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The Ethical Deficit of the United Kingdom's Proposed Universal Credit: Pimping the Precariat?
Author(s) -
DEAN HARTLEY
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2012.02292.x
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , precarity , cash , work (physics) , economics , wage , labour economics , law and economics , sociology , political science , market economy , finance , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics
Universal Credit is a proposed means‐tested cash benefit scheme in the UK that will serve, inter alia , to top‐up the wages of low‐paid workers. This article will argue first, that the moral justification for the scheme that is offered by the UK government is specious; second that the reconfiguration of existing wage top‐ups may be counterproductive and will in any event do little, if anything, to promote the work ethic; third, that the new scheme will not relieve but add to the injustices borne by the ‘precariat’ (the workers engaged in low‐paid precarious employment); finally, that far from having a justifiable moral purpose, Universal Credit is ethically flawed.