UBI is the opposite of something for nothing. It is the just compensation for all the one-sided rules of property and property regulations that society imposes on individuals.
The biggest threat to freedom in the world today is economic destitution. We need universal basic income (UBI) because destitute people are unfree to sleep undisturbed, unfree to urinate, unfree to wash themselves, and unfree to use the resources of the world to meet their own needs. Being unfree in these ways makes them unfree in all their economic relationships.
The destitute are unfree in the most basic sense of the word. The destitute are not unable to wash themselves and they are not unable to use the resources of the world to meet their needs: they are unfree to do these things. Because our governments enforce a property rights system in which some people control natural resources and other people do not, someone will interfere with them if they try to do these things that they are very capable of doing.
Poverty is not a fact of nature. Poverty is the result of the way our societies have chosen to distribute property rights to natural resources. For millions of years no one interfered with our ancestors as they used the resources of the world to meet their needs. No one failed to wash because they were too lazy to find a stream. No one urinated in a common thoroughfare because they were too lazy to find a secluded place to do so. Everyone was free to hunt and gather and make their camp for the night as they pleased.
No one had to follow the orders of a boss to earn the right to make their living. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not rich, but they were not in poverty as we know it today. Our laws today make it illegal for some people to satisfy their most natural and simple bodily needs, and our laws make homelessness such a fact of life that we can believably pretend that it’s all their own fault. There are billions of people today who are more poorly nourished than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. It cannot be simply their own fault. We have chosen one way to distribute rights to natural resources; we can just as easily choose a system that does not create poverty as a side effect.
We have created the threat of economic destitution, and we have used it as a ‘work incentive’. In doing so, we have made virtually everyone dependent on their employers or on the government or private charities for which they might be eligible. This policy allows a few privileged people to dictate the terms of employment to virtually everybody.
We need to stop judging people and restore the freedom people had before governments took away their direct access to the world’s recourses.
The most common objection to UBI labels it as something for nothing, and declares that something for nothing unacceptable. They say people have a moral obligation to ‘work’. Lazy people who will not work should not be rewarded with anything. Therefore, supposedly, any social benefits should be conditional on at least the willingness to accept employment.
This argument is filled with problems. I’ll just discuss two. The first problem with it is that UBI is the farthest thing from something-for-nothing. All societies impose many rules on every individual. Consider the discussion of homelessness above. Why can’t homeless people build their own shelter and their own latrine? Why can’t they drink out of a clean river? Why can’t they hunt, gather, or plant and harvest their own food? They cannot do these things because governments have made rules saying they don’t have the right to do these things.
Governments divided the Earth into ‘property’. The wealthy got a share, while most people got nothing but the opportunity to ask the wealthy for a job. Those of us who somehow managed to get a share of the Earth’s natural resources benefit every day from the state’s interference with virtually everybody else (i.e. the people who didn’t get a share). We pay them no compensation, no reparation, nothing to restore the freedom you get from the ability to work for yourself with no boss, no client, and no caseworkers. A state without UBI is the state that has something for nothing.
The wealthy got control of resources without paying their real cost, and control of resources gives them effective control over the labour of virtually everybody. UBI is not, and should never be seen as, something for nothing. It is the just compensation for all the one-sided rules of property and property regulations society inherently imposes on individuals.
The second problem with the work obligation argument against UBI is that it conflates two different senses of the word ‘work’ – one that means toil and one that means employment or time spent making money. In the toil sense, work simply means to apply effort regardless of whether it is for one’s own benefit or for someone else’s. In the employment sense work means to work for someone else – such as a client or a boss. Anyone with access to resources can meet their needs by working only for themselves or with others of their choosing. But people without access to resources have no other choice but to work for someone else. Furthermore, they have to work for the same group of people whose control over resources makes it impossible for the propertyless to work only for themselves.
Working for someone else entails the acceptance of rules, terms, and subordination, all of which are things that a reasonable person might object to. There is nothing wrong with working for someone else and accepting the conditions of work as long as the individual chooses to do so. But there is something wrong with a society that puts one group of people in the position where they do not have the power to say no to the jobs offered them by more privileged people.
When we take away access to the Earth’s resources and make no reparation, we are not forcing people to work, but to work for at least one of the people controlling the Earth’s resources. When we do this, we create a mandatory participation economy the makes people unfree, vulnerable, and miserable.
The evidence is found in every sweatshop, in every ‘trafficked’ person, in every on-the-job instance of sexual harassment, in every homeless shelter, and in every worker who can’t afford any basic necessity of life.
The solution is to create a voluntary participation economy based on truly free trade. In this sort of economy, each person would pay for the parts of the Earth they use and each would receive a share of the payment for the parts other people use. This principle is the basis of UBI. With a sufficient UBI to draw on, each person would have the power to say no to a bad job offer, and the power decide for themselves whether the offers in the job market are good enough to deserve their participation. And that’s what it means to enter the job market as a free person. Nothing protects a worker better than the power to refuse a job. This power will protect not only the poor and marginal but all of us.
This whole program is voluntary…The men don’t have to…if they don’t want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don’t.
–“Milo Minderbinder,” Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Basic Income does something virtually no other policy in the modern economy can do: it protects your status as a free person.
What does it mean to be a free person? Consider an answer given by someone who experienced chattel slavery. Garrison Frazier was the spokesperson for a delegation of former slaves called “freedmen” (although many were women) who met with General Sherman on January 12, 1865, before the end of the U.S. Civil War.
Asked what he understood by slavery, Frazier replied, “Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent.”
He defined freedom as, “taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor [and] take care of ourselves.”
Asked how best to secure their freedom, Frazier said, “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor.”
The story of what happened after the meeting has come to symbolize broken promises to African Americans, but it has much greater significance for everyone. Sherman distributed land seized from former slave owners to freedmen in a large area of the southeastern coast, sometimes along with surplus army mules. Rumors spread that all freedmen would receive 40 acres and a mule. Less than a year later, the Federal Government reversed Sherman’s order, restored the prewar property rights of former slaveholders, and forcibly evicted the freedmen, many of whom had to work for their former masters, taking the least desirable jobs and the lowest pay. Some descendants of slaves continue to serve the holders of those property rights to this day.
The significance of Frazier’s request for land to secure his freedom is not that freedom requires the opportunity to become a subsistence farmer; it requires the freedom from indirectly forced labor. Frazier recognized that the legal self-ownership slaves were granted at the close of the war was not enough to make the fully free. It does not free an individual from the “irresistible power” to do the bidding of others. Individuals who are prevented from working for themselves alone (and not sufficiently compensated for being denied that option) are forced to work for someone who controls access to resources. Forced labor is unfreedom whether that force is direct or indirect.
The freedom from indirectly forced labor has been taken away from the vast majority of people in the world today—when governments forcibly took control of the resources of the Earth to give them to their most privileged citizens. These newly established “property rights” not only gave privileged citizens control over resources: it gave them control over people. People who had shared access to those resources for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years were now forced to provide services for the wealthy to maintain their most basic subsistence. Eliminating indirectly forced labor is not all there is to ensuring everyone is fully free, but it’s an essential step.
We have owed each other a Basic Income since we enclosed the commons, since we abducted the slaves, since we killed the Buffalo.
The 41 minutes long documentary focuses on Universal Basic Income (UBI), retracing its history, explaining its rationale, and investigating why and how the idea has reached a much larger audience and unprecedented support in the last years.
It does so with though many poignant interviews with prominent exponents of the UBI community, as Van Parijs, Guy Standing, Daniel Raventòs, Scott Santens and many others. “UBI, our right to live” makes a compelling argument for the necessity of the measure, is a manifesto for UBI in the present day, and is an excellent introduction to the subject.
The documentary addresses two of the main drivers that are bringing UBI at the center of the public debate: economic inequality and technological development. The two themes are correlated, as economic inequality has reached unsustainable levels, and automation may make it even worse, if not handled in the proper way. The risk is the increase of unemployment and growing inequalities between high and low skilled workers.
UBI could eradicate poverty altogether, and if it were to be financed through progressive taxation, reduce inequalities. Moreover, it would provide an economic safety net for workers, and thus endorse them with more bargaining power when it comes to choose a job. People could decide how to focus productively their energies in order to contribute to society and give meaning to their live, rather than being forced in unfulfilling jobs just to survive. Nobody would be left alone, as it is bound to happen under the patchwork that present-day welfare is.
The fruits of technological advancement, if distributed via a UBI, rather than accumulated in the hands of the few, may help to shape a more just future, as this is what UBI is about (something that the documentary highlights): UBI is about justice and fairness, not charity.
It’s the instrument meant to redistribute what belongs to each and every person, the natural extensions of human rights in ensuring to everybody a standard of living adequate for a human being.
Talk of a universal basic income has been in the news a lot recently, but what does it all mean? First off, it’s important to make the distinction between free money and services that comes from your taxes – the money for a universal basic income has to come from somewhere, so it’s not free money but rather a useful return for your tax payments. The idea is to level the playing field as much as possible in an effort to eliminate poverty and give families a fighting chance in a world where the cost of living has long since surpassed any positive movement in wage growth. What’s more, the idea of a universal basic income is not a new one at all.
As far back as 1516, Thomas More wrote about the idea of a basic income in Utopia. More surmised that this type of social program would prevent people from becoming desperate enough to steal to feed themselves and their families, eventually becoming swept up in a criminal life that would turn them into corpses.
Later in 1796, Thomas Paine suggested in Agrarian Justice that providing a basic monetary endowment for every adult over the age of 21 would lessen the burden of transitioning from a landed gentry economy to a more egalitarian economy.
In 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proposed a universal basic income by which poverty could be eliminated, thus giving African Americans the ability to achieve their potential as well as economic stability.
Rather than making these payments in vouchers, goods, or services, the main idea is that in order to give people the most benefit in terms of freedom of choice in work, lifestyle, and education these payments would have to be made in the form of cash payments. The ultimate goal is to end poverty and lessen violence, crime, and addiction thought the elimination of hopelessness. But can it actually work?
There are several ways that have been proposed to pay for this system. A flat tax would basically take a percentage of everyone’s money and then give them back the same flat rate – a basic redistribution of wealth. A VAT, or value-added tax, would be a high tax on certain goods and services, usually those that are considered to be vices or luxuries, which would go into a fun to make these payments.
Already there are several places around the world that are testing this idea with varied results. Throughout this year in Stockton, California, 100 randomly selected people are receiving stipends, while over the last two years in The Netherlands test groups are receiving varying levels of stipends and benefits. While these programs are still ongoing, Finland found great success with its own pilot programs, including increased confidence in recipients’ financial situations, greater optimism for the future, and better health, but declined to continue the program after the test due to a lack of impact on employment.
Regardless of the inconclusiveness of these tests, a universal basic income may be the only thing that prevents mass poverty as artificial intelligence and automation take over jobs in the next industrial revolution. Jobs will be both created and eliminated, but it will take time to get the right people into the right jobs just as it was during the last major industrial revolution. While it’s not a perfect solution, a universal basic income might be the best tool we have to make the transition smoother.
Learn more about the pros and cons of universal basic income here.
Author Brian Wallace Bio: Brian Wallace is the Founder and President of NowSourcing, an industry leading infographic design agency based in Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH which works with companies that range from startups to Fortune 500s. Brian also runs #LinkedInLocal events nationwide, and hosts the Next Action Podcast. Brian has been named a Google Small Business Advisor for 2016-present and joined the SXSW Advisory Board in 2019.
In July 2016, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau introduced Unconditional Basic Income to Canada and never mentioned it to anyone.
6.4 million Canadians can count on benefiting from about $500, tax-free, every month, no questions asked. It contributes $46 billion per year to GDP and adds $4 to GDP for every dollar it costs.
It’s called the Canada Child Benefit (CCB).
Why have we not heard that this program is, in fact, a Basic Income? When the Ontario government announced the abrupt cancellation of the Basic Income Pilot Project involving 4,000 low-income people after a few short months, it was all over the news. A permanent nationwide Basic Income involving 6.4 million Canadians and their parents (19 million people in total) runs for three years with stunning success and not one word in the press.
Indeed, I have spoken with many Liberal Members of Parliament who all express dismay and disappointment at the lack of visibility the CCB has among their constituents. Yet Canadians know how Basic Income works because one has existed for close to 70 years.
“In 1951, following an amendment to the British North America Act to permit the federal government to operate a pension plan, the Canadian Parliament passed the Old Age Security Act, which provided a universal pension, or demogrant, of $40 per month financed and administered by the federal government. All Canadians aged 70 and over who could meet the more liberal residence requirements were eligible, regardless of their other income or assets. Pension payments began in 1952 and were taxable.”[emphasis added]
Who was in power in 1951? Louis St. Laurent’s Liberals!
Why focus, in this discussion, on only one Party? Is that partisan politics? Some background:
The October 21st election is the perfect crucible in which to forge a new narrative about Basic Income in Canada. The centre-left Liberals of Justin Trudeau, whose father was prime minister from 1968 to 1984, swept into power in 2015 after a decade of Conservative rule. The progressive New Democratic Party is thinking about Basic Income on a 30-year timescale. The Green party is demanding more tests. Only the Liberals can point to action, although they refuse to admit it.
So, while Liberals can legitimately claim both a long history and recent accomplishments in implementing permanent Unconditional Basic Income programs (UBI), the public has no idea that here are two examples of highly successful implementations, hiding in plain sight! Both were introduced by Liberal governments and no one knows about it.
There is no mainstream recognition that Basic Income is a fait accompli in Canada. Sadly, many of the cognoscenti also resist this paradigm shift.
Yet a recent independent report sponsored by UBIWorks, shows that the CCB is not only an Unconditional Basic Income, but it is also a highly successful one for families and the economy. The report makes the following key points:
Canada has demonstrated the effectiveness of a national-scale Basic Income
6.4 million Canadians benefit from about $500, tax-free, each month
The CCB directly touches approximately 19 million people. This not a test.
The CCB is an ongoing national program that has been running successfully for over 3 years
The CCB contributes $46B annually to the Canadian economy – exceeding the economy of Nova Scotia
CCB-related spending drives $85B / year in revenues and $18B in gross profits to businesses
453,000 full-time equivalent jobs are contributed by the CCB, 2.5% of the Canadian labour force
Every dollar invested drives $2 of GDP and more than 55 cents of is recouped in taxes from economic activity
Therefore the CCB drives $4 of GDP for every net dollar it costs
The CCB has generated $27B in private capital investment and $77B in wage growth since its inception
The CCB has contributed to 3 years of economic growth, low inflation, and unemployment levels at record 40-year lows
Clearly, the Canada Child Benefit is a Canadian flavoured Basic Income which is as close as it gets to a UBI in the real world. It is a huge success hiding in plain sight. it is individual because strictly based on headcount and it is unconditional because you do not have to do anything special to deserve it, and you can do with it as you please, no questions asked. Furthermore, it is a regular, predictable, cash transfer paid monthly, for which you can sign up before you are even born. It is not means-tested. However, it is income-tested, which means wealthier families are phased out from the benefit. Does it deviate in some ways from the ideal, orthodox form of Basic Income? Of course! Where do we find ideal forms in the real world?
A similar demonstration can be made for Old Age Security. Since the facts show the economic impact of Basic Income for ages 0-17 and 65+, why not expand the programs to all those in between? Why not start right away with ages 18-19, who need the money to stay in school or get a good start in life, some other way?
As the incumbent Liberals struggle in the polls and are headed toward a minority government status in the October 21st elections, according to the latest projections, Basic Income advocates around the world can only look on in dismay at this missed opportunity to benefit from changing the narrative about Basic Income in Canada.
Although the nomenclature of Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) is notoriously anarchic, clearly the federal Liberal Party of Canada was considering such a plan. In the article, the Canadian Press reports:
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos have argued that the Liberal-created Canada Child Benefit, among other measures, amounts to a guaranteed minimum income already.”
Yet not a word about this, 28 days into the campaign, as I have reported above.
Unconditional Basic Income was never mentioned even if there is no question that it helps reduce poverty. This is just not the best argument to support it when powerful economic data is available.
Why the Trudeau Liberals have chosen not to play the UBI card, I couldn’t say. They may come to regret the mistake.
