by Liam Upton | Jan 18, 2015 | Opinion
This is an interview with Nick Barlow, founder of the ‘Liberal Democrats for Basic Income’ group, you can read an article about the group here.
BINews: What stage is the Basic Income Liberal Democrat group at now and where do you see it going in the next 5 or so years?
Nick Barlow: We’re still very much at the coming together stage (top tip: don’t try organising a new group just before the Christmas break) and about getting the idea out there and discussed.(see this article for instance). There’s no formal structure to the group yet beyond an email list and a Facebook group, but people are joining up.
Realistically, I think the key time for basic income supporters in the party is going to be after the general election, when I think people will be looking at how we move forward and develop the party in the coming years. I would hope that in some point within the next couple of years we’d be able to take a proposal to party conference to be debated.
BINews: What makes you think the Liberal Democrats are particularly suited to adopt the policy of Basic Income?
Nick: First, because it was party policy before between 1990 and 94, and it was also suggested and discussed (usually alongside Land Value Tax) in the old Liberal Party.
I think there’s a need for a liberalism in the twenty-first century that understands a lot more has to be done to ensure positive liberty. For me, a basic income is a way of ensuring that basic level of provision for everyone which enables them to be free and to give them power. If we are serious about freeing people from poverty, ignorance and conformity – the party’s purpose, according to its constitution – then a basic income is one of the best ways of doing that.
BINews: What steps do you think are necessary for the idea to gain traction within the party and eventually be adopted?
Nick: First, I think we need to build awareness and challenge some of the preconceptions against basic income. A lot of people (in the party and society as a whole) just aren’t aware of the idea, so there’s work to be done in making people realise it is possible. In a wider sense, I think there needs to be a wider discussion about the future of the party and how people see liberalism. Basic income is just one idea that the party could adopt if it wants to be different, but we first have to answer the question of whether we strike out and be different, or just go for a centrist position.
BINews: Do you envisage it being adopted by the party within the next 10-15 years?
Nick: I think it’s entirely possible it could be adopted by the party within five years, if the party is willing to try a new direction.
BINews: What impact do you think the adoption of Basic Income would have on support for the party?
Nick: It’s very hard to say, because there’d obviously be a lot of negative publicity from the mainstream press, especially given the current coverage of anything to do with benefits, but it would open up a lot of potential new support (and reclaimed old support) who are people interested in doing things differently, As a key idea to show how we’re different from the big two parties, it would stand out, but the party would have to be willing to take the flak that comes with it in order to stand out.
If you look back at the party’s manifesto in 1992, basic income (Citizen’s Income as it was branded then) wasn’t just one policy, it was part of a wide-ranging set of policies that would have reshaped the whole relationship between the individual and the state. It was that commitment to doing things differently that I think helped rally the party from the low points of the late 80s and helped it recover.
BINews: Do you see the idea of Basic Income becoming a mainstream idea in British politics in the near future?
Nick: I think it’s unlikely in the short term, just because of the sheer level of demonisation the very concept of benefits is receiving at the moment. I think to get more widespread acceptance of basic income needs not just that to change, but for people to be more aware of how the way the economy works has changed. I’ve written before about the concept of ‘workism’, and how we fetishise the idea of people having to work, and that’s deeply rooted in our culture.
Basic income isn’t just a small adjustment to the system, it’s about a much more fundamental change than other policies, and to make it mainstream means a whole lot of wider attitudes need to change. To get back to the point, one of the reasons for looking to start a Liberal Democrats for Basic Income group was to help promote the debates and discussions we need to have, and keep having, to get the idea more widespread attention. Shifting widely-held attitudes takes a long time and a lot of conversations.
by Josh Martin | Dec 18, 2014 | Research
[Josh Martin]
Barlow discusses the reasons why the Liberal Democrats in the UK should include the Citizen’s Income, also known as the basic income, in its party manifesto. In fact, the Liberal Democrats had it in their manifesto from 1992 to 1994, and Barlow hopes to encourage other Liberal Democrats to support it once again.
Nick Barlow, “Liberal Democrats for Basic Income, anyone?”, What You Can Get Away With, 2 December 2014.
(Source: What You Can Get Away With)
by Stanislas Jourdan | Dec 1, 2014 | Opinion
Yoland Bresson (1942-2014), one of the prominent advocate for basic income in France passed away during the summer.
A tribute by Jacques Berthillier originally published in French. Translated and adapted by Stanislas Jourdan.
In 1971, Yoland Bresson worked as an economist for the Concorde aircraft project, and observes a surprising fact: those who have more control over time and personal schedule are those with more financial resources (and those who are more likely to book flights on Concorde airlines). Moreover, people’s resources increase over time because freedom and time allow to take advantage from commercial discounts, and get access to social conditions which allow to escape from constrained social time.
Yoland started to dedicated himself into studying those notions until he found the theory linking spare time with income, which he published in 1981, and developped in the book ‘Post-Salariat’ in 1984. A conclusion emerged from this theory: the value of time is the value of the minimum income, the poverty line from which individuals become economically integrated. Therefore, we should distribute to people the monetary equivalent of the unit of time.
In 1986, Yoland Bresson was invited by Philippe van Parijs to participate to the very first meeting in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) where BIEN was founded.
Later on, he was contacted by Henri Guitton, reknown economist and very enthusiast reader of Bresson’s books. They decided together to found a working group around those concepts. After a series of meetings at the Polytechnic University, the “association for an existence income” (AIRE) was created. They insisted on the notion of ‘income’ as opposed to ‘allocation’ [allowance] because an income is linked with the contribution to the creation of wealth, while a social allwoance is refers to the notion of assistance. Indeed, every single exchange of time contributed to the creation of wealth, as Bresson proclaimed.
First, Henri Guitton was president of the AIRE, then Yoland Bresson replaced him after Guitton died. The association was striving for the instauration of an ‘existence income’, it explored the idea in order for all citizens and politicians to embrace it.
Since then, the AIRE kept spreading the idea. It notably organised a BIEN Congress at Paris Saint-Maur in 1992, a colloque at Cedias on june 12th 1996, and two other ones at the French National Assembly: one on November 26th, 1998, with more than 300 participants. Finally; and the second one on june 23rd 2004 with the sponsorship from Christine Boutin (Christian-Democrats leader).
In 2012, when the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income started to be organised, Bresson immediatly supported the efforts deployed by a new generation of activists. He partners his association with the launch of a new website revenudebase.info which resulted in the creation of the French Movement for a Basic Income, a new association which broadly federates all those who push for the idea of a basic income. Yoland Bresson had the wisdom and open-mindness necessary to trust the young new blood who made the movement grow.
Yoland Bresson also played an international role in the promotion of basic income, notably through his interventions in the french-speaking african countries, and until recently in Bulgaria. Shortly before he died on august 22nd 2014, he was invited for a conference at the Polish Parliament.
His contribution as an economist also include his last proposal: the creation of a eurofranc, a new national currency complementary with the euro currency. His idea was to unleash the possibility to finance a basic income with money creation, without transgressing the Lisbon Treaty – which would result in leaving the eurozone. Such scheme was set to be temporary, allowing a smooth transition for the introducion of a basic income.
If this very innovative (and even revolutionary) proposal was adopted, the introduction of a basic income would be facilitated, and the economic activity would be simultaneously stiumulated.
Following Yoland Bresson’s decease, we have received a very large number of letters expressing sympathy, esteem and gratitude to Yoland and his family. It would not be possible to publish all of them, but there is one we would like to communicate. The one from BIEN’s founder Philippe van Parijs:
Yoland was present at the founding Assembly of BIEN in 1986. Until now he remained a loyal camarade of thoughts and struggle. Like others before and after him, he passed away without witnessing the achievement of a proposal he kept believing. Nonetheless, the day when his country as elsewhere eventually will implement the basic income, we will owe him and others with such personalities »
by Josh Martin | Oct 24, 2014 | News
[Josh Martin]
In this recent episode of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, 44 minutes into the show Nader answers a question from a listener on whether or not he supports a basic income. Nader replies by stating that he does and has supported a basic income for a long time. He then explains the bipartisan nature of the policy by pointing out its support from President Nixon, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek as well as the Green Party in the USA. When pressed to give more details on the size of a basic income for all Americans, Nader replied by saying that it could be as little as $3,000 or as much as $10,000 per year for each citizen. He then responds to claims that a basic income would create disincentives to work.
Ralph Nader is a five-time candidate for President of the United States, having run in 1992 as a write-in candidate, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent in 2004 and 2008.
To listen to the episode, follow this link.
Ralph Nader, “Ebola, Civic Heroes, Basic Income”, Ralph Nader Radio Hour, 20 October 2014.
Ralph Nader has reaffirmed his support for a basic income. (Source: Ralph Nader Radio Hour)
by Citizens' Income Trust | Nov 22, 2013 | Opinion
Tracy Shildrick, Robrt MacDonald, Colin Webster and Kayleigh Garthwaite, Poverty and Insecurity: Life in low-pay, no-pay Britain, Policy Press, 2012, v + 256 pp, pbk, 1 847 42910 0, £26.99, hbk, 1 847 42911 7, £70
There is no better way to learn about the effects of the UK’s employment market and its tax and benefits system than to hear people tell their stories; and the stories that we hear are stories of the ‘precariat’ (Guy Standing, The Precariat, Bloomsbury, 2011): people whose lives are characterised by precarious employment – if any – and by the resulting precarious income. The back cover of the book says that ‘this book is the first of its kind to examine the relationship between social exclusion, poverty and the labour market’. Not true. Trapped in Poverty: Labour-market decisions in low-income households, by Bill Jordan et al (Routledge, 1992), followed similar qualitative methods and told a similar story: similar, but not the same, because comparing the two books shows that today many individuals and households are in a far more precarious situation than the households that Jordan and his colleagues interviewed on an Exeter local authority estate twenty years ago. (Trapped in Poverty is not in Poverty and Insecurity’s bibliography.)
Poverty and Insecurity’s first substantive chapter, chapter 2, describes the book’s ‘dynamic’ approach to poverty: that is, an approach that studies how people move in and out of poverty. (Here Ruth Lister’s Poverty, published in 2004, ought to have been referenced.) The authors discuss recurrent poverty, low paid work, the low-pay, no-pay cycle, precarious work, and poor work, all of which appear throughout the book. They discuss the precariat and find that its growth is largely due to workers being ‘bumped down’ from higher-skilled to lower-skilled jobs; and that one of its most significant features is the high transaction costs experienced when people lose a job: a period of no income while benefit claims are processed, leading to debt, and then to unrepayable debt. A brief history of our means-tested and demeaning benefits system leads to the conclusion that the benefits system contributes to the poor quality of low paid jobs.
Chapter 3 describes Middlesbrough, where the research was carried out, and also describes the qualitative method; and chapter 4 describes employers’ and ‘welfare to work’ agencies’ perspectives on the low-pay, no-pay cycle, and finds that such agencies have little contact with people who are regularly in and out of work because their schemes are designed to cater for the long-term unemployed.
Chapter 5 finds that low paid and insecure jobs lead to more of the same and are not stepping stones to better jobs; and interestingly that this difficult experience does not dim people’s work ethic. Chapter 6 discovers that qualifications might or might not be a road to good jobs, and that most insecure jobs are obtained through friendship networks (an efficient method for both employers and employees when the job might not last very long). Chapter 7 finds that the main drivers of the low-pay, no-pay cycle are the supply of insecure employment and workers’ willingness to accept it; chapter 8 discusses the circular relationship between illness and poor jobs, and the similar relationship between caring responsibilities and poor jobs; and chapter 9 concludes that ‘neither work nor welfare protected the interviewees from poverty’ (p.189).
Chapter 10 concludes that work is not necessarily a route out of poverty, largely because there is a plentiful supply of low-skilled, short term employment, and workers are willing to apply for such jobs. The result is a lot of people in a low-pay, no-pay cycle, and therefore socially excluded core members of the precariat.
Most of the book is well-evidenced diagnosis. The final few pages are prescription: better jobs, by paying a living wage and improving conditions; and poverty reduction by increasing the level of benefits. The authors find the benefits system to be moving in a punitive direction. Two myths that the authors tackle are that benefits are too high and that the poor do not wish to work. Neither is true.
The authors ask for a ‘welfare system that promised social security not greater insecurity’ (p.223) – a good description of a Citizen’s Income.
