Are Temporary or Permanent Income Payments Better Placed to Boost Demand during Covid-19?

Rajiv Prabhakar

doi:10.1515/bis-2020-0022

Are Temporary or Permanent Income Payments Better Placed to Boost Demand during Covid-19?

Basic Income Studies ◽

10.1515/bis-2020-0022 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Rajiv Prabhakar

Keyword(s):

Emergency Response ◽

Permanent Income ◽

Basic Income ◽

Demand Shock

Abstract Covid-19 has sparked calls for a universal basic income as a way of coping with a demand shock caused by the pandemic. Temporary income payments have been part of the emergency response to the pandemic. This paper questions the effectiveness of temporary payments as a way to raise demand. Some observers claim that vouchers are better targeted at sectors hit hard by Covid-19 as people may have a tendency to save than spend from temporary payments. There may be a stronger case for permanent rather than temporary payments if the aim is to boost demand in the economy.

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Universal basic income revisited: COVID-19, biopolitical trade-offs, and the expropriation of digital academic labour

Policy Futures in Education ◽

10.1177/1478210320987411 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147821032098741

Author(s):

James Reveley

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

At Risk ◽

Emergency Response ◽

Basic Income ◽

Infection Rates ◽

Educational Activities ◽

Master Process ◽

Trade Offs ◽

High Infection ◽

Work And Life

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the biopolitical trade-offs inherent to contemporary capitalism are cascading down to higher education. Based on insights derived from theories of digitalized capitalism, this article argues that the emergency shift of educational activities online has much potential to heighten the expropriation of digital academic labour. The net result is an intensification of the master process of digitally driven academic proletarianization. At the same time, the reopening of campuses in countries and regions with high infection rates demonstrably puts academics and others at risk. Both of these developments provide reasons, the article maintains, to support the introduction of universal basic income (UBI). After drawing the crucial distinction between UBI as an emergency response and UBI as an institutionally frame-breaking initiative, the latter – non-emergency UBI – is advocated as a solution to the increasingly binaristic choice between work and life in the neoliberal university and beyond.

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