UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: A RIGHT, NOT CHARITY. SAVE THE BASIC INCOME PILOT PLAN IN CATALONIA

Firma:

27/02/2023

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: A RIGHT, NOT CHARITY. SAVE THE BASIC INCOME PILOT PLAN IN CATALONIA

 

We, the undersigned, express our support for the Pilot Plan for the implementation of the Universal Basic Income in Catalonia, as well as for the establishment of this redistributive measure. A pilot plan like this is the best way to design the way to implement this redistributive measure and to foresee some of its main impacts. We believe that an unconditional and universal monetary allocation must be a right to be urgently conquered.

 

The investiture agreement for the Catalan Presidency signed between the CUP (Candidatura de Unitat Popular) and ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) in March 2021 envisaged a Pilot plan to implement the Universal Basic Income. As a result of this agreement, an Office was created which has worked both on the design of this Plan and on its national and international dissemination. During the last few weeks, the PSC (the Catalan Socialist Party) has publicly demonstrated against this Pilot plan with quite weak arguments and has also tried to cancel the budget for the pilot plan, which in fact, was left out of the negotiation of the country’s budgets.

 

The Universal Basic Income is an essential measure to build a country that recognizes the right to exist based on freedom. Freedom which, if it is treated seriously and not as an empty slogan, can only be exercised if the material conditions that make it possible are available.

 

Without these material bases for life and freedom, anyone who have no assets or capital are forced to accept any conditions for “earning a living”. And necessity is not freedom. Freedom must be able to be a collective and universal right. The alternative, instead, is a crisis-torn country full of precarious lives. Universal Basic Income is, in short, a guarantee that “life worth living” is a right for everyone:

 

  • Because it overcomes the rumourmongering, the racist, and xenophobic prejudices generated by conditional benefits due to having to prove residence.
  • Because, as it is individual, it does not bind any particular type of family, nor does it reward any sex-affective form over others.
  • Because it avoids the hell of poverty or mental or physical health checks to which many benefits do create. He who begs cannot be free.
  • Because it allows space for the generation of community forms of association.
  • Because it allows reproductive work to be valued.

 

If we want a free future, we must think of a present that overcomes the ravages of a crisis that has lasted too long for a society where the postal system and the family unit determine life expectancy. Catalonia must advance in rights, not retreat in the face of those who fear the freedom of its people. There is much to be gained. It is necessary to strengthen public services and extend them, not to retreat in the face of big capital and cuts in public policies.

 

For the right to an existence that allows a life worth living.

 

For the right to Universal Basic Income.

 

To sign this manifesto: https://forms.gle/wBcBRwvrW3AXakJB7