Lhe Covid-19 crisis forces us to rethink the tools of redistribution and solidarity. Almost everywhere the proposals are flourishing: basic income, guaranteed employment, inheritance for all. Let us say it straight away: these proposals are complementary and not substitutable. Ultimately, they must all be put in place, in stages and in that order.
Let’s start with Basic Income. Such a system is dramatically lacking today, especially in the South, where the incomes of working poor have collapsed and where containment rules are inapplicable in the absence of a minimum income. Opposition parties had proposed to introduce a basic income to India in the 2019 election, but the ruling Nationalist-Conservatives in Delhi are still dragging their feet.
In Europe, there are different forms of minimum income in most countries, but with multiple shortcomings. In particular, it is urgent to extend access to the youngest and to students (this has already been the case in Denmark for a long time), and especially to people who are homeless or without a bank account, who often face an insurmountable problem. obstacle course. We will note in passing the importance of current discussions around central bank digital currencies, which ideally should lead to the creation of a real public banking service, free and accessible to all, at odds with the systems dreamed by operators. private (whether decentralized and polluting, like bitcoin, or centralized and unequal, like Facebook’s projects or private banks).
Ambitious tool
It is also essential to generalize the basic income to low-wage workers, with an automatic payment system on pay slips and bank accounts, without the people concerned having to request it, in connection with the system. progressive tax (also deducted at source).
Basic income is an essential tool, but insufficient. In particular, its amount is always extremely modest: according to the proposals it is generally between half and three quarters of the full-time minimum wage, so that by construction it can only be a question of a partial tool of fight against inequalities. For this reason, it is moreover preferable to speak of basic income than of universal income (a notion which promises more than this minimalist reality).
A more ambitious tool that could be put in place to supplement the basic income is the job guarantee system, recently proposed as part of the discussions on the Green Deal (The Job Guarantee. The social weapon of the Green New Deal, by Pavlina Tcherneva, La Découverte, 2021). The idea is to offer all those who want it a full-time job at the minimum wage set at a decent level (15 dollars [12,35 euros] per hour in the United States). Funding would be provided by the State and jobs would be offered by public employment agencies in the public sector and associations (municipalities, communities, non-profit structures). Placed under the double patronage of the Economic Bill of Rights proclaimed by Roosevelt in 1944 and the March for Jobs and Freedom organized by Martin Luther King in 1963, such a system could make a powerful contribution to the process of de-commodification and collective redefinition. needs, in particular in terms of personal services, energy transition and building renovation. It also allows, for a limited cost (1% of GDP in M’s proposalme Cherneva), to put all those who are deprived of it back to work during recessions and thus avoid irreparable social damage.
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