Elizabeth Anderson, “Common Property: How Social Insurance Became Confused with Socialism”

Elizabeth Anderson, “Common Property: How Social Insurance Became Confused with Socialism”

Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson has written an article in Boston Review in which she analyzes and reviews the political and economic theories of Thomas Paine, Friedrich Hayek, and others.

Anderson identifies the roots of modern systems of social insurance in Paine’s Agrarian Justice. She traces the history of the idea and its implementation through the late 1800s — when German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck instituted the world’s first social insurance scheme — and on to the present. In the latter half of the article, she critiques Hayek’s opposition to social insurance programs such as Bismarck’s pension system. Whilst people are fine with people getting insurance from Covered.com.au or other sites, there can be confusion about this part of the social system. Anderson connects modern right-wing opposition to the welfare state with Hayek’s criticisms of social insurance, criticisms which she argues to be unwarranted.

The article is not presented as an argument for basic income, but as a general defense of social welfare schemes — especially those that protect the middle classes. Indeed, Anderson herself clearly favors Bismarck-type schemes, in which “pension and disability benefits were graded according to each payer’s contributions” over Paine’s (and Hayek’s) idea of distributing equal benefits to all. She only mentions basic income “by name” when describing right-wing proposals, such as that of Charles Murray. She rejects these right-leaning basic income proposals — which would do away with all other benefits and keep individual subsidies below the poverty line — as insufficiently generous and detrimental to the middle class.

Although she seldom discussing basic income directly, Anderson situates some of the idea’s most important predecessors in their historical and political contexts. Paine’s Agrarian Justice and Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom are both canonical works in the history of the basic income movement. However, Paine and Hayek endorse very different types of basic income policies, for different reasons and as responses to different political currents — which Anderson’s article does much to illuminate.

Elizabeth Anderson is the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan (or, as we say here in Columbus, “the school up north”). Her areas of research in democratic theory, equality, racial integration, the ethics of markets, rational choice theories, and the political philosophy of John Stuart Mill and John Dewey. Her current work focuses on the history of egalitarianism.

Read the full article here:

Elizabeth Anderson, “Common Property: How Social Insurance Became Confused with Socialism,” Boston Review; July 25, 2016.


Photo: Statue of Otto von Bismarck, via Bernt Rostad

Mike Konczal, “These Policies Could Move America Toward a Universal Basic Income”

Mike Konczal, “These Policies Could Move America Toward a Universal Basic Income”

Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal has written an article about basic income for The Nation, a widely-read American progressive journal.

In the article, Konczal proposal several initial steps that might move the United States closer to a universal basic income. Specifically, he recommends that the country start with three policies: a child allowance (he suggests $2500 per year per child), a higher minimum wage (of at least $12/hour), and mandatory guaranteed paid leave (12 weeks medical leave and 2 weeks annual leave).

Interestingly, although Konczal states that what is needed is a policy “that benefits Americans while destigmatizing the concept of giving people no-strings-attached cash”, he does not actually discuss any policies that would result in “no-strings-attached cash” being giving to all Americans — such as a dividend funded by a carbon tax or land-value tax.(It might be noted that some American organizations, such as the National Campaign for Basic Income, are presently looking at social dividend approaches as part of a basic income “starter kit” — in addition to considering such proposals as children’s allowance.)

YouTube player

Read Konczal’s article — and watch a short animated video based on it — here:

Mike Konczal, “These Policies Could Move America Toward a Universal Basic Income“, The Nation; August 1, 2016.

The Nation, “What if we just gave people enough money to get out of poverty?” YouTube; August 9, 2016.


Photo CC BY 2.0, New America 

US: Poverty Expert Robert Greenstein’s Case Against Basic Income

US: Poverty Expert Robert Greenstein’s Case Against Basic Income

American poverty expert Robert Greenstein opposes a universal basic income in the United States due to concerns about political feasibility, even though he is sympathetic to the idea in principle. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has interviewed him to find out more.

Robert Greenstein is the President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which he founded in 1981. Prior to this, he was the administrator of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service under President Carter and a designer of the Food Stamp Act of 1977, regarded as a watershed anti-poverty act. Anti-poverty programs have continued to constitute a major area of research and action for CBPP.

Greenstein’s extensive experience with anti-poverty programs has led him to reject universal basic income (UBI) as a feasible policy for the United States, for reasons that he lays out in a blog post at CBPP (dated May 2016). It is clear that he rejects UBI not on the basis of principle but on the basis of practical issues. He worries that any livable UBI would be too costly to finance by any politically viable means and that, conversely, any politically viable policy package involving a UBI would be worse for poor Americans than the current welfare state. This is because, in his view, enacting a UBI would require a cross-partisan alliance, which would push the policy to the right (e.g. by accompanying UBI with the elimination of all or most current welfare programs, as under Charles Murray’s controversial proposal).

Here are some representative excerpts:

A UBI that’s financed primarily by tax increases would require the American people to accept a level of taxation that vastly exceeds anything in U.S. history. It’s hard to imagine that such a UBI would advance very far …

Proponents often speak of an emerging left-right coalition to support it. But consider what UBI’s supporters on the right advocate. They generally propose UBI as a replacement for the current “welfare state.” That is, they would finance UBI by eliminating all or most programs for people with low or modest incomes. Consider what that would mean. If you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them.

Will we really tax the top 1 percent or top several percent enough to finance most or all of UBI — on top of the higher taxes we’ll want the same group to pay to shoulder a substantial share of the burden of restoring Social Security solvency, repairing the infrastructure, and meeting other critical needs?

Greenstein, clearly, believes that the answer is no — and that, as a result, any politically feasible basic income would be much less than the aid currently provided to many of the poorest individuals (and distributed without any supplemental aid).

Nevertheless, Greenstein’s concluding sentence suggests that he is not opposed to UBI in principle:

Were we starting from scratch — and were our political culture more like Western Europe’s — UBI might be a real possibility. But that’s not the world we live in.

Robert Greenstein CC BY 2.0 US Department of Agriculture

Robert Greenstein, CC BY 2.0
US Department of Agriculture

Last month, Vox’s Dylan Matthews — who has written extensively, and sympathetically, about UBI for several years — interviewed Greenstein, calling on him to expand upon his opposition to UBI.

In the interview, Greenstein reveals that he learned about UBI in the 1990s from the Brazilian Senator Eduardo Suplicy, a former co-chair and honorary co-president of BIEN:

We’ve had this long dialogue, where I would say that I very much shared the ideas of UBI but in the United States, I didn’t think it was feasible or practical. There were, however, ways to move in that direction, such as big expansions of the earned income tax credit and the like. It was an ongoing conversation with Eduardo for a number of years.

As in Greenstein’s CBPP post, a tension between idealism and practicality emerges in the interview. At one point, for instance, Greenstein states:

There’s nothing in US political culture to suggest that there’s openness to doing big tax increases, that’d extend well beyond people just at the top, in order to finance cash payments for people who have no earnings and little or no work record. I personally am in favor of doing that! But I don’t see support for that. I think they’d likely be excluded.

Relatedly, Matthews poses an important question regarding the role of individuals — such as himself — who advocate for radical change as a way to begin to change popular opinion:

One reason I write a lot about basic income is not that I think it’s going to pass soon, but because I think giving cash aid to poor people, including the nonworking people, is a very good thing, and I view it as part of my job as a writer with a platform to try in some small way to change public opinion on that. … Do you think there’s any value in basic income as a persuasive tool that can translate to more sympathy for comparatively modest expansions of the safety net?

Greenstein’s reply is worth reading in full, but we might quote some excerpts:

I very much agree with the guaranteed income goal. The question is how do you get there, and, given the math and US political culture and budget politics, make sure that one is making progress toward that rather than going in the wrong direction? I would view UBI proposals like Charles Murray’s, or even other proposals that don’t eliminate Social Security or Medicare but do eliminate all or most means-tested programs, as clearly steps backward when you do the math.

I worry a little about the UBI interest being a little bit of a distraction from the immediate steps and fights that actually move toward that. I’ve had this discussion with a couple of UBI people, about starting with the child credit and moving to phase in at $0 and so on, and it’s sort of like we’re talking past each other. It’s smaller, it’s incremental. But to me, that’s how you get toward the goal.

I like many people, think we need a robust carbon tax. If we could ever get one, I do think there may be a potential to do a modest-size universal payment with a portion of the revenue that’d grow over time. To me, that’s a different route. The biggest obstacle there isn’t UBI; it’s getting the support to actually impose the tax. But if global warming continues to become more and more of a problem, one certainly hopes that at some point our political system accepts that you’ve got to do something about that. I do think that’s a potential platform. …

Such incremental proposals and cautionary notes are worthy of attention, even — indeed especially — from those who are already committed to UBI.

Read the entire interview, as well as Greenstein’s original article, below:

Dylan Matthews, “An expert on fighting poverty makes the case against a universal basic income,” Vox; July 16, 2016.

Robert Greenstein, “Universal Basic Income May Sound Attractive But, If It Occurred, Would Likelier Increase Poverty Than Reduce It,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; May 31, 2016.


Featured image CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Third Way Think Tank

Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan 

This basic income news made possible in part by Kate’s supporters on Patreon

CALIFORNIA, US: State Legislature Recommends Carbon Tax and Dividend

CALIFORNIA, US: State Legislature Recommends Carbon Tax and Dividend

On Tuesday, August 23, the California State Senate voted to approve a resolution calling on the United States Congress and President to enact a national carbon tax-and-dividend.

The proposed tax would apply to fossil fuels, and be applied based on the amount of carbon dioxide that the fuel emits when burned. While it specifies no exact tax rate, the resolution suggests that the tax start low and increase steadily through the year 2050. The intent of the policy is to encourage a shift away from carbon-based fuels, with the ultimate goal of reducing emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The dividend is not the focus of the resolution; it is merely stated that “all tax revenue should be returned to middle- and low-income Americans to protect them from the impact of rising prices due to the tax.” The resolution further mentions that, according to a study by Regional Economic Models, a family of four would receive an average of $288 per month after 10 years.

The Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), a California-based group that has been advocating strongly for a carbon fee-and-dividend, applauded the resolution — with 35 volunteers traveling to the state capital to voice their support.

In the United States, the carbon tax-and-dividend has been gaining currency as a possible way to introduce a basic income. For basic income advocates, of course, the interest is in the dividend: a universal and unconditional cash payment distributed monthly to individuals or households. Camila Thorndike of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network spoke about the connection between basic income and carbon tax-and-dividend policies on a recent edition of The Basic Income Podcast. The policy is one under consideration by the newly-formed National Campaign for Basic Income, whose founding member Steve May recently wrote an editorial in favor a carbon tax and dividend in Vermont. 

For an analysis of one such proposal, see Michael Howard’s article in Basic Income News: “Size of a Citizens’ Dividend from Carbon Fees, Implications for Growth” (September 14, 2015).

The full text of the California Senate resolution is available here.


Reviewed by Robert Gordon

Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 John Watson

This basic income news made possible in part by Kate’s supporters on Patreon

AUDIO / VIDEO: Future Thinkers on Basic Income

AUDIO / VIDEO: Future Thinkers on Basic Income

Euvie Ivanova and Mike Gilliland, digital entrepreneurs and world travelers, founded the Future Thinkers Podcast as an outlet to “explore and bring light to big ideas, open up to alternative modes of living, and think about how all of us can build a better future for all of humanity” (as stated on their website). Their goal is to create a community of individuals who are actively involved in building humanity’s better future. Recently, Future Thinkers has been developing and distributing materials that promote a universal basic income.    

For example, they have outlined some commonly cited reasons to support UBI in a short and simple infographic video, which is available on YouTube (1 min 47 sec). (The image above is from this video.)

Additionally, episode 31 of the podcast, aired on July 29, was an interview with Scott Santens on a variety of issues related to UBI. The 48-minute episode covered topics including how a basic income could be financed, the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (and how this relates to the decoupling of income from employment), the likely effect of basic income on the open source movement, the age-old question of whether the goal of humanity is to be a walking billboard, and many others. A recording of the podcast is available on YouTube and the Future Thinkers website.