by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 4, 2015 | Opinion
Benjamin K. Sovacool, Roman V. Sidortsov, & Benjamin R. Jones, Energy Security, Equality, and Justice, Routledge, 2014, xix + 213 pp.
This book is a recent product of the Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment’s research on how to ‘equitably provide available, affordable, reliable, efficient, environmentally benign, proactively governed, and socially acceptable energy services to households and consumers’ (p.xvii). The aim of this book is to describe current inequalities and injustices associated with energy use and make suggestions as to how greater justice might be both understood and achieved.
As the first chapter points out, we are drifting ‘into a future threatened with climate change, rising sea levels, severe pollution, energy scarcity and insecurity, nuclear proliferation, and a host of other dangers’ (p.1), and our desire for low-cost and reliable energy conflicts with the pursuit of the sustainable and cleaner environment that we also wish and need to experience. The chapter provides enough evidence for these statements.
Chapter 2 is more philosophical, and concludes that ‘energy justice’ should be based on two principles:
- a prohibitive principle: ‘energy systems must be designed and constructed in such a way that they do not unduly interfere with the ability of any person to acquire those basic goods to he or she is justly entitled’ (p.42);
- and an affirmative principle: ‘if any of the basic goods to which every person is justly entitled can only be secured by means of energy services, then in that case there is also a derivative right to the energy service’ (p.46).
Because a sustainable and clean environment and a stable climate are basic goods to which we are all entitled, the prohibitive principle requires that the damaging externalities associated with energy production must be minimized.
Anyone who doubts the environmental and climate damage being done by the ways in which we currently produce energy should read chapter 3. The damage done to health by fuel poverty in the UK and elsewhere, and the volatile and increasing cost of carbon, are described in chapter 4 – John Hills’ Getting the Measure of Fuel Poverty ought to have been referenced. In chapter 5 the socio-political dimension is described in terms of corruption, authoritarianism and conflict, which are as problematic in the so-called developed world as in the developing world. Chapter 6 charts the disproportionate way in which the poorest communities fail to benefit from energy production and at the same time suffer the most from production methods. Chapter 7 describes widespread environmental damage and finds that the extension of conventional technologies can only increase inequality.
The impression left by this book is of ubiquitous environmental damage and fuel inequality, that is, damage and inequality in the world’s wealthiest as well as in the world’s poorest countries. The answer is not new technologies: the answer is to ask who is affected by investment and pricing decisions, and to factor in the externalities when relative costs are calculated. If this is done, then solar and wind power turn out to be both more just and cheaper than nuclear power or fossil fuels.
The problem is therefore a political one – a fact that could have been made more explicit in the book’s concluding chapter.
This book should be read alongside Fitzpatrick and Cahill‘s Environment and Welfare: Towards a Green Social Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), in which Tony Fitzpatrick suggests that a citizen’s income could encourage economic growth and therefore greater environmental damage, and James Robertson proposes a carbon tax to fund a citizen’s income, which would encourage renewable energy production at the same time as promoting income justice and therefore fuel justice. It should also be read alongside the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report Energy use policies and carbon pricing in the UK which recognizes that an increased carbon tax is needed on domestic gas use and that this would require poorer households to be compensated. The acknowledged problem here is that such a compensation package would require an increase in means-testing, which would impose additional disincentives, administrative complexity and income volatility on those households least able to cope with them.
Energy Security, Equality and Justice lacks a bibliography, which is a pity, and its index is sketchy, which will make the book difficult to use as a reference volume. But it is a well argued and carefully evidenced discussion of issues vital to our future and it deserves a wide audience.
by Juliana Bidadanure | Nov 27, 2015 | Opinion
November 13-15, 2015, San Francisco. A group of basic income supporters joined forces for the first ever basic income ‘create-a-thon’. For those not familiar with the concept of create-a-thons, these are events where people from a range of professions meet up voluntarily to work and create something together. In general, they gather to work on a project that has a social dimension. Those events are inspired by the now famous hackathons that bring together software programmers, project managers and other creatives to work on developing new projects in just a few hours. The motto of the events: efficiency, creativity, and innovation.
So what does this have to do with basic income? The idea of the organizers was to use the great concept of create-a-thons to further the struggle for an unconditional basic income. They launched the event to harness the energy, creativity, skills and competences of an incredible mix of people over the course of a weekend. More than 100 people showed up at one point or another in the nice offices of the company Brigade in San Francisco, California. It really did look like a tech event: dozens of MacBooks and a lot of coffee. Developers, artists, filmmakers, community organizers, educators and seasoned basic income activists worked side by side. The participants chose a project, a sub-group, and then spent their weekend working on a particular idea.
So what did people actually do? A filmmaker made a movie where he asked each participant why we should support basic income. A group made a film called ‘Tell It To The Sun’ – a journey into the deepest reasons why people got interested in basic income in the first place; it made a few people cry. There was also a team that came up with a list of 100 reasons against basic income. Their idea was that better categorizing the objections is a first step in sketching a guide for campaigners. Helped by a group of activists that came all the way from Germany, another group launched the first American My Basic Income campaign in just three days! Everyone was amazed that all this content was created so quickly. You can see the full list of nine projects here.
Now the organizers are planning to help others create more basic income create-a-thons. They want people to benefit from this experience and are supporting those who want to meet up and get projects in place – click here if you want to find out more. Create-a-thons provide a great platform for basic income supporters to rally and coordinate, simply by inviting them to spend joyful and hopeful weekends working together. There is no doubt that many of the projects that started in San Francisco will have a long life.
And what better way to prove basic income skeptics wrong? The hard work and creativity unleashed at the first basic income create-a-thon show that people work and contribute to society in meaningful ways even when they don’t get paid for it. If people are willing to spend their precious weekends working together for a better future for all, then imagine what they could do for their communities with the extra time and security an unconditional basic income would afford them.
by Will Wachtmeister | Nov 21, 2015 | Opinion
A Swedish Green Party motion to investigate basic income policy options has injected new life into the UBI debate in Sweden. Several established commentators are finally engaging with the issue after a long period of ignoring or instantly dismissing the idea.
The Greens called for an inquiry into the effects of introducing a basic income at their party conference over the summer which predictably – given the political climate in Sweden – attracted much knee-jerk ridicule.
Swedish public intellectual Roland Paulsen
However, recently several heavy-hitting publications have run opinion pieces on the issue even if most are negative.
The debate has clearly been spurred on by additional factors such as moves towards basic income in neighboring Finland. There has also been tireless campaign work carried out by Swedish grassroots civil society groups and media advocacy by a number of public intellectuals, notably Roland Paulsen.
Well-established evening newspaper Expressen, a popular centre-right publication, this month ran an in-depth pro-UBI essay by Malin Ekman arguing that “a basic income for all” is far more realistic than “jobs for all” in tomorrow’s digital economy. The paper’s main national politics commentator has in the past dismissed the Greens’ basic income proposal as “immature” without further comment.
The moderate-conservative broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet earlier ran an in-depth essay by the center-right Center Party’s chief economist who called the implications of the basic income proposal “devastating for the economy and the environment” and said it reflected the Greens’ supposed “muzzy and unworldly” approach to politics.
The left-leaning cultural magazine Arena has also attacked basic income with an opinion piece by a macroeconomist saying UBI supporters were keeping silent about Sweden’s major refugee crisis because they knew their policy would only make the situation more difficult.
The nascent debate is taking place in a context where the prime minister’s Social Democratic Party remains wedded to its traditional active labor market approach, and a mix of demand-led and supply-side economic policies, to combat unemployment. The center-left government, which includes the Green Party, has set a goal of reducing unemployment to five percent by 2020, a target that has been widely condemned as unrealistic.
Further reading in SWEDISH:
Malin Ekman, “Medborgarlön allt mer realistiskt instrument” [Citizen’s income getting increasingly realistic as a policy] Expressen, 2 November 2015
Karl-Gösta Bergström, “Miljöpartiets fem omogna beslut” [Five immature decisions by the Green Party], Expressen, 14 June 2015
Roland Paulsen, “Att straffa de arbetslösa är en grymhet av historiska mått” [Punishing the unemployed is an injustice of historical proportions] Dagens Nyheter, 15 July 2015
Martin Ådahl, “Medborgarlön är dåligt för miljön” [Citizen’s income is bad for the environment] Svenska Dagbladet, 7 October 2015
Anders Bergh, “Därför tror ingen på basinkomst” [Here’s why no-one believes in basic income] Dagens Arena, 2 November 2015
by Citizens' Income Trust | Nov 19, 2015 | Opinion
Paul Spicker, Social Policy: Theory and Practice, Policy Press, 2014, xii + 499 pp.
This third edition of Paul Spicker’s Social Policy combines updated material from two previous books: Social Policy: Themes and approaches, and Policy Analysis for Practice. The subtitle of the new edition of Social Policy, Theory and practice, is accurate. As Spicker puts it: ‘Social policy has always been study for a purpose’ (p.3).
The book is organized in four parts: a study of society (welfare, inequalities, social problems and responses to them, needs, and indicators), policy (how policy-making works, models of welfare, principles and values, strategies, policy analysis), the organization and delivery of welfare (welfare sectors, public services and bureaucracies, service delivery, recipients, administration), and methods and approaches (research, evidence, application). The book is comprehensive and is an excellent resource for lecturers, students, and researchers. The guide to sources, the glossary, and the indexes, add to the book’s usefulness (although the index might have employed additional subentries).
The volume is not a detailed discussion of particular social policy fields. For that, the reader will need to refer to more specialized volumes. What this book does offer is a general education in how to study social policy in order to provide a context for detailed study of particular fields – and sometimes the text boxes provide illustrations of that process. So, for instance, a section on ‘universality’ is followed by a description of Liberia’s health care system.
One very good reason for not arranging the book into different social policy fields is, as Spicker makes clear in relation to poverty (p.222), that the different fields are all connected. For instance: any relevant strategy to improve a population’s health will need to provide for adequate income, good healthcare, high quality housing, and reliable sanitation.
The book raises some interesting questions for those of us interested in the reform of the benefits system – for instance: Should payment of a universal benefit be paid automatically, or is it important to enable people to exercise choice, and therefore to require them to make a claim for the benefit? (p.333). The book also provides some important arguments for universal benefits:
The argument for universality is the argument against selective approaches: the process of selection is inefficient, inequitable, difficult to administer, and it fails to reach people. By contrast, universal social provision can reach everyone, on the same terms. The degree of uniformity simplifies administration … . But there are also positive reasons for universality. One is the view that everyone has basic needs, and those needs can often be supplied more simply and effectively through general provision to everyone. … Second, universality has been seen as a way of establishing a different kind of society – one in which every citizen has a right to basic services, and the basic texture and pattern of social life is one in which people do not suffer unjustifiable disadvantages. (pp.218-9)
Social Policy: Theory and practice comes highly recommended as a thorough and stimulating introduction to the field.
by Albert Joerimann | Nov 15, 2015 | Opinion
SUMMARY: In 2016, Switzerland is going to vote on a popular initiative that asks for the introduction of an unconditional Basic Income. Daniel Häni, one of the promoters of the initiative, wrote this book with Philip Kovce in order to gather support for the initiative. It is made for a lay audience rather than a scientific publication with some succinct arguments against popular criticisms of basic income, for instance that it would be killing personal initiative, promoting idleness, etc. The title gives an indication that the authors do not see the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) primarily as a mechanism or institution to combat poverty. On the contrary: the UBI prepares for abundance which is the reality of modern societies (even if their actual structures do not yet correspond to this reality and still produce precariousness—but this is not the issue of Häni’s and Kovce’s book). By discussing these items as well as focussing on (paid) labour which our economic system is revolving around, they give several tips to rectify a number of current systemic prejudices: namely that within a society based on the division of labor, people do not work for themselves anymore, contrarily to all appearances; instead, all the others are working for oneself. Above all, the core questions of freedom and democracy are discussed: what are people going to do if they aren’t constricted to paid employment anymore? How will they materially realize this freedom? The main quality of the basic income scheme as discussed in this book is to raise these and other crucial questions for our present and our future.
Most of the arguments are known already from earlier publications and interviews of Daniel Häni, often in collaboration with Enno Schmidt, and in particular from the 2008 movie “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” [Basic Income—A Cultural Impulse]. As a matter of fact, the authors do integrate today more of the topics generally discussed in the context of the BI, above all in Germany, than they did some years ago. On the other hand side, they abstain completely from any discussion of the financing of the BI introduction, in Switzerland and in general.
Language: German
Daniel Häni, Philip Kovce: “Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist?” [What’s missing if everything is there?] orell füssli verlag, Zurich, October 2015, 189 pp., paperback, ISBN 978 3 280 05592 2
by Guest Contributor | Oct 28, 2015 | Opinion
Refugee support clothing depot (Hamburg)
by Rainer Ammermann
Much can be said about the possible links between the current refugee influx to Germany and the idea of unconditional basic income. Now, I want to highlight just one obvious intersection: thousands spend countless hours to build and maintain a support infrastructure for refugees independent from public services. They are not paid and they do in part work others might judge as stupid or heavy. They are driven only by the obvious need and the feeling to be part of a group or a movement of common interest. Although involvement in civil society activities in Germany is traditionally high, the challenge to support thousands of refugees and migrants at short notice shows once more the desire to work and to participate as a deeply rooted intrinsic and social value. With this in mind we do not need to worry about a lack of willingness to work once an unconditional basic income is implemented. But some have to worry that the jobs they offer may not provide the values necessary for real useful work.
One impressive project of refugee support is the clothing depot in a Hamburg trade fair hall. Within days and weeks it has become a well equipped logistics centre completely run by hundreds of volunteers. Of course, people in the core team bring in some professional experience, but no extra money drives them. Most volunteers in the store sort clothes, pack boxes and stack pallets. Some organize free drinks and food for the volunteers, others run and further develop the software used to process packages and orders, and so on. The centre is open 7 days a week from 9 to 9. New in this project is not the fact that volunteers work in a clothing depot, but the large scale of the project and that it is managed independently of established aid organizations with a fluid and self-organizing crowd of supporters. One can start working there without formal registration and without becoming a permanent member of a team or social group. Many people there work in anonymity apart from the first name on their chest.
I work there several hours about twice a week. I am impressed by the atmosphere of a relaxed but effective bustle based on freedom and mutual respect. Although I feel some kind of duty to contribute to this kind of community work (a socialist value), at the same time I enjoy the total freedom of choice each day to start and stop working whenever I like outside public service structures (a libertarian value). No formal accountability undermines my motivation while I can trust in the self-organizing crowd of people that the service is going on well in the time I focus on other things. I call this “my libertarian-socialist working feeling” (while this doesn’t fully reflect my personal political stance) and I feel it bears a huge potential for a more humane and effective world of work. May it stimulate somehow the inevitable way towards unconditional basic income.
Have some insights here and here.
Rainer Ammermann is an activist in the Basic Income Network Hamburg.
