by Harry Pitts | Oct 18, 2014 | Research
In this article Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party of Canada, suggests the ‘implementation of a universal Guaranteed Livable Income. She argues that such a measure ‘would provide the means for every Canadian to avoid poverty. It would save the health care system, the criminal justice system, and a whole raft of other social programs from spending their valuable resources on issues whose root cause is poverty. It could easily be paid for by a modest carbon tax. It would make our economy stronger and our society more just. A GLI paid for by a carbon tax would help to bridge any perceived gap between the fights for social, labour, economic, and environmental justice. It would also help minimize the disproportionate carbon footprint of the wealthy while allowing the less wealthy the freedom to find good work, without being forced to take any job that will employ them. It would hopefully spur real change in the intertwined fights for a livable climate and a just society.’
The full article is available here:
Elizabeth May, “A $15 minimum wage will not solv
e inequality — but it’ll help”, Rabble, 3rd October 2014
by Citizens' Income Trust | Sep 15, 2014 | News
Conference report: 63 people attended the conference, held by invitation of the British Library at its conference centre.
Anne Miller, Chair of the trustees, welcomed everyone to the conference, offered a brief history of the recent Citizen’s Income debate in the UK, and explained that an important aim of the conference was to help the Citizen’s Income Trust’s trustees to develop a strategy for the next few years. Jude England, Head of Research Engagement at the British Library, then introduced the British Library and its many research and educational facilities. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, explained a few terminological matters: that a Citizen’s Income is an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual as a right of citizenship; that different rates can be paid for people of different ages; that a Basic Income is the same thing as a Citizen’s Income (as is a Universal Benefit or a Social Dividend); and that in the UK the words ‘minimum’ and ‘guarantee’ are tainted by association with means-testing and so should be avoided. Child Benefit would be a Citizen’s Income for children if it were paid at the same rate for every child. Debate ensued on the definition of a Citizen’s Income, and on the meaning of citizenship.
Guy Standing, Professor of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, spoke on ‘Citizen’s Income: an income floor for the Precariat, and the means of global development’. He explained that we are in the midst of a painful transition. More flexible labour markets are leading to the breakdown of social insurance methods for sustaining income and to a resultant increase in means-testing, which in turn leads to categorising people as deserving and undeserving poor. Means-testing reduces incentives to seek employment so coercion, sanctions and ‘workfare’ are the result. The precarity trap (the fact that it is irrational to take short-term low-paid employment if that means frequent benefits applications) might now be as significant as the poverty trap. Professor Standing described some of the results of the recent Citizen’s Income pilot projects in Namibia and India, and offered four justifications for a Citizen’s Income:
- Justice: our wealth is due to the efforts of our forebears, so we all deserve a social dividend.
- Rawlsian: a policy is only justifiable if it improves the position of the poorest member of society. A Citizen’s Income can pass this test
- A policy must pass the paternalism test: that is, no policy is just if it imposes tests on some groups that are not imposed on others. A Citizen’s Income passes this test, too.
- The ‘rights not charity’ principle. Due process was an important provision in the Magna Carta. Means-tested benefits allow discretion to State officials, thus bypassing due process.
John McDonnell MP introduced Tony Benn’s theory of political change: that new policies are thought ‘bad’ and then ‘mad’ before everyone claims to have thought of the idea. Thomas Kuhn’s research on scientific change suggested that current theory becomes problematic, new possibilities emerge, and suddenly a paradigm shift occurs. Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit and other changes are revealing the problematic nature of the current benefits system, but there is a vacuum in terms of new ideas. A Citizen’s Income brings together debates about citizenship and poverty, and provides the necessary new paradigm: but obtaining agreement on the implementation of a Citizen’s Income won’t be easy. For the Labour Party, Ed Miliband will only move when it is safe to do so (as he has, for instance, over energy bills). When he does move, then he gathers support. We therefore need to make a Citizen’s Income safe for politicians. We need to lead so that the leaders can follow. The Labour Party is bereft of policies designed to tackle poverty and precarity, so the Trust needs to work with think tanks to provide the required package, and it needs:
- A seriousness of intent
- A professional approach
- Confidence
- Excitement and enthusiasm
Natalie Bennett (Leader of the Green Party) suggested that the outcome of a successful campaign would be that she would be able to say ‘Basic Income’ on Newsnight and everybody would know what she meant. People do ‘get it’ when the idea is explained to them, because the welfare safety net has fallen apart and they want to be able to feed their children without going to food banks. Public education is essential. Biological evolution is punctuated evolution: that is, alternating periods of stability and change. A Citizen’s Income constitutes the next major change because it would change everything, and in particular would provide both economic security and ecological sustainability. The Trust’s task is to educate people about a Citizen’s Income and its effects.
Tony Fitzpatrick (Reader, University of Nottingham) entitled his paper ‘Schemes and Dreams’. The welfare state established after the Second World War was the closest that we’ve ever got to achieving both security and freedom. We must now ask how we should achieve that combination today. Dr. Fitzpatrick discussed four moral contexts: productivism, distributivism, the deliberative, and the regenerative. A post-productivist settlement is needed if we are to conserve the world’s resources. A Citizen’s Income could contribute to that happening, and it could conform to all four moral contexts.
After discussion, and then lunch, three working groups met and then presented their findings at a plenary session:
Brief reports from the working groups
- Funding options: If the level of the Citizen’s Income is too low then it might not be politically inspiring. A variety of funding methods were discussed, but because policymakers are cautious, in the short term it might be important to concentrate attention on the Citizen’s Income itself rather than on possible funding mechanisms: so initially a Citizen’s Income would need to be funded by reducing existing tax allowances and benefits, with other mechanisms being considered later.
- Political feasibility: We need to avoid current vocabulary in order to avoid stale current debates; we need to offer a clear message of hope through visual representations; we need both a core message and variants to appeal to different audiences; we need a group of sponsors to raise the debate’s profile; and we need to relate to MPs, MEPs, NGOs, and other groups, so that they can promote the idea. A Citizen’s Income is the route to emancipation and freedom, and to the exercise of a variety of rights, and rights language could be useful. A Citizen’s Income enables people to care for others, so care language could also be helpful. Pilot projects will be important.
- The research required: Qualitative research is needed to test the acceptability of different ways of expressing a Citizen’s Income. The level at which a Citizen’s Income would be paid would also affect the idea’s acceptability. We need to show that people would wish to work in order to demolish the myth that there would be numerous free-riders. We need to show that a Citizen’s Income would act as an economic stabiliser in the context of a gap between wages and productivity; and we need to show how a Citizen’s Income would impact on health and other outcomes.
Panel discussion
Natalie Bennett (Leader of the Green Party) asked the Citizen’s Income Trust to provide both a wide variety of material and a clear and simple message; Kat Wall (New Economics Foundation) asked the Trust to be clear how work and social participation would be affected by a Citizen’s Income; and Neal Lawson (Compass) said that the time is right for a Citizen’s Income so we need to grasp the opportunity. A moral argument is required, and not just the figures. We need the courage to be utopian. Whilst a Citizen’s Income isn’t about everything, it is about security. Such central connections need to be clearly represented in new ways. Bert Schouwenburg (of the GMB Trade Union) discussed the fact that no trade union has a position on Citizen’s Income, and that that needs to change. Trades unions are wage brokers, and it needs to be made clear that a Citizen’s Income would complement that activity. Chris Goulden (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) explained that researchers are meant to be sceptical. A Citizen’s Income is dignified and simple and it avoids stigma, but such questions as who gains and who loses are important. ‘Something for something’ remains a significant public attitude, and lifecourse redistribution is acceptable, but not redistribution across income groups. A Citizen’s Income campaign needs to take account of such attitudes.
Further discussion followed; and then Professor Hartley Dean (London School of Economics), who had chaired the panel discussion, summed up the conference:
Citizen’s Income is a technology, or policy mechanism, which can serve a variety of ends. We must ensure that it serves social justice. We need to say how it would work, and the detail matters. Citizen’s Income is also a philosophical proposition. It is elegant, and it challenges prevailing understandings, for instance, of work, of human livelihood, of relationships of care, and of rights. ‘Unconditional’ is a stumbling block when applied to people of working age: but ‘working age’ is socially constructed. Work is diverse, and not just what happens within a wage relationship. A Citizen’s Income would support a variety of forms of work. Social insurance is risk-sharing, and a Citizen’s Income would also constitute risk-sharing. It deals with risk now in ways that social insurance did sixty years ago.
A global Citizen’s Income is a distant prospect, but borders are breaking down and citizenship is changing. We need to keep alive a big vision.
by Josh Martin | Aug 13, 2014 | Research
[Josh Martin]
Klinger attended the BIEN Congress in Montreal this summer, and the presentations dedicated to the effects a basic income would have on jobs especially caught the eye. Because most people working low-pay jobs are often only working them because they need the money, a basic income would allow people to only work jobs that are meaningful to their life. Klinger claims a basic income will promote a healthier work/life balance for everyone in society, resulting in a transition to an economy of care.
Jamie Klinger, “The other side of Basic Income: Basic Jobs”, Joatu, 28 July 2014.
(Source: JoatU.com)
by Citizens' Income Trust | Apr 8, 2014 | News
[Citizens Income Trust]
At a seminar at the University of London on 5 March Guy Standing reported the results of a Citizen’s Income pilot project in which he has been involved in India over the past five years. In recent decades, India has relied on subsidised rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene to reduce poverty, but about three-quarters of the money allocated to the programme never reaches the people for whom it is intended. So an alternative method has now become essential. Cash transfers are the obvious solution, and for the pilot project it was decided that universal, individual, unconditional monthly payments would be the model to be tested. Guy Standing worked with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) on the pilots with finance provided by UNICEF.
Guy Standing
There were three pilots. An initial small project in Delhi offered residents of a low-income area a choice between continuing with the subsidised goods or taking a cash transfer of equivalent value. . About half chose the Citizen’s Income. But after a few months of experience, over 20% of those who initially chose the subsidised food and kerosene asked to swap to the Citizen’s Income. All those who had taken the cash wished to remain with it.
The second pilot covered 20 villages in Madhya Pradesh. In eight villages every individual was paid a monthly Citizen’s Income while continuing to receive the subsidised food and kerosene, if they had been receiving them. Initially, each man and each woman received 200 Rupees a month, and each child 100, paid to the mother or surrogate mother. Subsequently, the Citizen’s Income was raised to 300 rupees per month for each adult, and 150 for each child up to the age of 14. These amounts were approximately one third of subsistence income. Twelve similar villages were taken as control villages in what was a modified randomised control trial, enabling the evaluation of the impact to compare individuals over time and with others like them who were not receiving the Citizen’s Income.
A third pilot was conducted in a tribal village, where every adult and every child received 300 or 150 rupees respectively. A second structurally similar tribal village was taken as the control village for comparative analysis.
In each of the 22 villages, a baseline survey (census) was undertaken and then evaluations carried out at six, twelve and eighteen months. In the villages in which a Citizen’s Income was received residents were required to open bank accounts within three months, and over 96% of them did so, the remainder being helped afterwards.
In the villages in which residents received the Citizen’s Income:
· Latrines were built or improved;
· Housing quality improved;
· Mosquito nets and repellents proliferated;
· Child weight-for-age moved closer to the normal distribution, and girls in particular benefited;
· Diets improved, with more fresh fruit and pulses being consumed;
· There was a lower incidence of illness;
· Spending on medical care and on schooling increased;
· 48 disabled people went to hospital when they were ill (and only two in the control villages);
· Secondary school enrolment outstripped enrolment in the control villages, particularly for girls;
· School performance rose;
· Indebtedness fell, and some men managed to escape from debt bondage. In the local naukar system, someone in debt has to work for the person to whom they owe money.
Particularly important results in relation to the critic-isms sometimes levelled at a Citizen’s Income were:
· Alcohol and tobacco use did not rise;
· There was a general increase in economic activity, particularly amongst women;
· The purchase of productive assets increased: goats, chickens, bullocks, buffaloes and sewing machines;
· More people in the Citizen’s Income villages increased their earned incomes than did those in the control villages. (An increase in work days was mainly generated by increases in second main economic activities and by a shift to own-account labour).
· Child labour shifted from external wage labour to work with adult relatives in own-account farming: a form of labour that is less disruptive to schooling.
What is particularly significant about these results is that they were obtained with a Citizen’s Income that was only about one third of subsistence income.
Questions and discussion followed the presentation.
Seminar led by Guy Standing, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on the 5th March 2014.
by Ian Orton | Apr 7, 2014 | Opinion
The increasing use of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) has perhaps been one of the most significant additions to the social development agenda of late. CCTs are now key components of many governments’ poverty elimination programmes and feature centrally in the UN’s current Social Protection Floor initiative.1 The mainstream media has also taken note and lent support in favour of their adoption.2
CCTs have delivered some impressive results in terms of reducing poverty and inequality, and are credited with numerous other positive human development outcomes. However, opinions on the status of CCT conditionalities in terms of human rights remain mixed. Some argue that CCTs are contradictory in nature (imposing obligations on rights) and therefore obstructive to the human rights agenda, while others stress the importance of obligations complementing those rights. The paradox is that CCTs may be positive along one dimension (reducing poverty) but not others (compromising human rights).
Moreover, there is no conclusive evidence to show that the conditional mechanism has anything to do with the aforementioned positive effects of CCTs; rather, conditionality is much more to do with politics and improving their acceptability. Perhaps conditionality is just a convenient mechanism by which to placate the paternalist twitch3 (that is to say, they provide sufficient behavioural controls to quench the demands of those social classes that finance social transfers)? In this sense, conditionality ensures continued political support and represents a ‘necessary evil’ to realize human rights through a non-prefigurative approach (that is, one in which the means are not consonant with the ends). One wonders if the conditional question ultimately boils down to a question of faith in human nature (or a lack of it), and whether the poor need to be “nudged” in the “right” direction or given the resourced freedom to develop in ways that they individually deem fit. If true, this poses the question: why not dispense with the conditional dimension rather than risk rights violation? A question I will return to later.
The first position, that CCTs violate human rights is straightforward: human rights are unconditional, universal and indissoluble in character, their fulfilment cannot be based on supposed “deservingness”. In this sense, CCTs are clearly detrimental to securing human rights… End of story! And since income security is the main delivery mechanism employed in advanced societies for realizing the human right to social security it is therefore unacceptable to deny a person (parent or child) that fundamental right; a right that might be violated through the imposition and enforcement of conditionalities. Concerns are further compounded by the fact that the fulfilment of the conditions may not entirely depend on the beneficiaries, but also on the availability and quality of the basic social services. How can individuals fulfil conditions if the requisite services do not exist, are inadequate or their distant location makes the opportunity cost of access prohibitive? Remote, difficult-to-reach or deprived areas where vulnerability is high, are typically characterised by the absence of such services. In such places, the high opportunity costs of meeting conditions of CCTs may penalize the most vulnerable who are least able to meet conditions. Responsibility for protection is therefore shifted from the state on to the individual.
Using conditionalities to promote human rights?
While seemingly counter-intuitive to the preceding argument, conditionalities can also be advocated from a rights-based perspective. They have been invoked as a way to promote a combination of rights and as a means to facilitate their materialization. This represents an important shift, as, although universal in principle, in practice rights have remained unfulfilled for many if not most of the poor (as per the looming post-MDG deficit). In other words, CCTs may represent a concrete way to bridge the gap between the legal basis of rights and their practical fulfilment. It is argued that this can be achieved because it is recognized that the situational knowledge of beneficiaries, and their behaviour, are key factors for the materialization of rights. In addition, CCTs can also positively influence the behaviour of non-beneficiaries who may wish to gain access to participation. More broadly, it is argued that conditionalities bind not only the beneficiaries, but also the public authorities to create the necessary conditions (for example, basic services availability) for their fulfilment. This is why CCTs are now presented as a vehicle for co-responsibility.
Continuing in this vein, rather than impede human rights, CCTs may have an important recursive function that permits further enhancement of service delivery and therefore maximizes opportunities for rights realization: lack of compliance with conditions does not have to trigger a punitive approach leading to the exclusion of the beneficiary. Instead, non-fulfilment can also be understood as having a revealing function, highlighting the vulnerability of individuals. This sheds light on the balance—or the lack of it—between the solutions provided and the needs of the beneficiary. Thus, non-fulfilment could kicks-start a positive feedback loop signalling to the authorities that perhaps the delivery of essential health and education services is lacking, or that there is a need for other services (for example, counselling, job training). Consequently, further inquiry leads to progressively improved solutions.
Far from undermining rights fulfilment, the existence of conditionalities might strengthen the bargaining power of some household members thereby facilitating the fulfilment of their rights and promoting their status within the household. This aspect can be particularly important for women and children. However, this point also illuminates the inherent gender bias of CCTs whereby fulfilment of conditions is a responsibility often bestowed on women, and therefore gender inequality is reproduced by anchoring women in existing roles, for example reinforcing the idea that caring is a maternal duty and simultaneously infantilizing men as potential carers.
But is conditionality morally acceptable or even effective?
For others, conditionality represents a form of paternalistic social engineering writ large4 where the design of CCTs is at best guided by a benevolent paternalism (saving us from ourselves), and at worst, by a mean-spirited cynicism, showing little faith in the poor to know what is best for themselves and their families, and reinforcing the belief that recipients are somehow social misfits wholly responsible for their condition. In this cynical sense, conditionality offers social policy makers a means to limit the adverse effects of decision making that may be inconsistent with human development goals or, arguably, with the best interests of household members. For instance, CCTs obligate the ‘poor’ to prove that they are not ‘lazy’. The morality of this approach is dubious and resonates frighteningly with Bentham’s project of creating an ‘architecture of choice’, and with ‘nudge-esque’ social policy.It also fulfils Foucault’s prediction that society will tend increasingly toward the panopticization of human behaviour. As a result, conditionality not only poses a threat to human rights; it chips away at freedom and personal responsibility, depriving humans of agency and the opportunity to consider and select forms of life which are both satisfying and rational.
As intimated early, much of the discussion thus far is underpinned by the presupposition that the conditional mechanism is pivotal in producing positive social outcomes. However, the efficiency of conditions has rarely been studied separately from the programmes that include them; therefore some argue that there is almost no evidence that conditions make any major difference.5 More study is clearly needed to disaggregate the effects of the conditional mechanism and the actual cash payment. Perhaps there is a need to recognize that the presumed effectiveness of conditions has attained something of the doxa status, or a kind of Emperor’s Clothes: an idea we think with and through, but not about. We should be cautious of such seemingly self-evident truths, whose employment really is more a matter of faith than anything based on scientific rigour. CCTs continue to be an increasingly popular means for reducing poverty. However, that CCTs should remain conditional is clearly not universally agreed. If the conditional mechanism is not the pivotal factor, then why not dispense with it and behavioural conditionalities? Perhaps a movement toward unconditionality could offer a way forward. While unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) are not automatic fulfillers of human rights, arguably they reduce the risk of human rights violations when it comes to the right to social security, with the bonus of being freedom enhancing. However, when it comes to other rights (such as education, basic health care), like CCTs, UCTs must be embedded in a wider social policy framework of adequate social services and monitoring, in order to facilitate rights maximization and materialization. Elsewhere it has been argued that cash transfers do not need to be made conditional on school attendance to impact on children’s education.6 Even the (unconditional) old-age pensions in Brazil have helped to increase school attendance, and there is evidence that the cash paid through the Namibian pension scheme has ultimately been spent on children’s education in spite of the absence of conditions. The recent pilot studies on UCTs in India, which have exhibited many similar positive results, also support this view.7
This debate is unlikely to be settled in the foreseeable future, but unconditionality can reduce the risk of human rights violation ex ante receipt of benefit, whilst continuing to reduce poverty.
FOOTNOTES
1 In 2012, Recommendation 202 on social protection floors was adopted as a new international labour standard at the International Labour Conference.
2 See: The Economist. 2013. “Cash to the poor, pennies from heaven: Giving money directly to poor people works surprisingly well. But it cannot deal with the deeper causes of poverty.” The Economist, October 26.
3 Standing, G. 2002. Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality. London: Verso.
4 Standing, G. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
5 Hanlon, Joseph. Armando Barrientos. David Hulme. 2010. Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South. Sterling VA: Kumarian Press.
6 Department for International Development (DFID). 2005. Social transfers and chronic poverty: Emerging evidence and the challenge ahead, A DFID Practice Paper.
7 Standing, G. 2012. Cash transfers: A review of the issues in India. Social Policy Working Paper Series – 1. UNICEF India.
