At a time when governments are looking for radical new ideas to deal with the looming unemployment crisis that many economists still believe is inevitable following the economic slowdown caused by the Covid Pandemic, few would have thought that we go back to the early 1980s for solutions. Perhaps the greatest irony is that at a time when the Futures Generations Commissioner for Wales suggested the introduction of a Universal Basic Income to give everyone a minimum amount of cash, there has been a call to resurrect a free enterprise scheme started under Margaret Thatcher that is already a model for basic income for entrepreneurs. Earlier this week, a paper from the Policy Exchange think-tank proposed the reintroduction of the Enterprise Allowance Scheme (EAS) to encourage more people to consider self-employment as a response to the potential jobs losses from the current recession. When the EAS was introduced in 1983, it provided support to out-of-work claimants who wanted to start thei...
Entrepreneurship, innovation and the economy