I have a private basic income – a small, regular cash income without means test or work requirement. It’s probably large enough to meet my basic needs. And I got it thanks to privilege, nepotism, and two big lucky breaks.
My first big lucky break happened in 2009 when Georgetown University hired me as a philosophy professor on their campus in Qatar. Georgetown-Qatar, which is funded entirely by the Qatar government, has to pay an enormous premium to get faculty to agree to live and work in Qatar. If I had a home I might have considered comparing all available equity release plans to pay that premium but that wasn’t for me. I get paid three times as much as my wife. I teach half as many classes. She’s a full professor. I’m only an associate.
Qatar can pay more than US universities because of their own series of lucky breaks that put them in control of enormously valuable resources. Their position today comes largely from decisions made about a century ago, as the Ottoman Empire was breaking up. Britain and France arbitrarily drew lines on the map to create what became the states of the Middle East. They had no idea those lines would eventually give some of those states enormous amounts of oil and gas and leave others desperately poor.
The joy of options
I ‘earn’ my salary by doing a job few others are both willing and able to do. To some extent wages compensate for other disadvantages of the job. But this equalisation is only partial and more importantly, it only occurs among people with similar options.
fedee P/Flickr. CC (by-nc-nd)
I had better options than most people in the world. My white, American upper-middle class privilege gave me the opportunity to get the qualifications and the flexibility to take this job. For every highly paid professional ‘expat’ in Qatar like me there are maybe eight or ten extra-low paid ‘migrant labourers’, some of whom make as little as $200 a month. They live in dorms for years at a time, separated from their families. They are unfree to quit or to change employers. They are unfree to leave the country without their employers’ permission.
There is no combination of hard work and grit that could have put any one of these workers in my position from their starting point in life.
I see these workers often. They clean the toilets at my university. They bring me tea if I want it. They are, on average, several inches shorter than me thanks to childhood malnutrition, because human resource companies in Qatar have scoured the earth looking for the most vulnerable, cheapest labour. There is no combination of hard work and grit that could have put any one of these workers in my position from their starting point in life – nor is there a combination of bad choices that could conceivably put me in their position from my starting point. I’m paid partly because I’m willing to see unfree labourers up close rather than to stay home and consume the products of billions of workers like them without seeing them.
I do not ‘earn’ my salary in the sense of doing more useful work. I’m a competent professor, but I’m not outstanding. My work is no more valuable than the work other academics do – perhaps less because most of my students are already so wealthy they need education much less than the average person around the world.
I receive a high salary because I was lucky enough to be in the position to serve the whims of rentiers – that is, people who own resources and the stuff we make out of them. There are exceptions but on the whole, the highest paid people are those advantageously placed to serve the whims of wealthy people. Doctors who perform cosmetic surgery for rentiers make far more than doctors who treat malnourished children.
And the power of ownership
The real money isn’t in doing stuff for the people who own stuff. It’s in being one of the people who owns stuff. My chance to do that was my second big lucky break.
A few years before I left for Qatar, my brother returned to the Midwestern United States with a significant amount of money he’d saved while teaching English. With that money, he’d bought a couple houses, fixed them up, and rented them out. Although he made a very good rate of return, he had no more money to invest. He had less money because he was now teaching underprivileged children in a public school in South Bend, Indiana instead of teaching relatively wealthy people in Tokyo.
We were a perfect match. I had the money but not the time or skills. He had the time and skills but not the money. And as brothers we had a bond of trust. No one is going to give tens of thousands of dollars every year to some guy who owned a couple of houses and said he knew how to manage more, but I’d give it to my brother. Nepotism made my business possible.
South Bend is a fabulous place for small investors to get into real estate. Thanks to overbuilding 50 years ago, houses there are extremely cheap to buy, but not as cheap to rent. So, we needed less money to buy in and made a higher return than most real estate investors in most US cities.
There are no doubts about it, investing in real estate is a fantastic way to boost your income. Whether you want to sell your Palmdale house fast for cash or whether you are a first-time buyer, the real estate industry is booming, and now is the time to get involved in property investments. However, that being said, managing multiple properties at one time can be overwhelming, and adding inherited property can raise further points for consideration. With this in mind, if you are considering investing in real estate, it might be worthwhile researching a few different property management companies in your area. Above all, a property management company can take care of everything from finding tenants to advertising your property on social media. Accordingly, you can learn more about the benefits of working with a property management company by doing some research online.
I also benefited because the US tax structure is extremely favourable to business owners in general and landlords in particular. Capital gains are taxed far less than income, and people who don’t need their income are taxed less than people who do. My brother needs to live off of the salary our business pays him, and so he pays income tax on it. My wife and I don’t need the money we make from owning most of the business. We live off the salaries of our jobs, and reinvest virtually our entire share of the business. These reinvestments count as “losses,” and so officially we have never made any income or paid income taxes on our share of the business.
The business pays property taxes, but they average about $15 per house, per month – minuscule compared to the rent we make. Our business needs to maintain the houses, but the cost of maintenance is far less than we receive in rent. Eventually, I’ll take money out and pay income taxes on it, but that amount will probably always be a small portion of the returns to my share of the business. As long as my wife and I (or our heirs) keep reinvesting most of our profits, the vast majority of it will never be subject to income tax.
Making private basic incomes universal
My wife and I don’t have enough property income to put us in the one percent, and at our age, it probably won’t get there while we’re alive. But we could quit right now and be safely out of poverty with probably as much as the most generous basic income proposals on the table right now.
We have a basic income – a permanently growing basic income – not just for life, but forever. Because we own stuff we don’t need, our society rewards us with more and more stuff every year. We don’t have to do anything to get more every year. Our money works for us, so we don’t have to.
Because we own stuff we don’t need, our society rewards us with more and more stuff every year.
We don’t quit because employers have offered us jobs with good working conditions and pay that makes us significantly better off than living on our basic income alone. Most people in a similar position would do the same. If some people don’t work when a basic income becomes available, we should consider the possibility that employers aren’t paying high enough wages. My wife and I are not better humans than most of the world’s poor. Our lucky breaks make us different from the poor. And those same lucky breaks make us similar to most other people with money.
Just because I benefit from the unfairness of our economic system doesn’t make its rules any fairer. Those rules are not some natural feature of the universe. People made them. People can change them.
Why don’t we?
Obviously people who own stuff have a great deal of political power, but there’s more to it than that. Most people and policymakers do not understand the difference between rewarding people who do stuff and rewarding people who own stuff. Spending rewards production, but rewarding production is not the same as rewarding people who do things that make production happen. Everything humans produce is made from a combination of human effort and resources. Some spending rewards human efforts, but the biggest rewards go to the owners of resources and of the things we’ve made out of them in the past.
People like to think that owners are ‘entrepreneurs’ and ‘job creators’. To some extent this is true. Entrepreneurs are owners who put forth effort to increase the value of what they own, and often what they do is valuable. But there are three reasons entrepreneurship can’t justify the enormous inequalities in the world today.
1. For owners, work is optional. For everyone else, it’s mandatory. Owners do not have to be entrepreneurs. They don’t even have to be competent. They can hire competent people to manage their money for them. The amount of ‘entrepreneurship’ in my story was miniscule. It amounts to this. I lucked into money. My brother knew what to do with it. I gave it to him. For nothing more than that, I never need to work again. Neither will my successors. And unless they’re spendthrifts or exceedingly incompetent investors, they’ll have more than me, and their successors will have more than them.
2. Most owners aren’t really entrepreneurs. Economists have a saying, “the entrepreneur tends to become a rentier”. The reason is simple. The more money you make, the more it makes for you, and that part of your income will eventually outstrip the part from the things you actually do. As a human, you will eventually stop working, and so, you’ll stop getting money for doing stuff, but your stuff will keep on making money forever.
3. We can get entrepreneurship without the enormous rewards to ownership we have today. Rewards were smaller a half century ago, but there was just as much entrepreneurship. What can I possibly have done in the seven years that I’ve been accumulating stuff to justify rewarding me and my successors with a perpetually growing stream of work-free income? In short, nothing. I do not exaggerate. I’ve studied the market as an economist and as a political theorist. I’ve lived it as a wage earner and as a business owner. It’s not just me and my wife. It’s how the economy works.
Some people who read this story will probably accuse me of hypocrisy, saying something like, “If you’re an egalitarian, why are you rich?” If I wrote a similar description of the economy when I was poor, they’d accuse me of jealously, saying something like, “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” That’s the catch-22 for people who complain about the rules of our economic system. You’re either hypocritical or jealous. No one has the right amount of property to complain about the distribution of property.
I plan someday to use most of my money to do something good for others instead of just for myself. But it’s the system that needs to change. Individual owners giving away things at their whim will not fix the unfairness of the system. We need to change the rules.
We don’t need to eliminate the market economy or property rights. We just need to realise that a lot of the income in the world today goes to the people who own resources and the stuff we’ve made out of them. Tax that unearned income and share it with everyone – a universal and unconditional basic income. The most common objection to basic income is that it’s supposedly wrong to give things to people who don’t work for it, when actually, the economy already gives billions of dollars of unearned income to people who are already wealthy. The problem is we don’t share it.
Chris Lee, a Democratic state representative from Hawaii, made international headlines when he passed legislation creating a working group to study Universal Basic Income.
Lee recently joined the UBI Podcast to discuss the legislation.
He said the working group will analyze Hawaii’s exposure to automation and the potential for solutions, such as basic income, to address this issue. The working group will also look at the efficacy of Hawaii’s current social services system and whether it is adequate for the challenges of the future.
“It’s safe to say, that if we do nothing…these programs that we are already spending money on are going to go through the roof. To say nothing of unemployment and other changes in the economy that is going to exacerbate income inequality and limit the opportunity for people to work and make a living,” Lee said.
There is no end-date to the working group, and Lee said the key players will likely be organized by the end of this summer. Lee said he hopes that by the next legislative session in January the working group will have produced enough research to push for funding for deeper research into evaluating various proposals.
A potential outcome of the working group is to create a pilot program that is “not necessarily administered by the state,” but is tailored to the local economy, he said.
While the United States had a debate over basic income during the Nixon Administration, Lee said he hopes that initiatives like this working group can bring the discussion to a new generation.
“I think this is definitely an inflection point where we have to acknowledge that the challenges that face us are far larger than our existing infrastructure and economic system is equipped to deal with,” Lee said.
Lee said there must be some changes in the system.
“I think that ultimately we have no choice and it is inevitable that we see some sort of paradigm shift in the way we are doing things,” he said.
The legislation passed unanimously, and Lee said he has not encountered opposition to the proposal. The legislation had support from labor unions, the business community, social justice advocates, and regular Hawaiians.
There were even a handful of legislators Lee worked with on the working group that already had exposure to basic income previously, he said.
“I think that respect for one’s neighbor, that ‘aloha spirit’ is something that drives our value set so that when we come together and say that everybody should have the right to basic financial security — that’s something I think is meaningful to people. So I think everybody has at least been open to the idea of having this discussion and seeing where it will go,” Lee said.
On Wednesday, April 12th, Philippe Van Parijs, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, Emeritus Professor at the University of Louvain and former Director of the Hoover Chair in Economics and Social Ethics, presented his latest book on Basic Income at Stanford University.
He offered a powerful defense of UBI as an instrument of freedom and argued that it can be economically sustained and politically achieved—especially if political communities consider starting with a small UBI. Basic income should be designed, he argues, to go alongside publically funded services, such as quality healthcare and education, and should be given to all fiscal residents of a country.
“I’ve listened to criticisms and questions about basic income in five continents and seven languages,” Van Parijs told an audience of more than a hundred students, teachers and members of the broader community. He remains convinced that the policy has no fatal flaws.
Co-written with Yannick Vanderborght, and with the heroic title Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, the book is an absolute must read for basic income enthusiasts and critics, advanced and beginners alike. As the idea of UBI spreads faster than ever throughout the world, it can be hard to keep track of all the major developments in the academic and political worlds. Their book is a seamless solution to this problem.
Over eight insightful chapters, the authors offer the most comprehensive survey ever produced of the scholarship surrounding the recent and less recent revivals of the old idea. Van Parijs and Vanderborght trace back the roots of the policy proposal in the history of public assistance and social insurance, as well as in utopian thinking from Thomas Paine to Charles Fourier, and Martin Luther King. As a scholar, writing and teaching on basic income, I cherish the more than 100 pages of notes and references at the end, which prove to be inexhaustible sources of knowledge.
We learned from Philippe’s talk more about the long journey that led Philippe where he is now. From his first (disappointing) encounter with Rawls over breakfast to his (equally disappointing) encounter with Dworkin in a taxi. On those occasions, both political philosophers challenged the view that liberal egalitarian justice requires a universal cash payment. He recounted for us how he nonetheless ended up convinced that basic income was the instrument of freedom.
In the book, the authors argue that UBI enables a fairer distribution of the most important good of all – the real freedom to lead one’s life as wished, through work and outside work. They make the case that UBI is ethically justifiable by taking on the most pervasive objection of all – that unconditional cash would allow an unfair freeriding of some on others.
Vanderborgth and Van Parijs also offer answers to the many other questions and objections to UBI that come up again and again in political debates. For a start, how would people who believe that work is a moral duty and see the welfare state as a moral hazard ever agree to a system where we don’t even require recipients to demonstrate a willingness to work? And even if we could get them to agree, how could we afford it? And how could such system be sustained? Presumably, if people get money for doing nothing, they will stop working, which will in turn make it impossible to afford a generous UBI. Should we give it to migrants? Won’t it create a dangerous pull effect? And, what about the global poor anyway? Each time, they dissect the objections and scrutinize the questions with the rigor of philosophers, the wise perspective of historians, the rationality of economists and the pragmatic outlook of political advocates.
We also learned more from the talk about how UBI can help build a sane economy. Automation and globalization are important threats to employment and workers’ rights. Van Parijs argued that UBI could be a possible solution to support displaced workers – allowing them to retrain, and giving them access to the means to lead a decent life. He also shared his vision of a form of work-sharing that could help prevent two opposite problems – the fact that so many work too much and burnout, and the fact that so many are depressed for being out of work. A ‘sane economy’, then, is one that works for the many and does not make so many of us stressed and unhealthy.
I remain convinced that one of the most exciting promises of basic income is that it can help us see a way out of the current dominant regressive mindset on public assistance. Existing benefits systems often condone an obsession with screening out a supposedly undeserving underclass: the “welfare queens” and benefits scroungers. At worst, politicians take advantage of this paradigm to get elected, promising to screen out the free riders. At best, they address the problem in a shortsighted way, making benefits even more conditional to show that they are preventing scroungers from abusing the system. In doing so, they strengthen the myth that benefit claimants are indeed undeserving of assistance. Van Parijs and Vanderborgth’s book proposes to try out the opposite strategy to help rebuild the welfare state: doing away with conditionality to avoid benefits traps while also rejecting means testing, so that more workers also benefit from public assistance.
The authors would prefer if everyone had access to the highest sustainable basic income, but they fear basic income will only work with a great deal of realism and pragmatism. The challenge is to strike the right balance between the ideal and the feasible – without compromising the vision and without wishful-thinking on what is achievable. For basic income to work, Van Parijs said at the end of his talk, the world needs visionaries, enraged activists, and opportunistic thinkers to work together. But don’t worry, he added, “I am sure that all three kinds can be found in this room”.
*** All Pictures are a courtesy of Christine Baker-Parrish
*** A longer review of the book by Juliana Bidadanure can be found on the Stanford Social innovation Review website here.
*** For more on the event, please read Sara Button’s review here.
It is better to have enough financial security to work for no pay than to receive payment directly for the same work — or, at least, this has been my own experience as a volunteer in the basic income community.
If my first year of active involvement in this community has done one thing to bolster my own support for a basic income, it has been this.
I began my work for Basic Income News as a “pure volunteer,” later dabbled in crowdfunding, and eventually received a grant for my work. Through it all, I have come to believe that there is good reason that voluntary work should remain voluntary, as long as it is financially feasible for volunteers to remain such (if, for example, volunteers had access to a work-unconditional guaranteed income).
Of course, no bold conclusions can be drawn from my experience alone. I am but one datum, a voluntary (no pun intended) sample of n = 1. The anecdotes that follow are meant only to be suggestive, to inspire critical reflection on ways in which the monetization of labor might compromise our attitudes as workers and, in turn, the quality (and quantity) of our output.
1. Background: Becoming a “Paid Volunteer”
When I began working for Basic Income News in early 2016, I did not seek financial compensation for my labor, nor did I have any expectation ever to do so. BIEN has been entirely volunteer-based since its inception and had no hiring plans for the foreseeable future. At that time, the praise and acceptance that I received as a result of my contributions — the satisfaction of providing something of quality and utility to people whom I respected — was all the motivation I needed. I also, at that time, had the means to support myself temporarily (a self-funded basic income, if you will). Thus, in mid-2016, I chose to treat this work for BIEN as if it were my “full-time job” while I self-financed my living.
Kate drinking fancy beer while supporting basic income
As my work began to gain attention, however, my situation changed. First, colleagues encouraged me to raise money for myself on Patreon, à la basic income writer and advocate Scott Santens. Allured by the prospect of a longer “career” as a freelance basic income reporter and writer, I did indeed create my own Patreon account, and reached a peak monthly “salary” of over $300 within only a few months.
However, crowdfunding — and the associated attempts to “brand myself” as a public figure — proved to be a considerable drain on my morale, and, as discussed below, it created perverse incentives that very nearly undermined my sense of solidarity with the BIEN and Basic Income News community. Thus, although I kept my account open, I ceased to devote time and energy to personal crowdfunding.
At the end of the year, though, the impulse to monetize my volunteer labor returned through a different vehicle: in December 2016, the Economic Security Project (ESP) launched in the United States, with the bold proclamation that it would be distributing $10 millionin cash grants to projects related to researching or promoting basic income. With the support of my colleagues, I applied for, and received, a grant amounting to $2,000 per month to support my work for Basic Income News for one year. It felt like a dream come true to me — the highlight and capstone of an unexpectedly exciting and successful year.
In the ensuing months, however, I noticed that — despite its unquestionable benefits to my personal finances — even the receipt of the ESP grant began to impact my attitude and morale, my relationships with colleagues, and the quality of my work in ways that were not altogether salubrious.
Given the present political reality, my personal circumstances — being paid to volunteer, if you will — are about as good as they can be. But I believe that, if reality could be otherwise, I might have been a much more effective contributor to the good of Basic Income News and BIEN, and perhaps the basic income community at large, if I simply had the wherewithal to continue to support myself while engaging in true volunteer work.
2. From Collaborator to Competitor
In my experience, the single most salient adverse effect of monetizing volunteer work — whether through crowdfunding or through grant-seeking — has been its tendency to induce a change in mindset that transforms allies and collaborators into rivals.
Whether I was raising money to support myself on Patreon or pursuing an individual grant, I was pursuing money to support myself as anindividual. I was forced to market myself, to promote myself, to present myself as individually (and uniquely among BIEN volunteers) deserving of funds — even though the job to which I had agreed, and the job that I initially loved, was to work for BIEN. During my first months with the organization, when I thought nothing about monetization, I tended to select my tasks for any given day based upon what I perceived as BIEN’s most pressing needs and demands, in conjunction with my own abilities, interests, and inclinations. But when I found myself faced with the tasks of earning and retaining funders, new questions emerged at the forefront: How can I make it appear that, out of all volunteers in the basic income movement, I am worthy of money? How can I stand out from the crowd?
Unsurprisingly, the drive to “stand out” as individually worthy of support can have deleterious effects on work in a collaborative environment like BIEN and Basic Income News. For example, the news service requires much “behind the scenes” work to remain functional. Most would-be funders, however, are not privy to our backstage activities — and would-be fundees like me know this. Meanwhile, Basic Income News posts are generally published under the names of their authors; thus, as actors on the front stage, news authors do sometimes gain the attention of those outside of the news team itself. As a consequence, the pursuit of outside funding tends to incentivize writing as much as possible under one’s own name, while minimizing administrative tasks, proofreading, editing, volunteer training, general website updates and maintenance, and any other such “invisible” work, despite the indubitable importance of the latter for BIEN.
Thus, for one, the pursuit of outside funds can create incentives that may lead the “fundee” to act contrary to their better judgement of how they could most effectively use their time and talents to further the good of their organization or cause. However, there can be even darker effects of the competitive, individualistic mindset engendered by personal profit-seeking.
Here are two examples from my experience — which, I must admit, fill me with shame and disgust even to relate. The first concerns a change in attitude towards proofreading and editing. I joined Basic Income News as a copyeditor and style editor, and I initially continued this work on an as-needed basis even after I also began to write articles under my own name. When I started crowdfunding, however, I nearly abandoned these proofreading and editing tasks — or, for that matter, providing any type of assistance to other volunteers — and I became much less thoughtful and meticulous when I did provide any type of editorial feedback. In part, this was motivated by the factor mentioned above: a newly acquired distaste for anything that distracted from the more “visible” work of self-authored posts. In part, though, it was driven by still more nefarious thoughts: “I have many ideas about how to make this draft into a better piece; thus, if I simply let it be published in its current state, my own work should then look better by comparison…”
Another tendency I noticed, after I began crowdfunding, was an avaricious urge to seize each and every good news lead for myself — neither asking nor caring whether any other volunteers might enjoy writing the story or might be better positioned than myself to write on its particular topic or region. When other writers claimed major news lead, I wasn’t happy to see that they were contributing, nor was I happy even to have less work for myself; instead, I felt a twinge of envy.
It’s a gross understatement to say that I’m not proud of these thoughts and never was; the feeling that I was required to outdo my own peers and allies was anything but fun or exciting.
It should additionally be noted that I encountered this perverse effect — the felt demand to treat collaborators as if they were competitors — despite the fact that no other Basic Income News volunteers were raising money for themselves. This is because, I think, I faced a special mental burden as the sole volunteer seeking monetary contributions: the burden of rationalizing to myself why I sought funding while my collaborators did not (or why, given that they were not receiving their own donations, I did not donate a portion of my own proceeds to them). When I observed my own money-seeking behavior, I saw that this behavior implied that I saw my own work and contributions as “more deserving” than those of my collaborators. Trying to “outdo” other volunteers, then, was in part a mechanism to relieve cognitive dissonance: if I could prove to myself that I was “the best” of the Basic Income News volunteers, I could rationalize my behavior of seeking donations for myself and myself alone.
In the end, I found one way to overcome these counterproductive attitudes and urges: I ignored the prospect of future money in basic income news writing, and accepted the assumption that I would not bring in additional money on Patreon, would not secure an additional year of grant funding, etc. That is, I retrained myself not to think of my work as a money-making venture.
3. The Threat of “Selling Out”
It probably requires little imagination to understand why seeking money from donors could threaten to compromise journalistic integrity. One should hope, at least, that news reporting would answer to the facts rather than the preferences and predilections of any monied interest.
Even when writing opinion pieces, such as this one, I consider myself to be bound by ethical and epistemic duties that the pursuit of donors might threaten to comprise. Roughly, I believe that I have a responsibility to write in support of positions that I believe Basic Income News followers should see supported, and to criticize positions that I believe Basic Income News followers should see criticized. Sometimes acting in accordance with this responsibility amounts to defending unpopular positions — such as, say, emphasizing some of the limitations of basic income or even questioning its feasibility — knowing that many readers are unlikely otherwise to seek out articles that challenge their pre-existing views. Indeed, even writing a full-fledged defense of basic income is likely to alienate some readers, given that there are many incompatible versions of basic income and that many incompatible reasons have been adduced to support them. I know, for example, that many basic income supporters would prefer to de-emphasize or outright reject approaches that turn on degrowth or post-work utopias.
When I supported myself financially, I was free to write whatever I believed needed to be written. Money seeking, however, introduces new questions. Should I try to remain as neutral and inoffensive as possible, even when writing opinion pieces, in order not to alienate potential funders? Should I avoid writing neutral and objective summaries of reports and articles that oppose basic income — knowing that most of my actual and potential funders would prefer to read a rebuttal? Should I try as much as possible to pander to the interests and positions of those basic income supporters with the most disposable cash (say, perhaps, those among the tech elite)? And, just to be safe, should I rule out ever writing a critical piece on the motives behind Silicon Valley’s interest in basic income? Should I assume that some rich potential supporters are likely to be pro-growth, and so stay away from ever writing in favor of a degrowth perspective — even though the latter is much closer to what I support? Should I avoid any sort of criticisms of the basic income movements that apply to my own funders? Should I stay quiet if I notice that one of my donors has begun spreading inaccurate or misleading claims about the status of one of the basic income experiments? And so on.
Fortunately, I was never tempted to compromise on my values as a journalist or writer in order to try to obtain donations, although it was distressingly easy to see that matters could have been different had I been in more dire need of funds, especially when attempting to crowdsource money through Patreon. I have occasionally, however, felt some pull after the fact to avoid criticizing those who have contributed to my funding — out of a sense of loyalty or respect to those who have shown generosity. Although superficially more virtuous, perhaps, the latter impulse — the desire not to offend those who have been charitable — can be just as problematic insofar as it becomes a threat to journalistic integrity.
4. From Social Norms to Market Norms
So far, I have focused on problems that arise when one fixates on the goal of securing or retaining funding. But adverse monetization-related effects on attitude and motivation can persist even within a secure funding arrangement — as I have experienced as a grantee.
Let’s look back to late 2016, prior to my receipt of the ESP grant. I have never tracked my hours, but I would guess that, at this time, I would sometimes willingly devote 50 or 60 hours per week to work for BIEN and Basic Income News. Since I did so for no pay, and without the expectation of future pay, the effort was clearly my choice; it was something I elected to do because of the appreciation it received from others and the sense of fulfillment it offered to me.
After I was offered $2,000 per month to complete the same work, my attitude began to shift. While there were surely many confounding factors, I feel certain that monetization played a distinct demotivational role at this point in my “career.” In fact, I felt a bit like an embodiment of research by behavioral economists like Dan Ariely on the tendency of monetary compensation to “crowd out” intrinsic and altruistic motivation to perform tasks. I grew disinclined to put in long hours of work, and sometimes even felt resentful when I imagined that others were expecting me to continue to work as much as I had been working at the end of 2016.
The fact that I was receiving only $2,000 per month played a role in this motivational change that was sometimes cognitively explicit. To be sure, this was the amount I had requested — the maximum amount, in fact — and I had requested this particular amount under the assumption that I would use it to cover basic expenses while continuing to work full-time (or more) each week. Prior actually to receiving the grant, I never thought about the fact that I was probably working at least 40 hours per week, and that, in the US, it would typically be seen as exceedingly cheap to hire a PhD-holder to perform a full-time job for a pre-tax salary of $2,000 per month without health insurance or other benefits.
After receiving the grant, however, I conceptualized my work much different: as Ariely might put it, I began to conceptualize my work in terms of economic norms instead of social norms. I was no longer working for the good of BIEN, for the basic income movement, or for any pleasure I intrinsically received from the work; I was instead working for$2,000 per month (with no benefits) — which seemed to merit no more than part-time work and effort. If I were to put in a 50 or 60 hour week, it no longer felt to me like I was voluntarily breaking my back for a good cause, as it did when I was doing the same amount of work for no compensation whatsoever. Instead, when I worked such long hours for a relatively small salary, I just felt underpaid relative to my efforts.
5. Epilogue
Eventually, I was able to work with ESP to resolve specific conditions on my grant funding, and I am happy to say that they are extremely reasonable (and, of course, they carry no expectation that I must work time-and-half!). It remains true, however, that the effect of financial compensation has not been to increase my effort or enthusiasm in my work for Basic Income News. On the contrary, I am now working much lessfor the news service than I was prior to being paid.
In the end, I believe, allof the effects of the grant have turned out well for me — even if not precisely (or at all!) in the way that might have been expected: given my tendencies toward workaholism, I am indeed rather grateful for any financially-induced loss of motivation. I am now much more inclined to moderate the time and effort that I dedicate to Basic Income News and, as as consequence, less stressed. It’s likely that, had it not been for monetization, I would have soon been a victim of burnout (yes, burnout at volunteer work).
Meanwhile, I have avoided other potentially adverse effects of monetization — such as the sense of competition against my peers — simply by adopting the acceptance that I will not continue to be funded in 2018 (and by assuring myself that this is okay, that I’ll find a way to make do, long enough, until I find something else). This mindset allows me to revert attention from the question “How can I secure money for myself?” back to questions like “What needs to be done?” and “What do I want to do?” The latter questions, I find, are much more conducive to the production of quality work and, certainly, healthier and happier attitudes.
So, while I have found an effective strategy, it depends, essentially, on having a personal financial safety net on which I can fall if I do not immediately secure additional paid labor.
It would irresponsible to assert that my experience can be generalized to others, in other circumstances of voluntary work. To the extent that it does generalize, however, it seems that voluntary work is best supported and encouraged not by the monetization of that work, but by the provision of financial support entirely independent of that work — the type of financial support that would be provided, for instance, by an unconditional basic income.
A Targeted Universal Framework for Shared Prosperity and Enduring Progress
By Mark Gomez
May 30, 2017
There is more than enough in the American economy, not merely to end poverty, but for everyone to prosper. And in the next 40 years, the economy will double again. Now is the time to construct a framework of bold policies to tackle extreme inequality and finally end racial economic exclusion.
Unfortunately up to quite recently, progress-minded activists have been proposing a familiar set of policies from a bygone era that represent little more than baby steps forward. These policies neither excite voters to go to the polls in droves, nor embolden candidates to risk their office to ensure the policies become law.
In this essay, we propose a strategic reform framework that adopts familiar set of policies for a new era of possibilities, with an eye towards how they can each uniquely contribute to economic prosperity and stability for all. In so doing, we believe we can inspire a new vibrant brand of politics and rekindle a belief in progress.
Excessive Power Creates Extreme Inequality
A few corporations and people enjoy remarkable prosperity. The rest of us are stuck. Without enough in our pockets to drive the economy forward, our prosperity is not just inequitably shared, it is fleeting.
Across product chains, prosperous firms know how to ensure their contractors produce high quality products. And prosperous firms have generated ample jobs across their regions. However, these firms have yet to ensure that the workers they rely on also prosper.
Extreme inequality is born of excessive power wielded by a few firms and people. This power is built on stabilizing advantages inherent in our economy (e.g. natural monopolies, industry clusters) or granted through policies (e.g. patents, occupational licenses).
The stabilizing advantages (e.g. unions, free college, cheap homes) that once built the white middle class have been severely weakened. Of course these advantages also were often designed to exclude people deemed less worthy–women, African Americans, immigrants and others.
The dominant players’ extreme power slows economic progress and corrupts our democracy. We need to create effective countervailing power mechanisms and supporting institutions. And we need to recreate stabilizing advantages not just for the white middle-class, but also for African-Americans, immigrants and others who have yet to fully prosper.
Driving the Economy Forward from the Back
Our framework puts money back into people’s pockets enabling them to drive enduring prosperity. Those at the back of the income and wealth distribution, those who heretofore have been held back will now lead the economy forward benefiting all of us.
Income and wealth created socially needs to be distributed socially rather than by the few. To revive the economy and protect our democracy, we must strategically break up perilous concentrations of income and wealth. This tames dominant economic players, rewards the work of the rest, and ends racial economic exclusion.
This framework is built on three pillars: a decent stable income, a sturdy foundation of assets, and a share in our economy’s prosperity. Here is an initial take at what this could practically look like in dollars and cents.
1. A Decent Living EITC with the maximum credit set so that a single earner full time minimum wage worker’s household earned income reaches 250% of federal poverty. Childless workers will receive proportionate credits. The credit will be distributed monthly. To break up perilous concentrations of income, the program will be paid for by a tax on the top 20% of earners.
2. A Social Inheritance Trust of $60,000 made available at 21 years of age. The initial annual contribution to the trust will be $2,857 per child. To break up perilous concentrations of wealth, the program will be paid for by a new tax on all forms of property. To ensure benefits for those now under 21, a one-time wealth tax will be imposed.
3. Prosperity Shares with monthly dividends to everyone over 18 years of age. The initial annual dividend would be $6,000 per household. To break up the perilous concentration of corporate income, the program will be paid for by a tax on the most prosperous of firms.
A Targeted Universal Framework
Our universal goal is to ensure everyone prospers. Each policy is targeted to address the structure of industries and of households. Our strategy is built upon how business firms are connected through value chains and regional economies. And our strategy recognizes how hourly wages, annual income, and assets each contribute to households getting by.
The “Decent Living EITC and Prosperity Shares” together reflect our ideal of the good life. We believe hard work should be rewarded and we believe in financial independence. The “Decent Living EITC” ensures dominant firms contribute to the prosperity of workers at less advantaged firms. And the “Prosperity Shares” ensure that we all, not just the upper middle class with stocks, enjoy our nation’s prosperity.
Over time, “Prosperity Shares” may be increased faster than the “Decent Living EITC”, eventually moving towards a more traditional UBI. The framework gives us the flexibility to adjust the distribution of income if, indeed, robots reduce the number of hours humans need to work.
The “Social Inheritance” breaks up racial economic barriers driving the political transformation needed to pass these policies. Those groups who heretofore have been held back from sharing in our prosperity are in many cases the most active politically in critical regions of the country.
This policy framework is predicated on reforming our antiquated national, state and city minimum wages laws. There is a legitimate fear that, with a decent living, EITC firms will in time not grant raises to their lesser paid workers. To ensure firms do not cheat in this manner, we need robust living wage standards with premiums for more prosperous regions.
None of this framework is possible without immigration reform. The dominant economic players, the people and firms, in the most prosperous regions rely on the hard work of undocumented immigrants. Their work is underpaid precisely because these workers and their firms lack power, in no small part, because they work in the shadows of our political economy.
For each policy we did not ask “how are we going to pay for this?” Instead we asked this: “At whose expense was the extreme income or wealth created?” Too many analysts critique extreme inequality only to then put forward policies that leave ill gotten gains intact. At the very least, moving forward, we need to discontinue the radical redistribution of income and wealth of the last two generations.
Over time, the income and asset standards need to increase with the economy. If they are indexed merely to the cost of living, within 40 years, we will the recreate extreme inequality we have worked so hard to undo. The income standard should be indexed to the U.S. GDP per capita. The asset standard is indexed to U.S. wealth per capita.
Shared Prosperity and Enduring Progress
Over the next generation, if we follow the historical trend, we will add to our economy $7 trillion in income and $27 trillion in wealth. Because each of us, and those who came before us, have contributed to that prosperity, we should share in it. In short order, we can ensure everyone enjoys a ‘middle-class’ standard of living. And, in the years to come, we should be able to ensure people do still better.
Mark Gomez, a long time community activist and labor union strategist, now leads the Leap Forward Project at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.
The rising power of Amazon and Alphabet represents the dawn of a new era. We have to shape a new culture that fits our connected future. Giving people a basic income for taking part in this mega project is the next step we should take.
In a matter of days, both Amazon’s and Alphabet’s stock prices have crossed the $1,000 dollar mark, hammering one nail after another in the coffin of traditional brick-and-mortar business. Malls are collapsing as drones take to the air. Tens of thousands of employees are being fired as automated supermarkets take shape.
Online shopping has become the norm and consumer culture as we know it is going into the history books. People are now using websites such as BuyerImpact.co.uk to help them buy what they need and compare items, it’s easier, faster, and can save them money. And it goes on. Whatever the needs might be, people can find what they are looking for online. They could be looking for new furniture pieces, or perhaps some coats and jackets that are high quality; everything can be found on the internet if they know where to look. Plus, there is the added convenience of not having to leave the house to get new things. Statistically, people can be seen shopping at a much larger capacity as compared to the last decade, due to the availability of gift cards and coupons to stores like Macy’s (sneak a peek at these guys for instance), making items more affordable than ever.
But it doesn’t end with shopping. The evolution of technology is like a fractal phenomenon – the pattern repeats itself in different shapes and colors. Autonomous cars are threatening drivers, artificial intelligence is spreading through the services sector, 3D printers are redefining manufacturing, and talking smartphones are becoming personal secretaries. I suppose a good thing to come out of it is drones, like the ones from https://www.drdrone.ca/pages/dji-mini-2 which can help reduce crime rates, and increases security, and for entertainment purposes is an excellent creation of technology.
The prospect of a jobless future is looming, and the concept of Universal Basic Income is making headlines left and right. But underneath the cold technological surface, a profound human question is brewing: What is going to be the role of the human being in the near future and where are we going as a society?
Human Evolution. The Bigger Picture.
So far we humans have been busy establishing our physical existence on this planet. We hunted mammoths, lived in caves and started fires for quite a while. Then we moved into houses with heating systems and industrialized our food production. Gradually, we are delegating the catering to our physical needs to devices and machines that do the job for us.
We are nearing a turning point in human evolution where a new realm is opening up for us. As we discover that we can largely automate the production of food, water, housing and clothing for all, our time, energy and focus can be invested in what matters most: Developing the essence of the human being within us alongside healing and nurturing humanity as a society.
The Advantage of Man Over the Robot?
Changes are happening faster than we realize since technological progress is accelerating. And if we once asked what is the advantage of man over the animal, soon we will be asking what is the advantage of man over the robot.
Answering this question will not be a matter of philosophy. It will be a pressing issue that determines no less the fate of the human race. The level of tech that will be at our disposal paints two possible futures: We could use sophisticated technology for countries to fight each other and destroy the planet, or we could build the means to provide for every basic human need, and create a reality of abundance for all.
If we wish to move towards the latter, then a lot has to change. And that change starts within us. We have to recognize that our egoistic drive to put our self-interests above all is in contrast with our interdependent future. We have to become aware that the world is a globally integrated system that requires us to move towards unity.
To that end, our social values and the purpose of human culture, our personal aspirations and what we actually do with our time, must all be focused on nurturing our human connections. By doing this, we will unlock a new source of prosperity and fulfillment, and set society on the right track.
Creating a New Connected Culture
Multiple fields of social and biological science have been saying this for decades – we are all wired for human connection. It doesn’t matter where we come from or what values we currently hold, as human beings, we find happiness and fulfillment when we feel connected to our fellow man. And that’s also when we become the best version of ourselves: Productive, creative, healthy, and resilient.
However, creating this new connected culture means a lot of work. The outbursts of human egoism need to be continuously balanced with the uplifting of pro-social values. As human beings we instinctively gravitate to our egoistic drives, but at the same time we’re social creatures that will go out of our way for social recognition. So instead of fighting for self-hoarding and self-maximization, in a connected culture, the social climate will drive us to compete for social contribution.
To achieve that, many people will need to undergo training and later work as educators and community organizers to create and maintain a positive social climate.
Back to the Present: The UBI Dilemma
The voices calling for governments to counter technological unemployment by providing a Universal Basic Income are mostly seeing the economic side of the equation. On the social side of it, it’s not as clear to UBI proponents that the new source of human fulfillment and progress is no other than positive human connection.
If we wish to prevent chaotic developments and move pleasantly towards the inevitably connected future of our societies, I recommend that a basic income will not come by itself. Rather, it will be coupled with socio-educational training. Instead of having people living on welfare while they struggle to compete with ever-advancing robots, they should be receiving a salary for the new jobs of the future: The social and educational roles required to shape a positively connected human culture.
In my view, this is what most people will be doing if we consciously get on the right track as a society. Our intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity can all be utilized to raise the quality of human connections. This is not a pipe dream, but rather the only realistic and pragmatic endeavor we can undertake to avert a dystopian future and make the right turn at the crossroads we are in.
If we work together, we might just have an advantage over the robots.
Michael Laitman is a Professor of Ontology, a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah, an MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics, and was the prime disciple of Kabbalist, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the RABASH). He has written over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
We also learned more from the talk about how UBI can help build a sane economy. Automation and globalization are important threats to employment and workers’ rights. Van Parijs argued that UBI could be a possible solution to support displaced workers – allowing them to retrain, and giving them access to the means to lead a decent life. He also shared his vision of a form of work-sharing that could help prevent two opposite problems – the fact that so many work too much and burnout, and the fact that so many are depressed for being out of work. A ‘sane economy’, then, is one that works for the many and does not make so many of us stressed and unhealthy.
Unfortunately up to quite recently, progress-minded activists have been proposing a familiar set of policies from a bygone era that represent little more than baby steps forward. These policies neither excite voters to go to the polls in droves, nor embolden candidates to risk their office to ensure the policies become law.
This framework is built on three pillars: a decent stable income, a sturdy foundation of assets, and a share in our economy’s prosperity. Here is an initial take at what this could practically look like in dollars and cents.
