How did the Citizens Income idea enter the mainstream welfare debate?
All through his career the late Professor James Meade of Cambridge University (winner of the Nobel prize for Economics in 1977) advocated the introduction of what we now call a Citizen’s Income. In Britain, during the 1930s, he advocated what he called a Social or National Dividend which would be payable to all citizens. But the idea of an income paid to individuals and replacing existing cash benefits and income tax reliefs is believed to have originated from the “New Social Contract” advocated in 1943 by Lady Juliet Rhys Williams as an alternative to the Beveridge Report. Her “contract” was close to a Citizen’s Income but differed in that it depended on a work test. Professor Meade later developed Lady Rhys Williams’ ideas, abandoning her work test, and financing the scheme through income tax. He was particularly concerned about Citizen’s Income as a method of helping a return to full employment. He argued that a Citizen’s Income served three purposes: “(1) It relieves poverty by gua
