by Citizens' Income Trust | Feb 28, 2013 | Opinion
‘Radical liberalism … holds a substantial universal and unconditional tier of social rights to be one of the ideal requirements of liberal-egalitarian justice.’ (p.8) Equality and freedom can and should be pursued at the same time, a universalist welfare state is the means to this combination, and an important element of such a welfare state is a Citizen’s Income. This is the agenda that Birnbaum has pursued through the research project of which this book is the outcome: an agenda with which he constantly contrasts more conditional forms of welfare state based on ideas of ‘reciprocity’.
In his introductory chapter, Birnbaum locates his treatment between the quite general theorizing of John Rawls and an empirical approach more concerned with feasibility: ‘between’ in the sense that his ‘feasibility’ takes the long view and does not allow short term political realities to determine feasibility in the longer term, and in the sense that his method is one of ‘reflective equilibrium’: a moving backwards and forwards between different propositions in an attempt to resolve contradictions.
In Rawlsian fashion, the first part of the book argues for a Citizen’s Income on the basis that it maximises the economic prospects of the least advantaged member of society more effectively than would more conditional benefits systems. The second part answers the objection that a Citizen’s Income requires taxation and therefore exploits workers. Birbaum follows Philippe Van Parijs in showing that much of the income earned through employment is the result of resources that belong to all of us, and that taxing earned income is therefore a redistribution of gifts. The argument is then extended to jobs: if they are gifts, then everyone has a claim on their value.
The third part of the book tackles feasibility. Birnbaum argues that a Citizen’s Income ‘would be particularly well-suited to foster economic initiatives, meaningful work and a rich associational life’ (p.169), making formal reciprocity requirements unnecessary; and he finds that ‘basic income proposals that seek to build on and develop the social insurance and in-kind benefits of existing welfare state institutions are far better suited to serve objectives [of political legitimacy, sustainability, and gender equity] than radical replacement strategies’ (p.204).
The book is full of enlightening argument, and particularly compelling is a method which sets out from a situation in which a Basic Income has been implemented and then studies a situation in which it has been abolished. This method is well employed on p.59 to demolish the ethical argument for ‘welfare to work’ policies.
The book is also full of quite dense argument which assumes some acquaintance with the terminologies and literatures of moral philosophy and political economy: but readers without such an acquaintance will still find the book invigorating because the argument is both thorough and coherent, and because it contains a persuasive riposte to arguments for a welfare state based on enforced reciprocity. (It is no surprise that Stuart White has the longest author entry in the index after John Rawls and Philippe Van Parijs.) In social policy terms, the book is a persuasive argument for a Citizen’s Income and against both today’s ‘welfare to work’ benefits structure and a Participation Income.
Anyone coming to this book will need to work hard at it, but the work will be worth it.
Simon Birnbaum, Basic income Reconsidered: Social justice, liberalism, and the demands of equality, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, xii + 246 pp, hbk, 0 230 11406 7, £62.50
https://us.macmillan.com/basicincomereconsidered/SimonBirnbaum
by Karl Widerquist | Oct 17, 2012 | Research
On p. 21, guaranteed income is discussed ….
We should consider the idea of a guaranteed minimum income. Tom Kent, the late social policy giant who was the architect behind the Pearson-era reforms that shaped modern Canada, left behind a plea to look at such an approach. Kent argued that we should design a system to ensure a reasonable level of income for every Canadian, building on the basic income guarantee we already provide to seniors. Support would be given in the form of regular payments to those with very low incomes, phased out with rising income reported via tax returns. He believed that the federal economies of scale would provide considerable efficiencies and reduce federal/ provincial overlap and friction as provinces would focus on services (Kent 2011). Kent’s blueprints find supporters and detractors among both conservatives and progressives. There are significant issues of cost to be considered, as well as how to provide income support without discouraging work. Perhaps we could begin by providing a guaranteed income to persons with disabilities, including persons who are able to work but cannot do so on a continuing full-time basis.
The full report can be found at:
https://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/sites/default/files/documents/towards_a_more_equal_canada.pdf
by BIEN Ireland | Sep 19, 2012 | Research
This new book by Danny Dorling (University of Sheffield) includes a 8 pages discussion of basic income in the British context. Dorling seems to be very supportive of the idea, including at EU-level: “Imagine how much money would be saved”, he writes, “if a basic income one day replaced all the numerous different benefit and taxation systems existing accross the whole of the European Union. How else could Europe ever have a unified system of social security to go with its free movement of labor?” (p.160).
Full references: DORLING, Danny (2012), The no-nonsense guide to equality, Oxford: New Internationalist.
For further information on the book, see:
https://www.dannydorling.org/books/equality/Homepage.html
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 1, 2012 | Research
Trish Hennessy recently published a short article on the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives blog that included a variety of expert opinions on how to reduce income inequality. A wide range of solutions were presented within the 16 quotes that were used in the blog, including: improvements to the labor market, employment protections, income supports, public services, and changes to the tax system. One of the experts Hennessey consulted was Rob Rainer, the Executive Director of Canada Without Poverty, who suggested that income security could best be reduced by a new basic income scheme, guaranteeing a sufficient and stable floor of income for all Canadians.
The article is online at: https://www.behindthenumbers.ca/2012/06/06/how-to-fix-income-inequality/
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 30, 2012 | Opinion
Daniel Dorling, Injustice: Why social inequality persists, Policy Press, 2011, xvii + 403 pp, pbk 1 847 42720 5, £9.99
Daniel Dorling’s Injustice (reviewed in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, edition 3 for 2010) has been reissued in paperback with a new foreword by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and a new afterword by the author.
In the book, Dorling gathers evidence for ‘continued belief in the tenets of injustice’ (p.13): ‘Elitism is efficient’, ‘exclusion is necessary’, ‘prejudice is natural’, ‘greed is good’, and ‘despair is inevitable’ – tenets imbibed by the wealthy as they grow up, and which perpetuate them in power and perpetuate their power; and tenets in which many others acquiesce. Dorling persuasively argues that the result is growing inequality, and it is surely shocking that ‘in countries such as Britain people last lived lives as unequal as today, as measured by wage inequality, in 1854, when Charles Dickens was writing Hard Times’ (p.316).
Presumably Wilkinson and Pickett were asked to write the new Foreword because of the success of their book The Spirit Level, which found that inequality (sometimes understood as income inequality, and sometimes more generally understood) was correlated to a variety of social ills. In their significant Foreword to Injustice they do as we suggested in a review in a previous edition of the Citizen’s Income Newsletter (issue 1 for 2010), and have located the causes of inequality and of various other social ills in deeper social structures – social structures which they interestingly suggest have prehistoric and indeed pre-human origins.
Dorling’s new Afterword is equally significant. The Coalition Cabinet contains more millionaires than any other in the last hundred years, and Dorling shows that in the interests of the élite which they represent, Cabinet members are consistent exponents of the ‘tenets of injustice’. He suggests that they have established a new higher education funding regime likely to restrict higher education to a social elite because they believe that elitism is efficient. Perhaps he’s right.
The Afterword locates the cure for all of this injustice in changed beliefs, as does the original book, but there is little to suggest how this might be achieved apart from the idea that we should fortify ourselves for the journey by reminding ourselves that things have sometimes changed for the better. This lack of a prescription raises an important question: Do we change behaviour by changing beliefs, or is it the other way round? The process is probably circular, which means that behavioural and structural change will be important methods of changing people’s beliefs, and vice versa. To take an example: Enforced good behaviour in the workplace in relation to racial equality has promoted belief in racial equality, and increasing belief in racial equality has promoted better workplace practice. If the process is circular in this way then we shall need to construct ‘equality mechanisms’ if we are to see people’s beliefs change.
Needless to say, Child Benefit, a Citizen’s Pension, and then a Citizen’s Income, will be such mechanisms. This leads us to suggest that, at last year’s Conservative Party Conference, George Osborne announced that Child Benefit would be deuniversalised because, in its present universal form, Child Benefit represents everything which the ‘tenets of injustice’ are against.
