by Tyler Prochazka | Nov 29, 2016 | Opinion
Europe has received a lot of attention for its recent moves toward experimenting with a basic income policy. What has been lost in this focus are the developments that are taking place in the rest of the globe, including the world’s second biggest economy: China.
Cheng Furui is one of the organizers of the China Social Dividend/Basic Income Network, and has done extensive research on China’s social safety net. In the interview below, she said a basic income would resolve many of the problems facing China’s current welfare program.
As the international economy faces increasing automization, Cheng said basic income is a potent answer to this issue in China.
“I believe that basic income and China’s status quo are aligned because it is in accordance with the essence of both socialism and the market economy,” she said.
The full length interview is below:
What is different between Universal Basic Income and China’s Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (Dibao)？
Dibao is China’s Minimum Livelihood Guarantee program. Anyone with an income below the minimum can receive a supplementary income up to the standard. In this way, Dibao is unconditional: no one can take away someone’s right to the Dibao income. The Dibao only provides a grant to those that are below the Dibao income standard. Thus, the government must conduct strict evaluations of recipients’ economic situations, which creates a lot of implementation problems and issues of abuse. By contrast, Universal Basic Income provides the grant to every person, regardless of income. Moreover, China’s Dibao benefit has a large discrepancy across different regions, consistent with the regional economic inequality that China already faces. Here is more information for reference: China’s MCA.
How do the Chinese view basic income? Do the Chinese generally understand about this policy?
Most Chinese don’t know about the basic income concept. Nonetheless, there are some places that are currently carrying out this policy, although they do not call it basic income. The areas that are implementing basic income all have different situations. The differences are not just regional, even neighboring areas have large differences depending on the community members’ organizational depth and shape.
Why should China implement basic income? What type of impact would it have?
The foundation for China’s implementation of basic income comes from China’s public ownership system itself. State owned enterprises, urban land, and mineral resources already exist, much like Alaska in the United States. Every person should have a share of public resources. This relies on the profit from the public resources being utilized as a basic income revenue, not only does everyone receive equal payment. This means the government does not have to collect more taxes from the rich only to give back to every person.
Chinese history applies the profit from publicly owned resources to supplement the country’s public finances, therefore lowering the private sector’s tax rate. In turn, conducting large scale investment in service sector and infrastructure development, including constructing railroads, and the systems that support the economy such as education and healthcare. These systems provide benefits to the vast majority of people. During China’s period of urbanization and gradual improvement of infrastructure and even completion of these projects, the profit of public resources perhaps can be used as a benefit to each person. Certainly, this will lower society’s overall wage rate or working hours. Simultaneously, some places have collective ownership of resources, and most of Chinese social dividends come from these resources.
What is the status of China’s basic income movement?
The basic income concept is currently only being discussed among Chinese academics and there are currently few researchers of the policy. However, the general public is already exploring implementation of basic income, also it is genuinely that every person in those areas can enjoy the local basic income. For example, much of the revenue for basic income programs is contributed by the collective organizations’ dividend bonus.
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, rural China has implemented collectivization of land, the household farm quota system allows the individual to use the land for production, but they cannot sell the land to others. During the movement toward urbanization, one part of the land was acquired by the government. Some of these collective resources that were taken were compensated with urban-based resources, in turn producing new benefits. From there, it produced social dividends within these communities. Looking at the entire country, this was not a rare case.
In BIEN News, I recently introduced these types of cases. China is putting into effect the policy of ‘separation of three land rights’ (ownership, contracting right, and operating right), which will promote the land right equity investment Recently, our main work has focused on excavating the essence of these cases, evaluating the likelihood of wide-spread promotion of this policy. Under the recent pessimistic economic environment, we want to offer a feasible path forward.
Does basic income suit China currently? Does it fit with Chinese culture?
I believe that basic income and China’s status quo are aligned because it is in accordance with the essence of both socialism and the market economy. However, Chinese culture encourages labor and looks down upon laziness. With the development of automatization, machines will continue to replace human labor. As a result, Chinese people will start to rethink this issue. If a basic income is put in place, after it is implemented it is feasible that the entire country will uniformly cut down on the weekly work schedule. Previously China had a six-day work week, and now it has been cut down to five days. In the future, it is possible it can be reduced to a four-day work week.
Additionally, China’s various regions have had drastically different levels of development, and the cost of living differences are also quite large. The social security system has not yet achieved nationally uniform administration. Public resources and financial data also need to be gradually made more transparent. This lack of transparency has impeded the ability to evaluate the potential impact of basic income.
About the interviewee:
Cheng Furui is doing her Post-doctoral program in Chinese Academy of Social
Science. She got her PhD in Tsinghua University. Her research interest is social
policy. “Social Assistance and Poverty Alleviation Divergence: A Capability
Approach” is her $rst published book based on her doctoral dissertation,
which explores Chinese social safety net in details. She is a voluntary news
editor of BIEN now. She is also one of organizers of China Social
Dividend/Basic Income Network: bienchina.com
by Kate McFarland | Nov 24, 2016 | News
The Goenchi Mati Movement advocates for the reform of mining practices in the Indian state of Goa. Its proposals include the investment of all money from iron ore mining into a permanent fund, which would be used to finance a citizen’s dividend.
Similar to Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, the fund’s income would be distributed equally to all citizens in the form of an unconditional cash grant, providing all Goans with a basic income.
Founded in 2014, the Goenchi Mati Movement (GMM) aspires to reform mining practices that it believes to deprive residents of Goa their deserved share of the natural resources in their homeland, while also rapidly depleting these resources and damaging the environment. Describing the state’s mining practices, the GMM’s Manifesto says, “The total loss was enormous: nearly twice the state revenues, or over 25% of per capita income, or thrice the poverty line. The loss was effectively a per head tax equally on everyone. A few have become rich from our children’s inheritance. This is clearly not a reasonable situation.”
While iron ore mining has a long history in Goa, it expanded rapidly during the mid-2000s, and quickly became plagued with malpractice and illegal activity. In September 2012, the Supreme Court of India temporarily suspended mining in the state while hearing a public interest litigation. In its final judgement in April 2014, the Supreme Court declared all mining activities to have been illegal, largely due to mining companies’ lack of valid leases and licenses.
The environmental action group The Goa Foundation submitted a series of letters to the government of Goa in 2014, wherein it demanded the recovery of losses due to illegal mining and a restructured mining system based on the Goenchi Mati Principles. However, the government did not respond and began renewing the leases of Goa’s iron ore mines near the end of the year. By early 2015, the government had renewed the leases of 88 mines.
The GMM Manifesto
The Goenchi Mati Movement has published a Manifesto that outlines its proposal, which centers on six core principles (bold typeface in original):
1. We, the people of Goa, own the minerals in common. The state government is merely a trustee of natural resources for the people and especially future generations.
2. As we have inherited the minerals, we are simply custodians and must pass them on to future generations.
3. Therefore, if we mine and we sell our mineral resources, we must ensure zero loss, i.e. capture of the full economic rent (sale price minus cost of extraction, cost including reasonable profit for miner). Any loss is a loss to all of us and our future generations.
4. All the money received from our minerals must be saved in the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund, as already implemented all over the globe. Like the minerals, the Permanent Fund will also be part of the commons. The Supreme Court has ordered the creation of a Permanent Fund for Goan iron ore and already Rs. 94 crores [about 3.8 million USD] is deposited.
5. Any real income (after inflation) from the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund must only be distributed to all as a right of ownership, a Citizen’s Dividend. This is like the comunidade zonn, but paid to everyone. [The comunidades of Goa are traditional villages in which land is owned collectively. Comunidades pay an annual dividend, called the zonn, to residents.]
6. The implementation of these principles will be done in a transparent participatory process with the people of Goa.
The GMM launched its Manifesto at a press conference on Monday, November 21, and hopes soon to publish it in multiple languages, as well as to develop a variety of supplemental materials (e.g. animated explainer videos, video-based FAQs, and even songs and street theatre).
GMM’s Claude Alvares and Rahul Basu at press conference
The Permanent Fund and Dividend
As stated in the manifesto, an important first step towards the creation of a Goan iron ore permanent fund is already in place: in April 2014, the Supreme Court of India issued an order that mandated the establishment of such a fund, which presently holds Rs 94 crores (or about 3.8 million USD). Commenting on the significance of the permanent fund, Rahul Basu of the GMM states, “It is, to our knowledge, the first such permanent fund on intergenerational equity grounds to be ordered by judicial pronouncement. If it stands up to the legal challenges, which will then also clarify some aspects of the order, it can become a global legal precedent, which makes it potentially very powerful.” However, the Supreme Court’s order did not require that the permanent fund be used to finance a citizen’s dividend.
GMM Workspace
According to the Goenchi Mati Movement, the citizen’s dividend is a crucial component of the mining reforms for several reasons. First, it gives Goan citizens a stake in the minerals in their land, creating a stronger bond between the citizens and the commons (as one of GMM’s blog posts puts it).
Second, it leaves the government without money from the sale of the state’s minerals. In the absence of money from iron ore, the government might then be forced to tax its citizens to raise revenue. Following thinkers like Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (the authors of Why Nations Fail), GMM argues that this change would promote good governance: “If the government wants to do all the various good things that need to be done, let them make a case to the people directly. If the people feel the government is good, they will agree to whatever new tax is imposed.”
Third, it compensates for what GMM sees as a bald injustice. As Basu describes it, any appropriation of parts of the commons–such as minerals and the land containing them–is effectively a “per head tax” or a “negative UBI” (that is, a practice that takes a share of resources away from every citizen).
Further reflecting on the moral significance of the dividend, Basu comments:
“Fundamentally, we are turning a lump sum mineral into a perpetual stream of Citizen’s Dividend. The Citizen’s Dividend today is given equally to everyone, achieving intragenerational equity. The perpetual nature of the Citizen’s Dividend achieves intergenerational equity. In a sense, each generation benefits to the extent of the real income. From this, we get to a practical example of the Golden Rule (the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated oneself), but even across generations.”
GMM has been influenced by the model of Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Dividend, and also considers itself closely aligned in its thinking with Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based organization that promotes global action for the adoption of carbon tax and dividend policies.
Speaking about GMM, BIEN co-founder and honorary co-president Guy Standing said:
This is the optimum way of promoting community development while giving every man, woman and child a sense of basic security and pride in their community. It is enlightened, it is sensible, and it is eminently feasible.
Goan State Elections
With state elections to take place in early 2017, the Goenchi Mati Movement is urging Goans to vote only for politicians who will implement its Manifesto, and is currently devoting much of its attention to this political action.
As other sources confirm, mining policy is expected to be a central area of debate in the 2017 state elections. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a relatively young party in Goa, promises sustainable mining practices, while meanwhile calling for a doubling of the mining cap. Meanwhile, environmental groups such as the Goa Foundation oppose the AAP’s plans, calling for greater restrictions.
The two major parties in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress, were in power during the controversial and illegal practices documented by the Goa Foundation — the Congress while the illegal mining practice themselves were occurring, and the BJP when the leases of the companies were renewed.
GMM states, “We urge whichever Government is elected in 2017 to immediately cancel the leases and reframe a fair and just mining policy for the people of Goa. We request the Public to join our campaign, fight for what is rightfully theirs and urge them to vote for those politicians that will change the system.”
GMM has produced a short video to emphasize this message:
Other Activities
Outside of direct political action, the Goenchi Mati Movement has been adopting other strategies to raise awareness of its vision. For example, on November 11, it sponsored an art show intended to promote reflection on the shared inheritance of the citizens of Goa. While this initial show was centered on paintings, GMM plans to host a second art show featuring cartoons, and third featuring photography.
Basu states, “Artists are at the leading edge of thinking, and they influence the masses in subtle and long term ways.”
Scenes from GMM’s Art Exhibit
Additionally, the Goa Foundation is engaging in litigation — a challenge to the structure of the Goan permanent fund (including the demand for citizen’s dividend), and a challenge to the 2014-15 lease renewals of the mines — and beginning to undertake academic research.
GMM Members at Create-a-Thon
BI-Related Reading from GMM
Rahul Basu and Deepak Narayanan (August 3, 2016) “Viewpoint: What can we learn from a campaign for zero-loss mining in Goa?” Citizen’s Income Trust.
Connects the activities of the Goenchi Mati Movement to the worldwide movement for basic income. Published on the blog of BIEN’s UK affiliate, the Citizen’s Income Trust.
Goenchi Mati (September 20, 2016) “Why should all mineral receipts be saved in the Permanent Fund?”
Argues that mineral receipts should be saved only in a permanent fund.
Goenchi Mati (October 28, 2016) “Why a Citizen’s Dividend? Why only a Citizen’s Dividend?”
Addresses the counterargument that some of the revenue of the iron ore permanent fund should go to the government instead of directly to the citizens.
Longer Video on the Goenchi Mati Movement (22:59)
Thanks to Rahul Basu for supplying information and photos, and for reviewing an earlier draft of this article.
Cover Image CC Frederick Noronha
by Dave Clegg | Nov 16, 2016 | Opinion
The London-based Apolitical website’s article on basic income (BI) opens with “Money for nothing – it sounds like a utopia” and then looks at some examples of BI concepts that have already been applied around the world.
This phrase, “money for nothing” represents a commonly held bias that, when there is no commodity returned for the money, whether that commodity is a thing or someone’s labour, then there is no tangible value returned for the monies. This bias is widely held and promoted by many adherents of modern-day economic theories – a bias which too often dismisses, or simply ignores, the numerous personal and societal benefits that others have evaluated and documented as attributable to BI models.
The article does a fairly good job of maintaining its organizational claim of being “apolitical” in that it does not overtly favour any particular side in the issue. Yet that does not mean it has escaped the narrow-minded focus that so many politicians, their handlers, and media commentators alike have grudgingly adopted regarding the BI. In fact, the Apolitical article offers a wonderful example of the very limited ways in which the BI idea is being appraised, namely as simply a response to job automation and/or carrot-and-stick welfare programmes.
Apolitical does, occasionally make mention of the fundamental roots of a BI, roots that run far deeper than simply jobs and poverty. Yet to emphasize that a BI is simply about addressing poverty or unemployment is to overlook the very foundation of a BI – namely that such a policy is meant to be an expansion upon, and commitment to, something that should never be commodified, namely personal freedom. All other aspects of a BI flow from this fundamental premise. That is, if a nation and its people are sincerely committed to the idea of freedom itself.
The five points made by Apolitical in the above article are all legitimate and commonly discussed around the world. Yet the shallowness of these points is intricately tied to the same old penny-pinching issues that surround welfare, as well as the easy access to cheap human labour that employers have enjoyed for far too long.
Yes, a BI can help eliminate the stigma and overbearing bureaucracy associated with welfare programmes. It would also force employers to be truly competitive regarding employee wages and hours. However, the most valuable asset each and every person possesses is our time in this life. We should be the stewards of that time – not employers and not bureaucrats. It is the personal freedom provided by a BI that is truly important to everyone, not just the workforce and welfare recipients.
A BI would allow individuals to tend to family and personal concerns without the anxiety of how to survive without a “job” income during these times of personal need. For example, if a family member severely injured as the result of a car accident. The family of this person may be too young for jobs, or on very low income as they had been relying upon the injured family member for income and cannot afford a carer to help in these times. In this case, a BI would help tremendously. Some might say that they can seek a uber accident attorney Glendale or a personal injury lawyer in order to seek compensation and financial security. Indeed these cases can bring great compensation, but court cases can take time, what will the family do in the meantime? Again, a BI would allow individuals to tend to family and personal concerns should anything happen. There may be no greater freedom than to have the time and economic stability necessary to order our lives as we, ourselves, see fit, rather than as employers demand, as is becoming far too common these days.
Politicians are slowly coming to accept that individuals are the best stewards of their monies, not bean-counting governments who tend to value the beans over the people the beans are intended for.
Let us examine each of Apolitical’s five points to see how personal freedom is addressed here.
1. Governments are not thinking the same as tech optimists
Apolitical is right about this and politicians are notoriously slow to respond to social changes of any kind, never mind one of this magnitude. Yes, the tech optimists foresee an evolutionary step in human time management when robotics and automation take over the monotony and the drudgery of the repetitive and injury-prone tasks found in so many labour-intensive “jobs”. Of course, these robotic inventions will not come soon enough to stop so many of our hardworking population from getting injured. In the meantime, if you’ve been injured at work, you will likely be entitled to personal injury compensation. Hopefully, the workforce of tomorrow will mean fewer people will have to take legal action in the future. If at all an employee needs to take some legal action but do not know where to head out for the same, check for firms similar to Douglas Beam, P.A. We should create a new workforce that is far more reliable (never taking time off), disposable (without regrets or complaints), and economically more efficient than human beings.
From the technologist’s viewpoint, a BI becomes an essential aspect of employment and personal advancement because of the accelerating pace of technological advancement. Every new innovation requires that the humans who will be utilizing those innovations undergo time-consuming training and up-skilling. These advances can even lead to whole new careers for which a BI would be the springboard to pursue those educational and up-skilling goals. To tech experts, this is not “money for nothing” but instead an investment in the future of the nation, its economic infrastructure, its people and its economy.
But there is also a very real need to understand how a BI frees workers – especially those who only have labour, rather than any marketable skills or training, to sell – from the spectre of destitution and homelessness if they are unable to find work, or simply to feed and/or shelter themselves on the meager, subsistence wages offered today to unskilled labourers.
Of course, time management in this case refers only to the workplace. What is overlooked here is the personal freedom that a BI introduces into the optimist’s time management scheme. A BI would provide an individual with the economic freedom to then choose to acquire more skills or education, or to spend more time with family, or to take a much-needed break. This freedom is of great value to the individual, as well as their future prospects, but has little or no meaning to many economists.
Apolitical, however, does make a very good point about welfare reform. It is true that eradicating the expensive and needlessly patronizing welfare bureaucracies would entail huge cash savings for governments at national, provincial/state and municipal levels everywhere – savings that could be utilized far more efficiently and effectively when incorporated into a BI.
2. People already get money for nothing
Actually people get money from their government because they are deemed, by their government, to be in need and it is a government’s principal responsibility to succor to its citizens in times of need. While Apolitical talks about how “money for nothing already exists in the state pension” system, it ignores a number of other social safety net programmes such as health care, welfare, student loans, disability, make-work projects, employee subsidies, food banks, and shelters, to name a just a few of the most common.
Social safety net programmes always incur infrastructure and staffing costs associated with the policing and distribution of these monies. A BI removes the stigma associated with so many of these programmes via its universality but it cannot ignore the special needs associated with people such as the disabled, seniors, and the unemployed. Their special circumstances can easily entail more than simply a “free money” infusion involving things such as in home support, accessibility of public buildings, mobility aids, wheelchair-friendly streets and curbs, and emotional and mental supports to deal with chronic and acute complications, to name just a few.
Apolitical also mentions the Alaska Fund, a decades old statewide “free money” programme that, today, is surrounded by much controversy, with some demanding the money be used, instead, to fund state social programmes while others are happy for the money to be put directly into the hands of the people themselves.
This is a very good example of how the assets of a community – its resources, both natural and human – are the heart and soul of its economy. However, the Alaska Fund’s greatest feature is that it offers good, sound support for the premise that some of the wealth flowing from a community’s resources should be returned to the people that comprise the community.
The debate here is not whether “free money” should be distributed to the citizenry, but rather how much and in what manner.
3. The schemes in the developing world aren’t really analogous
Apolitical is absolutely right to point out that the drastically modified BI programmes implemented in Namibia, India, and Brazil cannot be directly applied in more developed areas. These programmes are largely a response to severe destitution and poverty in those countries, while here in North America the BI is framed as a response to automation and welfare inequities.
However, Apolitical does recognize that there is a self-empowerment and entrepreneurial spirit that blossoms within the poorest individuals in the above-mentioned countries once they have been freed to make their own choices of how best to utilize their time and abilities to address their own needs and interests.
These observations correlate well with Canada’s own Dauphin Manitoba Mincome BI programme, which ran for five years. Mincome was well monitored and documented at a variety of levels and interests. Documentation that highlighted the many personal advantages derived from a BI. These advantages included the reduction of both individual and family stress levels, greater ability to cope with family issues and, most importantly, noticeable improvements in children’s health and growth due to better nutrition which lead to higher learning evaluations. While some people did indeed leave the workforce, they did so to upgrade their education and skills, to attend to personal and family issues, or simply to take a much needed break.
All of these findings amount to huge social and personal savings that invariably strengthen and improve communities, yet, once again, they are not benefits that economists are able to quantify or put a monetary value on and are too often deemed to be without value.
4. It actually all comes down to incentives
Here Apolitical addresses the commonly held fear that a BI would act as a disincentive to “working,” as if “paid employment” should be every person’s preoccupation rather than the management of their lives. However, Apolitical cites Hugh Segal, a Canadian senator who has been a long-time advocate for BI programmes and who laments the very real disincentives to improving one’s life that have been built into Canada’s social programmes. This is why Senator Segal has long applauded the personal empowerment that a BI could provide to all Canadians.
It is here that Apolitical acknowledges Sam Altman of Y Combinator – a US private investment firm – who sees a BI as the seed money necessary to provide the personal freedom allowing individuals to be economically empowered to address the rapidly changing education and training demands of a technologically driven economy. Of course, Altman seems far more interested in employing a BI to address the demands of technology and its impact upon production and the workforce than in actually addressing personal freedom per se.
Apolitical is absolutely right to acknowledge that BI differs from existing, welfare-style social programmes and highlights the divide as between those who insist upon “incentives” used coercively to promote job seeking and those who support the “freedom to choose” as incentive enough for anyone.
5. It’s not utopia or bust
Apolitical wisely concludes that, if supporters of a BI succeed, “…they will establish the principle that you can simply give people money and trust them to use it in a way beneficial to themselves and, indirectly, to society.” This is a sentiment long-shared by those who advocate for BI and wonderfully demonstrates that this sentiment is central to personal freedom and the creation of an empowered population. For Apolitical and the rest of us only time will tell.
by Kate McFarland | Nov 7, 2016 | News
David Thigpen, Research Affiliate at Institute for the Future, has written a short report on basic income for the progressive American think tank Roosevelt Institute.
The report considers universal basic income primarily as a response to the rise of the gig economy, increase in precarious work arrangements, and decline in full-time permanent employment. In Thigpen’s words, these changes in the economy leave the country “on the verge of a critical dilemma”:
If the traditional form of work—full-time employment paying middle class wages with benefits—is no longer a realistic expectation, how will we sustain a large middle class in the future? And if the spending power of millions of middle-class families is sharply reduced, what will be the effect on economic growth? These are the big questions universal income addresses (p. 5).
In the remainder of the report, Thigpen outlines different types of basic income proposals, looking especially at two general ways in which a basic income might be funded: taxation and revenues derived from common assets (as in the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend).
Thigpen recommends a combination of both funding models, taxes and co-ownership, to finance a basic income. He also advises that a basic income “should not reduce the amount of money allocated to the poor” and that “for tactical reasons” the initial level of the basic income should be modest (p. 8).
Read the report here:
David E. Thigpen (October 2016) “Universal Income: What Is It, and Is It Right for the U.S.?” Roosevelt Institute.
Reviewed by Robert Gordon.
“Uber” photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Melies The Bunny.
by BIEN | Oct 18, 2016 | News, Testimonies
André Coelho (credit to: Ann-Kathrin Anthon)
What made you become an activist for basic income, and devote so much time to it?
A revolution is taking place here and now, and each person has a choice: to be an active part in that revolution (to work for it to succeed), to be a passive part in it (to let it happen, if it must), or to fight against it. For me, the latter is just plain nonsensical. To be passive does not quite go along with my character, so I guess I could only go with the first one.
I identify with this revolutionary course – the implementation of basic income – because it’s about recognizing the humanity in us all, of our birth right to a decent living, and enough freedom to actually pursue happiness in this life.
What are other terms or phrases for ideas associated with, but not the same as, Basic Income (BI)? What characterizes them?
In most welfare states there are social benefits in place, paid in cash or in the form of tax credits. However, all of them are conditional, usually on income and/or willingness to take up a job. In Portugal, for instance, there is a minimum insertion income (RSI), which is only given to people who clearly show they have no other source of income.
There are also, for example, child benefits, disability benefits, income assistance…a whole set of income redistribution schemes, which always entail some conditionality. The only exceptions I know of, other than basic income pilot projects, are the Alaska and the Macau dividends. The latter two dividends, although unconditional, are not basic (not enough to cover basic expenses).
What makes the BI plan of action unique?
If I can put my finger on one main feature, I would say it is its unconditional nature. That’s what makes people roll their eyes around. What? Now we’re giving all this money to people, even if they don’t work? That’s just plain unfair.
Well, of course this is a short sighted opinion at best, and a plain lie at worst. It’s a limited view on our humanity. Usually people view themselves as active and willing to contribute with their work, but then are suspicious that their neighbours will do the same.
Of course that if everyone thinks this way we’ll arrive at an impossible proposition: that everyone is active and willing, while not being active nor willing, at the same time. But apart from our personal sensibilities, results from basic income pilot projects show that people contribute as much or more to society with their work, while receiving a basic income.
And even when slight decreases are observed, these are coupled with investments in education.
What are the most common success stories of BI or similar programs? Any failures?
The basic income pilot projects I usually cite are the Namibian, Indian and Canadian experiences. The first two were experiments in very poor, rural contexts, while the Canadian one was both urban and rural, involving the entire local population.
In all these cases, people receiving the basic income did not stop working (clearly the opposite in the Namibian and Indian cases), health conditions improved, as well as education indicators. There were also other benefits, such as reduced crime rates (in Namibia and India).
I think that, in the context of basic income experimentations, there cannot be ‘failures’. If done properly, these experiments aim to widen our knowledge, while temporarily helping the populations in question.
Of course that, as it was the case in the United States experiments, the results can be “spun” in different ways for political purposes. But that is always a risk attached to any experiment, especially those related with social behaviour.
What country seems the most progressive and forward thinking in implementation of BI?
According to news information around these days, Finland seems to be the part of the world most willing to formally take up the idea of trying basic income. Finnish officials and partners are developing an experiment, which is setup to start in 2017.
However, I would not say that translates necessarily into greater progressiveness than other regions of the world. The Finish experiment is already plagued by several shortcomings, even before it has started (although I still think it’s worth it).
The Canadian central and regional governments, and particularly the latter, are also seriously considering experimenting with the basic income. As well as regional Dutch officials, who are already developing their own basic income experiments (similar to Finland’s experiment).
Let’s also not forget the Swiss case, that recently held a national referendum on the subject. And also Spain, particularly in the Basque region. However, the interest in basic income is growing quickly around the world, so who knows who will implement it first?
Activist networks for basic income are also spreading. At this moment, BIEN already has 30 national and regional affiliates, and this is expected to rise in the next few years.
What is your work on BI?
At Basic Income News, I do writing, editing, training and coordinating. I also represent BIEN, on occasions, as an advocate for basic income in international meetings (up until now, related to the CO-ACTE project).
Locally, I also participate in some actions for our activist network in Portugal, by writing articles, speaking at venues and organizing events.
Any advice for would-be policy makers or activists about strategies for the implementation of BI?
I guess that if I could choose one piece of advice it would be not to consider basic income as a ‘miraculous’ cure for all social problems. Basic income is a helpful tool, even a crucial one, but cannot replace a “systems approach” thinking about society, a holistic view.
Also I would recommend to self-analyse and make clear why each of us is defending basic income, and how we think it should be implemented. Because the devil is in the details, and basic income can get “dirty” when analysed in its implementation depth.
I have been, more than once, challenged by the possibility of a “right-wing” basic income, which would come as a replacement of all other social benefits and welfare state public systems, including health and education.
This approach to basic income is common among the “right-wing” side of the political spectrum. It is dangerous and a real possibility which all activists should be aware of if they really care about the wellbeing of present and future society.
Thank you for your time, André.
