Simon Duffy - "Is basic income essential to the good life?"

Dr Simon Duffy is Director of the Centre for Welfare Reform and Secretary to the international cooperative Citizen Network. He is best know for his work on personalisation and citizenship and has previously won the Social Policy Association’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Social Policy and the RSA’s Prince Albert Medal. Simon is active in the global movement for basic income, with a particular focus on how basic income intersects with disability rights. He is also one of the co-founders of UBI Lab Sheffield, which has been one of the key groups for moving the topic of basic income into mainstream policy discussions.

In this talk Dr Duffy provides an overview of the concept of UBI with a particular focus on its potential for increasing wellbeing, in particular physical and mental health. He explores some of the different pathways by which basic income might be implemented and some of the ambiguities and surrounding policy questions. In particular he suggests that basic income offers citizens and researchers a chance to take a fresh look at some of our moral and empirical assumptions about what is essential to a good life.

This talk was hosted by the Centre for Wellbeing in Public Policy (CWiPP) as part of the Festival of Debate Fringe event.

The talk was delivered as a webinar.

The slides used in the webinar can be accessed here.