by Guest Contributor | Jul 9, 2012 | Opinion
D.R. Thompson
I have watched with quiet fascination the evolution/resurgence of alternative politics since the financial meltdown of 2008. In my opinion, we have (at least) two broad camps developing: a Ron Paul brand of libertarianism that seeks to return to a prior vision of capitalism lost, and a new brand of Economic Democrat (often reflected in the Occupy Movement and/or Green Party or the ‘New Economy’ movement) that seeks a balance between capitalism as we know it and the people at large, who are more often than not suffering the brunt of capitalism run amok.
Both factions are reacting to an increasing corrupt two-party system that sees Big Business allied with Big Government. The result is an alliance that destroys the middle class, promotes elitist globalism devoid of democratic oversight, increases the power of the security state, enriches the upper one percent of society with corporate welfare, and engenders corporate socialism through unsustainable monetary policies. The result sections society into an increasingly enriched, globally based upper echelon that guts the wealth of whole nations and peoples.
How this has happened we may disagree on, but both factions are in firm unity that we have arrived at this situation and it has been slowly developing the past 30 to 40 years.
The question is, of course, what do to about it. This essay seeks to dissect some of the ideas behind Economic Democracy, and then to suggest how libertarians and other de-centralists actually might see benefit in them.
In my mind, libertarians in general need to grasp the fundamental contradiction that a Ron Paul style of political shift — specifically one that is devoid of actions to directly break up monopolistic, duopolistic or cartel-like aspects of Big Business — could devolve into a neo-feudalistic scenario where large corporations essentially create corporate fiefdoms through which transnational factions evolve and compete. This could mean less, not more, liberty. In other words, some aspects of libertarian policies could have the exact opposite impact than what is intended and actually just hand power over to the big corporate interests they so often rail against. This new level of corporate power would likely not make us any more free and continue — even expand — the cycle of abuse seen today.
On the other side of the equation, the alternative of centrally planned, top down governance, if taken to the extreme, would create a kind of global fascism that stifles innovation, punishes individualism, guts individual wealth and undermines democratic sovereignty. We don’t want that either.
My argument here is that we can avoid these extremes by recognizing that each political pole must understand the logical limits of its own zeitgeist and determine at what level of society a particular philosophy or approach will work best for the overall benefit of people. This often comes down to understanding what is best centralized and/or cooperative in nature, and what is best left to individual choice and freedom.
In my mind, a centrally planned, cooperatively managed government enterprise is best used to develop the infrastructure upon which a free, democratic, innovative and entrepreneurial society flourishes. Examples of how this can work are numerous: the Interstate Highway System, National Airspace System, the Internet (based on the government’s DARPAnet), and the standardized Electric Grid.
We should translate the same thinking to a rethought national financial infrastructure that provides a basic income guarantee (BIG) and sufficient monies to develop new energy technologies and ensure they are put widely into use. All of this could be done through a Cooperative Central Bank that is government sanctioned but subject to democratic input from its citizen members. Ideally, bank policies and programs would be managed by a board that is in turn subject to democratic approval.
Basic Income Guarantee
A universal basic income that provides a simplified social safety net and replaces Social Security, welfare and unemployment benefits, would ideally be provided to all adults with no required means test, even while the upper tier income brackets are still taxed. In point of fact basic income programs exist to a certain degree already with our large-scale pool of veterans (with their benefits), the earned income tax credit, Social Security and ever-extended unemployment benefits. It is a well-known fact that over 50% of Americans already pay no income tax. Templates for a BIG already exist in the Alaska Permanent Fund and the recently enacted basic income guarantee in Brazil. In this country, Social Security is the model we can build on; we could move toward a basic income by expanding that program, or implementing, as suggested by Robert Reich, a reverse income tax.
If you believe the idea of a basic income has no support, I urge you to do a quick Internet search and you will be astounded by the array of individuals that has supported a BIG throughout history, including Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman, Daniel Moynihan, and John Kenneth Galbraith, just to name a few.
Rather than perennially watch the upper 1% obtain high earnings in ever more unjust, cynical and/or demeaning ways, it’s time to fight for a BIG and higher minimum wages for everyone. The reason: Americans earned almost 57% more per hour 40 years ago when accounting for inflation, even as productivity has continually increased. The situation continues to deteriorate and must be turned around.
We all agree that the reason for wage stagnation is not that people are lazy. It is that trade and labor policies of the last 40 years have allowed it to occur even as overall productivity has increased substantially, based primarily on automation. A BIG simply recognizes these productivity gains are at least in part an overriding social benefit rather than solely a corporate benefit channeled toward investors.
Put another way, a BIG allows us to simplify what we have and admit that we need a universal requirement that will provide a sound foundation for social stability and income equity within an efficient, technologically based society. We need to fully grasp that while a modern society should always offer the opportunity to work, automation makes it possible — even desirable — that all do not need to work (in the traditional sense), even among those groups we have historically felt should work. Simply put, we need to redefine the term ‘productive.’ ‘Productive’ can mean doing something that one loves and has a passion for, rather than working for an employer. A basic income can allow this to happen on a wide scale. As robotics and software continue to evolve and eliminate a plethora of even more jobs, the end result need not need to be chronic unemployment; with a BIG we can empower people to choose to work or not, thus leveling the playing field in the relationship between labor and capital.
While some would argue this is a statist utopia at its worst, as such a program would be run by the Federal Government, I beg to differ. My first question is: why does it need to be a Federal Program? Is the Federal Reserve ‘federal’? Most understand it isn’t: it is privately owned.
What we can do therefore is to turn the Fed on its head by creating a completely transparent, citizen-owned, Internet-ran, Cooperative Central Bank that is separate from (although approved by) the Federal Government and can print money into existence for two primary reasons: a BIG, and infrastructure (discussed below). All adult citizens could be a member of the cooperative. What can back such money? The physical infrastructure itself, including public lands and assets. In other words, we either have or can build the assets and provide liquidity as we go. This new form of debt-free money would be an alternative to Federal Reserve Notes and could complement other forms of new currency (i.e., Treasury Notes) that would be backed by other forms of assets (i.e. Gold). While some would argue that Cooperative Banking should remain only at the local community, the Internet has re-shaped our concept of what ‘community’ is. In short, globalization and technology has made ‘national’ the new local.
The template for a Cooperative Central Bank already exists in the National Cooperative Bank established in 1978 under President Carter. Perhaps that bank’s mission just needs to be rethought and expanded. Also, while different in their mandate, some states have already implemented Cooperative Central Banks that become the ‘bank of banks’ to cooperative banks throughout that state. Countries that have implemented Cooperative Central Banking can also be looked to as models. Moreover, some writers, such as Richard Cook, even lobby for an international bank with a similar mandate as stipulated in this essay, based on a reformed International Monetary Fund.
A key mandate of Central Banks during the economic crisis has been to provide ‘liquidity.’ But rather than provide liquidity through quantitative easing (where the Federal Reserve purchases Government Debt directly, often from ‘too big to fail’ banks), that inevitably channels any wealth to the top while driving inflation at the bottom, non-debt money generated through a new Cooperative Central Bank could provide another flavor of liquidity in a way that benefits the general population instead of primarily channeling those gains toward the elites.
A Wider Net of Social Security
If we are honest, most Americans, even staunch conservatives, appreciate the modest guarantees of Social Security for elderly Americans and would grow to appreciate a BIG that would empower the individual and, ironically to some, create more independence in the same way that Social Security allows for many seniors today to be more independent. While we may idealize some agrarian form of the independent ‘gentleman farmer’ as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson or a survivalist as envisioned by Thoreau, in our modern age any lack of income (whether urban or rural) simply generates suffering, ill-health, malnutrition, and a variety of other socially negative outcomes. A basic income, particularly when complemented by a well-thought out Healthcare system and other incentives toward positive outcomes, could alleviate such problems. If we steer education intelligently, and human inventiveness and entrepreneurship are promoted, bottom up endeavors can be nurtured in a variety of altruistic and productive ways, using a BIG as the foundation.
For the nostalgic among us who wish to return to some ideal world of very limited government and no intrusive Powers that Be, we need to remember something about the history of life prior to the advent of our current (albeit admittedly corrupted) modern societies. Life was short, and it was brutish. To the extent human beings can cooperate together to alleviate overall suffering, they should. And technology makes that possible. Why shouldn’t we use the benefits of that technology for the overall good? What is the alternative? An atomized society of iPad-toting survivalists dodging the bullets of those that choose to organize, probably via transnational large-scale businesses? I don’t believe such a neo-feudal world is desirable. We joke today that Apple is as large as a country. If we move down a libertarian path it won’t be a joke: Apple will make internal laws and provide security for its people if nation states cannot.
Green Energy Infrastructure
Another potential use of non-debt money generated through a Cooperative Central Bank is to create a green energy infrastructure, where the Central Bank could work with local cooperative banks to fund a multitude of sustainable energy projects. Regardless of where you stand on ‘climate change,’ a sustainable, clean, long-term energy infrastructure is a good thing. And again, the idea would be to ‘back’ the money with the asset created, i.e., the green infrastructure that creates the sustainable energy environment that could be the foundation on which long-term prosperity and entrepreneurial activity are built. The infrastructure would be publicly owned (perhaps by State) and corporations charged fees to use it. These use fees could then be channeled back into maintenance and any ‘profits’ toward a basic income in the form of a citizen’s dividend, just as in Alaska oil revenues are channeled back into the Permanent Fund.
Some of you are probably laughing that all of this is absolutely unaffordable and inflationary. But if we significantly downsized the military (something both Economic Democrats and Libertarians certainly agree on) and aggressively sought ways to create global treaties to outlaw open aggression, the energy and resources expended on maintaining the security state and Global US empire could be effectively channeled into more productive long-term objectives through a Cooperative Central Bank and a green infrastructure initiative geared toward fully integrating efficient, non-polluting energy technologies into our economies. Moreover, the Bank could be managed soundly through a systems approach so that expenditures would be monitored carefully and inflation kept in check. Certain levels of income could still be taxed, and fees for corporate resource utilization could be expanded.
We can look back to the New Deal infrastructure projects of the WPA, many of which are still used today by millions of people, as examples of intelligently channeled social energy into long-term infrastructure.
Simplification and Common Ground
The proposals above, including a new Cooperative Central Bank, Basic Income Guarantee, and Green Infrastructure development could be done in tandem with simplifying Federal Government as we know it. Agencies could be eliminated or downsized. Regulations that stifle innovation could be thrown out or rethought.
As a rule, the overriding mission statement of promoting the general welfare of the people should be revisited and integrated into every facet of government.
But can Economic Democrats find common ground with libertarians?
I believe Libertarians and Economic Democrats can agree to the following:
- Empower entrepreneurs
- Simplify government and make it more effective
- Downsize the military, repeal the Patriot Act and roll back Homeland Security
- Allow for alternative currencies to Federal Reserve Notes that are backed by Gold and/or Infrastructure
- Rethink the role of the Federal Reserve in monetary policy
- Simplify, not eliminate, the social safety net
- Support infrastructure with an eye toward sustainable business growth and prosperity, using resources such as https://m247.com/ to achieve this
- Support BIGness when it’s Goodness
By focusing proposals for Economic Democracy on the level of financial and energy infrastructure, we reconcile the two camps by allowing on one hand a cooperative, aggressive and activist stance that allows for a fair and sustainable economic system that promotes the general welfare, but on the other hand maintains a free and entrepreneurial business environment that can make use of that infrastructure in a fashion that is relatively unencumbered and free.
All of these shared stances I believe could be the basis for common ground where Economic Democrats and Libertarians come to agreement regarding a future America we can all feel good about.
About the author: D.R. Thompson is an award-winning film producer, playwright and essayist. He has also ‘done time’ on Wall Street. A compilation of his essays, A WORLD WITHOUT WAR, is available from Del Sol Press.
by Citizens' Income Trust | May 21, 2012 | Opinion
A big idea …
In December 2010, Iran became the first country in the world to establish a nationwide Citizen’s or Basic Income scheme. Interestingly, the scheme did not emerge by design but by default: it was the by-product of an effort to reform an outdated system of price subsidies that concerned primarily fuel products. A basic income proved to be the most practical way of compensating the population for the loss of subsidies that had been costing some US$100-120 billion a year.
When the first phase of the reform process became operational on 19 December 2010, nearly half of the subsidies were slashed overnight. At the same time, every Iranian became entitled to a monthly ‘cash subsidy’ of about US$40 payable to heads of households (e.g. $200 for a household of five members). In the first year of the scheme $40 billion were returned to households in compensation. Nearly the entire population of 75 million is now covered although some 1-2 million people have decided not to claim it. The second phase of the reform is expected to go into effect shortly, entailing further cuts in price subsidies and a corresponding addition to the transfer amount. Later phases will operate on the same principle until domestic prices of subsidised goods and services are brought into line with international or cost prices within the five year period of the reform effort.
The big idea has therefore been to convert price subsidies into cash subsidies. The objective is twofold: improving economic efficiency through rationalisation of subsidised prices, and reducing income disparities through cash transfers. These were reflected in the main provisions of the Subsidy Reform Law of January 2010 that is now being implemented.
… yielding results …
The reform process was launched over a year ago and evidence is now beginning to appear on the results. The Central Bank figures suggest that while the initial price shock accelerated inflationary pressures, the impact has not been as dire as had been predicted by some observers. The annual rate of urban inflation in the months preceding the reform was 9-10 percent. With the launch of the reform on 19 December 2010, this rate started climbing by about 1 percentage point a month to reach 20.6 percent in December 2011. The acceleration appears to have been entirely due to price reform. The relatively subdued impact on overall inflation – when subsidised prices had been raised several-fold – was due in part to price controls that were intensified when the reform was launched. Price controls have since been relaxed but not entirely withdrawn.
Official data also show substantial declines in the consumption of fuel across the board. Between 2010 and 2011, the years before and after the reform, the average daily consumption of petrol fell by 5.6 percent, diesel fuel by 10 percent, liquid gas by 10.6 percent, furnace oil by 36.5 percent, and electricity by 8 percent. These savings are all the more remarkable in view of past trends that witnessed growth of the order of 10 percent a year in the consumption of fuel and electricity.
Income effects too are likely to have been positive. The cuts in subsidies affect household incomes adversely in direct proportion to their consumption of subsidised goods and services. While some basic foods such as bread were among them, the cuts overwhelmingly concerned energy products whose consumption correlates positively with income. The compensatory transfers are however uniform for everyone and hence the short term impact of the reform on income distribution can only have been egalitarian, although the extent of it is not known since no hard data are available as yet.
… and some potential lessons
This basic income experience is in its infancy and it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions and lessons from it. Nonetheless, it may suggest possibilities that could help make basic income more of a realistic proposition in some contexts.
Advocacy for basic income:
The adoption of the subsidy reform and the birth of a de facto basic income in Iran owe much to the fact that cash transfers are universally seen as compensation for the loss of subsidies, not as a right or entitlement without a quid pro quo. That is how the hurdle of reciprocity was overcome. The rights-based arguments would have been a non-starter. Furthermore, a basic income was not a policy objective in itself but the fortuitous outcome of a broader effort aimed at correcting an inefficient and inequitable system of subsidies. It served to facilitate subsidy reform by making it more palatable to politicians and the public at large. In a sense, the country stumbled upon basic income while pursuing a different objective. This unique experience highlights the instrumental potential of basic income in smoothing the way towards better resource allocation and greater equality, the two objectives of Iran’s reform. The concept’s very simplicity appears to account for its emergence in the national search for an appealing alternative to an irrational system of subsidies. It just seemed to make sense.
Financing a basic income: A major hurdle facing a basic income scheme is often finding sufficient resources to fund it. In Iran, the problem was turned on its head: substantial funds were going to be available from price increases but a use for them had to be found. The basic income emerged as a way of using up a large portion of those funds. This method of financing a basic income is not discussed much in the literature but it has its merits. One is that it puts no new claim on existing sources, for example the national budget or oil export revenues. Another is pointed out by Philippe Van Parijs who contrasts Iran’s approach with that of Alaska, noting:
In many places, this is a far more realistic option than an Alaska-type permanent fund program…the Alaska scheme is funded out of the interest collected from investments made worldwide with revenues generated by the production of oil at some point in the past, whereas the Iranian scheme should be understood to be funded out of a tax on the current consumption of oil. The Alaska-type scheme is therefore restricted to resource-rich (sub-) countries that manage at some point to exercise sufficient political self-restraint to create and develop a substantial fund. The Iranian-type scheme, by contrast, is available to any country that wants to price the consumption of oil in an ecologically responsible way and to buffer the effect on people’s standard of living in a socially responsible way. For this road to basic income to be a real option there is no need to first accumulate a large fund, nor indeed to be an oil-producing or resource-rich country. (Philippe Van Parijs, ‘BIEN 2010 Congress: A Brief Personal Account,’ BIEN NewsFlash 62, 2010, pp. 2–4. www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/Flash62.pdf)
Over the longer term however, the Alaska model has the advantage of a permanent flow whereas the Iran model does not. Since the subsidies are being cut permanently, one might presume that the compensatory transfers too would continue indefinitely. But this is by no means certain.
Universal coverage and the transfer amount:
One of the main justifications for universality lies in the shortcomings of targeting, but universal coverage has its cost too when the resources available are exogenously given or “fixed,” as is the case in Iran since the funds available depend on the extent of price hikes and the volume of goods and services sold, not on the scheme’s coverage or the transfer amount. The distribution of the funds is thus subject to a trade-off between the number of beneficiaries and the amount of the transfer to each. The universality thus comes at the expense of the lower income people who could have received more had those with higher incomes been excluded. At the time of writing (April 2012), there is increasing evidence that the principle of universality in Iran’s scheme may be sacrificed with some better-off households being dropped from the programme. The current plan is to urge higher income earners to opt out of the transfer scheme voluntarily. Households with an income above a couple of thousand dollars a month (a fairly large amount of money in Iran) are being invited to consider giving up their cash subsidy in whole or in part (the options are the entire amount, half the amount or any addition to the transfer amount in the second phase of the programme). No one knows how they will respond. If enough of them agree to withdraw, the matter will have been settled. If not, the government will have to decide how to proceed.
Constituency building:
The subsidy reform in Iran was a government initiative that, far from enjoying public support, aroused deep anxiety throughout the society. It was the most radical economic transformation Iranians were going to experience in living memory. The cash transfer component of it was designed in part to alleviate public concern and build support for the reform on the strength of the argument that a large part of the population would in fact receive more in cash subsidy than they would lose from cuts in price subsidies. Universal coverage came about for lack of a practical alternative. It had few advocates per se and may yet prove to be short lived, even if retreating from it may be harder now that it is in place. But even if some of the better-off households are excluded from the transfer scheme, their number is unlikely to be large. The success of the reform depends on the vast majority of the people feeling that they are not being cheated out of their fair share of the oil wealth.
To sum up the potential lessons:
- overemphasis on rights may not always be the best political strategy for promoting basic income;
- the compensatory nature of the transfers can help overcome objections rooted in the principle of reciprocity;
- piggybacking on a larger issue may open up fruitful opportunities for the promotion of basic income;
- one can conceivably stumble on a basic income under certain circumstances;
- Iran’s model of generating resources for a basic income is potentially applicable in many other countries as well, even those that may not have fuel resources of their own or subsidized fuel;
- the Alaska model of dividend payment may have greater long-term sustainability;
- there is normally a trade-off between universality and transfer amount in the context of a developing country;
- universal entitlement need not mean universal payment if the better off can be induced to forego their entitlement voluntarily;
- cash transfers, once in place, can develop a large constituency behind them, for both economic and political reasons; and
- public support of cash transfers could be strengthened if they also addressed widely acknowledged problems (for example, irrational consumption patterns).
For more on the subject, see
Hamid Tabatabai, ‘The Basic Income Road to Reforming Iran’s Price Subsidies,’ in Basic Income Studies, vol.6, no.1, June 2011, pp.1–24, www.bepress.com/bis/vol6/iss1/art3
‘Iran: A Bumpy Road towards Basic Income,’ in Basic Income Guarantee and Politics, Richard Caputo (ed.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming;
‘From Price Subsidies to Basic Income: The Iran Model and its Lessons,’ in Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard (eds.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming;
‘Reforming Energy Subsidies: The Iran Model,’ in Oxford Energy Forum, Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, forthcoming.
