On December 11, anti-poverty activist and scholar Jason Burke Murphy appeared on the popular David Pakman Show to discuss basic income and how to implement it in the United States. Murphy is assistant professor at Elms College. He serves on the National Committee of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network and the BIEN Executive Committee.
The conversation touched on the reasons for introducing a universal basic income, and the practicalities of implementing it.
Murphy traced the beginnings of his basic income activism back to his experience of working with low-income communities in Arkansas in the 1990s:
All the neighbourhoods where I was knocking doors, almost nobody had a plan that would do anything significant in that neighbourhood. The city wanted to raise taxes to build the sports arena. The federal government has weapons purchases. And every time a job program was announced, the jobs were not a significant improvement, or they just were not coming to the areas we were working in. So this seemed the only thing that would actually get to the people I was working with.
Jason Murphy, BIEN Executive Committee.
Murphy’s anti-poverty perspective shapes his views on how to implement a basic income. He noted that the bureaucracy faced by those wishing to access current welfare benefits like food stamps is extremely complex. This means that many people who are entitled to these benefits do not actually receive them. Basic income would overcome these problems, and would also eliminate the poverty trap; as it is an unconditional payment, people would not have to worry about losing their benefits when they find employment.
Murphy stressed that implementing a basic income does not necessarily entail the immediate and total phasing out of other benefits:
We could keep things like food stamps or some disability services, there is nothing barring us from doing that. But we ought to have something that unconditionally belongs to everybody.
According to him, basic income should not be part of a race to the bottom:
It needs to be progressively funded from progressive taxation. Why? We have a serious problem with inequality and I see nothing that directly approaches that like a progressively funded basic income dividend.
Murphy also stressed the need for ecological taxes as another source of financing for basic income, as this would ensure that wealth would be redistributed in an environmentally sustainable way.
Andrew Yang is a technology entrepreneur who is taking three years away from his business to run for the Democratic nomination for president. His book, the War on Normal People, explains why Basic Income is the centerpiece of his platform.
This book review comes from the perspective of a political theorist who has been writing about Basic Income since the 1990s. Yang’s candidacy is one of many signs that the Basic Income movement is experiencing a substantial wave of support right now. But he is not necessarily the candidate of this extremely diverse movement. Basic Income comes in many forms and can go with almost any other set of policies. Whether any particular Basic Income supporter will also support Yang will depend on a host of other issues, but they should all take a serious look at his candidacy and his effort to make Basic Income an issue in the 2020 election.
This book communicates very clearly that Yang’s heart is in the right place. He’s not some narcissistic business owner running for president on the strength of his ego. He is very aware of the trail of luck and privilege that put him where he is today. He stresses that the American economy is not really the land of opportunity where anyone can make it if they try. It is full of injustice and unfairness. Most people will never get an opportunity to do what he did. And he points out clearly, the opportunities available to most normal people are shrinking.
Andrew Yang with Jason Burke Murphy
Yet, Yang is no opponent of capitalism. He sees it as an incredibly productive and useful system in the right institutional setting, but the book’s title, The War on Normal People, typifies his perspective: even as our technology has made greater prosperity and opportunity possible, legal and institutional changes have reduce opportunities for all but the luckiest and most privileged Americans. The current generation of Americans is the first that can’t expect to improve substantially on the economic situation of their parents, and might well be doing worse.
Many factors have combined to cause this problem. Automation makes it possible to produce more goods with the same amount of labor, which ought to be good for everyone. But most people are dependent on labor for their income. They spend their lives building up skills that are suddenly outmoded by technology, forcing them into the already crowded lower end of the labor market.
Automation has produced enormous benefits for the people who own the machines and the people who lend the money to finance machines. And it’s created a few wonderful jobs for people who happen to have the right skills, but there are only so many of those wonderful jobs to go around, and not all of them have certain futures either.
For normal people automation has produced both lower wages and less certain employment.
Yang argues that the side effects of automation are only getting worse. Trucking companies are already in the process of replacing truck drivers with self-driving trucks, a direct threat to millions of drivers and an indirect threat to millions more people who work in supporting sectors, such as truck stops.
College tuition has gone up exponentially, and people have had to take out increasingly large loans to pay for it. According to Yang, people in their twenties and thirties today have so much educational debt that they are increasingly unable to buy homes, start businesses, or take advantage of their salaries.
The healthcare industry has also saddled people with increasing debt-a problem no other country imposes on its people. According to Yang, many Americans-even some who think they have good health insurance are vulnerable to bankruptcy if they have an accident or come down with a disease that isn’t adequately covered by whatever insurance they might have. It seems to be so easy for people to fall into bankruptcy these days, so it’s important that people budget their spending to make sure they are financially stable. However, if this can’t be done and people are on the verge of bankruptcy, it might be worth contacting a bankruptcy attorney San Diego, for example, to see if they can help people struggling with financial troubles.
One thing technology has given us is greater distraction. Yang argues that video games and social media are cheap, easily accessible, and built to draw you in. The decline in labor hours among young American men has been mirrored almost exactly by an increase in hours spent playing video games. Millions of American men in their 20s live with their parents and play video games 40 hours per week. In the short run, the instant satisfaction video games provide can make up for a lot of frustration and unhappiness in the rest of people’s lives. Whilst this may be true for some people, a lot of people around the world have actually been making money from these video games. By using platforms, like Twitch, people can stream themselves playing these games live. They can, eventually, start making money. To do this, people would just need a computer and then they would have to find out where to get ps2 roms. That would allow them to play those PlayStation games from their computer. They can then stream them live and make some money.
Yang points out many other serious problems that need to be fixed and that most American politicians are ignoring, but the one serious drawback of this book is that some readers might find it drawing their attention more to the severity of the problems Yang points out than to the promise of the solutions he suggests. This is unfortunate, because Yang is optimistic and offers serious and realistic solutions.
Any reader who feels despondent by Yang’s pull-no-punches statement of the problem, should reread the parts of the book stating Yang’s solutions, and concentrate on the ultimately optimistic, uplifting nature of his message.
Yang supports a host of policies that put him firmly in the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He wants single payer healthcare, also known as, Medicare for all, and an end to medical debt and bankruptcies. He wants campaign finance reform to get money fully out of politics. He wants free or cheap college tuition and an end to student debt.
But the centerpiece of his book, and what most separates him from other progressive Democrats, is his unequivocal support for Basic Income. Other progressive Democrats and even some mainstream Democrats have said favorable things about Basic Income. But even some of the most progressive Democratic elected officials, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have directly endorsed no more than the ‘exploration of it.
Yang wants a full, national Basic Income right away, and he wants it for good reasons. He doesn’t see it as a way to toss out a few tidbits to the poor but as part of the solution to the economic unfairness and injustice in the world today. Retraining will not cushion the disruptions caused by automation. Education will not end the stagnation (or reverse the decline) in wages that most normal people are experiencing. Yang wants to give them a boost and one that is not dependent on their employers.
He doesn’t make the mistake (common among tech entrepreneurs) of portraying Basic Income as something we’ll need someday when all labor is replaced by machines. He portrays it as something that’s needed right now and is perhaps already overdue after the last 40 years of automation-fueled economic growth have failed to deliver either higher pay or shorter working hours to normal people.
The Basic Income Yang begins with is too small, only $12,000 per year and not adequately covering single parents and their children (the poorest demographic group in the United States), but it’s a good start. That amount won’t end poverty, but it will be an enormous improvement for everyone living on the margins and a significant boost to the middle class. I had the chance to speak to Yang, and he told me he chose that plan because he needed something that was fully costed already. It’s just a start; he’s open to much more.
Yang’s book provides an excellent statement of the severe economic problems facing normal people in America right now, and it makes a compelling case that Basic Income is an essential part of the solution. Yang is a solid standard-bearer for the Basic Income movement. Whether he can bring Basic Income fully into the debate during the 2020 U.S. Presidential election remains to be seen.
Chapo Trap House is known for bringing an irreverent, jokey style to US left discussion.
Andrew Yang’s interview with Virgil Texas on the podcast Chapo Trap House helps to answer a lot of questions that keep coming up as his candidacy is debated. After a little while Virgil brings up concerns that one often encounters in debate around basic income.
Full disclosure: I interviewed Andrew Yang a year ago and plan to vote for him. Most of my political training and viewpoint is left-wing. I have fond feelings and understanding for many friends who plan to vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
Yang avoids ideological language. He has embraced the slogan Scott Santens often uses of “Not right, not left, but forward.” That is not a slogan for me. I recognize that basic income is a policy that could be attached to any ideological program. I’ve written about that. I would call Yang’s Freedom Dividend a left policy proposal precisely because it re-allocates wealth from the rich to the poor. Yang is proving that basic income (and a diagnosis of “disintegration”) can get the attention of non-voters and even Trump voters.
My goal here is to do a little bit of translating and clarify a couple of points that I have seen raised on cable news and in left magazines. One hears these same points from political newcomers in online Yang discussion pages. Millions of people are thinking about a basic income for the first time. I am sticking to three points that Yang raises in this interview and that I have seen him make elsewhere.
(1) The Value Added Tax. I asked Andrew Yang about the VAT because I was not quite sure it was the best way to go. When you find out why he wants it, you can be better assured that he is ready to take on the one percent.
Yang’s reason for using the VAT to raise about a third of the Freedom Dividend is that it would capture a lot of the revenue that companies like Amazon and Google are making without having to pay tax. Even more important, Yang makes it clear that he will keep looking at ways to make sure these giants of the new economy pay their fair share. In the UK where VAT has been implemented for a long time, the VAT returns process has been claimed to be a confusing process (https://www.rosspartners.co.uk/vat-return-services-london/) However if VAT is implemented with strong easy to understand legislation, issues like these would be less of a problem and potentially bring more companies on board to the VAT system. Yang stressed in this interview that we should “Go where the money is.”
Chapo’s Virgil is not certain about the VAT for the same reason progressives often oppose sales taxes. Yang is clear that “in a vacuum” this would not be a progressive tax. With the dividend, it moves money from the wealthy to everyone else. Yang makes it clear that he also believes in funding the dividend through a carbon tax and a financial transactions tax as well. He would also like to see an increase in marginal taxation of income and wealth.
We should support various, multiple taxes in order to support everyday government and a basic income guarantee. There is less incentive for the wealthy to dodge a tax if there are different kinds in play. The VAT is featured in most of the social democracies that we on the left point to as evidence that good policies can improve social outcomes.
It should be clear now that Yang is NOT the “Silicon Valley candidate”. Everyone who is getting a free ride will end up paying into the dividend and into Medicare for All). That is the goal here. The VAT is a means to that end. A lot of workers in Silicon Valley might share his concern about automation but that is very different from calling him the candidate “of Silicon Valley”. You can bet that Yang is Peter Thiel’s worst nightmare. Yang cites the fact that so many tech companies are untaxed right now as a reason to bring something else into the party. If a VAT doesn’t work, he will try something else.
When it comes to taxing the wealthy, Yang goes further than any of his opponents. Moderates would just repeal previous past tax cuts. Without the dividend, other left candidates run the risk of backlash as people wonder if these new policies really include them.
(2) The size of the dividend. Will $1,000 a month do the work we want it to do? Virgil makes two very different points. First, he points out that there were many periods of his life when even one tenth of this amount per month would have been extremely helpful. Second, he gives cases in which this amount would not help much. Yang’s particular proposal does not give a share until one reaches 18 years old. (I would prefer they be included. I can tell you that, every day, I encounter strong opinions on both sides of this issue.)
Yang wants to point out that a single mother would get her dividend and know that the kid is getting the dividend in the future. He did not say that this was something that many voters can’t get their heads around. Millions of Americans think that low-income people have kids in order to get welfare. That simply never happens.
This is a very interesting line of discussion we are now seeing. I will summarize it:
You need more than X a month to survive/do well.
This plan offers less than X as a dividend.
Therefore, we should reject this plan.
The problem with this line of argument is that we are left without any dividend at all. If $1,000 a month is not enough, then zero is much worse. Very few people are arguing for zero basic income, but that is where we are now. Virgil Texas does not reach this conclusion. It is a very friendly interview. But we do run into this a lot. What should we do if we think this amount proposed is not enough?
Andrew Yang is very clear that his goal is a dividend that, combined with Medicare for All, would abolish poverty. This is why he is not talking about gutting current support systems. Everyone who gets support of any kind will have the option of keeping it or going with the Freedom Dividend. He reiterates that when he says “go where the money is”, he knows that low-income people aren’t who he’s talking about. He commits in this interview to tinkering to make sure that this dividend is sufficient, given the expenses that are out there, as well as any price changes in play due to the VAT or carbon tax.
People who say that an extra $1,000 a month is not enough to matter have not seen what low-income people are already doing with what they have. There are many, many communities that are politically invisible. Nothing will increase their ability to develop the stuff of good living-restaurants, shops, studios, dance schools, gyms, etc.-than a dividend. Yang also points out that many people do not get valued by our market at all who should be. Here he includes home-makers and those who care for the elderly in their family.
Some people are worried that this dividend will not matter because of the taxes in play. Sure, it would be bad to get a check and then lose it all to taxation. We only need to be aware of how much more commerce, pollution, and financial transactions are the property of the top ten percent and top one percent of US society. Again, Yang is committed to making sure that the dividend is enough to accomplish the goal of a secure share for all.
Once any amount is secured, we can call to raise it.
(3) Capitalism and “entrepreneurship”. Early in the interview, we hear that the word “entrepreneur” includes a lot more people for Yang than is typically the case. Starting a family or taking care of elderly relatives is included. He also includes creative work, citing the many studies showing that “creatives” improve quality of life and are an economic engine. This is all part of his quest to improve our measurements of economic progress. The Gross Domestic Product and the Stock Market keep improving, even while life expectancy is going down for the first time in the US since the Yellow Fever Epidemic.
This meme is “not my style” but we are seeing conversations like this blossom once people get on board the idea of a dividend for all.
This can be a translation issue for the left. Yang’s “capitalism” and “entrepreneurship” just aren’t the sorts described in our business schools and on television. I tried to address some of these translation issue in an earlier piece for Basic Income News. My main goal there was to get us to think of caregivers and organizers alongside business start-ups. The word “capitalism” puts an image in my mind of someone taking a portion of everyone else’s wealth. I think of Wall Street. Andrew Yang is thinking about markets. To understand him when he says “human capitalism”, think about Main Street in a “nice town”. He wants a lot of that everywhere. This is one reason he wants to improve our measurements of economic well-being. If we can develop better ways of tracking well-being, then an increase in creative and political organizing power (as well as consumer, labour, and negotiating power) will appear in those new measurements. Interestingly, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren often point to images of Main Street. We shouldn’t let the right own this imagery. They offer nothing to promote actual markets.
The comments on Chapo Trap House’s twitter page include a lot of positive reaction but they can run pretty bad. There is a lot of projection. A lot of people just did not listen to the interview but commented nonetheless. The idea that Yang’s Freedom Dividend is a “neo-liberal trojan horse” should be rendered completely absurd for anyone who listened to this interview. Yet, I have seen this phrase used by credentialed opinion-makers. I do not link here because I want to leave room for them to change.
This sums it up. Creator unknown. “M4A” means “Medicare for All”
Once we win a basic income guarantee, I hope that more people engage in social critique and I hope that solidarity, class analysis and Marxist critiques of alienation and exploitation are important parts of this. The dividend will increase the number of people who can participate in that new debate. And that participation is already starting, as put by a contributor on Facebook:
“One of the great things about this is if you imagine a town, you imagine a community, everyone’s getting $1,000 a month, how many more co-ops are going to be in that town? How many more artists? How man creatives? How many people are volunteering at their local nonprofit? How many more people are going to be civically engaged? How many people are going to join their friend’s book club because they’re not worried about starving to death? You can produce so many immense benefits by spreading the economic buying power. And yes, it would result happily in more people ending up owners of different enterprises.”
The US left needs to embrace basic income. Interviews just like this one brings us closer to making that happen. Those who stick to other candidates can still make it clear that they support a basic income. They can also support Rashida Tlaib’s “Lift Plus Act” which would issue a $3,000 / year grant to all. This measure would reduce the number of people in poverty in the US by forty-five percent. Who can say “no” to that?
Jason Burke Murphy teaches Ethics and Philosophy at Elms College in Massachusetts, USA. He worked as Head Organizer for Arkansas ACORN. He served on the Organizing Committee for the Youth Section of Democratic Socialists of America. He also served on the National Committee for the Green Party USA. He now serves on the National Committee for the US Basic Income Guarantee Network.
All ten candidates at the Democratic Deabte for the United States Presidential elections.
“It is not left, it is not right, it is forward”. Andrew Yang drank from Scott Santens famous words, to finish off his contribution to the Democratic Debate to the United States Presidential elections in 2020. The political debate, held on June 27th 2019, featured all 10 Democratic Party candidates who qualified to be in the televised debate (more than 65000 donors). Yang’s Freedom Dividend was voiced, for the first time ever, on a US national debate stage, shortly described as a 1000 $/month for every adult citizen, unconditionally.
Although severely time restrained to hush in his ideas – he was only allowed 2 minutes and 50 seconds of speaking time, the lowest of all candidates present in the debate – Yang succeeded in the attempt to plant the seed of basic income among the American People. People are definitely interested in basic income, or at least the basic income as Andrew Yang conceives it, considering the spikes in views of his intervention clips, posted by NBC, which surpassed those of any other candidate. Soon after the debate, Google searches for “basic income” spiked to about 300% of the average search results for those terms.
In March, Yang’s candidacy had just surpassed the 65000-donor mark; now it has gone over 130000 donors, qualifying him to further debates, to be held in September and October this year. Also, his platform’s list of followers shows no signs of slowing down, having gained more than 100000 new followers, just for having participated in this debate. Whether or not Andrew Yang will become the next President of the United States, his candidacy has already been historical, by definitely sketching basic income on the public and political arena.
Yang’s contributions to the debate can be seen on this short video:
The initiative calls for the application of a Carbon Fee, collected by European Countries, to be redistributed entirely through the general population, with no attached conditions. The scheme rests on three main pillars: the collection of the Carbon Fee, as upstream as possible in the fossil fuel economic tree; the distribution of the Dividend to European Union (EU) citizens, with only a small part of it used to pay for its administrative costs (governments do not keep any of the collected revenue); the introduction of a Border Carbon Adjustment, guaranteeing that EU businesses and industries do not suffer from unfair competition from countries with no such carbon fee and dividends policies (pollution intensive products entering the EU would pay a tax and exports from the EU would be refunded).
The scheme is based on solid research concerning carbon emissions scenarios, climate change and carbon pricing in order to reach Paris Agreement goals (for the EU). According to the IPCC, carbon prices should gradually be raised to around 13 times what they are today, so that a 2ºC maximum increase in global temperature is attained. Naturally that only rising prices on carbon-intensive products and services is regressive on its own, tending to hit harder on the vulnerable and poor. Hence redistributing the proceeds through the entire population ensures that lower income people will afford to pay for the goods and services they need, and the wealthier – who usually bear a higher per-capita carbon footprint – will generally lose out economically under this policy.
According to the initiative instigators, there is wide support for this kind the general Carbon Fee & Dividend policy, which they hope will be materialized in the collection of signatures process referred to above. This support has been voiced by scientists, economists, NGO’s, industry and EU citizens.
More information at:
“Support the European Citizens’ Climate Initiative” website
