My proposals for the "Grand Debat National" in France 2. A bursary for all 18 year olds

In my proposal for implementing a Basic Income using Negative Income Tax, I made the suggestion that children under 18 should not recieve the Basic Income directly. Instead, the parent or guardian would recieve a reduced rate payment for each child in their charge. I suggested that the payment could be 50% of the full adult payment - for example, €300 if the adult payment was €600.

The question then arises of what to do with the remaining €300. In a post last year, I suggested that the remaining €300 could be put into a sort of personal fund that would become available when the child reached 18. With 18 years contribution at €300 a month, this would mean a total of €64,800.

Now, that seems like a lot of money. But it's actually quite close to the amount of money required to provide 3 years of higher education. The actual cost of higher eduction in France is about €11,500 a year, which  if you add in the living costs needed to study at university, means that it would mean that literally anyone reaching 18 could afford higher education - thus removing one of the major obstacles to social mobility.

But my suggestion is that, if desired that €64,800 of funding could be used to finance a wide range of other projects - not just higher education. Some youngsters might like to use the funding to start up a business, or do several years of voluntary work, or maybe travel the world.

By giving them the choice to do what they want, it would immediately increase the sense of belonging that is sadly lacking in a substantial proportion of French youth - particularly those living in deprived areas. Just imagine how much social impact it would have if a group of 18 year-olds in a deprived area had hundreds of thousands of euros of funding to do something within their local environment.

Of course, I would not be in favour of just putting the money directly into the youngsters bank accounts. There would need to be safeguards to prevent misuse of the funds, and I think some sort of selection panel would be needed to approve the project.

Nevertheless, I think that this idea could go a long way to instauring the social cohesion that is currently lacking.

While I really like the idea, I have to confess that there are implementation problems that will need further thought. For example, it may not be reasonable to have the scheme start for everyone reaching 18 in a given year. It might be that the funding should depend on the number of years of residency in France.