Giving people access to the things they need and ensuring there is a basic level of life’s essentials that no one falls below. That’s the Social Guarantee in a nutshell. But what does this mean in practice? And how can it be done?
In this episode we speak with Maeve Cohen, Project Lead at the Social Guarantee in the UK. Launched in December 2020, the project aims to get the word out about the Social Guarantee, bring together allies and ultimately make change happen.
Grounded in an understanding that all human beings have a need for life’s essentials, like food, education and housing, and the Social Guarantee is about making sure that everyone is able to meet this need. This isn’t done by giving everyone a certain amount of money – such as a basic income – but rather by looking at who needs what service in which context, and how this can be best provided.
If you would like to learn more about The Social Guarantee, including examples of what it could look like in real-life or documentation about its theoretical underpinnings, the initiative’s website has many resources to dig into the detail.
In the episode, you also hear references to Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services – as well as their acronyms UBI and UBS. The Big Issue published a handy short overview of UBI here and some more information about UBS can be found in this report on The Social Guarantee website.
Photo credit: Vladi Surguci at Pexels.com
Pingback: 2021 Unpacked – what have we learned about poverty? – Poverty Unpacked