by Toru Yamamori | Aug 15, 2015 | News
Paul Mason, the award-winning economics editor of Channel 4 News, argues in favour of a basic income in his new book entitled PostCapitalism: A guide to our future, published in 30th July 2015 by Allen Lane, London.
Neoliberalism is broken, Mason argues, and we have the chance to create a new global economy which he calls ‘Postcapitalism’. He gives three reasons why this is possible: information technology is reducing the need for work; the abundance of information goods is undermining the market-based pricing mechanism which relies on scarcity; collaborative production is rising.
A basic income play a key role in Mason’s argument for the transition from capitalism to post-capitalism. Implementing it could ‘socialize the costs of automation’ by formalizing ‘the separation of work and wages’, while subsidizing ‘the transition to a shorter working week, or day, or life’.
What makes Mason’s argument unique among the many other existing arguments for a basic income, is that a basic income will be possible only during the process of transition and will disappear when the transition to post-capitalism is completed.
‘The ultimate aim is to reduce to a minimum the hours it takes to produce what humanity needs. Once this happens, the tax base in the market sector of the economy would be too small to pay for the basic income. Wages themselves would increasingly be either social – in the form of collectively provided – or disappear. So as a postcapitalist measure, the basic income is the first benefit in history whose success measure is that it shrinks to zero.’
Although Mason referred to a basic income in his contribution to the Guardian several months ago, this book locates a basic income in his wider perspective on history and the current state of capitalism as well as his design for future.
by Jenna van Draanen | Dec 18, 2014 | Research
SUMMARY: This article discusses the concept of a precariat, the “social class in the making” which the author describes as arising from increasing unemployment and underemployment. The concept signifies a unification of two previously identified groups: the precariously employed and the proletariat. The author argues for basic income as a way to solve the issues this emerging precariat is facing.
Stanislas Jourdan, “Le precariat: <<Une classe sociale en devenir>> [The precariat: A class in the making]” Le Souffle C’est Ma Vie” October 1, 2010.
by Josh Martin | Sep 19, 2014 | News
Shawn Cassiman (Source: Academia.edu)
The Seventh International Basic Income Week started on Monday with events scheduled all over the world as well as a series of “Ask Me Anything” threads on Reddit. Among the latest to host AMAs are Ann Withorn and Shawn Cassiman, Mike Howard, Hyosang Ahn, and Pablo Yanes.
Ann Withorn (Source: Derrick Cazard Foundation)
Ann Withorn, Ph.D. is Professor of Social Policy, Emeritus, at the University of Massachusetts/Boston. Her main work revolves around issues of economic justice, women’s poverty, and radical social movements. Shawn Cassiman, MSW, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Her research largely focuses on the impact of structural violence, especially on women, and policies that lead to a more just society. Their AMA, hosted on the Two X Chromosomes subreddit focuses on the effects of a basic income on women and its ability to address the ramifications of neoliberalism.
Mike Howard is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine and is the author of Self-management and the Crisis of Socialism, the editor of Socialism, and a co-editor of two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. He also serves as coordinator of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network. Specifically, Howard is an expert on socialist philosophy, the Alaska dividend, and on cap and dividend proposals. His AMA contains a great discussion about socialism in the modern political climate as well as questions about the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Mike Howard (Source: Bangor Daily News)
Hyosang Ahn is the Director of the Basic Income Korean Network and is editor of Left Monthly. His AMA, although short, contains information on the basic income movement in South Korea.
Pablo Yanes (Source: unam.mx)
Pabo Yanes is from Mexico and is working on advocating a basic income as a basic human right. His AMA focuses on whether a basic income is feasible in developing countries.
On top of these AMAs, there have been organized events all over the world this week about the basic income. A list of all events is online at: https://basicincomeweek.org/activities/
The Basic Income Subreddit is online at: https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome
Information about the grown of the BI Subreddit is online at: https://redditmetrics.com/r/BasicIncome
by Karl Widerquist | Oct 8, 2013 | News
This article discusses the potential dangers of the shared ground surrounding possible defences of a basic income. It argues that we should be careful to keep the more transformative potentials of basic income firmly in view.
David Jenkins, “The dangers and potentials of shared ground: A plea for caution,” Basic Income UK, October 5, 2013.
The dangers and potentials of shared ground: A plea for caution -BI UK
by Citizens' Income Trust | May 30, 2012 | Opinion
Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving (eds), Social Policy in Challenging Times: Economic crisis and welfare systems, Policy Press, 2011, xi + 335 pp, pbk, 1 847 42827 1, £27.99, hbk, 1 847 42828 8, £70
Whilst in all of the countries studied in this edited collection the welfare state can be regarded as entering a new age of austerity, the picture that emerges is one of diversity: of different kinds of financial crisis in different countries, of different cultural contexts, and of different effects on welfare provision. For instance: ‘Liberal market economies … are least well equipped in both economic buffers and social solidarity to deal with the impact of a crisis in welfare funding because interests are not shared corporately or between social classes’ (p.24).
The first part of the book tackles more general questions. Has the crisis resulted in a shift in the economic paradigm? No: that would require positive action. Has a crisis in financialised capitalism fostered a new economic and social strategy? No: it has resulted in welfare state retrenchment and widening inequality. Are we all in this together? No: there is one strategy for financial institutions, and another for citizens. Is a global social floor a good idea? It’s a better idea than national safety nets. How will relatively young welfare states in the developing world cope with the financial crisis? In Brazil and South Africa, the crisis has led to the expansion of income transfer programmes, and in particular to the inclusion of 16 and 17 year olds (p.104).
The second half of the book studies individual countries. South Korea’s experience of the 1997 crisis suggests that extreme neoliberalism doesn’t work. China’s response to the recent crisis has been to include previously excluded groups in welfare systems. Germany’s small financial sector, and adjustments already made during unification, have meant that the crisis has had a ‘muted’ effect. Ireland’s weak welfare state is suffering retrenchment rather than reform. Iceland’s crisis has seen the neoliberal model questioned. In Scandinavia unemployment has risen, but only slowly. Domestic policy concerns drove the United States’ healthcare reforms, and in neither the United States nor in Canada has the crisis resulted in much welfare state reform. In the UK, the depth of austerity measures is more ideological than necessary.
‘More of the same’ is the picture that emerges: that is, it is long term cultural and ideological factors that determine welfare structures. Whilst the financial crisis might have precipitated minor change, and in some cases it has exacerbated existing trends (especially in the UK and Ireland, and over the extent of punitive measures imposed on the unemployed), it has stimulated little genuine reform. The editors’ concluding chapter extracts a number of ‘solutions’ from the different chapters, but they can’t be said to constitute any kind of package; and their confident conclusion that
What the contributions here demonstrate is not only that emergency events are crucial to both the shaping of social policy, and to the understanding of that process, but also that challenging times are as likely to widen the scope for progressive welfare state-building as they are to diminish it, and that how states respond is a matter of political struggle and political choice (p.278)
isn’t borne out by the evidence.
The strengths of the book are the amount of detailed evidence and the careful analysis in each of the very different chapters; and a particular strength is that the chapter authors don’t draw clear conclusions where there are none to be drawn. A justifiable clear conclusion is Farnsworth’s: that Government policy is bound to increase inequality in the UK. What he might also have said is that reduced withdrawal rates under the new Universal Credit will reduce inequality and will incentivise labour market activity. The lesson to draw is that reduced benefits withdrawal rates and an increase in universal benefits would both reduce inequality and incentivise labour market activity: both outcomes which would enhance the economic outlook and the social fabric.
