The photo of Götz Werner was taken by Enno Schmidt.
The entrepreneur Götz Werner was the best-known and most influential proponent of the universal basic income in Germany since 2005. With him, the UBI became a topic in the media and in society.
His presentation of the idea was also an inspiration and substantial basis for the Swiss popular initiative and vote on UBI and for many other activities of others on the UBI. About two years ago, his state of health no longer permitted any public appearances.
On February 8th, 2022, he passed away in the age of 78.
His strong public appeal and talent to inspire was not only because he had a high social status as a successful and repeatedly awarded entrepreneur, credible with his statements about economy, money and work as someone who had made it in the existing society, but it was his authentic way of putting people first. His presence made others feel joyful, uplifted and assured of a future development despite all the hardships.
His involvement with the UBI was a logical consequence of his entrepreneurial career. For him, basic income was not a contradiction to business, to productivity, but its prerequisite. If you asked him something to which you expected a business answer, he answered with human, idealistic ones. If you asked him something for which you expected a human, ideal answer, he answered in business terms. There was no difference. And what he said lived with the people in the company right down to all the branches at all levels. Not as a parroting of a corporate philosophy, but as an attitude to life and a living space.
The dm pharmacy chain that he founded has today more than 66.000 employees, 43.000 in Germany alone, almost 4.000 branches and an annual turnover of more than 12 billion Euros.
“The company is a platform for biographies,” Götz Werner said. He considered the division between working time and free time to be wrong. Because both are life time. My lifetime is me. I cannot separate myself and my lifetime. Only I can determine my lifetime. No one else can dispose of my lifetime. It is only out of my freedom and determination that I can devote my lifetime to others. But it’s always me. Freedom is not nice talk, it is the very nature of human existence. “The goal of people is freedom-generation“, Götz Werner noted. In the company, people spend their life time, develop skills and unfold their lives. That is what the company is there for. “People are not means, but ends.” They are not a means to the end (purpose) of the company, but the company is a means to the end (purpose) of the people. “A company is a social-artistic cultural event.” In the development of the company, Götz Werner could seem like a sculptor, a social sculpturer, and who sometimes keeps taking a step back to see how it is right and coherent. Action and reflection. He himself changed with his insights and with the changes in the company.
Entrepreneurs create jobs? “Nonsense,” he answered. “No entrepreneur comes into the office in the morning and considers: how can I create a lot of jobs today? Instead, he thinks: how can I optimize processes, how can I do something better for the customers?” But he had created tens of thousands of jobs with the dm drugstore chain, he was further asked. “Where we have opened a new branch, other shops in the area have gone out of business because of it. Previous jobs have been lost where we have offered new ones. New jobs are primarily created today where work is being done to eliminate jobs elsewhere.”
After countless interviews with applicants, a light came on for him: “First people need an income, then they can get involved with our working community and see where they can and want to contribute best.” First an income, then you can engage in the work. Notice the order. That is the order of the free man.
At an event at the University of Karlsruhe, he called out to the thousand listeners: “Your work and the work we all do can never be paid for. But an income makes it possible.” Because my work is my lifetime and my contribution to others. This cannot be paid for because you cannot buy people. Income makes work possible. It does not pay it. “In our society based on the division of labor, we all live from what others do for us. The more productive others can be, the better for me. So it makes sense to create the best conditions for everyone to be productive.” This framework is the UBI. ” Work costs nothing. But everyone needs an income. And everyone works. Even the unemployed. They work too. They also do something. Everyone wants to work, wants to do something that makes sense, for which they experience appreciation.” “Only with the UBI we have a free labor market.” For a free market presupposes the freedom of market participants to be able to say no to a bad offer and yes to a good one. No to underpaid bad or pointless work. Yes to something that makes sense, that I want, even if the pay is not high or it is not paid at all. For Götz Werner, it was evidence from his professional life that made it clear to him that wage dependency stands in the way of real cooperation on an equal footing. Of course, earned income remains beyond the basic income. But the question of existence is not tied to a paid job or the requirements of social welfare. “Today, many people do not have a working place, but only an income place,” Götz Werner remarked. Needless jobs that only give an income and power to the employer to rule about staff. This fits with what David Graeber described in his book Bullshit Jobs.
But how can a UBI be financed, Götz Werner was asked again and again. And again and again he answered: “It’s already financed, isn’t it?” Incredulous amazement on the part of the questioner. “Yes, we live in paradisiacal conditions. We have enough goods and services for all, and we could produce even more. Everything that can be produced can also be financed. Provided one has the good will to do so.” Götz Werner saw: The fact that we are all alive proves that the basic income is already financed. If someone did not have even as much as a basic income, in whatever way, they could not live. This basic income is made unconditional. We look at economics under “a money veil”. We do not live on money. You can’t eat money and you can’t wear money. “We live from what others do for us.” And there is enough of that and could even be more. We no longer live in times of scarcity. That is why the basic income is already financed. Because the goods and commodities and services are there. Money is only a legal means of exchanging goods and services.
And how does the funding take place in practice? Götz Werner’s friend and advisor Benediktus Hardorp had explained VAT to him. Götz Werner understood the advantages. Not elevating taxes where people do something for others, income, but where we all claim the services of others for ourselves, consumption. Much more correct and fairer, much simpler in the calculations. Only value-added tax, all others no more. But he wondered: Where is the social component in VAT? And he came up with it himself: an unconditional basic income amount to all economic participants, that is, to all people, all consumers, paid out at the beginning of the month as a refund of the VAT to be paid in the prices in the extent of the necessities of life. For him, VAT and UBI belonged together. They complement each other and pull in the same direction. Releasing the initiative of the people.
Because Götz Werner’s portrayal of the UBI had grown out of entrepreneurial activity, out of insight and evidentiary experiences, because it did not mean or favor any class of society, but rather the human being in his freedom, of which work is a part, he had an effect on people.
Götz Werner has given his shares in the company to a foundation. When his health began to deteriorate, he decided to bundle his financial support for the debate on UBi into an institution and the science and, together with his wife Beatrice, to endow a professorship at the University of Freiburg. The Götz Werner Chair with Prof. Bernhard Neumärker as chair holder. The dm Werner Foundation also finances the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies, FRIBIS, at the university of Freiburg, Germany.
His son Christoph continues to run the company. He has adopted one of his father’s mottos: “Who want, find ways, who don’t want, finds reasons.”
The Basic Income March serves as our movement’s annual reminder to pause, take stock and celebrate our progress. This year was full of things to celebrate: from the over 90 pilots taking place across the U.S. to the extended Child Tax Credit – the first national guaranteed basic income legislation for families. While our movement celebrated this momentum across 31 cities – national and local press took notice. Teen Vogue touted the movement as one that resonates with the youth and local outlets took note of local community celebrations of pilot demonstrations.
Basic income advocates organized a variety of different events across the country. While some put on traditional events like marches and rallies, others hosted open skates, enjoyed barbecues at the park, put on concerts, and tabled at art fairs. Organizers did an amazing job on-the-ground of bringing people together for these events safely, taking appropriate COVID precautions.
A new addition to this year’s events was the involvement of organizations leading pilots in their cities. The organizing of the Denver and Chicago events were based on deep partnerships between local volunteer organizers and staff and partners working on Pilots in those cities. This led to strong turnout, great programs, and deeper celebration of local and national progress made for basic income. These were such a success; we anticipate increasing the number of events in 2022 that are led by pilot organizations.
Organizers across the country hosted events that included activities encouraging deep engagement with the community around the idea of basic income. Some provided posters with different financial responsibilities like rent, student loans, childcare, savings, and participants placed stickers next to items they would use a basic income for. Others had people write down a wish for their lives if they received basic income and added it to a collective art installation.
At the core of this celebration and the core of our movement is community engagement. Our design for this year led us to connect with volunteer organizers on a deeper level, the interactive activities during events allowed organizers to connect more deeply with their community and pilot supported events ensured larger turnouts bringing the movement to a wider audience.
It has been a joy to bring together our friends and advocates, both established and new. Along with our partner organizations and organizers, we invite new faces and facets to build on the foundation of our movement. We begin 2022 with gratitude to work in such a dynamic and growing space.
On 29th April 2021 the prestigious Oxford Union Society hosted a panel of students, activists, politicians and scholars to debate the motion ‘This House Would Introduce a Universal Basic Income’.
The debate began with the majority (68%) voting in favour of introducing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and the remaining 32% voting against it. After hearing a total of 8 panelists’ arguments for and against the motion, the majority shifted in the closing poll to a marginal victory for the opposition, with 54% voting against introducing a UBI and 46% voting for it.
The full debate can be watched on the Oxford Union’s YouTube channel here, with a programme of the speakers and summary of their key arguments provided below.
00:33 – Opening up the case for the proposition, Classical Archaeological and Ancient History student Ambika Sehgal drew on anecdotal evidence from victims of flaws in the DWP’s (Department for Work and Pensions) systems, experiences from the Covid-19 pandemic, and accounts of early forms of UBI in Ancient Greek societies to make three arguments for the motion:
To lift people out of poverty and provide a basic standard of living to everybody “without fear or favour”.
To increase the wealth of the entire population by giving everybody the freedom to upskill, reeducate, take on more prosperous jobs, or start their own business.
To prevent the inevitable economic catastrophe that we are approaching as a result of the automation of skilled industries.
10:52 – Rebutting with the opening case for the opposition, Eliza Dean, first year Classics and French student and Member of the Union’s Secretaries Committee, denounced UBI as the solution to our current economic and political struggles, arguing instead for better funding of existing state welfare systems and a return to greater recognition of the value of labour in society.
20:58 – Professor Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS University of London and founding member of BIEN, outlined the fundamental ethical – as opposed to instrumental – rationale for introducing a UBI, arguing that we have an ethical justification to introduce UBI to resolve the unequal distribution of wealth created by rentier capitalism.
Rounding off his argument for the proposition, Professor Standing drew on his extensive experience working on over 50 pilots to outline some of the key findings of research on UBI:
It improves individual mental and physical health.
It reduces people’s stress.
It leads to better school attendance.
It increases work and its productivity, leading people to be more innovative and altruistic in their work because people feel more able to act in such a way.
It helps to reduce debt.
It leads to a greater sense of social solidarity.
36:34Marco Annunziata, former Chief Economist and Head of Business Innovation Strategy at General Electric, invoked suggestions for the necessary rise in taxes, the case to offer the same amount to the rich and poor, and the disincentives to work as evidence that a UBI is both unaffordable, unjust and riddled with unintended consequences.
48:53 Drawing on simulations run by the RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Anthony Painter, Chief Research & Impact Officer, made the economic case for UBI, citing its ability to make up for inadequacies in existing social support systems by offering a hardwired economic platform for all in society.
59:50 Regarding UBI a ‘recurring revenant’ throughout his career, Professor Hilmar Schneider, Director of the Institute of Labour Economics in Bonn, cited the experience of the German pension system and his own research conducting funding and behavioral responses simulation models to argue against the motion. Pointing to the fact that most UBI pilots rely on external funding sources, Professor Schneider argued that the strongest argument against a UBI lies in its unaffordability, as it would ultimately result in more people losing money than gaining money.
01:10:34William Greve, first year Philosophy, Politics and Economics student and Sponsorship Officer at the Oxford Union,consolidated the arguments made by the panelists to round off the underlying economic and liberal arguments for a UBI:
That is the most effective way to counter the wealth inequality and unjust returns to capital observed in the modern economy that leave labour so unjustly rewarded.
That it is reasonable to demand that all individuals in a society be entitled to a share of the total wealth of society a basic level of economic security.
That it would fundamentally change our relationship with employment for the better.
Drawing on Professor Schneider’s earlier remarks on the case against higher income taxes (owing to the fact that the majority of wealth that exists in the modern economy is not received as an income in the traditional sense), William also argued that a wealth tax, not an income tax, is the most just and feasible way to fund UBI.
01:21:30 Rt Hon Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham and Former Coordinator for the Labour Party, rounded off the case for the opposition by arguing that those advocating for UBI should remain cautious when their political opponents also support the scheme for radically different outcomes. Noting the many cross-spectrum and cross-ideological arguments for and against the motion, he also pointed to the more ‘mundane and practical’ issues with introducing UBI, such as financial feasibility, its efficacy compared to its alternatives, and what accompanying policies are required to ensure desired outcomes.
Concluding the case against UBI, Rt Hon Cruddas hammered home his argument for the dignity of labour and questioned the role that UBI would play in creating decent work. All but entirely dismissing concerns around automation and the future availability of work, he argued that we should instead be organizing for collective rights, strong unions, income guarantees and above all, dignified labour. He argued that there is a strong case against UBI if you consider that the nature of work thesis is flawed, and that the debate around the future of work is an inherently political one. UBI, he suggested, could transform citizens into ‘passengers of capitalism’, robbing them of meaning and dignity, and leaving them more isolated, vulnerable, angry and humiliated, and society itself less fraternal and solidaristic.
After over a year of avoiding significant local COVID outbreaks, Taiwan experienced a scare in May with hundreds of cases emerging. This brought the idea of universal cash payments to the forefront of Taiwan’s political debate as millions of jobs were destabilized overnight.
With this backdrop, UBI Taiwan held its first-ever online basic income summit on August 15, inviting professors, activists, and politicians from around the world to discuss the state of basic income during the COVID pandemic.
Korea’s Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung opened the summit by noting the importance of the basic income movement in Korea and Taiwan. Lee is currently a frontrunner in the early stages of Korea’s presidential race. He has been called the “Bernie Sanders of Korea” because of his economic proposals.
“When the world is implementing expansive fiscal policy, basic income is gaining attention as the most rational and remarkable way to prepare for the era of the fourth industrial revolution,” Lee said in his address to the conference.
As the former mayor of Seongnam, Lee started a youth basic income program for all 24-year-old youth in the city to receive local currency every quarter. The scheme was shown to improve small business activity in the region. He later expanded the program to the province when he became governor.
Kim Kyeong Soo is part of the Gyeonggi provincial government vision planner. He is the planner of the provincial youth basic income program.
“What we are doing at our expense is to realize the basic social rights of young people,” Kim said in an interview for the conference.
This was a useful model during the COVID crisis because the provincial government was able to quickly expand the program to include all residents of the province during the economic downturn.
Kim also discussed how they increased a myriad of programs during the COVID pandemic and the plans to push for basic income on a nationwide scale.
“We designed it so that it could only be used in stores with annual sales of 1.2 billion won or less, so that the money could be actually revitalized for the small business owners of the real alley economy,” Kim said.
Members of the Basic Income Korea Network Mok Hwakyun and Kim Jae-seop attended the summit for the question-and-answer session. They noted how basic income has become a mainstream topic in Korea.
“The biggest change is that everyone knows about basic income now,” Mok said. “I hope Korea will be the first country” to implement UBI.
Prominent US activist Scott Santens gave a pre-recorded interview for the conference where he discussed the success and failures of America’s massive COVID relief program. One of the biggest changes that has emerged is the Child Tax Credit, which Santens said he believes will get more people on board with a wider basic income safety net.
“I feel hopeful that especially the monthly CTC is going to really change things here and help build momentum for a full UBI here in the US,” Santens said.
Taiwan’s Yangming University Professor Song-Lih Huang discussed the debate between Universal Basic Services compared to basic income. He concluded that UBS does not provide the same level of individual freedom as UBI.
UBI Taiwan Chairman Tyler Prochazka evaluated Taiwan’s COVID relief response and noted the inadequacy and complexity of receiving relief.
The situation became more severe this past May when a local outbreak caused Taiwan to go into level 3 lockdown for the first time during the pandemic. Taiwan is experiencing a bizarre contradiction, where record economic growth is fueled by its strong export sector despite the lockdown for other industries. At the same time, the lockdown has caused Taiwan’s employees to experience their worst economic situation in decades, particularly for the service industry.
As a result of the lockdown, half of Taiwanese experienced wage reductions of 10 to 50 percent, and 74 percent reported some reduction in wages. At the same time, 41 percent said they believed the government’s COVID relief program provided no help. One issue with the relief program is it relies on extensive documentation to prove an individual’s circumstance and can also reject an applicant if a household member has too much money in the bank.
For example, Taiwan’s unemployment had reached 570,000 people and the number experiencing lower than normal working hours had reached nearly one million during the lockdown. However, only 20,000 people were added to unemployment benefits during June which is less than one-fourth of the increased unemployment for that period.
Level two lockdown has been extended until September 6 in Taiwan, which places varying levels of restrictions on how businesses operate and closes some businesses entirely, such as certain entertainment venues. Even as much of the country returns to normal, many businesses will likely experience continued restrictions on their operations as well as reduced demand for the foreseeable future.
Despite one of the worst employment situations in decades for Taiwan, the government has only allocated around 6 percent of its annual GDP on COVID relief this year. Compared to Japan and the United States, which spent between 16 to 30 percent of their GDPs on COVID relief, Taiwan has given significantly less to its citizens as a developed economy.
Taiwan’s ruling party Democratic Progressive Party is moving toward another round of stimulus coupons worth 5,000 NT ($180 USD). Due to the stringent conditions associated with COVID relief programs, the universal coupons are the most accessible program from the government’s COVID response for many families. There has been a strong push by opposition parties in Taiwan to provide cash relief now for most Taiwanese instead of coupons and use the administrative savings to give an additional cash boost to poor households.
“Taiwan’s ruling party said they want to ‘share economic growth’ with all Taiwanese,” Prochazka said. “The real way to share economic growth is with Universal Basic Income.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is a draft of the first chapter of the book I’m working on: Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge. It can also be thought of as a reply to Bitch Bastardly’s guest article from last week. Comments welcome: Karl@widerquist.com.
Every minute of every day, you use something you don’t own to meet your needs without asking anyone’s permission and without paying anyone for the privilege. You do this every time you take a breath. You can’t do that without an atmosphere. You don’t own the atmosphere, but you’ve never had to get a job to earn the money to buy the right to use the atmosphere to keep yourself alive. You simply used it as if the free use of a common resource was the most natural thing in the world.
Karl Widerquist
I bet you’d be pretty angry if the government made a new rule dividing atmosphere into private property without giving you a share large enough to meet your needs. I don’ think it would make you feel better if they gave you the opportunity to get a job to earn the money to buy the right to breathe in your area, and thereby keep yourself alive. I think you’d recognize that if you had that much need for a job, you’d be willing to accept very low wages. I don’t think it would make you feel much better if lifetime subscriptions to breathe were affordable, and if, after working for years, saving your money, investing it wisely, you have the chance to become one of the small portion of people who own piece of the atmosphere before retirement age or the even smaller portion of people who own enough of the atmosphere that other people will pay them to breathe.
If the government tried to privatize the atmosphere, I think you’d say something like this. My ancestors and I have used the atmosphere freely for millions of years. We’re evolved to depend on it. If you take away our independent access to it, you make us dependent on whatever group of people owns it. If there’s some benefit in dividing the atmosphere into private property, either everyone should get a share, or those who don’t get shares should be compensated unconditionally for their loss with an income, and that compensation should be at least large enough to buy a lifetime subscription to the right to breathe.
If you’d be that angry about needing some else’s permission to use the atmosphere to meet your need to breathe, why aren’t you angry that you need some else’s permission to use all the other resources you need to meet all your other needs?
I think you should be. Our ancestors used the land and other resources of the Earth freely for millions of years, just as you and I use the atmosphere now. Every one of us is evolved to depend on it. No group of people “naturally” owns it. A few generations ago, governments took away the independent access our ancestors enjoyed. They created a system in which the resources we all need are owned by a few without giving the rest of us any compensation. By doing that, they made us dependent on the people who own the Earth’s resources.
The vast majority of us who don’t own a large enough share of natural resources or of the stuff we make out of natural resources to keep ourselves alive and thriving. The vast majority of us aren’t allowed to use any resources but air without the permission of an owner. We can’t build a shelter, hunt, gather, fish, farm, start a cooperative, or start our own business. Except for the wealthy few, we get a job to earn the money to buy the right to do use the resources that were here before anyone and that we’re all evolved to depend on. Wages are such that, only the lucky few get to the point where we’re free to do something other than paid labor before we’re too told to work anyway.
The division of the Earth’s resource into private and public property has many benefits, but if some people get a share and others don’t, the private property system has many cruel side effects, among them poverty, homelessness, alienation, fear, and hopelessness. Because most of us have no alternative to paid labor, we are all willing to accept lower wages, longer work hours, and less appealing working conditions than we otherwise would. In some situations, people are forced to accept dangerous jobs, sexual harassment, and other forms of abuse from employers or spouses, because they need the job or a spouse with money to keep them alive. That need is artificial, created by the way our governments chose to divide the Earth’s resources.
Let’s consider a way to divide resources that isn’t so cruel.
Back in 1918, Bertrand Russell’s suggested “that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income … should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful. On this basis we may build further.”
Russell’s proposal is very much what we know today as Universal Basic Income (UBI). Later chapters define it in more detail, but his description gives you a very good idea what it is. UBI is not all there is to social justice, but it removes an exceedingly cruel feature built into our economic system. If we’re going to divide the resource of the Earth unequally, those who own more of the wealth we make out of resources have the responsibility to pay those who have to do with less access to resources.
Although there are many reasons to introduce UBI, I started with this one, not only because I think it’s one of the most important, but also because I think it brings up the central decision that people have to make if we’re going to introduce UBI. Should everyone get an income—even the people who could take jobs but chose not to? I think that question already divides most readers into two groups with pretty firm positions: Yes, because no one should live in poverty or homelessness. No, because every nonwealthy person who can work must work.
UBI, on its own, is a mild reform with far-reaching effects. Later chapters show that it isn’t terribly expensive. On its own, UBI creates a market economy where income doesn’t start at zero. People who don’t take jobs, get less than those who take jobs, but no one has to go without the money they need for food, shelter, or clothing in the same way that no one today has to go without the money they need to breathe.
By offering good salaries and good working conditions, we have enormous ability to give people an incentive to engage in work that the community recognizes as useful. And if we’re not willing to pay enough to get people to freely choose do some particular job, maybe that job doesn’t need to be done all. If we do it this way, we end poverty and homelessness. We end the cruel treatment people at the bottom and relieve the fear of the people in the middle. We invite everyone—rather than frighten everyone—into participating in our economic system. That mild and humane reform finds resistance from the belief that everyone—or more realistically, everyone who isn’t wealthy—must work, and so the issue of whether everyone including those who refuse to take jobs should get the income comes up again and again throughout this book.
The idea of UBI has inspired a growing worldwide movement. Although the concept of a UBI goes back at least as far as the 1790s, the movement for it is stronger as I write these words than it has ever been. The movement grows out of frustration with the ineffectiveness and political vulnerability of conventional approaches to poverty and inequality. The market system also needs many other reforms, but millions of people are coming to believe that one of the most important and fundamental reforms we need right now is UBI.
The central goal of this book is to explain the essentials of UBI: what it is, how it works, the most popular arguments for and against it, how much it costs, how it can be financed, its likely effects, its history, and its possible future. But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I am a strong supporter of UBI. And so, this book’s secondary goal is to convince readers that UBI is a good, workable idea that should be enacted all around the world, but I will make this argument in a way that explains and addresses both sides of the debate over whether to introduce UBI. Whether you agree with my position on UBI or not, I think you can learn more from a passionate attempt to argue points for it and refute points against it than from a dispassionate list of points on either side.
With this in mind, the book begins with a more thorough explanation of what UBI is.
-Karl Widerquist, begun sometime ago, but completed in Aspen, Colorado, July 29, 2021
