by Kate McFarland | Aug 19, 2017 | Research
Three members of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) Young Academic Network — Frederick Harry Pitts, Lorena Lombardozzi, and Neil Warner — have published a study on basic income, entitled “Beyond Basic Income: Overcoming the Crisis of Social Democracy?”
The full paper can be read and downloaded here.
Abstract
Across Europe, a crisis of social democracy prevails. Deindustrialisation precipitates a breakdown of the communities, institutions and interests that held the social democratic and labour movements together. A collapse in everyday life passes over into a steady decline in the electoral realm. Elsewhere, a crisis of social reproduction ensues. The relationship between the wage and subsistence weakens, public services face cutbacks and a generalised dispossession of people from the commons continues apace. This triple crisis- of the society of work, social reproduction and social democracy- is a triple crisis of the social. The universal basic income (UBI) is suggested by many as a means by which the social synthesis can be pieced back together.
In this paper we explore whether or not UBI lives up to the claims made for its implementation, and to what extent it addresses these three crises. We ultimately pose the question whether UBI offers a solution to the crisis of social democracy, and whether, on this basis, European social democrats should pursue the policy as a central demand of a new electoral offer. We conclude that the policy cannot be suggested as a solution to the crises of work and social reproduction, at least not without being complemented by a range of other measures. A suite of reforms could strengthen its impact and ensure it is used to nurture and preserve positive social relations that reflect social democratic ideas, rather than contrary outcomes implied in alternative visions of the UBI proposed from both right and left of the political spectrum.
About the Authors
Frederick Harry Pitts holds a PhD from the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, and is currently a Lecturer in Management at the University of Bristol. His research interests lie in the sociology of work and political economics, with specializations in the creative industries and the future of work.
Lorena Lombardozzi is a graduate student at SOAS University of London, where she holds an MSc in Political Economy of Development. Her dissertation research concerns agricultural commercialization in Uzbekistan’s cotton-food system and its nutritional impacts.
Neil Warner is a postgraduate researcher in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, studying perspectives on unemployment and the British Labour Party in the late 20th century.
FEPS is the first progressive think tank to operate at a European level. It has previously supported discussion of universal basic income, convening a panel discussion on the topic in Brussels in February 2016 as part of its Next Social Europe lunch debate series.
The FEPS Young Academics Network, established in March 2009, currently consists of over 50 PhD candidates and recent PhD recipients from a range of disciplines.
Photo: “Unemployment Wall” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Luis Colás
by Kate McFarland | May 3, 2016 | News
Philippe Van Parijs
In a recent article for Social Europe, Philippe van Parijs — philosopher, social scientist, and co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network — urges social democrats to (re-)introduce the basic income as part of their agenda.
Along the way, he addresses several popular misunderstandings that have tended to make those on the left wary of the idea of providing all adults with cash benefits, irrespective of income and employment status:
“Is it not absurd to pay a basic income to the rich?” Van Parijs explains why it is not.
“It is acceptable to replace the right to a job by a right to an income?” Van Parijs explains that, in fact, a basic income functions like a “flexible, intelligent form of job sharing,” not undermining the job culture but improving it.
“Does a basic income threaten the existence of the welfare state?” Again, van Parijs argues that a basic income does nothing of the sort.
In his conclusion, van Parijs enjoins social democrats to recognize that the “bulk of our real income is not the fruit of the efforts of today’s workers…but a gift from nature increasingly combined with capital accumulation, technological innovation and institutional improvements inherited from the past. … In a truly ‘socialist’ perspective, those entitled to this gift are all members of society equally, male and female, irrespective of the extent of their participation in well-protected full-time employment.”
Indeed, despite the recent explosion of interest in basic income, many on the left continue to ignore or dismiss the idea — devoting much more attention to raising wages or creating more jobs. In these regions of politics, van Parijs’s short but compelling article demands careful attention.
Philippe van Parijs, 11 April 2016, “Basic Income And Social Democracy,” Social Europe.
by Stanislas Jourdan | Apr 4, 2016 | News
In a recent interview with ‘The Economist’, Yanis Varoufakis says basic income is an ‘absolutely essential’ approach for the future of social democracy.
This is a major endorsement from a rising star of the European left. Varoufakis is a Greek economist who served as Finance Minister of Greece under the first Syriza government installed in January 2015. He recently launched ‘Democracy in Europe Movement 2025’ (DiEM25), with the aim of transforming the European Union from an elitist technocracy into a transparent and democratic institution that serves people’s interests.
In the interview, Varoufakis links the case for a basic income to the future of social democracy:
Today we are facing a serious danger of large masses of people who have low economic value. This is a powder keg in the foundations of society. Making sure that the great wealth-creation which capital is capable of does not light this dynamite — the basic income approach— is absolutely essential, but it is not part of the social democratic tradition. Think about it. The post-war consensus was all about national insurance, it was not about basic income. Now, either we are going to have a basic income that regulates this new society of ours, or we are going to have very substantial social conflicts that get far worse with xenophobia and refugees and migration and so forth.
Further on, he adds:
So what do we need to do to capture hope? That is the issue. In the 50s and 60s the dream of shared prosperity was that which gave hope. (…) So I think the basic income approach is capable of doing this as long as (…) you can explain to them where the money will come from, that it will not be simply debt, that we are going to generate a lot more income and a chunk of it is going to fund this. But we, the Left, must not be fearful.
Surfers should be fed
Varoufakis also mentions the famous controversy initiated by Philippe van Parijs and John Rawls about whether ‘surfers should be fed’. Varoufakis stands with van Parijs:
I gave a talk some time ago in the United States and said: yes, surfers in California must be fed by the rest of us. We may not like that, we may feel they are bums, but they deserve a basic income too.
OK, they don’t “deserve”, but they should have a basic income, because this is the way to stabilise society. But you need politicians that are capable of going out there and saying: You see that lazy bum over there that you hate? We should feed him. And we should make sure he has a house. Because if he does not have a house and he gets sick and so on, he is a greater burden for all of us.
It is the first time Varoufakis has explicitly endorsed basic income, but he has made allusions to it in in the past.
Back in 2010, he co-authored with Stuart Holland a report called ‘The Modest Proposal’ in which he elaborated four proposals to fix the structural crisis of the European monetary union. Under his 4th proposal, the Emergency Social Solidarity Programme (ESSP), Varoufakis developed the idea of implementing an EU-wide food stamp-style scheme as an emergency measure to reduce poverty, to unify Europe and to redistribute across all European states the trade surplus accumulated by countries like Germany. Such a scheme could even be financed by the European Central Bank:
CC picture: EU Council Eurozone
by Basic Income Earth Network | Apr 21, 2020
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by Furui Cheng | Apr 18, 2017 | Opinion
Furui Cheng
In the discourse of global basic income debates, China provides the most recent example of a social dividend-style basic income, similar to the Alaskan model. In discussions surrounding Nixon’s welfare reform in the 1970s, which was a quasi-basic income proposal, four different anti-poverty paradigms competed for influence. None of them can well explain today’s social dividend examples. We need a new paradigm in the current round of worldwide basic income debates.
China’s new facts
In November of last year I introduced the Huaidi case from China, in which villagers cooperated in urbanization and received high levels of welfare from their collectively owned land. This is not the only such case in China, however. The Chinese Famous Villages Influence Ranking was published in 2016, and 300 villages were selected from thousands in a joint effort by the Working Committee of Chinese Village Development Association, the Modern Village and Town Development Research Center of Tongji University, the Chinese Council of APCRD (the Chinese Association for Rural Community Development) and the Chinese Reputation Center (CPPC). The evaluation of the influence of Chinese villages in 2016 was mainly based on the comprehensive evaluation of the following factors: the village development index, people’s livelihood index, management index, charm index, green index and reputation index. In this way, the evaluation depends not only on per capita GDP or income, but also on living conditions, security conditions and interpersonal relationships, as well as the temperament of the villagers, including their mental state, sense of ownership and so on. This evaluation incorporates the well-being of the people and promotes the comprehensive development of further villages. The Zhejiang province has 37 villages in the ranking list, the most of all the provinces. Huaidi is one of the Hebei province’s 15 ranking villages, which ranks 77th of the total 300.
In addition to the regional welfare from land, China’s fiscal contribution by national state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has increased in recent years. In the past, Chinese SOEs only paid tax to the budget, but kept all their after tax profits. Since 2007, SOEs have increasingly paid part of their net profits to the national budget. This proportion will rise to 30% of total profits in 2020. There are four different categories of SOEs. The first type includes tobacco, petroleum and petrochemical, electricity production, telecommunications, coal and other resource monopoly industries and enterprises, which pay 20% of their net profits to the state. The second type includes steel, transportation, electronics, trade, construction and others in the competitive industries, paying a proportion of 15%. The third category includes the military and scientific research institutes, contributing 10%. The fourth category encompasses policy companies, including the Chinese Grain Reserves Corporation and the Chinese Cotton Reserves Corporation, which are exempt from turning over their net profits. Of interest, the proportion of the China National Tobacco Corporation’s net profits to be paid to the state has increased to 25%, singling the corporation out as a fifth category of its own. Part of the revenue from SOEs’ profits has been injected into the national social security system to benefit the majority.
Regardless of the origin of the social dividend – whether public land or SOEs – it is similar to Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) model.
A new paradigm?
What are the key elements in the current global discussions about basic income? Is it simply an anti-poverty strategy, just like any other kind of social assistance program in operation? Or is it a comprehensive overhaul of the welfare system, like the New Deal transformation was in the 1930s, which came to form the very basis of the current social security system? The most controversial elements of debates surrounding present public welfare systems and basic income proposals include work ethic, fiscal affordability, a culture of desert and civil rights, among other aspects. The latter has been reviewed in detail in recent history, especially since Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan (FAP) legislation. The main characteristic of FAP is that people can receive the benefit without work requirement, and independently of their family structure. This is very similar to today’s unconditional basic income definition, although FAP is not universal.
At the outset of the Nixon administration, proponents of four fundamentally different anti-poverty paradigms, each of which contained a different causal story, competed for influence. Three of these paradigms supported Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) plans. Proponents of an economic citizenship paradigm identified the economic system, especially structural unemployment and the wage structure, as the source of poverty. For proponents of this view, the objective of GAI policy was to alleviate poverty and provide citizens with basic income security.
The family stability paradigm identified the social system, especially changing family structures within poor, typically black communities, as the source of poverty. Proponents of this view hoped that GAI policies would decrease poverty by providing additional support for maintaining two-parent families, since rates of marital breakup appeared to be correlated with poverty rates.
The laissez-faire paradigm, which GAI supporters with a libertarian orientation invoked, identified the welfare system and its alleged perverse incentives against work as the root of the problem. Laissez-faire proponents felt that GAI plans would rationalize the welfare system by creating stronger incentives for labor market participation while also granting the poor greater freedom.
The main opposition to GAI proposals within the administration came from officials who saw the behavior of the poor themselves as the primary cause of poverty and believed that welfare reform should rehabilitate the poor by exposing them to the discipline of the labor market. This rehabilitation paradigm argued that limiting eligibility for social provisions and requiring recipients of government benefits to work would be the best path to eliminating poverty.
Is Alaska’s PFD or China’s current social policy context embedded in any of the above paradigms? I don’t think so. At least, that is to say, the four paradigms that undergirded this decade-long debate half a century ago are not sufficient to underpin a new round of worldwide debates on basic income. For example, many countries are considering levying a tax on various kinds of resources, including land, minerals, oil and gas, internet infrastructure, etc. (1). But if we want to justify these different kinds of taxes for financing basic income, the world need a new paradigm. As Philippe Van Parijs says: “It needs to recognize fully that the bulk of our real incomes is not the fruit of the efforts of today’s workers (let alone of the abstinence of today’s capitalists), but a gift from nature increasingly combined with capital accumulation, technological innovation and institutional improvements inherited from the past.”
Notes:
(1) Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (edited), “Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
More information at:
Furui Cheng, “Cooperative Society and Basic Income: A Case from China”, Basic Income News, November 10th 2016
Brian Steensland, “The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy”, Princeton University Press, September 2007
Philippe Van Parijs, “Basic Income and Social Democracy”, Social Europe, April 11th 2016
[in Chinese]
The editor, “The Chinese Famous Villages Influence Ranking”, The Orientation News, December 16th 2016
HEB101, “Famous Villages in Hebei Province”, Hebei News, December 14th 2016
About the author: Cheng Furui is undertaking a post-doctoral program in the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She got her PhD from Tsinghua University and her research interest is public policy. “Social Assistance and Poverty Alleviation Divergence: A Capability Approach” is her first published book based on her doctoral dissertation, which explores the Chinese social safety net in detail. She is now a voluntary news editor of BIEN, and also one of the organizers of China Social Dividend/Basic Income Network: bienchina.com.
Article reviewed by André Coelho and
