Basic Income Elevator Pitch

So far signature collection for a Basic Income is quite slow and the only way to speed things up is to talk to more people. That means that I may have to actually canvas people on the street to make this thing work. But if I do that I'm going to need to be able to persuade people that its worth considering in quite a short space of time. What I need is an elevator pitch.

I found a post on Basic Income News on the very topic and Timothy Roscoe Carter has come up with one minute pitches aimed at specific political and economic points of view. 

The only problem is that ordinary people like myself don't generally classify themselves an Keynesians or Georgists and while some might consider themselves conservative or liberal, they aren't in a strict academic sense. So unless I go canvassing the London School of Economics its likely that these cases would fall on deaf ears.

That's not to say that they don't have good points I think they are all good cases and the fact that there is much to like about basic income for all shades of the political spectrum is what gives me hope that it could become a reality one day.

The one minute feminist case for a basic income:

Patriarchy has put the world’s wealth in the hands of men, prevented women from being professionals and entrepreneurs, forced poor women into dead-end second-class labor jobs, and forced all women to become unpaid domestic servants and caretakers of the young, elderly, and disabled of their families. Women have been forced to be financially dependent on fathers or husbands who are often abusive. A basic income would change all of this. A basic income would be a massive transfer of wealth from men to women. Women would be free of financial dependence on any man, and the young, elderly, and disabled would all be fully supported. Women could afford to leave abusive husbands, those who chose to be caretakers would be fully compensated, and no woman would be forced into a dead-end job, and would instead be able to pursue her own financial goals as she saw fit. - Timothy Roscoe Carter

You can read more of these one minute cases on the Basic Income News website

So I need an elevator pitch something that will make people take the idea seriously and hopefully they will  become engaged and not just sign the petition but become activists as well.  

So this is my pitch. I'll probably end up tweaking it here or there but for me these are some of  the core values of basic income.

Basic Income replaces our wasteful bureaucratic means tested welfare system with a basic income granted to all citizens rich or poor. The unemployed will receive no more or less than they get now but if they choose to work they get to keep all of their additional earnings less tax. Basic income will help people back into work because work will really pay. Hard working families at the poverty line will get a much needed boost to their income and this will also boost the economy. Basic income will be financed by the abolition of means tested benefits and its wasteful bureaucracy and through replacement of tax allowances. It will put more money into the hands of more than 80% of the population without significantly adding to the tax burden of the other 20%

I'd be interested in your opinions.

Commune 2000AD

I first heard of the idea of  a citizens income when I was a teenager, reading Commune 2000AD by Mack Reynolds. Admittedly I found the idea of sexual liberation far more compelling at the time than the idea of a basic income for all citizens and it wasn't something that had any great impact on me. It wasn't till decades later that a friend suggested that it was an answer to the many issues surrounding the welfare system that it started to get some traction in my thick skull. Then one day the penny dropped and I realised that it could be a real solution that could chime with people from all across the political spectrum.

I'm setting up this blog so that I can discuss the benefits of Basic Income and support the European Citizens' Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income
 
The European Citizens' Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income petition is happening right now and if we can get a million signatures, then we can put Basic Income firmly into the political arena and maybe come a little closer to making it happen. If we demand it, then maybe we can make it a reality