by Genevieve Shanahan | Jan 31, 2017 | News
Meeting of the Minds, an organization that aims to identify and raise the profile of practical innovations in the field of urban sustainability, has published an article explaining the motivation for the Finnish basic income experiment, initiated earlier this month, co-written by one of its designers.
The “stick” mentioned in the article’s title refers to the sanctions claimants face under existing workfare policies, while the “carrot” refers to the fact that the basic income will continue to be paid to study participants even if they take up work or gain income through entrepreneurial endeavours.
The authors explain that the experiment “is designed to reform the Finnish social security system to better correspond to changes in modern working life, to make social security more participatory and diminish work-disincentives, and to reduce bureaucracy and simplify the overly complex benefit system.”
The article is written by Olli Kangas and Heikki Hiilamo. Kangas is Director of Government and Community Relations for Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, and one of the designers of the basic income trial administered by that organization. Hiilamo is a professor of social policy at the University of Helsinki and Kjell Nordstokke Professor at the VID Specialized University in Oslo.
Read the full article here:
Olli Kangas and Heikki Hiilamo, “Universal Basic Income: Does the Carrot Work Better than the Stick?”, Meeting of the Minds, January 25, 2017.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Photo: Sibelius Monument, Helsinki. CC BY 2.0 Dennis Jarvis
by Guest Contributor | Jan 30, 2017 | Opinion
“The UBI Bait and Switch” by Bruenig, Jauhiainen, and Mäkinen: A Critical Response
By Otto Lehto, political economist, King’s College London; former chairman of BIEN Finland (2015-2016).
A recent article in Jacobin Magazine on the Finnish UBI experiment is mostly an accurate and well-researched piece of journalism. I was especially impressed by its fastidious attention to detail in its account of the timeline of events leading up to the experiment. However, as someone well-acquainted with Finnish UBI experiment, allow me to bring another perspective on the matter. Jacobin Magazine has all the right to be as firebrand leftist as it wants to be. No question, the rhetoric of the commentary is in line with its socialist ethos. But I would just like to point out a few things that are inaccurate or misleading.
I, too, have written about the government’s proposal in harsh and unforgiving tones in the past, so I really can’t fault them for that. The experiment, let us not mince words, is badly mangled, expert advice is ignored or distorted, and the government coalition’s commitment to any form of basic income is half-hearted, with the gracious exception of a few MP’s. The narrow focus on reducing unemployment and increasing workforce incentives is unfortunate. It becomes tragic when one realises that this ideological agenda drowns out the human rights perspective.
But this is where it gets tricky to fully agree with the Jacobin article’s apocalyptic spin. It describes the current experiment as a “UBI-as-workhouse nightmare”. Now hold on a minute. A workhouse is a place where you must work in exchange for basic amenities. This is a preposterous description of the UBI proposals and experiments underway today. Even under the most critical lens, the (partial) UBI model under experimentation in Finland, while obviously targeted too narrowly and with too many exclusions, significantly reduces the “workhouse nightmare” nature of the benefit system.
What are we to make of the conundrum? It would be useful to separate the general political ambitions of the Sipilä government and the UBI experiment itself. The Sipilä government has an admittedly “schizophrenic” attitude towards basic income. While, on the one hand, it is committed to seeing through the UBI experiment, it is simultaneously, via other channels, pushing for stringent workfare conditionality. These draconian practices – nonsense baked in the tears of unemployed people – are truly deplorable, even from the point of view of austerity itself, i.e. even if one believes the anti-Keynesian line that one must balance the budget when national output is down. The proposed and enacted cuts are disproportionately hurting poor people, relative to the cuts affecting the mid income and high income sectors. The richest people have even been given delicious tax cuts, while students, pensioners, sick people, disabled people and others have suffered.
All that is worth criticising. Some other enactments of the government, like drastically deregulating the opening hours of stores, or shaking the stiff and moribund government monopoly on alcohol sales, I personally find most welcome developments. But all things considered, the general direction of the austerity program, and the government’s attitude towards poor people, leaves a lot to be desired. But I would argue that one shouldn’t judge the UBI experiment on this basis.
I will concede that the general ethos of the Sipilä government certainly permeates the parameters of the experiment. The limits of the experiment were decided after the 2015 elections. The result is a predictable beast built upon the sorrowful soil of a Protestant work ethic that fetishises work incentives and bemoans the metaphysical sinfulness of laziness. It involves the misguided and conscious exclusion of people who are either too old or too young, or who are not currently recipients of the mainline unemployment benefit. This distorts the experiment from the start.
But here’s something to consider. The only people for whom the current UBI experiment is a significant welfare-reduction are people who fulfill all of the following criteria: 1) they happen to be long-term unemployed, 2) they happen to be taking part in the UBI lottery and 3) they happen to have received a slightly higher level of benefit from the state in the past. The diversity of benefits in Finland translates to a diversity of levels of income security, with some people relatively well-off while others receiving pennies (if anything at all). The universal UBI level of approximately €560 can be a reduction to people who have received approximately €650 in the past. The UBI is topped off with housing benefits and other types of discretionary benefits. But a few will obviously be net losers in any equalizing scheme. This is understandable. But this hardly qualifies as a “workhouse nightmare.” In fact, the reduction in quantity comes with many obvious upsides that may or may not compensate for the marginal reduction in the absolute level of welfare income for some people.
Even with net-losers mixed in with net-gainers (in a yet-to-be-determined proportion), the proposed UBI model is an improvement over the current system in almost every respect: 1) it is given automatically and without hassle (for the duration of the experiment), 2) it provides a long-term safety net (a steady shower rather than a drizzle of sporadic benefits) and 3) it is not withheld from people who take up part-time or full-time work (thus improving work incentives). I will surely not need to enumerate for my audience the other well-known benefits of a non-utopian UBI system.
In fact, since the tax system hasn’t (yet) been reformed to account for the UBI system, those lucky participants in the experiment who find employment, full-time or part-time, will also gain significantly in terms of post-tax income. To this extent the experiment is arguably too generous. The tax system obviously needs to be reformed as well, since money doesn’t just grow on trees.
But there’s another thing. Some of the aims of the utopian left, as evinced by this piece, are just contradictory or confused. One cannot simultaneously call for more legal power to the unions, in the style of the old corporatist model of the Nordic welfare state, and to call for a truly universal basic income guarantee. This, however, is the paradoxical cry of the Jacobin piece, whose logic I simply cannot comprehend. The power of the unions has been traditionally very strong in Finland. This has meant, e.g., the legally protected collective bargaining of wages and benefits. For all the good this has brought to industry-insiders, this has meant very little for people outside the framework. It has created a natural opposition between “inside” and “outside” groups: the “insiders” being the members of the protection racket of the unions and the employer’s associations, who receive good and generous benefits, while the “outsiders” being all the other people that fall outside the “standard” model of employment. The insiders have received semi-automatic and hassle-free benefits for a long time, while outsiders have suffered from the “workhouse nightmare” of the discretionary welfare bureaucracy. The guarantee of a non-union-based unemployment and sick leave benefit scheme in the form of a UBI naturally chips away at the monopolistic power of unions to determine who deserves what, when and under what conditions. This is a good thing.
Out of the four demons conjured by the authors of the Jacobin article in the concluding paragraph – “forcing unemployed workers into bad jobs while undermining organized labor, earnings equality, and the welfare state” – the first one, about forcing people into bad jobs, is simply false (nobody is forced under the UBI system to accept any bad jobs, either de jure or de facto); the second one, about undermining organized labor, is actually a mixed blessing (since it actually helps “outsiders” gain benefits at a cost to “insiders”); the third one, about earnings equality, is something that the authors give no reason to think is threatened by the experiment (and indeed, it seems like a complete throwaway line); and the fourth point, about undermining the welfare state, is a tad question-begging.
The real question is, which structures should be reformed and which not. The existing welfare state has obviously failed in many ways to provide effective welfare for all people, and it is impossible to reform the system (for the better) without breaking a few eggs.
If the accusation is levelled at the other stuff the Sipilä government is doing, or the broken moral compass of the austerity crowd, the accusation sticks much better. But I have tried to show these should be kept separate. The UBI experiment is, indeed, severely compromised as a result of a confluence of factors. It survives, barely, within narrow ideological bounds. But the important thing is that the experiment tests the waters for a paradigm shift – slowly, ineluctably.
Even a compromised UBI marks a steady improvement over the status quo in almost all conceivable dimensions. And those are just the conceivable dimensions.
Reviewed by Kate McFarland
Photo: Finland’s “frozen waves”, CC BY-ND 2.0 Marjaana Pato
by Guest Contributor | Nov 21, 2016 | Opinion
Original post can be found at TRANSIT
Written by Bonno Pel & Julia Backhaus
On Saturday October 1st 2016, the Basic Income Earth Network celebrated its 30th anniversary at the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). The picture shows the founding meeting in 1986, but is also quite applicable to BIEN 30 years later. The conference was held at the same location and many of the founders and their fellow militants met in good atmosphere to commemorate the early beginnings of the network. Together with other scholars and generally interested people, they discussed current developments in science and policy and ‘the way forward’ for the basic income movement.
picture source
An unconditional income for all
First, the picture is telling for the ways in which BIEN pursues transformative social innovation, namely through the development, discussion and dissemination of persuasive “new framings” and “new knowings”. The seminar room in the picture gathers several individuals who by now have become eminent scholars in economy, social philosophy or sociology. Over the course of three decades and together with activists, politicians and citizens, BIEN members have developed a whole complex of arguments, evidence and framings around the basic income. The idea itself is simple: An unconditional, individual income entitlement, more or less sufficient for fulfilling basic needs, promises real freedom for all.
It offers individual empowerment in the form of income security and the material conditions for a self-determined existence in society, but it is also in many aspects about changing social relations: between men and women (as the conventional breadwinner model is challenged by individual income entitlements), between employed and unemployed (as stigmatization lessens when entitlement is universal rather than for the ‘unproductive’ only), and between employee and employer (the latter’s possibilities to exploit the former are decreased by the basic income security). In current institutional-ideological constellations, the idea of a basic income is bizarre and outrageous for rewarding jobless ‘free-riders’. Apparently relinquishing hard-earned social security arrangements, BIEN members met (and continue to meet) with tough press, sidelining them as ‘irresponsible freaks’. Yet the power of BIEN members’ socially innovative agency resides in showing that it is actually many common ideas about work and income that are outdated, and harmful even.
Claus Offe (credit: Enno Schmidt)
Impressive examples of outdated conceptions were provided by prof. Claus Offe, who argued that we do not earn our income, as commonly believed. Wage flows from labour that forms part of ever-extending production chains of individuals and machines. The availability of jobs fluctuates cyclically, and independently from individuals’ employability efforts. Moreover, the current productivity in highly industrialized countries is possible because ‘we stand on the shoulders of giants’. It is largely inherited from previous generations. So it is rather the current insistence on employability, on meritocracy and on ‘earning one’s income’ that is out of tune with economic reality. Production has become post-individual, and this requires a matching social security system. Harmful effects of a capitalist system that ignores its obviously collective character through individualist ideology include blaming the losers and accepting precarious conditions for some. Economist Gérard Roland outlined how the basic income provides a better trade-off between labor market flexibility and precariousness than current social security arrangements. Sociologist Erik O. Wright views the basic income as a “subversive, anti-capitalist project”. He expanded how the concept allows moving on from merely taming to escaping the globalized, capitalist system. For him, the basic income can provide the basis for numerous social innovations that also the TRANSIT project considers, such as social and solidarity economy initiatives or co-operatives.
BIEN thriving on internal differences: many streams forming a river
Second, based on the variance of people’s clothing, the picture above also visualizes how BIEN has developed as an association of very different individuals. At the conference various founding members recalled the routes they had traveled towards the transformative concept. They arrived at the idea on the search for liberalist re-interpretations of Marx, through feminist commitments, when rethinking meritocracy, as a response to the structural unemployment of the time, or as a logical conclusion of a transforming and ‘robotizing’ economy. The forthcoming case study report on BIEN by yours truly spells out in more detail how these different little streams came to ‘form a river’, as expressed by a founding member. The internal differences between the generally principled and intellectually sharp BIEN members led to fierce debates, it was recalled. According to a longstanding motor, evangelizer and lobbyist for the basic income, BIEN has only survived as a network for members’ capacity to ‘step back a bit’ from their ideological disputes at times, and to recognize what united them. BIEN even thrived on its internal divisions. It functioned as a discussion platform, and helped to institutionalize basic income as a research field. Since 2006, there is even an academic journal on this example of transformative social innovation: Basic Income Studies.
Evolving communication: spreading the word
Philippe Van Parijs (credit: Enno Schmidt)
Third, the black and white photo immediately suggests how different the world was three decades ago. At the time of founding, network members and conference participants from various countries had to be recruited through letters. Initially, the newsletter was printed out, put in envelopes and stamped, for which members gratefully sent envelopes with pesetas, Deutschmarks and all the other European currencies, subsequently converted at the bank by standard bearer professor Philippe Van Parijs and his colleagues. Today’s e-mail, website and Youtube recordings obviously make a crucial difference when it comes to facilitating discussion and spreading the word fast and wide – especially for this social innovation that primarily travels in the form of ideas. The presentations on the history of basic income underlined the significance of the communication infrastructure. The history of basic income can be conceived of as a long line of individuals working in relative isolation, often not knowing of others developing similar thoughts and blueprints. The evolution of BIEN very instructively shows the importance of evolving communication channels and knowledge production for transformative social innovation – critical, weakly-positioned, under-resourced individuals no longer need to re-invent the wheel in isolation.
BIEN, a research community? Ways forward
A fourth, telling element the picture above is the confinement of the seminar room. There have been discussions about BIEN’s existence as a researchers’ community, with the expert-layman divides it entails (during this meeting of experts, yours truly fell somewhat in the latter category). There are in fact also other networks of basic income proponents that have rather developed as citizen’s initiatives and activist networks. BIEN, as a network that can boast such a high degree of conceptual deepening and specialization, is illustrative for the ways in which it remains confined in its own room. It is significant in this respect that the current co-chair brought forward two lines along which the network should reach out more. First, BIEN should be more receptive towards and engaging with the various attempts to re-invent current welfare state arrangements. While this may imply using a more practical language and taking off the sharp edges it may yield real contributions to social security. Often these change processes (regarding less stringent workfare policies, for example) are not undertaken under spectacular headings and transformative banners, but they involve application of some basic income tenets such as unconditional income entitlements. A second line for outreaching confirms the importance of comparative research into transformative social innovation like TRANSIT: The co-chair highlighted that BIEN will explore and develop its linkages with other initiatives, such as Timebanks and alternative agriculture movements more actively.
Basic income: a ‘powerful idea, whose time has come?’
Fifth and finally, the seminar room setting depicted in the photo raises attention to the knowledge production that BIEN has been and is involved in. The socially innovative agency of its members can be characterized as ‘speaking truth to power’. Basic income activism has taken the shape of critiques, pamphlets and counterfactual storylines (Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ being a 500 year-old example), but also featured modeling exercises, forecasts, and economic evidence to support the case. BIEN members’ key resource is their expertise. Moreover, considering the strong arguments and evidence gathered in favor of the basic income over the past decades, there are reasons to be confident in basic income ending up as the ‘powerful idea, whose time has come’. As described in Pel & Backhaus (2016) and currently considered further, it is remarkable how much BIEN seems to have developed in line with the trend of evidence-based policy. The commitment to hard evidence gives rise to an important internal discussion on the recent developments towards basic income-inspired experimentation (such as in Finland and in the Netherlands). The common stance of BIEN members is that these experiments fall short of providing any reliable evidence for their limited duration and scope, and for the system-confirming evaluative frameworks that tend to accompany them. However, there is also a somewhat growing attentiveness to the broader societal significance of experiments and pilots in terms of legitimization, awareness-raising and media exposure. It is therefore instructive for the development of TSI theory to study the basic income case for the new ways in which ‘socially innovative knowings’ are co-produced and disseminated.
About the authors:
Bono Pel (Université libre de Bruxelles; bonno.pel@ulb.ac.be) and Julia Backhaus (Maastricht University; j.backhaus@maastrichtuniverstiy.nl) are working on TRANSIT (TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory), an international research project that aims to develop a theory of transformative social innovation that is useful to both research and practice. They are studying the basic income as a case of social innovation, focusing on national and international basic income networks and initiatives.
by Toru Yamamori | Aug 27, 2016 | News
Liisa Siika-aho (provided by herself)
As we’ve already reported here, Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has announced their most recent move in a plan to launch a basic income experiment. On 25th August the Ministry canvassed for the Finnish public’s opinion on a bill regarding a basic income experiment. Here is a follow up with the Ministry’s comments and experts’ responses.
Liisa Siika-aho, director, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health responded to BIEN on 26th August as follows:
Q: What is the basic income experiment and what is its aim?
A: The basic income experiment is included in Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s Government Programme. The experiment is one of the activities aiming to reform social security so that it better encourages participation and employment.
Q: Why is the basic income experiment carried out?
A: The objective of the legislative proposal is to carry out a basic income experiment in order to assess whether basic income can be used to reform social security, specifically to reduce incentive traps relating to working.
Q: How are the participants selected?
A: Persons receiving Kela’s unemployment-related benefits, under certain limitations, would be included in the experiment. From the target group, a test group of 2 000 persons would be selected by means of random sampling.
Q: Is it mandatory to participate in the experiment?
A: Participation in the experiment would be mandatory for those selected.
Q: When will the experiment start?
A: It is suggested in the legislative proposal that a basic income experiment will be carried out in 2017–2018.
Q: What would be the level of basic income in the experiment?
A: The level of basic income would be EUR 560 per month. Basic income would be tax free for the receivers.
Q: How is the experiment financed?
A: A total of EUR 20 million has been reserved in the budget for the basic income experiment.
In addition to this, the benefits that Kela is paying at the moment would be used as an addition for those persons who are receiving basic security benefits at the beginning of the experiment.
Q: Who is responsible for carrying out the experiment?
A: The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) would be responsible for carrying out the experiment.
Finland has a long history of advocating UBI (for a brief summery, see here). Here are those advocates’ Comments.
Jan Otto Andersson with an article in the Helsingin Sanomat (taken by Toru Yamamori)
Jan Otto Andersson, Emeritus associate professor at Åbo Akademi, has been advocating UBI since around 1980 and is a founding member of the BIEN (European Network at that time). On 26th August, he had this to say:
It is not a test for what a basic income for all in the society would mean, but for just to see how it affects those who have been unemployed. …. So it is limited but interesting. It will improve the discussion which has been here for a long time….It [my feeling on the experiment] is positive because this makes the idea more well known.
Osmo Soininvaara, a former minister of Social Services with the Finish Green League and another long term advocate of UBI in Finland, posted a harsh criticism on his blog on 26th August, where he calls the experiment as ‘such a stupid model’. His reasons were as follows:
……
In a proper BI model, the received basic income does not, indeed, get smaller when your income level rises, but taxation starts from the very first euro earned. That’s why a proper basic income does not bring net income gains to people in mid-income jobs.
In this experiment taxation is left untouched. If you get into a 4000 euro per month job, you will earn 560 euros more than the person doing the exact same job next to you. We cannot afford to increase the income level of every job earner by 560 euros per month.
In this regard, the model is guilty of the accusations levelled against BI by those people who do not understand who basic income is supposed to work.
…..
(translated by Otto Lehto)
Otto Lehto, the former president of the BIEN Finland, gave us his comments, which seems to have a more nuanced tone:
Feelings, as an individual and academic, formerly of BIEN Finland, can be summed up as follows: The research parameters are about exactly the sort of compromise that one would expect to emerge as a result of the recommendations of an expert coalition commissioned by a wide-ranging coalition government spurred to action by a vague and compelling sense that something needs to be done, but equally held back by the realization that many toes will inevitably be stepped on, and many special interests will need to be reconciled, before anything can be done. Change breeds fear, and fear breeds paralysis. To allay skepticism, the parameters are designed to be the least offensive to, and the smallest possible departure from, the established norms and expectations of the Finnish workfare/welfare-state. In particular, excluding young people and students is, in my opinion, a moralistic choice of little merit and little justification, but it makes sense as a compromise within the status quo, and as a precaution against the critics of “free money to lazy students.”
The budgetary constraints and time constraints are beyond Kela’s control, so the main fault lies within the government. They also set the original goals and parameters within which the labour market participation focus has been raised as the main criteria, with the predictable result that human right, liberty. equality and other considerations of social justice bent have been largely set aside, to the chagrin of many (myself included). This. however, is the state of things, and can only be changed in the next general election of 2019.
2000 participants is a small sample, but if the budget does not change, this cannot be helped. Limiting the sample to people on the government unemployment benefits makes nominal sense as a result of the government’s single minded focus. But it skews the experiment by excluding a number of potential beneficiary groups, including people on low-paying jobs, students, the self-employed, etc. This does not even make sense from the government’s own (limited) perspective, since labour market participation is a more complex notion than the old-fashioned distinction, reflected in the official unemployment statistics, between people who are “in” and “out of” work.
The taxation aspect is another potential disaster. If taxation cannot be changed to reflect the new benefit structure, this will inevitably make SOME recipients of basic income better off than their peers, while some of them will be worse off than their peers. Such a model, with its creation of a massive budget-deficit, cannot be generalized for the whole national economy, as Osmo Soininvaara, the father of the Greens’ basic income model, has written in his recent blog, very critical of the government’s/Kela’s proposal.
I am very skeptical this experiment will produce any really interesting scientific results, but it serves the function of satisfying the nominal requirements of the government’s plan, and the pressures from the various interest groups. It does not appear too radical, too left-wing, nor too right-wing. It might serve a useful purpose in propelling the basic income discussion forward. At the same time, many instances will probably try and use to it squelch any further discussion, too.
Beyond my own views, I will now say something about how this proposal has been received more generally. The overwhelming consensus among my own group of friends, representing multiple parties, left-wing and right-wing, those opposed to basic income as well as those in favour, is that the experiment seems disappointing in many respects, and perhaps even doomed to fail. (Some will conspiratorially add: consciously?) Many people, including opponents and skeptics, would like a more thorough, larger-scale and better designed experiment. The lukewarm success, bordering on failure, of the experiment, before it has even gotten off the ground, is a good indication of the difficulty of institutional change in our country. Good ideas become OK ideas, bad ideas become OK ideas, until we are left with nothing but OK ideas. So, yes, this experiment seems… OK.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod.
by Florie Barnhoorn | Jul 30, 2016 | News
Highlights from the first half of 2016
The early days of 2016 brought a pleasant surprise for the Vereniging Basisinkomen (VBi; Association for a Basic Income), the Dutch branch of BIEN, which celebrated its 25 year anniversary in January. The political leader of the small Cultural Liberal Party, Norbert Klein, initiated a memorandum for the Members of The Tweede Kamer (Second Chamber) of Parliament. “The labour market is changed fundamentally. The introduction of new, innovative concepts like a basic income are urgently needed to prevent large scale social inequality, social unrest and to provide income protection,” he argued in his memo called Zeker Flexibel (Security and Flexibility). This was the first time since the 2000s that the highest political levels were challenged to discuss basic income.
However, the Minister for Social Affairs and Employment, Lodewijk Asscher (of the Partij van de Arbeid or Labour Party) said that although he recognizes the importance of a social and political debate on the future shape of social systems, I’m sure having some great lobbying tips would help in these efforts. He prefers to continue with the existing policy, because he cannot guarantee that areas such as healthcare and social participation would be secured after the introduction of a basic income.
According to Guy Standing at the opening of the 16th World Congress of BIEN, held in Seoul 7-9 July 2016, the best way to attract the attention of politicians is to highlight the growth of the precariat and the growth of related social unrest. The unconditional basic income (UBI) is the most practical, feasible and positively inspiring response to those problems for years to come.
A recent poll by Dalia Research found that 68% of people across all 28 EU member states said they would definitely or probably vote for a universal basic income proposal.
In recent years, the VBi too witnessed an increasing interest in the idea of a basic income, not only among the general public but also in the media. The association increased from a handful of older members in 1991 to a robust movement with more than 500 subscribers both young and elderly. This growing awareness has compelled the VBi to think about new strategies to spread the message: the implementation of an UBI in The Netherlands.
One of these strategies is the establishment of so-called ‘Basisteams’ (Basic teams), local groups who have the important task to inform people and to raise enthusiasm among the population for the advantages of a basic income. Full knowledge of the concept of a UBI is a prerequisite that must lead to political decision-making and acceptance.
Nowadays there are about ten active groups and eight more groups in the pipeline. The groups differ considerably in size and scope. Some are large and put their focus on the organisation of meetings and debates; others are smaller, more regionally oriented. Mostly they start with making a page on Facebook. They come together in the local pub or community centre, hand out pamphlets and deliberate about how to change old systems into something entirely new. The vice-president of the VBi coordinates the ‘Basic teams’.
A crucial achievement of the local groups is that they have convinced municipalities to start experiments with a basic income in their communities.
Utrecht Sunset CC Tambako The Jaguar (flickr)
The pilot in Utrecht among welfare beneficiaries, conceived mainly with the intention to get rid of the sanctions and the obligation to apply for jobs under the current welfare scheme, is set for January 2017. Another four experiments — in Wageningen, Tilburg, Groningen and Nijmegen — will follow as soon as the Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Employment, Jetta Klijnsma (Labour Party), has finalized the administrative decree for allowing experiments in the context of the welfare system.
More experiments will follow as long as basic teams continue to push the local authorities to start pilots with a basic income. Often, these groups are helped by the Dutch Green party, not only on a local level, but also on the national level. In November 2015, the Green Party succeeded in clearing the way for experiments by filing a motion to parliament. It was supported by all political parties, except those of the right-wing liberals of Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the populist Freedom Party of Geert Wilders.
The VBi has also called upon its active members to reach out to co-fighters within their political parties and labour unions and to start discussions during meetings and congresses. As a result, some political parties have positively responded to the idea of a basic income as a social agenda for the sake of the general welfare and against precarious conditions and growing inequality.
After the Green Party and the Democrats 66, the majority (61%) of the Partij van de Arbeid (Labour Party) recently voted for a large experiment with a basic income. The leadership is not yet convinced, but members are very committed to the idea of a basic income and they want the issue to play a major role in the forthcoming campaign for the national elections of March 2017. “A basic income as part of the modern welfare state becomes more and more the ultimate goal for people. A society that includes everyone and where everybody contributes according to their capacities and needs: paid work, volunteering, education, the establishment of a company, et cetera,” says VBi’s most active member in political lobbying.
Many voters of the far left (Socialist Party) endorse the idea of a basic income. However, the leadership has firmly rejected it. Hence the party decided not to adopt it.
Last June, the youth organisation of Democrats 66 passed a policy framework “Moedig Voorwaarts” (Courageous Forward) that states that every adult will receive €600 – €1200 per month and each child €300. The proposal guarantees that nobody will live in poverty. The creation of a basic income is to also be combined with tax reforms.
Last spring a National Poll was held about the following question:
Everyone receives a basic income from the government, regardless of other income and without the obligation to work. The system of taxes and benefits will be adjusted accordingly. Do you find this a good idea?
The results were encouraging: 40% of those surveyed said they are in favour of a basic income as described in the poll, 45% said they are against it and 15% didn’t know.
Most members of right-wing parties declared themselves to be against the idea: 73% of right wing liberals and 61% of the Christian Democrats. Supporters and opponents were roughly in balance among the supporters of Democrats 66: 44% and 45% respectively. Most voters of three left-wing parties were in favour: 60% of the Green party, 54% of the Socialist Party, and 53% of the Labour Party. Interestingly, voters of the populist right-wing Party of Freedom of Geert Wilders were divided: 37% were in favour of the idea, 46% were against it and 17% did not know.
In the Netherlands, people are beginning to recognize that a basic income, as an unconditional floor under the existing welfare state, could be very beneficial for us all by opening up new ways to end inequality, provide stability and freedom to choose. This is especially true for welfare claimants. In recent months, the labour union FNV (Dutch Federation of Trade Unions) organised two rounds of policy debates about basic income with more than 1000 welfare claimants, who are members of an affiliate union. Most of them were in favour of introducing a basic income, because it guarantees financial security, more freedom and less stress. Further, these beneficiaries call upon the FNV Congress 2017 to adopt a proposition stating that the implementation of a basic income will be an explicit trade union objective.
The appetite for such initiatives is also fuelled out of frustration with workfare programmes that turned out to be “hugely expensive and humiliating for those involved”, says Rutger Bregman, the author of Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income.
Rutger Bregman CC Bond van Nederlandse Architecten (flickr)
Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents nearly 2 million American workers, puts it like this in a conversation with Bourree Lam about his book Raising the Floor: “What I’m hoping for is that unions can look up from the defensive crouch they’re in, look into the future, and understand that so many of the things they’re doing now that are enormously important could be very insufficient. And that they’ll begin to think of universal basic income …”
In Christian circles one also hears people making a strong case for basic income. On the website of the Christian union for employees, employers and the self-employed (CGMV), a staff member reacts to the biblical directive that “He who does not work, shall not eat”. In an article with the title “Is everyone entitled to a basic income?”, referring to the many volunteers in organisations that have replaced paid workers, he asks: How then should we interpret another biblical text that says that “a labourer deserves his wages”? How can these volunteers get money to buy food? And how can we defend this attitude towards people who have tried to get a job so hard, but who did not succeed in finding one and who have to deal with rules that cripple their capabilities and creativity?
And there are more projects going on in the Netherlands that draw attention to basic income. A group of citizens has launched a big digital campaign to collect at least 40.000 signatures for the introduction of an unconditional basic income for every adult in 2018. The Parliament is legally obliged to discuss and vote on a topic, once it has been undersigned by more than 40.000 Dutch individuals. Right now (11-07-2016) the counter stands at 51.780 signatures. On to the 100.000! The more signatures, the stronger our voice! See https://basisinkomen2018.nl/.
In April an anchor woman of RTL-Z, an affiliate of the RTL Group (an European entertainment network) in the Netherlands, started the “Basic Income Bullshit Bingo Pot“: every time someone uses the words ‘basic income’ in a wrong way — that is, other than in the sense of an individual, universal, unconditional basic income that is high enough for a dignified life — he or she has to pay a Euro. The pot for the Euro donations can be found here: https://basisinkomen.eu/donatie-aan-vereniging-basisinkomen/.
In May, ‘Haagse Anne‘ (a young woman, artist and living in The Hague) received the second crowd funded basic income for a year. No strings attached! Liesbeth van Tongeren, Member of Parliament for the Green Party, handed her a symbolic plaque. The second publicly financed basic income is an initiative of MIES (Maatschappij voor Innovatie van Economie en Samenleving, a.k.a. Community for the Innovation of Economy and Society).
Another project of MIES, ‘OnsBasisinkomen’ (OurBasicIncome), can be found on this page. Readers are asked to tell what they would do if they were to receive a basic income tomorrow. So far, over 1800 Dutch people have told their story, of which 600 responses have been scientifically analysed. Two provisional findings emerged from the survey: people are not lazy and social participation is a multifaceted concept.
I cannot wait until the next report for this big news: Just a few days ago, the Financiële Dagblad (Financial Journal) announced that four municipalities will get the freedom to experiment with fewer regulations under the existing social welfare schemes. Some of the benefit claimants will be temporarily relieved of the duty to apply for jobs or to follow a reintegration program. Others may earn a bit without having their payment reduced from their benefits. The Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Employment, Jetta Klijnsma, has now agreed because the scientific assessment framework – a partnership between the four major cities and four collaborating universities – is now ready. If after the summer recess the Council of Ministers and the First and Second Chamber quickly agree, the cities of Utrecht, Tilburg, Groningen and Wageningen can start with the experiments in January 2017.
Authors: Florie Barnhoorn, Adriaan Planken
