LEUVEN, BELGIUM: Basic Income Stream at ESPAnet Conference, 2-4 September 2020

by | Feb 5, 2020 | News, Research

Basic Income will be a major stream at the ESPAnet conference in Leuven, Belgium, 2-4 September 2020

“Basic income across Europe: Exploring variation in proposals, policy windows, and trajectories”

Stream convenors: Jurgen De Wispelaere, Tim Vlandas and Hanna Schwander

The basic income proposal has generated exponential policy (and public) interest in a short time span. In many countries a majority of the population expresses support for a basic income, several recent prominent experiments have been launched, and a basic income has been mentioned in several recent elections and was the subject of a referendum in Switzerland.

This stream has two objectives. First, to examine what might explain the current policy interest. In addition to better understanding how to interpret the current momentum — a genuine policy window or a passing fad? — we are seeking contributions that theorise and empirically explore this resurgence. We are especially interested in possible answers to the puzzle of why basic income features prominently in policy debates yet still appears to resists policy implementation. A second objective is to explore where to go next, both academically and politically for supporters of a basic income. What are the wider theoretical implications of this mixed and varying support for the politics and economics of social policy in advanced economies? What are the leading avenues to maintain policy interest in basic income? What are the main political and policy challenges to overcome? What are the most feasible pathways or trajectories to move towards some form of basic income? What pre-existing policies or institutions serve as stepping stones that might promote basic income policy implementation under current conditions?

Answers to these questions have to account for the specific political and policy context that is present in different European countries, which in part accounts for why basic income proposals and the ongoing debate shows considerable cross-country variation, often at odds with prominent political economy typologies. We are particularly interested in papers that advance the comparative understanding of basic income variation across Europe employing diverse theoretical frameworks and empirical methods.

To apply to participate, send an abstract to the organizers.

Deadline for abstract submission is 15 April 2020. More info at https://kuleuvencongres.be/espanet2020/home

Was Thomas Paine a Proponent of Universal Basic Income? Short answer: yes.

Was Thomas Paine a Proponent of Universal Basic Income? Short answer: yes.

by | Jan 14, 2020 | Opinion, The Indepentarian


I was recently asked whether the statement “Thomas Paine was a proponent of Universal Basic Income” is true. Although that statement is slightly controversial, it is true. Let me explain:

  1. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a contested concept. Different people within the UBI movement use the term differently. The policy Paine advocates in “Agrarian Justice” fits most of the popular definitions of UBI but not narrowest one.
  2. The received definition of UBI (used by the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG)) includes five characteristics: a regular, individual, universal, and unconditional cash payment. Paine’s policy is only a regular payment for people who live beyond 50. So, it is a bit of a judgment call whether it fits BIEN’s definition. But the BIEN definition has usually been understood to imply that the income is life-long, and some leaders of BIEN have expressed interest in clarifying that it should be lifelong. For these reasons, you might hear someone denying that Paine supported UBI, but to say that would be to apply the narrowest definition of UBI as if it were the only definition in popular use today, and it would be inaccurate to do so.
  3. The difference between the policy Paine advocated and the narrowest definition of UBI is small and almost a technicality compared to the similarities. Therefore, it is often not worth the time and effort to explain the difference between Paine’s policy and the narrowest definition of UBI.
  4. The only missing characteristic of the narrowest definition of UBI is that the income should be life-long. In that sense, Andrew Yang’s proposal also fails to meet the narrowest definition of UBI.
  5. The oldest-know proposal that fits the narrowest definition of UBI was written by a man named Thomas Spence, who was writing a sympathetic response to Paine—showing a way to take the idea a little farther. Paine, as far as I know, never responded to that proposal. He might well have viewed it positively.
  6. Many people who are widely accepted as leading advocates of UBI not necessarily advocate it under the narrowest definition of it. Martin Luther King and Milton Friedman are prominent examples.
  7. Paine is almost universally recognized as a founder of the UBI movement even by people who prefer the version the narrow definition.
  8. The size of the payments that Paine suggested were very large for the time. The initial payment of 15 pounds that people were supposed to receive when they came of age, Paine argued, would be enough for them to by land and become farmers, thereby achieving two central goals of many members of the UBI movement: to compensate people for the fact that wealthy people own all the resources and to give them the power to say no to unacceptable employment offers.
  9. Paine supported the policy he described in Agrarian Justice for the same reasons that more radical UBI proponents support UBI. His use of these arguments implies that he would be sympathetic to proposals convert his idea to life-long income.
  10. Therefore, if he were alive today, Paine would be recognized not only as a UBI supporter, but as one of the more radical UBI supporters. It is accurate to say he’s a UBI supporter, and even inaccurate to suggest otherwise without explaining the technicality of that suggestion.

London, UK: The Ethics of UBI in a Changing Economy

by | Jan 13, 2020 | News

The Ethics of UBI in a Changing Economy

King’s College London

London, UK, April 24, 2020

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eubi1

Abstract registration deadline: February 28, 2020

Submission deadline: February 28, 2020

Final paper submission: April 10, 2020

The Department of Political Economy at King’s College London will host a full day interdisciplinary workshop on “The Ethics of UBI in a Changing Economy” in London on April 24, 2020.

The workshop focuses on Universal Basic Income from the interdisciplinary point of view of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Suggested topics include but are not limited to

  • Sufficiency, equality, and the threshold for UBI
  • Political economy and the institutional challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
  • Unemployment and the citizen: conditional benefits or universal dividends?
  • Enhancing freedom and autonomy in a changing economy
  • Relational equality and democratic empowerment
  • Open borders and the limits of the welfare state

The workshop tackles the theoretical issues surrounding the normative justification(s) for UBI and evaluate the practical feasibility of UBI in comparison to competing policy responses from a political economy perspective.

The organizers invite abstracts from scholars in various disciplines, including but not limited to political economy, citizenship studies, philosophy, and political theory. We especially welcome contributions from underrepresented groups in academia.

To apply, send your abstract of 300 words through easychair (first time users may have to register): https://easychair.org/cfp/EUBI1

The deadline for abstract submission is February 28, 2020. Limited conference stipends will be available to speakers. The results will be announced within two weeks of the deadline. Accepted attendees will be asked to submit a manuscript (5000 words) by April 10, 2020.

If you have any further questions about the workshop, please send an email to the following address: otto.i.lehto@kcl.ac.uk. (Please do NOT use this email address to submit abstracts or papers.)

Thoughts on the British elections and the rise of nationalism

Thoughts on the British elections and the rise of nationalism

by | Dec 16, 2019 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

I wasn’t planning to write about the British elections until a friend asked. I’m not confident that I’m right about my conclusions, but here are some disjointed thoughts in no particular order.

1. I hate the parallels between US & UK politics: You get Thatcher-Major. We get Reagan-Bush I. We get Clinton. You get Blair. We get Bush II. Blair does double duty as the British Bush II. You get a group of mendacious, xenophobic, nationalist leaders. We get Trump.

2. Labour’s loss wasn’t just Brexit. It wasn’t just Corbyn. It wasn’t just the party moving to the left. Some of those might have been positive for Labour. It was very complex. The best strategy from here and the right thing to do from here aren’t obvious. I don’t know what’s best. I think a hasty decision would be a mistake.

3. The election only shows a limited amount about people’s Brexit. The 43.6% who voted Conservative were at least comfortable with Brexit, and many Brexit supporters probably voted for other parties as well. So, support is probably still about half the population–depending on what Brexit deal is in question.

4. Brexit was a great opportunity for democracy if people hadn’t made it about who beats who. It appears to be a voting paradox: a majority for Brexit, a majority against any possible Brexit deal, and a majority against no-deal Brexit. It would have been a great opportunity to discuss voting-paradoxes, and to use rank-choice voting to see if there was something we could call a majority preference. Even Corbyn didn’t suggest going that far in his effort to find a middle ground and to use democracy to resolve the impasse.

5. The recent election, like every US & UK election shows what’s wrong with first-past-the-post voting. The rules were in place long before the election. I wish people had talked more about changing them before the election. Some US states are doing that now. It could be a significant step toward real democracy in the USA. But getting the money out of politics is the biggest thing we need to transition to democracy. Maybe not as big a problem in the UK

6. But a significant portion of Brexit support was xenophobia, auslander raus thinking. I don’t know whether trying to be a voice of reason like this would have sold.

7. Nationalism is a much bigger trend right now than just the US-UK parallel (e.g. Brazil, India, Russia, Turkey, Philippines, etc.). All nationalists have to be opposed until they’re defeated. They are not for the nation. Nations prosper when they work together. Nationalist leaders prosper when they make their people afraid. Not when their people thrive. Leaders who do not put humanity first, do not really care about any religious, ethnic, or national group no matter how much they say their putting them first. Those leaders put themselves first.

8. I wish I could enjoy being in the opposition more than I do. I find it hard to take heart as part of a group of billions of underdogs opposing this worldwide trend. I don’t know what works. But I know that nationalist and especially mendacious leaders have consistently failed to deliver in the long run. Leaders who don’t use fact-based reasoning, can’t get the outcomes they want. We don’t know how much damage they’ll do before their failure becomes obvious and how much of that damage will be irreversible. But they will fail eventually. That will be an opportunity. And that’s a reason for optimism.

X. Perhaps, my active support for the Universal Basic Income (UBI) movement keeps me optimistic. UBI is still far from the centers of power, but after watching it stagnate for a long time, I’ve watched it gather strength for more than 20 years. I’ve enjoyed all of the little victories of that movement whether mainstream politics was getting better or worse at the time. So, I guess the lesson is that a good way to keep your morale up is to have something you’re working on that is making progress however small.

“A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments:” an early version of this book is available for free download

by | Nov 2, 2019 | Opinion, The Indepentarian

An early version of the book, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments,  is available for free download on my selected works website.
The devil’s in the details is a common saying about policy proposals. Perhaps we need a similar saying for policy research, something like the devil’s in the caveats. I say this both because nonspecialists (the citizens and policymakers who are ultimately responsible for evaluating policy in any democracy) have great difficulty understanding what research implies about policy and because specialists often have difficulty understanding what citizens and policymakers most hope to learn from policy research.
This problem creates great difficulty for Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments which are now getting underway in several countries. These experiments can add a small part to the existing body of evidence people need to fully evaluate UBI as a policy proposal. Specialists can provide caveats about the limits of what research implies, but nonspecialists are often unable to translate caveats into a firm grasp of what that research does and does not imply about the policy at issue. Therefore, even the best scientific policy research can leave nonspecialists with an oversimplified, or simply wrong, impression of its implications for policy.
This short book discusses the difficulty of conducting UBI experiments and communicating their results to nonspecialists given both the inherent limits of experimental techniques, the complexity of the public discussion of UBI, and the many barriers that make it difficult for specialists and nonspecialists to understand each other. This book is an effort to help bridge those gaps in understanding with suggestions in an effort to help researchers conduct better experiments and communicate their results in ways more likely to improve public understanding of the possible effects of UBI.
The book, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments, by Karl Widerquist is Published by Palgrave Macmillan (2018) and is available on Palgrave’s website, on amazon.com, and other online retailers. But an early version is available for free download on my selected works website.
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