by Tyler Prochazka | Aug 24, 2016 | Opinion
One of the most visible libertarian advocates of the basic income is Dr. Matt Zwolinski. Zwolinski is a professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego and has written extensively on the libertarian case for the basic income.
In my interview with Zwolinski, he said a basic income “can help protect the freedom of certain vulnerable people,” although he recognizes there is a trade-off due to the coercive nature of taxes.
Zwolinski also dismissed some of the common libertarian objections to the basic income, saying it is a hard moral sell to claim taxation to help the poor is indistinguishable from a mugger stealing for himself.
“I think there’s a moral case, based on freedom and a correct theory of property rights, that justifies some form of economic redistribution,” he said.
For those libertarians that think basic income disqualifies them from the libertarian label, Zwolisnki said this does not make much sense since many libertarian thinkers throughout history have advocated for the basic income approach.
“Libertarianism is and should remain a pretty big tent,” Zwolinski said.
As a libertarian, what is the best reason to support UBI?
I don’t think that there’s a single best reason. I’m a pluralist in my moral philosophy, and so I think that a lot of different kinds of reasons are usually appropriate in assessing the case for or against a particular piece of public policy.
But, basically, I think there are two strong libertarian arguments in support of a basic income, one broadly deontological in nature and the other broadly consequentialist. The deontological argument has to do with the limits to the libertarian case for private property. For reasons that I think were very well laid out by Herbert Spencer in 1851, I don’t think the standard Lockean story about self-ownership and labor mixing gets us very far in justifying private property in land and other natural resources. For starters, that account simply doesn’t match the historical reality in which most private property originated in force and theft rather than peaceful homesteading. But, more fundamentally, I just don’t see how mixing your labor in a natural object gets you a property right in the whole economic value of that object, as opposed to a right to that portion of the value created by your labor. Basically, I think Henry George was right. And so I think that there’s a strong case to be made for a basic income funded by a “Single Tax” on “land rent” – the economic value of unimproved natural resources such as land.
The more consequentialist case has to do with protecting individual freedom. I call it a consequentialist case rather than a utilitarian one deliberately. The idea is that a basic income can help protect the freedom of certain vulnerable people. But I recognize that a basic income that’s large and broad enough to do that might have to be funded by taxes that violate the freedom of others. So we’re trading off freedom for freedom. That might sound scary to some libertarians, but I think that unless you’re an anarchist you’re already willing to accept something like this. Tax-funded police services, after all, protect individual freedom but are funded by coercive taxation.
I think the seeds for a freedom-based defense of a basic income are present in the writings of Friedrich Hayek, especially in his Constitution of Liberty. Hayek himself defended a kind of basic income, but was never entirely clear about what he saw the justification for it to be. I’ve tried to work out what a plausible Hayekian justification might be, at least in terms of broad outlines. Basically, I see Hayek as embracing a kind of republican account of liberty, where freedom means not just not being subject to the initiation of force but, more generally, not being subject to the arbitrary will of any other person. Once you take that account of freedom on board, I think you can justify a basic income as a way of protecting the economically vulnerable. The idea is that people who might otherwise have to accept any offer an employer makes or else starve aren’t really free. A basic income gives them the ability to say “no,” and thus protects them from being bossed around by the economically powerful.
One interesting thing to note about these two arguments is that they’re not just different in terms of where they start – the moral premises on which they’re based. I think they’re also different in terms of where they end up – in the kind of basic income they justify. If the Georgist argument works, I think that justifies a truly universal basic income. The earth belongs to all of us, and so all of us have an equal claim to the economic value of unimproved natural resources. Now, depending on how much of present wealth you think is due to labor, rather than raw natural resources, the value of this kind of basic income might not be very large. So, on this argument, what you might end up with is a very broad but relatively small basic income. Everybody gets something, but nobody gets much.
The freedom-based argument, on the other hand, doesn’t give us any reason to write a check to Bill Gates. His freedom is already protected by his economic power, so there’s no real point in giving him any more money. And the same will be true of a lot of other people, not just the rich but probably most of the middle class as well. So if the case for a basic income is based on the protection of individual freedom, I think what that gets you is something less than a universal basic income. Not everybody gets something, but what those who need it get will be large enough to effectively protect them against economic domination by others.
What would your ideal UBI look like?
Designing a policy like a universal basic income is obviously a complicated task. And I think it’s a task that should be highly sensitive not only to the kinds of moral considerations with which I spend most of my time as a philosopher, but to empirical considerations of the kinds studied by economists, sociologists, and the like. So I don’t want to claim that I’ve got anything close to the final word on this. I have some ideas, but this is definitely not a one-person project.
That said, I think that given the two distinct moral considerations that justify a basic income, there’s a case to be made for having two distinct basic income type policies that respond to those considerations. One would be a small, truly universal cash grant based on the economic value of unimproved natural resources. Think of this as something like the Alaskan Permanent Fund writ large. The other would be a less universal but more generous grant directed toward those individuals who fall below a certain specified threshold of economic sufficiency. I think the best way of implementing this second program is probably something like Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax, though I also like the proposal set forth by Charles Murray in his book, In Our Hands. In both cases, people earning less than a certain amount of money get a cash grant from the government, with which they can do whatever they wish; while people earning more than that amount get nothing. That conditionality makes the program less than truly universal. But I think you’ve got to do something like that in order to make a basic income economically feasible. Many basic income enthusiasts want a grant that is (1) universal, (2) large enough to provide people with an adequate level of income, and (3) economically affordable. But you can’t satisfy all three of those conditions at once. A Negative Income Tax satisfies conditions (2) and (3), which to my mind are the most important conditions, morally speaking. Condition (1) might be politically important in terms of generating and sustaining support for the program. I’m not sure. But it seems to me that something has to give, and I think there’s a strong case to be made for keeping (2) and (3) and relegating (1) to the land-tax component of the joint program.
Many libertarians say removing all welfare would be superior to replacing welfare with the UBI. Do you agree with this sentiment?
No, I don’t think so. But before I explain why, let’s be clear about two different conversations we could have about this question. One is a conversation about ideals – what is the best kind of society we could imagine as libertarians, regardless of how different that society might look from our own? The other conversation is about pragmatics – what should libertarians advocate here and now, given all the injustices, imperfections and disagreements with which any practical political proposal has to deal?
Now, as it happens, I don’t think either of those conversations gets you to the conclusion that all state-based welfare ought to be eliminated. That’s certainly not something that has any practical chance of being implemented in a world where, after all, most people aren’t libertarians. But I don’t think it’s very attractive as an ideal, either. I think there’s a moral case, based on freedom and a correct theory of property rights, that justifies some form of economic redistribution. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of bad redistribution in our society. We’ve have redistribution to the poor that’s made their lives worse, rather than better. And we’ve had a lot of straightforwardly regressive redistribution that actually takes money and opportunities away from the poor and channels it toward the better off. And libertarians have rightly criticized those programs. But the idea that anytime the state takes money from the well-off and gives it to the poor, that’s morally indistinguishable from a mugger on the street taking your wallet at gunpoint, well, that’s a hard sell. And not, I think, simply because non-libertarians are being thick-headed.
In my experience, many libertarians have called me a statist and denied me the label of libertarian for supporting the UBI. Have you had similar experiences and what is your reaction?
Sure, I get that all the time. Some people seem to think a desire to eliminate the welfare state is just part of what it means to be a libertarian. But what’s their basis for that? That Murray Rothbard thought so? Or Ayn Rand? But why should we take them as the final say on what libertarianism is or isn’t?
As I’ve written about before, there are a number of people who fall pretty squarely in the libertarian intellectual tradition – Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Herbert Spencer, to name a few – who don’t hold that view. Why should their views count any less toward defining what libertarianism is than Murray Rothbard’s?
I’m finishing up a book on the history of libertarian thought with John Tomasi. And one of the themes of that book is that the libertarian intellectual tradition is incredibly pluralistic. Some libertarians are consequentialists, some are deontologists, and some are ethical egoists. Some are anarchists, some are minimal-statists, and some are classical liberals. Of course, not all of those views can be right, and libertarians should (and do!) argue amongst themselves about which view is the best libertarian view. But I think it’s silly – and more than a little ironic! – for libertarians to try to write people with whom they disagree out of libertarianism altogether on the basis of some putative ideological authority. Libertarianism is and should remain a pretty big tent.
by Guest Contributor | Aug 15, 2016 | Opinion
The Unconditional Basic Income has been springing up around the world as a new human rights movement, protecting everyone’s fundamental right to life. In addition to basic human rights, traditional Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism shows us the fundamental nature of humanity is good, in that all beings originally are Buddhas, all are endowed with Buddha nature (1), so each human being deserves equal respect and care. The Unconditional Basic Income is a manifestation of this ideology of benevolence.
Around 2,300 years ago, China’s Mencius wrote in King Hui of Liang, due to a lack of constant property, the common people also lack unwavering perseverance. This will lead to a dissipation of propriety, causing a tide of lawlessness. Waiting until a citizen breaks the law, and utilizing punishment to handle him is essentially like using a fishing net to ensnare the populace. How can a benevolent monarch think this type of policy can be put into practice? As such, a wise monarch will formulate property for the people, giving them the ability to serve their parents and provide for their spouse and children. During a year of prosperity, a family can eat well and during years of shortages, they can still avoid starvation. Then enlightenment can be put into practice, urging the populace to perform good deeds, making it easier for them to follow the enlightenment. This is what Mencius meant when he said “Establishing property of the people, make them have sufficient food and clothing; first support (the people), then teach (the people).”
Thus, each of the basic income experiments around the world allow us to realize that after a person receives a guarantee for their livelihood, crime goes down, educational outcomes go up, economies grow, physical and spiritual health improves, families and societies become more harmonious, and parents have more time to accompany and take care of their children. Society is created by each family unity. Creating more harmonious families will make a more harmonious and safe society. In today’s turbulent world, implementing a UBI is of the utmost importance.
Inspired by the news surrounding Switzerland’s basic income referendum, this February I worked with the respected teacher Chunchi Tsao, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, to start a new organization Global Basic Income Social Welfare Promotion Association in Taiwan. On Facebook, I recruited 30 people to found the organization to apply through the government to become an official organization. I hope that we can cooperate with the global movement to push the basic income, free education, social housing, free vegetarian restaurants for environmental protection, etc. in order to implement social welfare.
The honorary president of our association, Taiwan University’s School of Law European Union Law Research Center (EULRC) Dr. Lukas Lien said, “When the country’s founder, Dr. Sun Yatsen said ‘of the people, by the people, for the people,’ the genuine meaning was a country of social welfare, instead of the Nationalist KMT party’s idea of exploiting the people. No. The real meaning is to give all of the resources to the people and then the government can attain so-called legitimacy. Otherwise what can they rely on for legitimacy to levy taxes? The purpose of taxes is for educating the people, ensuring everyone has food, clothing, housing, transportation, and then the most important element is ensuring the most basic right to life. In German it is not called UBI. It is called the most fundament, the most basic right to life. That is to say, at the very least, is that no matter the circumstances, no one will face starvation.”
The purpose of government’s existence is to take care of the people. If a government does not take care of the people’s food, clothing, shelter, education and their fundament right to life, then a government is no longer needed, and in fact no longer has legitimacy to levy taxes and legislate to regulate the people. Since ancient times, both the East and the West have followed the ideology: “The will of the people is the will of Heaven,” and “The people are God.” The Book of History puts forward “Heaven sees what the people see, Heaven hears what the people hear,” and “That which the people desire, Heaven must abide by.” In Latin it is, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”, or “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Dr. Lien also quotes the last Pope: “because all are created in the image of god, so we must protect people, in the same way that we protect the image of God. In his Christian Socialism course, Dr. Lien quotes Matthew 25 verse 31-46, the story of the judgement day: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” That is to say, we push for the basic income in order to push for world peace.
The practical way to achieve this is through the basic income, free education, and social housing as social welfare protections in the constitution and legislation. Educate the people about the ideology and law behind these basic rights is the first obligation. Revolution has to start from the mind. Once the people have the understanding of the ideology and law, then we will be able to choose and create a government of benevolence, as well as understand how to use legislation to push for these social benefits.
Collecting the revenue for the basic income has many different methods, for example taxes and printing money, cutting and integrating general welfare spending, generating profits or raising money. As science and technology continues to progress, humanity can already gradually use automation and robots to substitute human labor. This will give people more time and energy to pursue artistic and creative endeavors, entrepreneurship, spiritual development and realize their own dreams.
Our organization already conceived of some methods to fund the basic income: develop autonomous robotic national industries in order to produce food and other necessities and allocate the profits to all people. The American economist Milton Friedman 1969 popularized the satirical idea of throwing cash from helicopters and letting people collect it. In reality, the Central Bank could print money and directly give it to the entire population. In the second year, the basic income could be matched with a consumption tax and some of the money that was issued could be absorbed back into government coffers. From this, an uninterrupted source of finances could supply the revenue for the unconditional basic income to smoothly operate over the long-term. Certainly, there are many more methods for financing the UBI, which could all be properly tuned and applied.
Universal unconditional basic income is not only feasible; it is an imperative.
Annotation: 1. All beings are originally Buddhas – The Chart of Mortals, Saints, Delusion and Enlightenment
Written by Juku Shenguang: Founder, Vice-president and Secretary-General of Global Basic Income Social Welfare Promotion Association in Taiwan.
Translated by Tyler Prochazka
by Jason Burke Murphy | Aug 13, 2016 | News
Sustainable Consumption
I recently went to a fascinating conference organized by SCORAI, the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative. This organization is dedicated to interdisciplinary study of consumption and the ecological impact of that consumption. They take seriously the threat of climate change and posed strong questions about the ways that our consumption decisions are driven by corporate culture and social planning. I went to presentations on transportation, automation, and ideology. Topics included driverless cars, e-bikes, downshifting, ecological footprints, mindfulness, and consumer wisdom. The topic of sustainable consumption pushes the research into posing hard questions about how humans are living and how they can live well. The conference had a blend of policymakers and scholars that you do not often see. I was reminded of the Basic Income Earth Network and US Basic Income Guarantee Network Congresses where I see activists, policymakers, and scholars listen to each other. Readers here should also consult SCORAI and keep their future conferences in mind.
Getting the Word Out about a Carbon Tax and Dividend
There was a sense of urgency given what we know about the amount of resources we are using and using up. Carbon taxes came up often. After all, they could impose the real ecological costs of consumption and manufacturing. I am a strong believer that a carbon tax is one of the ways we should fund a dividend for all.
We have heard about the “Limits to Growth” since the Club of Rome put out a now famous report bearing that title in 1970. Dr. William Rees, the inventor of the term “ecological footprint” pointed out to the conference that their projections have proven accurate in the 46 years since publication. This report predicts a series of economic collapses as consumption outpaces resource availability. So far, so scary. Rees calls for carbon taxes but also for cities to plan around local sustainability.
However, I was daunted by how often I found myself explaining what basic income is to participants. Most participants had heard of it recently but a surprising number looked curious when I mentioned it. If you are reading this, you have likely seen quite a few articles on a universal basic income and you may think “everyone else” has heard of it as well. We are not there yet. These are very clever and concerned people. Most were sympathetic. Not everyone thought a basic income was part of the topic of sustainable consumption just like not everyone at a basic income gathering would think the environment was a central part of the struggle against poverty. But we have to keep talking.
Concerns about Basic Income and ‘what the neighbors will think’
Those who were not on board (or at least not enthusiastic as me) came from many different angles. Many were speculating about how well basic income would “play” among the general public or in Congress. Some just wanted to know if the issue would hurt or help the Democrats in the upcoming election. These are the hardest people to convince. They are not actually asking themselves what they believe. We hear these sorts of things often elsewhere. These concerns will be met once a greater portion of the public has heard of basic income. Again, we have to keep talking. We have got a long way to go.
Direct Concerns about Basic Income
Some participants raised some very strong reservations about a basic income and I want to share them here and pose an initial response to them and a slightly longer one that includes an introduction to “degrowth.”
Most participants who were considering basic income were earlier proponents of a carbon tax to be used to fund ecological initiatives like public transportation, ecological energy production, and enforcement of environmental laws. Would a basic income squeeze out the budget for these things? That is a very real concern. Basic income is often sold as replacing other government functions. We have to acknowledge that this is a large budget item and all budget items can be seen as competing with other governmental functions. The best solution for this is environmental organizations writing bills with basic income in them. In the US, we have Citizen’s Climate Lobby and the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act, which has several congressional and organizational sponsors.
Another concern was raised as a research question. There is a strong link between income and ecological destructive impact. Worldwide, and in the US, the larger one’s income, the larger one’s “ecological impact.” Would a basic income turn every low-income American into a middle-income American? Would it turn middle-income Americans into Hummer-driving suburban developers? That would be an environmental disaster. I want to stress that this was posed as a research question. I heard no one straight out submit this as a rebuttal of basic income.
Income Now Drives Carbon Output
Jean Boucher’s research, presented at SCORAI, gave me another reason to think a carbon tax is important. He interviewed people who believe that climate change is a serious problem and those who do not. He compiled other research into climate beliefs and consumption patterns. He showed that people who believed climate change was a threat still used more carbon as their income increased. They used as much carbon as people with similar incomes who did not believe climate change was a threat. He noted that “liberals” tended to use up the carbon they save elsewhere with travel.
The fact that income makes people more dangerous as consumers is a strong argument for carbon taxes and other ecological regulations. Boucher, who supports a carbon tax dividend, shows that convincing people that climate change is real will not generate a sufficient amount of vegetarians with solar panels to actually make an impact. Carbon must be made more expensive.
Boucher has campaigned for a carbon tax through the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, which seeks a dividend. But could a basic income or any dividend reverse the benefits of the carbon tax? Would we just eat more cattle and travel more and ruin the planet?
We Cannot Build a Better World on the Backs of the Poor
If the ecological movement were to adopt this sort of reasoning, that would be a political disaster. They are already accused of forsaking jobs and prosperity for the sake of natural preservation. A basic income is a way to get around this. It also offers something to someone who has good reason to doubt they will be getting one of these new high-tech ‘green’ jobs preserving the environment. Can you really tell a coal miner to become an environmental engineer or an organic farmer? Do we not owe people something for pulling out the rug from under them, like that coal miner, even if we needed to?
We need to understand why depressed communities do not believe movement leaders who promise them jobs. They been promised this sort of thing before. They have been told jobs were created and they have been unimpressed. As I write, I just saw the Democratic National Convention run a video claiming Bill Clinton created millions of jobs. There is a whole belt of communities that just are not seeing it. A dividend would be a visible support for them and their communities. And a new sort of job creator. And it would reach the invisible and despised. Without a dividend, we give the opponents of environmental regulations a better opportunity to recruit votes from the less powerful.
We do not have the right to use deprivation, or the threat of deprivation, to promote even the best outcomes. It is very bad when the privileged argue that we should keep the threat of poverty in play so that people will work bad jobs for less money. It is still bad to leave people in precariousness even if our intention is to promote ecological sustainability. To talk that way is to combine a political disaster with our current moral one. After all, we are using the threat of deprivation to organize large sections of the population.
Basic Income and Degrowth
Giorgios Kallis’ keynote presentation steered me towards my provisional answer to these questions. He supports a basic income alongside the promotion of universal access to low-consumption versions of public transportation, education, and health. He sees this as a way of shrinking the destructive aspects of our economy, driven by capital, and increasing other parts of economic that we value, though ignored by capital.
Kallis’ main project is combining political ecology and ecological economics. These are two separate movements that he draws from in an attempt to take more seriously the material conditions that undergird our economic activity. We have a very long history of a link between growth in gross domestic product and a growth in carbon emissions. Kallis has called for “prosperity without growth” and is part of a “degrowth” movement. We have a finite planet and we cannot keep growing in the ways we have measured growth.
I have to admit that I have often presented a basic income as a vehicle for growth in those communities too invisible for current markets and current public planners to take action. Because I found this ecological argument for degrowth plausible, I wondered what this would mean for how I see basic income working.
The Gibson Graham Iceberg Model
In the course of presenting his argument, Kallis’ showed us was this drawing of an iceberg devised by feminist economists Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham. I have not been able to get it out of my head. Let us look at two examples, talk about them, and then get back to basic income and degrowth.
Drawing by James Langdon
Drawing by Ken Byrne
They published under a combined name of “J.K. Gibson-Graham” and their work can be found at a website called “Community Economies.” Almost all economics, they argue, only looks at the “tip of the iceberg” which consists of capitalist markets and wage labor. Above the “water-line”, we have the sort of things that our market economy sees. If a price can be put on it, then someone with money to invest (a capitalist) or to consume (a customer) can make an offer for it. These are the things that our economics and our politics (and increasingly our culture) value.
Below the water-line are things that we do value but capital markets do not value in the same way we do. I went with two examples because the whole idea of the iceberg model is to get you thinking about the things you value and see where they stand. Think about how important so many of these “underwater” items are. We value culture, charity, education, health, and family life. We should not give these up in exchange for money. They have a value that is hard to reduce to a cash amount.
The list is not complete. Also, every item below the line has capital and wage versions. People pay for schools and policymakers do assign a monetary value to them. There is an art and music market. Lots of economic activity that used to take place in households are now taken care of with wage payments.
The problem is that we live in a world in which all of our decisions are being pressured to work using the terms we see above the line. Libraries and schools, when they submit their budgets, are asked to justify their existence in terms of capitalist markets and wage labor. Maybe we just want to learn. Environmental organizations are told to think about the “economy” as if we do not assign value to what we breathe, eat, drink, and look at.
Many of the terms below the water-line point to ways of belonging, to spaces where we recognize each other’s talents. Families are a large space and a lot of us would like to be able to work more with open-source technology and cooperative enterprises because we place a value on their less dominated character.
Markets and workplaces can also be such value-laden spaces but the values we use when we assess a market or a workplace must come from somewhere below the water-line. If all you thought about was money in evaluating health care at any level, you will not get to the goal of health. But so many health organizations’ decisions are driven only by the tip of the iceberg.
Giorgio Kallis shows us the Gibson Graham Iceberg Model in order to point out that the “degrowth” movement seeks to contract what is at the top of the iceberg in order to grow what is low on the iceberg.
Basic Income and Values Growth
Perhaps I am too indoctrinated by growth-oriented language but I cannot help but push against the word “degrowth”. Their adherents seem to be talking about “real growth” or “values growth” (“Values Growth” is a phrase I just invented). I suppose they need to be very clear that they think the earth can only be sustained if capital markets are organizing less of the planet’s resources. That part of the economy needs to shrink.
Giorgios Kallis makes it clear though that he is not talking about a sparser existence. Degrowth for him would not mean tightening our belts. He supports a carbon-tax-funded basic income precisely because he hopes people will opt out of the hurly-burly lives of wage-work and consumption of consumer goods. He actually hopes people opt out of the economy as it is right now. But they would live better as they see it.
Those who decide to try to live on just their basic income are, by definition, deciding they can live better with more time and less income than they would with the jobs they see available. These lives will consume less of what the capitalist market steers us now to consume. The lives they build will promote options for others as well. When we look around, we will see more than just the lives that corporations want us to value. It does not all have to be shopping between shifts at work.
When we present basic income, we are often called upon to prove that people will not opt out of the workforce. I often point out that a basic income is still yours when you take on a job. Right now, people dependent on disability worry about losing that support if they try out a job. (I am often referred by policy analysts to very complex regulations. MBA’s and lawyers disagree over the meaning of these rules. I hold a couple of degrees but I couldn’t tell anyone what would happen to them. Disability recipients, whether educated or not, are expected to understand how these policies will be interpreted. Basic income gets around all that.) Many start-ups will be buoyed by basic income.
But Kallis calls for a rethink here. For Kallis, this nightmare scenario is no nightmare at all. People who opt out of the wage-labor market simply will use up less of the earth. Everyone who opts out of the labor market in order to live more sparsely is buying the planet time.
We Do Not Need to Consume to Live or Live to Consume
Consumption becomes more expensive while we are empowered to give care and creativity the time they deserve. This answers Jean Boucher’s concerns about increased income and consumption. There are not a lot of low-consumption options now when we look at what to do with our income. There will be more with basic income, which will create new kinds of social actors.
Let us look back at the iceberg again. A basic income means that you have a property-like claim on an income. You do not have to please someone with money to have an income. You do not need a job or a patron. This means you can spend more money and time on things you care about besides capital markets, wage labor, and the people who run those things.
Basic income moves resources from the top of the iceberg to the bottom. We can see that markets are pushing their values onto other things we care about. A basic income large enough to live on is one that enables us to say “no” more often to the world on top of the iceberg. As we look around in order to build a life that we want, we will survey the values that are below the line. We will be more confident than ever that we know what we want.
We will have more examples of people living lives they value. These will include investor and entrepreneurs and job-holders but they will also include lives focused on culture, experience, ethics, and values. A basic income will increase the number of people who organize to promote what they consider to be good, fair, and true. We need more organizations besides for-profit corporations competing for our attention and time. We depend on people negotiating between their needs and wants and the beliefs and power relations that they have inherited. This new world may be more contentious, more diverse, than our current one. It also may be more deliberative if persuasion becomes a more important means to organizing people now being organized by capital and wage offerings. Combined with making environmental destruction more expensive, a basic income funded by taxing pollution will make less-destructive lives more meaningful.
Edit (August 13, 10:40 pm EST):
A line was changed by the author. The new version makes it more clear that many people with disabilities are highly educated.
by Guest Contributor | Aug 10, 2016 | Opinion
By Alexander de Roo
The 20th century was the century of social democracy in Western Europe. But nowadays the social democratic model of the welfare state is in deep crisis. This model — in which paid work is central, full (male) employment is the norm, and social benefits are dependent on performance in paid work — is no longer working and no longer appealing to voters.
The strong political position of social democracy in Western Europe has been based on the strength of labor unions. Economic changes, however, have accelerated the declining membership of unions. The strength of the various social democratic parties has thus been structurally eroded. Consumption and leisure time are becoming ever more important. These factors open the way for basic income as the economic model for the 21st century.
There is a strong relationship between the strength of the unions and the popularity of the Dutch Labor Party in national elections. In the chart below, the dotted line represents the strength of the unions, while the continuous line represents the strength of the Labor Party:
As you can see, there is a structural relationship between the strength of the unions and the electoral strength of the Dutch Labor Party (PvdA – the social democratic party of the Netherlands). The unions are slowly losing members in the Netherlands. The decline is largely due to structural changes in advanced economies. For example, total manufacturing employment in America has fallen from nearly 20 million in 1979 to 12 million today. The kinds of workers who have lost out — unskilled men, in particular — were precisely those who were most likely to belong to a union in the first place. And what has sprung up in their place further undermines unions. If you went to a factory in the 1970s, you would have seen assembly lines of people. Such workers were much more amenable to the idea of “class consciousness”. Go to a factory today and you might you find a few people monitoring robots and other whizzy bits of machinery. Add other economic changes to the mix — globalization (which makes it harder for unions to regulate work), the rise of a more flexible service sector and government policies — and the loss of union clout seems inevitable. More recent reforms to minimum wage and workplace discrimination have also reduced the need felt by individuals to belong to a union.
The decline of the Dutch Christian Democratic party
Additionally, the other political party essential to the construction of the Dutch welfare state, the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), is in structural decline. Below, we see the electoral results of the CDA over the last 60 years – from an absolute majority in the 1950s and early 1960s to only 10 percent in the 2012 elections.
The blue line represents the three different Christian democratic parties in the Netherlands, which merged in 1980 to form the singular CDA – represented by the green line.
In the general election of 2006 — before the 2008 economic crisis — the CDA and the PvdA together had 46 percent of the vote. That proportion dropped to 32 percent in both the 2010 and 2012 national elections. Today, according to opinion polls, these two parties together command just over 20 percent of the vote. That is to say, the parties of the old social model have declined from 46 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in 2016, losing more than half their support in just 10 years.
Conclusion: Political support for the old welfare state, developed by the Labor Party and the Christian Democratic Appeal, along with the unions, has been completely eroded.
The Dutch Precariat: Almost 40 percent
“In the 21st century, technological changes are being introduced into economic and social life at a much faster pace than in the 20th century,” noted Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, in a 2012 lecture in Brussels.
One of the most important trends has been the rise of flexible work. This has been especially strong in the Netherlands. Today 20 percent of Dutch workers, amounting to 1.7 million people, are on flexible contracts. The increase seems unstoppable. Unions are demanding that politicians repair this state of affairs by restoring the old model of stable, regulated jobs through legislation.
Alongside the 1.7 million flex workers are 1.3 million people who are self-employed. At least 20 percent of these – 0.3 million people – became self-employed due to a lack of alternatives. The graph below shows the increase in flexible jobs over last 10 years, and the corresponding decrease in regular jobs. The blue bars signify the increase in the number of flex workers, while the brown bars indicate the change (usually negative) in the number of regular workers.
Additionally, there are 0.6 million people officially registered as unemployed, and 0.4 million who depend on social benefits (“Bij-stand” in Dutch). In total, 3 million people and their dependents form the Dutch precariat. Approximately 5 million people still have regular jobs – 10 percent fewer than 10 years ago. And automatization is threatening even these jobs. In the debate in The Netherlands, the position that the rise of the robots will lead to structural unemployment is still minor. However, studies like one from Oxford University show that approximately 50 percent of the jobs that exist today will no longer be secure in 20 years’ time (THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: HOW SUSCEPTIBLE ARE JOBS TO COMPUTERISATION? Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne; September 17, 2013).
Opportunities for basic income implementation are growing in the Netherlands
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
The decline of the two old parties that built the Dutch welfare state, combined with the rise in number of the Dutch precariat, opens the way for a post-social democratic pathway. Basic income has the strongest card. In contrast to the 1980s and 1990s, large parts of the Dutch population are now receptive to the idea of basic income, given that the present welfare system is – in their eyes – no longer worth fighting for.
History of the basic income debate in the Netherlands
There was fierce debate about basic income in the 1980s and 90s in the Netherlands. The Dutch branch of BIEN, “Vereniging Basisinkomen”, was founded in 1989. Before that, an organization called “Workshop Basic Income” promoted the idea. The PvdA almost adopted basic income in its national election program in 1993 (with 40 percent in favor). Then, in 1994, there was a debate about basic income in the national government. On the side of basic income were the Minister of Economic Affairs, Hans Wijers (of Democrats 66, left wing liberals), and the Minister of Finance, Gerrit Zalm (the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, right wing liberals). On the other side, the Prime Minister, Wim Kok (of the PvdA), argued successfully that basic income’s time had not yet come, claiming it to be a topic for 30 years down the line. The economic upswing of the early years of the new millennium subsequently overshadowed this discussion in the Netherlands.
The financial and economic crisis of 2008 changed the economic and political landscape. And, over the past three years, the basic income discussion has returned to the Netherlands, becoming much more intense than it was 25 years ago.
Even with the recent economic upswing, the old status quo — under which almost all adult citizens had a secure, regular job — is history. A new scheme of social security is urgently necessary. The general public recognizes this.
National poll: 40 percent in favor; 15 percent don’t know; 45 percent against basic income
In a recent national poll, 40 percent of the Dutch population declared themselves to be in favor of a basic income, with 45 percent against and 15 percent expressing uncertainty. The voters of the three left wing parties are in favor, with their endorsement breaking down as follows: GreenLeft 60 percent, the Socialist Party 54 percent, and PvdA 53 percent.
The votes of Democrats 66 are divided, with 44 percent in favor and 45 percent against. The followers of the right wing parties, by contrast, are quite clearly against basic income: 73 percent against in People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, and 61 percent against in CDA. It is interesting to note that voters of the populist right wing Party for Freedom, headed by Geert Wilders, are also divided, with 37 percent in favor, 46 percent against and 17 percent uncertain. The Party for Freedom is the biggest party in current polls.
Enthusiasm
When we hand out our basic income leaflets to the general public, about 50 percent of people take the pamphlet and react positively, while the other half ignores us. Several times a young couple, arm in arm, would pass me – the young man would nod that he was not interested, but the young woman would leave him to walk back and collect a leaflet! We have lively discussions with the public. Even young people who were not alive 25 years ago, when that first debate raged, have already a very good idea of what basic income is. I have been active in politics for 42 years and I have never encountered so much enthusiasm.
Free money for everyone
The return of the basic income idea to the Dutch debate has been invigorated by a book by the young historian Rutger Bregman (only 28 years of age), Gratis Geld voor Iedereen (Free Money for Everyone), which was published in September 2014, along with a few national television documentaries. Bregman’s influential book on basic income is now available in English, under the title Utopia for Realists.
Petition for the Dutch parliament
A petition to put basic income on the agenda of the Dutch parliament gathered 50,000 signatures over a couple of months. The intention is to generate 100,000 signatures by autumn so that basic income can play a role in the election campaign for the Dutch national elections in March 2017.
Local experiments with basic income
Several basic income experiments are planned in the Netherlands. Nineteen municipalities have officially declared their willingness to initiate such an experiment to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. Utrecht, Groningen, Tilburg and Wageningen were the first four to do so, and they are currently in conversation with the State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment in order to establish the necessary space in the law. These experiments will not comprise trials of a full basic income, even though many are based on the idea of a basic income. Instead, elements of a basic income are to be implemented in these experiments within the rubric of the current Dutch minimum welfare scheme (“Bij-stand”). More precisely, for the experiment participants, allowances will be made unconditional, allowing recipients of the minimum welfare to earn money simultaneously and thereby removing the currently existing poverty trap.
Various questions will be addresed by these experiments:
- Will people become more active if they are free to do what they want, as compared to the present situation under which they must apply for jobs and be policed?
- Will people become more autonomous?
- Will people become healthier?
- Will people be quicker to participate in paid work if they are allowed to earn in addition to receiving their allowance?
A large majority of the parliament is in favor of the experiments, but the details are still under discussion nationally, and there is a legal process that must be completed. If all goes well, the first experiments will start in January 2017.
Why have the experiments not yet started? Will there be 25 experiments in 2017?
The experiments should have already started, in fact, but the national government is very slow in giving the green light. The Dutch GreenLeft asked the national parliament in November 2015 to clear the way for these experiments. Fifteen of the 17 political groups in the national parliament said yes, with only Wilders’ Party for Freedom and Prime Minister Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy saying no. According to the latest update, the government is now working on an administrative decree which will allow the 25 most advanced municipalities to start their experiments in January 2017. That is likely to annoy the other 50 municipalities that also wish to initiate their own experiments.
Since the national elections are set for March 17th, 2017, this issue will most likely play a role in the national election campaign. It is likely that the left wing parties (GreenLeft, PvdA and, perhaps, the Socialist Party) will put forward demands for a Finnish-style experiment of basic income during the 2007 national election. One small party, the Cultural Liberal Party, is already advocating for the introduction of a basic income of €800 in the Netherlands.
Funding of basic income should be based on consumption rather than labor
The Dutch branch of BIEN has developed a model to raise VAT and environmental taxes, while removing most tax exemptions, to fund a basic income of €1100 per person. In the long run, this amount should be increased to €1400. The option of a small tax on financial transactions is also of interest in this regard. We oppose models that would fund basic income solely on an increase of taxes on labor. The Dutch Central Planning Bureau did just that in 2006, resulting in 56 percent income tax for everyone and a five percent increase in unemployment. We are instead fighting for a new calculation based on increasing consumption taxes so as to make it clear to the public that a basic income is (easily) affordable.
Alexander de Roo (alexanderderoo@gmail.com) was one of the founding fathers of BIEN and served as BIEN’s treasurer from 1986-2006. He studied chemical technology in Delft (1972-1978) and political science in Amsterdam (1976-1982), and was a GreenLeft Member of the European Parliament from 1999-2004.
Alexander de Roo photo credit: Bill Crompton.
Content reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan and Kate McFarland.
by Kate McFarland | Aug 9, 2016 | News
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn stated in a recent HuffPost interview that he is “instinctively looking at” a basic income, along with Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of Britain’s Labour Party, was recently asked about universal basic income (among other topics) in an interview with HuffPostUK. Corbyn replied that he and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are “instinctively looking at” the policy.
Here is the remainder of his answer:
I am looking forward to discussing it with our colleagues from Norway because we have to think radically about how we bring about a more just and more equal society in Britain, how we develop policies that achieve that.
Because what we are doing is heading in absolutely the wrong direction with a growing wealth inequality and an opportunity inequality for communities, as well as poorer families. It’s got to change and it will.
I can see the headline attraction to it. I don’t want to commit to it until I’ve had a chance to look at it very seriously and very carefully because this would be a major, major change in social policy and it’s something I would invite the whole party and the whole movement to have a serious discussion about.
What I want to do is develop policymaking through to 2020, where it’s very obvious what the general direction is we are going, on environmental policy, on housing policy, and health policy.
Corbyn was soon shown right about the “headline attraction” of basic income. Immediately following the interview, HuffPostUK editor Paul Waugh published an accompanying article with the headline “Jeremy Corbyn Looking At ‘Universal Basic Income'” And, on the next day, an article appeared in The Independent with the title “Universal Basic Income: Jeremy Corbyn considering backing radical reforms”.
John McDonnell has been a supporter of basic income prior to his appointment as Shadow Chancellor in September 2015. Earlier in this year, he encouraged the Labour Party to consider adopting UBI as official party policy on several occasions, most notably at events in February and June. To date, however, the Labour Party has not made basic income part of its platform.
Following Brexit, the Labour Party reached over 500,000 members, its highest number in decades.
More Information
Full interview with Jeremy Corbyn, which also touches upon housing policy and other issues:
Paul Waugh, “Jeremy Corbyn Interview: On Owen Smith, Trident, Brexit, The Housing Crisis And A ‘Universal Basic Income’“, HuffingtonPost UK; August 6, 2016.
Subsequent press concerning Corbyn’s remarks about UBI:
Paul Waugh, “Jeremy Corbyn Looking At ‘Universal Basic Income’; Says House Price Fall Could Help Tackle Housing Crisis“, HuffingtonPost UK; August 6, 2016.
Siobhan Fenton, “Universal Basic Income: Jeremy Corbyn considering backing radical reforms“, The Independent; August 7, 2016.
Background about the British Labour Party’s recent interest in UBI:
Kate McFarland, “UNITED KINGDOM: Labour Party to look into Basic Income”, Basic Income News; June 6, 2016.
Toru Yamamori, “United Kingdom: Labour Party considers universal basic income”, Basic Income News; February 21, 2016.
“Basic Fact Checking”
In his HuffPostUK articles, Paul Waugh states, “The universal basic income idea has been around since the 1970s but has recently become popular and Canada’s Ontario and Norway are both starting pilot schemes.” Two brief remarks:
1. Out of Scandinavian nations, Finland is much more advanced than Norway in planning a basic income experiment, with one set to begin in 2017. While Norway has held conferences to discuss the idea of a basic income, it has not announced any plans for a pilot study.
2. It’s true that the “universal basic income idea has been around since the 1970s” — but perhaps notable that the idea (and even the term ‘basic income’) has been around longer.
Jeremy Corbyn photo CC by ND 2.0 70023venus2009
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