by BIEN | Jul 15, 2017 | News
Credit to: AT Kearney.
Courtney McCaffrey and others from AT Kearney published an article on the debate around Universal Basic Income (UBI) in markets throughout the world. Politicians, in both Europe and North America, are winning on campaign trails with talk about returning control to the common people from the economic system in the globe.
But one of the big worker displacers is automation and new technologies. Oxford University reported 47% of US jobs will be taken over by automation in the next two decades. A UBI is being offered as an economic buffer for such workplace and technology transitions.
Such a UBI would be universal and unconditional in the application. Past UBI experiments such as Mincome in Canada, projects in Seattle and Denver (USA), and Namibia produced real, positive results empowering those politicians. McCaffrey and her collegues also mention recent major endorsements for UBI, for instance from such luminaries as Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, and Marc Andreessen.
Two books are recommended: 1) Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, and 2) Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght. Other notable cases reported on were Finland, India, and Ontario.
The article discusses pros and cons of UBI, in a general sense. It was noted that citizens with a UBI will spend more time on family and school. The sources of funding for the UBI could be revenues from natural resources and/or more taxes. Some views of critics are following their own political lines, but the major concern revolves around people’s availability to work when they get a UBI covering their basic needs.
Finally, the article summarizes views agains UBI on the political Right and Left. On the Right, the main argument is cost. On the political Left, detractors view UBI as “regressive” because it could dismantle current welfare systems, and that it may not capture different living costs in different areas.
More information at:
McCaffrey, C.R., Toland, T. & Peterson, E.R., “The Best Things in Life Are Free?“, AT Kearney, March 2017
by Kate McFarland | Jul 11, 2017 | News
The end of June saw the proliferation of rumors that a basic income experiment would be launched in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. While such rumors were inaccurate, a political coalition in the state has called to further research basic income.
The June 25th edition of the newspaper Flensburger Tageblatt, the daily newspaper of the city of Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein, heralded the purported plans of the state government to introduce an experiment of basic income. The paper quoted Robert Habeck, Green Party leader and future minister of environment, as saying that “we want to test a basic income from the government side and propose Schleswig-Holstein as a model region.” It further claimed that a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Green Party backed the demand for a test of a basic income.
The article fueled rumors, widely disseminated through basic income social media channels, that Schleswig-Holstein is preparing to launch a basic income experiment.
This announcement, however, was premature. Despite Habeck’s support, a basic income experiment Schleswig-Holstein remains at best a remote future possibility. In fact, the coalition agreement signed in between the CDU, FDP, and Greens does not call for an experiment or pilot study of basic income. Instead, calls only for the establishment of a “laboratory for the future” (“Zukunftslabor”) to research and assess new forms of social protection, a basic income being one.
Arguably, the coalition agreement’s proposed “laboratory for the future” does signal progress toward the investigation of a basic income in Schleswig-Holstein. However, the reality is far more modest than originally rumored.
No German UBI Experiments So Far..
Shortly prior to the first rumors of a basic income pilot in Schleswig-Holstein, the State Legislature of Hawai’i passed a bill that created a working group to study a universal basic income among other possible policies to provide the state’s residents with economic security. This generated a spate of media attention for basic income — but, as usual, not all reports were entirely accurate. Some news reports on the legislation, identified Germany (in addition to Finland and, soon, Canada) as a country that is already “testing” a basic income.
The claim may have originated in an article published in Business Insider and Futurism, which cites an article about the startup Mein Grundeinkommen as its source. This is misleading: Mein Grundeinkommen is a private effort, not a governmental one, and it merely awards year-long “basic incomes” of €1000 per month to individuals chosen by lottery. The startup’s work benefits randomly selected individuals while increasing awareness of basic income — and, in these aims, the project been highly successful. Mein Grundeinkommen has distributed year-long “basic incomes” to 94 individuals (and counting), and each drawing continues to generate media publicity. However, although anecdotes from individuals are sometimes presented as evidence regarding the effects of a basic income, the project should not be confused for an experiment.
Currently, no basic income experiment is being conducted in Germany — and, so far, no developments in Schleswig-Holstein have changed this fact.
More information on the alleged Schleswig-Holstein pilot:
Lea Hampel, “Jamaika-Koalition flirtet mit dem Grundeinkommen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 27, 2017 (in German).
“North German state weighs up introducing unconditional basic income,” The Local, June 27, 2017.
Ronald Heinrich, “Grundeinkommen in Schleswig-Holstein? – Reality Check,” Huffpost, June 30, 2017 (in German).
Photo (Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein) CC BY-SA 2.0 Rüdiger Stehn
by Kate McFarland | Jul 9, 2017 | News
Ipsos, a Paris-based market research and consulting firm, has published the results of a multinational opinion survey on basic income, surveying 9500 people in 12 countries.
Between April 21 and May 5, 2017, Ipsos collected online survey data from a total of approximately 9500 individuals, drawn from 12 countries. The firm polled about 1000 individuals in each of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and about 500 in each of Belgium, Mexico, Poland, Serbia, and Sweden. (Note that, at a 95% confidence level, the margin of error is about 3.1% for a sample of 1000 and 4.4% for a sample of 500.)
Survey participants were selected among adults aged 18 to 64 in the US and Canada, and adults aged 16 to 64 in other countries. Ipsos notes that the samples in Mexico and Serbia should not be considered representative of the countries’ populations since, in these countries, respondents to online surveys are disproportionately urban, affluent, and well-educated. For the other 10 countries, the results were weighted to reflect the demographics of each respective country’s adult population, according to its most recent census data.
The survey queried respondents on whether they agreed or disagreed (or neither) with the following statements:
- “The government should pay all residents in [country] a basic income in the form of free and unconditional money in addition to any income received from elsewhere.”
- “Basic income will help to alleviate poverty in [country].”
- “Basic income will allow people to spend more time with their families.”
- “Basic income will allow people to be more involved in their local communities.”
- “Basic income will make people reliant on the state for income.”
- “Basic income will discourage people from being in or seeking paid employment.”
- “Basic income will increase taxation to unaffordable levels.”
Based on responses for the first question, basic income enjoys its highest support among adults in Poland (60% agree, 24% disagree), Germany (52% agree, 22% disagree), Mexico (52% agree, 23% disagree), and Italy (50% agree, 26% disagree). Meanwhile, the basic income proposal saw its lowest support in France (29% agree, 46% disagree), Spain (31% agree, 45% disagree), the UK (33% agree, 38% disagree), and the US (38% agree, 38% disagree).
Respondents in Poland, Germany, the US, and Canada were the most optimistic about the ability of basic income to alleviate domestic poverty and allow people to spend more time with families and local communities. Those in France were the most pessimistic about all three outcomes. In general, respondents were more accepting of basic income’s ability to ameliorate poverty or increase family time than its ability to promote community involvement.
American and French respondents demonstrated the greatest rates of concern that a basic income would make people financially dependent on the state, discourage labor market participation, and increase taxation to unaffordable levels. In all countries but Germany, a majority of respondents expressed agreement with the first concern. And, in all but Sweden, a majority expressed agreement with the second.
For the full breakdown of responses by country, with percentages, see Ipsos’ “Public Perspectives” report (note that this particular report is framed for a Canadian audience).
Ipsos’ survey is one of the largest multinational opinion surveys on basic income since Dalia Research’s EU-wide survey conducted in March 2017. In general, the Ipsos data suggest lower support for basic income among Europeans than do those of Dalia Research (although a full analysis and comparison is well beyond the scope of the present article).
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 frolleinbombus
by Hilde Latour | Jul 7, 2017 | News
In May this year, Bryan Caplan debated with Karl Widerquist about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Welfare at PublicSquare.net.
Widerquist is associate professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service at Qatar and vice-chair of Basic Income Earth Network (co-chair at the time of the debate). He sees UBI as a means to completely eliminate poverty and as a compensation for the government’s actions to turn resources into property, which creates groups of people that don’t have access to resources they need to survive. Widerquist predicts UBI will also have an increasing effect on lower level wages, as the payment for work will need to be high enough for a non-starving person to accept the job. In the current system, employers don’t have the incentive to provide good wages, according to Widerquist.
Caplan is professor of economics at George Mason University. He thinks the idea that everyone should be supported by the government is ridiculous. Whatever charity is given should only be for to the people who need it, and UBI is therefore not a good idea, according to Caplan. Furthermore, it will discourage people from working and is not fair to people that are paying their taxes, he states.
Info and links
Photos: Karl Widerquist by BICN/RCRG Basic Income Canada Network, 2014 and Bryan Caplan speaking empathically by Eric Hanneken, 2015, CC-BY-SA 2.0
Special thanks to Dawn Howard for reviewing this article
by Guest Contributor | Jun 9, 2017 | Opinion
“(…) mental health cannot be defined in terms of the “adjustment” of the individual to his society, but, on the contrary, that it must be defined in terms of the adjustment of society to the needs of man,[highlighted in original version] of its role in furthering and hindering the development of mental health. Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of his society. A healthy society furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work creatively, to develop reason and objectivity, to have a sense of self which is based on the experience of his own productive powers. (…) Society can have both functions; it can further man’s healthy development, and it can hinder it; in fact most societies do both, and the question is only to what degree and in what directions their positive and negative influence is exercised.” Erich Fromm (1956/1959)
This is the third and last part of a series of articles published on BI News, in which I call for accompanying a UBI with reforms in the domain of public interest services (please see the first and second parts). The analysis will help one to imagine how the work experience could be transformed to contribute to happiness in a UBI society.
In the current employment system, work organizations are rarely adjusted to human needs, such as self-fulfillment and meaning. In the article on Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (2013) observes that the more a job is useful for society and able to provide a sense of meaning, the less it is rewarded in monetary terms. Furthermore, employment is an exclusive form of work organization. UBI could help transform work if accompanied by initiatives to create frameworks for useful and meaningful contributions. This paper draws on empirical research of a cooking collective known as People’s Potato. There are similar initiatives where work is distributed among volunteer – for example, the global movement, Food Not Bombs, Les Petites Cantines, which are participative restaurants in poor neighborhoods of Lyon, or the Brooklyn-based food cooperative, Park Slope Food Coop, with about sixteen thousand member-peers.
Example of People’s Potato as a project of regaining work and producing commons
People’s Potato distributes vegan lunches for free at Concordia University in Montréal. It is managed by a workers’ cooperative. However, much of the work is done by volunteers, who can come and go without notice and choose from available tasks. Three other publications provide more details (Gajewska 30 June 2014, Gajewska 2014, Gajewska 10 April 2017). In September 2014, I interviewed several students and non-students helping out in the kitchen. In this article, I will analyze the elements that attract volunteers to People’s Potato to illustrate the potential of advancing human happiness by creating spaces of spontaneous work contribution in the domain of services of general interest.
Work as source of meaning and belonging
Gerald Hüther (2015) defines work as a system of relationships (Beziehungsgefüge) that integrates an individual into society. In order to develop, our brain needs experiences created with other people, a shared undertaking and it is structured by these experiences. Many people simply are deprived of the opportunity to contribute work that has meaning with tangible results, that might enrich the lives of other people. Gallup data shows that only 13 percent of people are emotionally invested in their work. 63 percent are “not engaged”—in other words, simply unmotivated and unlikely to exert extra effort. The remaining 24 percent are “actively disengaged,” or truly unhappy and unproductive. The United States and Canada actually have the highest engagement rate in the world. 29 percent of respondents from these countries reported that they are invested in their work, whereas only 14 percent of Western Europeans are (MacGregor 2013).
Volunteers that I interviewed indicated that doing something useful was an important reason to join People’s Potato. One woman mentioned that giving out food for free generates a spiritual satisfaction in her. Many participants stressed that they contribute because they believe in the cause. For one, the integration of handicapped volunteers, working with the other volunteers in the kitchen, was especially important.
The importance of having fun
How can work be organized so that no coercion is needed? Despite all the developments in the domain of technology and entertainment, Western societies seem to have lost the capacity and the conditions to play. In my view, this lack is one of the fundamental obstacles for changing the economic system. Therefore, it should become the subject of political debate and in-depth research to determine how to create a society based on play, not as a form of consumption but as a joy of engagement. Bob Black describes play in the following way: “Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. (…) Playing and giving are closely related, they are the behavioral and transactional facets of the same impulse, the play-instinct. They share the aristocratic disdain for results. The player gets something out of playing; that’s why he plays.” (Bob Black 1996: 239).
Organizing work processes so that volunteers have fun is an important element of People’s Potato’s philosophy. For example, people often perform tasks in groups, close to each other, so that talking is possible. Once when we chopped the same vegetables for quite a while, the coordinator asked: “Are you guys still having fun?”
One participant in People’s Potato mentioned that he would continue to contribute at the cooking collective only if it retains its current non-hierarchical structure. Another volunteer said that she would not participate if the involvement felt like her regular job in a commercial gastronomy where she worked part time at the time of the interview.
Alternative work spaces for a healthier society
Loneliness is a health issue. Therefore, government should also think about policies that might limit the extent of isolation in our modern atomized society instead of subsidizing pharmacology and conventional medicine as the only solutions for health problems. Being a critic of modern civilization, Helena Norberg-Hodge demonstrates in her book “Ancient Futures” how the different organization of work in indigenous Ladakh society includes (or used to include) older people. Since there is no pressure, people can contribute at their pace and be part of a joyful community. She observed that, in this society, typical old-age diseases were rare and elders were well-integrated in this society, throughout their lives.
People’s Potato also creates conditions for different types of people to contribute and enjoy a community. Meeting people and interacting with folks outside of one’s studies were important reasons to come and help out. A Brazilian woman had been coming to the kitchen to integrate in Montreal, her new home, at the beginning of her stay. Eventually busy with new friends and activities, she came less often. For her son, an artist suffering from depression, volunteering at the People’s Potato gives structure to his days. Two women in their early twenties told me that they feel more at ease to meet and interact with people by joining collective work rather than going to a party. A young woman said that one of the reasons why she keeps coming to the People’s Potato is that they know her and she can keep in touch with people through helping out.
Bringing people together around useful tasks does not, however, automatically translate into deeper ties, even if they are crucial for health. Longitudinal research has shown that the quality of relationships does determine possible health advantages. One of the interviewees, an aged unemployed man, comes to volunteer to be part of a community. Yet, during eight years of volunteering, he has not managed to build stronger ties with other participants of the project. He wishes that people would notice him and be interested in keeping in touch outside of the kitchen. Unfortunately this did not happen.
Experimenting with work organization to prepare the ground for a UBI
People’s Potato’s alternative work organization exemplifies how a post-capitalist system of production could look and feel. In order to change the perception of and feelings about work shaped by the employment system, neurobiologist, Gerald Hüther (2015), proposes to re-condition the brain by creating positive work experiences. This is what People’s Potato’s team does. New forms of work organization can rewire society to manifest new ways of approaching work. These could be considered as laboratories of inner transformation to induce those attitudes and behaviors necessary to build a new kind of society. This new understanding of work could foster the ideological and mental foundation needed for an unconditional basic income society. In the interview published on basicincome.org (Gajewska 2016), I argue that a transformation of work and social relations to prevent substance addictions is a crucial element to prepare the ground for a UBI. We can convince opponents by prefiguring the well being that we strive for.
Black, Bob (1985): The Abolition of Work, “The Abolition of Work and Other Essays”, published by Loompanics Unlimited,
Fromm, Erich (1956/1959) : The Sane Society. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Gajewska, Katarzyna (10 April 2017): UBI needs peers (PT 2): Re-imagine work organization, basicincome.org,
Gajewska, Katarzyna interviewed by Tyler Prochazka (January 2016) : Beyond temptation: Scholar discusses addiction and basic income – an interview
Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montreal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog,
Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer Production and Prosumerism as a Model for the Future Organization of General Interest Services Provision in Developed Countries Examples of Food Services Collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39.
Greaber, David (2013): On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, Strike!https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
Hirnforscher Gerald Hüther im Gespräch „Erst die Arbeit macht uns zu Menschen“https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftswissen/interview-mit-hirnforscher-gerald-huether-erst-die-arbeit-macht-uns-zu-menschen-13963189.html 31 December 2015
MacGregor, Jena (2013): Only 13 percent of people worldwide actually like going to work. October 10, 2013,
Norberg-Hodge, Helena (1991): Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World. Sierra Club Books.
Photo from People’s Potato.
About the Author
Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent scholar and a writer. She has a PhD in Political Science and has published on alternative economy and innovating the work organization since 2013. You can find her non-academic writing on such platforms as Occupy.com, P2P Foundation Blog, Basic Income UK, Bronislaw Magazine and LeftEast. For updates on her publications, you can check her Facebook page or send her an e-mail: k.gajewska_commATzoho.com. If you would like to support her independent writing, please make a donation to the PayPal account at the same address!
