by Kate McFarland | Jan 6, 2017 | Opinion
One needn’t spend too much time examining the current state basic income movement to deduce that pilot projects are en vogue this year.
Finland’s two-year experiment–in which 2,000 randomly-selected unemployed people will receive an unconditional payment of €560 per month instead of the country’s standard unemployment benefits–was launched on January 1. Several Dutch municipalities are also planning experiments, expected to begin early in 2017, in which existing welfare benefits will be replaced by unconditional benefits for current claimants. Meanwhile in Canada, the government of Ontario is finalizing its plan for a pilot study of a minimum income guarantee (most likely in the form a negative income tax), also set to commence early in 2017, and Prince Edward Island is seeking federal support to run a pilot of its own. And, in Scotland, the councils of Fife and Glasgow are actively taking steps to develop basic income pilots.
In the private sector, some organizations are not waiting for government-run pilots, and have taken it upon themselves to instigate studies. Non-profit organizations like GiveDirectly, ReCivitas, Eight, and Cashrelief have launched, or will soon launch, pilot studies of unconditional cash transfers in poor villages in Kenya, Brazil, Uganda, and India (respectively). In the states, the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator has initiated a short-term pilot study in Oakland, intended to pave the way for a larger scale basic income experiment.
And this is not to attempt to enumerate all of the various individuals, political parties, unions, and advocacy groups who have issued calls for basic income pilots in their own countries, states, or municipalities. Indeed, it has become commonplace, it seems, for basic income supporters to demand pilot studies of basic income rather than, say, just to demand a basic income straight-out.
This wave of pilot projects–with more, most likely, on the horizon–should rightfully excite basic income supporters, as well as those who are merely “BI-curious”. No doubt these studies will provide many useful and interesting data on the effects of cash transfers. At the same time, however, I caution strongly against the fetishization of pilot studies. A pilot study in itself is never a final goal–such is the nature of a pilot–and such a study is neither sufficient nor (presumably) necessary to secure the implementation of basic income as a policy. Furthermore, significant dangers can arise from a narrow and myopic focus on the goal of running pilot studies.
The first problem is this: excessive attention to experimentation threatens to trigger the presupposition that the question of whether basic income should be adopted is a question subject to experimental evaluation. To be sure, even if one is antecedently convinced that a basic income should be adopted, there are many reasons for which one might run a pilot study. It could, for example, help to identify and resolve potential hitches in implementation. But, more commonly, pilot studies are framed as mechanisms for determining whether a basic income is desirable in the first place. Skeptics and supporters alike speak in terms of finding out whether basic income “works”. The experimental approach tend to invoke an instrumentalist view of basic income as policy: the policy should be adopted if, and only if, it is more effective than other candidate policies in achieving certain socially desirable outcomes.
I would contend that this instrumentalist view should be rejected. We can remain neutral on this point, however, and assert only that the debate surrounding the justification of a basic income is severely and artificially constrained by the implicit assumption that this justification rests on empirical grounds. (And, specifically, empirical grounds amenable to testing in a pilot study!) Consider, for example, the view that all individuals deserve a share of society’s collectively generated wealth, unconditionally, merely in virtue of being a member of that society. On this view, it would be entirely beside the point to run an experiment to determine whether a basic income is justified.
If individuals are owed an unconditional basic income simply as their right–whether as a share of a common inheritance, as a condition on individual freedom, or as a realization of a right to the means to survival–then asking whether basic income “works” has the flavor of a category mistake. It is a nonsensical question to ask. (Conversely, if we assume that the question does make sense, we implicitly rule out the position that a basic income is simply a basic right.)
At this point, perhaps, the activist might say, “I don’t need experimental evidence to pursue me that a basic income should be adopted. Policymakers, however, do–and basic income experiments are the best way to convince policymakers that basic income ‘works’ according to the their criteria.” But this maneuver, I believe, goes to far to countenance whatever criteria policymakers use to judge the “effectiveness” of basic income.
In many cases, the goals deemed valuable in status quo politics–increases in jobs, increases in consumption, increases in economic growth–can themselves be called into question (and, I would argue, ought to be). Yet these conventional goals are likely to guide researchers and policymakers in their selection of “success conditions” of basic income experiments. Finland’s experiment, for example, has been designed specifically to assess whether employment increases with the replacement of means-tested unemployment benefits by unconditional transfers.
Indeed, I believe that a main reason to agitate for a universal and unconditional basic income is to challenge conventional social and political values, such as (especially) the Protestant work ethic. To allow to those same conventional values to provide the metric of whether basic income “works” is to subvert this critical role of the movement.
In a worst case scenario, a pilot study could lead policymakers to categorically reject basic income on the grounds that the policy has been shown to be associated with politically undesirable outcomes, when there is reasonable dispute over whether these outcomes are genuinely undesirable. There is some historical precedent here: in the 1970s, experiments of the negative income tax were held in several US cities; however, they were widely dismissed as failures in light of reports that they showed the policy to be associated with a decrease in work hours and increase in divorce rates [1].
There is, to be sure, much to anticipate in basic income research in 2017. But our excitement and fascination at empirical studies mustn’t overshadow the basic normative question of what society should be like. It is only by keeping sight of this latter question that we can properly contextualize the demand for basic income (if any) and, in turn, the role that can be served by pilot studies (if any).
[1] See, e.g., Karl Widerquist, “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” The Journal of Socio-Economics (2005).
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 sandeepachetan.com travel photography
This article was originally written for an editorial in USBIG Network NewsFlash, but posted here instead due to word length.
by BIEN | Jan 1, 2017 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Louise Haagh (BIEN Co-Chair)
I first came across basic income in summer of 2001 when instructed about it by Workers’ Party Senator Eduardo Suplicy, at his home in São Paulo. I was doing research on workers’ rights, at the same time undertaking a survey of economic security among residents in poor and middle-income districts (published in World Development, 2011a). Eduardo famously played a key role in the drive to legalise a basic income as a policy goal in Brazil, and in presenting the extension of targeted cash grants as a step towards it (Suplicy, 2002). Eduardo was insistent that I do not go home that evening till I mastered all there was to know about reasons for basic income and how the path towards it was being paved in Brazil. Night fell. I remember enjoying more than a few helpings of food and tea, before Eduardo was satisfied I understood, after which – the gentleman that he is – he accompanied me to somewhere I could hail a cab, making sure to have a long friendly chat with the driver before we were sent off into the night.
The basic income appealed to me then primarily as a necessary foundation for consolidating workers’ rights – and in many ways that is still how I see it, but in a broader context of rights to human development. I had been working on workers’ rights and issues of economic citizenship since the early 1990s, during my PhD on Chile and later work on South Korea, both places I spent a lot of time and in which I did surveys of workers’ condition of precarity and their institutional sources of power. Against this background I was struck by the sanity – the immediately obvious justification for basic income. It seemed to me evident that the most important justification was a basic humanist and democratic one – and I still think that today.
Coming to the BI proposal from the perspective of workers’ movements, and in general the problem of the democratisation of everyday institutions, gives a different perspective on the political character of a BI reform. Above all, it makes it evident that BI intersects with other institutional and political challenges. This is something I am very conscious of when thinking about the question of how a BI might extend the social bases of freedom.
The sense in which I first found BI intuitively important was in relation to occupational freedom. I had been studying the economic liberalisation and institutional restructuring of the Chilean economy during the years of Pinochet and found that the precariousness among workers it generated, both economically and institutionally, had become embedded in a way that the new democratic regime of 1990 could not overturn (Haagh 2002a, 1999). The result, I argued (Haagh, 2002b), was that Chile deepened political rights without this leading to the expected deepening of social rights, given the absence of economic rights. This marked an evident contrast to the formation of welfare states in Europe in the 20th century, as discussed in T.H. Marshall (1949). Before I knew about basic income – during the mid-1990s – I had been working on a concept of ‘occupational citizenship’ – first in my PhD and then during a later British Academy post-doctoral fellowship at Oxford University. Essentially, what sparked my enquiry was the contradiction within liberal economic theory – so manifest in the labour market outcomes I studied in Chile – between the expectation of worker mobility– and the lack of underlying forms of economic security – in the forms both of money and services – that would make this sustainable.
I argued the atomised labour market regime not only predictably led to weak investment in skills, and thus a low-wage, low–skill equilibrium economy (Haagh 1999). In addition, it undermined workers’ freedom in a way that denied them effective citizenship within the polity at large (Haagh 2002a,b).
Having theorised a ‘gap’ in terms of absence of occupational citizenship (Haagh 1999, 2002a), it seemed obvious to me that basic income (BI) would be a necessary but not sufficient element in improving persons’ control of their lives.
There are important lessons from Latin America about the political conditions for a BI reform that are important to consider as the debate on BI is gaining force in Europe today. These are of both a practical and analytical kind. Like the case of Chile’s in part stunted democratization, the story of BI in Latin America is not a straightforward one of cash grants turning into rights (Lo Vuolo 2013). Similarly, one cannot be sure prospective transitions into partial forms of basic income through experimentation in Europe will turn into secure bastions of freedom, given the overall context of austerity and preceding roll-back of public sector protections (Haagh 2015).
It is ironic to think that Friedman – who advocated a form of constant basic security in the shape of the Negative Income Tax essentially on freedom grounds as rooted in an idea of independence – also indirectly was architect of Chile’s economic experiment.[1] The irony lies in the fact that that experiment was not complemented with a set of basic rights outside the market. On the contrary, deregulation of unions’ functions – detailed in Haagh (2002a,b) – along with other mechanisms of economic security, was paralleled with the implementation a state organised system of individual insurance, too weakly subsidized to afford real protection (Haagh 2002a, 2006). Given the underlying precarity of workers’ income streams, the individual insurance model was unable to offer effective cover.
The case of Chile shows why basic income has moral appeal, yet the basis of that appeal that lie in destabilisation, precarity, inequality, and loss of workers’ democratic rights may not be a likely political basis for a sustainable BI reform. Moreover, time has shown that in conditions of high inequality and weaker public finances, such as in Latin America, political preferences are likely to continue to be for targeted and conditional benefits (Lo Vuolo 2013, Haagh 2007, 2011a, 2013, Haagh and Helgø 2002).
The practical contradiction – as demonstrated in Chile – between the two seemingly symbiotic elements of Friedman’s advocacy, for economic liberalisation, and for basic security, is then not that surprising from a political and institutional perspective.
This is because the destabilisation of institutions that the first project entails destroys the basis for everyday cooperation within society that gives legitimacy to the second project to extend universal rights. Although Friedman did not see the Negative Income Tax as a welfare right, but as a kind of money mechanism to promote agency and ensure against basic risk, even something ostensibly simple like the NIT, depends on quite complex institutional development and political agreements. The fact that Friedman did not like the welfare state does not mean it did and does not exist in the United States. It is its more hierarchical – interclass-distributive- form that makes it more incoherent and punitive (Haagh 2012, 2015).
In short, the conditions of precarity in Latin America – now more common in the developed world – showed me why basic income is morally necessary for the market economy (as Friedman knew), but not itself sufficient for freedom in a democratic polity.
The Chilean case also showed me that the moral appeal of basic income is not the same as a political foundation for basic income reform. The two may even be contradictory if moral appeal is linked with conditions of crisis and compensation, as distinct from equality as equal standing in a more complex sense, which gives to BI a key but partial role in democratising institutions’ form.
For me it is very important to stress the compatibility of basic income and the interests of workers’ movements. The demands made by workers’ organisations historically can be argued to have played a transitional role in a process of democratisation to consolidate more universal rights. At the same time, the interests they channel in terms of institutions’ stability and democratic form represents something constant and deeper. This is important to remember today when – in a context of growing precarity in the developed world – there is a risk that the defence of basic income comes to be thought about as compensation for loss of – or an exchange for – other rights.
Coming back to that evening in 2001, it was not at all a surprise to me then that it was a Senator of a Workers’ Party advocating for basic income who was trying to convince me of the. To me, it was intuitive that workers’ movements should and would embrace the idea – at least in the context of a family of rights-based institutional changes. Having come to BI via work on unions, I was therefore quite surprised when – after going to the BIEN Congress in Geneva in 2002 – I became aware of the polemical nature of the BI debate concerning the relationship of that proposal and the established welfare state – hereunder social democracy and the union movement. Although it is painful to acknowledge, I think an important basis for that real life tension lies in the academic basis of the BI proposal as couched in fairly abstract and idealistic terms (Haagh 2011b).
In short, coming from the comparative institutional tradition of historical enquiry it seems evident to me that basic income is an element in a wider process of democratisation of institutions in society. The success, substance, form, and stability of that proposal is likely to stand or fall with the level of democratisation of society as a whole.
That is why we should not be surprised that BI experiments and debates are happening today in some of the most institutionally developed welfare states in Europe. It is far from given however how they will turn out.
[1] Explaining the purpose of the Negative Income Tax that closely resembles a basic income, Friedman (1979, 120) argued that the ‘basic amount’ (or ’personal allowance’) would “..provide an assured minimum to all persons in need regardless of the reasons for their need, while doing as little harm as possible to their character, their independence, or their incentive to better their own condition” (italics added) 120 He further (ibid. 121) noted, “[t]he negative income tax would allow for fluctuating income… but that is not its main purpose. Its main purpose is rather to provide a straightforward means of assuring every family a minimum amount…”
Friedman, M., 1990[1979/1980], Free to Choose, San Diego: Harvest.
Haagh, L. (2015) Alternative Social States and the Basic Income Debate: Institutions, Inequality and Human Development,’ in Basic Income Studies, Special Issue on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, August, ISSN (Online) 1932-0183, ISSN (Print) 2194-6094, DOI: 10.1515/bis-2015-0002, August 2015, https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bis.ahead-of-print/bis-2015-0002/bis-2015-0002.xml
Haagh, L. (2013) ‘The Citizens’ Income and Democratization in Latin America – A Multi-Institutional Perspective‘ in Rubén Lo Vuolo (Ed.) Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America. From Cash Transfers to Rights, Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee Series, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Haagh, L. (2012) ‘Democracy, Public Finance, and Property Rights in Economic Stability: How More Horizontal Capitalism Upscales Freedom for All’ in Polity, October, Volume 44, No. 4. pp.542-587.
Haagh, L. (2011a) ‘Working Life, Well-Being and Welfare Reform: Motivation and Institutions Revisited’, World Development, March, Vol. 39, No.3. pp.450-573. Also available Basic Income, Social Democracy and Control over Time at: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeewdevel/v_3a39_3ay_3a2011_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a450-473.htm
Haagh, L. (2011b) , Policy and Politics, January, Vol. 39, No.1, pp. 41-64.
Haagh, L. (2007) ‘Basic Income, Occupational Freedom and Anti-Poverty Policy’ in Basic Income Studies, Vol. 2, Issue, 1, June.
Haagh, L. (2006) ‘Equality and Income Security in Market Economies: What’s Wrong with Insurance?’’ in Social Policy and Administration, Vol. 40:4, 385-424.
Haagh, L. (2002a) Citizenship, Labour Markets and Democratization – Chile and the Modern Sequence, Basingstoke: Palgrave, St. Antony’s Series.
Haagh, L. and Camilla Helgø (2002) (Eds), Social Policy Reform and Market Governance in Latin America, Basingstoke: Palgrave. St. Antony’s Series.
Haagh, L. (2002b) ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Labor Reform and Social Democratization in Chile’, Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 37, No.1, Spring, pp. 86-115.
Haagh L (1999) ‘Training Policy and the Property Rights of Labour in Chile (1990-1997): Social Citizenship in the Atomised Market Regime, Journal of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University Press, 31, 429-472.
Lo Vuolo, R. (Ed.)Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America. From Cash Transfers to Rights, Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee Series, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marshall, Thomas, H., 1949, Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suplicy, E. (2002), Renda de Cidadania – A Saída é Pela Porta, Cortez Editora
Photo credit: Enno Schmidt
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by BIEN | Dec 31, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
“Toward Basic Income and a Peaceful Democratic Revolution”
By Steven Shafarman
My drive to enact a basic income – and most of my ideas about how to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize allies – arose from exploring the way young children learn to walk and talk.
I first wrote about these ideas, though without the term basic income, in the mid 1980s, inspired by the analogy of “the body politic” and Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs.” Young children, as they learn to walk, outgrow crawling and leave it behind. Their basic needs are provided by parents or other adults. Thus, when everyone’s basic economic security is guaranteed, I believe our society can “outgrow” pollution, racism, war, and other problems.
In 1998, while enrolled in a doctoral program in system science and human development, I self-published a book about how to heal our political system. With that book, I was hooked. I moved to Washington D.C. in the fall of 1999, seeking support for these ideas. I heard about USBIG in 2000, went up to New York for one of the earliest meetings, and presented at the first conference in March of 2002. That’s when I learned about BIEN, and decided to attend the Congress in Geneva. My paper, on how to build a mass movement, was selected and published.
Over the following years, I presented at most USBIG meetings; wrote three more books; started an author mailing list to update my readers; self-published or with micro publishers; gave talks at BIEN meetings in Dublin in 2008 and Montreal in 2014; worked with the Green Party of the U.S., adding basic income to their platform; and made several attempts to launch nonprofit organizations to support our efforts. Yet I was always thinking about young children, and how they learn naturally, spontaneously. My primary profession is teaching people, all ages and any health condition, to breathe freely and move easily, to outgrow back pain, breathing troubles, stress-related disorders, and other difficulties.
While promoting basic income, I’ve been actively thinking of myself as a healthy curious young child, pursuing my dreams, goals, and interests. At the same time, though, I’ve been anxiously wishing I had a basic income; regardless of the amount, that would have been immensely valuable.
The “Tax Cut for the Rest of Us Act of 2006,” H.R. 5257, would have created a small basic income through a fully refundable tax credit. It was introduced in the U.S. Congress, though never debated. Al Sheahen and Karl Widerquist wrote the initial paper, with a title I suggested, and Al and I arranged a series of meetings to lobby for it. After lunch in the basement cafeteria of a House office building, on our way to a meeting on the third floor, we were in an elevator with a dozen congressional staffers. I used that moment to say, loudly, “The reason I’m lobbying for basic income, Al, is that I want to live in a true democracy, without leaving the country.” Several staffers laughed. One said, “Good luck.”
Living in Washington D.C., I’ve had many conversations with people who work at political think tanks, lobbying shops, and similar organizations. Everyone has a specific issue, project, or other focus, and limited interest in new ideas. Liberal Democrats typically respond with a variation of “I love that idea, but … ,” and then explain why it’s politically impossible. Conservative Republicans tend to instantly state a moral or emotional objection; when we have time to discuss it in detail, however, they often agree that it makes sense.
Before autumn 2013, most people had never heard of basic income, although a few recalled ideas from the 1960s and ’70s about guaranteed income, negative income tax, or Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan. That October, our friends in Switzerland filed for their referendum and held their event with the coins, and their campaign was widely reported in the U.S. media. I saw a huge breakthrough. My conversations became far more congenial and productive.
Over the past few years, I’ve been writing a book that, I expect, will attract, excite, and unite people from across the political spectrum and outside it. My title is “Basic Income Imperative: for peace, justice, liberty, and personal dignity.” It’s nearly finished. I have queries out to a number of literary agents, and hope to have a publisher soon.
I now believe – more than believe, actually, I’m confident – that within the next few years we can have a peaceful democratic revolution for basic income. Let’s make history and make it happen.
Steven Shafarman is a co-founder of Basic Income Action, and the author of four books about basic income, with another forthcoming. He also teaches FlexAware and the Feldenkrais Method. He lives in Washington, D.C.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by BIEN | Dec 22, 2016 | News
Earlier in the year, Basic Income News reporter Scott Jacobsen spoke to Basic Income News reporter Kate McFarland about her background and influences. This is a continuation of Part One.
You mentioned valuing clarity of writing, for readers to have correct inferences. Any advice for BI writers? That is, those that want clear writing and to avoid the statistical probability of readers making wrong inferences.
That’s a good question. I feel like this is something I do based on instincts from my training in analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of language. It’s hard to codify that—those instincts—right off the bat.
I do want to stress that one thing that’s special about Basic Income News—sorta in our mission statement, as it were—is that we are clear to make the distinction between straightforward factual reporting and opinion pieces. If you just want the facts, you read one of our news reports, and you don’t have to wade through a bunch of the writer’s own analysis and commentary to get to them. You’ll see a lot of writing that conflates opinion and persuasive writing with reporting the facts, in a way not always conducive to the reader being able to figure out exactly what’s going on. Too often the factual reporting seems like an afterthought.
As much as I can, and as much as BI News can, we try to give people the bare facts. We don’t want to gloss them over with a bunch of fluff about what we think about basic income. It is not our job in news reporting. Our job is to disseminate the latest information about the basic income movement. It is not to make every one piece a persuasive one. It is not to write exciting stories, fluff, and propaganda.
I would also urge other writers to stick with primary sources whenever possible. When you use quotes, be sensitive to the context. When you talk about data from experiments or surveys, be sensitive to the design of the study and what you can actually infer from it.
Never, ever selectively misquote or misrepresent information by presenting it out of context! Some people do that, which is why I say always stick with primary sources—the original research reports, the full transcripts, and so forth.
Otherwise, my advice is to learn a lot, do you research from the primary sources, but also read some of the fluffy, superficial, often misleading stories on BI in mainstream media. Pay attention to the awful clickbait headlines. Read the comments sometimes even; notice how people are confused. Let it irritate you. You’ll develop instincts, I think, to write in a way that strives to avoid that. I think it helped me, anyhow.
Some things you said suggest mainstream news sources on BI want to persuade one way or another. Does this seem to be the case? It would be in contradiction to journalistic virtues of objectivity and neutrality insofar as they can be achieved.
Well, I see a lot—I see a lot that’s not necessarily to persuade, but where there might be, I think there are, values that conflict with just straightforward objective reporting. It might not be to persuade people on whether to support BI. It might be just to excite people, hook people, or write a catchier piece… As I say, I’m a philosopher, not a journalist; the ideals I have for prose come from there. Maybe journalists want to engage the reader at the expense of laying out the facts in a clear and complete manner. We’re just trying to concisely summarize the facts and make everything as clear as possible.
So, for example, if you read a journalistic report on a sample survey—this has just happened recently—you almost never get the details you want to know in order to really know what conclusions to draw. The sample size, sampling frame, selection method, response rate—you don’t often get all that. I would want to know that. And I don’t really care what a survey says about people’s attitudes on basic income if you don’t give me the details of the questionnaire design. What exactly is being asked? How it is phrased? I want to know all that before I make conclusions; I think you should make that info available to the reader if you’re gonna bother to report on an opinion survey at all. ‘Course, I should say I was a statistician before I became a philosopher.
Another thing is quoting out of context. There was an example that comes to mind—I won’t name names—of a famous basic income advocate being asked his opinion on when BI would actually happen. The gist of what he said was that we can’t predict, but in saying it, he said something like “It could as soon as 5 or 10 years, but it could be much longer.” It was clearly just this fragment of a larger point about how we just can’t know. But then the journalist just quotes him as saying that BI could happen as soon as 5 or 10 years! Just that! Entirely misleading. Entirely misrepresented his point.
A related phenomenon—a sub-phenomenon, maybe—is jumping on any use of the phrase “basic income” and then quoting the speaker as making a point about what you and I and BIEN call “basic income”. But that’s really too hasty. There was a recent case of a famous businessman who allegedly came out in support of UBI—he said he supported “basic income” (or “Grundeinkommen”, being German)—and people in the media just assumed he meant the unconditional thing. Later, he tweets that he didn’t mean the unconditional thing, but by then, the damage is done, as it were.
Sometimes this is [a] tough one, I have to be honest. Maybe, that’s another thing for the advice: If you’re not 100 percent positive someone means basic income when they say “basic income”, then leave what they say in quotes. Say “They said these words…” But don’t necessarily disquote if you’re not sure what they mean. I mean, equivocation on the phrase “basic income” is a whole other issue—it’s becoming a real big thing, I think, with the Canada movement versus US commentators—but maybe we’ll get back to that.
Another example with the reporting, I guess, is just being misleading through superficiality or vague weasel words. Like, to make basic income seem exciting, maybe a journalist will give a long list of countries that are “pursuing” BI or “considering” BI or something—but what does that even mean? Or maybe they’ll talk about a long list of people who “endorse” or “support” it just because they said something vaguely favourable at one time.
Then you see things—I’ve been seeing this a lot lately—like “Finland, Ontario, and Kenya are beginning pilots.” The problem there a little subtler, but you see it? That suggests, I think, that the governments of Finland, Ontario, and Kenya are all planning pilots. Kenya? They must be thinking of GiveDirectly, a private charity based in New York that happens to be operating in Kenya. I think it’s important to keep those private efforts distinct from the government-sponsored ones. That’s an important distinction. It’s one sort of thing you often see just casually elided.
I could go on—those are just some examples off the top of my head—but I hope you get the idea. I think that, with most journalism on BI, it’s about saying the bare minimum to be interesting and provocative—don’t bore readers with too many facts and details and distinctions, maybe—at the expensive of saying enough, and saying things clearly enough, to really give a good and accurate sense, knowledge, of what’s going on in the world.
Your background in philosophy at the graduate and doctoral level seems relevant to me. It obviously helps with your clarity, rigour, and simplicity to the point it needs to be to present ideas. For BI, it can come along with different terms and phrases, for different ideas associated with, but not the same as, BI.
Yeah, that’s definitely—that’s a whole ‘nother thing. I try to point to it when it’s relevant. And I try to be consistent in my own terms, and of course to keep my uses consistent with the official definition agreed upon by BIEN—a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.
The US BIG site actually has a pretty good primer on some of the different terms, and I tend to follow its usage for BI and UBI versus BIG and so on. But sometimes it’s tricky, especially with the BIG versus BI distinction, which you see conflated a lot these days.
“BI” and “UBI” are both often used to refer only to policies where everybody gets a check of the same amounts—no clawbacks with additional earnings—but sometimes people use them more generally to include policies that include what you might otherwise hear called “guaranteed minimum income” or a “guaranteed annual income” or a “negative income tax”; these are policies where everyone’s assured a minimal income floor, unconditionally, but the amount you receive is clawed back as you earn more and more on top of this floor. That’s what Ontario’s almost certainly gonna pilot next. It won’t be everyone in the pilot getting money. It’ll be that everyone’s guaranteed money if their income drops low enough—but, assuming Hugh Segal’s advice is followed, it won’t be the rich people in the sample also getting the check.
But sometimes you’ll see things like “Ontario plans to give all its residents an income boost”—because people hear “basic income”, and elsewhere they hear “basic income” to mean “checks to everybody, even then rich”, and they put two and two together, incorrectly. Sometimes all these policies together are referred to as a “basic income guarantee”, a “BIG”, with the GAI/GMI/NIT and the UBI (or “demogrant” as it’s sometimes called) being different types.
I can see this becoming a real problem—confusing these types of “BIGs”, equivocating on the term “basic income”—for people’s understanding and interpreting past and present pilots, and understanding how they revolve around the current debate, and I do hope to write a full-length article about it in the new year, if it keeps being problematic.
I’m realizing that what I’m talking about is not so much too many phrases for BI—but the term “basic income” being used to mean too many things. That might actually be the bigger problem, in fact, especially in the States. In addition to this equivocation with “does it entail giving money to the rich”, there’s this issue with some people, it seems, thinking that anything called “basic income” by definition replaces the whole rest of the welfare state. But that’s not true. But writers sometimes talk that way, and it leads to confusion and misconceptions.
And there’s also an issue about whether a “basic income” is, by definition, enough to live on. I think writers occasionally go in both ways. They probably sometimes equivocate, which would be bad… There’s been some controversy in BIEN caused by precisely this last concern, in fact. I think you can read about it some in Toru’s report on the controversy about the definition at the last BIEN Congress.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 16, 2016 | News
The Opportunities Party flag
In November 2016, Gareth Morgan–economist, investment manager, philanthropist, and advocate for a universal basic income in New Zealand–launched a new political party: The Opportunities Party (TOP). TOP will be unveiling in policy positions through early 2017.
Morgan has supported basic income (along with comprehensive tax reform) as part of his Big Kahuna plan for New Zealand. Thus, some hoped that basic income would also be included in the TOP platform. In its December newsletter, Basic Income New Zealand (BINZ) announced: “BINZ is supportive of the formation of this party [TOP] and we hope it will invigorate national debate on UBI, even though Morgan hasn’t yet committed to UBI for his party platform.”
On December 8, however, Morgan announced to reporters that UBI would “not be on the table” this time [1]. Although he speaks about UBI as a “great concept”, he believes that New Zealand’s present focus should be tax reform, such as removing tax breaks for homeowners that have driven up housing prices across the country.
Morgan states that UBI will be in “phase two” if TOP is still around.
Watch Morgan talk about UBI at approximately 8 min 2 sec into this video:
#Watch: Gareth Morgan joins us to talk politics and explain what The Opportunities Party will stand for.
Posted by Stuff.co.nz on Tuesday, December 6, 2016
The Big Kahuna
In 2009, Morgan called for a $10,000 guaranteed minimum income for all New Zealanders, combined with a flat-rate income tax of 25% (a negative income tax). In addition to the 25% income tax (which would apply to corporate as well as personal income), Morgan proposed a Comprehensive Capital Tax on all forms of capital (land, buildings, equipment, etc) [2]. Later, he adjusted his recommended figures to an $11,000 minimum income and 30% flat tax rate.
[1] Amanda Saxton, “Gareth Morgan’s divisive policy to tackle inequality,” The Dominion Post, December 8, 2016.
[2] Bernard Hickey “ ‘Big kahuna’ tax overhaul proposed,” NZ Herald, December 1, 2009.
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı.
Cover Photo CC BY 2.0 Rosa Stewart1; Gareth Morgan is the adult pictured.
