by Guest Contributor | Jun 4, 2020 | Opinion
We stand at a crossroads. Our great depression threatens to create a larger and more permanent underclass in the United States, as Congress loots the economic system for over $5 trillion in bailouts for the wealthy. Brave protestors and disaffected rioters have taken to the streets to speak truth to American white supremacy, even in the midst of a pandemic that threatens the lives of Black and working-class Americans the most.
George Floyd’s murder inspires unimaginable pain. We lost a soul, a neighbor, a friend, and for many—a brother—to the hands of injustice. Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, and Kalief Browder. Countless people have been stolen from their families. From every city in America. Because they were black.
To say that Black Americans live in a state of terror at the hands of unjust policing, vigilantes, and the criminal justice system is an understatement. To many, it is a militarized occupation of the cities built by their labor, in this century, and the labor of their ancestors dating back almost four hundred years.
If you name a disease in American society, whether it be heart attacks or COVID-19, poverty, or evictions, Black Americans are disproportionately brutalized. The underlying disease is white supremacy, in all its heinous and hidden forms. It hides in white systems. And it hides in white people’s hearts. The United States never achieved freedom for Black Americans. As Fredrick Douglass noted, as wage slavery and disenfranchisement replaced slavery after the Civil War, “Emancipation for the Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their heads… it was freedom and famine at the same time.”
Universal basic income, an unconditional payment to all rooted in the belief that everyone has a right to natural resources and the economic fruits of our labor, represents a way to make economic freedom a reality. For Black and brown Americans, it will help counter many of the innumerable barriers to voting: the cost of voting documents, forced relocation, the inability to take off work to vote, intergenerational nihilism, and the economic insecurity that makes it impossible for poor Americans to run for office themselves. Universal Basic Income posits that an individual’s right to life, particularly in a world scourged by a pandemic, should not depend on the profit-driven interest of a corporate employer. Its philosophy contends that the more conditions put on accessing economic relief, the harder it is for people to use and access it — as any person who has received welfare or applied for unemployment benefits will tell you.
In his address to Stanford in 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that riots “are the language of the unheard” for those denied suffrage or recourse through the political system. Less appreciated is what he said immediately after: “Now one of the answers it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for all families of our country.”
Rooting his philosophy in a politics of hope, King called on us to implement policies that fundamentally transform government. Because millions have taken to the streets, the elite finally listens in fear, making this transformation possible. Universal Basic Income is fundamental for restoring democracy, a social contract that lays the groundwork for peace and justice. We need this compromise more than ever as inequality reaches record levels, authoritarian regimes strip ordinary people of their rights, and the destruction of our planet continues unabated. With more climate and pandemic crises on the horizon, how long will it take elites to realize that this economic system threatens the rise of violent populism?
As authoritarianism reasserts itself in the United States, Brazil, India, China, and Russia with mass surveillance and information warfare, the window for a peaceful resolution is fast departing. Now more than ever, Black and brown Americans and their allies have shown us that our only hope is taking action to demand our rights be protected. And we must be willing to risk our lives to ensure those rights are backed by transformational policies like Universal Basic Income.
Let us use this moment to demand comprehensive racial and economic justice for our nations. We owe George Floyd no less.
Article By James Davis
Picture Creator: Jesse Costa
Picture Copyright: Jesse Costa/WBUR
by Pablo Yanes | May 21, 2020 | News
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a regional organism of the United Nations Secretariat has declared itself in favour of a new regime of welfare and social protection that includes the gradual, progressive and sustained establishment of universal basic income in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.
On May 12th, its executive secretary, Alicia Bárcena, presented the 3rd Special Report COVID-19: the social challenge in times of covid-19, which reads:
To address the socioeconomic impact of the crisis, ECLAC proposes that governments guarantee temporary cash transfers to meet basic needs and support household consumption, which will be crucial to achieving a sound, relatively rapid recovery (p. 14)
The Proposal however, is not limited to this emergency programme which would involve at least one cash transfer, equivalent to a poverty line, for 1/3 of the population, but rather:
From a long-term perspective, ECLAC reiterates that these transfers need to be ongoing, should reach beyond those living in poverty and cover broad strata of the population that are highly vulnerable to falling into poverty, such as the low-income non-poor and the lower-middle income strata. This would make it possible to move towards a universal basic income that could be implemented gradually over a period suited to each country’s situation. (p.15)
ECLAC has held the position now for 10 years that the current dominant development style needs to be replaced, as it has brought low economic growth, high social inequality and accelerated environmental destruction. It has been 10 years since ECLAC highlighted that this should be the hour of equality in Latin America and the Caribbean, and as such has been working on developing and deepening far reaching initiatives and proposals aimed towards building a new style of development centred around a core of equality and sustainability.
This is the perspective that corresponds to the proposals for progressive structural change, equality pacts and the initiative for a great environmental push. Through all these years ECLAC has insisted on and reiterated the need for social policies that are universal and with a focus on rights. In this decade there have been different mentions of the importance of guaranteeing income, of the possibilities of basic income as an emancipation mechanism and the possibility of implementing basic income for women as a tool for building their economic autonomy. Now, ECLAC is declaring the need for universal basic income and rates it, beyond the emergency and the short-term, as a strategic objective.
Facing the profound weaknesses in the welfare and social protection regimes that have been laid bare by the pandemic, and the unprecedented growth in the volume of cash transfers that, through different modes, have been implemented by the region’s governments, the interest in basic income has grown exponentially. Its appeal is not only philosophical, but also includes its power and utility for solving practical problems and achieving an immediate, opportune and far-reaching impact.
It has been said many times that the most intense debates are not solved by new arguments, but rather by great outcomes. This seems to be the case for the basic income proposal, a proposal whose debate, analysis and experimentation increased significantly after the great recession of 2008-2009 and which has placed itself, with a previously unknown force up until a few weeks ago, into the public and political spheres of various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is an idea whose time, it seems, has arrived.
The question regarding what would have been the impact and dynamic of the pandemic if instead of having highly precarious and unprotected societies there had been a practical, operating basic income is ever more present. We would surely be talking about a different story in terms of poverty and inequality and uncertainty. Likewise, the physical distancing and home confinement measures involving people that, facing a sudden loss of income had to continue going out into the street to try and earn a survival income, would have been implemented more successfully and with less suffering.
Due to all this, ECLAC highlights the importance of having a universal basic income, within the broad framework of a welfare state and a strong social protection system. That is, basic income as an additional pillar for a new welfare regime, where most importantly the fragmentation, hierarchization and commodification of health services must be overcome, as the same document states.
Regarding the types of policies to be implemented, ECLAC says:
Before the pandemic, the social situation in the region had been deteriorating since 2014 in terms of poverty and extreme poverty, with a slowdown in the pace of inequality reduction.
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- In view of the major persistent gaps that the pandemic has widened, ECLAC reiterates that it is time to implement universal, redistributive and solidarity-based policies with a rights-based approach, to ensure that no one is left behind.
- From a rights and welfare perspective, emergency responses rooted in social protection must be developed to avoid a serious deterioration in living conditions.
- Social protection responses must link the short-term measures needed to address the most acute manifestations of the crisis to medium- and long-term measures aimed at guaranteeing the exercise of people’s rights, by strengthening the welfare State and providing universal social protection. (p. 18)
If the covid-19 pandemic is, as Ignacio Ramonet says, a comprehensive social fact, the least that can be done is to learn from it and to understand that social precariousness and the fragility of life cannot be part of the new normal, of the new post-pandemic reality. So much suffering for so many people cannot be and must not be, repeated or assumed to be natural.
This article was originally published in Spanish at Sin Permiso. www.sinpermiso.info
Regional Research Coordinator for the subregional headquarter of ECLAC in Mexico. The opinions stated here may not be those of the United Nations System.
by Basic Income Earth Network | May 17, 2020
BIEN | Media On this page you will find a variety of videos that you might find useful. BIEN Conversations is a series of discussions about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the Basic Income debate around the world. To see the videos, click here. Korea...
by Basic Income Earth Network | Apr 21, 2020
What is a Basic Income?
A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.
Sometimes called Universal Basic Income, a Citizen’s Income, or a Citizen’s Basic Income, it is not the same as a Minimum Income Guarantee; A Basic Income does not reduce as one earns more. For more information: About Basic Income
Why do we need it?
Because someone’s Basic Income would never be taken away, it would
- provide a secure financial platform to build on
- enable the employment market to become more flexible at the same time as enhancing income security
- give to everyone more choices over the number of hours for which they were employed
- enable carers to balance their caring and other responsibilities
- make it easier to start new businesses or to go self-employed, and
- encourage personal freedom, creativity, and voluntary activity
Because everyone would get a Basic Income, it would
- create social cohesion, and
- carry no stigma
Because the Basic Income would never be withdrawn, it would
- reduce the poverty trap for low income families, enabling them to lift themselves out of poverty by seeking new skills, better jobs, or additional hours of employment
- reduce the unemployment trap, so getting a job would always mean additional disposable income
Because Basic Income would be simple and efficient, it would
- be easy to understand
- be cheap to administer and easy to automate
- not be prone to errors or fraud
Many current benefits system are no longer fit for purpose. They assume that everyone has a stable single employment, that household structures don’t change, and that individuals’ circumstances change very rarely. Our lives are no longer like that: and as technology and the employment market continue to change, our benefits systems will become even less appropriate.
In a context of rapid change, the only useful system is a simple one. A Basic Income is as simple as it gets.
For a list of 101 reasons for a Basic Income, see Malcolm Torry’s book, 101 Reasons for a Citizen’s Income.
Why pay money to the rich when they don’t need it?
It is efficient to pay the same level of income to everybody of the same age and then tax it back from those who don’t need it. The alternative is to means-test incomes so that only those who are poor receive them: but that results in complexity, stigma, errors, fraud, and intrusive bureaucratic interference in people’s lives.
Would Basic Income be financially feasible?
Tests for a Citizen’s Basic Income scheme’s financial feasibility might be listed as follows:
- Revenue neutrality ( – that is, it would be funded by making changes to the current tax and benefits system), or sustainable additional funding should be shown to be feasible
- Poverty and inequality need to fall
- Low income households should suffer no significant losses at the point of implementation, and no household should suffer unmanageable losses
- Income Tax rates should rise by a clearly manageable amount
- A significant number of households should be released from means-tested benefits
Would people still work?
If by ‘work’ we mean ‘paid employment’, then the answer is yes. In the short to medium term, we are unlikely to see a Basic Income that would be sufficient to live on, so everyone would need additional sources of income. And because Basic Incomes would not be withdrawn as earnings rose, any family taken off means-tested benefits by their Basic Incomes would experience a reduction in withdrawal rates, and would experience more incentive to seek employment, or to start their own business, than they do now.
If by ‘work’ we mean purposeful activity of any kind, then the answer is again yes. By providing a secure layer of income, a Basic Income would enable people to readjust their employment hours in order to undertake additional caring and community work.
Why pay money to people who do nothing?
In many countries we are already paying means-tested benefits to people who do nothing, and the complexity and sanctions associated with those payments demotivate people and can tip their families into poverty. A Basic Income would take a lot of people off means-tested benefits, and so would encourage economic activity. Pilot projects in India and Namibia showed that in countries with less developed economies, and without comprehensive benefit systems, even quite small Basic Incomes increase economic activity among households with the lowest disposable incomes.
Would immigration go up?
As with other benefits, a government would be likely to require a period of legal residence before someone could receive a Basic Income. Because Basic Income would provide everyone with a secure layer of income, and therefore a greater employment incentive than means-tested benefits, anyone coming into the country would be even more likely to contribute to the economy than they are now.
Would wages fall?
Means-tested benefits function as dynamic subsidies – that is, they rise if wages fall, which can encourage wage-cutting. A Basic Income would not rise if wages fell, so employers would experience more resistance if they attempted to cut wages.
Some wages might rise. Because everyone would have a secure financial platform on which to build an income strategy, some workers would be more able to leave undesirable jobs in order to start their own businesses, or to learn new skills and seek new jobs; and workers would be able to spend longer looking for a job that they might want, rather than just any job. Either currently undesirable jobs would have to improve, or wages would have to rise in order to attract workers.
Some wages might fall. Because everyone would have a secure income layer, some people might decide to take a desirable job even if it didn’t pay very much. Wage levels for desirable jobs might therefore fall.
Would a Basic Income threaten the welfare state?
If a revenue neutral Citizen’s Basic Income scheme were to be implemented, then no cuts to public services would be required. The amounts of means-tested benefits received by households would fall, but only because those households were already receiving Basic Incomes. Benefits specifically designed to cover the additional costs of disability, and benefits to cover the differing housing costs in different areas, would continue.
Would a Basic Income cause inflation?
Inflation occurs when the amount of money available to spend is greater than the value of the economy’s productive capacity. In that situation, if the amount of money keeps growing, then each unit of money can buy progressively less, so money loses its value, sometimes rapidly. A Basic Income scheme paid for purely by making changes to the current tax and benefits system would not add to the money supply, so inflation would not occur. If the amount of money available to spend was below the productive capacity of the economy, then a government could create money until the gap was filled, and that new money could be used to pay a Basic Income: but if inflation started to occur, then money creation would have to stop, and new taxes would have to be used to pay for the Basic Income.
Has a Basic Income ever been tried?
Short pilot projects have taken place in Namibia and India, and something like a Basic Income has been implemented by accident in Iran. Experiments with the similar but different Minimum Income Guarantee and Negative Income Tax in the United States and Canada during the 1970s showed useful social outcomes and very little withdrawal from employment. The similarities between the economic effects of a Minimum Income Guarantee and Basic Income would suggest that the results of the Minimum Income Guarantee experiments would be replicated if a Basic Income were to be implemented; and the differences between them mean that the effects are likely to larger for Basic Income than for the 1970s experiments. Basic Income pilot projects and similar experiments continue in the United States, Uganda, Kenya, Spain, and the Netherlands, and experiments are planned for Scotland.
Further reading
More detailed responses to questions can be found in chapter 10 of Malcolm Torry, Why we need a Citizen’s Basic Income: The desirability, feasibility and implementation of an unconditional income, Policy Press, 2018.
Recently published introductions to the subject are as follows:
Louise Haagh, The Case for Universal Basic Income, Polity, 2019
Annie Miller, A Basic Income Handbook, Luath Press, 2017
Guy Standing, Basic Income: And how we can make it happen, Penguin, 2017
Malcolm Torry, Why we need a Citizen’s Basic Income: The desirability, feasibility and implementation of an unconditional income, Policy Press, 2018
For a detailed treatment of feasibility, see Malcolm Torry, The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
For chapters on many aspects of the Basic Income debate by world experts, see The Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income, Palgrave, 2019
