by Jason Burke Murphy | Jun 7, 2017 | Opinion
An economic study of Iran’s Basic Income, which was implemented to make it easier to phase out expensive (and ecologically destructive) fuel subsidies, shows that there have been no negative effects on employment. In the first section, I will summarize the study. In the middle, there is a list of past contributions made by Basic Income News authors. In the final section, I will make a few observations.
Iran’s Fuel Subsidy Reform and Employment
The unconditional grant program was launched in 2011. The monthly grant amounted to 29% of median household income, or about $1.50 extra per head of household, per day. Around 90% of Iranians are funded through this program. (Wikipedia has a good summary of the program at the time of this writing. It does not include the end of the universal cash grant program.)
Most people in Iran and in the government came to believe that the grant discourages employment. One often hears anecdotes and assertions in national and local Iranian press. The Iranian Parliament called for cuts in the program. (See Tehran Times, April 19, 2016.) After some wrangling, cash subsidies were finally ended in 2016, with funding reserved now for low-income citizens, they could possibly begin performing a criminal background check on applications for this funding in the future. Costs were cited. It is important to note half of the cuts in fuel subsidies went to business grants and other government expenses. (See Kate McFarland in Basic Income News, “Iran: Parliament Slashes Cash Subsidies to Citizens”). What is frustrating here is the fact that the program did not undermine work participation at all.
This study shows that some people in their twenties reduced work hours, often to go to school or improve their schoolwork. But this only averaged out to a matter of months (and is likely to yield medium- and long-term benefits.) Many people increased work time a little, especially in the service sector. The authors think that these businesses used the income to find more work opportunities. Empirical evidence contradicts a lot of presuppositions about the impact of an unconditional cash grant.
The study, “Cash Transfers and Labor Supply: Evidence From a Large-Scale Program in Iran“, is put out by the Economic Research Forum and was authored by the economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooei.
The World Economic Forum posted a summary of the Economic Research Forum study here.
Past Articles on Iran’s Basic Income
Basic Income News has repeatedly covered Iran’s Fuel Subsidy Program to make sure it is regarded as a basic income policy. Here is a list of additional articles on the subject:
Djavad Salehi-Isfahani wrote an earlier piece for the ERF. Josh Martin writes about it at Basic Income News here.
Mathieu Ferry writes about Jacques Berthiller’s piece in Basic Income News here.
The Citizens’s Income Trust, based in Britain, wrote this opinion piece for Basic Income News here.
Karl Widerquist wrote four articles early in the program’s history. “Iran: Basic Income Might Become Means Tested” and “Iran: Basic Income Gets International Attention.” “Iran: On the Verge of Introducing the World’s First National Basic Income” and “Iran Might Be Moving Toward a BIG”
Hamid Tabatabai wrote an article that, very early on, points out that a country that had not been debating a basic income implemented substantial basic income grant.
III. Observations
These are conclusions reached by the author, Jason Burke Murphy, after reading the ERF study and the other articles on Iran’s program. I wanted to separate them because the first section of this article is meant to review an important study and past contributions by BI News authors.
(1) There was no point at which this program was embraced as a way to promote real freedom or to roll back poverty. Fuel subsidies were just unleashing such strong side effects that something needed to be done. It is amazing to know that a program that raises average income by 29% could be launched in order to solve a problem other than “lots of people would be better off with more money”. Had this been debated as a basic income guarantee, maybe things would turned out better.
(2) The idea that some people who can work might not work seems to bother people so much that the government ended a program that raises income for a majority of its people and for its least-well-off.
The idea is so powerful that the fact that people are NOT refusing to work can’t seem to overcome the fact that many people MIGHT or COULD refuse to work. There is a lot of work to be done here.
(3) Everyone should ask the question: What sort of percentage of people not formally working is even a problem? Most of them will do work for their families, after all. Many will gain expertise with the idea of applying it to future. Some will do work for their communities or as entrepreneurs.
(4) The impact of this grant was likely affected by the fact that it was never been presented as permanent. It also is not large enough to sustain most people at a standard of living that Iranians find decent. This may not serve as the rock-solid proof that a sizable grant won’t affect employment.
(5) In the US, an equivalent percentage of support would be around $16,000 a year. Can we assert that the Iranian experience shows that this amount would not trigger a mass refusal to work? Hard to say. Would a small-to-medium dip in job seekers even be a problem? Probably not. Lots of places in the US have average income below $16,000. Can we really say that they would be worse off with this grant just because some of them quit their jobs?
(6) All countries should take a good look at their subsidies, especially ones that benefit the already wealthy. They should cut them and fund an unconditional dividend. We get rid of something bad and replace it with something good. We see how high the dividend would be and think about the next step.
(7) As Basic Income advocates, we need to list Iran alongside Alaska and Macau as regions with a Basic Income. This is difficult because only Alaska has described its dividend as “permanent” and only there have recipients come to believe it is dependable. In the US, it is a little unusual to say “let’s do what Iran did” but that is our fate as a truth-telling movement.
by Florie Barnhoorn | Jun 2, 2017 | News
The permission to start the social assistance experiments depends on the political will of politicians at the national level. Despite obstructions, several municipalities are determined to continue with the experiments for the sake of that part of the population that is suffering under the current social welfare regime.
It’s time for new forms of social security, says Sjir Hoeijmakers in a presentation held during the annual meeting of the Dutch branch of BIEN on May 7, 2017. He begins his lecture by stressing that he prefers to speak of ‘experiments in the context of the Participation Act’, instead of ‘basic income experiments’, because they don’t fulfill BIEN’s definition of an unconditional basic income. More on the subject can be found in this thoroughly composed article. However, to smooth the conversation, he cautions that he would probably fall back in the habit of talking about ‘basic income experiments’.
According to Hoeijmakers, an econometrist who crowdfunded his own income for two years in order to support municipalities who want to study alternative forms of social assistance in scientific research projects, we need a system that is based on trust, freedom and income security. A basic income can do that. However, nobody knows the short or long term consequences of the implementation of such an income, because it has never done before. Hence, we need to do experiments, investigate as many aspects as possible and launch a broad debate.
Background
The ideas for the experiments were mainly born out of discontent with the Participation Act. Under this law, introduced in 2015, the municipal executives are obliged to stimulate welfare recipients to look for a job and to accept paid work, as well as to provide social benefit payments to its inhabitants who need such arrangements.
The implementation of this law at the local level requires a complicated set of rules, obligations and restrictions. In order to ensure a welfare recipient’s integration into the workforce and to prevent fraud, the local bureaucracy has to develop many regulations regarding, e.g., the imposition of fines and payment reductions, the appropriate use of disciplinary punishment or the application of rebates for people who live together.
A newly introduced measure is the so-called ‘compensation’ (Dutch: ‘tegenprestatie’). A welfare recipient has the obligation to do something in return for the payments. This can be voluntary work, but one can also be forced to ‘gain work experience’ in a commercial enterprise. The obligation can go as far as requiring unpaid work for six months. Some organizations who have stood up against this policy have already called it ‘forced labor’. The kind of ‘compensation’ is to be decided by the civil servant of the municipality, who is in charge of the implementation of the Participation Act. This practice is highly susceptible to arbitrariness and is therefore very unpopular among recipients.
Because of the complexity and far-reaching consequences of the law, the local government has to allocate a lot of money and manpower for control and enforcement. In the meanwhile, the social welfare system has lost its function as social safety net by the dreadful accumulation of inspection, monitoring and sanctions. Additionally, as a result of the continuing exerted pressure, beneficiaries accept less instead of more paid or voluntary work leading to alarming levels of impoverishment among this group. At the same time Dutch trend watchers predict that in ten years less than thirty percent of the population will be engaged in full-time paid work. The rest will earn money with ‘loose jobs’.
A normative framework
For these reasons, municipalities have begun to design experiments within the existing social assistance scheme. In the Netherlands income distribution and taxes (except municipal taxes) are regulated at the national level. Municipalities are not allowed to implement income policy. However, it’s the local government that is responsible for the provision of social assistance.
After a long period of lobbying by the municipalities, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has finally released its general administrative regulation (Dutch: Algemene Maatregel van Bestuur / AMvB). This sets out the exact standards for the implementation of a law. The social assistance projects must be tested to the AMvB. A city council can apply for an experiment based on this document by requesting an exception to the law, for example, to temporarily suspend reintegration requirements or to allow people to earn an extra income on top of the benefit payments. The municipality is required to carry out the experiment according to the terms of the document. The framework causes many problems, because the AMvB only allows for exceptions to the law in individual cases and not when it comes to groups.
Sjir Hoeijmakers
Unfortunately, the AMvB has become the subject of political controversy, as Hoeijmakers notices. That’s why additional stipulations have been added to the experiments and compromises have to be made. For instance, the projects must be now carried out in a relatively short time, and people who make too little effort to get work can be excluded from the experiments, which makes the whole project a bit weird. As Hoeijmakers explains, all these irritating requirements make it very difficult to set up a good scientific and ambitious project. At all political levels, there are often a few people who support or sabotage the idea. Yet, city councilors and researchers are determined to overcome the obstructions and are actively seeking smart, legal solutions to bypass the Participation Act.
In the previous cabinet consisting of VVD and PvdA, it was very difficult to reach agreement over the AMvB. A majority in the Second Chamber (or House of Representatives) was in favor of the proposed experiments, but the government was not. Especially the VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy; Dutch: Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie), a conservative-liberal political party in the Netherlands, had many objections to experiments that could emancipate welfare in the long run by introducing a basic income. Members of the PvdA (Labour Party (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid, the social-democratic party) at the local level are usually in favor of experiments in contrast to members of the cabinet. In the last months, several municipalities have stopped the preparations because of all the difficulties. In an ideal world, Hoeijmakers comments, you would expect that the national government plays a stimulating role, ensures proper tuning of the experiments and good scientific coordination. This is not the case. Municipalities also lacked financial support from the government, despite of all the rhetoric about decentralization and being open to experiments.
Hoeijmakers explains that 45 municipalities are considering experiments with social assistance policy:
- Seven have submitted an application, among which the four forerunners Wageningen, Tilburg, Groningen who submitted their proposal in April. Utrecht wanted to start the experiment on May 1st, but the trial is postponed because the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (SZW) has still questions about the design. A few days after the presentation all seven municipalities received a response from the ministry with further questions and instructions about the experiments they had proposed. Tilburg’s responsible alderman (Christian Democratic Appeal / CDA) reacted furiously: “It is a bold from the blue! But we will continue with or without the blessing of the Secretary of State.”
- Eight municipal governments are considering an application.
- Thirty are considering alternatives. As exemplified by the experiment in Terneuzen, a small town that wanted to give a basic income of 933 euros with no strings attached to twenty benefit recipients to test how it works. However, after a news break on national television, the State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment (PvdA) quickly torpedoed the plan. Here’s the clip (in Dutch) of the news item. There is also much hassle around an article in the AMvB indicating that the municipality is obliged to have a regulation regarding the ‘compensation’ and how it should be implemented. Multiple municipalities, for instance Amsterdam, don’t execute this directive perfectly, and that can be a reason for the Ministry to reject the application. A few days ago, the NRC, a daily paper mostly read by the establishment, came up with an article titled ‘Municipalities no longer listen to Klijnsma’ [the State Secretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment; PvdA], written in boldfaced headlines. In the article Amsterdam’s alderman for Work, Income and Participation, Arjan Vliegenthart (SP, Socialist Party) expresses his anger: “We are not going to wait for Klijnsma’s approval. We are going to start our own pilot projects.”
Hoeijmakers expects that the number of municipalities who actually will start an experiment will be around 10, although there is room for 25.
Political Outlook
Hopefully the new cabinet will become more positive about social assistance experiments. The Dutch general election of 2017 was held on Wednesday, 15 March 2017. Several small parties who were in favor of a basic income (a.o.Piratenpartij / Pirate Party, Basisinkomen Partij / Basic Income Party, Vrijzinnige Partij (VP, Liberal Party; leader: Norbert Klein) did not win a seat or lost its only seat (VP). On the other hand, GroenLinks (GreenLeft), D66 (Democrats 66), Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD / Party for the Animals) who are strongly supportive of pilot projects, all three won considerably: 10, 7 and 3 seats respectively. The PvdA lost substantially (29 seats). The new Members of the House of Representatives were installed on 23 March 2017. At least four parties are required to form a coalition with a majority (76 seats). At this moment VVD, CDA, D66 and GreenLeft have failed to build a new coalition.
According to Alexander de Roo, chairman of the Dutch branch of BIEN and co-founder of BIEN, the ratio between the left and the right in the Second Chamber is approximately 60 to 81 seats, assuming that a basic income is more popular among voters of left-wing parties than among parties at the right-wing. But this is not necessarily true. He proposes to cooperate with D66, GL and the PvdD in an effort to keep basic income on the political agenda.
Hoeijmakers emphasizes that it’s important to create a broad political support base. So, how can you introduce the basic income into the liberal tradition? Much depends on the framing of the message, stresses Hoeijmakers. He is convinced that a right-wing public is also susceptible to good arguments, at least for doing experiments, when you explain what is in it for them. For instance, what can a basic income mean for entrepreneurs, or for the complexity and bureaucracy of a government? It is very useful to show successful experiments done in other countries. The spin-off of these reports cannot be overestimated. They are very stimulating. Looking forward, it is inconceivable that we do not start experimenting with alternatives for the current social security system, we have to learn, tell stories. It will bring us to the day when people will say: Of course we want a basic income, of course we want to know the effects of its introduction! “I always advise the municipal authorities to continue with their basic income projects. Just do what you can do,” says Hoeijmakers. In conclusion, he points to Rutger Bregman, who stated in his Tedtalk (Vancouver, April 2017), “We already have the means, the research, and the need for basic income. All that’s left is the action.” According to Business Insider, “He [Bregman] got a standing ovation“ for the talk. Watch the video here.
“Rules are tools. But it is impossible to rule out the human experience.”
Credit: Benno Baksteen, retired pilot of KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines)
Credit Pictures CC Fidgit the Time Bandit and Hans Lindeijer
Thanks to Ad Planken and Kate McFarland for reviewing this article
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 1, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
In the process of cowriting a book about the upcoming Unconditional Basic Income Trials, I’ve been trying to come up with a list of the claims that tend appear in the debate. Below are two lists: first a list of supporters’ claims and then one of opponents’ claims. I gave each claim a name to make it easier to talk about them, but these names do not reflect any standard definition. I tried to order the claims in each list from the relatively more important or more common to the relatively less important or less common.
To say that a claim appears on the supporters’ or opponents’ lists is not to say that all supporters or all opponents agree on it. In fact, some of the claims contradict each other, which is to be expected, because different people support or oppose UBI for diverse reason. They might have little in common but their support or opposition to one policy proposal.
Supporters have claimed:
- The freedom claim: UBI gives people greater freedom by giving them more effective power over their own lives.
- The poverty claim: UBI (usually in combination with other policies) can eliminate poverty.
- The anti-exploitation claim: UBI reduces exploitation in employment by giving all workers the power to refuse exploitive working conditions.
- The welfare claim: UBI raises the welfare of net-recipients (by eliminating destitution, reducing poverty, increasing incomes of people near poverty, reducing inequality, and other effects) and many net-contributors (by removing the fear of destitution, improving their bargaining position in the market, and so on). To the welfare claim we could add many supporting claims, that UBI is good for physical and mental health, that it decreases homeless and malnutrition, that it decreases infant mortality, and so on.
- The increased-worker-income claim: UBI increases in the income of workers directly by acting as a wage subsidy for lower-income workers and indirectly by creating market conditions likely to increase wages.
- The better-working-conditions claim: UBI improves working conditions for many workers both by giving them the flexibility to move more attractive sectors and by creating market conditions likely to give employers incentive to improve working conditions.
- The affordability claim: UBI at the desired level is affordable. (Most UBI proposals call for one high enough to eliminate official poverty or to raise incomes to 150% of the officially poverty level. Some call for meeting basic needs or to enable social participation and to secure a life in dignity. Some simply call for the highest sustainable UBI regardless of what that might be.)
- The economic equality claim: UBI increases economic equality both by direct redistribution to lower income people and by creating market conditions where workers can command higher wages and better working conditions. (The taxes used to support it can also be formulated to increase equality.)
- The social equality claim: UBI increases social equality by reducing social isolation of people with very low incomes, by reducing the stigmatization of people who benefit from redistributive programs, by reducing housing segregation, and by other means.
- The poverty-trap claim: UBI encourages people on benefits to reenter the labor force in greater numbers than a conditional system, by ensuring they are always better off earning more private income than earning less.
- The anti-ghettoization claim: UBI reduces (both personal and social) costs linked to high concentrations of poverty both by reducing housing segregation and by significantly raising average incomes in those communities.
- The cost-effectiveness claim: UBI is relatively more cost-effective than traditional, conditional welfare policies (in achieving goals such as increasing equality, raising welfare levels of recipients, and so on).
- The reduced-capture claim: UBI’s benefits are less likely to be captured by others (such as employers, landlords, and bureaucrats) than conditional welfare state policies.
- The bureaucracy claim: UBI reduces the overhead cost associated with income support.
- The labor-productivity claim: UBI increases labor productivity both by encouraging employers to substitute skilled for unskilled workers and by improving workers’ ability to enhance their skills and search for higher-productivity jobs.
- The productive non-labor claim: UBI allows people to do more unpaid work (such as care work and volunteering), some of which is more productive (or socially valuable) than many forms of paid labor.
- The politically-enabled-proletarian claim: UBI—by freeing low-wage workers from long hours and low pay—makes them a greater force for progressive social change on all other issues.
- The acceptable-labor-supply-effect claim(s): if UBI causes a reduction in labor supply, it will be within acceptable levels, and/or if UBI causes a greater-than-desirable labor-supply reduction, it can be at least partially counteracted by other policies to increase labor supply or the demand for higher-wage employees.
- The macro-stimulus claim: UBI, in combination with the taxes that support it, helps improve economic growth and reduce unemployment by helping to stimulate and stabilize aggregate demand.
- The “degrowth” claim: UBI helps economies move away from overconsumption and overexploitation of resources.
- Greater respect for people in need: UBI and other universal programs treat everyone with respect while many conditional programs treat virtually all recipients as suspected cheats, even if they fit almost anyone’s definition of the most truly needy.
- The increased-overall-redistribution claim: UBI results in greater overall redistribution to the poor, because universal policies foster greater feelings of solidarity and support once in place
Opponents have claimed:
- The reciprocity claim: UBI allows people to share in the benefits of social production without contributing their labor.
- The exploitation claim: a tax-financed UBI redistributes income from workers to people who do not work, thereby exploiting workers.
- The harm-to-workers claim: the taxes needed to support UBI financially harm workers, all things considered.
- The unacceptable-labor-supply-effect claim(s): UBI causes an unacceptably large reduction in labor supply that is not easily counteracted by other policies.
- The self-destruction claim: UBI increases self-destructive behavior in recipients.
- The meaninglessness claim: UBI makes it possible for people to live lives that they will eventually find meaningless because paid labor is a central source life meaning.
- The capture claim: many of the benefits of UBI will go to someone other than the recipients, perhaps because employers reduce wages, because landlords increase rents in low-income areas, because bureaucrats create overhead costs, etc.
- The inflation claim: UBI causes inflation that is not easily counteracted by other policies.
- The migration claim: UBI encourages immigration and/or migration into areas with UBI.
- The unaffordability claim: UBI at the proposed level is prohibitively expensive.
- The negative, relative cost-effectiveness claim: UBI is more expensive than other programs that can achieve similar goals.
- The gender-role reinforcement claim: UBI helps maintain traditional gender roles by making it easier for women to remain out of the paid labor force while performing unpaid care work and other traditional women’s roles.
- The macro-deterrent claim: UBI decreases economic growth by enabling reduced labor market participation and increasing costs.
- The shut-door claim: UBI creates political pressure to restrict immigration and migration.
- The bought-off-proletarian claim: UBI—by providing a minimal level of contentment for workers—reduces their effectiveness as a force to challenge the deeper inequalities and other social inequities in society.
- The consumerism claim: UBI leads to even more environmental destruction because of increased consumption.
- The decreased-overall-redistribution claim: UBI is (politically and/or economically) feasible only at such a low level and only accompanied by so many other social programs that it will leave low-income people worse off than traditional, conditional social policies.
- The strategy-to-cut-redistribution claim: factions in government will use UBI as an excuse to cut other programs, then cut in a strategy that will lead to much less overall redistribution.
I compiled this list from general knowledge accumulated over years of reading about the UBI debate. It is bound to be incomplete. Many more claims (of various levels of relevance, certainty, and testability) are undoubtedly circulating in the academic and nonacademic literature on UBI. But I hope it captures a significant range of what is being said. This list is enough to demonstrate the difficulty of designing a trial and communicating its results in a way that successfully raises the level of debate over these claims. Some are things that can’t be tested. Some are things that can only be tested indirectly, partially, or inconclusively. Few if any of these claims can be directed tested with any accuracy in a trial.
I’m interested to know how comprehensive people think it is. Did I include all the relevant claims you can think of? Did I overblow any claims that don’t deserve to be on the list?
A stock image used to evoke a mental connect with the word “experiment”
by Andre Coelho | May 28, 2017 | News
Vito Laterza and Jurgen de Wispelaere. Credit to: O Observador.
An event focused on the discussion about social policy in Portugal, and particularly about basic income (in Portugal mostly called unconditional basic income), took place at the Lisbon School of Law (University of Lisbon) on the past day 15th of May 2017.
The first part of the event featured Pierre Guibentif and Paulo Pedroso, both professors at ISCTE, University Institute of Lisbon. The former spoke favorably about basic income in a general sense, while the latter was clearly against it. Guibentif defended it was important to compare basic income to other forms of (conditional) income support, although he did not suggest the setup of an experimental pilot to test it. He, although highlighting basic income’s originality over other social policies, defended that it doesn’t per se defend social inclusion. He went on to say that its originality stems from an intent to generate social evolution, contrasting with minimum income schemes, that aim at alleviating most pressing inequalities but not to change the capitalist mode at its core. In his final remarks, Guibentif doubted basic income’s power to emancipate people, who may lack the capacity and/or knowledge to really pursue virtuous life paths. For that he suggested that the State should maintain and even strengthen specific programs to support citizen’s continuous learning in core areas as science, the arts and other humanities.
On the other hand, Paulo Pedroso questioned the relevance of basic income from the onset. Although he concedes that basic income is intended to be a correction of inequalities at birth (structural inequalitites), he remains skeptic about the capacity of the poorest segment of the population to structure their own lives and make a meaningful contribution to society. According to him, basic income will just keep them (the poor) marginalized and unfulfilled. Pedroso firmly stands that work is fundamental for a healthy society, and so basic income will just erase work’s importance as an identity driving force. Supporting a view of full employment, he views work as essentially related to paid employment, more commonly held as jobs. In an increasingly emotional exposition, Pedroso affirms that basic income is sure to be a vehicle for the destruction of the welfare state as we know it, in a reference to common right-wing views on the applications of basic income. He concludes stating that basic income “amounts to suicide”.
The presentation panel also included Olli Kangas, PhD and responsible for the basic income pilot project being run in Finland at the moment, while working for Kela, the social insurance institution of Finland. He essentially presented and justified the pilot project, which aims at avoiding social traps of several kinds – mainly bureaucratic, poverty and unemployment traps. He referred to some internal challenges, for instance unions in Finland, which are categorically against basic income in fear of losing affiliates in the near future. These unions congregate around 70% of the work force in Finland. Kangas explained that the value used in the experiment (560 €/month) was set in order to match the average amount recipients were already receiving from Kela. He also said that, other than employment, this first experiment would also measure the use of prescriptions, medical treatment and income registration. This would be done without interviews or questionnaires, in order not to influence the experiment’s output. To conclude, Olli Kangas announced that Kela was already planning a larger, more profound experiment in Finland. This time it would be national in range, with a larger sample taken from all people on low incomes and experimenting with more tax models.
Olli Kangas. Credit to: Observador.
Vito Laterza was also a panelist, and enthusiastically defended the basic income concept, while clearly highlighting some of its challenges. He approached the issue in a “back-to-basics” fashion, recalling the “original idea” of basic income: to liberate people. Laterza went on to describe the present-day labor market as “very segmented” and in which several lines of separation are drawn – sexual, racial, disability, etc. To counteract that unfair and segmented labor market he spoke of “cooperative security”, which intends to build on the welfare state in a non-discriminatory way. He also alerted that basic income must not be seen as “just cash”. That monetization of life tendency is, according to him, extremely dangerous, and so the implementation of basic income must be guided by a freedom-for-all mindset, without destroying the beneficial aspects of the welfare state.
To close this event’s first part, Jurgen De Wispelaere spoke about the necessity of basic income being part of a landscape of policies, most of them already in place within the context of the welfare state. According to him, a policy like basic income can be a generator of other policies, and he made a case for a possible integration between “active” and “passive” social measures. Typically, “active” policies like social investment try to prepare people for the marketplace (where commodification occurs), and “passive” ones like basic income are about de-commodification. Jurgen considers that these policies may be complementary, rather than opposites. He defends that basic income can also be an activation tool, helping in removing social traps – unemployment, bureaucratic and poverty traps – so liberating citizens to pursue education and/or other qualifications. In the same vein, basic income can also provide better conditions for young age learning, which will further the potential for a productive adulthood. He goes on to sustain that basic income also “activates” people to move from “crappy jobs” to better, more meaningful activities. As a final remark, Jurgen’s activation argument also involves gender equality issues, assuring that a basic income can particularly help women to get activated.
Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro, also present, shortly listed their version of the advantages and disadvantages of introducing a basic income, opening the session for questions and answers with the audience. The debate that followed revolved around the usual arguments against basic income: disincentives to work, difficulty in financing and the capture of the idea by the far-right.
The second part of the event was setup as a debate roundtable. Several personalities of the academia and politics were present, such as Carlos Farinha Rodrigues, Manuel Carvalho da Silva, Renato do Carmo, Martim Avillez Figueiredo, André Azevedo Alves, André Barata, Luís Teles Morais and the Minister of Work, Solidarity and Social Security José António Vieira da Silva.
José António Vieira da Silva. Credit to: Observador.
Apart from known defenders of basic income in Portugal, as André Barata and Renato do Carmo, all others showed reserves, in several degrees. Among these there was an overall sentiment that it may still be better to improve on existing conditional social assistance, than to risk a free-from-obligation cash transfer program and end up with a largely idle population. Basic income implementation at the European level was referred several times, in what could be a signal of reluctance in spearheading the concept, leaving that responsibility to supranational entities like the European Community. That is also the opinion of the minister Vieira da Silva, who is concerned about how to communicate the basic income concept to the population at large, and about the risk of creating a cleavage in society between those who work (have jobs) and those who do not (do not have jobs). He has also expressed his belief that there will be no shortage of work (intended as jobs) due to technological innovation, referring to past “revolutions”. However, Vieira da Silva has agreed, along with others, that a wider, more profound discussion about work is necessary in our society.
André Barata summed up the feelings in the air with the following sentence: “There were many reticent speeches, but I haven’t seen any downright opposition”.
Help provided by Eduardo Currito.
More information at:
Event information at the Lisbon School of Law website
In Portuguese:
Agência Lusa, “Vieira da Silva admite “sentimentos cruzados” sobre o Rendimento Básico Incondicional [Vieira da Silva admits “mixed feelings” about basic income]”, Diário de Notícias online, May 15th 2017
Edgar Caetano, “Um salário sem trabalhar. Faz sentido em Portugal? [An income without work. Does it make sense in Portugal?]”, Observador, May 15th 2017
by Donald Brown | May 27, 2017 | News
The California Research Bureau hosted a panel on March 23, 2017 regarding current issues facing the state of California, and one of the topics that arose was Universal Basic Income.
The panel, hosted by Anne Neville and featuring three experts — Nicholas Davis; Rachel Hatch; Irena Asmundson — focused on various topics of inequality facing Americans in the state of California. From housing, to health care, to inequality itself, many of the themes focused on how to reshape and adjust society for the wellbeing of its citizens. At one point during the panel, the topic of Universal Basic Income arose, and all three experts took time to explain their views on it during a roundtable discussion.
Nicholas Davis, who was the most connected to the concept of a basic income, spoke in favor of it. Davis argues there are three reasons why a discussion on UBI is essential: the first is about creating security for people in current social climates of instability and insecurity; the second reason focuses on empowering personal freedom, to escape the issues of governmental paternalism; and the final point addresses social justice, which focuses on inclusiveness so that the gains of technology are shared with all instead of a few.
Irena Asmundson then took the response to Davis’ remarks, talking about the economic cost to introducing a UBI. The representatives main point regarding affordability for a UBI in California in terms of taxation would be that the state would need to obtain four times the amount of money it currently does from citizens. However, the largest form of aversion Asmundson expressed was on America’s failings to introduce affordable housing and health care to its citizens, and that these issues need to be solved before a UBI can be considered feasible. In her view, she believed the failure at addressing baseline needs like housing and health care to be far more crucial than assuring a minimum floor, which in comparison UBI may seem more nuanced and not direct at addressing those issues.
Finally, Rachel Hatch expanded upon Asmundson’s position on inequality, and worried that a UBI may not deal with the issue of wealth inequality. Hatch believes a basic income may assure people a minimum financial base, but that it will do very little to address systemic inequality, where just eight men own as much wealth as the bottom half of the human species.
Watch the alluded conversation below.
