by Guest Contributor | Dec 22, 2015 | Opinion
By Tom Streithorst
The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is back in the news. The Finns are considering implementing it, as are the Swiss, replacing all means tested benefits with a simple grant to every citizen, giving everyone enough money to survive. Unlike most current benefits programs, it is not contingent on being worthy or deserving or even poor. Everybody gets it, you, me, Rupert Murdoch, the homeless man sleeping under a bridge. Last seriously proposed by Richard Nixon in 1969, more and more economists and bloggers are suggesting that the Basic Income Guarantee may ultimately be the salvation of capitalism. The BIG will eliminate poverty, lessen inequality, and vastly improve the lives of the most vulnerable among us. But that is not why we need it. It may seem impractical, even utopian, but I am convinced the BIG will be instituted within the next few decades because it solves modern capitalism’s most fundamental problem: lack of demand.
Technology and capitalism have largely solved the problem of supply. We are able to make more stuff, with fewer inputs of labor and capital, than ever before. We have the know-how, we have the resources, we have the trained labor, we have the money. The only thing businesses lack is customers. Making stuff has become easy. It is selling it that keeps entrepreneurs (and central bankers) awake at night. Stagnant wages tell us that the supply of labor exceeds demand. Microscopic interest rates tell us that we have more capital than we need. Since the Great Depression most economists have recognized that demand is the Achilles heel of the modern economy.
Over the past 80 years, we have solved the problem of demand in three very different ways. The first is war. In 1938, US unemployment was almost 20%. In 1944 it was barely 1%. Everybody knows World War II ended the Great Depression. But it is worth remembering that it wasn’t the slaughter of civilians or the destructions of cities that reinvigorated the global economy, but rather the massive fiscal stimulus of government borrowing. Had we borrowed and spent as much on building schools, homes and roads as we did on defeating the Axis powers, the economic effect would have been even greater. The advantage of military Keynesianism is political: conservatives who loathe government spending are able to overcome their distaste when it comes to war.
The second, during the post war Golden Age, was rising salaries. Between 1950 and 1970, the average American worker saw his real wages double: since then, they have barely gone up at all. Back then, productivity improvements translated almost immediately into wage gains. As workers’ wages went up, so did consumer spending. Productivity increases meant each worker was able to make more stuff. Wage increases meant he was able to afford to buy it. Advertising transformed luxuries into necessities. Productivity gains combined with wage hikes gave the Golden Age the greatest GDP growth the world has ever seen.
In our most recent era, from 1982 until the financial crisis, the engine of economic expansion was ever increasing levels of private debt. After Reagan and Thatcher, median wages stopped going up, even as productivity maintained its inexorable rise. With wages stagnant, only by taking on more debt were consumers able to keep spending enough to buy all they produced. As long as banks were happy to lend, the economy managed to grow (albeit much more slowly than during the Golden Age) and the party could go on. But after the financial crisis, both household willingness to incur more debt and bank willingness to lend contracted, leaving us with the stagnant economy we are trapped in today.
These three old methods of stimulating demand have passed their sell by dates. Global war would reinvigorate the economy, but at an unbearable cost. Rising wages, unfortunately, are unlikely, with more and more of us replaceable by robots, software or much cheaper foreign workers. And higher levels of debt not only increase inequality, they also engender financial instability. What is to be done?
Every year, technological progress allows us to make more goods and services with fewer inputs of labor and capital. As consumers, this is wonderful. We can buy better and cheaper goods than ever before. As workers, however, productivity increases threaten our jobs. As we need fewer workers to make the same amount of stuff, more of us become redundant. And it is likely to get worse. The rise of the robots may eliminate 47% of existing jobs within the next two decades. Unfortunately, even though a robot can make an iPhone, it cannot buy one. If we are hurtling towards a post scarcity future, only a Basic Income Guarantee can ensure sufficient demand to keep the global economy ticking over.
It is not just the poor that profit. The rich get exactly the same payment, in the form of a tax cut. Corporations also win. With more money in consumers’ pockets, sales increase, raising profits. And since firms no longer need provide a living wage, labor costs could go down, which would give employers reason to hire. Meanwhile, workers, with a guaranteed income, no matter what, will have the freedom to tell an unreasonable boss to “take this job and shove it.” These benefits suggest that a Basic Income Guarantee could command considerable support from diverse sectors. But these are all merely side benefits.
If technological progress continues to eliminate jobs, the BIG may well be the only way we will be able to maintain demand in a post-work future. By giving every citizen a monthly check, a BIG will be as fiscally stimulative as World War II without requiring the murder of millions. The BIG is economically sensible and politically practical. What then stands in its way?
The first problem is that it sounds too good to be true. We have been told to be suspicious of anyone promising a free lunch, and giving people money for doing nothing certainly seems like a costless gift. Fear of scarcity is built into our DNA. For the BIG to seem viable for most people, they need to learn that demand, not supply, is the bottleneck of growth. We need to recognize that money is something humans create, not something with fixed and limited supply. With Quantitative Easing, central banks created money and gave it to the financial sector, hoping it would stimulate lending. Today, even mainstream figures like Lord Adair Turner, Martin Wolf and even Ben Bernanke recognize that “helicopter drops” of money into individuals’ bank accounts could have been more effective. Technocrats are beginning to recognize the practicality of Basic Income. We in the economic blogosphere need to bring this message into the public eye. The rise of the robots, ever declining prices for goods and services, and disappearing jobs may ultimately teach this lesson more effectively than any number of well-meaning essays.
The second problem is sociological. Most of us are still in employment. We feel, in some fundamental way, that our work makes us more worthy than lazy layabouts on benefits. This simultaneously makes us disinclined to raise benefits for others (or increase the number of people on benefit) and equally disinclined to think of ourselves as the kind of people that receive money from the state. Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (the book he considered his masterpiece), said that we humans are motivated primarily by the regard of others. We want people to think well of us, and we want to think well of ourselves. The psychological pleasure of considering ourselves better than welfare recipients can trump genuine economic benefit. To overcome this objection, we need to recognize that defining ourselves by our jobs is very 20th century. If technological progress continues to kill traditional jobs, this objection too will eventually dissipate. As full-time jobs become harder to find, more of us will recognize the need for a BIG.
The third problem is perhaps the most central. By stimulating the economy and pushing it towards its production possibilities frontier, the Basic Income Guarantee will be growth enhancing, but it is undeniable that it will also be redistributive. The pie will be larger, but it will be sliced differently. For the past 30 years, we have stimulated the economy by shoveling money towards rich people. A BIG shovels money towards poor people. And for many in the top 1%, that is anathema.
Conservatives generally favor tax cuts as a way of stimulating the economy. Although they do not like to admit it, this is textbook Keynesianism. As long as the government does not cut spending, more money in consumers’ pockets will inevitably increase demand. Unfortunately, tax cuts generally favor the richest among us, and they, unlike the poor, are liable to save rather than spend their windfall. Stimulating savings is a waste of a tax cut. Today, we have an over-abundance of saving and a shortfall of investment and consumption. A BIG can be thought of as a tax cut targeted to those most likely to spend it, which is what the economy needs.
The Basic Income Guarantee solves the problem of demand, stimulates the economy, increases corporate profits, gives workers more freedom, and provides a safety net to the most vulnerable. It is economically sound and politically savvy. But the very rich do not fear unemployment, they fear redistribution and they will be the most significant force against the implementation of the BIG.
Related reading:
Frances Coppola, “The changing nature of work,” Coppola Comment, August 5, 2012.
Francesc Coppola, “The wastefulness of automation,” Pieria, July 8, 2013.
Tom Streithorst, “The central paradox of the 21st Century,” Pieria, June 25, 2014.
Anna Hedge, “Basic income and a room of one’s own,” Pieria, February 26, 2014.
Anthony Painter, “In support of a Universal Basic Income: introducing the RSA basic income model,” RSA, December 16, 2015.
Tom Streithorst has been a union member, an entrepreneur, a war 
cameraman, a promo producer, a journalist. These days, he mostly does voiceovers and thinks about economic history. An American in London, he has been writing for magazines on both sides of the pond since 2008. He is currently working on a book on post scarcity economics, and how the incredible productive power of capitalism and technology has the potential to bring us all prosperity and happiness but so far, we keep screwing it up.
This piece was originally published in Coppola Comment.
by Guest Contributor | Dec 17, 2015 | Opinion
By Jim Pugh
“I like the idea, but it’ll never happen.”
I hear this response a lot when talking to people about establishing a universal basic income in the United States. Once you get past the explanation of what a basic income is and how offering it could eliminate poverty, support entrepreneurship, and prepare us for a future where most jobs have been displaced by automation, people are generally quite supportive”Š-“Šbut they don’t believe that it could ever be implemented here.
And their skepticism is entirely reasonable. In today’s political climate, it’s hard to imagine how a program as radical as basic income could be enacted. When simply passing a budget to keep the federal government operational starts to seem like a big accomplishment, what chance do we have for major reform?
But in spite of the perceived impasse, there is a viable path to implementing universal basic income in the United States. Here’s how it can work.
Step 1: Spread Awareness
If you were to stop a random person on the street and ask them what they think about basic income, you’d most likely get a confused stare. While more people have become interested in the idea in recent years, basic income is still unknown to the population at large. What’s more, when you first tell people that the solution to some of our biggest economic challenges is just giving everyone money, a lot think the idea sounds crazy.
For that reason, the first step on the path to an American basic income is raising awareness and support across the country. For radical reform to become possible, there needs to be a solid majority of Americans behind the idea.
There isn’t any secret formula for accomplishing this”Š-“Šit’s up to those of us who support the idea to make it happen. We can talk to our friends and family and convince them of the importance of basic income. We can produce compelling media that explains the idea and why it will work. We can organize events to capture the attention of the press and general public.
In 1933, a man name Francis Townsend wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper, proposing a plan to provide money every month to the elderly across the United States. Within a year, millions of people had organized into grassroots groups around the country, distributing pamphlets to their community and advocating for passage of the Townsend Plan. And just one year after that, Franklin Roosevelt proposed and passed the Social Security Act, providing the first-ever federal assistance to American retirees.
More and more, people are starting to realize the system we have right now is no longer working. If we let them know there’s a better alternative out there, we can build a movement in support of universal basic income in the United States.
Step 2: Test It Out
Providing a full basic income to all Americans would be a huge leap forward. Before we can make that leap, we need to try it out in a more limited capacity.
The second step on the path to an American basic income is to enact smaller-scale prototypes of the program and see how they go. By observing actual implementations of basic income-like programs in the United States, we can gain insight into how a full program would work and allay the concerns of skeptics. And the cost could be considerably lower, making prototypes much more achievable in the short term.
There are a couple of different models for how basic income prototype programs could work:
Dividends from Shared Resources
One type of basic income prototype actually exists in the US already: the Alaska Permanent Fund. Since 1976, the state of Alaska has managed a fund which is financed by oil revenue in the state. The fund pays out dividends each year, split equally amongst all Alaska residents. Over the last 25 years, the dividend payment has varied between $800 and $3,200 per person.
While the amount awarded isn’t sufficient to be considered a true basic income, the Alaska Permanent Fund is an example of an unconditional, universal income. In his book With Liberty and Dividends for All, Peter Barnes argues that this program could pave the way for adoption of similar plans by other states and could be expanded to provide increased universal income down the road.
Credit: 3D Printing Industry.
In fact, an analogous program is currently being considered in Oregon. Under the Carbon Fee and Dividend plan, polluters in the state would need to pay for the carbon they emitted, and this money would then be distributed equally to all Oregon residents. While the Alaska Permanent Fund model only makes sense for states with large oil industries, Carbon Fee and Dividend could be expanded to every state in the country.
Randomized Trials
Another potential prototype model is to provide a full basic income, but only to a small number of people. Randomized trials could be set up and run, where certain families in a given region would receive a basic income, and the program impact could be assessed by comparing to non-participating families.
In fact, an experiment similar to this was previously run in the US in the 60s and 70s”Š-“Šin various locations across the country (New Jersey cities; rural Iowa and North Carolina; Gary, Indiana; and Seattle and Denver), randomly-selected families were provided with a “negative income tax,” which gave substantial direct monetary support to those with low incomes.
The study showed some initial promising results, with increased school attendance rates and only a modest reduction in labor rates. Randomized trials are now being set up abroad in Finland to evaluate the effect of a universal basic income there. If more experiments were conducted in the United States, it could provide a much clearer picture of the full impact of enacting basic income here.
Although labeled as the second step on the path, implementing prototypes could actually happen in parallel to raising awareness amongst the public. These efforts could even be complementary”Š-“Šthe success of prototype programs would increase visibility and support for basic income. And in turn, greater support would make additional prototypes easier to enact. We need some very concrete examples of how basic income can work, though, before we’ll be ready for final step.
Step 3: Wait for Lightning to Strike
Let’s say we’ve reached a point where most people know about and support basic income, and there are prototype programs showing it working. Even then, given the current level of dysfunction in Washington, DC, it would still be extremely difficult to enact a federal version. That’s why the third step to implement an American basic income is to wait for the right moment.
In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes how in times of crisis, people may be willing to accept big changes that normally would seem far too radical. While Klein’s focus is on the enactment of exploitative corporate policies, the same principle can apply to positive changes.
If automation continues to displace jobs as predicted in the coming years, there will be moments of extreme disruption to our economy. Grocery stores will lay off big parts of their workforce as cheap, automated stocking and checkout services become available. More automated restaurants like Eatsa will appear, which employ fewer service staff. Millions of jobs will be lost in the transportation industry to self-driving vehicles.
There are no doubts about it, the transportation industry, in particular, has already undergone some significant changes over the past few years. For example, thanks to developments in technology such as Titanwinds trucking dispatch software, it is now possible for fleet managers to plan routes in real-time to ship goods and control their fleets in the most efficient way. With this in mind, it is certainly intriguing to consider what else might be in store for the future of the trucking sector for instance.
As the magnitude of these disruptions becomes apparent, people will be knocked out of their normal routine and be willing to embrace a big change. At that moment, if we have public awareness and support, and if we’ve demonstrated the program’s effectiveness, people across the country can rally behind a clarion call to push past the gridlock in Washington”Š-“Šand we will have a real chance to enact an American basic income.
What’s Next?
The steps laid out above are not theoretical”Š-“Šmany of us are already working to achieve them.
Discussion groups and panels are being convened around the country in places like New York, Palo Alto, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. A new nonprofit organization, Basic Income Action, is pushing presidential candidates to engage on the issue.
People are crowdfunding their own basic income and using the money to support themselves as they write about the idea. An Oregon nonprofit is working to push for the enactment of Carbon Fee and Dividend there.
And on the weekend of November 13, the first-ever Basic Income Create-A-Thon was held in San 
Francisco, where writers, artists, videographers, developers, musicians, and others came together to create content and media around the theme of basic income. More Create-A-Thons are now being planned across the country.
An American basic income is possible”Š-“Šand it’s up to us to make it happen.
Jim Pugh is the CEO of ShareProgress, a politically-progressive tech company offering tools for social sharing. He is the former CTO for Rebuild the Dream, and Director of Analytics for @BarackObama. He holds a PhD in Robotics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
by Guest Contributor | Dec 11, 2015 | Opinion
By Otto Lehto
People have different ideas on what society should look like, but they can still agree that a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a good idea. The struggle for BIG should be the struggle for a specific policy measure, not for a utopian ideal. We are trying to make BIG a reality. That’s it. We are engaged in an ambitious project with limited boundaries. We are not trying to find a panacea for world hunger, domestic abuse or global warming. All we need is for a critical mass of people, and a few shrewd politicians, to do the right thing and vote for BIG.
In Finland, nearly 70% of the population supports basic income. For the first time ever, more than half of members of parliament do too. Historically, BIG has been advocated in Finland by the Green Party, the Left Alliance and the Center Party, joined recently by the Pirate Party. Advocates are found in all political parties and across all sectors of society. The Finnish National Union of University Students has officially endorsed a universal basic income, and so have many academics and think tanks. Post and neo-Keynesians are calling for it, as are leftist intellectuals. Even the banker Björn Wahlroos repeatedly endorsed BIG on newspapers and TV shows. He is one of the richest men in the country and a free market enthusiast.
We need a broad consensus if we want basic income to become reality. As recently reported in mainstream news across the world, a basic income experiment is about to be implemented, under the new center-right government headed by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä from the Center Party. The experiment is set to begin in 2017. Hopefully, this is just the prelude to a nation-wide implementation of a universal basic income.
There is nothing wrong in being utopian and in favor of radical solutions. But utopianism is not a necessary condition for engaging in the struggle for BIG. Sometimes it can be a hindrance. As basic income supporters, we may disagree on how high a basic income should be. We may have different views on whether to use the tax system, as in the case of a negative income tax, or social welfare instruments, as with most other forms of BIG. We may see basic income as a socialist principle or a free market mechanism. But we all acknowledge the need for a universal, unconditional and simple solution. We do not have to agree on anything else. We believe that BIG is important, because it does three things:
1) it eradicates absolute poverty;
2) it reduces bureaucracy;
3) it lays the foundation for a new, sustainable relationship between states and markets.
In order to achieve this, we need to build alliances between utopians and realists of different persuasions. At BIEN-Finland, our national branch, we are confronted every day with the various political leanings and aspirations of our members. Our diversity is something we celebrate, even if sometimes it causes friction and animosity. A one-sided approach to basic income would seriously hurt the prospects of BIG becoming a reality.
We should learn from popular struggles that have rallied mass support, such as the campaign for extending the right to vote to women in the late 19th and early 20th century. Universal suffrage was advocated by various classes and social groups. Driven by the same goal, farmers and workers marched together. Women were joined by their husbands. Newspapers representing different interests endorsed the idea. After some time, opposition to it was frowned upon. It was not the exclusive battle of Marxists, or trade unionists, or social liberals, or enlightened aristocrats. It was a struggle owned by the whole population. From a marginal idea, universal suffrage became common sense. The opposition did not disappear overnight. But it gradually lost steam, until it became a remnant of the past, deprived of any real power. BIG will succeed when it will achieve the same broad consensus. Our goal is to make opposition to BIG unfashionable and a little reprehensible.
The danger is not that the “wrong people” like the idea. Rather, the problem is that some people want to appropriate the name to implement different policies. If a proposed basic income is not high enough to cover basic human necessities, like food, shelter and clothing, then it cannot be called basic income. BIG should also not be confused with means-tested grants or workfare schemes. We need to be clear about this. In Finland, the government’s position oscillates between a real basic income and austerity or workfare policies, but public pressure and intellectual debate are creating a space for a BIG experiment.
A universal basic income should gain the support of Marxists, trade unionists, neoliberals, businessmen, teachers, farmers, feminists, tech nerds, American billionaires and Nigerian chicken farmers. The alliance must be broad and deep, and focus on common human needs. The emerging domain of populist politics, increased media attention and the growing intellectual debate around BIG, provide an unprecedented opportunity to further our cause.
Of course, we should not kid ourselves that humanity would finally overcome its differences under the guise of a BIG campaign, nor that left-wing and right-wing interpretations would lead to the same result. BIG organizations should be democratic forums for people from different backgrounds. Some of them are naturally inspired by a variety of utopian visions. Broad-based BIG has the potential to act as a true meeting ground for popular struggle, in which conflicting visions of the good society can strategically talk to each other and put forward a shared, simple solution. People should be able to set aside their differences – at least for a short while.
We may not like all our friends in the movement. Some of our allies are horrible people. (By the way, they probably think the same about you.) But we still have to live together in the same house. If people can, for the time being, agree on basic income, then we have already won. Bickering partisans can still keep on fighting over other issues. Trust me, there will always be something to fight about.
So bite your nails and be wise about strategy. Smile to your enemies. Shake hands with the most awful people. The smiling basic income activist is a silent, deadly assassin. If we want to think BIG, we need to act stealthily. We do not have the luxury to choose our political allies.
Otto Lehto is a philosopher and a political activist. He is the chairman of BIEN Finland.
by Guest Contributor | Oct 26, 2015 | Opinion
Image via Intermountain CFC.
by Karen Christine Patrick
We have refugees in my house this week, one is a dog we are dog-sitting for our friend who had a sudden death in the family. The other is an elderly neighbor who had three trees come down in his yard from a sudden storm as we get from time-to-time here in Texas. Friends and neighbors are likely to assist in the case of our elderly friend beyond putting him up for a few days. On a fixed income, he’s going to have a hard time with the bill for the electrician to repair his power box that was torn from the house. We are working on this issue, but this situation but this had me thinking about “charity” in terms of short term or how it’s seen as a crutch for the economy, the safety net when all others fail.
Where I live, we hear about “faith based charities” like it’s a panacea for the increasing austerity and appealing to the noble notion that giving is good (which it is) and communities ought to support the needy. Key word here is “ought”… in other words, it’s voluntary and so people may or may not respond, fair enough. Also, people cannot be guilted into giving what they don’t have. That’s not fair, although some of the most generous people I know give sacrificially, and that is admirable. But as we go now in the “recession” LONGER than the Great Depression, and people are burning every resource they have now just for the basics, depending on charity is not realistic for an economy that doesn’t allow for the accumulation of resources to be shared in the first place, generally.
Charities can help people, but they need to be helped first before they can do that. With the economy down, most of the charities are very limited like never before. I think that giving to others is a wonderful thing, but it is important to acknowledge that charity can’t make up for when an economic system is being mismanaged on the grand scale. Experiencing a move, I came from a community with much stronger charitable capacity than the one I am in now. I have seen that charitable capacity differs, community by community, according to the overall health of the local economy.
Charity is great, but it’s for setbacks. It does it’s best work providing for life’s unfortunate events, for the ability for the community to respond individually and collectively to what wasn’t able to be provided any other way. However, more and more it’s apparent that our system is broken at the top. Financial scandals and bank bailouts by the government means something is really, really wrong with the monetary system itself that needs corrected or the bailouts and “easing” won’t do a darn thing. The people will lose trust enough, hopefully before “a crash” as our grandfathers and grandmothers told us about.
Charity was not made to balance an imbalance in the social contract where we expect the wealthy to contribute, not continually hunt for loopholes and tax shelters. That doesn’t mean they don’t contribute at all, for there are many foundations and charitable organizations that court the wealthy to contribute. There is that tax benefit thing also further goading the wealthy to cough up the cash. Great. Awesome. More. However, by the numbers, we see a gross inequity where charity is just a cover up of a fundamentally unfair system of patronage, not unlike the feudal age. That is not just rhetoric on my part, we have a world where eighty individuals now have over half the wealth of the planet. That is mind boggling. And the laws, governments, economic advantages have the effect of an invisible funnel pumping money up the chain. The idea of a “trickle down” is a joke. The experiment is over and the results are in. What do we hear from our politicians? Austerity. Not just in Europe but American Austerity. Our leaders are whipping the donkey that knows it’s about to go over a fiscal cliff.
Yet Americans are very generous, to a fault. And the fault often is they get their heartstrings pulled to donate to charities who say they are taking care of people in need. However, people need to get some awareness about the world of the non-profits. Not all are managed well. I have done quite a bit of volunteer work and unfortunately have seen the dark side of charity. One important thing people should do is investigate the charities they give to. An important consideration is to see how much “pennies on the dollar” or by percentage, how much fundage goes to the client population, the people on the posters. One way to check is with the office of your state’s Attorney General department. They have information of how much is being donated and how much goes to the needy.
Fortunately, this is not the norm, but one horror story I can share illustrates where some can take advantage. I volunteered for an organization where the director was an alcoholic and regularly asked for donations of wine for fundraising events but always requested an overage and then CHARGED for glasses of wine at the event, thereby assuring that there was extra left over, that she took home for herself and gave to friends. Yikes! But it happens. The usual situation is that most charities are underfunded and overwhelmed. Mistakes and misunderstandings, stress and strain is common, burnout common and organizational strain complying to the ever-increasing demands of a state that would rather lean on charities instead of managing the economy properly and fairly.
The truth is, nobody really wants to be on the receiving end of charity if they can help it. It’s humiliating for most people. I’ve used those services myself, especially when I had kids, just to survive. Also, I have walked others through the process of getting help, from getting food stamps , applying for disability benefits, taking them to the food or clothing bank for the first time. It’s not a fun situation, in the case of the food banks, I have had to help people with special dietary needs and so they are limited in what is there to take home because instead of being able to choose what they need from a store, they have to pick through what was donated and hope for the best. Ditto those going to a clothing bank. Hope it fits! Doesn’t smell funny. I have to give kudos to the wonderful organizations that get this “right” and work really hard at it.
But here is the situation, minimum wage and part-time workers are the working poor. They are working, but they are not making enough to make it. They require support EVERY month and now many have done this for years, decades, generations. Month after month, if you go into a store in a moderate to poor neighborhood and right around the first of the month, you will see what are the cheap eats because those with food stamps will have emptied those sections and there will be rectangular holes on the store shelves where the bargains were cleaned out. This is not about how people are trying to survive, but how we have an economic system that has been systemically weak for a very long time.
There are whole levels of our economy, organizations, and corporations that benefit by there being a poverty class. For example, banks by being the issuers of food cards are getting a kickback on each transaction. Almost all states could make the choice to create their own banks for dealing with state benefit programs like North Dakota has and thereby save money for the state government, but do not. Organizations and individuals that BENEFIT from there being a poor class are not likely to want to change the situation. If we have an industry that benefits from poverty, how are we going to get rid of poverty? I would love it if every person who works for an organization or BANK or business that works for charities would work themselves out of their job because suddenly everybody is doing so well, unless it’s the kind of charity for emergencies and setbacks only.
One proposal for abolishing poverty is the Basic Income Guarantee, giving a cash grant to every citizen just like we do with Social Security benefits. Those who benefit from poverty would find themselves out of work. But hey, they still would have a Basic Income Guarantee to live on when they no longer are needed for that kind of work. If you are employed because of poverty, you would want to work yourself out of a job, right? Am I right?
If people still want to help, I think it’s wonderful that the B.I.G. is going to unleash a wave of volunteerism like never before. I believe in the philosophy that humans will “get up and do stuff” and freed from drudgery jobs by automation and robotics, supported financially to get the gas to get in the car to go to where one volunteers will mean more people will have the time and ability to volunteer. We will re-define charity in terms of hands-on help instead of dollars and cents.
For more from Karen Christine Patrick, visit her blog.
by Guest Contributor | May 14, 2015 | Opinion
April 28, 2015
A Basic Income Women Action Group
Statement Prepared by
Liane Gale, Ann Withorn and Kristine Osbakken
Inspired by conversations and presentations at the 2015 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress in NYC
- The broad goal of the group is to connect women within the Basic Income movement, and also to connect with women of other economic/social/environmental justice activist groups, where people are mindful of the dignity of all people and the planet. We are committed to exposing the problems within current economic, political and social systems, to questioning these systems from a women’s point of view and to arguing for Basic Income as a vital avenue towards systemic change. Group members are also committed to contributing to a healthy community, connecting and interacting with each other based on solidarity and compassion.
- Support for a Women Action Group within the Basic Income movement draws from both historical and contemporary sources. Martin Luther King wrote in 1967: “I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most revolutionary. The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed annual income”. The history of the U.S. Welfare Rights movement also reminds us that poor women and their allies recognized a “Guaranteed Adequate Income” as their welfare plan, particularly to eliminate sexism from welfare, with National Welfare Rights Organization leader Johnnie Tillmon affirming in 1972 “the right to a living wage for women’s work, [is] the right to life itself”. And today, activist men from across the world have joined the call. Here is globalist Nafeez Ahmed: “If we want to save the planet, patriarchy must die. That means recognizing and taking responsibility for the fact that patriarchy is integral to the structures of power we take for granted, across East and West. There’s no time to waste. If misogyny wins, the planet dies.”
- Action Items. We propose several general avenues for how a Women Action Group can come together as part of the full Basic Income movement. We seek further discussions and refinement regarding these proposals from all sections of the movement.
The Basic Income Women Action Group will:
- Connect with women already active in the Basic Income movement, both nationally and internationally, for the sake of building stronger networks and solidarity;
- Promote the staging of forums in venues that will examine Basic Income through a gender lens — and introduce this perspective within all public discussions of Basic Income;
- Serve as a nexus for informing people about the existing literature and activist resources on Basic Income and women;
- Support the writing of open letters asking international, national, state and local organizations and movements to discuss and endorse Basic Income, especially in regard to its immense potential to positively affect all women and their families;
- Support initiatives that promote gender parity within Basic Income organizations such as NABIG and BIEN, especially in regard to events that are the “public face” of our movement.
- Support pro-Basic Income policy campaigns. When possible, we would also like to offer coordinated support for women candidates and those leaders, who are working toward a Basic Income at any political level.
We seek suggestions and reactions from all, but also specifically encourage comments and ideas from those who are already connected with the Basic Income movement.
Feel free to join or to contact any of us in the Basic Income Women Action Group:
Liane Gale, liane.gale@gmail.com (Roseville, MN));
Ann Withorn, withorn.ann@gmail.com (Boston, MA);
Kristine Osbakken, krissosbakken@gmail.com (Duluth, MN).
