by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 27, 2013 | Opinion
Danny Dorling, The No-Nonsense Guide to Equality, New Internationalist, 2012, 176 pp, pbk, 1 78026 071 6, £7.99
Dorling’s egalitarian tract is, as Richard Wilkinson suggests in his foreword, ‘multi-faceted and rich in insights’ (p.7). Throughout the book, countries in which inequality is greatest are compared with those exhibiting greater equality ( – Dorling is, after all, a geographer), and by the end of the book the deluge of facts and graphs has delivered the same message as Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s The Spirit Level: that inequality is bad for us, and as bad for the rich as for the poor. But there are some major differences between The Spirit Level and this book. Wilkinson and Pickett attempt to show by statistical methods that income inequality causes other kinds of inequality, and their passion lies under the surface of cool statistical description. There is little attempt at prescription. Dorling’s book, on the other hand, is a passionate denunciation of inequality in all of its forms, a somewhat utopian desire for greater equality, and a clear prescription of what is required.
It is of the nature of such committed essays that argument is cumulative rather than linear, and that is the case here. We are treated to a ‘multi-faceted’ approach, and what we might call a holdall of a book. We are told that we are going to experience a positive exposition of equality rather than a polemic against inequality, but in fact we are treated to frequent oscillation between the disbenefits of inequality and the benefits of equality. On a single page (for instance, p.53) we find wide sweeps of history, the evolution of public schools, and how religions evolve, and such diversity of material is far from unusual. This all makes for an unnerving ride, but it isn’t without its excitement. The book is divided into chapters: ‘Why equality matters’, ‘What is equality?’ ‘Winning greater equality – and losing it’, ‘When we are more equal’, ‘Where equality can be found’, and ‘How we win greater equality’. But each chapter is in fact a somewhat random selection of inequalities and what’s wrong with them, and of more equal countries and what’s right with them – including the final chapter, which contains a clear prescription preceded and followed by yet more material on inequalities and the need for equality.
None of this is a criticism. The book is a compelling read, and you finish it utterly convinced of the damage done by inequality, and of the necessity for greater equality – for equality defined broadly as ‘being afforded the same rights, dignity and freedoms as other people’ (p.41).
The prescription? The book contains numerous carefully researched and argued denunciations of the damage done by educational segregation ( – including a devastatingly cool description of how wealthier and more privately educated Bristol gets a lower proportion of its children into higher education than does poorer and less privately educated Sheffield), so we expect the final chapter to suggest that the abolition of private education, or at least the removal of its charitable status, would contribute to greater equality in the UK. But we don’t. Instead we find several pages of advocacy for a Citizen’s Income. (Dorling is right to suggest that children in the UK receive such a universal benefit, but mistaken to suggest that elderly people receive one – they don’t: they receive National Insurance and means-tested benefits, though they will receive something closer to a Citizen’s Pension if the recent Department for Work and Pensions consultation gives rise to legislation for a single tier state pension.) Dorling has previously been somewhat less convinced about the usefulness of a Citizen’s Income, but his passionate exploration of inequality, his longing for greater equality, and his reading of Callinicos, have persuaded him of both the desirability and the feasibility of an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income for every individual as a right of citizenship – though he remains well aware of the political obstacles in the path of its implementation.
I’ve called The No-Nonsense Guide to Equality a book. Yes, in some ways it is a book, but it might be better to call it sustained, well-argued and passionate journalism. Whether or not you find yourself sympathetic to the political stance represented by The New Internationalist, the publisher, if you are concerned about growing inequality and would like to see greater equality then you will enjoy this book and will find it an inspiration.
The publisher is to be commended on the price.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 10, 2013 | Research
This document reports on a conference that was hosted by Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) and the Ecumenical Service on Southern Africa (KASA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was held on 25 and 26 April 2013 at the Economic Rights Programme. The conference was aimed to develop an innovative and comprehensive case for the introduction of a universal cash transfer in the form of a Basic Income Grant for the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC). The grant will be funded by a tax on extractive activities, such as mining and drilling.
Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute, “Report on SADC-wide Basic Income Grant: Alternatives to financing SADC-wide Basic Income Grant,” KASA, June 11, 2013.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Sep 20, 2013 | News
Karl Widerquist, Associate Professor at SFS-Q, Georgetown University, will give a public lecture entitled, “Basic Income Grant: A remedy for poverty and inequality in Namibia?” at 6:30pm on Tuesday, 24 September 2013 at the Windhoek Multipurpose Youth Centre, Auala Street, Windhoek, Namibia. The lecture is organized by the University of Namibia’s Department of Sociology and the Theological Institute for Advocacy and Research in Africa. Widerquist will speak on a related topic two days later at the Bank of Namibia’s Annual Symposium.
Karl Widerquist
Topic: Basic Income Grant: A remedy for poverty and inequality in Namibia?
Date: Time: Venue: Tuesday, 24 September 2013 18h30 Windhoek Multipurpose Youth Centre, Auala Street, Katutura (near Independence Arena)
Guest Speaker: Prof. Karl Widerquist
For further details please contact Heidi at 081 440 1194 or 235 420
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jul 26, 2013 | Opinion
Åsa Lundqvist, Family Policy Paradoxes: Gender equality and labour market regulation in Sweden, 1930-2010, Policy Press, 2011, viii + 155 pp, hbk, 1 847 42455 6, £65
The Nordic countries provide generous gender-neutral parental leave and benefits and also publicly-funded childcare, and the result is an unusual combination of high fertility and high female labour market participation. This book is a detailed study of family policy in Sweden, particularly in relation to two paradoxes: that policy promotes both mothers as carers in the home and as workers in the labour market, and that men and women are regarded as both different and equal.
The book is a study of how Swedish social policy relating to the family has arrived at its present state and of more recent developments which have been driven in different directions by a greater individualisation in society (and thus defamiliarisation) and an understanding of women as disadvantaged within the family. Most recently, a reintroduction of a benefit for carers at home, and the introduction of labour market incentives for women, have exacerbated the paradoxicality of the situation.
As the concluding section of the book suggests, the fundamental paradox is between equality and freedom of choice. We might put it like this: How to preserve radical gender freedom in the face of government policies aimed at equality in the labour market? And how to preserve gender equality in the face of government legislation designed to give to carers freedom over how they organise their households and their labour market participation? These are vital questions for any government, and are thus an essential field of debate for anyone promoting debate on social policy reform.
This is a well-researched and thought-provoking book.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jun 14, 2013 | Opinion
Götz Werner and Adrienne Goehler, 1000€ für Jeden: Freiheit, Gleichheit, Grundeinkommen [€1000 for each person: freedom, equality, Basic Income] Ullstein, 2010, 267 pp, pbk, 978 3 548 37421 5, £6.56
It is unusual for us to review foreign language books in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, but an exception surely has to be made for this German book which has been a consistent bestseller, significantly in the ‘business’ category. 1 (Because the book’s content is so tightly tied to the German context it is unlikely to be translated into English, which is why we are reviewing the German text rather than waiting for an English translation.)
The first part of the book discusses the German political context and the Citizen’s Income debate within it. This is followed by sections on what the authors take to be essential elements of the definition of a Citizen’s Income: large enough to cover subsistence needs; for every individual; without means-test; and without work-test. Objections are then answered, particularly in relation to labour market participation. An interesting section uses the fact that most lottery winners remain in the labour market as important evidence. The concept of ‘work’ is then broadened beyond the labour market, and a variety of imagined personal situations show how a Citizen’s Income would promote diverse kinds of work.
Werner is a successful entrepreneur, so perhaps it is not surprising that rather too much space is then given to how workplaces have changed during the past few decades and how they might be further humanised with the help of a Citizen’s Income. Even more space is then given to the German education system and how it might be reformed.
The authors discuss implementation of a Citizen’s Income scheme, and suggest that it should be paid first for children and young people and then to older people (largely because women’s historically low labour market participation means that they are often ill-prepared financially for old age). An interesting section suggests that the income security we need was once provided by the family but now cannot be, and that only a Citizen’s Income will be able to fill the gap.
A chapter on the results of the Namibian Citizen’s Income pilot project contains too much about microcredit.
1000€ per month is a lot of money. The authors intend to pay for a Citizen’s Income this large through taxing consumption rather than income and by abolishing most other government expenditure. They write rather too much about consumption taxes and are somewhat unrealistic about the level at which they might be collectable. Whether we would wish to abolish other public expenditure to the same extent in the UK, in which we already have a universal National Health Service and universal free education based on the same principles as a Citizen’s Income, is rather doubtful.
But the authors are right to ask for radical change. We are no longer a ‘self-help’ agrarian society. We now rely heavily on other people’s work, and therefore belong to a ‘stranger-help’ society. This is a huge paradigm shift, and it suggests that a welfare system based on self-help, as social insurance is, really does now need to be replaced by a system based on ‘stranger-help’, the purest form of which can only be a Citizen’s Income.
This is a somewhat rambling book. There are long sections on matters with only oblique relationships to the Citizen’s Income proposal, and the authors frequently return to issues already discussed. A forceful editor might have prevented the authors from expatiating on their rather irrelevant enthusiasms, and could have helped them to create a more concise, more connected, and better ordered book: but what is really interesting is that this holdall of a book should have become such a best seller. I suspect that this is because within it the magnitude of the changes facing our society are expressed with some feeling, and a proposal radical enough to respond to those changes, and sufficiently feasible for implementation to be conceivable, is expounded with equal feeling. This is above all an enthusiastic book by authors who believe that real change is possible.
Thoroughly recommended to anyone with enough German to read it.
1https://www.buchreport.de/bestseller/bestseller_einzelansicht.htm?tx_bestseller_pi1%5Bisbn%5D=9783430201087
