by Kate McFarland | Sep 2, 2017 | News
The Autumn 2017 issue of the left-wing political magazine Australian Options includes a special “viewpoints” section dedicated to basic income.
The issue can be read in full here.
The section on basic income consists of three short articles:
- “Basic income: An idea whose time has come?” by Troy Henderson (PhD Candidate in Political Economy at the University of Sydney)
- “Basic income: Political economic considerations” by Frank Stilwell (Professor Emeritus in Political Economy at the University of Sydney)
- “Basic income or job guarantee: What is to be done?” by Neale Towart (Unions New South Wales).
Henderson provides an overview of the idea of basic income, and then addresses four concerns facing its implementation in Australia: cost, cultural opposition to giving “handouts” to the poor and unemployed, lack of agreement between left-wing and right-wing proponents of basic income programs, and lack of mass social support.
Stilwell briefly articulates five political economic reasons in favor of basic income: sharing the nation’s abundant wealth, quelling anxiety about the future of work and technological unemployment, reducing inequality, simplifying the social safety net, and increasing individual freedom. He weighs these advantages against two main concerns: “could the nation afford to pay a BI?” and “would a BI have a big cost in terms of national output because people might decide not to work?” Stilwell offers tentative support for basic income, but only if combined with a strengthening of public health services, education, housing, transportation, and utilities.
Towart argues in favor of a job guarantee as a way to harness the potential of automation to free people from unfulfilling toil while ensuring well-paid employment in “work that we need done to create a fairer, sustainable society.” He raises concerns that a basic income would act as a subsidy for low wages and fail to empower workers to the extent of a well-designed job guarantee.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo (Lake Clifton, Western Australia) CC BY NC-ND 2.0 inefekt69
by Kate McFarland | Sep 1, 2017 | Research
Teppo Eskelinen and Johanna Perkiö have published “Micro-investment perspective and the potential of the universal basic income” in Development Policy Review (June 2017).
Eskelinen and Perkiö analyze basic income as a tool to promote micro-investments by poor individuals and households, hypothesizing that a basic income would impart to such households a “greater confidence to undertake more risky activities, knowing they will have a minimum income to fall back on.”
As they explain in the abstract, the authors “aim to estimate potential impacts of the BI by synthesising existing knowledge. This estimation will not be quantitative, but rather show likely outcomes of a BI scheme. We will complement existing knowledge by exploring cognate cash transfer policies and other experiences that bear similarity to the BI.”
As a core part of their analysis, the authors examine the pilot studies conducted in the Namibian village of Otjivero-Omitara (2008 to 2009) and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh (2011 to 2013), looking especially at the effects on “labour, behavioural impacts, psychological impacts, and investment in human capital.” Regarding psychological impacts, they point out that, in the Madhya Pradesh experiment, “households receiving cash grants were three times more likely to start a new business or production activity than control group households,” which appears to affirm their conjecture that “the availability of money combined with a sense of security is what eventually determines the occurrence of micro-investment.” Regarding behavior, they note a “recurring observation” that part of recipients’ additional income was “invested in income-generating activities.”
Eskelinen is a philosopher and social scientist who has published on political theory, political economy, global justice, and development theory. He is senior lecturer at University of Jyväskylä.
Perkiö is a doctoral candidate in the social sciences at the University of Tampere, writing her dissertation on the history of the basic income debate in Finland (see her November 2016 presentation for Kela). Many of her previous articles and blog posts on basic income available online, including the Transform! Network discussion paper “Basic Income Proposals in Finland, Germany and Spain,” the International Solidarity Work report “Universal Basic Income – A New Tool for Development Policy?,” and a response to the OECD’s recent critical report on basic income, published on Kela’s blog.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: Store in Madhya Pradesh, CC BY 2.0 Brian Gratwicke
by Kate McFarland | Aug 31, 2017 | News
Nature Needs More, a wildlife conservation group based in Australia, is currently investigating the potential of basic income to help curb illegal hunting.
Founded in 2013 under the name Breaking The Brand, the group’s first advocacy and educational campaigns focused on curbing the demand for the products of illegal hunting, such as rhinoceros horns. As its work progressed, however, Breaking The Brand realized that its demand reduction campaigns could not be sufficient to stop illegal wildlife trade; successful wildlife conservation “needs more”.
Now called Nature Needs More, the organization is exploring new strategies, including a basic income pilot project designed to measure its effects on hunting and wildlife conservation.
Elephants in Namibia, CC BY-NC 2.0 Frans Vandewalle
Nature Needs More is inspired in part by the Basic Income Grant Pilot Project conducted in 2008 in the Namibian town of Otjivero. Prior to the introduction of the basic income grant, the local police station commander told researchers that poaching was the most common criminal activity, stating, “Poverty and unemployment are the reasons for these criminal activities. Otjivero is a tiny place and there is no source of income there. Most people hunt or poach just for survival.” In 2007, 20 instances of illegal hunting and trespassing were recorded between January 15 and October 31. In 2008, however, after the introduction of the basic income pilot, the count fell to only one instance during the same time period.
As Nature Needs More notes on its website, current basic income experiments–such as the 12-year randomized control trial that the non-profit GiveDirectly is due to launch in rural Kenya in September–are not linked to conservation outcomes.
Thus, the organization is considering the possibility of launching its own basic income experiment within the next two years.
Describing its hypothesis, Nature Needs More states, “Financial security would not only mean less poaching for food [and] less illegal harvesting … but would [also] mean wildlife trafficking syndicates would have less leverage to recruit poachers from the impoverished communities neighbouring key conservation areas.”
The organization is also exploring whether a basic income might help conservation areas convert to ecotourism as a revenue source.
Reviewed by Caroline Pearce
Rhino photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Martin Heigan
by Kate McFarland | Aug 30, 2017 | Research
Inequality in the UK has been rising for some time as gaps between the lower and upper classes increase. But, there are movements such as levelling up the north east that are looking to reducing this inequality to ensure everyone gets good healthcare, education, job opportunities, etc. And now, the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex has released a paper titled “Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study” as part of its EUROMOD working paper series.
The paper uses the EUROMOD microsimulation model to examine the impact on poverty and inequality of the proposals put forth in economist Anthony Atkinson’s most recent–and final–book Inequality: What Can Be Done? (2015). Atkinson, himself a co-author of the ISER study, passed away on January 1, during the final stages of preparation of the working paper.
The proposals considered include a “significantly more progressive income tax structure,” a “major increase in the minimum wage” (i.e. a “living wage”), and an increase in the amount of the nation’s universal child benefit, and two types of programs of social transfers: a strengthening of the UK’s social insurance system, and a “participation income”. A participation income–an idea developed and promoted by Atkinson–is similar to a basic income in that it guarantees all members of society a stable and secure livable income. It differs from a basic income, however, in that it is not fully unconditional: as its name suggests, a participation income is subject to a participation requirement. According to Atkinson, however, fulfilling this requirement should not require paid work or looking for paid work; it should also be able to be met through caregiving, community volunteer work, full-time education, or other unpaid but socially valuable activities.
In the simulation study, the authors note that “this participation condition cannot be imposed in our simulation exercise due to lack of data” and thus carry out the study “on the basis that everyone is entitled.” In other words, for the purposes of the working paper, they have chosen to simulate what is effectively an unconditional basic income.
The authors simulate a basic income at the level of £75 per week (or £3,902 per year), which replaces many means-tested programs.
One conclusion of the study is that, in comparison to strengthened social insurance (SI), the set of reforms introducing a participation income (PI) “produces a larger immediate impact on both inequality and poverty”. As the authors summarize, “[i]n achieving this greater impact the PI-focused package affects considerably more households, both positively and negatively: 43% of all households see a substantial gain and 21% a substantial loss, compared to 34% and 10% respectively with the SI-focused alternative.”
Other researchers have also recently used the EUROMOD microsimulation method to model the effects of basic income policies–including Malcolm Torry of the Citizen’s Income Trust (“A variety of indicators evaluated for two implementation methods for a Citizen’s Basic Income“) and, to more skeptical conclusions, the OECD (“Basic Income as a Policy Option: Can it add up?“).
The full working paper is free to download from ISER’s website:
Anthony B. Atkinson, Chrysa Leventi, Brian Nolan, Holly Sutherland and Iva Tasseva (June 2017) “Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study,” EUROMOD Working Paper Series.
Reviewed by Caroline Pearce.
Photo: “The Poverty Trap…” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Neil Moralee (taken in Taunton, England)
by Kate McFarland | Aug 29, 2017 | Research
Ville-Veikko Pulkka, a public policy researcher and doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki, has published his paper “A free lunch with robots – can a basic income stabilise the digital economy?” in European Review of Labour and Research.
Pulkka was previously employed as part of the research team at Kela, the Finnish Social Insurance Institution, responsible for the design and preparation of the nation’s two-year experiment replacing conditional unemployment benefits with an unconditional basic income.
The Finnish experiment has been the topic of most of his previous published work and presentations related to basic income (including presentations at conferences in Switzerland, Poland, Finland, and Ireland).
Pulkka’s research at the University of Helsinki, including his doctoral dissertation, centers on the implications of the digital economy for labor and public policy.
“A free lunch with robots,” his latest publication on basic income, moves away from focus on the Finnish experiment to explore the latter topic in more general terms:
The discussion on the possible implications of the digital economy for labour continues unabated. An essential dimension of the discussion is the widely shared view that a basic income could guarantee sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers should technological unemployment and labour market insecurity increase. A budget-neutral basic income has serious limitations as an economic stabilisation grant, but if financing proposals are revised, these limitations can be tackled. Even though guaranteeing sufficient purchasing power for unemployed, underemployed and precarious workers does not necessarily require an unconditional universal benefit, it seems clear that traditional activation based on strict means-testing and obligations will not be a strategy flexible enough to guarantee sufficient consumer demand in fluctuating labour markets. An economically sustainable solution might be to reduce means-testing gradually and to study carefully the effects.
The full article is available behind a paywall here.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram.
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Helen Taylor
