And if you didn't know, now you know

The number of people in (at least, applying for) receipt of Universal Credit grew by almost 1 million in just two weeks. A million citizens who never expected they would need the support of the welfare system this year. And in response, the Government has increased the amount by £20/week, for a year. This is an admission that you cannot live on Universal Credit. It is also an expression of the ideology that there are deserving and undeserving citizens.

In any case, in the past few weeks millions of us have experienced an insight into just how damn mentally, emotionally, physically tiring it is to live with constant anxiety as to whether you will be able to pay your bills, your rent/mortgage, will be able to get hold of food, or medicine should you need it. And this might be a lesson we need to learn.

We’re also being brought to the key realisation of income inequality.

The moral case for a fundamental rethinking of how we do society grows daily. The moral case for replacing much of the current welfare system (which, of course, includes state pension) with a universal citizens basic income grows. This would be affordable, though would take the imagination that, until now, has been unthinkable, especially for the media. The security of knowing that you won't be plunged into poverty is not a disincentive for work—nor is it an undervaluing of anyone else’s work—but a platform (as opposed to a safety net) on which we might be free to be creative in giving our best to the world, through work, through voluntary service and association, through care for others. But whether we go down this route or some other, this crisis is an invitation to system-level change.