by BIEN | Jul 15, 2017 | News
Credit to: AT Kearney.
Courtney McCaffrey and others from AT Kearney published an article on the debate around Universal Basic Income (UBI) in markets throughout the world. Politicians, in both Europe and North America, are winning on campaign trails with talk about returning control to the common people from the economic system in the globe.
But one of the big worker displacers is automation and new technologies. Oxford University reported 47% of US jobs will be taken over by automation in the next two decades. A UBI is being offered as an economic buffer for such workplace and technology transitions.
Such a UBI would be universal and unconditional in the application. Past UBI experiments such as Mincome in Canada, projects in Seattle and Denver (USA), and Namibia produced real, positive results empowering those politicians. McCaffrey and her collegues also mention recent major endorsements for UBI, for instance from such luminaries as Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, and Marc Andreessen.
Two books are recommended: 1) Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, and 2) Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght. Other notable cases reported on were Finland, India, and Ontario.
The article discusses pros and cons of UBI, in a general sense. It was noted that citizens with a UBI will spend more time on family and school. The sources of funding for the UBI could be revenues from natural resources and/or more taxes. Some views of critics are following their own political lines, but the major concern revolves around people’s availability to work when they get a UBI covering their basic needs.
Finally, the article summarizes views agains UBI on the political Right and Left. On the Right, the main argument is cost. On the political Left, detractors view UBI as “regressive” because it could dismantle current welfare systems, and that it may not capture different living costs in different areas.
More information at:
McCaffrey, C.R., Toland, T. & Peterson, E.R., “The Best Things in Life Are Free?“, AT Kearney, March 2017
by BIEN | Jul 1, 2017 | News
Hamilton, Canada. Credit to: CBC.
As reported before, the majority of the Ontario’s citizens support a basic income, but they want a pilot project. However, most think $17,000 (CAD) is insufficient to meet the basic needs of most citizens.
There was a poll by Campaign Research done on 1,969 people with 53% of people supporting the plan for a basic income. Young people, aged 18 to 24, were the most supportive age group at 59%.
Lars Osberg, professor of economics at Dalhousie University, said the poll was possibly inaccurate with, for example, the Atlantic Canada (63% support for the plan) sample at only 198 people. Liberals (62%) and NDP (63%) were the most supportive.
The pilot project has 4,000 people from three areas: Hamilton, Lindsay, and Thunder Bay. It emphasizes citizens with low incomes. Couples will get $24,027; singles will receive $16,989.
The first experiment will run one year without conditions. The reason for the experiment is to see if the basic income provisions will improve life quality and job prospects.
Osberg noted that the youth are the unemployed or the underemployed, generally, and that the basic income does not disincentivize work. Osberg thinks the basic income would not disincentive work, as some fear.
More information at:
Jack Hauen, “Majority support Ontario’s basic income plan, but many find $17,000 not enough: poll”, Financial Times, May 17th 2017
Eli Yufest, “Majority approves of Ontario’s basic income plan, many find $17,000 per year too little an amount“, Campaign Research, May 16th 2017
by BIEN | Mar 25, 2017 | News
From March 4 to May 7, 2017, a novel program will begin under the auspices of ‘Beyond Growth’ (“Oltre La Crescita”), which is a school of training open to all circa 2011, entitled ‘Need to work or work without? Automation, future of work, the basic income.’ Beyond Growth is an event intended to be a debate and a reflection.
There will be examination of a variety of issues, including the “relationship between automation and work, the effects of neoliberal policies and wage labor, and rethinking the current paradigm,” among other topics. Program here.
These topics will be debated and reflected upon in their cultural, economic, ethical, social, and technological dimensions. The ‘Beyond Growth’ conference will include four events for broad-based debate, followed by a concluding event offering results and a final discussion.
Further details can be found here and here (in Italian).
Image credit to Basic Income Network Italia
by BIEN | Mar 9, 2017 | News
The issue of the basic income, its pros and cons and the feasibility of its implementation have occupied space in media outlets in recent years, mainly due to the visibility it gained after the referendum in Switzerland and the experiment started this year by the Finnish government. However, this discussion has not reached all corners of the planet. Or at least not until recently.
On February 1st of this year, the Argentine conservative-leaning newspaper La Nación published an opinion piece entitled “An universal income that compensates for poverty and unemployment”. The author of the article, Eduardo Levy Yeyati, is an economist, writer, and civil engineer, with a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Yeyati introduces the concept of universal income and describes the historical dimensions of this idea, as its discussion has spanned the centuries, from Thomas More, to Martin Luther King, to its contemporary promoters such as the British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the French presidential candidate Benoît Hamon.
However, the text mainly discusses three fundamental complications surrounding the idea of basic income. First, despite having multiple detractors and defenders, the basic income is still an idea in search of a design. According to Yeyati, there is a rather classic proposal such as an unconditional basic income (the model advocated by the most ardent supporters of the initiative), a conservative proposal that would be represented by the negative income tax defended by Milton Friedman and a compromise third-way between these more extreme positions that seeks to guarantee a basic salary floor for those who already receive some type of income.
Second, the author identifies two moral dilemmas that must be addressed and answered by any definition and operationalization of the basic income. First, should it be paid only to those who have a registered job, in the style of an addendum and prize to effort, or should it be paid to everybody, even to those who have no intention of working? Second, should the person who has a lower income receive more money, should everybody receive the same amount or should the person who works the most receive more? For many advocates of this initiative, a basic income basically implies answering these dilemmas in the most “generous” way: it should be paid to everybody and everyone should receive the same. In this sense, it seems that Yeyati uses the term more broadly than a lot of speakers in other countries, not compromising to any of the possibilities.
Finally, the author ventures one last idea in which he discusses the feasibility of thinking and discussing the implementation of a basic income in Argentina today. And despite some pessimism on his behalf and considering that it would take several years of political maturation to reach the appropriate level of discussion, Yeyati does believe that it is possible to move towards the realization of a basic income today through the design and implementation of a Finnish-style pilot in Argentina. Basically, the author argues that this would not be very costly, that the twin challenges of poverty and unemployment will dominate the development agenda in the coming years and that, in order to move forward, this debate needs information that we do not currently have. In this sense, despite the fact that this issue it not yet in the agenda in the Latin American and Argentine context, at least there are people who are encouraged to discuss its implications and there are media outlets, however conservative they may be, willing to publish them.
Featured Image CC Mike Ramsey (via flickr, Scott Santens)
by BIEN | Mar 6, 2017 | News
Sarah Gardner, a reporter for Marketplace, published three articles in December 2016 on the topic of universal basic income (UBI): How to support yourself after the robot revolution, Finland to test a basic income for the unemployed, and On the Canadian prairie, a basic income experiment.
In How to support yourself after the robot revolution, Gardner describes the prediction of Lawrence Summers, Former Undersecretary of International Affairs, that by the middle of the 21st century, one third of men between the ages of 25 and 54 will be out of work. The reason is automation.
Sam Altman, Gardner says, also sees automation, including software automation, as a factor for future unemployment. Altman and others are raising millions of dollars for a basic income experiment in Oakland, California.
In Finland to test a basic income for the unemployed, Gardner talks about the “buzz” around UBI in Silicon Valley, the Netherlands, and Finland. Finland, specifically, is facing a hard time with high youth unemployment. — general unemployment is at 8%, while young adults have a 20% unemployment rate. Olli Kangas, the director of government and community relations for KELA (the government agency responsible for public benefits), said, “In the present system they are a little bit afraid of accepting job offers, say, for two months or three months, because they think that, okay, how much would I benefit, in terms of money?”
In On the Canadian prairie, a basic income experiment, Gardner notes, as in the other articles, that automation and temp work are modern issues. Previously, however, there were the Mincome experiments in Manitoba, which trialled a payment similar to UBI.
While these trials were conducted in several parts of Manitoba, “the most interesting pilot was in Dauphin, a small farming town more than three hours northwest of Winnipeg,” Gardner says. Dauphin was a tight-knit Ukrainian community, and the Canadian government gave money, through the program, to ensure families “would never fall below a basic amount.”
Read the full articles here:
Sarah Gardner, “How to support yourself after the robot revolution“, Marketplace, December 7, 2016.
Sarah Gardner, “Finland to test a basic income for the unemployed“, Marketplace, December 13, 2016.
Sarah Gardner, “On the Canadian prairie, a basic income experiment“, Marketplace, December 20, 2016.
