by Andre Coelho | Mar 1, 2019 | News
Prem Das Rai (Wikipedia)
The Morung Express newspaper has interviewed the sole Sikkim MP at Lok Sabha (central parliament in India), Prem Das Rai. On the 17th of February, excerpts of that interview were posted, where Rai clearly states that introducing a universal basic income (UBI) in the state “is a leap of faith”. To him, it is a trust issue, when critics point out that a UBI kind of policy may turn people lazy. In reply, he says that “lazy people will be lazy people whether they get money or not”.
Rai does not conceive UBI as a grant, or a subsidy, but an income. That means that the purpose is not to have UBI seen as a hand-out, but a human right. “UBI is for every citizen of Sikkim, all Sikkimese people”. This contrasts with the recent announcements of both national opposition party Congress and government Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which Rai considers to be targeted schemes (Congress aims at the “poor” and the BJP at “poor farmers”) and in reaction to the agrarian crisis ravaging the country.
According to Rai, Sikkim state is not proposing basic income as a reaction to some urgent crisis, but as a way to look “ahead and changing the mindset of the youth”. Over that new mindset, and knowing they will have a guaranteed influx of money every month, regardless of their personal situation, people will naturally behave differently and tend to make better choices in life. That is Rai’s belief, anyway.
As for funding, and instead of speaking about taxes, Rai responds that Sikkim state is rich in resources, such as “hydropower, tourism, organic farming and pharmaceutical companies”, as well as “educational facilities”, and so will find the funds to cover for basic income, from within these several sources. The specific form this funding will be performed, however, is still unclear.
On Raul Ghandi’s Congress party promise to implement a kind of basic income all across India (conceived as a negative income tax), if it gets elected in May, Rai responds that Sikkim is the example to follow, devaluing Ghandi’s initiave. Rai sees basic income in India more as a growing number of regional initiatives, rather than a central idea, implemented nationally.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Sikkim state is on the verge of becoming the first place on Earth implementing a basic income”, Basic Income News, January 11th 2019
“Universal basic income proposal a leap of faith: Sikkim MP”, Morung Express, February 17th 2019
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 26, 2019 | News
Elizabeth Warren. Picture credit to: Vox
Childcare in America is amongst the highest in the world. For typical middle-class families (two working parents with two children), it sits at just about 30% of the family’s earnings, according to an OECD study which places it as the 5th more expensive in the world. For low-income single parents the result is even more severe, with childcare cost representing about 32% of the earnings, and pushing the USA to the second most expensive country in the world (only supplanted by Ireland). That seems to be related with the lack of state support for childcare (as opposed to that of the UK, for instance, where this last population bracket may get refunded for up to 85% of their childcare costs), joined with staggering rises in prices for these services, which have risen 1000 % in 30 years.
Despite this grim scenario for working parents, especially those on low incomes in the USA, childcare has not often been on the political agenda. Republican dominated governments have always been contrary to large federal spending programs, and Democrats initiatives along the years (e.g.: Obama, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton) have gotten little attention, both from media and voters. However, the issue is regaining traction among Democratic leaders, and Elizabeth Warren’s initiative to go for universal child care (UCC), as part of her presidential candidacy agenda for 2020, is getting some media attention.
The policy is set to guarantee that no family gets to spend more than 7% (official Department of Health and Human Services figure for what is considered “affordable”) of their income on childcare. If implemented, the policy will also exempt families earning less than twice the poverty line from paying any related childcare cost. Of course, this represents a large increase in governmental spending, estimated in 700 billion $ in 10 years, and Warren proposes to tax it from the super-rich. This new tax represents a 2% levy on fortunes worth at least 50 million $, and a 3% on those surpassing 1 billion $. According to economic consultants (Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, former Thomas Piketty collaborators) working with Warren, this new tax could generate 2,75 trillion $ in the same 10-year period.
The universality of the proposed policy is an important feature of it, even though it is tied to childcare alone. On the other hand, and unlike a basic income type of policy, it is given as a subsidy for children care centres, as a cap on costs at 7% would be installed for parents. So, all parents (and their children) would potentially benefit from it, depending on the percentage that their childcare costs represent on their total income. In other words, Warren’s idea is not to boost citizen’s earnings, and create a secure financial floor under which they cannot go – as a basic income would do – but to universally reduce childcare costs for all families, capping those costs as a percentage of their earnings.
More information at:
Reality Check Team, “Childcare: Do UK parents pay the most in the world?”, BBC News, February 13th 2018
Sarah Kliff, “Elizabeth Warren’s universal child care plan, explained”, Vox, February 22nd 2019
Matthew Yglesias, “Elizabeth Warren’s proposed tax on enormous fortunes, explained”, Vox, February 24th, 2019
Mark Zandi and Sophia Koropeckyj, “Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act: Helping Families and the Economy”, Moody’s Analytics, February 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 22, 2019 | News
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Picture credit to: The Cut.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) tabled a Resolution on the United States House of Representatives (H.RES.109) which hinted, in a first version, that “the Green New Deal would take care of people who are “unwilling to work””. That last bit of the sentence started a political hurricane in the United States. In that country, work is seen as tightly linked to jobs, and jobs are conceived as essential to value, and so “unwilling to work” is simply understood as “lazy”. Period. So, taking care of the lazy just sounds nonsensical to most Americans.
Because most people and politicians in the United States equate “unwilling” with “lazy”, it’s very difficult to pass on the message that “unwilling” might actually mean unwilling to perform a certain job/task that can be revolting, disgusting, unfair, tedious, repetitive and/or badly paid. Rigid work ethics and years of living in an economic crisis has also helped to lower people’s expectations, and be more open to exploitation. What is at dispute, at bottom, is the nature of work.
On the aftermath of those three words having been read on an official document, AOC was showered by a rain of criticism, particularly from Republicans, while being left isolated by colleague Democrats. Everybody fled, including AOC and her assessors. In an attempt to clear the record, AOC team tried to link it to the GOP, then alleged the release was a draft version. On the “final” version of the 109’th Resolution, cited above, indeed no reference is made to “unwilling to work”, or “unwilling” anywhere. Also, the reference to “basic income programs”, which was a part of a draft text for the Green New Deal that had already hit the news (for more positive reasons) was eliminated. So now, the creation of a Green New Deal, as proposed by AOC and some of her team and fellow Democrats, is completely devoid of references to basic income and unconditionality, while referring only to “universal access to clean water” and “universal access to healthy food”. And, on the H) paragraph of the 4th chapter, one can read the more fundamental and still core Democrats value as far as work is concerned: “guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States”. What remains to be seen is how AOC and other supportive Democrats envision achieving these universal rights – e.g.: access to clean water, healthy food and a decent income – without actually implementing a basic income in the country.
Basic income supporters / activists say, however, that the unwillingness to work is one of the reasons basic income should exist. American philosophy professor and author Karl Widerquist says it eloquently: “This idea that somehow people who are unwilling to work are bad or lazy is a horrible idea. Because whenever there’s a job offer and somebody doesn’t want it, what you have is a dispute about wages and working conditions”. Andrew Yang, the American presidential candidate who is running his campaign on the basic income concept, said that, in fact, the language (“unwilling to work”) “is unfortunate. It does make it easier to try and portrait [UBI] as extreme”. Widerquist added that “It’s really horrific to use the threat of poverty and homelessness as a work incentive”, qualifying that as “monstrous”. However, it seems, the monstrosity hasn’t been enough to break the bond most Americans hold dear, between wealth and work.
Senator Chris Murphy, on this issue, has stated that, although he thinks basic income is not sellable to the American public right now, the discussion about it should start today, because, to him, it will become a necessity in “decades” from now. In other countries, though, far away from the US geographically, economically and culturally, such as India, not only that debate has been going on for decades, but recent developments indicate that implementation of a basic income type of policy is on the verge of becoming a reality.
More information at:
André Coelho, “United States: Democrats add basic income to a climate change addressing plan”, Basic Income News, December 9th 2018
Paul McLeod, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Got Dragged For Suggesting People Who Are “Unwilling To Work” Should Get Paid. Advocates Say That’s The Point”, BuzzFeed News, February 15th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 20, 2019 | News
What we are going through now is not a disaster, it’s a process. Last time, it took over a century of mass misery and, occasionally mass bloodshed to get through it (…) We should try to do it a lot better and quicker this time.
By Lynette Geddes
International affairs commentator Gwynne Dyer latest book, “Growing Pains: The future of democracy (and work)”, is a balanced and compelling look at the current rise of populism and how a Universal Basic Income (UBI) could be “a tool that might cool the anger (…)”.
The first chapter, titled “A giant orange canary”, claims the election of Donald Trump might actually be good for history as he is the canary in the coal mine of the growing unrest in the developed world. Dyer argues that, contrary to political rhetoric, it is not the immigration of cheap labour, or the out-migration of factories to other countries or free trade that are at the root of the problem. It is automation and the concomitant stagnation of middle-class incomes. The author states that “out of 7 million manufacturing jobs lost in the United States in the past forty years, at least 5 million were lost to automation.”
Dyer briefly outlines the calamities of the twentieth century – economic depression and wars – and draws parallels to our current geo-political conditions. However, he believes it to be widely accepted that the social safety nets that were implemented during that time in all western countries – though to varying degrees – have almost certainly mitigated the conditions that might now lead to similar extremes. But more must be done if we don’t want to slip back into the destruction of the past century.
Dyer argues that humans, unlike our simian ancestors/cousins, are fundamentally egalitarian and that solutions lie in understanding this. Though acknowledging that “non-violent revolution” sounds like a contradiction in terms, history shows us that “people can and will act together spontaneously to resist domination”. He quotes Harold Schneider, economic anthropologist, “All men seek to rule, but if they cannot rule, they prefer to remain equal.”
Throughout the book, two premises arise repeatedly: that income inequality brought about by automation is the problem and that some form of a UBI is a solution. He concedes that the concept of UBI is not new but it is an idea which is compelling, plausible, and gaining traction. It is also one that appears to span the political spectrum. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a well-known International Institution for Public-Private Cooperation that brings business and political leaders together annually. In January 2017, several of the invited speakers addressed the concept of UBI.
Arguments against UBI, Dyer writes, include the notion that people’s self-respect comes from their job, or that countries can’t afford it, or that giving people “free money” will lead to laziness. He neatly disputes those ideas with facts but also a little facetiously. “As Harvard economist, John Kenneth Galbraith once put it, ‘Leisure is very good for the rich, quite good for Harvard professors – and very bad for the poor. The wealthier you are, the more you are thought to be entitled to leisure. For anyone on welfare, leisure is a bad thing.’”
Dyer closes the book with his opinion that, with climate change physically threatening existence as we know it, there isn’t time to waste on these political issues. “What we need now is a quick fix that reduces inequality to a tolerable level and re-stabilises our democracies, (…) ensuring that everybody has a decent income despite the unstoppable advance of automation, and doing it in a way that does not humiliate those who no longer have jobs.”
Edited by André Coelho
by Andre Coelho | Feb 19, 2019 | News
Children playing in Sikkim, India. Picture credit to: India Today
Anil Sasi’s article starts from the Sikkim announcement to implement a basic income in the state, up until 2022. After describing the basic income concept in broad strokes, explains the Indian tapestry of conditional social benefits, in cash and in kind, which is riddled with inefficiency and corruption. It refers that, so as to finance a basic income, the structure of existing benefit programs would have to be completely changed, “in order to free up resources so that a particular amount can be directed to people on a periodic basis”. From there, Sasi goes on to describe a few of the most relevant basic income-like pilot programs and experiments, using that to contextualize the Sikkim situation.
As in many other regions in the world, the planning for a basic income implementation involves slashing on existing conditional programs, some of which might be rendered obsolete on their own terms (emptied out of beneficiaries, due to mean-testing). Sasi points out, though, that this cutting on governmental subsidy programs might be dangerous, even counterproductive, citing economist Bhalchandra Mungekar, a former member of Rajya Sabha and the Planning Commission. Interestingly enough, however, Mungekar was one of the Congress party leaders to promptly backup Rahul Ghandi’s announcement of a national basic income implementation in India, were the party elected in the next general elections in May.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Sikkim state is on the verge of becoming the first place on Earth implementing a basic income”, Basic Income News, January 11th 2019
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Anil Sasi, “Universal Basic Income: The ‘money for nothing’ idea”, The Indian Express, January 11th 2019
