It won’t correct the imbalances in society

While the data shows benefits for families in being given cash without strings, there are problems when it is applied to everyone, says Victoria University of Wellington researcher Dr Jess BerentsonShaw.

‘‘If you give everyone cash, it is not the same as giving everyone what they need.

‘‘A UBI will not address imbalances in society – like the benefits that Pa¯keha¯ experience in the health and education system, as it is like giving some communities who already have lots of libraries, parks, shops, cycles lanes even more of these things, while only giving other communities one playground and a Four Square.

‘‘You have to find ways to use unconditional cash to ensure those who have been disadvantaged the most have what others have just got used to before you give it to everyone.

‘‘That might take a generation. In other words, if you give a UBI and ignore the imbalances already in existence in society, then you are buying into myths of meritocracy.’’

Economist Brad Olsen says there is a fear a UBI would reduce people’s need to find work.

‘‘This fear of the unknown and a strong societal pressure in New Zealand that people should pay their own way . . . makes the political appetite for reform towards a UBI highly unlikely, at best.

‘‘Society currently views payments from the government as requiring people to fulfil obligations to ensure they go back into employment quickly – with no such thing under a UBI, it seems to appear as far too big of a policy for anyone to stomach.

‘‘A UBI would require a systematic upheaval to New Zealand’s tax and transfer settings, and regardless of the economic sense behind it, the public and politicians would be highly resistive.

‘‘The fact that the economic carve-outs for an already unpopular capital gains tax idea have left that policy without a strong economic or political sense shows just how fraught the process could be to even start discussing a UBI.’’

He says more evidence is needed on how getting a set sum of no-strings-attached cash each week can affect people’s behaviours. Trials so far have been on small, limited numbers of the population, ‘‘so we haven’t seen the wider interplay yet’’.

NZ Initiative chief economist Eric Crampton says a UBI that does not leave beneficiaries worse off than now would be expensive and require a big increase in our tax rates.

That is unless it has a clawback system much like the current one that a UBI was meant to solve.

New Zealand already has one of the most efficient tax systems by internationals standards when it comes to transferring money to those on the lowest incomes, he says.

The most recent Treasury estimates found that, for a $300-a-week UBI for adults and $86 a week for children, income tax rates would have to rise to 55 per cent.

‘‘I just don’t see the point.’’