Morgan offers questions-free $200 a week
A proposal for the Government to give young Kiwis $200 a week with “no questions asked” is no more controversial than giving elderly people a pension, The Opportunities Party leader Gareth Morgan says.
People aged between 18 and 23 would receive an “unconditional” basic income under his party’s policy announced yesterday, without income-testing, drug-testing, or any other hurdles.
The fledgling party has already proposed its own version of a universal basic income (UBI) for over65s and families with children under 3, and said economic forecasts now meant it was possible to extend it to a section of society which had been “badly neglected” by successive governments.
“They are subject to quite a lot of stress, we can see it in the mental illness statistics for that group, we can see it in the youth suicide statistics, drug abuse, all that stuff,” Morgan said.
“This transition from the nest to being independent is not that easy.”
Announcing the policy at a Wellington cafe yesterday, Morgan said many New Zealanders wrongly assumed that non-workers were “non-human” and “a bunch of layabouts”.
There were one million Kiwis who went to work every day “and don’t get paid”, he said, referring to stayat-home parents and caregivers.
Asked about the inevitable resistance to a UBI from people who felt it was subsiding teenagers’ trips to the pub, Morgan said the same argument could be applied to superannuitants who treated their pension as “an excuse to buy a motorboat” or travel overseas.
Morgan has previously said TOP would replace superannuation with the same basic income of $10,000 a year, reducing the pension from between $15,000 and $20,000. The UBI would also replace paid parental leave and the parental tax credit.
A UBI has been trialled in the Netherlands, Finland and Canada but is yet to gain traction in New Zealand.
Labour considered it as part of its Future of Work programme — which looked at ways to cope with the rise of automation and disruptive technologies — but did not formally adopt it as a policy.
Finance Minister Steven Joyce said yesterday a UBI would send the wrong message to young people at a time when there were “so many jobs” and regions were “crying out” for workers.
It was not the time to be saying, “Here, have $200 a week and don’t do anything,” he said.
Morgan, however, said that “revolutionary” tax and welfare changes were needed to cope with the growing insecurity of the workplace and the threat automation posed to jobs.