Podcast: Scholars research UBI to address ecological, economic crises

Podcast: Scholars research UBI to address ecological, economic crises

by | Sep 8, 2017 | Opinion

The greatest challenge of this generation is managing both environmental sustainability and a growing human population. Climate change and income inequality are making this an increasingly difficult prospect.

The Sufficiency4Sustainability Network (S4SN) is working on analyzing the intersection of these issues and the solutions that can address them.

S4SN is led by Peter Knight, a former lead economist at the World Bank. The network of researchers analyzes different policies and how they may interact with ecological and economic trends. Knight recently joined the UBI Podcast to discuss his work with S4SN.

“We’re exploring how changing values and policies might result in lower resource use by the relatively well-off, while raising the consumption of the poor to a level sufficient to meet their basic human needs on a planet with limited resources and moving toward a population of 11 billion by the end of the century,” Knight said.

The network is interested in researching Universal Basic Income (UBI), and it is included as one of the main research topics of S4SN.

“It seems to me that Universal Basic Income is right on this issue of what are the technological trends that’s going to make this important for not only economic sustainability but social, political, and ecological sustainability,” he said.

UBI is of interest to Knight because he thinks it may be an important solution to address the upcoming dramatic shifts in employment due to technology.

“I think the exponential rates of change involved in Artificial Intelligence and all those technologies that are related to Moore’s Law and their speed and cost of computation, jobs are going to be destroyed faster than they can be replaced, so UBI is a method of separating work and paid remuneration from enough to live on,” Knight said.

While Artificial Intelligence has the potential to help solve many of the problems facing humanity, Knight said, the problems it creates means that it must be coupled with a UBI.

“Exponential technologies including artificial intelligence offer potential substitutes for the limited resources, provide cleaner energy, and reduce the need for physical labor. But they also tend to concentrate income and wealth, so UBI is necessary to provide economic, social, and political sustainability,” Knight said.

For Knight, it is important to consider that the sacrifices made for environmental sustainability should not be made by the poorest among in society.

“You just can’t tell people that are starving, ‘look you’ve got to cut back your consumption. If you want their support for broader changes, you need to both change values and provide enough income to live for people who are increasingly not just manual labor, agricultural labor, industrial, but increasingly the white-collar professions are going to be displaced,” Knight said.

Ping Xu, Leader of UBI Taiwan, interviews Hawaii State Legislator Chris Lee

Ping Xu, Leader of UBI Taiwan, interviews Hawaii State Legislator Chris Lee

by | Sep 3, 2017 | News

Ping Xu, the leader of Basic Income in Taiwan,  interviewed Hawaii representative Chris Lee about Basic Income in July. In the interview, Representative Chris Lee talks about the need for discussing Basic Income as a solution outside the traditional government safety net programs. Lee says that discussion of Basic Income goes beyond party politics in Hawaii, Basic Income, he says is rather  “a question of humanity and what our future is going to look like.”

Representative Chris Lee first encountered the concept of Basic Income on the Reddit Basic Income group, and since then has been interested in the topic. According to Representative Lee, the state of Hawaii needs to think about Basic Income with some urgency for reasons related to its economy, which is mostly based in the service industry. Hawaii’s flourishing tourist market and its physical isolation combined make the state’s cost of living much higher than what the local residents are able to afford. Lee mentions several situations, from homelessness, to people who are not able to retire, to younger residents who have to live with their parents for much longer than would be desirable, and yet others who have to leave the state and move away from their families. Basic Income would be a way to guarantee that the local economy could benefit and work for everyone and that Hawaii natives and others can live in the state while being able to pursue their dreams and their passions, and that no one is left behind.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLMTxCpes1HOJGsdoBwSPGPPrh1pWox6r

Hawaii, being a service based economy, could be hit hard with the new wave of automation that is focusing on innovation applicable to the retail industry. This however can be seen as an opportunity to change the nature of work for Hawaii’s residents. Representative Lee argues that the millennials look for meaningful work that is more than just a paycheck. According to Lee, 51% of all millennials don’t believe in capitalism as is right now. Millennials would like to redefine the american dream. The american dream is “no longer to seek out the best job that pays the most, but it is rather to find the job that provides the best meaning and quality of life.” Basic Income is “a mechanism that empowers people to have that opportunity in the face of a changing economy.” Furthermore, with the innovations in automation, traditional safety nets such as welfare, food stamps, and housing assistance, can make government expenses skyrocket in the near future. Basic Income could be a policy that is cheaper to implement in the long run. For all these reason, Representative Chris Lee is supporting Basic Income in Hawaii and was able to pass legislation that will create a working group to officially look at Basic Income as a solution, looking for a better future in the state of Hawaii.

 

More information at:

Basic Income Bill in Hawaii: House Concurrent Resolution n. 89.

Tyler Prochazka, “Interview: Hawaii becomes first state to study full basic income”, Basic Income News, June 27th, 2017

Ashley Blackwell, “United States: Hawaii to study Universal Basic Income and impact of job automation on social safety net”, Basic Income News, June 18th, 2017

 

Magazine Australian Options features section on basic income

Magazine Australian Options features section on basic income

by | Sep 2, 2017 | News

The Autumn 2017 issue of the left-wing political magazine Australian Options includes a special “viewpoints” section dedicated to basic income.

The issue can be read in full here.

The section on basic income consists of three short articles:

  1. “Basic income: An idea whose time has come?” by Troy Henderson (PhD Candidate in Political Economy at the University of Sydney)
  2. “Basic income: Political economic considerations” by Frank Stilwell (Professor Emeritus in Political Economy at the University of Sydney)
  3. “Basic income or job guarantee: What is to be done?” by Neale Towart (Unions New South Wales).

Henderson provides an overview of the idea of basic income, and then addresses four concerns facing its implementation in Australia: cost, cultural opposition to giving “handouts” to the poor and unemployed, lack of agreement between left-wing and right-wing proponents of basic income programs, and lack of mass social support.

Stilwell briefly articulates five political economic reasons in favor of basic income: sharing the nation’s abundant wealth, quelling anxiety about the future of work and technological unemployment, reducing inequality, simplifying the social safety net, and increasing individual freedom. He weighs these advantages against two main concerns: “could the nation afford to pay a BI?” and “would a BI have a big cost in terms of national output because people might decide not to work?” Stilwell offers tentative support for basic income, but only if combined with a strengthening of public health services, education, housing, transportation, and utilities.

Towart argues in favor of a job guarantee as a way to harness the potential of automation to free people from unfulfilling toil while ensuring well-paid employment in “work that we need done to create a fairer, sustainable society.” He raises concerns that a basic income would act as a subsidy for low wages and fail to empower workers to the extent of a well-designed job guarantee.

Reviewed by Russell Ingram

Photo (Lake Clifton, Western Australia) CC BY NC-ND 2.0 inefekt69

Cure health inequality by reducing income inequality

Cure health inequality by reducing income inequality

by | Aug 30, 2017 | Opinion

The relationship between health and social context includes a range of factors influencing overall well-being. Social status, class, lifestyle, education, and environment primarily shape these factors. Age, gender, race, and ethnicity are structural variables of equal importance to health outcomes. Health is being facilitated or inhibited by the socioeconomic, cultural, and political backgrounds, in which one is born and raised. The people that view these data points and makes correlations between socioeconomic status and backgrounds to health issues have an interesting career because they constantly have to adapt to the understanding of new societal groups and focus on why a certain group would make a certain decision, for example.

In the last few decades, we have seen growing income inequality between the poor and rich. Since the 1980’s, the United States of America has seen a shift in wealth from the middle class towards the wealthiest people and transnational companies. The top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much as the bottom 90 percent. Firebaugh and Beck argued economic growth would automatically benefit the masses, which in hindsight seems questionable.

As health outcomes and life expectations closely liaise to within-country income inequality, policies should aim at finding appropriate actions to address this phenomenon. Meaning, getting basic family urgent care, in terms of medical needs cannot be compromised. Currently, in some countries, those who earn more are able to find medical treatments to treat their injuries or illnesses, whilst those who don’t have as much money are having to cope with their illness or find other treatments. For example, those who suffer from digestive problems would have to pay a significant amount to get their illness looked at, so people on lower incomes will find supplements to help them instead. The bio complete 3 supplement can deliver prominent improvements for people’s digestive systems, so people are able to treat these problems. However, not all problems can be treated with supplements. This is why changes have to be made.

Wilkinson and Pickett found health issues to be strongly correlated to income inequality within a country. To support this finding, they used two different measurement tools. The first index, applied to Western countries, was a ratio of the 20 percent top incomes in relation to the 20 percent of the bottom earners. For different states within the USA they used a second index, the Gini-index, which adopts a different methodology. Where ‘Gini = 0′ represents perfect equality (same income for everyone) and ‘Gini = 1′ is total inequality (if all income goes to one person). The outcome of these results showed that the widening income gap led to an increase of different health issues related to mental disorders, life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity and teenage births. Societal problems that correlated to income inequality included: lower levels of trust, less educational performance, more homicides, higher imprisonment rates and a lack of social mobility. Some authors found Wilkinson and Pickett’s dismissal of poverty in relation to health outcomes incorrect as they did not measure it. On the other hand, research by Beckfield and Bambra confirmed the correlation between life expectancy and health stating that the lagging welfare state in the USA led to an average loss of 3.77 quality life years in comparison to other OECD countries. The USA has an income gap of 8:1 (the average biggest earners have 8 times the wage of those at the other end of the spectrum) leading to a life expectancy of 78.7 years, which is in contrast with Japan reaching an average of 83.0 years with an income gap of 4:1. The same age dependent relation has been found in Scandinavian countries having similar income gaps as Japan.

Goda and Torres Garcia looked at the rise of global inequality and confirmed previous results by stating that within-country inequality is responsible for 70 percent of the global inequality, suggesting 30% is due to in-between country inequality.

Taking national and local figures into account for the UK, the Office for National Statistics observed a life expectancy for new-born baby boys to be 83.3 years in the Kensington and Chelsea area. Meanwhile, the life expectancy for the same cohort in Blackpool is merely 74.7 years. Nationwide, the female life expectancy is 86.6 years in Purbeck and the lowest in Glasgow City with an expectancy of 78.5 years. The authors conclude that inequality has increased over the last two decades despite improvements in these local areas.

Medical technology has improved greatly over the past two decades, with many illnesses that were fatal twenty years ago proving simple to treat now. Simple technological breakthroughs such as RFID labeling and instant messaging have meant that medical practices can be streamlined, saving time and money which can then be invested back into treating patients. With all these improvements in technology, why is there still little improvement in life expectancy in some areas? The answer lies again with income inequality, with areas that suffer from low income also suffering from lower government funding. This directly impacts the access local hospitals have to new technology, meaning they have fewer new technologies to utilise for their patients.

We may assume a strong relation between income inequality and health outcomes on a global scale as Dorling in recent research concludes there are overarching arguments. Dorling (2007) confirmed a strong relation between income inequality and negative health outcomes on a global scale after an observational study performed in 126 countries.

The academic world has provided alternatives to deal with the widening gap between poor and rich. Reformed minimum wages, living wages, basic income or a global ‘fair tax’ and redistribution are only a few austerity counter-proposals to ensure overall well-being by reaching or transcending the poverty line. Minimum wages have proven insufficient and a basic income is still globally debated. An international fair tax may even prove more challenging as this requires global political support.

Minimum wages and living wages have the same aim; raising income for the least fortunate to reduce the impact of a growing income gap. A minimum wage is defined as a minimum market valued income, imposed by law and paid by employers. A living wage is a locally liaised and negotiated pay rate that a fulltime employee needs for a household of four to reach the poverty line. For the latter, societal context is important, as living in a metropolitan area is more expensive than living in the countryside. The Basic Income Earth Network defines basic income as “a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means, test or work requirement”.

A locally implemented living wage project in the UK, facilitated by the General and Municipal Boilermakers Union in 400 councils, has proven to be successful in reducing (health) inequalities as well as being beneficial for government tax income. Awareness within the community influenced policy in a way that living wages became accepted as a benchmark for society. In this regard, a living wage clearly will contribute to individual well-being and social cohesion – both factors improve health within communities.

Proposals for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) are slowly reaching the minds of global policymakers, but this process will take more time in achieving broader support. In developing a short-term response tackling inequality, a living wage appears to be a possible solution for developed countries yet remains a huge challenge for developing countries.

Emerging new technologies will demand economical strategies that are able to cope with less job certainty and keeping up with growing demands in healthcare.

A redistribution of capital, as proposed by Thomas Piketty in his book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, in combination with a UBI may prove to be the best strategy in the long-run to counter income-related health inequalities on a global scale. We must urge politicians to finally face transnational companies and the top one percent in order to obtain a globally acceptable taxation rate.

About the author:

Sam Brokken hails from Belgium and lives near the city of Leuven. He studied physiotherapy, sports physical therapy and manual therapy practicing these areas for years in private practices within local communities. He lectures in musculoskeletal disorders in relation to manual handling and ergonomics for healthcare service providers.
He is currently engaged in postgraduate work at the Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen – Scotland) within the MSc Public Health and Health Promotion course.

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“Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study”

by | Aug 30, 2017 | Research

Inequality in the UK has been rising for some time as gaps between the lower and upper classes increase. But, there are movements such as levelling up the north east that are looking to reducing this inequality to ensure everyone gets good healthcare, education, job opportunities, etc. And now, the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex has released a paper titled “Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study” as part of its EUROMOD working paper series.

The paper uses the EUROMOD microsimulation model to examine the impact on poverty and inequality of the proposals put forth in economist Anthony Atkinson’s most recent–and final–book Inequality: What Can Be Done? (2015). Atkinson, himself a co-author of the ISER study, passed away on January 1, during the final stages of preparation of the working paper.

The proposals considered include a “significantly more progressive income tax structure,” a “major increase in the minimum wage” (i.e. a “living wage”), and an increase in the amount of the nation’s universal child benefit, and two types of programs of social transfers: a strengthening of the UK’s social insurance system, and a “participation income”. A participation income–an idea developed and promoted by Atkinson–is similar to a basic income in that it guarantees all members of society a stable and secure livable income. It differs from a basic income, however, in that it is not fully unconditional: as its name suggests, a participation income is subject to a participation requirement. According to Atkinson, however, fulfilling this requirement should not require paid work or looking for paid work; it should also be able to be met through caregiving, community volunteer work, full-time education, or other unpaid but socially valuable activities.

In the simulation study, the authors note that “this participation condition cannot be imposed in our simulation exercise due to lack of data” and thus carry out the study “on the basis that everyone is entitled.” In other words, for the purposes of the working paper, they have chosen to simulate what is effectively an unconditional basic income.

The authors simulate a basic income at the level of £75 per week (or £3,902 per year), which replaces many means-tested programs.

One conclusion of the study is that, in comparison to strengthened social insurance (SI), the set of reforms introducing a participation income (PI) “produces a larger immediate impact on both inequality and poverty”. As the authors summarize, “[i]n achieving this greater impact the PI-focused package affects considerably more households, both positively and negatively: 43% of all households see a substantial gain and 21% a substantial loss, compared to 34% and 10% respectively with the SI-focused alternative.”

Other researchers have also recently used the EUROMOD microsimulation method to model the effects of basic income policies–including Malcolm Torry of the Citizen’s Income Trust (“A variety of indicators evaluated for two implementation methods for a Citizen’s Basic Income“) and, to more skeptical conclusions, the OECD (“Basic Income as a Policy Option: Can it add up?“).

 

The full working paper is free to download from ISER’s website:

Anthony B. Atkinson, Chrysa Leventi, Brian Nolan, Holly Sutherland and Iva Tasseva (June 2017) “Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study,” EUROMOD Working Paper Series.

Reviewed by Caroline Pearce.

Photo: “The Poverty Trap…” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Neil Moralee (taken in Taunton, England)