This headline was on the front page of just about every major Belgian newspaper. Some news outlets even went a little bit further, stating that basic income would spell disaster for our society. All of this news is based on one single study done by the University of Antwerp(U.A.). I would like to add some nuance to these claims, since there were a lot of assumptions being made on the basis of one single research simulation.
Explaining the Research
This research was done by U.A. in cooperation with a Dutch mutual fund (GAK). In this study, they simulated the distribution of a 700 euro basic income for all Dutch citizens between 18 and 64 years old. Minors would receive a monthly basic income of 165 euro. Mind that this basic income would not replace pensions.
The cost to fund this sort of basic income would be over 94 billion euro and would require cancelling various social benefits, such as unemployment benefits, childcare benefits and scholarships. Some services, such as disability benefits would remain in place. Taxes would have to be increased by 32 percent, in order to fund a basic income with these parameters.
The general conclusion of this research was that, while income equality would slightly improve, this would not be accompanied by a decrease in poverty rates. Due to the removal of various social benefits, more people would receive less money than they do under the current system.
Source: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2018/06/13/studie-basisinkomen/(Dutch)
My Criticism
My critique is actually not targeted at U.A. or any of the researchers, I definitely think it's good that this sort of research is being done, regardless of the outcome. That said, some of the reporting on this has been overly dramatic and sensation-seeking in my opinion. The scope of this particular research simply isn't big enough to make any sort of grand conclusions about all the different forms of basic income that could be implemented.
One of the only Belgian news newspapers can commend for their choice of title is HBLV, who went with a non-clickbait title 'Basic Income could increase poverty, according to research by U.A.'. Most other newspapers made direct claims that basic income would outright cause poverty.
As for as I know, this news hasn't been picked up yet by international news organizations. If they happen to do so, I hope people won't rise against the idea of basic income, all on the basis of one single research simulation and sensationalist headlines.
Not Every Basic Income is the Same
There's a variety of approaches to take on issuing a form of basic income to citizens. There's the option of issuing a conditional basic income for a particular subset of the population or alternative funding methods could be researched.
Here on Steemit, most of us have probably heard about crypto basic currency (cryptoUBI). We've all seen references to Mannabase and SteemBasicIncome. It's not that hard to imagine that similar initiatives could be set up by governments, which will help to lower costs.
Just because one research shows that implementation of an unconditional basic income, would cause an increase in poverty, does not mean that all other forms can be discounted. I was not able to find the original research paper, so I cannot comment on their methodology.
Basic Income via Cryptocurrency
I would love to see some more research done into basic income that is issued on the blockchain. There are more than 10 projects, which all have the goal of providing people around the world with a basic income, though none of these has succeeded yet.
I've recently become a moderator over at the CryptoUBI subreddit, which has over a 1000 members. There's currently not that much interest in crypto UBI, but this will certainly change in the future, as current projects mature. Check out the subreddit if you are interested in some additional discussion.