by Scott Santens | Oct 31, 2014 | Opinion
As reported here earlier this month, Green Party candidate for Congress Ian Schlakman of Maryland’s Second Congressional District has made the Basic Income Guarantee a major issue in his campaign. Basic Income News asked him for an interview and he took the time from his campaign to answer our questions.
I first learned about a negative income tax when I was about 20. I really liked the idea but the implementation seemed a bit confusing. A year and a half ago I began looking at parties and races for the 2014 elections. I also started seeing news stories about Universal Basic Income (UBI) from Switzerland. While running, I got a crash course in how to create focus and maintain consistency in messaging.
I initially entered the race due to my cyber security credentials and to challenge Rep. Dutch Ruppersburger on his handling of Snowden and the NSA (he is the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee). Later on, I decided that my core issue would be a UBI.
Messaging a complex idea like UBI definitely posed some challenges. First we came up with “Think BIG with a Basic Income Guarantee”. But then a high-ranking Green Party US (GPUS) staffer suggested that we change, or explain BIG by bringing up Social Security. He also pointed out that BIG has been in the GPUS platform for years.
Now we use “Social Security for All” in our messaging. Frankly, it’s the easiest way to explain a UBI to everyday people. An excellent side-effect of this is that in a day and age when Social Security is being attacked, it makes a clear distinction that I would fight to expand Social Security to everyone.
As a candidate for the Green Party, what effects do you believe a basic income will have on traditionally considered key components of the Green Party platform like a cleaner environment, progress on climate change, and the pursuit of sustainability?
The challenge was to show that the Greens are more than just environmentalist. I relied a lot on the Green Party platform. Take a look at it. It’s huge, it’s thorough, and it’s very well- thought-out. The platform already had a lot of great reasons for a BIG and several other economic justice and economic stimulus ideas.
Our economic system demands that you make an income to pay for your essentials. I personally believe that’s wrong. In a world of such extreme abundance, we should be moving to a “Post Scarcity” age. But as a Congressman, it’s not my job to turn my opinion into legislation.
The reality that you have to work no matter what to pay for life’s essentials has far-reaching consequences on the environment and the health of communities. If someone desperately needs work, (like so many of us do) they have to work anywhere that will hire them. This means if only high-polluting, low-wage jobs that are harmful to the environment are available in your community, such as fast-food or mountaintop removal mining projects, then that’s where you have to work or you won’t be able to survive.
A Social Security for All program would be a great step in making sure you don’t have to choose between harming your community and paying your rent. Also, it would allow entrepreneurs a bit of breathing room when they begin their business ventures. So if you wanted to quit your job in fast-food and start a business as a local tailor, a BIG would really help while you’re in the crucial startup months.
Scott Santens, Interviewer
When we started pushing for a BIG, we started gaining lots of Twitter followers but they were mostly from Europe. A BIG was (and arguably still is) relatively unheard of in the USA. It became clear rather quickly that explaining what a BIG is and why it’s an excellent idea was going to be harder than I anticipated. When we’re on Reddit or Facebook it’s easy to assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about when you mention BIG or UBI. When you have between 30 to 120 seconds to describe what you would do on Social Security in a debate to an audience that’s never heard of BIG, let’s just say it’s tough.
When you run for public office and you take on a responsibility to the public, you have to realize that most people spend their spare time with their families, fixing up their homes, working a second job, working a third job, etc. You have to be willing to take on the challenge of explaining big (no pun intended) concepts in very brief sound bites.
To answer your question directly, Social Security for All is my preferred method of explaining a BIG. If elected, I would work with a coalition of Democrats who want to expand Social Security and Republicans who are familiar with things like Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax. My goal is to create some truly bipartisan legislation that would give everyone a BIG.
You’ve mentioned universal healthcare and a $15 minimum wage as part of your platform of “thinking BIG” with basic income. What other big ideas do you want the opportunity to fight for in Congress?
I would like to deescalate our military presence abroad. I would work with progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans to end current military actions overseas, close foreign military bases (especially in countries that don’t want us there) and bring our troops home. I would take every opportunity to stop military drone operations. I would never authorize spending for what Ron Paul calls “illegal wars”. Congress (including my opponent, Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger) just authorized a half BILLION dollars for military action in Syria. I would have voted against this. I don’t care what party the President is from, if they want money for a war then they need to follow the Constitution and get Congress to declare war. America should be seen as a country that takes military violence very seriously and follows its own Constitution.
Some suggest that having a basic income should lead to a more civic-minded and politically-engaged citizenry. Do you consider basic income one step toward weakening corruption and strengthening democracy? What other steps would you take in Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on government?
YES! As I mentioned previously, far too many people are working over 40 hours a week, more than 1 job, etc. This leaves no time for art, mental health, recreation and democratic engagement! This is a huge problem.
In Maryland, we have a fantastic organization called GMOM (Get Money out of Maryland) that I’ve worked with. I know they have chapters in all 50 states and I would encourage people to find their state and local chapters.
How can those interested in helping make basic income a reality help you and your campaign?
We as activists, advocates and academics tend to gloss over the need for financial and volunteer support when it comes to elections. A BIG will not just appear one day. We all need to support candidates that take the risk of supporting something as exceptional as a BIG.
There are a few Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and independents that know about and support a UBI. But remember it’s been a staple of the Green Party for years. So make an effort to contact your local Green candidates and donate some money or some time.
As for my campaign, please spread the word on social media! Please consider a donation even if you only have $5. And if you really want to get involved, sign-up to volunteer on our website at ian42.com/volunteer. We are focusing on making phone calls from now until the end of the campaign to make sure our supporters get out and vote. If you’re able to help out (either in the Baltimore area or from across the country) please let us know!
by Harry Pitts | Oct 19, 2014 | Research
Speaking as part of a roundtable discussion in the McKinsey Quarterly, Jeremy Howard suggests that we have to ‘accept that in this new world, there’s a large group of people who can’t really add economic value anymore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get to live a decent human life.’ In response to this, ‘we have to start thinking about the policy implications—like a basic living wage, which Germany will be introducing, or a negative income tax, which has been off the agenda for decades but deserves to be back on it. I think people should start to think about these policy implications because the point at which we need to make decisions will be upon us suddenly.’
The full article is available here:
Erik Brynjolfsson, Jeremy Howard, Robert Schiller, “The Great Decoupling”, McKinsey Quarterly, September 2014
by Josh Martin | Aug 20, 2014 | Research
[Josh Martin]
Fitsnews decided to write on the basic income as a response to the debate started by Zwolinski at Cato Unbound on the basic income. Fitsnews provides a basic introduction to the negative income tax and provides some humor by noticing that the basic income guarantee has the same abbreviation as the infamous Notorious B.I.G.
Fitsnews, “The Notorious (Basic Income Guarantee)”, Fitsnews, 4 August 2014.
The Notorious (Basic Income Guarantee) (Source: Fitsnews)
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 24, 2014 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
Heidi Laura, of Danish Weekendavisen, conducted this interview (by email) with Karl Widerquist in late February 2014. She used only parts of the interview for her article in Weekendavisen, and she gave BI News permission to use the interview in its entirety. Karl Widerquist is the editor of BI News, co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network, and an Associate Professor at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University. He is the author of Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No.
Heidi Laura: There are several models for a basic income; could you comment on those most commonly promoted and to what extent each of them would increase the equality and freedom of the citizens?
Karl Widerquist: It’s better to say that there are two main models of the Basic Income Guarantee, (BIG) rather than several models of Basic Income (BI). We’re dealing with terms used in very different ways by many different people. So, it’s not really possible to say what definitions are definitive, but let me explain the most commonly used definitions. BIG is the government ensured guaranteed that no citizen’s income will fall below a certain level for any reason—including the refusal to work. Usually that level is defined as enough to meet basic needs, and a guaranteed income below that level is usually considered a partial BIG.
There are two ways to guarantee no one’s income falls below a certain level: through a BI and/or through a negative income tax (NIT). Basic Income gives a regular unconditional income to all citizens on an individual basis without either a means test or a work requirement. This means everyone gets the income whether or not they have other income. But it does not mean everyone’s income goes up. If we introduced a BI, high-income earners would receive it, but they’d also pay more taxes, so on balance they would have lower income. Like the BI, the NIT has no work requirement, but it is means tested. It ensures that no citizen’s income falls below a certain level by paying only the citizens who need it. Under most plans the NIT is gradually phased out so that an individual always has a financial incentive to earn more.
Heidi Laura -Weekendavisen
Within the BI alone, in one sense there is only one model: a universal grant to all citizens without exception. It can be higher or lower, but it always follows that model. To the extent that there are different models of BI, they could be defined by the financing of if. Some people link BI to income taxes, others to sales or VAT taxes, and others to land, natural resource, and rent taxes. This third model links BI to assets over which citizens have a claim of joint ownership. You want to live on our land? Pay into our BI fund. You want to drill or mine our resources? Pay into our BI fund.
Laura: Can the current social systems in the Western world be called distributively unjust?
Widerquist: Yes, the current welfare system is stingy and punitive. Even some of the more generous social welfare systems waste a lot of time supervising the poor and making them prove their worth, as if the mere fact of being poor made them morally suspect. We—the voters—need to get over our ridiculous belief that we are the moral superiors of those with less money.
Laura: What do you see as the greatest advantage of a basic income?
Widerquist: The greatest advantage of basic income is freedom. We put the poor and dissatisfied in society in the position where they have few real choices, no real possibility to reject subordination to others. They cannot use the resources of the land directly for their own benefit. Society makes rules to ensure that all the Earth is owned by someone else. If some other group owns a resource essential to your survival, they own you. The only legal way to access the resources of the Earth are to work for—i.e. take orders from, be a subordinate to—someone who owns some of those resources. If you reject that subordinate position you have few options—eat out of a garbage can or beg perhaps. You can try to get money from existing social welfare systems, but as we’ve discussed, you’ll find them punitive and overbearing in their rules.
Laura: An often heard argument against basic income is that it would reduce the incentive to work; what is the scholarly reply to this argument?
Widerquist: The very question reflects the socially unjust assumptions embedded in all or most existing social welfare systems and in the political mentality of many of our leaders. If someone is unwilling to accept a job offer, we jump to the assumption that he or she is a bad or lazy person for refusing to work. But there are too sides to the job-offer coin. Why don’t we assume the employer is bad or stingy for not making a better offer? By framing the question in the way we do, we have sided with the more privileged people in our society. Assuming they treat their inferiors just fine, and if the inferiors refuse to accept whatever their superiors offer, we can judge them as bad people. We thereby put the privileged in the position where they can make very bad job offers and expect to have them accepted. We create poverty wages.
I think we’ve got it exactly wrong. I believe in freedom. If the two parties don’t agree to a price in a setting in which both of them have the power to say no, then it doesn’t mean one of them is a bad person, it means that the deal is bad: it doesn’t work for the two people. We need to make workers free to say no to give employers the incentive to pay good wages and provide good working conditions. If we make our workers so desperate that they have to take any job offered, we should expect job offers to be horrible.
Another problem with that question is that as economists usually define the term, a Basic Income (BI) has no work disincentive at all. It is given to everyone whether or not they work. You don’t have to quit your job to get the BI. It has no marginal incentive against work. If people have a BI, and someone comes along with an attractive job offer, people have nothing to lose by taking that job. If jobs can’t provide enough to encourage that free people to take them, if they’re just barely getting by, they’re probably not productive enough to be worth doing. Everyone has his price. If we as a society want people to work, we have to pay wages high enough and working conditions good enough to attract people to choose work.
Laura: How would you describe the study of basic income as a scholarly field today? Is it growing?
Widerquist: It is growing, but not nearly as much as activism on BI is growing. As the editor of BI News and the USBIG NewsFlash since 1999, I’ve watched developments on BIG closely for more than 13 years, and something very new has happened in the last year or two is amazing. People across Europe and all over the world are suddenly working to get BIG on the political agenda in a wide diversity of countries. The work is going on in different ways in different places, and for me, it’s just great to see.
Laura: Do you see the upcoming vote in Switzerland as a sign of a growing or renewed interest in Basic Income?
Widerquist: Yes, the Swiss movement is the most impressive achievement so far of the new activism for the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). In a country of only about 8 million people, they managed to get 127,000 people to sign a petition demanding not only BI but a very substantial BI. They helped to jump start a flurry of media interest which has not yet died down. The European Citizens Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income was also an impressive achievement. They didn’t reach the enormous threshold necessary to trigger a response from the European Council, but they helped to create a movement across Europe, including in places such as Hungary and Slovenia, which have never had a movement before.
There are non-governmental organizations attempting to test or employ the BIG model in Africa, Indian, and South America. There’s a new organization promoting a single BIG across the Southern African Development Community. It’s been endorsed by the Occupy Movement in North America. South Korea is looking into hosting the next Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network. The movement is all around the world.
If your readers want to get involved, they can contact me at karl@widerquist.com. If they want to know more they should visit www.binews.org. This website provides daily updated news about BIG from all around the world. They should also go to www.basicincome.org—the website of the Basic Income Earth Network—which has information about BIG, our upcoming Congress, and links to national affiliates around the world.
Basic Income, Weekendavisen
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 22, 2014 | News, The Indepentarian
The national parliament of Cyprus has introduced a policy with a name that translates as “guaranteed minimum income” or “minimum guaranteed income.” The name sounds like a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). It is not, but it appears to be a significant step in that direction. The law was enacted 10 July 2014, and the first recipients started signing up on 14 July 2014. According to the Cyprus Daily, the law provides a minimum income of 480 Euros for Cypriot citizen, “irrespective of whether they are unemployed, pensioners or self-employed. … For every additional family member over 14, including the wife or husband, 50% of the initial amount of €480 (240) will be added to the benefit. For members under 14, an additional 30% (€144) will be added.” According to Cyprus Mail, the government arrived at those amounts using figures including the average cost of rent in Cyprus, cost of living and entertainment and others.
The guarantee is means tested—making it closer to the Negative Income Tax than to the Basic Income form of BIG. Income must be “less than the real needs of the household,” and wealth must be less than $100,000 Euros for each member of the household. The new guaranteed minimum replace most existence state benefits in Cyprus. When the government proposed the idea of a “guaranteed minimum income” last year, the prime minister said it would come with a work expectation. Available reports so far make no mention of whether the final version included work requirements or how strict they are. However, the combination of benefits, the effort to meet basic needs through cash benefits, and the ability to keep them whether employed or not is a significant step in the direction of a true basic income guarantee, a step that few if any Western industrialized nations have yet taken.
For more information on the new law see:
InCyprus, “Guaranteed minimum income approved.” The Cypress Daily: InCyprus.com, 11 July 2014
Cyprus Mail, “Large family benefits not to be impacted by GMI.” Cyprus Mail, July 22, 2014
Cyprus Mail, “Our View: Public sector cuts could finance better welfare system.” Cyprus Mail, July 22, 2014
Applicants sign up for Guarantteed Minimum Income -Cyprus Mail
