by Kate McFarland | Jan 6, 2017 | Opinion
One needn’t spend too much time examining the current state basic income movement to deduce that pilot projects are en vogue this year.
Finland’s two-year experiment–in which 2,000 randomly-selected unemployed people will receive an unconditional payment of €560 per month instead of the country’s standard unemployment benefits–was launched on January 1. Several Dutch municipalities are also planning experiments, expected to begin early in 2017, in which existing welfare benefits will be replaced by unconditional benefits for current claimants. Meanwhile in Canada, the government of Ontario is finalizing its plan for a pilot study of a minimum income guarantee (most likely in the form a negative income tax), also set to commence early in 2017, and Prince Edward Island is seeking federal support to run a pilot of its own. And, in Scotland, the councils of Fife and Glasgow are actively taking steps to develop basic income pilots.
In the private sector, some organizations are not waiting for government-run pilots, and have taken it upon themselves to instigate studies. Non-profit organizations like GiveDirectly, ReCivitas, Eight, and Cashrelief have launched, or will soon launch, pilot studies of unconditional cash transfers in poor villages in Kenya, Brazil, Uganda, and India (respectively). In the states, the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator has initiated a short-term pilot study in Oakland, intended to pave the way for a larger scale basic income experiment.
And this is not to attempt to enumerate all of the various individuals, political parties, unions, and advocacy groups who have issued calls for basic income pilots in their own countries, states, or municipalities. Indeed, it has become commonplace, it seems, for basic income supporters to demand pilot studies of basic income rather than, say, just to demand a basic income straight-out.
This wave of pilot projects–with more, most likely, on the horizon–should rightfully excite basic income supporters, as well as those who are merely “BI-curious”. No doubt these studies will provide many useful and interesting data on the effects of cash transfers. At the same time, however, I caution strongly against the fetishization of pilot studies. A pilot study in itself is never a final goal–such is the nature of a pilot–and such a study is neither sufficient nor (presumably) necessary to secure the implementation of basic income as a policy. Furthermore, significant dangers can arise from a narrow and myopic focus on the goal of running pilot studies.
The first problem is this: excessive attention to experimentation threatens to trigger the presupposition that the question of whether basic income should be adopted is a question subject to experimental evaluation. To be sure, even if one is antecedently convinced that a basic income should be adopted, there are many reasons for which one might run a pilot study. It could, for example, help to identify and resolve potential hitches in implementation. But, more commonly, pilot studies are framed as mechanisms for determining whether a basic income is desirable in the first place. Skeptics and supporters alike speak in terms of finding out whether basic income “works”. The experimental approach tend to invoke an instrumentalist view of basic income as policy: the policy should be adopted if, and only if, it is more effective than other candidate policies in achieving certain socially desirable outcomes.
I would contend that this instrumentalist view should be rejected. We can remain neutral on this point, however, and assert only that the debate surrounding the justification of a basic income is severely and artificially constrained by the implicit assumption that this justification rests on empirical grounds. (And, specifically, empirical grounds amenable to testing in a pilot study!) Consider, for example, the view that all individuals deserve a share of society’s collectively generated wealth, unconditionally, merely in virtue of being a member of that society. On this view, it would be entirely beside the point to run an experiment to determine whether a basic income is justified.
If individuals are owed an unconditional basic income simply as their right–whether as a share of a common inheritance, as a condition on individual freedom, or as a realization of a right to the means to survival–then asking whether basic income “works” has the flavor of a category mistake. It is a nonsensical question to ask. (Conversely, if we assume that the question does make sense, we implicitly rule out the position that a basic income is simply a basic right.)
At this point, perhaps, the activist might say, “I don’t need experimental evidence to pursue me that a basic income should be adopted. Policymakers, however, do–and basic income experiments are the best way to convince policymakers that basic income ‘works’ according to the their criteria.” But this maneuver, I believe, goes to far to countenance whatever criteria policymakers use to judge the “effectiveness” of basic income.
In many cases, the goals deemed valuable in status quo politics–increases in jobs, increases in consumption, increases in economic growth–can themselves be called into question (and, I would argue, ought to be). Yet these conventional goals are likely to guide researchers and policymakers in their selection of “success conditions” of basic income experiments. Finland’s experiment, for example, has been designed specifically to assess whether employment increases with the replacement of means-tested unemployment benefits by unconditional transfers.
Indeed, I believe that a main reason to agitate for a universal and unconditional basic income is to challenge conventional social and political values, such as (especially) the Protestant work ethic. To allow to those same conventional values to provide the metric of whether basic income “works” is to subvert this critical role of the movement.
In a worst case scenario, a pilot study could lead policymakers to categorically reject basic income on the grounds that the policy has been shown to be associated with politically undesirable outcomes, when there is reasonable dispute over whether these outcomes are genuinely undesirable. There is some historical precedent here: in the 1970s, experiments of the negative income tax were held in several US cities; however, they were widely dismissed as failures in light of reports that they showed the policy to be associated with a decrease in work hours and increase in divorce rates [1].
There is, to be sure, much to anticipate in basic income research in 2017. But our excitement and fascination at empirical studies mustn’t overshadow the basic normative question of what society should be like. It is only by keeping sight of this latter question that we can properly contextualize the demand for basic income (if any) and, in turn, the role that can be served by pilot studies (if any).
[1] See, e.g., Karl Widerquist, “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” The Journal of Socio-Economics (2005).
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 sandeepachetan.com travel photography
This article was originally written for an editorial in USBIG Network NewsFlash, but posted here instead due to word length.
by BIEN | Dec 30, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Michael Howard (Coordinator of US Basic Income Guarantee Network)
I can remember the moment when I first took a keen interest in basic income. I was familiar with the idea, having spent a research leave at the European University Institute in Fiesole, when Philippe Van Parijs was there writing Real Freedom for All. We had some casual conversations, but I failed to appreciate the radical implications of basic income, until some months later, when I happened to read one of Philippe’s essays, in a collection on social class edited by E.O. Wright.
My work up to that point was focused on market socialism and worker self-management, and, more generally, just and feasible alternatives to capitalism. I thought that the way to address the democratic deficits and inequalities of capitalism, without abandoning its efficiencies, was to convert capitalist enterprises into worker-managed firms operating in a market economy, and also to democratize investment decisions through a system of public banks.
When I read Philippe’s essay, I realized that the model of work I was presupposing, where workers work full-time over many years for a single enterprise, was disappearing. Philippe observed that many in our generation were finding themselves in and out of paid employment, working part-time, or in temporary positions, relying on fellowships, increasingly finding themselves in a precarious position regarding income and work. I invited Philippe to my campus for a series of talks, and to discuss my work.
I attended my first BIEN congress in Amsterdam. In some ways it was my favorite. While I would not wish BIEN to return to an attendance level where everyone meets for the whole conference in the same room, it was great to be able to have one continuous conversation with everyone, and enough break time for serious one-on-one conversations on the side.
In the book I subsequently published, Self-Management and the Crisis of Socialism, I incorporated a basic income into the model of socialism I was defending. After the book, my focus shifted from market socialism and cooperatives to basic income, and I became a regular contributor to conferences on basic income.
I had the good fortune to spend a semester as a Hoover Fellow at the Catholic University in Louvain-la-Neuve. I worked with Karl Widerquist to edit two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. When the US Basic Income Guarantee Network needed a coordinator to take over from Karl in 2008, I was willing, and have been doing the job ever since.
It has been a pleasure and inspiration to work with the dedicated scholars and activists in USBIG and BIEN. During these roughly 25 years, I have seen basic income move from a novel idea, under discussion by academics and a few visionary activists in response to unprecedented changes in our world, to a policy idea being tested in South Africa, Brazil, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, India, and Canada, and on the radar of mainstream policy makers in the US like Robert Reich and even President Obama. The growth of interest threatens to outpace the capacity of our organizations. USBIG, for example, is just now becoming incorporated, has relied on voluntary labor, and has operated without a budget since its beginning.
But BIEN, USBIG, and other organizations are gearing up to meet the rising interest and the important and difficult policy challenges and decisions that lie ahead. Despite recent turns toward the right in politics, I am confident that our best times lie ahead. Xenophobia and neoliberal austerity cannot solve the climate crisis, the disruptions created by the current wave of automation, persistent global poverty, and stagnating economies. Once the false promises of right wing populism are exposed, there will be an opening for new solutions, and basic income is likely to be an essential part of the mix. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with my comrades in BIEN during these very interesting times.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 21, 2016 | News
On November 29 and 30, the White House, the Stanford University Center on Poverty and Inequality, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative co-hosted the Summit on Poverty and Opportunity.
Held at Stanford, the event brought together “275 high-level players in technology, philanthropy, community service, government, and academia” to listen to and participate in a series of panel discussions on social and economic policy and the role of technology and big data.
The conference included a 40-minute panel on “The Future of Jobs and the Question of a Basic Income”:
PANELISTS (from viewer’s left to right)
– Sam Altman, president of the startup incubator Y Combinator, and the initiator of its plan for a basic income experiment. Y Combinator is currently running a pilot study of a basic income in Oakland, with plans for a larger scale experiment in the future.
– Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and (as of this month) a co-chair of the Economic Security Project, which will be distributing $10 million in grants to support basic income projects in the US.
– Juliana Bidadanure, an assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Philosophy who specializes in political theory and public policy. Bidadanure will be teaching a graduate seminar on the philosophy of basic income in winter 2017.
Future of work expert Natalie Foster moderated the discussion.
All four participants are supporters of universal basic income.
PANEL OVERVIEW.
Bidadanure, Hughes, and Altman, respectively, begin the panel by describing how they came to interested in basic income and outlining their reasons for supporting such a policy. Following these introductory remarks, discussion turns to past and present basic income experiments: Altman talks about Y Combinator’s newly launched pilot study, Hughes describes the work of the charity GiveDirectly, and Bidadanure lays out the results of past experiments in Manitoba, Namibia, and India. Altman additionally stresses the ability of a basic income to alleviate financial anxiety for people who currently live paycheck to paycheck. Finally, panelists present their thoughts on the question of how to finance a basic income. Due to concerns about feasibility, Hughes proposes beginning with a small basic income of $100 or $200 per month; Bidadanure and Altman, however, raise concerns with the implementation of a basic income that is it not sufficiently large to allow for freedom and security.
Additional press on the Summit on Poverty and Opportunity:
Nitasha Tiku, “Stanford, The White House, And Tech Bigwigs Will Host A Summit On Poverty”, BuzzFeed News, November 28, 2016.
Reviewed by Jenna van Draanen
Photo (Stanford University) CC BY 2.0 Robbie Shade
by Guest Contributor | Dec 19, 2016 | Opinion
What is a negative basic income?
“A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement.” A negative basic income would be one where a periodic cash payment is unconditionally demanded from all on an individual basis, without means-testing or a work requirement. This is nothing but a per-head tax or a poll tax, a payment for existence, an equal amount taken from everyone, unconditionally.
The extreme unfairness is apparent. How can you take the same amount from the billionaire and the beggar? Not surprisingly, there have been very few pure poll taxes in history – most had a number of exclusions, especially for the poor. However, there is a different kind of per-head tax that is large, widespread, and right under our noses. This is when there is loss or diversion of the commons.
Let’s take a toy example to understand this. Imagine a tiny commons, 100 people who own a 1 kg slab of gold in common, inherited from the past. As they are worried about theft, they store it under the protection of the local deity. But it is a continual worry. The community decides to sell the gold, and to invest in a piece of land. They reason that at least the land can grow a crop, whereas the gold generates no income. As long as they maintain the fertility of the land, they can all share the crop. This would be the equivalent of a commons dividend or a cooperative dividend, essentially a Universal Basic Income for the community.
Now imagine that when they go to sell, they find the gold is simply stolen. Clearly it is a loss of 10 grams each (100 persons x 10 grams = 1,000 grams = 1 kg). This is nothing but a per-head imposition of the equivalent of 10 grams of gold. Since it is an inherited asset, the loss is suffered by all future generations as well. In a different sense, the loss is the opportunity to receive the commons dividend, the universal basic income in perpetuity.
We can extend this logic to diversion of either the capital (the value of the gold), or the income stream from the new asset (the land). If the government appropriates the value to finance infrastructure or health or education, it is still effectively financing these investments with a hidden per head tax.
This is even clearer in the instance of the fruit of the land and the commons dividend. If the government appropriates the entire crop, then it is identical to distributing a commons dividend as a basic income, and taxing it simultaneously to the exact same extent – the negative basic income.
This kind of underselling of the commons is widespread, particularly in minerals. To take a couple of examples, it has been estimated that the United Kingdom and Norway have extracted approximately equal amounts of oil from the North Sea. However, the United Kingdom received approximately GBP 400 billion less than Norway[1]. For a population of 64 million, this is a loss or a poll tax of GBP 6,250. Had this amount been saved, it could have financed a Citizen’s Dividend of GBP 250 in perpetuity, assuming a real return of 4%.
Another common problem is that the money received for the minerals is treated by the government as taxation revenue, not as the sale of the commons. Consequently, instead of creating a new asset, such as the land in the toy example, or more seriously, Future Generations Funds or Permanent Funds, the government simply spends the money as income. While this boosts the GDP figures, it is both the consumption of our inherited asset as well as the hidden imposition of a per head wealth tax. . Alaska only deposits 25% of its money from oil in to its Permanent Fund. The remaining 75% is treated as revenue in the state budget. This year, Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend was set at US$2,072. By extension, the remaining 75% that was spent through the budget could have financed an additional dividend of $6,216 per annum.
The Norway oil fund presently saves all receipts from minerals in the Norway Government Pension Fund. This is the single largest fund in the world, approximately USD 900 billion. However, instead of paying out a commons dividend or a Citizen’s Dividend, the money is appropriated into the budget. This is clearly equivalent to imposing a per head tax on all Norwegians. The 2016 budget estimates a transfer of NOK 208,994 million to the budget[2]. For a population of 5.084 million[3], that is a negative universal basic income of NOK 41,108, or approximately USD 4,863[4]. It is doubtful that any modern democracy can impose a per head tax of such a staggering amount.
The Goenchi Mati Movement, a people’s movement in Goa has adopted simple principles that they advocate for governing mining of the commons. In short, the principles are:
- We, the people of Goa, own the mineral in common. The state government is merely a trustee of natural resources for the people and especially future generations (Public Trust Doctrine).
- As we have inherited the minerals, we are simply custodians and must pass them on to future generations (Intergenerational Equity).
- Therefore, if we mine and we sell our mineral resources, we must ensure zero loss, ie. capture of the full economic rent (sale price minus cost of extraction, cost including reasonable profit for miner). Any loss is a loss to all of us and our future generations.
- All receipts from minerals must be saved in the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund, as already implemented all over the globe. Like the minerals, the Permanent Fund will also be part of the commons. The Supreme Court has ordered the creation of a Permanent Fund for Goan iron ore and already Rs. 94 crores is deposited.
- Any real income (after inflation) from the Goenchi Mati Permanent Fund must only be distributed to all as a right of ownership, a Citizen’s Dividend. This is like the comunidade zonn, but paid to everyone.
We argue quite simply that any other structure would impose per head taxes, which is fundamentally regressive and obviously unfair. The principle of zero loss mining was clearly violated in the UK receiving GBP 400 billion less than Norway. The principle of saving all receipts from minerals is widely violated, largely due to the way governments account and report for this – windfall revenues instead of it being a capital receipt. And where permanent funds do exist, in most cases the government appropriates the income instead of distributing it as a commons dividend.
This problem is not confined to minerals. All over the world, the commons are being destroyed at a rapid rate. For example, the “Mickey Mouse extension” of copyright is also nothing but a transfer from the commons to the private sector, an imposition of a negative basic income.
It is time that activists for basic income seriously hunt out instances of negative basic income. Simply eliminating them could achieve many of the desired benefits of basic income, with a moral argument in favour, rather than the uphill battle of helicopter money.
About the author: Rahul Basu
[1] Did the UK Miss Out on £400 Billion Worth of Oil Revenue?, David Manley & Keith Myers, Natural Resource Governance Institute, 5 October 2015
[2] https://www.statsbudsjettet.no/Upload/Statsbudsjett_2016/dokumenter/pdf/budget2016.pdf
[3] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=population+of+norway&oq=population+of+no
[4] Google. 1 NOK = 0.12 USD, 41,108 NOK = 4,863.76 USD. 13 Dec 2016, 12 noon GMT
by Kate McFarland | Dec 16, 2016 | News
Universal basic income (UBI) has been receiving an increasing amount of attention in India–including from the national government, with the Chief Economic Adviser having announced that UBI will be examined as part of the country’s next Economic Survey.
Within the government, UBI tends to be viewed chiefly as a way to overcome the inefficiencies and corruption that plague existing programs of social welfare. Some academic economists, including Abhijit V. Banerjee (MIT) and Pranab Bardhan (UC-Berkeley), have also emphasized the efficiency of UBI in comparison to India’s current welfare state.
One critic of this approach to UBI is Nimai Mehta, Academic Director of Global Economics and Business at Washington DC’s School of Extended and Professional Studies. Mehta maintains that UBI should not be seen only–or even primarily–as a way to make India’s welfare system more efficient, but should instead be conceptualized as a route to other reforms.
In an article published in October, Mehta argues that a UBI alone would not suffice to solve the most fundamental problems faced by the poor in India. Indeed, the adoption of a UBI could threaten to leave many worse off if the government were to take it as a license to make substantial cuts in its spending on health, sanitation, education, and other public goods:
Where entrepreneurship and job creation continue to face formidable challenges, and public sector failures in education, health and sanitation severely degrade the poor’s expenditure on human capital, a UBI will prove insufficient or even wasteful. This is not because, as many fear, the poor would spend it unwisely, but because, without wider reforms, the poor remain handicapped in their ability to “buy” themselves out of poverty, whether through entrepreneurship or investments in their human capital. Worse, a UBI handout could reduce the political incentive for these reforms.
Mehta proposes what he calls “UBI-for-reform” programs as a way to address further handicaps faced by the poor. Crucial to his proposal, these programs would be organized within individual Indian states rather than nationwide. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has preferred that states take the lead in initiating reforms, and has promised support for states undertaking difficult but important reforms. Thus, Mehta suggests that the national government provide money to a state to help fund a UBI for its residents, while making its renewal contingent on the state’s carrying out additional reforms aimed at, for example, improving educational quality and access, removing barriers to entrepreneurship, or helping laborers to find more secure and stable work.
Reference
Nimai Mehta (Oct 28, 2016) “A universal basic income to step up economic reform” Ideas for India; originally published as “A UBI to step up economic reform” (Oct 18, 2016) Mint.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Cover Photo CC BY 2.0 Trocaire
