The book, the Prehistory of Private Property by Grant S. McCall an me, examines the origin and development of the private property rights system from prehistory to the present day to debunk three widely accepted false beliefs about the private property system: that inequality is natural, inevitable, or incompatible with freedom; that capitalism is more consistent with negative freedom than any other conceivable economic system; and that there is something “natural” about the private property system. That is, the normative principles of appropriation and voluntary transfer applied in the world in which we live support a capitalist system with strong, individualist, and unequal private property rights. The book reviews the intellectual history of these claims and demonstrates their importance in contemporary political thought before reviewing the history and prehistory of the private property system to address their veracity. In so doing, the book uses thorough anthropological and historical evidence to refute these three claims. The book shows that societies with common-property systems maintaining strong equality and extensive freedom were initially nearly ubiquitous around the world, that their claims to common ownership were consistent with appropriation-based theories, and that the private property rights system was established through a long series of violent state-sponsored aggressions.
This post summarizes the book, chapter-by-chapter.
1. Introduction
This chapter previews the book, explains the importance of debunking the three claims, the usefulness of examining the intellectual history of how they became so important in political thought, and the value of reviewing the prehistory and early history of the private property system to debunk them.
2. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part One: 5,000 years of clever and contradictory arguments that inequality is natural and inevitable
This chapter reviews the history of the belief that inequality is natural and inevitable, showing that different versions of it played a role in differently unequal societies from prehistory to modern times. Inequality has been attributed to the divine favor of gods, to leaders actually being gods, to the belief that only hierarchies are capable of maintaining peace; to the intellectual, moral, or genetic superiority of the upper class; to the need to reward useful behavior; and to many other questionable beliefs. The parallels between the uses of the inequality hypothesis are striking. Although predominant ideologies in virtually all unequal societies agree that inequality is natural and inevitable, they can’t agree why inequality is natural and inevitable, and they all use this natural-inequality hypothesis to justify force in order to maintain inequality.
3. Hierarchy’s Apologists, Part Two: Natural inequality in contemporary political philosophy and social science
This chapter shows that the belief in natural inequality survives in many guises in contemporary social science and political philosophy—most especially in social contract theory and in “freedom-based” arguments for unequal private property rights in natural resources and the things people make out of them. The parallels between contemporary and historical justifications for inequality are striking. They all use the belief that inequality is natural and inevitable to justify coercive rules to maintain inequality, but they all present conflicting explanations why inequality is inevitable. This observation itself raises doubt about this claim and provides reason for empirical historical analysis of whether the natural inequality hypothesis is true.
Grant S. McCall
4. How small-scale societies maintain political, social, and economic equality
This chapter uses anthropological and historical evidence to debunk what the authors call the natural inequality hypothesis—i.e. the belief that inequality is natural and inevitable and/or that inequality is the inevitable result of respecting negative freedom. It examines land-tenure and property systems in a wide-variety of societies known to history and anthropology. It shows that many societies maintained very high levels of social, political, and economic equality for extremely long periods of time while protecting negative freedom at least as well, if not better than, contemporary property rights-based societies.
5. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Market Economy
The negative freedom argument for the market economy relies on the belief that capitalism delivers greater freedom from interference and coercion than any other system. This chapter shows that this claim cannot be established in pure a priori theory and that “propertarians” (people who use this argument) have so far failed to establish it empirically. Section 1 shows that the establishment and maintenance of the private property system involves an empirical tradeoff of liberties that most versions of the negative-freedom argument ignore. Section 2 considers and rejects a priori attempts to use a rights-based conception of freedom to resolve that tradeoff. Section 3 considers other possibilities for resolving the tradeoff in pure theory and concludes that it must be addressed empirically. Section 4 explains why a particularly useful way to examine that tradeoff is to make an empirical comparison of the freedom experienced by people in the market economy and the hunter-gatherer band economy.
6. The Negative Freedom Argument for the Hunter-Gatherer Band Economy
This chapter presents an empirical argument that the hunter-gatherer band economy is more consistent with negative freedom than the market economy. Although freedom is difficult to measure, the freedom of people in band societies dominates the freedom of the least free people in capitalist societies. There is no form of coercion, interference, force, non-contractual obligation, involuntariness, or aggression, to which people in band societies are subject and from which lower- and middle-class people in capitalist society have been freed. Lower- and middle-class people in capitalist societies are subject to forms of coercion, force, and so on that do not exist in band societies. The independently wealthy might have more liberties than people in band societies, but if so, their additional liberties come at the cost of fewer liberties for middle- and lower-class people. Therefore, the market economy—as usually conceived—fails to deliver the highest equal freedom. The potential advantage of large-scale societies is in promoting opportunity, not in protecting freedom. If the private property system is to be justified against other systems, it must be justified on the basis of opportunity, not on the false claim that it promotes negative freedom.
7. Contemporary Property Theory: A story, a myth, a principle, and a hypothesis
This chapter argues that rights-based justifications of unequal private property systems rely on an empirical claim that the authors call, “the individual appropriation hypothesis.” That is, if people were allowed to appropriate resources, in the absence of interference, an unequal, individualistic property rights system would develop. It essentially means that the private property rights system is natural and that collective property systems are unnatural and tend to be established only by interfering with individually appropriated property rights. Propertarians who try to distance themselves from empirical claims tend either to fall back on this claim or to fall into tautology and/or special pleading.
Karl & Hobbes
8. The History of a Hypothesis
This chapter reviews the intellectual history of the individual appropriation hypothesis from its seventeenth-century origins to the present to show how it became a background assumption in contemporary political theory. The history of appropriation theory and the appropriation story are intertwined with the history of the hypothesis.
9. The impossibility of a purely a-priori justification of private property
This chapter assesses attempts to justify specifically private property rights on an a priori basis. It shows how such attempts either resort to special pleading or fall back on one or another version of the individual appropriation hypothesis. It demonstrates that arguments based on negative freedom, opportunity, inequality, market power, self-ownership, and the Lockean proviso all fail to rule out a property-owning government. Even Loren Lomasky’s explicit attempt to remove empirical claims from the theory involves both special pleading and the appropriation hypothesis.
10. Evidence Provided by Propertarians to Support the Appropriation Hypothesis
Chapters 7-9 have shown that propertarianism requires some version of the (set of) empirical claim(s) we call the individual appropriation hypothesis. Some propertarians actually have provided evidence in favor of it. This chapter reviews that evidence, showing that it is superficial and inconclusive. A more thorough investigation is needed. Therefore, this chapter sets up the following five chapters, which provide that investigation.
The Prehistory of Private Property
11. Property Systems in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
This is the first of four chapters examining the origin and development of property rights (private, public, collective, common, and other) in order to investigate the individual appropriation hypothesis and related claims outlined in Chapter 7. Section 1 considers whether appropriation theory applies to animals. Section 2 explores the broad variation of systems of territoriality among modern human hunter-gatherers and uses the results to think about territoriality among the earliest human occupants of most of the globe. Section 3 argues that nomadic hunter-gatherer bands appropriated most of the world’s land in ways that were consistent with all or most appropriation criteria contained in natural property rights theories. In contradiction to propertarian theory, these original appropriators chose not to establish individual private property—neither in land nor in other goods. Land was a common, and food and tools were subject to requirements to share.
12. Property Systems in Stateless Farming Communities
One appropriation criterion, the requirement that appropriators mix their labor with the land, bypasses nomadic foragers and gives the first ownership claims to the first people to clear and farm the land. This ubiquitous appropriation story uses this ethical principle in tandem with the empirical claim that the first farmers established private land ownership systems to support the claim that private property is a natural development. The evidence presented in this chapter shows it is not so. The origin of private property occurred long after the origins of agriculture. Private ownership and individual appropriation play no role in small-scale stateless farming communities. Small-scale swidden agriculturalists clear the land together and choose to establish nothing like the supposedly natural private property system. Early farming societies had complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, and at least partly collective land-tenure systems with a significant commons in the sense that individuals retained one or another kind of access rights to land for different purposes.
13. Property Systems in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern States
This chapter shows that no period of private, individual appropriation is found in the formation of states. Early states had land-tenure systems in which political elites—kings, pharaohs, lugals, etc.—were considered the owners of all of the land in their kingdoms and subjects had various forms of usufruct rights for farming or other practices. The beginnings of individual private property occurred gradually, long after the formation of states, not with individual acts of appropriation but with elites using their political power to name themselves or their underlings as owners of assets. Even then, private landownership did not become the dominant property rights system in ancient or medieval times. Communal village agriculture remained the most common system in state societies throughout the world until the early modern period.
14. The Privatization of the Earth, circa 1500-2000
The history recounted in Chapters 10-14 shows that private property does not arise spontaneously through appropriation or any other method. The first people to discover, claim, use, occupy, or mix labor with resources over most of the Earth established complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, partly collective land-tenure systems with significant common elements. The individual appropriation hypothesis is not merely unproven: it is disproven. The history discussed above indicates that the establishment of private property systems necessarily involves coercion and violence. Claims that the defense of unequal private ownership is somehow the defense of “natural liberty” are false. In the context of real history rather than the made-up appropriation story, the natural rights theories invented to defend private property shows that the people and the community have a better claim to land and resource ownership than unequal private owners.
15. The individual appropriation hypothesis assessed
The history recounted in Chapters 10-14 shows that private property does not arise spontaneously by appropriation or any other method. The first people to discover, claim, use, occupy, or mix labor with resources over most of the Earth established complex, overlapping, flexible, nonspatial, partly collective land-tenure systems with significant common elements. The individual appropriation hypothesis is not merely unproven: it is disproven. The history discussed above indicates that the establishment of private property systems necessarily involves coercion, violence, and dispossession. Claims that the defense of unequal private ownership is somehow the defense of “natural liberty” are false. In the context of real history rather than the made-up appropriation story, the natural rights theories invented to defend private property shows that the people and the community have a better claim to land and resource ownership than unequal private owners.
16. Conclusion
This book has told six histories: the intellectual histories of three widely believed empirical claims, and the political and economic histories that refute those claims. The natural-rights-based argument for strong, unequal private property rights relies on false empirical claims about equality, freedom, and the origin and nature of property rights in the past and as a stand-in for some kind of imagined universal human nature. A society that will be more consistent with the protection of all individuals from violence, coercion, and interference will have to find some way to ensure that each individual has direct and unconditional access to the resources necessary to survive. We suggest Universal Basic Income as an important policy to help achieve that goal.
Enzo grills Karl at the PPA+ Conference, Amsterdam 2019
Michael j. Sandel has written a book about the deep causes of the inequality that is a key driving force behind the populist backlash of recent years. His analysis serves as a basis for justification of the introduction of a universal basic income. For the complete review, see: https://basisinkomen.nl/wp-content/uploads/Book-Review-Michael-Sandel-Jan-Stroeken.pdf
Here you will find a short summary, being the last part of the review:
Public Debate and Basic Income Sandel’s analysis is razor sharp. What he brings to the fore more than anything is how present-day populism is only indirectly fuelled by the unequal distribution of income and essentially dominated by an ethical and cultural component. A growing section of the population feels underrated. This has everything to do with the tyranny of merit driven by the meritocratic ethos that, over the past decades, has led to meritocratic hubris. This hubris is reflected in the winners’ tendency to let their success go to their heads, forgetting about all the luck and good fortune that helped them along the way. Those who make it to the top believe with self-satisfied conviction that they deserve their fate and that those who end up at the bottom do too. This leaves little room for the kind of solidarity that could arise if we were to realise just how haphazardly talent is distributed and how randomly fate can either be kind or cruel. Merit-based pay is, according to Sandel, thus a form of tyranny – an oppressive regime.
And so, Sandel launches into a plea for a sweeping public debate on how to move from today’s individualisation to a greater sense of solidarity and more self-determination for all. What is essential in this respect is his conclusion that for many to be successful in life, all forms of education and work would have to be taken equally seriously. Without explicitly mentioning it, he points to the core of what the implementation of a universal basic income is all about: more equal recognition of current paid and unpaid work, as well as a stimulus to go to school. In an interview with Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant (20 September 2020), Sandel describes this when he speaks about ‘that which contributes to the community’ as a key alternative criterion to purely performance/merit-based recognition:
‘It is, in any case, a more democratic method that allows us to recognise contributions that are currently ignored or undervalued. I mean contributions such as the unpaid work that is done within households, for example, such as raising children and caring for relatives. Or all the work that, due to the COVID-19 crisis, has turned out to be much more important than society gave it credit for: nursing care, cleaning work, waste collection, and logistics. Setting aside the matter of usefulness, the fact that there is equal dignity in every human being should also reverberate in the dignity of everyone’s work.’
Regrettably, Sandel hardly gets around to formulating specific solutions in his book. Nevertheless, his most concrete suggestion with respect to the revaluation of work is to improve wages at the bottom of the labour market, such as through wage supplementation schemes and by shifting the tax burden away from labour and onto consumption, speculation, and capital. While the latter suggestion is an excellent one, it would be even better if it were substantiated further to ensure that those who do unpaid work also benefit.
This further substantiation also takes us to a second key argument for downgrading the role of merit-based pay, which is that the link between current wages on the one hand and individual work performance on the other is loosening. Pay is increasingly less personal. Our current level of prosperity, as initially reflected in people’s primary income, is the result of many years of productivity growth to which many generations have contributed. Our high income levels can, therefore, not be put down only to the labour performed and capital invested in companies at this point in time. In this context, distributing primary income only to those directly involved in the production process seems to be increasingly less of a given and implementing a universal basic income for all is an obvious alternative, i.e. regardless of someone’s position in the productivity-driven labour process. The state collecting taxes directly at the source, i.e. at the level of companies’ production, would then be the obvious choice. This would also automatically shift the tax burden to sources other than labour, which is merely one production factor.
The figures provided in the book demonstrate that there is growing support among the general public for the idea of universal basic income. Even so, there is a hard core of people who are against it and keep using counter-arguments that they cannot back up with facts, such as a universal basic income having adverse effects on the labour market and being too costly. Their rejection might very well have little to do with those counter-arguments and rather be driven by a strong meritocratic bias. There is a clear relation between implementation of universal basic income and the public debate that Sandel wants to initiate.
Finally, the results of the most recent parliamentary elections in the Netherlands can be explained based on Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit. On the one hand, right-wing populist parties are on the rise. One in five Dutch people voted for populist right-wing parties that have become increasingly extreme since the days of Pim Fortuyn’s first populist revolt in the early 2000s: full of mistrust and bitterness directed at everything and everyone and not shy about avowing discrimination. Even in the knowledge that these parties will not be part of a coalition government and play no role in the actual governance of the country, people still vote for them. And people vote for these parties even though their election programmes are, at least in a socioeconomic sense, more likely to be prejudiced than to favour them. On the other hand, the two winners of the elections are supreme exponents of meritocracy, namely the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD, the party for the successful) and Democrats 66 (D66, the party for the highly educated). What we need to do over the coming years, therefore, is to assemble a left-wing populist programme that addresses three pressing issues:
How to achieve a sustainable world as soon as possible;
How to reach a post-capitalist state by shifting the balance of power;
How to accomplish lasting labour market change in line with the foregoing through a national debate as proposed by Sandel.
Some possible solutions include a large-scale shift from taxation of labour to direct taxation of companies’ production as well as implementation of universal basic income.
‘The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?‘ is available from Penguin Random House, published September 2020
History Matthias Dilthey called for a day of basic income in 2006, which unfortunately received little support at the time.*
The first week of the basic income was held in 2008 and was designed as a sub-project of the EU-funded “Basic Income on the way to Europe.” This was initiated by Günter Sölken, from an idea the Basic Income Network Germany (Netzwerk Grundeinkommen) had proposed. It happened with the support of Basic Income Network and Social Cohesion Austria, BIEN Switzerland, Attac branches in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, along with the help of many independent basic income initiatives in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In 2009, a significant expansion took place. A call started from various initiatives, and finally 247 organizations and over 2,800 individuals participated. In Germany a website was developed to showcase the activity and creativity, with countless ideas, suggestions, and planned actions, under the editorial supervision of Martina Steinheuer.
The 4th International Basic Income Week was held 19 to 25 September 2011 with a focus on “Basic Income in Europe“. In Germany and Austria, there were about 100 events and activities: discussions, workshops, readings, theater and film screenings, exhibitions, etc. The fifth International Basic Income Week happened 17 to 23 September 2012 with the focus on “Ways to Basic Income”.
In 2013, the year of the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income, “Basic Income a Human Right“, a further internationalization of the 6th week of basic income took place. The Netherlands organized the “Week van het Basisinkomen” but not much action was involved, we were all too busy collecting signatures for the ECI.
In 2014 a Basic Income Week websitewas set up in English to further internationalize the event by Robin Ketelaars. Manja Taylor handled promotion and activities.
Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) adopted the 8th International Basic Income Week in 2015 as a key item to organize every year by all countries individually. Also at the 15th Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress, International Basic Income Week was adopted as a way to publicise UBI.
That year, 19 countries participated with live events: Belgium, China, Danmark, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Malawi, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Sweden, Swiss, Zimbabwe, Spain, South Korea, Hungary, USA. A further eight countries participated on the internet: Australia, Brasil, Bulgaria, Finland, India, Italy, Mozambique, New Zealand, Zambia, South Africa.
9th international Basic Income Week had the motto “Basic income goes worldwide”. In 2016 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) contributed to the week´s further globalization by starting a group on Slack for better collaboration. Jenna van Draalen from Canada and Christof Lammer from Austria were among the promoters of the IBIW along with many more UBI activists. Themes for other yearly events can be found on basicincomweek.org.
International Basic Income Week is a self-organised participatory week. A lot can be done, from spreading the news to friends to organising your own event with films, speakers or creative action. We can help with finding presenters and promoting your event with our shared Basic Income Week website. We welcome new participants who can share time, money or ideas! Get in touch with your regional group or the international coordination team, and let us know what you decide to do! This year there was the start of the Videothon Playlist.
From 2018 onwards there have been three synchronised events. 1) Make a photo and share it on social media with the hashtag #countonbasicincome on the Wednesday 2) Come and socialize, organize a #basicincomebeer on the Friday 3) Since 2019 the #basicincomemarch is part of the week on the Saturday
Basic Income Marches In April 2019, social worker and co-founder of Basic Income NYC Diane Pagen and 2020 candidate for U.S. Congress James Felton Keith came together to organize a public event in a show of force and inclusion for basic income.
2020 saw a huge growth in support for basic income in the United States. It was important to provide different ways for the community to celebrate. All sorts of events, live and online, from a film screening, panel discussions, to a Year of Basic Income Livestream event featuring commentary from Andrew Yang, Andy Stern, and over 10 Mayors from Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and more, marked the important progress made in 2020.
With COVID measures in place, city organizers got creative. From art installations, to bike and car parades, to street corner protests, Income Movement in the US built tools to make it easy for organizers to plan amazing, highly successful events while allowing for safe social distancing for community members. Many people who did not go on the streets posted a photo with the hashtag #talkonyourwalk and held Zoom sessions with shoes.
This year’s motto for International Basic Income Week is ‘Forward to a Better World!’
Future plans? Who knows? We hope that with BIEN’s support we can involve more countries in India, Africa, Asia and Latin America this year.
How can people contribute to or participate in IBIW this year? Organize events and spread the B-word! Social media activists wanted for @insta and other media outlets There is a Slack group where activities are discussed which you can join: the Basic Income Outreach Group. Please let us know if you want an invite via the contact form. We’re always on the lookout for more ideas!
*) Basic Income Day In 2014 a website promoting Basic Income Daywas started by Robin Ketelaars. “If everyone is his own king, nobody has to be the king of the other.” This sentence by Michael Sennhauser (Swiss Radio DRS) in the review of the film Kulturimpuls Grundeinkommen by Daniel Häni & Enno Schmidt and the film scene at Basel SBB train station inspired the crowning of the first 500 heads 1 May 2009 on the market square in Lörrach. Since then, we want to unite with everyone who burns for an unconditional basic income to trigger a wave of change.” The action was followed up in 2014 by Sylvia Mair and Oliver Der as a Basic Income Day on the 1st of May. This was supported by Scott Santens, a Basic Income activist from the United States, and other activists in Europe and the US. The websiteis in use for more “basic income days”. Human Rights Day is celebrated annually across the world on 10 December. In 2013 we participated by showing the world through our profile pic that an Unconditional Basic Income is a human right. The action this year will take place 4 to10 December. International Women’s Day on 8 March could also become a “Basic Income Day”.
With the increase in research on the circular economy system, the basic income and circular economy relationship has also started to be considered. For example, this relationship was examined in the article ‘‘How could a Basic Income support a Circular Economy?’’ published on the Basic Income Network Scotland website on 23 July 2019. In fact, this article is based on the transcript of an interview between Timothea Armor, Basic Income Network Scotland Editor, and Teja Hudson, a zero waste consultant and founder of Zero.
The current system of capitalism, free markets, and endless growth, according to Hudson, disappoints us socially. She points out that there are many people who want to make the world a better place, but this disappointment forces them to struggle just to survive. Therefore, she claims that we have lost many bright and creative minds due to preventable social inequalities such as poverty, hunger, disease, gender inequality, persecution, violence and lack of education. Finally, she suggests we need social change, and these people represent a great untapped potential for that social change.
Adding to Hudson’s argument, it is very difficult to be creative when you are stressed, under pressure or not inspired, and especially when you are worried about money. As a result of this, there are a lot of artists and creative people struggling to practice their art and instead interrupted by the need to earn a living. Hudson summarizes the potential contribution of basic income to this problem with the following statement: “This is where Basic Income would be a revelation.” She claims that by implementing a Basic Income, highly experienced creative people, free thinkers and problem solvers will be ready to help solve the problems of 10 billion people on a small planet instead of getting stuck in a dead end.
According to Hudson, circular economy is a way of looking at resources on our planet and understanding that everything is part of a circular system rather than a line. She believes the aim is to keep resources circulating in this cycle for as long as possible, minimizing the use of unused raw material and maximising productivity in the production process.
As for the potential relationship between basic income and the circular economy, Hudson points out that environmental and social concerns are very closely linked and that the goals and values of both systems are the same; “for humanity and the planet to survive and flourish together, so what helps the environmental movement to accomplish that will also help the social movement to accomplish that, and vice versa.” She argues that these two systems acting together could be more effective and bring sources and audiences together.
Kim Lag Jung from Gyeonggi Province was interviewed about the South Korean Youth dividend program. The interview took place at the 2019 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress in India.
The interview covered the dividend and its reported benefit for local youth, local business owners and how it has affected the national conversation about basic income and whether it could be expanded to include more ages.
Since 2016, 3,500 South Korean youth have received the equivalent of 1,000,000￦ (US$872) in local currency that can be used at local small businesses. The youth dividend started in Seongnam city, but from 2019 it was expanded to 150,000 youth across Gyeonggi province with 31 cities.
In 2020, because of Covid-19, Gyeonggi Province gave the local cash 250,000￦ (220$). This was essentially a Covid Basic Income given to every citizen. Small businesses and traditional markets, especially street marketers were pleased with the program.
In addition, in April 2020, the first international South Korea Basic Income fair was hosted in Gyeonggi province. Another online fair was held in September 2020 with 150,000 participants. The fair will be held in April 2021 again.
Yujoo city in Gyeonggi province has begun an agricultural basic income project. The project will be implemented if it gains approval from the local legislature. Cultures and Arts Basic Income and basic income for pregnant women are being discussed as well.
In March 2022 with the presidential election, basic income will be a hot issue on the agenda. Basic Income Korean Network (BIKN) is trying to lead the basic income conversation during the election.
With Gyeonggi province, BIKN and a member of the national assembly from the Basic Income party was elected in 2020. This demonstrates basic income is becoming a widely discussed issue in Korea. Even few public schools are giving cash coupons to students to spend at the school cafeteria.
Below is the transcription of four interview questions being asked in the video.
What is the biggest benefit of the youth dividend?
The Youth Basic Income was implemented in April 2019. Before that, it was implemented in 2016 in Seongnam city. Lee Jae-Myeong started it. Now he is the Gyeonggi provincial governor. He changed the Youth dividend to the youth basic Income and has been implementing it in 31 cities and districts. We had conducted a survey on 3,500 youth basic income recipients. The results say that the youth had difficulties not having any income and planning their future was hard due to financial difficulties such as unemployment. However, now that they have the youth basic income, they can make their future plans with it. That is the biggest surprise of the basic income research result.
2. What have business owners said about the Basic Income?
In Korea, Youth basic income gives local cash, which can only be used in Gyeonggi province. Its youth satisfaction rate is high. The reason why? Because there is a well-established infra structure for Basic Income consumption supported by Gyeonggi province. Small businesses and traditional markets, especially street market traders receive the local cash so that local business gain from it. Also, self-employed people and small business people are highly satisfied with the Youth basic income so that Basic Income is being widely spread and well known in Korea.
3. How has the youth dividend affected the national conversation about Universal Basic Income?
The youth dividend, implemented in 2016 in Seongnam city and the youth basic income, started in 2019 in 31 cities and districts, has a big impact on the Basic income discussion and basic income policymaking nationwide.
For example, starting the youth dividend in 2016, through the Youth Basic Income in 2019, now we discuss about agricultural Basic Income, Agricultural subsidy, Cultures and Arts basic income in Korea. Some local governments made it a reality. Political party members are having various discussions of the Basic Income legislation. Therefore, I am confident that the basic income will become a reality soon.
4. Will the youth dividend expand to include more ages in the future?
Yes. I am certain that its expansion will include infants, the elderly and cover all ages. As I mentioned earlier, right now, we are discussing the agricultural basic income, Agricultural subsidy, Cultures and Arts basic income, and the pregnant women basic income etc.
The proposal for European universal basic income & European Social Pillar Action Plan & long-term post-COVID-19 recovery strategy
V. KORO EC, a social policy analyst from Slovenia, suggested that the European Commission examine the idea of a European Universal Basic Income. The UBI would be paid directly from the ECB’s “helicopter money.” The suggestion was made within the debate of the European Social Pillar Action Plan. The proposal stems from the observed shortcomings of the current social security systems related to the COVID-19 crisis, the efforts of the United States, India and many other countries made in this direction and the research done by OECD, IMF, ILO, UNICEF, European and Slovenian experts. This proposal is not the same as the European Citizens’ Initiative “Start Unconditional Basic Incomes (UBI) throughout the EU“, for which signatures were collected starting on 25 September 2020. However, this proposal does take a similar direction as the European Citizens’ Initiative. One day Europeans will receive a local, national, European and global basic income to safeguard and foster democracy and ecological-economic development.
The proposal for European UBI & European Social Pillar Action Plan & long-term post-COVID-19 recovery strategy.
The current solutions in the European Social pillar, the 13th principle (unemployment benefits) and the 14th principle (minimum income), make the safety net conditional on incentives to reintegrate into the labour market. This is obviously not the right solution in the case of COVID-19, where work is not allowed. When people are not allowed to work (as in the case of COVID-19), it does not matter how educated they are, what the agreement on the minimum wage is, how good the social and economic dialogue is and so forth. In such a case is the most important social security system, a safety net that guarantees the minimum income as a kind of ‘universal insurance system’ that helps everyone, including people on the labour market, to be compensated for loss of earnings and to receive reimbursement for lost investment etc.
On the other hand, the 12th principle (social protection) and 20th principle (access to essential services) are combined with the prerogative to satisfy the conditions “to be in need and not to be able to work”. To prove this is such a demanding administrative task that is obviously not suitable in times of emergency such as COVID-19 when there is no time or resources. We have already seen in 2008 that the current system is not suitable in time of national emergency, but that is only good for ‘normal’ situations – which is exactly the opposite of what people expect from national social security systems. The COVID-19 situation also made it clear – again – that the current national social security system is good for some workers in ‘standard employment’ and not for workers in ‘non-standard’ jobs.
In the policy brief “Supporting livelihoods during the COVID-19 crisis: Closing the gaps in safety nets“, the OECD starts with a similar finding: the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the pre-existing gaps in social protection provisions (2020: p. 2). It continues with the recognition of the effectiveness of universal unconditional cash transfers (2002: pp. 13-17): “In a crisis situation, universal cash payments, made to everyone, can maximise coverage and, depending on the size of the payment, help the entire population to make ends meet. Universal transfers can be rolled out quickly as they do not depend upon the income, assets, or prior contributions of the recipient avoiding costly and time-consuming means tests. The appeal of this simplicity has led a number of OECD countries to announce plans for such schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic.” (OECD 2020: pp. 16-17, Box 4).
The same applies to emerging and developing economies, where the development of universal social protection is supported and guided by several recent key international initiatives: ILO Recommendation 202 on Social Protection Floors, and the “Leave No One Behind” agenda as an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. SDG goal 1.3 calls for “implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and substantially increasing coverage of the poor and vulnerable”, while goal 3.8 calls for universal health coverage including financial risk protection. Health coverage is an important part of living, people need to know that they are being protected in case they get ill. Covid has shown just how many people are vulnerable to what is out there, that is why there are Final expense insurance policies and policies similar that are available to those who want to be prepared in case they do get ill. Health coverage can only go so far, but life insurance can help after a loved one has died.
In 2018, the High-Level Panel at the European Development Days discussed how to address inequalities and “Leave no one behind” agenda in the EU. As described in the report Addressing inequalities: A seminar of workshops (EC 2019) three experts out of four spoke about income inequality. Two of them, Fratzser (pp. 32-37) and Raitano (pp. 55) suggested that the EU should start thinking about a universal basic income, while the third, Callan, suggested that social policy should be based on facts and results of microsimulations (pp. 75).
Prior to COVID-19, the OECD, IMF, ILO and UNICEF had already studied the idea of universal basic income (UBI) in detail. There is an important history of research on the sustainability of UBI funding and its implications for income distribution based on microsimulations, e.g. OECD (2017) and IMF (2018). The findings of the above-mentioned papers were also confirmed in a paper based on microsimulations (KORO EC 2019), which was presented in 2019 at the International Conference on Universal Child Grants organised by ILO and UNICEF to explore the conditions and possibilities of introducing UBI for children. The microsimulations proved that in developed countries UBI can be introduced at a level just above the current Guaranteed Minimum Income scheme (GMI) within the same fiscal envelope (i.e. budget-neutral).
Some Europeans mistakenly assume that the idea of universal basic income is not the right solution for the EU. They think that the EU is the part of the most developed world with the best social security systems. They seem to have overlooked the fact that because of automatisation and digitalisation, the most developed countries have the biggest problem with ‘non-standard’ employment. It is no surprise that Japan and Korea were the two countries, besides the United States, that introduced ‘new universal transfers’ (OECD 2020: p. 4). They also seem to overlook the fact that the EU is heterogeneous. The EU Member States have different social security systems. There are also major divergences in the effectiveness of national administrations in the use of ‘EU money’. Different success in using the ‘Covid-19 money’ will only foster additional divergences in Member States, which can easily turn into political divergences.
As stated at the Bled Strategic Forum (31 August 2020) by some Eastern EU countries, they are ready to follow their own path, as they do not wish to be the ‘second tier’ of the EU. These are the political reasons for the proposal that the EU should distribute the ‘ECB helicopter money’ as a European universal unconditional cash transfer directly to EU citizens. There is also an economic reason: to effectively stimulate aggregate demand in Europe (EP 2016). This has been proposed a number of times since 2008. In Slovenia, we have two papers by an eminent economist on this subject (Mencinger 2015 and Mencinger 2017).
EU citizens expect the EU Commission to take into consideration the facts about a universal uniform unconditional individual cash transfer that are based on data and microsimulations. It could be called a European UBI. This transfer should be financed by the ECB. The same for all Europeans, to foster social convergence. This is the main difference with the current EU approach in the domain of the European Social Pillar and post-Covid-19 recovery plan with country specific measures that foster further divergence. Hopefully, the new European Citizens’ Initiative for UBI in the EU will be an additional, democratic sign for the European Commission and the European Parliament of what EU citizens want and expect from them in the area of social security: the Universal Basic Income. The European UBI could be the first step towards a world in which all people will eventually receive a local, national, European and global basic income in order to safeguard and foster democracy and ecological-economic development.
