by Karl Widerquist | Feb 14, 2014 | Research
SUMMARY: This report examines the potentials of basic income to serve as a new tool for social and development policy, drawing from the recent experiences from recent pilot projects. The structure of the report is as follows: Chapter two provides a brief literature review of cash transfer policies currently in place in many developing countries and assesses the potential advantages of universal and unconditional transfers over targeted and conditional ones. Chapter three presents the three country cases where universal cash transfer policies have been tested or gradually implemented. Chapter four concludes and explores the prospects of basic income as a part of the new development policy agenda. The empirical material regarding basic income experiments is collected from the projects’ own research reports and newsletters, as well as relevant academic and non-academic articles.
Johanna Perkio, “Universal Basic Income: A New Tool for Development Policy?” Kansainvalinen Solidaarisuutyo: International Solidarity Work, January 31, 2014.
For a direct link to the PDF version of the article go to: https://sange.fi/kvsolidaarisuustyo/wp-content/uploads/Universal-Basic-Income-A-New-Tool-for-Development-Policy.pdf
Kansainvalinen Solidaarisuutyo
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 6, 2014 | News
TITLE: “Citizen’s Income: A minor policy change that would transform our society”
SPEAKERS: Guy Standing and Malcolm Torry
TIME & DATE: “Tuesday 4th March. 6.30pm – 8.30pm
LOCATION: Committee Room 5, House of Commons
TICKETS are available at this link.
Guy Standing
A Citizen’s Income is an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income for every individual as a right of citizenship. The withdrawal of means-tested benefits as earned incomes rise means that far too many households receive almost no benefit from additional earnings. A Citizen’s Income would change that and would therefore enable families to climb out of poverty. There is very little now that binds every individual into society. Everyone would receive a Citizen’s Income, creating a new social belonging. The labour market gives few choices to most individuals. A Citizen’s Income would increase people’s power in the labour market, and would enable both employers and workers to negotiate the employment patterns that they want.
Professor Guy Standing, SOAS, University of London, and author of The Precariat: The new dangerous class, will tell us how the need for a Citizen’s Income is increased by the growth of the precariat in the UK and elsewhere. Those in the precariat typically face economic uncertainty and pervasive poverty traps and precarity traps that remove incentives to labour and work. A Citizen’s Income is the only feasible way to provide basic socio-economic security, and would make a modest but sustainable contribution to the reduction of the high and rising level of income inequality. Professor Standing will also be able to report on the stunning results of Citizen’s Income pilot projects in Namibia and India.
Malcolm Torry, for Policy Press
Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, and author of Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, will explain how a Citizen’s Income would have significant beneficial effects for individuals and for society, and that it is an entirely feasible policy because it could be paid for by reducing tax allowances and means-tested benefits. No additional public expenditure would be required, and on day 1 few households would notice much financial difference. It’s in the weeks, months and years after that that individuals, families, and society as a whole would experience life very differently.
For more information go to: https://thepeoplesparliament.me.uk/themes/citizens-income/.
by Karl Widerquist | Jan 26, 2014 | News, Research
[Michael W. Howard]
In this column, Velasquez-Manoff summarizes ground-breaking research by Duke University epidemiologist Jane Costello and UCLA economist Randall Akee on the effects of regular unconditional cash disbursements to every member of the North Carolina’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, as equal shares of some of the profits of their casino. There have been many casinos build within Native American communities, which is sometimes controversial. However, gambling can be a fun and safe past time when casinos are run well. Visitors might want to read this article by the South Florida Reporter to learn how to find a reputable casino. Furthermore, casinos provide much-needed jobs and income for those living nearby. After five years, by which time the yearly profits per person amounted to $6000, the number in poverty declined by half, a surprising result for Costello. “The expectation is that social interventions have relatively small effects,” Costello told Velasquez-Manoff. “This one had quite large effects.” Other effects included a decline in minor crimes by youth, an increase in high school graduation rates, and, especially when the income arrived early in a child’s life, better mental health in early adulthood. The study thus tends to support the view that poverty can cause mental illness, rather than poverty being explained by mental illness. It is thought that the income facilitated better parenting by reducing the stresses of poverty. Even income arriving for 12-year-olds, according to Akee, has benefits that in five to ten years exceed the cost of the extra income.
Harrah's Cherokee Casino -via Daily Kos
Velasquez-Manoff does not mention the relevance of this study for basic income policy, but it is particularly relevant. First, even major studies like the Mincome pilot program in Manitoba were of fixed length. Critics could say that behavior was affected by the expectation that the income would end. Here, the payments are ongoing. Second, the payments, although not sufficient to cover basic needs, are substantial. By 2006, the yearly stipend had risen to $9000 per person. So, unlike Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, these payments have been a more substantial percentage of individual incomes among poor families. Yet, as basic income advocates would expect, there appears not to have been a substantial work disincentive. Rather, the steady supplements to wages have relieved the stresses of seasonal, irregular employment, with numerous benefits to family and community life, and this, as Charles Karelis has argued, in The Persistence of Poverty, enables work. Akee “calculates that 5 to 10 years after age 19, the savings incurred by the Cherokee income supplements surpass the initial costs – the payments to parents while the children were minors.”
The study also raises interesting questions. The source of the funding is a business owned by the tribe; it is a “bottom-up” initiative. Would it make a difference to the outcomes if the source were publicly owned resources or tax revenues? Not all of the casino revenue went to cash payments. Some went to infrastructure and social services.
There are some questions regarding the long-term sustainability of these policies. For example, the growth of online casinos like https://thisisstory.com which may cut into the Cherokee casino profits if they continue to grow. But for the most part, these policies look like they will continue.
Were the positive outcomes due to the complementarity of these policies? Could there have been better outcomes if more had been spent on in-kind goods, or if more had been disbursed in cash? Whatever the answers, this study shows the positive potential of substantial universal unconditional cash payments in the fight against poverty.
Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?” Opinionator, New York Times, January 18, 2014.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In reaction to Velasquez-Manoff’s article, several other authors wrote articles about the project, some making the connection to BIG:
Matt Bruenig, “A Cherokee Tribe’s Basic Income Success Story,” Policy Shop, January 19, 2014.
Jared Bernstein, “The Transfer of Income to Poor Families with Children Can Be An Investment with Long Term Payoffs,” On the Economy, January 19th, 2014.
Dave in Northridge, “What Happens when Poor People get Cash? An Empirical Study,” Daily Kos, Jan 20, 2014.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 3, 2014 | Opinion
Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, xiv + 300 pp, 1 44731 125 6, pbk, £24.99, 1 44731 124 9, hbk, £70
From the book:
The structure of the book
Following some notes on terminology and on graphical representation, chapter 1 sets the scene by asking the reader to imagine themselves trying to solve the financial crisis, to imagine some representative people trying to cope with our tax and benefits system, and to imagine themselves creating a tax and benefits system in a country without one. The second chapter offers a historical sketch, because it is helpful to know where we have been before we set off into the future; and chapter 3 discusses existing schemes similar to a Citizen’s Income and also some Citizen’s Income pilot projects. Chapter 4 discusses the changing labour market and the changing family in order to locate our discussion of benefits reform in its context, and asks whether people would be more or less likely to seek paid employment if they were in receipt of a Citizen’s Income; and chapter 5 establishes a set of criteria for a successful benefits system and judges both the current system and a Citizen’s Income against those criteria. Chapter 6 discusses poverty and inequality and asks whether a Citizen’s Income would tackle them; chapter 7 explores the notion of citizenship in order to decide who should receive a Citizen’s Income; chapter 8 asks whether it would be ethical to pay a Citizen’s Income; and chapter 9 explores a variety of political ideologies’ possible responses to a Citizen’s Income in order to discuss whether a Citizen’s Income is ever likely to happen. Chapter 10 asks whether we can afford a Citizen’s Income and discusses funding mechanisms; chapter 11 discusses a variety of other reform options, and some issues not tackled in the rest of the book; and a brief chapter 12 offers a summary argument for a Citizen’s Income. (p.viii)
A review by Professor Bill Jordan
This is a very important contribution to current debates about tax-benefits systems. In his carefully-argued and comprehensive examination of the case for and against Citizen’s Income, Malcolm Torry presents an updated and extended review of the state of play in the UK and worldwide. Even as some developing countries are experimenting with versions of the idea, ours seems as far from doing so as ever, despite its obvious advantages.
We are living through the most recent of a series of missed opportunities for the principle of state payments to all citizens to be accepted. Whereas the others (such as the introduction of contributory National Insurance benefits and National Assistance after the Second World War, and of Family Income Supplements for low earners in 1973) were innovations in income maintenance systems, the present one combines financial and fiscal crisis with the consolidation of means-testing and coercion through ‘Universal Credits’. As Torry points out at the start of the book, ‘money for everyone’ could have been an alternative approach to both the bail-out of the banks and the Duncan Smith reforms
The early chapters of the book set out the processes through which our present mix of universal, contributory and selective benefits was established, how universality as a principle was accepted in the case of Child Benefits, and how a CI scheme might be implemented (for specific groups first, or at a low initial level). There follow four chapters on criteria for a benefits system, demonstrating that CI scores well for coherence and simplicity, adaptability to changing family patterns, supplying incentives, efficiency and dignity, and appropriateness for a flexible labour market.
He analyses with care the issues of work motivation and the responsibilities of citizens raised by the proposal, acknowledging that prejudice and timidity have influenced political responses to the idea, even in the face of strong evidence. For instance, despite the finding from a CI experiment in a district of Namibia that people engaged more in work and education, the government still expressed fears that a wider introduction of the scheme would make people lazy. Yet even in the face of these barriers, CI has continued to gain wider attention.
Above all, these chapters show how what was originally seen as an outrageous idea, espoused by a handful of outsiders, has gradually come to be accepted by a wide range of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and members of the social policy community. With impressive scholarship, Torry assembles the arguments and research findings by which scoffers and nay-sayers have been converted (or have converted themselves) over the past 40 years.
Finally, he demonstrates that all the major political traditions support goals that would be served by CI – individual enterprise for the New Right, equality and solidarity for Socialists, inclusion for One Nation Conservatives, personal freedom for Liberals, efficiency with justice for Social Democrats, and modernisation for advocates of the Third Way. It could also be introduced in affordable ways. So why is it still marginal to politics in the UK, USA and almost all of Europe?
Although Torry does not say so, the answer seems to be that – with capital in the ascendant over organised labour, and globalisation extending its strategic options – it is the disciplinary role of the state that all political regimes seek to uphold. Instead of improving incentives for work, enterprise and savings, they scrutinise and sanction those with low earning power; instead of enabling family formation, they police parenting; and instead of promoting equality, they divide and rule.
Malcolm Torry’s book shows that the introduction of a CI could be rational, ethical and efficient, if combined with other measures to promote sustainability and the common good. It could also be afforded under several different taxation regimes. Unfortunately, none of this makes it likely to happen, so long as power over societies is exercised for the benefit of the few.
Professor Bill Jordan, Plymouth University
by Karl Widerquist | Nov 25, 2013 | Research
This article discusses the recent Basic Income Grant pilot project as a strategy to address the great inequality experienced in most southern African countries.
Henning Melber, “Rich region, poor people,” D+C, October 25, 2013.
View on Swakopmund, a popular holiday destination for rich Namibians. -from D+C
