As part of its response to Covid-19 the government paused the use of the ‘Minimum Income Floor’ (MIF), which restricts the Universal Credit (UC) entitlement of the self-employed. This paper places the MIF in the wider context of conditionality in the social security system and considers a judicial review which claimed that the MIF was discriminatory. The paper focuses on how UC affects the availability of real choices for low-income citizens to limit or escape from wage labour, with two implications of the move to UC highlighted. First, the overlooked labour decommodifying aspect of tax credits, which provided a minimum income guarantee and a genuine alternative to wage labour for people who self-designated as ‘self-employed’, even if their earnings were minimal or non-existent, has been removed. Secondly, UC has in some respects improved the position of low-paid wage labourers in ‘mini-jobs’, who are not subject to conditionality once they work for the equivalent of approximately nine hours a week on the minimum wage.

作为对 Covid-19 的回应的一部分，政府暂停使用“最低收入下限”（MIF），这限制了个体经营者的通用信贷（UC）权利。本文将 MIF 置于社会保障体系中更广泛的条件背景下，并考虑了一项声称 MIF 具有歧视性的司法审查。本文重点关注加州大学如何影响低收入公民限制或逃避雇佣劳动的实际选择的可用性，并强调了搬到加州大学的两个影响。首先，税收抵免中被忽视的劳动力去商品化方面，它为那些自称为“个体经营者”的人提供了最低收入保障和真正的有薪劳动替代方案，即使他们的收入微乎其微或根本不存在。删除。其次，