by Tyler Prochazka | Oct 6, 2015 | News
freedigitalphotos.net
Many Americans still believe that poverty represents an individual’s moral failure, and so they often oppose “handouts” to the poor. Matt Zwolinski, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, argues in a Washington Post article that a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is more consistent with preserving the poor’s dignity than America’s current approach with strings attached.
Zwolinski said that individuals know their needs better than the government does. Thus, providing them the freedom to choose how to spend their money through a basic income will increase the effectiveness of the social safety net.
Recent empirical evidence from Brazil, Uganda and Mexico show cash grants improve the lives of the poor, the article points out.
Matt Zwolinski, “Our welfare system insults the poor. Basic income could do better” Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2015.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Sep 17, 2015 | Opinion
Hartley Dean, Social Rights and Human Welfare, Routledge, 2015, xiv + 194 pp, 1 138 01310 0, hbk, £95, 1 138 01312 4, pbk, £32.99
Hartley Dean will soon be starting the process of retiring as Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, and this book is a worthy summary of his lifelong involvement in social rights and human welfare, first as a welfare rights adviser in Brixton, and then as an academic.
The first chapter discusses the evolution and characteristics of social rights. The second summarizes much of the material in Dean’s 2010 Understanding Human Need, and, in the context of a discussion of inequality and poverty, understands social rights as the articulation of human need. The broad range of Dean’s treatment is particularly visible in chapter 3 on ethics and social rights, where he discusses a variety of ethical theories, categorizes rights-based perspectives, and asks that ‘welfare’ should again mean wellbeing. The fourth chapter deals with a variety of challenges to the idea of social rights, and particularly the neoliberal challenge, that social rights compromise property, civil, and political rights, and the post-structuralist challenge, that social rights imply state control.
The book turns from a more theoretical to a more practical treatment of social rights at chapter 5, on the meaning of, and prospect for, global social rights. Here the broad canvas reveals even more clearly the tension between rights founded on universal principles (‘doctrinal’ rights) and rights based on experienced and expressed needs (‘claimed’ rights). Chapter 6 examines rights to work and to subsistence, and some possible relationships between them: and in this context Dean discusses arguments both for and against universal benefits. Earlier in the book he had constructed a typology of competing perspectives – liberal, moral authoritarian, communitarian, and social democratic/democratic socialist – and probably rightly sees universal benefits as fitting most easily into the liberal and social democratic/democratic socialist understandings of social rights.
Chapter 7 tackles rights to shelter, education, health, and social care. Throughout the chapter we discover conflicting rights – for instance, between the rights of parents and/or children in relation to education), and also throughout this chapter we encounter the complex relationship between the right to satisfy needs (for health, knowledge, shelter, etc.) and the right to government services designed to satisfy those needs (healthcare, education, social housing, etc.). Chapter 8 discusses rights of redress – a civil right that assumes such social rights as legal aid.
The final part of the book is titled ‘rethinking social rights’. In the cause of alleviating global poverty, chapter 9 explores the complex relationship between social rights and social development; and chapter 10 returns to the understanding of social rights as the articulation of human need and as the social means for satisfying it. Dean challenges T. H. Marshall’s construction of history, in which civil and political rights preceded social rights, by suggesting that we were social beings before we were political or civic beings, so in practical terms there were social rights before there were ever civil or political rights; and he goes on to show how, in the future, social rights will be as much a global phenomenon as a national and local one, and that the international human rights framework will be a significant factor.
Writing an index is not an easy task, and no index is perfect: but perhaps one word that ought to have been in this index is ‘contested’. It is a major theme of the book that ideas are contested: that is, that different interest groups in society will create their own definitions, ideas and processes, in order to satisfy their own needs, and that these definitions, ideas and processes might severely compromise other groups’ abilities to meet their needs.
The concept of contestation is just one example of the breadth and the depth of the discussion. The depth of the treatment as a whole suggests that the book would serve well as the textbook for a module on social rights and human welfare, and its breadth suggests that it would be a useful resource for an entire master’s degree on the subject. A complex agenda is well handled, and it is impressive how both depth and breadth are achieved without loss to either.
While Hartley Dean will soon be retiring from his full-time post at the LSE, we hope that he will not be retiring from the kind of thoughtful engagement with the theory and practice of social rights and human welfare of which this book is persuasive evidence.
[This review was first published in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, 2015, issue 3.]
by BIEN | Sep 6, 2015 | News
The Finnish Government is interested in the basic income. Prime Minister Juha Sipila has expressed support for the idea, saying, “For me, a basic income means simplifying the social security system.” 4 out of 5 Finns currently support the basic income, but some policy experts have expressed hesitation to endorse the policy. Ohto Kanninen, from Tank Research Centre, said, “What would be the impact of a basic income to employment in Finland – positive or negative? We can’t really foresee how people would behave with a basic income.” Consequently, a pilot is being considered. The project would pay 8,000 people from low income groups four different monthly amounts, possibly ranging from €400 to €700. The Finnish constitution requires every citizen must be equal, which could prevent the project, but this requirement could be waived to gain information for the good of society
For more information on the Finnish basic income project, see:
“Finland considers basic income to reform welfare system” Maija Unkuri, BBC News. August 20, 2015.
by Will Wachtmeister | Aug 23, 2015 | News
The IIPPE’s upcoming Annual Conference at the UK’s Leeds University features an in-depth basic income presentation by longstanding anti-poverty activist professor Ann Withorn. For more information and registration please visit the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy website.
The abstract of Withorn’s conference contribution, which will take place at 11AM on 9 September, followed by additional conference details can be found below.
ABSTRACT
Finding Solidarity Within Precarity–Lessons from the US Welfare Rights Movement Regarding the Role of Universal Basic Income
This presentation will open discussion around three interconnecting questions:
- What does it mean to consider our current global economy as increasingly defined by “precarity” and to accept the “Precariat” as the “new dangerous class”? (Guy Standing, 2011, 2014)
- What do the experiences of people within the US Welfare Rights Movement teach us about theories and strategies for addressing a range of problems associated with economic insecurity? (Willie Baptist and Jan Rehmann, 2011)
- How does the current movement for a Universal Basic Income Guarantee have the potential to build solidarity and counter the economic and affective consequences of precarity?
Ann Withorn (right) with Diane Dujon
This presentation grows out of my 40+ years of anti-poverty activism and writing — as well as from my recent work to achieve a Universal Basic Income in Massachusetts and the US. The basic premise is that precarity is growing across many sectors of society in the US and the world — far beyond those who have been traditionally labeled poor or especially “vulnerable to poverty”. I presume that, by acknowledging our shared precarity, people today may be more able to demand recognition as legitimate members of society who are equally deserving of society’s common resources.
I will present examples of how women and men in the Welfare Rights struggles from 1966 though 2015 have claimed their rights to economic assistance and full social acceptance while struggling with their highly stigmatized status as members of the “lumpen precariat”. I will explain in some detail how my contacts with local activists both showed me the deep scariness generated for individuals, families and cultures by precarity, and offered a concrete way people within the Precariat can fight these fears: by seeking solidarity through a Basic Income for all. My goal is not only to deepen our shared knowledge but to engender a commitment to action grounded in such knowledge.
EVENT INFORMATION:
IIPPE Conference 2015, Rethinking Economics: Pluralism, Interdisciplinarity and Activism, University of Leeds, UK, September 9-11, 2014. Conference registration: https://iippe.org/wp/?page_id=2655. For more information on Ann Withorn’s presentation at the conference, contact her at withorn.ann@gmail.com.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jun 5, 2015 | Opinion
John Hills, Good Times, Bad Times: The welfare myth of them and us, Policy Press, 2014, 1 44732 003 6, pbk, xviii + 323 pp, £12.99
The title says it all: the normal experience for most families and individuals is that there will be good times and bad times; and it is simply not true that society is made up of two relatively stable groups: one group of people that pays for the welfare state, and the other that benefits from it. The political polemic of ‘strivers’ and ‘skivers’ is precisely that: political polemic. At different points in our lives we might be net contributors or net recipients in relation to the welfare state, but there is nobody who does not at some stage benefit from its provisions. Another myth that the book challenges is that vast sums are spent on supporting people who are ill, disabled, or out of work, whereas in fact the budgets for the relevant benefits are small compared with the budgets for the pensions and healthcare from which all of us benefit.
The author employs a number of literary devices to get his message across. He writes about the different ‘wavelengths’ along which changes occur: for instance, the long wavelength within which we accumulate and then run down assets as we progress through middle age and into old age; and the short wavelength of coping with the loss of income precipitated by unemployment or illness. And throughout the book he follows the fortunes of two fictitious but recognisable families: the middle class Osbornes, and the working class Ackroyds.
If you don’t have time to read the whole book, then read the diagrams and text about these two families at the beginning of each chapter. The picture that they reveal is that both families benefit from the welfare state, and that taking the tax and benefits systems as a single system, the Osbornes do rather well out of it. But if you do have time to read the whole book then you will find that the mass of survey data discussed in the body of each chapter reveals a highly complex picture, an important characteristic of which is that what is normal for the Ackroyds is rapid and frequent change in their economic position. One week a government minister might describe them as ‘skivers’, and the next they would be praised as ‘strivers’. Another important characteristic that hits the reader time after time is the effect of initial social and economic capital on economic and social capital outcomes. The social mobility ladder seems to have some rungs missing.
Along the way, we discover how unequal predistribution is in the UK compared with most other countries, and how much harder our welfare state therefore has to work to generate a little more equality; we notice how much everyone benefits from the welfare state, particularly in childhood and old age; we discover how difficult it is for Working Tax Credits – and in the future how difficult it will be for Universal Credit – to respond to the rapid changes in income level experienced by an increasing number of households; we understand how current austerity measures reduce the incomes of low income households but largely protect the incomes of higher earners; and we find that wealth inequality is exacerbated by a tax system that rewards the already wealthy and a benefits system that takes household wealth into account when benefits are calculated.
John Hills is the Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, and this book is full of thorough analysis of social exclusion. A few questions are asked at the end about the ways in which future policy might take into account the book’s findings, but Hills leaves it to others to work out what should be done to rectify the situation that he discovers.
Of particular interest to readers of this Newsletter will be the numerous ways in which a benefits system based on a Citizen’s Income would respond to the problems explored in the book. In particular, a Citizen’s Income would cohere far better with rapidly gyrating earnings than means-tested benefits will ever manage to do. But perhaps the most important lesson that the book holds for anyone promoting debate on social policy reform is that however thoroughly robust evidence and logical argument manage to demolish myths perpetrated by the press and by politicians, those myths persist. So perhaps however good the evidence that a Citizen’s Income would be feasible, the myth will persist that it isn’t. If John Hills’ book manages to reduce the potency of the myth of them and us, then some of us might begin to hope that the myth of a Citizen’s Income’s infeasibility might one day lose some of its strength.
