NOVEMBER 4 — A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a form of social empowerment that has five core characteristics: it is paid in cash, to individuals, on a regular monthly basis and is universally available to everyone without conditions.

Beyond these foundations a UBI has a wider impact by promoting individual choice, freedom to make those choices, a commitment of trust between the government and the people, fewer intrusive bureaucratic requirements and costs and less wastage, leakages and corruption.

A UBI recognises and supports the idea of individual choice. Its unconditional nature empowers recipients to decide how best to use the money, granting them the freedom to make important life decisions.

This gives people the freedom to say no, partially or fully, to exploitative work or relationships.

Without an independent source of income by right, people are often compelled to take low-paid jobs to make ends meet. They have no power to push for higher wages and face "take it or leave it” options which is no choice at all when they cannot afford to refuse.

Many UBI pilot schemes show that this helps middle-income groups as well as the poorest.

The opportunity to quit your job and start your own microenterprise becomes available when a regular income can be relied on in the start-up phase of a small business.

This promotes creativity, innovation, self-reliance and economic growth, especially in local communities.

With the changes in the working environment from new technologies, gig-economy and freelancing opportunities and the replacement of once secure jobs, there is a growing precariousness in employment that affects everyone.

Even Elon Musk has acknowledged this and suggested that a UBI helps people respond to these changes.

It also allows people to reconsider abusive relationships and finally address long-standing personal decisions, all of which may have previously been deferred due to income insecurity.

Women in particular are more empowered to make their own decisions because having a monthly UBI paid directly to them makes them less reliant on the money given to them by their spouse.

The UBI approach to personal and social empowerment also reflects the government’s trust in its people, allowing individuals to make decisions for themselves rather than being nudged by paternalistic policies that assume the government knows better than the citizens about their own lives.

It also reduces the burden of administration of social empowerment by providing income as a right rather than having people repeatedly apply across multiple agencies endless forms and proof of their eligibility for assistance.

This not only reduces costs in administration it removes the subjective and often arbitrary approvals from civil servants as to who is "deserving” or "undeserving” of help.

In many social welfare systems, people fall through the net because they do not have proof of eligibility or even do not know that programmes for which they are eligible actually exist.

In other systems eligibility can be secured through corruption via small payments to the bureaucrat who approves your application.

Since UBI is universal, it would also benefit people in Malaysia by allowing them to bypass the bureaucratic challenges of the current social system.

These challenges often involve extensive paperwork and lead to exclusion errors in targeted programmes, leaving many who need support without it.

Universality is important because it creates a sense of unity and inclusivity. Everyone receives something and if they do not need it they can decline it or transfer it to others in greater need. The choice is theirs.

The progressive reforms of welfare assistance in Malaysia are moving toward the UBI approach and the momentum can build more quickly if UBI as a path to individual freedom is embraced.

* John Michael is the Asia-Pacific Hub Manager for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and Professor Geoffrey Williams is an economist and policy specialist. The views expressed are those of the authors.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.