which interrupts economy? That which, in sus-
pending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to exchange? That which opens
the circle so as to defy reciprocity or symmetry, the common measure? … It must
not circulate, it must not be exchanged … It is perhaps in this sense that the gift
is the impossible. … For there to be a gift, it is necessary that the donee not give
back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never
have contracted a debt. … It is thus necessary, at the limit, that he not recognize the
gift as gift. Why? Because it gives back, in the place, let us say, of the thing itself,
a symbolic equivalent. (Derrida, 1992a: 7, 13)
50 Unconditional
Derrida goes as far as to say that the gift defines impossibility: it is ‘the
impossible’ (Derrida, 1992a: 7, italics in the original), and it ‘tears time apart’
(Derrida, 1992a: 9), because if it is in time then it belongs to an economy and is
no longer a gift. Paradoxes proliferate: for instance, only if the gift is immedi-
ately forgotten can it remain a gift, but only if there is a gift can it be forgotten
(Derrida, 1992a: 16).
It is no surprise that Derrida finds in Mauss’s anthropological study of
gift-giving in tribal societies (Mauss, 1990; 2021)
everything but the gift. It deals with economy, exchange, contract … sacrifice, gift
and counter-gift—in short, everything that in the thing itself impels the gift and the
annulment of the gift. (Derrida, 1992a: 24)
But having said all of that, Derrida recognizes that an element of genuine
gift-giving can occur if a defined length of time intervenes between a gift and
any reciprocation.
The thing must not be restituted immediately and right away. There must be time,
it must last, there must be waiting – without forgetting … It demands a delimited
time, neither an instant nor an infinite time, but a time determined by a term. … The
thing is not in time; it is or it has time, or rather it demands to have, to give, or to
take time. (Derrida, 1992a: 41)
A gift that ceases to be a gift because it enters an economy and can be recipro-
cated is clearly conditioned by that economy, and any gift that remains a gift, at
least to some extent, requires time – is conditioned by time – and so is equally
conditional. Unconditional giving is an impossibility.
JEAN-LUC MARION’S ‘GIVENNESS’

The phenomenon is not confined to its status as object or as being but must be
characterized more originarily … this characterization can be made in terms of what
Husserl … regularly called Gegebenheit [givenness]. (Marion, 2012: ix)
Marion radicalizes Husserl’s ‘givenness’: that is, makes it foundational for his
philosophy.
The happening phenomenon happens as given – given only to consciousness if

you want, given to me, but in the end always given … phenomena cannot appear,
without appearing as given to me. … some phenomena appear as more given, or
given to a larger and higher degree than others, and we may call them paradoxical
or saturated phenomena. (Derrida and Marion, 1999: 57)
As we can see here, ‘given’ or ‘the given’ is used in two different ways: of
a particular given, and of givens in general. Either way, it is ‘the given’ that we
experience, not ‘givenness’:
The given, issued from the process of givenness, appears but leaves concealed
givenness itself, which becomes enigmatic. (Marion, 2002a: 68)
In his Reduction and Givenness (Marion, 1998), Marion found the givenness
of the object to be constitutive of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction;
in the Prolegomena to Charity (Marion, 2002b) and in The Crossing of the
Visible (Marion, 2004) that followed, he picked up again the theology that he
discussed in the earlier God without Being (Marion, 2012) and embarked on
a more theological period that aligned ‘the given’ with love; and then in Being
Given he returned to a more philosophical treatment in which
‘being given’ discloses [the given] as a given, owing nothing to anybody, given
inasmuch as given, organized in terms of givenness and even employing ‘being’
therein. (Marion, 2002a: 2)
Marion here sees himself as entirely within a phenomenology that understands

all appearances as given:
Only a phenomenology of givenness can return to the things themselves because, in

order to return to them, it is necessary first to see them, therefore to see them as they
came and, in the end to bear their unpredictable landing. … what shows itself first
gives itself – this is my one and only theme … Admitting the phenomenality proper
to the phenomenon – its right and its power to show itself on its own terms – …
implies understanding it in terms of givenness. (Marion, 2002a: 4–5)
Derrida has shown that any practical gift-giving immediately collapses into
a non-gift, and that only by separating in time the gift given and any response,
or by the response leaving a remainder of a genuine gift relationship when
compared with the gift, can any meaning be given to ‘the gift’. Marion circum-
vents the problem by extracting anything that is not pure gift from the given
– for instance, by ‘bracketing’ the giver, the gift and the receiver (Derrida and
Marion, 1999: 62) – leaving only pure givenness.
The phenomenon can, indeed must, be reduced to a pure given in order to appear
absolutely … It belongs to givenness to give (itself) without limit or presupposition
because it gives (itself) – it alone – without conditions. (Marion, 2002a: 53)
An inheritance can be understood as a gift without a giver, and the giving of

time gives no object: ‘it is within the horizon of such absences that the possible
phenomenon of the gift may appear, if it appears’ (Derrida and Marion, 1999:
52 Unconditional
63). As Marion puts it, ‘we have to go back from the gift to givenness’ (Derrida
and Marion, 1999: 68).
But can the giving be completely ‘without conditions’? Just as Husserl
understood the subject’s intention to be essential to the experiencing of phe-
nomena, so Marion recognizes the part that the recipient must play if there is
to be givenness. The recipient cannot be entirely bracketed. An inheritance
envisages a recipient. ‘It is now a question of a gift conforming to givenness
(outside economy); but it will also be a matter of an immanent phenomenality,
without transcendence outside consciousness’: an ‘immanent phenomenality’
constituted by ‘lived experiences of receivability and givability … [that]
presupposes that the agent playing the role of the I exerts, each time, over and
through its lived experiences, an intentionality’ (Marion, 2002a: 115–16).
The insistent power of givenness makes the gift decide itself as gift through the
twofold consent of the givee and the giver, less actors of the gift than acted by
givenness. … the gift, reduced as what decides itself (as receivable and givable),
gets its character ‘given’ from givenness, that is to say from itself. The gift is given
intrinsically to give itself. (Marion, 2002a: 112–13)
Marion has attempted to avoid any positive intentionality on the part of either
the donor or the recipient by locating all of the action in the giving itself, but
he cannot avoid the active participation of both the donor and the recipient
in terms of their consent. The givenness is no longer entirely ‘without con-
ditions’. An unconditional ‘givenness’ is a universal, an ideal, that is never
achieved in practice.
Marion calls a phenomenon that is not comprehensible in terms of any
categories, and not constituted by the recipient’s consciousness, a ‘saturated
phenomenon’: ‘The saturated phenomenon contradicts the subjective condi-
tions of experience precisely in that it does not admit constitution as an object’
(Marion, 2002a: 214). A variety of candidates for saturated phenomena are
discussed, but none entirely escape categorization or intention except for
‘revelation’:
My entire project has been directed to liberating possibility in phenomenality, to

unbinding the phenomenon from the supposed equivalencies that limit its deploy-
ment … The maximum of saturated phenomenality must remain an ultimate possi-
bility of the phenomenon … the phenomenon of revelation. (Marion, 2002a: 234–5)
But even this givenness is compromised by the requirement for a ‘receiver’

(Marion, 2002a: 248):
To receive, for the receiver … means nothing less than to accomplish givenness by
transforming it into manifestation, by according what gives itself that it show itself
on its own basis … The receiver … lets what gives itself through intuition show
itself. (Marion, 2002a: 264)
Again consent, in the form of ‘lets what gives itself through intuition show
itself’, compromises the unconditionality of the givenness. Marion attempts
to circumvent the problem by calling ‘the given’ a ‘self’ and the recipient a
‘witness’ (Marion, 2002a: 249); by suggesting that ‘what gives itself shows
itself, and the given phenomenon brings it about that the receiver arises by
happening to him’ (Marion, 2002a: 262); by employing Levinas’s ‘call’ ter-
minology to locate the initiative in the given rather than in the receiving self
(Marion, 2002a: 267); and by regarding the self as ‘the gifted’ rather than as
independently intentional (Marion, 2002a: 249, 268). ‘The call … suffices to
provoke … the gifted’ (Marion, 2002a: 266). And so in relation to the Other:
To receive the Other – that is equivalent first and before all to receiving a given and
receiving oneself from it; no obstacle stands between the Other and the gifted. There
is more: the gifted himself belongs within the phenomenality of givenness and
therefore, in this sense, gives itself. … I reach [the Other] in his unsubstitutable par-
ticularity, where he shows himself like no other Other can. (Marion, 2002a: 323–4)
But the ‘I reach …’ here yet again implies a conditionality: so might locating
the action in the givenness enable it to become and remain unconditional?
The given phenomenon arrives – crashes even – over consciousness, which receives
it. … Following the path towards its final appearing, it … appears only when it
finishes, by falling upon what receives and then sees it. This process of the phenom-
enon authorizes me to think it as the incident … a – small – event that comes up …
the characteristic of eventness gathers together all those previously recognized in
the given phenomenon – unrepeatability … excessiveness … possibility. (Marion,
2002a: 151, 162, 171–2)
The phenomenon might crash over consciousness, but that consciousness

then ‘receives’ it. We cannot escape from the givenness being conditioned by
our reception of it. Everywhere we encounter givenness, but never uncondi-
tionality. Everywhere we go we find conditionality. And everywhere we find
a yearning for the unconditional: for an absolute givenness.
We find the same longing for unconditionality in Marion’s understanding
of God, which is written with the word crossed out (expressed here by ‘Gød’)
to imply that God is not a being among beings and cannot be possessed by us
as an idol (Marion, 2012: 9–10, 46). This name for God, who for Marion is
‘revealed in Jesus Christ’, is
a name anterior to the Being of beings (according to metaphysics), hence also to

every thought of Being as such. For a single path can yet open: if ‘God is charity,
54 Unconditional
agapē’ (1 John 4:8), can agapē transgress Being? … can it no longer appear as one
of the ‘ways’ of being (even if this being has the name Dasein)? (Marion, 2012: 82)
A ‘radical reversal’ takes place. We ‘are’ before we ‘love’, whereas ‘only love
does not have to be. And Gød loves without being’ (Marion, 2012: 138); and
‘what is peculiar to love consists in the fact that it gives itself … this transfer-
ence of love outside of itself, without end or limit, at once prohibits fixation
on a response, a representation, an idol’ (Marion, 2012: 47–8). As Shane
MacKinlay suggests, ‘such a phenomenon will be excessive, overwhelming,
ungraspable, and, indeed, saturated’ (MacKinlay, 2010: 215).
But can such a phenomenon be unconditional? No, because it requires a
‘hermeneutical space’ in which such a revelation can occur, which suggests
that God’s revelation and the believer’s faith must form a mutual and circular
relationship. The saturated phenomenon ‘cannot be understood apart from the
existential commitment of a believer … neither the phenomena nor the recip-
ient are described in terms that are exclusively active or passive’ (MacKinlay,
2010: 215, 219). In the real world of phenomena there is always an element
of circularity, or reciprocation: it is this bidirectional pattern of action that is
foundational, and not a unidirectional gift-giving. The theological question is
this: Can God as Love be a phenomenon for us without the recipient of that
love already possessing an understanding of love and exercising love towards
God? Marion writes that ‘what is at stake in God without Being’ is ‘to give
pure giving to be thought’ (Marion, 2012: xxvii). We have now seen that such
‘pure giving’, unconditional giving, might be thought, but there can be no pure
unconditional giving of phenomena. In phenomena, including revelation, we
experience conditioned givenness.
UNCONDITIONAL GENEROSITY?
A pattern of action that can be found across a variety of religious traditions

is that of ‘grace’: an unconditional giving. God gives, and in that giving God
is given. But is that giving unconditional? Here we shall briefly explore that
question in relation to the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
In the Hebrew Scriptures – the foundation texts for Judaism, and for
Christians the Old Testament – we find plenty of reliance on the unmerited
grace of God: ‘I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger
has turned from them’ (Hosea 14:4, NRSV). God’s choice of Israel was not
because of any virtue on its part, but was rather an act of unmerited love: ‘It
was because the Lord loved you …’ (Deuteronomy 7:7–8, NRSV). The cove-
nant between God and Israel was a gift, and so was the Torah, the Law, which
looked forward to a new Law:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one
another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from
the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and
remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31: 33–4, NRSV)
The Hebrew Scriptures assume a relationship between God and Israel estab-
lished by God’s unconditional love, but the covenant is not entirely uncondi-
tional as its maintenance is conditional on Israel’s obedience to the Torah, the
Law. Reciprocity is required: obedience by Israel in response to God’s gift of
the covenant; and the reciprocity operates in the other direction as well: for
instance, the faithful Jew’s almsgiving elicits a response from God (Anderson,
2013: 52). ‘Store up almsgiving in your treasury, and it will rescue you from
every disaster’ (Ecclesiasticus 29:12–13, NRSV).
In the Christian gospels we find a similar reciprocity when Jesus tells
a wealthy young man who has already declared his obedience to the Torah that
you lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. (Mark 10:21, NRSV)
The covenant with Israel had to be maintained by obedience. It was never

entirely unconditional, and was not a pure gift, but its birth and constant
renewal remained and still remains an act of grace: of God’s unconditional
generosity. And although a great deal of reciprocity appeared in the tradition
during the following centuries, including in Jesus’ teaching, grace remained as
a thin stream through the tradition.
Was Jesus’ religion a religion of grace? And was his life a life characterized
by grace in the sense in which I have defined it? While Jesus’ attitude to the
Law might have been largely conventional, one thing that was new is that Jesus
ate with ‘sinners’, the unrepentant wicked. Jesus was ‘a friend of tax-collectors
and sinners’ (Matthew 11:19, NRSV), did not demand repentance from
sinners, and did not reject them if they did not offer it. It was this, and not
his occasional breaches of the Sabbath Law, that would have ensured that he
was regarded as a social menace (Sanders, 1983). Jesus made considerable
demands on his followers (Matthew 5–7), but the offer of the Kingdom of God
56 Unconditional
to sinners was a rare example of genuine unconditionality. As Peter Groves

puts it:
The grace of God, in scripture, is over and over again the loving kindness of God
towards those whom he has chosen to favour. This is seen in his relentless mercy
towards his errant children and his unfailing love in the face of the faithless and
loveless behaviour of those whom he has created. In this sense, the word ‘grace’
describes what God is like, and what God is like is self-giving love. … So the grace
of God characterizes all that we can say about God’s revelation of himself in Jesus
Christ: this is what God is like. This is the God whose revelation is witnessed by
the texts that we call scripture or the Bible, and proclaimed in word and deed by the
Christian Church. To say, however, that grace can tell us about the nature of God is
not to suggest that it is merely an attribute or a description. Love is not an attribute of
God in the way that speed is an attribute of cheetahs. Love is what God is, something
active and dynamic, and so grace is never simply a characteristic. (Groves, 2012: 3)
CONCLUSION
Much of the giving that we have discovered in this philosophical and briefly
theological chapter is conditional. Unconditionality has appeared occasionally
as the ideal end of a spectrum that we never reach, and as an ideality repre-
sented in both philosophical and religious traditions. This rather suggests that
in the real world in which social policy is formulated and implemented we
shall never discover genuine unconditionality, and we shall find conditionality
to be ubiquitous. However, this does not negate the importance of a reduction
to givenness, of Dasein as given, of the Other and our responsibility as uncon-
ditional givenness, of the pure gift, or of grace as an absolute generosity. It
is the end of the spectrum that both defines the spectrum and preserves the
possibility of a genuine unconditionality, however compromised it might be
in the real world.
The next few chapters will explore arguments for and against uncondition-
ality in social policy. We shall discover traces of unconditionality as an ideal,
ubiquitous conditionality in practice, and the possibility of a trajectory in the
direction of unconditionality.
4. Arguments for unconditionality
INTRODUCTION
In Chapter 3 we mentioned Marcel Mauss’s The Gift as one of Jean-Luc

Marion’s inspirations, and we shall again be discussing Mauss’s book in
more detail in Chapter 9. In her introduction to the English translation, Mary
Douglas suggests that the practices that Mauss discovered among tribal soci-
eties were more about politics and economics than they were about religion,
and she points out that Mauss himself had drawn conclusions relating to social
policy, particularly in relation to healthcare and unemployment insurance, but
that modern social policy bears very little relation to the tribal gift-giving that
Mauss records (Douglas, 1990: xiii).
Social democracy’s redistributions are legislated for in elected bodies and the sums
are drawn from tax revenues. They utterly lack any power mutually to obligate
persons in a contest of honour. (Douglas, 1990: xix)
Douglas recognized that ‘voluntary cycles of exchange’ (Douglas, 1990: xx)

do take place in society, but also that when she was writing her foreword to
The Gift in 1990 there was little census or survey evidence available (Douglas,
1990: xx). (This situation was soon to change. A particularly interesting survey
of financial, employment, childcare and various other practices was already
being undertaken on an Exeter local authority housing estate, the results of
which were published in 1992 (Jordan et al., 1992).) What Douglas might have
recognized, but did not, is that ‘social democracy’s redistributions’ are often
encumbered with obligations, and with plenty of opportunities for stigma and
shame: it is just that the obligations and stigma are imposed on individuals by
governments and various media rather than on tribes by other tribes. So in this
chapter and elsewhere we shall in fact find ourselves discussing stigma and
shame, and later in the book we shall encounter a discussion of reciprocity.
As Mauss and Derrida recognized, and as we shall recognize in this chapter,
and will continue to recognize as the book progresses, pure unconditionality is
an ideal, and in the real world we have to ask such questions as ‘Is this public
service more or less unconditional in relation to this particular conditionality?’
and ‘What would be the advantages and disadvantages of this public service
57
58 Unconditional
being less conditional in this particular respect?’ The title of the chapter
suggests that we shall be offering ‘arguments for unconditionality’, which
we shall: but always recognizing that any social policy change that might
be envisaged by those arguments will be towards increasing the extent of
unconditionality in relation to particular conditionalities. We shall sometimes
argue in favour of the ideal of unconditionality because that will enable the
arguments to be clearly put: but where that is the case the reader will need to
understand that any practical application will be towards reducing particular
conditionalities rather than arrival at pure unconditionality.
This chapter will offer a variety of pragmatic arguments for unconditionality
that might apply in any social policy field. The following chapter will offer
arguments for unconditionality specific to the healthcare and educational
fields; and the two chapters after that will propose arguments for less con-
ditionality in benefits policy – although unconditional healthcare, education
and income will of course be discussed in this chapter as examples of uncon-
ditionality. The penultimate chapter of the book will ask about the ethics of
unconditionality. The reason for locating that chapter after these chapters,
and also after chapters on arguments against unconditionality, on the history
of conditionality and unconditionality, and on the question as to whether
unconditionality works, is that if the more practical arguments for and against
increasing the extent of unconditionality in social policy were to suggest that it
would be infeasible or inadvisable to seek less conditionality then there would
be little point in discussing the ethics of doing so, whereas if the arguments
for and against were to suggest that it might be both feasible and desirable
to increase the unconditionality of education, healthcare, income, and so on,
then we might wish to know whether it would be ethical to do so. A further
reason for locating the ethical chapter closer to the end of the book is that the
understanding of social administration that we shall develop as we study more
pragmatic arguments for and against unconditionality will enable us to locate
ethical considerations in the real world.
Arguments against conditionality are arguments for unconditionality, and
arguments for unconditionality are arguments against conditionality. In this
chapter the reader will find both arguments against conditionality and argu-
ments for unconditionality, all of which constitute arguments for uncondi-
tionality: and so, for instance, the first argument that we tackle will be an
argument against means-testing, which is an argument against conditionality
and therefore an argument for unconditionality.
INSTITUTIONAL RELATIVE UNCONDITIONALITY
A healthcare service, a social security benefit, the rule of law, a school, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a local authority’s arrangements
Arguments for unconditionality 59
for collecting refuse are all institutions, as are numerous other organized or
structured ideas and activities. Organizations are institutions, but so are such
complex bundles of ideas and practices as norms, legislation, regulations,
marriage, money and chess. So when we discuss such unconditional public
goods as the healthcare offered by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS)
and the unconditional income constituted by Child Benefit, we are discussing
institutional unconditionality (Baumberg et al., 2013: 4, 11; Larsen, 2006:
141). We might divide institutions between the categories of ‘private sector’,
‘public sector’ and ‘voluntary and community sector’, but if we do that then
we shall have to recognize that many institutions do not fit easily into just one
of those categories: for instance, in the UK, General (medical) Practices are
private partnerships with contracts with the public sector NHS. What matters
to us here is not whether a particular institution belongs within a particular
sector, but the extent to which the service that it offers is unconditional.
We have already recognized that in the real world any claimed uncondi-
tionality is necessarily incomplete, and this is clearly true of any social policy.
For instance, the ‘every legal resident’ restriction that applies to numerous
social policies means that foreign nationals visiting the UK can sometimes be
charged for using the NHS (National Health Service, 2023a): so the healthcare
provided by the NHS is only unconditionally available for a particular group:
legal residents. For this group, visits to a GP, hospital appointments, hospital
admissions, operations, community nursing, and many other services, are
entirely free. The richest person in the country pays nothing (unless of course
they opt for private healthcare rather than the NHS). But none of this might be
available to a visitor from another country.
We sometimes have to be clear precisely what is unconditional and what is
not. While most aspects of the UK’s NHS are free at the point of need, dental
care is subsidized rather than free, and so are medication prescriptions. Some
categories of people get these free (for instance, people 18 years old and under;
and, in the case of prescriptions, anyone over 60); and the cost can be reduced
for people on low incomes (National Health Service, 2023b). These examples
are interesting. We might say that subsidization constitutes an unconditionality
because every legal resident’s healthcare is subsidized, whereas for some age
groups the free prescriptions and dental care are conditional on the recipient’s
age but are otherwise unconditional, and for other age groups they are condi-
tional on whether or not the patient has a low income. The situation is compli-
cated; and one particular complexity that we shall encounter more than once is
the category of services and incomes that are unconditional within particular
age groups and so conditional on age (see Chapter 1).
This discussion suggests that by ‘unconditional’ we will often mean
‘entirely without conditions’, although there will be occasions when we shall
60 Unconditional
mean by ‘unconditional’ ‘unconditional apart from being conditional on age’,

‘unconditional apart from being conditional on legal residence’, or both.
UNCONDITIONALITY IS PREFERABLE TO
MEANS-TESTING
Means tests offer the clearest possible example of conditionality. If when

I apply for membership of a leisure centre I am presented with a form that
asks about my income, and if the level of the membership fee that I shall be
charged depends on my answer to the question, then the cost of membership
is conditional on my income. If there are no other conditions relating to an
individual’s ability to join the leisure centre, then we might say that member-
ship is unconditional but its cost is not. Similarly, if I am asked whether I live
in the local authority area in which the leisure centre is located, and if either
the ability to join the leisure centre or the fee level depend on my answer to
the question, then membership or its cost are subject to a residence condition.
Such conditionalities are entirely understandable. The leisure centre might
be subsidized by the local authority which would therefore have legitimate
political and financial reasons to restrict membership to its own residents or to
charge a higher price to non-residents, and political and public health reasons
might lead politicians and officials to encourage membership among poorer
members of the community and so to charge them less than individuals with
higher incomes.
Here we are discussing ‘club goods’, that is, goods and services somewhere
between private goods (owned and controlled by individuals or individual
companies and accessible only to them) and public goods (accessible to every-
one, and so only provided if paid for out of taxation or donations, examples
being streetlights and lighthouses). Club goods tend to be goods that become
less accessible the more people use them, and so are not public goods and ought
not to be (wholly) funded by taxation or donations, but no individual would
be able to pay for the goods or services on their own so they cannot be private
goods. We can offer a general rule here: access to private goods is conditional
on ownership; access to public goods is unconditional; access to club goods is
conditional on some exclusionary principle: a residence requirement, payment
of a membership fee, or some other (Buchanan, 1965: 13; Cornes and Sandler,
1986: 157–243; Foldvary, 1994: 62–5, 69; Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 143–69;
Jordan, 1996: 10, 62–77, 161–88; 2008: 92, 104–5; Torry, 2020a: 80–2, 88).
None of this is problematic, except in the sense that poverty will inevitably
restrict access to club goods that wealthier people will be able to access; hence,
the necessity of public subsidy and graduated membership fees if the club good
would be of benefit to every member of the public, as a leisure centre might be.
However, nobody has to join a leisure centre. More serious issues arise when
means-testing is applied to some good or service that everyone needs. Children

need to eat lunch, and if the cost to the child’s family is means-tested then both
the parents and the children of families receiving free school meals due to
their low incomes might experience stigma and therefore shame; they will be
subject to complex and intrusive bureaucratic processes; and because the good
or service that they need will be withdrawn if their earned or other income
rises, they will experience a disincentive to improve their financial position
(Torry, 2023: xiii, 20). This suggests that means-testing is problematic, and so
constitutes an argument for increasing unconditionality by reducing the extent
of means-testing.
An Absence of Stigma and Shame
Stigma is the consequence of stigmatization: a process inflicted on an indi-

vidual or institution by another institution or individual. Erving Goffman
lists three types of stigma: ‘physical deformities’, ‘blemishes of individual
character’ and ‘the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion’ (Goffman, 1969:
13, 65–6, 147, 223–4; 1990: 13–14). It is the second of these that might be
generated by conditionalities that divide communities. A leisure centre that
charges a subsidized price to residents of the local authority in which it is
located will not stigmatize a group within its community because everyone
will receive the subsidy. It will only be isolated members from outside the
area who will be paying a higher price, so there will be no coherent group of
people to stigmatize the subsidy-recipients. However, some conditionalities
can divide communities, including entire national communities, thus creating
the conditions for stigmatization.
Where government-provided incomes are paid to households on low
incomes, or free healthcare is only offered to people who cannot afford health-
care insurance, communities will be divided into low-income recipients and
higher-income non-recipients: a recipe for the higher-income group to ‘other’
and stigmatize the lower-income group, and for the lower-income group to
experience debilitating shame and the consequent demotivation (Lister, 2017;
Spicker, 2014: 39), a process that can be seriously exacerbated where determi-
nation of eligibility involves surveillance of claimants’ behaviour and bureau-
cratic interference in their lives (Deci and Ryan, 1985: 43; Enzle and Anderson,
1993; Hilton, 2014; Tonkens et al., 2013: introduction; Torry, 2020a: 94–8,
113–17, 138–9). Demands for evidence of income or job search imply that we
are not trusted to answer questions truthfully or to motivate ourselves to seek
employment; face to face interviews during which we are obliged to divulge
intimate details of our relationships are demeaning (Greener, 2018: 174–6);
earnings rules that require us to declare a spouse’s earnings, and cohabitation
rules that require people to reveal personal details, exacerbate a sense of
62 Unconditional
vulnerability to officials; and decisions made by obscure processes, and in

which ‘discretion’ is exercised, exacerbate claimants’ sense that they are lost
in a system that they do not understand and within which they have lost control
of their lives. The experience is one of ‘domination and subordination, within
which supplication becomes a standard mode of conduct’ (Fryer and Fagan,
2003: 94; Handler, 2005: 117; Hill, 1990: 110; Wagner, 2007: 196). If we are
in the claimant group, whether for means-tested benefits, or for second-class
healthcare that is only available to people who cannot afford health insurance,
then we can be stigmatized by the general public, politicians and the media,
and we can end up self-stigmatizing (Hills, 2014; Lister, 2017; Torry, 2023:
151–4; Whiteford, 2015a; 2015b). The stigmatizing of the benefits and ser-
vices, and the consequent stigmatization and shame experienced by recipients,
generates a circular process in which it is easy for governments to reduce the
adequacy of the services and benefits and to make it more difficult to claim
them (Hirsch, 2015: 4–5), to the point where the regulations represent ‘cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment’ (Adler, 2018). A significant source of the
stigma imposed on people who receive means-tested benefits is other people’s
fears that they might one day be in the same position: fears that underlie the
apparent acceptability of such language as ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’. Such
is the stigmatizing effect of multiple conditionalities that shame has become
a global phenomenon among the economically disadvantaged (Walker et al.,
2013).
When I left university, I worked for two years in a government office in
Brixton in South London where we interviewed claimants for means-tested
benefits and calculated what they were due. I would sometimes find myself
trying to persuade elderly people to claim the Supplementary Pension to
which they were entitled: a means-tested top-up to the contributory Basic
State Pension. They felt that the Basic State Pension was something that they
or their husbands had paid for (even if it is not strictly an insurance scheme),
and that they could only receive the Supplementary Pension with a sense of
shame. Between 2010 and 2015 the UK’s Pensions Minister was Steve Webb,
who in 1990 had written Beyond the Welfare State: An Examination of Basic
Incomes in a Market Economy with Samuel Brittan (Brittan and Webb, 1990):
a description of an income that would have been unconditional if its calculation
had not been based on the structure of the household. Webb instigated the par-
liamentary process that gave birth to the UK’s Single Tier State Pension, with
the intention of reducing substantially the number of pensioners who would
need a means-tested supplement (although Housing Benefit and Council Tax
Support are still required in some areas). There is still a contributions condi-
tionality attached to the new pension – a full pension is received only if the
recipient has paid National Insurance Contributions for thirty years – but apart
from that condition, which is met by most of the UK’s population, the pension
is unconditional and completely without stigma (Torry, 2013: 17–42).
If instead of means-tested benefits an unconditional income – a Basic
Income – were to be paid, no questions asked, then because everybody would
receive it, we would experience no fear that we might one day have to claim
it, simply because everyone would get it anyway; and neither would the
income generate fear that we would not understand the system, for everyone
would understand it. Such an unconditional income would give us maximum
control over our lives. A Basic Income would generate no stigma and would
enable millions of people to dispense with means-tested benefits and would
therefore reduce stigma in innumerable households. Households still in need
of means-tested incomes would be on lower amounts of them and so would
be better able to earn their way out of them (Birnbaum, 2012: 48–51; Jordan,
2010).
As Psychologists for Social Change put it:
The psychological impact of means tested benefits, as per the current system in the
UK, inherently produces a ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving poor’, generating stigma
and mistrust of ‘outgroups’. … social policies that improve social cohesion and
trust are likely to reduce mental health problems. (Psychologists for Social Change,
2017)
An increase in the extent of unconditional incomes and services would reduce

substantially the stigma suffered by individuals and thus by society as a whole,
and because stigma drains our ability to function effectively, compromises
personal relationships, prevents initiative, and results in ill health and particu-
larly in depression, a reduction in stigma would offer enormous benefits for
individuals, communities and the economy.
The Mayor of London’s 2023 scheme to make school meals free for every
London child up to the age of eleven will substantially reduce stigma for the
duration of the scheme (Greater London Authority, 2023), which is a really
good argument for making school meals free for every child.
No Requirements to Contribute
A conditionality very different from those represented by means-testing is the

requirement to make contributions of some kind prior to receiving a service
or benefit. So healthcare might be available to those who have paid insurance
premiums or social insurance contributions; and unemployment benefit might
be available to those who have paid social insurance contributions or whose
employers have paid them on their behalf. It is no surprise that research
has shown that contributory benefits experience a more positive image
64 Unconditional
than means-tested benefits. Mauss found the contributory mechanism to be

informed by the same ‘to give, to receive, to reciprocate’ process as tribal
reciprocal gift-giving. In
our social insurance legislation … the worker has given his life and his labour, on
the one hand to the collectivity, and on the other hand to his employers. Although
the worker has to contribute to his insurance, those who have benefited from his
services have not discharged their debt to him through the payment of wages. The
state itself, representing the community, owes him, as do his employers, together
with some assistance from himself, a certain security in life, against unemployment,
sickness, old age, and death. (Mauss, 1990: 86)
Social insurance benefits, that require contributions to have been paid in the
past, can generate a sense of ownership of the benefits or pensions to which
claimants are entitled. Means-tested benefits, that require an essentially arbi-
trary set of conditions to be met in the present, generate a sense of ownership
among those who are not recipients. Different kinds of conditionality can have
different effects.
TACKLING THE POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT

TRAPS
Two important contributors to a household’s financial position are the amount

of the household’s disposable income and the ease with which disposable
income can be increased by earning additional income. Arguably the second
factor is the more important because it is that that determines whether a house-
hold can escape from poverty (Lister, 2004: 94–7, 145–6, 178–83; Torry,
2018a: 8–11). A household on means-tested benefits will suffer benefits
income withdrawal if they earn additional income, thus reducing their ability
to climb out of poverty. Empirical evidence for this effect was provided by
New Zealand when its government replaced an unconditional family benefit
with a means-tested one and families found it more difficult to escape from
poverty (O’Brien, 2007: 124).
I first understood the poverty trap when I heard a hospital employee saying
that he had been promoted and wished that he had not been. Additional income
tax and social insurance contributions had wiped out some of the increase,
and he no longer received means-tested in-work benefits. He was no better
off and he wanted to go back to his previous job. He was in the ‘poverty trap’,
with no way out apart from demotion. Anyone who has direct experience of
a poverty trap can be forgiven for losing their sense of enterprise. Why should
they seek new skills and new responsibilities if they might end up no better off
financially? For someone on means-tested benefits it can take a big increase in
wages for disposable income to rise by an amount worth having.
The marginal deduction rate is the rate at which the value of additional
earned income is withdrawn by income tax and the reduction of benefits. If
someone in employment suffers a high marginal deduction rate then they are
in a ‘poverty trap’, and if someone unemployed were to suffer a high marginal
deduction rate if they entered employment then they are in an ‘unemployment
trap’. Workers in unemployment and poverty traps are both theoretically and
empirically likely to experience loss of motivation to look for employment, to
form new businesses, or to seek new skills. Classical models of the economy
show that an individual on means-tested benefits can experience the same
maximum utility across a wide range of working hours per week, so are likely
to choose a low number of hours if that is available, whereas an unconditional
Basic Income can mean that maximum utility would be achieved at a single
number of hours, so working additional hours would increase the worker’s
utility (Atkinson and Flemming, 1978; Brown and Levin, 1974; Shone, 1981:
1–24; Torry, 2015b: 3; 2020a: 70–7).
Turning to evidence in the real world: If the only jobs available in an area
are full time, then reduction of working hours might not be an option for
workers in those jobs, and someone might not be aware that taking a new job
at a higher wage might not provide them with much additional disposable
income. However, once the poverty or unemployment trap has been experi-
enced during transition to employment or to a new job, demotivation will set
in, and the evidence shows that this effect of high marginal deduction rates
is particularly significant in relation to part-time employment and in relation
to the employment motivation of the spouses of workers who lose their jobs
(Atkinson and Mogensen, 1993: 191; Emmerson et al., 2014: 161; Parker,
1995: 27; Torry, 2018a: 42–4). Additional evidence is that higher tax rates can
reduce employment motivation, which suggests that higher marginal deduc-
tion rates reduce employment motivation, which in turn means that high rates
of benefits withdrawal will have the same effect (Davis and Henrekson, 2005).
As important as the evidence for the demotivation effect of higher marginal
deduction rates is evidence of the motivating effect of lower marginal deduc-
tion rates. When in the USA earned income was no longer taken into account
in benefit calculations for individuals over retirement age, paid employment
rose among retired workers; and when Canada reduced the marginal deduc-
tion rate experienced by higher earners, part-time employment rose by 10
per cent among higher earning women, but not at all among lower earning
women (Crossley and Jeon, 2007; Michaud and van Soest, 2008). The most
direct evidence for the motivating effect of a zero marginal deduction rate
comes from Basic Income pilot projects in Namibia and India, where small
Basic Incomes generated significant additional economic activity, particularly
among the poorest households. Similar evidence is provided by Minimum
Income Guarantee experiments in Canada and the USA that topped up house-
66 Unconditional
hold incomes to specified levels using the mechanism of an income-tested

payment at the end of the tax year. These were not Basic Income pilot projects,
so the results need to be treated with care, but the fact that participants expe-
rienced only minimal employment withdrawal, and that what there was was
due to adult workers looking for the right job, mothers following the births
of their children, and delayed entry or re-entry to the employment market by
young people in education, suggests that an entirely unconditional income
would have even more of an employment retention effect. An experiment in
Finland that made unemployment benefit unconditional for two years for 2000
randomly selected unemployed individuals found that during the second year
employment activity actually increased (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009:
13–17; Blomberg et al., 2021: 166; Davala, 2019; Davala et al., 2015: 153–5;
De Wispelaere et al., 2019; Forget, 2011: 286; Haarmann et al., 2019; Torry,
2020a: 130–5; Widerquist, 2019: 308–10; Widerquist and Sheahen, 2012: 21;
Ylikännö and Kangas, 2021: 68).
It is of course true that if unconditional incomes were to be paid for by
increasing income tax rates and reducing income tax allowances, then workers
not on means-tested benefits would experience higher marginal deduction
rates. However, the additional income tax would withdraw additional earned
income at a lower rate than means-tested benefits had done, and behavioural
economics research suggests that the increase in taxation would be felt less
keenly than the withdrawal of means-tested benefits. A further finding in
behavioural economics is that the certainty of not losing is preferable to
uncertain gain or loss, suggesting that an unconditional income would be expe-
rienced more positively than uncertain wages, taxes and means-tested benefits
(Avram, 2015; Thaler, 2015: 33–4; Torry, 2018a: 42–4).
It is clear from both the theory and the empirical evidence that means-tested
benefits leave government ministers in a quandary: to increase benefit rates
would reduce poverty but would also reduce employment incentives further
along the earnings range, and to reduce benefit rates would increase employ-
ment incentives but would also increase poverty. An unconditional income
would not pose this dilemma (Adam et al., 2006: 1).
The poverty trap is usually discussed in relation to means-tested benefits,
where it means that someone on means-tested benefits receives little additional
net income if their earned income increases because means-tested benefits
are withdrawn as earned income rises: and so, to take the UK as an example,
a household receiving the means-tested ‘Universal Credit’ can be better off by
only 27p for every additional £1 of earned income. However, a poverty trap
can also be experienced in relation to means-tested services at the point at
which earned income takes a household off means-tested benefits. If someone
on means-tested benefits is also eligible for free school meals, then finding
employment, or an increase in earned income, can take the household off
means-tested benefits and at the same time deprive all of their children of
their free school meals. The result is less money to spend on other essentials,
children going hungry, or both. While the household might then benefit from
a lower marginal deduction rate – that is, any additional increase in earned
income will translate into a larger increase in net income because means-tested
benefits are no longer being reduced – it can take a lot of additional earned
income to make up for the loss of the free school meals. And when multiple
services are means-tested, as they are in the UK – medication prescriptions,
free school meals, leisure centre memberships, and so on – the poverty trap
can be a chasm.
The answer to the poverty trap in relation to both income and services can
only be an increase in unconditionality. An unconditional income, that by
definition would not be reduced as earned income rose, could not possibly
contribute to a poverty trap, although any remaining means-tested benefits
would of course do so. And unconditional services would have the same effect.
If every child were to receive free school meals, then increasing earned income
would have no effect on whether children had enough to eat in the middle of
the school day. Admittedly, additional taxation might be needed to pay for the
extension of free school meals, but the advantages in terms of children’s nutri-
tion, and their ability to concentrate on their education, would reap long-term
benefits, not to mention the encouragement that the absence of poverty traps
would give to workers to enhance their skills and seek new business opportuni-
ties and responsibilities. Both society and the economy would benefit (Miller,
2012; Torry, 2018a: 166–7).
It matters a great deal if employees feel that there is little point in seeking
new skills, but it matters even more if unemployed people on means-tested
benefits are disempowered by the knowledge that they would experience
little financial advantage if they were to take low-paid employment. If they
were to find themselves still on means-tested benefits, of the in-work rather
than the out-of-work variety, then they would experience a poverty trap;
and if their finding a job would take them off means-tested benefits then the
unemployment trap might have the same consequences as the poverty trap: that
is, they would lose means-tested services such as free school meals and free
medication. On top of these losses, the new employee might have to pay fares
to work, and might have to pay for childcare as well. It can take a significantly
virtuous work ethic to inspire a worker to seek employment in such a context.
And because means-tested benefits are generally calculated on the basis of the
household, and not on the basis of the individual, if someone’s post is made
redundant then because their spouse’s income will be taken into account when
their means-tested benefits are calculated it will immediately become less
worthwhile for their spouse to remain in employment, improve their skills,
or seek additional employment. One partner experiences an unemployment
68 Unconditional
trap, and the other a poverty trap. The fact that the household might find itself
eligible for free services of various kinds, such as free school meals and free
medication, constitutes yet another poverty trap, because new employment that
took the household off their means-tested benefits would mean losing those
free services (Miller, 2012; Torry, 2023: 172–3).
We can measure the number of people who suffer high marginal deduction
rates, and we can value the free services that they might lose if earned income
were to rise, but we cannot measure the wealth that is not created because
people do not take up opportunities for new employment or for increased skills
and responsibilities. We can calculate the loss of disposable income suffered
when individuals take employment at particular wage rates, but we cannot
measure the economic outcome resulting from people deciding not to start new
businesses because the small and variable earnings that they generate would
result in little or no additional disposable income and initial small earnings, if
declared, could result in a claim for means-tested benefits being discontinued.
Again the only answer is an unconditional income and unconditional services,
as only those would make no contributions to poverty and unemployment
traps, and only those would reduce the depths of poverty and unemployment
traps. Fares to work might remain a problem for many, but much part-time and
flexible employment that is now not attractive to someone on means-tested
benefits would become much more attractive if their government-provided
incomes were not withdrawn.
What we cannot do is try to solve the problem by allowing those households
currently on means-tested benefits to retain their benefits if their incomes were
to rise. That would create a new injustice, as someone continuing to receive
their benefits income might be working next to someone who did not have
one. The only answer is to provide everyone with an unconditional income
and unconditional services, as that would make no contribution to poverty
or unemployment traps, and would not result in injustices (Torry, 2015b: 4;
2018a: 151–9).
Those who object to the idea of an unconditional income on the basis that
nobody would then wish to do the work that society needs to have done might
have a point. As well as the motivating effect of an unconditional income, it
would also have a demotivating effect if it was large enough to live on, because
there would then be no need to earn an income unless the household wanted
goods and services over and above the minimum required for survival. It is
true that as a Basic Income rose it would have a demotivating effect alongside
its motivating effect (Torry, 2020a: 78–9): but first of all, it is unlikely that
a large enough Basic Income to produce a significant demotivating effect
would be feasible in the short to medium term (Torry, 2019c), and secondly,
there are many reasons for seeking paid employment or to found a business:
relationships with colleagues, a sense of purpose, fulfilment of a vocation,
a sense of pride in one’s work, and so on; so even with a sizeable Basic Income
we would be likely to see paid employment continuing. The evidence shows
that the vast majority of workers are intrinsically motivated to seek and retain
employment: ‘Just 1 in 10 non-employed men, and a similar proportion of
non-employed women, can be unambiguously classified as voluntarily out of
work’ (Burchardt and Le Grand, 2002: 24; Gilroy et al., 2013), and a Basic
Income would not change that. So on the implementation of an unconditional
income we can envisage a significant motivating effect, and rather less demo-
tivation. What we would probably see is wages having to rise for pointless and
less desirable jobs in order to persuade people to do them, which would be no
bad thing (Goos and Manning, 2007; Graeber, 2018: 9).
STABILITY IN A TIME OF CHANGE
My grandfather joined an engineering firm as an apprentice at the age of

fourteen and worked in the same firm, eventually in a management role, until
he retired. That was normal. My father was a local government officer for
the whole of his working life, working for a handful of local authorities but
always in the housing field. My mother worked for various periods for local
government, as a classroom assistant, and as a post office clerk. These were
entirely normal patterns for those generations. Today’s adults will spend time
in full-time employment, part-time employment, self-employment, unem-
ployment, study, caring for relatives, founding a business, and working in
a co-operative enterprise, and often more than one at a time. Diversity can
be good for us, as it enables us to develop different skills and broaden our
experience, but it can also be destabilizing if a stable personal infrastructure is
not in place to support us during times of change. Important elements of that
personal infrastructure are relationships, accommodation, income and health-
care. Relationships might be less able to provide a secure base in the midst
of change than they might have done in previous generations, and accommo-
dation can be equally insecure, particularly in the private rented sector. That
leaves healthcare and income. In countries with healthcare provided free at
the point of need, whether tax funded or via a compulsory insurance scheme,
we appreciate the system’s importance whenever we need to access it, but its
availability also provides an important element of security whether we need
to access it or not. In countries in which healthcare is not guaranteed to all of
their citizens, healthcare is yet another unstable element among many, and the
very opposite of the stable personal infrastructure that we need if we are to find
change in other areas of our lives both manageable and creative (Gama, 2015;
Tomsik et al., 2014). The same is true of income. If every source of income
is insecure, then income cannot be a stable element that enables change to
be manageable and creative; but if there is just one stable element then other
70 Unconditional
changes in the sources and amounts of income will be easier to navigate.

Countries that have unconditional child allowances provide families with
children with precisely the kind of foundational stable income that every adult
would find of value in the midst of today’s ubiquitous change; and the same is
true of unconditional pensions: important sources of stability not just in old age
but throughout working life. And such incomes might as well be unconditional
because there is little evidence that imposing such conditions as vaccinations
and school attendance on child allowances improves such social effects as
school and clinic attendance (Barrett, 2020; Bastagli et al., 2019; Hanlon et
al., 2010; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2021;
Orton, 2014).
An important question is whether the change and diversity that we experi-
ence today has entered a new phase. There has always been precarious employ-
ment – dockers employed and paid by the day is a particularly egregious
example – but we have now seen not only its return, but its rapid expansion,
particularly in relation to zero-hour contracts, that is, work when the employer
requires work, but not otherwise – in fact, a return to the dockers’ experi-
ence. In the UK, at the end of 2022, there were 298,000 workers on full-time
zero-hour contracts, and 824,000 on part-time zero-hour contracts: in total 3.45
per cent of workers active in the employment market, although the authors of
the report caution that workers who did not state that they were on a zero-hours
contract were placed in the ‘not zero hours’ category, suggesting that the true
proportion of workers on zero-hours contracts might be somewhat higher
than stated (Office for National Statistics, 2023a). In addtion, 5.17 per cent of
workers are on full-time or part-time temporary contracts (Office for National
Statistics, 2023b), and even though the group of people on temporary contracts
and those on zero-hour contracts might overlap somewhat we are still looking
at a significant body of workers without the kind of income security required
for a dignified life in society.
Not all zero-hour contracts are exploitative. Those that allow workers to
decline shifts offered at short notice, and that enable them to work for other
employers as well, can suit both the employee and the employer. For instance,
restaurants around The O2 arena in London are heaving with customers on
event nights but otherwise can be almost empty: so they need lots of staff on
event nights but very few if any for much of the time. Such restaurants could
not operate with only full-time staff. Being able to employ staff by the shift can
make the restaurants financially viable, and for the students and other young
adults who work in the restaurants on event nights both the flexibility and the
income can be essential. However, if an exploitative zero-hour contract – one
that insists that shifts offered at short notice must be worked, and that forbids
the worker to work for other employers – is all that is on offer, then the worker
can find themselves trapped in a destroyed social and domestic life and an
unpredictably gyrating income. They are in a precarity trap. But that is not
the only such trap. Self-employment was once a status to be sought, whereas
now it can be the only option, and not a desirable one (Conen and Schippers,
2019). Low-paying self-employment, self-employment that is disguised casual
employment, one-off contracts accessed through online platforms, unpaid
internships that have become the only gateway to too many kinds of employ-
ment, and short-term contracts, all require ‘work for labour’ – that is, work
finding employment – and all of them are precarious. No longer can workers
expect to work in professions or occupations that provide the satisfactions of
belonging, progression and skill enhancement (Standing, 2014). In countries
in which health insurance is a perk of long-term employment, belonging to the
precariat means no access to high-quality healthcare. Insecure employment
and insecure income mean insecure housing and often insecure relationships;
and if the worker in the precariat has dependent children, then those children’s
education is likely to be disrupted. Theoretically, means-tested benefits offer
the prospect of a consistent minimum income, but their administrative com-
plexity means that they cannot cope with rapidly changing earned incomes
compounded by rapidly changing employment statuses, so the resultant
income can be just as insecure as any other (Westerveld and Olivier, 2019).
The employment market is now global, and that alone will ensure that the
precariat can only grow, both among such current occupations as delivery
drivers and among occupations once thought exempt from precarity, such as
university lecturers, many of whom are now effectively on zero-hour con-
tracts (Standing, 2011; 2014; University and College Union, 2021). While we
have not yet seen a wholesale automation of tasks previously undertaken by
workers, we are seeing a significant trend in that direction, particularly among
the lower-skilled (Georgieff and Milanez, 2021): and we are also seeing
generally less secure employment (Bruun and Duka, 2018; Brynjolfsson
and McAfee, 2014; Daugareilh et al., 2019: 29; Greve, 2017; Lund, 2019;
Mowshowitz, 1994: 267). The employment insecurity generated by Facebook,
Google, Amazon, and the like, is well understood by some of those who gave
birth to those companies (Clifford, 2017; Huczynski and Buchanan, 2007: 424;
Hughes, 2018: 41).
Psychologists for Social Change list five indicators of a healthy society:
agency, connection, meaning, trust and security (Psychologists for Social
Change, 2017), and they find that
employment insecurity is associated with a range of individual and family psycho-

logical difficulties, including distress …, depression …, strained relationships, and
overall poorer life satisfaction … Similarly, insecure housing resulting in frequent
house moves impairs academic performance and probably other aspects of child
well-being, particularly for low-income families. Financial insecurity worries often
72 Unconditional
form a basis for family stress, which can contribute to poorer outcomes for children,
including their mental health. (Psychologists for Social Change, 2017)
In this situation, security of income and healthcare will be essential ingredients

if long-term relationships are to be feasible, if children and other dependents
are to be cared for, if families are to be able to find accommodation secure
enough to allow for consistent educational experiences for children, and so
on; that is, if societies are to be relatively free of anxiety and with sufficient
financial security to be creative.
In the UK, the NHS is an important factor that has enabled the country to
weather the trend towards greater precarity better than it would have done
otherwise. The same logic would apply to financial provision. An uncondi-
tional income would provide in the income sphere the same kind of security
that the NHS provides in healthcare. The Finland experiment not only showed
additional employment market activity in the second year, but also a variety
of increased wellbeing indices, including enhanced trust in politicians; and
the Namibian and Indian Basic Income pilot projects, mentioned above, have
shown that such a secure layer of income would promote creative and eco-
nomic activity (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009: 13–17; Brokken, 2019:
55; Davala, 2019; Davala et al., 2015: 153–5; De Wispelaere et al., 2019;
Haarmann et al., 2019; Widerquist and Sheahen, 2012: 21; Ylikännö and
Kangas, 2021: 68). Research conducted for the World Bank into Conditional
and Unconditional Cash Transfers has found that unconditional schemes
can be particularly effective (Garcia and Moore, 2012: 8), and more recent
research for UNICEF has reached the same conclusion:
Taking eight experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations on large-scale

government UCTs [Unconditional Cash Transfers] in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA),
conducted in collaboration with the Transfer Project, we summarize evidence
around six common perceptions associated with cash transfer programmes in
resource-poor settings. Specifically we investigate if transfers: 1) Induce higher
spending on alcohol or tobacco; 2) Are fully consumed (rather than invested); 3)
Create dependency (reduce participation in productive work); 4) Increase fertility;
5) Lead to negative community-level economic impacts (including price distortion
and inflation); and 6) Are fiscally unsustainable. We present evidence refuting each
of these claims. … We conclude that these perceptions are myths, and that they
present a distorted picture of the potential benefits of these programmes. Since such
perceptions are utilized – or inform underlying assumptions – in policy debates, they
constrain governments’ policy decisions in the area of poverty reduction. (Handa et
al., 2017: 6)
When we put together the evidence on the effects of unconditional incomes

in countries with both developing and more developed economies we find
that unconditional cash transfers can increase purposeful economic activity
in countries with developing economies, and that in countries with more

developed economies they cause hardly any change in employment market
participation rates or in hours per week spent in paid employment (Gilbert
et al., 2019: 61–4). A large Basic Income randomized controlled trial paying
small Basic Incomes to 20,000 individuals across 197 entire rural Kenyan
villages is now testing lump-sum transfers, long-term Basic Incomes designed
to last for twelve years, and short-term Basic Incomes, and results similar to
those reported in Namibia and India have been obtained, with the changes
being more pronounced in the villages looking forward to twelve-year Basic
Incomes, as we might expect. Other smaller scale projects in the Democratic
Republic of Congo and in Uganda exhibit similar effects (Banerjee et al., 2020;
Douillard, 2017; Duverger, 2018: 127; Eight, 2021; GiveDirectly, 2020; 2021;
Torry, 2021a: 221).
There is no reason to think that the turbulence that so many experience today
is likely to diminish in the near future. If that turbulence is to be manageable
and creative then significant elements of stability will be required, particularly
in the fields of healthcare and income. Given that means-tested healthcare and
incomes are inherently unstable and can only add to the turbulence, what we
require is an increase in unconditionality. As Psychologists for Social Change
conclude:
a social policy that enables a less stressful financial context for families is arguably
an investment in the nation’s future mental health. The [Basic Income] means that
there is a minimal threat of falling into absolute poverty, ensuring people experience
greater security and thus overall better physical and mental health. (Psychologists
for Social Change, 2017)
SOCIAL INCLUSION
Our societies are increasingly divided in terms of wealth, income, healthcare,
educational opportunities, and much else. This results in social exclusion,
with each aspect compounding the others. People on low incomes have less
choice than others about where to live, housing tenure, what to eat, children’s
schooling, leisure activities, and so on. Children’s extracurricular activities
cost money, as do music lessons, uniformed organization membership, going
to the cinema or the theatre, going on holiday, and going out to a restaurant.
Children can find themselves without socially acceptable clothes, shoes,
toys and games, and their social interaction and education can be seriously
hampered by lack of access to a mobile phone and a computer. For parents the
result can be stigma and current social exclusion, and for children it can mean
lower social capital, and therefore both current and future social exclusion
74 Unconditional
(Bailey and Bramley, 2018; Dean, 2016; Dermott, 2018; Hills et al., 2002;
Torry, 2015b: 37; 2020a: 210–12).
The more aspects of the social infrastructure there are that apply to every-
one, the less will be the exclusion experienced by those households experienc-
ing or likely to experience social exclusion. So, for instance, school trips that
are free to every child can be instruments of social inclusion, whereas trips
that parents have to pay for can exclude children whose parents cannot pay;
and if only some parents are not required to pay, perhaps because they receive
means-tested benefits, then they can stigmatize themselves as well as being
stigmatized by others, so even more social exclusion can occur. Only uncon-
ditionality can solve this problem (Miller, 2012; Torry, 2018a: 166–7; 2020a:
188–90). Just as multiple conditional provisions can compound the problem
of social exclusion by imposing additional stigma every time a conditional
service or income is accessed, so multiple new unconditional provisions would
constitute a trajectory towards social inclusion.
SOCIAL MOBILITY
Inequality matters less if someone in one position in society can move easily to
another; and if we are socially excluded then that matters less if there is a route
to social inclusion available to us, perhaps by working hard to gain new skills
as a means to improving the family’s financial situation. If social mobility is
not a possibility then inequality and social exclusion really matter, as to be
trapped in disadvantage is far worse a prospect than to be in it and able to climb
out of it (Brittan, 1995; Dickens and McKnight, 2008; Dorling, 2012: 47–8).
The problem is that societies are becoming less mobile. If a high proportion
of the population is on means-tested benefits, as is the case in the UK, then
climbing out of poverty can be really difficult, because across a wide earnings
range the withdrawal of means-tested benefits makes it really difficult to exit
poverty; and if abandoning the means-tested benefits becomes a possibility
then the family risks losing such services as free school meals and poverty
can extend even further up the earnings range. The family can still not afford
school trips, holidays and computers, so social exclusion continues.
In countries with more developed economies the employment market is
bifurcating into good jobs (well paid and with good conditions) and lousy jobs
(badly paid and with poor conditions) (Goos and Manning, 2007; Graeber,
2018). What we are increasingly missing is the middle-range jobs that used
to form a bridge, enabling workers to transition eventually into higher-skilled
and better paid jobs on the basis of experience gained in middle-range jobs.
Those in lower paid jobs are more likely to be on means-tested benefits and
so are more likely to be unable to increase their earned incomes than are
people in higher-paid jobs who do not suffer the high marginal deduction rates
associated with means-testing. A bifurcating employment market is delivering

a bifurcating society and vice versa (Oxford Analytica, 2021).
We find a similar bifurcation in skills accumulation. Lousy jobs rarely come
with high-quality training, so employees can find it difficult to progress to
a better job within the same company or in a different one. Good jobs often
come with high-quality training attached, so promotion prospects are better
both within the company or by seeking opportunities with other employers.
Whereas public and voluntary sector jobs, although not well paid, often
granted access to high-quality training, the fact that so many public services
are now contracted out to private companies means that the tasks are often per-
formed by people in low-paid and low-skill jobs and in jobs without training.
Education costs both money and time, both of which can be in short supply in
low-wage contexts, which is why low incomes are restricting the development
of the human capital that education can build (Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, 2014). We need to repair the rungs in order
to recreate the ladder that people used to be able to climb from one social and
economic position to another, and the new rungs that we need are those char-
acterized by unconditionality (Torry, 2015b: 38).
SOCIAL COHESION
A society characterized by both social inclusion and social mobility will also
experience social cohesion: that is, whatever the differences between differ-
ent people, everyone will feel themselves to belong to the same society as
everyone else, and that their own wellbeing and everyone else’s are bound up
together.
Some differences are inevitable and creative: differences of ethnic origin
and of religion are among these. Some other differences are destructive and
not inevitable, such as differences of income, wealth and social class: although
we might regard social class as on the boundary between the two different
kinds of difference if differences of social class do not imply differences in
income, wealth, educational and occupational opportunities, and so on. What
is never helpful is differences that result in unequal opportunities, particularly
in relation to education, health, physical environment, housing quality, skills,
and community and political participation. If one group possesses most of the
opportunities, and another only a few, then the whole of society will be impov-
erished by the inability of some of its members to contribute as much as they
would have been able to had they all had the same opportunities. Significant
differences of opportunity, lack of social inclusion, and lack of social mobility
all compromise social cohesion (Torry, 2015b: 44).
If we define work in terms of paid employment, then in countries with more
developed economies, the tax and benefits system can divide residents into
76 Unconditional
workers and non-workers. Workers relate to the tax system, and non-workers
to the benefits system, although the division is sometimes rendered less clear
by workers receiving means-tested in-work benefits to top up low wages.
Workers can exercise power through trades unions that fund political parties
that might then govern in favour of workers, creating more of a division
between workers and non-workers. A Basic Income would begin to dissolve
the boundary by enabling people to escape from the unemployment trap,
become workers, and exercise workers’ power.
The fewer divisions that there are in society, and the more opportunities that
all of its members share, the more everyone will feel that they belong to the
same society, the more they will have an interest in creating a good society,
and the better will be their mental health (Psychologists for Social Change,
2017). This means that the more unconditional aspects there are to a socie-
ty’s economic and social infrastructure, and the more those aspects promote
social inclusion, social mobility, and a wide variety of opportunities, the more
cohesive that society will be, and the more people will take responsibility for
society’s infrastructure by community and political engagement (Dorling,
2010: 245; Mays, 2019; Patrick, 2017: 301; Torry, 2020a: 117).
The kinds of unconditional infrastructure that promote a cohesive society
have to be paid for, which requires taxation, and at the same time taxation
engages people with a society’s politics, which means that they are more likely
to vote according to their preferences (Gingrich, 2014: 109). If the taxation is
progressive then that also reduces income and wealth inequality and by that
means becomes yet another means of enhancing social cohesion. This suggests
that income tax allowances – levels of earned income below which income tax
is not paid – should be as low as possible rather than raised, as is the current
tendency. Raising tax allowances tends to benefit the wealthy rather than
poorer households, whereas lowering them brings more workers into paying
income tax which in turn promotes social cohesion. This suggests that paying
for unconditional incomes and services by lowering income tax allowances
might offer the best method for increasing social cohesion.
Such social cohesion is what was once meant by ‘fraternity’, although the
male connotations of that word suggest that ‘social solidarity’ might be a better
way of expressing what was once meant by ‘fraternity’, and it might be that
‘social solidarity’ expresses rather better than ‘social cohesion’ the depth of
understanding between people that a cohesive society requires.
The USA offers means-tested healthcare systems for the elderly and for
the general population; privately run and government regulated insurance
schemes for the working-age population (recently extended to larger numbers
of people under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act); and private and
employer-financed insurance for anyone who can afford it. This diversity of
healthcare provisions fractures society and promotes the opposite of social sol-
idarity. The UK, on the other hand, experiences a significant social solidarity
in relation to healthcare. The wealthy might choose to buy insurance or pay for
healthcare so that they can jump the queue, but the healthcare will generally
be of the same quality. The NHS is both source and result of significant social
solidarity. A Basic Income would be experienced as a similar instrument of
social solidarity (Groce and Groce, 2020).
ADMINISTRATIVE SIMPLICITY
If healthcare is paid for per item – that is, an operation to remove an appendix
is costed, along with the cost of the hospital bed for the relevant period, and
the total is then paid by the patient – then every aspect of healthcare has to be
separately costed and the payment then needs to be administered. If healthcare
is paid for by an insurance company, then still every aspect of healthcare has to
be costed and the payment administered, and the insurance premiums will have
to be calculated and paid. However, if healthcare is free at the point of need,
and paid for by general taxation or by social insurance contributions, then none
of this administration is required (Torry, 2018b). Perhaps somewhat counterin-
tuitively, it is the unconditionality of the service that reduces substantially the
administrative cost. It is somewhat unfortunate that when the Affordable Care
Act in the USA was being negotiated, a decision was taken simply to draw
more of the population into the insurance-funded healthcare system, at least
partly on the basis that to implement a free at the point of need system like the
UK’s NHS would have put a lot of insurance company employees out of work.
The Affordable Care Act instead substantially increased the administrative
burden for insurance companies, healthcare providers, and state and federal
governments (Book, 2017).
When I worked in Brixton’s Supplementary Benefit office, one of my tasks
was to update the code of regulations that was contained in ring binders. They
filled a bookshelf, and neither the claimants nor ourselves understood more
than the bare outline of the complex detail contained in them. That was before
the age of the computer, but means-tested benefits are still notorious for their
complex and expensive administration and for the fraud and errors related
to it. While the calculation of household benefits is increasingly automated,
administrative staff are still required to enquire into household structures,
earned incomes, fraud, errors, and so on (House of Commons Committee of
Public Accounts, 2023; National Audit Office, 2022). The complexity of the
regulations that govern means-tested benefits, along with the complexity and
fluidity of today’s households and employment markets, means that the system
only works when administrative staff make it work, which is why substantial
numbers of civil servants are still required now that the combined means-tested
benefit Universal Credit has been rolled out.
78 Unconditional
An additional complexity in the UK is the continuing social insurance

system that grants non-means-benefits of amounts and for periods related to an
individual’s contribution record; and a particularly complex new administra-
tive and social policy mess was created by Universal Credit, designed to avoid
different benefit withdrawal rates operating differently at the same time, and
by the simultaneous localization of Council Tax Reduction: reductions in local
taxation that are means-tested differently by each local authority. Computers
can now handle vast amounts of information at unbelievable speeds, but the
fact that means-tested benefits require numerous and constant human interac-
tions – for instance, in relation to Universal Credit, employers reporting their
employees’ earned incomes and the tax deducted accurately and on time every
month – means that the system as a whole continues to be prone to error and
fraud. At least the UK has a single national benefits system. The USA too has
a benefits system that is partly based on contributory benefits and partly on
means-tested benefits, but the means-tested system is different from state to
state, so moving across a state boundary can mean engaging with a different
benefits system. The possibilities for complexity are endless. By localizing
Council Tax Support, the UK is heading in the same direction.
The obvious answer is an unconditional income for every individual paid
for by taxation of various kinds. The scheme would require rules to determine
who should receive the unconditional incomes (Should prisoners continue to
receive it? How long would someone need to live in the country before they
became eligible?) (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018b), but such regulations
would not complicate the Basic Income itself, the administration of which
could be turned on at someone’s birth, the amount of the income could adjust
automatically as they grew older, and it would be turned off at their death.
The extreme simplicity would result in the simplest possible administration, in
100 per cent take-up, and in increasing demand for simplicity in other areas of
social policy (Torry, 2015b: 62).
Because the unconditional income is unlikely to be sufficient for most
households to live on, at least initially, continuing means-tested benefits will
be required, so the relevant statistic would be the number of households taken
off means-tested benefits by the Basic Income scheme implemented, and the
number that could be brought within striking distance of coming off them, ena-
bling them to escape from them by seeking small amounts of additional earned
income (Torry, 2022b). Administration of the Basic Income would be radically
simple, and fewer households would be subject to complex means-tested bene-
fits administration, thus reducing the administrative burden overall.
SCALABILITY
Every country has its own tax and benefits system, which makes co-ordination
between them difficult to achieve. The European Union is an attempt at a free
market in goods, services and labour, but the market in labour will never work
seamlessly because each of the countries in the Union has a different language,
a different healthcare system, a different education system, a different tax
system, and a different benefits system. These differences make it difficult
for workers and their families to move from one country to another; and the
continuing separation of the systems means that workers are more likely to
move from countries with poorer services to countries with better ones than
vice versa, which only exacerbates the inequalities. Some steps have already
been made towards co-ordination. A European Health Insurance Card enables
a citizen of the European Union to access healthcare in a European Union
country other than their own, but not ‘ongoing or permanent healthcare’
(Citizens Information Board, 2023). Children moving from one European
Union country to another have a right to attend school in their new country,
and also to introductory tuition to help them to integrate, but the education
systems in different countries are very different and there is no automatic
recognition of qualifications (Your Europe, 2022). It would appear that there is
no possibility of genuine scalability of healthcare or education systems beyond
the level of the nation state; and this would probably be equally true elsewhere
in the world. Genuine scalability would require the right to access all types of
healthcare on the same terms in all European Union countries, which would
mean all healthcare systems offering the same kinds of healthcare, all of the
same quality, and all of them funded in the same way, which at the moment
they are not. Similarly, only compatible education systems with broadly the
same curriculum would permit the kind of mutual recognition of qualifications
required for genuine scalability. Scalability to the European level of both
healthcare and education systems would both facilitate and encourage the free
movement of labour across Europe.
Benefits systems in different European Union countries are all very different
from each other, so all that the European Commission has been able to achieve
is a set of ‘co-ordination’ rules:
1. You are covered by the legislation of one country at a time so you only pay con-
tributions in one country. The decision on which country’s legislation applies to
you will be made by the social security institutions. You cannot choose.
2. You have the same rights and obligations as the nationals of the country
where you are covered. This is known as the principle of equal treatment or
non-discrimination.
3. When you claim a benefit, your previous periods of insurance, work or resi-
dence in other countries are taken into account if necessary.
80 Unconditional
4. If you are entitled to a cash benefit from one country, you may generally receive
it even if you are living in a different country. This is known as the principle of
exportability. (European Commission, 2023)
The rules constitute co-ordination at the level of the individual moving from
one country to another, and not between the different national systems. This
introduces friction into the free movement of labour. One of the advantages
that radical simplicity gives to an unconditional income is its complete scala-
bility. The same Basic Income could be implemented across Europe, providing
useful social and economic cohesion, and also more efficient redistribution
from richer countries to poorer countries than current methods can achieve;
and there is no reason why a global Basic Income should not be feasible at
some point in the future. After all, there is no necessary reason for a welfare
state to restrict its activities to a single country, nor for civic, political, social
or economic rights to be restricted to nation state boundaries (Atkinson, 1992;
Blackburn, 2011; Cowen, 2002: 53; Genet and Van Parijs, 1992; Goedemé
and Van Lancker, 2009; Hayward, 1993; Kleinman and Piachaud, 1993:
7; McKnight et al., 2016: 67–8; Meade, 1991: 24–9; Torry, 2020a: 142–3,
260–61; 2021a: 256–7; van Dijk, 1988; Van Parijs, 1996: 66; Van Parijs and
Vanderborght, 2017: 23–41).
Just as a Basic Income could be implemented across an area larger than
a nation state, so one could also be implemented at a more local level. The
advent of local currencies has enabled municipalities to implement Basic
Incomes in South Korea and in Maricà in Brazil, and a variety of experiments
are taking place that suggest that local Basic Incomes could be paid in sover-
eign currencies (Gyeonggi Research Institute Basic Income Research Group,
2019; Rocha, 2020). Similarly, a pilot project in India – a country in which
individual states have considerable fiscal autonomy – suggests that a Basic
Income implemented in one state might inspire other states and eventually the
whole country to follow suit. A similar process might be envisaged in other
federal states such as the USA and Canada. The fact that a Basic Income could
be implemented at any of these levels is a highly unusual characteristic of
a social policy and is a significant recommendation. A particularly attractive
possibility is that we might one day see Basic Incomes implemented at all of
these levels (Torry, 2013: 198–200).
TRANSPARENCY
In 1991 the UK charity Age Concern commissioned research into the pub-
lic’s attitude towards an unconditional income (DVL Smith and Associates,
1991: 5, 29). A significant conclusion of the research was that people did not
understand the current benefits system, let alone the implications of changing
it. Many benefits systems in countries with more developed economies are far
from transparent, that is, they are not immediately comprehensible. This is
understandable, as the UK’s benefits system has evolved over four centuries,
and during the past eighty years, since it took its current form during the 1940s,
it has been constantly tinkered with. Far too frequently a claimant will not
even understand the parts of the system to which they relate, let alone the rest
of it. If members of the general public do not understand a system, then they
will not be comfortable discussing it in case their ignorance is revealed. It is
unfortunate that this applies equally to legislators.
An unconditional income, on the other hand, would be completely transpar-
ent. The regulations governing its administration would be minimal, and its
unconditionality would mean that everybody would receive it and everybody
would understand it. This statement is perfectly compatible with the fact that
the idea is currently not universally understood. When a Basic Income is
explained to somebody who has not previously heard of the idea, they might
try to put it into some existing category (such as means-tested benefits or
a National Minimum Wage). Comparison with existing universal benefits,
such as the UK’s Child Benefit, can help the penny to drop, but sometimes it is
extremely difficult to get across the idea that a Basic Income would be totally
unconditional. We find it hard to imagine a government giving something to
everybody without strings attached unless it is to such clearly deserving groups
as children and the elderly. But once we had a Basic Income the situation
would be entirely different, and its complete unconditionality and transparency
would be perfectly understood and would go on to shape future social policy
options. Understanding any continuing means-tested benefits would continue
to be a challenge, and the difference between that difficulty and the complete
transparency of the Basic Income would be experienced as an important new
fact.
Much the same is true of healthcare systems that are free at the point of need.
They are completely transparent, unlike healthcare systems paid for either by
payment per item or by insurance companies. That does not mean that admin-
istration of the healthcare system itself is necessarily simple – no healthcare
system administration is – but it does mean that as far as the patient is con-
cerned, and therefore as far as the whole of the general public is concerned,
a healthcare system that is free at the point of need, and paid for by taxation, is
radically simple to understand (Torry, 2015b: 63).
CITIZENSHIP
Where there is already a clear definition of citizenship it will be relatively

easy to determine who should have access to healthcare, contributory and
means-tested benefits, education, and other public services, although there
82 Unconditional
might be complexities relating to the rights of European Union citizens to

benefits and public services in countries other than their own, and also in
relation to other treaties and reciprocal agreements (European Commission,
2023; Your Europe, 2023). However, in some countries the situation is rather
less clear. In the UK, immigrants can pay a fee, pass an exam, and become
‘citizens’, and UK passports usually say ‘British Citizen’, but the UK has no
clear definitions of either citizenship or citizenship rights and responsibilities.
The government can decide who has a right to live in the UK and for how
long, often on an ad hoc basis that can change at short notice. While in some
countries it would be fairly clear who should receive care from a healthcare
system free at the point of need, and who should receive an unconditional
income, this would be less clear in the UK. If regulations relating to the UK’s
unconditional Child Benefit were to be taken as a precedent, then anyone with
a right to live in the UK, and for whom the UK was their main home, would
receive a Basic Income. A waiting period between arriving in the UK and
receiving a Basic Income would no doubt replicate the waiting period currently
applied to receipt of Child Benefit, but a question would remain as to whether
someone would continue to receive their Basic Income if they moved abroad
or were imprisoned. Where other countries pay a child allowance similar to the
UK’s Child Benefit a reciprocal agreement enables migrants in either direction
to avoid a waiting period, and similar reciprocal agreements could be agreed
between countries that pay unconditional incomes to working-age adults; and
once one country paid a Basic Income, others would follow in order to reap
the same benefits and maintain economic competitiveness, so the possibility
of reciprocal agreements would need to be addressed fairly quickly (Citizen’s
Basic Income Trust, 2018b).
Not only would decisions and questions about citizenship determine who
should receive a Basic Income, but receipt of the Basic Income would deepen
the definition of citizenship in the direction of social citizenship in much the
same way as the UK’s NHS is
a general enrichment of the concrete substance of civilized life, a general reduction

of risk and insecurity, an equalization between the more and the less fortunate at all
levels – between the healthy and the sick, the employed and the unemployed, the old
and the active. (Marshall, 1950: 56)
Citizenship is many-layered: it can be local, regional, national, continental and

global, and it can imply social, economic, and civil and political rights (Dean,
2011). Citizenship might be experienced differently by every individual, but
a commonality will be that without social and economic rights (and so access
to healthcare, education and an income) it will always be difficult or impos-
sible to exercise such civil rights as political participation and access to the
courts (Golding, 1972: 135–6; Held, 1984: 203; Lewis, 2004; Melden, 1981:
276; van Gunsteren, 1978). In most countries, citizenship confers political,
civil and social rights but not economic rights. An unconditional income would
offer economic rights and would therefore enhance the social citizenship that
T.H. Marshall described as
the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to
the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized
being according to the standards prevailing in the society. (Marshall, 1950: 10–11)
New economic rights and enhanced social rights would make it more pos-
sible for everyone to exercise their civil and political rights (Coote, 1996),
but means-tested benefits would not fulfil this requirement because they are
experienced as a stigmatized concession rather than as a right (The Speaker’s
Commission on Citizenship, 1990: 21; Twine, 1994: 97). A Basic Income,
on the other hand, like unconditional healthcare and education, would be
an important shared institution that would contribute to the creation of an
economic citizenship alongside civil, political and social citizenships: an
economic citizenship that would be felt as both an individual possession and
as a shared reality. A Basic Income would offer the additional advantage that it
would reduce employment disincentives and thus better enable a duty to work
to be exercised, and it would better enable citizens to increase their disposable
incomes and to make new choices about their use of time, which would in turn
enhance their ability to fulfil the duties of citizenship that make possible the
reciprocity required to enable citizens to exercise their rights (Chapters 1 and
8; Plant, 1988: 73). Not only the concept of citizenship but also the felt reality
of citizenship would be significantly enhanced (Purdy, 1990).
In today’s world, in order to preserve economic, social, civil and political
citizenship rights and duties, citizenship requires unconditional services and
an unconditional income (Dahrendorf et al., 1995: 86; Torry, 2013: 187–209;
2015b: 66).
… AND DEMOCRACY
Strongly related to the notion of citizenship is democracy: the rule of the

people. During the past thousand years or so we have seen a slow shift from all
political power being held by the monarch to widespread universal franchise.
In the UK, the monarch needed the barons to provide him with the resources to
wage war, so nearly a thousand years ago a shift towards a more corporate style
of government began to take shape, well represented by Magna Carta and also
by the less well-known Charter of the Forest which in 1225 granted a universal
right to gather food and fuel in the king’s forests (National Archives, 2023).
84 Unconditional
Eventually parliamentary government emerged along with an increasingly

broad and eventually universal franchise. Many other countries have followed
similar trajectories, although some have stalled along the way, and in others
those with financial and media power have managed to subvert democracy.
At each proposed extension of the franchise, arguments were offered both
for and against: for extension on the basis of the equal value of every human
being, or on the basis of no taxation without representation, and against
extension on the basis that only certain people could understand governance
sufficiently to be able to vote intelligently. However, this latter argument was
always to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy: for if a group of people is
treated as incompetent then they will become incompetent and will feel infe-
rior, which is why revolutions have usually been organized by intellectuals and
not by the proletariat. The universal franchise has declared all of us to be com-
petent to decide who should govern us and has to some extent made us capable
of doing so, although an educational deficit means that in many countries far
too little education is provided to enable citizens to participate intelligently in
the democratic process.
Unconditional public services and incomes have a similar effect in the
economic sphere to the universal franchise in the political: they are a statement
of citizenship, of membership, and of responsibility, and so help to create the
responsible citizenship society of which unconditional services and incomes
are both cause and effect. One day we might take for granted an unconditional
income for every citizen in the same way that we now take for granted the
universal franchise (Torry, 2015b: 99).
THE COMMON GOOD
Bill Jordan, social worker, academic, and enthusiast for unconditional incomes,
suggests that rather than implying a ‘sharing out’ of resources, the ‘common
good’ implies a ‘sharing in’, that is, opportunities to participate in the life of
a diverse community (Jordan, 1989; 1992). The good society is a step beyond
individuals choosing to work together: it is a community characterized by
such public goods as peace, a sustainable environment, and a quality of life.
Co-operation and democracy are as important as contracts, so such collabora-
tive activity must be given the attention too often reserved for the market in
goods and services. It is such collaborative projects as drainage, water, edu-
cation, immunization, and so on, that have improved our lives during the past
few centuries: all projects created by people working together to achieve the
common good. Such a project today would be a ‘sharing in’ of an equal foun-
dational distribution of wealth which would in turn promote wealth-creating
activity and greater opportunity to take part in community activity. A Basic
Income would therefore provide both the material and the psychological foun-
dations for the creation of the common good (Torry, 2015b: 100).
Wherever public services are free at the point of need, or when they are
heavily subsidized, those material and psychological foundations of the
common good are already present. Healthcare and education free at the point
of need promote the common good simply because they are publicly funded
collaborative projects that enable everyone to feel that they belong to a good
society and to experience the reality that generates that understanding. Such
institutions not only create good societies, but they also sustain them, as an
unconditional income would.
TWO UNCONDITIONAL PUBLIC GOODS
A classic early public good was lighthouses. Ships were being wrecked on the
coasts of the UK, but no individual ship owner could afford to pay for light-
houses to be built on all of the rocks that his ships might encounter. So why
didn’t all of the ship owners club together to build lighthouses? Because ‘free
riding’ was possible, that is, if one ship owner decided not to contribute then
they would still benefit from the lighthouses that the other ship owners would
build; and because every ship owner could think in this way, the lighthouses
were never built. It took an independent charitable organization, Trinity House,
founded by Royal Charter in 1514, to raise the money to provide the British
coastline with the lighthouses that it needed (Trinity House, 2023). Once the
first lighthouse was in place, in Lowestoft in 1609, it was a public good, that
is, it was available to everyone, unconditionally. The crew of any ship passing
Lowestoft could benefit from the lighthouse whether or not they had helped
to pay for it, whether or not they were responsible sailors, and whatever their
nationality or the place of registration of their ship. The lighthouse was univer-
sally available, unconditionally.
Is this efficient? In Chapter 1 we suggested that there are efficiencies rather
than efficiency, so we shall tackle several different efficiencies in turn.
• Is the cost as low as possible? With a single provider, only one lighthouse
is built and maintained in any position that needs one, and if lighthouses
are built and maintained by competitive tender then we can assume that
provision of lighthouses is efficient in terms of cost. The same argument
would apply to administrative efficiency.
• Are the activities and outcomes as ethical as possible? Yes, if every risky
piece of coastline is provided with a lighthouse.
• Is everyone for whom the institution is designed able to access its activ-
ities? Yes. Nobody can prevent a passing ship from seeing a lighthouse.
• Does the institution treat people with dignity and compassion? Yes.
86 Unconditional
• Does the institution facilitate a just and cohesive society? In relation to

the maritime community, the provision of lighthouses by an independent
organization has removed a possible cause of conflict.
It looks as if the provision of lighthouses as an unconditional public good is

efficient.
An interesting example of a public good characterized by a similar extreme
unconditionality is public roads (leaving aside for the moment toll motorways,
toll tunnels, toll bridges and congestion charge zones). Although we might
have to pay a licence fee to drive a car on public roads, nobody asks us to pay
a fee, or questions us about our income, wealth, relationships, employment
status, legal residency, age, or anything else before we walk or cycle on
a public road. It is difficult to see how it could be any other way. The idea
of each road being owned by a private provider with toll booths at either end
would be the least efficient service provision in terms of cost, administrative
efficiency, speed of travel, ease of access, social cohesion, justice, or any other
efficiency type. So roads have to exhibit unconditionality of access in the
strong sense: available to everybody, unconditionally; and they have to be pub-
licly provided goods as well as public goods because otherwise they would not
be provided at all. Private estates of houses still have their own private roads,
usually maintained by a company of which the residents are members: but our
villages, towns and cities, as well as thinly populated areas of the country, are
criss-crossed by roads to which we don’t give a second thought because they
are publicly provided. In the UK the major roads are maintained by a central
government agency and their maintenance is paid for out of general taxation
and a licence fee for motorized vehicles, and minor roads, in both rural and
urban areas, are maintained by local authorities and their maintenance is paid
for out of the Council Tax: a locally administered property tax. Donations paid
for lighthouses, and in the UK and elsewhere it was donations that used to pay
for hospitals, but public funding on the basis of taxation is the only way to
sustain a public good in the long term.
CONCLUSION
We have explored a number of arguments for unconditionality and therefore

against conditionality. We now turn to arguments for unconditionality in
specific social policy fields: in the next chapter in relation to healthcare and
education, and then for unconditional incomes. Following that we shall offer
some arguments against unconditionality, along with some refutations.
5. Arguments for unconditionality in
healthcare and education
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 4 studied some arguments for unconditionality in social policy gen-

erally. In this chapter we shall study healthcare and education to see if there
are particular arguments for unconditionality in these particular social policy
fields. If there are, then we might make a more general proposal that there
are arguments for unconditionality in social policy in general, and that in any
particular social policy field there might be arguments for unconditionality
specific to that field.
HEALTHCARE1
We shall study a variety of different ways of organizing and funding healthcare

systems, and then the particular case of primary care practitioners (family
doctors, practice nurses, and so on) in the UK’s National Health Service
(NHS).
Healthcare requires human and other resources, and there are at least five
ways of paying for them: donations, membership fees, payment per item,
insurance premiums and taxation.
Donations
In past centuries this is how many hospitals were funded (Chapter 9). It is
difficult to predict the amount of money that will be donated, so planning will
always be difficult; the amount donated might be inadequate to the demand
for healthcare; and because people and organizations are more likely to donate
to local provision than to national organizations, national provision will be
1
This part of the chapter summarizes and sometimes expands on Malcolm Torry,
‘Primary care, the basic necessity: Part I: Explorations in economics’, in Handbook of
Primary Care Ethics, edited by Andrew Papanikitas and John Spicer, pp. 369–76, Boca
Raton, FL: Taylor and Francis, 2018 (Torry, 2018b).
87
88 Unconditional
underfunded, and local provision will be better in wealthier areas and worse in
poorer areas. Donations might be a useful subsidiary funding method, but on
its own it would never be able to fund the healthcare resources required in the
modern world.
Membership Fees
Trades unions and roadside assistance organizations charge membership

fees. These are ‘clubs’ providing ‘club goods’ for their members: a type of
resource lying between private goods, which are available only to an individ-
ual owner, and public goods, available to everyone. Only by clubbing together
can members of clubs fund the resources that they all require, and only by
restricting the resources to members of the club is it possible to ensure that
club members receive the resources to which their membership fees give them
access. An angling club might buy a lake. No individual member would be
able to buy a lake, so members club together to buy it, and restrict access to the
lake to ensure that they can benefit from fishing in it. Leisure centres and art
galleries might use a mixture of membership fees and payment per visit to fund
their activities in order to ration the amounts of the resource that an individual
member can absorb (Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 145–60). In the UK, before the
NHS was established, primary care was funded largely through membership
fees.
If today’s healthcare were to be paid for via membership fees, then individu-
als who were unable to pay, or who decided not to pay, would be provided with
no healthcare; planning would be difficult because it would not be clear how
many people would pay membership fees; and during an economic downturn,
when additional healthcare might be required, there would be less money to
pay for it. It would be possible to means-test membership fees, but that would
impose the problems that we have discussed in Chapter 4. If a society were to
believe that every individual should have access to adequate healthcare then
the membership fee would have to be compulsory and calculated so that those
who could afford would pay more, and those who could afford less would pay
less. The membership fee would then be a tax, on which see below.
Payment per Item
In order to obtain the heart operation that someone needed they could buy it
from a healthcare provider, who would charge per operation, per night spent
in hospital, and so on. There are two main drawbacks to this funding method.
First of all, administrative costs will accrue from healthcare providers having
to divide up the care provided into chargeable units; and secondly, the product
being purchased will often be difficult to define before the event. For other
Arguments for unconditionality in healthcare and education 89
goods and services there will often be a fair degree of clarity as to what is being
purchased. If I buy a house then I can increase my knowledge of the good to be
purchased by paying for a survey; a car retailer will offer a guarantee, which
means that the purchaser can reasonably believe that the retailer will not wish
to pay for repairs during the guarantee period and so will have ensured that the
car is in good working order (Pindyck and Rubinfeld, 1995: 623–4). A builder
might offer a fixed price quotation with a qualification that if they find that
additional work is required then that will be discussed before a revised quo-
tation is provided. An interesting case is plumbers stating hourly rates. The
householder can either accept the risk constituted by not knowing how many
hours of plumbers’ and other service providers’ time will have to be paid for
during the year, or they can pay a fixed membership fee to join a club that
then pays for the hours of work required during the year. Paying per item for
healthcare imposes even more problems than paying for plumbing repairs. As
well as not knowing what health difficulties will require healthcare resources
during our lifetimes, we shall rarely understand the resources that will be
required. If a radiator valve is leaking then we know that a replacement valve
will be required: a definable project with a cost that would not be too difficult
to determine before the repair was carried out. If a gas boiler malfunctions then
the eventual cost of a repair might be less easy to define before the repair is
started, but once the engineer has examined the boiler it will often be possible
to define fairly closely the cost of the repair required or the cost of a new boiler
if the repair would be too expensive. Healthcare represents an extreme case of
the boiler repair. The patient puts themselves in the hands of medical practi-
tioners who might begin the costed operation and then find that far more needs
to be done than initially envisaged. The patient is unconscious on the operating
table and so can make no decisions, and in any case has no option but to have
the additional work done. The purchaser has no control whatsoever over the
cost of their care. The situation is even more problematic than that faced by
a litigant in a civil case. They might not know when they begin the action how
much the legal and court costs will be, but at any point they can decide to settle
out of court or abandon the case in order to cut their losses. The healthcare
purchaser might not be in a position to decline a second operation and several
more weeks in hospital. Paying per item for healthcare is an option that only
the extremely wealthy should consider, which means that no society should
regard this method of funding healthcare as the default option.
Insurance Premiums
If I own a house then I am wise to insure it. I pay premiums to an insurance

company, and in return the company promises to pay to rebuild the house if it
burns down: something that I would not be able to afford to do. The arrange-
90 Unconditional
ment is similar to club membership, except that the deal requires me to have no
control over whether or not I shall need the club’s resources. Risks rather than
resources are shared. I cannot predict whether my own house will or will not
burn down. If the insurance company insures a sufficient number of houses,
then it will be able to predict fairly confidently the number of houses that will
burn down during the year, and it will be able to set insurance premiums high
enough to enable it to rebuild houses that burn down, as well as low enough to
enable it to compete with other insurance companies.
The same mechanism can be employed for healthcare. An insurance
company can charge premiums, and then pay the costs of healthcare for its
customers. I cannot predict my own healthcare costs, but if an insurance
company has a sufficient number of policyholders then it will be able to predict
their total healthcare costs fairly accurately and will be able to set the level of
premiums accordingly. Risks will be shared.
However, the two situations are not the same. The task of rebuilding a house
is well defined and has a predictable cost that will be understood by the house-
holder, the insurance company and the builder, all of whom will have access to
similar levels of information about what it takes to rebuild a house. Healthcare
costs will always be rather less predictable; there will be scope for the interpre-
tation of the terms of an insurance policy; the healthcare provider will possess
more knowledge than either the patient or the insurance company: and it will
be the healthcare provider that will be making the decisions as to what is to
be done. Such asymmetric information inevitably creates market inefficiency
(Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 251–91; Matsaganis and Leventi, 2011; Schneider
et al., 2021; Torry, 2018b; 2018c). An aggravating factor is that individual
clinicians can be more influenced by pharmaceutical company marketing tech-
niques (Brody, 2007) than can governments that determine which drugs can
be prescribed by their healthcare organizations and at what price. Yet another
aggravating factor is that healthcare will be subject to a complex conflict of
interest. Healthcare practitioners might be concerned about the patient’s health
and about the financial cost that they will have to bear, whether for payment
per item or an increase in the next year’s insurance premium, but they will
also be tempted by their own financial interests to provide as much healthcare
as possible. Neither the insurance company nor the patient will have much
ability to question the healthcare provider’s decisions and costs, so premiums
will always be higher than they would be in a market without asymmetric
information and in which medical need was the criterion for healthcare provi-
sion rather than financial factors. Additional costs will be companies’ need to
distribute dividends to shareholders, and the administrative costs generated by
packaging healthcare into chargeable units and the construction and monitor-
ing of contracts (Hart, 2006: 28–9). The high premiums that result from all of
these costs mean that some people will be able to afford to insure and others
will be uninsured, and that some people will experience too much healthcare
and others too little.
Some of these problems are avoided by the public insurance-based schemes
found in such European countries as France and Germany, where the funds are
managed by partnerships between government, trades unions and employers.
Here an added complication is the complexity of the relationships between the
medical profession, the State, and the other social partners (Salter, 2004: 29).
Taxation
To tax individuals according to ability to pay, and to use some of the proceeds
to provide healthcare free at the point of use for everyone, avoids all of the
problems encountered with the four funding methods listed above. Such
taxation provides a secure source of income for healthcare providers; the
amount of healthcare available is relatively predictable; nobody is excluded
from healthcare; on condition that enough tax revenue is spent on the service,
everybody receives the healthcare that they need; provision can be consistent
across the country; those who can afford to pay more are paying more, and
those who can afford to pay little are paying little; and healthcare providers
do not benefit financially by doing more than necessary for a patient, so they
are not tempted to do so. The result is a healthcare system experienced by the
patient as unconditional access at the point of need.
Methods for Rationing Healthcare
However, we shall find ourselves qualifying the verdict implied by the discus-
sion so far that funding healthcare by membership fees, payment per item, or
insurance premiums results in systems characterized by financial conditional-
ities, whereas a tax-funded system is characterized by unconditionality. The
problem is that healthcare has to be rationed somehow. There will always be
unmet demand: a situation aggravated by a growing and ageing population and
the invention of new drugs and treatments, both of which constantly increase
the demand for healthcare provision. The relevant question is this: Given that
resources are always limited, and that demand is already large and continues to
grow, how is healthcare to be distributed?
Costs per item, membership fees and insurance premiums might be unaf-
fordable, so those who could not pay them would not consume healthcare
resources, thus rationing resources by methods with little to do with people’s
need for healthcare. However, if healthcare is funded by donations or by
92 Unconditional
taxation, and healthcare resources are free to every citizen, then some other
rationing method will have to be found. There are several possible methods:
• Bulk purchasing can ensure that prices charged by such healthcare pro-
viders as pharmaceutical companies can be controlled, and can insulate
practitioners from pharmaceutical company marketing techniques, thus
reducing costs and enabling more healthcare to be provided for the same
amount of money (Hart, 2006: 28);
• More expensive healthcare can be banned, so that more of the cheaper
healthcare can be provided;
• Clinicians in both primary (family medicine) and secondary (specialist)
care can be trained and encouraged not to prescribe treatments that offer
marginal or no benefit to the patient (Brody, 2012; 2013);
• Time intervals between healthcare events can be lengthened, thus spread-
ing demand into the future;
• A limited supply of a particular healthcare resource can be rationed (for
instance, family doctor or practice nurse appointments);
• A gatekeeper can decide which healthcare resources will be available to
each patient.
In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is
responsible for price control, and NICE and healthcare commissioners are
responsible for deciding which treatments will be available on the NHS.
Waiting times between appointments and for operations can be lengthened or
shortened as supply falls or rises in relation to demand; and General Practices
will construct appointments systems to distribute a restricted supply of General
Practitioner (GP) and practice nurse time. Secondary care, GPs, nurses, recep-
tionists, and other primary care staff act as gatekeepers in most non-emergency
circumstances by making decisions about individual patients’ medical needs
and the healthcare resources that will be available to them. Many patients will
experience all of these distribution methods in relation to a health problem:
difficulty with getting a GP appointment; a GP deciding what treatment they
need; a waiting list for consultants’ appointments; a waiting list for operations;
NICE deciding which drugs will be available; and the local commissioner
deciding which healthcare resources will be commissioned and which will
not be. The overall effect of these different rationing methods can be to bring
demand into closer relation to supply than it might be otherwise. However,
these rationing methods are experiencing some significant challenges, and par-
ticularly ‘political consumerism’, that is, patient groups demanding their own
choices of treatment (Salter et al., 2015: 162); and such government and media
slogans as ‘choice’ and ‘customer’ are now persuading patients to understand
healthcare as subject to consumer demand rather than to democratic control
(Hart, 2006: 7). When a service that is advertised as unconditional, as the

UK’s tax-funded NHS is, experiences too large a gap between demand and
supply, then governments might be tempted to reduce the inevitable political
pressure by seeking to transition to a different funding mechanism. At the time
of writing, the UK’s NHS faces some extreme versions of some of the ration-
ing methods listed above (for instance, long waiting lists caused by too few
human and other resources in relation to medical need), and also pressure from
a related social policy field: a lack of social care making it difficult to release
NHS resources by discharging patients into care homes.
For the system to continue to work, patients must be able to trust the mech-
anism by which healthcare is rationed. This requires the medical profession to
be self-regulating rather than regulated by government (which it can generally
achieve anyway because of its possession of expertise that government minis-
ters and officials do not possess) (Hasenfeld, 1992: 10; Salter, 2004: 154–6),
and it also requires governments not to imply that patients are customers.
A further requirement is that governments should ensure that resources are
somewhere close to sufficient to meet demand. Unfortunately, this requires
planning across a longer timescale than the election cycle, because it takes
longer than the period between two general elections to train doctors and build
hospitals: hence, chronic underprovision.
It is clear from this discussion that primary care is crucial to the economics
of any healthcare system, and particularly to a tax-funded one, because it
is family doctors who function as the initial gatekeepers by deciding which
expensive secondary care will be available to each patient. It is also clear
that even though a tax-funded and free at the point of need healthcare service
might not exhibit financial conditionality, the healthcare provided might still
be conditional in a number of respects: conditional on the decisions of family
doctors, on the availability of human and other resources, on the length of
waiting lists, on government decisions about which treatments will be availa-
ble and which will not be, and so on. The question therefore becomes: Which
conditionalities are preferable? The theoretical discussion that we have held
here suggests that overall more resources will be available, and fewer will be
expended on functions that do not directly supply healthcare, with a tax-funded
system free at the point of need than with payment by item, insurance schemes,
or membership clubs. The empirical evidence that we shall discuss in Chapter
10 leads to the same conclusion: that tax-funded and free at the point of need
systems are both more effective and more efficient than other systems. Just as
important are the different conditionalities. A financial conditionality means
that healthcare is conditional on a household’s income and wealth, whereas
a tax-funded scheme free at the point of need is not, whatever other condition-
alities might be in play.
94 Unconditional
Hybrid Systems
The USA and various other countries have hybrid systems: insurance-based
healthcare for those who can afford it, and a publicly funded system for those
who cannot. As Richard Titmuss has pointed out, this can only result in a poor
public service because only a service used by everyone will have the necessary
democratic pressure behind it to ensure high-quality and adequate funding
(Titmuss, 1968: 134). In the USA the insurance basis of the healthcare system
has been even further embedded by the Affordable Care Act which mandates
citizens to provide themselves with insurance cover and insists that insurance
companies should provide it. A different kind of hybridity can be found in
countries in which there is one dominant healthcare system and one or more
subsidiary systems, as in the UK in which the NHS is the dominant system and
payment per item and insurance premiums are subsidiary funding methods.
Such private provision is often integrated with the NHS in terms of staffing and
contracts, as NHS consultants will often offer private consultations, and NHS
procedures are frequently contracted out to private providers. None of this is
a problem as long as healthcare remains unconditional in the sense of free at
the point of use: but if too many people obtain healthcare through payment per
item and insurance-based schemes then there will be less middle-class political
pressure for the NHS to be adequately funded and of high quality; and if too
much NHS healthcare is provided by the private sector, and less by public
sector organizations, and if the private sector does the easier routine operations
and leaves the difficult and expensive emergency and complex medicine
to the public sector, then the public sector will cease to reap economies of
scale and inefficiency will be the result. NHS healthcare has always involved
private sector organizations – such services as hospital laundry have been
contracted out for long periods, and General Practice partnerships have always
been private practices contracted to undertake work for the NHS. Where such
relationships between the private and public sectors enhance the uncondition-
ality of the service provision then they are to be encouraged; but that requires
careful study as to whether they do. Such services as hospital laundry are
best contracted out if a commercial operation can benefit from economies of
scale unavailable to individual hospitals or health authorities; and because in
General Practice partnerships the partners provide management as well as clin-
ical services, such partnerships can be more efficient than a bureaucratic public
sector organization would be. It is the detail that matters when we are consid-
ering the extent and types of hybridity: and an important criterion ought to be
whether or not the particular arrangement enhances unconditionality, that is,
whether it enhances the ‘free at the point of need’ characteristic of the service.
A further kind of hybridity occurs where patients experience some aspects
of healthcare as free at the point of need and others as payment per item. So,
for instance, in the UK working-age adults have to pay towards the costs of
prescriptions, dentistry and opticians’ services on a payment per item basis
unless they are deemed not to be able to afford to do so. These are the parts
of the healthcare system that it is possible to means-test, so they are. We
have discussed in Chapter 4 the multiple problems encountered and imposed
by means-testing, and means-testing payments for healthcare is no different
from other means-testing. And as we have seen, payment per item constitutes
a rationing method, so for those who are earning sufficient to have to pay for
their prescriptions, dentistry, visits to the optician and spectacles, two rationing
mechanisms are operating: the primary care practitioner, dentist, or optician
deciding what healthcare is required, and the cost of the prescription, dentistry,
eye test, or spectacles.
The Gift Relationship
Parallel to the difference between free at the point of need healthcare and
a market in healthcare is the difference between blood donated for a fee and
paid for by the recipient, as in the USA, and blood freely given by donors and
freely given to patients, as in the USA and the UK. Commercial operators in
the blood and organ donation field might say that they ‘wish to set people free
from the conscience of obligation’ (Titmuss, 1970: 159) implied by the kind
of unpaid donation practised in the UK, but some of the questions about the
advisability of paid-for blood donation raised by Richard Titmuss in his 1970
The Gift Relationship (Titmuss, 1970: 157) – for instance, that in a market
in which blood donation is paid for, those who donate because they need the
money might not tell the truth about infections (Titmuss, 1970: 240) – proved
to be prescient during the 1980s when blood products derived from commer-
cially provided blood from the USA infected UK patients with AIDS and
hepatitis viruses. Titmuss compares unpaid donation with the gift exchanges
discussed by Mauss (Chapter 1), defines the relationship established by unpaid
donation as a ‘stranger relationship’ (Titmuss, 1970: 215), and finds
social gifts and actions carrying no explicit or implicit individual right to a return
gift of action are forms of ‘creative altruism’ … creative in the sense that the self is
realized with the help of anonymous others; they allow the biological need to help
to express itself. (Titmuss, 1970: 212)
This is the kind of reflexive return, to the self from the self, discussed by
Derrida as an argument for the impossibility of a genuine gift; but it is also
an act of freedom in the twentieth century which, compared with the emphasis on
consumer choice in material acquisitiveness, is insufficiently recognized. (Titmuss,
1970: 225)
96 Unconditional
Titmuss emphasizes the importance of such freely chosen, unremunerated

social contributions in a context of
few opportunities for ordinary people to articulate giving in morally practical terms
outside their own network of family and personal relationships. (Titmuss, 1970:
226)
and demands the ‘right and freedom to give’ (Titmuss, 1970: 242). However,
it is unfortunate that the withdrawal of governments from increasing numbers
of areas of social provision – evidenced by the growth in demand at increasing
numbers of foodbanks – is making available more of the kinds of ‘giving in
morally practical terms outside [one’s] own network of family and personal
relationships’ (Titmuss, 1970: 226).
At the end of his study of blood donation in a variety of different countries,
Titmuss concludes
that the commercialization of blood and donor relationships represses the expression
of altruism, erodes the sense of community, lowers scientific standards, limits both
personal and professional freedoms, sanctions the making of profits in hospitals and
clinical laboratories, legalizes hostility between doctor and patient, subjects critical
areas of medicine to the laws of the marketplace, places immense social costs on
those least able to bear them – the poor, the sick and the inept – increases the danger
of unethical behaviour in various sectors of medical science and practice, and
results in situations in which proportionately more and more blood is supplied by …
exploited human populations … Redistribution in terms of blood and blood products
from the poor to the rich appears to be one of the dominant effects of the American
blood banking systems. (Titmuss, 1970: 245–6)
While donations might be rather risky as a primary source of resources, that

is no reason to neglect it as a potential secondary source. The blood donated
free of charge by 1.3 million UK residents in their own or their employers’
time (NHS Blood and Transplant, 2023; Titmuss, 1970) is a vital healthcare
resource. Hospitals rely on thousands of volunteers to undertake tasks for
which paid staff are not available (transport, shops, chaplaincy, and much
else), and hospices rely on massive voluntary effort for staffing and fundrais-
ing. It is not easy to calculate the value of this voluntary provision, simply
because it is provided entirely free of charge; but it is clear that the withdrawal
of all of this voluntary effort would impose substantial additional costs on
healthcare providers. So an important question is this: Would this voluntary
effort be provided if the NHS was not a public service free at the point of use?
It is not insignificant that in the USA blood is often paid for.
If in the UK insurance premiums or payment per item were to become the
dominant method for funding healthcare, then there would be no sense in
which society as a whole was providing healthcare for society as a whole, and
companies would be making profits and distributing them to shareholders.

Potential and current volunteers would understand their donation of time and
energy as a cost saving to companies, so they would be more likely to donate
their time and money elsewhere. The fact that healthcare in the UK is provided
free to every legal resident invites a reciprocal response, particularly from
those who have received high-quality, high-cost healthcare free at the point of
need. The massive amount of voluntary activity that the NHS attracts is just
one more reason for providing healthcare unconditionally.
We can conclude that a healthcare service that is unconditional in the sense
of free at the point of need is likely to be economically efficient. This suggests
that healthcare in the UK should remain free at the point of need. The corol-
lary is that primary care should remain the primary rationing mechanism, and
that healthcare planning, NHS funding and the education of future healthcare
professionals should always begin with primary care, and only then move on
to the other parts of the service. The argument as a whole suggests that other
countries should consider establishing healthcare systems that are uncondi-
tional in the sense of free at the point of need, and should ensure that primary
care is at the heart of those systems.
EDUCATION
Healthcare and education are both social policy fields, both are services that
we all need at various times in our lives, both can be provided by the private,
public and voluntary sectors, and populations expect governments to ensure
that both are provided. However, there are some significant differences
between the two. Healthcare can be needed at any point in our lives, it is pro-
vided when we need it and not when we do not, and different individuals can
need very different amounts of it. Education is needed during clearly defined
periods in our lives, during those years constant provision is required, and
at least in principle everyone needs the same amount of education. It would
therefore seem reasonable to expect the levels of healthcare resources provided
to differ between different individuals, sometimes substantially, whereas we
might expect the levels of educational resources provided to different individ-
uals to be broadly similar.
There is a variety of ways of providing education: a market in privately
run schools; such a market accompanied by a system of vouchers, either
means-tested or not; a voluntary system; and a system of publicly funded
education provision to which every child has free access.
98 Unconditional
Market Provision
It would be difficult to claim that a market in privately run schools could

be efficient as an education system. For those who could afford to attend,
the competitive market might indicate cost efficiency, and administrative
efficiency might be achieved, but whether the system would be ethical must
be open to doubt; it certainly would not promote justice, human dignity, or
a cohesive society; and it would lack compassion. No education would be
provided for those who could not afford the fees, and even if poorly funded
charitable schools attempted to fill the gap, the education system would not
be doing what it needed to do. There must even be some doubt as to whether
an effective education could be provided for those who attended the schools.
A school system that excluded large parts of the population would not be an
adequate preparation for life in society. Such a system would be neither uncon-
ditional nor efficient.
Vouchers
But what if every child were to be provided with a voucher of the same value
that they could spend on an education? This would recognize the equal levels
of educational resources that we would expect to be provided for every child,
but would a plethora of private and other providers then be able to deliver an
unconditional and efficient education service?
We shall look first at the option of providing every child with a voucher of
the same value. Schools in poorer areas would need to provide an education at
the cost of the voucher, whereas schools in wealthier areas would be able to ask
parents to top up the voucher and so would be able to provide more teachers,
more resources and a better education. This might be cost efficient, and admin-
istrative efficiency could be achieved, but it would not provide easy access
to a high-quality education for every child, it would not achieve a just and
cohesive society, and it would not promote the dignity of those at the poorer
schools. If just any kind of education were to be acceptable as an outcome
then the system could be regarded as unconditional, but the presupposition
would be difficult to sustain either ethically or democratically; and it would be
far from efficient in terms of enabling society to benefit from the potential of
every one of its citizens. If a high-quality education is the desired outcome then
the system would not be unconditional as a high-quality education would be
conditional on additional funds being available, and it would not be efficient as
some pupils would be able to reach their potential but others would not be able
to do so. Both society and individuals would suffer irreparable loss.
If the vouchers were to be means-tested, then the situation would not in fact
change. Wealthier parents would still be able to buy better educations for their
children, the poor would still receive a poorer education, the poor would suffer
the added indignity of yet another means test (on which see Chapter 4), and
social cohesion would be even further damaged.
None of the education systems that we have discussed so far could be
regarded as unconditional in any sense, and none of them would be efficient.
Voluntary Provision
Moving on from market provision: might voluntary provision work? No:

because education is not like lighthouses. Lighthouses had to be provided
by an independent charitable organization because any ship might need any
lighthouse. A child needs only one school at a time, so it is perfectly possible
for groups of parents to club together to provide a school for their children,
as has happened for many years in relation to Steiner Schools in the UK. The
problem is that the good that is sought is the education of every child, and no
amount of voluntary collective activity could ensure that that could happen.
If there is an obligation on every parent to send their child to school, and
therefore an obligation on the public authorities to provide the schools for
children to attend, then publicly funded public provision will be needed to fill
the gaps left by other initiatives. So looked at from the point of view of society
as a whole, education has to be a public good, and it has to be an unconditional
and universal institution.
Tax-funded Free Education
This leaves just one option to test: publicly provided free education for every
child in the country supplied unconditionally by public authorities and funded
by taxation.
Public education is delivered in the UK in ‘state schools’ (and not in the
bizarrely named ‘public schools’, which are not public). There is now a bewil-
dering variety of kinds of state school: grammar schools, secondary modern
schools, comprehensive schools, academies, free schools, faith schools …,
which makes co-ordinating schools admissions somewhat complicated; but it
remains true that no parent is ever charged for the education of their child, and
every local authority is obliged to find a free school place for every child living
in the authority’s area.
The education of children is a particularly complex matter because it has
both individual and social aspects. In relation to society, the education of all
children is essential if the skills are to be available to ensure that necessary
tasks are carried out, if individuals are to be able to provide for themselves
and their dependents, and if everyone is to learn how to live in a community.
In this respect, education is a public good. It is a social good that society as
100 Unconditional
a whole has to provide. But it is also a private good, as education improves

each individual’s economic and social prospects. A complicating factor is
that different children will be able to operationalize educational resources
to different extents. A child’s own attitude to schoolwork, and their parents’
engagement in their education, are particularly important factors related to
educational outcomes. Also important will be the ability of the family to pay
for school uniforms, school trips and school meals that might be of benefit to
the individual and therefore to their family. Wealthier families will be able to
move into the catchment areas in which schools have higher proportions of
well-motivated children and parents, and will be better able to pay for addi-
tional tutoring, musical instruments and lessons, and so on. A further compli-
cating factor is that schools are all different, and if a school is oversubscribed
then children will find themselves at schools that were not their first choice;
and because there will always be some schools better than others, different
individuals will end up with different levels of private good. Yet another
complication is that every child’s educational needs are different and incom-
mensurable – that is, they cannot be compared with each other along a scale; so
providing an appropriate education for each child will always be an individual
matter, and whether the same level of private good has been provided for two
different children will always be an impossible question to answer. All that can
be attempted is the same level of provision in terms of class size, resources,
teacher to pupil ratio, teacher qualifications, and so on. In such a complex
field it is easy to see how education provision might exacerbate inequality,
injustice and social incohesion; and it would appear that providing parents
with often theoretical choice has reduced rather than increased social mobility
(Beresford, 2016: 284). Because the quality of the education actually received
can depend on the quality of the school, on the quality of parents’ engagement
in their children’s education, on where a child lives, on their gender and
ethnicity, and on a variety of other factors, there are multiple conditionalities
related to a child’s education, so even if education is available free to every
child, and an attempt is made to provide the same level of resources for each
child, the publicly funded education of children will always have a complex
relationship with unconditionality, and perhaps one even more complex than
the relationship between unconditionality and healthcare.
We shall ask the usual questions about efficiency. Is the cost as low as
possible? Wherever competitive markets are absent, cost inefficiencies are
always possible, but the way in which the UK’s government funds education,
by setting a funding level for each pupil and allocating each pupil’s money
to the school that they attend, is probably the best way to ensure value for
money. Competition between schools for pupil admissions then takes the
system as close to a competitive market as it is possible to get in the context of
a public-funded education provided free for every child. Whether this achieves
administrative efficiency is an interesting question. There are administrative

costs to managing a quasi-market, particularly in relation to the administration
of admissions, but it is difficult to see how any other system could deliver
lower administrative costs.
A further question must be whether the activities and outcomes are as ethical
as possible. Potentially, yes: although independent providers, both secular and
religious, pose ethical challenges that would not be present if only local and
national government authorities provided public education.
A similar question is this: Is everyone for whom the institution is designed
able to access its activities? Again potentially, yes, but because the wealthy
have more ability to purchase homes in the catchment areas of better schools,
their children can be at an advantage, and children from poorer households
might not be able to access education of a similar quality. But in principle, yes,
publicly provided education is available to every child.
Does the institution treat people with dignity and compassion? School
admissions policies of any kind can be dehumanizing, and in those parts of the
country that retain a selective secondary school system, and test children at
the age of eleven to decide which kind of school they will go to, it is doubtful
whether those who fail the exam and therefore attend the less good school
are being treated with either dignity or compassion. If such selection were
to end, and the quality of every school were to be the same, then the system
would have done as much as possible to ensure that every pupil is treated with
dignity. Ultimately, treating children with dignity and compassion is down to
the school. Public policy can facilitate such treatment by ensuring that schools
have sufficient human and other resources, but what happens inside the school
is down to the school’s policies and leadership (Bloodworth, 2016: 63–5,
79–93; Craig et al., 2008: 241–3; Dean, 2012a: 46–7; Exley, 2016).
And finally, in this chapter we have distinguished between private and
public provision, but in practice the division can be somewhat blurred. Private
schools benefit from substantial public funding, both because they benefit
from the largely publicly funded training that teachers have received, and in
the UK and elsewhere they benefit from the charitable status granted to private
schools that enables them to claim back the tax that parents have paid on the
income with which they pay the school fees. Conversely, private funding of
the public sector takes the forms of the requirement to buy school uniforms,
parent-funding of school trips, and parent-funding of musical instruments,
music lessons, and so on (Glennerster and Low, 1991).
Whatever the complexities, and however much outcomes diverge from
those intended, publicly provided education that children are obliged to attend
is both a public good and a private good. Anything other than unconditional
provision would be far less of a private good for a high proportion of children,
and would be a lot less of a public good.
102 Unconditional
Private and Faith-based Schools
An education system that both retains and privileges private schools, as the
UK’s system does, is no way to facilitate a just and cohesive society. Private
schools benefit from the wealth and motivation of the parents who decide to
send their children to them – wealth and motivation denied to state schools;
they benefit from teachers whose training has been paid for by taxation and not
by the parents and children who will benefit from their training; they provide
their pupils with influential contacts, internship opportunities, and so on, that
are less likely to be available to pupils at state schools; and they can select their
pupils and so can select out the disruptive children who can make education
difficult for themselves and everyone else. Some of these factors relate to
selective state schools as well as to private schools; for instance, wealthier
parents able to move into the catchment areas of the best schools; individual
tutoring for the eleven plus exam that in some places still selects the brightest
pupils for grammar schools and the best academies, leaving everyone else
with worse schools. What seems scandalous is that private schools are still
permitted to claim that they provide public benefit and can therefore register
as charities and obtain the related tax advantages, when what they actually
achieve is public disbenefit. For every child to attend a state school would do
wonders for a just and cohesive society, but whether in a free society it would
ever be possible or advisable to abolish private education is open to doubt.
Some of these points can also be made in relation to faith schools, that
is, schools, often owned by religious organizations, in which religious and
faith-based organizations can appoint significant numbers of governors,
including the chair, in which the governors can often define admissions poli-
cies, in which the teachers will often be paid by the government, and in which
teachers are required to teach the national curriculum, but in which they are
also permitted to teach the tenets of the faith community to which the school
is attached. Faith schools can deprive state schools of motivated pupils and
their parents, of high-quality teachers, and particularly of qualified religious
education teachers; they can draw motivated parents into their catchment
areas; and they can become enclaves of privilege. In relation to schools owned
by Christian denominations, this is the very opposite of what Jesus of Nazareth
would have wanted of schools named after his movement for an unconditional
Kingdom of God.
The conclusion that we can draw is that a comprehensive non-selective state
system that educated every child in the country would be an unconditional
educational system that would be as efficient as it was possible to get. The
existence of a variety of categories of schools does not necessarily compromise
efficiency, but the faith or other ideological positions of boards of governors
might compromise schools’ ethical efficiency. Perhaps we ought to say that

an unconditional education system is broadly efficient and potentially ethical.
MARKETIZATION
The only way to provide an education system that would enable every child to
meet their potential, and that would promote justice, dignity and social cohe-
sion, is to ensure that education is free and available for every child in a state
community school, that sufficient resources are allocated to schools, and that
every child should be required to attend a state community school and to eat
the lunches provided. This conclusion is particularly important because the
trend in global education policy is towards ‘neoliberalization’, that is, global
processes, often facilitated by such global organizations as the World Bank and
the United Nations, that result in an education market, management techniques
informed by the private sector, and education as a means of creating ‘human
capital’ destined for the market economy: trends salient in countries with both
developing and more developed economies, but with the difference that coun-
tries with less developed economies will often have less developed existing
education systems and so will not be able to exhibit the path dependency that
enables societies with more developed economies to resist neoliberalization, at
least to some extent (Ball et al., 2017; Bieber, 2016: 3, 7; Souto-Otero, 2017).
In the UK, the 1988 Education Act extended the scope of ‘parental choice’
by allowing parents to choose any state school for their children; although
such choice was in practice limited by the availability of places. Subsequent
Conservative and Labour governments have created a quasi-market in edu-
cation by making schools compete for students (Trowler, 2003: 10, 37). One
aspect of the contemporary market in schools in the UK is that schools that are
permitted to select by ability in the school’s specialist subject can advantage
the children whose parents engage with their education – for instance, by
supplying music lessons; and if league tables are published then a school’s
position in the table will attract or dissuade parents, so schools will be
incentivized to exclude more challenging students, again disadvantaging the
already disadvantaged (Trowler, 2003: 41). A particular difficulty relates to
the marketization of examinations. Different exam boards in competition with
each other will encourage schools to choose the provider that publicizes the
best results: but those results might look good because the standard required
to gain each grade might have dropped relative to other exam boards. This is
a recipe for a spiral to the bottom. Research in the USA and the UK into this
and other aspects of the education system has shown that even on their own
terms neoliberal marketization policies applied to education do not generate
the efficiency promised. They have closed achievement gaps only slightly
or not at all; the number of dropouts has increased; and the reforms have
104 Unconditional
improved some standards at the expense of others, or have not improved them
at all (Hursh, 2007; Machin and Vignoles, 2006). The increasing engagement
of economists in education policy might not be having the effect that they
might wish (Machin, 2014).
As we have seen, one important unconditionality is that education should
be free for every child, and another is that every child should receive
a high-quality education. Aspects of the marketization of the relationships
between schools, and between schools and parents, might therefore com-
promise unconditionality, although they might enhance it if they achieve the
objective of a high-quality education for every child. That is an empirical ques-
tion that must be decided empirically. What matters is the unconditionality
experienced by students and their parents, and any marketization aspect in the
education field must serve that essential unconditionality.
The only way to provide acceptable healthcare would be to make all
healthcare free at the point of need and to provide the resources required to
rebuild both primary and secondary care as high-quality public services. The
UK’s NHS, free at the point of need for every legal resident, is as close as any
country has got to this ideal, and it was entirely legitimate for Titmuss to call
it a ‘unique … instrument of social policy’ (Titmuss, 1970: 225). Widespread
free public education up to the age of eighteen is an equally important instru-
ment of social policy. An unconditional income for every adult – a Basic
Income – would be equally free of stigma and shame, and equally efficient in
a variety of respects.
Unconditionality in neither the healthcare nor the educational social policy
fields could ever be complete: the reality will always be somewhere between
a pure public good and a pure private good, and there will always be circum-
stantial conditionalities to be navigated. What we can ask for, and what we can
attempt to achieve, is a trajectory from compromised unconditionality towards
the real unconditionality at one end of the spectrum, which implies a shift away
from market transactions at the other.
SERVICES AND INCOMES
We have discussed unconditionality in social policy in a more general sense;

we have now explored unconditionality in relation to healthcare and education;
and we are about to discuss unconditionality in relation to incomes, which
raises the question as to the substitutability of the different unconditionalities
– a discussion already broached in Chapter 1. We have now discovered that
unpaid contributions to a society’s healthcare in the form of blood donation
ought not to be replaced by a market in blood; public services free at the point
of use cannot be replaced by an unconditional income; and an unconditional
income cannot be replaced by additional public services. The unconditionalities
are all different, and they achieve different objectives: unpaid blood donation
avoids multiple problems related to a market in blood, and it enables donors
to exercise moral responsibility; unconditional public services can provide for
needs when they arise, or can provide for particular needs for particular age
groups; and unconditional incomes can provide a secure ability to purchase
goods and services. Just as proposals are made for Basic Income schemes, so
proposals are made for adding to the list of public services currently provided
unconditionally or close to unconditionally. Some such proposals are for
genuinely unconditional public services, such as extensions of currently free
public transport at certain times of day for individuals over state retirement
age; but care must be taken when reading ‘Universal Basic Services’ proposals
to ensure that what is being proposed is genuinely universal, because a service
is only genuinely universal, in the sense that everybody receives the service, if
it is unconditional. For instance, one proposal for ‘Universal Basic Services’
for the UK is for 1.5 million social housing units at zero rent ‘on a needs basis’,
and another is the provision of one third of the meals needed by the 8 per cent
of households ‘deemed to experience food insecurity each year’. These would
be means-tested services and so would be neither unconditional nor universal.
The same report proposes free public transport and free internet access for
every resident (Portes et al., 2017: 12). These would be unconditional and so
would be genuinely universal. Similarly, free school lunches for every child
would be both unconditional and universal (Coote and Percy, 2000: 51–6,
125–6; Portes et al., 2017; Statham et al., 2022: 4).
It is sometimes suggested that Basic Income and Universal Basic Services
are mutually exclusive social policies (Gough, 2021). They are not. Genuine
unconditional and therefore universal services, and genuine unconditional and
therefore universal incomes, would both offer considerable benefits to society
and the economy, both could reduce poverty (Matsaganis, 2013: 91), and they
would be entirely compatible with each other if a feasible revenue neutral
Basic Income scheme and additional public services that required limited
additional public expenditure were both to be implemented (Percy, 2019: 222;
Portes et al., 2017: 13).
CONCLUSION
Whether in relation to income, healthcare, or education, unconditionality

offers opportunities: to be educated; to work, whether paid or unpaid; to
create a home and a family; and to develop relationships – all of which enable
individuals, families, society and the economy to flourish. Without such
opportunities both society and the economy stagnate, and the result is poverty.
Improvements in healthcare, education and income provision during the past
couple of centuries have given us a world with far more opportunities for far
106 Unconditional
more people than could have been envisaged two hundred years ago. While
a broad diversity of goods and services have made improvements possible, it
is those unconditional goods and services that have made the most significant
difference: unconditional equality before the law, the unconditional franchise,
unconditional public health, unconditional street lighting, unconditional edu-
cation up to the end of secondary school, unconditional healthcare where it
exists, and unconditional child allowances and pensions where those exist.
But why provide healthcare, education and the vote on an unconditional basis,
and not the most basic requirement: an income (Tawney, 1931 [1964]: 86)?
A foundational income might be as necessary to today’s society as equality
before the law (Dahrendorf, 1991). If unconditional education and healthcare
facilitate the opportunities that a civilized society needs, then we can surely
argue that unconditional provision in other social policy fields would have
similar effects and is well worth serious consideration.
6. Some of the arguments for
unconditionality in income
maintenance
INTRODUCTION
Having discussed unconditionality in relation to healthcare and education, we

now turn to unconditional incomes, for which there are so many arguments that
two chapters have had to be given to the subject. In order to provide context,
this first chapter begins with a discussion of the constituents of government
income maintenance systems in countries with more developed economies.
Then will follow application to income maintenance of the argument against
means-tests discussed in Chapter 4, followed by further arguments related to
employment and the economy. The following chapter will explore arguments
for unconditional incomes related to the changing nature of our society.
Both of the chapters will follow the convention that particular existing taxes
and benefits will be capitalized, as will proposed taxes and benefits that have
clear and generally accepted definitions, whereas more general descriptions of
taxes and benefits will not be capitalized. So, for instance, ‘income tax’ means
any tax on income, whereas ‘Income Tax’ might mean the UK’s or some
other country’s legislated and implemented income tax; and ‘housing benefit’
might mean any benefit paid to people because they cannot afford their living
accommodation, whereas ‘Housing Benefit’ might mean the UK’s legislated
and implemented housing benefit. In this and the subsequent chapter ‘uncon-
ditional income’ and ‘Basic Income’ will be used interchangeably, because
a Basic Income is an unconditional income and an unconditional income is
a Basic Income.
THE CONSTITUENTS OF BENEFITS AND TAX

SYSTEMS, AND THE UK AS AN EXAMPLE
In countries with more developed economies, benefits systems tend to be made

up of three elements: means-tested benefits, social insurance benefits and
unconditional benefits, often called universal benefits.
107
108 Unconditional
There are three main kinds of means-tested benefits: ‘out-of-work’ benefits,

given to adults of working age who are not in employment because they cannot
find work, they have caring responsibilities, or they are sick or disabled;
‘in-work’ benefits, given to adults of working age who are in employment
but whose wages are regarded as insufficient to maintain a decent standard of
living; and a means-tested benefit that is both in-work and out-of-work, such as
the UK’s ‘Universal Credit’: a relatively new combined means-tested benefit.
Means-tested out-of-work benefits are normally allocated to households rather
than to individuals, and the amount received will generally be conditional
on the structure of the household, its wealth and income, and whether its
working-age adults are participating in such employment-seeking behaviour as
job search and skills training. An in-work means-tested benefit will be similar
except that it might be conditional on working-age adults seeking additional or
better paid employment.
A social insurance benefit is paid on the basis of contributions paid into
a fund by someone employed and/or by their employer, or by someone
self-employed. Usually the longer the contribution record, or the more money
that has been paid into the fund, the higher the benefit. Social insurance bene-
fits will be managed by the State, by trades unions, by employers, by voluntary
agencies, or by a combination of those. Benefits are paid out when a relevant
contingency applies, such as unemployment, sickness, or old age. Benefits are
generally time-limited, but they are usually not means-tested. UK examples of
social insurance benefits are the Basic State Pension and Contribution-based
Jobseeker’s Allowance. If unemployment continues beyond six months then
the means-tested Universal Credit is paid instead. Some social insurance
systems, such as the UK’s, bear little relation to normal insurance theory and
practice.
An unconditional benefit is paid to people in a particular age group without
means-test and without contribution conditions having to be satisfied. Such
benefits are by definition universal (Chapter 1). A UK example is Child
Benefit which, following a residency test, is paid for every child living in the
UK. A different amount is received for the first child of each family than for
the second and subsequent children, but the same amount is paid for every first
child, whatever their parents’ income, wealth, employment status, household
structure, or anything else, and similarly for every second and subsequent
child.
Most tax systems are based on a progressive income tax. Except for those
few cases where tax is charged on the first pound, dollar, or Euro, as in New
Zealand, each individual or household is allocated a personal (or household)
tax allowance, and earnings up to the allowance are not taxed. Beyond the
allowance, earned and other income is taxed, often with different rates applied
to different income levels. So someone earning a high income will usually not
Some of the arguments for unconditionality in income maintenance 109
be taxed up to their tax allowance, then on the next band of income they will
be charged a lower rate, and then on subsequent bands the rates will rise. The
UK’s Income Tax operates in this way and is applied to individuals and not to
households.
Social insurance contributions will often be levied alongside income tax,
either by the State or by an industry body, an employer, or a trade union. In the
UK, National Insurance Contributions are paid to the State alongside Income
Tax. Up to an initial threshold no contributions are collected. After this point
they are collected at 12 per cent of earned income (but not on other income) up
to an Upper Earnings Limit, and beyond that they are collected at 2 per cent of
earned income. The system is not progressive, that is, the rate of contribution
falls rather than rises as earned income increases (Torry, 2015b: xv–xvi; 2023:
xiii–xv).
UNCONDITIONALITY RATHER THAN MEANS TESTS
In Chapter 4 we recognized that means-testing can be intrusive, stigmatizing,

shame-inducing, error- and fraud-prone, non-transparent, and much else.
When I worked in Brixton’s Supplementary Benefit office nearly fifty
years ago I was horrified that so much time and energy was spent tracking
down fraud and prosecuting claimants. People who were earning often small
amounts of money for occasional casual work on market stalls were prosecuted
for claiming means-tested benefits; evidence was collected, sometimes surrep-
titiously, and often from informants, on claimants living at the same address so
that they could be prosecuted for not declaring that they were living together
as husband and wife; and families were prosecuted for taking a lodger and
not declaring the income. All they were trying to do was to provide for their
families. They knew that to have declared their occasional earnings would
have resulted in benefits payments ceasing while they were recalculated, and
then restarted at an unpredictable level. They were acting illegally, but they
were acting rationally, which means that the problem was the benefits system
(Jordan et al., 1992): a system that in all essentials is still the same today as
it was then. In the UK, 7.7 million households were claiming means-tested
benefits in December 2022 (Department for Work and Pensions, 2023), and all
of them were suffering the consequences.
The arguments that we have offered in Chapter 4 against means-testing are
of course arguments for an unconditional income, paid equally to everybody
of the same age. With a Basic Income there would be nothing to be fraudulent
about. People could earn what they liked, live with whom they liked, own what
they liked, and have whatever employment status they wished, and nobody
would need to know, so nobody would need to ask, because every individual
would be paid exactly the same whatever their circumstances. The only fraud
110 Unconditional
possible would relate to individuals claiming multiple identities, which is

already a problem and not a new one related to Basic Income. Because fewer
people would be on means-tested benefits the overall level of fraud would fall,
so the level of criminalization would fall as well. It would become virtuous
rather than criminal to earn an income while receiving a Basic Income; it
would not be necessary to declare the letting of a room (except for tax purposes
if the rent was over a statutory threshold); and it would no longer be neces-
sary to declare who you were living with. Such non-reporting would still be
crimes in relation to any remaining means-tested benefits, which would be an
additional incentive for households brought close to coming off means-tested
benefits by their Basic Incomes to come off them. Regulations that criminalize
what most members of a community would regard as rational brings the law
into disrepute, so means-tested benefits bring the law into disrepute: whereas
to legislate for a Basic Income would enhance the status of the law. When we
implement a Basic Income, and experience significant reductions in fraud and
criminalization, we shall wonder why it took so long to pay an income that
reflects the moral sense of the community.
Just as means-tested benefits make fraud possible, so they exhibit high error
rates, whereas both fraud and error are non-existent in relation to citizen’s
pensions and unconditional child allowances. It would be impossible to make
an error in the calculation of someone’s Basic Income, as the amount that they
were to be paid would be determined entirely by their date of birth (Baillie,
2011: 67–70; Dean, 2012a: 106–8; Jordan et al., 1992: 277; Noteboom 1987,
[2013]; Torry, 2013: 22–5, 93–6; 2020a: 185–7; 2023: 268–9).
A Basic Income is as close as it would be possible to get in social policy to
the pure gift declared impossible by Derrida (1992a). A good example is the
UK’s Child Benefit (Baumberg et al., 2013: 4, 11; Larsen, 2006: 141), paid
equally to every family with the same number of children, whatever their
incomes, household structure, or employment status. No stigma is attached
to Child Benefit simply because everyone with the same number of children
receives the same amount of money every month. Contrary to popular opinion,
the UK’s Child Benefit has never been means-tested.
Interestingly, as well as exemplifying some of the clear advantages of
unconditional incomes, Child Benefit also offers a salutary example of what
we might call a proxy conditionality. In 2010 a proposal was made at the
Conservative Party’s annual conference to withdraw Child Benefit from
parents in wealthy households, but this was never going to be possible without
setting up an entirely new means-testing bureaucracy. Instead, additional
Income Tax is charged to higher rate taxpayers who declare themselves to be
living in households that receive Child Benefit. The UK now has an uncondi-
tional Child Benefit and a tax on children, and significant new injustices have
been the result. A household containing a member with a very high income
might pay half of the tax charge payable by a household containing two
members earning far less; and particularly where high-earning male partners
are living with mothers who receive Child Benefit for children of whom the
male partner is not the father, mothers are withdrawing their Child Benefit
claims to avoid the partner having to pay the tax charge. A new gender injus-
tice has been created (Torry, 2018a: 19–20).
However unfortunate the new UK tax charge on children might be, it rep-
resents the kind of connection between tax and benefits systems that we shall
need if a Basic Income is to be implemented. It is certainly true, as objectors
to Basic Income might claim (Chapter 7), that if the poor need money then we
need to target money on the poor. This is intuitive; and the intuitive mechanism
for achieving such targeting is means-tested benefits. But we can also target
money on the poor by paying everyone an unconditional income and then
increasing the taxes paid by the non-poor. Means-tested benefits require us
to define ‘the poor’, and because the benefits are withdrawn as other income
rises, they keep people poor. This kind of targeting will struggle to reduce the
number of poor households. A Basic Income would require no definition of the
poor, and it would play no role in keeping poor people poor. There is nothing
wrong with targeting, but there is a lot wrong with the way that we do it today.
A Basic Income would do it better.
WORK
Our lives are substantially defined by the work that we do: both paid work and
work caring for dependents, the environment and the communities in which we
live. Here we shall study a variety of aspects of paid work and unpaid work that
would be affected by the implementation of an unconditional income.
Income Stability
In Chapter 4 we argued that social policy characterized by unconditionality

can increase household, economic and social stability during times of change,
and in that context have argued that a Basic Income can make non-exploitative
zero-hour contracts useful for employees as well as for employers. Any cal-
culation of means-tested benefits takes into account earned income from any
source, so the amounts paid have to be adjusted whenever change of any kind
takes place in the total earned income of a household. This makes zero-hour
contracts, casual earnings, self-employed earnings and varying employment
earned income administratively problematic, with the result that a household
can find itself without benefits income when they need it, with overpayments
that have to be paid back, or with less income than they need. Automatic
real-time adjustments in benefits income consequent upon automatic employer
112 Unconditional
declaration of someone’s real-time earned income might look like a solution to

this problem, but it only works if employers report earned income to a govern-
ment agency accurately and on time, and if an individual has a single long-term
employment. More than one employment, or additional casual earned income,
can cause complexity and inaccuracy. None of these problems afflict uncon-
ditional incomes, which makes a layer of such income highly appropriate for
today’s employment market. While contributory and means-tested benefits
systems can slowly adapt to some employment market change, legislative,
regulatory and administrative change is inevitably slow and so will always
lag behind what the employment market of the time requires. Only an uncon-
ditional income would be appropriate to any future employment market con-
figuration because it would provide an income floor on which could be built
income-generating activity of a variety of kinds: zero-hour contracts, fledgling
businesses, self-employment, co-operatives, casual earnings, and continuing
means-tested benefits if required – none of which would alter the stability
provided by the unconditional income (Carmen, 2000).
While in countries with more developed economies most jobs are still full
time and permanent, employment market flexibility is an important social
fact that affects an increasing number of occupations, one of the more recent
being university lecturers who are now more likely to be employed per module
rather than on full-time and permanent contracts (University and College
Union, 2021). Own-account income-generating activity is often a personal
choice, as are job-shares: changes that occur in spite of rigid tax and benefits
systems that discourage part-time work and self-employment. For there to be
even more flexibility would benefit families with children as long as there
was at least some level of totally secure income on the basis of which flex-
ible income-generating activity could take place. If the Basic Income along
with diverse flexible income generation were able to take a household off
means-tested benefits, then any additional income generation would substan-
tially increase net disposable income, which would enable yet more flexibility.
Both employers and employees need both security and flexibility: ‘flexicu-
rity’. Employers need a supply of labour that reliably matches their need of
it when they need it and not otherwise, and employees need a secure income,
and employment sufficiently flexible to enable them to meet their other needs,
such as time for their children and other dependents. Where all sources of
income are insecure, the flexible employment market that many industries
need imposes flexibility without security on employees; and by making prob-
lematic the transitions between employment and unemployment, between one
job and another, and between one employment status and another, our often
rather rigid tax and benefits systems prevent the flexibility that manufacturing,
service industries and public services require. In the absence of a secure income
layer, governments will either enhance the worker’s security by reducing the
employment flexibility that industries need, or promote a flexible employment

market to the detriment of workers’ income security. What is clearly required
is a secure layer of income that would begin the transition towards flexicurity
for both employer and employee (Gilbert et al., 2019: 56–7; Goodin, 1992;
Huws, 1997: 50; Torry, 2016b: 13–15; Tros and Wilthagen, 2013).
A further consequence of an unconditional income is that the larger it
could be, the closer would the employment market be to the kind of classical
efficient employment market envisaged by economic theory. The implemen-
tation of national minimum wages is a recognition that for most households
employment income needs to be sufficient for subsistence, that is, that there is
a ‘reserve’ wage level that has to be paid before the worker can accept the job.
This introduces inefficiency into the employment market. The economic value
of a particular employment might be lower than the reserve wage, so either
automation of the task will add to unemployment, or the industry will have
to absorb the higher cost of the employment to the detriment of its efficiency.
If a Basic Income were to provide sufficient of a household’s subsistence
income for them to be able to take or leave employment at any wage level
that happened to be offered, then first of all the worker would be able to exit
employment – an example of republican freedom: the freedom not to be dom-
inated (Birnbaum, 2019: 516–20; Widerquist, 2013) – and at the same time
the employment market would be efficient for both employer and employee,
labour supply would match labour demand, and the wage paid could match the
economic value that the worker would contribute. If the unconditional layer of
income were to be less substantial, then there would be less of an ‘exit’ option
(Birnbaum and De Wispelaere, 2016) and a national minimum wage might still
be required, but the employment market would still be more efficient than it
would have been in the absence of the unconditional income. Industry would
still be closer to getting the labour that it needed, and households would be
closer to receiving both the income that they needed and the employment that
they wanted.
One reason for implementing a national minimum wage is to ensure that
workers receive sufficient to live on without the government finding large pro-
portions of the population on means-tested benefits, another is to set a floor to
wages in order to ensure that bad employers cannot experience a competitive
advantage, and yet another is that a national minimum wage encourages com-
panies and other employers to make the most of expensive labour by training
workers properly and by ensuring that production processes are efficient.
Because staff turnover is expensive, and a higher wage will help an organi-
zation to retain staff, a national minimum wage can improve the efficiency of
both industry and public services. A significant problem is that in a context of
ubiquitous means-tested benefits, a national minimum wage is often of little
use to low-earning households: not because there is anything wrong with the
114 Unconditional
national minimum wage, but because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits

means that the household will see little improvement in its disposable income.
All that needs to be said here is that in the context of a smaller Basic Income
a national minimum wage would still be required, that the national minimum
wage and a Basic Income would work very happily together, and that the
desirability, feasibility and implementation of a national minimum wage is
a separate argument from that of the desirability, feasibility and implementa-
tion of a Basic Income (Edwards and Gilman, 1998; Pond and Winyard, 1983;
Torry, 2016a: 209–11).
An Unconditional Income Would Reduce Unemployment
A job offers all kinds of benefits. It provides social contact, a role in life,
a necessary change from close family contact, an income, the ability to provide
for oneself and for a family, the fulfilment of our need to work, and a status in
society. To lose a job is to lose more than an income, and the household might
find itself with a new social dynamic that it cannot handle. The social damage,
to children as well as to the parents, can be enormous. By creating more oppor-
tunities for people to earn their way out of poverty through self-employment
or part-time employment, a Basic Income would reduce the number of those
who wanted paid work and could not obtain it; it would provide continuity
between employment and unemployment, thus minimizing disruption to the
household’s income; it would offer a social cohesion that would blunt the
isolation that unemployment can tip a household into; and, unlike means-tested
benefits, it would invite people to re-enter the employment market in a wide
variety of ways, thus reducing the frustration felt by people who send multiple
job applications to which they receive no responses. For a post to be made
redundant and for the postholder to lose their job will always be traumatic,
but a Basic Income would reduce the salience of the ‘unemployed’ label, and
would provide multiple ways into new economic activity (Gilbert et al., 2019:
47–59).
And perhaps we should question whether reducing unemployment really
should be a priority. We need the economy to provide everyone with the goods
and services that they need, not to provide everyone with a job. So what is
required is a subsistence income, and the ability to earn additional income if
we wish. We only assume that everyone needs a job because that is currently
the default method for providing an income with which to purchase goods and
services. With an unconditional layer of income we would begin to discover
both what mixture of paid and unpaid work people want, and what mixture
of paid and unpaid work society needs. We might find that most people want
a part-time job and the opportunity to do unpaid work of various kinds, and if
we did find that then we might find the money economy contracting and the
voluntary and non-money economy of unpaid work expanding. Partially to

break the link between income and paid work would offer and validate new
ways to create and distribute goods, services, income and wealth, to the benefit
of the planet’s health (Callinicos, 2003: 134; Dean, 2012a: 125–6).
Wage Levels
One of the interesting things about an unconditional income is that it could

apply pressure to wage levels in two different directions. The additional finan-
cial security that it would offer to workers could enable them to decline job
offers if the wages were below what they believed their labour was worth, so
wages would have to rise to attract workers into employment; but on the other
hand, the existence of the secure layer of income might mean that the wage
would not have to provide the whole of someone’s subsistence income, so
wages lower than the reserve wage could be accepted. One possibility is that
the former pressure would be greater in relation to low-paid jobs with little
inherent job satisfaction, and the former in relation to more desirable jobs.
A complexity is that the unconditional income would be implemented in the
context of an existing complicated tax and benefits system, so several changes
would occur at the same time: the Basic Income; changes to income taxation;
and changes to means-tested benefits. The overall effect could be different
for every worker, with the structure of their household always a significant
factor. A complex pattern of pressures on wage levels would be inevitable, to
which the only response is that we shall have to implement a Basic Income
and then see what happens. What we do know is that any household taken
off means-tested benefits by their Basic Incomes would no longer experience
the demotivating effects of coercive work tests, so yet again an unconditional
income would shift the employment market closer to a classical free market
in which price – in this case the wage level – would match supply to demand.
This is another reason for thinking that wages might rise for lousy jobs and
might fall for good jobs. However, given the complexity of the situation, the
precautionary principle suggests that the best approach would be to start with
a relatively small Basic Income, or perhaps a Basic Income for a single age
group, and then increase it or extend it while keeping an eye on wage levels,
employment motivation, and other relevant factors (Gilbert et al., 2019: 57–9;
Torry, 2013: 49–50; 2023: 252).
Whether wages would increase or decrease is a particularly significant ques-
tion in relation to the current general downward pressure on wages caused by
globalization and automation. Most countries’ economies are now open to the
rest of the world, so manufacturing production can move from one country to
another, and understandably often to countries with lower wage levels, with the
inevitable effect that wages fall everywhere. Whereas during the mid-twentieth
116 Unconditional
century large-scale manufacturing concerns could be forced by trades unions

able to bring entire workforces out on strike to pay significant proportions
of the proceeds of production in wages, such strikes today are more likely to
result in jobs moving elsewhere in the world. The only exceptions relate to jobs
that cannot move, such as train drivers, which is why most of the strikes that
we see today are among such workers, and why only those workers are capable
of maintaining high wage levels. Because statutory minimum wages have to
operate in a global context, they are set at levels low enough to avoid signifi-
cant job loss rather than high enough to provide an adequate standard of living,
and only employers whose jobs cannot be located abroad, such as those that
employ retail and cleaning staff, can opt for a higher ‘living’ wage: a luxury
that employers whose jobs can move abroad cannot allow themselves (Torry,
2016a: 212–14). (This book might have been expertly copyedited and typeset
in the UK, where it was written, but some of my others have been typeset in
India, precisely because that is where an adequate level of competence can be
obtained at the lowest price.)
Automation can have the same effect as globalization. If a job can be auto-
mated, then low wages might mean that the task will continue to be carried out
manually, whereas higher wages would make it cheaper for the company to
automate the process. The free movement of labour within the European Union
brought workers willing to accept low wages from Eastern Europe to the UK,
so the early automation of car-washing stalled in favour of efficient teams of
workers washing cars at reasonable prices. When the UK left the European
Union that low-wage labour supply dried up, so we now see fewer workers
washing cars and more automatic carwashes. Anyone who now wishes to be
employed as a car washer will have to be content with a wage level below the
rate at which automation would be cheaper. The UK is a special case in the
sense that it has self-defeatingly restricted its supply of labour, which has meant
labour shortages in hospitality and other industries, and an increased tendency
towards automation where that is feasible (some London railway stations are
now cleaned by robots): a process that restricts even further the proportion of
the proceeds of production destined for consumption and increases the propor-
tion destined for dividends and increased share values received by the already
wealthy. Globally, the result is declining disposable incomes, an increase in
demand for in-work and out-of-work means-tested benefits, and the reduction
of the level of those benefits to protect government revenue. A further result is
people working longer hours to the detriment of their children and themselves
(Gilbert et al., 2019: 48–51; Working Families, 2018).
This situation makes it even more important that any increase in earned
income should translate into an increase in disposable income, which, as we
have already seen, requires an unconditional income that will not be withdrawn
as earned income rises. Another reason for wanting to see means-tested benefit
claims reduced by an unconditional income is that means-tested benefits pose

a direct threat to wage levels. If an employer reduces wages, or reduces real
wages by not granting wage rises that match inflation, then means-tested
benefits will increase to partially fill the gap. This is an encouragement to
reduce wage levels. An unconditional income, on the other hand, would not
increase if wages or real wages were to fall. Both an unconditional income
and means-tested benefits function as subsidies to wages, but means-tested
benefits act as a dynamic subsidy, whereas an unconditional income would be
a static subsidy and so would offer no incentive to an employer to cut wages
or the real value of wages.
We need a tax and benefits system that would enable households to increase
their disposable incomes if they were able to achieve increases in their earned
incomes, and which would provide a secure layer of income on which to build.
No current systems can do this. A Basic Income would, so it would be the
ideal anchor for a tax and benefits system appropriate to an automating and
globalizing world.
Employment Incentives
Poor-quality employment and high marginal deduction rates – the combined

effect of income tax and the withdrawal of means-tested benefits – are seriously
demotivating, the evidence for this being the empirical effects on employment
hours of altering marginal deduction rates (Atkinson and Mogensen, 1993:
191; Crossley and Jeon, 2007; Emmerson et al., 2014: 161; Gilbert et al., 2019:
66; Michaud and van Soest, 2008) and the onerous and coercive work tests
routinely attached to means-tested benefits (Patrick, 2017: 123–44; Welfare
Reform Team, 2016: 51). Particularly demotivating is the complexity of bene-
fits systems which makes it irrational for someone to change their employment
market status because they might end up without an income if they do. All
of this seriously skews the employment market, impoverishing both workers
and the economy. The problem is that all of these inefficiencies fit together.
High marginal deduction rates and benefits system complexity are demotivat-
ing, so coercion is required to push unemployed workers into employment,
meaning that in order to abolish the work tests both complexity and marginal
deduction rates would have to be reduced. In a developed economy such
as the UK, it would not be possible to abolish means-tested benefits on the
implementation of a Basic Income because to do so would tip too many poor
households into poverty. However, a Basic Income could take a lot of house-
holds off means-tested benefits, and could bring even more of them within
striking distance of coming off them, making it possible for them to escape
from means-testing by adding new or additional employment of a few hours
per week (Torry, 2022b). For each of those households both complexity and
118 Unconditional
marginal deduction rates would be reduced, resulting in a significant increase

in employment motivation.
If work tests and their related sanctions were to be abolished then central
government agencies would no longer need to collect job vacancies and force
claimants to apply for them. A variety of public, voluntary and private sector
agencies already provide skills training and match applicants to available jobs.
This works, and none of it needs work tests to make it happen. Abandoning
the work tests and the accompanying sanctions would make redundant a vast
amount of bureaucracy, and would save public money that could be recycled
into Basic Incomes.
Similarly redundant would be workfare and job guarantee schemes. Work
tests, that require benefits claimants to show evidence of seeking employment,
can easily evolve into ‘workfare’, sometimes called ‘work experience’: claim-
ants having to work for companies for nothing before they can receive their
benefits. A similar concept is the ‘job guarantee’: jobs created by governments
that claimants have to accept. This is the route that the French non-contributory
unemployment benefit has taken: from the Revenu Minimum D’Insertion
(RMI), to the Revenu Minimum D’Activité (RMA), to the Contrat Unique
D’Insertion – Contrat Initiative-Emploi (CUI–CIE).
The employment market is necessarily at its most efficient when it expe-
riences no external interference, that is, when employers offer employment,
workers seek employment, and a free market matches supply and demand
through advertisements and employment agencies. Work tests, workfare and
job guarantees make the market less efficient, and all of them require supervi-
sion and the administration of both the schemes themselves and the inevitable
sanctions. Workfare and a job guarantee are particularly inefficient because
they create alternative economies of the kind now abandoned by Russia
and Eastern Europe because of their chronic inefficiencies (Dean, 2012a:
51; Henderson and Quiggin, 2019: 501–4; Leff et al., 2019: 222–5; Welfare
Reform Team, 2016). It is odd that governments ideologically committed to
the free market will often impose serious inefficiencies on the employment
market. To implement a Basic Income would shift the employment market
closer to being an efficient free market, and would reduce the felt need for
work tests, workfare and job guarantees, which would shift the employment
market even closer to efficiency.
The inefficiency of work tests, workfare and a job guarantee imply that there
must be a reason for implementing them, and that reason can only be psycho-
logical. If someone receives something that we do not receive then we expect
them to have to have worked for it. However, if all of us received the same
unconditional income then the psychological reason for work tests, workfare
and a job guarantee would evaporate, and we would be content that someone
might choose to live on their small Basic Income without being in employment
because we would have the ability either to do the same or to earn additional
income in employment or self-employment. Psychology and economic effi-
ciency would be perfectly aligned.
We must here mention again a necessary complexity: an unconditional
income would have two opposing effects on employment motivation; it would
provide a secure layer of income that might mean that some workers would
seek fewer hours of paid employment; and it would reduce the marginal
deduction rate for any household taken off means-tested benefits, and so
would increase the incentive to earn additional income. With a lower Basic
Income, the latter effect would be stronger, and with a higher Basic Income, it
would be the former. However, given the non-financial advantages that paid
employment offers – a social network, social status, an occupation in which
to progress, and so on – any disincentive effects of a secure layer of income
might be minimal, and the increased motivation resulting from lower mar-
ginal deduction rates would add to existing motivational factors. The obvious
response to this complexity is to implement a low Basic Income and then
slowly increase it until employment incentive begins to decline (Gilbert et al.,
2019: 59–68; Torry, 2020a: 77–9).
Flexible Employment Patterns
For thirty-four years I worked full time in the Church of England’s ministry
in wonderfully interesting parishes in South London. Five times I was granted
periods of study leave of varying lengths so that I could write articles and
books on metaphysics, the Basic Income debate, workplace chaplaincy, and
the management of religious and faith-based organizations. Early retirement
from the full-time ministry enabled me to spend time on research at the
London School of Economics and on being Director of the Citizen’s Income
Trust and General Manager and then treasurer of the Basic Income Earth
Network (BIEN): voluntary tasks that for twenty years I had been able to fit
in around work in the parish. And now I have returned to part-time voluntary
ministry in the City of London, and I am still writing books about philosophy
and social policy. All of this has been a huge privilege. I am conscious that
too few people have the opportunity for such diverse and fulfilling work, and
that far too few have the opportunity to take sabbaticals – periods of time for
education, creativity and new tasks – either because their employment does
not allow for it or because giving up employment in order to take a sabbatical
would result in a substantial loss of income.
An unconditional income instead of personal tax allowances and
means-tested benefits would reduce the loss of income on taking unpaid leave
from employment, meaning that taking periods out of paid employment would
become more of a possibility. We would be better educated and better trained,
120 Unconditional
and more able to plan for the changes in careers and occupations that a chang-
ing economy will require. Adding additional unconditional public services
would make that even more possible. Grants and sponsorship would continue
to be important ways of financing further education and training, but a Basic
Income would contribute to the process both financially and psychologically:
financially, by providing a continuing income, and psychologically, because
a Basic Income would be a statement by society that financial support is a gift
as well as something that we earn. The change in mindset would be as impor-
tant as the continuing income in enabling many of us to think about seeking
new experiences and new intellectual activity.
To be able to plan when to be employed full time and when part time,
when to choose a period for further education, and when to take time out of
employment to look after children or elderly relatives, would enable all of us
to create our own life-plans, and would result in more fulfilled individuals, and
in a society and an economy more able to adapt as the world changes around
us (Huws, 1997; Torry, 2015b: 30).
ENTERPRISE
One of the most significant outcomes of a Basic Income pilot project in

Namibia in 2011 is that economic activity among the families with the lowest
disposable incomes increased by 200 per cent, not counting the Basic Income
itself. The small secure income had made risk-taking possible (Haarmann et
al., 2019). If disposable income is constituted by a low wage and means-tested
benefits then it is difficult to take risks, particularly if small casual earned
incomes can reduce means-tested benefits or stop them completely. So much
potential for enterprise is being wasted. A Basic Income would enable some
workers to seek part-time rather than full-time employment so that they could
pursue a new creative career that would never generate sufficient income
to make leaving paid employment feasible; others might pool their skills
and resources to found a co-operative enterprise; or someone unemployed
might seek a few hours of paid employment each week, and if their Basic
Income took them off means-tested benefits then they would no longer have
to report their new income to the benefits office, and no longer would job
search requirements distract attention from a new business. The changes that
might be facilitated by a small Basic Income might not be in the employment
field. For instance, someone might reduce their employment hours in order to
concentrate on unpaid artistic activity – which might then become paid artistic
activity. Precisely what new enterprise would emerge will only be discovered
when a Basic Income is implemented.
Few businesses make a profit in the early stages, and many businesses
never make enough money to live on. Village shops are essential to the life
of a community but are often run by recently retired people or by the partners
of full-time earners because there is no possibility of the business generating
a sufficient salary. A Basic Income would make it easier to run such busi-
nesses, and would encourage more of them, which would enrich both the
communities that they serve and the people running them.
Economies need new businesses, but there are often just too many barri-
ers, financial and otherwise, to founding them. We need new writers, new
publishers, new artists, new musicians: all activities that might generate only
occasional income. A Basic Income could make such activity so much easier
to contemplate.
TRAINING AND EDUCATION
For a healthy society we need people to be well educated, and for a healthy
economy we need people with the requisite skills. These needs are generally
satisfied by a wide variety of institutions and funding methods. However,
course fees and loss of earnings can be significant disincentives, so people
fail to reach their potential as educated members of society and well-trained
participants in the economy. Not only do individuals not reach their full poten-
tial, but society and the economy are deprived of the education and skills from
which they might have benefited. A particularly serious problem is that where
loans have to be taken out to fund education or skills training, the result can be
a debilitating amount of unrepayable debt.
A Basic Income would not completely solve the funding dilemma, but it
would provide at least a basis on which to build other sources of income.
Means-tested benefits often cease during periods of training and education
because the worker is no longer available for employment, and either earned
income ceases as well, or the student or trainee tries to fit their studies around
part-time employment, which means that their learning suffers. A Basic
Income would never cease to be paid, and so would incentivize both part-time
and full-time education and training both after school and throughout the
working life and beyond, and would also mean that funding options would be
less of a factor when choices were being made about which courses to under-
take. For many young adults, a Basic Income alongside part-time education
and part-time employment would enable education and training to take place
without amassing significant amounts of debt. The same could be true of adults
later in life as they sought the education and skills to enable them to participate
fully in a changing society and a changing economy. The University of the
Third Age offers an example of teaching and learning by people living on the
unconditional incomes constituted by their pensions. A Basic Income would
make it much easier for people earlier in life both to learn new subjects and
122 Unconditional
new skills, and to teach new subjects and new skills, to the benefit of the indi-
vidual learners, of the teachers, and of society generally.
THE ECONOMY IS A MACHINE
The more manufacturing and service industries are automated, the less do the
proceeds of production find their way into the pockets of workers, and the
more they find their way into the bank balances of wealthy transnational com-
panies (Piketty, 2014: 353). The consequences are that people no longer have
sufficient income to pay for the products and services that industry produces,
and so they go into debt in order to obtain them: hence, the occasional financial
crisis.
When an engineer sees that a machine is not working efficiently they natu-
rally seek ways to solve the problem and optimize the machine’s performance.
The economy is a machine, so it is no surprise that a string of engineers and
scientists have suggested ways of fixing it (Douglas, 1933: 185–7; Duboin,
1932; 1939; 1946: 203–10; Lambert, 1998; Roberts, 1983). An obvious
solution to the problem of insufficient spending power going to consumers
is to pay a Basic Income to fill the gap between disposable income and the
total price of all goods and services, and to fund the Basic Income by taxing
the profits of transnational companies. The companies should not object to
this means of maintaining demand for their products. Whether we should
be attempting to maintain demand in the economy in this way is of course
an interesting question in a context in which increasing economic activity
produces additional carbon emissions with the now well-understood dire
consequences. The obvious response to this problem is that a carbon tax would
discourage carbon emissions, and a Basic Income funded by the revenue from
the tax would protect the disposable incomes that would otherwise be reduced
by the new taxation (Howard et al., 2019: 121–2).
There is no point in pretending that the world is not changing, and equally
there is no point in thinking that we can return the world to a former state,
which would probably not have been as desirable as we might think it to have
been. The only direction is forwards into a new and complex world: a journey
that could be both desirable and feasible if we were to provide sufficient
financial, social and other infrastructure to enable us to weather the inevitable
uncertainties and surprises. A Basic Income, and such other unconditional
provision as a healthcare service free at the point of need, would be precisely
what was needed to enable us to survive the social and economic turbulence
and to thrive and innovate in every new context.
On the basis of the last few sections of this chapter we can legitimately
claim that a Basic Income would deliver a more efficient employment market.
Employment supply would slowly adjust to match demand; wages would
increase for less desirable jobs, and maybe decrease for more desirable
jobs; hours offered would adjust, perhaps towards fewer full-time jobs and
more part-time ones. Skills levels would increase and would bring employ-
ment into the country, and job quality would rise. Those who wanted to be
self-employed, to start a new business, or to undertake creative activity that
might eventually generate an income would be able to live their dreams; and
those who wanted secure full-time employment would be able to find that. An
efficient employment market would be good for everybody.
Adult education teachers are some of the earliest to have experienced
precarity as most of them have always been paid by the session. Payment per
session or per module is now increasingly common among university teachers,
and short-term contracts are now common among researchers, resulting in
anxiety, less ability to progress in their careers, and teachers and researchers
leaving academia for more secure employment. A Basic Income would serve
this sector of the precariat as well as it would serve any other part of it by pro-
viding a solid base on which to build a variety of income-generating activities.
The income security gap between short-term part-time contracts and perma-
nent full-time employment would be less than it was, so fewer researchers and
teachers would leave and many would find the flexicurity creative (University
and College Union, 2021).
The image of the economy as a machine raises the question of its adaptation
as needs and circumstances change. Steam engines are no longer the default
means of transport because technology has evolved. The economy evolves as
well. For instance, credit cards now enable us to create our own credit during
the gap between expenditure on goods and services and settling the credit
card bill from our current account, at no cost to us if the bill is settled in full
each month. However, new technology always comes with its own problems,
and new financial technology does too: unmanageable credit card debt can
be debilitating. In a broader context, algorithms trading in shares can cause
irrational stock market crashes; and uncontrolled lending by banks can cause
financial crises.
But new technology can offer significant public benefit, and new financial
infrastructure can do the same. Experiments with unconditional incomes paid
in new local currencies in Brazil and Korea have registered positive results,
so the mechanism might spread (Bollain et al., 2019: 418–21; Silva and Lima,
2019). For a government to pay every citizen an unconditional income might
feel like a big step to take, but arguably it would be merely a rearrangement of
current tax and benefits systems, and so a minor adaptation of the economic
machinery rather than a whole new technology. An international financial
transaction tax would represent a rather more wholesale development, but it
would put a brake on currency speculation and offer greater stability to every
national economy, and it could also supply some of the revenue required to pay
124 Unconditional
an unconditional income. Its time might come, as might the time for a Basic
Income.
Sometimes machines stop working and so need repair or replacement.
Sometimes the global economy has stopped working. Logjams have occurred:
technology and human creativity have lain idle, poverty has increased in the
midst of abundance, and no tinkering has fixed the problem. A new concept,
or maybe a whole new trajectory, has then emerged that has enabled new tech-
nology to create new kinds of wealth (see Chapter 2). Coinage, paper money,
double-entry book-keeping, and the limited liability company have all freed
the economy from stagnation and stimulated new creative development, which
has then itself stagnated until the next new ideas and new technologies have
arrived. Just as machines are human creations, so money is a human creation
that we can cause to evolve (Galbraith, 1976), and what we do with it can
evolve as well. There is no particular reason why the machine that we call the
tax and benefits system should continue as it is. We can change it, and perhaps
we should. The first countries to employ new technology have benefited from
being first movers. The same could be true for the first country that implements
a genuine Basic Income (Torry, 2015b: 23).
THE DEFINITION OF WORK
Work might be properly defined as purposeful activity, but it is rather too

often understood to mean paid employment. This restriction of ‘work’ to paid
activity facilitates the division of society into those who work and earn money
through paid employment, and those who don’t work and receive their income
in the form of means-tested and other benefits to which are attached oppressive
regulations that communicate the social division. A hierarchy of esteem values
paid work over the unpaid work that benefits recipients might be doing.
An unconditional income would not discriminate between those in paid
employment and those not, and it would value equally the paid work done
by employees and the unpaid work done by people not in employment or
by people in employment in their spare time. As it is, people in employment
sometimes value more highly the work that they do in the time during which
they are not employed, and a Basic Income would help to socially validate
such valuations. A new hierarchy of esteem might evolve in which work was
valued for its quality and for what it achieved. Educational work would be
valued for its creativity rather than on the basis of whether or not it was paid,
and unpaid political work would be valued as highly as the work done by paid
politicians. We might be able to understand as more valuable the voluntary
work applied to cleaning up a river than the work done in the factory that has
polluted it. We shall always need to pay for work that society needs to have
done and that would not be done if it was not done by paid employees, but that
is only one kind of work, and the implementation of an unconditional income

would be a clear signal that that is the case.
A particularly important kind of work is of course the care that parents
give to their children and that adult children give to elderly parents. Millions
of hours a week are given entirely free to run youth clubs, uniformed organ-
izations, churches, tenants’ associations, football clubs and political parties.
Unpaid school governors give vast amounts of time to their schools, armies of
volunteers hear children read at school and accompany school trips, and life-
boatmen and volunteer fire officers in small communities risk their lives and
aren’t paid for it. These are some of the groups for whom their unpaid labour
can sometimes be more important to them than the job that they’re paid for.
Most voluntary activity is not in fact undertaken by people who are unem-
ployed and receiving benefits. It is undertaken by people in employment. The
stigma attached to receiving benefits, and the complex, time-consuming and
often pointless fulfilment of conditions imposed by the benefits system, drain
recipients of the energy that voluntary community activity requires. A Basic
Income would have none of those effects and so would swell the army of
motivated volunteers. It is no surprise that countries with more universal
provision generate more social capital than countries with less (Rothstein,
2008). Because a Basic Income would relate to both paid and unpaid work in
the same way, it would provide a new psychological foundation for purposeful
voluntary community activity; and for some households it would enable new
decisions to be made about how many hours of paid work should be done
and who should do them, potentially releasing large amounts of time for new
voluntary activity.
The same can be said of musicians, potters, sculptors, artists, actors and
writers. Vast amounts of creative activity are undertaken voluntarily, and
among professional artists of various kinds there will often be periods when
they earn very little. All of these creative people would benefit enormously
from a Basic Income, as would those who give innumerable hours of voluntary
labour to organize local arts festivals, young people’s orchestras and choirs,
community drama productions, local art exhibitions and amateur dramatics.
There will always be people committed to the arts, whether as volunteers or as
impecunious professionals. A Basic Income would provide many of these with
new choices to make about earned income, hours spent in paid employment,
hours given to community voluntary activity, and so on. There must be many
potentially significant artists, dramatists and musicians who have had to give
up or neglect their passion because they have to be employed full time in order
to feed their children. If a Basic Income alongside part-time employment
were to provide sufficient disposable income, then their communities, and
potentially society as a whole, would benefit from their talent, and they would
benefit from increasing appreciation of their work and from the proceeds of the
126 Unconditional
sale of their work that along with the Basic Income was providing them with
a sufficient disposable income (Callinicos, 2003: 134; Russell, 1996; 2006).
CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions that we might draw in relation to arguments for unconditional

incomes will be discussed at the end of the next chapter, but here it is worth
saying that we have developed a variety of arguments for unconditional
incomes in the economic and employment fields: two contexts in which it is
essential to have shown that an unconditional income would be both desirable
and feasible.
7. More of the arguments for
unconditionality in income
maintenance
INTRODUCTION
In the first chapter of arguments for unconditionality in income maintenance

we studied arguments related to employment and the economy. In this second
chapter we shall explore some arguments related to our changing society. An
argument related to poverty and inequality will then be discussed, and finally
some more administrative arguments. As in the previous chapter, ‘uncon-
ditional income’ and ‘Basic Income’ will be used interchangeably, because
a Basic Income is an unconditional income and an unconditional income is
a Basic Income.
A CHANGING SOCIETY
As well as being constituted by the diverse work that we do, our lives are
shaped by the societies and communities in which live, and by family and other
relationships. Here we shall ask how an unconditional income would affect
those different relationships.
The Individual’s Autonomy
An unconditional income is by definition paid at the same rate to every indi-

vidual of the same age: and the fact that it is paid to the individual and not to
a household is as important to the definition as is the fact that a Basic Income
would always be the same amount of money. Each individual would receive
their own Basic Income, which would facilitate the individual’s autonomy
within the household: something seriously compromised by means-tested
benefits calculated on the basis of the structure of the household and paid to
one individual within it. A Basic Income would leave every individual free to
do what they wished with the money, so factors rather more important than
127
128 Unconditional
the means-tested benefits claim would be able to determine the quality of

intrahousehold relationships.
Important to governments would be the simplicity of administration.
Household structure is one of the factors that determines how much
means-tested benefit should be paid: a highly complex factor in a society in
which household structures are often fluid and complicated. Complexity and
fluidity implies both administrative expense and, in the case of households,
and therefore of people’s most intimate relationships, highly intrusive and
therefore degrading enquiries. A Basic Income would require none of this
administrative effort, and none of this intrusion.
It is important to emphasize that a Basic Income would always be paid to
an individual because ‘Basic Income’ and ‘Citizen’s Income’ have sometimes
been taken to mean a household-tested income. Steven Webb based his 1990
‘Basic Income’ scheme on the household rather than the individual (Brittan
and Webb, 1990) – hence, the inverted commas – because he thought that that
would save money. Firstly, it would have saved very little (and in particular it
would have saved nothing for claimants still on means-tested benefits, for their
lower joint ‘Basic Income’ would have entitled them to higher means-tested
benefits than two genuine individual Basic Incomes would have done), and
secondly, the scheme would have required detailed and intrusive enquiry into
the intimate relationships of every legal resident in the UK. This would be as
politically unacceptable as it would be administratively difficult. The same
mistake was made by the Ontario government when it experimented with what
it called a ‘Basic Income’. This was an income-tested and household-tested
income, and if implemented nationwide this too would have required detailed
enquiry about every Canadian’s intimate relationships. It was not a Basic
Income.
A Basic Income is an unconditional, automatic and non-withdrawable
income for every legally resident individual. It would enable every individual
to create their own relationships without intrusive enquiry by civil servants,
and it would offer extreme administrative simplicity.
Prospects for Relationships
When from 1976 to 1978 I worked on the public counter in Brixton’s

Supplementary Benefit Office, one of the problems that we encountered was
that there were never enough of the longest treasury tags to link together the
casepapers of individuals who were involved with each other. Papers had to be
linked together because people cohabiting were a household and so could only
submit one claim for benefits; because if two people lived together as husband
and wife then they received between them less in means-tested benefits than
they would have done as two individuals; and because the calculation of the
More of the arguments for unconditionality in income maintenance 129
household’s benefit entitlement had to take into account the income of every
household member. Household structures were often seriously complicated:
hence, the need for long treasury tags. This is all still true of in-work and
out-of-work means-tested benefits, except that today it is staff using computers
who are trying to link people’s claims together, rather than staff walking round
offices looking for casepapers and the tags with which to connect them.
Household structures are changing. For instance, in the UK,
the number of families that include a couple in a legally registered partnership in

the UK has increased by 3.7% in the past decade, to 12.7 million; by comparison,
the number of cohabiting couple families saw an increase of 22.9% over the same
period, to 3.6 million. … The number of people living alone in the UK has increased
by 8.3% over the last 10 years. (Office for National Statistics, 2023c)
And households are diverse: the Office for National Statistics now categorizes
households into seven main types, each with three subtypes (no children,
dependent children, non-dependent children) (Office for National Statistics,
2023c). Means-tested, household-tested and work-tested benefits are not
designed for diverse and changing family structures. (With which of the two
men with whom a woman is living is she cohabiting, and who is the lodger?)
There is no such thing as a normal family, so diversity is now the norm, which
has made computerization of means-tested benefits difficult to manage.
A Basic Income would not be a total solution to the problem, but because
it would be paid to every individual at the same rate, and because it would
take no account of family structure, it could remove the complexity for a lot
of households. The cohabitation rule would still apply to people still needing
residual means-tested benefits, but many families would be able to escape
from both the unemployment trap and the cohabitation rule, and the freedom
from intrusion that a Basic Income would offer would make it more likely
that families would add to their Basic Incomes with earnings rather than with
means-tested benefits.
The only way for tax and benefits systems to cope with fluid family patterns
is for tax and benefits to be calculated separately for every individual, what-
ever the structure of their household. In many countries income tax moved in
this direction a long time ago. It is time for benefits systems to do the same
(Esam and Berthoud, 1991; Torry, 2015b: 27).
But it is not just diversity of household structure that would be well served
by a Basic Income. It would also offer greater autonomy to women, and it
would mean that household relationships would be about the quality of those
relationships rather than about financial dependence.
Separation and divorce are now more common than they once were, and
the change is partly because women are now more independent financially
130 Unconditional
and are not held in unhappy marriages by the prospect of poverty should they
leave them. Financial arrangements are only one aspect of a marriage, and
they should never be more important than the quality of the relationship, or
a couple’s mutual caring for each other and for dependents. But there are still
many women with too little financial independence from their husbands, often
because they are caring for children or elderly parents and are not employed
outside the home. A Basic Income could give to some women sufficient
financial independence to enable them to make decisions about a relationship’s
future according to factors other than money.
Two people not on means-tested benefits and living together experience
economies of scale, whereas the way in which means-tested benefits paid to
a couple are less than twice those paid to individuals living alone means that
the government reaps the benefits of scale rather than the couple. This is an
injustice. A further problem is that at the moment two people on means-tested
benefits might decide not to form a household because their total income
would drop if they did so; or a woman on means-tested benefits might decide
not to move in with a man in full-time employment because if she did then she
would lose her benefits and thus lose the small financial independence that the
current benefits system has given to her as a woman living alone. If two indi-
viduals’ Basic Incomes, along with earned income, enabled them to come off
means-tested benefits, then no longer would means-tested benefits regulations
constitute an incentive to live apart. Whether or not to live together would then
be decided on the basis of the two individuals’ understandings of their relation-
ship and on what might be best for any dependent children or other dependents.
It is therefore likely that a Basic Income would increase the formation rates,
the survival rates, and the quality, of people’s relationships (Miller, 2016: 169;
Morgan, 1995: 61; Torry, 2015b: 28).
If the differences that unconditional incomes could make to people’s rela-
tionships were to be understood, would that improve the prospects of a Basic
Income being implemented? A related question is this: Do the ways in which
a Basic Income would change the context of people’s relationships tell us
anything about the ways in which other increases in unconditionality would do
that? Probably not. We use public transport, educational institutions, health-
care, and so on, as individuals and not as households. The only parallel case
might be housing, because it is households that occupy living accommodation
and not individuals. However, housing’s relationship with conditionality and
unconditionality will always be somewhat complicated. Every household
is different, and every accommodation option is different. Every household
occupies a unique piece of living accommodation: with a unique location,
a unique physical size and structure, unique relationships with surrounding
housing units, unique relationships with the environment, unique funding
arrangements, and so on. And every household’s housing needs are different.
It is difficult to see how we can discuss unconditionality in relation to housing.

There is no way in which we could ever give to every individual exactly the
same housing provision unconditionally.
It would therefore appear that only in the benefits sphere might
a relationship-enhancing increase in unconditionality be feasible; so it is only
in this policy field that an understanding of how an increase in uncondition-
ality could benefit relationships might influence the prospects of an increased
unconditionality being implemented.
If being able to choose our relationships is one side of a coin, then per-
sonal autonomy is the other. We now expect to choose our way of life: our
employment, our pastimes, where we live, to whom we relate, and how we
behave socially, sexually and financially. This has its problems (mainly in
terms of broken relationships), but personal autonomy is in general a good
thing because it creates a diverse society in which people can make their
own decisions, carry out their own projects, and learn to get along together in
a fast-changing world.
The problem with our current benefits system is that it does not give us the
necessary autonomy, but rather traps us into prescribed family and financial
patterns. A Basic Income would give us greater autonomy financially, and it
would also be a catalyst, creating further autonomy. Rather than promoting any
particular family or labour market pattern, it would be neutral towards all of
them, and would actively promote the ability of an individual to choose how
much paid work to do and how much unpaid, and to choose to whom to relate
and for how long.
There will be those who do not think such autonomy to be a good thing
because it is not biased in favour of their own particular vision of the good
society, the good family, or the good lifestyle: but they should rethink.
A Basic Income would enable people to choose their own social, family or
lifestyle structures without reference to benefits regulations. This would
mean that moral convictions would become more important, not less. To take
one example: A Basic Income would give greater autonomy to non-earning
partners in a marriage because for the first time they would have an income
of their own (unlike Child Benefit which is their income because they receive
it for their children). Such financial autonomy would not make an enormous
difference to the distribution of wealth or power within most marriages, but in
some marriages it would give to the woman a sense of autonomy, and it might
provoke a rethink on the part of both partners as to what their relationship is
about and how it should evolve into the future.
A Basic Income would reflect the greater personal autonomy that we already
have, and it would promote greater autonomy. One definition of good social
policy is that it should reflect and promote change in society, and on such
132 Unconditional
a definition a Basic Income would seem to be very good social policy (Torry,
2015b: 29).
Gender Equality
A significant difference between a Basic Income – an unconditional income

for every individual – and means-tested benefits is that the latter is usually paid
on the basis of a household, and usually a single payment is made each week
or each month to a single member of the household, and usually to the male
partner of a two-gender couple. Most income tax systems are now individu-
alized, which means that women and men are treated equally, but this change
has not occurred in many benefits systems. This inequality can give to the man
a higher degree of control over the household’s finances than the woman might
experience, particularly where there is already a power imbalance in the house-
hold. If it is the man who becomes unemployed, then the way in which psycho-
logical dynamics work in many families means that the woman is likely to give
up her own employment: a tendency exacerbated by the fact that the woman’s
earnings will reduce the means-tested benefits coming into the household. So
even if the calculation of the means-tested benefit privileges neither the man
nor the woman, the outcome represents a significant gender inequality.
A Basic Income would always be paid separately to each individual, and
no other financial circumstances, whether of the recipient or of their partner,
would affect the amount of the payment. Some women might take advantage
of the Basic Income to cease their paid employment or to reduce the number
of hours for which they were employed, but others might take advantage of
reduced marginal deduction rates to increase their number of hours of employ-
ment. If an existing income tax allowance were to be reduced or abolished
to fund the Basic Income, then in a household not receiving means-tested
benefits there would be less incentive to be employed at low wages for a small
number of hours. The net effects of the Basic Income and its funding methods
would be different for different households, and in complex tax and benefits
systems those effects might be difficult to predict. Microsimulation research,
that models the real-world effects of implementing particular Basic Income
schemes, can tell us about the different marginal deduction rates that house-
holds would experience (Morgan et al., 2019; Torry, 2017c; 2018d: 9–16),
and employment market models might give some indication of the dynamic
effects that might ensue: but only the implementation of a Basic Income in
the real world will be able to tell us precisely what would happen. This is an
argument for either the implementation of a small Basic Income to start with,
or for a large-scale and sufficiently long pilot project. But what we can say is
that to the extent that a Basic Income contributes to a household’s finances,
women and men will experience financial equality, and that in any household
taken off means-tested benefits by their Basic Incomes the equalizing effect
could be considerable. Although there might still be a psychological dynamic
that meant that a man losing his job would result in the woman giving up
hers, the fact that her earned income would not affect the man’s Basic Income
would remove any excuse that the man might offer for suggesting that his
partner should abandon her paid employment. Even if the household still
needed a certain amount of means-tested benefits, it would be closer to coming
off them, and the still-earning partner might then ensure that it did. A further
interesting factor is that any unconditional incomes allocated to children would
be paid to their mother. This could result in the interesting situation of the
children’s mother receiving more unconditional income than her male partner,
whether or not he was the father of the children; and the equally interesting
result that she could end up with more control over the household’s financial
affairs than he might have (Miller et al., 2019).
PEOPLE WITH PARTICULAR NEEDS
Questions often arise as to how an unconditional income would affect people

with particular needs, whether that be homelessness, old age, or disability.
A Basic Income scheme might be proposed that would abolish all benefits
except for the Basic Income, which would of course disadvantage many
people living with disabilities because the benefits that they would lose would
be worth more than the value of the Basic Income. Because of this problem,
Basic Income schemes are sometimes proposed that would give a higher
‘Basic Income’ to people with disabilities: but such a payment would not
be unconditional and so would not be a Basic Income. Similar and different
questions arise in relation to other particular needs: hence, the importance of
considering how an unconditional income would impact the lives of people in
a wide variety of circumstances.
People Living with Disabilities
Would a Basic Income change things much for people living with disabilities?
Would it simply add to the mosaic of provision already in place? And might
it worsen their situation? Someone living with a disability or chronic illness
needs money and services: different amounts of money, and different services,
for every individual. These are usually provided by a mixture of incomes
administered by central and local government and by local services. A Basic
Income ought not to attempt to replace any of this, as by definition it cannot
adapt to particular circumstances, although it might of course be taken into
account when means-tested benefits are calculated.
134 Unconditional
The situation might be different for people able to undertake small numbers
of hours of appropriate employment. To take the UK as an example: In many
contexts, administering the current mixture of benefits and services alongside
fluctuating low wages is far from easy. It is often easier not to be employed,
or to work in the informal economy and not declare earned income. If some-
one’s Basic Income, along with local authority cash and services and a small
earned income, were sufficient to live on, then they might decide to do without
means-tested benefits and the accompanying disability assessments. Then the
only declaration of earned income required would be a tax return. Life would
be more legal and a lot simpler, and the same mechanism that would float
numerous families off means-tested benefits would provide a solid income
floor and greater freedom of choice to people with disabilities.
Everyone would receive a Basic Income, which would help to integrate
people with disabilities and chronic illnesses with the rest of society; the
enhanced employment options that a Basic Income would deliver would also
contribute to social integration; and the way in which a Basic Income can float
people off means-tested benefits would apply to people with disabilities in
the same way as it would apply to everyone else, providing yet another new
common experience.
In the UK and elsewhere there is a trend towards supplying cash rather
than services so that people with disabilities can pay for their own care and
generally exercise more autonomy. A Basic Income would also supply cash
– unconditionally and non-withdrawably – and so would enhance the trend
towards financial independence.
Above all, a Basic Income would increase people’s ability to choose the
mixture of paid and unpaid activity that suited them, which would contribute
positively both to disposable incomes and to social inclusion. The same would
be true for many other people, too (Mays, 2019; Torry, 2015b: 32).
Carers
A ‘carer’ is here understood to be anybody caring for someone with substantial

caring needs, whether the person cared for is elderly, middle-aged, a young
adult, or a child. Most carers are worse off than they would be if they were not
caring for someone with particular needs, because they are likely to be availa-
ble for only part-time employment, if any, and because necessary equipment,
or only being able to access local shops, makes life more expensive than it
would be otherwise. In the UK, Carer’s Allowance offers some compensation,
but much of the amount received is deducted from means-tested benefits, so
many families receive little overall benefit. A Basic Income would lift many
carers who get Carer’s Allowance off means-tested benefits, enabling them to
live on their Basic Incomes, their Carer’s Allowance, and occasional earned
incomes. Whatever provision a country makes for carers, a Citizen’s Income

could only help, provided existing benefits are not abolished in the process.
Because carers might not have been in sufficient employment to have built
up social insurance contribution records, they might find themselves without
various benefits, and in particular without pensions. This problem can be
solved by replacing conditional pensions with citizen’s pensions – uncondi-
tional pensions – as in Denmark and the Netherlands (National Association of
Pension Funds, 2005).
An important psychological advantage of a Basic Income would be that
both carer and cared for would receive the same Basic Income: the same Basic
Income as every other adult in the country. No longer would carers’ financial
situations be entirely different from those without caring responsibilities, and
no longer would cared-for and carer experience entirely different financial
situations. Both carers’ social inclusion and that of the people they cared for
would be enhanced.
Should carers receive an increased Basic Income? No, because unlike
someone’s age, whether or not someone was living with a disability would be
subject to bureaucratic enquiry, as would a statement that a particular individ-
ual was giving substantial amounts of time to caring for them, which means
that what would be paid would not be a Basic Income: it would be an income
conditional on both one person’s disability and another person’s caring respon-
sibilities. It would be essential to retain such provisions as the UK’s Carer’s
Allowance so that bureaucratic involvement in people’s lives remains entirely
separate from Basic Income administration. Some carers might then be able to
live on their Basic Incomes and on part-time or occasional earnings, and might
be able to avoid the administrative complexities of both the Carer’s Allowance
and means-tested benefits. The administration of a Basic Income needs to be
radically simple. Conditional supplements would need to be administered
separately (Torry, 2015b: 33).
People without Homes
There are multiple reasons for individuals and families having nowhere
to live. War or a natural disaster might have destroyed someone’s home;
a family might have had to flee a war zone; a mortgage company might have
repossessed a home; a landlord might have evicted someone; a relationship
might have broken down. In a conflict zone, or following a natural disaster,
immediate international aid is required, the most effective kind of which might
be a Basic Income, because that is likely to re-energize the local economy
(Bashur, 2019). In a more stable country with a more developed economy the
main problem with getting an income to someone with no fixed abode might
be that they have no stable contact details and their circumstances might not
136 Unconditional
be clear to government agencies responsible for administering conditional

benefits. A Basic Income could be paid to people of no fixed abode in the
same way as it would be paid to everybody else, and because its administration
could be automated, and it could be drawn anywhere in the country, it would
not pose the same administrative problems as means-tested or social insurance
benefits. Single homeless people might be able to live on their Basic Incomes;
and homeless families would find that their Basic Incomes would be a secure
basis not dependent on a fixed address, which would reduce the problems
experienced when homeless families move rapidly from place to place.
A further advantage of a Basic Income is that it would make it less likely
that people would become homeless in the first place. A Basic Income would
improve family members’ economic independence, which would improve
their relationships with each other. A Basic Income would also make it
financially beneficial for people to live together, unlike now, when people
on means-tested benefits who live together can have their benefit reduced.
Because a Basic Income would enable many households to escape from
poverty and unemployment traps, it would enable those households to climb
out of the poverty that is often the precursor to homelessness. And a Basic
Income would provide a secure financial base, whatever else was happening to
a family’s income streams, which would enable the rent to be paid when other
benefits are stopped, reduced, or delayed for any of the many reasons that now
stop, reduce, or delay them. There is evidence that giving money uncondition-
ally to homeless people works. In 2009, money was given unconditionally to
a group of homeless people and they used it positively, and mainly to provide
themselves with accommodation (Bregman, 2013). A Basic Income would not
solve the homelessness crisis, but it would make homelessness less common,
and it would provide a secure income for people who are homeless. For these
reasons alone it would be worth trying (Torry, 2015b: 34).
Elderly People
Social insurance pensions can leave people with incomplete contribution

records short of money as they grow older, particularly if they have low or
no occupational or private pensions. Means-tested benefits can top up low
social insurance pensions, but that disincentivizes savings, because savings
can reduce means-tested pensions. One contribution to solving this problem
is to pay unconditional pensions – Citizen’s Pensions – as Denmark and the
Netherlands do (National Association of Pension Funds, 2005). Means-tested
top-ups might still be required for elderly people with no private or occupa-
tional pensions, or who live in particularly expensive areas of the country.
Whether it would be better to retain existing social insurance pensions and
pay a Citizen’s Pension as well, or to abolish existing state pension schemes
and increase the value of the Citizen’s Pension, is a question that would have to
be answered differently in each national context and the answer to which ought
to be informed by microsimulation research (Morgan et al., 2019): and how
that choice is made will determine the extent to which the Citizen’s Pension
becomes the basis of the country’s pension provision, and the extent to which
elderly people will be able to lift themselves out of poverty by continuing in
part-time employment. However the unconditional income is administered,
the important thing that a genuine Basic Income would achieve is an entirely
stable and secure income into old age. Whatever the context, a Citizen’s
Pension would reduce anxiety among those approaching retirement, would be
electorally popular, would not cost much additional public expenditure, would
enable many now on means-tested pensions to earn small incomes and thus get
themselves off means-tested benefits, and would be a statement that elderly
people are members of society, something that not all elderly people now feel.
Retirement has different meanings for different people. For those who
understand it as a well-earned rest from active participation in society,
income in retirement should be by way of pensions that we pay for; but if
retirement is an invitation to new ways of life, then society should provide an
unconditional income in old age. Because retirement is both a disengagement
and a re-engagement, a mixture of state and private provision is appropriate,
and, for practical purposes, a mixture of social insurance pensions, Citizen’s
Pensions, part-time earned income, and residual means-tested pensions is what
is required (Torry, 2015b: 35).
A Pre-retirement Income
Retired people receive pensions, but what about those approaching retirement
age? Increasing longevity, and the increasing cost of pension provision, mean
that in many countries the state pension age is rising, often in the face of public
protest, as in France, but sometimes slowly and rather more quietly, as in the
UK. The age at which state pensions are paid will no doubt continue to rise;
and, at the same time, the experience of retirement is becoming more diverse.
If people retire early then even though the state pension will not be paid
straight away a reduced occupational pension might be available, and many
retirees will find a part-time job with which to fill the income gap. This can
constitute a useful transition into retirement: but some people without employ-
ment as they approach retirement, perhaps because their posts have been
made redundant and they have not found alternative employment, will find
themselves on means-tested benefits that assume that men and women will
continue in full-time employment until the age at which they receive a state
pension. A Basic Income would assist the transition into retirement because
it would be paid during full-time employment, during part-time employment,
138 Unconditional
and during semi-retirement, and as a Citizen’s Pension in retirement. Other

pension income would still be needed, but the whole of one’s income from the
State would no longer be determined by which side of a somewhat arbitrary
retirement age you happened to be when you ceased paid employment.
For many people, the psychologically ideal retirement process is to move
from full-time to part-time employment and then maybe to cease paid employ-
ment altogether. A Basic Income would reflect and encourage this trend
towards more flexible retirement because it would make the state retirement
age even less significant than it is now. All that would happen at the desig-
nated age would be that someone’s Basic Income would rise to the level of
the Citizen’s Pension, or, if social insurance pensions were still to be paid, the
smaller Citizen’s Pension would provide a secure layer under the state pension
and any other income. Because everyone would receive a Basic Income we
would see a variety of retirement patterns, the most common being a gradual
process from paid employment into full-time retirement.
The flexible ‘decade of retirement’, and flexible retirement, are becoming
the norm, but few concrete proposals have been made to encourage the process
and to enable it to serve the needs of residents. A Basic Income would fill part
of the income gap, and would go further by offering people the opportunity to
vary their participation in the labour market at any age. If the pre-retirement
Basic Income were large enough, it would minimize means-testing, tackle
poverty, encourage saving for old age, help to make flexible retirement less of
a dream and more of a reality, and prevent the poverty in old age that stems
partly from the complexity and stigma of the present web of means-tested
benefits (Torry, 2015b: 36; 2016c: 9–10).
ENVIRONMENTAL ADVANTAGES
Green Parties have shown considerable interest in Basic Income, in spite of the
fact that if a Basic Income were to reduce inequality then poorer households’
greater propensity to consume would mean that carbon emissions would
rise, and that a generally more efficient economy would have the same effect
(Sager, 2017). Green Party interest is because a Basic Income would facili-
tate a transition to a sustainable economy. While it might still be just about
possible to envisage a sustainable environment in the context of economic
growth – an assumption based on the premise that renewable energy and new
technology might enable both economic growth and rapid reductions in carbon
emissions to occur together – we might have to recognize that either no-growth
or degrowth will be required. Whether our politicians would be able to take
such decisions and remain in power is perhaps the most significant political
question facing our global society. But whatever kind of economy emerges,
the transition is bound to be turbulent, and such turbulence is only likely to
be socially and therefore politically acceptable if households can be provided

with a secure standard of living, which an unconditional income would help to
provide. Hence, Green Party interest in Basic Income.
Other factors might also lie behind Green Party enthusiasm for Basic
Income. There might be a psychological connection, that is, the kind of person
likely to be committed to a liveable planet, and willing to work for it, might
also be the kind of person who recognizes that a secure layer of income could
provide them with the time to do that; and a further psychological factor might
also be the felt connection between the two ‘progressive’ political positions
of care for the environment and a greater role for unconditionality in social
policy. Another reason might be that a Basic Income would give to people
far more choices, and that many of those choices, such as craft industries and
small-scale organic farming, would be good for the environment. A reason
actually given for Green Party enthusiasm for a Basic Income is that it can be
difficult to get people to focus on the future of the planet if they are in poverty,
because poverty absorbs significant levels of cognitive capacity (Green Party,
2008). As for the problem that a Basic Income scheme might lead to higher
carbon emissions: a carbon tax would reduce carbon emissions, and it could
also contribute towards the funding of a Basic Income. This suggests that
a Basic Income and a carbon tax could be a useful combination (Howard et
al., 2019).
AN UNCONDITIONAL INCOME WOULD REDEFINE

POVERTY AND REDUCE INEQUALITY
Which is better off: the household that earns £18,000 per annum and keeps
25p out of every £1 pay rise, or the one that earns £16,000 per annum and
keeps 58p out of every £1 pay rise? Initially the former, but in the longer term
the latter. Both of the households are in poverty, but the difference is that the
former is likely to remain in poverty while the latter might not.
‘Poverty’ is notoriously difficult to define. One child might have parents who
both work full time, have plenty of money, but have little time to spend with
their children; another might have parents who both work part time, have less
money, and have more time to spend with their children. Which child is poor?
One possible solution to the problem is to break down poverty into a number
of different poverties: attention poverty, income poverty, housing poverty,
environmental poverty, fuel poverty, health poverty, education poverty, and so
on. But even this does not sufficiently capture the complex reality. Ruth Lister
suggests that poverty should be understood as a dynamic process rather than as
a static reality, and that ‘social exclusion’ expresses the way in which families
can fall into poverty (Lister, 2004: 94–7, 145–6, 178–83); and in support of
this understanding of poverty John Hills has shown that families move in and
140 Unconditional
out of various kinds of poverty, often from one week to the next as wages rise
and fall, that at least in principle all of us are cushioned from the worst falls in
fortune by the welfare state, and that few people are permanently in poverty
(Hills, 2014).
So to the question ‘How can we prevent poverty?’ the answer must be ‘We
must enable people to climb out of poverty’. Complex means-tested benefits
that are withdrawn as earned incomes rise, that cannot cope with earned
incomes and employment statuses that change rapidly, and that in general
require accurate administrative activity whenever a family’s circumstances
change, are clearly not the answer. Because a Basic Income would be a com-
pletely reliable layer of income it would help to prevent families from falling
into poverty in the first place, and because it would not contribute to mar-
ginal deduction rates – that is, to the proportion of additional earned income
extracted by benefits withdrawal – it would enable people more easily to earn
their way out of poverty if they found themselves in it.
What we are not discussing here is a kind of equal disposable income for
every individual. If every individual were to receive the same amount of
money unconditionally, and in order for equality to be maintained nobody was
to be allowed to earn additional income, then many of the less desirable tasks
would no longer be done. However, R.H. Tawney might have had a point when
he suggested that
those who dread a dead-level of income and wealth, which is not at the moment,
perhaps, a very pressing danger in England, do not dread, it seems, a dead-level
of law and order, and of security for life and property. (Tawney, 1931 [1964]: 86)
We might temper that entirely valid but not very practical statement by sug-
gesting that a healthy society might not require ‘a dead-level of income and
wealth’, but it does require at least some degree of equality of opportunity, and
a reliable income is essential to enable that to happen. For income and wealth
to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and for fewer and fewer people to
be able to increase their income and wealth, is inevitably to compromise moti-
vation, innovation, and much else. While inequality might not be a problem,
a constantly increasing inequality clearly is (Choo, 2019).
There is a variety of measures of inequality. A more recent one is the Palma:
the ratio of the top 10 per cent of the population’s share of gross national
income (GNI) to the share of the poorest 40 per cent (Cobham and Sumner,
2013). In 2014 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
published research that showed the extent to which inequality hampers eco-
nomic growth (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
2014: 2). Because means-tested benefits prevent households from earning
their way out of poverty, they exacerbate inequality, whereas unconditional
incomes, because they constitute a higher proportion of net disposable income

for low-income households than they do for higher-income households, and
because they are not withdrawn as earned incomes rise, reduce inequality and
at the same time encourage productive income-generating activity. This is
a valuable combination for any society.
A potential downside to reducing inequality by implementing a Basic
Income is that any reduction in inequality is bound to increase carbon emis-
sions. Poorer households have a higher propensity to consume than wealthier
households – that is, any additional money is likely to be spent in the economy
rather than saved (Danson et al., 2014: 4, 11; Sager, 2017) – so to increase the
disposable income of poorer households, and to reduce the disposable income
of wealthier households by the same amount, would increase demand in the
economy and therefore increase carbon emissions. This suggests that a Basic
Income funded by a carbon tax would both prevent the Basic Income from
increasing carbon emissions and at the same time mitigate the effect of the tax
on the disposable incomes of poorer households (Howard et al., 2019).
EASE OF DESCRIPTION
A significant argument for an unconditional income is that it is easy to describe

and understand. A Basic Income is an unconditional and non-withdrawable
income paid to every individual: the same amount, every week or every month,
to every individual of the same age (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2018a).
By ‘unconditional’ we mean that the amount of the Basic Income that
someone receives would not be affected by employment status, other income,
wealth, household structure, gender, marital status, or anything else. The
amount would vary with the age of the recipient, generally with a standard
amount being paid to working-age adults, less to children and young people,
and more to elderly people. Strictly speaking, age is here a conditionality,
although because it is a conditionality that we cannot affect and about which
no enquiry has to be made once our date of birth is known, it is not one that we
need to resist. It does not affect the fundamental character of the Basic Income,
which could be turned on at our birth, and turned off at our death, and would
require no active administration between those two dates.
By ‘non-withdrawable’ we mean that if someone began to earn an income,
or their earned or other income rose, then their Basic Income would not
change. Strictly speaking, ‘non-withdrawable’ is redundant because if an
income is unconditional then it cannot be reduced as other income rises, but
the word is often added to a definition of Basic Income in order to emphasize
the fact that once granted it cannot be taken away.
A Basic Income really would be radically simple to describe and under-
stand: a payment to every individual, every week, with everyone of the same
142 Unconditional
age receiving exactly the same amount, whatever their circumstances. An

interesting symptom of that simplicity is that a microsimulation program
– a computer program into which are coded a country’s tax and benefits reg-
ulations – needs several pages for means-tested benefits but only half a dozen
lines for a Basic Income (Morgan et al., 2019; Torry, 2022b). This shows just
how easy it would be to administer a Basic Income once a database was in
place that contained every legal resident’s bank account details.
The ease of administration would be particularly noticed by households
taken off means-testing by their Basic Incomes. A household that receives
means-tested benefits, and in which someone is employed or self-employed,
experiences two means tests: the benefits means test and the calculation of
income tax. Both of these calculate income and wealth, in the former case in
order to pay the correct amount of money, and in the latter to collect the correct
amount. This combination is a waste of expensive administrative effort.
A household no longer on means-tested benefits would find themselves on just
one test of their means: a calculation of the income tax that would be extracted
by their employer and forwarded to the tax authorities. Any household still
on means-tested benefits after the implementation of the Basic Income would
probably be on less of them, and so would be able to add a few hours of paid
employment, leave means-testing behind, and suffer just the one means test
of income tax calculation. Why do the same job twice when everyone can be
given an unconditional income and then taxed on their earned income and their
wealth?
If a country were to pay a Basic Income then a citizenship or residency test
would of course be required to determine who should receive it: but if any
other kind of test were to be used then it would cease to be a Basic Income
(Torry, 2015b: 2).
PRECEDENTS
Precedents can be a good reason for a change in social policy, because if some-
thing has worked before then something like it might work now. A precedent
might mean that what might look like a new idea is not one, so it is more likely
to be seriously considered by a country’s complex policy process.
Healthcare services and state-provided education that are free at the point of
use are to some extent precedents for an unconditional income. Because they
represent unconditionality of access at the point of need, and an unconditional
income represents unconditionality of constant provision, an unconditional
healthcare service is not a precedent for an unconditional income: but it is
a precedent to the extent that it would be more efficient than means-tested
and insurance-based healthcare and education systems. A genuine precedent
for an unconditional income is the UK’s Child Benefit, which is paid uncon-
ditionally to children’s main carers, at the same rate for the same number of
children. Child Benefit is efficient, it does not contribute to the poverty or
unemployment traps, those who don’t need it pay more in tax than they receive
in Child Benefit, and it remains a source of income whatever circumstances
face households with children. Take-up was close to 100 per cent until women
in households containing higher rate taxpayers started to withdraw their claims
in order to avoid the domestic disharmony generated by the new tax charge
levied on high-earning individuals living in households that receive Child
Benefit. Pensions that are paid unconditionally offer a similar precedent, as
do such payments as the UK’s Winter Fuel Allowance paid at the same rate to
every state pensioner.
Just as useful as a precedent can be an understanding that a new kind of
income would be in some kind of continuity with existing tax and benefits
systems. One of the ‘giants’ that William Beveridge wanted to slay was
‘want’: hence, his reorganization of the existing patchwork of contributory
and means-tested benefits. However, he was just as committed to slaying the
giant of ‘idleness’ by ensuring the full employment that his proposed benefits
system assumed (Beveridge, 1942; 1944). During the 1940s full employment
meant stable full-time employment for the majority of men, and full-time or
part-time employment for women not engaged in child-rearing: and in that
context the benefits system that Beveridge proposed served reasonably well.
Today’s employment market is far more fluid and complex than the employ-
ment market of the 1940s, so Beveridge’s prescription is less and less appro-
priate. Today we shall be true to Beveridge’s intention if we make it easier for
people to increase their disposable incomes, which means a layer of uncondi-
tional income and not just means-tested and contributory benefits. Beveridge
had been converted to unconditional child allowances, and had included them
in his report as a presupposition on which the other proposals were based, so it
is possible that if Beveridge had been writing today he might have regarded an
unconditional income for every individual as the way in which we might today
slay the giants of want and idleness, and therefore as a legitimate development
of the ideas in his 1942 report (Torry, 2015b: 72).
CONCLUSIONS
Several times in this chapter we have encountered the notion of freedom:

freedom from intrusive enquiries, and freedom to choose relationships, ways
of life, employment patterns, and so on. ‘Freedom from’ is a freedom not
to be interfered with: often called ‘republican freedom’; and ‘freedom to’ is
a freedom to choose what to do with our lives, and the ability to carry out
our plans: what is sometimes called ‘real freedom’. As we have seen, a Basic
Income would release households from intrusion, and would enable new
144 Unconditional
choices to be both made and acted upon, so it would offer both republican and
real freedoms (Birnbaum, 2019: 516–20; Casassas et al., 2019: 461–2; Van
Parijs, 1995; Widerquist, 2013). Such a combination of freedoms is clearly
desirable: but is it feasible?
There are many policies that would be desirable but not feasible. Free public
transport, for everyone, and from anywhere to anywhere, comes to mind. The
policy would be desirable as it would get lots of cars off the roads, but public
transport would be quickly swamped, and the public subsidy needed would be
unsustainable. Public transport has to be rationed, and the price mechanism is
one way of doing that. The practical solution is a balance between individual
payment and public subsidy, which is what normally occurs.
And there are plenty of policies that are feasible but not desirable. A gov-
ernment could decide to collect no taxes and to abolish all public services, but
to do that would be highly undesirable. Many services can only be provided
efficiently as public services, so public provision, and the taxation to pay for
it, is desirable as well as feasible. Different political decisions might be made
as to where the balance should be struck between individuals paying for ser-
vices and governments providing them for everyone: but there will always be
a mixture of private and public provision.
One of the significant facts about Basic Income is that it is a policy that
would be both desirable and feasible. It could improve social cohesion,
increase equality, reduce poverty, enable people to earn their way out of
poverty, be gender neutral, and give people more freedom over their personal
relationships and employment patterns. It would be desirable. A Basic Income
would also be feasible: administratively feasible, because easy to administer,
and because transition to a system based on a Basic Income would be feasi-
ble; financially feasible, because revenue neutral schemes are available, and
some of those schemes would reduce poverty, reduce inequality, and impose
no losses on low-earning households (Torry, 2022b); behaviourally feasible,
because the evidence suggests that a Basic Income would have the effects that
we would expect it to have; psychologically feasible, because we can envisage
the general public coming to understand what a Basic Income is and that it
would be desirable; politically feasible, because every mainstream political
ideology can find reasons for supporting the idea, which means that the various
hybrids on the political spectrum should be able to do so as well (Chrisp and
Martinelli, 2019); and policy process feasible, because it would be possible for
Basic Income to navigate its way through a country’s policy process (Torry,
2016a).
Basic Income would be both feasible and desirable. It is unfortunate that
this unusual combination cannot on its own ensure the idea’s implementation
(Torry, 2015b: 80).
8. Arguments against unconditionality
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, a wide variety of arguments against unconditionality will be

briefly stated and then answered. We shall discover that all of them can be
answered positively.
WE SIMPLY CAN’T DO IT
In relation to existing examples of unconditionality we clearly can do it. We

are perfectly capable of running healthcare services characterized by uncondi-
tionality. It isn’t perfect, but the UK’s National Health Service, free at the point
of use, is relatively efficient and effective (Schneider et al., 2021). Similarly,
many countries provide free primary and secondary education. Unconditional
child allowances and citizen’s pensions already exist. The objection ‘we
simply can’t do it’ therefore refers to social policies proposed but not yet
implemented. In Chapters 6 and 7 we have studied the feasibility of paying to
every working-age adult an unconditional income – a Basic Income – so we
shall take that as an example of a social policy proposal that is not yet imple-
mented and will ask whether we could in practice pay a Basic Income to every
individual. We shall take the UK as an example.
In 2017, 97 per cent of the adult population of the UK had a bank account
into which their Basic Incomes could be paid, and most of the rest had some
kind of account into which money could be paid and from which it could be
extracted (Statista, 2022). A Basic Income pilot project in India required every
recipient to open a bank account, and it was not difficult to achieve 98 per cent
coverage within a few weeks of the start of the project (Davala et al., 2015: 38).
This suggests that in any country it would be possible to provide every individ-
ual with the ability to receive and spend their Basic Incomes. One complexity
is that many households run joint accounts. A Basic Income is by definition an
income for each individual, which suggests that the payments should only be
made to accounts in single names. Whether couples should be permitted to ask
for their Basic Incomes to be paid into joint accounts is an interesting question,
because that would carry the risk of one of the account-holders controlling the
other’s Basic Income. If payment into a joint account is to be permitted then
145
146 Unconditional
it ought to be a temporary measure to give couples the time to open individual

accounts.
As for the frequency of the payments, a Basic Income would offer options
that other benefits would struggle to offer. The sheer simplicity of a Basic
Income means that it could be paid into bank accounts monthly, weekly, or
even daily, according to the preferences of the recipients. Daily payments
could be particularly useful for homeless individuals or for people with other
challenging domestic circumstances.
There is one challenge that some countries would face and others not.
Because a Basic Income would have to be paid to each individual, a complete
database would be required of every legal resident of the country, and it would
need to contain their name, contact details, date of birth (to determine the
amount of the regular payment), and bank account details. Some countries
already have complete lists of their citizens, and sometimes of other residents.
The UK is an interesting example because it possesses multiple databases
containing all manner of information about its residents, but none of them lists
all legal residents, and when a previous government attempted to implement an
identity card – common and accepted in many countries – the proposal caused
a visceral public reaction. It would appear that the British population is more
content with multiple partial databases rather than a single database that it
would be easier for them to check for accuracy. If the UK were to implement
a Basic Income then it would need to construct a complete database, either
by Act of Parliament permitting the merger of existing databases along with
information from banks and building societies, or by huge administrative
effort to construct a new database from scratch (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust,
2020a; 2020b). Once the database was constructed and the Basic Income was
in payment it would be in everyone’s interest to keep the database up to date.
However, this method for managing a transition to a Basic Income is only
one option. Another would be to pay a Basic Income to a single age cohort:
perhaps everyone between their eighteenth and twenty-first birthdays. This
group could easily be deprived of income tax allowances and other benefits,
which would pay for their Basic Incomes; and the construction of the required
database would be a relatively simple matter. During subsequent years a new
one-year cohort would be paid their Basic Incomes for the first time, and those
already receiving one would keep it, which in the course of time would provide
everyone with a Basic Income. This method would avoid the necessity of cre-
ating a database of the entire country’s population all in one go.
A compelling argument for our ability to afford and administer uncondi-
tional incomes is practical examples of them. Denmark and the Netherlands
have implemented Citizen’s Pensions: pensions conditional only on the
number of years of residence (National Association of Pension Funds, 2005:
25); and in the UK Child Benefit remains unconditional, and the same Winter
Arguments against unconditionality 147
Fuel Allowance is paid to everyone over state pension age. We know how to
administer unconditional incomes, and we also know how much easier they are
to administer than means-tested and contributory benefits.
All of this suggests that it would be easier to pay an unconditional income
to everyone than it is to pay conditional incomes, which in turn implies that
it might be easier to implement additional unconditional public services than
to implement additional conditional ones. For instance, to implement entirely
unconditional public transport would simply mean removing the ticket barriers
at railway stations and payment machines on buses, although the increased
demand might be rather difficult to handle. To implement unconditional wifi
provision would require some additional infrastructure, but that could be done.
Clearly much of what we need to enable us to live a decent life in modern
society could be provided unconditionally: an income, healthcare, education,
transport, wifi, and so on. There will always be some basic needs that cannot
be met in this way, or at least that ought not to be, because provision by the
market is the most efficient method of distribution: the provision of food
and clothing is the obvious example of this; and then there are such complex
necessities as housing, to which we shall turn in the next section, but there is
still plenty of scope for an unconditional income for every legal resident, and
for increasing unconditionality in public services.
Unfortunately, none of that logical treatment of the possibility of imple-
menting unconditional services and incomes can tell us whether we shall ever
see an increase in unconditionality in social policy. For instance, given what
we know about the ways in which policies travel through the policy process
from idea to implementation, can we envisage ways in which a Basic Income
would be able to do that?
To be implemented, ideas need to be able to travel through a complex
institutional network: through academic departments, thinktanks, political
parties, government departments, governments and parliaments. Thinktanks
are a crucial part of the system as they enable political parties to hold internal
debates without laying themselves open to accusations of disunity or U-turns.
Political ideologies, public opinion, private sector suppliers, various media –
all will have parts to play; and certain policy characteristics might facilitate
the journey through the complex institutional process, for instance, conti-
nuity with existing policy, coherence with stated government priorities, and
a concept simple enough for journalists to understand so that media framing
is at least something like accurate (Perkiö et al., 2019). Feasibility tests – for
financial, administrative, psychological, behavioural, political and policy
process feasibilities – will usually need to be passed, but one or more can be
bypassed if a government decides to implement a policy for reasons of elec-
toral advantage (Torry, 2016a). There will always be lawmakers who believe
that means-testing helps the poor: but they, like other members of the public,
148 Unconditional
are at least potentially rational, and so are perfectly capable of understanding

the advantages of unconditionality and the disadvantages of means-testing
(Torry, 2015b: 83).
In more mature democracies (mature in the sense of long-standing and
institutionally complex, rather than ethical maturity), policy change tends to
be incremental, because then changes are better understood and outcomes can
be more reliably predicted. So a country with one public service free at the
point of use might not find it too difficult to extend that service into currently
fee-paying adjacent policy fields. For instance, it would not be impossible for
the UK to extend its National Health Service into unconditional social care
provision. An unconditional income could be framed either as a major change
of direction or as a natural development from an unconditional Child Benefit.
The latter framing would be more likely to see the proposal through to the
other side of the policy process.
Whatever the likelihood or otherwise of a desirable and feasible idea such as
an unconditional income getting through a country’s political process, political
accidents do happen. The UK found itself with an unconditional child allow-
ance largely by accident, and Iran has experienced the accidental implemen-
tation of something close to a Basic Income (Karshenas and Tabatabai, 2019;
Tabatabai, 2012). One day a political accident might give birth to a genuine
unconditional income for every legal resident of a country.
PEOPLE WON’T UNDERSTAND IT
It is a natural psychological process to take for granted the context in which

we live. In the USA, someone in full-time and permanent employment will
expect their employer to pay for healthcare insurance for them, and that the
insurance company will pay for healthcare, whereas in the UK we assume
that visits to the General Medical Practitioner or to a hospital will be free. If
a political party should propose that we should all have free wifi available to
us then we would wonder how that would be provided and we might wonder
whether tax rates will rise to pay for it. If we should hear a proposal for an
unconditional income for every legal resident then we might compare that with
existing benefits systems and wonder how the country could afford it, why we
would give money to the rich when they don’t need it, and whether people
would stop working. These would be natural questions to ask within a largely
means-tested context in which we don’t give money to the rich, governments
and the media complain about the cost of benefits, and we impose work tests
on means-tested benefits recipients on the basis that they would not look for
work otherwise, which in the context of means-tested benefits can be a rational
decision.
If I am invited to introduce the idea of a Basic Income to a group of people

then I might offer a variety of reasons for implementing it, and I might compare
it to such existing unconditional incomes as the UK’s Child Benefit. I can see
the penny drop for some members of the group, but others simply cannot get
past their existing presuppositions: that we should not give money to rich
people, that benefits are costing too much already so how could we possibly
afford to give an income to everyone, and that people on benefits don’t want
to work so an unconditional income might mean that nobody would. Neither
logic nor evidence seem to make any difference. The important question here
is whether a sufficient number of people could come to see an unconditional
income as both desirable and feasible. Research on organizational behaviour
has shown how a minority opinion can slowly shift the views held by indi-
viduals among the majority to the point where one individual revealing their
change of mind can reveal that the majority has done so. We have seen this
process at work in society, where what looks like a rapid change in public
opinion – for instance, on same-sex marriage – has in fact been a slow change
revealed to have taken place by a government’s proposal to permit same-sex
marriages. There are signs in opinion polls that a public shift towards regarding
a Basic Income as both feasible and desirable is taking place, but we shall only
know the extent of that change when a government minister is brave enough to
propose legislation and implementation (Moscovici, 1980).
THERE ARE PROBLEMS THAT UNCONDITIONAL

INCOMES AND SERVICES WOULD NOT SOLVE
A Basic Income would not solve the housing crises that many countries are
now suffering, and it is difficult to see how any unconditional service could
do so. A combination of planning regulations, restricted public revenues,
international buyers seeing residential property as an investment opportunity,
divorce settlements that require both divorced parents to have room for their
children, and expanding urban populations are making it difficult for housing
supply to keep up with the demand for housing in many of our cities. Where
means-tested housing benefits help families to pay for their housing, govern-
ment budgets are overstretched; and the means-testing of the benefits means
that they rise when rents rise, so landlords know that tenants’ disposable
incomes would not be diminished by the whole of a rent increase, which
incentivizes rent increases. To stop landlords from taking full advantage of
the dynamic subsidy effect of means-tested benefits, maximum rent levels can
be set for each region, which imposes yet another inefficiency on the housing
market as well as forcing families to move away from their support networks
to areas where housing is cheaper. A Basic Income would not have any of
150 Unconditional
these unfortunate effects because it would act as a static subsidy rather than as
a dynamic one.
Although a Basic Income would not solve the housing crisis, what we can
say is that a Basic Income could make a contribution to solving the problem of
housing costs. If a Basic Income were to take a significant number of house-
holds off means-tested benefits, then those households would no longer see
their incomes automatically rise if rents increased, so fewer landlords would
be incentivized to increase rents. An understanding of the extent of this effect
will have to wait for the implementation of a nationwide Basic Income scheme.
As well as acting as a dynamic subsidy, means-tested benefits can make
it financially beneficial for members of couples to live apart, and for new
households not to be formed. The individual basis of a Basic Income would
not incentivize couples to split up, and because it would leave economies
of scale with the couple, rather than extracting them for the government, as
means-tested benefits do, it would encourage the formation of households.
Both of these processes would reduce the pressure on the existing housing
stock, would reduce the need for additional housing, and, by reducing demand,
would reduce rents and house prices (Torry, 2015b: 109).
Is there some way in which housing itself could be made unconditional? It is
difficult to see how that could happen. Attempts to describe how housing could
be a ‘Universal Basic Service’ end up describing housing that would be neither
unconditional nor universal (Portes et al., 2017: 12).
UNCONDITIONAL PROVISION COULD MAKE POOR

PEOPLE POORER
This is a salient objection to Basic Income since research has shown that it
would not be difficult to construct a Basic Income scheme that would make
many poor households even poorer (Torry, 2015a), and a UK government min-
ister employed that research to claim that a Basic Income would make many
poor households poorer. This might, of course, have been a purposeful failure
of logic, because to show that a particular Basic Income scheme would make
poor households poorer is not to prove that all Basic Income schemes would
necessarily do that (Citizen’s Basic Income Trust, 2016).
A Basic Income would never be implemented alone because unless a gov-
ernment was going to pay for it with newly created money and risk the inev-
itable inflation, the Basic Income would have to be paid for by increasing tax
rates and reducing tax allowances (the amounts of income or wealth that can
be received before tax is charged). If no additional funds were to be available
then any changes to the tax and benefits systems will always generate both
winners and losers, and the total losses will match the total gains. The outcome
for poorer households will depend entirely on the construction of the Basic
Income scheme implemented. For instance, if in the UK means-tested benefits

were to be abolished at the point of implementation, then poorer households
with someone in employment would become poorer because their Basic
Incomes would not be able to substitute entirely for both additional taxation
and the loss of means-tested benefits (Torry, 2015a). It might be thought that
because marginal deduction rates will have been reduced, each household
would be able to find sufficient employment to lift their disposable incomes to
their previous levels, but this cannot be assumed.
What matters is that there are Basic Income schemes available that
would not impose significant losses on significant numbers of low-income
households, that would reduce both poverty and inequality, that would take
significant numbers of households off means-tested benefits and bring even
more households within striking distance of coming off them, and that would
require no public money from outside the benefits and income tax systems
(Torry, 2022b).
The same issues apply in relation to other public services. Unconditional
provision has to be paid for, so it will always be a public services scheme that
will be implemented, and not simply public services. To take a recent example:
In the UK, a 1.25 percentage points addition was recently added to National
Insurance Contributions to provide additional funds for the country’s uncon-
ditional healthcare system and for social care, which would still have been
conditional in various respects. The addition has been rescinded, but while it
lasted it imposed an additional flat rate tax on all earned income but not on
such other sources of income as pensions and dividends, with the consequence
that wealthier households were paying a smaller proportion of their income
than poorer households. The new funding of the unconditional healthcare
system really was making poorer households poorer. There was no need for
that: it would have been perfectly possible to increase the higher and top rates
of Income Tax, which would have ensured that poorer households would not
have been made poorer.
The general lesson is that it is perfectly possible for a new unconditional
service or income to be implemented in such a way that poorer households
would be made poorer: but it would also be perfectly possible for a different
funding method to avoid doing that.
ENTANGLED BENEFITS AND SERVICES
In England, the youngest primary school children all receive free school meals,
older primary school children receive them if they live in households on low
incomes, and the amount of money that each school receives depends to
some extent on the number of children receiving free school meals. Similarly,
prescriptions are free to people on means-tested benefits. The fact that free
152 Unconditional
school meals would stop if a household came off means-tested benefits is

a disincentive for doing so; and in a context of entangled benefits, a Basic
Income scheme that took households off means-tested benefits could tip rather
too many households into deeper poverty. This contingency can be employed
as an argument against providing an unconditional income, although a more
constructive response would be that the problem is not the new unconditional
income or public service, but the means-tested benefits and the various ser-
vices entangled with them, because it is this complex combination that con-
stitutes an employment disincentive even more serious than that imposed by
the means-tested benefits on their own. To begin to tackle that disincentive we
would need not only the implementation of a Basic Income scheme that would
take a significant number of households off means-tested benefits, but we
would also have to make unconditional the various services conditional on the
receipt of those benefits. To provide free school meals for every child would
not be particularly expensive because schools already possess the infrastructure
and the staff required; the only additional costs would relate to raw materials,
the volume of which would generate economies of scale; the administration of
payments for school lunches would no longer be required; and the additional
control over the nutritional value of the lunches eaten by schoolchildren would
have a positive long-term effect on their health. It is not insignificant that at
the time of writing the Mayor of London is planning to extend the year-long
programme of free school meals for every child in London up to the age of
eleven (Greater London Authority, 2023; Miller, 2012).
UNCONDITIONAL INCOMES AND SERVICES SPEND

SCARCE PUBLIC MONEY ON PEOPLE WHO DO NOT
NEED IT
There is something interesting about this objection to increasing the scope of
unconditionality. Unconditional services are routinely popular when imple-
mented, but they can be unpopular before they are implemented, leading to the
unfortunate consequence that a population can be deprived of unconditional
incomes and services that they would be pleased to have available to them.
At first sight it does sound ridiculous to give money to households that
already have plenty of it. However, once we recognize the many advantages
of doing precisely that, in terms of administrative efficiency, social cohesion,
economic efficiency, the reduction of disincentives, and so on, and that we
could pay for the unconditional incomes by charging additional tax to wealth-
ier households to ensure that they experience a neutral or negative net effect on
their disposable incomes, then it will be clear that wealthier households would
not be receiving additional money, and the idea of giving a Basic Income
could start to look rather sensible. And the same goes for public services. As
we have seen, it is simply more efficient and effective to establish a healthcare

service that is free at the point of need and paid for out of general taxation.
We enjoy the UK’s National Health Service and free public education without
thinking about it, simply because those are the services that we have. A little
thought and research recognizes how valuable they are. The same would be
true of a Basic Income and of other unconditional services if they were to be
implemented: we would take them for granted, but occasionally recognize how
valuable they were to both society and the economy.
TOO SMALL TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Is it worth paying a small unconditional income to everyone? Research has

shown that in the UK a Basic Income paid at subsistence level could make poor
households poorer because a household’s Basic Incomes would not be able to
protect them fully from the negative effects on their disposable incomes of the
tax and benefits changes required to fund them (Torry, 2019c: 9–13; 2020b).
Tax and benefits systems are complex, and on the assumption that no addi-
tional public money would be available, and that there would be a strict limit
on the amount of additional money that could be created without exacerbating
inflation, any gains would have to be matched by losses; and what research
has shown is that the higher the Basic Income, the more difficult it is to restrict
losses to households with higher incomes (Torry, 2019c).
So is it worth paying a Basic Income below subsistence level (Gough, 2017:
185)? As Ian Gough puts it, is it worth creating a ‘powerful tax engine’ to ‘pull
a tiny cart’ (Gough, 2018)? We can all agree that a very small Basic Income is
not worth bothering with, but one of a significant size but below subsistence
level could have important effects. It could take a large number of families
off means-tested benefits; fewer people would suffer the demeaning inquiries,
work tests and sanctions related to means-tested benefits; it would represent
a new instrument of social cohesion; it would provide many households with
new choices in relation to employment patterns; and so on.
The same would be true of relatively small additions to unconditional public
services. In England the advent of free school meals for children in the first
three years of primary education has been well worth doing. No longer are
some children stigmatized by receiving free school meals when other children
do not; and during the early years of education, schools can now ensure that
children receive nutritious food at least once a day. And the provision of
free school meals for the early years of education has stimulated a debate on
extending the provision to other years, and has inspired at least some provision
of school meals during school holidays.
A small Basic Income would make a substantial difference to society, to the
economy, and to a lot of households; and relatively small additions to a coun-
154 Unconditional
try’s collection of unconditional services would offer similarly significant

advantages.
UNCONDITIONAL INCOMES AND SERVICES DO NOT

ACT AS AUTOMATIC STABILIZERS
During a recession, means-tested benefits and services function as dynamic

stabilizers. If unemployment rises and wages fall in real terms then more
households receive means-tested benefits and benefit from means-tested
services, and this new support of disposable incomes maintains demand
which helps a country to climb out of recession. Neither a Basic Income nor
additional unconditional services would have this kind of dynamic stabiliz-
ing effect, although because they would always contribute to demand in the
economy they would have a constant stabilizing effect. It would always be
open to a government to increase a Basic Income during a recession and then to
reduce it again once economic recovery was on the way, which would increase
demand and then restrict it again.
A further effect would relate to the tax system. A likely means of funding
a Basic Income would be to reduce or abolish income tax allowances. This
would mean income tax being paid on more income. During a recession,
earned and dividend incomes fall, so less income tax is collected, which
contributes to the maintenance of demand in the economy. A further effect
results from the fact that a feasible Basic Income scheme would be likely to
retain means-tested benefits. Fewer households would receive them, so they
would not offer as much dynamic maintenance of demand as they would in
the absence of a Basic Income, but there would still be some effect. The con-
clusion to draw is that the income tax system, retained means-tested benefits,
and the Basic Income, would help to maintain demand during a recession, and
the additional factor would be the government’s ability to regulate demand by
adjusting the level of the Basic Income: an entirely transparent instrument of
government policy with predictable fiscal effects.
The same logic tells us that although less means-tested provision of public
services in a context of additional unconditional services would mean a lower
dynamic stabilizing effect directly related to the services themselves, the
unconditional services would still function as a static stabilizer, and the altera-
tions made to the tax system to pay for the unconditional services would mean
that the tax system’s stabilizing capacity would be enhanced.
We can conclude that an economy characterized by increasing uncondition-
ality would be perfectly capable of employing Basic Income, unconditional
services, the tax system, and remaining means-tested benefits, as stabilizers
during a recession.
WHAT ABOUT DIVERSITY?
The human race is infinitely diverse in the sense that every person is different.
So does it make sense to implement unconditional services and incomes when
what might be needed is something more tailored to each individual?
Again we must distinguish between different kinds of unconditionality. Any
healthcare system can tailor healthcare to each individual’s needs, although,
somewhat counterintuitively, an unconditional system, free at the point of
need, might find it easier to do that than one funded by insurance companies or
patients paying for healthcare. Where a patient pays for each item purchased,
it is the patient who will decide what they need, usually in consultation with
whatever doctor they choose to consult. That doctor will have an interest in
maximizing the amount of healthcare that they can persuade the patient to
pay for, although there might be some recognition of financial constraints;
and the patient might have a somewhat skewed idea of what they need. In an
insurance-based system the complexity is compounded by the insurance com-
pany’s protocols and financial interests. It is in a system that is free at the point
of need that a doctor decides what is required, in consultation with the patient,
on the basis of a medical assessment. The doctor might be aware of certain
constraints in relation to what they know the health authority is willing to pay
for, but that factor is usually only in play in relation to new and experimental
treatments. The normal treatments for conditions will always be available,
although there might be a waiting list. One individual might need very little
healthcare throughout a long life, whereas someone else might need multiple
and expensive treatments during a shorter life. The latter might not be well
served by payment by item or an insurance-based system. They would be well
served by an unconditional income or service. Somewhat surprisingly, it is the
unconditional service that best takes account of human diversity.
Publicly funded education varies between countries. In some countries,
such as France, national policy determines the curriculum that will be taught in
every school, all of which will function in much the same way. In the UK there
is a variety of kinds of publicly funded schools, and although core curricula
are nationally determined, schools have a fair degree of choice as to what is
to be taught and how. However, in both of these systems it will be the quality
of the teacher that matters, and in particular whether they are able to work
successfully with the different learning paces and preferences of the members
of their class. The same will be true of private schools. Perhaps the only
difference between publicly funded and privately funded education is that in
publicly funded schools there is likely to be a greater diversity of background,
ethnicity, and so on. It is this that will enhance everyone’s education for life
in the real world, and it is this that will most challenge the teacher to tailor
156 Unconditional
their teaching to the needs of each and every child. Here we have an uncon-
ditionality that lies somewhere between unconditionality of provision and
unconditionality of access at the point of need. Education is offered to every
child for the requisite number of weeks per year, so there is unconditionality of
provision; and because teaching is tailored to the needs of the child, at least in
the ideal situation, the situation exhibits unconditionality at the point of need
as well. Unconditional education is just as capable of handling the diversity of
the human race as is a healthcare system unconditional at the point of need:
provided of course that schools receive the resources that they need.
Much the same is true of the unconditionality of provision that characterizes
an unconditional income. Here there really is equal provision for every indi-
vidual, and by definition no account is taken of the diversity of individuals’
characteristics. Take, for example, people with disabilities: they are less likely
to be gainfully employed than people not living with disabilities, and they
are also likely to bear higher costs. If when a Basic Income was implemented
means-tested benefits were abolished then the needs of people with disabil-
ities would not be well served; however, if they were to be left in place and
recalculated in relation to the Basic Incomes received by a household and in
relation to changes to net earned income consequent upon changes to the tax
system to pay for the Basic Income, then the Basic Income would serve those
aspects of the diverse human race that are not diverse – everyone needs food
and somewhere to live – and means-tested and other benefits would continue
to serve the particular needs of individuals. Ideally, incomes additional to
a Basic Income should be as like a Basic Income as possible, conditional on
being appropriate to the needs of the individuals being served.
What must not be permitted is changes to the Basic Income (Chapter 1). For
instance, it might be suggested that an addition to the Basic Income might be
appropriate for people with disabilities. If there is to be such an addition then it
must be administered entirely separately from the Basic Income. By definition,
the Basic Income is unconditional, so an income conditional on the recipient
living with a disability would not be a Basic Income and it would not offer all
of the advantages of a Basic Income. That income might be unconditional in
all respects apart from being restricted to people with disabilities, but it would
still not be a Basic Income and it should not be treated as one.
WHY WOULD PEOPLE BOTHER TO WORK?
What is interesting about this objection to unconditionality is that we don’t

apply it to unconditional healthcare or to unconditional education. The
response might be that it is only an income that is directly related to paid work:
but no, it is all of the things that we can buy with an income to which work
relates. So it is what we need that matters. We need food, clothing, shelter,
healthcare, education … All of these can be purchased if we have an income.

In a country in which education always has to be paid for directly to the
school by children’s parents, an income is essential to education. If healthcare
has to be paid for by patients, then an income is required, preferably to pay
insurance premiums because our need for healthcare in the future is extremely
unpredictable. If we are taxed on our income, and out of the tax revenue
a government pays for unconditional healthcare and unconditional education,
then we might not notice the relationship between an income, education and
healthcare. Where we do notice a connection is in relation to such goods and
services as food, shelter, clothing, and the like. In most countries these can
only be purchased in a market of some kind, so an income is required and is
understood to be required. The normal route to the required income is wages
supplemented by occasional contributory or means-tested benefits. So if we
were to be simply given an income unconditionally, would we still seek paid
employment? The answer has to depend on the precise details of the particular
Basic Income scheme that would be implemented. If a Basic Income were to
take lots of households off means-tested benefits then marginal deduction rates
(Torry, 2018a: xi–xii) would fall – that is, a smaller proportion of someone’s
wages would be withdrawn through benefits withdrawal and income tax, so
we might expect an enhanced motivation to seek employment and to learn the
skills required to obtain a higher income. On the other hand, the existence of
the unconditional income might encourage some people to live on the small
unconditional income and not to seek additional income, so they might indeed
cease to seek or to remain in paid employment. This suggests that some people
might leave the employment market, and some might work harder so that they
could save sufficient money to buy a house: easier to do in a context of reduced
marginal deduction rates.
While such arguments might be rational, they will not necessarily persuade
someone that giving to everyone an unconditional income would not mean
that the work needed to keep society and the economy running would not be
done. It is intuitive to believe that if we were to give everyone some money
then they might be less likely to seek paid employment. However, it is the
present system that encourages idleness because it pays unemployed people
only as long as they do nothing, and it penalizes them by withdrawing their
benefits if they take part-time employment or start a small business. A Basic
Income would continue to be paid as people’s earned incomes rose, so it would
always be worth earning more; and it would continue to be paid if someone
took a training course or voluntary work: both of which are often difficult to
reconcile with means-testing regulations. It is a Basic Income, and not the
current system, that is the way to improve incentives to work for an income;
and it is the way that we organize means-tested benefits now that discourages
people from seeking employment.
158 Unconditional
In Namibia, a Basic Income pilot project found that economic activity rose
among people given a Basic Income (Haarmann et al., 2019). A foundational
income had given them the economic security to take risks and start their own
businesses. Minimum Income Guarantee experiments – that is, experiments
in which the government guaranteed that each household’s annual income
would not fall below a specified level for its particular household type (Torry,
2018a: x) – found that work effort changed little, but that people who became
unemployed took longer to re-enter the employment market, probably because
they were looking for the right job rather than for any job; and that employees
with children would sometimes spend longer out of the employment market.
We should regret neither of these tendencies. When we put the theoretical
and empirical evidence together we can see that a Basic Income would either
increase economic activity or would reduce it slightly in ways that might be
helpful (Torry, 2015b: 112).
We cannot foresee accurately the long-term effects of a Basic Income, nor
can we necessarily spell out in detail what the short-term effects might be
following implementation. What we can say is that the effects would be some-
what unpredictable: the short-term effects might depend on such contingencies
as the weather, and the longer-term effects on the influence of countless
psychological, economic and social factors. What would always be important
would be to take implementation slowly so as to ensure a smooth handover,
either by starting with a small Basic Income or by starting with one or more
particular age cohorts.
AFFORDABLE?
Would it be affordable to shift social policy in the direction of unconditional-

ity? That all depends on which policy field we are discussing. When every bus
had a conductor to collect fares as well as a driver it might have been cheaper
to dispense with the conductor and allow everyone to use the bus without
paying, although then more buses with drivers might have been required,
again shifting the cost/benefit analysis. As buses no longer carry conductors,
and tickets are paid for by touching a card on a card reader, providing free bus
rides for everyone would inevitably be more expensive than not doing so. The
question of affordability can only be decided in relation to options and alterna-
tives. Our discussion of different methods for funding healthcare in Chapter 5
suggests that a service free at the point of need is likely to be more affordable
than either payment per item or an insurance-based system, as well as being
more efficient in terms of providing high-quality healthcare to everyone who
needs it. Education will always be expensive because it is labour-intensive and
needs considerable resources, particularly in the sciences at secondary level.
Here unconditional provision really is the only option if every child is to be
at least adequately educated for the modern world, as it would be impossible

for many poorer households to afford to pay for their children’s education
themselves. In countries in which every school has to fund itself by collecting
fees from parents, poorer children will always receive a less good education
than children from wealthy households, and will therefore have fewer eco-
nomic and social opportunities open to them once they are adults. During
the Basic Income pilot project in Namibia school attendance and educational
outcomes rose substantially, showing that the only barrier to parents providing
an adequate education for their children was the cost (Haarmann et al., 2019).
Unconditional education provision reduces the cost, and therefore the barrier,
to almost zero, and so must be the only efficient way for a country to educate
its children. The same argument surely applies beyond secondary school.
If higher education is of high quality, and is appropriate to the individual,
society and the economy, then it will benefit the individual, society and the
economy. Much higher education is currently financed by students taking on
a substantial amount of debt. This is a disincentive, particularly in relation to
subjects less likely to generate a financial return following graduation. The
correct criterion for entering higher education has to be whether the education
offered will benefit the individual, society and the economy, and the funding
method means that too often potential students are being selected on the basis
of the wrong criterion. This can only result in individual, social and economic
inefficiency.
The objection that an unconditional income would be unaffordable is always
based on a failure of logic. An unconditional income – a Basic Income – would
never be implemented on its own. A funding method would be required, and
we would also see changes to the existing tax and benefits systems. It is the
package as a whole – the Basic Income scheme – that would be implemented:
so the right question to ask is not ‘Would a Basic Income be unaffordable?’
but ‘Is there a Basic Income scheme that would be affordable?’, because if
there is just one affordable scheme then Basic Income is affordable. A wide
variety of funding methods would be available, many of which, whether singly
or together, would generate affordable Basic Income schemes. Extraction of
carbon fuels, exploitation of the sea’s wealth (Standing, 2019; 2022), data,
radio frequencies, financial transactions, the value of land, and more: all could
be taxed (Andrade et al., 2019). A high Basic Income paid without charging
new taxes or reducing existing tax allowances or other benefits would not be
affordable for a government, and a scheme that paid for a Basic Income by
increasing the basic rate of income tax and abolishing means-tested benefits
could well not be affordable for poorer families because their Basic Incomes
would not sufficiently substitute for their loss of means-tested benefits and
for the loss constituted by additional income tax (Atkinson, 1995: 24–46).
However, a scheme that funded a Basic Income by reducing income tax
160 Unconditional
allowances and other benefits could be an affordable scheme in both senses.

No public money from outside the benefits and income tax systems would be
required, and only an insignificant number of low-income households would
lose money at the point of implementation.
One reason for a government to pay unconditional incomes that ought not
to need arguing for is that the cost of the Basic Income itself would be entirely
predictable. Other conditional and unconditional social policies are notoriously
difficult to budget for simply because at the beginning of the financial year the
demand for public services cannot be known. An extreme case of unbudgeted
expenditure is the recent pandemic, during which governments spent billions
propping up incomes and providing the additional healthcare required, and all
of that in the context of an economy hampered by Covid-19 not generating
the volume of tax revenue that it had generated before the pandemic. During
more normal years the costs of healthcare and education are fairly predictable,
and if the employment market, wages and household structures are reasonably
stable then a government can also have a fair idea how much it is likely to
spend on contributory and means-tested benefits. All such estimates will be
approximate. On the other hand, the cost of unconditional incomes would be
entirely predictable as the only unknown factor would be how many people of
different ages would be legally resident: and that factor would be a lot more
predictable than some of the other factors that governments have to estimate.
Expenditure on any retained means-tested benefits would still be difficult to
predict, but there would be fewer people on such benefits, so overall budget
predictability would improve.
In current tax and benefits systems most people are either paying tax or
receiving benefits (although in-work means-tested benefits generate some-
thing of an overlap). Most Basic Income schemes would reduce income tax
allowances and would therefore bring more people into paying income tax;
and everyone would be receiving Basic Incomes. Everyone would want more
say over the level of the Basic Income and over tax rates, and such increased
political engagement would increase the quality of our democracy. Not only
would governments know how much they would be spending on unconditional
incomes, members of the public would know as well, and they would be more
engaged in the political process that would set both tax rates and the level of
the Basic Income.
UNPREDICTABLE AND UNFORTUNATE

CONSEQUENCES
There have been occasions when unconditional provision has generated diffi-
culties, mainly due to limited resources no longer being rationed effectively.
During the early years of the UK’s National Health Service eye tests, dental
inspections, spectacles and false teeth were free, as were all medications. All
of these now have to be paid for, although provision is often subsidized, and
can be free for households on means-tested benefits, again deepening the
unemployment and poverty traps that prevent households from earning their
way out of poverty. The problem was that resources were limited but there was
no effective rationing mechanism in place. Visits to the GP and operations in
hospital remain free at the point of need: the former rationed by the availability
of appointments, and the latter by GPs acting as gatekeepers, as only a referral
by a GP can trigger a hospital outpatient appointment, and only that can trigger
an operation. Educational provision free at the point of use is effectively
rationed by school budgets. Free public transport for elderly people outside the
rush hour in London is sustainable because the buses and trains are running
anyway and outside the morning rush hour there is usually sufficient space.
Free transport for London’s young people has made public transport more
accessible for poorer households, but has meant buses becoming crowded
when workers need them most; and because going a couple of stops on a bus
is now free, free public transport has meant young people walking less than
they did. Providing free public transport for everyone would face a significant
rationing problem. If ever this were to be considered in a city such as London,
then a gradual reduction in fares would provide the necessary evidence on
which to base a decision.
Would an unconditional income exhibit the advantages claimed for it, or
might we see unfortunate disadvantages instead? Unfortunately, this cannot be
tested until a genuine Basic Income is implemented. Successful genuine Basic
Income pilot projects have been held in Namibia and India: two countries
without complex tax and benefits systems that needed to be adapted if a nation-
wide Basic Income were to be implemented (Davala, 2019; Haarmann et al.,
2019). The problem in countries with more developed economies is that if
a Basic Income were to be implemented then existing tax and benefits systems
would have to be adapted, but that cannot be done for single communities, so
genuine pilot projects cannot be held. And in any case, because a pilot project
is by definition time-limited, the employment market advantages of a Basic
Income might not appear because workers will have in their minds the employ-
ment market and other contexts likely to appear after the project closes rather
than the incentives configuration during the period of the pilot project. So what
we have seen in practice is experiments with incomes more or less like a Basic
Income, leaving us to wonder whether the results can tell us much at all about
the behavioural consequences of a Basic Income.
What we can say is that both economic theory and experiments with
incomes similar to Basic Income can offer some indication of the behavioural
changes likely to be seen following the implementation of a Basic Income.
The secure financial floor would enable households to construct more diverse
162 Unconditional
employment patterns, start new businesses, decide to spend more time on care
work and voluntary community work, and for those households floated off
means-tested benefits by their Basic Incomes the lower marginal deduction
rates that they would experience would encourage additional employment
market activity. The absence of work tests and sanctions; of overpayments
needing to be repaid; of the requirement to report small amounts of casual
earned income; of calculation errors; and of the risk of unwarranted criminali-
zation would considerably reduce anxiety and promote personal wellbeing: an
important conclusion of the recent Finland experiment in which 2000 unem-
ployed individuals from around the country had their unemployment benefit
made unconditional for a period of two years (De Wispelaere et al., 2019).
Everyone would experience an increase in social cohesion; and employers
would be grateful for the greater flexibility that workers could now handle
without jeopardizing their income security.
We can conclude from experiments with Minimum Income Guarantees
– that is, specified minimum income levels calculated on the basis of the
household structure and to which households are raised by an income-tested
payment at the end of the tax year – that although a Basic Income is very differ-
ent from a Minimum Income Guarantee, it would represent a similar security
of income and so would generate similar effects, and in particular very little
reduction in employment market activity apart from young people spending
longer in full-time education, women spending longer looking after new-born
children before returning to employment, and unemployed workers spending
longer looking for a job, probably because they would be seeking the right job
rather than just any job (Forget, 2011).
Unfortunately, however much we can predict that a Basic Income would
have the behavioural consequences outlined here, a Basic Income would only
be able to pass a behavioural feasibility test after implementation, and until
implementation occurs doubt will remain as to whether Basic Income would
pass a behavioural feasibility test. Informed cross-party consensus and leader-
ship will therefore be essential if we are ever to see implementation.
Not being able to predict accurately the effects of a proposed policy change
can be as much of a problem for a government as it can be for individuals
affected by it. Changes to tax and benefits systems can be notoriously difficult
to predict because of the complexity of the system. This is why governments
routinely set about simplifying regulations, but often fail to make progress
because changing a regulation can often cause difficulties and complexities
elsewhere. Because it would be radically simple, a Basic Income would not
contribute to the problem of complexity; and because it would be radically
simple, it would provide a model for further simplification. Some unpredicta-
bility would remain, for instance, the effect of a Basic Income scheme on the
employment market will always be difficult to predict because the scheme
would comprise the Basic Income at various levels for different age groups and
also changes to existing taxes and benefits, but that would be the only major
unpredictability.
TRADES UNIONS WOULD NEVER AGREE TO IT
When in the UK a law had been passed to extend Family Allowance, an

unconditional child allowance for the second and subsequent children in every
family, to the first child in every family, to increase its value, and to pay for the
extension and increase by abolishing a Child Tax Allowance – a tax allowance
that enabled employees with children to pay less tax – trades unions fought
the plan because it would have reduced the take-home pay of male full-time
employees. Women did not see it that way. They would often see men spend-
ing rather more of the family’s income on themselves than on the children
and their mother. The decision to implement the Child Benefit for which
Parliament had voted would have given children’s mothers more control over
the family’s income, which would have benefited the children and themselves.
However, during the 1970s trade union leaders exercised substantial power,
and the Cabinet was persuaded not to implement the law that had been passed.
A junior civil servant leaked the Cabinet minutes and a vigorous public cam-
paign resulted in Child Benefit being implemented (Torry, 2013: 24–5).
And so it has always been. Trades unions are designed to protect their
members’ interests: so the question will always be whether the extension of
existing unconditional public services, or the implementation of new uncondi-
tional incomes or services, might or might not be in the interests of trade union
members. Trade union members are normally employed working-age adults,
so whether trades unions would support an extension of unconditional health-
care into unconditional social care will depend on whether their members were
thinking short term about the possibility of paying additional income tax, short
term about their parents needing social care, or long term about the possibility
that they themselves might need social care.
Quite understandably, trades unions have always been interested in income
tax rates and allowances, contributory benefits and a National Minimum
Wage, all of which benefit employees, and not in either conditional or uncon-
ditional incomes that might benefit individuals who are not active players
in the employment market. An additional reason for not wishing to discuss
unconditional incomes is that they would create an income floor for every-
one, and so would reduce the proportion of workers’ incomes generated by
earned income, which would in turn reduce trades unions’ control over their
members’ subsistence incomes. A Basic Income would also both suit and
promote a more flexible employment market: something of a strange land
164 Unconditional
for the trade union tradition of bargaining over pay and conditions for large
permanent workforces.
We have seen occasional trade union interest in unconditional incomes
when unions’ research officers have seen that a Basic Income would turn the
employment market into something closer to a classical market in which trade
union members would be in a better position to decline lousy jobs, and that
that would force employers to improve pay and conditions, and when they
have also understood that a more efficient employment market might exhibit
more opportunities for genuine bargaining over wage rates, and that in a flour-
ishing economy trades unions would be needed to bargain over safety and
employment conditions. Trade union officers and members are all members
of a general public slowly coming to see the advantages of an unconditional
income, so we might eventually see trades unions becoming active advocates
for an extension of unconditionality from education and healthcare to the
incomes of every legal resident and not just of employed trade union members
(Henderson and Quiggin, 2019).
RECIPROCITY
An argument against Basic Income often encountered among social democrats

is that
from a human need perspective, participation in productive and reproductive

activities, as well as contributing to collective welfare, is a crucial component of
self-respect, contributes to cognitive development and provides a site for purposeful
socialisation. (Gough, 2017: 185)
On the basis of this argument, Ian Gough favours Tony Atkinson’s proposal
for a Participation Income, although he correctly recognizes the administrative
challenges that it would face (Gough, 2017: 186).
Stuart White offers similar arguments framed in terms of reciprocity as
a social norm. Reciprocal activity can generate self-esteem, which is both
a public and a private good; non-reciprocation burdens other people with
providing for society’s needs; to expect not to reciprocate carries an implica-
tion of superiority; to expect others not to reciprocate implies servility; and
a welfare state is more likely to remain politically acceptable and to survive
if it is founded on reciprocity. White suggests that what he calls ‘fair-dues
reciprocity’ can be exercised in a variety of ways – by paid labour, care work,
and voluntary community activity – all of which are the kind of ‘civic labour’
that generates the ‘civic minimum’ of income, healthcare, and so on, needed
to constitute the kind of society in which ‘institutions governing economic
life are … sufficiently just’ and so a society in which reciprocity can be legiti-
mately expected (White, 2003: 59, 99, 131, 132).
White’s proposal, that ‘in a context of otherwise sufficiently fair economic
arrangements, everyone should do their bit’ (White, 2003: 18), implies that
if ‘economic arrangements’ are not ‘sufficiently fair’, then the obligation to
reciprocate must lapse. And so, for instance, if obligations apply to some
but not to others, and particularly if there is not a sufficient ‘civic minimum’
because some sections of a society are not meeting their obligations, then we
might legitimately decide that ‘economic arrangements’ are not ‘sufficiently
fair’. This might occur in a context in which wealthier members of society
are not making a sufficient contribution to the ‘civic minimum’. As White
suggests, only if everyone in a society is contributing work can any kind of
work test ‘be defended as a necessary device for protecting citizens against
the unfair resource claims of those who are unwilling to meet the contributive
obligations they have to the community’ (White, 2003: 152). A somewhat
different failure of ‘economic arrangements’ to be ‘sufficiently just’ would be
if opportunities for gainful employment were to disappear from a community.
It could legitimately be argued that only if relevant opportunities for making
a contribution were to be available could ‘economic arrangements’ be regarded
as ‘sufficiently just’ for a contribution to be expected (De Wispelaere, no date).
However, an assumption underlying this discussion of reciprocity is that the
‘civic minimum’ is created solely by current effort. This is not entirely true, as
a significant proportion of the resources available to a society are the gifts of
nature or creation, and a further significant proportion are the product of the
work of past generations. These are genuine gifts to us, although it might be
added that the gifts of creation will only remain gifts if some kind of covenant
or contract with nature enables nature to continue to make resources available
to us (Serres, 1995). As White puts it in an article published three years after
The Civic Minimum:
Some resources are properly seen as belonging to a common citizens’ inheritance

fund, and it is implausible that the individual’s entitlement to a share of this fund is
entirely dependent on a willingness to work. (White, 2006: 13)
White goes on to argue for the legitimacy of an unconditional income on the

basis that
1. Even if basic income is bad for reciprocity, this is outweighed by its posi-
tive effects on other concerns of fairness, such as the prevention of market
vulnerability.
2. Even if basic income is bad for reciprocity in one way, it is also likely to have
positive effects in terms of this same value. (White, 2006: 14)
166 Unconditional
Any household lifted off means-tested benefits by its Basic Incomes would
experience an increased incentive to seek paid employment because additional
income would no longer suffer from the high withdrawal rates typically associ-
ated with means-tested benefits; for the same reason we could expect a greater
incentive to learn and use new skills; we could legitimately expect the exist-
ence of a solid financial floor to encourage the formation of new businesses,
social enterprises and co-operatives, as we saw in the Namibian pilot project,
referenced above (Haarmann et al., 2019); we could expect an improvement
in employment terms and conditions; and we could also expect households to
experience more freedom in relation to their employment patterns, and so more
opportunities for caring and voluntary community work of various kinds. All
of this would contribute to the ‘civic minimum’ required to establish the con-
ditions for post/expected and just fair-dues reciprocity (Torry, 2018a: 41–9;
White, 2003: 168). Means-tested benefits rely on ‘ante/required’ reciprocity:
‘ante’, because the claimant has to give something to society before the State
will give them an income; and ‘required’ because if the requirement is not
fulfilled then no income will be forthcoming. A Basic Income and other uncon-
ditional provision coheres with ‘post/expected’ reciprocity: a gift is given, and
the recipient might be expected to reciprocate in some way but is not required
to do so (Chapter 1). Both varieties are entirely valid variants of reciprocity.
Reciprocity is an argument against an unconditional income that has become
an argument for it.
AN UNCONDITIONAL INCOME ASSUMES AND

PROMISES ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION
As Ian Gough points out, Basic Income is often argued for on the basis that as
production is increasingly automated jobs will be destroyed, so if households
are to be able to consume the product of the automated production then they
will have to be provided with the income to do so. However, the increasing
automation of production could well increase both environmental destruction
and carbon emissions, with disastrous results for the planet and its inhabitants.
Gough’s point is that the presupposition on which the argument for Basic
Income is based is dangerous, and that an alternative scenario is low economic
growth, in which case the presupposition underlying the argument for Basic
Income no longer applies (Gough, 2017: 185).
However, a low-growth scenario is unlikely to prevent current and future
employment market and economic turbulence, and it is such turbulence, and
not only job destruction, that makes a Basic Income useful. And if automation
facilitates increasing production, and therefore additional carbon emissions and
environmental destruction, then whether or not a Basic Income is implemented
will not change that, and a Basic Income funded by a carbon tax could both
slow carbon emissions and protect household incomes from the price increases
driven by the carbon tax. Either way a Basic Income would be helpful.
CONCLUSION
In the context of his argument that we need a degrowth strategy, Gough sug-
gests that a Basic Income would impose
an expanded and fiscally more demanding state … on a shrinking economy …

A needs-based approach supports a more mixed package of policies. Policy analysis
shows that there is no one-to-one relationship between policy instruments and
outcomes, and that one-size-fits-all policies rarely succeed. … [Basic Income]
requires a one-off, top-down transformation: the abolition of numerous entitle-
ments, acquired social insurance, benefits, and tax reliefs. (Gough, 2017: 186)
He recommends ‘collective goods, services and investment’ (Gough, 2017:

186).
First of all, while a Basic Income might need to be funded by reducing tax
reliefs and other benefits, there is no intrinsic need to abolish any of them; sec-
ondly, a Basic Income would not expand the State, but would rather contribute
to a reduction in the State’s interference in our lives; and thirdly, a Basic
Income would work happily alongside the collective goods and services and
the infrastructure and other investment that we shall need if we are to navigate
our way to a more sustainable society and economy.
The obvious overall response to many of the objections discussed in this
chapter is of the both/and, not either/or variety, which suggests that the fun-
damental message offered by this and previous chapters is that what is clearly
required is an increase in unconditionality across as much of the social policy
agenda as possible.
9. A trajectory: Snapshots in history
INTRODUCTION1
It would not be possible to offer in a single chapter anything like a complete

history of conditionality and unconditionality in social policy, so here we
shall offer snapshots of a history of conditionality in social policy by studying
gift-giving in some of the societies studied by anthropologists; Seneca’s reflec-
tions on Roman practice; the UK’s Poor Law; examples from more recent
history; and contemporary conditional cash transfers. And then in the second
part of the chapter we shall discuss snapshots of the history of unconditionality
in social policy. What we shall find is a ubiquitous and diverse commitment
to reciprocity across the history of social policy, and also a fitful and minor
trajectory towards unconditionality.
SNAPSHOTS OF THE HISTORY OF CONDITIONALITY

IN SOCIAL POLICY
Anthropological Study of Gift-giving
As Wilk and Cliggett point out, there are different kinds of gift-giving, and
to study them is important, both because they form economies with different
characteristics and because
examining gift giving is a good way to see all the various aspects of human nature
in action at one time because gifts can be simultaneously understood as rational
exchange, as a way to build political and social relations, and as expressions of
moral ideas and cultural meanings. … Gifts ultimately show that the dividing lines
between rational choice, social goals, and morality are entirely our own creation.
(Wilk and Cliggett, 2018: 155)
Essential reading in this field is Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le Don (translated
into English as The Gift), published in 1924 (Mauss, 1923–4 [2021]; 1990).
1
Parts of this chapter summarize material in Malcolm Torry, An Actology of the
Given, Resource Publications/Wipf and Stock, forthcoming.
168
A trajectory: Snapshots in history 169
There he records different kinds of ‘potlatch’: extravagant gift-giving that

requires reciprocation, festivals during which tribes exchange gifts, and the
conspicuous destruction of goods that requires a neighbouring tribe to recipro-
cate or lose honour. Mauss describes ‘the so to speak voluntary character’ of
these and other gift-giving activities that were
apparently free and disinterested but nevertheless constrained and self-interested.

Almost always such services have taken the form of the gift, the present generously
given even when, in the gesture accompanying the transaction, there is only a polite
fiction, formalism, and social deceit, and when really there is obligation and eco-
nomic self-interest. … a quite considerable number of intermediate forms between
those exchanges comprising very acute rivalry and the destruction of wealth, such
as those of the American Northwest and Melanesia, and others, where emulation is
more moderate but where those entering into contracts seek to outdo one another in
their gifts. (Mauss, 1990: 4, 6–7, 8–9)
The complex pattern of giving and reciprocating results in evolving social rela-
tionships between individuals or between whole communities (Mauss, 1923–4
[2021]: 6; 1990: vii, 7).
Mauss discovered no genuinely free gifts. Gifts were always with a view to
reciprocation, and to the social relationships that the exchange would generate;
and Mary Douglas makes the general point that
by ignoring the universal custom of compulsory gifts we make our own record
incomprehensible to ourselves: right across the globe and as far back as we can go
in the history of human civilization, the major transfer of goods has been by cycles
of obligatory returns of gifts. (Douglas, 1990: 10)
Sigaud suggests that such gifts only appear unconditional if they are isolated
from the social systems in which they occur and in which they function to
create social hierarchies (Sigaud, 2002: 342), and in the context of the systems
of gifts that Mauss researched
one obeys a set of rules, rules that govern exchange, and if not, one is put out of the
game. The rules of ritual exchange have their own force … The gift itself embodies
the force of sociality. (Siegel, 2013: 72, 73)
When European explorers and scientists encountered the native societies of

South America, they complained about the constant demand for sharing. One
of those scientists was Charles Darwin, and when he visited the archipelago of
Tierra del Fuego he found that ‘young and old, men and children, never ceased
repeating the word yammer-schooner, which means “give me”’ (Darwin,
1909: 234). This was not hunter-gatherer discontentment and a desire for
European capitalism: it was an attempt to enforce an ancient social norm to
170 Unconditional
which the visitors were paying no attention. The wealthy visitors represented
an inequality that was anathema to the hosts and would have been foreign
to their own stone age ancestors: hence, the demand that the visitors should
donate sufficient wealth to right the balance (Widerquist and McCall, 2017:
208; 2021: 67).
Reciprocal gifts are in practice not very different from a market economy, as
both conform to a ‘give, receive, reciprocate’ pattern (Mauss, 1990: 50), and
both can engender improved social relationships, as when migrant workers
send money home as a means of caring for their families and strengthening
the social bonds on which they might one day have to rely (Wilk and Cliggett,
2018: 168, 170).
While what is exchanged is relevant in all of the examples of gift-giving
that we have discussed, it is the context in which gifts are given – the cultures,
societies, communities and individuals involved; the events during which gifts
are given; and the social relationships involved – that provides the majority of
the meaning of the gift. Even if we study what is given rather than the kinds
of exchange that are going on, it is not long before we find ourselves back at
the action of exchange. For instance, Arjun Appadurai asks how the objects
being exchanged gain value, and finds that ‘exchange is the source of value’
(Appadurai, 1986: 56) and
politics (in the broad sense or relations, assumptions, and contests pertaining
to power) is what links value and exchange in the social life of commodities.
(Appadurai, 1986: 57)
Societies experience ‘spheres of exchange’ (Kopytoff, 1986: 77), and differ-

ent spheres of exchange can ascribe different values to the same object. For
instance, in one sphere of exchange a painting by Picasso might be without
price, but in another it can be bought and sold and by that means ascribed
a value. Similarly, and rather more importantly, in one sphere of exchange
people are ‘singular’ and so are not commodities, but in another they might be
bought and sold as slaves: and perhaps there are aspects of slavery whenever
human commoditization takes place: for instance, as a worker’s labour is
bought and sold (Kopytoff, 1986: 82, 85). Context is everything, but always
gift-giving is
powerful because it demonstrates that all values are produced through human
relations and cultural conventions. Value is therefore not an inherent or intrinsic
property of things themselves. (Wilk and Cligett, 2018: 148)
The same might be said of values in a market, of course. Gift-giving might

appear to be more directly about social bonds, and a market in goods and ser-
vices might look as if it is entirely about exchange for the purpose of obtaining
useful goods (Wilk and Cligett, 2018: 171), but every market economy is
just as deeply embedded in ‘social forces and institutions’ as any gift-giving
economy might be (Panoff, 1970: 65); every contemporary gift-giving will
be embedded in a market economy, social forces and institutions; and both
the gift-giving and the market economy will have moral, social and utilitarian
meanings, with the moral meaning always somewhat mitigated by the ‘irony
of promoting good through funds harvested from dehumanizing economic
systems’ (Wilk and Cligett, 2018: 173).
However, there are differences between market and gift economies.
A market represents post/required or ante/required reciprocation, depending
on whether the price is paid after or before the good or service being pur-
chased is transferred to the new owner; and a gift economy represents an ante/
expected or post/expected reciprocity (Chapter 1). There is also a difference
in the orientations of the different economies: market economies are more ori-
ented towards production and consumption, and gift-giving economies more
towards social bonds and hierarchies (Sabourin, 2008).
Seneca and Roman Practice
Seneca, who lived during the first century of the common era, studied
gift-giving norms in his own Roman society. He sometimes suggests that
a pure gift-giving might be possible:
A certain amount is dispensed; if anything comes back, that’s a profit, but if not, it’s
no loss. … It’s a base kind of usury to treat a gift as an account payable. (Seneca,
2020: 15)
but then he understands that there will always be some kind of return, even if
that is entirely internal to the giver:
When you ask what return one gets from a gift or good deed, I will reply: ‘A good
conscience’. … Why does one give? In order not to fail to give, not to lose the
chance of doing good. (Seneca, 2020: 149, 151)
There will always be an element of self-interest in the giving:
We should think about what we can give that will bring most pleasure in future,
what the owners will often bump into so that we’ll be in their thoughts every time
they’re in its presence. (Seneca, 2020: 33)
An interesting recognition of the necessity of reciprocation is the injunction to

receive gifts only ‘from those to whom we would have given’ (Seneca, 2020:
79), and that we should grant an immediate reciprocation by ‘expressing our
172 Unconditional
joy in a way that the givers can’t miss, so they’ll get an immediate reward’
(Seneca, 2020: 81).
This all looks very like the reciprocal tribal giving and receiving that Mauss
studied, although internal intention and felt gratitude are here as important as
a reciprocal gift. Always we find giving, receiving and reciprocation.
Conditional Social Policy since the Eighteenth Century
Every country’s tax and benefits systems are different, and they all have
different histories. The UK’s benefits system has been chosen for study here
because it contains all of the main elements to be found in such systems:
means-tested, contributory, and unconditional services and benefits. We shall
also be studying a variety of authors who have become part of the history of
unconditionality but whose proposals were for conditional benefits.
We shall begin with a study of means-tested and contributory benefits in
the UK, that is, benefits calculated in relation to existing means, and benefits
calculated on the basis of previous contributions paid.
The Poor Law

In 1601 the UK’s Poor Law established local administrations to provide
for people unable to provide for themselves, and ‘houses of correction’ for
able-bodied men who could not find paid employment. Already we can see
the all too frequent division between the deserving poor – mainly widows
and orphans – and the undeserving poor who needed to be ‘corrected’. No
assistance was provided for able-bodied men who were in employment or for
their dependants. However, by the end of the eighteenth century price infla-
tion meant that wages could no longer provide for a large family. In 1795 in
Speenhamland, the Poor Law Guardians implemented a means-tested benefit
calculated on the basis of existing wage income, the size of the household
and the price of bread. This was understood to be the dynamic subsidy that it
was, that is, it rose as wages fell, which provided employers with an incentive
to reduce wages, and workers with a disincentive to seek paid employment.
The result of a subsequent review of the Poor Law was the 1834 Poor Law
Amendment Act that embedded the idea of ‘less eligibility’ – that the unem-
ployed man or women should not receive as much in benefits as they would if
they were in paid employment. In place of the ‘out relief’ that had previously
provided for families unable to feed themselves, the Act established ‘work-
houses’ designed to separate poor people from the rest of society, to encourage
those who could work to do so, and to persuade poor rural families to move to
industrial towns and cities that needed their labour (Pitts et al., 2017: 149–51;
Sloman, 2019: 33–6; Torry, 2013: 17–18; 2021a: 31–3; Van Parijs and
Vanderborght, 2017: 58, 61).
Twentieth-century diversity
Surveys of the populations of London by Charles Booth, and of York by
Seebohm Rowntree, had revealed the extent of poverty. A flat-rate pension
was implemented for older people with incomes under £31 per annum and who
had never received Poor Relief. This was the first poverty alleviation scheme
managed by central government and so breaking with a long tradition of local
administration of income maintenance. Contributory Unemployment Benefit
for certain industries, payable for 26 weeks on the basis of contributions
previously made by employers and employees, was implemented for certain
industries (Thane, 2011); during the 1920s these social insurance benefits
were extended to other industries; and during the depression at the end of the
1920s it was financially unsustainable to extend the length of time for which
the benefits would be paid so means-tested benefits were implemented instead,
with a means test that took into account all of the wealth and income of the
entire household (Lynes, 2011).
During the Second World War the government necessarily extended its
control over the UK’s society and economy, so when after the war the gov-
ernment established the country’s welfare state by implementing the proposals
made by William Beveridge in his 1942 report, the establishment of such
a centralized welfare state might have felt like a natural evolution (Beveridge,
1942). The report proposed an unconditional Family Allowance (discussed
below), a National Health Service (Chapter 5), National Insurance benefits,
calculated on the basis of contributions paid both by workers and by their
employers, and means-tested National Assistance to fill any gaps left by the
contributory benefits. Because the contributory benefits did not cover the cost
of housing, whereas the means-tested National Assistance did, far more people
than Beveridge had intended found themselves being means-tested, with
long-term serious effects on the welfare state’s ability to generate social cohe-
sion, which was one of Beveridge’s intentions when he established National
Insurance benefits (Atkinson, 1969: 24; Bradshaw and Bennett, 2011; Thane,
2011).
Only minor changes and occasional renaming have occurred in relation
to this scheme since its implementation, and arguably the relatively new
‘Universal Credit’ that combines a number of previous means-tested benefits
in a still administratively compromised single benefit is still a minor evolution
rather than a major new direction, however many differences there might be
between Universal Credit and the legacy benefits. It is unfortunate that this
new direction was towards locating workers and the unemployed in the same
stigmatized and stigmatizing benefit, thus removing from those claimants who
were employed the perceptional firewall that they had previously enjoyed
between in-work and out-of-work means-tested benefits, and plunging them
174 Unconditional
into the same demeaning system and its related stigma that were already expe-
rienced by unemployed claimants (Dean, 2012b; Dean and Mitchell, 2011).
On the way, multiple proposals for new conditional benefits have been
made. The ‘Tax Credits’ proposed at the beginning of the 1970s would have
allocated credits to most workers. These would have been paid in full if there
was no other income but would have been reduced as earned income rose until
they were no longer being paid, at which point Income Tax would have been
deducted from earned income.
The tax credit system is a reform which embodies the socially valuable device of
paying tax credits, to the extent that they are not used against tax due, positively
as a benefit … [so as to] bring together what people pay and what they receive
… Fewer people will be means-tested and others means-tested less often, and for
the community there will be a large saving in administrative staff. (Her Majesty’s
Government, 1972: iii)
The proposal, if implemented, would have largely merged the Income Tax and
benefits systems in the UK into a fiscal environment that would have been
more friendly towards the introduction of an unconditional income. Instead
of the proposed Tax Credits, a means-tested in-work benefit, Family Income
Supplement, was implemented; and the term ‘Tax Credit’ was then purloined
by a subsequent government for its own means-tested proposal that extended
means-testing further up the earnings range than ever before, thus digging
a large number of households into high marginal deduction rates and employ-
ment disincentives (Field, 2002: 54, 57) and embedding means-testing as the
chief characteristic of the benefits system. The lack of structural change since
the Second World War reflects the character of Beveridge’s report, which
can be interpreted as a tidying up and a centralizing of existing voluntary and
public sector unemployment insurance schemes (Beveridge, 1942; Sloman,
2019: 132; Torry, 2013: 20–1; 2021a: 124–8).
Throughout the history of the UK’s benefits system, means-tested benefits
have been the primary means for alleviating poverty; the benefits have been
paid to households, not to individuals; and in a two-gender couple the man has
normally been regarded as the main breadwinner and is assumed to have a per-
manent full-time job to enable him to care for himself and his dependants. Our
society is now far more fluid than that (Bauman, 2000). A major reason for so
little changing across four hundred years is that ‘the UK social security system
is a large, complex juggernaut that has grown in a largely incremental way’
(McKay and Rowlingson, 2008: 53) so it is easier to make small changes with
fairly predictable results than to reform the system as a whole, even though
rapid and wholesale social and economic change since the Second World War
have made major change essential.
SNAPSHOTS OF UNCONDITIONALITY
In this second part of the chapter we shall study some of the history of social
policies characterized by unconditionality, after which we shall ask whether
we can identify any trends in relation to conditional and unconditional policies.
Healthcare Systems
Research in 2020 in twenty countries with more developed economies showed

that some countries provide entirely free primary and secondary care – Brazil,
Canada, Denmark, the UK and India; some provide free primary care but
expect financial contributions for hospital outpatient and/or inpatient treat-
ment – Australia, Germany, Israel, Italy and the Netherlands; and some charge
for both primary and secondary care: China, France, Japan, New Zealand,
Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the USA. Where fees
are charged, they are capped, subsidized, or both, the main exception being
the high fees charged for long-term inpatient care in the USA (Tikkanen et
al., 2020: 224–6). Only Brazil, Canada, Denmark, the UK, and India offer
unconditional healthcare, that is, healthcare free at the point of need. We shall
therefore study the evolution of the UK’s healthcare system: the National
Health Service.
The UK’s National Health Service

By the end of the 1930s the healthcare needs of the UK were served by a patch-
work of local authority and voluntary sector institutions offering varying
degrees of quality and a chaotic multiplicity of governance structures, resulting
in both duplication and uneven provision. At the heart of the system was the
‘panel’ to which General Practitioners belonged if they wished to receive fees
for providing treatment free at the point of need for working men: treatment
often denied to their families and to the increasing number of unemployed
men (Dean, 2012a: 45). Then during the Second World War, as with many
areas of national life, central government took charge of hospitals and of the
training and allocation of medical personnel, and it also organized a regional
blood donation service, a national laboratory service and regional specialist
services. Half way through the war, in 1942, William Beveridge based his
plans for social insurance and social assistance on the assumption that after
the war the UK would have a ‘comprehensive national health service … pro-
vided where needed without contribution conditions in any individual case’
(Beveridge, 1942: 158–9). Following the end of the war, and a period during
which every interest group – the local authorities, voluntary hospitals and
General Practitioners – vociferously opposed a government-led co-ordinated
176 Unconditional
healthcare system, Aneurin Bevan was appointed Minister of Health in the

Labour government elected in 1945 and within three years he had nationalized
both the voluntary and the local authority hospitals and established a separate
governance structure for the management of general practice which continued
to be staffed by independent contractors (Grimes, 1991; Webster, 2002: 2–14).
Although there was controversy about the governance arrangements for
hospitals, and General Practitioners argued against becoming a centrally
managed salaried service and managed to maintain their status as independent
contractors, the main characteristics of the National Health Service (NHS)
envisaged by the Beveridge Report survived intact: the healthcare system
established after the war was ‘universal (available to all), comprehensive
(including all services, both preventive and curative), and free (involving no
payment at the point of delivery)’ (Webster, 2002: 22). Apart from minor
changes – such as the introduction of charges for dental and optician services,
and later prescription charges – the three principles have survived: visits to
a General Practitioner, and all inpatient and outpatient hospital care, remain
universal, comprehensive and free at the point of delivery. From the beginning
the service was funded from central taxation and the new National Insurance
Contributions, as it still is (Webster, 2002: 23, 37).
Not all has gone to plan, mainly because even though there has been some
understanding of ‘the awesome magnitude of the challenge taken on when
a state assumes responsibility for providing a comprehensive health service’
(Webster, 2002: 253), the NHS has frequently been deprived of the resources
that it needs. However, as Charles Webster puts it:
At the time of its establishment in 1948 the National Health Service was recognized
as a remarkable experiment in health care. Alone among its capitalist partners, the
United Kingdom offered comprehensive health care to its entire population. On the
basis of finance from general taxation, all of its services were free at point of use.
(Webster, 2002: 1)
and the most important ones still are.
Unconditional Incomes
As far as this author can tell, the first writer to propose an equal and uncon-
ditional income for every adult in a community was Thomas Spence. In 1796
he proposed that all of the land in a parish should be made ‘the property of the
corporation or parish’, that the land should be let to tenants, and that the rents
should be applied to a variety of purposes, among which was a distribution
to all members of the community: ‘each, without respect of person, is sent
home with an equal share’: and by each he meant everyone, ‘male and female,
married and single … from the infant of a day old to the second infantage of
hoary hairs’ (Spence, 1796: 8, 12; Torry, 2021a: 36–43). A year later, Spence
offered more detail on the effects that he expected his equal dividends to
deliver. Everyone experiencing financial difficulties would be able to ‘start
again’, and ‘as both young and old [would] share equally alike of the parish
revenues, children and aged relatives will … be accounted as blessings’
(Spence, 1797: 13).
The people will receive, without deduction, the whole produce of their common
inheritance … will be vigilant and watchful over the public expenditure, knowing
that the more there is saved their dividends will be the larger … Universal suffrage
will be inseparably attached to the people both in parochial and national affairs,
because the revenues, both parochial and national, will be derived immediately from
their common landed property. The government must of necessity be democratic.
… There will exist only the robust spirit of independence mellowed and tempered
by the preference and checks of equally independent fellow citizens. (Spence, 1797:
11–12)
During the following two centuries the idea of unconditional incomes for
every member of the community came and went, but since the early 1980s
a continuous and diverse debate has taken place in multiple countries, and now
globally; pilot projects and related experiments have been held; and research
has been conducted (Chapters 4, 6, 7 and 8; Torry, 2021a; 2023). Spence has
been shown to have been prescient in relation to the effects that unconditional
incomes have delivered during pilot projects (Chapter 10).
The one country that has legislated for a genuine Basic Income is Brazil: in
2004, its government passed a law that specifies that a Basic Income is to be
approached by stages. Earlier schemes had provided food for families iden-
tified by teachers as likely to take their children out of school, and statutory
minimum wages for poor families in some cities (de Carvalho, 1997): but after
the legislation was passed a number of cash benefits were established for poorer
families. An early stage of the journey towards an unconditional income is the
now long-standing Bolsa Família, an income-tested benefit with educational
and healthcare conditionalities attached to it. Occasional extensions take place,
and the relative autonomy that regions and municipalities possess means that
local experiments have continued. One of these, in Maricà, like Brazil’s legis-
lated but so far unimplemented Basic Income, is approaching unconditionality
by stages (Lavinas, 2013: 44; Rocha, 2020; Silva and Lima, 2019: 320–4, 327;
Suplicy, 2003: 408–16). This almost unconditional municipal benefit raises an
interesting question because it is paid in a local currency that has to be spent
within the municipality. Is this still a ‘cash payment’, as required by the BIEN
definition’s clarifications, or is it ‘vouchers’ (Basic Income Earth Network,
2022), and how much does that matter? Perhaps what we are looking at here
178 Unconditional
is a spectrum, from cash to non-cash, with the position of a currency on the

spectrum depending on the level of choice available to residents as to how the
income is to be spent. So an income paid in the country’s sovereign currency
will be at the ‘cash’ end of the spectrum, and a voucher that can only be spent
on education, or on particular kinds of food at specified shops, will be at the
‘voucher’ end. This would locate Maricà’s local currency income around the
middle of the spectrum.
Countries that allow substantial autonomy to states, regions or municipal-
ities find it easier to experiment than more centralized countries. Examples
are the USA, Canada, India, Brazil, and Mexico, where Mexico City has
implemented an unconditional pension (Hamilton, 2020; Kline, 2022; Yanes,
2013; 2019).
Unconditional Incomes in the UK
The one properly unconditional income in the UK was implemented in 1946 as

Family Allowance and was subsequently extended and renamed Child Benefit.
Eleanor Rathbone’s Family Allowance

At the same time as Thomas Spence was proposing an unconditional income
for every member of a community, the Prime Minister of the UK, William Pitt,
was opposing a parliamentary bill for a statutory minimum wage and instead
was proposing an income for families with large numbers of children: ‘a matter
of right and honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt. This
will make the large family a blessing, and not a curse’ (Quoted in Macnicol,
1980: 4). No income for families emerged, although when an income tax was
implemented to pay for the Napoleonic wars a child tax allowance reduced
the tax collected from families with children (Hope-Jones, 1939: 3; Macnicol,
1980: 4). Whether Pitt had read Spence’s proposal I have not been able to
discover.
During the 1890s, the Independent Labour Party called for the ‘endowment’
of motherhood (Thane, 1996: 63–4), and, on the basis of his survey of poverty
in York, Seebohm Rowntree proposed child allowances for the fourth and
subsequent children. During the First World War, incomes for servicemen’s
families included amounts for children, and the payments continued for six
months on demobilization; and in 1918 Beatrice Webb called for the payments
to continue beyond that point (Macnicol, 1980: 5–10). Eleanor Rathbone’s
1911 pamphlet about children being society’s responsibility, and her 1917
argument that a man’s wage could not be expected to support a large family,
contained nothing new: but what was new was the Family Endowment Society
that she established in 1917, and then the Children’s Minimum Council, both
charged with campaigning for incomes for mothers to enable them to care
for their children (Macnicol, 1980: 10, 20–3; Thane, 1996: 202). In 1924
Rathbone developed her proposal in The Disinherited Family in which she
questioned the wisdom of expecting the same wage to be adequate for every
family, whatever its size, especially as there was always a question over how
much of a man’s wage reached his wife. Rathbone discussed other countries’
child allowances and the possibility of occupational schemes, and called for
a universal state scheme (Rathbone, 1924).
It being generally recognized that the well-being of the family concerns the com-
munity as a whole, there seems something strange in the assumption so commonly
made, that the question of the maintenance of families concerns only individual
parents and can be safely left to them … Family Endowment involves something
much greater than a scheme of child welfare, or a device of wage distribution … it
offers a hope … realizable here and now, of making attainable by every family …
the material means for healthy living. (Rathbone, 1924: ix, x–xi)
A new edition of The Disinherited Family published in 1949 included an

epilogue by William Beveridge: ‘I suffered instant and total conversion’
(Beveridge in Rathbone, 1948: 270). Beveridge had read the book in 1924,
when he was Director of the London School of Economics (LSE), and had
established what we would now call a pilot project by paying child allowances
to LSE staff; and in 1925, in the report of a Royal Commission on the mining
industry, he recommended the practice as an alternative to raising wages
(Harris, 1981: 249). Unconditional incomes for children were not part of the
brief that Beveridge was given when he was asked to chair a committee tasked
with bringing order to the somewhat chaotic provision of social insurance
benefits, but he was determined to see them happen, so he inserted them into
the preface of the report as a presupposition on which the rest of the report
was based (Beveridge, 1942: 10, 154, 158, 163, 177). For both Rathbone and
Beveridge, a child allowance was ‘an expression of the community’s direct
interest in children’ (Beveridge, 1942: 155), but for Rathbone an important
motive was the emancipation of women, whereas what Beveridge wanted was
a mechanism to ensure that income in employment would always be higher
than means-tested benefits, which it often was not because means-tested bene-
fits paid allowances for children whereas wages took no account of the number
of children in a worker’s family; and what the government wanted was a way
to keep a lid on wage inflation after the war, and providing family allowances
meant that the costs of bringing up a large family would no longer have to
be met entirely from the single male wage (Beveridge, 1942: 154; Grimes,
1991: 83). Although Rathbone’s argument that child allowances would have
promoted the emancipation of women from dependence on men did not appear
in the list of reasons for child allowances that had persuaded Beveridge, her
argument that a child allowance was ‘an expression of the community’s direct
180 Unconditional
interest in children’ had done (Beveridge, 1942: 155). The reason for not
means-testing the child allowances was that ‘little money can be saved by any
reasonable income test’ (Beveridge, 1942: 157). The government agreed to
child allowances for all but the first child of the family, so ‘Family Allowance’
rather than a ‘Child Allowance’ was legislated in 1945 and implemented
in 1946 (Macnicol, 1980: 193). Thirty years later Family Allowance was
extended to the first child in the family and renamed ‘Child Benefit’.
Family Allowance happened because it was the answer to a variety of
policy problems, so there were lots of ways of arguing for it and a broad base
of support could be constructed (Freeman, 1998: 2; Land, 1975: 227); a per-
suasive advocate had campaigned for the idea over a long period of time; two
significant conversions, Beveridge’s and John Maynard Keynes’s, gave the
idea two significant champions; and the accident of Beveridge being asked
to chair a relevant committee, and different political parties being able to find
reasons for voting for it, ensured that Family Allowance was legislated and
implemented (Land, 1975: 169, 173–9, 195–6, 205, 221, 227; Torry, 2013:
22–3; 2021a: 82–3, 129–30).
Juliet Rhys Williams’s minority report

At the same time that Family Allowance was making headway, a member of
Beveridge’s wartime committee was having problems with his proposal for
contributory National Insurance and means-tested National Assistance bene-
fits. Lady Juliet Rhys Williams, Secretary of the Women’s Liberal Federation
(Harris, 1981: 258), was concerned that as workers’ families would quickly
find themselves means-tested when their time-limited contributory benefits
ran out, they would have little incentive to seek paid employment. They would
have to be coerced, and ‘once the power of the State is made use of as a means
of making a man work against his will’ (Rhys Williams, 1943: 13), other
coercions might follow.
The hope of gain is infinitely preferable to the fear of punishment and the fear of
want as a motive for human labour … The real objection to the Beveridge scheme
does not lie in its shortcomings in respect of the abolition of want, which could be
made good, but in its serious attack upon the will to work. (Rhys Williams, 1943:
45, 141)
Rhys Williams proposed a different solution:
The State owes precisely the same benefits to all of its citizens, and should in no
circumstances pay more to one than to another of the same sex and age, except in
return for services rendered … Therefore the same benefits [should be paid] to the
employed and healthy as to the idle and sick. … The prevention of want must be
regarded as being the duty of the State to all its citizens and not merely to a favoured
few. (Rhys Williams, 1943: 139, 145)
The income envisaged was not entirely unconditional as workers would have
been expected to accept any job offered: a conditionality removed when
Lady Rhys Williams’s son Brandon, a Conservative Member of Parliament,
proposed a genuinely unconditional income to a parliamentary select commit-
tee in 1982. ‘Every British Citizen should be awarded a personal allowance
of a value related to personal status, not to resources’ (House of Commons
Treasury and Civil Service Committee Sub-Committee, 1982: 423). The sub-
sequent report proposed that the government should research the possibility
(Parker, 1989: 100). There is no evidence of this happening, but the incident
did inspire the formation of the independent Basic Income Research Group in
1984. The UK remains at the forefront of the modern Basic Income debate, and
has been the location of much of the research that has facilitated that debate
(Torry, 2013: 33–3; 2021a: 83–7, 131–3).
Citizen’s Pensions
Pensions come in three main types: state pensions provided by national
governments; occupational pensions provided by employers; and private pen-
sions paid by insurance companies to which premiums have been paid. State
pensions are paid either to everyone legally resident in a country or to those
who have paid social insurance contributions during their working lives, with
the amount of a contributory pension usually determined by the number of
years during which contributions have been paid. Contribution-based pensions
are by definition conditional, as are means-tested residence-based pensions,
and most state pensions are of one of those two types. However, there are
some countries that pay what are generally called ‘Citizen’s Pensions’ –
unconditional pensions paid at the same rate to everyone legally resident
in the country. Among OECD countries, such unconditional pensions are
paid by Canada, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands,
New Zealand and Norway (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, 2021: 123). Some of these countries pay a means-tested element
alongside the unconditional pension, and some pay both residence-based and
contribution-based pensions.
The picture is complicated by the fact that a contribution-based pension
towards which the vast majority of the residents of a country have paid
contributions can come very close to being a residence-based pension, and
if the vast majority of residents have either paid a sufficient number of years
of contributions to receive the full amount of the pension, or they have been
credited with contributions that have not in fact been paid – for instance,
while receiving state benefits, or following the birth of a child – then the
182 Unconditional
residence-based pension can come close to being a Citizen’s Pension. It is this

situation to which the UK is moving as its Single Tier State Pension is gradu-
ally rolled out. Most residents will receive the full value, and the higher value
compared to the previous Basic State Pension means that far fewer pensioners
will have to claim means-tested benefits, bringing the pension close to being an
unconditional residence-based pension. Removing the contribution condition
would turn it into a Citizen’s Pension. The initial proposal for the Single Tier
State Pension was made in 2010 by Steven Webb, Minister for Pensions, and
co-author in 1990 of a book about a household-based but otherwise uncondi-
tional income for every individual (Brittan and Webb, 1990; Department for
Work and Pensions, 2011: 10, 29–35; Torry, 2013: 38–42; 2021a: 139–40).
DISCUSSION
Why have some unconditional services and incomes been implemented, and
some have remained unimplemented ideas?
In the UK, Family Allowance benefited from a passionate campaigner
in Eleanor Rathbone; a high-profile and well-placed champion in William
Beveridge; well-understood problems requiring a solution; and lots of good
reasons for implementation. The same was true of the transition to Child
Benefit: the new Child Poverty Action Group was the campaigner; Barbara
Castle and Margaret Herbison, Members of Parliament, were parliamentary
champions; poverty was the clearly understood problem; and an increase
in Family Allowance and its extension to the first child in the family was
an obvious if partial solution. There were particular reasons related to the
times: At the end of the Second World War, members of both main political
parties could find reasons to vote for Family Allowance; and during the 1970s
increasing numbers of women were joining trades unions (Abel-Smith and
Townsend, 1965; Atkinson, 1969: 24, 141; 2011: 83; Banting, 1979: 66, 95,
102–3; Barr and Coulter, 1991: 291; Hill, 1990: 41; Titmuss, 1962; Torry,
2013: 24–5; Townsend, 1979: 151; Walley, 1986). The UK’s new Single Tier
State Pension, which it would not take much to turn into a Citizen’s Pension,
had benefited from significant levels of research and debate among a variety
of institutions related to pension provision, and a widespread understanding
that large numbers of pensioners having to receive a means-tested top-up
made it difficult for both individuals and the pension industry to plan for future
pension provision. The idea had a ministerial champion: a pensions minister
knowledgeable about the benefits system, and in particular about the advan-
tages of unconditional incomes (Torry, 2013: 41).
Commonalities between the UK’s NHS, Family Allowance, Child Benefit
and the Single Tier State Pension are that all of them were for identifiable and
‘deserving’ groups of people – people with healthcare needs, children and
elderly people. All three were easy to understand; had experienced significant
public and institutional debate; were designed to solve well-understood prob-
lems; had benefited from public understanding; had benefited from hig§rofile
and well-placed champions; had been tested in identifiable pilot projects of
various kinds; and crucially did not reduce the number of civil servants, but
rather increased it. In the UK there has been plenty of research on the feasibil-
ity and desirability of a Basic Income, and public understanding is growing,
but there has been no high-profile and well-placed champion; the income
would be for the whole population, including the ‘undeserving’; and the civil
service might perceive a risk that fewer civil servants would be required, even
if that might not be the case. As José Harris suggested in relation to Juliet
Rhys-Williams’s proposal: ‘Like most schemes for abolishing bureaucrats,
Lady Juliet’s proposals met with an official wall of silence’ (Harris, 1981:
258). Additional factors relating to the UK are that we have been means-testing
for four hundred years, so any alternative will necessarily be viewed with
suspicion; and because revenue foregone in the form of tax allowances is
not counted as public expenditure, to turn tax allowances into unconditional
incomes would make it look as if public expenditure had increased even if
it had not. This objection is irrational, but it is made nevertheless (Atkinson
and Sutherland, 1988: 1; Evans and Williams, 2009: 140; Monckton, 1993: 6;
Torry, 2013: 42–7).
As we have studied both the more conditional and more unconditional
streams within social policy, both in this chapter and elsewhere, we have had
to recognize that there is no pure unconditionality anywhere. An unconditional
income paid to 2000 unemployed individuals chosen at random from across
Finland was conditional on unemployment; pensions are conditional on being
elderly; and the Indian and Namibian Basic Income pilot projects were for
people living in clearly defined communities. Minimum Income Guarantee
experiments in the USA and Canada were with incomes conditional on the
levels of other income, but not otherwise. Child Benefit remains unconditional,
subject to the one conditionality of legal residence. In the UK’s NHS, health-
care is conditional on a General Practitioner deciding that healthcare resources
are required, and some aspects of care are conditional on the patient paying
for them: but healthcare in the UK is far less conditional than in many other
countries, and particularly in the USA (Chapters 4 to 10).
What we are looking at here are spectrums: between conditional and uncon-
ditional healthcare, between conditional and unconditional incomes, and so on.
Perhaps no implemented social policy is actually at either end, though there
will be some that get close. The UK’s Child Benefit is still unconditional if
understood as the same amount of money for every main carer with the same
number of children: but legal residence remains a conditionality, so Child
Benefit is still not right at the end of the spectrum.
184 Unconditional
Perhaps we ought to suggest that implemented social policies should

be put through an unconditionality audit and the results published. Child
Benefit would be almost at the unconditional end, and means-tested benefits
and insurance-based healthcare much closer to the conditional end. So our
first conclusion is that social policies are more or less unconditional, and
that contact needs to be maintained between policies at different levels of
conditionality.
CONCLUSION
It is quite difficult to find genuinely unconditional implemented social policies

before the twentieth century: so we have to say that for hundreds of years,
European and many other societies were characterized by means-tested ben-
efits and conditional health, education and other services; that contributory
benefits and services then evolved; and that less conditional policy instru-
ments then followed. Each new category of income has been added on top of
other existing policy instruments, rather than by replacement: so the UK now
experiences healthcare free at the point of need but also paid-for elements
and a parallel private healthcare system, and it has means-tested, contributory
and unconditional benefits incomes. There were proposals for unconditional
incomes before the twentieth century – for instance, Thomas Spence’s land
expropriation to pay for Basic Incomes: but these were never implemented.
It was only around the beginning of the twentieth century that pilot projects,
experiments, and theoretical and practical research began into a social policy
and economic regime to replace both neoliberalism and Keynesianism,
although those who argued for Family Allowance, Child Benefit, Citizen’s
Pensions, and other unconditional incomes, might not have recognized that
that was what they were doing. The trajectory in the direction of increasing
unconditionality is a conclusion that we can legitimately draw on the basis of
the evidence. However, that trajectory remains a fitful stream alongside the
permanent contributory and means-tested rivers. Whether that stream will gain
momentum or remain an occasional minor element in income maintenance and
public service provision might depend on some of the readers of this book.
10. Quite simply, unconditionality works
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, we shall extend research into the efficiency and effectiveness of
different healthcare systems into a study of what resources, characteristics and
modes of delivery are required for efficiency and effectiveness in other social
policy fields. We shall conclude that social policy characterized by uncondi-
tionality can be both effective and efficient, and in particular more effective
and efficient than social policy coherent with alternative regimes.
THE VITAL DIMENSION1
What is it that makes a social policy work? If we think in terms of a variety of

‘dimensions’ of social policy then the question becomes: To which dimension
do we need to pay particular attention if we want social policy to be effective
and efficient? For instance, is it the different resources that need to be pro-
vided, the characteristics of those resources, or the ways in which delivery
methods are structured?
Resources
First of all, what resources are needed? The approach frequently employed to
determine the resources that households need to live a minimally decent life in
today’s society is sometimes termed the ‘Breadline Britain’ method after the
1983 book of that title. A representative sample of a population is asked what
resources they think are required to enable someone to live a minimally decent
life. This is the process still employed to set the Minimum Income Standards
published annually by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (Davis et al., 2021;
Goedemé, 2020; Lansley and Mack, 1983; 2015). A particular virtue of this
1
This section of the chapter is based on a paper offered at a conference in Oñati,
Spain, in 2017. A revised version was published as ‘An essential dimension of the social
minimum’, in Specifying and Securing a Social Minimum in the Battle against Poverty,
edited by Toomas Kotkas, Ingrid Leijten and Frans Pennings, pp. 31–46, Oxford: Hart
(Torry, 2019a), and subsequently republished as chapter 6 in Torry, 2022a.
185
186 Unconditional
approach is that it recognizes that to a large extent human need is socially con-
structed (Dean, 2010: 46–7), which it is: but it also recognizes that someone
for whom lower level needs such as food, drink and shelter have not been
fulfilled will find their very existence threatened, their needs for affiliation,
esteem, knowledge, the aesthetic, transcendence and self-realization (Maslow,
1943: 376–82) difficult to fulfil, and any potential capabilities difficult to
exercise (Sen, 2009).
In a modern society, some of the resources required can be purchased in
markets of various kinds. This is how food and drink are usually obtained;
shelter can often be purchased, either by buying a property or by renting one;
electricity and gas can be bought; and there are also markets in healthcare and
education. For all of these resources an income is required: earned income;
investment income; or income provided by charities or the State. How much
the State provides might be determined by Minimum Income Standards
generated by a ‘Breadline Britain’ exercise, but political and affordability
constraints might be more determinative (Atkinson, 1990). Some resources
cannot be left to market provision if they are to reach their intended targets.
For instance, if the only route to the provision of a child’s education were to be
payment for admission to privately run schools, then many households would
not be able to afford to pay for education, and there might be households who
would decide not to spend their slim resources on their children’s education. If
a society regards education as a right, then it will have to provide education for
every child as a free public service. Somewhat different considerations apply
in relation to healthcare, although the outcome is the same. Two different
individuals might need radically different amounts of healthcare if both of
them are to live minimally decent lives: so again, healthcare will need to be
provided as a public service. Stuart White is correct to regard both income and
healthcare as required for a ‘civic minimum’ (White, 2003: 99, 131–2). Eric
Thorbecke lists additional requirements: ‘life-expectancy (longevity), literacy,
the provision of public goods, freedom and security’ (Thorbecke, 2007: 17).
Sufficient income to pay for food, drink and shelter (including clothing), and
publicly provided healthcare and education, will be essential members of any
list of necessary resources. Others might be public transport, policing, a courts
system, legal representation, and perhaps social cohesion (De Boyser et al.,
2009: 220). For the purposes of this chapter, we shall concentrate on income
and healthcare.
Characteristics of the Resources
Each of the resources possesses a variety of characteristics – such as efficiency

and equity – and, in different countries, different ways of delivering the
resources will mean that the resources will be characterized by more or less
Quite simply, unconditionality works 187
equity, more or less efficiency, and so on. The Commonwealth Fund, based
in New York, has evaluated the healthcare systems of eleven OECD countries
three times: in 2014, 2017 and 2021. In 2014, the UK was ranked first overall,
and first in relation to most of the characteristics, and the USA was ranked
last overall and either last or a long way down the rankings in relation to
most of the characteristics. Following some changes in the indices measured,
researchers found that by 2021 the UK had slipped to fourth place overall,
behind Norway, the Netherlands and Australia, and that the USA was still in
last place overall and last in relation to most of the indices (Davis et al., 2014:
7; Schneider et al., 2021: 3).
The characteristics measured in 2021 were as follows:
• Access to care (including affordability and timeliness)

• Care process (including preventive care, safe care, co-ordinated care, and
engagement and patient preferences)
• Administrative efficiency
• Equity
• Healthcare outcomes (Schneider et al., 2021: 21).
(The fifth characteristic is somewhat different from the others, as a healthcare

system is only partially responsible for the healthiness or otherwise of people’s
lives, and other factors can be more important.)
A further interesting finding is that all of Norway, the Netherlands, Australia
and the UK spend about 10 per cent of their Gross Domestic Products on
healthcare, whereas the USA spends 16.8 per cent (Schneider et al., 2021: 5).
The fact that some healthcare systems are doing so well in relation to most of
the indicators, and that the US system is doing so badly, is an issue to which
we shall return.
A question raised by this list is whether these characteristics are applicable
to the other resources required for a minimally decent life in society. Take
education as an example: all four of access, process, administrative efficiency
and equity are meaningful. The sub-characteristics related to the healthcare
characteristics might also be relevant: affordability and timeliness in relation
to access; and preventive, safe, co-ordinated, engagement and student prefer-
ences in relation to process (Schneider et al., 2021: 23–31).
However, the list of characteristics might not look so appropriate in relation
to income provision, so either we shall require a different set of characteristics,
or we shall have to give different meanings to the characteristics employed
in relation to healthcare. Neither approach would be a problem. In 2021, the
Commonwealth Fund’s researchers employed surveys and other empirical data
to generate measurements for seventy-one different indices, then combined the
scores into scores for each characteristic, and then ranked countries in relation
188 Unconditional
to those scores: and finally, they calculated overall rankings for the different
healthcare systems (Davis et al., 2014: 28–9; Schneider et al., 2021: 21–2). We
shall always be able to construct lists of characteristics, sub-characteristics,
and indices; we shall always be able to conduct surveys to evaluate to what
extent the characteristics are met in different contexts; although it will never be
possible to compare scores across different resources, we shall always be able
to rank different contexts in relation to the characteristics of each individual
resource; and we shall always be able to ascribe an overall ranking to each
context for each resource. This is what matters: so it is not a problem that the
lists of characteristics and sub-characteristics might be different for different
resources.
Suppose that we wished to conduct a survey and collect other data to dis-
cover how people regard the income maintenance system in the UK. First of
all, we would need to distinguish between earnings, other forms of income,
the tax system, and the benefits system, and we would need to treat each of
them separately. We would also need to treat different types of social security
benefit differently, for instance, unconditional Child Benefit behaves very
differently from means-tested benefits. If we decided to set out from the list
of characteristics employed by the Commonwealth Fund, we would quickly
find ourselves dividing them. ‘Preventive’ could mean ‘prevents poverty’
and ‘incentivizes employment’; ‘safety’ could mean ‘avoids bureaucratic
intrusion’ and ‘ensures continuity of provision’; ‘co-ordinated’ could mean
‘fits with desired family and employment structure’ and ‘co-ordinates with
other income streams’; ‘engagement and recipient preferences’ could mean
any or all of ‘adapts to individual needs’, ‘avoids stigmatization’ and ‘encour-
ages personal choice’; ‘affordable’ needs to apply to the claimant, so it could
mean ‘the claiming process is not costly in terms of money’ and ‘the claiming
process is not costly in terms of time’, and it might also mean ‘does not result
in overpayments that have to be paid back’; ‘timely’ could mean ‘payments
are always made on time’ and ‘correct payments are made from the date of
the claim’; ‘administrative efficiency’ is what it says it is; and ‘equity’ could
mean either ‘everyone receives the same income from the State’ or ‘everyone
is enabled to reach a specified income level’. Once a list of indices for the
different meanings of the characteristics and sub-characteristics has been
constructed, survey and other methods can construct scores for the different
indices and then sub-characteristics and characteristics, and a method similar
to that used by the Commonwealth Fund researchers can be used to construct
overall scores for the characteristics, and from those we can construct rankings
and overall rankings.
It is fortunate that neither indices nor sub-characteristics need to be con-
sistent with each other. For instance, in relation to income provision, ‘those
who need more should receive more’ and ‘the system should provide everyone
with the income that they need in order to provide themselves with a min-
imally decent life in society’ appear to be inconsistent because the former
might suggest means-tested benefits and the latter an unconditional income.
However, there is no necessary conflict, as the same amount of money given
to everyone will always increase the net incomes of low earners by a higher
proportion than it increases the net incomes of higher earners (Rothstein, 2002:
210–11); and research on proposals to pay an unconditional income to every
member of a population shows that such schemes can be designed to redistrib-
ute from rich to poor, to reduce poverty, to reduce inequality, to achieve zero
net cost, to ensure almost zero net disposable income losses for low-income
households at the point of implementation, and to require minimal increases
in rates of income tax (Torry, 2022b). Even if the indices, sub-characteristics
and characteristics are not entirely consistent with each other, the method is
not compromised. Each sub-characteristic can always be separately scored
for each resource in each context; the scores can be combined to create scores
for characteristics (whether or not the same characteristics are listed for
each resource); rankings can be calculated; and then overall rankings can be
calculated. It therefore appears that the same basic method can be employed
for a variety of different social policy fields, for instance, in the educational,
healthcare and income fields; and within the income field it can be used sepa-
rately for means-tested and unconditional benefits.
While the same basic method can be employed in different social policy
fields, the indices to be measured will be different. For instance, in the income
field it will be important to measure the resource’s ability to relieve poverty,
but it will also be important to measure the extent to which the income enables
the recipient to earn their way out of poverty. Means-tested benefits will
score poorly in relation to this latter index, whereas unconditional incomes
will score rather better. It will be as important to ask whether the institutions
involved prevent progress towards achieving a minimally decent life as it is to
ask whether they positively promote it (Sindzingre, 2007: 63). We might find
that an index required in one field will indicate its requirement in another. For
instance, we have found that in relation to income provision an ‘ability to pro-
gress’ sub-characteristic might be required, and we might find that in relation
to healthcare a similar index would be useful. ‘Ability to progress’ suggests
that we should measure the extent to which institutional boundaries between
hospital care and local authority social care might prevent progress towards
independence following an accident or illness. The ‘process freedom’ that
Amartya Sen discusses alongside the ‘capabilities’ freedom to which process
freedom can take us suggests that ‘ability to progress’ might be a useful index
in relation to a variety of resources (Sen, 2009: 225–52, 370–1).
Once lists of indices have been constructed for each characteristic of
a resource, surveys can be carried out, scores for the indices amalgamated,
190 Unconditional
the different countries ranked for each characteristic, and overall rankings
calculated. The same process can be carried out for each resource. If it were to
be possible to combine the rankings for the different resources then we would
be able to construct the kind of welfare function that Thorbecke and Atkinson
envisage (Atkinson, 2009: 31–3; de Neuberg et al., 2009: 52; Thorbecke,
2007: 17), although Atkinson was aware that applying weights to the different
rankings might be a somewhat subjective exercise. In order to combine the
rankings of characteristics to create overall rankings, the Commonwealth Fund
researchers have employed a variety of methods:
We found that these alternative methods tended to consistently yield the same
top-performing countries … and worst-performing countries … However, there was
a fair amount of fluidity among the countries in the middle of the performance range,
whose rankings were sensitive to relatively small changes in data or methodology.
For this reason, overall rankings may overshadow important absolute differences in
performance, warranting closer examination of the data when describing a particular
country’s performance. (Davis et al., 2014: 28–9)
We would find the same combination of consistency and fluidity if we were to

calculate overall rankings for resources other than healthcare, and also if we
were to calculate overall rankings across different resources.
An important question that researchers always face is whether differ-
ent factors are independent of each other. For instance: might there be
a trade-off between equity and efficiency? Le Grand suggests that in relation
to means-tested benefits there is such a trade-off between equity, understood as
a reduction in poverty, and efficiency, understood as employment and savings
incentives (Le Grand, 1990: 554). However, such a trade-off does not neces-
sarily exist in relation to unconditional benefits because they provide a higher
proportion of net income for the poor than they do for the rich, they can reduce
poverty and inequality, and they are not withdrawn as earned and investment
incomes rise. Here equity and efficiency can be enhanced together (Torry,
2022b). Another potential trade-off might be between low cost and uncon-
ditionality, simply because unconditional incomes and unconditional access
to healthcare at the point of need require less administration, and involve no
market inefficiencies, whereas insurance-funded schemes imply both complex
administration and market inefficiencies due to asymmetries of information.
And there might be trade-offs between different resources as well as within
each particular resource. For instance, if certain characteristics were not met
in relation to income, such as timeliness, then health might be damaged; if the
inequality of incomes were to increase, then again health might be damaged;
insufficient income might compromise educational attainment; and without
sufficient education there might be less income. Some of these relationships
might be circular. Without sufficient income, health might be compromised;
and ill health can compromise income. There might be unresolved questions
here, but that does not compromise our ability to create a legitimate and com-
prehensible matrix, or our ability to employ the overall rankings for the modes
of delivery of the different resources to construct the best available social
minimum policy regime.
Trade-offs might or might not exist, but whether they do or not does not
compromise the usefulness of generating rankings of characteristics.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN OPTIMAL POLICY

REGIME
The Commonwealth Fund researchers have set out to understand how well
different countries’ healthcare systems function, but it is not the fact that the
healthcare systems are in different countries that delivers the different effi-
ciencies, equities, and so on: it is the fact that the different healthcare systems
are differently organized. An insurance-based system such as the US health-
care system will function differently from a tax-funded system that is free at
the point of use, as in the UK. It is the mode of delivery that is the relevant
variable. The countries in which healthcare, educational, income maintenance
and other welfare systems operate have now become irrelevant. The three
dimensions of social welfare are now resources, their characteristics, and
their modes of delivery, and in relation to the last of those, what matters is the
detail of how incomes and services are delivered. Here we must always keep
in mind the fact that the same word might indicate different realities in relation
to different resources: so in the healthcare field ‘unconditional’ means uncon-
ditional access at the point of need, whereas in the income maintenance field
‘unconditional’ means unconditional regular provision. These will constitute
two different modes of delivery.
A comparison of the Commonwealth Fund healthcare system rankings with
information on how different healthcare systems are organized and funded
reveals that systems that are free at the point of use and publicly funded out of
direct taxation, or are universal compulsory social insurance schemes, tend to
be more efficient and effective than healthcare systems relying for funding on
private insurance companies or payment per item of healthcare by the patient
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2022; Schneider
et al., 2021). This suggests that any country wishing to construct an efficient
and effective healthcare system should be looking at systems that exhibit
a mode of delivery characterized by unconditionality of access at the point
of need. When we study modes of delivery, we are studying institutions, and
institutions are as they are because of their histories and current economic,
social and political contexts (Rothstein and Steinmo, 2002: 15–17): so if we
192 Unconditional
wish to optimize social welfare the task will always be an institutional one,
and in particular a reshaping of how institutions deliver the different resources.
The countries with the most effective healthcare systems tend to have one
dominant system that is publicly funded and free at the point of use, and
subsidiary private systems funded by private insurance policies or by payment
per item by the patient. The situation is often the same for education, with
dominant publicly funded systems free for children up to the end of secondary
schooling and often beyond that into university education, and subsidiary
private systems privately funded by parents. The situation is somewhat
different in relation to income, which can come from any of employment,
self-employment, investment income, company profits and government bene-
fits of various kinds. Each different income source will have its own character-
istics, so in relation to income it is not different countries’ income systems that
should be evaluated, but rather the different modes of delivery to be found in
multiple countries. If research similar to that conducted by the Commonwealth
Fund in relation to healthcare were to be conducted into different income
provisions, then it is each mode of delivery that would have to be evaluated;
and in relation to government benefits, that means that each different type of
benefit – social insurance, means-tested and unconditional – would have to
be evaluated separately. Particularly in relation to income maintenance, but
also in relation to other public services, the third dimension of social welfare
might be understood as a generalization of the empowerment spectrum devel-
oped by Kumlin (2002: 26) – a spectrum that enables him to conclude that
means-testing and other forms of selectivity hamper citizen empowerment,
whereas unconditional provision does not. Similarly, Atkinson concludes
that in today’s more turbulent employment market, social insurance needs to
be complemented by an unconditional income rather than by a means-tested
one because we no longer expect governments to ensure the full employment
that would enable social insurance on its own to sustain a constant and stable
income (Atkinson, 1993: 9, 19).
The ‘resources, characteristics, and mode of delivery’ triad suggests a sig-
nificant research agenda: the construction of lists of characteristics and indices
for each of the resources, and evaluations of those characteristics in relation
to a wide variety of modes of delivery, by survey and other social science
methods, in order to rank the modes of delivery for the different resources (de
Neuberg et al., 2009: 37; Kakwani and Son, 2007: 269).
Thorbecke suggests that ‘there are too many unresolved questions left over
to consider seriously using multidimensional measures in any truly operational
sense’ (Thorbecke, 2007: 18). There are indeed many unresolved questions,
but the whole purpose of social scientific research is to answer such questions:
and the particular question that the research agenda outlined here is intended
to answer is whether unconditionality works, that is, would a shift towards

unconditionality improve social welfare?
UNCONDITIONALITY
The combination of evidenced research and thought experiment that we have

explored above suggests that unconditional provision is likely to be both
efficient and effective. This corroborates findings throughout this book. We
have studied such practical implementations of unconditionality as the UK’s
National Health Service and Child Benefit, and also Basic Income pilot pro-
jects and experiments in Minimum Income Guarantees, and have found useful
economic and employment market effects. However, it is not only in the eco-
nomic and employment fields that the Namibian and Indian pilot projects have
generated results that recommend giving everyone an unconditional income
(Chapters 4, 6 and 8). Results from the two-year Namibian pilot project were
impressive:
• Household poverty dropped. In November 2007, 76 per cent of residents

of the two villages fell below a food poverty line. Within a year, this was
reduced to 37 per cent. Those households that were not joined by family
members from outside the project villages (an understandable migration)
saw poverty levels reduced from 76 per cent to just 16 per cent.
• The proportion of people engaged in economic activity rose from 44 per
cent to 55 per cent, often through own-account work of various kinds: and
especially through such initiatives as the tending of vegetable plots and the
building of latrines, which directly led to an increase in the community’s
health.
• Far from leading to idleness and a decrease in economic activity, the eco-
nomic security that a Basic Income offered to people gave them the con-
fidence to take the economic risks necessary for new productive activity.
• Child malnutrition fell. Children’s weight-for-age improved in just six
months from 42 per cent of underweight children to just 10 per cent by the
end of the project.
• Before the pilot project, almost half of the villages’ children did not attend
school regularly. Pass rates were at 40 per cent, and drop-out rates were
high. This was mainly because parents had to pay fees for their children to
attend school. By the end of the project, 90 per cent of parents were paying
school fees, and most children were attending school. Drop-out rates fell
from 40 per cent to almost zero during the project.
• The clinic, like the school, is funded by attendees’ payments. During the
project, residents could pay the attendance fee, use of the clinic increased
sixfold, and the income of the clinic increased fivefold.
194 Unconditional
• During the first year of the project, average household debt fell from
N$1215 to N$772. Savings increased, as did ownership of livestock.
• Crime rates fell by 42 per cent during the project. Theft of stock fell by
a similar amount, giving people the confidence to invest in assets.
• The Basic Income gave to women a new economic independence, and
paid-for sex was reduced accordingly.
• There was no evidence that the Basic Income led to an increase in
alcoholism.
• Administrative costs were just 3 to 4 per cent of the total outlay.
• The villages of their own volition elected an advisory committee of eight-
een residents, and among its achievements were the opening of a post
office, the establishment of savings accounts, and the closure of shebeens
on the day of the monthly distribution of the grants.
• New shops were opened.
• The number of people experiencing daily food shortages fell from 30 per
cent to 12 per cent of the population in just six months.
• The number of people who rarely experienced food shortages rose from 20
per cent to 60 per cent of the population.
• Economic activity rose fastest among women.
• Average income rose in every earnings quintile, and proportionately more
for lower quintiles.
• Average income rose a staggering 200 per cent in the lowest quintile
excluding the N$100 (US$12) Basic Income, because people could now
purchase the means for making an income, and they did.
• Low-wage employment was in many cases replaced by better paid
self-employment (Basic Income Grant Coalition, 2009: 13–17; and results
given at a seminar at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, University
of London, on 27 January 2009).
Similar results were generated by the large pilot project in India (Davala,
2019: 375–8). In any country, a Basic Income would provide a secure layer
of income for every individual and household; improve social cohesion; and
increase employment incentives for any household taken off means-tested ben-
efits by their Basic Incomes. Basic Income schemes – that is, Basic Incomes,
with levels for different age groups specified, the funding method fully spec-
ified, and changes to existing tax and benefits systems specified – could be
constructed that would leave no funding gap and would reduce both poverty
and inequality (Torry, 2021b; 2022b). Above all, in relation to the discussion
above, a Basic Income would require no intrusive bureaucratic inquiry; would
be radically simple to administer; and would attract no stigma or shame,
simply because everyone would receive the same amount unconditionally
(Torry, 2015b; 2020a; 2022b). Selective schemes generate stigma, whereas
unconditional services and incomes do not (Baumberg, 2016: 196). If we want

to be rid of stigma and shame, then we need additional public services free at
the point of use, and unconditional incomes to provide a secure layer of income
for every individual in society.
There is still much debate: about the definition of Basic Income and how
to interpret it; how much the Basic Income should be; precisely who within
a country should receive it; and so on (Torry, 2022a), but much is now fairly
settled, particularly in relation to the different feasibility tests that would
need to be passed for a Basic Income to be implemented (Torry, 2016a). The
global Basic Income debate is now a significant social fact, and at some point,
whether by accident or by mainstream social policy planning, a country will
implement a Basic Income and will reap the benefits.
As Richard Titmuss has suggested, ‘poor quality selective services for
poor people were the product of a society that saw “welfare” as a residual,
as a public burden’ (Titmuss, 1968: 134). Unconditional public services and
incomes, on the other hand, are provided for everyone, and so are more likely
to remain of high quality (Walker, 2011: 149–50) (unless significant inequal-
ity enables a high proportion of the population to abdicate from both public
provision and from paying for it). Because unconditional incomes and public
services benefit everyone, they turn ‘welfare’ into a shared experience to
which everyone contributes according to their means. The most efficient way
to assist the poor is to make proper unconditional provision for everyone and
to ensure that the wealthy pay more in tax than they receive in unconditional
incomes and public services (Spicker, 2007: 136).
CONCLUSION
This chapter has defined the ‘dimensions’ of social welfare as ‘resources’,

‘characteristics’ and ‘modes of delivery’, and it transpires that the dimension
to which we should pay particular attention is mode of delivery: and given the
efficiency and effectiveness of an unconditional mode of delivery, we have to
say that a social policy regime increasingly characterized by unconditionality
would deliver results that we might wish to see.
11. The ethics of unconditionality
INTRODUCTION
The arguments that Thomas Paine deployed to advocate for annual pensions
and one-off capital grants to working-age adults might be regarded as either
religion or ethics, although the boundary between those two was somewhat
less clear two hundred years ago than it is today.
… the earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to
be, the common property of the human race … [e]very proprietor … of cultivated
lands owes to the community a ground-rent … for the land which he holds; and it is
from this ground-rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue …
… out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of
twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for
the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed
property:
And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now
living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age …
… to every person, rich or poor, to prevent invidious distinctions. It is also right
it should be so, because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right,
belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited
from those who did.
Land … is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal prop-
erty is the effect of Society; and it is impossible for an individual to acquire personal
property without the aid of Society, as it is for him to make land originally. … All
accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands
produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of
justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to
society from whence the whole came. (Paine, 1797: 12–17, 29–30)
Somewhat less religious, but equally ethical, was Thomas Spence’s argument
for an unconditional quarterly income.
That property in land and liberty among men, in a state of nature, ought to be equal,
few, one would fain hope, would be foolish enough to deny … Let it be supposed
then, that the whole people in some country, after much reasoning and deliberation,
should conclude that every man has an equal property in the land in the neighbour-
196
The ethics of unconditionality 197
hood where he resides. They therefore resolve … that every one may reap all the
benefits from their natural rights and privileges possible. (Spence, 1796: 5, 8)
The ethics of a Basic Income are somewhat exhaustively discussed in chapter 8

of my A Research Agenda for Basic Income (Torry, 2023) and in chapter 4 of
my A Modern Guide to Citizen’s Basic Income: A Multidisciplinary Approach
(Torry, 2020a), so in this chapter I shall study the ethics of unconditionality in
social policy in relation to healthcare, and as ethics is best done in relation to
specifics, I shall study the ethics of unconditionality in relation to primary care
in the UK. The reader will find helpful the discussion of healthcare funding
methods to be found in Chapter 5 of this book.
THE ETHICS OF UNCONDITIONAL HEALTHCARE1
We shall begin our exploration of healthcare by studying some traditional

ethical theories.
Healthcare as a Categorical Imperative
For Immanuel Kant, a ‘categorical imperative’ is an imperative to ‘act only in

accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that
it become a universal law’ (Kant, 2002: 37; Ak 4.421). Kant gives examples:
I ought not to make a promise that I do not intend to keep, because if the
practice were to become universal then no promise would ever be believed, so
the promise that I would make would not be believed and would be pointless
(Kant, 2002: 39; Ak 4.422); and I ought not to avoid helping those in need,
because if not helping those in need were to become universal then if I was in
need I would not receive the help that I needed (Kant, 2002: 40; Ak 4.423). In
relation to the subject under discussion, I might one day need healthcare to be
available free at the point of use, the people that I know and love might need it
to be available, and the people on whom they rely might need it – indeed, any
individual might require it – so we might regard it as a categorical imperative
to vote for political parties that promise to maintain a healthcare system free
at the point of use. Where a categorical imperative is framed in negative terms
– for instance, the imperative not to make a promise that we do not intend to
keep – the negative categorical imperative implies a positive obligation: for
instance, only to make promises that we intend to keep. Where a categorical
1
Parts of this chapter are based on Malcolm Torry, ‘Primary care, the basic neces-
sity: Part II: Explorations in ethics’, in Handbook of Primary Care Ethics, edited by
Andrew Papanikitas and John Spicer, pp. 377–84, Boca Raton, FL: Taylor and Francis
(2018) (Torry, 2018c).
198 Unconditional
imperative is framed in positive terms – for instance, the imperative to vote

only for parties that support healthcare free at the point of use – a negative
categorical imperative is implied: for instance, not to vote for political parties
that would abolish a healthcare system that is free at the point of use.
What a categorical imperative does not do is specify detailed method. So, for
instance, there might be a variety of ways of funding a healthcare system that
is free at the point of use, for instance, universal social insurance coverage, or
more doubtfully a donation basis. However, as we have discovered in Chapter
5, the only secure way to fund a healthcare system that is free at the point
of use is to fund it from general taxation: so in practical terms a categorical
imperative to vote for political parties that would maintain a healthcare system
free at the point of use also implies a categorical imperative to vote for parties
that would fund healthcare free at the point of use out of general taxation, and
also a categorical imperative to pay the taxes due.
Healthcare as a Basic Right in a Just Society
John Rawls, in his search for principles on which to build a just society, posits
an ‘original position’ in which all parties are equal: ‘all have the same rights in
the procedure for choosing principles’. He envisages all of us standing behind
a ‘veil of ignorance’ which prevents us from knowing what position we shall
have in society, and then asks us to choose the principles by which we would
wish society to be governed (Rawls, 1971: 19, 136–42). The two principles
that emerge from this thought experiment are
1. equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties;

2. social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and author-
ity, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in
particular for the least advantaged members of society. (Rawls, 1971: 14–15)
One of the ‘basic rights’ that Rawls wants to see equally distributed is the right
to ‘primary goods’, that is, goods that we all require whatever our individual
aims in life – for instance, ‘rights and liberties, opportunities and powers,
income and wealth’. He might also have listed shelter, food and healthcare,
which are also clearly ‘primary goods’, although he might be expecting
‘income and wealth’ to enable everyone to purchase those goods for them-
selves (Rawls, 1971: 93–5): which, as we have discovered in Chapter 5, would
not be a viable option in relation to healthcare. Of particular relevance here
is the second of Rawls’s two principles: that inequalities are only just if they
are to the benefit of ‘the least advantaged members of society’ (Rawls, 1971:
15). One of the ‘least advantaged’ might be unable to pay for the healthcare
that they needed, and might also be unable to pay the insurance premiums
demanded: so as they will need a healthcare system free at the point of use,
only that kind of healthcare system can be counted as just. This is the same
conclusion that we have to come to if we are behind the veil of ignorance.
Behind that veil I would not know whether I would be able to afford healthcare
membership fees, insurance premiums, or payment per item, so I would have
to choose a society in which healthcare was free at the point of use. We can
therefore conclude that two Rawlsian methods come to the same conclusion:
that a society that provides healthcare free at the point of use is just in terms of
healthcare provision.
A similar process might be able to decide on an appropriate tax system.
Whether in relation to income or consumption taxes, the main question is this:
Should everyone pay tax at the same rate, or should people with lower incomes
pay a lower tax rate than people with higher incomes (Adam et al., 2011:
46–72; Hindriks and Myles, 2006: 477–506)? If behind the veil of ignorance
I did not know how much income or wealth I would have, I would choose
a progressive tax system. I might find myself with a low income, and in that
case I would both prefer a lower tax rate and want as high a provision of public
services as possible; whereas if I had a higher income, then I would know that
I would be able to afford a higher rate. This Rawlsian thought experiment sug-
gests that a just society would be one with a smoothly progressive tax system
with a non-punitive top rate of tax (Murphy and Reed, 2013: 25–7).
Later on in his A Theory of Justice John Rawls offered an amended set of
two principles of justice more concerned about individual liberty:
1. each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compat-
ible with a similar liberty for others.
2. social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a)
reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions
and offices open to all. (Rawls, 1971: 60)
The second principle was later strengthened to require ‘conditions of fair

equality of opportunity’ in relation to positions and offices, rather than posi-
tions and offices theoretically open to everyone (Rawls, 1971: 302).
We can either read this reformulation as requiring the provision of suffi-
cient ‘primary goods’ to achieve the individual’s ‘extensive liberty’, or we
can read it as requiring only the negative liberty of non-interference (Locke,
2014; Nozick, 1990: 312, 322; 1993: 42–3). The latter option would permit
healthcare to be funded by payment per item, membership fees, or insurance
premiums, whereas the former would require healthcare free at the point of
use and funded by general taxation. The process is circular: the provision of
200 Unconditional
healthcare invites a social contribution in response, and if we make a social

contribution then we expect healthcare to be provided. As Stuart White puts it:
Where institutions governing economic life are otherwise sufficiently just, e.g.,
in terms of the availability of opportunities for productive participation and the
rewards attached to these opportunities, then those who claim the generous share of
the social product available to them under these institutions have an obligation to
make a decent productive contribution, suitably proportional and fitting for ability
and circumstances, to the community in return. I term this the fair-dues conception
of reciprocity. (White, 2003: 59)
A ‘basic right’ to ‘primary goods’ is therefore the basis for both the liberty
that we might expect to be able to exercise in a just society and the contribu-
tions expected of us if society is to be able to provide those ‘primary goods’.
Equality of healthcare provision is clearly not required, but equal access to
appropriate healthcare clearly is (White, 2007: 84, 93). Only a healthcare
system free at the point of use, and funded by general taxation, can deliver this.
AN ETHICAL FUNDING MECHANISM
In Chapter 5 we have discussed a variety of methods for funding healthcare,

and in this chapter we have asked how healthcare should be provided if it is to
be ethical. Here we explore the ethics of different funding mechanisms.
As well as ethics as categorical imperatives, Kant offered the principle that
human beings should always be an end and never a means to an end (Kant,
2002: 36–8). If we are to live together in society then we cannot avoid treating
the product of our labour as an object, and thus as a means to a social end: but
that must never tip over into seeing the worker as a means to an end. Similarly,
a hospital patient might agree to take part in research into a new treatment
that might involve surgical interventions, so that their body becomes a means
to an end: but the patient is only themselves a means to an end if they cannot
withdraw from the trial. However, providing healthcare as a means to a profit
gets quite close to treating patients as means to an end, which suggests that
private sector healthcare providers that issue dividends to shareholders might
not be ethical, and that public sector and not-for-profit voluntary organizations
might be. A hybrid case might be private sector organizations contracted by
the public sector to provide healthcare free at the point of use. Here the means
to the end of profit is general taxation and not the patient.
In Chapter 10 we discussed the Commonwealth Fund’s research into the
efficiency and effectiveness of different modes of delivery. This enables us to
employ an ethical theory somewhat different from Kant’s: one more about the
effects of decisions rather than one constituted by principles on the basis of
which decisions might be made. Utilitarianism asks the question: What should
we do in order to provide the highest possible welfare for the greatest possible
number of people (Mill and Bentham, 1987)? The theory requires the kind
of empirical approach employed by the Commonwealth Fund’s researchers
(Schneider et al., 2021).
Our discussions of various healthcare funding methods in Chapter 5 have
already indicated some of the reasons for the different efficiencies and effec-
tivenesses of different modes of healthcare delivery. A healthcare system
funded by taxation and free at the point of use is not tempted to do the unnec-
essary; primary care acts as a gatekeeper; the administrative systems required
by insurance premium and payment per item systems are not required; profits
are not distributed to the shareholders of insurance companies; and nobody is
excluded from healthcare (Hart, 2006: 172). Utilitarian ethics seeks the great-
est utility for the greatest number, and for everyone to receive the high-quality
healthcare that they need is bound to be more ethical than for only a few to do
so (Smith, 1759 [2009]: 325–6). An unconditional service that is free at the
point of use simply has to be the most ethical.
In Chapter 10 we have recognized the mode of delivery of a public service
to be crucial to its efficiency and effectiveness, and we have discussed various
modes of delivery in general terms. However, modes of delivery are constituted
by detailed institutional arrangements, and although it would be impossible in
one section of one chapter to provide a comprehensive discussion of the details
of all of the services required for health and wellbeing, we ought at least to give
an example: and as the bulk of this chapter so far has asked about the ethics
of healthcare delivery, we shall explore just one aspect of just one healthcare
system: the primary care aspect of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
Primary Care in the UK’s NHS
In Chapter 5 we have understood that every healthcare system needs a ration-

ing system, and that the appropriate rationing system for a system free at
the point of use is the primary care practitioner: the doctor, or other health
professional, who is the first point of contact for the patient, and who decides
what investigations and treatments are to be carried out. We shall now employ
the economic and ethical sciences to evaluate the ways in which primary care
might be provided.
We have already employed Kant’s principle that a human being is always an
end, and never a means to an end, to suggest that public sector and not-for-profit
voluntary sector provision is more ethical than provision by private sector
organizations that distribute profits to shareholders. We might expect the same
to be true of primary care. However, the way in which primary care is deliv-
ered in the UK’s NHS through private General Practice partnerships provides
an interesting lesson in the importance of detail. The partnerships are clearly in
202 Unconditional
the private sector, and the partners – who are normally medical practitioners,
although the practice manager might also be a partner – take profits rather
than salaries. The reason that this arrangement generates greater efficiency
than a salaried public sector service is that such salaried services are generally
managed by bureaucratic structures constituted by salaried administrators,
whereas the management of General Practice partnerships is provided entirely
by the partners. Private sector companies, public sector organizations, and
voluntary sector organizations would need to pay separately for clinical and
management activity, so it is difficult to see how any of them could be more
economically efficient than partnerships in which the same people provide
both clinical and management activity.
But that does not tell us whether General Practice partnerships are intrinsi-
cally more ethical than other methods for organizing primary care. A private
sector company would not be more ethical, because it would share profits with
shareholders and would to some extent be treating patients as means to ends
rather than as ends in themselves. Public sector organizations, accountable to
local or central government, and employing clinicians on the basis of employ-
ment contracts, might be able to claim to be ethical, but they will always have
to fulfil political agendas and so would also to some extent be treating patients
as means rather than ends. A voluntary organization managed by a board of
trustees might initially look as if it might be treating patients as ends rather
than as means to some other end, but its ethical credentials might be dented to
the extent that its contract with central or local government forces it to treat
patients as means rather than ends, and because the charitable objects to which
the organization is committed are the final determinant of what the organiza-
tion does, it is the objects rather than the patient that is the end, so the patient
is at least to some extent a means to an end. General Practice partnerships are
also regulated by contracts with the public sector, and profits are distributed to
partnerships, so there would be a case for regarding voluntary organizations as
more likely to treat patients as ends rather than as means. We might therefore
need a further ethical theory to provide a bit more distance between the ethical
legitimacies of the different institutional arrangements.
Virtue Ethics
Virtue ethics seeks to develop the ethical individual rather than particular
ethical actions, on the assumption that the ethical individual’s actions will
then be consistently ethical and ethical actions will follow (Aristotle, 1987:
372–3 (I, 8), 378–80 (II, 3), 382–4 (II, 6); Broadie, 1993: 3, 7, 50; Hutchinson,
1995: 199–219). In the context of this ethical theory, the question about
primary care providers is this: Which institutional arrangement is most likely
to produce virtuous individuals? Public and voluntary sector organizations are
bureaucracies in which someone’s role in the organization determines the task.

Individuals can develop virtue within such organizations, but there is nothing
in the organizational structures that actively encourages that. At the heart of
a General Practice partnership there is a community, not a hierarchy. While
there might be a senior partner, they have no hierarchical status in terms of
the management of the organization. Virtue is more likely to be facilitated
by communities than by bureaucracies (MacIntyre, 1984). In public sector
organizations, clinicians will be managed by administrators whose purpose
will be to meet organizational goals, which will constrain the ways in which
virtue can develop. Partners in General Practices function as individuals in the
community, and so are in an ideal context to develop their own and their part-
nership’s virtue (Toon, 2007: 83–99). There might be short hierarchies within
the practice, and organizational politics is a possibility in any organization, but
there will always be a community of clinicians at the heart of the practice, and
that will inevitably inform the ethos of the whole. Any bureaucratic aspects
of the organization will function within a structure infused by community,
allowing plenty of scope for the development of virtue.
It is the way in which the community aspect of General Practice partnerships
facilitates virtue that gives such organizations the ethical edge over public and
voluntary sector organizations, and because partnerships are more efficient in
terms of their economics there are at least two reasons for private partnerships
contracted to the NHS being the preferred option for the delivery of primary
care.
Ethical Healthcare Provision
Healthcare that is free at the point of use, and funded from general taxation,
is more ethical than other funding methods, and public sector providers are
generally to be preferred to private sector providers, but in the context of
primary care General Practice partnerships are both ethically and economi-
cally the most efficient – and because General Practice is the gatekeeper, and
constantly involved in the lives of patients, even when they are temporarily
cared for by hospitals, General Practice can legitimately claim to be genuinely
primary in relation to healthcare. This all suggests that where healthcare is
provided by means other than unconditionally and free at the point of use,
and where primary care is not at the heart of the service and delivered by
private partnerships, these characteristics should be carefully studied as means
towards efficient, effective and ethical healthcare, and should be implemented
whenever possible.
204 Unconditional
A Right to Healthcare
We have discussed Kant’s categorical imperative and his insistence that

human beings are ends and not means; and we have discussed both utilitari-
anism and John Rawls’s definitions of justice. A further ethical theory is what
we might call a ‘rights’ ethical framework. If there is a right to healthcare, then
healthcare free at the point of use is required, as that is the only system that can
ensure that every individual receives the healthcare that they need. In the UK,
a rights-based ethical approach is explicit in the NHS Constitution for England:
‘The constitution sets out rights for patients, public and staff …’ (Department
of Health and Social Care, 2021). Such a right to healthcare represents adher-
ence to the terms of article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being
of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances
beyond his control. (United Nations, 1948)
There is of course no right to any particular health outcome, and the declaration
leaves it up to the nation states that are party to the declaration to determine
precisely what incomes and services will be available to fulfil their obligations
to the declaration: but the article clearly assumes that sufficient healthcare will
be provided to everyone to enable them to lead healthy lives. This suggests that
it should be impossible for anyone to fall through the net, which in turn sug-
gests that a healthcare system free at the point of need, and funded by general
taxation, is what is required.
Rights to Healthcare and to a Secure Income
The health outcomes that we experience depend on our genetic inheritance,

our upbringing, our lifestyle, air quality, housing quality, and a wide variety
of other factors: so many that we both expect to find, and do in fact find,
a wide variety of health outcomes. Some factors we can do little about, but
some factors that we can do something about are causing health outcome ine-
qualities, and in those cases to do nothing is to deprive people of their right to
health and wellbeing (Dean, 2015: 107–11; Department of Health and Social
Security, 1980; Royal College of Nursing, 2012; Townsend and Davidson,
1982).
However, what article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
requires is not a particular level of health but rather a ‘standard of living …’,
and so a bundle of incomes and services that together will ensure that every
individual will experience ‘health and well-being’. Just as unconditional

healthcare is required to ensure that everyone should experience the level of
healthcare required, so an unconditional income will be required to ensure that
everyone should experience the level of income required. Any other method
for providing healthcare, and any other method for providing an income, is
bound to allow some individuals to fall below the levels required. Ideally, an
income sufficient to live on should be provided, but in many contexts that is
likely to be infeasible (Torry, 2020b), in which case the maximum feasible
amount of unconditional income should be provided, and any conditional
sources of income, such as wages and means-tested benefits, should be as
close to unconditionality as possible: and so, for instance, a preference for
permanent employment contracts and a National Minimum Wage, and as few
conditions attached to means-tested benefits as possible.
Having already begun a discussion of the ethics of income maintenance, we
shall now continue on that theme.
ETHICAL INCOME PROVISION
Here we shall employ what might best be regarded as Platonic Forms to

explore the ethical legitimacy of Basic Income. For Plato, Beauty, Justice
and the Good were all unchangeable Forms in which the world in which we
live participates (Plato, 1903 [1969]). So here we shall ask about the beauty
of unconditional incomes, the justice of unconditional incomes, and the good
society that we might attempt to create. We shall also add to the list the Forms
of liberty, fairness and truth.
A Categorical Imperative
An unconditional income exhibits a different kind of unconditionality from

that of unconditional healthcare, in the sense that an unconditional income is
one that is constantly available, without conditions, to every individual – an
unconditionality of provision – whereas unconditional healthcare is healthcare
that is unconditionally available to us when we need it: an unconditionality of
access. The related universalities will also be different: unconditional health-
care is universal in a potential sense, that is, everyone who needs it receives
it, but not everyone needs it all of the time; whereas unconditional income
is universal in an actual sense, because the income is constantly available to
everyone. This suggests that Immanuel Kant’s concept of ethics as categorical
imperative might be even more relevant to an unconditional income than it is
to unconditional healthcare.
A ‘categorical imperative’ is an imperative to ‘act only in accordance
with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become
206 Unconditional
a universal law’ (Kant, 2002: 37; Ak 4.421). We have already argued that
unconditional healthcare is ethical in the sense that if we wished healthcare to
be available for ourselves when we needed it then not only might we wish it to
be available to everyone on grounds of consistency, but we might also wish it
to be available to everyone on the basis that other people’s health is of benefit
to ourselves. An unconditional income is universal in an actual sense, which
argues that it already constitutes a categorical imperative without even trying;
and if we might wish to receive an unconditional income, then that income is
by definition unconditional for everyone else: so again it is ethical by virtue of
its flawless fulfilment of the requirements of a categorical imperative.
But what does ‘universal’ mean in this context? Our world is very different
from Immanuel Kant’s: it is characterized by vast information flows and is
dominated by a handful of transnational companies. We are quickly moving
towards global markets in goods and services, and increasingly in labour:
but our income structures rarely escape beyond the boundaries of the nation
state, apart, that is, from the movements of the income and assets belonging
to a relatively small group of seriously wealthy people who can move their
capital to tax havens. Not only do global markets argue for a global tax system
and a global benefits system, but Kant’s categorical imperative argues for
them as well: for is there any reason in logic for universality to stop at arbitrary
national boundaries? A universal maxim applies globally, so an unconditional
and therefore universal income should apply globally as well. Any income
that is unconditional within particular national boundaries should therefore be
regarded as a step towards genuine universality, and the same would go for
a Eurodividend if ever one were to be established (Van Parijs, 2013).
Beauty
Is there an aesthetics of social policy? If so, can a social security system be

beautiful? Many of our benefits systems are simply ugly. Any attempt to create
a diagram showing how a benefits or tax system works will soon reveal that.
The diagram of a Basic Income would be radically simple, with any complex-
ities being entirely related to any existing taxes and benefits to which it was
having to relate. Whether we might regard a Basic Income’s sparse beauty
as ethically beautifully will no doubt be a matter of opinion, but we are more
likely to be able to say that than that current means-tested benefits are ethically
beautiful.
Tax and benefits systems tend to become more complex over time, whereas
a Basic Income would not be able to do so: at least as long as it remained
a Basic Income; and the permanent beauty that a Basic Income would rep-
resent might begin to instil a sparse beauty in other social policy fields, and
particularly in relation to taxation: a field in which rates described by a smooth
parabola rather than random steps is now entirely feasible. Where uncondi-
tionality and simplicity can be found in a variety of fields – for instance, Basic
Income, Child Benefit, a NHS, and so on – we might even be able to speak of
a beautiful welfare state.
For Plato, Beauty, Justice and the Good were all Forms in which the world
in which we live participates. Perhaps the beauty of a Basic Income might
help us to appreciate those Forms’ connectedness today. However, I recognize
that there are still a few aesthetes who prefer ornate baroque, and for them
a means-tested benefits system might remain preferable.
Social Justice
Difficulties over defining the meaning of ‘justice’ go back to book I of Plato’s

Republic (Plato, 1903 [1969]). Without the word, we would find it difficult
to pass judgement on the direction of our society, but as with such concepts
as ‘equality’, ‘liberty’ and ‘fraternity’, we struggle to formulate a positive
definition. However, we can sometimes agree that one situation is more just
than another, which might be sufficient for our purpose. In the UK, it is surely
unjust that someone on means-tested benefits might see only a £25 increase in
their disposable income if they earn an extra £100, whereas someone earning
large amounts of money might see their disposable income increase by £53
if they earn an extra £100. This is unjust, and for many households a Basic
Income would offer greater justice.
We might all at least in theory have access to the law, the right to vote, and
the right to stand for election, but if we suffer from economic injustice then
we do not live in a just society, and we can ask how our society might become
more just. Economic justice requires that everybody should be able to improve
their financial position through hard work. Because a Basic Income would
reduce the depth of the poverty and unemployment traps, it would increase
economic justice for any household taken off means-tested benefits, and it
would deliver a more just society.
For Plato, a just city is one in which the citizens harmoniously fulfil their
distinctive roles, in the same way as a just person is one in whose soul the
appetitive, spirited and rational elements all function harmoniously. We might
regard the stratification of the society that Plato recommended in The Republic
(Plato, 1903 [1969]) as inimical to individual liberty, but we can still agree
that a just society is one in which everyone can fulfil their own potential at
the same time as living in harmony with everyone else. The rigidities of most
modern tax and benefits systems in countries with more developed economies
can make that difficult to achieve. The flexibility that a Basic Income would
contribute both to the employment market and to every individual’s and every
household’s employment pattern would make it more likely that individuals
208 Unconditional
would be able to choose what they did with their time, and would therefore
make it more likely that everyone would find it easier to achieve their poten-
tial. A Basic Income would deliver a more just society without requiring the
kind of coerced stratification that Plato envisaged.
A Good Society
An interesting question is whether an unconditional income for every individ-

ual along with additional unconditional services would add up to a coherent
vision of a new society or would rather represent the kind of ‘patching’ that has
been normal in social policy. In the UK there was a sense that the Beveridge
Report of 1942 represented a ‘Welfare State’, a new kind of society repre-
sented by such terms as ‘reconstruction’ and such values as the sacredness of
personality, fellow-membership and the duty of service: values formulated by
Archbishop William Temple and widely shared in the population (Beveridge,
1942; Temple, 1976). The problem now is that we find it difficult to agree on
a set of principles on which to base our social projects. Alasdair MacIntyre
has suggested that we have abandoned primary virtues and are left with such
secondary virtues as fairness and co-operation. I am not so sure that we can
distinguish between primary and secondary virtues in this way, but MacIntyre
is right about our difficulty over agreed values (MacIntyre, 1984).
So can we any longer hope to create what we would all agree would be a
‘good society’? Perhaps we can if we can agree on the values on the basis of
which it would be built. As we are suggesting in this book, ‘unconditional
giving’ might be the potential fundamental attitude on which to build the kind
of social project that our plural society will need as it changes ever faster. One
contribution that we could make would be to organize a genuine Basic Income
pilot project in a country with a more developed economy. This would begin
to move us towards a better society, and it would represent in our world today
what such a society would look like if it were to come about (Torry, 2022b).
There is a sense in which a Basic Income is simply an administrative rear-
rangement of the current tax and benefits system, but there is also a sense in
which it can represent a very different kind of society: one in which uncondi-
tionality would be foundational. The arguments contained in the chapters of
this book suggest that it would be both sensible and feasible to locate multiple
unconditional social policies at the heart of our society and economy, and that
it might be essential to do so.
After the Second World War, ‘social insurance’ mediated between liberal
ideas about individual responsibility and a socialist commitment to collective
provision (Bradshaw and Bennett, 2011; Thane, 2011). We already know
that the UK’s NHS represents collective and unconditional provision and at
the same time contributes to individual wellbeing, and a Basic Income would
do likewise. It would offer new social possibilities and would also cohere
with a growing individualism. There is no need to abandon one set of values
before we construct another. Such policies as healthcare free at the point of
need and an unconditional income can enable seamless transition. A Basic
Income would provide a solid equal platform on which everyone could build,
and it would enable many households to keep more of their earned income
and so increase their disposable incomes. Public provision and an individual’s
ability to increase their own income are not necessarily incompatible. We
need liberty, equality and diversity; individual wealth and community wealth;
justice and efficiency. These are not only compatible: they can be mutually
reinforcing if appropriate social policies make that possible both theoretically
and in practice. What we need is social policies that can mediate between
different ideologies, different ways of life and different values. Social policies
characterized by unconditionality can do that, so it is just the kind of social
policy that we are going to need to enable our society to become progressively
more plural and yet remain coherent.
Liberty
‘Liberty’ can be defined negatively or positively, that is, we can define liberty
either as not being constrained, or as the ability to choose from a variety
of options: as the power to say ‘no’ (Widerquist, 2013) or as the ability to
spend our days as we wish (Van Parijs, 1995). In practice the two definitional
methods might deliver the same requirements. For instance, in relation to edu-
cation, for parents to be able to choose between a variety of schools for their
children would enable them to say ‘no’ to schools that they did not think suit-
able, and to positively choose a school that would be appropriate; and in rela-
tion to incomes, an unconditional income would enable someone to say ‘no’
to a low-paying job with poor working conditions, and positively to choose
a portfolio of self-employment and occasional or part-time employment.
As we can see, the question of liberty will often come down to the issue of
resources, and in a situation of limited resources that means that one person’s
increased liberty is likely to reduce another person’s liberty. The more liberty
one person has to enclose land for their own use, the less liberty others will
have to do the same: hence the ‘Lockean proviso’, that enclosure, and in
general the use of resources, can be counted as just as long as there is ‘as much
and as good’ left to enable others to do the same (Fleischer and Lehto, 2019:
442–7). In a context of limited resources, such justice in the distribution of
liberty is difficult to achieve. A tax cut that increases one person’s liberty to
do as they wish with their earned income might be another person’s reduced
access to the public services that they need. Rarely will a social policy be able
to increase everybody’s liberty. However, there are aspects of a Basic Income
210 Unconditional
that suggest that it might be able to do that. If somebody’s Basic Income

enabled them to escape from means-tested benefits then they might have more
employment options open to them, they would be able to escape from some
onerous bureaucratic interference in their lives, and because their disposable
income would not be reduced by benefits withdrawal, they would have greater
liberty to earn their way out of poverty. A variety of new liberties would be
available. And if the Basic Income scheme that was implemented managed
to limit Income Tax increases to two or three percentage points, then other
people’s liberty would not be too badly compromised. Liberty is difficult to
quantify, so comparison between one person’s liberty and another’s is in prin-
ciple impossible to achieve, but we might still be able to argue that it would
be possible to implement a Basic Income scheme in such a way that the total
loss of liberty could be well below the total gain, thus increasing the amount
of liberty overall. This would make Basic Income an unusual social policy
(Torry, 2015b: 94).
Fairness
‘Fairness’ is as difficult to define as ‘justice’, ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’. We use

the word differently in different situations, without either the possibility or the
necessity of discovering some universally applicable definition: although there
will be ‘family resemblances’ (Wittgenstein, 1967: §67) between the different
uses of the word. And as with justice and liberty, we can identify differences
between the fairness of different situations, and we can decide that one society
might be fairer than another, without closely defining fairness: and perhaps
that is all that we require.
There are at least two fairness arguments for unconditionality. The first goes
back to the beginning of the Basic Income debate at the end of the eighteenth
century (Chapter 9): that the planet and its resources belong to all of us, so to
provide everyone with an equal share of those resources would be fair, and
not to do so would be unfair (Birnbaum, 2019: 512–16). This argues for an
unconditionality of provision, and so for the provision of an unconditional
income. It does not argue for the kind of unconditionality of access that an
unconditional healthcare service represents. For that, the second fairness
argument is required.
John Rawls has defined a ‘fair society’ as one that is ‘acceptable to someone
who does not know where he or she personally stands in relation to allocation’
(Rawls, 1971: 19). If we envisage ourselves standing behind a veil of igno-
rance – that is, we did not know what position we would have in society – then
the kind of society that we would choose to be in would be a fair society. One
clear requirement would be that the rules would be the same for everyone,
which is not the situation in most of our societies today. Some families suffer
from the work tests, sanctions and cohabitation tests related to means-tested
benefits, and some do not, so the UK’s society is not fair. A Basic Income
would take at least some families off means-tested benefits and so would give
us a fairer society: and increasingly fair the greater the number of families
taken off means-tested benefits. Much would still be unfair – for instance, the
social capital differentials between children growing up in different homes:
but a Basic Income – an unconditionality of provision – would begin to take us
in the right direction. This argument, unlike the first argument from fairness,
argues for the unconditionality of access represented by a healthcare service
free at the point of use. Behind Rawls’s veil of ignorance none of us know what
our lifetime healthcare needs will be, so we would want a healthcare service
that would be available to us however high our own needs might be. Only
a healthcare service free at the point of use can be fair in that respect.
The Whole Truth
Social policy is full of half-truths. In the UK, the amount of ‘National Insurance’
Basic State Pension that an elderly person receives is a political decision and
is entirely unrelated to the amounts of ‘National Insurance Contributions’ that
they might have paid during their working lives. The government can invent
new conditions, reduce benefits, or even withhold them. (The situation is
different in Germany and a number of other countries, where employees’ and
employers’ contributions build a fund out of which unemployment benefits
are paid.) The UK’s ‘contributory principle’ is a myth that enables the gov-
ernment to extract a regressive earnings tax that it calls ‘National Insurance
Contributions’ while being able to publish low Income Tax rates.
During the 1970s, the UK’s ‘Supplementary Benefit’ was rarely supple-
mentary to anything; ‘Working Tax Credits’ were not tax credits (they were
not administered through the tax system); and ‘Universal Credit’ is neither
universal nor a credit. Other countries have similar problems: Australia’s
means-tested child benefit is called ‘Family Tax Benefit’ (Torry, 2015b: 61).
A Basic Income would be what it says it is: an income that would con-
stitute a base on which to build. And whereas the rules governing existing
means-tested benefits are often complicated and opaque, those governing
a Basic Income would be simple and transparent.
Principles
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during the first half of the Second
World War, had been at Balliol College, Oxford, at the same time as William
Beveridge, and the ‘principles’ that Temple listed – the sacredness of person-
ality; fellow-membership; the duty of service; the power of sacrifice (Temple,
212 Unconditional
1942 [1976]) – and some more practical but similar ‘standards’ that emerged
from a conference held in Oxford in 1937 – the abolition of extreme poverty;
equal opportunity of education; the safeguarding of the family; a sense of
vocation in daily work; the earth’s resources as belonging to the whole human
race (Oldham, 1937: 108) – might all have helped to shape the UK’s Welfare
State: a term that might have been coined by William Temple.
It can be onerous to have to work everything out from scratch in every new
situation, so when there are difficult decisions to be made it can be useful to
be able to rely on a set of principles or values that have stood the test of time.
However, as society changes, flexibility is required, so any principles must
be constantly revisited. The same might be said of the Forms of Liberty, the
Good, Justice, Beauty, and so on. The words might remain the same, but how
the words are used will change constantly.
A Basic Income would cohere well with Temple’s and the 1937 confer-
ence’s principles, and also with the ‘Victorian value’ of earning a living to
support one’s family. Indeed, Basic Income might be able to form a useful
bridge between various sets of values, and perhaps above all it would give
a practical application to unconditionality: a Platonic Form in which all
attempts at unconditionality might be said to participate (Torry, 2015b: 105).
Responsibility
In Chapter 3 we found Levinas demanding that we should take responsibility

for the Other; and one of the values that has underpinned welfare states, and
particularly the UK’s, is responsibility, which we might define as a combi-
nation of fellow-membership, the duty of service, the power of sacrifice, and
a sense of vocation in daily work (Oldham, 1937: 108; Temple, 1942 [1976]).
Responsibility is both a cause and an effect. Only if people take responsibility
for providing essential services, manufacturing the products that we need, cre-
ating a community, and preserving the environment, will resources and oppor-
tunities be available to other people and to themselves; and only if resources
and opportunities are available will people be willing to take responsibility and
will be able to do so. Rights and duties belong together.
A Basic Income would make all kinds of ways of taking responsibility
easier to achieve. Self-employment and the starting of new businesses could
be more available to more people; employment would be more attractive, as in
the context of an unconditional income conditions and wages might improve;
many recipients could find themselves with more time for community activity,
trade union roles, political activity, caring responsibilities, and so on. And all
of this taking of responsibility would create new opportunities, services and
resources, and so would encourage the taking of responsibility. A virtuous
spiral might evolve.
HUMAN BEINGS AS MORAL BEINGS
One useful way to approach ethical questions is to ask how societies operate.
If we assume that in spite of our faults we are basically moral beings, then
we might be able to study ethics by studying human behaviour. For instance,
research by sociologists on a housing estate in Exeter has shown that up to
a tacitly agreed earned income threshold communities allow people to ignore
regulations that require earned income to be declared to the benefits office
so that means-tested benefits can be reduced, but only up to the threshold. If
a community member continued to claim means-tested benefits beyond that
point without declaring an earned income then a neighbour might inform on
them. That Exeter community was effectively awarding itself a Basic Income,
and we can assume that many communities still operate in this way (Jordan et
al., 1992).
It is rational for unemployed people not to declare casual earnings, because
to declare them would cause benefits to be recalculated and possibly stopped
and then restarted, with all of the disruption that that entails. Depending on the
withdrawal rate, to declare additional earnings can cause large deductions in
benefits, making it pointless to seek additional or casual earnings in the first
place. This leaves workers with a difficult choice: either not to seek additional
earned income, or to earn it and not declare it. Only if the earned income is
sufficient and consistent enough to take someone off means-tested benefits is
it worthwhile coming off benefits.
We might regard social policy as ethical if it reflects the ethics prevalent
in the national community, providing that policy is not unethical for other
reasons. This suggests that earnings rules should be relaxed: but that would
cause an injustice like that experienced during the recent experiment in Finland
in which unemployment benefits were made unconditional for two years
for a random sample of claimants from across the country (De Wispelaere
et al., 2019). Someone who had entered employment and had retained their
unemployment benefit could find themselves working next to someone who
was not a participant in the experiment and so had lost their unemployment
benefit when they entered employment. To relax earnings rules will always
cause an injustice. The only solution is to replace means-tested benefits with
an unconditional income.
The behaviour of the community on that Exeter housing estate provides one
of the strongest arguments ever for a Basic Income as it begins with people’s
rational behaviour – behaviour that they regarded as ethical because it ben-
efited their families; it seeks a solution to the question posed by the current
tax and benefits system; it discovers an injustice in the initial solution; and it
solves the injustice by proposing an unconditional income.
214 Unconditional
CONCLUSION
We have divided this chapter into two parts, the first on the ethics of uncon-
ditional healthcare, and the second on the ethics of an unconditional income.
While the two unconditionalities are different, the former an unconditionality
of access, and the latter an unconditionality of provision, what we have said
about the ethics of unconditional healthcare will often relate to the ethics of an
unconditional income, and vice versa. The extents to which ethical considera-
tions of one kind of unconditionality might be relevant to another would make
an interesting topic for further research.
12. Prospects for unconditionality
INTRODUCTION
What are the prospects for less conditionality in incomes and public services?
The problem with answering this question is that every public service is dif-
ferent, and every tax and benefit is different, so questions about the feasibility
of increasing unconditionality have to be asked and answered separately for
each social policy field and subfield: unconditional income, job guarantee, free
public transport, healthcare free at the point of need, and so on. A particularly
important reason for discussing each social policy field separately in relation
to the prospects for increasing unconditionality – as we have done in Chapters
5 to 7 – is that the fields are not interchangeable. For instance, providing an
unconditional income would not enable us to reduce unconditionality in the
healthcare field because that would mean either an increase in insurance-based
or pay per item funding, which would deprive poorer individuals with higher
healthcare needs of the care that they needed, or an increase in means-testing
in healthcare provision which would simply shift the disadvantages of
means-testing from one field to another. So while there might be some argu-
ments for and against unconditionality that could apply in a variety of fields
– as we have discovered in Chapters 4 and 8 – there will be many others that
would apply in only a few or in only one (Behrendt, 2002: 77–8; Pateman,
2005: 56–7). In particular, we shall have to be aware that to implement an
unconditional income would not enable us to reduce unconditionality in any
other social policy field, and might require us to increase unconditionality else-
where, as, for instance, where public services are entangled with means-tested
benefits that fewer households would receive if an unconditional income were
to be implemented (Chapter 8).
A basic income is … a necessary step forward – but it is not sufficient. … Public

provision is also needed to sustain and strengthen democratic citizenship. A basic
income cannot in itself provide good quality education in well-equipped schools,
affordable housing, access to health care … (Pateman, 2005: 56–7)
There is not space here to deal properly with the prospects for each of these
policy fields. We shall instead make some more general points about the
215
216 Unconditional
possibility of an increase in unconditionality in social policy, and also a few

more detailed points about the prospects for an unconditional income in
particular, leaving the reader to ask which of those points might or might not
be applicable to unconditionality in other fields. Studies of the prospects for
increasing unconditionality already exist for some social policy fields (Gregg,
2009; Leff et al., 2019; Mitchell and Watts, 2005; Portes et al., 2017; Szlinder,
2019; Torry, 2016a; Tymoigne, 2013). More detailed studies of prospects
for increasing unconditionality in a wide variety of policy fields would be
extremely helpful.
THE ALTERNATIVES
A useful way to test the prospects of a particular social policy can be to study
the prospects of a variety of options. This is the approach taken by Ian Gough:
If the state were to provide a higher minimum income to eliminate poverty, it would
very soon surpass the wages paid to low-paid workers and would act as a disincen-
tive to people to work. It would substantially interfere with the free operation of the
labour market. One solution to this might be to replace economic choice by admin-
istrative persuasion and coercion, but this would conflict with the intentions of
a more welfare-oriented policy. Nor is this all. If the higher minimum income were
to be provided on a selective, means-tested basis, either the ‘marginal tax rate’ (the
rate at which benefit is reduced as income increases) would have to be very high,
resulting in the ‘poverty trap’ and the collapse of the work effort, or the total cost
would be extraordinarily high, in which case the problems of financing this would
lead to higher inflation, slower economic growth, or both. If the benevolent state,
perplexed by these unforeseen problems, tried to raise minimum wages directly, it
would find the competitiveness of the economy eroded and/or unemployment and
inflation rising. (Gough, 1979: 12–13)
In relation to this thought experiment (Gough, 1979: 12–13):
• A Basic Income that was set too high certainly could act as a ‘disincentive
to people to work’: but any Basic Income that would be feasible in the
short to medium term would not be high enough to do that (Torry, 2022b).
Instead, such a Basic Income scheme would release a substantial number
of households from means-tested benefits and would provide those house-
holds with lower marginal deduction rates, would release them from the
poverty trap, and would immediately increase their employment incentives.
• There are proposals for Basic Income schemes of which ‘the total cost
would be extremely high’: but there are also schemes that would go some
way towards ‘eliminating poverty’, and that would reduce inequality, and
of which the net cost would be zero (Torry, 2019c; 2022b).
Prospects for unconditionality 217
• Means-tested benefits ‘interfere with the free operation of the employment

market’ because they rise as wages fall and fall as wages rise. A Basic
Income would not do that, but would instead function as a reverse lump
sum tax – the most efficient kind available – and as a static wage subsidy
rather than as a dynamic one, and so with less of a wage-depressing effect.
• With a Basic Income, ‘administrative persuasion and coercion’ would be
impossible, simply because by definition the income would be provided
unconditionally.
It would appear that a feasible Basic Income scheme would not suffer from
the contradictions that Gough suggests. As for the option of a statutory
minimum wage, experience with the UK’s National Minimum Wage suggests
that such minimum wages do not necessarily raise the level of unemployment
(Torry, 2016a: 209–11), and that because the economy is already skewed in
a variety of directions, a statutory minimum wage has the potential to make the
economy more efficient rather than less.
There are of course elements of the welfare state that do exemplify the
various contradictions that Ian Gough has discovered, and means-tested
benefits are possibly the clearest example: but there are also elements that do
not, such as the UK’s Child Benefit; and there are elements that would not do
so if they were implemented, of which a Basic Income would be the clearest
example. As Gough recognizes, Basic Income ‘embodies tendencies to ensure
social welfare, to develop the powers of individuals, to exert social control
over the blind play of market forces’; and it exhibits no
tendencies to repress and control people [or] to adapt them to the requirements of
the capitalist economy … the positive aspects of welfare policies need defending
and extending, their negative aspects need exposing and attacking, (Gough, 1979:
4, 12, 153)
so we need to reduce the prevalence of means-tested benefits, and increase the

coverage of unconditional incomes (Torry, 2020a: 250–2), and by implication
we need to reduce the conditionalities related to other social policy fields and
increase the coverage of unconditional provision and access in as many fields
as possible.
A Basic Income
… would provide more freedom of choice over citizens’ life courses; it would
promote a better work-life balance, enhance gender equality and expand choices
between paid and unpaid work. It might enable more people to contribute to the
‘core economy’ … [it would] reduce division and stigma and enhance social soli-
darity … [it would contribute to] a realistic transition strategy from the present to
a post-growth society. (Gough, 2017: 184–6)
218 Unconditional
The same might be said of other social policies characterized by unconditionality.
THE PROSPECTS FOR FUNDING INCREASED

UNCONDITIONALITY
Proposals for funding a Basic Income could quite often apply equally to
increasing unconditionality in other policy fields.
Take the proposal that governments should fund a Basic Income by creating
new money. What this means is that a government might create more money
than it plans to extract through taxation, thus increasing the total amount of
money circulating in the economy. If the ‘velocity’ of money remains the
same – that is, the frequency with which the same money is spent in transac-
tions remains the same – then the Basic Incomes will enable households to
buy additional goods and services without taking on additional debt, which is
how rather too much consumption is currently funded. (Debt is simply another
means of creating new money, this time by commercial banks writing entries
on their customers’ bank statements: the money is then repaid with interest,
which destroys the new money and adds to the banks’ profits.) If the additional
new money fills an existing gap between labour income and the value of goods
and services produced in the economy, then there would be no risk of adding
to inflation, and there could be efficiency benefits for the economy (Kőműves
et al., 2022: 33). It is only if there is more money in the economy than the
value of goods and services to be purchased that the value of money will fall
and inflation will be the result, and, in the open global economy to which most
countries now belong, an additional effect of too much money in the economy
will be that the value of the currency will fall relative to other currencies,
exports will become more competitive, and imports will become more expen-
sive. What this means is that new money should be added to the economy until
the total stock of money equals the value of goods and services produced, and
then no more should be added: so although money creation might be a useful
means of kick-starting a Basic Income, the mechanism could not be used to
fund it permanently (Crocker, 2019; 2020: 3–52). A revenue neutral method
would then be required, that is, additional taxation and reductions in the costs
of existing benefits would have to equal the total cost of the Basic Incomes
(Torry, 2022b).
While newly created money would mean that on average individuals would
receive additional money as well as a secure income base, Basic Income
funded by rearranging the current tax and benefits system would not mean
that on average individuals would receive additional money. Particular Basic
Income schemes might mean that some households would gain and others
might lose, preferably with poorer households gaining and households with
higher incomes contributing more in additional taxation than they would
receive in their Basic Incomes: but overall there would be no increase in

the money supply. A Basic Income is not necessarily a means of providing
people with additional money: it is a means of providing every individual with
a secure layer of income on which they can build in the knowledge that their
Basic Incomes will never be taken away from them. It is that secure layer of
income that would provide the economic, social and employment advantages
that a Basic Income would deliver.
It is here that we encounter differences between prospects for Basic Income
and prospects for increasing unconditionality in other policy fields. Additional
revenue from increasing income tax rates, reducing tax allowances and reduc-
ing means-tested benefits would have to be spent on unconditional incomes,
otherwise household disposable incomes would suffer. To use the additional
revenue to fund additional unconditional public services would on average
reduce disposable incomes. How those reductions would be distributed across
the income gradient would be a political decision. It would be possible to
implement a Basic Income scheme that would impose almost no disposable
income reductions on anyone (Torry, 2022b), but that would not be possible in
relation to reduced conditionalities in other policy fields.
However, that does not mean that additional unconditionality should not be
sought in a wide variety of social policy fields. It simply means that the reduced
unconditionality would have to be paid for. Unconditional benefits and public
services represent a new direction for social policy, currently visible only in
free education, free at the point of need healthcare, and unconditional benefits,
currently restricted to people at both the young and the elderly extremities of
the age range. Given the efficiency and effectiveness of unconditional provi-
sion, the lack of stigma and shame, the social cohesion, and a variety of other
employment market, social and economic advantages, the question ought not
to be ‘Should we do this?’ but ‘To what extent can we do this, and how can
we fund it?’ Funding by a mixture of progressive income, wealth, business and
consumption taxes would seem to be obvious answers, along with a carbon tax,
a land value tax, a financial transaction tax, and an element of money creation
(Torry, 2019b: 157–90).
COULD IT HAPPEN?
Social insurance and means-tested benefits have been the foundations of

income maintenance systems throughout the world, so to consider a different
basis for a benefits system is to ask quite a lot of the public psyche. However,
change is always possible.
As we recognized in Chapter 8, research by Serge Moscovici in organiza-
tional settings has found that a minority can convert a majority by offering
a consistent message and allowing sufficient flexibility in framing the debate
220 Unconditional
to encourage the minds of the majority to engage with the minority’s view.
Initially it will look as if nothing is changing, but members of the majority will
have been changing their minds without being willing to admit that that has
happened for fear of what other members of the majority might say. Eventually
one brave member of the majority will reveal their personal conversion, which
will enable others to do so, and it will then be apparent that large numbers of
minds have changed, and that the majority opinion is now that of the former
minority. We have seen this process in action in recent social change. It might
have looked as if multiple populations around the world have been suddenly
converted to the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, but the process will have
been a slow one during which minds have been changing. Legislative propos-
als by governments aware of the direction of public opinion, and same-sex
marriage increasingly represented in the media, might then have provided
occasions for discussion that brought into the open just how much change had
occurred (Moscovici, 1980: 211). This suggests that a minority committed to
increasing unconditionality in social policy might be able to persuade a major-
ity currently not so keen, and that the ways in which an idea is framed in the
media can have a significant impact on the direction in which a public debate
might go (Perkiö et al., 2019). It also suggests that the expressed views of
government ministers might not reflect the number of members of parliament
who might favour an increase in unconditional provision. In 2006, surveys
of members of the UK’s two Houses of Parliament found substantial interest
in the government giving serious consideration to a Basic Income (Citizen’s
Income Trust, 2007).
A further research result might also suggest that it might be possible to
facilitate such a change.
Surveys show that public attitudes towards those experiencing poverty are harshly
judgemental or view poverty and inequality as inevitable. But when people are
better informed about inequality and life on a low income, they are more supportive
of measures to reduce poverty and inequality (Hanley, 2009: 1)
and are themselves ‘willing to contribute to the collective good as long as the
distribution of burdens and benefits is regarded as just’ (Mau and Veghte,
2007: 13). This suggests that a shift towards increasing unconditionality might
be more acceptable to the general public than we might have thought.
As we have already recognized, one of the problems that social policy
change encounters is that policy change in one field can have effects in another.
For instance: to implement an unconditional income that would take a signif-
icant number of households off means-tested benefits would take those same
families off other public service provision to which being on means-tested
benefits gives them access. Where free school meals are contingent on families
receiving means-tested benefits, a family taken off means-tested benefits by

their Basic Incomes could find themselves worse off (Chapter 8). The same
might apply to medical prescriptions, dental care, and so on. The problem
with such connections between benefits is that they increase the disincentive
to seek additional earned income and so substantially deepen the poverty trap.
The obvious solution is to make all of those public service provisions currently
reliant on the receipt of means-tested benefits unconditional for everyone in
the population, and to meet the additional cost by increasing the tax paid by
wealthier households. The argument that some families do not need free school
meals or free dental treatment is as flawed as the argument that some families
do not need unconditional incomes. Wealthier families would pay more in tax
than the value of the newly unconditional incomes and services. Providing
a benefit or a meal for everyone is administratively efficient, is good for chil-
dren’s nutrition and concentration, and promotes an integrated society rather
than a divided one. It is therefore sensible to provide universal free school
meals, unconditional incomes, and much else unconditionally.
Except for where free provision might encourage abuse, there is a good case
for free provision (for instance, of dental check-ups); and where abuse is more
of a possibility (for instance, with the supply of spectacles), a small payment
element might be appropriate. Whatever the future of benefits in kind, such as
free school meals, one of the advantages of a Basic Income would be that it
would force us to re-examine them and to go back to first principles. And what
better starting point than the unconditionality principle: that unconditional
provision is administratively efficient, reduces the debilitating effects of the
poverty and unemployment traps, offers the possibility of 100 per cent take-up,
reduces stigma, and contributes to the creation of a cohesive society.
A GIVING SOCIAL POLICY

In his book The Gift, discussed in Chapter 9, Marcel Mauss describes gift
exchange between tribes, and discusses the fact that a variant of gift-exchange
– exchange between tribes and their gods – has frequently transitioned into
almsgiving:
the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion
of sacrifice, on the other. … The gods and the spirits accept that the share of wealth
and happiness that has been offered to them and had been hitherto destroyed in
useless sacrifices should serve the poor and children. (Mauss, 1990: 23)
However, such ‘charity’, which might still be regarded as religious rather

than economic, is ‘wounding’ for anyone who accepts it (Mauss, 1990: 33,
83). Additional problems with charity might be that the wealthy can gain
222 Unconditional
more from their giving than the people to whom they give; charity can
embed inequality; the wealth that makes charity possible is often generated
by exploitation; and charity categorizes and cheapens human life (Raventós
and Wark, 2018). Problems also arise where giving requires reciprocation,
because in that context poor families can find themselves financially ruined
by social expectations of generosity (Mauss, 1990: 84). However, the recip-
rocation of gifts has for millennia created social bonds between tribes that
might otherwise have been at war (Mauss, 1990: 104), and Mauss believed
that we should maintain, and where necessary reintroduce, the ‘give, receive,
reciprocate’ principle in social policy (Mauss, 1990: 87–9). In his Given Time,
Derrida remarks on the stream of imperatives that appear towards the end of
Mauss’s book: imperatives to give, and also ‘to limit the excess of the gift and
of generosity … by economy, profitability, work, exchange’ (Derrida, 1992a:
62–3). Wealth must be shared, and the individual must rely on their own hard
work (Derrida, 1992a: 63–4; Mauss, 1990: 87–8). Mauss had understood that
‘give, receive, reciprocate’ might require mitigation if it is to enhance rather
than damage relationships, but all he can suggest is that we should moderate
the requirement.
Also in Chapter 3 we have found Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas offering
variations on givenness, in Derrida’s philosophy we have found the conviction
that the perfect gift is impossible, and in Marion’s philosophy we have found
reality itself defined as the given. That journey has also been taken in both
Judaism and the Christian Faith. What we now require is a social policy that
takes that same journey towards the gift and does not stop with the ‘give,
receive, reciprocate’ model, however mitigated. As Raventós and Wark
suggest, an unconditional income is not charity: it is justice (Raventós and
Wark, 2018: 193). This is precisely the point that Thomas Paine and Thomas
Spence made at the beginning of the debate on unconditional incomes. We
might not regard Spence’s solution to the occupation of land for individual
profit – that the community should take possession of it, rent it out, and employ
the proceeds for the benefit of the public and to supply unconditional incomes
to every individual – as realistic politics, but we might still wish to pursue the
idea that a common inheritance of nature, and the product of the work of pre-
vious generations, belongs to everyone, so some way must be found to extract
at least a proportion of the profit to distribute to everyone.
It is the continuing salience of ‘to give, to receive, to reciprocate’ in social
policy that makes any new unconditional incomes or public services, or any
significant extension of existing unconditional incomes and public services,
initially unpopular, and that also makes such unconditional incomes and ser-
vices generally popular after their implementation. Such post-implementation
popularity does not suggest that the reciprocity principle has been circum-
vented: rather it suggests that implementation alters the direction of reciproca-
tion, so that the unconditional income or service constitutes an initial gift that
invites a reciprocal response from those who receive it.
Perhaps we should respond to Mauss’s calls for ‘reciprocating generosity’
(Mauss, 1990: 106) by recognizing that the perfect gift is a possibility, both
theoretically and in practice, and that the perfect gift makes space for and
inspires a ‘post’ reciprocity that is not even expected, let alone required, but
that is itself a gift. For such a paradigm to be possible the initial gift must be
utterly unconditional, with no requirement or expectation of any kind of return.
A gift might then be given in return (Torry, forthcoming, chapter 8).
A GIFT ECONOMY
Money is not wealth: it is simply a means of exchange. Wealth is constituted by

health, education, a stimulating and clean environment, sufficient to eat, clean
water, effective sanitation, an adequate home to live in, care when we need it,
good relationships within the family and between neighbours, fulfilling and
creative work, opportunities for leisure and culture, and a host of other things.
Ensuring that everyone has sufficient wealth is a complex process involving
both a money economy, public services, and an informal ‘gift’ economy in
which people give their time and labour without financial incentive or reward.
Both additional services free at the point of use and an unconditional income
would shift the balance between the money and gift economies in different
directions for different people. Some people would take the reduced poverty
and unemployment traps as an invitation to be more active in the money
economy, while others would use their unconditional incomes to enable them
to reduce the hours that they spend in paid employment and to give more time
to their family, to community activity, and perhaps to leisure and educational
activity for themselves. Both those who spend more time in paid employment
and those who spent less time in it would be more ‘wealthy’.
A group for whom an unconditional income and additional free services
would be particularly useful would be those currently without employment
and on means-tested benefits. Work tests can make it difficult to engage in
voluntary community activity, and means-tested benefits generate stigma, and
it takes a strong personality to be able to engage deeply with voluntary work
under such circumstances. Unconditional incomes and additional uncondi-
tional services would carry no stigma, and would release time for voluntary
activity, so a great deal of energy would be released for voluntary and caring
activity. Wealth of all kinds would increase: and we would see new kinds of
wealth creation, in both the gift and the money economies – and more kinds of
wealth on the boundary between the two economies: voluntary activity leading
to new activity in the money economy, and new activity in the money economy
leading to new voluntary activity. So a Basic Income and additional uncondi-
224 Unconditional
tional services would encourage caring for family members and neighbours,
self-education networks, sports and leisure activities, self-build houses, and
a host of other kinds of wealth creation; and they would remake what we mean
by the word ‘wealth’: and all of it would be a gift, or made possible by a gift
(Torry, 2015b: 24).
AN UNCONDITIONALITY REGIME
Because both unconditional incomes and additional unconditional services

can be seen to belong within both the neoliberalism and Keynesian paradigms
(Crocker, 2015), their implementation is a practical possibility; and because
there is something radically new about an unconditional income for every
individual – that is, its complete unconditionality – it would be possible for it
to represent the next new paradigm. If we view Keynesianism as a Hegelian
and Marxist thesis, and neoliberalism as the inevitable antithesis, then perhaps
we might best view a Basic Income and additional unconditional services as
a ‘sublation’ of the two (Burbidge, 1993: 95; Hegel, 1812 [2010]: lxvii, 47;
Hook, 1962: 55; Marx, 1859 [1977]: preface) and as a significant element in
a new paradigm that would serve society and the economy in today’s situation
in a way similar to the ways in which the two previous paradigms served
society and the economy in their own times. If that is correct, then Basic
Income is an indication that both the Keynesian and neoliberalism paradigms
could be replaced by an unconditionality paradigm: an entire political economy
characterized by unconditionality (Torry, 2020a: 248). What we have shown in
this book is that such a shift would be both desirable and feasible.
While an unconditionality regime might replace or reduce the remaining
fragments of Keynesianism, it would respond positively to a prediction that
Keynes made in 1930.
In our lifetimes … we may be able to perform all the operations of agriculture,

mining and manufacture with a quarter of the human effort to which we have
become accustomed. (Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 20)
When Keynes made this prediction there was unemployment ‘in a world full of
wants’ (Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 18):
We are suffering, not from the rheumatism of old age, but from the growing pains
of over-rapid changes, from the painfulness of readjustment between one economic
period and another. (Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 17)
‘Technological unemployment’ was one of those temporary ‘growing pains’,

whereas the more serious longer-term problem was how to use our
freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science
and compound interest will have won for [us], to live wisely and agreeably and well.
(Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 22)
If wars were to cease, and if we were to allow science to do what it can, then
the practical problem would be to ensure that the available employment would
be equally shared, so that instead of some being unemployed and others being
employed for far too many hours a week, every worker would experience
‘three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week’ (Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 23).
There are increasingly few still alive who were alive when Keynes made
the prediction that begins ‘in our lifetimes …’, but we have still not solved
our ‘economic problem’ (Keynes, 1930 [2008]: 21), which is not chiefly the
one that Keynes suggested, but rather the problem of the maldistribution of
resources. We are becoming worse off, not better. We spend too little time with
our families and friends, we lead unhealthy lifestyles, wages stagnate, we work
harder to achieve anything like constant disposable incomes, and market fail-
ures are ubiquitous (Stiglitz, 2008: 41–4). ‘The economic system has created
an insatiable set of wants’ (Stiglitz, 2008: 63), but as I write it has also created
a serious inability to meet basic needs. As Stiglitz suggests, ‘the case for
collective action is compelling’ (Stiglitz, 2008: 44) if we are to provide more
and better public services and to be content with fewer things (De Angelis,
2000: 178). We might add that the case for unconditional provision is equally
compelling.
How might an unconditionality regime come about? First of all, the new
paradigm has been slowly coming to birth for over half a century. The UK’s
National Health Service, free at the point of use, and the UK’s unconditional
Family Allowance/Child Benefit, have belonged to the new paradigm as well
as finding a place within the old ones. Genuine Citizen’s Pensions in various
places have also belonged to the new paradigm. But there is no overall strat-
egy related to a new paradigm, and in particular there is no equivalent to the
Mont Pelerin Society. Organizations relating to particular elements of the new
paradigm, such as those organizations that research Basic Income, fit the bill
to some extent: but not entirely. Perhaps what is needed is a new Mont Pelerin
Society with the aim of promoting the hegemony of an ‘unconditionality’
narrative through the establishment of thinktanks, journals, and so on. An
early objective would be the establishment of Basic Incomes in a variety of
developing and more developed countries. This could propel global society
and its economy towards the gradual establishment of the new paradigm.
Alternatively, of course, we might find that by implementing a Basic Income
226 Unconditional
we would have rescued neoliberalism. That is a risk that we would have to take
(Torry, 2020a: 249).
No social policy regime is inevitable. There are always choices to be made,
especially when we realize that ‘the idea that capitalism is a system that has
its own logic and rules that must be obeyed or we risk losing the material
well-being that has been achieved to date’ is an ‘illusion’ (Block, 2018: 10)
and an example of ‘rhetoric’ that is open to challenge (Block, 2018: 24–5).
‘Capitalism … is not a coherent and unified system’ (Block, 2018: 12), econ-
omies are socially constructed, and successful economies need a complex
mixture of social and economic institutions and need to be constantly recon-
structed (Block, 2018: 25, 59, 173, 201). As we rebuild in the twenty-first
century, an unconditionality policy regime might be just the building block
that we need to enable capitalism to survive, thrive and serve global society.
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Index
accident, policy/political 148, 180, 195 bank account 142, 145–6, 218
action 4, 54 bargaining power 164
human 49, 52–3, 73, 78, 95, 168, Basic Income ix–x, 1, 10, 43, 62–9, 73,
170, 202 76–83, 104–67, 176–77, 183–4,
administration 8, 19, 71, 77–8, 81, 85–6, 193–7, 205–25
88, 90, 98, 101, 111–12, 118, 140, administration of 17, 78, 81, 128,
152, 156, 164, 172–4, 187–8, 190, 134–7, 141–2, 144, 146–7,
201–3, 211, 216–17, 221 156, 194, 208, 221
see also Basic Income, amount of 17–18, 78, 108, 110, 127,
administration of 132, 140–42, 146, 189, 194,
administrative feasibility see feasibility, 205
administrative arguments against ix–x, 145–67, 221
agapē 54 see also unconditionality,
see also love arguments against
age cohort/group 9, 12, 17, 59, 105, 108, arguments for ix–x, 57–86, 107–44,
115, 146, 158, 163, 194 196, 208, 210–11, 213, 215
ageing 91 automatic 78, 128
Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend 16 cash payment of 16, 134, 177–8
allowance see child tax allowance; tax debate about viii, x, 1, 13, 15–18,
allowance 20, 43, 119, 177, 181–3, 195,
alms 55, 221 210, 219–20, 222
see also charity definition of13–18, 20
alterity 49 desirability of x, 13, 58, 114, 126,
altruism 95–6 144, 148–9, 183, 224
anthropology 50, 168–71 European see Eurodividend
anxiety 72, 123, 137, 162 feasibility see feasibility
Aristotle 202–3 freedom-enhancing 113, 129, 134,
Atkinson, Anthony B. (Tony) 164, 190, 143–4, 166, 217
192 funding of 17, 132, 139, 151, 154,
attitudes 37, 45, 55, 80, 100, 208, 220 159, 194, 218–19
Australia 25, 175, 187, 211 global 80
authenticity 33, 47 implementation of see
automation 37, 71, 77, 111, 113, 115–17, implementation
122, 136, 166 individual basis of see individual
autonomy 4, 11, 15, 41, 80, 127–31, 134, periodic payment of 16
177–8 regular payment of 16–17, 146, 191
autre, see Other, the scheme see Basic Income scheme
autrui, see Other, the subsistence level 17, 113–15, 153
unconditional see unconditionality
Bachelard, Gaston 24 uniform payment of 17
256
Index 257
universal see universality see also Mincome experiment

Basic Income European/Earth Network capital 8, 29–35, 37–9, 196, 206
(BIEN) 16, 18, 119, 177 human 39, 75, 103
Basic Income Guarantee 18–19 social 73, 125, 211
Basic Income Research Group 16, 181 capitalism 22, 25, 27–42, 169, 176, 217,
Basic Income scheme 17–18, 20, 78, 226
105, 128, 132–3, 139, 150–54, carbon 159
157, 159–60, 162, 194, 210, emissions 122, 138–9, 141, 166–7
216–19 tax see tax, carbon
behaviour, control by/of 7, 13 care 13, 57, 67, 72, 125, 134–5, 148, 151,
behavioural feasibility see feasibility, 163, 174, 178–9, 223
behavioural primary 87–8, 92–5, 97, 175, 197,
behavioural requirements 61, 108, 213 201–3
behavioural science see economics, secondary 92–3, 104, 175
behavioural 66 work 162, 164
Being 5, 46–8, 51–5 see also healthcare
Belgium 25 carer 19, 134–5, 143, 183
benefits cash transfers 1, 3, 6, 72, 168
dependency 72 categorical benefits 10
entangled 150–51, 215 categorical imperative 197–8, 200, 204–6
in-work 64, 67, 76, 108, 116, 129, change 17, 23–5, 34, 39, 45, 47, 58,
160, 173–4 69–73, 80, 82, 98, 107, 111–15,
means-tested see means-tested 117, 120–24, 127–33, 140, 142,
benefits 148–50, 153, 156–9, 162–3, 166,
out-of-work 67, 108, 116, 129, 173 173–6, 187, 190, 194, 208, 212,
recipient 3, 7, 9, 13, 16, 52–4, 59, 219–20
61–4, 124–5, 148, 156, 188–9 charity 53, 80, 85, 98–9, 101–2, 186,
system 17, 75–81, 107, 109, 111–12, 202, 221–2
115, 117, 123–5, 129–32, see also alms
143, 148, 150, 153, 159–62, child(ren) 3, 6–9, 13, 56, 61, 63, 66–7,
172–4, 182, 188, 194, 206–8, 70–74, 79, 81, 97–106, 108–16,
213, 218–19 120, 125, 129–31, 134, 139, 141,
Beveridge Report 173–6, 180, 208 143, 149, 151–3, 156–9, 162–3,
Beveridge, William 143, 179–80, 182, 169, 177–84, 186, 188, 192–3,
211 209, 211, 221
blood donation 43, 95–6, 104–5, 175 child allowance 19, 26, 70, 82, 106, 110,
Bolsa Família 3, 6, 177 143, 145, 148, 163, 178–80
boundary 3–4, 43, 75–6, 78, 80, 189, Child Benefit 9, 59, 81–2, 108, 110–11,
196, 206, 223 131, 142–3, 146, 148–9, 163, 178,
bracketing 43, 51–2 180, 182–4, 188, 193, 207, 217,
Brazil 3, 6, 80, 123, 175, 177–8 225
bureaucratic enquiry/interference/ child tax allowance 19, 163, 178
intrusion/process 7, 17, 61, 109, childcare 57, 67
128–9, 135, 143, 188, 194, 210 Christ see Jesus Christ
bureaucratic structures 202–203 Christian Faith/Christianity 54–6, 102,
businesses 29, 41 222
new 65, 67–9, 112, 120–21, 123, see also faith; Judaeo-Christian
157–8, 162, 166, 212 tradition
church 56, 25
Canada 25, 65, 80, 175, 178, 181, 183 see also Roman Catholic Church
258 Unconditional
Church of England 119 temporary 70–71, 112, 123

Citizen’s Basic Income see Basic Income zero hour 70–71, 111–12
Citizen’s Basic Income Trust 16 contributions record see social insurance,
Citizen’s Income see Basic Income contributions record; National
Citizen’s Income Trust 119 Insurance
Citizen’s Pension 110, 135–8, 145–6, contributory benefits 3, 7, 26, 62–4, 78,
181–4, 225 81, 108, 112, 143, 147, 157, 160,
citizenship 10, 81–4, 142, 215 163, 172–3, 175, 180–81, 184,
civic minimum 164–6, 186 211
civil servants/service 77, 128, 163, 183 see also National Insurance benefits/
claimant 61–4, 77, 81, 109, 118, 128, contributions/number;
166, 173–4, 188, 213 non-contributory benefits;
couple 109, 130, 132, 150, 174 social insurance
see also individual conversion experiences 179–80, 220
climate change 39 co-operation 31, 84, 208
coercion 117, 180, 216–17 co-operatives 39–41, 69, 112, 120, 166
cogito 43 corporation 29, 32, 39, 176
cognitive capacity/function 139, 164 couple 129–30, 145–6, 150, 174
comoditization 170 see also claimant, couple
common good 84–5 covenant 55, 165
commons, the 159 creation/creativity 27, 42, 56, 68–9,
Commonwealth Fund 187–92, 200–201 72–3, 75–6, 83–5, 95, 103, 105,
communism 22, 25, 27, 29, 33–4 115, 119–20, 123–5, 128, 131,
community 9, 23, 26–7, 29–30, 59–64, 150, 153, 163, 165, 168, 196, 205,
72, 75–6, 84–6, 96, 99, 102, 208, 212, 218–19, 222–5
110–11, 121, 125, 127, 161, credit 123
165–6, 169–70, 174, 176–9, 183, crime 194
196, 200, 203, 209, 212–13, criminalization 110, 162
222–3 critique 26, 34, 38
activity see voluntary community culture 32, 47, 168, 170, 223
activity
complexity 7, 31, 48, 59, 71, 77–8, 82, Dasein 46–7, 54, 56
91, 101, 112, 115, 117, 119, death 64, 78, 141
128–9, 135, 138, 145, 155, 162, debate about Basic Income see Basic
206 Income, debate
computerization 37–8, 77–8, 129 definition of Basic Income see Basic
conditionality ix–x, 1–21, 53, 56–8, Income, definition of
60–64, 91, 93, 100, 104, 110, 130, degrowth 138, 167
141, 168, 177, 181, 183–4 democracy 5, 32–3, 37, 83–4, 92, 94, 98,
see also income, conditional; 148, 160, 177, 215
unconditionality see also social democracy
conservatism 25–6 demotivation 61, 65, 68–9, 115, 117
Conservative Party 103, 110, 181 see also employment disincentive;
consumer 41, 92, 95, 122 motivation
consumption 38, 41, 116 dental care 59, 95, 160, 176, 221
tax see tax, consumption dependency see benefits dependency
contingency 2, 39, 108, 158, 220 depression 63, 71, 173
contract 2, 4, 30–32, 40, 49–50, 59, 75, deprivation 67, 102, 121, 204
84, 90, 94, 111, 165, 169, 176, Derrida, Jacques ix, 43, 47, 49–51, 57,
200, 202–3, 205 95, 110, 222
Index 259
deserving/undeserving 63, 81, 172, economy x, 8, 28, 32–4, 39–41, 49–50,

182–3 52, 63, 67, 105, 107, 114–15,
difference 22, 75, 79, 95, 132, 139, 117, 120–24, 138, 141, 154, 157,
153–4, 171, 190, 210, 219 159–60, 164, 167, 171, 208,
see also diversity 216–18, 222
differentia 8, 211 capitalist 32–4, 40, 217
dignity 19, 85, 98–9, 101, 103 classical 65
disability 7, 108, 133–6, 156, 204 communist 34
disclosure 23, 47–8, 51 developed 72, 103, 117, 135, 208,
discourse 11, 27, 39, 42, 225 225
hegemonic moral 27–9, 32–3, developing 72–3, 103, 225
38–40, 225 gift 171, 223–4
see also frame/framing gig 39
discretion 62 global 8, 32–3, 124, 218, 225
disempowerment 67 informal 134
see also empowerment; power local 135
disincentive see employment disincentive market 38, 103, 170–71
distribution 29–31, 85, 91–2, 115, 131, UK 22, 173
147, 176, 179, 194, 198, 209, 219, see also political economy
222 education 19, 25, 30, 37, 58, 66–7, 71–3,
see also redistribution 75, 79, 81–86, 97–106, 119–24,
diversity x, 3, 6–7, 11, 23, 26, 29, 69–70, 130, 139, 142, 145, 147, 153,
76, 84, 106, 112, 119, 127, 129, 155–62, 164, 177–8, 184, 186–7,
131, 137, 155–6, 161, 168, 173–4, 189–92, 209, 212, 215, 219,
177, 209 223–4
see also difference faith-based 102–3
dividend 16, 90, 116, 151, 154, 177, 200, private 97–8, 101–3, 155, 186, 192
206 state 99, 102–3, 142
domination 62, 113, 206 vouchers 97–99, 178
don, le; donation, la; donné, le, see gift; see also school
given, the; givenness; giving efficiency 1, 19–20, 24, 33, 35, 80, 85–6,
donations 26, 43, 60, 86–88, 91, 95–7, 93–4, 97–104, 113, 116, 118–19,
104–5, 170, 175, 198 122–3, 138, 142–5, 147, 152–3,
donor/donee 49, 52, 95–6, 105 158–9, 164, 185–91, 193, 195,
doubt 20, 42, 98, 102, 162, 198 200–203, 209, 217–21
Douglas, Mary 57, 169 see also inefficiency–8
dynamic, the 32, 56, 114, 132, 139 elderly people 35, 62, 76, 81, 120, 125,
see also rent subsidy, dynamic/ 130, 134, 136, 141, 161, 183, 211,
static; wage subsidy, 219
dynamic/static elections 35, 93, 137, 147, 207
empirical evidence 35, 64–6, 93, 104,
economic growth 8, 30, 38–40, 96, 138, 117, 158, 187, 201
140, 166, 216 employer 63–4, 70, 75–6, 78, 91, 96,
economic rights see rights, economic 108–9, 111–13, 116–18, 142, 148,
economics 34–6, 42, 57, 66, 93, 203 162, 164, 172–3, 181, 211
behavioural 66 employment 6, 34, 39, 57, 121, 125, 131,
135, 143–4, 151, 212–13
casual 71, 109, 112, 134, 142
conditions 166
260 Unconditional
disincentive 7, 65–9, 83, 117, 132, Esping-Andersen, Gøsta ix, 25–8

152, 174 ethics x, 49, 58, 196–214
see also employment incentive see also morality
flexible 68, 112–13, 119, 134 ethnicity 75, 100, 155
full 25, 34–5, 143 Eurodividend 79–80, 82, 206
full-time 65, 69–70, 112, 119–21, Europe 16, 22, 26, 79–80, 91, 116, 118,
123, 125, 130, 137–9, 143, 169, 184
148, 163, 174 European Commission 79
incentive 66, 72, 115, 117–19, 157, European Health Insurance Card 79
188, 190, 194, 216 European Union 32, 79, 82, 116
see also employment Evolution 173, 175
disincentive excess 53–4, 222
income see income, employment exchange 13, 16, 30, 32, 49–50, 57, 95,
insecurity 41, 69, 71 168–70, 221–3
low-paid 67, 71, 108, 194 see also economy
market 7, 26, 28, 36, 66, 70–71, exchange rates 35, 37
73–5, 77, 79–80, 112–18, experience 7, 13–14, 25, 27, 30, 32,
12, 131–3, 143, 157–8, 160, 44–9, 51–4, 61–7, 69–70, 72–5,
162–4, 166, 192–3, 206–7, 77, 81–5, 91–4, 104–5, 115, 120,
216–17, 219 123, 130, 132, 134–7, 142, 152,
motivation see motivation 162, 166, 174, 177, 194–5, 204–5,
occasional 109, 121, 134–5, 209 213, 220
opportunities/options/patterns 134, experiment 15, 23, 27, 65–6, 72, 80, 123,
144, 153, 162, 165–6, 207, 128, 155, 158, 161–2, 176–8,
210 183–4, 193, 198–9, 213, 216
paid 65, 68–70, 73, 75, 119–20, see also pilot project
124–5, 132, 138, 157, 164,
172, 180, 223 fairness 164–6, 199–200, 205, 208,
part-time 65, 69, 112, 114, 119–21, 210–11
123, 125, 134–5, 137–9, 143, faith 54, 99, 102, 119
157, 209 see also Christian Faith/Christianity
precarious 70–71, 111 family 26, 61, 64, 71–2, 74, 87, 92–3,
rights see rights, employment 96, 100, 105, 108, 110, 114, 127,
self- 69, 71, 112, 114, 119, 192, 194, 129, 131, 135–6, 140, 163, 172,
209, 212 178–80, 182, 188, 193, 204,
status 8, 10, 12, 71, 86, 108–10, 112, 211–12, 221–5
140–41 Family Allowance 163, 173, 178–80,
see also contract; job; labour; work 182, 184, 225
empowerment 192 family resemblance 2, 4, 11, 15, 210
see also disempowerment; power fear 62–3, 180, 220
enquiry (into personal circumstances) feasibility x, 13, 17, 58, 68, 80, 105, 114,
7–8, 128, 135, 141, 194 122, 126, 131, 144–5, 148–9, 154,
epistemology 44 183, 195, 205,208, 215–17, 224
epoché 43, 45 administrative 144, 147
equality 25, 106, 132–3, 140, 144, behavioural 144, 147, 161–2
198–200, 207, 209–10, 217 financial 144, 147
see also inequality policy process 144, 147
equilibrium 35, 39, 41 political 144, 147
errors 77–8, 109–110, 162 psychological 144, 147
es gibt 46–7 financial crisis 38, 41–2, 122–3
Index 261
financial dependence 129 goods 13, 22, 29–30, 68, 79, 84, 89,
financial floor 112, 134, 161, 163, 166 105–6, 114–15, 122–3, 157,
financial insecurity/security 71–2, 115 169–71, 206, 218
financial market see market, financial club 60, 88
Finland 25, 66, 72, 162, 183, 213 collective 167, 220
food bank 96 primary 198–200
Form, Platonic 46, 205, 207–8, 212 private 60, 88, 100–101, 104, 164
see also Good, the public 59–60, 84–6, 88, 99, 101,
Foucault, Michel 24–7 104, 186
foundation 15, 18, 22, 40, 42, 48, 70, gospels 55
84–5, 106, 125, 158, 208, 219 government 15, 18, 28, 30–37, 39–40,
see also ground 57, 61–2, 64, 68, 72, 76–7, 81–4,
Foundation for International Studies on 86, 90–93, 96–7, 100–103, 107,
Social Security 1, 5, 11 112–13, 116, 118, 123, 128, 130,
frame/framing 147–8, 164, 197–8, 133, 136, 144, 146–50, 154,
219–20 157–60, 162, 173–7, 179–81, 192,
France 25, 91, 118, 137, 155, 175 202, 211, 218, 220
fraud 77–8, 109–10 government deficit 35
free riders 85 government expenditure 25–6, 105, 137,
freedom 36, 72, 95–6, 113, 127, 129, 160, 177, 183
134, 143–4, 166, 186, 189, 217, government minister 62, 66, 93, 149–50,
225 176, 178, 182, 220
fuel costs 139, 143, 147 government revenue 57, 91, 105, 116,
122–3, 144, 149, 157, 160, 177,
gains and losses (household) 66, 144, 183, 218–19
150–53, 159, 189 grace/gratuity 48, 54–6
gender 100–111, 132–3, 141, 144, 174, gratitude 172, 196
217 green parties 138–9
Germany 15, 25, 47, 91, 175, 211 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 40, 187
gift ix, 43, 47–57, 64, 110, 120, 165–6, ground see foundation
168–72, 196, 221–4 group 5, 9, 24, 37, 41, 59, 61–3, 70, 75,
economy 171, 223–4 81, 84, 92, 99, 125, 136, 149, 175,
relationship 43, 51, 95–7 182, 206, 223
givee 52 see also age cohort/group
given, the ix, 43–54, 56, 166, 169–70, group norms see norms, group
222–3 Grundeinkommen 15
givenness ix, 43–54, 56, 222 guarantee 1, 18, 25, 38, 69, 89, 158
giver 51–2, 171–2 see also job guarantee; Minimum
giving viii, ix, 6, 43, 46–57, 64, 96, Income Guarantee
168–72, 208, 221–3
global Basic Income see Basic Income, happiness 19, 221
global see also welfare; wellbeing
global warming see climate change health 3, 6, 19, 75, 82, 152, 179–80, 187,
globalization 16, 36, 39, 42, 115–17 190–91, 193, 201, 205, 223
God/Gød/gods 53–6, 102, 221 mental 63, 72–3, 76
Good, the 205, 207, 212 poverty 139
see also Form, Platonic services 7, 20, 94–5, 97, 142, 175–6,
good society 36, 76, 84–5, 131, 205, 201–4
208–209 see also National Health Service
262 Unconditional
healthcare ix, 20, 25–6, 37, 57–9, 62, 69, human being/condition/nature/need 33,
72–3, 76–7, 79, 82, 87–97, 130, 45–6, 78, 84, 96, 124, 155–6, 164,
155, 157, 160, 164, 177, 182–9, 168, 186, 196, 200–201, 204,
191 212–13, 222
ethics of 197–205, 214 human capital see capital, human
free 7, 12, 20, 58, 61, 69, 81–3, 85, human resources 87, 93, 101, 224
91–3, 97, 104–6, 122, 142, human rights see rights, human
145, 147, 151, 153, 155–6, see also dignity
158, 163–4, 175–6, 183–4, humanity 33
186–8, 190–92, 198–201, Husserl, Edmund ix, 43–5, 50–52, 222
215, 219
funding methods 87–97, 158, 175, ideal, the 6, 12, 52, 56–8, 104, 156, 203
187, 191, 200 ideologies ix, 22, 24, 26–7, 29, 36, 102,
hybrid 94–5, 200 118, 209
insurance 62–3, 71, 77, 81, 89–91, political 144, 147
148, 155, 184, 191, 199–201 idleness 143, 157, 193
primary care 87–8, 92–5, 97, 175, idol 53–4
197, 201–3 illness 133–4, 189
private 25–6, 88–9, 184, 186, immanence 44–5, 52
199–200 implementation 13, 27, 40, 42, 56, 69,
public 60, 106 77–8, 80, 105, 107, 110–11,
unconditional see healthcare, free 113–15, 117–20, 124–5, 128,
see also National Health Service 130–32, 141–2, 144–53, 155–63,
(NHS) 166, 172–4, 177–8, 180, 182–4,
Hebrew Scriptures 43, 54–5 189, 193, 195, 203, 210, 215, 217,
hegemonic moral discourse see 219–20, 222, 224–5
discourse, hegemonic moral incentive see employment incentive
Heidegger, Martin ix, 43, 46–8, 222 income 19, 25, 28, 30, 41, 60, 64, 68, 73,
history 23–4, 26, 31, 39, 47, 58, 168–84, 75, 105–6, 108, 119, 191–2, 198
191 Basic see Basic Income
honour 57, 169, 178 conditional 15, 74, 135, 147, 156,
household 3, 6, 19, 22, 30, 41, 61, 64–8, 163, 183, 215
74, 76–8, 93, 101, 105, 109–10, disposable see net disposable
110–14, 117, 119, 125, 127–30, income
132–3, 136, 138–45, 150–61, distribution see distribution
166–7, 172–4, 182, 186, 189, earned 7, 18, 65–8, 71, 74, 76–8,
193–4, 207, 209, 215–20 108–13, 116–17, 120–21,
formation 150 125, 130, 133–4, 137,
net disposable income see net 140–42, 151, 156–7, 162–3,
disposable income 172, 174, 186, 188, 190, 194,
structure 7–8, 12, 62, 108, 110, 115, 209, 213, 218, 221
128–9, 141, 160, 162 employment see income, earned
tested 15, 108, 110, 128–9 floor see financial floor
housing 30, 71, 73, 75, 105, 130–31, 139, gap 137–8
147, 149–50, 204 generation 112, 123
costs of 150, 173, 215 higher 60–61, 108, 110, 141, 153,
insecure 69, 71 157, 199, 218
see also rent insecure 71, 121
Housing Benefit 62, 107, 149 labour see income, earned
Index 263
low 59–61, 71, 73, 75, 141, 151, inequality 26, 30, 37, 74, 76, 79, 100,
160, 189, 199, 220 127, 138–41, 144, 151, 170,
minimum see Minimum Income 189–90, 194–5, 198–9, 204, 216,
Guarantee 220, 222
net disposable see net disposable see also equality
income infinity 17, 50, 155
secure 41, 69–73, 91, 112–13, 115, inflation 36–7, 72, 117, 150, 153, 172,
117, 119–20, 136–7, 162, 179, 216, 218
194–5, 204, 218–19 inheritance 51–2, 165, 177, 196, 204, 222
subsistence 113–15, 163 injustice 68, 100, 110–11, 130, 213
test 15, 25, 66, 93, 108, 128, 162, see also justice
177, 180 innovation 38, 122, 140
see also means test; insecurity 41, 69–71, 82, 105, 112
means-tested benefits employment see employment
unconditional viii–x, 10, 12–14, insecurity
17–18, 43, 58–9, 62–3, financial see financial insecurity/
66–70, 72, 76, 78, 80–86, security
104–5, 107, 109–17, 119, see also security
121, 123–8, 130, 132–3, 137, institution 8, 19–20, 26–7, 39–40, 58–9,
139, 141–3, 145–9, 151–3, 61, 79, 83, 85–6, 99, 101, 121,
155–7, 159–61, 163–6, 174, 130, 147–8, 164, 171, 175, 182–3,
176–9, 181–4, 189, 192, 195, 189, 191–2, 200–202, 226
205–10, 212–17, 219–22 insurance 69, 71, 76–7, 81, 90–91, 93–4,
unearned 186, 188, 190, 192–3 108, 142, 148, 155, 158, 181, 184,
Income Tax 19, 107, 109–110, 151, 174, 190–92, 201, 215
210–11 premiums 61–3, 77, 87, 89–91, 94,
income tax 18–19, 64–5, 76, 107, 109, 96, 157, 181, 191, 198–9, 201
115, 117, 129, 132, 142, 151, 154, see also National Insurance benefits/
157, 159–60, 163, 178 contributions/number; social
allowance 66, 76, 119, 146, 154, 163 insurance
flat rate 151 intention 45, 52–3, 62, 143, 172–3, 216
individual see individual interest 35, 40, 171, 200–201, 218, 225
progressive 35, 76, 108, 199, 219 intrusion see bureaucratic intrusion
rate 19, 65–6, 148, 150, 160, 163, intuition 44, 53, 77, 111, 155, 157
189, 199, 211, 216, 219 investment 35, 38, 73, 149, 167, 186,
Income Tax Personal Allowance 19 190, 192
India 65, 72–3, 80, 116, 145, 161, 175, Iran 148
178, 183, 193–4 Israel 54–5, 175, 181
individual ix–x, 4–5, 10, 13–17, 36–7, Italy 25, 175
43, 60, 67, 78, 82–3, 88, 91, 97,
99–100, 108–9, 127–33, 140–41, Japan 25, 175
143, 145–6, 150, 155–6, 174–5, Jesus Christ 53, 55–6, 102
182–3, 186, 188, 194, 199, 205, Jews 55
208, 219, 222, 224 job 64–7, 112–16, 125, 158, 162, 181
individual responsibility see bad/lousy 69, 74–5, 115, 164
responsibility badly-paid 74, 115, 209
individualism 36, 209 desirable 115, 123
inefficiency 19, 40, 90, 94, 100, 113, full-time see employment, full-time
117–18, 149, 159, 190 good 74–5, 115
see also efficiency guarantee 118, 215
264 Unconditional
insecurity see insecurity legal resident 59–60, 86, 97, 104, 128,
loss 116, 133, 166 142, 146–8, 160, 164, 181, 183
low-skilled 75 leisure (centre) 60–61, 67, 73, 88, 223–5
middle-range 74 Lévinas, Emmanuel ix, 43, 48–9, 53,
part-time see employment, part-time 212, 222
pointless 69 liberalism ix, 25–6, 28, 180, 208
quality 123 see also neoliberalism
satisfaction 115 life (ways of) 32–3, 64, 70–71, 82–4,
search 61, 108, 120, 158, 162 98, 114, 120–21, 131, 134, 137,
security see security 140, 143, 147, 155, 185–9, 196,
share 112 198, 204, 209, 211, 217, 220, 222,
undesirable see job, bad/lousy 224–5
well-paid 74 limit 44, 49–52, 54, 91–2, 96, 103, 105,
see also employment; work test; 108, 153, 160–61, 180, 209–10,
workfare 222
Jobseeker’s Allowance 108 Lister, Ruth 139
Judaeo-Christian tradition 54 Living Wage 116
justice 86, 98, 103, 196, 199, 204–5, Local Authorities 57–8, 60–61, 69, 78,
207–10, 212, 222 86, 99, 134, 175–6, 189
see also injustice see also Municipal Authorities
Locke, John 209
Kant, Immanuel 197, 200–201, 204–6 logic 44–5, 72, 149–50, 154, 159, 206,
Kenya 73 226
Keynes, John Maynard 22, 34–6, 39–40, London School of Economics and
42, 180, 224–5 Political Science 119, 179
Keynesianism viii–ix, 22, 24–5, 27–8, losses see gains and losses
31, 34–42, 184, 224 love 51, 54–6, 197
Kingdom of God 55, 102 see also agapē
Kuhn, Thomas 22–5
marginal deduction rate 26, 65–8, 74,
labour 31–3, 64, 112, 158, 170, 172, 180, 117–19, 132, 140, 151, 157, 162,
200 174, 216
civic 164 marginal product of labour 34
marginal product of 34 marginal propensity to consume see
market see employment market propensity to consume
market status see employment status Marion, Jean-Luc ix, 43, 50–54, 57, 222
returns to 218 market 8, 13, 22, 30, 32, 34–5, 37–40,
supply/demand 112–13, 116 84, 90, 95–105, 123, 147, 149,
voluntary see voluntary 157, 164–5, 170–71, 186, 190,
(community) work 217
work for 71 economy see economy, market
see also employment; work employment see employment
Labour Party 103, 176, 178 market; employment status
land value tax see tax, land value failure 225
Law 55 financial 32, 35
law 31, 41, 58, 96, 106, 110, 140, 147, free 29–31, 36, 38–9, 70, 79, 115,
163, 177, 197, 206–7 118
see also Poor Laws global 37, 206
marriage 59, 130–31, 149, 220
Marx, Karl 33
Index 265
Marxism 34, 224 Municipal Authorities 39, 80, 177–8

Mauss, Marcel 50, 57, 64, 95, 168–9, see also Local Authorities
172, 221–3
means test 5, 16, 26, 58, 60–61, 73, 88, Namibia 65, 72–3, 120, 158–9, 161, 166,
95, 97–8, 105 183, 193
means-tested benefits 7, 9–10, 18, narrative see discourse
25–6, 58, 62–8, 71, 74–8, 81, 83, National Health Service (NHS) 7, 40,
107–21, 124, 127–30, 132–8, 140, 59, 87, 145, 148, 153, 160, 173,
142–3, 147–54, 156–7, 159–62, 175–6, 193, 201, 225
166, 172–4, 180–84, 188–90, 192, National Institute for Health and Care
194, 205–7, 210–11, 213, 215–17, Excellence (NICE) 92
219–21, 223 National Insurance Benefits/
escape from 76, 78, 117, 129, 136, Contributions/Number 62, 109,
210 151, 173–6, 180, 211
in-work see benefits, in-work National Minimum Wage 81, 113–16,
out-of-work see benefits, 163, 177–8, 205, 216–17
out-of-work natural world see world, natural
media 57, 62, 84, 92, 147–8, 220 nature 33, 35, 165, 196, 222
membership 4–5, 60, 67, 73, 84, 87, 90, needs 41, 61, 92, 97, 100, 105, 112, 114,
93, 208, 211–12 123, 130, 133–8, 155–6, 158, 167,
fee 88–9, 91, 199 175, 182, 188, 205, 211, 215
microsimulation vii, 132, 137, 142 basic 18, 147, 186, 225
migrants/migration 82, 170, 193 human 164, 186
Minimum Income Guarantee 18, 25, social 30, 41, 68, 106, 114, 121,
65–6, 71, 158, 162, 183, 193, 216 124, 164
Minimum Income Standards 185–6 neoliberalism viii–ix, 24–5, 27–8, 31,
mistrust see trust/mistrust 36–42, 103, 184, 224, 226
misunderstanding 18 see also liberalism
see also understanding net disposable income 7, 64–8, 83, 112,
money 32, 35, 38, 55, 59, 114, 141, 223 114, 1167–17, 120, 122, 125–6,
creation 40, 124, 150, 218–19 134, 140–41, 143, 149, 151–4,
supply 37, 40 189–90, 207, 209–210, 219, 225
Mont Pelerin Society 36–7, 225 Netherlands 25, 135–6, 146, 175, 181,
moral hazard 7 187
moral repertoire 13 New Testament 43
see also norms, social New Zealand 64, 108, 175, 181
morality 35–6, 39, 96, 105, 110, 131, non-contributory benefits 3, 6–7, 10, 118
168, 171, 213, 221 see also contributory benefits
see also ethics nonwithdrawable benefits 13–14, 17,
Moscovici, Serge 219 128, 141
motivation 61, 65, 68–9, 100, 102, 115, norms 1, 25, 41, 59, 175
118–19, 125, 140, 157 social 13, 26, 37, 129, 138, 164, 169
see also demotivation; disincentive; Norway 25, 175, 181, 187
employment disincentive;
employment incentive; object(-ive) 24, 44–5, 50–52, 104–5, 111,
incentive 170, 200, 202
motive 31, 179–80 objections see Basic Income, arguments
multiplicity 175 against; unconditionality,
see also difference; diversity; arguments against
plurality
266 Unconditional
obligation 13, 24, 57, 79, 95, 99, 165, see also experiment
169, 197, 200, 204 Plato see Form, Platonic
Old Testament see Hebrew Scriptures policy 22, 24, 27, 35–6, 38–40, 42, 58,
Ontario 15, 128, 72, 101–4, 131, 144, 154–5, 158,
ontic 46–8 167, 175, 184, 191, 213, 216–19,
ontology 46–8 226
opinion surveys 110, 147, 149, 220 accident see accident, policy/
opportunity 67–8, 73, 75–67, 84, 96, political
102, 105–106, 114, 119, 138, 159, change 14, 16, 25, 28, 58, 148, 162,
165–6, 198, 200, 212, 223 220
equality/inequality of 75, 140, 199, debate 43, 72
212 failure 39
organ donation 95 making/makers 24, 38
Organisation for Economic Co-operation network 24, 147
and Development (OECD) 140 problem 180
Other, the 47–9, 53, 56, 212 process 142, 144, 147–8
public 101
Paine, Thomas 196, 222 social see social policyix–x, 1, 5–8,
paradigm ix, 1, 22–7, 36–7, 39, 223–5 11, 20, 27–8, 41–3, 56–9, 63,
shift 22, 24, 158, 193, 220, 223–4 73, 78, 80–81, 86–7, 93, 97,
Parker, Hermione (Mimi) 18 104–6, 110–11, 119, 131–2,
parliament 62, 84, 146–7, 163, 178, 139, 142, 145, 147, 158, 160,
181–2, 220 167–8, 172, 175, 183–5, 189,
member of 181–2, 220 191, 195, 197, 206, 208–11,
Participation Income 164 213, 215–22, 226
partner 67, 111, 121, 129, 131–3 political accident, see accident, policy/
social 91 political
partnership, private 40, 59, 94, 201–3 political economy 34–6, 224
path dependency 103, 147 political parties 29, 76, 125, 147–8, 180,
pattern (of action) 54 182, 197–8
payment per item 77, 81, 87–91, 94–6, politics 24, 32–3, 36, 57, 76, 170, 203,
158, 191–2, 199, 201, 215 222
pension 3, 6–7, 25–6, 62–4, 70, 106, 121, Poor Laws 40, 168, 172
135–8, 143, 145–7, 151, 173, 178, poor relief 25, 173
181–4, 196 potlatch 169
see also Basic State Pension; poverty 30–31, 35, 60, 64–9, 72–3, 105,
Citizen’s Pension; Single 117, 124, 130, 139–44, 151–2,
Tier State Pension 173–4, 178, 182, 188–90, 193–4,
people/person see human being/ 212, 216, 220–21
condition/nature dynamic definition of 64, 139
phenomenological reduction see elderly 3, 6, 138
reduction, phenomenological escape from 114, 136–8, 144, 210
phenomenology 24, 43–4, 46, 51 see also trap, poverty
phenomenon 24, 43–5, 48–54 trap see trap, poverty74, 161, 207,
saturated 50, 52, 54 216, 221, 223
philosophy viii–ix, 5–6, 33, 35–6, 43–56, power 24–6, 32–4, 36–9, 57, 76, 83–4,
119, 222 122, 131–2, 138, 163, 170, 180,
pilot project 65–6, 72, 80, 120, 132, 145, 198, 209, 217
158–9, 161, 166, 177, 179, 183–4, see also disempowerment;
193–4, 208 empowerment
Index 267
precariat/precarity 39, 70–72, 123 regime viii–x, 1, 22, 24–8, 31, 33, 35–6,
pre-retired 137–8 38, 40–42, 184, 191
prescriptions, medical 59, 67, 90, 92, 95, optimal 191
151, 176, 221 social policy 22–42, 195, 226
price 29–30, 37–8, 40, 60–61, 72, 89–90, unconditionality see
92, 115–16, 122, 144, 150, 167, unconditionality regime
170–72 see also welfare (state) regime
prisoners 78, 82 regulations 31, 35–7, 39–40, 59, 62,
private partnership see partnership, 76–8, 81–2, 93, 110, 112, 124,
private 130–31, 142, 149, 154, 157, 162,
production 29–33, 38, 113, 115, 166, 171 202, 213
means of 32–3 see also rules
proceeds of 41, 116, 122 religion 24, 55, 57, 61, 75, 196
profits 29–32, 42, 96–7, 120, 122, 192, rent 105, 110, 136, 149, 196, 222
200–202, 218, 222 subsidy, dynamic/static 149–50
propensity to consume 138, 141 research x, 1, 11, 13, 20, 23, 28, 30, 43,
property 140, 149, 176–7, 186, 196 63, 66, 72, 80, 103, 119, 132,
private 33, 196 137, 140, 149–50, 153, 164, 169,
rights see rights, property 175, 177, 181–5, 187–93, 197,
tax see tax, property 200–201, 213–14, 219–20, 225
Psychologists for Social Change 63, 71 residence requirement 60
psychology 44, 63, 71–3, 85, 118–20, resident 10, 41, 60–61, 75, 86, 96, 105,
125, 132–3, 135, 138–9, 144, 138, 146, 178, 181–2, 193–4
147–8, 158 legal see legal resident
public resources 7, 32, 38, 72, 84, 87–93, 96–8,
expenditure see government 100–101, 103–4, 120, 156, 158,
expenditure 165, 168, 176, 181, 183, 185–92,
opinion see opinion surveys 195, 209–10, 212, 225
policy see also social policy constraints 5, 155, 160–61, 186
sector see sector, public responsibility 5, 11, 36–7, 48–9, 56, 64,
servants see civil service/servants 67–8, 76, 82, 84–5, 92, 105, 108,
services see services, public 135–6, 176, 178, 187, 208, 212
transport see transport retirement 65, 69, 105, 119, 121, 137–8
revelation 52, 54, 56
Rathbone, Eleanor 178–9, 180 revenue neutrality 105, 144, 218
rationality 1, 15, 23, 38, 109–10, 117, revolution 23, 32–3, 84
123, 148, 157, 168, 183, 207, 213 Rhys Williams, Brandon vi, 18, 181
rationing 91–5, 97, 161, 201 Rhys Williams, Juliet 180–81, 183
Rawls, John 198–9, 204, 210–11 rights 5, 11, 79, 82, 197–8, 204, 212
receiver/receiving 49, 51–3, 172 citizenship 82–3
reciprocity ix, 1, 13–14, 20–21, 49–50, civil 82
54–5, 57, 64, 82–3, 97, 164–6, economic 80, 82–3
168–72, 200, 222–3 employment 39
rectification, see critique human 58, 204
redistribution 25, 35, 57, 80, 96, 189 see also Universal Declaration
reduction of Human Rights
phenomenological 43–4, 51 political 82–3
to the given 56 property 32
unconditionality see social 26, 83
unconditionality
268 Unconditional
risk 74, 82, 89–90, 96, 120, 158, 162, free see services, unconditional
183, 193, 226 health see health services
Roman law, see law, Roman public 11, 28, 31, 39–40, 57, 75,
rules 23, 63, 78–80, 169, 210–11, 213, 81–5, 94, 96, 104–5, 112–13,
226 120, 134, 144–5, 147–8,
see also regulations 151–4, 160, 163, 184, 186,
192, 195, 199, 201, 209, 215,
sacrifice 50, 211–12, 221 219–23, 225
safety 19, 164, 188 unconditional 7, 67–8, 83–5, 105,
net 25–6 147, 149, 151–5, 163, 172,
sanctions 96, 118, 153, 162, 211 182, 195, 201, 208, 221–4
school 3, 6, 58, 70, 73–4, 79, 97–106, see also Universal Basic Services
121, 125, 151–2, 155–7, 159, 161, shame 57, 61–2, 104, 109, 194–5, 219
177, 186, 192–3, 209, 215 see also stigma
meals 61, 63, 66–8, 74, 100, 151–3, sickness benefit 64, 108, 204
220–21 simplicity 77–80, 128, 142, 146, 162,
see also education 207
science 5–6, 20, 22–4, 27, 36, 45, 95–6, Single Tier State Pension 62, 182
122, 158, 169, 192, 201, 225 sinner 55–6
scrounger see skiver skills 30, 64–5, 67–9, 71, 74–5, 99, 108,
sector 118, 120–23, 157, 166
financial 38 see also training
private 30, 40, 59, 75, 94, 97, 103, skiver 62
118, 147, 200–203 social advantage/disadvantage 62, 74,
public 30, 40, 59, 75, 94, 97, 101, 101, 103, 133, 198
118, 174–5, 200–203 social assistance 10, 175
voluntary (and community) 30, 59, social bonds 170–71, 222
75, 97, 118, 175, 201–3 social capital see capital, social
see also voluntary (and social cohesion 19, 30, 63, 75–6, 80, 86,
community) work; 98–103, 114, 144, 152–3, 162,
volunteer 173, 186, 194, 219, 221
security 41, 64, 69–70–73, 83, 91, social control 34, 217
105, 112–13, 115, 123, 136–40, social democracy 25, 57, 164
158, 161, 186, 193, 198, 204–5, social exclusion 73–4, 139
218–19 social inclusion 73–6, 134–5
see also employment, secure; social insurance 3, 6–7, 12, 26, 57, 63–4,
income, secure; insecurity; 69, 77–9, 91, 107–109, 135–8,
social security 142, 167, 173–5, 179, 181, 191–2,
self-employment see employment, self- 198, 208, 219
self-esteem 164 see also contributory benefits;
self-givenness 45, 56 National Insurance benefits/
self-interest 13, 36, 169, 171 contributions/number
Seneca 168, 171–2 social minimum 191
services 12, 16, 22, 30–31, 37, 59–60, social mobility 74–6, 100
62–4, 66–8, 74, 76, 79, 83–4, 89, social norms see norms, social
94–7, 105–6, 114–15, 122–3, social partner see partner, social
133–4, 157, 167, 169–70, 191,
204, 206, 212, 218
Index 269
social policy ix–x, 1, 5–8, 11, 20, 27–8, see also Basic Income, subsistence
42–3, 56–9, 63, 73, 78, 80–81, level
86–7, 93, 97, 101, 104–6, 110–11, surveillance 37, 61
119, 131–2, 139, 142, 145, 147, Sweden 22, 25, 175
158, 160, 167–8, 172, 175, 183–5, Switzerland 25, 36–7, 175
189, 195, 197, 206, 208–11, 213,
215–22, 226 targeting 5, 11, 36, 111, 186
regime see regime, social policy tax 32, 60, 67, 69, 76–8, 79, 81, 84,
social rights see rights, social 86–8, 91–3, 99, 101–2, 107,
social security 5, 7, 9–13, 58, 79, 174, 110–11, 144, 151–3, 159, 163,
188, 206 176, 191, 195, 198–201, 203–4,
social services 204 209, 218, 221
see also services, public allowance 19, 108, 150, 183
social solidarity 76–7, 217 see also income tax allowance
social wage see wage, social carbon 122, 138–9, 141, 166–7, 219
social welfare see welfare, social consumption 199, 219
socialism 22, 25–6, 29, 208 corporation 122
society 13, 19, 24, 26–8, 30–42, 50, 57, financial transaction 123, 159, 219
63, 67–8, 70–76, 83–6, 88–9, haven 206
96, 98–9, 102–7, 114, 120–22, income see income tax
124–5, 127–8, 131, 134, 137–8, land value 159, 219
140–41, 146–7, 149, 153, 157, local 78, 86
159, 164–74, 178, 184–7, 189, lump sum 217
195–6, 198–200, 205–13, 217, progressive see income tax,
221, 224–6 progressive
tribal 50, 57, 61, 64, 169, 172, property 86
221–2 rates see income tax rates
spectrum viii, 7, 12–13, 29, 33, 56, 104, reliefs 167
144, 178, 183, 192 revenue see government revenue
Spence, Thomas 176–8, 184, 196–7, 222 system 17, 75–6, 79, 107–8, 112,
stabilizer, dynamic/static 154 115, 117, 123–4, 129, 132,
standard of living 108, 116, 139, 204 142–3, 150, 153–4, 156, 159,
state 13, 22, 25–6, 30–34, 37–9, 42, 64, 161–3, 172, 188, 194, 199,
77–80, 91, 99, 102–3, 105, 108–9, 206–8, 211, 213, 218
136–8, 142–3, 147, 166–7, 176, threshold see tax allowance
178–81, 186, 188, 204, 206, 212, Tax Credits 174, 211
216 taxpayer 19, 110, 143
welfare see welfare state technology 8, 123–4, 138, 225
static, the 139 temporality 44–5, 47
see also wage subsidy, dynamic/ theology 36, 43, 51, 54, 56
static theory ix, 7, 23–4, 27, 29, 33, 35–6, 39,
stigma 7, 57, 61–3, 73–4, 83, 104, 42, 65–6, 71, 93, 100, 108, 113,
109–10, 125, 138, 153, 173–4, 158, 161184, 197–204, 207, 209,
188, 194–5, 217, 219, 223 223
see also shame They, the 46–8
stress 71, 73 thinktank 36, 42, 147, 225
subjectivity 44–5, 52, 190 Titmuss, Richard 43, 94–6, 104, 195
subsidy see wage subsidy Torah, see Hebrew Scriptures; Law
subsistence 17, 113–15, 163 trade-off 190–91
270 Unconditional
trades unions 35–8, 76, 88, 91, 108–9, uniqueness 104, 130
116, 163–4, 182, 212 United Kingdom (UK) x, 176
training 13, 75, 101–2, 108, 113, 118, United Nations 30, 103
120–21, 157, 175 United States of America (US) vii, 14
see also skills Universal Basic Income see Basic
transparency 80–81, 109, 154, 211 Income
transport 11, 96, 105, 123, 130, 144, 147, Universal Basic Services 105, 150
161, 186, 215 Universal Credit 10, 66, 77–8, 108, 173,
trap 211
poverty 64–8, 161, 216, 221 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
precarity 71 58, 204
unemployment 64–5, 67–8, 76, 129, see also rights, human
136, 143, 207, 221, 223 universalism/universality ix, 1, 5, 9–12,
tribe see society, tribal 14, 16–17, 20, 25, 28, 44–5, 81,
trust/mistrust 61, 63, 71–2, 93 83–5, 99, 105, 107–8, 125, 150,
truth 24–6, 45, 61, 95, 205, 211 169, 177, 179, 191, 197–8, 205–6,
turbulence 31, 38, 73, 122, 138, 166, 192 210, 211, 221
universals 52, 176, 205
uncertainty 35, 41–2, 66, 122 uprating 16
unconditionality ix–x, 1, 5–8, 12–14, utilitarianism 171, 200–201
19–20, 27–8, 41–3, 48, 53, 56–61, utility 34, 65, 171, 201
67, 73–5, 77, 81, 86–7, 91, 94,
100, 104–5, 107, 111, 127, value 19, 29, 65, 68, 70, 84, 96, 98, 100,
130–31, 139, 142, 145, 147–8, 113, 116–17, 124, 133, 137, 152,
152, 154–8, 164, 167–8, 172, 175, 159, 163, 165, 170, 181–2, 208–9,
177, 183–5, 190–91, 193, 195, 212, 218, 221
197, 205, 207–214 see also tax, land value
arguments against ix, 58, 86, virtue 54, 185, 202–3, 206, 208
145–67, 183 voluntary sector see sector, voluntary
regime ix–x, 224–6 voluntary (community) work 124–5, 157,
see also Basic Income; Basic 162, 164, 166, 223
Income, arguments against; volunteer 96–7, 125
conditionality; healthcare, von Hayek, Friedrich 36
unconditional; services, voting 5, 12, 72, 84, 106, 163, 180, 182,
unconditional; income, 197–8, 207
unconditional vouchers see education vouchers
understanding ix, 1, 3, 15, 24–5, 27,
38, 47, 51, 53–4, 58, 76, 81, 85, wage 32, 34, 64–6, 68–9, 108, 113,
130–31, 139, 143, 148, 150, 176, 115–17, 122, 140, 154, 157, 160,
182–3 172, 178–9, 205, 212, 216–17,
see also misunderstanding 225
unemployment 36, 57, 65–7, 69, 82, low 75–6, 115–17, 120, 132, 134,
112–14, 117, 120, 125, 132, 154, 194, 216
157–8, 162, 172–5, 183, 204, 213, rate 68, 164
216–17, 224–5 reserve 113, 115
trap see trap, unemployment; social 37
unemployment benefit subsidy, dynamic/static 117, 172,
unemployment benefit 26, 63–4, 66, 108, 217
112, 118, 162, 173–4, 211, 213
unidirectionality 54
Index 271
see also employment; income; care see care work

Living Wage; National effort 158, 216
Minimum Wage ethic 67, 83
wealth 9, 19, 26, 29–31, 37, 55, 60, 68, paid 111, 114–15, 124–5, 131, 156
73, 75–7, 84, 86, 88–9, 93, 98, test 10, 13, 16, 115, 117–18, 129,
100–102, 108, 110, 115–16, 122, 148, 153, 162, 165, 211, 223
124, 131, 140–42, 150–52, 159, unpaid 111, 114–15, 124–5, 217
165, 169–70, 173, 195, 198–9, voluntary see voluntary work
206, 209, 219, 221–4 see also employment; labour
Webb, Beatrice 178 worker 33, 36, 38–9, 41, 64–7, 69–71,
Webb, David 47 74, 76, 79, 112–13, 115–22,
Webb, Steven 62, 128, 182 161–3, 170, 172–4, 179–81, 200,
welfare 25–6, 28, 37, 40, 83, 164, 179, 213, 216, 225
190–91, 195, 201, 216–17 insecure 41
regime see welfare (state) regime workfare 3, 6, 118
social 191–3, 195, 217 working age 76, 82, 95, 108, 141, 145,
state see welfare state 163, 196
see also happiness; wellbeing working class 33–4, 39
welfare state viii–x, 25–8, 33–5, 37, 39, working hours/week 65, 116
80, 138, 164, 173, 207–8, 217 working life 69–70, 121, 181, 211
welfare (state) regime 25–6, 28, 34 Working Tax Credits 211
see also regime work-life balance 217
wellbeing 72, 75, 162, 201, 204, 208 world 24, 32, 39, 41–9, 79, 83, 105, 120,
see also happiness; welfare 122, 131–2, 155, 159, 205–8,
withdrawal rate see marginal deduction 219–20, 224
rate globalizing 36, 38–9, 42, 115–17
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 2 modern 88, 159
women 65, 69, 129–30, 132, 137, 143, natural 43
162–3, 172, 179–80, 182, 194 real 29, 32, 54–9, 65, 132, 155
work 7, 16, 23, 30, 33, 38, 41, 48, World Bank 72, 103
68–72, 75, 79, 84, 89, 105, 108–9, worldview 24
111–15, 124–7, 134, 139, 148–9,
156–8, 165, 180, 193, 207, 212, zero hour contract see contract, zero hour
222–3, 225

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Unconditional

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

A catalogue record for this book

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023948895

This book is available electronically in the

ISBN 978 1 0353 1324 2 (cased)

1 The meaning of unconditionality 1

2 Social policy regimes 22

3 Is unconditional giving possible? 43

4 Arguments for unconditionality 57

5 Arguments for unconditionality in healthcare and education 87

6 Some of the arguments for unconditionality in income

7 More of the arguments for unconditionality in income

8 Arguments against unconditionality 145

9 A trajectory: Snapshots in history 168

10 Quite simply, unconditionality works 185

11 The ethics of unconditionality 196

12 Prospects for unconditionality 215

Is a gift ever unconditional? Can anything ever be truly unconditional? Can

‘Conditional cash transfers’, ‘Unconditional cash transfers’, ‘unconditional

THE DEFINITION OF ‘UNCONDITIONAL’

We shall explore a variety of ways in which words are defined: according to

Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that we discover the meaning of language by

Defining ‘Unconditional’ in Relation to Its Use

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘unconditional’ as

Not limited by or subject to conditions or stipulations; absolute, unlimited, com-

The entry on ‘condition’ contains the following:

… Something demanded or required as a prerequisite to the granting or performance

and the entry on ‘stipulation’ includes

The action of specifying as one of the terms of a contract or agreement; a formulated

The dictionary gives as one of its examples of the use of ‘unconditional’,

Improvements in schooling are not restricted to conditional cash transfer pro-

What is sometimes called the ‘classical’ way of defining a word is to envisage

If a field has related to it an organization that those involved in that field

might decide on a definition by a democratic process, although this method

The word ‘unconditional’ is found in multiple language games. An important

the I can be determined in no way except by being unconditional, for it is I owing to

Schelling’s conclusion is that everything is conditioned by the I: although it

This book’s task is to ask about unconditionality in relation to social policy,

Improvements in schooling are not restricted to conditional cash transfer pro-

We recognized that the first use of ‘unconditional’ means ‘without conditions’,

• conditions that we cannot affect (such as our age);

The first use of ‘unconditional’ in the International Labour Office paragraph,

of degrees of unconditionality, or conversely of degrees of conditionality. We

and administrative cost. So while it might look as if conditionalities relating to

A useful example of the meanings of ‘conditional’ and ‘unconditional’ that

whatever convergence one can find is conditional: It depends on policies, institu-

The convergence that Rodrik discovers is not strictly unconditional as it relies

A term frequently confused with ‘unconditional’ is ‘universal’. For instance,

Defining ‘Universal’ in Relation to Its Use

Just as we have defined ‘unconditional’ in relation to its use, so we can define

We have discussed the possibility of defining something by asking whether

‘UNCONDITIONAL’ AND ‘UNIVERSAL’

Given the ubiquity of the words ‘universal’ and ‘unconditional’ in social

Another word intimately related to ‘unconditionality’ and ‘conditionality’ is

An increasingly significant factor in research and discussion about social secu-

unconditionality that this book is all about, it is as important to be clear about

1 The meaning of unconditionality 1

2 Social policy regimes 22

3 Is unconditional giving possible? 43

4 Arguments for unconditionality 57

5 Arguments for unconditionality in healthcare and education 87

8 Arguments against unconditionality 145

9 A trajectory: Snapshots in history 168

10 Quite simply, unconditionality works 185

11 The ethics of unconditionality 196

12 Prospects for unconditionality 215