by Guest Contributor | Sep 6, 2015 | Opinion
By Karen Christine Patrick
One thing learned in the caregiver realm is the range and types of disabilities and illnesses that require somebody to help, or preclude people from what is considered “normal” activities. Assessments for the levels of disability are very extensive, and most certainly go through daily activities that can be done by the person or where they need some help.
The picture in the mind that comes with the word “disability” is somebody with something visible. One of the things that happened that often made me cringe when going out socially with my daughter in her wheelchair is that some well-meaning, curious person would ask, “What’s WRONG with her?” I would say, “Nothing is WRONG with her, but she was born with a condition (etc.) and maybe share a few things, but that is the motif in many people’s minds that they see someone using things like these heavy-duty wheelchairs, cane, walker, something like that and something is WRONG. Which could result in helpful behavior, well-meaning, getting help with doors, or people making some space in the front for us. And my daughter’s condition was visible. Once I got frustrated with one the agencies I had to deal with not realizing she was an actual person, not a theoretical one, and took her out for a day out of school to bring her to said office, make them have to make space in the office for her in her wheelchair as “Exhibit A” … I really hated having to do that but I was at my wit’s end with the “deciders” in that office and this did get results.
I myself became disabled, but mine came on gradually and fit into the category of “Invisible Disabilities” and I became aware of an organization for people who “don’t look sick” as one writer put it. People in this category of disability often experience it that it’s much harder to get help or services because there is nothing to “show for it” as what happened in my Exhibit A story. Certainly, people with mental illness, don’t necessarily have physical traits to show for it. If you encounter someone with a hearing disability, you may not realize it until you notice their hearing aids. Furthermore, you might not recognize the difficulties that they face and the increased costs they have to incur when changing the batteries (if you’re interested in better alternatives, check out https://www.earpros.com/uk/hearing-aids/hearing-aid-batteries here), as well as how they lead their lives on daily basis. For cancer patients, until they are going through the visible effects of treatment, many other disorders and diseases do not “show”. There are so many people who have disorders or conditions that have no visible signs, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore or minimize their suffering. So many people struggle with disorders and conditions that may not have any physical signs, but it still doesn’t mean that we can question them about it or disregard their illness. Some of these invisible disabilities, such as mental health issues, can really affect an individual’s life. In fact, some of them even have to visit PureHempFarms online to purchase some hemp to help them manage their mental illness, so it’s important that they receive the support that they need.
Where the Basic Income Guarantee comes in is to not put people in that agonizing position of having to “prove” they are sick enough for help. They can work through their disability issues or recovery issues with dignity, having a basic way to live and not have that worry added onto the stress of what is already going on with their health. Some people have intermittent visitations of their conditions, not knowing when they are going to have debilitating bouts. Again, not fully disabling all the time, but enough during the bad times to preclude working full-time.
There is much talk in the B.I.G. advocacy community of robotics replacing jobs and that a basic income is to be the logical response to technological unemployment. To this I heartily agree because most employers have looked to their workers as “human resources” which seems an impersonal term that implies that some how people are “units” that don’t break down. Our bodies are not robotic, they can break down. Our minds, especially in this precarious age, also can suffer injury just from the stress of uncertainty as we are in times that are a changin’.
We can affect a dignified change, we can acknowledge the humanity in our changes by choosing the Basic Income Guarantee to bridge the gap between living and work as we knew it.
For more about the Invisible Disabilities Association go to invisibledisabilities.org.
For more from Karen Christine Patrick, visit her blog.
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 5, 2015 | News
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, publicly endorsed basic income at least as early as March 2014. Has been increasingly talking about it lately. In a blog on the upsurge in uncertain employment, published on August 24, 2015, Reich concluded, “Ultimately, we’ll need a guaranteed minimum basic income. But I’ll save this for another column.”
Robert Reich
It turns out that that other column was his Labor Day message. The entire post is reproduced below in full:
Labor Day 2028
Monday, August 31, 2015
In 1928, famed British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would advance so far in a hundred years – by 2028 – that it will replace all work, and no one will need to worry about making money.
“For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”
We still have thirteen years to go before we reach Keynes’ prophetic year, but we’re not exactly on the way to it. Americans are working harder than ever.
Keynes may be proven right about technological progress. We’re on the verge of 3-D printing, driverless cars, delivery drones, and robots that can serve us coffee in the morning and make our beds.
But he overlooked one big question: How to redistribute the profits from these marvelous labor-saving inventions, so we’ll have the money to buy the free time they provide?
Without such a mechanism, most of us are condemned to work ever harder in order to compensate for lost earnings due to the labor-replacing technologies.
Such technologies are even replacing knowledge workers – a big reason why college degrees no longer deliver steadily higher wages and larger shares of the economic pie.
Since 2000, the vast majority of college graduates have seen little or no income gains.
The economic model that predominated through most of the twentieth century was mass production by many, for mass consumption by many.
But the model we’re rushing toward is unlimited production by a handful, for consumption by the few able to afford it.
The ratio of employees to customers is already dropping to mind-boggling lows.
When Facebook purchased the messaging company WhatsApp for $19 billion last year, WhatsApp had fifty-five employees serving 450 million customers.
When more and more can be done by fewer and fewer people, profits go to an ever-smaller circle of executives and owner-investors. WhatsApp’s young co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, got $6.8 billion in the deal.
This in turn will leave the rest of us with fewer well-paying jobs and less money to buy what can be produced, as we’re pushed into the low-paying personal service sector of the economy.
Which will also mean fewer profits for the handful of billionaire executives and owner-investors, because potential consumers won’t be able to afford what they’re selling.
What to do? We might try to levy a gigantic tax on the incomes of the billionaire winners and redistribute their winnings to everyone else. But even if politically feasible, the winners will be tempted to store their winnings abroad – or expatriate.
Suppose we look instead at the patents and trademarks by which government protects all these new inventions.
Such government protections determine what these inventions are worth. If patents lasted only three years instead of the current twenty, for example, What’sApp would be worth a small fraction of $19 billion – because after three years anybody could reproduce its messaging technology for free.
Instead of shortening the patent period, how about giving every citizen a share of the profits from all patents and trademarks government protects? Patent owners would want to contact a patent lawyer to discuss the change in profit before anything is edited. It would be a condition for receiving such protection.
Say, for example, 20 percent of all such profits were split equally among all citizens, starting the month they turn eighteen.
In effect, this would be a basic minimum income for everyone.
The sum would be enough to ensure everyone a minimally decent standard of living – including money to buy the technologies that would free them up from the necessity of working.
Anyone wishing to supplement their basic minimum could of course choose to work – even though, as noted, most jobs will pay modestly.
This outcome would also be good for the handful of billionaire executives and owner-investors, because it would ensure they have customers with enough money to buy their labor-saving gadgets.
Such a basic minimum would allow people to pursue whatever arts or avocations provide them with meaning, thereby enabling society to enjoy the fruits of such artistry or voluntary efforts.
We would thereby create the kind of society John Maynard Keynes predicted we’d achieve by 2028 – an age of technological abundance in which no one will need to work.
Happy Labor Day.
Reich’s focus on Basic Income is important for U.S. politics, because, although a significant grassroots movement for it is growing in the United States, and public support for the idea is increasing, it is still far outside the centers of power. Reich is the first major U.S. politician in decades to make such a strong endorsement of Basic Income. He has linked basic income to labor market uncertainty, to climate change strategy, and to automation. His choice to make it the focus of his Labor Day column indicates that he believes this policy is a central strategy to supporting workers in a difficult labor market.
The column quoted in full is taken from:
Robert Reich, “Labor Day 2028,” Robert Reich.org, August 31, 2015
He’s earlier column previewing his comments on basic income is:
Robert Reich, “The Upsurge in Uncertain Work,” Robert Reich.org, August 23, 2015
For additional info about Reich and the basic income see these two articles:
Basic Income News, “Former Labor Secretary Endorses BIG, calling it “almost inevitable,” Basic Income News, March 14, 2014
Basic Income News, “Former Secretary of Labor endores introducing a carbon tax and using the revenue to support BIG,” Basic Income News, June 17, 2014
by Tyler Prochazka | Aug 27, 2015 | News
U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in her first Facebook question and answer session on July 20, was asked about her feelings regarding the Negative Income Tax. Her exchange with an editor at the Huffington Post did not directly answer whether she would support a negative income tax.
The premise of the question came from Clinton’s earlier skepticism toward the “gig economy”, which includes services such as Uber and Airbnb. The questioner, Alexander Howard, implied that one solution to the increasing prevalence of these types of services as well as greater automation of labor may be a negative income tax.
“I certainly don’t have all the answers. But we have to resolve these questions while embracing the promise and potential of these new technologies and without stifling innovation or limiting the ability of working moms and veterans and young people to get ahead,” Clinton said.
While Clinton did not directly endorse the idea of Negative Income Tax, her answer did highlight some of the purported features of a Basic Income Guarantee, such as untying the benefit to one’s employer.
“On the issue of benefits, the experience of the Affordable Care Act shows that we need to make sure people have access to benefits and that they are portable as they move from job to job,” Clinton said.
How Clinton would prefer to operationalize this concept, however, is left unclear at least in her Facebook Q&A. Clinton is not the first candidate to be asked about a Basic Income Guarantee. Her rival in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders, said he is “sympathetic” to this approach.
Karl Widerquist, “UNITED STATES: Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, “absolutely sympathetic” to basic income approach.” BIEN, July 28, 2015.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Aug 26, 2015 | Opinion
Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done?, Harvard University Press, 2015, ix + 384 pp, hbk, 0 674 50476 9, £19.95
Politicians of all political parties tell us that inequality is a problem and that they are working to reduce it. Now they have the manual that they need: and what we all now have is a book that builds on Tony Atkinson’s lifetime of careful and relevant research, that offers analysis of the definitions and causes of inequality, that proposes policies to deal with the problem, and that shows that the policies proposed are affordable.
The first part of the book discusses the meaning of ‘inequality’, and then studies how inequality has changed during the last hundred years. A particularly important conclusion is that in the immediate postwar decades, the welfare state was ahead in the race to keep up with widening inequality of market incomes, but since the 1980s it has failed to do so – often as a result of explicit policy decisions to cut back on benefits and on coverage. (pp.67-8)
Then the economics of inequality are discussed, and the final conclusion of the first part is that in order to reduce inequality market income inequality needs to be reduced and governments need to achieve more redistribution through tax and benefits systems. The second part of the book makes detailed proposals for policy change: technological innovation to increase worker employability; a better balance of power between the different stakeholders in the economy; guaranteed public sector employment at the minimum wage; a national pay policy (including a living wage); a guaranteed positive real rate of interest on savings; a capital endowment payable at the age of majority; a sovereign wealth fund; a more progressive Income Tax; a broader tax base; an Earned Income Discount; a progressive lifetime capital receipts tax; a progressive or proportional property tax; increased Child Benefit; increased overseas development aid; and either a participation income or a renewal of social insurance. Each of the proposals is persuasively argued.
In the third part of the book, Atkinson tackles three possible objections to his proposals: that they would reduce economic growth; that globalization would make them difficult to implement; and that we wouldn’t be able to afford them. He shows that the welfare state makes a positive contribution to economic performance; that his proposals would have incentive effects in the employment market; that global competition restricts the scope for redistribution rather less than we might think; and that his proposals could be revenue neutral.
Of particular interest to readers of this Newsletter will be the social security proposals. Atkinson is well aware of the problems relating to means-testing, he regrets that so many families in the UK are so dependent on means-tested benefits, and he studies two alternative possibilities: a Participation Income, and a renewed social insurance system. In relation to Child Benefit, he would like to see the end of the tax penalty for households that include higher rate taxpayers; he would like it to be paid at a higher single rate; he would like it to be taxed; and he would like the European Union to take the initiative in establishing an unconditional income for children throughout Europe.
Atkinson then discusses a Citizen’s Income, and decides that a flat tax to fund a Citizen’s Income high enough to replace existing benefits would be at too high a rate. He has here allowed research that he conducted thirty years ago into the rate at which a flat tax would need to be set to fund a Citizen’s Income to create an inconsistency in his approach. One of the proposals in this book is for a more progressive income tax than we have now: so why expect a Citizen’s Income to be funded by a flat tax? And why not consider paying for a Citizen’s Income by reducing or eliminating the Personal Tax Allowance?
Atkinson’s solution to the dilemma that he has constructed is a Participation Income that would be paid to people making a contribution to society. He recognizes that an administrative process would be required to decide who should receive the Participation Income, but when he begins to outline the kind of casework approach that would be required we can quickly see the size of the bureaucracy and the extent of the complex regulations that would be needed. To create the kind of workable definition of ‘citizenship’ or of ‘legal residence’ that the administration of a Citizen’s Income would require would be a lot easier. Research that the Citizen’s Income Trust undertook when Atkinson first suggested a Participation Income thirty years ago suggested that the list of eligibility criteria that he outlined then would have meant that only about 1% of the population would not have received a Participation Income. This research would now need to be repeated, but the outcome would not be very different. It would surely be both easier and cheaper to pay a Citizen’s Income than to pay a Participation Income.
And then comes a further contradiction: The chapter on costings employs the EUROMOD software managed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex (Professor Holly Sutherland and her colleagues are well thanked in the book’s acknowledgments). The graph on p.297 that shows the effects of a Participation Income on inequality shows no evidence of any ‘participation’ conditions having been taken into account: and it is difficult to see how a programme such as EUROMOD could take into account such social contributions as voluntary work. What appears to have been modeled is a Citizen’s Income.
An alternative to a Citizen’s Income would be a reinvigorated social insurance system, which, as Atkinson recognizes, would need to be adapted to today’s labour market. He takes as his model the new Single Tier State Pension, and suggests that other National Insurance benefits should be higher in value and should achieve greater coverage – for instance, by lasting longer – and that National Insurance Contributions should be credited for periods during which any kind of contribution is being made to society (echoing the eligibility criterion for a Participation Income). The graph showing the effects on inequality of both a Participation Income and a reinvigorated Social Insurance system suggests that the former would redistribute from rich to poor, and the latter more towards middle income households.
We hope that this well researched and clearly written book will be carefully read by anyone with any connection to the making of social policy; that we shall see implemented as many as possible of the policies for which Atkinson has provided such useful evidence and such persuasive arguments; and that the arguments both for and against a Participation Income will contribute to the increasingly vigorous
and informed debate about a Citizen’s Income.
The book contains a useful glossary and a detailed index. The publisher is to be congratulated on publishing a good quality hardback at such a low price. Other academic publishers might like to follow this example.
[This review was first published in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, 2015, issue 3.]
by Will Wachtmeister | Aug 24, 2015 | News
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_International#/media/File:Metro.svg
The francophone Métro newspaper in Canada has run an in-depth article promoting a universal basic income in its careers advice section.
The article by job-market and study-choice expert commentator Mario Charette provides a rundown of pro-BIG arguments, including widespread automation, stagnant wages in jobs that are crucial for society and the foregone family benefits of shorter working weeks.
The article’s main finishing argument is that an unconditional basic income would make studying more fulfilling as students would no longer be forced to choose courses based solely on income prospects, which Charette says is increasingly happening in the United States.
Language FRENCH:
Mario Charette, “Un revenu minimum garantit la liberté” Journal Métro (Canada), 11 August 2015.
