by Guest Contributor | Feb 16, 2017 | Opinion
Written by: Derek Horstmeyer
Aside from the numerous societal benefits that Universal Basic Income (UBI) offers in the future as automation disrupts the nature of employment, we in the basic income movement should not forget the benefits it also offers in the immediate term.
Economists across the board, whether they focus on labor, corporate governance or environmental issues, love to see mechanisms and incentive systems designed so they are free of distortions. Our current national system in the US of assistance for the short-term unemployed and long-term unemployed is designed with incentive misalignment over different income levels. This is particularly evident on the lower end of the income distribution.
An individual who has just lost their job or an individual who continues to suffer long-term unemployment faces a daunting decision when posed with the prospect of taking on a new job. Many of these individuals may have been approached by executive search headhunters (PIXCELL – Chasseurs de Têtes Montreal Headhunters or a similar headhunter, for example) to take up a good position in a renowned company. On one hand, there are the wages associated with the new job and on the other there are is potential loss of federal and state assistance. CATO’s 1995 “The Welfare-Versus-Work Tradeoff,” estimates that a change in employment status from a part-time position (below the poverty line) to a full-time position at 18 dollars an hour might actually cost the individual a net of 5 to 10 thousand dollars a year due to a loss in state benefits.
These benefits that the individual may have to relinquish span numerous forms including cash assistance (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), food assistance (SNAP), medical insurance (Medicaid) and housing assistance. And, one criticism of the Affordable Care Act is individuals just above the income cutoff for Medicaid are doing far worse when you consider the mandatory penalty they must pay as compared to those who are receiving Medicaid. It also might be worth thinking about those that do get Medicaid aren’t actually receiving the support for free. For instance, read over this article touching on avoiding medicaid estate recovery, a part of Medicaid some people look past or don’t even know about. If someone that was receiving Medicaid passes away, Medicaid could then actually legally possess your house to cover the costs, leaving living family members a lot worse for wear. The idea of these benefits and aids always seems to have some downfalls, but there can also be ways to navigate around them.
While the magnitude of the loss in state benefits that one suffers as their wages increase is debated, one thing that all economists agree on is that poverty traps are real. As an individual moves up the income ladder, there is a class of income where they would better off monetarily if they turn down a job (or a pay increase) because they must forfeit state benefits.
If we desire to have incentive alignment in our economic system, where every marginal amount of time worked by an individual leads to a marginal increase in total income, the poverty trap created by the welfare system is a major problem. Of course, there are a few ways to fix this issue. One is to just reduce the number of benefits that people receive on the lower end of the income distribution. This does not sound appealing seeing as the number of vulnerable people in the US may continue to increase as the nature of employment changes over time. The second way to handle this issue is to extend the ‘phase-out’ ranges, so people don’t lose as many benefits as they earn more income. This is more appealing, but only puts a band-aid on the issue and still allows for income ranges where incentive misalignment persists.
The third and final option is UBI. The beauty of universal basic income, paired with a negative income tax, is that these decisions to forgo work or a raise because of a loss in state benefits, are non-existent. In a UBI system, incentives are always aligned for the individual to accept a raise or to work an additional hour because it will always put more money in their pocket.
As work becomes more automated, it is important to highlight the wonders that UBI may serve us in the future. However, one should also not forget what UBI affords us today in terms of a system of welfare and assistance that is free of incentive misalignment.
About the author: Derek Horstmeyer is a professor at George Mason University School of Business, specializing in corporate finance. His research, which has garnered several awards, focuses on boards, governance and hedge fund activism. He has presented at conferences across the country as well as internationally, and is consistently rated a top professor by his undergraduate, MBA and EMBA students who have honored him with teaching awards.
Derek has a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Chicago, an MS in Financial Mathematics from Stanford University and a PhD in Finance from the USC Marshall School of Business.
by Guest Contributor | Feb 11, 2017 | Opinion
Written by: Katarzyna Gajewska
The argument that the system of peer production on a wide scale requires securing stable income for peers from the state is promoted, among others, by Michel Bauwens. In this article, I will argue that the reverse is also true. In order to be sustained, unconditional basic income (UBI) needs to be accompanied by changes in the realm of general interest services. This applies particularly to the domain of services of general interest that participate in the subsistence. Money transfer needs to be accompanied by de-commodification of subsistence measures.
Although UBI certainly would contribute to bettering the situation of the poor, it does not challenge the capitalist power relations. The domain of work and production is only one of the opportunities for the capitalist class to exploit inequalities and accumulate wealth. Other sources of wealth extraction are property rights, real estates, rent, access to natural resources, urban infrastructure, land grabbing. Elsewhere, I elaborate how, despite introducing a UBI, capitalist class domination would continue in the domain of subsistence1 and housing 2 if other elements of the system were preserved.
Technological unemployment due to robotization of production is indicated as one of the reasons for a UBI. Robotization would cause centralization of power in the hands of machine owners and technological elites. Since labor used to exercise influence on their wages through the threat of withdrawing from production, under the condition of technological unemployment it would lose its leverage.3 Therefore, adjusting the basic income to the level that enables a decent living would be increasingly difficult. On the other hand, the capital owning the means of production in the domain of services of general interest such as water, food, electricity, health or housing can demand higher prices once having dominant position, and there may even be additional costs for things like commercial water treatment products for businesses after the initial price is paid. Therefore, neoliberal pressure for privatization of subsistence-related services and goods is particularly dangerous. As a result of privatization, citizens can increasingly less meaningfully participate in the governance of general interest services, being left with the relatively passive roles of voter and client.4 The UBI movement needs to take this into account in formulating proposals for UBI reform, namely advocating for more democratic control over the means of subsistence.
Subsistence services in citizens’ hands: some inspirations
Representative democracy alone does not seem to prevent that services of general interest are privatized. Specific citizen mobilization around this issue is required. Three types of strategies can be pursued to bring more control over essential services: re-municipalization, overtake by citizen cooperatives, and commoning. I will give more space to the latter one because the two former have been described in other publications.
Remunicipalization
There are different models that incorporate the democratic dimension in the provision of services of general interest. For example, in water supply services privatization turned out to be dissatisfying for the customers both in terms of quality and prices. The book “HERE TO STAY: WATER REMUNICIPALISATION AS A GLOBAL TREND”5 analyzes examples of how this trend has been reverted by re-municipalization initiatives. It illustrates how significantly the quality can improve and prices lowered with the involvement of public authorities.
However, involving citizens in the process of decision making does not guarantee their influence on the final output. Incumbents’ initiatives in the realm of political participation do not seem to alleviate the democratic deficit. Participatory elements within the new public management and neo-Weberian state models can be motivated by the instrumental aim of overcoming resistance.6 Participatory and deliberative procedures can be used as ‘public relations’ tools by political elites to give citizens the illusion of engagement,7 so-called ‘participatory window-dressing.’8
Cooperatives
Citizens can organize to buy the infrastructure related to subsistence needs. In a small German town, Schoenau,9activists bought out electricity infrastructure to convert it into a cooperative of which citizens can buy shares. As an act of protest against the nuclear power, they turned to solar energy. Similar attempts have been undertaken by activists in Berlin to prevent the renewal of a contract with a multinational company of Swedish origin. Certainly, in the case of services that are sold on the market, there is a danger of degeneration of cooperative ideals due to the market pressure, which is quite common among worker and consumer cooperatives. Still it may be a better option in comparison to an accumulation of power in capitalist enterprises.
Commoning
The precariat, in the face of unresponsive state institutions, prefers the self-organized provision of services in order to become autonomous of these institutions.10 Heynen11 argues that the realm of social rights and the welfare state has diminished in recent decades in the US, so social movements have invented other forms of pursuing their struggles. Instead of trusting that delegation to the state will ensure the provision of public services and redistribution, activists create services themselves. For instance, Food Not Bombs produces and redistributes food. Furthermore, representatives of the recent generation of social movements believe that creating alternatives rather than reforming the system is a better way to bring about change, which reflects the mistrust of and awareness of the danger of cooptation by elitist politics and institutions.12 Activists focus on the ‘here and now’, practicing alternative forms of production and organization parallel to the state-based and market-based ones as everyday ‘revolutions.’13 For example, the domain of food-producing resources, although now mostly privatized, can be organized in a different way. In ancient times and still nowadays there are various communal arrangements in some parts of the world.14
In articles on People’s Potato, I describe a worker cooperative that coordinates the preparation of partly dumpster-dived food with the help of volunteers. Financed by fee levies, the meals are distributed for free. This type of the organization of food provision can be defined as peer production, which means a voluntary, spontaneous, and inclusive work contribution to produce a good or service in common that serves a broader community. Peers produce use value that is accessible even to those that have not contributed to its production. Initiatives such as Food Not Bombs or Incredible Edible follow similar philosophy. In the article on technological unemployment and work, I describe further initiatives of self-organized services: retirees time bank in Germany and subsistence cooperative in Catalonia.15 One could expect to optimize the costs and use of resources by restructuring production into commons. Las Indias’ Manifesto demonstrates potential gains that can be achieved by escaping the capitalist organization of production. Kibbutz movement managed to increase productivity and reduce the use of water in agriculture.16
Basic Income movement for other causes
“All we can ask of politics is to create the spaces in which the alternative social practices can develop.”17
Joining other movements in demanding the democratization of services, UBI movement could focus on a twofold struggle: mobilization against the privatization of services and for the re-appropriation of spaces for citizen participation and self-organization.
Elinor Ostrom argued in favor of creating institutional arrangements ‘for cooperative housing and neighborhood governance (…) to facilitate co-productive efforts for monitoring and exercising control over public spaces.’18Kooiman presents a model of ‘societal governance,’ a mix of self-governance, co-governance, and hierarchical governance.19
Bovaird predicts that the governance system may evolve into ‘self-organizing policy and service delivery systems – ‘governance without government.”20 The progressive theories of public administration have a vision of public administration that is ‘collaborative, facilitative, or transformational social role in support of citizen emancipation and self-governance.’ This type of re-conceptualization of the role of public administration has a longer tradition in the feminist movement and in the 2000s several authors have postulated this direction of change.21 In an academic article, I propose a change to the tax system. Taxpayers could allocate certain part of the due taxes to the organizations of their choice. In this way, the organizations can plan their yearly budget and produce as much as the collected sum allows.22 Also laws facilitating the access to unused spaces would make it easier for the self-organizing groups to start commons projects.
The example of People’s Potato, which struggles against corporate monopoly in food provision at Concordia University in Montreal, illustrates that the mobilization although it requires true determination, can begin now, case by case. I summarized the relations between People’s Potato, commercial food providers, and the university administration in another article:
“People’s Potato discovered that part of kitchen space previously used by Sodexho/Marriot was vacant, while the major part was overtaken by Chartwells. They started to use this space for their cooking. For another two years, People’s Potato struggled with the administration to get official use of the space. It is equipped with all necessary industrial kitchen facilities. The university charges the Potato for some repairs, like painting or heavy maintenance, but they pay all of their other utilities, such as garbage removal, electricity and hot water. The status of the collective within the university structure is ambiguous and there is always a fear of losing support from other organizations and the kitchen space as no official contract has been signed. “23
Instead of waiting for a more serious debate on UBI among political elites where activists could present a more encompassing reform, the change can arise from single initiatives. Späth and Rohracher point to the power of local experiments, which can mobilize actors. Niches, spaces protected from economic pressures can develop into full-fledged models for change. The local level change is possible in ‘off the radar’ spaces for interests of dominant economic actors. In this way, it is easier to overcome the problem of nested interests preventing change. Furthermore, institutional voids can enable introducing new practices.24
About the author: Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent writer. She has a PhD in Political Science and has published on alternative economy and innovating the work organization since 2013. You can find her non-academic writing on such platforms as Occupy.com, P2P Foundation Blog, Basic Income UK, Bronislaw Magazine and LeftEast. For updates on her publications, you can check her Facebook page or send her an e-mail: k.gajewska_comm@zoho.com. If you would like to support her independent writing, please make a donation to the PayPal account at the same address!
References:
1Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest. Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.
2Gajewska, Katarzyna (May 2014) : UBI and Housing Problem, https://basicincome.org.uk/2014/05/housing-power-land/
3Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest. Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.
4 Elinor Ostrom, “A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance,” National Civic Review (Summer 1993): 226-233.
5HERE TO STAY: WATER REMUNICIPALISATION AS A GLOBAL TREND :https://www.tni.org/files/download/heretostay-en.pdf
6 William N. Dunn and David Y. Miller, “A Critique of the New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian State: Advancing a Critical Theory of Administrative Reform,” Public Organization Review 7 (December 2007) 345-358, 355.
7 Léon Blondiaux, “L’idée de démocratie participative: enjeux, impensés et questions récurrentes,” In M.-H. Bacqué et al. (eds), Gestion de proximité et démocratie participative. (Paris: La découverte, 2005). Léon Blondiaux and Yves Sintomer, “L’impératif délibératif,” Politix 15.57 (2002): 17–35.
8 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Countervailing Power in Empowered Participatory Governance,” in Deepening Democracy (London/New York: Verso, 2003), 265.
9Elektrizitätswerke Schönau Netze, https://www.ews-schoenau.de/
10 Christophe Trombert, “Expertise professionnelle et contre-expertise militante dans l’accès aux droits sociaux: tension à front renversé autour du général et du singulier,” SociologieS, Théories et recherches, 25 June 2013. URL : https://sociologies.revues.org/4360
11 Nik Heynen, “Cooking Up Non-violent Civil-disobedient Direct Action for the Hungry: ‘Food Not Bombs’ and the Resurgence of Radical Democracy in the US,” Urban Studies 47(6 2010): 1225–1240.
12 cf. Day, “From Hegemony to Affinity.”
13 Marco Silvestro and Pascal Lebrun, “La révolution à l’échelle humaine, une radicalité actuelle concrète,” Argument 12 (Spring-Summer 2010).
14Vivero, Jose Luis (2015) : Transition Towards a Food Commons Regime: Re-Commoning Food to Crowd-Feed the World, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2548928
15Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest, Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.https://jetpress.org/v24/gajewski.htm
16Las Indias’ Communard Manifesto, https://lasindias.com/the-communard-manifesto-html
17Gorz, A. (1999): Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-based Society. Cambridge: Polity, p. 79.
18Ostrom, Elinor (1993): A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance, National Civic Review Summer, 226-233, 232.
19Kooiman, J. (2000): Societal Governance: Levels, Modes, and Orders of Social-political Governance. In Jon Pierre (ed.) Debating Governance: Authority, Steering and Democracy, (pp. 138–64). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20Bovaird, Tony (2005): Public governance: balancing stakeholder power in a network society. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 71(2), 217–228, p. 226.
21Stout, Margaret (2010): Back to the Future: Toward a Political Economy of Love and Abundance, Administration & Society 42(1): 3–37.
22Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer production and prosummerism as a model for the future organization of general interest services provision in developed countries: examples of food services collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39.
23Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montreal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30
24P. Späth, H. Rohracher (2012): Local demonstrations for global transitions – Dynamics across governance levels fostering regime change. In: European Planning Studies 20(3), pp. 461-479.
by Michael Howard | Feb 11, 2017 | Opinion
The Climate Leadership Council just put forth a proposal for a carbon fee and dividend, as a key policy to combat climate change. The authors are conservatives, including Republican former Secretaries of State James Baker and George Schultz, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and two Chairs from the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. While there are some aspects of the proposal to question, progressives should get behind the main idea: a steadily rising carbon fee and dividend.
First, the proposal is a very welcome development for the effort to fight climate change, and for the introduction of a partial basic income. At a time when the President and many Republicans in Congress make light of or outright deny the problem of anthropogenic climate change, it is encouraging to see such concerted effort by people with impeccable conservative credentials proposing a policy that is also favored by many progressive Democrats and environmentalists like Bill McKibben. The dividend would be a significant benefit especially to poor and working class families, and, if revenue-neutral, would more than compensate for the regressive income distribution effects of a carbon tax.
How effective this particular carbon tax and dividend proposal will work depends on details not spelled out in the proposal. The proponents propose starting at $40 per ton of CO2, and a lot depends on how quickly the tax rises. They claim that a commission will decide after five years whether to raise the tax, and if it is flat for five years, that would not be adequate. One analysis of the proposal assumes that if the tax rose by $5/year, it would reduce US carbon emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. While not as much as we need, it would be a big step beyond the status quo, and could be strengthened as the political will rises to do so.
The authors propose a tradeoff between the carbon tax and regulation. The authors claim, “To build and sustain a bipartisan consensus for a regulatory rollback of this magnitude, the initial carbon tax rate should be set to exceed the emissions reductions of current regulations.”
If this is indeed the effect, the tradeoff might be worth it with respect to the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. According to Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center, “well over 80 percent of the plan’s targeted reduction in electricity-sector emissions for 2030 had already been achieved by the end of 2016,” so an economy-wide carbon tax is the logical next step. But worrisome is the Climate Leadership Council’s apparently wider scope of reduction of regulatory power of the government, which serves many other purposes unrelated to climate change. And unless the carbon tax is set high enough and is assured of rising regularly, to give away the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions might be a fool’s bargain. The challenge for progressives and environmentalists is making sure that any tradeoff gives us a robust climate fee and dividend.
A deeper question is whether a carbon fee and dividend will stimulate growth. The model suggested here does not give us enough detail, but a similar proposal by Citizens’ Climate Lobby is projected to create millions of new jobs in clean energy, and not inhibit growth. However, as we steadily use up our carbon budget, the level and pace of reduction in greenhouse gases necessary to avert catastrophic climate change may not be compatible with sustained economic growth.
This leads me to question whether the challenge of climate change — more than two decades after the international community became aware of the problem and initiated treaties to address it — can now be addressed through a carbon tax alone. We may also need direct investment in research and development of alternative technologies. We need to make good on our promise in the Paris Agreement to aid poor countries in the transition to a non-carbon future, so that they do not face an intolerable dilemma between economic development and environmental safety. And we may need to manage a scaling down of our consumption in a manner that does not cause widespread misery.
But there should be little doubt that a carbon tax is a key pillar in the battle against climate change, and using the revenue for dividends is an equitable and politically prudent policy. For basic income supporters, it is the closest analogue on the national scale to Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend that we can hope for in the near term.
Reviewed by Kate McFarland
Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 macwagen
by Michael Lewis | Feb 6, 2017 | Opinion
Michael A. Lewis
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
A recent post, by Nathan Keeble, which appears on the Mises Institute’s website is titled The Dangers of a Universal Basic Income. The main danger seems to be that a basic income (I’m paraphrasing) would provide non-productive people with an income they would not have to work for. “Non-productive” in this context isn’t synonymous with lazy, shiftless, or anything like that.
The non-productive among us could be very busy writing poetry, composing music, playing it, or engaging in other pursuits. What makes one non-productive isn’t a lack of effort or initiative but the lack of a market for their goods or services. That is, if you create or produce something no one wants to buy, you’re non-productive. The problem with a basic income is that it would subsidize such activities. According to the Mises article, this is bad because it would allow people to continue such non-productive pursuits, instead of trying to figure out how to do something there’d be a market for. The result, Keeble writes, is that a society with a basic income would be less productive and experience a lower level of social welfare than a society without one.
I think this is a questionable line of reasoning because it’s based on the shaky assumption that the market is the sole determinant of what’s productive. If someone wants to buy your good or service, you’re productive; if not, you’re not. This is an extremely narrow view.
Consider folks who’re currently employed in factories that make cigarettes, firearms, sugary snacks, or alcoholic beverages. There are huge markets for all of these activities. But if a basic income were enacted, folks working in the above industries reduced their labor supply, and this resulted in a decrease in the production of cigarettes, handguns, Twinkies, and liquors; it’s not clear to me this would amount to a net reduction in social welfare. This is because there’s evidence that all these goods contribute to serious public health problems. And if people spent less time producing cigarettes and more time making art, even if there weren’t markets for their work, this might amount to a net increase in social welfare.
What does or doesn’t contribute to net changes in social welfare is far too complex to be reduced to what people are willing to buy in the marketplace.
About the author: Michael A. Lewis is a social worker and sociologist by training whose areas of interest are public policy and quantitative methods. He’s also a co-founder of USBIG and has written a number of articles, book chapters, and other pieces on the basic income, including the co-edited work The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. Lewis is on the faculties of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the Graduate and University Center of the City University of New York.
Image: Mises Crest – By ConcordeMandalorian – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31860282
by Jason Burke Murphy | Feb 3, 2017 | Opinion
Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy: Securing the Social Freedom and Economic Power for All People
Written by: Katja Kipping
[A long translator’s note: Katja Kipping is chair of the Left Party (Linkspartei) in Germany and a member of the national parliament. She has served as spokesperson for Germany’s Basic Income Network (Netzwerk Grundeinkommen). Within the Left Party, she organized the “Emancipatory Left” faction and writes for the libertarian socialist magazine “Prague Spring” (Prager Frühling).
Kipping presented this lecture “Grundeinkommen als Demokratiepauschale” at the Basic Income Earth Network Congress in Seoul, Korea, July 19th. She has frequently argued for basic income throughout Germany and has helped organize a “Basic Income faction” that includes most political parties in parliament.
I have translated this with the hope that left organizations worldwide will pay attention to her vision of basic income as a core component for the democratic left. Basic income would provide a clear sign that the left has learned from problems wrought in the past by bureaucracy, technocracy, and authoritarianism. Kipping draws from a constitutional republican tradition of investigating institutions that promote robust citizenship and deliberation. See Casassas and De Wispelaere 2012 and 2015. She also links her hopes with that of the degrowth movement. I see basic income, as Kipping presents it here, as an antidote to alienation and right-populism. Social analysis shows basic income to be part of the design of truly public institutions.
Any lapses in quality or argumentation should be attributed to me.
Please note that Kipping also presented in Dublin at the 12th Basic Income Earth Network Congress in 2008. “Moving to Basic Income (BI) – A left-wing political perspective” can be found at BIEN’s website.
You can a video of Kipping presenting the original German speech at https://bien2016.org/en/video-basic-income-and-politics-of-democracy/.
The text of her speech can be found at: https://www.katja-kipping.de/de/article/1112.grundeinkommen-als-demokratiepauschale.html. ]
Basic Income as All-inclusive Democratic Subsidy
Securing the Social Freedom and Economic Power for All People
Contents
- Social Freedom and Democracy – radical democratic approaches to basic income.
- Economic Might for All – basic Income and democratic institutions
- Closing Remarks on social transformation
1. Social Freedom and Democracy – radical democratic approaches to basic income.
Radical democratic approaches to basic income pay close attention to the connections between people and to their mutual dependencies within a community. The community is here understood as something public and political. It is oriented towards the well-being of all and should be shaped by all. From this it follows that freedom should not be understood as a mere absence of intervention or interference. On the contrary, freedom should be understand as independence over against any arbitrary authority [Fremdherrschaft]. Freedom, in this sense, implies no arbitrary interventions or interference on the part of state institutions and also no possibility of such interventions and interference. Intervention is arbitrary if an intervention comes whenever the intervener wills it.
Freedom, on the other hand, is fulfilled primarily through self-governance. Self-governance is formed by social and individual organization and also by monitoring these potential interventions and the institutions capable of them. Individual freedom, viewed in such an intersubjective political context, is also social freedom. The highest value is active participation of all in the res publica – a collective deliberative democratic self-determination. This naturally implies social equality and the securing of social freedom, which implies preventing any economically grounded dominance and dependency. Laws and institutions also need to reflect, promote, and enable the common good and self-governance. (See Socialist Party South Korea 2009, Patry 2010, Cassasas/De Wispelaere 2012, Cassasas/De Wispelaere 2015).
The following six theses on the establishment of a basic income as an all-inclusive democratic subsidy can be derived from these basic principles of radical democracy and social freedom.
- Basic Income must secure what a political community requires from each citizen in terms of money. This includes securing existence, social participation, and participation in political life. This unconditional guarantee of existence and participation has a monetary component. Non-monetary components also exist, such as free access to public goods, and to public infrastructure and services. These monetary and non-monetary components do not exclude each other but rather they complete one another. Both these monetary and non-monetary forms should, first, provide people socio-economic independence and, second, preserve their status as citizens with economic negotiating power whereby they can participate in the formation of society. Without the adequate safeguarding of free and equal conditions of social participation, no democratic participation is possible – formal possibilities for participation are not enough.
Whoever does not have enough material resources is first of all excluded from political participation and, secondly, doesn’t have enough negotiating power within political processes. This means that basic income, like all vital services, needs to be provided long-term. As I see it, this is not a problem in a time of high productivity and surplus. At most, it is a problem for those who do not want to give up economic privileges and political power. There is enough for all—worldwide!
- From a radical-democratic perspective, the basic income on a regular basis is preferable to single disbursements, like with a stakeholder grant or starting capital. Only regular payments can guarantee a lifelong income and its corresponding participation.
- The right to an unconditional basic income must be combined with a modern understanding of citizenship. A distinction between a majority of citizens and a minority of immigrants with regard to elementary socioeconomic rights and opportunities would lead to a problematic division of the community and a majority’s dominance over a minority.
- From a radical democratic viewpoint, people receive the unconditional basic income as equal members of the political community, not as part of a needy group that depends on the state. Any particular stigmatization of population groups splits the community and is a source for domination. That would still be true with a partial basic income (or transfers that do not secure survival or make social participation possible) that is supplemented by need-tested, income-tested, or asset-tested social benefits in order to reach a sufficient level.
It is clear that a person, who must make him or herself a stigmatized petitioner at the social office has a significantly harder time taking an upright path towards the political formation of the community. As Zygmunt Bauman formulated it: “The decisive argument in favor of the basic income is that it is the conditio sine qua non of a republic, as it can only exist in the union of people with self-confidence, of people without existential anxiety. A basic income which actually secures existence and allows social participation would establish a principle of citizens’ rights, rights that are not subject to a divisive and disqualifying ‘access test’ by need tests.” (Bauman 1999). [Note: this is a translation of the Bauman quote as found in Kipping’s speech. –JBM]
Therefore 5 holds: All citizens only have their rights fully recognized reciprocally through a sufficient basic income. This also means that more affluent citizens are comparatively more likely to contribute to the financing of the basic income than the less well-off citizens. This poses the question of the redistribution of economic resources and economic power.
- Basic income is not tied to any condition. An obligation towards any social or political participation would be sources of new domination. These would enable arbitrary interventions. The question of what makes something socially recognizable, and what does not, opens up a considerable amount of bureaucratic discretion. A citizen’s right to a basic income that included a direct citizen obligation would also transform voluntary engagement into regulated compulsory participation.
I would like to end this section with a quote from a German supporter of basic income who is also a politician. “It is farcical that MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] claim to maintain their substantial independence through relatively high salaries in order to make themselves non-extortionable but most of these deputies do not consider it necessary to ensure such independence and non-blackmail for the sovereign, the people” (Spehr 2003, 105). Basic income’s individual guarantee of a secure existence and participation is, alongside other forms of universal security for people (such as free access to public goods, social infrastructure, and social services), an indispensable prerequisite for social freedom, democratic and political engagement and the negotiating power for all people. It is an all-inclusive democratic subsidy!
2. Economic power for all – basic income and democratic institutions
Whoever says A must also say B. Who calls for basic income so that people can enter the public sphere with negotiating power must also call for the public shaping of our political foundations, economy, and everyday life (see Casassas and De Wispelaere 2012 and 2015). We need this to secure a basic income and other sorts of public services. Arbitrary interferences in human affairs through economic power, by endangering survival, health, and natural resources is not acceptable. An economy that is deprived of public organization, an economy that is privatized, is unacceptable. That also means that an economy and a financial sector that is immune to democratic control and influence is likewise unacceptable.
An imbalance in power through the deprivation of the public (privatization) in one form or another reaches deeply into real political and social power relations and removes the political and therefore citizens from the formation and control of public affairs. On the one hand, this includes power that arises from economic distribution—income, assets, and investment opportunities. This certainly also includes power in the realm of shaping and administering the economy and the financial sector. Who actually determines the use of natural resources, production resources, investment and the way in which economic activities are taxed? Who is exercising an alienated domination over the people today with real, unequally distributed, forms of design and control, and who subjects society and the economy to the will of a minority?
In addition to basic income and other forms of life and of participation for all people, social freedom requires the self-government of the citizens: by means of joint and individual control and appropriate intervention possibilities, which are secured by appropriately democratic institutions. These institutions must give all people the opportunity to shape social and economic life individually and collectively (see Cassasas / De Wispelaere 2015).
Economic power for all means basic income, including other unconditional support for existence. It also means the safeguarding of the economy and society for all and the institutionally secured public and political shaping of the economy and the society by all. This makes a democratic social transformation all the more necessary and urgent. Tomorrow, I am speaking at another conference about the challenge that this entails for the European left.
3. Concluding Remarks on Socio-Ecological Transformation
Poverty and exclusion, power over the many by the few, and destruction of the natural foundations of human life – that is the situation.
The international degrowth movement, which is committed to a world with significantly less natural resource consumption and to a rollback of ecological destruction and damage to our planet, therefore argues for the cohesion of ecology, democracy and social security of all people, and thus for the convergence of the various social movements and political actors (see Blaschke 2016).
It seems to me that only with this complex point of view and a committed relationship between social movements can the challenges of the 21st century be countered. Basic income, which in fact assures material existence and enables social participation, is an important component of a social-ecological transformation, which seeks to also be a democratic transformation!
Literature:
Bauman, Zygmunt (1999), In Search of Politics. Cambridge. Polity Press.
Blaschke, Ronald (2016), Grundeinkommen und Degrowth – Wie passt das zusammen? https://www.degrowth.de/de/2016/02/grundeinkommen-und-degrowth-wie-passt-das-zusammen/
Casassas, David / De Wispelaere, Jurgen (2012), The Alaska Model: A Republican Perspective. In: Karl Widerquist / Michael W. Howard (Ed.): Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. Examining his Suitability as a Model, New York, 169-188.
Casassas, David / De Wispelaere, Jurgen (2015), Republicanism and the political economy of democracy. European Journal of Social Theory, September, 1-18.
Kipping, Katja (2009), Ausverkauf der Politik. Für einen demokratischen Aufbruch, Berlin.
Patry, Eric (2010), Das bedingungslose Grundeinkommen in der Schweiz. Eine republikanische Perspektive, Bern, Stuttgart, Wien.
Socialist Party South Korea, Unconditional Basic Income and General Social Care, Party Program, Supplement No. 1, 2009 (Translation of Socialist Party of South Korea, “Basic Income for All und Universal Welfare”, translation by Min Geum, https://www.grundeinkommen.de/ Content / uploads / 2010/08 / 10-05-22-bge-program-socialist-party-korea-endrb.pdf
Spehr, Christoph (2003), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, in: Christoph Spehr (Hg.), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, Berlin, S. 19-115.
Spehr, Christoph (2003), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, in: Christoph Spehr (Hg.), Gleicher als andere. Eine Grundlegung der freien Kooperation, Berlin, S. 19-115.
Translated by Jason Burke Murphy, Elms College
by Andre Coelho | Feb 2, 2017 | Opinion
There are studies (such as the Gallup World Poll) which point to a correlation between the unemployment situation and a relative reduction in people’s happiness. At first glance, one might immediately conclude that what we need is to provide jobs for everyone — problem solved. However, a rushed conclusion like this under-evaluates the situation, ignores its alternatives and can even become counterproductive.
These studies conclude that, beyond the obvious issue of income, jobs seem to be a source of meaning and self worth for people. This apparently only reinforces the above results, and so it seems that a Job Guarantee (JG) is a policy for the future and that we must implement it as soon as possible.
But lets calm down.
First, let’s think awhile on why individuals with jobs show higher relative happiness levels, when compared with unemployed individuals.
Part of the answer lies in the stigma associated with being unemployed. The thing is, in a society so dependent on jobs like ours, being unemployed is, unquestionably, a source of stigma. According to many in society, people are unemployed because he/she is incapable of finding a job, because she has not tried enough, because she not got enough education, because she has deficient social capabilities, or due to a wide range of reasons, real or imagined. Turn it as you like, that person is to blame. If structural unemployment is on a systematic rise due to automation and other factors, if incomes drop so low that people simply give up, if precarity is a daily reality, or if working conditions may be physically or psychologically degrading…those are only considered circumstantial excuses from someone who is lazy, case closed. Everyone will have a different path in their lives that they want to go down. Maybe for some, this doesn’t include getting a job. But for those of us who actively look for a job in the hopes of being offered an interview, this can take some time. To make this process a lot easier, maybe you could check out Berke, who can give you an overview of what the hiring process entails for the employer. As the candidate, you don’t always have an idea as to what the interview process will include, but through companies like Berke, you’ll at least have an understanding of what methods companies put in place to hopefully find the right candidates for the job. You may be able to use this advice to ace your interview! It will all fall into place eventually.
However, if proof of this argument is needed, retired people are relatively less unhappy than unemployed people, although they do not have jobs (Clemens Hetschko et al., 2012). Why? Because retirement is socially acceptable; it is expected that, after decades of valid contributions to society, through a job, the person can finally rest and become free to spend the rest of his/her life just walking at the park (if so he/she wishes). They look forward to retiring as they know it’s something they can plan for using resources like Joslin Rhodes UK as well as other services that can help them be prepared for their retirement, giving them that time to get settled and be happy with the outcome.
And, of course, getting help from the state to ease the income situation does not solve the problem. The reason is because the stigma is still there: now the person has to prove that he/she is factually incapable of gaining his/her own income. Apparently, the unemployment stigma was not enough: on top of that now comes the stigma of receiving a handout in order to survive.
What’s really at stake here, and again beyond the mere income situation, is that we live in a culture based on jobs as a source of meaning and value, and so the lack of a job is seen as a problem. However, the income situation is a major one, since lacking income represents a great source of unhappiness for individuals. So, the unemployed’s relative unhappiness when compared to employed individuals is only clear when seen in the context of our present culture, and not necessarily outside it. Basic Income (BI) can – and hopefully will – create conditions under which that connection does not exist. To guarantee jobs for everyone, in this first sense, does not necessarily generate more happiness for individuals than BI, simply because the cultural environment around work gets totally transformed.
Secondly, it is wrong to assume that people want jobs, as traditionally defined. And, to be clear, that doesn’t mean in any way that people do not want to contribute to society through their work. As living proof we observe all those individuals who, despite working in jobs in order to survive, can still (sometimes with great effort and sacrifice) manage to surmount enough energy and time to do voluntary work. That means that, for all those who have trouble believing these people actually exist, jobs are not necessarily a source of meaning and self-worth in humans, which is shown in greater detail in an informal study by Robin Chase (as presented in an article by Kate McFarland).
Thirdly, I think it is not necessary to list the growing quantities of jobs seen as unattractive, monotonous, unchallenging and/or offering no carrier development perspectives, recently labelled as “bullshit jobs“. It’s hardly understandable the point in having people doing jobs that are not interesting to them, from which they do not get satisfaction, that do not allow them to explore their talents and that suck their precious lifetime, only to provide them with an income (which may not even be enough to cover basic expenses). If those jobs are not necessary, then let’s have them eliminated. If these are necessary, then let’s automate them. If that is not possible, then let’s pay more to whoever is willing to accept them.
The JG will only be beneficial to those searching for jobs – any job, we can assume in desperation – and cannot find them. For those currently and comfortably employed it would be innocuous, and for those who actually choose not to be employed (whether presently employed or not), in order to have time to pursue their passions and talents, it would only cause suffering and would be a waste of time.
On the other hand, BI is beneficial for all those who prefer not to be formally employed, are currently unhappily employed, or are indifferent, such as those individuals who are satisfied with their job at the moment. Moreover, BI will benefit the presently unemployed, offering them the chance to informally contribute to society and/or develop their capacities in order to be fit for jobs they see as more adequate to their profiles and preferences.
On a finer assessment, it seems that BI can be the strategy that will enhance people’s happiness, in respect to their relation to work. It’s also worth noting the potentially more complex and policing nature of the EG structure. To guarantee employment, the state will have to create it first, since apparently the marketplace is destroying it; To do that, these jobs must first be invented, and then distributed to people who will, supposedly, be willing to take them. There will have to be an effort to categorize each person’s abilities in order to establish a match between them and the jobs being created. It seems to be an enormous task, and a potentially highly bureaucratic one (more than we already have in our present welfare states). Even on the assumption that the state would be able to create all these jobs and to get people on them, it would still be necessary to have some system that would guarantee that the latter would stick to the former. Or at least have a way to generate new jobs for all those who want one or for some other reason had to change jobs. But maybe all this is unnecessary.
Alternatively, because basic income allows everyone to work creates conditions for each person to initiate his/her activity. If, for any reason, that person cannot do it (or does not want to do it that way), BI gives him/her the possibility to pursue education and/or skills to apply for the job he/she really craves. In time, BI will effectively put everyone to work. That’s because, one way or another, everyone wants to contribute to society, given the chance. Unfortunately, our current system prevents many people from working, precisely (and ironically) due to the coercive effect of needing a job – any job, even if the person gets actually sick from doing it – in order to survive.
To work in something meaningful and aligned with one’s values will render a completely different social environment than what we have today. To trust people to do what they think is best for their lives will completely change work, for the better. Unlike the JG, which will only mean more coercion and entrenchment of the present day job culture.
This article draws upon the articles by Kate McFarland:
Kate McFarland, “Basic Income, Job Guarantees and the Non-Monetary Value of Jobs: Response to Davenport and Kirby“, Basic Income News, September 5th 2016
Kate McFarland, “The Greater Happiness for the More Workers: Basic Income vs Job Guarantee Pt 2“, Basic Income News, October 21th 2016
More information at:
Clemens Hetschko, Andreas Knabe, Ronnie Schöb, “
