Andrew Murphy Davis is a young producer of documentaries and network news, who has started The Millennial Project. This project has been developing since 2015 and aims at “activating a unique millennial voice in American politics”.
Andrew, as the main driver behind The Millennial Project, has recently taken an interest on basic income, and released a video about it. This video was accompanied by an article, which defends that the main reason universal basic income (UBI) is nowadays widely discussed and has spurred interest from several public figures, politicians and the wider public all around the world, is related to artificial intelligence. Although this view has been contested, for instance by prominent researchers and basic income activists like Guy Standing, it is a fact that basic income is now ever more present in today’s globalized social debate.
In this short four-minute video, basic income is presented in general terms and contextualized within a reality of growing automation and advances in technologies that “are threatening to put millions of Americans out of work”. This reality has brought fears to many policy makers, predicting skyrocketing unemployment figures, igniting interest for this “once defunct idea of guaranteeing everyone a modest cash income as a basic right”.
Steven Shafarman has just published a new book titled “Basic Income Imperative”. The sub-title points to some of the expected results of basic income implementation, according to him: peace, justice, liberty and personal dignity. Shafarman, author of three other books (Awareness Heals, Healing Politics and We The People), defends the basic income concept in this new book, in an approach centered on the individual. “What do you want for your kids and grandkids?”, “What will you do with a basic income?”, Can you see how this might lead to rapid progress on the issues you care about, like hunger, homelessness, health care, education, democracy, social justice, climate change or peace?” are some questions the book poses, and hints at possible answers, looking further into the future.
In Basic Income Imperative, after a presentation of the basic income concept, precedents are also described, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. It goes on with explaining how it could be implemented, and what it could represent as a changing factor to political landscapes. According to Shafarman, a life member of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), basic income may be a key policy to achieve “meaningful progress on health care, tax reform, global warming, immigration, national security, and other issues”.
Although an experiment on basic income is being performed in Finland at the moment (being expected to end by January 2019), this does not say much about what Finns think about it, or about basic income in general. According to recent research developed by Ville-Veikko Pulkka, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, not only does survey methodology deeply affect people’s responses, but current beliefs and views of society by Finnish citizens are also such that “there is no need for a paradigm shift”.
Ville-Veikko and his colleague Professor Heikki Hiilamo ran another survey in late 2017, arguing that other surveys on basic income in Finland such as Center party’s think tank e2 in 2015, Finnish Social Insurance Institution (Kela) in 2015, and Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA in 2017 skewed results due to different ways of defining and framing basic income, with support ranging from 39 up to 79%. These researchers view their survey as “a more realistic view on basic income’s support in Finland”, having it based on the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) definition. They also explicitly referred the basic income net level of 560 €/month, which is around as much as many basic social benefits in Finland.
Ville-Veikko and Professor Hiilamo have found that the partial basic income of 560 €/month currently being tested in Finland is actually the most supported one among several basic income options (partial(1) with more or less than 560 €/month, full(1) with 1000 or 1500 €/month), with 51% of respondents saying it is a “good idea” (20% being undecided and 21% firmly considering it a bad idea). Significantly, of the surveyed income schemes, the most supported one was “participation income” (78% of supporters) which is not a basic income by definition.
This survey also showed that the younger the respondents (around 1000 in total), the more support the basic income proposal (the one cited above) receives – 72% under 24 years of age, down to 42% for people over 65. Occupation also seems to have a strong influence, with students showing 69% of support for basic income and entrepreneurs only 38%. For relatively obvious reasons, the unemployed and part-time employed were also more in support of the idea (68 and 61% respectively).
The new survey by Ville-Veikko and Professor Hiilamo comes at a time when it becomes clear that the Finnish government’s path is not to break from “the activation policies implemented since the 1990s”. This has been shown through the recent implementation of a tighter work activation model, aimed at the unemployed, which brings more conditionality and sanctions into the system. This is, apparently, contrary to the basic income spirit of unconditionality and, on top of that, the government is already considering tightening up unemployment benefits even further.
From the referred survey and recent Finnish government moves toward activation policies, it seems clear that running an experiment on basic income does not equate to leading the way towards the implementation of this policy. According to Ville-Veikko, basic income in Finland is likely to receive more support if only unemployment and work precarity rises significantly in the near future, which is uncertain even given the latest studies on the subject. It also becomes clear that the public remains polarized regarding social policies for the future: on the one hand there is moderate support for basic income, and on the other hand there is clear support for activation measures such as the “participation income”.
Notes:
1 – here, “partial” refers to receiving the stipend and maintaining eligibility for housing allowance and earnings-related benefits, and “full” refers to losing eligibility to those same benefits.
Ricardo Anaya, potential candidate for Mexico’s next presidential elections in July 2018, presents an unconditional basic income as his main proposal in matters of social policy. An overview of this proposal, as spoken by Anaya, can be watched in this short video. Here, in general terms, he presents the basic income proposal, describing what are the ten main advantages of its implementation, in his view. Financing it would essentially come from reorganizing public spending and deeply changing social policy programs within the government.
This initiative comes from a joint ticket between the centre-right Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party – PAN) and centre-left Partido de la Revolución Democratica (Party of the Democratic Revolution – PRD), plus leftist Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens Movement – MC), which calls itself Por Mexico al Frente (Put Mexico Ahead, former Frente Ciudadano (Citizen’s Front)). This coalition aims at “winning the Presidency, building a stable majority government and establish the first coalition government in Mexico’s history”, as ex PAN national leader Anaya Cortés has declared.
The basic income proposal under consideration within the bounds of this coalition aims at a 10 000 Pesos (US$537) per year for every Mexican citizen, including children. Jorge Alvarez, a Mexican congressman involved in the plan has said in an interview that financing this could be done by consolidating funds from federal, state and municipal welfare programs. He also added that this basic income for children could be made conditional on school enrolment. That latter comment, of course, deviates from what would be an unconditional basic income, but such condition has been introduced in other proto-basic income-like programs, such as the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. It could then be referred to as an alternative to basic income for children.
Independently, senator Luís Sánchez Jiménez from PRD has requested the Mexican Senate to look into the cost of various minimum income schemes, including universal ones, through its research department. This report will soon be available, authored by John Scott, a professor/researcher in the Department of Economics at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económic (CIDE) in Mexico.
The book discusses the basic income policy from many different perspectives, whether greater financial freedom for women, value unpaid work, reduced poverty or an enhancer of freedom for all. Critical views are also present, confronting the idea as utopian when other policies may be more effective and practical at the moment.
