The novel starts in Boston, United States, in 1887. I decided to make it my first lockdown book purchase and then read it. I read about Bellamy’s book during the pandemic and then happened to spot it in a local second-hand shop once bookshops began to open.
Thomas More is often cited as one of the forerunners of the basic income idea, but so is Edward Bellamy. People would be free to spend a universal basic income as they please with no duty to find work. A universal basic income is a regular cash payment provided to all individuals. One effect of the pandemic has been to renew calls for a universal basic income to help people cope with the economic fall-out from the crisis. There is a venerable strand of literary fiction from Thomas More’s Utopia onwards that I could turn for help, but I alighted upon Bellamy as another result of Covid-19. I turned to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887, first published in 1888, in an effort to look forward. I wondered whether utopian or speculative fiction might be a guide, at least for part of the way. Dismal economic news about how Covid-19 had worsened inequality and job prospects, particularly amongst the young, prompted me to consider alternative visions for the future. The word furlough then turned up in a surprising place. Furlough changed during the pandemic and is due to end on October 31. To stop a mass shedding of labour, the UK government pledged to pay 80% of a worker’s pay (up to a maximum). But I had to become well acquainted with it as I teach at the Economics Department of The Open University.Īs I learnt quickly, furlough referred to providing wages for workers who were temporarily relieved from duties. Some of this language is new but Covid-19 has also revived older words.Ĭhancellor Rishi Sunak referred to ‘furlough’ when he announced the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme at the outset of the pandemic. Covid-secure, social distancing, the R rate. The coronavirus crisis has ushered in its own language. Rajiv explores Bellamy's attachment to income as a part of wellbeing and links this with his own work, understanding the role universal basic income could play in helping people cope with the economic fall-out from the crisis. Dr Rajiv Prabhakar is a Senior Lecturer in Personal Finance at the OU. In this blog, written for The Open University's History of Books and Reading (HOBAR) Series, hosted by the Institute of English Studies, he talks about his recent reading of the novel Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy.
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