by Kate McFarland | Jul 13, 2016 | Opinion
A recent article in The New York Times, entitled “Universal Basic Income is Poor Tool to Fight Poverty,” spawned a debate on the desirability of implementing a UBI in the United States. This Basic Income News feature analyzes the NYT column’s argument against UBI, and looks at the counterarguments posed in several response pieces.
On May 31st, the New York Times published an article that launched a debate about the cost and effectiveness of implementing a universal basic income in the United States.
The column’s author, Eduardo Porter, argues that “universal basic income is a poor tool to fight poverty” (to cite the article’s title). He makes two main arguments against UBI:
First, on his assessment, a UBI would be either insufficiently low to end poverty, or require too many cuts to existing programs, or it would be prohibitively expensive to administer:
It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes.
Second, even if a UBI could be afforded, Porter believes that it would have “many undesirable features” due to its unconditionality. These include a “non-negligible disincentive to work” — work, in his view, “remains an important social, psychological and economic anchor” — and a lack of social control. (Porter brings up housing vouchers as an example of the latter: “Say we know the choice of neighborhood makes a difference to the development of poor children. Housing vouchers might lead them to move into a better one. A monthly check would probably not.”)
Additionally, Porter dismisses one popular argument in favor of basic income: he denies that technological unemployment is a pressing concern.
While Porter admits that poverty and precarity are problems in dire need of better solutions, he believes that there are better policy options than a universal basic income. In particular, he is fond of the idea of subsidized employment, suggesting that “The government could subsidize jobs as varied as school repairs and fixing potholes.”
Is a basic income too expensive?
Before the end of the day, responses to Porter’s argument appeared across the Internet, defending both the feasibility and desirability of a universal basic income.
Three notable replies include those of Vox columnist Matthew Yglesias, former BIEN secretary Almaz Zelleke, and popular basic income activist Scott Santens. All three of these authors respond to the cost objection, although they employ slightly different strategies in doing so.
While Zelleke remains focused on matters of principle, largely bypassing the attempt to numerically “prove” that a basic income would be affordable, Yglesias and Santens both crunch a few numbers. Yglesias calculates the cost of a basic income of $10,000 per adult (which is, admittedly, below the poverty line) and $6,000 per child. Santens considers an amount of $12,000 per adult (topped-up for seniors and people with disabilities) and $4,000 per child. They conclude that, although expensive, a UBI is not prohibitively costly.
Yglesias points out that the level of spending required, as a percentage of GDP, would not be out of line with the amount of government spending in social democracies like France and Sweden. Thus, while a UBI would “take federal spending to a level never before seen” in the United States, this level would not seem farfetched when compared to other developed nations.
But, of course, the question that worries critics of the UBI is not just “Could America afford a UBI?” but, more to the point, “Where would the money needed to fund a UBI come from?” On this point, all three of Porter’s opponents seem to agree, nodding to an answer that some Americans might not want to hear: funding a UBI will require some tax increases and redistribution.
Zelleke cuts to the chase here: the question of financing a UBI is not really a matter of affordability at all, but of political will:
It’s true that basic income is expensive, but calling it unaffordable short-circuits the discussion we should be having about the costs and benefits of a basic income. Raising taxes is never an easy sell, but might it be worth it if the additional revenues were spent on a program guaranteed to eliminate poverty?
And Santens puts matters even more bluntly, asserting that the money needed to fund a UBI “comes from the raises no one has gotten since productivity decoupled from wages and salaries back around 1973. Basic income belongs to us because it’s been effectively stolen from us for decades.” On Santens’ view, a UBI is not merely an affordable option to eliminate poverty; basic principles of fairness and justice make it mandatory.
At base, the disagreement between Porter and his opponents is not a dispute about the mathematics. It’s a question of value: it is more important abolish poverty, or to give individuals the shares of collectively-generated wealth that they deserve, or is it more important to avoid raising taxes and federal spending?
Interestingly, Porter himself seems to tacitly agree with opponents like Yglesias that, technically, the United States could afford a universal basic income. In an article published just a week later, he complains that paying for a sufficiently high basic income would require “raising taxes to Scandinavian levels.” Similarly, U.S. News and World Reports contributor Chad Stone — in an article echoing Porter’s — says of Yglesias: “he assumes that the goal of ending poverty would make conservatives and GOP politicians comfortable with raising federal spending to European levels…”
Even its adversaries, then, seem to admit that a UBI could be financed if the United States was willing to raise taxes to a level that already has a precedent in countries that rank among the happiest in the world. Where money alone is concerned, the United States can pay for a UBI.
As Santens puts it, “The money is there, it’s just massively maldistributed after decades of upward redistribution.”
A June 6th article in Quartz — written in part as a response to Porter’s New York Times piece — makes a similar point: the debate over the cost of basic income “isn’t really about welfare spending: It’s about tax policy.”
The remaining disagreement, I submit, is twofold:
- Is it fair to raise taxes on the highest earners in order to redistribute money to all?
- Even if it is, could this be a viable sell in American politics?
These are the debates that must be had. I believe that, where matters of justice and fairness are concerned, UBI proponents can easily mount the more compelling normative argument. Political feasibility, to be sure, might require a tough and prolonged fight — but the advantages of UBI are enough to warrant it.
(For more background on these normative arguments and practical advantages of UBI, I recommend further exploration of the BIEN website.)
Would a basic income harm society?
So, then, a universal basic income is affordable in the United States — as long as the country can summon the political will to implement it. But would it harm society?
Porter gives two reasons to think that it could: a UBI would disincentivize work, and it would deprive the state of valuable and productive control over how individuals spend money. While Yglesias and Zelleke do not focus on this portion of Porter’s article, Santens addresses both in some detail.
Porter’s first worry is a common objection to UBI: if people can get money for free, they might stop working (specifically, they might abandon or reduce time spent in paid employment [1]).
Note that, in general, there are two ways to respond to this objection:
- Don’t contest the implicit evaluative presupposition that it’s bad if people stop working (in paid jobs), but deny that this is likely to happen under a UBI.
- Don’t contest the prediction itself, but deny that it would be a bad thing if people spent less time in paid employment; that is, deny the evaluative presupposition that more paid work is better for individuals or society.
Of course, one could employ both tacks in tandem — which is, roughly, what Santens does in replying to Porter.
For the most part, Santens takes the first approach, countering Porter’s empirical claim that a UBI would disincentivize (paid) work. In doing so, he cites multiple studies of cash transfers and basic income pilots — notably drawing upon an article written last fall by none other than Eduardo Porter — that show that unconditional cash transfers have not, in fact, had this effect.
There is a danger, though, in relying too heavily on this first tack: it can tend to reinforce the assumption that, all else equal, more time spent in paid work is better than less. It reinforces the view that the issue is an empirical one (“Will people spend less time at jobs or not?”), when the bigger issue is a normative one (“Is it bad or good if people spend less time at jobs?”).
Ezra Klein’s contemporaneous piece in Vox, which was also inspired by Porter’s article, partially exemplifies this danger. Klein takes for granted that some people would leave the workforce if provided with a basic income — and that this would indeed be an unwanted result “in a world where a job with a steady paycheck is the only path to self-respect.”
In fact, he goes so far as to say,
If that’s the reality of the situation, then, yes, a UBI is a bad idea — it’s better to push people to work by supplementing incomes or using the government as an employer of last resort. Sure, that’s more paternalistic, and it means we’ll waste people’s time in unpleasant or useless jobs and consign others to unemployment.
Although Klein is willing to admit that a UBI could be a good idea if Americans change the way that they view work, he believes that Americans have not yet reached this point.
I submit, however, that it is precisely the job of the UBI advocate to challenge Americans to change the way that they view work — assuming that Klein is correct about the status quo.
This brings us to the second of line of response to Porter’s “a UBI would disincentivize work” objection — which, in fact, Santens also touches upon (although he does not develop it in his response to Porter to the extent that he has elsewhere):
[B]asic income is not at all an idea about paying people to do nothing, but instead about paying people to do anything. There is so much work being done right now that is not seen or recognized as work, but is. And there is so much work people want to be doing on their own volition that they are prevented from doing in a system that requires they spend their hours working for someone else just to survive.
Again, if Klein is right about how Americans view work, then Americans must change the way they view work. She might, though, simply be wrong about the current state of affairs in American culture: plausibly, Americans can see the value of unpaid work — or, in Santens’ words, “work that is not recognized as work” — even if it’s not always obvious that they can.
“Frustrated man at a desk” CC LaurMG
This leaves Porter’s contention that, as Santens puts it, a UBI “would not be paternalistic enough.” Santens’ response here is to argue that the lack of paternalism is for the best: allowing individuals more discretion over how they spend money, and with fewer restrictions and qualifications on who receives it, has been shown to produce the better outcomes.
He takes up Porter’s own example — housing vouchers — to create a compelling case study, combining anecdotal and statistical evidence in favor of the effectiveness of cash transfers and against that of means-tested programs. According to the research he cites, over three out of four people who qualify for housing assistance in the US don’t receive it. Meanwhile, studies of cash-transfer programs show that many beneficiaries do, in fact, use their cash to move into better houses or neighborhoods.
As Santens repeatedly complains, Porter’s attack on UBI rests on little in the way of empirical evidence. Now, perhaps Santens himself has cherry-picked studies in favor of his pro-UBI conclusion. Even if that were the case, however, he at least does provide some hard-and-fast data. Minimally, this shifts the burden of proof back to Porter to demonstrate — with evidence — why paternalistic welfare programs would provide a greater benefit to individuals and society.
Finally, in addition to arguing that direct cash transfers are more effective in producing certain results, one might directly object to the normative presuppositions of means-tested welfare programs — as Santens does here:
I’m fed up with people with positions “up on high” looking down at everyone else and telling them they know better who needs assistance and who doesn’t, and how that assistance should be provided and when that assistance should be taken away. I’m fed up with the idea that anyone must prove their right to live to anyone at all.
I will close with this passage. We do need to consider the evidence; sometimes, though, we need just to step back and ask “What does this policy imply about basic human dignity?”
[1] When critics like Porter complain that a basic income might cause people to “stop working”, they often conflate “working” with working for money — ignoring the many types of unpaid activities that add value to society (if not to the GDP), and that are even colloquially regarded as “work” (e.g., volunteer work, care-work, and housework).
Continuing to use the word ‘work’ in this narrow sense, they paint a false dichotomy between working for money and idleness. The important category of “unpaid work” is ignored — even though it might well that, given a basic income, many individuals would choose to engage in more unpaid work rather than either paid work or “idleness”.
In the interest of clarity, I’ve disambiguated ‘work’ as ‘paid employment’ in my treatment of the argument — but it should be noted that, quite misleadingly, Porter does not.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original article:
Eduardo Porter, “Universal Basic Income Is a Poor Tool to Fight Poverty,” The New York Times, May 31, 2016.
Critical responses:
Scott Santens, “Universal Basic Income Is the Best Tool to Fight Poverty,” The Huffington Post, June 2, 2016.
Matthew Yglesias, “A universal basic income could absolutely solve poverty,” Vox, May 31, 2016.
Almaz Zelleke, “Actually, a Universal Basic Income Will Solve Poverty,” May 31, 2016.
Sympathetic responses:
Chad Stone, “A Universal Basic Income Is No Solution,” U.S News & World Reports, June 3, 2016.
Related:
Alexander Holt, “Critics of Universal Basic Income just don’t understand how the policy would actually work,” Quartz, June 6, 2016.
Ezra Klein, “A universal basic income only makes sense if Americans change how they think about work,” Vox, June 1, 2016.
Thanks to Asha Pond, Tyler Prochazka, and André Coelho for reviewing a draft of this article — and, as always, to my supporters on Patreon (click the link to join ’em!).
Featured image CC Luis Felipe Salas.
by Kate McFarland | Jul 11, 2016 | Opinion
An article in the June 4th edition of The Economist, entitled “Basically Flawed,” argues that universal basic income is a radical policy that is just too risky to pursue. The anti-UBI argument itself is flawed, however, largely due to understating the benefit of UBI–if not ignoring its moral necessity.
According to an article in the June 4th edition of The Economist [1], universal basic income (UBI) is a policy of uncertain need but certain costs. A simple risk-benefit analysis, then, would advise us to maintain our current welfare states (perhaps with less radical adjustments) rather than gamble with a UBI.
The argument has two main components: first, establishing that there is no definite need for a UBI; second, establishing that a UBI presents unavoidable costs.
Concerning the first, the author assumes that there is one (and only one) reason why something like a UBI would become necessary: widespread unemployment due to new technologies. Here the author notes that the robot job takeover has not happened yet, and expresses skepticism that it ever will:
Worries that technological advance would mean the end of employment have, thus far, always proved misguided; as jobs on the farm were destroyed, work in the factory was created. Today’s angst over robots and artificial intelligence may well turn out to be another in a long line of such scares.
Having set aside robot-driven angst, the author turns to defend the claim that UBI has sure costs. The first and most obvious of these is financial: a UBI is certain to be expensive to any government that implements it. For example,
An economy as rich as America’s could afford to pay citizens a basic income worth about $10,000 a year if it began collecting about as much tax as a share of GDP as Germany and replaced all other welfare programmes with the basic-income payment.
Moreover, the author complains that a UBI would “destroy the conditionality on which modern welfare states are built” — leading to an “erosion” of the workforce:
During an experiment with a basic-income-like programme in Manitoba, Canada, most people continued to work. But over time, the stigma against leaving the workforce would surely erode: large segments of society could drift into an alienated idleness.
Finally, the author worries that it would be impossible to combine UBI with a reasonable immigration policy; immigrants would have to be barred or else treated as “second-class citizenries without access to state support.”
Thus, the author concludes, the risks of UBI — which are both large and near-certain — greatly outweigh its sole benefit as insurance against technologically-driven job loss (which might or might not occur).
Reply by Basic Income News editor Kate McFarland
The basic income proponent could, if she wished, directly attack any one of the author’s premises. She might be tempted to argue that a universal basic income could be afforded and that it could be reconciled with a fair immigration policy, contest the claim that it would cause people to stop working, or produce evidence that mass technological unemployment is indeed very likely.
For my own part, I am not particularly interested in quibbling over any of these points, however important they might be independently. Instead, I will concentrate on two overarching problems with the author’s argument:
1. The argument understates the potential benefits of a universal basic income, which far exceed security against a robot job apocalypse.
2. The argument assumes that risk-benefit analysis is an appropriate method by which to answer the question of whether to adopt a universal basic income. But this would not be the case if, for example, a basic income is required as a matter of individual rights or social justice.
Why do we need UBI?
In an article published last April, Rutger Bregman writes, “Forget about robots. The reasons why we need basic income are infinitely better.” This is a crucial viewpoint–and one common in basic income discourse, the media’s apparent fondness for “the robot issue” notwithstanding–which must be taken into account when addressing potential benefits of UBI.
Take, for instance, the elimination of poverty. When scholars and researchers like Pranab Bardhan, Nkateko Chauke, and the team at GiveDirectly–to name only a few–argue that developing nations should adopt a basic income, they are not worrying about robots; they are thinking about poverty and inequality.
But, of course, poverty is also a pressing and immediate concern in high-tech countries like the United States. Indeed, a recent article in the New York Times sparked a debate about whether a UBI could abolish poverty in the US. When Scott Santens and Vox’s Matthew Yglesias joined the fray to argue that it indeed could, they remained focused on the issue of present poverty–not future automation.
Perhaps the author of The Economist article believes that a UBI is unnecessary to fight poverty, because existing welfare programs could just as well be tweaked to accomplish this goal. But, if so, the author would overlook many known problems with means-testing, which a UBI might eliminate.
The abolition of poverty–along with all the hurdles, stigmatization, and poverty traps created by means-tested programs–is a potential benefit of UBI that is clearly quite profound, yet one the author fails to mention.
Furthermore, a benefit unique to UBI is that, if high enough, it would enable workers to refuse employment. This too promises many positive results in the here and now, without waiting for robots to arrive at the door.
A UBI could be an enormous boon to workers who need or desire to leave full-time employment, if only temporarily, in order to raise a child, care for an ailing family member, return to school, start a small business, participate in voluntary community services, contribute to the arts, or pursue any other unpaid project. UBI is often said to recognize the value of unpaid labor in all of its forms; current systems of social welfare do not.
Moreover, it is often argued that this ability to refuse work benefits even those workers who do wish to retain full-time employment, insofar as it increases their bargaining power: if a worker cannot be replaced by someone desperate to take any job just to survive, it is easier for that worker to demand higher wages, better working conditions, or shorter or more flexible hours. It is UBI, not existing welfare systems, that would generate this type of bargaining power.
None of these advantages of UBI are mentioned in the risk-benefit analysis in The Economist, despite the fact that they are arguably as near-to-certain as any of the alleged risks–robots or no robots–and would be positive impacts of very high magnitude. A UBI might well be expensive, but one should to consider its full range of benefits in order to properly assess whether it is worth its high price tag. The author does not.
Of course, this is all to grant that the use of risk/benefit analysis is a fitting approach to the decision of whether to pursue UBI–but I believe that even this assumption can, and should, be questioned.
Is UBI “just just”?
As evidenced by the various articles linked above, it is popular to argue in favor of basic income on the basis of its predicted effects: pro-UBI authors of cite empirical evidence of effectiveness cash-transfer to establish the claim that a UBI “will work”. That is, many authors argue that UBI will achieve certain desired outcomes (or not cause certain outcomes generally deemed undesirable, such as decreased workforce participation, laziness, or higher spending on alcohol or other temptation goods).
But what if a basic income is not merely an effective means to attain socially desirable ends? What if universal and unconditional basic income is mandated as a matter of social justice?
This is, in fact, far from an uncommon view within the basic income movement.
For example, Guy Standing and Yanis Varoufakis have recently described UBI as a form of social inheritance (cf. their linked lectures). The idea here is this: the money distributed in a UBI is money that rightfully belongs to all of us, equally, as inheritors of the wealth generated through the collective activities of our forebears.
Alternatively, one might argue for a right to a livable basic income in other commonly recognized individual rights–such as, perhaps most straightforwardly, a right to a certain minimal standard of living, just for being alive. Furthermore, a well-entrenched view in philosophical work on basic income–canonically presented by Philippe van Parijs and later developed in a somewhat different form by Karl Widerquist [2]–holds that the protection of freedom mandates an unconditional basic income.
If a universal basic income is a universal human right, then there is no question of whether the benefits are worth the risks; thus, arguments of the form given in The Economist don’t get off the ground. There is simply no question as to whether a UBI should be adopted: it should. The only question is how to manage whatever risks the policy would create, or perhaps how to tweak and fine-tune the policy to minimize risk.
If a basic income is a right–if it’s necessary as a matter of social justice–then we must find a way to fund it, even if it requires hefty tax increases on the rich (or even German levels of government spending!). And we must be willing to assume risks, including the possibility that some individuals will leave the workforce (some of them, perhaps, to simply smoke weed and watch Netflix).
This is not to suggest that we should ignore the potential risky outcomes. On the contrary, it is crucial to understand what the risks are, so that we might build safeguards against them. But, under the present supposition that basic income is simply a right, they should be viewed as potential problems that can–and must–be surmounted for the sake of what is owed to individuals and society.
[1] “Basically flawed,” The Economist, June 4, 2016.
[2] Such arguments are made in the books mentioned in the embedded links. N.B. All chapters from Widerquist’s work are available for free download from his website.
Thanks to Genevieve Shanahan and André Coelho for reviewing a draft of this article, and thanks to my supporters on Patreon.
“MET II Robot Lab” photo CC Georgina Rose.
by Kate McFarland | Jun 30, 2016 | Opinion
Oxford Fellow Max Harris presents an argument that a universal basic income (UBI) could contribute to loneliness. The argument as given, however, seems to rest on misconceptions about what a UBI would and would not do, and even in its strongest form does not give us reason to reject a UBI.
Would a universal basic income exacerbate loneliness?
This is the question posed by Max Harris, an Examination Fellow at Oxford’s All Souls College, in a recent article for openDemocracy.
In Harris’s assessment, there are two ways in which a universal basic income might contribute to loneliness:
- A UBI “removes the social interaction that some people gain from employment.” Harris worries that recipients of the UBI would “curl up in individualist cocoons” rather than initiating social contact, since they have already been conditioned by the norms of a society in which interpersonal contact has become limited (“we email people who sit in the same office as us, for example, and often text people over talking to them in person”).
- A UBI by itself does not provide any “accompanying public infrastructure to underscore the value of community.” It is, of course, an investment directly in individuals — not in, say, community programs or public parks, libraries, or recreation centers.
Harris himself does not endorse the conclusion that, as a matter of fact, a UBI would make us lonely. Indeed, he does not take a firm stance on whether it would or not. His objective is merely to raise the concern.
As Harris points out, citing basic income proponents such as Scott Santens and the UK think tank Royal Society of Arts (RSA), one can also make a case that a UBI should be expected to foster social relationships. After all, if people are liberated from dependency on full-time paid employment, they would be able to spend less time in jobs that are themselves socially isolating — as some jobs surely are — and more time “pursuing communal projects” outside of work.
According to Harris, the question is in part empirical: we won’t know whether a UBI increases loneliness in society, or whether it reduces it, until it is actually tested.
A Non-Empirical Assessment
I want to offer a counterpoint to Harris’s loneliness worry that differs slightly from the brief pro-UBI response entertained in his essay.
It’s no doubt correct that some office work does inhibit individuals from engaging in community projects (a point that Harris attributes to Santens) — or, for that matter, prevent individuals from spending time with friends and family — but it’s a bit beside the point to argue about whether jobs facilitate valuable social interaction or whether, more often, they just get in the way. Presumably, there are jobs of each type. The key point here is that a UBI would provide options: with a UBI, a worker can choose to say at a job, or a worker can choose to quit (perhaps for the sake of engaging in some communal project).
Contra Harris, I believe that we don’t need an empirical study to demonstrate the flaws in the argument that “a universal basic income would make us lonely.” The argument, as he presents it, is a non-starter.
Look again at his two major concerns: (1) a UBI removes the social interaction gained at a job, and (2) a UBI offers no infrastructure to replace this lost interaction.
Credit: The Open University via flickr
The first of these premises is plainly false, and it doesn’t take a pilot study to see why: receiving a basic income does not prevent an individual from also continuing in paid employment. Thus, there is no sense in which a UBI “removes” the social interaction gained at a job; it does not even remove the job!
Indeed, one oft-touted benefit of basic income is that, because a UBI is not means-tested, it is not a disincentive to work (in contrast to most existing systems of welfare, in which benefits vanish if a receipt receives a job or earns income above a certain amount). Despite loose talk in the media about “paying people to do nothing” and “giving people money not to work,” receipt of a basic income is not conditional on quitting work (obviously); quite the contrary.
We might assume that people are able to recognize whether their jobs provide a valuable source of social interaction and connections — and that, if this is so, they will retain their jobs even if UBI came to be. (I will, though, revisit this assumption shortly.)
To be sure, UBI is often discussed in parallel to forecasts of mass unemployment (e.g., especially, due to automation). In the scenarios envisioned, many workers will lose their jobs — but, of course, this job-loss is not due to UBI. A UBI, insofar as it’s in the picture, is there to offset one of the worst effects of joblessness: loss of income. By itself, it is not meant — and should not be expected — to replace all aspects of the lost jobs. A UBI “merely” ensures that displaced workers won’t have to worry about paying for food or rent, thereby providing a foundation that allows us to focus on concerns at higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy — such as how and where to find social interaction.
This leads to the second concern raised by Harris: a UBI does not provide alternative infrastructure for social interaction. Here, I think that we should accept Harris’s claim, but we should question its relevance.
It’s true that a UBI does not by itself provide schools, parks, or community programs; it also does not cure for cancer or end warfare. It would be patently absurd, however, to oppose UBI on the ground that it does not achieve the latter goals. A UBI might accomplish a lot, but it is not a panacea; no advocates take it for one.
Credit: Valerie Shane via flickr
We can even grant that the development and enrichment of the commons is a goal that we ought to pursue in conjunction with a basic income.
Guy Standing, for example, incorporates a call to protect and revive the “physical, social, and information commons” as part of his Precariat Charter (immediately after his proposals for basic income and sovereign wealth funds, as it happens).
And Harris himself describes the RSA’s idea for a “public contribution contract” to be introduced alongside of a basic income, by which individuals express commitment to contribute to their communities.
As an argument against basic income, Harris’s loneliness worry holds no water. At most, it is an exhortation to UBI proponents not to forget about parallel programs, such as the construction and enhancement of public spaces, that could foster social interaction and community well-being.
A Concession and Response
Credit: NoirKitsuné via flickr
I do, though, want to offer an important caveat. Above, I suggested that individuals can recognize when the social interaction fostered by a job is beneficial to them, and that they will act accordingly. But, in fact, I think it’s quite probable that there are some individuals who — were they to receive a basic income — would leave their jobs and cocoon themselves in their homes, even if doing so would not be in their overall best interest. A guaranteed income could indeed be the catalyst that drives some individuals into a voluntary, but potentially harmful, life of isolation.
What sorts of individuals? There might be some who would intentionally avoid social interaction as a consequence of mental illness, such as social anxiety or depression. Meanwhile, others might quit their jobs to pursue passions that just happen to be solitary (whether writing, painting, computer-programming, or what have you). After all, one major talking-point in favor of basic income — and one with which I wholeheartedly agree — is that the policy would allow individuals to quit their jobs to pursue their passions. The loneliness worry might well arise, however, when a naturally introverted person engages herself in an inherently solitary pursuit; even if avoiding social interaction is not her goal, it might be her natural inclination — an inclination that would be unthwarted if paid employment is not necessary to make a living.
Against Harris, perhaps, I believe that the loneliness worry would be greatest for those people who don’t avidly desire social interaction — for they are the least inclined to be proactive in ensuring that they receive a healthy dose. (Harris states, “While some individuals might enjoy this time on their own, others might feel isolated by this lack of social contact,” which suggests that he forecasts that those who crave social contact will be the hardest hit.)
Would this problem arise under a UBI? If so, how big of a problem would it be? These, I think, are indeed empirical matters.
But a better question for our purposes is this: if there is a risk of the type of self-induced loneliness that I’ve described above, would this be a reason not to favor a UBI?
And here I think that the we can, with some confidence, answer no.
Consider an analogy. Presumably, there are people in industrialized nations who currently receive very little physical activity, and who would receive more physical exercise were it not for the mechanization of labor. (Perhaps, say, they’d work in the field instead of sitting at a desk.) Such individuals could hit the gym after work, or ride a bike to the office instead of driving a car, or jog in the morning, or so on; however, because exercise is not required to make an income, many opt out, despite acknowledging that they’d be healthier if they moved around a bit more.
Nonetheless, it would be inappropriate to attempt to impede progress (e.g., by banning mechanized agriculture) simply because some percentage of the population is disinclined to exercise unless their life and livelihood depends on it. Such a reactionary policy would be not only unfair to society as a whole but also condescending and paternalistic to those it endeavors to help. A better approach might be to make other options for physical activity more accessible (e.g., say, installing bike lanes, funding parks and community recreation centers, or sponsoring free fitness classes).
Likewise, the possibility that a UBI would lead some to reduce their amount of social contact — even if this possibility is likely — is not a good reason to deprive society of the myriad benefits that would be bought about by a UBI. That said, there is likely little harm in preparing for this contingency by thinking of ways of encourage social contact in a world with less work (or, perhaps more accurately, less mandatory paid employment), such as by expanding and protecting commons areas.
Max Harris, “Will the Universal Basic Income make us lonely?” openDemocracy, May 25, 2016.
Feature Image via Chris de Nice (flickr)
Thanks to Dave Clegg for reviewing a draft of this article.
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon.
by Karl Widerquist | May 21, 2016 | News
Medium, the popular blog site, has published an increasing amount of articles on basic income in the last few years. It’s hard to search the site by date and to capture all articles that might focus on basic income by one of its many synonyms, but at least seven articles on Basic Income have appeared on it in May 2016:
Martin Farley, “Don’t Get Angry. Don’t Get Even. Get Paid!” Medium, May 17, 2016. Farley argues, “A basic income paid to all citizens and funded by a land value tax would create the foundations for a fair and prosperous society and avoid ugly social and political tensions.”
Matt Orfalea, “Something for Nothing (6 Examples)” Medium, May 6, 2016. The six examples are food, land, money, your mom, all the work of the past, and the universe.
Rutger Bregman, “Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone,” Medium, May 19, 2016
Nicole Sallak, “Universal Basic Income — The Foundation of a Technically Advanced Society, PART TWO,” Medium May 19, 2016
Nicole Sallak, “Universal Basic Income — The Foundation of a Technically Advanced Society [Part One],” Medium May 13, 2016
Anna Oman, “What I Want for All Moms on Mother’s Day: A Universal Basic Income,” Medium, May 8, 2016
Scott Santens, “Last Month in Basic Income… A Summary of April 2016,” Medium, May 6
Medium
by Kate McFarland | May 2, 2016 | News
Earlier this year, Basic Income News reported on the activities of the San Francisco-based My Basic Income team, which successfully crowdfunded a $15,000 no-strings-attached basic income to be awarded to one lucky individual in a raffle.
My Basic Income has now announced that the drawing will take place on May 31 (the following is a press release from the group):
SAN FRANCISCO GROUP IS GIVING AWAY $15,000 TO PROMOTE BASIC INCOME
America’s first crowdfunded Basic Income sweepstakes has launched in San Francisco. On May 31st, the “My Basic Income” team will hold a random drawing to decide who will receive $1,250/month for one year, with no qualifying conditions or strings attached. The goal of the project is to promote and discuss the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), and find out how the payment affects people’s lives.
The drawing at www.mybasicincome.org is still open and free for anyone to sign up. Entrants are asked to answer the question “What would you do with your life if your income was guaranteed?” Initial funds for the project were raised on the Indiegogo platform, and the group is now building ongoing support through Patreon. The group will host an event at 111 Minna in San Francisco, though attendance is not required to win.
The SF team was founded at the first Basic Income Create-A-Thon, an event in November 2015 attended by over 80 people. There they were coached by Michael Bohmeyer, a German entrepreneur who created a similar project and has successfully crowdfunded 39 basic incomes so far. The Basic Income concept has grown exponentially in the last year, beginning with a strong internet presence, and several European countries are now conducting pilot experiments. It has recently begun to appear in mainstream news.
Founder Cameron Ottens says “With the automation revolution in full swing, it’s time that we rethink our safety net. Basic Income can give all people the security and resources to innovate and take on more meaningful work.” Historically, variations on the idea of guaranteed income have been promoted both by Martin Luther King Jr. and Milton Friedman for the goals of eliminating poverty and reducing inefficient and dehumanizing government means-testing among many, many others. This cross-partisan support has led Scott Santens, UBI blogger and activist, to coin the phrase “Basic Income isn’t left or right – it’s forward!”
Press Release from My Basic Income
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (Click the link to see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News.)
