by Andrew Sisk | Mar 31, 2017 | News
A cash-transfer experiment in was initiated in Finland at the beginning of 2017. In the experiment, the country’s social security agency, Kela, will pay €560 ($600) a month guaranteed for two years to 2,000 Finns, unemployed when the program began.
Chris Weller, profiles five participants in the program in an article for BUSINESS INSIDER. In this “modified version of Basic Income” participants are not told how to spend the funds they receive, nor will the payments be reduced if they get a job or start trading online currencies with a Bitcoin Trader mit Risiken verbunden?
For the full article:
Chris Weller, “Finland just launched a radical experiment in giving people free money — here’s how 5 residents are using their extra cash”, (March 7, 2017)
by Kate McFarland | Mar 30, 2017 | News
The UK think tank Compass, which published the 2016 report Universal Basic Income: An idea whose time has come? by Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley, recently launched the blog series on the topic of basic income (“Universal Basic Income: Security for the Future?”).
Two pieces in the series are “Coming off the fence on UBI?” by Ruth Lister (chair of the Compass Management Committee and Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University) and, in reply to Lister’s contribution, “Basic Income and Institutional Transformation” by Louise Haagh (co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network and Reader at the University of York).
Lister expresses much sympathy toward UBI, in part due to its challenge to the “contemporary fetishisation of paid work.” At the same time, however, she questions the total lack of conditionality on benefits — on grounds of both ethics (is it fair to subsidize the “right to be lazy”?) and feasibility (would the idea garner enough political support?) — and notes a “participation income,” as defended by the late Tony Atkinson, as a potential compromise. In the end, though, she states that “for all my ambivalence, I am coming round to the idea of a UBI as a means of ensuring everyone a modicum of basic security in an increasingly insecure world.”
Haagh, writing in part in response to Lister, argues for UBI as a way to fundamentally reconceptualize the relationship between citizens and the state. She emphasizes that removing conditionalities on a basic level of economic support does not “entail a general separation of income from work” (since monetary remuneration for work would continue to exist). Neither, in her view, should a basic income be seen as a “challenge to the work ethic.” Instead, according to Haagh, the removal of conditionalities should be seen as a way to enable individuals to think and plan for the long term. Conditional income support, as she puts it, aims to “motivate people in the short-term, with a heavy dose of stick.” For example, beneficiaries risk losing their most basic support if they do not take the first job offered — regardless of the job. The punitive nature of conditional benefits encourages short-term thinking aimed at mere self-preservation. In contrast, an unconditional basic income provides a floor on which individuals can engage in long-term strategizing.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: “Welfare Office” CC BY 2.0 Jacob Norlund
by Andre Coelho | Mar 29, 2017 | News
RTP3: Fronteiras XXI (debate panelists)
On the past Thursday, 15th of March 2017, basic income was discussed for the first time on a prime-time television program in Portugal, through the recently created channel RTP3.
The program, which ran for 1hr 30 min, was framed as a group interview and debate, moderated by journalist Carlos Daniel. The program included some related reporting and excerpts from other interviews. Four participants made up the panel, and the main theme of the discussion was automation and its societal consequences.
Manuela Veloso, a robotics researcher in the United States and head the Machine Learning department of the Carnegie Mellon University, was one of the panelists. Asked if automation will be good or bad, she first pointed out its inevitability. Machines are capable of capturing much more data than human minds cannot possibly manage to cope with in order to make decisions: people will have to rely on machines for support in decision making. She also argued that although machines will naturally replace some human work, other human tasks will be created with the increasing use of automation in industry and services.
Another participant was Carvalho da Silva, a lifetime syndicalist and researcher in sociology. Carvalho da Silva pointed out certain caveats when facing what many are calling a “technological revolution”. He said that we should not be deterministic about it (casting doubts about its impact on jobs), since ultimately decisions are political. He underlined that the entire situation must be contextualized and inserted into a crisis framework, where many more jobs have been lost than those estimated to be lost to automation. Like Manuela, he also highlighted the job creation potential of these new technologies.
António Moniz, a sociologist specializing in work and enterprises, and a researcher on the impact of automation in society was also invited. António pointed out that machines are demanding higher professional standards from people tasked to handle them. He relativized the question of job destruction due to automation, believing that there is no direct relationship between introduction of machinery and loss of jobs (although the numbers shown during the program clearly depicted elimination of jobs in large swathes due to automation).
Finally, João Paulo Oliveira, an executive manager of a large paper production company in Portugal, was also present. He alerted the audience to the fact that the adoption of automation is extremely fast these days, so that all politicians must be made aware of its effects on society. According to him, an important aspect of this transformation is education, which must be more in tune with demand. According to him, the marketplace will determine what the “jobs of the future” will be, and the education system must follow suit.
The program included short pieces and interviews, inserted between presentations by the panel. One of those segments was with Gabriele Bischoff, a long time syndicalist and president of the Workers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee. Shocked to learn that a company in Belgium already uses chip implants in its employees, she highlighted the importance of respecting workers’ fundamental rights and the need to provide them – especially young workers – with good quality, stable jobs, which can give them, dignified life standards.
Another segment featured Guy Standing, a lifetime researcher of economic and social issues; a professor and activist defending the basic income concept. He summarized the basic income principle and, when questioned as to how the Portuguese people can finance it, he clearly stated that “It’s a matter of fiscal priorities”. According to him, if, for example, such regressive practices as the systematic saving of banks in the past decade were eliminated and the money used for the benefit of all citizens, a basic income could have been already administered in Portugal. Standing also predicted that within the next five years some country will implement the basic income concept, which will lead other countries to gradually follow suit.
Guy Standing. Credit to: RTP3
During the program, simple graphics were shown, both for briefly explaining what basic income is and to report on the estimated number of jobs likely to be lost (and gained) to automation in the next 15 years. Notably, the next Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, happening in Lisbon on September this year, was also cited.
The conversation about the future of work naturally led into a debate about basic income. Each of the participants was directly asked what they thought about the idea and its anticipated consequences. Maria Veloso was quick to support it, although questioning its feasibility. She regards the idea as a freedom gaining instrument, in an age of relentless automation and ever-expanding learning opportunities. She also referred to its role as a secure financial platform that allows people to engage in activities not bound by economic viability, in such a way that work is aligned with what each person wants to do in life. Clearly against was Carvalho da Silva, despite his past as a syndicalist. According to him, basic income is against the work ethic, and he assumes that people will lose their motivation to work under that regime, hence also losing a great deal of their meaning in life. He also thinks that basic income is the perfect instrument for the far right political branch to push in neo-liberal agendas slashing the welfare state. On the other hand, António Moniz was more cautious, supporting the basic income idea in general but warning that its effects on the marketplace and especially on companies must be well understood. João Paulo Oliveira was not convinced by the basic income concept or its rationale, as presented by Guy Standing or his fellow panelists. According to him, basic income will just kill competitiveness as more and more people move away from work.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 25, 2017 | News
BIEN co-founder Philippe van Parijs and his former student and recurring coauthor Yannick Vanderborght have coauthored a major new work: Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy, published in March 2017 by Harvard University Press.
In the book, van Parijs and Vanderborght present a thorough history of basic income as well as a philosophical and practical defense. In the first chapter, they elaborate upon the concept of a basic income (“a regular income paid in cash to every individual member of a society, irrespective of income from other sources and with no strings attached”), explaining the significance of each of the key characteristics: it is paid in cash (rather than in kind), paid to individuals (rather than to households), universal, and obligation-free. In the second chapter they proceed to contrast basic income with alternative (but often closely related) proposals — such as the negative income tax (which is sometimes conflated with basic income), basic endowment, Earned Income Tax Credit, job guarantee, and working-time reduction.
In the following two chapters, van Parijs and Vanderborght turn to the history of the idea of basic income, beginning in the sixteenth century with the writings of Thomas More and his fellow humanist Juan Luis Vives, then progressing alongside policy developments from England’s Poor Laws to the Speenhamland system to Bismarck’s social insurance to contemporary welfare states. The fourth chapter delves in more detail into the intellectual history of the idea, starting from Thomas Paine’s seminal proposal in Agrarian Justice and the competing proposal of his contemporary Thomas Spence. Van Parijs and Vanderborght relate the ideas of subsequent thinkers — including J.S. Mill, Bertrand Russell, George D.H. Cole (who coined the term ‘basic income’) — in their historical context. The authors describe the varied strands of support for minimum income proposals in the United States during the 1960s and early 1970s, briefly review the creation of Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, and overview the emergence of the European movement in the 1970s and 1980s, including the founding of BIEN.
After this history, the authors devote a series of chapters to analyzing and rebutting arguments against basic income — the ethically based “free riding objection” to the lack of a work requirement, the practical concern that a basic income could not be sustainably funded, and the worry that basic income is not politically feasible. Finally, they devote a chapter to the impact of globalization on the implementation of a basic income.
Basic Income has been featured as “Book of the week” by Times Higher Education, which published a review along with wide-ranging interviews with van Parijs and Vanderborght.
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has described the book as “essential reading for anyone interested in the problems of deprivation and unfreedom that survive even in the richest countries in the world” — calling it “powerful as well as highly engaging—a brilliant book.”
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: CC BY-NC 2.0 Patrick Down
by Kate McFarland | Mar 23, 2017 | Research
Three University of Manitoba economists, Wayne Simpson, Greg Mason, and Ryan Godwin, have jointly authored a new research paper about the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (“Mincome”), a trial of a guaranteed income that took place from 1974 to 1979.
The Mincome experiment consisted of randomized studies in Winnipeg and rural Manitoba, as well as a saturation study in the town of Dauphin, where all residents were eligible for participation in the study. Participants received an income supplement that was phased out as personal earnings increased, and several combinations of minimum income level and taxation rates were tested. The guaranteed income scheme tested, a negative income tax, is equivalent in its distributional effects to a basic income that is taxed back with personal income over a certain amount. Decades after Mincome ended, its outcomes were analyzed by economist Evelyn Forget. The results are now frequently mentioned as evidence of the effectiveness of basic income / negative income tax.
At present, the province of Ontario is preparing a new major trial of a guaranteed income (which, as in Mincome, is likely to be designed as a negative income tax). In a lengthy discussion paper about the new trial, project advisor Hugh Segal notes that the Dauphin saturation study, showed “population health improvements, the potential for government health savings, and no meaningful reduction in labour force participation.”
In their new article, Simpson, Mason, and Godwin re-examine Mincome, and consider how it might answer questions about contemporary experiments in Ontario and elsewhere.
Abstract
The recent announcements of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot and Finland’s cash grants to jobless persons reflect the growing interest in some form of guaranteed annual income (GAI). This idea has circulated for decades and has now been revived, no doubt prompted by concerns of increased inequality and employment disruptions. The Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment (Mincome), conducted some 40 years ago, was an ambitious social experiment designed to assess a range of behavioural responses to a negative income tax, a specific form of GAI. This article reviews that experiment, clarifying what exactly Mincome did and did not learn about how individuals and households reacted to the income guarantees. This article reviews the potential for Mincome to answer questions about modern-day income experiments and describes how researchers may access these valuable data.
Wayne Simpson, Greg Mason and Ryan Godwin (2017), “The Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment: Lessons Learned 40 Years Later,” Canadian Public Policy.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo: Northern Lights in Manitoba, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 AJ Batac
