Things might have turned out differently had President Nixon not been reminded of Speenhamland, says David Beake . Plus Mike Higgins on how today’s student loan system shows the feasibility of the sort of large taxation shift necessary for a UBI

A basic income (Beveridge was cradle-to-grave: who could sell that these days?, Polly Toynbee, 26 February) came close to fruition in the US in 1969 through the unlikely offices of President Nixon, who wanted every American family of four to have, from the state, at least $1,600 dollars a year – that’s $10,000 today. Until, that is, Nixon was reminded of events in Speenhamland, Berkshire, in 1795; there every citizen had a basic income against rising food prices and, by most accounts, it all worked well but a royal commission falsely claimed that all manner of social evils befell the town. Nixon’s advisers, including one Milton Friedman, recalled this and the idea was swiftly dropped. As Rutger Bregman says in his excellent Utopia for Realists, until Nixon heard bad reports about 18th-century Berkshire, the “fallacy that a life without poverty is a privilege you have to work for, rather than a right we all deserve” was, very nearly, dismissed even by capitalism’s HQ.

David Beake

Budock Water, Cornwall

• Polly Toynbee argues against a full system of basic income on the grounds that it would require a politically impossible tax rise (of between 4% and 8%, plus removing tax and NI thresholds). Yet the student loan system for higher education now functions for the majority of recent graduates as an effective 9% increase in income tax (cutting in at gross earnings over £21,000 a year in England and Wales). With over 40% of young people now entering higher education, this represents a massive change to the system of income taxation. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the higher education funding debate per se, this is proof of principle that, with the right arguments (or sleight of hand), income tax changes of this magnitude can indeed be introduced.

Mike Higgins

Glasgow

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