by Kate McFarland | Jun 27, 2016 | News
Former SEIU president Andy Stern, along with Natalie Foster of Institute for the Future, will be leading a discussion of universal basic income at the SPUR Urban Center in San Francisco, CA, USA, on Tuesday, June 28 at 6 pm Pacific Time.
From the event description:
National labor leader Andy Stern is one of the country’s leading thinkers about the future of work and jobs. In his new book, Raising the Floor, Stern concludes that the United States needs to consider what may be the biggest idea of the 21st century, a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Join us for a discussion with the author about how a universal basic income could work, and be paid for, in order to help all Americans.
Stern’s book, Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream, was published earlier this month to great publicity. For more background, see recent interviews with Stern in The Atlantic, The Guardian (and here), Yahoo Finance (video), Bloomberg (video), and CNBC (video), and a commentary written by Stern for CNBC.
For more information about the upcoming event, or to register, visit the event page at SPUR’s website.
SPUR Urban Center photo (2010) CC Anita Hart
by Josh Martin | Jun 24, 2016 | News
Three reporters from Bloomberg Businessweek included a question about Basic Income at their White House interview of President Obama yesterday. John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief for Bloomberg; Megan Murphy, Bloomberg News Washington bureau chief; and Editor-in-Chief Ellen Pollock, asked the president,
Some economists suggest that globalization is going to start targeting all those services jobs. If you want to keep up wages in that area, doesn’t it push us toward something like a universal basic income?
Obama answered, in full:
The way I describe it is that, because of automation, because of globalization, we’re going to have to examine the social compact, the same way we did early in the 19th century and then again during and after the Great Depression. The notion of a 40-hour workweek, a minimum wage, child labor laws, etc.—those will have to be updated for these new realities. But if we’re smart right now, then we build ourselves a runway to make that transition less abrupt, because we’re still growing, and we’re beating the competition around the world. Look, for example, at smart cars, where the technology basically exists now. The number of people who are currently employed driving vehicles of some sort is enormous. And some of those jobs are pretty good jobs. You know, people are worried about Uber, but the fear is actually driverless Uber, right? Or driverless buses or what have you.
Now, there are all kinds of reasons why society may be better off if smart cars are the norm. Significant drops in traffic fatalities, much more efficient use of the vehicle, so that we’re less likely to emit as much pollution and carbon that causes climate change. You know, drastically reduced traffic, which means we’re giving back hours to families that are currently taken up in road rage. All kinds of reasons why we may want to do that. But if we haven’t given any thought to where are the people who are currently making a living driving transferring into, then there’s going to be deep resistance.
So trying to separate out issues of efficiency and productivity from issues of distribution and how people experience their own lives and their ability to take care of their families, I think, is a bad recipe. It’s not an either/or situation. It’s a both/and situation.
Obama did not mention Basic Income in his answer, but he did talk about some concerns of the movement. Chris Weller, of Tech Insider, interpreted Obama’s remarks as a hint at support, and saying, “Now Obama seems to be leaning in the same direction.”
Karl Widerquist, Co-Chair of the Basic Income Earth Network was less certain that Obama wanted to communicate support:
Obama didn’t clearly answer the question, but there is a lot of good news in this interview. Just the fact that the question was asked shows the growth of the movement. These were three top-level reports at one of America’s top news publications. They had an audience with the President at the White House. They only asked 16 questions. And they devoted one of those questions to the subject of Basic Income. Without the worldwide movement that’s sprung up in the last few years this would not have happened. I doubt any reporter has bothered to ask the President any form of Basic Income Guarantee since the 1970s.
Obama’s answer doesn’t clearly say whether he is for or against Basic Income, but what he is trying to do is clear and obvious. He doesn’t want to endorse basic income, but he wants Basic Income supporters to support him. The last paragraph is masterfully unclear. He uses the phrase “bad recipe,” which implies that his answer is negative, but I read over that paragraph again and again, it’s increasingly unclear what the bad recipe is. The need he feels to obfuscate is progress: had he been asked this question in 2008, he might have clearly stated his opposition, as he clearly opposed same-sex marriage back then. I wonder if it’s an exaggeration to say he’s less willing to alienate Basic Income supporters in 2016 than he was to alienate same-sex marriage supporters in 2008?
Obama attempts to court Basic Income supporters by showing them that he understands two of their concerns (automation and climate change). Apparently he hopes this much will be enough to gain their support even though he doesn’t specifically support their proposed solution. He doesn’t mention the issues of poverty, inequality, and freedom that are so important to most Basic Income supporters, but the Basic Income movement has forced the President to take notice and think about some of the issues they have brought up. That’s not victory, but it marks the growth of the movement.
The full interview will appear as the cover story in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek, and it is already online:
John Micklethwait, Megan Murphy, and Ellen Pollock, “The ‘Anti-Business’ President Who’s Been Good for Business.” Bloomberg Businessweek, June 27-July 3, 2016
Chris Weller’s interpretation is online at:
Chris Weller. “President Obama hints at supporting unconditional free money because of a looming robot takeover,” Tech Insider, Jun 24, 2016
Business Week
by Kate McFarland | Jun 16, 2016 | News
The 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress was held at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, from May 12-15.
Ric Lim videotaped most (although not all) of the panel discussion and paper presentations for informational and documentation for the forthcoming documentary Mincome: Manitoba’s Great Experiment. The videographer has also uploaded these videos to vimeo for our viewing pleasure.
You can find the list of speakers and sessions, with links to the videos, here: NABIG 2016 Videos.
Image: University of Manitoba campus; Teles via Wikimedia Commons
by Kate McFarland | Jun 11, 2016 | News
Andy Stern, the former president of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), has written a new book on basic income: Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream. This upcoming book was previously announced on Basic Income News, and it remains true that the book will published on June 14, 2016. We now get to say, however, the book will be released next week.
In his new book, Stern investigates the current and projected state of the labor economy — focusing especially closely on the effects of new technologies — and argues that we need to adopt a universal basic income to prepare to massive disruptions in the job market of the not so distant future. Along the way, he talks to “economists, futurists, labor leaders, CEOs, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, and political leaders” about their predictions for economic change in upcoming decades.
Trade unionist Andrew Brady recently conducted a short interview with Andy Stern about the book, which can be viewed here. Stern notes that “we’re about to face a time of major economic disruption” — “a tsunami of change” — when merely tinkering with current policies and programs, such as adopting stricter labor laws, “will not be sufficient to solve workers’ problems.” Thus, “we need to guarantee that there’s a floor” for workers, even though there might be work on top of it.
Stern further elaborates on these issues in an article for Daily Caller, in which he remarks on the outcome of Switzerland’s June 5th vote on basic income.
Today’s economic pain though may only be a warm-up to more anguish if we fail to act boldly, and expediently. There is now quite reputable research on the potential disruption of software and AI; an Oxford University study predicting the loss of 47 percent of all U.S. jobs by 2033; Boston Consulting Group estimating up to 25 percent by 2025; McKinsey Global 45 percent elimination of all present tasks, with artificial intelligence reducing 13 percent more, could be harbingers of a future of increased economic peril.
Indeed, as he describes in a post on The World Bank’s Jobs and Development blog published last April, these changes in the economy played a large role in Stern’s decision to leave his prestigious post in organized labor. (He is now a Senior Fellow at Columbia University.)
I didn’t resign from SEIU because I was bored. Rather, after nearly fifteen years at the helm of SEIU, I had lost my ability to predict labor’s future. I could do that in the 1990s and early 2000s. But, by 2010, the economy was changing and fragmenting at such warp speed that I couldn’t see where it — or labor — was headed. At the end of that year I embarked on what became a four-year journey to discover the future of jobs, work, and the American Dream.
Already, the new landscape of work is populated by free agents and temporary workers who have more freedom and flexibility in their work life, but no job security and significantly less leverage with the people and companies who hire them. My focus turned to larger questions: If there are significantly fewer jobs and less work available in the future, how will people make a living, spend their time, and find purpose in their lives? Also, how can we keep the income gap from growing so wide that it erupts into social discord and upheaval?
I believe there is a solution – the universal basic income or UBI.
This blog post, “Moving towards a universal basic income,” is an extract from Raising the Floor, and it’s well worth reading in its entirety as you wait for the book to arrive.
The philosopher and political economist Philippe Van Parijs — well known in these parts as a cofounder of BIEN — calls Raising the Floor “a stunning combination of lucid analysis, up-to-date information, and lively dialogues that culminates in a bold proposal for universal basic income.”
The book has also received praise from the likes of former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich, author Barbara Ehrenreich, CEO Tim O’Reilly, and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.
Andy Stern with Lee Kravitz (2016) Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream, PublicAffairs.
Picture of Andy Stern from Ralph Alswang via flickr
by Kate McFarland | Jun 8, 2016 | News
The Washington Post reported on June 7th that the City Council of Washington D.C. has approved an amendment that “calls on the city’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer to study the possibility of providing a basic income in D.C.”
The amendment was included as part of a measure to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020 — which passed unanimously on Tuesday.
Council member David Grosso, who introduced the amendment, announced its approval in a tweet — noting his concern that a minimum wage alone is not sufficiently “forward thinking.” As he says, “A minimum income is an alternative approach with the basic idea of providing a floor of income upon which residents can build other income.”
N.B. While The Washington Post describes the amendment as introducing a call to study a ‘basic income’, Grosso himself uses the term ‘minimum income’, which conventionally refers to a slightly different policy idea (cf. the first paragraph of our overview). Although context does suggest that Grosso uses the term to refer to a “basic income,” this caveat is in order.
Reference
Perry Stein, “Is a basic income possible in D.C.? The city is looking into it,” The Washington Post, June 7, 2016.
Image Credit: Ted Eytan via flickr
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