by Tyler Prochazka | Jun 20, 2020 | Opinion
This past week, Finland released the final results from its two-year “basic income” experiment. The program produced a modest increase in working days among basic income recipients and noticeable improvements in perceived happiness and healthiness.
Is this a surprise? When governments give people cash assistance, of course, their lives will improve. And with financial stress alleviated, these recipients will still find productive uses for their time.
Simply imagine the unearned suffering billions of people could have been spared if governments had implemented basic income prior to the pandemic and global economic depression.
Basic income skeptics should consider which system failed when confronted with the current avalanche of suicide, descent into addiction, and hungry mouth these twin crises have created. But according to the government’s standard, Finland’s basic income experiment still “failed” because recipients only increased their working days by a week or so.
Let that sink in. Despite proof that the program improved basic income recipients’ physical and mental well-being, it was deemed a failure because it did not fix every aspect of the labor market in two years. Recipients worked more, but that apparently still was not enough.
Maybe the standard by which success is judged is, therefore, the true failure.
Our current situation shows us that the government was dead set on keeping us in jobs at all costs. And the natural result of that obsession to “preserve work” is that governments are now bailing out corporations instead of their people.
Of course, well-connected businesses like airlines are bailed out first (and multiple times) as average people languish on the edge of financial ruin. Meanwhile, complicated schemes in the United States like the “Paycheck Protection Program” are designed to create the impression of modest job loss, since employees are kept tacked to their employer by way of payroll. But these “jobs saved” are meaningless insofar as many small businesses will immediately shutter from falling demand whenever the program ends. Many are zombie employers, animated by governments’ obsession with “jobs” over human wellbeing.
Even increasing unemployment benefits with a $600 bonus has been a nightmare, having never gone to many informal workers like caregivers and mothers in the first place. The unemployed will now make every effort possible not to return to work. Unlike with basic income, where the payment is available unconditionally, people will lose their leisure time and $600 unemployment bonus when they accept their next job.
Unemployment payments are also being used to threaten employees to return to work before the pandemic is even under control. In Iowa, the governor said unemployment recipients will be thrown off unemployment assistance if they do not return to work when lockdowns are eased: even if their workplaces are still hotspots for COVID. This means even more lives will be sacrificed on the altar of “increasing work” and “saving jobs.”
In contrast, basic income would empower people to make an informed decision whether it is safe to return to work without the loaded gun of economic self-destruction being held to their head. Governments should pay people directly instead of paying their employers. If they did, employers would have to meet the safety and pay standards of the people they hope to woo back into work
Almost a year ago, I wrote that the era of “experimenting” with basic income to determine whether it causes “laziness” should end. This question is more often than not asked in bad faith by opponents of basic income, who ignore overwhelming evidence that it generally increases the number of hours recipients work: even leaving aside the productivity gains in those work hours, as people are given more freedom to choose how their labor is allocated.
When the article was written, Canada cancelled its basic income experiment and Finland released its first year of results. These experiments were deemed failures at the time. But the absurdity of that belief is clearer than ever before.
We stand at the abyss, with the highest unemployment rates and deepest recession of our lifetimes on the horizon. And yet governments have doubled down on putting “jobs,” narrowly defined as roles serving corporate interests, over our wellbeing. This paradigm, by supercharging the economic fallout of the pandemic and forcing people back to work without safety rails in place, defies all logic.
Basic income never failed us. Our “jobs” did.
By Tyler Prochazka and James Davis
by Michael Howard | Jun 3, 2020 | News
Michael Howard, Co-ordinator of USBIG, has written an article about increasing Basic Income activism in the United States.
Two years ago, if one were to speak of a basic income movement, one might be accused of hyperbole. USBIG was able to muster support for annual congresses, in cooperation with the Basic Income Canada Network, and disseminate information and analysis through the website and newsflash. … Then came the Yang campaign, putting UBI on the national agenda. …
To read the article, click here.
by Malcolm Torry | May 6, 2020 | News, Research
At a presentation on Wednesday 6th May, Kela, the Finnish social security agency, gave further results from the first year of its Basic Income experiment.
The trial group was 2,000 randomly selected unemployed individuals who had their unemployment benefit made unconditional for a period of two years. A control group of 173,000 unemployed individuals had no changes made to their unemployment benefit.
During the first year of the trial there was no statistically significant change in employment market activity among the trial sample. Analysis of the data generated by the second year of the experiment has now shown that, for the trial group, employment rose on average by six days between November 2017 and October 2018. Larger increases were experienced by families with children, and by individuals whose mother tongue was not Finnish. Evaluation of the second year’s employment data had been complicated by the implementation of a more activation-oriented social security system for unemployed individuals half way through the experiment, which means that changes in employment market behaviour will have been affected by various consequences of the new policy as well as by the unconditionality of the trial group’s unemployment benefit.
The response rate to survey questions about wellbeing was predictably low, but it had still been possible to conclude that, compared with 5,000 randomly selected individuals from the control group, the trial group had experienced a higher rate of generalised trust, less stress, less depression, less bureaucracy, less financial stress, and better cognitive functioning.
From interviews with 81 recipients of the Basic Income, it was discovered that some had experienced a wider variety of participation in society outside employment, and that a sense of autonomy had increased.
The researchers had concluded that wellbeing effects were more significant than employment market effects, which mirrored results from experiments with different but similar mechanisms in Canada and the Netherlands.
A telephone survey to gauge public opinion after the experiment had found that 46% of respondents believed that a Basic Income should be introduced.
The discussion that followed the presentation explored the definition of Basic Income, whether different experiments could be compared if they were experimenting with different things, the importance of a secure layer of income, how long it would take to implement a Basic Income, the importance of social experiments, whether a Basic Income would make people lazy, and the extent to which the effects of a nationwide and permanent implementation of a Basic Income scheme would differ from those of a two year experiment.
Still to do: a report in English; a report on experiment participants’ use of other social benefits and services; and a study of the reasons for individuals with a non-Finnish mother tongue had been disproportionately enabled by their Basic Incomes to gain new skills and find employment.
To see a recording of the presentation, click here.
The final report can be found here. An English summary will be found on the last few pages, starting on page 187.
Social Europe has published an article about the results by Philippe Van Parijs
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by Andre Coelho | May 4, 2020 | News
Faun Rice, a former Basic Income News editor, has just posted an article on the new Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) (and the characteristics it shares with universal basic income). That article, called “The Global Turn to Cash Transfers”, starts with a lucid but provocative opening:
Before March 2020, the Canadian public probably would have rebelled at the idea of a program that delivered a full-time minimum wage to 20% of the population without requiring them to demonstrate that they couldn’t find a job. A global pandemic has created an ideological shift where many of us are suddenly very empathetic with the unemployed — and this gives Canada an opportunity to trial unprecedented policies and ask some never-before-possible questions, including: what happens when we just give people money?
More information at:
Faun Rice, “The Global Turn to Cash Transfers“, Medium (Digital Policy Salon), April 30th 2020
