by Citizens' Income Trust | May 30, 2012 | Opinion
Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving (eds), Social Policy in Challenging Times: Economic crisis and welfare systems, Policy Press, 2011, xi + 335 pp, pbk, 1 847 42827 1, £27.99, hbk, 1 847 42828 8, £70
Whilst in all of the countries studied in this edited collection the welfare state can be regarded as entering a new age of austerity, the picture that emerges is one of diversity: of different kinds of financial crisis in different countries, of different cultural contexts, and of different effects on welfare provision. For instance: ‘Liberal market economies … are least well equipped in both economic buffers and social solidarity to deal with the impact of a crisis in welfare funding because interests are not shared corporately or between social classes’ (p.24).
The first part of the book tackles more general questions. Has the crisis resulted in a shift in the economic paradigm? No: that would require positive action. Has a crisis in financialised capitalism fostered a new economic and social strategy? No: it has resulted in welfare state retrenchment and widening inequality. Are we all in this together? No: there is one strategy for financial institutions, and another for citizens. Is a global social floor a good idea? It’s a better idea than national safety nets. How will relatively young welfare states in the developing world cope with the financial crisis? In Brazil and South Africa, the crisis has led to the expansion of income transfer programmes, and in particular to the inclusion of 16 and 17 year olds (p.104).
The second half of the book studies individual countries. South Korea’s experience of the 1997 crisis suggests that extreme neoliberalism doesn’t work. China’s response to the recent crisis has been to include previously excluded groups in welfare systems. Germany’s small financial sector, and adjustments already made during unification, have meant that the crisis has had a ‘muted’ effect. Ireland’s weak welfare state is suffering retrenchment rather than reform. Iceland’s crisis has seen the neoliberal model questioned. In Scandinavia unemployment has risen, but only slowly. Domestic policy concerns drove the United States’ healthcare reforms, and in neither the United States nor in Canada has the crisis resulted in much welfare state reform. In the UK, the depth of austerity measures is more ideological than necessary.
‘More of the same’ is the picture that emerges: that is, it is long term cultural and ideological factors that determine welfare structures. Whilst the financial crisis might have precipitated minor change, and in some cases it has exacerbated existing trends (especially in the UK and Ireland, and over the extent of punitive measures imposed on the unemployed), it has stimulated little genuine reform. The editors’ concluding chapter extracts a number of ‘solutions’ from the different chapters, but they can’t be said to constitute any kind of package; and their confident conclusion that
What the contributions here demonstrate is not only that emergency events are crucial to both the shaping of social policy, and to the understanding of that process, but also that challenging times are as likely to widen the scope for progressive welfare state-building as they are to diminish it, and that how states respond is a matter of political struggle and political choice (p.278)
isn’t borne out by the evidence.
The strengths of the book are the amount of detailed evidence and the careful analysis in each of the very different chapters; and a particular strength is that the chapter authors don’t draw clear conclusions where there are none to be drawn. A justifiable clear conclusion is Farnsworth’s: that Government policy is bound to increase inequality in the UK. What he might also have said is that reduced withdrawal rates under the new Universal Credit will reduce inequality and will incentivise labour market activity. The lesson to draw is that reduced benefits withdrawal rates and an increase in universal benefits would both reduce inequality and incentivise labour market activity: both outcomes which would enhance the economic outlook and the social fabric.
by Yannick Vanderborght | May 15, 2012 | News
The European Foundation Centre (EFC) is holding its 23rd annual general assembly and conference in Belfast this year, and the topic of the conference is “Peace for Social Justice – A Role for Foundations?”
As one of 236 EFC members from 40 countries around the world,the Koerber Foundation is organising a session about social justice and basic income: “Justice through unconditional basic income? A debate on European Social Policy”
Massive protests against growing social inequality and unemployment have erupted all across Europe lately. Young Europeans in particular are calling for radical political change and a new strategy for social justice. At the same time, the EU has set five ambitious objectives to be reached by 2020 – reducing the number of people in poverty by 20 million is at the top of this agenda. How can Europe reach this ambitious goal and further foster social justice?
This session aims to discuss whether the unconditional basic income can be a means of European social policy, a way to reduce social imbalance throughout Europe and a possibility to save expenditure within the European social welfare systems. More generally the session will focus on the effectiveness within the EU to develop and implement a common strategy and common standards in the field of social policy.
The session will allow for interaction between an outstanding social policy, social partnership and socio-economic expert and young citizens from several European countries, who are affiliated to FutureLab Europe, an initiative of the European Alliance for Democratic Citizenship, coordinated by the Körber Stiftung, and to the young European online magazine Europe&Me.
Organised by Körber-Stiftung
Moderator:
Almut Möller, Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies
Expert:
Guy Standing, University of Bath
Speakers:
Lukas Brück, Germany, FutureLab Europe
Christoph Johannes Delcker, Germany, FutureLab Europe
Johannes Himmelreich, Europe & Me
Eemeli Isoaho, Finland, FutureLab Europe
Estefania Almenta Lopez, Spain, FutureLab Europe
Zuzana Novakova, Slovakia, FutureLab Europe
by Yannick Vanderborght | Apr 9, 2012 | Opinion
The BRICS Heads of State Summit in Delhi this week presents an excellent opportunity to launch some joint initiatives that would help promote the aims of the meeting, security and stability. Among those, one stands out that could easily be sidelined.
The leaders of India, Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa face a common challenge arising from the fact that their economic growth is leaving a large number of people languishing in dire poverty and economic insecurity. Each country has adopted very different approaches. Without doubt, Brazil has done best, and India, China, Russia and South Africa would be well advised to learn lessons from its experience.
For dealing with poverty, India has relied heavily on hugely expensive subsidies, primarily through the Public Distribution System (PDS). Most of the money poured into those schemes goes astray. Nearly three-quarters of PDS never reaches the poor. Inequality has worsened as well, as it has in China, Russia and South Africa in recent decades.
In China, the share of national income going to capital has risen by twenty percentage points in just over two decades. The Chinese leadership is acutely concerned about the persistent poverty threatening the sustainability of their growth model, marked by a rising incidence of social protests. South Africa has also fared badly, with sluggish economic growth being combined by the persistence of high poverty, chronically high unemployment and shocking inequality.
By contrast, Brazil under President Lula transformed their social protection system to rely extensively on cash transfers, notably its scheme of Bolsa Familia, which since its introduction in 2003 has reached over a quarter of all Brazilians, over 50 million people. In that time, poverty has declined, income inequality has fallen considerably, economic growth has risen while it has fallen in the other BRICS countries as well as in the G20 area in general, and unemployment has fallen to its lowest ever. And women and children have done particularly well.
Cash transfers have been hailed as a primary reason for these successes. President Dilma Rousseff is committed to continuing on that road. There is even a law on the statute books committing the government to introduce a basic income for all as and when economic conditions allow it.
The Bolsa Familia is nominally a conditional cash transfer scheme, providing monthly payments conditional on children attending school and having regular medical check ups. In practice, these have moved to “co-responsibility” commitments, obliging local agencies to provide better facilities as much as being policing mechanisms.
Meanwhile, India has slowly moved into a phase where the Planning Commission and others are more open to use of cash transfers. Regrettably, polemical criticisms have been holding up dispassionate debate. Cash transfers do not rule out other schemes, such as labour projects such as MGNEGS. Nor do they mean government should roll back its development of social services.
At the moment, several experimental cash transfer schemes are in progress in various states. These have been done mostly by non-government bodies, such as SEWA. Lessons learned are mainly positive. But Indian officials and their colleagues in China, Russia and South Africa should organise a joint assessment of the design of cash transfers, drawing on the Brazilian experience, and that of other Latin American countries.
The issue of cash transfers is closely related to one other theme that is scheduled for discussion, financial initiatives. Cash transfers are linked to the need for financial inclusion, an imperative that concerns all five countries. Unless the poor, the emerging precariat and all rural residents are enabled to be part of the money economy, their plight will continue to deteriorate. In this respect, lessons are to be learned by all the BRICS countries, and here India has some recent encouraging experience to pass to their colleagues.
Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security, University of Bath, England. He is the author of Cash Transfers in India: A Review of the Issues, just published by UNICEF, New Delhi.
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 24, 2012 | Research
Basic Income Studies is the only academic journal devoted entirely to examining basic income. In October 2011 it released a special issue, edited by Daniel Mosley, entitled, “Should Libertarians Endorse Basic Income?” The debate includes the following articles:
MOSELEY, DANIEL D., “Introduction: What is Libertarianism?”
Abstract – This article introduces the special Basic Income Studies journal’s debate issue on whether libertarians should endorse a universal basic income. The article clarifies some common uses of the term “libertarianism” as it is used by moral and political philosophers. It identifies some important common features of libertarian normative theories.
MOSELEY, DANIEL D. “A Lockean Argument for Basic Income”
Abstract – Libertarians should not reject the goal of establishing a global basic income program. There are strong Lockean considerations that favor such a program. This article explains a conception of equal share left-libertarianism that is supported by the rights of full self-ownership and world ownership. It argues that an appropriately constructed basic income program would be a key institution for promoting those rights.
LAYMAN DANIEL “Locke on Basic Income.” This essay was runner-up for the 2011 BIS Essay Prize
Abstract – Perhaps the strongest attempts to derive support for basic income policy from John Locke’s political philosophy hinge on Locke’s view that the world and its resources were originally owned in common by all persons. This world ownership, many have supposed, gives all persons a natural right to equal shares of resources and thus a right to an equal basic income under conditions (like our own) in which nearly all resources have been appropriated. This reasoning betrays a misunderstanding of Locke’s conception of original world ownership and, once this understanding is corrected, it becomes clear that there is no natural right to equal shares of resources, although there is a natural right to sufficient shares. Consequently, although governments must guarantee sufficiency for their citizens, there is no Lockean reason why this guarantee must take the form of a basic income or a scheme of equal and unconditional payments.
BOETTKE, PETER J. AND ADAM MARTIN, “Taking the ‘G’ out of BIG: A Comparative Political Economy Perspective on Basic Income”
Abstract – Basic Income Guarantee proposals aim at, among other objectives, the salutary goal of providing a minimum income floor beneath which individuals cannot fall. We analyze this family of proposals through the lens of comparative political economy, arguing that politics is not an appropriate institutional environment for pursuing the end of an income floor. Once the notion of a guaranteed income is cast in realistic, probabilistic terms, it becomes a live question whether the market or the polity can better secure a Basic Income. Actual markets must be compared to real-world political processes rather than idealized policy proposals in order to ascertain their desirability. Drawing on the extant literature on the failure of political processes to realize the goals of other redistributive programs, we argue that Basic Income proposals likewise ignore politics as practiced and are thus equally subject to critiques both of their means-ends coherence and their vulnerability to political opportunism.
ZWOLINSKI, MATT, “Classical Liberalism and the Basic Income”
Abstract – This article provides a brief overview of the relationship between libertarian political theory and the Basic Income (BI). It distinguishes between different forms of libertarianism and argues that at least one form, classical liberalism, is compatible with and provides some grounds of support for BI. A classical liberal BI, however, is likely to be much smaller than the sort of BI defended by those on the political left. And there are both contingent-empirical and principled-moral reasons for doubting that the classical liberal case for BI will be ultimately successful.
MUNGER, MICHAEL C. “Basic Income Is Not an Obligation, But It Might Be a Legitimate Choice”
Abstract – A distinction is made between libertarian destinations and libertarian directions. Basic income cannot be part of a truly libertarian state unless it could be accomplished entirely through voluntary donations. But basic income is an important step in a libertarian direction because it improves core values such as self-ownership, liberty, and efficiency of transfers while reducing coercion and increasing procedural fairness. Practical approaches to achieving basic income are compared to proposals by Milton Friedman and Charles Murray.
POWELL, BRIAN K. “Two Libertarian Arguments for Basic Income Proposals”
Abstract – For those familiar only with libertarians on the economic right, it seems obvious that libertarians will oppose basic income proposals. However, there are a variety of ways to argue for basic income proposals from within a “left” or “egalitarian” libertarian framework. In this article I argue that such a framework ought to be preferred to the alternative right-libertarian framework. Then I look at a simple left-libertarian argument for basic income proposals that is inspired by Thomas Paine and Henry George, and at another, more complex, argument offered by Phillipe Van Parijs.
VALLENTYNE, PETER, “Libertarianism and the Justice of a Basic Income”
Abstract – Whether justice requires, or even permits, a basic income depends on two issues: 1. Does justice permit taxation to generate revenues for distribution to others? 2. If so, does justice require, or even permit, equal and unconditional distribution for some portion of the tax revenues? I claim the following: 1. although all forms of libertarianism reject the nonconsensual taxation of labor and the products of labor, all but radical right-libertarianism allow a kind of wealth taxation for rights over natural resources, and 2. some versions of libertarianism allow the equal and unconditional distribution of such revenues and some do not.
The October issue also includes the following book reviews:
Pérez, Jose Luis Rey, “Review of Gijs van Donselaar, The Right to Exploit: Parasitism, Scarcity, Basic Income
Vick, Andrea,, “Review of Doris Schroeder, Work Incentives and Welfare Provision: The ‘Pathological’ Theory of Unemployment”
Online at: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bis.2011.6.issue-2/issue-files/bis.2011.6.issue-2.xml
by Yannick Vanderborght | Feb 15, 2012 | News
French politician Christine Boutin withdraw her candidacy for the next presidential election, and announced on the French television TF1 that she reached an agreement with the unofficial candidate Nicolas Sarkozy.
The president of the Christian-Democrat Party explained that recent speeches of the president Nicolas Sarkozy proved he defends the same values as her such as family, marriage, work, and religious roots of Europe. All in all: Conservative values. As a contrast, Christine Boutin is a long-time supporter of basic income and is very committed in the fight against poverty.
Yet in 2011, Boutin made clear she would support Sarkozy under three conditions, including the basic income (see an earlier article on BI News). Indeed, she said on TF1 that the agreement finally reached with Nicolas Sarkozy included a deal about the basic income. Apparently, Sarkozy would mandate her to lead a parliamentary commission to examine the proposal, and would play “an important role” in the election campaign.
Does Nicolas Sarkozy actually support basic income? This remains unclear. At first sight, after all the measures taken against unemployment rights and social welfare by the government during his presidency, this seems very unlikely. But ironically, the general feeling in France is that Sarkozy is “capable of everything to stay in power”.
As Boutin said on TF1: “The basic income is a proposal currently discussed very seriously in Germany, and is perfectly fundable”. Could these arguments convince Nicolas Sarkozy? In a recent speech, the president was highly criticized for referring too much to the German model.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Christine Boutin met several times lately. According to sources familiar with Christine Boutin, the negotiations were running positively for her.
Christine Boutin advocates for a basic income of 400 euros per adult per month, and 200 per children, regardless of means. In her proposal, the basic income would substitute for several, but not all current social grants the French system offers, and would be conditioned upon the completion of compulsory national service, military or civilian.
Boutin’s proposal is considered “very low” from the basic income supporters in France. In a recent study (pdf), Marc de Basquiat proved 400 euros is, on average, the amount every French citizen already earns from the welfare system.
However, in a way, this would make the basic income “visible” behind the complex French social model, not to mention it would simplify it and make it much more understandable.
