by Andre Coelho | Jul 26, 2019 | Research
Economists Ori Katz (picture: on the left) and Michael Sarel (picture: on the right) believe the implementation of basic income is a task both necessary and desirable in the near future, within the Israeli social reality. So, as researchers, they conducted a thorough study on basic income applied to the economic reality of Israel (used figures from the year 2016). In that study, they considered the elimination of existing (conditional) benefits, abolishing tax exemptions and raising income tax as the financing mechanisms for sustaining an unconditional basic income for all the population.
If adopted in Israel basic income would, according to Katz and Sarel, induce significant bureaucratic savings, encourage employment, eliminate the poverty trap, reduce friction between citizens and the authorities, increase individual freedom of choice, (slightly) reduce inequality and reduce incentives to work in the black market.
In the conclusions it can be read:
Basic income is not a panacea to all the ills of the Israeli economy, and it is unable to create money “out of thin air.” However, it is a more effective way of providing a safety net for the entire population than the current welfare system, and it eliminates the perverse incentives this system creates. As a result of the transition to basic income, Israelis will be able to work, study and manage family life and relationships of their own accord, without fear that their income will be affected due to their choices and without having to justify the way of life they chose. Overall, we believe that this is a saner way of subsisting as a human society.
More information at:
Ori Katz, “Basic income in Israel”, KPF, Kislev 5779 Policy Paper nº42, December 2018
by Andre Coelho | Jun 12, 2019 | News, Research
According to a recent report (May 2019) by UCL Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP), guaranteeing universal basic services (UBS), such as health care, education, child care, transportation and digital information, would be more beneficial to low income groups than universal basic income (UBI).
It is argued, in the referred report authored by Anna Coote, Pritika Kasliwal and Andrew Percy, that “extending public services is likely to be more effective in addressing poverty, inequality and wellbeing than unconditional cash payments to individuals”. That assertion is linked to a yet to be published article by Coote and Yazici called “Universal Basic Income, A literature review”, while the present report does not “consider the case for UBI in any depth”. The discussion defending UBS, in the report, seems then to be unilateral. However, cost considerations between the two systems, for the United Kingdom reality, have been done in a previous report (from 2017). From these calculations, the authors have reached the conclusion (stated after the 2019 report’s release) that UBS would cost around 10% less than UBI to implement in the country.
Andrew Percy, co-author of the report (supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) and Citizen Sponsor at IGP, has said that “universal access to basic public services must be the foundation of 21st century welfare that delivers real social security, allows people to make meaningful choices about their work, and can be delivered in an affordable and practical way”, which doesn’t seem to pitch UBS against UBI. Others, like Will Stronge (Autonomy think tank) and Mathew Lawrence (Common Wealth think tank), explicitly consider UBI and UBS to be complementary in an evolving model for society.
Anna Coote. Picture credit to: Green European Journal
Anna Coote and co-author Edanur Yazici have also recently (April 2019) published another report (signing for the New Economic Foundation), entiled “Universal Basic Income: A Union Perspective”, which clearly rejects UBI in favour of a UBS. That study has been published by the global trade union federation Public Services International (PSI), financially supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation. This particular report was analysed by UBI activist Scott Santens, who has written that it is “a prime example of a disinformation campaign designed to manipulate public opinion against the idea of universal basic income”, and a “shameless propaganda” move.
The publication of the 2019 report on universal basic services, by the IPG, has also spurred a reaction in Guy Standing, a lifelong researcher, economist, author and activist for UBI. According to him, in an article published in Open Democracy, “there is no contradiction between having some public quasi-universal basic services and a basic income”. He adds, concluding, that these systems “address different needs and stem from different rationales. But having cash enhances freedom of choice, is potentially more empowering and can be more transformative. I plead with those advocating ‘Universal Basic Services’ to stop juxtaposing the idea of more and better public services with giving people basic income security.”
More information at:
Laurie MacFariane, “Universal services more effective than a Universal Basic Income, argues new report”, OpenDemocracy, May 16th 2019
Scott Santens, “‘Universal Basic Income Doesn’t Work’ Says New Prime Example of Fake News”, Medium, May 31st 2019
Guy Standing, “Why ‘Universal Basic Services’ is no alternative to Basic Income”, Open Democracy, June 6th 2019
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 9, 2019 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
My latest book project (coauthored by the anthropologist, Grant S. McCall) is called The Prehistory of Private Property. It book tells two parallel histories. It tells the story of how modern property theory became dependent on three misconceptions about the origin of the property rights system and the difference between societies with common and privatized resources, and how those misconceptions continue to have a negative effect on contemporary political thought and beliefs about our shared responsibility. The second story traces the origin and development of the private property system through history and prehistory to debunk those misconceptions.
The three claims at the center of this book are: 1. The normative principles of appropriation and voluntary transfer applied in the world we live in can only support a capitalist system with strong private property rights. 2. Capitalism is more consistent with negative freedom than any other conceivable economic system. 3. Inequality is natural and inevitable, or egalitarianism is unsustainable without a significant loss in freedom.
The book devotes a great deal of space to show how these misconceptions are embedded in many influential theories in political philosophy, because political philosophers are often unclear about the extent to which their theories rely on empirical claims. The clarity problem is nearly as important as the dubious nature of the claims. Obscurity and ambiguity help shield these claims from scrutiny.
Underlying this specific theoretical agenda is the more general goal of raising the level of discussion of empirical issues in political philosophy. Ambiguous allusions to empirical claims should be unacceptable in any academic literature. Philosophers have the responsibility to be clear about what empirical claims they rely on and about the level of support they can offer for those claims. Their critics should not let them get away with the sloppy use of ambiguous allusions to empirical claims.
Once the need for each claim is clearly established, the book subjects each claim to rigorous empirical investigation using the best evidence available from anthropology, and then discusses the implications of those findings for contemporary theory. Some of the book’s central findings follow.
- The normative principles of appropriation and transfer much more easily support common or collective claims to property. Private property rights systems tend not to develop without state aggression against small-scale societies with better claims of a connection to “original appropriation” than people establishing individualist private property rights.
- The hunter-gatherer band economy is more consistent with negative freedom than any other form of socio-political organization known to anthropology. If freedom is an overriding value, everyone must become a nomadic hunter-gatherer. This finding implies both that the justification of any other system must rely at least partially on some other value such as opportunity and that aid to the disadvantaged is not necessarily freedom-reducing: it often counteracts freedom-reducing aspects of private property.
- Inequality is not natural nor inevitable nor in conflict with freedom. Contemporary egalitarian theory can benefit from the experience of small-scale societies that successfully maintain very high levels of political, social, and economic equality.
The book is not directly about Basic Income, but it will connect to the idea in the final chapter. We will argue that the mass of humanity lead lives of manufactured desperation. People are not naturally in a struggle to “find work” to ensure they have food, shelter, and clothing. They are artificially put in this situation by a stratified property rights system that is not necessary for human social organization and that most societies (from the earliest hunter-gatherers to more recent peasant farming systems) did not find it necessary to manufacture such desperation. Basic Income is one way to compensate people for the imposition of a stratified property system and to relieve them of desperation that has come with it.
We have full drafts of 8 of the books ten chapters, and we are positing them online at this link as they reach presentable form. We hope to have a full draft we can send to our publisher (Edinburgh University Press) within a few weeks or months.
Enzo grills Karl at the PPA+ conference, Amsterdam, 2019
by Andre Coelho | Jun 7, 2019 | News, Research
Apart from experimental designs testing basic income-like policies, in small scales, theoretical evidence keeps mounting, showing that basic income is not a pipe dream, but a practical reality within our reach. Published earlier this year, a new report issued by the Compass think tank demonstrates just that. It proposes two models for change in the British social security system, one that installs a partial basic income for a cost of 28 billion £/year (approximately the benefits cut per year since 2010), and another that would rise the unconditional transfer of the first model through the operation of a “citizens’ wealth fund”.
As a summary, it can be read in the report’s conclusions:
The to models presented satisfy the feasibility tests set out earlier. Both models:
- Are progressive: they raise the incomes of low-income households at the expense of those on the highest incomes, cut poverty and reduce inequality; the greatest benefits go to the poorest;
- Provide a basic income for all, while reducing the level of sanctions; Britain would finally have a secure income floor set to rise over time;
- Become more progressive and more powerful anti-poverty instruments as basic income payments rise;
- Help to correct the gender imbalance of the present system;
- Ensure that there are almost no losers among the poorest households
- Apply a new 15% rate of income tax, an additional 3% on each rate of income tax, and an extension of national insurance payments.
It is still worthy to say that the 28 million £/year figure cited above can be collected in a variety of ways, for instance reversing the freezing of diesel and petrol excise duties since 2010 (9 billion £/year), reversing cuts in corporate tax rates from 18 to 28% (26-28 billion £/year), reduce the number and value of tax reliefs (ex.: eliminating the “entrepreneur’s relief”, saving 2,7 billion £/year), phasing out financial support to home owners and private landlords (which mainly benefit property developers) (8 billion £/year), among other possibilities. All these imply reversing tax cuts and attributed benefits to the relatively wealthier members of British society, which makes them quite progressive measures.
More information at:
Stewart Lansley and Howard Reed, “Basic Income for All: From Desirability to Feasibility”, Compass, January 2019
by Andre Coelho | May 29, 2019 | News
Night view from Coorg valley, India
It seems the promise of a solid financial ground for all poor citizens in India was not enough to win the Congress Party a leading position on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. The country just counted its votes on the past 23rd of May, and the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was reappointed to power by a landslide, winning more seats than all the other parties combined (56% of all votes). The Congress Party, the second most voted party, got less than one fifth of the BJP won constituencies. Although there has been some contention on the voting procedure, BJP election seems indisputable.
The BJP party had also spoken about a cash transfer, unconditional in principle, to poor farmers, but that was clearly on an electoral spell, and only because the Congress Party had already gone public with its plan to roll out a basic income-type of policy if elected. In any case, the amount proposed by the BJP was many times lower than the former, and limited to poor farmers, so that shouldn’t have been the motive for the Congress defeat on these elections.
Congress Party had announced and defended the implementation of a basic income in India on the basis of reducing poverty. However, statistics show that poverty has been dropping sharply in India through the last decade. The Indian government stated that 22% of its population lived under the official poverty line in 2012. In 2015, that number had been reduced to 12,4%, according to World Bank Data. Also, as of 2019, only about 3% of the Indian population now lives in extreme poverty, according to the World Poverty Clock. This means that, as far as escaping poverty is concerned, things have been doing fine in India lately, and that helps to explain this election’s result: the BJP is not perfect, but has been making sure the trend in reducing poverty is maintained. And that collects a lot of votes.
In Sikkim, the small northern Indian state in which the ruling party (Sikkim Democratic Front – SDF) was seriously considering rolling out a basic income for its 600 thousand people, once re-elected, things gone the other way around. The ruling party was defeated – by a small margin – by a contender (Sikkim Krantikari Morcha), and with it goes the would-be policy of guaranteed income for all. Maybe the decision on choosing a leader, at this moment in time, was less related with basic income (Sikkim is one of the wealthiest states in India, enjoying low inequality and relatively high living standards on average), but with other issues. One of these could be the fact that SDF had been in power for 25 years, and so might have worn the seat too much, which easily happens in a democracy.
Some analysts consider this election to be a huge failure for the Congress Party. That is certainly an understandable connection and the result surely worried Congress leaders. However, trying to promote plurality, secularity, and now the “radical” redistributive policy of basic income, cannot be wrong in itself. It shows, rather, the mark of progressive politics. It’s just that the contemporary average Indian voter seems to be more interested in maintaining what he/she has gained in the last few years – which has, nonetheless, amounted to, on average, a great uplift in living conditions – and in securing a national identity (an easier Us vs Them mentality), then aligning with an all-encompassing pacifying agenda that doesn’t interest markets, GDP or (a power-driven) foreign policy.
In any case, and if examples like Finland have any relevance, this is not the end of basic income in India. Just a momentary stop on the roadside.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Congress party gets serious about basic income and reaches out to Thomas Piketty for policy design support”, Basic Income News, February 14th 2019
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
André Coelho, “India: The Indian government also promises basic income to farmers”, Basic Income News, February 12th 2019
“India’s BJP tells opposition to ‘accept defeat with grace’”, BBC News, May 22nd 2019
Annalisa Merelli, “Indian elections 2019: What can Democrats learn from Congress failure”, Quartz, May 25th 2019
André Coelho, “India: Sikkim state is on the verge of becoming the first place on Earth implementing a basic income”, Basic Income News, January 11th 2019
