by Kate McFarland | Dec 8, 2016 | News
In a unanimous decision on Tuesday, December 7, the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada, agreed to “pursue a partnership with the federal government for the establishment of a universal basic income pilot project” on PEI.
Peter Bevan-Baker
CC BY-SA 3.0
The motion was originally proposed by Green Party Leader Peter Bevan-Baker, and received the support of all four political parties in the province, which have been united for well over a year in their support for investigating a basic income guarantee (BIG).
Bevan-Baker drew inspiration from past experiments in Manitoba (the Mincome trial of the late 1970s) as well as the pilot scheduled to begin next year in Ontario. He believes that PEI’s small size — the island has only about 150,000 residents — would make it an ideal setting for an additional pilot study. Hugh Segal, adviser for the Ontario pilot, has also encouraged other provinces, such as PEI, to run their own trials of basic income.
According to Bevan-Baker, a pilot project is necessary “so we can evaluate whether the benefits outweigh the costs” — as quoted in a CBC News report about the successful motion — where the costs, in his view, might include a work disincentive effect as well as financial costs to the government. The main benefit specified in the motion is the reduction or elimination of poverty. However, the motion also mentions many other possible positive effects, including “local economic growth, supporting entrepreneurship, reducing administrative complexity and costs, improving working conditions, reducing crime, improving health, and helping to build vibrant rural communities.” CBC News quotes Bevan-Baker as saying, “A universal basic income could enable the greatest unleashing of human potential ever seen.”
The full text of the motion is as follows:
WHEREAS implementing a universal basic income in Prince Edward Island would significantly reduce or potentially eliminate poverty in the province;
AND WHEREAS a universal basic income would likely have many other positive effects,
including local economic growth, supporting entrepreneurship, reducing administrative
complexity and costs, improving working conditions, reducing crime, improving health, and helping to build vibrant rural communities;
AND WHEREAS all four Prince Edward Island political parties have indicated their support for exploring a universal basic income;
AND WHEREAS the federal government has indicated an interest in exploring a universal basic income;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Legislative Assembly urge government to pursue a partnership with the federal government for the establishment of a universal basic income pilot project in Prince Edward Island;
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Government shall provide an update on the progress of this initiative in every session of this assembly.
The motion is still only an early step toward a basic income pilot in PEI. If the province is to actually implement a pilot, it will require cooperation and support from the federal government. The PEI Department of Family and Human Services has previously issued the following statement:
The Province supports the concept of the Basic Income Guarantee. We have been consistent in our response that any pilot project in this area would require active and committed federal participation. We are always open to partnerships with the federal government to improve the financial well being of the residents in our province.
No specific model for the basic income has been proposed for the (possible) pilot. The Working Group for a Liveable Income — an advocacy group that has been instrumental in promoting BIG in PEI for over a decade — explicitly supports a negative income tax (NIT), in which “if the person receiving BIG gets other personal income, the maximum level benefit will be affected by a reduction rate”. Segal has also recommended an NIT for the Ontario pilot. While ‘universal basic income’ is often used to refer to a universal cash grant with no reduction based on other earnings, in contrast to a NIT (cf. “What is the Basic Income Guarantee?”), it is not certain whether the PEI motion intends the phrase in this sense (which would entail that PEI is pursuing a form of BIG less commonly discussed in Canada).
References
Motion No. 83, Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island.
“P.E.I. MLAs effusive in their support for basic-income pilot project,” CBC News, December 7, 2016.
Kevin Yarr, “’A rare opportunity’ for basic income pilot project on P.E.I,” CBC News, November 23, 2016.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Government of Prince Edward Island
by BIEN | Dec 3, 2016 | Bios & background Info
Karl Widerquist in 2014
Karl Widerquist was vice-chair of BIEN from May 2017 to August 2018, after serving as co-chair from October 2010 to May of 2017, and as a member of the executive committee from 2004 to 2010. He is a political philosopher and economist at Georgetown University-Qatar. He is the co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network, which he chaired from 1999 to 2008.
Widerquist is best known as an advocate of Basic Income. But he is also an interdisciplinary academic writer who has published in journals in fields as diverse as economics, politics, philosophy, and anthropology. He is a consistent critic of propertarianism (also known as right-libertarianism or libertarianism), Social Contract Theory, and the Lockean proviso. 8, and he cofounded in 2011. He has been a commentator on several television, radio, and print networks.
Contents
- Biography
- Advocacy of Basic Income
- Empirical and anthropological criticism of contemporary political theory
- Other political and economic theories
- Bibliography
- Media appearances
Biography
Karl Widerquist as a grad student-musician in 1993
Karl Widerquist was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1965. His family moved to Cassopolis, Michigan in 1969, and he grew up there. He completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at the University of Michigan in 1987. For several years Widerquist pursued both music and economics. He was the original bass player for Michael McDermott, and play in several indie bands in New York in the 1990s.[i]
Widerquist completed a Ph.D. in economics at the City University of New York in 1996, later working at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and the Educational Priorities Panel. He was a Hoover Fellow at the Université catholique de Louvain where he worked with Philippe Van Parijs.[ii]
Widerquist received a second doctorate in Political Theory at the University of Oxford in 2006, and then worked as a Fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Since 2009, he has been an Associate Professor at Georgetown University-Qatar.[iii]
Advocacy of Basic Income
Widerquist claims to have been a supporter of some form of Basic Income Guarantee since he heard the topic discussed on an episode of Milton Friedman’s television show, Free to Choose, in 1980, when he was only 15 years old.[iv] But he did not start writing, working, or publishing on the topic until the late 1990s.[v]
Michael A. Lewis, of Hunter College and USBIG
Widerquist has worked on Basic Income as an economist, a political theorist, a public policy analyst, and organizer. In 1999, Widerquist cofounded the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network along with Michael A. Lewis, Fred Block, Charles M. A. Clark, and Pamela Donovan. Widerquist chaired the organization until 2008 and edited its email NewsFlash until 2014.
Widerquist has been the co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) since 2008. In 2011, Widerquist and Yannick Vanderborght cofounded BIEN’s news website, Basic Income News, and severed as its principle writer and editor until 2014, and he still writes for it occasionally. He and BIEN’s other co-chair, Louise Haagh chartered BIEN as a non-profit organization in 2016 and oversaw the expansion of BIEN’s activities.[vi]
Widerquist’s writing on Basic Income includes several articles reexamined the results of the Negative Income Tax experiments conducted in the United States and Canada in the 1970s.[vii] He and Michael Howard co-edited two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, addressing it as a small model of a Basic Income.[viii][ix]
Michael Howard holding umbrella and Karl Widerquist in the rain, New York in 2017
He has been critical of the “reciprocity” or “exploitation” objection to Basic Income. Under these objections people who receive Basic Income without work are said to fail in the duty of reciprocity by accepting social benefits without contributing to their production and thereby they are said to exploit workers who do produce those benefits. Widerquist’s responses hinge on the distribution of ownership of resources, which according to him, violates the principle of reciprocity because the law gives ownership of the Earth’s resources to a limited group of people without compensation for the loss of the commons for others. Therefore, Widerquist argues, to be consistent with reciprocity those who hold resources must make an unconditional payment to those who do not.[x]
If this argument works, instead of violating reciprocity, Basic Income is required by that principle. Widerquist further argues that Basic Income, so conceived, does not not exploit workers because it does not matter how one gets control of resources (through work, inheritance, or any other means). What matters is that anyone’s ownership of resources must not be part of a system that imposes propertyless on others.[xi] The absence of propertylessness is important not only to ensure that the privatization of resources is consistent with reciprocity but also to protect all workers from vulnerability to exploitation by their employers.[xii]
This view of property rights as something that both protects owners from interference and imposes interference on nonowners is a running theme throughout much of Widerquist’s writing and his arguments for Basic Income. This idea is closely related to left-libertarian or Georgist views of property, which are based on the principles of self-ownership and some principle of equal access to natural resources.[xiii] Left-libertarians argue that this view of resource rights is more consistent with negative freedom than any other view because the establishment and enforcement of property rights inherently interferes with non-owners in very substantive ways and in a very negative sense of the term.[xiv]
The first of two books laying out Widerquist’s theory, “Justice as the Pursuit of Accord.”
Widerquist does not endorse the whole of either of those theories of justice. Instead he presents his theory of justice as a separate ideology, which he calls “justice as the pursuit of accord” or “indepentarianism.” The central difference between this theory and more mainstream left-libertarianism is that it rejects the left-libertarian view that equal access to resources entitles people to an equal share of the market value of natural resources.[xv] Widerquist instead argues that disadvantage might be entitle to greater redistribution larger than what would be required to equalize the income generated by natural resources.[xvi]
He makes several arguments for this position, the most important of which is that respect for equal freedom requires that any legitimate authority protects individuals from the most substantively important interference. This principle, Widerquist argues, requires respect for individuals’ status free individuals, which in turn requires economic independence. They need access to enough resources to ensure that they are not forced by propertylessness to serve the interests of people empowered to give them access to resources. Widerquist calls this concept, “freedom as independence,” or “freedom as the power to say no.” He argues that respect for independence in the present socio-economic context requires redistribution to come at least in part in the form of an unconditional Basic Income and that it must be at least enough to meet an individuals’ basic needs. He also argues that Basic Income protecting vulnerable individuals from exploitation and other forms of economic distress better than traditional conditional welfare state policies.[xvii]
Philippe Van Parijs at TEDx Ghent
Widerquist is not the first to recognizing the poverty effectively forces individuals to work in service to more advantaged individuals, nor is he the first to argue that Basic Income can relieve that effective force. The unique feature of his theory is the central role that it gives to “the power to say no” in an individual’s status as a free person.[xviii] This line of argument seems to have recently become more important to the movement for Basic Income with even Philippe Van Parijs, one of the movement’s long-term leaders, arguing along these lines in his recent TEDx Talk, “The Instrument of Freedom.”
Empirical and anthropological criticism of contemporary political theory
Prehistoric Myths, this book mentions Basic Income only once–on the last page
Widerquist’s criticism of right-libertarianism began in 2009 when he published both an encyclopedia entry on libertarianism and an article criticizing libertarianism. The article argues that the central principles that are meant to determine the just distribution of property in a right-libertarian economy can justify government ownership of the powers to tax, regulate, and redistribute property just as well as they can justify private ownership of property. It argues that there are no historical or principled reasons to believe that private owners holdings of their powers are any any better justified than government holdings of their powers.[xix]
Karl Widerquist began collaborating with anthropologist Grant S. McCall with the publication of two articles in 2015 and a book entitled Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy released in January of 2017.[xx][xxi][xxii] The book uses anthropological evidence to debunk claims in contemporary political theory. It shows how, since the 1600s, most forms of social contract theory and natural property rights theory—especially those in the propertarian or right-libertarian tradition—have relied on the false empirical claim that Widerquist and McCall identify as “the Hobbesian hypothesis. That is, everyone is better off in a state society with a private property rights regime than everyone is, was, or would be in a society with neither of those institutions. The book shows how this claim became a central feature in the social contract justification of the state with Thomas Hobbes’s publication of Leviathan in 1651. Very much the same claim entered property rights theory a few decades later when John Locke made the fulfillment of his famous “proviso” central to his justification of the private property rights system. The book shows how the Hobbesian hypothesis has reappeared throughout the history of political thought since then and that it continues to be passed on in twenty-first century political theory.[xxiii]
Grant S. McCall of the Center for Human Environmental Research
The book argues, few of the philosophers who pass on the Hobbesian hypothesis offer any evidence to support it. Early philosophers relied on the colonial-era prejudice that any civilized man must be far better off than any savage natives. Later philosophers have simply relied on how commonly this claim is repeated to give it the air of obviousness. Yet, it is not the type of claim that can be obvious. It involves a comparison between the least advantaged people in modern, capitalist states with people who live in small-scale, stateless societies very remote to most modern writes in time and/or in place.[xxiv]
Widerquist and McCall present several chapters of evidence making that comparison and showing that the Hobbesian hypothesis is false: contemporary society has failed to fulfill the Lockean proviso. The least advantaged people in contemporary state society are actually worse off than the remaining native peoples who live outside the reach of the authority of the state or the property rights system. Therefore, if either of the two theories is to successfully justify the state and/or the property rights system, societies have to treat their disadvantaged individuals much better than they do now—whether that be by providing a Basic Income or by some other means.[xxv]
Other political and economic theories
Widerquist coauthored a textbook entitle, Economics for Social Workers.[xxvi] He has argued that Piketty’s observation that the rate of return on capital tends to exceed the growth rate in the economy should be seen as an outcome of the institutional setting rather than as a natural law of capitalism.[xxvii] Widerquist has also examined the effect that relaxing public choice theory’s assumption of self-interested behavior. He shows that many public choice problems exist as long as political actors are rational and disagree about what government should do, even if their disagreement stems from adherence to competing ethical theories rather than from competing self-interested wants.[xxviii]
Although Widerquist’s work uses some sufficientarian assumption, he criticized other aspects of sufficientarianism.[xxix] He has done historical work examining the many different (and often contradictory) ways that Lockean appropriation theory has been interpreted and revised.[xxx] He has written critically about wage subsidies as a redistributive strategy.[xxxi]
Media appearances
Karl Widerquist has frequently appeared in print, radio, and television news networks, including:
Click here for an updated (hopefully updated) list of Widerquist’s media appearances.
Publications
Books
Michael Anthony Lewis and Karl Widerquist, 2002. Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services, New York: Columbia University Press
Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis, and Steven Pressman (eds.), 2005. The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate
Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Karl Widerquist, Jose Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.), July 2013. Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
Journal Articles
Karl Widerquist, 1999. “Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income” Politics and Society, 33 (3): 386–401
Karl Widerquist, 2001. “Perspectives on the Guaranteed Income, Part I” the Journal of Economic Issues 35 (3): 749–757
Karl Widerquist, 2001. “Perspectives on the Guaranteed Income, Part II” the Journal of Economic Issues 35 (4): 1019-1030
Karl Widerquist, 2003. “Public Choice and Altruism,” the Eastern Economic Journal 29 (3): 277-278
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” the Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 49–81
Michael Lewis, Steven Pressman & Karl Widerquist, 2005. “The basic income guarantee and social economics,” The Review of Social Economy 63 (4): 587-593.
Karl Widerquist and Jurgen De Wispelaere, 2006. “Launching a Basic Income Journal” Basic Income Studies 1 (1): 1-6
Karl Widerquist and Michael A. Lewis, 2006. “The Basic Income Guarantee and the goals of equality, efficiency, and environmentalism,” International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment 2 (1): 21-43.
Karl Widerquist, 2006. “Who Exploits Who?” Political Studies 54 (3): 444-464
Karl Widerquist, 2006. “The Bottom Line in a Basic Income Experiment” Basic Income Studies 1 (2): 1-5
Karl Widerquist, 2008. “Problems with Wage Subsidies: Phelps’s economic discipline and undisciplined economics” International Journal of Green Economics 2 (3): 329-339
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “A Dilemma for Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 8 (1): 43-72
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade,” Human Rights Review 11 (1): 83-103
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation,” Public Reason 2 (3): 3-26
Karl Widerquist, 2010. “How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum,” Utilitas 22 (4): 474-480
Grant S. McCall and Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Evolution of Equality: Rethinking Variability and Egalitarianism Among Modern Forager Societies.” Ethnoarchaeology 7 (1) March: 21 – 44
Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Piketty Observation Against the Institutional Background: How natural is this natural tendency and what can we do about it?” Basic Income Studies 10 (1), June, 83-90
Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall, 2015. “Myths about the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies.
[i] “Personal Web Page of Karl Widerquist”, at widerquist.com/karl/personal.html
[ii] “Karl Widerquist”, at explore.georgetown.edu
[iii] “Karl Widerquist”, at explore.georgetown.edu
[iv] “Personal Web Page of Karl Widerquist”, at widerquist.com/karl/personal.html
[v] “Selected Works of Karl Widerquist”, at works.bepress.com/widerquist/
[vi] “About BIEN”, at basicincome.org.
[vii] Karl Widerquist, 2005. “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” the Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 49–81
[viii] Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[ix] Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) 2012. Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[x] Karl Widerquist, 1999. “Reciprocity and the Guaranteed Income” Politics and Society, 33 (3): 386–401
[xi] Karl Widerquist, 2006. “Who Exploits Who?” Political Studies 54 (3): 444-464
[xii] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade,” Human Rights Review 11 (1): 83-103
[xiii] Vallentyne, P. and H. Steiner (2000), The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An anthology of historical writings. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
[xiv] Vallentyne, P. and H. Steiner (2000b), Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave
[xv] Vallentyne, P. (2000). “Left-Libertarianism – A Primer,” in P. Vallentyne and H. Steiner, Eds.). Left-Libertarianism and Its Critics: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Palgrave, 1-22
[xvi] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xvii] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xviii] Karl Widerquist, March 2013. Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No, New York: Palgrave Macmillan
[xix] Karl Widerquist, 2009. “A Dilemma for Libertarianism,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics 8 (1): 43-72
[xx] Grant S. McCall and Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Evolution of Equality: Rethinking Variability and Egalitarianism Among Modern Forager Societies.” Ethnoarchaeology 7 (1) March: 21 – 44
[xxi] Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall, 2015. “Myths about the State of Nature and the Reality of Stateless Societies.” Analyse & Kritik 37 (2), August
[xxii] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxiii] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxiv] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxv] Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall. Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, January 2017
[xxvi] Michael Anthony Lewis and Karl Widerquist, 2002. Economics for Social Workers: The Application of Economic Theory to Social Policy and the Human Services, New York: Columbia University Press
[xxvii] Karl Widerquist, 2015. “The Piketty Observation Against the Institutional Background: How natural is this natural tendency and what can we do about it?” Basic Income Studies 10 (1), June, 83-90
[xxviii] Karl Widerquist, 2003. “Public Choice and Altruism,” the Eastern Economic Journal 29 (3): 277-278
[xxix] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “How the Sufficiency Minimum Becomes a Social Maximum,” Utilitas 22 (4): 474-480
[xxx] Karl Widerquist, 2010. “Lockean Theories of Property: Justifications for Unilateral Appropriation,” Public Reason 2 (3): 3-26
[xxxi] Karl Widerquist, 2008. “Problems with Wage Subsidies: Phelps’s economic discipline and undisciplined economics” International Journal of Green Economics 2 (3): 329-339
Karl Widerquist in speaking in front of (a painting of) the Danish Parliament
by Kate McFarland | Nov 24, 2016 | News
British journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason, author of Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future, recently delivered a lecture in Amsterdam in which he points out the need for a universal basic income as a partial solution to changes in the economy due to new technologies. He raises related concerns in an article in The Guardian published shortly thereafter.
On October 25, author Paul Mason delivered a lecture at the De Balie culture center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, wherein he argues that technological advancement has been not only correlated with but in fact a cause of economic stagnation. He attributes this to several characteristics of new information technologies: the ability to automate more jobs and job tasks, the ability to produce and reproduce goods at very low (even zero) marginal cost, and the ability to combine data through networks to generate new goods not reflected in standard measures of economic growth.
In addressing how the left should respond, Mason says, “Our long-term aim should be to push more and more economic activity [to be] done outside the market and the state.” This requires, in part, that we “end [the] reliance on wages for work.” In this context, he continues: “We need quickly to pursue the experiments with the universal basic income … and aim within 10 years for states to be in a position to roll out the policy itself.”
He goes on to add, however, that UBI alone is insufficient; the state, for instance, should also provide “cheap basic goods” (he mentions housing, healthcare, education, and transportation) and promote open source and non-profit businesses.
The entire lecture, along with the Q&A session, can be viewed below. Mason has also published a text version of his lecture on Medium.
https://vimeo.com/188859000#t=8m42s
In an October 31 article in The Guardian, Mason again broached UBI as a potential solution to technological unemployment — predicting a world in which smart technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, cause paid work to become scarce and sporadic. Here, in passing, Mason also links UBI to the potential fulfillment of Marx’s vision of a society in which people are free to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner” without ever assuming an occupational identity as hunter, fisher, cattle-rearer, or critic.
References
Paul Mason (October 27, 2016) “Postcapitalism [in Amsterdam]” Medium.
Paul Mason (October 31, 2016) “The battle over Uber and driverless cars is really a debate about the future of humanity” The Guardian.
Photo: Paul Mason in 2015, CC-BY-SA-4.0 DTRocks via Wikimedia Commons
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.
