by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 13, 2014 | Opinion
By Marina Pasetto Nóbrega.
We read the recent article by Philippe Van Parijs suggesting a Euro-dividend for all in the EU. That would represent about 200 Euros monthly to each and everyone, unconditionally. And, he points out, this minimum basic income or citizen’s income can be supplemented with income from labor, capital or social benefits. The author calculated that the total expenses amount to 10% of the EU’s GDP. Recently the citizens of Switzerland petitioned their parliament to examine a proposal for a basic income for all adults, amounting to about US$ 2,800/monthly. This is a mighty sum but Switzerland is a rich country with a small population. Iran, among economic changes applauded by the IMF, introduced an unconditional cash transfer that benefits 90% of its population. We would spare the readers of this newsletter the arguments that Van Parijs aligned to justify the proposal as they are most likely familiar to supporters of the basic income idea.
What we want to discuss is the way to turn the utopia into reality. 10% of the GDP is a sum that will be a formidable barrier to implementation of the benefit. We draw from the discussions we are having in a Brazilian city where there is a Municipal Council devoted to devise a way to start a basic income in steps, as required (in Brazil) by the 2004 law that created the benefit but still awaits regulation(1). Our government, as almost every government in democracies, has a bureaucracy that takes care of requests from the unemployed or underemployed. In Brazil 13.9 million means-tested families are receiving help from the Bolsa Familia program. That amounts to about 40 million persons, nearly 25% of our population. We would argue that the easier first step to initiate an unconditional and permanent basic income for all Brazilians is to target the present Bolsa Familia beneficiaries. Just turn the present benefits permanent and unconditional. The poverty trap will be eliminated. The bureaucracy can now search for the remaining poor and families or individuals that fall into economic vulnerability. Those will receive the permanent minimum income. The existing government social security network will be active monitoring those that enter the “precariat”, moving them to the minimum income shelter. We would claim that such a strategy would also be more palatable and less costly to the EU residents.
We also would like to stress the importance of the minimum income not only as a basic human right but as a necessary measure if we want to improve the safety and well-being of rich and poor because want will increase social unrest and crime for all. It will grant people, amidst the modern revolution in the job market, time to wait for new opportunities that we still cannot foresee or get training to qualify for existing or emerging jobs. The right to frugality independent of work seems relevant when a lot of people pay lip service against excessive consumption. A better life, for those without other means except the basic income, will also boost, we hope, communal arrangements to lower costs for all involved.
The modern situation that adds urgency, in our view, to the implementation of a basic income has been analyzed by scholars and we would like to mention just two studies: Brynjolfsson and McFee(2) have shown that notwithstanding a continuous rise in productivity, the last two decades exhibit a marked reduction in job opportunities. This modern decoupling is due to developments like electronic computation, robotics and artificial intelligence. Job openings are being reduced in a very marked way. Frey and Osborne(3) released a very interesting study of 702 occupations, charting out the many that are in the road to extinction due to the modern trends mentioned. In the US the authors estimate that 47% of jobs are at risk of being automated within a decade or two. Also a fundamental psychological barrier exists and resides in the deeply engrained notion that income has to be linked to work. People will have to overcome that as we did in the recent past with slavery, torture and the rights of women and minorities, finally embracing solidarity in the economic realm.
Anywhere we could hasten the arrival of the basic income dream by taking the stepwise approach, using the existing social agencies to permanently move into the unconditional minimum income the vulnerable.
1 Our proposal was presented in BIEN news in 2012 as “A three-step proposal to get to a basic income for all in Brazil”.
2 Race Against the Machine – how the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McFee, 2011, Digital Frontier Press, Mass, USA
3 The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013,
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
We thank Jim Hesson for generously reviewing the text
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jan 3, 2014 | Opinion
Malcolm Torry, Money for Everyone: Why we need a Citizen’s Income, Policy Press, 2013, xiv + 300 pp, 1 44731 125 6, pbk, £24.99, 1 44731 124 9, hbk, £70
From the book:
The structure of the book
Following some notes on terminology and on graphical representation, chapter 1 sets the scene by asking the reader to imagine themselves trying to solve the financial crisis, to imagine some representative people trying to cope with our tax and benefits system, and to imagine themselves creating a tax and benefits system in a country without one. The second chapter offers a historical sketch, because it is helpful to know where we have been before we set off into the future; and chapter 3 discusses existing schemes similar to a Citizen’s Income and also some Citizen’s Income pilot projects. Chapter 4 discusses the changing labour market and the changing family in order to locate our discussion of benefits reform in its context, and asks whether people would be more or less likely to seek paid employment if they were in receipt of a Citizen’s Income; and chapter 5 establishes a set of criteria for a successful benefits system and judges both the current system and a Citizen’s Income against those criteria. Chapter 6 discusses poverty and inequality and asks whether a Citizen’s Income would tackle them; chapter 7 explores the notion of citizenship in order to decide who should receive a Citizen’s Income; chapter 8 asks whether it would be ethical to pay a Citizen’s Income; and chapter 9 explores a variety of political ideologies’ possible responses to a Citizen’s Income in order to discuss whether a Citizen’s Income is ever likely to happen. Chapter 10 asks whether we can afford a Citizen’s Income and discusses funding mechanisms; chapter 11 discusses a variety of other reform options, and some issues not tackled in the rest of the book; and a brief chapter 12 offers a summary argument for a Citizen’s Income. (p.viii)
A review by Professor Bill Jordan
This is a very important contribution to current debates about tax-benefits systems. In his carefully-argued and comprehensive examination of the case for and against Citizen’s Income, Malcolm Torry presents an updated and extended review of the state of play in the UK and worldwide. Even as some developing countries are experimenting with versions of the idea, ours seems as far from doing so as ever, despite its obvious advantages.
We are living through the most recent of a series of missed opportunities for the principle of state payments to all citizens to be accepted. Whereas the others (such as the introduction of contributory National Insurance benefits and National Assistance after the Second World War, and of Family Income Supplements for low earners in 1973) were innovations in income maintenance systems, the present one combines financial and fiscal crisis with the consolidation of means-testing and coercion through ‘Universal Credits’. As Torry points out at the start of the book, ‘money for everyone’ could have been an alternative approach to both the bail-out of the banks and the Duncan Smith reforms
The early chapters of the book set out the processes through which our present mix of universal, contributory and selective benefits was established, how universality as a principle was accepted in the case of Child Benefits, and how a CI scheme might be implemented (for specific groups first, or at a low initial level). There follow four chapters on criteria for a benefits system, demonstrating that CI scores well for coherence and simplicity, adaptability to changing family patterns, supplying incentives, efficiency and dignity, and appropriateness for a flexible labour market.
He analyses with care the issues of work motivation and the responsibilities of citizens raised by the proposal, acknowledging that prejudice and timidity have influenced political responses to the idea, even in the face of strong evidence. For instance, despite the finding from a CI experiment in a district of Namibia that people engaged more in work and education, the government still expressed fears that a wider introduction of the scheme would make people lazy. Yet even in the face of these barriers, CI has continued to gain wider attention.
Above all, these chapters show how what was originally seen as an outrageous idea, espoused by a handful of outsiders, has gradually come to be accepted by a wide range of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists and members of the social policy community. With impressive scholarship, Torry assembles the arguments and research findings by which scoffers and nay-sayers have been converted (or have converted themselves) over the past 40 years.
Finally, he demonstrates that all the major political traditions support goals that would be served by CI – individual enterprise for the New Right, equality and solidarity for Socialists, inclusion for One Nation Conservatives, personal freedom for Liberals, efficiency with justice for Social Democrats, and modernisation for advocates of the Third Way. It could also be introduced in affordable ways. So why is it still marginal to politics in the UK, USA and almost all of Europe?
Although Torry does not say so, the answer seems to be that – with capital in the ascendant over organised labour, and globalisation extending its strategic options – it is the disciplinary role of the state that all political regimes seek to uphold. Instead of improving incentives for work, enterprise and savings, they scrutinise and sanction those with low earning power; instead of enabling family formation, they police parenting; and instead of promoting equality, they divide and rule.
Malcolm Torry’s book shows that the introduction of a CI could be rational, ethical and efficient, if combined with other measures to promote sustainability and the common good. It could also be afforded under several different taxation regimes. Unfortunately, none of this makes it likely to happen, so long as power over societies is exercised for the benefit of the few.
Professor Bill Jordan, Plymouth University
by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 27, 2013 | Opinion
Danny Dorling, The No-Nonsense Guide to Equality, New Internationalist, 2012, 176 pp, pbk, 1 78026 071 6, £7.99
Dorling’s egalitarian tract is, as Richard Wilkinson suggests in his foreword, ‘multi-faceted and rich in insights’ (p.7). Throughout the book, countries in which inequality is greatest are compared with those exhibiting greater equality ( – Dorling is, after all, a geographer), and by the end of the book the deluge of facts and graphs has delivered the same message as Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s The Spirit Level: that inequality is bad for us, and as bad for the rich as for the poor. But there are some major differences between The Spirit Level and this book. Wilkinson and Pickett attempt to show by statistical methods that income inequality causes other kinds of inequality, and their passion lies under the surface of cool statistical description. There is little attempt at prescription. Dorling’s book, on the other hand, is a passionate denunciation of inequality in all of its forms, a somewhat utopian desire for greater equality, and a clear prescription of what is required.
It is of the nature of such committed essays that argument is cumulative rather than linear, and that is the case here. We are treated to a ‘multi-faceted’ approach, and what we might call a holdall of a book. We are told that we are going to experience a positive exposition of equality rather than a polemic against inequality, but in fact we are treated to frequent oscillation between the disbenefits of inequality and the benefits of equality. On a single page (for instance, p.53) we find wide sweeps of history, the evolution of public schools, and how religions evolve, and such diversity of material is far from unusual. This all makes for an unnerving ride, but it isn’t without its excitement. The book is divided into chapters: ‘Why equality matters’, ‘What is equality?’ ‘Winning greater equality – and losing it’, ‘When we are more equal’, ‘Where equality can be found’, and ‘How we win greater equality’. But each chapter is in fact a somewhat random selection of inequalities and what’s wrong with them, and of more equal countries and what’s right with them – including the final chapter, which contains a clear prescription preceded and followed by yet more material on inequalities and the need for equality.
None of this is a criticism. The book is a compelling read, and you finish it utterly convinced of the damage done by inequality, and of the necessity for greater equality – for equality defined broadly as ‘being afforded the same rights, dignity and freedoms as other people’ (p.41).
The prescription? The book contains numerous carefully researched and argued denunciations of the damage done by educational segregation ( – including a devastatingly cool description of how wealthier and more privately educated Bristol gets a lower proportion of its children into higher education than does poorer and less privately educated Sheffield), so we expect the final chapter to suggest that the abolition of private education, or at least the removal of its charitable status, would contribute to greater equality in the UK. But we don’t. Instead we find several pages of advocacy for a Citizen’s Income. (Dorling is right to suggest that children in the UK receive such a universal benefit, but mistaken to suggest that elderly people receive one – they don’t: they receive National Insurance and means-tested benefits, though they will receive something closer to a Citizen’s Pension if the recent Department for Work and Pensions consultation gives rise to legislation for a single tier state pension.) Dorling has previously been somewhat less convinced about the usefulness of a Citizen’s Income, but his passionate exploration of inequality, his longing for greater equality, and his reading of Callinicos, have persuaded him of both the desirability and the feasibility of an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income for every individual as a right of citizenship – though he remains well aware of the political obstacles in the path of its implementation.
I’ve called The No-Nonsense Guide to Equality a book. Yes, in some ways it is a book, but it might be better to call it sustained, well-argued and passionate journalism. Whether or not you find yourself sympathetic to the political stance represented by The New Internationalist, the publisher, if you are concerned about growing inequality and would like to see greater equality then you will enjoy this book and will find it an inspiration.
The publisher is to be commended on the price.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 20, 2013 | Opinion
Alberto Minujin and Shailen Nandy (eds), Global Child Poverty and Well-Being: Measurement, concepts, policy and action, Policy Press, 2012, xxxii + 591 pp, pbk, 1 847 42481 5, £28.99, hbk, 1 847 42482 2, £70
In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the first internationally agreed definition of child poverty:
Children living in poverty are deprived of nutrition, water and sanitation facilities, access to basic health-care services, shelter, education, participation and protection, and … while a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human being, it is most threatening and harmful to children, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, to reach their full potential and to participate as full members of society (quoted on p.3)
In 2007, UNICEF stated that
measuring child poverty can no longer be lumped together with general poverty assessments which often focus solely on income levels, but must take into consideration access to basic social services, especially nutrition, water, sanitation, shelter, education and information (also quoted on p.3)
In 2008, a conference, ‘Rethinking poverty: making policies work for children’, gave birth to a revived academic interest in the measurement and causes of child poverty. In 2009, Peter Townsend died. His early work on child poverty and his constant commitment to poverty’s measurement and abolition have been an inspiration to academics, policy-makers and practitioners, and to the authors of the papers published in this tribute volume.
The first part of the book finds that children’s human rights are frequently violated, and that economic growth is far from being a sufficient condition for the elimination of child poverty. The second part discusses a variety of methods for measuring child poverty, and finds that the multidimensional nature of poverty means that cash-defined poverty lines are inadequate on their own. The third part relates case studies on the development of multidimensional poverty indices; and the fourth part studies the causes of child poverty and a number of methods for eradicating it. Of particular interest to readers of this Newsletter will be chapter 18, ‘Utopia calling: eradicating child poverty in the United Kingdom and beyond’. Ruth Levitas tells the story of the UK’s Family Allowance, which evolved into Child Benefit, and shows how other rather different policies intended to reduce child poverty reduce the level of absolute poverty but do little or nothing to reduce relative poverty. She laments the proposal to means-test Child Benefit, shows how social polarisation is at the root of child poverty, and suggests that to increase the level of Child Benefit and establish a Citizen’s Income would provide a good basis on which to tackle the many aspects of child poverty. The fourth part of the book shows that economic growth is not a sufficient condition for abolishing child poverty, that tackling one deprivation at a time (for instance, sanitation) can make a real difference to levels of child poverty, and that a global study in fifty countries effectively combines quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a deep description of child poverty. The final chapter, by Peter Townsend, calls for an international financial transactions tax to pay for a global Child Benefit. This is classic Townsend: well researched, big ideas, and quietly passionate.
I have only one quibble: that an editor might have removed duplication, such as the similar discussions of the flawed ‘under $1 a day’ poverty definition in adjacent chapters: but such duplication is hardly unusual in a volume which started life as conference papers.
This is a brilliant book, and a most fitting tribute to Peter Townsend’s lifelong campaign to measure and eradicate child poverty. Now that we have some more adequate methods of measuring global child poverty, all we need to do is abolish child poverty, and then measure it again to see if we’ve succeeded.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Dec 13, 2013 | Opinion
Gaby Ramia, Kevin Farnsworth and Zöe Irving (eds), Social Policy Review 25: Analysis and debate in social policy, 2013, Policy Press, 2013, xii + 324 pp, hbk, 1 44731 274 1, £70
As Gaby Ramia’s introduction to this twenty-fifth annual collection suggests, the choice of papers is evidence of an increasing internationalisation of the Social Policy Association (SPA). The contributions are from Germany, Denmark, the USA, South Korea, Australia, Israel, and the UK. The first part of the volume tackles some particular policy issues faced by the UK’s coalition government, chapters in the second part are papers delivered at the 2012 SPA conference, and the third part is on the theme ‘work, employment and insecurity’.
All of the chapters address important questions: Is it possible to reconcile policy designed to address fuel poverty with policy designed to address climate change? Does marketisation make the NHS less of a universal public service? Will marketisation of pensions, social care and housing for elderly people breed greater inequality? Does the ‘social cohesion’ agenda mean that we no longer notice racial disadvantage? Can social policy initiatives generate corporate interconnectedness and therefore corporate power? What kind of welfare states are Israel, China, Japan and South Korea developing? Does unemployment have personal or structural roots? Do current EU regulations sufficiently address the two-tier labour market? How do labour market activation policies affect social citizenship? Is subsidised childcare a route out of the unemployment and fertility traps? Can female employment make up for public spending cuts that hit low income families the hardest?
Two chapters will of particular interest to readers of this Newsletter. Jeroslow asks whether the US’s Earned Income Tax Credit is palliative or cure, and concludes that quality childcare, improved education and training, improved community services, and more family friendly employment practices are required if the next generation is to escape poverty and the US is not to become an even more unequal society. Equality of opportunity requires a bit more equality of outcomes if it is to work.
Even more relevant is Paul Spicker’s evaluation of Universal Credit. Because it is means-tested, and its administration is complex, it will go the way of all other means-tested benefits. It will adapt to the conditions in which it is applied and will become more complex; old rules will be recycled into the new benefit; and for those sections of the population for whom the benefit works least well the system will be separately managed, thus recreating yet another mosaic of benefits.
Even if Universal Credit fails spectacularly, it will lumber on. (p.19)
Sadly, Spicker does not suggest a solution. He could have done.
