A British basic income? Green leader Natalie Bennett is a bad advocate of a good improvement to the welfare system - Sam Bowman writes for the International Business Times
Deputy Director of the Adam Smith Institute Sam Bowman makes the argument for a British basic income in The International Business Times:
As most people laughed at Natalie Bennett's car-crash interview with Andrew Neil this weekend, in which the Green Party leader appeared to have no grasp of any of the numbers behind her policies, a few unlikely viewers were wincing.
Her craziest-sounding policy, to give a "basic income" of £72 a week to everyone in the country regardless of income at a cost of £280bn to the Exchequer, has some surprising supporters on the free market right.
Many free marketeers, including Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, favour a form of welfare known as a "Negative Income Tax". This would replace existing benefits aimed at alleviating poverty like tax credits and jobseekers allowance with a single automatic payment that is tapered off according to earnings.