OPINION: Some Thoughts on May Day

OPINION: Some Thoughts on May Day

I have some ambivalence about the attempt to rebrand May Day as “Basic Income Day”. I have some ambivalence also, however, about the “modernization” of May Day as a time to demand higher wages for workers but give no attention to another historically important demand: the demand for reduced working hours. It was the latter, after all, that was at issue in the fateful demonstrations at Haymarket Square in May 1886.

That specific demand, of course, was the eight-hour workday. Over 130 years ago, it was widely accepted that society would not cease to function if workers clocked only eight hours per day. In light of such astronomical increases in productivity over the past 130 years, why, pray tell, is the eight-hour workday still considered standard? Why have demands for reduced work hours been all but absent from the US labor movement for over 80 years? Why has technological advancement not translated to increased leisure? Where is the 15-hour week prophesied by John Maynard Keynes? Where is this “fight for 15” campaign? It seems that a 40-hour work week has become all we can envision; we have lost our imagination.

I used to support a renewal of the demand for reduced work hours–and I still do. But I now recognize that it is insufficient, and insufficiently radical. Given the increasing prevalence of alternative job structures–short-term contract work, freelancing, self-employment–a mandatory reduction in work hours would have little or no effect on a large portion of the economy. And precarious employment, I believe, is something that we should not merely accept as inevitable but indeed welcome and embrace. Although not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps, the freedom, flexibility, and variety is ideal for many of us–and might well be ideal for many more, if only they had a safety net sufficient to eliminate the constant financial anxiety that too often accompanies the lifestyle.

Rather than merely spending less time in traditional jobs (if they happen to be traditionally employed), individuals could–and should–have the option and opportunity to piece together a livelihood out of part-time and short-term work. Doing so with equanimity, however, requires the reliable financial floor that a basic income could provide. Moreover, a basic income could be considered a subsidy that effectively allows individuals to reduce work hours on their own terms.

Of course, a reduction in work hours is still desirable–and perhaps necessary–for traditional full-time jobs which, after all, still predominate in our society (and this might be joined to other reforms, such as legislation mandating that employers allow job-sharing or permit employees to trade income for time). However, with the rise of the “gig” or “1099” economy, an increasing number of individuals find their time not evenly and consistently distributed between work hours and non-work hours but, instead, erratically and inconsistently divided between times of employment (sometimes at multiple “gigs” at once) and times of underemployment or unemployment. For those of us in precariat, the most suitable analogue to work-hour reduction is the provision of an economic safety net that is not contingent on employment, such as a stakeholder grant or basic income, allowing us to seek fewer part-time jobs or short-term contracts.

In the end, then, insofar as May Day recognizes and commemorates not only the demonstrators at Haymarket Square but also the validity of their demand, it might just be that advocating a basic income is the best way to honor the spirit of the day.


Reviewed by Tyler Prochazka

EDITORIAL: Does Greater Awareness of Basic Income Increase Support?

EDITORIAL: Does Greater Awareness of Basic Income Increase Support?

I occasionally hear it asserted that increased familiarity with basic income tends to increase individuals’ support for the idea: as people learn more about basic income, they become more likely to endorse the idea. It is important to clarify the apparent source of this claim and why, given this, it is actually baseless.

(Note that, while there might be many problems associated with measuring both awareness of and support for basic income, I will assume for the sake of argument that the claim is sensible, and focus on the specific misinterpretation of data that, based on my observations, seems to have given rise to this claim.)

 

The Dalia Research Poll

As far as I’ve been able to deduce through my following of the discussion of basic income, the claim originated through a misinterpretation of the results of a survey conducted by Dalia Research in March 2016. The survey was a milestone in public opinion research on basic income: the first EU-wide opinion poll on basic income, featuring a representative sample of 10,000 Europeans across 28 countries. Its scope, as well as its encouraging results (64% of respondents said that they would vote for a basic income referendum in their country), led to its wide dissemination within the basic income community. These results go to show how important it is to conduct public surveys as businesses, and the general public can obtain better insight into everyday needs. To help with creating surveys at various levels, a template like one that can be found at https://www.qualtrics.com/marketplace/survey-template/ can serve as a good base to start at. Knowing how people truly feel is an important step for the public.

In a summary of survey results, researchers reported the additional finding that “Europeans who said they were aware of basic income were also more likely to report that they would vote for it.” This claim, as stated, is accurate. However, it tends to implicate an additional claim that is not substantiated by the survey: the causal claim that awareness of basic income increases support for it.

It’s important here to understand the design of the survey in a bit more detail. In the first question, subjects were asked, “How familiar are you with the concept known as ‘basic income’?” (without no definition of ‘basic income’ provided).

 

 

Following this preliminary question, the interviewers provided the definition of that was to be assumed during the remainder of the survey: “A basic income is an income unconditionally paid by the government to every individual regardless of whether they work and irrespective of any other sources of income. It replaces other social security payments and is high enough to cover all basic needs (food, housing etc.).”

Subjects were then posed the question “If there would be a referendum on introducing basic income today, how would you vote?” (“for it,” “against it,” or “not vote”).

As part of their analysis, Dalia Research broke down the responses to the latter question by level of awareness as measured in the first question: “More aware” (corresponding to responses of “Understand it fully” and “Know something about it” on the first question) versus “Less aware” (corresponding to “Heard just a little about it” and “Never heard of it”).

 

 

As seen in the chart above, those who claimed to be relatively “in the know” about basic income were disproportionately likely to express willingness to vote in favor of the hypothetical referendum. This, it seems, was the main empirical support behind the claim that “awareness and support for basic income are linked,” as Delia Research cautiously phrased it. (We might also note that those with greater awareness were also disproportionately likely to express willingness to vote rather than to abstain. That is, awareness is associated not only with support but also with decisiveness.)

To cite the well-known Statistics 101 maxim, however, correlation does not imply causation. The finding that awareness and support for basic income are “linked” does not entail that higher awareness is the cause of support. In the present case, in fact, it’s easy to imagine a causal relationship in the opposite direction: plausibly, those who find the idea of basic income appealing are more motivated to research and learn more about it. (Indeed, this probably describes many of us who follow Basic Income News.) Moreover, to give another potential explanation, those who are generally interested in and supportive of progressive policy might be relatively likely to read publications that discuss basic income–and thus to learn about the concept–as well as being relatively likely to vote in favor of such a policy.

Whatever the underlying cause of the observed statistical relationship, one cannot cite the Dalia Research survey to support the assertion that awareness of basic income increases support. The survey simply did not test this causal claim, and thus provides no data on it.

 

Does Support Increase with Awareness?

How might one test the causal claim? One possibility might be to select individuals who initially report no knowledge of basic income, provide a short description of the policy, conduct a “pre-test” of their attitudes, provide more information about the proposal, reassess their attitudes toward the idea, and so on–making the imparting of information about basic income an experimental intervention. To my awareness, no such study has been conducted (although a 2016 survey of San Francisco voters, discussed below, comes close).

Given what we do know, however, it is unreasonable to infer that increased familiarity with basic income is sufficient–or even reliable–to generate increased support.

First, let’s consider the “real world” case study of the Swiss referendum. On June 5, 2016, citizens of Switzerland voted on a referendum that would have introduced an article in the federal constitution mandating a government-funded “basic income” sufficient to “allow the people to live in a dignified manner and participate in public life.” The referendum was defeated, with 23% of voters in favor. This final result suggests, if anything, a decline in popular support–compared, for example, to an April 2016 survey that indicated that 40% of Swiss voters were inclined to vote “yes” on the referendum–despite the fact that the basic income referendum continued be heavily publicized and debated between April and June (leading, presumably, to increased awareness).

Secondly, we might turn to “Oxford-style” debates on basic income, in which audience members are polled on their support for the issue before the debate begins and again after it has concluded. Presumably, nearly all audience members would claim that their familiarity with the issue being debated increases during the course of the debate. Minimally, then, such debate settings show that greater familiarity with basic income does not invariably lead to increased support, given that basic income proponents have “lost” Oxford-style debates such as ABC’s Intelligence Squared Debate (March 2017) and Ontario’s Wolf Hall Debate (April 2016), with even some initial supporters apparently changing their positions during the course of the debate. (Of course, the results can hardly be generalized: much depends on the quality of the particular debaters, and debate audiences are by no means representative of the general population.)

Finally, let’s look at a survey of 500 likely San Francisco voters conducted in April 2016. In contrast to most opinion polls on basic income, the San Francisco survey did attempt to discern the impact of increased understanding of basic income (initially called ‘base income’ in the survey) on support for the idea. At the start of the survey, subjects were asked “Do you support or oppose providing every resident of the United States with a base income?” No further elaboration on the concept of a “base income” was provided.

 

 

After respondents answered this initial question, the researchers provided more details about the proposed policy (which was relabeled as ‘universal basic income’) and polled respondents on their support or opposition to each individual policy detail: the payment “is not tied to work or having a job”; “the amount of the monthly check would be between $500 and $2000”; the “monthly income could be used for anything”; “the cost of the monthly income would be paid for by tax revenue”; “every adult resident would receive a monthly check.”

 

Finally, following the provision of these five policy specifics, respondents were against asked about their support for basic income. This post-assessment showed a decrease in support and increase in opposition (with fewer respondents remaining undecided). As Misha Chellam interpreted the result in a blog post, “digging into the details led to concerns and eroded the policy support.”

 

This is not, precisely, a test of the effect of increased awareness on support for basic income. For one, the terminology was alerted, with the usual term ‘base income’ used in the initial question. Additionally, we cannot be certain that the survey questions had the effect of imparting new information to respondents: in some cases, the additional questions might merely have had the effect of raising the salience of previously known information, which happens to cast a less favorable hue on the idea of implementing basic income. By way of example, surveys conducted in recent years in Finland and Canada indicate that support for basic income decreases when respondents are requested to entertain the idea of funding it through tax increases. In these cases, plausibly, it’s not that respondents did not previously believe that at least part of the funding for a basic income would come from tax dollars; it could simply be that this consideration was not salient when they were first asked, in the abstract, whether they favored the idea of a basic income.

We might note here, however, that 51% of respondents the San Francisco poll claimed to know “nothing” about universal basic income prior to the survey. Thus, it is quite likely that, for a majority of respondents, the questions on policy specifics did have the effect of introducing more information (not merely, that is, increasing the salience of old information or existing beliefs). In this light, the San Francisco survey not only fails to confirm the claim that greater awareness leads to greater support, but also supports the opposing claim that greater familiarity with the idea of a basic income tends to lead to a decrease in support (at least in the population studied).

Overall, we still know very little about the effect of awareness on support for basic income. To my knowledge, however, there is no sound empirical basis for the claim that awareness increases support–outside, perhaps, of anecdotes and hearsay.


Cover photo: CC BY 2.0 Generation Grundeinkommen

Dalia Research visuals: Nico Jasper (Apr 2016) “What do Europeans think about basic income?

San Francisco survey visuals: Misha Chellam (Dec 19, 2016) “Could universal basic income start with local and state legislation?Medium.

Methodological details of San Francisco survey confirmed by Seiji Carpenter of David Binder Research.

Reviewed by Tyler Prochazka

Interview: Pitfalls of libertarianism without basic income

Interview: Pitfalls of libertarianism without basic income

The basic income is known for cutting across ideological lines. Libertarians, who have had a long history supporting the basic income, are also giving the idea a fresh look as a way to replace the current welfare system.

Many libertarians, though, remain skeptical of whether a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is in line with libertarian ethics, and other libertarians believe it would cause economic damage.

Daniel Eth, a PhD student at UCLA studying computational nanotechnology, argued in Thinking of Utils that strict libertarianism, particularly without UBI, “enables oppressive systems to emerge, even when no one is acting in bad faith and all agreements are consensual.”

Eth joined the UBI Podcast to discuss the problems of libertarianism that does not endorse basic income.

One of the primary issues with strict libertarianism, Eth argued, is that without a social safety net, workers are not truly volunteering for work, because they are agreeing to work simply to survive.

“There is an uneven power dynamic and that contracts are almost inherently exploitative, at least for those that are living hand to mouth,” Eth said.

At least with a basic income system in place, Eth said, the workers could decide to walk away from unreasonable working conditions.

“if a basic income is large enough to satisfy people’s basic needs, it goes a long way to correcting for that (power dynamic),” he said.

One area of agreement between Eth and libertarians is that market-based solutions “tend to be much more effective than the alternative of central planning.”

That is to say, without appropriate taxes to account for things like pollution, then the market outcome will not reflect these costs to society and the environment.

From this framework, Eth said something like a carbon tax would be a “great way to pay” for a basic income because it would account for pollution, but also allow the market to solve.

“The market is almost like an algorithm, like what a computer might use to solve a problem and I think it tends to be better at finding solutions than central planning. But you have to ask it the right question. You have to make sure you are solving the problem you want to solve,” Eth said.

Interview: ‘Village One’ documentary follows village with basic income

Interview: ‘Village One’ documentary follows village with basic income

People often ask whether a country has to reach a certain stage of development before a basic income can become viable. A new documentary series will help answer that question.
 
Village One is a new series that follows a village in Uganda, Busibi, where each villager is receiving an unconditional basic income of around $18.25 USD per month for adults and $9.13 USD for children. There are 56 adults and 88 children who are receiving the basic income in the village for at least two years. 
 
Steven Janssens, the director of Village One and the founder of Eight, discussed this project with the UBI Podcast. The series can be viewed now and will have a new episode premier each Saturday.
 
Eight is partnering with Ghent University to conduct research on the effects of the basic income on the village. The project has only been running since January, and Janssens said he already has seen dramatic results.
 
“Every child is going to school in that village now, whereas before it was around 50 percent,” he said.
 
The positive results on education were not just for children. One 18 year old was able to go back to school after he started receiving the basic income, Janssens said.
 
So far, Janssens said they have seen an improvement in health care access, increased entrepreneurship, and democratic organization, even though it has only been around three months since the basic income was started.
 
According to Janssens, villagers have created “saving circles” where they pool together their funds so that they can invest in larger expenditures, even for the benefit of the entire village.
 
“They are more social with each other. They talk more, they get involved more. They also make plans to make the water distribution better, to make the roads better,” Janssens said. “They are really talking a lot with each other to make improvements for the whole village, not only the individual.”
 
As for negative effects, Janssens said he has not yet seen anyone change their behavior for the worse because of the basic income, including harming the environment or spending it on “temptation goods,” such as alcohol.
 
“People who were already boozing before, continue to (do so), but they don’t (consume) booze more or less. People don’t start boozing or using alcohol. There is no change in that type of consumption,” he said.
 
GiveDirectly, which is also running a basic income program in Africa, has run into some issues with individuals skeptical of the organization refusing the basic income. Janssens said they have also had some similar instances in their case.
 
“There is one family that refused our project because they believe that we are going to take over the land, or they don’t believe the money is really for free,” Janssens said.
 
For Janssens, he said he hopes that his project can help people see the effects of basic income for themselves.
 
“We see a lot of inequality and it is so unfair. In all of my travels I see the same. You see so many people with so much potential, so many talents and they are actually in a lot of cases just wasted. A basic income is one of the instruments that can improve it,” Janssens said.

The bitter Italian situation: no basic income and false protection for the poor

The bitter Italian situation: no basic income and false protection for the poor

By: Sandro Gobetti

Basic income began to be debated in Italy from a diverse range of viewpoints about 4-5 years ago, when two law proposals were submitted to the Italian Parliament: one a part of the 5S Movement and the other the outcome of a popular initiative which had more than 50,000 signatures (the necessary threshold according to the Italian Constitution) collected by a pool of political and civil society associations. The role of Bin-Italy, which took part in the judicial extension of the latter text and played a consulting role for the 5S Movement, was particularly important. The two proposals have much in common (for example, that the financing burden falls on collective taxation, that the provision should be individual and not family-based, that the beneficiaries should have, at least at the beginning, an income below the threshold of relative poverty) but also have some differences, especially as to the degree conditionality is concerned.

For the 5S movement the possibility of refusing a job offer is a constrained to a maximum of three times and there is an obligation to work a number of weekly hours in community service. For the law of petition (BIN-Italy law), it introduced the concept of “fairness”, that it is possible to reject any job offer, which is considered “unfair”, since it is in line with the following three parameters: 1. the salary level is lower than previous jobs held or not in line with contractually stipulated pay rates (in the case of the young searching for their first job, without success); 2. the job is not in line with the qualifications and skills of the job-seeker; 3. the workplace is more than 70 km from the job-seekers residence.

Currently, these laws were discussed in the appropriate Labour Committees of the House and Senate but have not yet been put up for voting because the government chose other paths: in March, the new government approved the introduction of Reis (Social Inclusion Income) which presents very different characteristics from basic income and cannot also be considered a minimum income according to the parameters of the EU (PE Resolutions 2009, 2010, Charter of rights, the 1992 Commission Recommendation). Reis is only paid to families that have a total taxable income of less than € 3,000 a year (a ridiculously low amount), have a dependent or a disabled or at least two children and the breadwinner is over 55 years of age. Moreover, Reis includes an obligation to follow a path of integration to work, under penalty of revocation. The available financial resources amount to € 1.1 billion for 2017 and it is expected to increase to € 1,6 billion in 2018. The result is that only ¼ of households in absolute poverty can be helped. It is an expense of 0.1% of the national GDP in a country that already in social spending (net of pension) spends less than half of the average for European countries. The expense to cope with the two proposals for a real minimum income is between € 14 and 16 billion, according to different official statistical sources.

The current debate has given way to some experiments at the local level. Among these, the City of Livorno is testing (for a period of only 6 months), the introduction of a form of income support. To this purpose it has been allocated € 300 thousand. The municipality received 997 applications. Among the requirements was residency in the municipality for at least five years, unemployment status, registration at the employment center and a family income not exceeding € 6530 gross per year. In exchange for € 500 monthly, the municipality invited successful applicants to perform socially useful work.

Some Italian regions such as Puglia, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy have anticipated the governmental model of income support for those in absolute poverty and dependent children or only for the long-term unemployed and often with the obligation to carry out community service: in any case these are not even remotely sufficient to restore decent living conditions. The governor of Apulia Mr. Emiliano even spoke about the cleanliness of the palm leaves on the Bari seafront!

Acceptance with the condition of performing “community work” has been extended to unemployed and workers temporary outside production because of restructuring. Most minimum income experiments at local level are thus more like workfare programs, if not just poverty benefits still tied to a purely assistance-concept, selective, and on a strictly family-oriented basis; this has little to do with a ‘idea’ of ​​a basic minimum income which is also an instrument of freedom and personal self-determination. Further, they are not in line with the instruments already in place in more European countries of fighting social exclusion.

In conclusion, not only is there no actual testing of basic income in Italy, nor are there even forms of guaranteed minimum income consistent with EU parameters. Finally, there is a generalizing culture of coercive control on beneficiaries and induction to accept any kind of work. This is paradoxical in a country known to be free from the implementation of efficient active policies in the labor market and efficient employment services and training.

Last, but not least, in Italy we suffer from a cultural delay regarding the idea that basic income is mainly a primary income. It is a means of remuneration, and not only passive assistance, of all the lifetime that today is put to labor and to value but not yet certified as productive labor and, hence, paid. It is not even related to the fact that unpaid labor is sharply increasing.

 

Executive Committee Basic Income Network – Italy

 

Reviewed by Cameron McLeod

Rebalancing the mix of benefit systems

Rebalancing the mix of benefit systems

Most developed countries’ benefits systems exhibit a mixture of different kinds of benefits, and this is increasingly true of developing countries. Most run social insurance schemes of some kind (either government-run or organized by a trade union, employer, or independent organizations); most have a layer of means-tested benefits, and some have universal and unconditional benefits for certain demographic groups (usually elderly people and/or children). In the short to medium term, this is likely to remain the situation. This is both because complex systems tend to be path-dependent ( – that is, adapting an existing system is easier than starting from scratch), and because there are good reasons for all three kinds of benefits. Social insurance represents reciprocity, with a contribution record granting a right to receive benefits when certain contingencies arise; means-tested benefits recognize that a needs-based approach can be appropriate; unconditional benefits recognize our equal members of society and represent a solid financial platform on which families can build. Each of the three types exhibits both advantages and disadvantages, with perhaps means-tested benefits offering more disadvantages than advantages, and unconditional benefits more advantages than disadvantages, with social insurance somewhere in between.

So the question is rarely: How can we replace the current benefits system? It is usually: How should we rebalance this mixture? In the UK, and in the medium term, no viable Citizen’s Income scheme could entirely abolish means-tested benefits. The complexity of the current system means that levels of Citizen’s Incomes that could be funded by adapting the tax and benefits system would be too low to avoid losses for low-income households at the point of implementation unless means-tested benefits were left in place and recalculated.

Social insurance benefits (National Insurance benefits in the UK) are another question. If a Citizen’s Income scheme were to be implemented, would we wish to abolish National Insurance benefits? Even though they are not genuine social insurance benefits (there is no connection between the amounts collected and the amounts paid out; the Government can alter the rates and durations of benefits at whim), many older members of the public still have a soft spot for them. However, younger members of society do not, and don’t understand them either.

The propensity to manage change in an evolutionary fashion, by systematic demolition (that could be carried out by hiring firms such as prodanllc.com or alike) and building afresh, means that we are likely to see Citizen Incomes implemented alongside social insurance and means-tested benefits. This is not a problem: at least for the time being.

Thank you for reading…