Universal Basic Income and Services

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK How many streaming subscriptions do you have Is it the same for your business Avoid it by having all your business on one platform. Try Odu for free at odu d. com at' odwo. com self directed invvesting trrading Full service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning P and to think That's just a small taste of what Schwab offers The Geschwab knows that when it comes to your finances Choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place So you can invest your way Visit Schwab d. com to learn more. Hello and welcome to your Radical Questions. This is where I put your magnificent questestions to one of our magnificent guests. It's a chance to really engage very directly with the brilliant radical thought provoking, brave people that we have on this podcast to ask them about their ideas for the future. And this week, as you may know by now because you heard Thursday's fantastic episode I'm so thrilled to be joined by Kate Rayworth, who has fundamentally altered how we think about Economics. She wrote a book in twenty seventeen called Donut Economics Huge Bestseller It's one of those books other economists use as a kind of starting point for their own philosophy and worldview. Kate thinks that we should rather than have this relentless focus on growth, we need to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet fabous And her big radical idea is that we should have an economic model which puts ecological and social needs first, things like human rights instead of prioritizing things like GDP per capita at all costs. Anyway, it's all in Thursday's episode It a episode wasn't it? It was great. I loved it. It was absolutely fantastic. And we've had lots of questions. Thank you as ever to all of you who have sent in questions. We had rather a lot because Kate is a very, very, very, very popular guest As I mentioned on Thursday's episode, she is the most requested guest that we've had. Be my sister No's not it's because of you to. Oh ye, I forgot I asked about that. Anyway, here we go. lotots of questions. we're going to rout through as many as we can. Okay. first question and it's from Toby GDP condenses all economic activity down into one metric that can assess a country's performance Does GDP incentivise the right kind of economic development? and if not, do you propose an alternative economic metric Or do you believe that we should move away from metrics like GDP entirely? Toby What a fantastic question. Thank you Toby. Great question. So GDP doesn't add up the value of all economic activity. It doesn't do dididdlely squat for the unpaid caring work of parents the coo, washing, cleaning, sweeping, raising the kids and getting labour ready to go to work every day. That's massively missing. It doesn't count the value of everything that's in the commons or the community created, doesn't count the value of Wikipedia, for example. It doesn't count the value of having a stable climate or fertile soils and everything that earth gives us to make economic activity feasible. So what it does do is reflect the financial value of the goods and services that bought and sold in an economy in a year, and that's a subset of everything that matters. So that's one issue Simon Krznetz who was one of the architects of GDP back in the nineteen thirties, he was asked to come up with GDP as a measure for the US economy at a time when they didn't have that, right? They had like tons of steel and tons of timber. And it was really handy to be able to add stuff up for the first time, especially when you've got a war going on in the nineteen forties. How much do we need to keep going for provisioning for the American population? How much can we take off for the war effort? Really handy to be able to do that Even Chrisers himself said GDP can scarcely be taken as a measure of the welfare of society. He knew it didn't count the value of forest as opposed to timber. it didn't count the value of society. It measured income and not wealth. So I think he'd be turning in his grave If you knew that today Really? Nearly a hundred years later, we were still using this onene number to rule them all We live in the era of the data revolution Almost many people on the planet have a mobile phone. so actually we can gather human data about do people have food and health and education? How's their well being? We can gather much richer information about people. We can measure the planet with sensors. We can almost in real time sense the health of this planet So yes, I would replace that one metric with a dashboard. and actually there's one I've already drawn, it looks like a bit like a doughnut And you could we we're now going to be reporting on this year on year together with my colleague Andrew Fanning, We are going to be updating the data of the donor every year and you can So we can see at the global scale Are things getting better? Are we meeting humanity's needs or not? Are we coming back within the needs of the planet? But nations can do this too. So you can have a national donut and I would love to see And it could be happening now Nations or cities reporting year on year to their people Here's how we're going in terms of meeting the needs of our people here within the means of the planet. This is a very twenty first century G and we've got the metrics for it. So it's not about abandoning metrics altogether. No when Toby says, or do you believe We should move away from metrics like GDP andnally. It's about a a single metric to a dashboard Yeah. is a dashboard this. think you of driving a car I mean, if I offer you, oh, here's a car, it's great car. There's just one indicator I've made this s before for you make. I've added everything together. so it's got the speed, it's got the engine temperature, fuel It's got your, you know acceleration. It's all just in this one indicator. donoughut dashboard. That's what it's in one indicator. you would refuse to drive that Be you want to know, think of a cockpit of an airplane. They've got a zillion little indicators. because we want to know lots of different things about managing this delicately balanced system. So why on earth would we steer our economies if with this One number. I of, you know, think of this think of it like at a domestic scale. if I If my kids held a yard sale in front of my house and had a big sale I went out And I come back and they go, M, mom, we made a hundred quid. I was like, wow. How'd you do that? Oh, we sold the dog. That's not okay It matters what we're buying and selling, right? It matters what is the content. Is the GDP going up because there's been an oil spill and now we've got to clean the ocean or is it going up because we're hiring more primary school teachers? It matters. So we want to know how it's impacting on humanity and how it's impacting on the living world Have your twins sold the dog wouldouldn't forgive him if they had. Toby, thank you very much indeed for that question. We've got loads and loads of questions about the politics around donut economics, including this is a good example. In fact, it's an exemplar, an exemplar from Stuart Hi Emmo How great to have Kate Rayworth on radical I've got a question for her Have you reconciille the need for change against the main political parties who are so attached to growth Do you see the upsurge in support for the Greens Hope for Dut economics Or is it a step too far even for them Thank you so much for that Stuart. I should say we've had loads and loads of questions, Kate on a similar Ilk, which is the sort of UK domestic politics implications of what you're saying. Another one just give you an example is this from Julia. Julia, thank you for sending this in Juliia says, in the UK, we can't maint a Prime Minister for more than ten minutes as we always want more, want better. We strive and want by nature. How do we address this and then maintain it for more than one political campaign How can you convince a global humanity that everything they have known and understood needs to change Stewart says, Kate, how do to you reconcile the need for change against the main political parties who are so attached to growth And what'd you make of the upsurge in support for the Greens So For me, it's really important that the concepts of don economics are recognized by political parties across the spectrum And that has been the case both in the UK and the Netherlands So in the UK, when my book first came out The Green Party were the first to invite me to come and speak at one of their conferences. But then the Labour Party John McDonald invited me to come and speak on a platform with him about creating a circular economy, The Women's Equality Party engaged with it. The Liberal Democrats have engaged with it. Even Conservative party ministers have referred to it, told people to go and read don it economics This really matters to me because The goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet surely crosses a political spectrum, surely As humans, we recognize that this matters People in different parties may come up with different policies to get there and that's the whole question of how do we get there? but it really matters to me. I often say, you know, donuts, it's not left wing or right wing, Donnuts don't have wings. And the more in a country that it's recognized as a common goal across the spectrum, that really matters But the goal of being regenerative and distributive, I think it is much more what I hear, it's more home turf to Labour Party, Green Party, parties that value the rights of all and value the ecology and the health of the planet So I think yes, we're hear in the and we're talking about the UK, we hear in the rise of the green narrative, I think it is resonant with a lot of what Donut economics talks about. and I'm always listening to herear when when political leaders talk about thriving instead of growing, or when they say we need to Live well. within the limits of the planet. The word within sounds like a little joiner word. it's actually a radical word, right? When we say we want to live well within the limits, it's a very different paradigm from saying we've got to grow, grow, grow. So I'm always listening for that And I think The way the Green Party are talking about in the UK at the moment taps into what a lot of people feel around this Julia's question says I think she's alert to the fact that we've had quite a few Pime ministers in recent years And we always want more, want better. We strive and want by nature, Julia says. How do we address this and then maintain it for more than one? political campaign and then how can you convince a global humanity that everything they've known and understood needs to change? Okay, so how do you reconcile Fverish short term British politics with long term ecological thriving And then also how to convince people beyond our borders So I think that the feverish short term media cycle is really problematic. gaming our attention and turning politics into a shock scandal. let's shame them with headlines I really empathize with politicians I think that is not an easy job at all to be judged, you know multiple times a day againg, the short termism that that creates and the personality and the kind of attacks Hard must it be to make good common good long term sensible thinking policy beyond the immediacy. I mean, just everything is set against you. So I just want to empathize with politicians on that the city of Carnoble in France They said in twenty twenty two, we're adopting the donor and a child born today by the time they're eighteen. There'll be twenty forty We commit to this city being well on the way to living in the Dut city of Amterdam have done something quite similar, taking a long vision eighteen years, way bel beyond anybody's electoral cycle, let alone political career to have ways and the donut is one of them. to get beyond the immediacy of not even just the daily cycle, but the full yearly kind of re election cycle. How do we? Get out of that Julia, thank you so much. The next question, I love it when different episodes of this podcast are kind of in conversation with each other and by implication, how different guests are in conversation with each other. And we've got a question here from Matt Clifford. Matt Clifford wrote the AI opppportunities Action planlan, which had a whole number of dozens of recommendations which Kir Stara said he would implement. and he's quite a big fan of economic growth. And he casts himself in this very charming voice note as being in a different place to you on that question. He thinks this country needs to supercharge growth, especially using AI to make Britain wealthy again and fix the problems of the nation. and Matt Clifford has very kindly sent in this voice note Hi, Kate. I suspect we probably disagree about the role of economic growth. and so my question for you is this. It seems clear to me that over the last three hundred years or so, growth has been the single most important force, lifting people out of poverty and improving living standards P living in seventeen hundreds say it would have been very hard, I think, to argue that people had enough prosperity So my question is how should we know when growth has stopped being the solution and starts being the problem in your view Is there a level of income, wealth or material comfort which societies should deliberately stop prioritising growth. And if so, how would we tell Yeah, G question, Matt. Thankk you There's two ways I think I'd say that. One when The data show that the vast majority of the returns to increases in wealth are going into the hands of pockets of people who are already very wealthy not being a very efficient means of actually tackling poverty anymore? And secondly, we need to look at the connection between trying to supercharge growth, as you might say. and carbon emissions and the impact on the planet because We have to recognize very differently from hundreds of years ago, we now know that we are having impact on the stability of the climate, which fundamentally determines life for everybody on this planet So when The data show that Our economy grows, we are not decarbonizing at anything like the speed or scale that's required We are not on track for what would be green enough growth So I would put the question back to you, If you want to supercharge growth and using AI, I would say you need to prove that you can do this while decarbonizing five times faster and also dematerializing our economy because when we look at our relationship to planetary boundaries, we're way over. on our use on our carbon emissions and we're way over on our material impact. How How would that plan bring us back within our share of planetary boundaries. I think only then can we say we could actually engage with AI and St stimulate the economy. I don't want to say grow the economy because that's not the point. The point is to create an economy that thrives and meets people's needs. So I put the challenge back to you Be Matt Matt's question is, is there a level of income welfare and material comfort in which societies should deliberately stop prioritizing grow growth? And you'd say it's not about the level of income welfare, material comfort, it's about who's getting the returns of capital and what's happening in terms of carbon release. first of all, it's about ensuring that everybody reaches the minimum Lvel, right? So we want to make sure nobody's falling short And then rather than specifying a maximum, I'm not interested in saying, oh, you shouldn't have a house bigg than that or an income big that. The point is collectively got to do this within the means of the planet So we are way over the means of the planet right now. And so that's the metric that matters We need to come back within. You and Matt get on, you know I love it. know I really love respectfully disagreeing with you. Yeah. of course. go a long way. it's called democracy. and you know, B' two very, very bright, very, very nice people. Matt, thank you very much indeed. It's always always really nice to get a voice note from a previous guest as well. hope you are well. This is a final question. Let's make get a final question because we've been you've been so generous for your time, Kate It's a final question from Nicola. I'd be very keen to know your thoughts about the feasibility and potential of having a universal basic income in the UK. Many thanks and absolutely love the show. Keep it up byye Oh, Nicola, thank you so much. It's so kind of you. Universal basic income. This is something that actually has a lot of adherence in Silicon Valley where people think that AI is going to come for many a job. What do you make of the case for universal based income? Universal based income is not going to enable you to have everything you need. And there's a danger that let's say, if you go a society where a lot of housing, for example, is owned By landlords, the landord is like, oh I now know you've got some money in your bank account so I'm stickking the rentter It's not redistributing If that becomes the policy pushes us into you've all get your basic income, go buy everything you need. and then we start privatising. Equally is important and actually if I had to choose between, I'm going to go for Universal Basic Services. And this is about public healthcare, state led education, water, really affordable transport. What if you could what would you choose? Everybody has their basic income, you go buy everything you need goodood luck and hope that the income keeps up with the prices of stuff that you need O you could live in a society and there are places like this where Really good state provided education schools. Of course you want your kids to go there You've got good healthcare You've got clean water in the rivers. you've got really affordable public transport. And it's really equalizing, this is like pre distributive design. It means that the fundamentals are provided publicly and that we can all afford them. Now, personally, if I have to choose between those two realities, I want to go to the place that really invest in universal public services of universalic. I think in your book you say universal basic income. why on earth not But you've just said for some reasons as to why not. Yeah there's caveats. There's caveats. Yeah. and I'm not against it at all. I just want to be careful. You want to help people thinkking through. Well, there are often things that we think that sounds like a solution.. You know what? solutions can be gamed and they can also be underpided and