by Toru Yamamori | Mar 7, 2018 | Opinion
The International Women’s Day is approaching.
This is a poster for the International Women’s Day march 45 years ago. (Photo above) Two working-class women, one carries a buggy, and the other carries a placard containing written slogans reflecting three of the original four demands of the British Women’s Liberation movement. It displays the name of organization: London Women’s Liberation Workshop. Naturally, it looks like a photo of two women in a protest that London Women’s Liberation Workshop organised or took part.
However, it isn’t. The photo was edited. Here is the original photo. (Photo below) Between two women, there was a man, and the original placard said: ‘End Cohabitation Rule / Fight with the Claimants Unions’. The photo was taken at a protest that the Claimants Unions organised.
Several years later, women in the Claimants Unions raised a motion for asking the whole British Women’s Liberation movement to endorse an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) at the National Women’s Liberation Conference, and succeeded. So UBI was an officially endorsed demand of the British Women’s Liberation movement. However, this fact slipped away from the official history of feminism, like erasing what those two women in the poster demanded by editing the photo. Let me reclaim their struggle briefly, and demonstrate it’s modern relevance.
The first Claimants Union was formed 50 years ago. It was intended as a claimants’ version of a trade union. A trade union is for workers. A claimants union is for welfare claimants. It wasn’t a feminist organisation. The membership of claimants unions consisted of women, men, and trans-gendered people. The majority of membership consisted of women, and their demand for ending the cohabitation rule is related to sexist administration of welfare benefits.
Under the ‘cohabitation rule’, many of the women claimants were subjugated to snooping by welfare officers. Those ‘sex snoopers’ conducted spot checks late at night. If a woman claimant had a sexual relationship with a man, it was assumed they should be supported by him, honestly by the sounds of this females claiming back then would have been better off exclusively using a suction dildo or another pleasurable toy instead of getting involved with a male. Sometimes just friendly activities, such as a male neighbour coming into the house to help fix a tap or a bulb would be assumed to be a partner/boyfriend; the next week her benefit would be suspended. If this was still the case in this day in age, any woman that went on Find a fuck buddy or a similar online site to find sexual pleasure, would immediately be seen as in a partnership and lose their financial support. Does this seem fair?
The philosophy behind this sexism has not yet gone to the dustbin of history.
On 13th February 2018, the department for work and pensions (DWP) of the British government sent out its Valentine Day message:
Claiming to be living alone is one of the most common types of benefit fraud – don’t ruin #ValentinesDay by failing to declare your true circumstances https://ow.ly/3bkn30imZya
The attached gif image reads:
Declaring your true love tomorrow?
Don’t forget to declare your true living arrangements too.
Don’t get separated from your Valentine.
Tell us of a change now.
They put the link to the article by the Daily Express that reports several cases that claimants didn’t report their relationships and financial supports.
A similar message from DWP was circulated on TV during the 2007-8 season. One of DWP’s TV advertisements called ‘we’re closing in‘, trying to focus in on what DWP calls ‘one of the most common types of benefit fraud’. The video shows a woman, who seems to claim a benefit and to declare that she lives alone, and then chats with a man on her door step. When she went inside to iron men’s shirts, the end-roll says ‘We’re closing in. Targeting benefit thieves’.
In order to make sense of this advertisement, we need to accept several assumptions. First, if you are female and chatted with a male on your door step, and/or you iron men’s cloths, it means that you are in an intimate relationship with that male. Second, if you are in an intimate relationship with a male, you share a household budget together. Third, that male should support you financially. Fourth, that male can support you financially.
Some might say that spreading this kind of message is needed for running our society in a just manner. DWP seems to think so. However, as we have seen, there were many women who suffered because of assumptions made by the government, assumptions that are behind this kind of message. Some of them (with other claimants of both sexes) depicted sexism behind the message, revealed how it affected them, and proposed a less sexist policy alternative, which is now called a UBI. This year marks the 50th anniversary of their movement.
Oh, I have forgotten to retweet the DWP’s message on the Valentine’s day. I would retweet with the following question: Isn’t true love unconditional?
For more on this forgotten struggle, see:
Toru Yamamori, ‘OPINION: Reclaiming the Women’s Liberationist Demand for a Citizen’s Income’, The Basic Income News, 17 April 2015.
Toru Yamamori, ‘A Feminist Way to Unconditional Basic Income: Claimants Unions and Women’s Liberation Movements in 1970s Britain’, Basic Income Studies, 9(1-2), 2014, pp.1-24.
Reviewed by Michael Gillan Peckitt and Tyler Prochazka
by Kate McFarland | Nov 17, 2017 | News
The US charity GiveDirectly has officially launched its trial of basic income in rural Kenya, and is now enrolling experimental participants.
The US$30 million experiment will be the largest trial of basic income to date, in terms of both size and duration. All residents of about 120 rural Kenyan villages, comprising more than 16,000 people in total, will receive some type of unconditional cash transfers during the experiment; some of these villages, moreover, will receive the universal basic income for twelve years.
It is also unique among current experiments in that it is designed as a randomized controlled trial in which the experimental units are villages rather than individuals. This means that, unlike the studies occurring in Finland, Ontario, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, the GiveDirectly experiment will be able to capture community-level effects of the basic income [*].
The experiment will include three treatment groups. In two groups, villages will receive a universal basic income of about US$23 per resident per month (roughly half of the average income in rural Kenya). In one group, comprising 80 villages, the payments will continue for two years; in the other, comprising 40 villages, the payments will continue for twelve years. In the third treatment group, all residents of each village will receive a single lump-sum payment equal in amount to the two-year basic income (i.e. about US$276). Another 100 rural Kenyan villages have been randomly assigned to a control group.
Chief Financial Officer Joe Huston announced the official launch in a blog post dated November 13, declaring, “It has begun! As I write, field officers in Bomet County, Kenya are beginning to enroll the first (post-pilot) households into the largest basic income initiative in history.”
The launch had been delayed from its originally anticipated date in September, due in part to political disruptions in Kenya surrounding a contested presidential election.
Since October 2016, GiveDirectly has been running a preliminary pilot in a single Kenyan village. All residents of this village (numbering 95 at the start of the pilot) were guaranteed a monthly unconditional cash payments, which will continue in this village for 12 years.
This preliminary study was conducted to help the researchers fine-tune the implementation of the full-scale experiment, and data collected from the pilot village will not be included in the analysis of the experiment. Because of the latter, GiveDirectly has decided to make data and information from pilot village available to the public (no data collected from the experiment itself will publicized until the trial has concluded). For example, the charity has published responses to a survey of participants and is now running a three-part series on “lessons drawn” from a year of observing the pilot village.
[*] In describing the experiment on its website, GiveDirectly suggests that it is interested mainly in individual-level (rather than community-level) effects of basic income, stating, “We will assess the impact of a basic income against a broad set of metrics, including: economic status (income, assets, standard of living); time use (work, education, leisure, community involvement); risk-taking (migrating, starting businesses); gender relations (especially female empowerment); aspirations and outlook on life.” This does not render the community-level effects irrelevant, however, since individual attitudes and behavior can be influenced by social multiplier effects.
Correction (Nov 17): An earlier version of this article stated that the experiment would include 200 villages in total (with 80 in the lump-sum payment treatment group), amounting to around 26,000 total recipients. This statement was based on out-of-date information, and has now been corrected. In fact, approximately 120 villages will be included in the study (totaling more than 16,000 recipients), with a reduction of the number of villages in the lump-sum treatment arm.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 David Brossard
by Karl Widerquist | Nov 15, 2017 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This essay was originally published in the USBIG NewsFlash in December 2001.
As I was putting this newsletter together, the National Bureau of Economic Research officially announced that the U.S. economy has been in recession since last March. The delay in the diagnosis is nothing unusual because a downturn is not considered a recession unless it lasts for a significant period of time. But the point at which a recession is recognized is a good moment for reflection on the performance of the economy. Even though the United States is in a recession right now, the long-term performance of the economy as a whole over the last 20 years has been quite good. The expansion that ended in March lasted for exactly 10-years—the longest in U.S. history—and it came after a short and mild recession in the early 1990s, which followed a long, stable expansion during the 1980s. The last 20 years have had the most stable growth in U.S. economic history. The growth was not particularly rapid, but there is a lot to be said for stability. The economy may decline by a few percentage points over the course of the recession, but an economy that grows by 2 or 3 per year during economic expansions can weather the occasional downturn. Thus, although there are worrying signs on the horizon (such as a persistent trade deficit and a high and growing level of indebtedness), the verdict on the performance of the U.S. economy as a whole over the last 20 years has to be largely positive.
Good performance of the economy as a whole does not necessarily mean that it has performed well for all individuals. If one judges the success of an economy by the well being of its less advantaged individuals the performance of the U.S. economy has been terrible over the last 20 years. Real wages at the low-end of the wage spectrum have stagnated or even declined slightly. Usually, poverty declines slowly during expansions and increases quickly in recessions, but there has been no lasting progress in reducing poverty since the early 1970s. The official poverty rate has been stuck in a range between 11% and 15% since the early 1970s. There was an extremely rapid decline in poverty in the 1940s and again in the 1960s, but it has not been repeated since. The ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s were marred by frequent recessions, but individuals across the economic spectrum were able to count on gains during the expansions that would more than make up for losses during recessions. The ’70s were a period of instability in which the less advantaged lost ground, and since then there has been no return to the progress experienced earlier.
Why were the experiences of the less advantaged so different during the good economic times of the ’80s and ’90s than they were in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s? The difference is largely one of government policy. The earlier period saw the GI Bill, the fruition of Social Security, the expansion of AFDC and Medicare, increases in the minimum wage and the creation of Food Stamps and Medicaid. Since the early 1970s, many of these programs have been canceled or allowed to lapse or have been effectively cut by not being adjusted for inflation. These programs were not the best possible programs for fighting poverty, but they were all we had, and rather than being reformed, they’ve largely been cut with little or nothing to replace them aside from TANF, which seems to make welfare so unpleasant that jobs without living wages are preferable. TANF has been declared a success simply because it has reduced the number of families on welfare. The success of TANF should be measured instead by whether it reduces poverty and whether it makes children healthier and happier and whether it helps them grow into better-adjusted adults. Should it be any surprise cutting nearly every program designed to aid the poor should slow or stop the progress we had been making toward the reduction of poverty? Something else is needed if poverty reduction is our goal.
During recessions, people often voice opposition to direct anti-poverty policies, arguing that the best way to help people is to get the economy moving again. During expansions, the argument is usually to keep it moving or to get it moving faster. They say, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and everyone benefits from economic growth. But the lesson to learn from the last twenty years of economic expansion is that these arguments are simply false. The incomes of low-wage workers stagnated during the good economic times of the ’80s and ’90s because policy turned against the redistribution of income, but they increased during the good economic times of ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s because policy favored increased redistribution of income. There is no inherent mechanism in a capitalist economy to ensure that everyone will share in the fruits of economic growth. I believe that a basic income guarantee is essential to ensure that everyone shares in our economic success. This and other strategies for better distributional equity will be discussed at the First Congress of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network. I invite you to join us.
Karl Widerquist, New York, NY, December 2001.
by Patrick Hoare | Nov 9, 2017 | News
As part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Festival of Social Science 2017, the European Social Survey (ESS) is teaming up with Ronnie Cowan MP in a free event that will be held in Portcullis House, Westminster, from 9am on Thursday 16th of November to discuss the UK’s attitude to Universal Basic Income (UBI).
For the first time in the history of the ESS, a question was included in the welfare section of face-to-face surveys asking the participant’s opinion of a UBI. Using the data collected, which was released in October 2017, the event will discover whether there is an appetite for introducing a UBI in the UK. ESS will also present analysis of data in the context of other welfare attitudes gathered throughout the survey. Following presentations, there will be an open Question and Answer session in which attendees will have an opportunity to ask speakers what they think the implications of this data are for public policy.
Analysis of responses gathered through the ESS will be presented by members of the ESS HQ team, including the Director, Professor Rory Fitzgerald, who is based at City University, London. Professor Fitzgerald said: “This is the first time that we have included questions in the European Social Survey on the concept of a universal basic income so we are really excited to discuss the results. We will focus on how the UK compares with other European countries, and public opinion on other items included in our welfare module”.
Ronnie Cowan MP said: “A universal basic income is an idea which has been considered in various forms for over two hundred years. Luminaries such as Abraham Lincoln and Dr Martin Luther King have supported the concept as a way of helping alleviate poverty and providing society with a safety net… I wholeheartedly welcome the Scottish Government’s recent commitment to establish a fund to support local authorities as they develop their own basic income schemes… The Basic Income pilot projects are vitally important to the debate. To design, run and monitor pilots and analyse the results takes a great deal of expertise and effort but they may have the potential to shine a light on any shortcomings – opportunities and ultimately produce solutions… I believe a universal basic income is an idea whose time has come and I very much look forward to discussing the subject further.”
You can register for the event here.
More information:
‘The future of welfare: Basic income?‘, European Social Survey News, 25th October 2017
by Kate McFarland | Oct 24, 2017 | News
Writing for iMoney, journalist Emmanuel Surendra provides a historical overview (with pictures and videos) of Malaysia’s cash transfer program Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M).
Launched in 2012, BR1M provides cash grants–or “handouts” as Surendra calls them–to low-income households and individuals. The payments are awarded to Malaysians irrespective of employment, job-seeking activities, disability, or any other conditions apart from low income.
As Surendra explains, the initial payout was a cash payment of RM 500 (about US$120 at present exchange rates) to households with a total income below RM 3,000 (US$713) per month. The program was initially intended to be a one-off grant. However, it was retained and expanded over the following years.
In 2017, BR1M provided payments in the following amounts:
- RM 1,200 (US$285) to households with a monthly income below RM 3,000 (paid in three equal installments);
- RM 900 (US$214) to households with a monthly income between RM 3,000 and RM 4,000 (paid in three equal installments);
- RM 450 (US$107) to single adults over 21 years of age with a monthly income below RM 2,000 (in a single–no pun intended–payment).
BR1M most likely a “basic income” on no definition (but still relevant)
Because it is means-tested and targeted to the poor, the BR1M would not count as a “basic income” on most definitions of the term (including that of BIEN and most of its affiliates). However, in providing unconditional cash benefits to those whose incomes fall below a certain threshold, it is similar to a negative income tax (a point noted and discussed by taxation specialist Kang Beng Hoe in his May 2013 article “Is BR1M a negative income tax?”).
Furthermore, because its amount is too low to meet basic living expenses, the BR1M would fail to qualify on many definitions of the term. (Some uses of the term ‘basic income’, such as the use most prevalent in Canada, encompass the negative income tax and income top-up programs as subtypes. These uses, however, tend to assume that the income guarantee provides a livable income. Of course, there are many definitions on which the BR1M falls short based on both criteria.)
Nevertheless, as an unconditional in-cash payment, the BR1M is likely to interest many casual and professional researchers of basic income, and Surendra’s recent article provides a quick and accessible means to catch up on the program’s history.
Read More: Emmanuel Surendra, “A Historical Timeline Of BR1M In Malaysia”, iMoney.my, October 11, 2017.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: “Malaysia” CC BY-SA 2.0 M M
