by Karl Widerquist | Aug 29, 2018 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in March 2014.
Basic Income is suddenly the subject of much more discussion around the world. Political movements are growing. The media, social networks, and blogs have suddenly devoted more attention to basic income. Basic Income News (BI News) suddenly has much more news to report. The website is running two-to-five stories a day, and its accompanying NewsFlashes have more news than they can fit. This is a good time to talk about the goals of BI News and the accompanying NewsFlashes.
BIEN
BI News has three main goals. Most importantly, it keeps readers informed about all the news directly relevant to the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) around the word. Secondly, it keeps readers informed about events organized about BIG and publications written about BIG. Thirdly, it includes features providing a mouthpiece for members of BIEN and its affiliates to write blogs, opinion pieces, and book reviews about BIG.
The first goal of BI News is important because activists, researchers, and anyone interested in BIG need a place where they can find out what is happening around the world that is relevant to BIG. No one other website is doing it, and no others are likely to start. You can’t just search Google News for “basic income” and expect to find all the news about BIG. There are more than a dozen, perhaps dozens, of terms for BIG in English alone. There are policies and programs that are forms of BIG or that share some of the characteristics of BIG but that are not discussed in terms of BIG: the Alaska Dividend, some cash transfers, the Earned Income Tax Credit, dividends from casino revenue on U.S. Indian Reservations, the Bolsa Familia in Brazil, GiveDirectly in Uganda, and many, many more. There are also policies that are described in the words “basic income” or words very similar to terms for BIG but aren’t BIG or aren’t very closely related to it. The news section of BI News shows readers what proposals, policies, and social activism around the world related to BIG and explains that connection.
USBIG
This effort requires consistent monitoring of mainstream news, social media, blogs, and other sources of information. It involves original reporting to make the necessary connections to BIG as well as meta-reporting—reporting about reporting. Articles in this section of BI News are written from a neutral perspective, because the goal of this section is not to persuade but to inform. There are many arguments going around about BIG, but only one news source dedicated to informing people about BIG. This service is valuable to activists, researchers, and anyone interested in BIG.
This section reports only on issues directly relating to BIG. It doesn’t report on other social policies or on the economic and social conditions that create a need for BIG unless there is some direct connection to BIG in the news on these issues. The reason is that news indirectly relating to BIG outnumbers the news about BIG by orders of magnitude. If BI News reported on all these other things, its focus on BIG would be lost.
Stories from the news section of BI News can be found at this link: https://binews.org/category/latest-news/.
CIT (UK)
The second goal of BI News is to keep people informed about events being held and literature being written about BIG around the world. The goal of publicizing events is obvious. It helps our members, our affiliates, other networks, and hosting institutions to publicize events related to BIG. The goal of keeping up with the literature is important because of the dispersion and the diversity of the BIG literature today. So many different terms for BIG are used that there simply is no easy way to find it on a search. As far as we know, no other group is keeping a comprehensive bibliography of the literature on BIG as BI News attempts to do.
BI News posts summaries of the more important publications and attempts to post at least the publication information and a link to all publications, even the less important ones. We do this because, even if one individual publication is not terribly importantly by itself, the dialogue as a whole is important. If you want to know what is being said about BIG at a given time or what has been said over a given period, BI News has collected and organized that information. We’re doing a fairly good job of that for English-language publications right now, and hopefully, as we expand we will do it for more and more languages.
Articles in these sections are also written from a neutral perspective, because as with the goal of reporting the news, the goal of reporting on events and publications is also to inform, not to persuade. The literature and events in this section also must directly relate to BIG, again because reporting on wider literature would sacrifice our focus on BIG.
The BI literature posts on BI News are here: https://binews.org/category/bi-literature/.
Events posts are here: https://binews.org/category/events/. Links are here: https://binews.org/category/links/.
BIN Italia
Persuasion is the third goal of BI News. The features section, which includes blogs, opinion pieces, book reviews, and occasional podcasts and interviews, performs this function. This section provides an outlet for BIEN members to write their opinions about BIG, sometimes directed at other supporters, sometimes directed at a wider audience. Arguing for the cause of BIG has obvious value, but there are several reasons why this goal ranks third. The readership of BI News is overwhelmingly made up of people who already support BIG. They’re already convinced; their primary need is for information. Another reason this is a lesser important goal is that there are many places around the world where people can publish features having to do with BIG, but only BI News is pursuing the first two goals. However, making the case for BIG is valuable. BI News provides a place for BIEN members and supporters to become a part of that dialogue. Right now we’re running an average of about one feature per week, but we are hoping to increase that substantially, perhaps eventually to one feature per day.
A list of and links to the latest features can be found on the homepage of BI News: https://binews.org/
. Blogs can be found by going to the Features dropdown list and selecting blogs.
To keep up with these goals, BI News maintains a website, updated at least once a day, and a regular newsletter, collecting the recent stories from the website. As we expand our volunteer base, we will expand what we do.
-Karl Widerquist, Doha, Qatar, March 2014
Volunteers needed for BI News
If you’d like to help, we need volunteers. Primarily we need people with one of two skills. We need writers to help us report the news and we need people with website-design skills to help us improve how we present it. Among our writers, we need people with language skills. The languages we need most are English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian, but if news is happening in any language, we need writers to report on it. If you would like to help spread the word about BIG, please contact the editor of BI News, Karl Widerquist <Karl@widerquist.com>.
by Michael Lewis | Aug 24, 2018 | Opinion
Michael A. Lewis
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
One of the main criticisms of basic income is that if the government gave us money we did not have to sell our labor for, we would work less. Perhaps not all of us would reduce our labor supply but enough of us would render the policy unsustainable for example, if you are in a lawsuit you won’t be able to sustain your financial status since you would be struggling, therefore lawsuit loans would be able to help you and prevent you from drowning under financial stress. This is an important criticism and much of the basic income debate is centered around it. What I want to do in this post, however, is address another related criticism. I will call it the “something for nothing” (SFN) objection to basic income.
The SFN objection goes something like this. Even if giving people money they didn’t have to work for didn’t result in a significant decrease in labor supply, we still shouldn’t enact such a policy. The reason is that it’s simply wrong to give able-bodied people money without requiring something in return. I realize there’re those who’d object to the word “nothing” in the SFN objection. Many who received a basic income would work part-time, go to school, take care of others, or engage in a host of other activities we might not think should be characterized as nothing. Although I agree with this sentiment, for the sake of this post I’ll put it to one side. That’s because I want to address the SFN objection head on and believe the best way to do so is by conceding, for the sake of argument, that recipients of a basic income would do nothing.
The wrongness of giving people something for nothing is often couched in paternalistic terms. Here’s an example from economist Isabel V. Sawhill:
“Liberals have been less willing to openly acknowledge that a little paternalism in social policy may not be such a bad thing. In fact, progressives and libertarians alike are loath to admit that many of the poor and jobless are lacking more than just cash…. A humane and wealthy society should provide the disadvantaged with adequate services and support. But there is nothing wrong with making assistance conditional on individuals fulfilling some obligation whether it is work, training, getting treatment, or living in a supportive but supervised environment.”
But, as pointed out by economist Guy Standing in his book Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, many seem perfectly fine with people receiving something for nothing under other circumstances.
Take the cases of inheritance and gifts. Wealthy parents, grandparents, etc. are allowed, upon their deaths, to transfer vast sums of money or wealth to their heirs. And while alive, they’re able to make such transfers as gifts. Yet recipients of such bequests and gifts are under no obligation to work, receive training or treatment, or live in supportive environments. It’s rare to hear basic income opponents criticize this form of something for nothing. There’re several possible reasons for this absence.
Perhaps basic income critics opposed to such transfers among the wealthy do not say much about them because they are thought to be beyond the reach of public policy. That is, perhaps these critics believe it’s wrong for the kids, grandkids, etc. of the wealthy to receive something for nothing but feel such immorality must be tolerated because there isn’t much public policy can do to stop it. But this underestimates the reach of public policy, at least from a technical point of view.
Bequests and gifts are regulated by estate and gift taxes. So, technically, we could change tax laws to make it very difficult or impossible to transfer money or wealth to one’s descendants or heirs. Alternatively, we could allow such transfers to take place but require recipients of them to provide evidence that they’re working, or receiving job training, or in school, or have graduated from school, are receiving drug treatment if necessary, etc. To my knowledge, we currently do none of these things.
Another reason for lack of criticism of SFN transfers among the wealthy might be the view that we shouldn’t tell wealthy people what to do with their money and assets. If they want to leave a million dollars or a couple of homes to their kids, who are we to tell them not to? This raises a complicated economic and moral question: how much of the money and wealth we possess is ours? This may seem like a strange question to ask because the answer seems so obvious: all the money and wealth we possess is ours. But now consider the following autobiographical story.
I am currently a professor at a public university in New York City. I worked very hard to get where I am, having spent almost 25 years in school, culminating in a PhD. I’m not exactly wealthy but neither am I poor. I’m currently living, as many say, “comfortably,” as a result of making a “decent” salary. And I own (well co-own with a spouse) a home. Now here’s a question: what supports did I require to get to this point?
First, I was raised within a family. People don’t get to become professors, or anything else for that matter, without being socialized by a caring family of some kind, whether biological or not. Second, I spent 13 years in K-12 educational institutions. I, of course, did not teach myself but was taught to be a dedicated teacher. This continued throughout college and graduate school. Third, not only was I taught by teachers, but I took part in a number of group study sessions. This resulted in me learning a great deal from my classmates, as well as from teachers. Fourth, the things I learned were, in most cases, neither invented/discovered by my teachers nor my classmates. None of my teachers or classmates were Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Emile Durkeim, Adam Smith, Marie Curie, Shirley Ann Jackson, Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, etc. That is, a host of people no longer with us played an indirect role in helping me get to where I am today.
I could go on but suspect I’ve made my point: any income or wealth I currently possess is not an individual accomplishment. On the contrary, it is a collective one in which many others, dead and alive, played a role. And it’s very difficult to quantify how much of what I have now is due to what I did and how much a result of what others did. That is because what I have been able to do is so intertwined with what others helped make it possible for me to do. This doesn’t just apply to me; it applies to all of us, no matter how wealthy or successful.
To be clear, I am not saying people should have no say in how they allocate the money or wealth they possess. Perhaps they should have more say in deciding this than anyone else. That is, the point of my autobiography was not to support the assertion that the government can just confiscate people’s money/wealth for whatever purposes it sees fit. But it was intended to support the conclusion that government may have more of a claim on “our money” than many of us typically think. That is because government plays a big role in creating the legal/cultural environment which allows for the various collective accomplishments I spoke of earlier. It helps to define and enforce property rights, “nurtures” markets, and helps to curtail acts of violence and aggression, acts which could be quite destabilizing for any socioeconomic system. Thus, basic income opponents who worry about something for nothing transfers among the wealthy may have more room to maneuver than they think.
A third possible reason for reticence when it comes to criticizing SFN transfers among the wealthy may be their voluntary nature. When wealthy folks make transfers to heirs, this is something they’ve chosen to do. Current social welfare benefits (and this is likely to be true of any enacted basic income) are financed by taxes. If people do not pay taxes, they can be fined, jailed, or both. That is, social welfare SFN transfers are involuntarily financed. Perhaps this gives taxpayers the right to demand something in return from social welfare beneficiaries, a right they do not have when it comes heirs of the wealthy.
This is a fair point. But I think it implicitly takes us back to the question of whose money and assets wealthy people are transferring to their heirs. That is, implicit in the voluntary transfers argument is the notion that wealthy people can transfer any money or assets they want to their heirs because it’s their money and assets to do with what they please. But if what I said earlier about how achievements are collective, as well as individual, achievements facilitated in part by the government, perhaps the rest of us do have some say in what children of the privileged have to do in return for gifts and bequests from their rich friends and relatives.
There’s another point to raise about this voluntary transfers argument. The U.S. federal government currently has in place a number of tax expenditures. These are policies where the government allows people to reduce their taxable incomes or, in some cases, their actual tax bills. Those which allow people to reduce their taxable incomes are called deductions. Those which allow taxpayers to reduce their tax bills, that is, the amounts they owe in taxes, are called tax credits. I can make the point I want to make here by focusing on deductions, one in particular.
Under certain conditions, people who borrow money to buy a house can deduct the interest they pay on the loan used to finance that purchase. That is, when it comes to calculating their income which is subject to taxation, taxpayers in this situation can subtract the amounts they paid in interest before determining their taxable incomes. This could put them in a lower tax bracket and cost the government, that is, taxpayers lots of money in forgone revenue. The policy is arguably a kind of housing subsidy. Yet people do not have to work, take part in job training, prove they are staying off drugs, etc. to receive it. That is, this looks a lot like a “subsidy for nothing” policy. Why allow this one, as well as others like it, but not a basic income?
For the sake of discussion, let us put aside some of the things I have been saying in the past few paragraphs. That is, let’s assume any money or wealth people have is solely theirs to do whatever they please, and government has no claim whatsoever on these resources. Where does that leave us? Well it might leave us in the following situation.
The wealthy could continue transferring something for nothing to their kids because we would have no right to shape public policy to stop it. We could, by enacting a basic income, create a more equal playing field by allowing all of us the opportunity for a similar transfer. Yet if we could not tax people (wealthy or not) who did not want to be taxed, we might not be able to obtain enough revenue to enact a basic income. In fact, we might even be able to obtain enough revenue to enact the kind of conditional system Sawhill advocates. That is, if people had the right to decide what they wanted to do with their money/wealth and government had no claim on these resources, we might not be able to finance a social welfare system at all. That’s because folks might not want any of their money and wealth taken to finance such a system. So, the something for nothing objection to basic income, if taken seriously, could lead to the “free market Libertarian’s” first-best paradise. I wonder if something for nothing objectors to basic income have thought about this possibility.
Acknowledgements: I’d like to thank Michael D. Tanner and Eri Noguchi for their helpful comments on this piece. In contrast to what I said in the essay about accomplishments, I take full responsibility for any errors that remain.
by Guest Contributor | Aug 17, 2018 | Opinion
Written by: Alfredo Roccia
We talk so much about freedom.
-Ingmar Bergman, The passion of Anna
As argued by Karl Marx, “it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”
[1] Despite acknowledging the importance of external factors on men’s freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre did not share the Marxian thesis, however, asserting that “we have the war we deserve,” namely man, “being condemned to be free,” is only “responsible for himself,” regardless of their surrounding environment.[2] Therefore, according to the French philosopher, human beings have the decisive possibility to give meaning to their existence in absolute freedom, without any influence from pre-established principles.
However, what do we do when the future we want is precluded by precarious economic conditions or a staleness social system? What if we had to settle for what Martin Heidegger called “inauthentic” existence rather than pouring all our abilities out?
It is on the fine line between what Marx and Sartre exposed, that we could position the Universal Basic Income (UBI) and its significative impact on humanity’s freedom in a future scenario.
Although the reasons-be them of political, economic and social nature-which UBI advocates opt for, we could essentially group them in three sets of problems: (1) the current levels of unemployment, (2) the work threatened by the new advent of machines, (3) the current social care system as not sufficient for twenty-first century needs.[3]
However, the aspect of UBI which has won me over, besides the financial security that would result, is the freedom of choice that UBI could generate or at least reinforce in modern society. Also, those who Need Money Desperately
might find this a huge relief. It can also pave way for their financial planning because now they have a recurring income to depend on.
A freedom that would allow everyone to express and legitimize his or her own talent through any job or activity without any kind of diktat from the market or society.[4] I personally consider this aspect deeply interesting since today, more than ever, human beings seem to have lost the ability to say “no,” being slaves of constant financial insecurity, trapped in not always satisfying careers, stressful working hours and short leisure time.[5]
Indeed, how do we define leisure time? Would it be perhaps a vacation every month, running away from the working stress, an apparent getaway from an unsatisfying life? Or maybe focusing on our own passions and talent just during weekends, because of the scarce free time we have, stolen from a job we do not love-therefore constantly working, ignoring the need for a vacation?[6] I believe it is clear how greater financial security would consequently enable a greater possibility of choice, less influenced by external factors, allowing our creativity to run riot, giving us greater flexibility within our lives.[7]
Staying in the creative sphere, it is clear how UBI could have a significant weight within the work of artists. Namely, it could help those who choose to devote themselves to art, despite sometimes agreeing to accept jobs not totally in line with their ambitions or realizing works whose typically commercial nature is imposed by the market and the need of paying the rent by the end of the month, rather than their artistic will.
Not being technically an artist, but feeling very tied with disciplines like photography, music, cinema or literature, I quite sympathize with those persons who, not being able of practice their own talent freely, are forced to follow careers alien to their pure artistic ambitions. However, thanks to current web platforms like YouTube, many young artists-among which also poets and philosophers, categories perhaps more penalized today than in the past from the job market-can display their own knowledge and talent through video tutorials, lessons, performances, etc., that are free and available to everyone. But, how can they finance all of this, since the working time required for writing, shooting, editing, and post-producing a very short video requires quite a lot of time? There are ways to make money from YouTube, such as by growing a large following and monetizing your videos. For small channels, it might be worth visiting Venturebeat to learn about buying YouTube subscribers. That could help the channel to grow, eventually leading to the channel making some money. However, there are other ways too. Crowdsourced funding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon (just to mention some), can help young creative minds by promotional campaigns for financing a single project (see Kickstarter) or by subscriptions that provide an income on a recurring basis or per work of art, in return of special contents or rewards (see Patreon).[8] Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
So, it seems a kind of artistic basic income is already here and works quite well: many of these young artists can support their expenses with the help of their own backers, changing also the direction to their own career. It is common to see some of them quitting their job or devoting themselves to that virtual activity indeed.[9]
For instance, a case that personally surprised me and which I consider significative is that of a young YouTuber, Paul Davids, a Dutch musician who has shared video lessons about guitar and music theory since 2009.[10] Later, Paul joined Patreon, proposing special contents for his patrons, in exchange for a subscription. On February 20, 2018, Paul published a video telling his followers that he quit his job as a guitar teacher so he could devote himself to what he truly loves: offering high-quality videos, investing his time to improve his guitar skills and making more music.[11] It is interesting to note how Paul decided to quit that activity on which many musicians are “forced” to make do, namely scholastic or private teaching.[12] A difficult choice, but he thinks it could bring him more freedom to “take on bigger projects requiring more time.”[13]
Another example is the Patrick (H) Willems channel, registered on YouTube since 2011 and dedicated to short movies production and video essays about cinema. On a video published on May 7, 2018, the founder Patrick Willems shared the ambition of financing his works through Patreon community, so as to update his working tools, acquire a proper studio, and become more independent. He stated that he was grateful for getting as far as he could using equipment similar to avid media composer first editing software, audacity, and other free resources.
[14]
Those of Paul and Patrick are only some of the hundreds of cases in which young YouTubers, by the funding of Patreon or similar services, can finally pour their own ambitions out through a greater financial security.[15]
But, how long will all of this last? Can we really think that platforms such as Patreon could support young artists forever, behaving as a proper basic income?
Actually, it is important to stress how crowdsourced funding could not replace any form of UBI because of their fundamental differences. It is true how they allow people to collect money through crowdfunding and perhaps even more than what a person could get with any current experiment involving UBI. However, crowdsourcing is breaking what is probably the first rule of UBI, namely its universality. Platforms such as Patreon are not open to everybody in so far as creators need to offer content in return for being supported by their community. Poor or “uncreative” people are evidently excluded from this policy. Moreover, those platforms are usually made by private companies and run for private purposes: they could stop anytime, evolve in something totally different or even close the business for any reason. This could really affect people from planning their own career grounding on a variable amount of money they can get every month, while UBI would be potentially perpetual as well as more inclusive.
However, despite being its surrogate, crowdsourced funding is the proof that the UBI concept can be extremely useful for young artists, at least at the beginning of their career. Moreover, it could allow them to go beyond the current constraints which those platforms implicate-not always making frequent content can be an attractive thing for videomakers-as well as to exceed the rather narrow frame of YouTube.
Perhaps, we should start with what those platforms are representing at the moment and try to mutate the modern perception we have about work and the current values system which characterize it. A greater freedom for artists could mean a boost of creation of those “things that enable market production but lie outside the monetary system,” in a structure in which UBI would have been seen “as capital, and not just money,” allowing a cultural renaissance and the production of new values for an invigoration of the twenty-first century economy.[16]
About the author:
Alfredo Roccia is an Italian-born architect working in London, UK. He studied architecture at the “Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II”, where he graduated in 2012. In the past five years, he has worked in Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, where he currently lives.
[1] Karl Marx, preface to A contribution to the critique of Political Economy, trans. Nahum Isaac Stone (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1904; initially published in German as Zur kritik der Politischen Oekonomie in 1859), 11–12.
[2] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956; initially published in French as L’Être et le néant in 1943), 553–5; Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet (1948; repr. London: Methuen, 1960; initially published in French as L’Existentialisme est un humanisme in 1946), 29.
[3] For a deepened analysis about UBI and its more recent applications consult: Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Guy Standing, Basic Income: And how we can make it happen (London: Pelican, 2017); Amy Downes and Stewart Lansley, eds., It’s Basic Income: The global debate (Bristol: Policy Press, 2018).
Various are the forms that UBI is assuming in current debates and during tests adopted by some countries. However, herein I will refer to its most “pure” version, that is “an unconditional, automatic and non-withdrawable payment to each individual as a right of citizenship.” Malcolm Torry, “History and the contemporary debate in the UK” in Downes and Lansley, Basic Income, 123–4.
[4] “Somehow release those who are technically and imaginatively proficient from the restraints imposed by the business system and there will be unprecedented productivity and wealth in the economy.” John Kenneth Galbraith, A history of Economics: The past as the present (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987), 172. In this passage, Galbraith summarizes the thought of the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen as he made explicit in his Theory of business enterprise (1904).
[5] Matt Zwolinski, “The libertarian case for universal basic income” in Downes and Lansley, Basic Income, 152. According to Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), “nearly two-fifths (38%) of U.S. employees reported that they were very satisfied with their current job, whereas a greater proportion (51%) stated they were satisfied but to a lesser degree, indicating that the majority of U.S. employees are to some extent satisfied with their present job role.” SHRM, “2017 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement,” accessed May 28, 2018, https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/Documents
/2017-Employee-Job-Satisfaction-and-Engagement-Executive-Summary.pdf.
[6] John Maynard Keynes already dealt with problems within a future “age of leisure” in his “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren (1930),” in Essays in persuasion (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932), 358–73.
[7] “We need to make the case that entitlement to an income and a dignified life should not be dependent on working for an employer, nor conditional on searching for employment. A basic income would free people from this compulsion, granting them much fuller freedom to direct their lives, engage in civic activity, or enjoy leisure time.” Avi Lewis and Katie McKenna, “A down payment on a new cooperative economy” in Downes and Lansley, Basic Income, 72.
[8] cf. GoDaddy Inc., “Top 20 crowdfunding platforms of 2018,” by Erick Deckers, last modified February 27, 2018, https://www.godaddy.com/garage/top-20-crowdfunding-platforms/.
[9] In 1969 Nixon administration already launched the “Family Assistance Program (FAP),” a welfare reform proposal whose unexpected results showed an increase of the time devoted to study or artistic activities by people involved in the experiment. cf. Jacobin, “Nixon’s Basic Income Plan,” by Rutger Bregman, accessed May 28, 2018, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05
/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/.
[10] Paul Davids, YouTube channel, accessed May 28, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/user/Luapper/about.
[11] “Giving guitar lessons, especially private lessons, they are very time-consuming and with YouTube I get so many cool and awesome offer, all of the things I simply can’t do because I don’t have the time.” Paul Davids, “I’m Quitting,” February 20, 2018, YouTube video, 5:29, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nruh9SSXoQ.
[12] “For many musicians…teaching is a way to pay the rent, to pay for food and everything else. When you don’t have many gigs, you want to have a secure income…but nowadays YouTube and everything around…can provide for those things for me.” Davids, “I’m Quitting.”
[13] “I’m very relieved to quit teaching. From now on I can really focus on my channel, work harder for my videos, accept more cool side projects and hopefully play in more bands.” Davids, “I’m Quitting.”
[14] “In the past year the channel finally got to the point where I can afford to do it full-time…just making enough to live off of. So, there isn’t much money left to put into the budgets for the video themselves.” Patrick (H) Willems, “Upgrading Our Videos (Patreon Announcement),” May 7, 2018, YouTube video, 3:48, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A57-1JteA&t=0s&index=2&list=WL.
[15] “We’ve got…a hundred and sixty-nine thousand subscribers. So, imagine if every one of them pledged $1 a month, it would be crazy!” Willems, “Patreon Announcement.”
Following the live streaming video platform Twitch, other companies such as YouTube and Facebook have recently launched the option of sponsoring videomakers. Artists make more money the more followers they have which is why many of them use one of the 22 Best Sites to Buy Twitch Followers to increase their profits. cf. Business Insider UK, “Twitch raises incentives for creators,” by Kevin Gallagher, accessed May 28, 2018, https://uk.businessinsider.com/twitch-raises-incentives-for-creators-2017-4?r=US&IR=T; CNBC, “Facebook is opening up ways for video creators to make money,” by Michelle Castillo, last modified March 21, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/facebook-opening-up-ways-for-video-creators-to-make-money.html; Variety, “YouTube Kills Paid Channels, Expands $4.99 per Month SponsorshiModel,” by Janko Roettgers, accessed May 28, 2018, https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/youtube-kills-paid-channels-1202563599/.
[16] Roope Mokka and Katariina Rantanen, “Universal basic income for the post-industrial age” in Downes and Lansley, Basic Income, 65–6.
