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Karl Widerquist, Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A theory of freedom as the power to say no

by Citizens' Income Trust | Nov 8, 2013 | Opinion

Karl Widerquist, Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A theory of freedom as the power to say no, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 1 137 27472 4, hbk, xiv + 241 pp, £62.50

The message of this book is simple: We are not free; we ought to be; and a Citizen’s Income (called here a ‘Basic Income Guarantee’) is an important means to that end.

The ‘propertylessness’ in the title represents the diagnosis: that is, that someone who is without sufficient property to meet his or her basic needs is reliant on property owners for the meeting of those needs (through an employment contract, state benefits, or some other mechanism) and is therefore not free. Starting from a definition of freedom as non-interference, Widerquist develops a theory of ‘status freedom’: ‘the effort to identify the difference between a free person and an unfree person’, and also a refined definition of freedom as ‘effective control self-ownership … freedom as the power to say no’ (p.15). Co-operation with others should always be voluntary, which means that it should be from a position of genuine independence: and it is this ‘independentarianism’ that requires an individuals’ right to property and therefore to a Citizen’s Income.

In this book Widerquist draws out the implications of freedom as effective control self-ownership, and particularly its relationship to the individual’s co-operation with other individuals, to the labour market, to our ability willingly to sign away our freedoms, and to such theoretical positions as Philippe Van Parijs’s ‘real freedom’ (a positive freedom to do as one wishes consistent with others’ freedoms) and Stuart White’s ‘justice as fair reciprocity’.

Alongside this somewhat abstract discussion of concepts, Widerquist studies today’s social and economic context, and concludes that

in a modern, industrial economy [effective control self-ownership] is best secured by an unconditional basic income guarantee large enough to secure housing, food, clothing, and basic transportation, plus enough more that individuals do not display signs of economic distress (p.70)

and also that a Citizen’s Income is compensation for our inability to provide everyone with sufficient status independence (p.71).

There is no attempt to escape the logic of capitalism. Trade is a perfectly just mechanism if undertaken by independent individuals and by mutual agreement; and Widerquist shows how a moral obligation to participate can be satisfied better by voluntary participation than by mandatory participation:

Even if people have an obligation to contribute to a just system of social cooperation, giving individuals the power to say no to working conditions they find unacceptable might be a better method to create a just system of social cooperation than giving a democratic majority the powers both to determine the conditions of fair cooperation and to enforce participation. (p.117)

For Widerquist, the individual’s freely-chosen consent to participate is paramount: a freely chosen consent that can only be guaranteed by the existence of an exit option: that is, by the ability not to participate.

This book is many things: an exercise in political economy; a textbook on philosophy and social ethics (particularly in chapter 9 on ‘duty’); and a sustained argument for a Citizen’s Income: and it is an excellent example of all of them.

However, there remains a problem with terminology. For a UK audience, the language of ‘guarantee’ is confusing. A ‘guarantee’ of an income is a promise that someone’s income will reach a particular level, and this can be achieved by a means-tested benefit as well as by a universal one. The previous Labour Government’s Minimum Income Guarantee was means-tested, and was as far from a universal benefit as it is possible to get. It is unconditionality, individuality and universality that matter, and Widerquist might have stressed these important characteristics of a Citizen’s Income more than he has.

But having said that, this is an important contribution to the literature on universal benefits, and therefore to the debate that might one day lead to their extension to working age adults.

Guy Standing to give several presentations on basic income in Italy, Norway, Finland, and the United Kingdom, 2-13 November 2013

by Karl Widerquist | Oct 27, 2013 | Research

Guy Standing

Guy Standing, honorary co-president of BIEN and Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, will be taking part in a debate on basic income at the Salone dell’Editoria Sociale book fair in Rome. The event will take place on Saturday 2 November 2013 at 6.15pm to 8pm at the Porta Futura, Via Galvani 108 (Testaccio), Rome. Click here for more details.

On Monday 4 November, Standing will talk about basic income to the Bergen Students Society. The event will take place at 6pm at the Akademiske Kvarter, Olav Kyrres gate 49, 5015 Bergen. For more information please click here.

Standing will then speak at two venues in Helsinki on issues related to the precariat, identified in his 2011 book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, including why the precariat needs a basic income. On Wednesday 6 November he will give a keynote address to the 2013 Finnish Conference on Youth Studies entitled “Generations, Economy and Equity”. The conference will take place from 10am to 6pm at the House of Science and Letters, Kirkkokatu 6, Helsinki. Click here for more information.

On Thursday 7 November he will give a guest lecture at 2pm at Aalto University, Arkadia building, Lapuankatu 6, Helsinki, lecture room AE-127. For more information click here.

Warwick PPE Forum: All Work and No Pay in 2013

On Saturday 9 November Standing will be one of the speakers at the 2013 Forum organized by the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) Society of Warwick University. The title of the forum is “All Work and No Pay in 2013: The Automation of the Global Economy”, and will address, inter alia, how technological progress can be used for the benefit of all rather than just an elite. The Forum will take place at 2pm to 6pm at the Arts Centre, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

On Wednesday 13 November, Standing will give a seminar on “Basic Income in India: Evaluating a Pilot Scheme” at the India Institute, King’s College, University of London, Strand, WC2R 2LS. The seminar, based on the results of an unconditional cash transfer pilot scheme in a number of Indian villages, will be held from 5pm to 7pm. Click here for more information.

Copenhagen, Denmark: “Lectures with Philippe Van Parijs,” Nov. 1-2, 2013

by Karl Widerquist | Oct 21, 2013 | News

Lecture in Copenhagen

Philippe Van Parijs, professor at the Faculty of Economic, Social and Political Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, will give two lectures in Copenhagen on November 1 – 2. In the first, on Nov. 1, he will talk about his idea of financing a European Unconditional Basic Income through the European tax system, the so-called Value Added Tax or VAT. The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion headed by associate professor Christian Rostbøll from the Centre for European Politics, a branch of the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. The title of this lecture will be “No Euro-zone without EU-dividend”.

In the second lecture, titled “Basic Income and Social Justice”, on Nov. 2, Van Parijs will discuss the reasoning behind his Basic Income proposal in a more generalized form. The lecture will take place at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen in collaboration with the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. As an introduction to the seminar, the Swiss Basic Income film “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” will be shown on a big cinema screen with Danish subtitles. This will be followed by the lecture itself and another panel discussion with invited participants, among others a former colleague of Van Parijs, professor Robert van der Veen and associate professor Søren Midtgaard.
Lecture 1:
Time and date: 2-4pm, 1. November 2013
Place: Room 35.01.06. Building 35, CSS, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5.
The lecture is open to all, but registration is necessary.
Language: English
Website: https://www.cep.polsci.ku.dk/lecture_with_phillipe_van_parisj/

Lecture 2:
Time and date: 12-2pm (film), 2:15-4pm (lecture), 2. November 2013
Place: The Danish Film Institute, Gothersgade 55, 1123 Copenhagen K
Detailed information about the second lecture is listed (in Danish) at the following website: https://www.dfi.dk/Filmhuset/Cinemateket/Billetter-og-program/Serie.aspx?serieID=9259.

UNITED STATES: Occupy Strategy Group includes BIG in its top 10 recommended strategic objectives

by Karl Widerquist | Oct 20, 2013 | News, The Indepentarian

The Occupy Strategy Group has included the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) on its top 10 list of recommended strategic objectives. The group is an email list of over 100 people who have met to craft strategy for the Occupy Movement. The group reviewed surveys, research, emails, articles, and other sources. After intense deliberations—and with the desire to be as inclusive as possible—the group chose 10 recommendations based on urgency, doability, and degree of impact.

: InterOccupy

BIG is included not once but twice on the list. Item 5 is “Replace all entitlements with a Basic Income Guarantee.” Item 10 is “Institute a carbon and other natural resource use tax based on ‘full resource use accounting’ and allocate the revenue derived from it for a Basic Income Guarantee.” The group quotes the USBIG network for a definition of BIG, “‘The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a government ensured guarantee that no one’s income will fall below the level necessary to meet their most basic needs for any reason.’ – The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, https://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php”

Other items on the list include the following: Abolish Corporate Personhood. Nationalize health care. Establish a strong “commons” to protect the Earth and nourish community. Enact a sustainable large scale energy, jobs, and environmental recovery program. Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Discontinue the practice of using federal reserve notes to back US currency and replace them with U.S. notes. Dismantle the CIA; end private military forces and prohibit private intelligence agencies. Stop the Patriot Act, NDAA and Drones.

The group invites individuals to join their ongoing conversation about current and future studies of strategic objectives by going to the following website: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/occupy-strategy

For more information see the following web page: “Occupy Strategy Group’s Top 10 Recommended Strategic Objectives,” InterOccupy, first published October 11, 2013: https://interoccupy.net/occupystrategy/2013/10/occupy-strategy-groups-top-10-recommended-strategic-objectives/

Or contact the Occupy Strategy Group at: OccupyStrategy@interoccupy.net

OPINION: Living Income Guaranteed – A proposal for a Basic Income from Equal Life Foundation

by Karsten Lieberkind | Sep 23, 2013 | Opinion

If you are searching the internet for ‘basic income’, ‘basic income guarantee’ or related subjects or you are a regular visitor to the various internet-based social networks like Facebook it would hardly have escaped your attention that quite a few of your hits will point to websites or blogs discussing topics like the Equal Money System and recently also Basic Income Guaranteed (previously ‘Grant’), with the acronym B.I.G. (or BIG)., but not to be confused with the Basic Income Guarantee (without ‘d’) of organisations such as USBIG that are affiliated to BIEN. Even more recently, the name was changed again, this time to Living Income Guaranteed (LIG). The terms are here used interchangeably. All those sites can ultimately be traced back to an organization called Desteni which is based in South Africa and its offspring, an online community of groups in more than 20 countries, called Equal Life Foundation.

According to the Equal Life Foundation, the LIG is considered part of and the first stage in the development of the overall philosophy of the Equal Money System and a human right, an intrinsic part of citizenship. It is to be financed in part by equal access to resources such as ‘mining resources and water resources, electricity, cellphones, telephones’ of which all citizens become ‘shareholders’. Those resources, some of which are already owned by ‘capitalists’, are to be nationalized, the reason being that the shareholders, that is the citizens, ‘should have owned them in the first place’. It is considered a human right that profit from such corporations be shared equally among all citizens as social dividends in the form of a Basic Income because, in the final analysis, natural resources belong to no one but the earth. ‘This way the corporation = becomes government, the shareholder = the citizen, the profit = the Basic Income Guaranteed’. Occasionally, owning property beyond what is reasonable is even referred to as ‘theft’ or ‘treason’.The ‘capitalists’, however, will also profit from a transition to LIG as more people will be able to spend money on products and this will, in turn, boost the general economy.

In addition to the nationalization of resources, financing the LIG may take place through tax on goods and services, that is, sales tax, value added tax or important duty. The philosophy behind is that the value of labor should be directly reflected in the prices of the goods and services: ‘part of the price is another person’s livelihood, and that as you give = you will receive’. Toll tax on roads is also suggested as another form of tax on consumption. All income and corporate taxes are to be abolished and so will play no part in financing the LIG, as this would allegedly amount to ‘charity, where the rich give to the poor’.

How does the LIG compare with the Basic Income advocated by BIEN and its affiliated organizations? Following one of BIEN’s prevalent definitions, four conditions are to be met for a proposal to qualify as a genuine Basic Income: It must be universal, individual, unconditional and high enough for a decent standard of living.

LIG reportedly complies with the first condition in that it is paid to individuals rather than families or households.

LIG is universal in the sense that everyone including children, in principle, is entitled to receive it. The exceptions to this fall under the category of conditionality, a subject that I will return to next. In a transitional period, children may receive a lower grant, a ‘basic child grant’, but the goal is a full LIG for all and will not be dependent on the parents’ income.

LIG is not unconditional or at least only to some extent. First of all, there are certain limitations (‘Certain Rules‘) to what recipients of a LIG can own. If you are able to sustain yourself through investments or savings or if you have a job, you are not entitled to receive a Basic Income. In other words, prospective recipients are means-tested. From this perspective, LIG is sometimes referred to as a form of insurance in that it is paid out if you are unable to provide for yourself the basic needs. ‘Basic income is a means to an end and not an end in itself’ and ‘there is no point in giving to people who don’t need it because their human rights are already secured’. It is, however, to my knowledge not discussed how to deal with people who are not willing to work even if one is available, but from my own correspondence with members of ELF and this reply it would seem that there are no strings attached to their proposal besides means-testing. If you are willing to live very modestly, with few possessions, you may live exclusively on your LIG and will not be forced to take a job.

LIG seems to comply with the condition of being ‘high enough: ‘The basic income should be ‘sufficient for a person or a family to live a decent life, one worthy of their birthright as a citizen’. However, in order to keep an incentive to work, ELF suggests a fixed minimum wage at ‘double the Basic Income’. For people working part-time, this will only pay off if they work enough hours and/or if they are sufficiently educated or skilled to receive a higher pay than the minimum wage. Otherwise, they might just as well live off their LIG and do voluntary work. However, this part of the proposal does not appear to be fully worked out.

In addition to the LIG, a ‘Subsidy for Homes‘, that is, for building one’s own house, will be provided, to the benefit of both the recipients and the industry.

The system as a whole is characterized as a mixture between capitalism and socialism, in other words, while the proposal is meant to restore justice through equality, it is not directly opposed to capitalism: ‘The Basic Income Guaranteed will function as the medium through which a state is able to remediate the most direct negative effects of a capitalistic system, while still being able to maintain some of the perks that such a system represents and embodies.’ This version of the Equal Money System – actually an intermediary stage before the full implementation of EMS – is also sometimes referred to as ‘Equal Money Capitalism‘, a system that is further characterized by equal wages and joint ownership to corporations. What this means is that workers are to be shareholders in the companies and the profit generated by them will be paid out equally to all workers once the basic costs of running them are covered. Also production will not take place according to a ‘supply and demand’ principle, but only according to what is needed and ecologically sustainable.

Some, or maybe in due course all, welfare benefits such as pensions will be phased out, at least gradually, as it is suggested that the LIG recipients invest part of their grant in private companies and the revenue from this will eventually make them ‘self-sufficient’. This type of investment appears to be on a voluntary basis however.

One peculiarity of the proposal is that teachers at all levels will be receiving an LIG, meaning they will not get paid, the reason being that teaching is a ‘calling’ and teachers are not supposed to be in it for the money. The educational system as a whole should be entirely free.

In order to prevent corruption, it is stressed that the distribution of the Basic Income is to take place electronically with as few people involved as possible.

In due course, LIG is to be distributed globally.

References:
Basic Income Guaranteed
https://equalmoney.org/

Desteni
https://desteni.org/

Equal Life Foundation
https://www.facebook.com/EqualLifeFoundation

Equal access to resources
https://equalmoney.org/wiki/BIG_Proposal_Basic_Lay-Out#Nationalized_Resources_as_Every_Citizen’s_Birth_right

Nationalized resources
https://basicincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/basic-income-and-nationalized-resources/

Natural resources belong to the earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4eKv6KDxgvE

Basic Income can save Capitalism
https://basicincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/basic-income-can-save-capitalism/

Basic Income Guaranteed and Taxation
https://basicincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/basic-income-guaranteed-and-taxation/

Basic Income Guaranteed with Labor as Interest
https://basicincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/basic-income-guaranteed-with-labor-as-interest/

Abolishment of personal Tax
https://basicincome.me/discuss/t/63-how-do-you-feel-about-the-abolishment-of-personal-tax

BIEN’s Criteria for an Unconditional Basic Income
https://basicincome2013.eu/