by Jonny West | Mar 21, 2016 | News
On 30 January 2016, BasisInkomen, the Dutch association for a basic income, hosted the International Congress on Basic Income Experiments in Maastricht, Netherlands, to celebrate its 25th anniversary. This was an opportunity for those interested in the idea of a basic income to come together to reflect on recent developments – particularly in the Netherlands, Finland and France – and look towards the future. Keynote speakers included Julia Backhaus, Sjir Hoeijmakers, Stanislas Jourdan, Markus Kanerva, Otto Lehto, Philippe van Parijs, Bono Pel, Guy Standing and Nicole Teke. This article is a summary of the key points from the congress.
Guy Standing opened the congress by reflecting on the journey that the basic income idea has made over the previous 30 years: from the impossible to the ridiculous to the absurd and now perhaps even to the cusp of the inevitable. Two key themes ran through Guy Standing’s presentation: the necessity for further experimentation in order to gain political legitimation and, moreover, the importance of designing these experiments based on normative principles of social justice, such as wealth redistribution and social emancipation. If political legitimation can be won, based on principles of social justice, then a basic income will provide a pathway toward a dignified life for individuals within a good society — a society in which the collective wealth of the community is shared equally within and across generations, and in which each individual makes a moral commitment to actively participate in society. The idea of a basic income represents a rejection of the opportunistic politics of today in favour of a positive vision for tomorrow’s good society.
Guy Standing
After Guy Standing’s expansive introductory speech, discussion turned to the details of social experiments currently being planned in the Netherlands, Finland and France. In each case, recent developments demonstrate broad support for some type of basic income across the political spectrum.
In the Netherlands, nineteen municipalities are currently developing some form of social security experiment, which will remove the condition that beneficiaries must participate in workfare schemes, and tackle the poverty trap that beneficiaries experience when transitioning between the social security system and work. While many of these municipalities initially proposed introducing a basic income as part of the experiment, current legislative restrictions have limited this number to three. Four municipalities have lobbied the Dutch Ministry for Social Security and Employment to revise these legal restrictions, though the government has yet to respond. Despite this legal scuffle, the proposed Dutch experiments reveal widespread support for a basic income experiment across the political spectrum, with each major political party represented among the nineteen municipalities.
In Finland, the government has proposed a number of social experiments, including a basic income experiment. The government’s aim is to better align social policy with societal demands, as well as to reduce disincentives to work and decrease the role of bureaucratic processes in social security. A research consortium led by Kela, a government agency responsible for social security payments, is responsible for designing and implementing the basic income experiment. A first hearing for the basic income experiment was held on 5 December 2015, while a preliminary report will be released on 30 March 2016 and a final hearing will be held on 15 November 2016. A budget of €20 million has been allocated to the basic income experiment, which is expected to begin in 2017 and last two years. Different variations of a basic income are currently being considered, including a ‘full’ basic income, a ‘partial’ basic income, a negative income tax and a participation income. The models propose a basic income of between €400 and €1,200 per participant per month, with many models retaining supplementary allowances. One major challenge is the constitutional requirement to treat all citizens equally. To meet this requirement, participation in the experiment will be voluntary. A basic income experiment enjoys broad public support across voters of all major political parties in Finland, and recent public opinion polling indicates that more than 50% of the public supports the idea.
Nicole Teke (Credit to: MFRB)
In France, parliamentary support for a basic income has been increasing. Current proponents include Jean Desessard MP (Green Party), Frédéric Lefebvre MP (Les Républicains), and Gaetan Gorce MP and Delphine Batho MP (Parti Socialiste). Furthermore, the Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs Emmanuel Macron expressed support for the idea of a basic income and a government agency on digital affairs recommended introducing a basic income experiment. In addition, the Sirugue Commission, a parliamentary working group led by Christophe Sirugue MP (Parti Socialiste), is under increasing pressure to examine the case for a basic income experiment as part of its comprehensive review into the existing social security system. Meanwhile, the regional coalition government in Aquitaine is developing its own proposal for a basic income experiment. However, social security policy is a departmental rather than regional competency, and the regional governmental tier is currently being restructured with welfare allowances likely to become a central government competency, which might pose difficulties for regional experimentation.
All such experiments, however, will be limited in what they are able to prove. In his presentation, Philippe van Parijs challenged the audience to reflect on three such limitations. First, an individual is likely to make different labour market decisions depending on whether the basic income is temporary or permanent, which will distort the effect on labour supply. Second, participants receiving a basic income within an experiment will only account for a small fraction of the total labour force rather than the whole labour force, which will distort the effect on labour demand. Third, voluntary participation in the experiments will likely attract net beneficiaries rather than net contributors, which will distort the effect on financing. Philippe van Parijs then articulated the social justice case for a basic income: a basic income is an intergenerational redistribution of the currently unfair and uneven allocation of the efforts of previous generations as well as accessible natural resources. Furthermore, a basic income is a gift, which deserves a counter gift. If this counter gift were a commitment to actively participate in society, it could nurture a renewed ethics of responsibility. This is a strong case for a basic income, which exceeds the scope of the experiments planned in the Netherlands, Finland, France and elsewhere.
In all, the congress was one of optimism buoyed by a sense that the basic income movement is on the cusp of something momentous. The various developments in the Netherlands, Finland and France were also a reminder that if we truly want change, we can find a form for that change that fits our unique circumstances. We are not restricted by whether our political systems are centralised or decentralised, majoritarian or multi-party, left or right, a republic or a constitutional monarchy – we our restricted only by our imaginations and our tenacity.
More information at:
Basisinkomen.org, “Interviews and Lectures about #basicincome from Maastricht 2016”
by Guest Contributor | Dec 11, 2015 | Opinion
By Otto Lehto
People have different ideas on what society should look like, but they can still agree that a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a good idea. The struggle for BIG should be the struggle for a specific policy measure, not for a utopian ideal. We are trying to make BIG a reality. That’s it. We are engaged in an ambitious project with limited boundaries. We are not trying to find a panacea for world hunger, domestic abuse or global warming. All we need is for a critical mass of people, and a few shrewd politicians, to do the right thing and vote for BIG.
In Finland, nearly 70% of the population supports basic income. For the first time ever, more than half of members of parliament do too. Historically, BIG has been advocated in Finland by the Green Party, the Left Alliance and the Center Party, joined recently by the Pirate Party. Advocates are found in all political parties and across all sectors of society. The Finnish National Union of University Students has officially endorsed a universal basic income, and so have many academics and think tanks. Post and neo-Keynesians are calling for it, as are leftist intellectuals. Even the banker Björn Wahlroos repeatedly endorsed BIG on newspapers and TV shows. He is one of the richest men in the country and a free market enthusiast.
We need a broad consensus if we want basic income to become reality. As recently reported in mainstream news across the world, a basic income experiment is about to be implemented, under the new center-right government headed by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä from the Center Party. The experiment is set to begin in 2017. Hopefully, this is just the prelude to a nation-wide implementation of a universal basic income.
There is nothing wrong in being utopian and in favor of radical solutions. But utopianism is not a necessary condition for engaging in the struggle for BIG. Sometimes it can be a hindrance. As basic income supporters, we may disagree on how high a basic income should be. We may have different views on whether to use the tax system, as in the case of a negative income tax, or social welfare instruments, as with most other forms of BIG. We may see basic income as a socialist principle or a free market mechanism. But we all acknowledge the need for a universal, unconditional and simple solution. We do not have to agree on anything else. We believe that BIG is important, because it does three things:
1) it eradicates absolute poverty;
2) it reduces bureaucracy;
3) it lays the foundation for a new, sustainable relationship between states and markets.
In order to achieve this, we need to build alliances between utopians and realists of different persuasions. At BIEN-Finland, our national branch, we are confronted every day with the various political leanings and aspirations of our members. Our diversity is something we celebrate, even if sometimes it causes friction and animosity. A one-sided approach to basic income would seriously hurt the prospects of BIG becoming a reality.
We should learn from popular struggles that have rallied mass support, such as the campaign for extending the right to vote to women in the late 19th and early 20th century. Universal suffrage was advocated by various classes and social groups. Driven by the same goal, farmers and workers marched together. Women were joined by their husbands. Newspapers representing different interests endorsed the idea. After some time, opposition to it was frowned upon. It was not the exclusive battle of Marxists, or trade unionists, or social liberals, or enlightened aristocrats. It was a struggle owned by the whole population. From a marginal idea, universal suffrage became common sense. The opposition did not disappear overnight. But it gradually lost steam, until it became a remnant of the past, deprived of any real power. BIG will succeed when it will achieve the same broad consensus. Our goal is to make opposition to BIG unfashionable and a little reprehensible.
The danger is not that the “wrong people” like the idea. Rather, the problem is that some people want to appropriate the name to implement different policies. If a proposed basic income is not high enough to cover basic human necessities, like food, shelter and clothing, then it cannot be called basic income. BIG should also not be confused with means-tested grants or workfare schemes. We need to be clear about this. In Finland, the government’s position oscillates between a real basic income and austerity or workfare policies, but public pressure and intellectual debate are creating a space for a BIG experiment.
A universal basic income should gain the support of Marxists, trade unionists, neoliberals, businessmen, teachers, farmers, feminists, tech nerds, American billionaires and Nigerian chicken farmers. The alliance must be broad and deep, and focus on common human needs. The emerging domain of populist politics, increased media attention and the growing intellectual debate around BIG, provide an unprecedented opportunity to further our cause.
Of course, we should not kid ourselves that humanity would finally overcome its differences under the guise of a BIG campaign, nor that left-wing and right-wing interpretations would lead to the same result. BIG organizations should be democratic forums for people from different backgrounds. Some of them are naturally inspired by a variety of utopian visions. Broad-based BIG has the potential to act as a true meeting ground for popular struggle, in which conflicting visions of the good society can strategically talk to each other and put forward a shared, simple solution. People should be able to set aside their differences – at least for a short while.
We may not like all our friends in the movement. Some of our allies are horrible people. (By the way, they probably think the same about you.) But we still have to live together in the same house. If people can, for the time being, agree on basic income, then we have already won. Bickering partisans can still keep on fighting over other issues. Trust me, there will always be something to fight about.
So bite your nails and be wise about strategy. Smile to your enemies. Shake hands with the most awful people. The smiling basic income activist is a silent, deadly assassin. If we want to think BIG, we need to act stealthily. We do not have the luxury to choose our political allies.
Otto Lehto is a philosopher and a political activist. He is the chairman of BIEN Finland.
by BIEN | Sep 11, 2015 | News
In a public square in Berlin, Ralph Boes can be found sitting at a table. Anyone who would like to can speak to Boes, who will then explain his protest of the current German welfare system. Boes demands a “livable income”, a guaranteed minimum income that can provide enough for everyone to meet their needs. Germany’s welfare sanctions mean that if an individual refuses a job, regardless of the circumstances, they lose their welfare benefits. Boes believes that this policy of sanctions fundamentally sacrifices the dignity of the individual. Boes has been on strike since July 1, and plans to continue his strike to educate people about the basic income.
For more information on Boes and his ideas, visit Boes website, or the Tumblr page dedicated to his efforts.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Sep 4, 2015 | Opinion
This book is a study of the language that OECD countries use to describe social policies: language such as ‘welfare state’, ‘social security’, and ‘safety net’. Some of the chapters are about particular countries, and some tackle transnational governance levels (such as the EU and the OECD): some are more focused on language, and some more on the
policy characteristics expressed by the language. All are informative.
As the introduction suggests, language is political and context-specific, and so similar terms sometimes describe different policies, and similar policies sometimes have different names. Such terms as ‘welfare state’ are used in such a wide variety of ways that clarity is difficult to achieve. The authors employ a broad range of disciplines in order to study language within its national contexts, and also to study how it travels – as ‘workfare’ has done from the US to the UK. All of the chapters are interested in how social policy language has changed, and in the reasons for that change.
To take two examples:
Barbier’s chapter on the EU shows how the very notion of ‘social policy’ is problematic at the equally complex ‘EU level’; how the dominance of European English in social policy research has affected social policy debate in the EU; how ‘flexicurity’, ‘activation’, ‘workfare’ and ‘social investment’ have come to flourish as somewhat vague notions; and how social policy as formulated in English by an élite Brussels group cannot hope to capture the complexity of social policy across Europe.
In his chapter, Daniel Wincott charts the history of the ‘welfare state’ concept in the UK from its origins in 1928 in a publication by William Temple to its later use during the 1950s and 60s as a description of a developed set of social policies – but, as Wincott points out, the term was not employed as a description of those policies when they were developed and rolled out during and after the Second World War. His interesting conclusion is that ‘welfare state’ has functioned as a description of a golden age that never existed in order to express dissatisfaction with the ways in which social policy has been changing during the past fifty years.
The editors’ concluding chapter shows how influential the concepts of ‘welfare state’ and ‘social security’ have been; how transnational bodies have diffused such language, along with such modern terms as ‘flexicurity’; how earlier traditions (such as ‘deservingness’) continue to influence language; and how more straitened economic conditions since the 1970s have caused convergence of social policy language around such concepts as social investment and activation.
An interesting pair of words to follow through the book are ‘universal’ and ‘universalism’. In some places they mean an ideal state of affairs to which politicians aspire; in others (e.g., p.222) they represent a plan for genuinely universal provision; and in others (e.g. p.263) they express a service’s universal availability for anyone who possesses the need that the service is designed to satisfy. In this last sense the terms might have appeared in the context of the British National Health Service. Wincott does not discuss the current UK welfare state, but if he had then he might have said that Universal Credit is nothing like universal, and that only a Citizen’s Income would be universal in the way in which that word is normally understood.
This most interesting book has opened up some important social policy questions, and we hope to see them pursued further. Maybe a future edition might ask why so many different terms – Basic Income, Citizen’s Income, Universal Grant, etc. – have been used to describe an unconditional and nonwithdrawable benefit for every individual.
[This review was first published in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, 2015, issue 3.]
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 19, 2015 | News
Guy Standing, honorary president of BIEN, noted author, and leading advocate of Basic Income will give five talks on Basic Income over the next six weeks. The presentations are:
August 20-24, 09.00-12.00: summer school seminar series on “Work, distribution and crisis in Europe”, organised by the European Forum Alpbach, Austria, which will lead up to a full justification for basic income. More information: https://www.alpbach.org/en/event/seminar-week/; organiser Lara Weisz <lara.weisz@alpbach.org>
Guy Standing takes to the street at Occupy Washington DC in 2011
September 3, 13.00: opening ‘keynote’ speech on the precariat, creativity and basic income at the Long Progress Bar festival in Brighton, England, organised by Lighthouse (a “contemporary cultural agency”). More information: https://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/the-long-progress-bar; organiser Grace Baird <gracevictoriabaird@gmail.com>
September 4, 10.00: workshop on basic income as part of the Long Progress Bar festival in Brighton, England. More information: https://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/the-long-progress-bar; organiser Grace Baird <gracevictoriabaird@gmail.com>
September 30, 09.00: Plenary speech on “The expanding precariat: Reviving empathy and universalism”, Australian Social Policy Conference, Sydney. More information: https://www.aspc.unsw.edu.au/; organiser Annie Whitelaw <ASPC@unsw.edu.au>
September 30, 15.10: Plenary forum on “Beyond Workfare: Progressive Social Policy for a Good Society”, Australian Social Policy Conference, Sydney. More information: https://www.aspc.unsw.edu.au/; organiser Annie Whitelaw <ASPC@unsw.edu.au>
