by Kate McFarland | Jul 6, 2016 | News
A recent survey of economists at leading institutions purports to show that 58% oppose a universal basic income, while only 2% support it. However, the survey asked specifically about a UBI that replaces all other social insurance programs and is paid only to adults over 21. Many opposed these qualifications, not UBI itself.
On Tuesday, June 28, the IGM (Initiative on Global Markets) Forum released the results of a survey on “universal basic income” distributed to the Economic Experts Panel — a panel consisting only of “senior faculty at the most elite research universities in the United States” chosen to be diverse in their specializations, locations, and political orientations.
Out of these economics experts, 58% either “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed” with a description of a specific universal basic income policy, while only 2% “agreed” and none “strongly agreed”. (The remainder were either “uncertain” or had no opinion on the matter.)
At first blush, such results are apt to shock and disappoint supporters of basic income. However, as with any survey, attention to the detail is key: what, exactly, were respondents asked?
In this case, respondents were asked to rank their opinion on the following statement on a five-point scale (or declare no opinion):
Granting every American citizen over 21-years-old a universal basic income of $13,000 a year — financed by eliminating all transfer programs (including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing subsidies, household welfare payments, and farm and corporate subsidies) — would be a better policy than the status quo.
Presumably, this particular policy proposal comes from Charles Murray, who endorsed exactly this in a recent Wall Street Journal feature.
Even before looking at the survey responses, we should take pause here: Charles Murray is a controversial figure even among — perhaps especially among — supporters of UBI. Left-leaning advocates tend to regard Murray and his proposals as “downright undesirable”, to use the phrase wielded by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark in their June 15th article in CounterPunch.
Last January, to give another example, an article in Jacobin argued that a UBI “could do little to achieve egalitarian objectives — or even backfire badly” if the policy poorly designed. The author presented Murray’s proposal as an example of “non-liveable” basic income, due to its low amount and concurrent elimination of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
With this in mind, then, it should not be too surprising that several economists in the IGM Forum also took issue with the proposed elimination of all other benefits — but not UBI per se — when explaining their votes of “Disagree” or “Strongly Disagree”. Some even expressed support of policies closely related to UBI. For instance, Richard Schmalensee (MIT) said, “A properly designed negative income tax could be part of a better policy, but replacing everything is a bad idea.” Similarly, Eric Maskin (Harvard) replied, “A minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Medicare.” And Christopher Udry (Yale) opined that UBI could work if “coupled with universal health care and tax reform … but we are far from that.”
Larry Samuelson (Yale), who responded as “Uncertain”, stated, “There is much to recommend a universal basic income, but specifically a 13k income while ending all other transfers is difficult to assess.”
The proposed restriction of the UBI to adults over 21 worried other economists — such as William Nordhaus, who said, “And the children get nothing? The basic idea is sound but too simplistic as stated.” Likewise, Robert Hall (Stanford) simply offered, “Limitation to people over 21 can’t be the right answer.”
This is not to suggest, of course, that all of the economists surveyed were inclined to support a basic income (but just not Charles Murray’s version). Some did express opposition to UBI itself, and for reasons that we might expect: it’s too expensive, it might discourage work, it’s not necessary given current welfare programs, and “Bill Gates would get 13k, which is crazy.”
Nonetheless, it’s striking that many explanations of “Disagree” responses did not criticize UBI per se, and were sometimes even implicitly (or explicitly!) supportive.
Not all respondents gave explanations of their answers. However, looking through the list of economists surveyed, it’s further notable that the Murray-inspired UBI proposal elicited disagreement and uncertainty from some others who have previously expressed support of basic income. For instance, the Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton voted “Disagree”, despite having recently come out in favor of “basic income grants”. Even distinguished MIT Professor Abhijit Banerjee — who is an advisor for GiveDirectly’s basic income pilot and recently wrote a compelling case for UBI in The Indian Express — voted “Uncertain”.
Thus, supporters of UBI — and especially those on the left-side of the political spectrum — should not be discouraged by this particular poll, despite its purportedly showing that only 2% of a forum of economics experts “support a universal basic income”.
If there’s anything to concern us about this survey, it should be the implicit conflation (in its headline) of the general idea of UBI with Charles Murray’s specific, and very controversial, proposal.
On the other hand, the economists themselves do not make this conflation — and, indeed, their responses serve as a reminder of the danger of tying the idea of UBI to any one particular policy implementation.
As basic income researcher Jurgen de Wispelaere writes in a recent blog post,
Agreement at the level of the general idea amongst opposing political factions is often hailed as a virtue of the basic income proposal. However, once we move from idea to policy implementation, persistent disagreement may return with a vengeance.
This is an important message, and one which the IGM Forum survey illustrates well.
Reference:
“Universal Basic Income,” IGM Forum, Chicago Booth, June 28, 2016.
Thanks to Asha Pond for reviewing a draft of this article.
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (To see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News, click the link.)
by Guest Contributor | Jun 25, 2016 | Opinion
Dear friends,
The basic income movement is picking up momentum at an enormous rate, but even with past and present trials, many are still looking for further evidence of what would happen if a guaranteed income were provided over the long-term.
So we’re planning to run what will likely be the largest long-term pilot of a basic income ever, and we have got some of the world’s leading economists on board to perform a rigorous evaluation.
You can learn more and join the pilot here.
For years, GiveDirectly has been providing short-term cash transfers to the extreme poor and seeing positive results — people do not stop working or drink it away, they invest in bettering their lives. If this basic income pilot shows similarly positive results, it could open the door to governments around the world beginning to adopt policies like basic income.
But we need to move fast — the debate over basic income is happening now and people are shooting down the idea based on speculation. If we are going to provide evidence in time to effect this debate, we need to launch the pilot this year. We will guarantee thousands of individuals living in extreme poverty in East Africa a basic income for over ten years, but we will have results on impact — do people invest more, seek more education, become more creative? — within a year or two.
But to launch this year all of us need to chip in a small amount — we can make it happen for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day:
Learn more about our project and, for just $1 per day, support the basic income of one person in poverty.
At best, we will break through the impasse of the basic income debate with evidence that shapes our economic futures; and at worst, we will provide life-changing aid to some of the poorest people on the planet.
We are teaming up with leading researcher Abhijit Banerjee from MIT and have calculated that we can run and study this pilot for $30 million, and we are willing to match the first $10 million donated. If just 5,000 people commit $1/day by this summer, we can make it happen.
Join us: for just $1 per day, support the basic income of one person in poverty.
This is the moment to launch this potentially historic pilot. Be a part and join now.
Sincerely,
Ian Bassin
At the home of Caroline Awino Odhiambo in Koga village on 22 October 2014. With the cash transfer from Give Directly, Caroline bought a cow, a sewing machine, put metal sheets on her roof, and paid school fees for two children in primary school. Caroline and her family in front of their house
At the home of Beatrice Achieng in Nduru Upper village. She used the cash transfer from Give Directly to dig a 30-foot borehole that now supplies her family with fresh water. She also build the foundation for a new house on her compound. Beatrice fetches water at the borehole.
At the home of recipient Rispa Atieno Okoyo in Koga village on 22 October 2014. Rispa used the cash to build this goat pen, she bought 2 cows, and planted maize and beans. Rispa with her children in front of their house.
At the home of recipient Gabriel Otieno Awoche in Koga village on 22 October 2014. Gabriel built a house and chicken coop with the cash. He also bought woodworking tools for his furniture workshop. Gabriel with his wife Lucy Adhiambo and their daughter Charlotte, 3. They also have another daughter, Mariam, age 1 1/2.
by Josh Martin | Jun 5, 2016 | News
On June 5, 2016, Swiss people voted on a referendum that included a question about implementing a universal basic income. Although the official text for the vote did not specify the level, the campaigners proposed 2,500 Swiss francs for adults and 625 francs for children per month.
Credit to Basic Income News Editing team (namely Josh Martin, Jenna van Draanen, Kate McFarland, André Coelho, Karl Widerquist and Tyler Prochazka) and Philippe Van Parijs.
The referendum on Unconditional Base Income (UBI), as they call it, has been building since 2013 when the Swiss Citizen’s Initiative, co-initiated by Enno Schmidt, gathered enough signatures (more than 100,000) to successfully trigger their right to have a national referendum on the issue. Although the Swiss Federal Council rejected the initiative in August 2014, the rejection was more of a symbolic suggestion to vote against the basic income than a consequential political action: the Swiss people had already asserted their constitutional right to the referendum.
Basic income advocates utilized headline-grabbing tactics to gain publicity for the referendum. Upon submitting the initiative in 2013, basic income supporters dumped 8 million five-rappen coins (one for each Swiss citizen) outside the Federal Palace in Bern. Then, in the final weeks before the vote, members of the Swiss Initiative for an Unconditional Basic Income unveiled a poster that broke the poster size world record.
While this referendum may have been voted down, the Swiss basic income movement helped spark an international dialogue on how a basic income can help fix issues related to poverty, social policy, and technology, among other topics. This conversation has caught the imaginations of citizens all over the world and has led to commitments from governments or non-profit organizations to establish basic income pilot projects in Finland, the Netherlands, Canada, Uganda, Kenya, India, and in Silicon Valley, as well as public considerations for basic income research in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, France, and Namibia. This dialogue is truly global, and media outlets all over the world have begun writing articles and making videos debating the merits and principles for a basic income.
Even with a defeated referendum, the basic income movement is poised to march forward toward a brighter future in the coming years: thanks, in part, to the efforts of the Swiss basic income advocates who triggered this momentous referendum. We extend a special “thank you” from the BI News editorial team to all of those involved in the Swiss movement who have publicized basic income and worked so tirelessly on this referendum.
Sources:
More information on the results themselves can be seen here.
Confédération Suisse. Votation nº 601 official results, June 5th 2016
Ethan Jacobs, “Switzerland’s Basic Income Vote Turns Finance Reform Into a Democratic Spectacle”. Inverse, February 11, 2016.
by Karl Widerquist | May 3, 2016 | News
Discussion of Basic Income the U.S. media continues to increase. Just in the past two weeks several publications have addressed the issue, many of the major media outlets, and most of them have addressed it in a positive way. Bloomberg View includes the headline, “A Basic Income Should Be the Next Big Thing.” Gawker calls Universal Basic Income “the Utopia We Deserve.” Ben Thomas of Crossing Genres writes, “If You Think Free Money Kills Work Ethic, Your Definition of ‘Work’ Is Horrible.” Triple pundit summarizes, “The Case for Universal Basic Income.” The only negative recent article, in Forbes, gets the definition of basic income wrong. The author is under the misconception the basic income requires that the government “let people starve” and deny them “medical care.” So, even this article does not oppose basic income as it actually is defined by supporters.
From crossingenres.com
by Kate McFarland | Apr 19, 2016 | News
Rutger Bregman in June 2015
Source: Victor van Werkhooven (Wikimedia Commons)
Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek, the latest book by the award-winning Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman, will be published in English on Tuesday, April 19. The book was originally published in Dutch, and met immense success in the Netherlands — where it not only became a national bestseller but also helped to spearhead the movement for municipality-level basic income experiments.
Early in the book, Bregman transports the reader back to a long-gone time of utopian fantasy — to visions of “Cockaigne,” a land where “rivers ran with wine, roast geese flew overhead, pancakes grew on trees, and hot pies and pastries rained from the skies,” and all people danced, drank, and lounged together as equals. A new vision of utopia, he argues, is sorely needed in modern societies.
A century ago, influential thinkers like John Maynard Keynes predicted that automation and improved efficiency would render work all but gone in the not-so-distant future. Instead, here in the early decades of the 21st century, we citizens of developed nations find ourselves working longer hours than ever — all too often in jobs that we ourselves find meaningless. (On the last point, see Bregman’s lucid discussion of “bullshit jobs” in hist chapter entitled “Why it Doesn’t Pay to be a Banker.”) Technology has brought great improvements in living conditions — at least for a few — but dreams of a paradise of leisure seem lost to the wind.
Detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Luilekkerland” (“The Land of Cockaigne”), 1567
How, then, can we reclaim our visions of utopia? How can we turn our modern “Land of Plenty,” as Bregman often calls it, into a land of plenty for all — and plentiful leisure and life-fulfillment as well?
No doubt, many skeptics and naysayers will find Bregman’s solutions — his visions of a universal basic income and a 15-hour workweek — to be fanciful as the mythical land of Cockaigne. Bregman himself concedes that, to many, his proposals will sound like “crazy dreams.” But it can’t be over-stressed that this “crazy dream” is, indeed, a “utopia for realists.” Far from being a woolly-headed dreamer, Bregman proposes and describes specific steps en route to utopia — from disincentivizing overtime to taxing banking transactions to developing alternative measure of progress to the GDP — and thoroughly backs his claims with diverse historical and experimental evidence.
For example, in his first chapter on basic income (“Why Everyone Should Get Free Money”), Bregman presents the findings of multiple studies of the effects of “free money.” He discusses the results of “Mincome” experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, and similar concurrent studies conducted in the United States, in some detail — in addition to summarizing the outcomes observed by charitable organizations like GiveDirectly, which deals in no-strings-attached cash donations, and formal studies of cash transfers to the poor. He effectively combines statistics, anecdotes, and theoretical considerations in making the case that a basic income is the most effective means to combat poverty — a realistic approach to utopia-building if any is.
Of course, as Bregman knows, basic income, on its own, is not sufficient to create a utopian future. I will leave it to the reader to discover the other facets and nuances of his “crazy dream” — but, as an educator, I do want to call special attention to Bregman’s critique of our present discourse about education, which he (accurately) notes “invariably revolved around the question: Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market?” According to Bregman, this is “precisely the wrong question.” Instead, educators must ask what knowledge and skills we want students to have — to prepare them “not only for the job market but, more fundamentally, for life.” I couldn’t agree more. (Of course, as a philosophy instructor, I also couldn’t agree more when Bregman specifically recommends training students in “philosophy and morals,” but I digress…)
Utopia for Realists is a highly recommended read — but, in the words of Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take my word for it. Bregman’s book has received widespread praise from noted scholars and thinkers in the basic income movement and beyond.
Nick Srnicek, the co-author of another influential utopian-leaning book (Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work), calls Utopia for Realists “a bold call for utopian thinking and a world without work – something needed more than ever in an era of defeatism and lack of ambition,” while noted social theorist Zygmunt Bauman describes it as “brilliant, comprehensive, truly enlightening, and eminently readable” and “obligatory reading for everyone worried about the wrongs of present-day society and wishing to contribute to their cure.”
BIEN co-founder Philippe van Parijs also commends the book, saying, “Learning from history and from up-to-date social science can shatter crippling illusions. It can turn allegedly utopian proposals into plain common sense. It can enable us to face the future with unprecedented enthusiasm. To see how, read this superbly written, upbeat, insightful book.”
To learn more about Rutger Bregman and Utopia for Realists, visit the website of its publisher The Correspondent, a crowdfunded online journal for which Bregman has written extensively.
Bregman was recently interviewed by Gawker about basic income, in conjunction with the English version release of his book. The interview covers much ground, including the feasibility of a basic income in the United States (Bregman sees a “natural fit” for a basic income in the US, calling it the “ultimate marriage of conservative and progressive politics”), and responses to a battery of potential objections, such as the free-rider problem, the threat of inflation, and the worry that an economy in which people work fewer hours could not generate sufficient revenue to finance a basic income.
For a short and accessible video introduction to Bregman’s ideas about a basic income, watch his TEDx talk on YouTube.
