Key Points
The Global Financial Crisis, austerity measures, climate change, Covid-19 and war have all reduced people's standard of living, wellbeing and even predicted lifespan..
The consequence was three decades of growth, increased standards of living, increased life expectancy and unprecedented technological development, ended only by war-induced increases in energy prices that sent inflation spiralling...
Giving people largely unconditional, predictable forms of income to satisfy their basic needs has been identified as means of restoring social security, increasing equality and supporting growth in areas of countries that have been left behind by development and promoting public health overall...
This is because people believe that giving consumers more money to spend leads to businesses charging higher prices to take advantage of increased purchasing power, creating a cycle in which employees demand higher wages to buy commodities, increasing the cost of production, cancelling out any benefit from the monetary intervention and actually reducing the standard of living overall...
As our recent RSA report indicated, if governments are committed to resolving our age of crisis, they need to do as their predecessors did in the wake of WWII: invest in transformative policies with expensive up front costs to achieve the most significant social outcomes..
