by Citizens' Income Trust | Mar 3, 2014 | Opinion
This essay begins and ends with a genuine question: Given the proven desirability and financial feasibility of a Citizen’s Income, why does a Citizen’s Income not appear to be politically feasible?
Briefly in the Citizen’s Income Trust’s introductory booklet, 1 and at greater length in Money for Everyone, 2 the case is made for the desirability of a Citizen’s Income’s desirability. Because it would not be withdrawn as earned income rose, a Citizen’s Income would reduce marginal deduction rates for any household currently on means-tested benefits (including ‘tax credits’) and would make it more worthwhile for every one of those households to seek new or additional employment. Everyone of the same age would receive a Citizen’s Income of the same amount every week, and this would create social cohesion in place of the social division currently created by our means-tested and contributory benefits systems. Because a Citizen’s Income would be paid at the same rate whatever someone’s employment status, it would enable individuals to seek the labour market involvement that their circumstances required and it would provide a more flexible labour market for both employers and employees. Since neither the Citizen’s Income nor the higher Citizen’s Pension would be reduced as savings rose, they would not discourage savings as means-tested pensions and other benefits do now. A Citizen’s Income would be extremely simple to administer and it would reduce drastically the cost of benefits administration and would eliminate fraud and payments errors. Computerisation would be easy.
Both the introductory booklet 1 and Money for Everyone 2 (along with its website appendices 3 ) show that a Citizen’s Income could be paid for by reducing existing benefits and tax allowances and in such a way that no additional public expenditure would be required. Further, few households would suffer appreciable losses at the point of implementation, and that those households that do experience losses could easily recover their economic position by seeking relatively small amounts of additional earned income because that extra earned income would not result in the Citizen’s Income being withdrawn.
Unfortunately, arguments and evidence do not necessarily add up to political feasibility. Pilot projects in Namibia 4 and India 5 have exhibited significant improvements in labour market activity and in a variety of other social and economic indicators: but however persuasive the evidence might be, politicians have found it hard a) to recognise that this is the case, and b) to commit themselves to the policy that generated that evidence. In India, initial political enthusiasm for the pilot projects, for the evidence generated, and for unconditional cash transfers, has given way to a re-emphasis on the distribution of subsidised food to the poor: a process that provides plenty of opportunity for corruption, waste, and all of the usual problems that afflict means-tested benefits. In Namibia, a press release issued by the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition represents the problem:
Despite the positive results, the Namibian government has still not committed itself to the introduction of a BIG [Basic Income Grant: Citizen’s Income] in Namibia. Instead, senior government leaders have raised concerns that the grant would make people lazy and dependent on hand-outs. Such perceptions are rooted in prejudices rather than being based on the evidence provided by Otjivero! We wish to point out that the BIG Coalition arranged for many Namibians, including Members of Parliament (MPs), to visit Otjivero and to witness the developments there first-hand. The honourable MPs were free to assess the impact of the BIG themselves and they were impressed with the results achieved in Otjivero. However, they preferred to express their views in private instead of speaking out publicly in support of a national BIG. 6
A Negative Income Tax would be administratively different from a Citizen’s Income, but in other respects it would be similar: and Negative Income Tax experiments in the USA between 1968 and 1980 exhibited the same problem as that suffered by the Namibian and Indian Citizen’s Income pilot projects. In this case, discussion of initial positive results in relation to poverty reduction and labour market engagement was submerged by heated debate about what appeared to be a rise in the number of divorces: and even though it was shown that there had in fact been no rise in the divorce rate discussion of a Negative Income Tax did not resume. 7
In the UK, politicians and those who advise them have sometimes studied the evidence and come to the conclusion that social security reform in the direction of a Citizen’s Income would be worthwhile.
Christopher Monckton, who worked in Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit from 1982 to 1986, recommended a Citizen’s Income because it would meet basic needs, reduce employment disincentives, reduce administrative costs, encourage family cohesion, redistribute from rich to poor ‘but only mildly’, be revenue neutral (or involve only a small increase in the basic rate of Income Tax), stimulate many beneficial secondary effects, and be ‘politically neutral’: that is, it would both require and generate a political consensus. The problem that Monckton encountered was that the Treasury counts benefits as public expenditure but does not count tax allowances in the same way. If a tax allowance is turned into a cash payment of the same value, then public expenditure looks as if it has increased even though it hasn’t. As Monckton puts it:
Does all this matter? Yes it does, vitally, because national accounts prepared using this daft accounting principle are useless as a starting-point for policy formation. In particular, unless the Treasury is forced to mend its ways, it will always block the consideration of any universal benefit scheme, erroneously believing it to be in all circumstances unaffordable. 8
During the 1980s there were ‘One Nation Conservatives’ who advocated a Citizen’s Income because it was
about changing attitudes all the way down the income distribution instead of just at the top. For there is no reason to suppose that people on low incomes react differently to increased economic incentives than people who are rich. (Brandon Rhys Williams MP) 9
A little later, and a little further to the left, the Labour Party’s Social Justice Commission argued that
the case for Citizen’s Income is partly moral and partly economic. The moral case rests on the principle of social citizenship … civil and political rights must go hand in hand with economic and social rights. And just as civil and political rights belong unconditionally to all citizens as individuals, irrespective of need or desert, so all citizens have a right to a share in the social and national product sufficient to make it possible for them to participate fully in the common of society … the state is no more entitled to say which citizens have a right to a sufficient share in the common stock to participate fully in the life of the society than to say which citizens have a right to vote or to a fair trial. And in modern conditions that principle can be realised more simply and more completely by a Citizen’s Income than by any other mechanism. The economic case rests upon the falling demand for unskilled labour. … a Citizen’s Income … enables those without saleable skills to take low-paid or casual jobs of some kind, while at the same time receiving an income large enough to enfranchise them, without the stigma of a means test.’ 10
To the left of the political spectrum, and in response to what he believed to be an unnecessarily non-committal Social Justice Commission report, Meghnad Desai, a Labour peer and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the London School of Economics, recommended a Citizen’s Income simply because it would ‘reduce poverty and allow for greater flexibility in labour markets’, and because it would be possible to fund it by reducing tax allowances and other benefits. 11
Somewhere on the political map lie the Liberal Democrats. Paddy Ashdown, who was leader of the party from 1988 to 1999, was a firm advocate of a Citizen’s Income because it would be non-stigmatising, it would encourage work and saving, it would provide the labour market flexibility required by a modern economy, it would be
well targeted because people with higher earnings automatically pay back more than the value of the [Citizen’s Income] through tax
and it would
provide a basis that people could use to gain education and training, and to retrain during their working lives. 12
These political voices suggest that a Citizen’s Income is in principle politically feasible. All it would take would be for MPs, and particularly party leaders, to study the arguments and the evidence, to draw the obvious conclusion, to reach all-party consensus, to pass legislation, and then to implement the policy.
Instead, a constellation of ideas appears to be firmly lodged in the minds of politicians across a variety of cultures, including ours: that universal benefits make people lazy, even though the opposite has been shown to be the case, both in theory and in practice; that it is essential to means-test benefits, even though means-testing is known to be expensive, inefficient, and prone to error and fraud; that those on benefits need to be treated as households rather than as individuals, even though household claimant units generate complexity, expense, error, and fraud; and that as people on benefits increase their earnings their benefits should be taken away from them, even though such withdrawal of benefits is known to disincentivise labour market activity. A classic expression of the current political mindset can be found in a speech that the leader of the Labour Party made on 6th June 2013:
It doesn’t make sense to continue sending a cheque every year for Winter Fuel Allowance to the richest pensioners in the country. … When it comes to the decisions of the next Labour government it won’t be our biggest priority to overturn the decisions this government has made on taking child benefit away from families earning over £50,000 a year. 13
Ed Miliband offered no argument or evidence, and in the speech we find no consideration of the substantial administrative cost of sending the Winter Fuel Allowance to some pensioners and not to others as opposed to the very small administrative cost of sending it to everyone in receipt of a state pension; nor do we find any recognition of the fact that the wealthy pensioners about whom he was speaking are paying far more in Income Tax than they receive in Winter Fuel Allowance. On top of this, wealthy pensioners may be more likely to contributing financially to plans such as a pre-paid funeral, meaning they have less money free to spend on essentials like winter heating. Even if they are using a website like Discountcaskets.com to keep costs low, a funeral still remains very expensive and could put a strain on their finances.
When I explain a Citizen’s Income to a group of people, the normal experience is for the penny to drop for most members of the group – and you can sometimes watch it happen as furrowed browns turn to affirmative concentration – but for some members it never does. They simply cannot see that it would be both feasible and desirable to turn both tax allowances and means-tested benefits into unconditional payments, and by those means to pay to every citizen an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income. Means-testing is so securely lodged in their minds that no alternative proposition is able to dislodge it. Means-testing appears to be similarly lodged in the minds of Members of Parliament, except that in each generation there is a handful for whom the penny has dropped (of whom the late Malcolm Wicks was one). What appears to be happening is that Members of Parliament, and particularly ministers, are not doing their own reasoning. They are seeking evidence for public opinion in the print and other media, and they are finding articles and programmes in favour of paying more to poor people than to those less poor (‘because they need it more’), in favour of extracting benefits as quickly as possible as people’s earnings rise (‘because they don’t need it’), and in favour of imposing conditions on the receipt of benefits (to ensure that benefits recipients ‘deserve’ their benefits). Such articles and programmes may be a fair representation of public opinion because the vast majority of the public have not experienced an educational opportunity that might enable the penny to drop.
De Wispelaere and Noguera suggest that ‘psychological feasibility’ is prior to ‘strategic feasibility’ and that both are required for political feasibility. By this they mean that the public needs to be persuaded of the rightness of a new course of action before policy makers can be persuaded of it, and that both the public and policy makers need to be persuaded of the rightness of a new policy before it can be implemented. 14 There are of course counterexamples. Equalities legislation has often led public opinion, and the new behaviour generated by the legislation has helped to form new public opinion on a variety of equalities. Legislation to ban smoking in public places was ahead of the public mood in terms of its stringency, but public opinion soon followed. However, these counterexamples might not be relevant to the present case.
Starting with equal pay for men and women, and then moving on to other equalities legislation, most members of the public would have been clear about what the proposed legislation would achieve, and would have had some understanding of the reasons given for equalities legislation, even if they disagreed with it. Similarly, most members of the public would have been clear about what legislation to ban smoking in public places would achieve and would have had some understanding of the arguments for banning smoking in public places.
There were many people, particularly smokers, who were very against banning smoking in public areas. But once the legislation came in, public opinion started to change. It almost definitely led to people turning to things like Shiro tobacco-free pouches instead and quitting smoking altogether. Slowly, people realised that perhaps the legislation was a good thing. It has also led to vaping, which has become a popular alternative for smokers. It is a lot less damaging to our health as a vaporizer contains a small amount of nicotine compared to cigarettes. Not to mention, you avoid the by-products of smoking such as tar and carcinogens. They aren’t that hard to get hold of either, as a lot of stores have now been set up around the world, as well as websites such as Gourmet E Liquid.
These are both examples of what we might call ‘prohibitive’ legislation, because they prohibit part-icular easily identifiable types of behaviour. Legis-lation to establish a Citizen’s Income would be very different. It would be ‘positively innovative’, and would involve a transition from a current complex system to a future somewhat less complex one, rather than the easily understood prohibition of a single behaviour. Whilst the Citizen’s Income would be simple enough in its operation, transition from the current system to one based on a universal benefit could be far from simple. Members of Parliament would not find it easy to explain to their constituents either the proposal or its effects. The penny might not have dropped for them; and, if it had, then they might still find it difficult to enable it to do so for others.
Having said that, if a genuine Citizen’s Income were to be established, the benefits would be clear – as they were in the Namibian and India pilot projects. At that stage psychological feasibility would no longer be an issue. The problem is now. If psychological feasibility has to precede strategic feasibility, and if both are required before political feasibility becomes a possibility, then there really is a problem. However clear the benefits of a transition to a Citizen’s Income are to those for whom the penny has dropped, the penny has not dropped for the vast majority of the public, and there is little likelihood that it will do so in the near future for three reasons. Firstly, an educational process is required which begins with gaining an understanding of our current benefits system, moves on to an understanding of how a Citizen’s Income is different and better, and then moves to seeing how the transition could occur. Secondly, a Citizen’s Income is counter-intuitive because our intuition has for so long been formed by a benefits system characterised by means-testing. Thirdly, a transition that the public does know about – to Universal Credit – has so far been a disaster. Universal Credit is not universal, but members of the public might perceive the truly universal Citizen’s Income to be a kind of Universal Credit, and therefore decide that it must have all of the problems associated with Universal Credit.
Let us suppose for the sake of argument that public education has occurred, and has been of sufficient quality and depth to enable the majority of the British public to understand a Citizen’s Income and its benefits. Let us further suppose that ministers now find themselves carefully considering establishing a Citizen’s Income. Then another obstacle will appear.
Amongst proposed reforms of the UK’s tax and benefits systems that have failed to be implemented are the tax credit proposals 15 of the early 1970s, Brandon Rhys Williams’ proposal 16 for a Citizen’s Income in 1982, and his mother Juliet Rhys Williams’ similar idea 17 during the Second World War. Amongst proposed reforms that have been implemented are Family Allowance and then Child Benefit; 18 and amongst those about to be implemented is something like a Citizen’s Pension. 19 Three patterns emerge:
- The patterns that have changed the system, or that are likely to do so, have been for identifiable groups of people
- Those proposals that have changed the system have benefited from longstanding and widespread debate and a reasonable level of public understanding of what was intended
- Those proposals that have become Acts of Parliament are those that have not reduced the number of civil servants, and those that have not become Acts of Parliament would have done so. 20
The first pattern suggests that a Citizen’s Income ought to be implemented one demographic group at a time. Child Benefit is currently paid at a different rate for the first child, and equalising the rate for all children would give us a Citizen’s Income for children. Removing the link between the proposed Single Tier State Pension and National Insurance records would give us a Citizen’s Pension. Next could come a Citizen’s Income for young adults ( –this would facilitate university and other education). Then a Citizen’s Income for the over 55s (to ease the transition into retirement); and finally a Citizen’s Income for other working-age adults. 21
The second pattern requires a sustained and deep educational exercise by all possible means, of Members of Parliament, of others with an influence on the policy-making process, and of the general public. This will be a far from easy task.
The third pattern commits us to a significantly difficult task. The reason for the pattern is obvious. Civil servants brief ministers. If a proposed policy would increase the size of a department then a departmental head would be likely to brief in its favour, whereas a policy that might reduce the size of a department might generate negative or neutral briefings. A Citizen’s Income of almost any size would mean fewer households on means-tested benefits and therefore fewer benefits administrators; and the largest Citizen’s Income that could be financed by reducing tax allowances and means-tested and other benefits might significantly reduce the number of civil servants. We can therefore see that ministers thinking of exploring the feasibility and desirability of a Citizen’s Income might find their civil servants either advising against the proposal or amending it and therefore establishing something other than a Citizen’s Income. Anything more complex than an unconditional and non-withdrawable income for every individual would require additional civil servants to manage its regulations and yet more civil servants to administer it.
We have arrived at an understanding of the conditions that might make implementation of a Citizen’s Income possible: a substantial educational effort to enable the general public to see that a Citizen’s Income would be both desirable and feasible; a similar educational effort to enable ministers and Members of Parliament to develop the same view; a Citizen’s Income implemented one demographic group at a time; and ministers sufficiently convinced of the rightness of implementing a Citizen’s Income that they were able to listen to and then ignore any biased civil service briefings against a Citizen’s Income.
The conditions for implementation are perhaps both ‘additive’ and ‘conjunctive’: additive, like a tug of war team, because the strength of each element of the feasibility mix will enhance feasibility overall; and conjunctive, like a relay team, because the strength of the weakest element will determine whether implementation occurs. 22
We are asking a lot of the policy process: we are asking that a substantial and deep educational effort should succeed in changing millions of minds for which means-testing is intuitive; that Members of Parliament and ministers should give both time and sustained attention to a highly complex policy field; that policy makers will understand that the Citizen’s Income concept is non-negotiable and non-revisable: that is, that it is an unconditional and nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual; that ministers would be able to question negative briefings and maintain a steady course in the face of civil service attempts to complicate the proposal; and that interest and energy should be sustained as the different demographic groups receive their Citizen’s Incomes.
This really is asking a lot, and it is highly unlikely that it will happen. This means that however desirable and however financially feasible a Citizen’s Income might be, we might never see one implemented.
There is, of course, another possibility, and that is that policy-making does not always happen according to the logic that we have carefully constructed. We have looked back and found some patterns, and we have assumed that we can read off from them the future trajectory of tax and benefits policy. A brief look at one of the policies not implemented will help us to see that other possibilities might present themselves. The Heath Government’s tax credit plans of the early 1970s would have been implemented if a General Election had not intervened. It is true that the proposal was somewhat complex and would not have reduced the number of civil servants, but it would have represented a major change in the way in which Income Tax and social security benefits were understood. It was a political accident that meant that Tax Credits were not implemented and that means-tested in-work benefits have been normative for the past forty years.
Political circumstances could equally well generate a very different outcome, and, somewhat surprisingly, Iran might provide a useful lesson. When the Iranian Government decided to withdraw subsidies on food and petrol, and to compensate poor households for their additional costs by establishing a means-tested benefit, the administrative system collapsed and the only way to ensure that poor families had sufficient income to pay for the now more expensive essential commodities was to pay the benefit at the same rate to every individual. Iran had arrived at a Citizen’s Income by accident. 23 It is not beyond the bounds of possibility for the complexly computerised administrative systems for Universal Credit to collapse and for the only solution to be to pay a Citizen’s Income. Whilst a rapidly implemented universal benefit, paid for by abolishing means-tested benefits and tax allowances, would be likely to generate immediate losses for some households, these would not necessarily be large in comparison to losses sustained by large numbers of households in relation to recent cuts in benefit levels and entitlements.
The abolition of means-tested benefits, or the drastic reduction of households receiving them, would reduce the number of civil servants, but, in this age of austerity, we should no longer assume that the pattern discovered by surveying attempts at benefits reform during the last century will apply to this one. The implementation of the ‘small state’ is a permanent UK government project, even if more in theory than in practice, and the implementation of a Citizen’s Income could easily be justified on that basis as well as on the basis that there would be substantial administrative savings: a policy aspect always popular with Treasury ministers. Equally, a Citizen’s Income could be argued to be a step on the same road down which Universal Credit was already taking us, thus turning the exit from Universal Credit into a PR success.
Nobody can predict that such a scenario will occur, because accidents are precisely that: accidents, and therefore unpredictable. However, the scenario is a possible one; and there might be other possible scenarios that would require a government to react quickly on tax and benefits policy. Contingency planning is never unhelpful, and it might be that contingency planning in the direction of a Citizen’s Income is already in place, perhaps in preparation for the next financial crisis, so that quantitative easing can be paid out via a Citizen’s Income, thus increasing the consumption of goods and services as well as increasing the money supply. But if contingency planning is not in place then it ought to be. A useful mechanism would be a Royal Commission on income maintenance: a policy instrument that we ought to have seen considered before. Where a policy field is complex, where a long-term plan is needed, where an all-party approach is therefore required, and where multiple and changing factors need to be taken into account, a Royal Commission is a tried and tested means of considering the policy options available, of drawing together the necessary evidence, and of coming to a considered decision as to the best options. Little use has been made of Royal Commissions during recent history, but that is no reason for not considering the possibility in today’s particular circumstances. Whether a Citizen’s Income would be the best option for the reform of the tax and benefits system would be for the Royal Commission to decide. Whatever the outcome of the Commission’s research and discussions, a Citizen’s Income, and the ways in which it might be implemented, will at least have been carefully considered. A Citizen’s Income would in this way become a practical option; and, if one were to be needed in the midst of a crisis, then its implementation will already be a known quantity.
Good government requires nothing less.
Notes
1 Citizen’s Income: A brief introduction, Citizen’s Income Trust, 2013
2 Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013
3 www.citizensincome.org/MoneyForEveryone.htm
6 Malcolm Torry, ‘Can unconditional cash transfers work? They can’, Citizen’s Income Newsletter, issue 2 for 2009
5 Guy Standing, ‘Can Basic Income cash transfers transform India’, Citizen’s Income Newsletter, issue 2 for 2013
6 Press release, ‘The Basic Income Grant (BIG) is Government’s responsibility’, Basic Income Grant Coalition, Namibia, 1st March 2012, https://bignam.org/Publications/Press_release_March_2012_to_Government.pdf
7 Robert A. Levine, Harold Watts, Robinson Hollister, Walter Williams, Alice O’Connor, and Karl Widerquist, ‘A retrospective on the Negative Income Tax experiments: Looking back at the most innovate field studies in social policy’, pp 95-106 in Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis and Steven Pressman, The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, Ashgate, 2005
8 Christopher Monckton, ‘Universal Benefit’, pp 3-6 in Citizen’s Income Bulletin, issue 16, July 1993, Citizen’s Income Trust
9 Brandon Rhys Williams, Stepping Stones to Independence, edited by Hermione Parker, foreword by David Howells MP, Aberdeen University Press for the One Nation Group of Conservative MPs, 1989, pp 35-6
10 Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for national renewal, London, Vintage, 1994, pp 261-2
11 Meghnad Desai, ‘Borrie is no Beveridge. Citizen’s Income now’, pp 7-8 in Citizen’s Income Bulletin, issue 19, February 1995, Citizen’s Income Trust, p 8
12 Paddy Ashdown, ‘Breaking the poverty trap: A Basic Income’, pp 5-6 in BIRG Bulletin, no 10, 1989, p 6
13 www.labour.org.uk/one-nation-social-security-reform-miliband-speech#
14 Jürgen De Wispelaere and José Antonio Noguera, ‘On the political feasibility of Universal Basic Income: An analytic framework’, pp.17-38 in Richard Caputo (ed.), Basic Income Guarantee: International experiences and perspectives on the viability of Income Guarantee, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
15 Her Majesty’s Government, Proposals for a tax-credit system, Cmnd 5116, Stationery Office, 1972
16 House of Commons Treasury and Civil Service Committee Sub-Committee, The structure of personal income taxation and income support: Minutes of evidence, HCC 331-ix, Stationery Office, 1982, p.423
17 Juliet Rhys Williams, Something to look forward to, MacDonald and Co., 1943
18 Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, pp 22-7
19 Department for Work and Pensions, A state pension for the 21st century, Cm 8053, The Stationery Office, 2011
20 Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, pp 43-5
21 Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, pp 49-50
22 Ivan D. Steiner, Group Process and Productivity, Academic Press, 1972, pp 17-18
23 Hamid Tabatabai, ‘From Price Subsidies to Basic Income: The Iran Model and its Lessons’, pp 17-32 in Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds) Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, pp 67-9
by Aynur Bashirova | Feb 22, 2014 | Research
Luigi Narni Mancinelli, “Il Basic Income e il diritto di fuga dal mercato del lavoro” [The Basic Income and the right to escape from the labor market], Basic Income Network Italia. January 29, 2014.
ABSTRACT:
Secondo la definizione di Philippe Van Parijs e Yannick Vanderborght il Basic Income è “un reddito versato da una comunità politica a tutti i suoi membri su base individuale senza controllo delle risorse né esigenza di contropartite”[1]. Le caratteristiche di universalità, individualità e non condizionatezza dell’erogazione del reddito sono dunque alla base di questa proposta di riforma sociale e vanno spesso in aperta contraddizione con altre concezioni di reddito minimo esperesse teoricamente o applicate in alcune nazioni. Il reddito elargito dallo Stato o dal governo di una particolare regione può essere infatti condizionato dall’accettazione di un lavoro subordinato o di un percorso di formazione lavorativa e spesso viene visto come un momento intermedio prima del reinserimento del disoccupato nel mondo del lavoro. Per quanto riguarda invece la forma di universalità del reddito, nelle diverse legislazioni ci troviamo sovente di fronte a specifiche misure rivolte a fasce di popolazione, cui viene rivolta l’erogazione monetaria, individuate in base a condizioni economiche svantaggiate per povertà, mancanza di integrazione etc. La mancanza del requisito di universalità si accompagna così anche all’assenza del target di individualità: i sussidi possono riguardare famiglie indigenti le cui risorse economiche vengono preventivamente scandagliate a fondo fino a trovare condizioni di estremo disagio cui rivolegere un intervento di carità sociale riguardante l’intero nucleo familiare. Così come è stato concepito nei suoi caratteri essenziali, dunque, il Basic Income non ha trovato fin ora realizzazione compiuta e la diffusione di forme di reddito minimo, salario sociale, sussidio di disoccupazione, ha complicato il campo di analisi e di studio di questa proposta complessiva di riforma sociale confondendone i contorni di applicazione oppure considerandola come una prospettiva utopica di difficile realizzazione relegandola così nel campo delle proposte irrealizabili. Universalità, individualità e incondizionatezza dell’erogazione monetaria sono andate in secondo piano rispetto all’esigenza di tutelare sì il patrimonio di fasce sociali e famiglie, ma in primo luogo nell’ambito del controllo e della riorganizzazione del mercato del lavoro. La proposta di reddito minimo garantito si è dunque inserita anche nel filone di pensiero neoliberale in cui, permanendo il ricatto all’assunzione di un lavoro precario e sottopagato nel contesto di società con fortissime diseguaglianze sociali, si concepisce il sostegno al reddito come sostegno per la semplice riproduzione fisica della forza lavoro. In questo caso si manifestano somme particolarmente basse di erogazione monetaria, fortemente condizionate dall’accettazione di proposte di inserimento professionale spesso con obbligo di lavori socialmente utili e/o corsi di orientamento e formazione, e più in generale con un forte controllo sociale esercitato dallo Stato sui cittadini individuati come risorse da ricollocare nel circuito dello sfruttamento e della centralità dell’impresa privata. È noto come nella Scuola di Chicago in cui si è formato il pensiero neoliberista diversi economisti, tra cui Milton Friedman, abbiano sviluppato questo indirizzo teorico di una declinazione di reddito minimo che si allontana con decisione dalle caratteristiche del Basic Income individuate da Van Parijs anni addietro. Per comprendere appieno questa apparente contraddizione dobbiamo considerare l’attuale sviluppo del capitalismo, nella fase cosiddetta postfordista o neoliberista che si è consolidata a partire dalla fine degli anni settanta del secolo scorso, non semplicemente come un processo di ritirata dello Stato e della spesa pubblica destinata a fini sociali, ma più organicamente come una fase di ristrutturazione complessiva del mercato del lavoro e della subordinazione lavorativa alla luce dei nuovi processi di accumulazione e di valorizzazione: “Il neoliberismo non è semplice distruzione regolativa, istituzionale, giuridica, è almeno altrettanto produzione di un certo tipo di relazioni sociali, di forme di vita, di soggettività. Detto altrimenti, con il neoliberismo ciò che è in gioco è né più né meno la forma della nostra esistenza, cioè il modo in cui siamo portati a comportarci, a relazionarci agli altri e a noi stessi. Il neoliberismo definisce una precisa forma di vita nelle società occidentali e in quelle società che hanno scelto di seguire le prime sul cammino della cosiddetta “modernità”. Questa norma impone a ognuno di vivere in un universo di competizione generalizzata, prescrive alle popolazioni di scatenare le une contro le altre una guerra economica, organizza i rapporti sociali secondo un modello di mercato, arriva a trasformare perfino l’individuo, ormai esortato a concepire se stesso come un’impresa”[2].
Assieme alla crescita della tipologia postfordista dell’organizzazione della fabbrica, della diffusione di un’impresa più snella, agile, senza scorte di magazzino, con una produzione just in time in un contesto aperto di concorrenza, il lavoratore si è trovato sempre più spaesato e ricattabile, mentre le sue conoscenze pregresse, il suo bagaglio formativo viene sempre più utilizzato dalle aziende senza retribuzione. Se si investono anni e denaro in una formazione permanente, totale e infinita del lavoratore, spesso non troveremo che aziende disposte a sfruttare corsisti, stagisti, laureati che lavorano, quasi gratis, il doppio di altri lavoratori, ormai sempre di meno, assunti decenni prima con contratti a tempo indeterminato. Questo processo si intreccia fortemente con la svolta finanziaria dell’economia, con la forte e crescente finanziarizzazione dei processi produttivi e delle sorgenti di accumulazione del capitale, così come enormi sono le rendite e i trasferimenti di ricchezza ottenuti grazie allo sfruttamento delle economie esterne e della cooperazione degli individui cresciute al di fuori della subordinazione lavorativa. È chiaro dunque come il reddito minimo di inserimento proposto dai teorici liberisti si contrapponga ad una visione di Basic Income fondata sulla riappropriazione da parte dell’individuo di questa gigantesca accumulazione di denaro ottenuta gratis dal capitale grazie ad uno sfruttamento sempre più esteso e intensivo delle forme di cooperazione e comunicazione delle persone, del linguaggio così come della formazione della conoscenza delle singolarità, in una parola delle “soggettività”. La prospettiva della piena occupazione e di una politica economica che metta l’accento sul principio costituzionale della Repubblica “fondata sul lavoro” diventa sempre più inconciliabile con la sfida della creazione di un nuovo welfare che protegga tutte quelle fasce di soggetti non più tutelati dalla scomparsa e dalla ristrutturazione neoliberista dello stato sociale costruito con il vecchio compromesso fordista ormai saltato in aria: “di cosa si occupano i non occupati? E cosa se ne fa il capitale delle loro vite? I cosiddetti non occupati, tra cui bisogna annoverare un gran numero di lavoratori intermittenti, temporanei, occasionali, costituiscono il più grande se non l’unico laboratorio di sperimentazione e progettazione di nuovi servizi e attività culturali, sociali, politiche, nonché di attività produttive minori, in perenne conflitto con norme e regolamentazioni imposte da burocrazie nazionali ed europee che operano al servizio di corporazioni e poteri forti. Il tutto fiscalmente penalizzato nell’illusione, di incrementare il mercato del posto fisso. Per tornare a una formula più volte ribadita esiste una vasta cooperazione sociale produttrice di ricchezza, non riconosciuta in termini di reddito e di garanzie. Quanto alla seconda domanda, il capitale cattura a piene mani, trasformando in sua proprietà o in suo prodotto, procedimenti e risultati di questo insieme complesso di attività, avvalendosi anche di un apparato giuridico e contrattuale che spudoratamente lo agevola. Volendo dirla in maniera un po’ sfacciatamente provocatoria, tutti i discorsi sulla piena occupazione non fanno i conti con il fatto che la piena occupazione esiste già e si dà appunto in questa forma e con queste modalità. Si potrà certo obiettare che siccome i singoli e le collettività cercano sempre di tirare a campare, messa così la piena occupazione c’è sempre stata, ragion per cui questo discorso sarebbe privo di senso. Tuttavia mi sentirei di controbattere che in altre epoche e in altri contesti la massa degli esclusi vegetava in condizioni soggettive e oggettive di sostanziale passività. Non è certo questo il caso della “inoccupazione” contemporanea segnata da un attivismo evoluto e inventivo che produce indirettamente profitti, ma non riceve direttamente alcun reddito. Considerare dunque il reddito di cittadinanza, non come un ammortizzatore sociale, ma come retribuzione della partecipazione a questo processo di produzione della ricchezza costituirebbe la base dell’autonomia economica e politica dei singoli e non la sua negazione. La possibilità di sottrarre il proprio agire a una condizione di ricatto”[3]. Il reddito garantito non dovrebbe essere dunque vincolato al lavoro e strutturato esclusivamente in vista di una misera riproduzione sociale della forza-lavoro da ricollocare sul mercato con il fine di tenerla pronta alla sfida della competizione ma pur sempre ricattabile e sulla soglia mobile della povertà e dell’esclusione sociale. La società potrebbe maggiormente diversificarsi e crescere culturalmente procedendo aldilà della subordinazione lavorativa, oltre l’inglobamento di tutte le attività di creazione individuale e di cooperazione sociale sotto la rigida corazza della gestione salariale. Questa diversificazione potrebbe agire creando un circolo virtuso in grado di influenzare positivamente anche il mercato del lavoro garantendogli nuovi e più alti standard una volta apertasi una competizione positiva grazie al riconoscimento della cittadinanza di tutte queste pratiche, elaborazioni e produzioni alternative. Andrebbe quindi affrontato un cambiamento anzitutto dal punto di vista culturale che punti allo spostamento delle enormi risorse oggi destinate allo sviluppo delle imprese private, della concorrenza e del mercato, al campo dell’esercizio dell’autonomia dell’esistenza degli individui. Le criticità dell’applicazione del reddito garantito riguardano infatti principalmente il finanziamento della misura e il rapporto con il lavoro salariato. Il finanziamento riguarda scelte socio-economiche di fondo, come l’eventuale riduzione della spesa militare, una tassazione più equa ecc. Il rapporto tra reddito garantito e mondo del lavoro salariato è un processo complesso che andrebbe sì affrontato per gradi e in divenire, ma tendendo al superamento della totalizzazione del rapporto di subordinazione lavorativa. Il Basic Income potrebbe innescare un processo virtuoso che influenzerebbe il mercato del lavoro alzando gli standard generali. Ciò non toglie che si aprirebbero comunque delle grosse contraddizioni con il mercato e l’impresa privata che sarebbe però interessante poter verificare, approfondire e sviluppare. Usare la prospettiva di sostegno al reddito unicamente come mezzo per ricollocare i fuoriusciti dal mercato del lavoro nella posizione precedente fa perdere alla collettività un’occasione di crescita generale. Il problema va dunque posto prendendo di petto tutte le attuali ed egemoni obiezioni presenti nel dibattito pubblico rispetto la creazione di un reddito di esistenza sgnaciato dal lavoro analizzando l’obsolescenza di tutte quelle teorie che considerano parassitario l’uso del Basic Income per i non occupati e un limite per la crescita complessiva della società. Con una progressiva diversificazione delle forme di attività “potrebbe verificarsi un effetto complessivamente incentivante del basic income secondo la logica di quello che, osservando l’esodo di massa dei profughi dalla Germania est nell’estate dell’89, si potrebbe chiamare ‘il paradosso della Rdt’. Il paradosso è questo: se il governo della Rdt avesse concesso ai suoi cittadini il diritto ad andarsene, molti sarebbero rimasti. L’errore di non aver riconosciuto questo diritto fu una delle cause immediate della decisione di molti di fuggire illegalmente. Applicando questa logica al mercato del lavoro e al sistema garantito dal basic income, si potrebbe prevedere che il ‘diritto di partire’ indurrebbe molte persone a ritirare la loro forza lavoro dall’impiego formale, cosa che potrebbero permettersi data la sicurezza del basic income e la conseguente reale possibilità di scelta dell’impiego. Quei lavoratori marginali che sono rimasti sul mercato del lavoro per paura che uscire significasse non tornarci più, farebbero certamente questa scelta. Ma questo ‘diritto di andarsene’ verrebbe usato, in una misura che non
conosciamo, ma che difficilmente sarebbe irrilevante, anche per acquisire nuove abilità sociali e tecniche e per liberare energie e inclinazioni che faciliterebbero infine il ritorno volontario al lavoro salariato. Così l’effetto finale sarebbe, da una parte, un modello di vita più flessibile e fondato sulla scelta, e, dall’altra, una riqualificazione della forza lavoro, fattori che potrebbero entrambi concorrere a una nuova situazione di piena occupazione sulla base di un segmento di vita dedicato al lavoro formale notevolmente più breve per il cittadino medio”[4]. Si tratta dunque di pensare il Basic Income anche e soprattutto in funzione di questo diritto di fuga dalle maglie del lavoro subordinato e non come un mero inserimento in un modello di competizione globale che sta procurando danni incalcolabili anche dal punto di vista di sostenibilità ambientale. Tutte le produzioni nocive all’ambiente, alla salute, tutto l’obsoleto impianto industriale che provoca inquinamento e devastazione dei territori ha come unica alternativa sostenibile una sua riconversione basata principalmente sulla fine del ricatto della disoccupazione. Più in generale è la stessa nocività sociale della strutturazione del lavoro salariato che può essere messa in discussione solo con l’adozione del Basic Income.
Luigi Narni Mancinelli
Note
[1] P. Van Parijs, Y. Vanderborght, Il reddito minimo universale, Egea, Milano 2006
[2] C.Laval-P.Dardot, La nuova ragione del mondo. Critica della razionalità neoliberista, Derive Approdi, 2013, Introduzione
[3] M.Bascetta, Reddito di cittadinanza: una libertà fuori dal mercato, ilmanifesto 19 giugno 2013
[4] C.Offe, Un disegno non produttivista per le politiche sociali, in AA.VV. Tempo e democrazia, manifestolibri, Roma, 1997, p.105
by Guest Contributor | Jan 27, 2014 | Opinion
Max Sawicky’s post on the liberal case against a universal basic income (UBI) characterizes the rationale for UBI as poverty elimination at low overhead cost. While he’s right that this is one of UBI’s benefits, he misses its much larger goal. What distinguishes UBI from the anti-poverty programs we already have in the US is that it eliminates poverty through redistribution that is explicitly unconditional and universal—it goes to everyone, whether or not they work or are looking for work. Low overhead costs are simply a bonus of abandoning the means-testing and monitoring of work effort that are the foundation of all the programs Sawicky wants to expand.
The idea of unconditionality is counterintuitive. Work makes our riches possible, and all should contribute, if they can, to that work. UBI does not reject this principle of reciprocity, but challenges the priority of that contribution: should subsistence be conditional on work first, or should subsistence be guaranteed to all first, and work for anything more come after basic needs are met? Clearly, throughout most of human history, when life was dominated by scarcity of resources, the answer was the former. But why should that be the case in post-scarcity societies?
For some, the problem with unconditionality is not the fear of freeriding, but of abandoning efforts to provide meaningful and rewarding work for all. It’s easy to imagine the dystopic scenario in which millions are mailed monthly checks to stay home so we don’t have to create jobs for them, or provide childcare, or invest in the infrastructure required for a thriving economy. Just let the bankers do the work and pay the taxes that fund everyone else’s UBI. But that’s not so different from the welfare state we have now in the US—except that without the UBI, 50 million Americans live below the federal government’s wholly inadequate poverty threshold.
Advocates of UBI envision a society in which absolute poverty is eliminated and productive and rewarding work is defined and shaped by individuals, not the government. Anyone who wants more than the minimum provided by the UBI will need to work, but the UBI will give them what sociologist Erik Olin Wright calls “a permanent strike fund.” They’ll come to the labor market with leverage to negotiate better wages and working conditions for unappealing work, and with funds that make more rewarding but lower paying work feasible. Those who perform unpaid care or voluntary work will have an income without the government monitoring their performance in exchange for a stipend. Time spent on education and vocational training will no longer have to be weighed against earning an income to live on. Entrepreneurs will have a bit of venture capital with which to support themselves while they try out a business. Higher wages at the bottom of the wage scale will cause more automation of the most routine jobs, but the labor savings are shared with all through the UBI.
A utopian fantasy? Hardly—but a more democratic and pluralistic version of what we have now. Income inequality remains, but those at the bottom of the income scale have their basic needs met without having to prove their deservingness. Gender inequality remains, but women receive, on balance, a redistribution of income from higher earning men whether they work or not. Children go to school with full stomachs and warm clothes, and have more of a chance to use their education to improve their lot in life. Most importantly, citizens are no longer divided into groups vying for a bigger share of a stigmatized social assistance budget, but a unified force with the political clout to defend and expand the UBI. Individuals freed from the constraints of poverty help shape the contours of the economy through their inalienable and renewable economic “votes,” as they do in the political sphere. Like political democracy, it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternatives.
How do we get there? Not by expanding the programs Sawicky lists, which even if expanded and more generously funded will inevitably exclude some from coverage. Instead, we should push for a UBI modeled on the one he doesn’t mention but which happens to be the strongest anti-poverty program in the US—Social Security. Social Security is the closest thing we have to a universal benefit in the U.S. It’s not unconditional, but it’s inclusive eligibility rules mean that almost 90% of seniors are covered by it. Because it’s paid individually, it provides an independent income to spouses of covered workers even if they’ve never been employed themselves. Because it’s not means-tested, it doesn’t create a disincentive toward other forms of retirement savings or earned income. And because it’s nearly universal, it creates a powerful solidarity among its recipients that has successfully resisted calls for its defunding in the name of deficit reduction or “privatization”—unlike the fragmented, stigmatized, and politically powerless recipients of the programs Sawicky thinks we should expand.
The UBI should be universal, unconditional, individual, and untaxed. Income above the UBI should be taxed progressively, with steeper increases above median income. To more effectively target child poverty than a $10,000 adult-only UBI would do, the UBI should go to children as well and be pegged to the poverty threshold of a family of four—a minimum of $6,000 per person. To the extent that they pay lower benefits than the UBI, other programs can be eliminated and their budgets used to fund it. For those that pay higher benefits than the UBI, as Social Security does for many recipients, their budgets can be reduced to the supplemental amounts alone, with the savings used to fund the UBI. Additional funding can come from phasing out the $100 trillion in tax credits that go overwhelmingly to taxpayers with incomes far above the poverty line. And yes, we’d probably still have to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. But, as with the payroll taxes that fund Social Security, we’d know exactly where those taxes are going—to eliminate poverty.
Many on the right object to redistribution on any terms, but as Sawicky notes some on the right see UBI as the form of redistribution least disruptive to the market, and so prefer it to minimum wages, closed union shops, and employment stimulus programs that favor certain industries over others. This “market efficiency” aspect of a UBI could be the key to a bargain between the left and the right to guarantee all Americans economic security. It would be ironic if it turned out that the left was more attached to a punitive and stigmatizing welfare state than the right.
This article was written by Almaz Zelleke.
