“You should not discuss Basic income in Russia. You should not implement pilot projects in the country,” a representative of the Russian government preaches to Russian citizens. He is an adviser to the Analytical Center of the Russian government.
On November 14, 2018, a conference was held in Moscow: “Basic Income: is it a prologue to social policy of the 21st century?” In the best traditions of «Russia Today», the English version of the conference was framed as: “Basic Income as a prologue to social policy of the 21st century”. Thus, Russian society was initially forced to doubt the need for implementing basic income.
The organizers for the conference were: The Institute for Social Policy of the Federal State Institute, National Research University’s Higher School of Economics, the European Dialogue group, and Russia’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation. This is one of the first international conferences on basic income in Russia. The Russian public was very interested in the experience of other countries.
A panel discussion was moderated by Peer Teschendorf, the Director of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Russia. The speakers for the panel included: Miska Simanainen, KELA (Finland) – “Experiment with basic income in Finland”; Giuliano Bonoli, University of Lausanne (Switzerland) – “The 2016 Swiss referendum on basic income”.
Presentations by Russian speakers gave new insight from the Russian point of view. These speeches included: “Basic income and goals of reforming social assistance systems”, “Transformation of compulsory pension insurance: the next paradigm is the unconditional basic income”.
In general, the conference ended like the old Soviet joke: “Whatever Russians do, it always turns into Kalashnikov`s AK-47“.
Participants brought many arguments in favor of basic income, but the organizers made the opposite conclusion: Basic income is not necessary for Russia. The organizers argued it is better to increase targeting of social support; in authoritarian regimes, since the president is always “good,” something like basic income is “not necessary”! This was the expected conclusion from a state-run university and “experts” dependent on the state budget.
“Experts have already moved far away from a primitive understanding of basic income as a guaranteed payment to all members of society regardless of the level of their income, employment, health status, and other factors,” Russian organizers said.
Solovyev Alexander SM “Basic Income Russia Tomorrow” spoke in favor of the need for the widest and most open discussion of basic income in Russia, as well as consideration for Russian pilot projects. Experimentation is essential to grasp the truth. The world’s support of basic income is constantly growing: US presidential candidate Andrew Yang, former US President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla founder Elon Musk and many other prominent figures from across the world have expressed interest and support in UBI.
Solovyev emphasized that BIEN and “Basic Income Russia Tomorrow” consider universalism and unconditionality as the main principles of basic income.
We would like to believe that Russian citizens, the scientific community and government officials will understand the importance of basic income for Russia. Basic income is really “a prologue to social policy of the 21st century”. Only the implementation of basic income will provide an opportunity to reduce social tension, eliminate social inequality, ensure equal rights for citizens, reduce poverty level and corruption in the country.
For Russia of this century, UBI is an essential policy.
Rebecka Le Moine. Picture credit to: SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)
The Member of the Swedish Parliament (MP), and Green Party representative Rebecka Le Moine has submitted, on the 30th of November 2018, a motion for the deep investigation of basic income in Sweden. Rebecka, a 28 years old ecologist particularly dedicated to natural conservation issues, is a member of both the committees on Taxation and Environment and Agriculture.
The motion itself doesn’t go into a large detail about basic income itself, although it does provide a firm justification to pursue with deeper studies related to it. For instance, it refers to John Maynard Keynes’s predictions of a 15-hour working week, and the generalized usage of automation to replace most repetitive and/or too demanding (or dangerous) jobs. It also names Martin Luther King, particularly his voicing on eradicating poverty through the introduction of unconditional cash transfers. The most notorious basic income experiments around the world – Namibia, Finland, Canada, India – are also mentioned, as a way to contextualize the motion and show-reel some of the advantages of basic income (on an experimental setup).
The motion also draws on a human-rights approach to basic income, by referring to the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. Concretely, it appeals to article 22, where it says that all members of society shall have the right to a dignified life, according to each country’s capacity. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are also referred to, since these call for poverty eradication and equal rights to financial resources for all people.
On a more personal level, the motion justifies studying basic income deeper on the experimental fact that people get more creative and less risk-aversive when given unconditional money. It also testifies for the relation between freedom and civility, democracy and conscious environmentalism. More secure and less needy people are also more amenable and generous. It goes on to add that unconditional money equates to a power shift from society’s main institutions – governments, corporations, churches, ONG’s – to the individual, who gets a higher ability to say no to oppressive work and life conditions, or yes to tasks or life paths which are not sufficiently valued nowadays. That, of course, leads to major disruptions in the labour market and generalized social constructs.
As for financing, the motion swiftly mentions international prized economists who affirm basic income is affordable. That affordability can come from cost savings, with the reduction or elimination of certain conditional social benefits, together with increased taxes on the extraction of natural resources, carbon emissions, fortunes and on the financial sector.
More information at:
[in Swedish]
Rebecka Le Moine, “Basinkomst”, Motion till riksdagen, Sveriges Riksdag, November 2018
The Concluding Conference of the German Research Foundation-funded research team “Landnahme, Acceleration, Activation. On the (De)-Stabilisation of Modern Growth Societies” and the Second Regional Conference of the German Sociological Association will be held in Jena from September 23 to September 27, 2019.
Even as the scars left by the economic crisis began to heal, societal division and polarization are rampant, and there is reason to believe that the “Great Transformation”, conceptualized by Karl Polanyi as “a period of profound change, most likely including the abandonment of dominant growth patterns, forms of production, and lifestyle that have been maintained over decades” is occurring.
The double conference in Jena wants to address where such “journey” will bring us and who should set its course.
Event Program:
23 September: opening evening with Branko Milanovic and others.
24 September: presentation and discussion of research findings from the Jena Centre of Advanced Studies, the general theme is “After Rapid Growth”, the main topic addressed are the “contours of future post growth societies”.
25 September: main topics of discussion will include global finan-cial markets, class and social structure, sustainability, gender relations, migration and flight, mobility, labour relations, and social movements.
26 September: individual examples of alternative development options.
27 September: the topic of digitisation, and thereby a key future project of neo-capitalist expansion will take centre stage.
“The conference seeks to provide a platform for ‘Experimental Utopistics’. The well-founded (case- based) debate around diagnoses of time and distinct future trajectories of society shall take place not exclusively among sociologists, but in an interdisciplinary forum and enriched by the expertise from social practice. In this sense, the formal-organisational frame of a double conference is part of the attempt to test possibilities and limitations of such sociological utopistics, to explore, as well as question, its usefulness.”
Basic Income is a radically different and yet elegantly simple notion that has been around for decades: all citizens should have an income and be allowed to maintain their dignity, simply because they are citizens in a society that is prospering. In social policy terms, this idea can be put into action by giving unconditional cash payments to citizens. In the 60s and 70s, there were several long-term Basic Income policy experiments in the USA and Canada. The goal of these experiments at the time was to see if giving people money would be a disincentive to workforce participation. In the end, there was only a very small reduction of work participation among the subjects. In the USA women worked fewer hours per week, an understandable consequence is given that there were on average 4 children per family in the study group. Young men in Canada reduced their work participation, but high school completion rate increased, with stipends enabling the pursuit of higher levels of education. Furthermore, there was an increase in divorce rates, which was the main motivator to take BasicIncome off the table at the time, but looking back seems like it was not such a bad result, Basic Income was shown to empowered women in difficult situations to be able to exit those situations.
BasicIncome has recently returned to vogue, and Canada was, until recently, conducting an experiment in the province of Ontario, led by the of the Liberal government. It was a pilot program guaranteeing an income to 4000recipients in the region an and was supposed to last three years, but it was abruptly canceled in July 31st 2018, by the newly elected Ford administration. There have been many reactions to the cancellationof this pilot program, including a class action suit filed by fourLindsey residents, represented by lawyer Mike Perry. The Basic Incomerecipients in this class action are arguing that they “made plans to improvetheir lives when they signed up for the pilot in April last year, providing thegovernment with detailed personal information to be approved and expecting thepilot to run its three-year term.” It also seems like a breach of basic socialresearch ethics and complaints have been filed to Veritas, the company the previous government hired to ensure ethical standards are metin the conduct of research involving human beings.
On the aftermath of the cancelation, and as a reaction to it, photographer JessieGolem, also a recipient in the experiment, started a portrait series named Humans of Basic Income, depicting photos of Basic Income recipients displaying placards with their stories handwritten on them. We spoke to Jessie about her experience as a recipient of the Ontario Basic Income trial and about her own experience as a recipient and her perspective on the Basic Income pilot that gave rise to her portrait series.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background?
I
grew up in the small town of Hanover, Ontario. I’m quite lucky and privileged
that I’m actually quite close with my family and had a stable childhood. My
parents are still together, and I grew up in the same house and attended the
same elementary school and high school. We were not rich, but we were always
provided for, and my childhood was happy, stable and peaceful. I went to school
at University of Waterloo, majoring in Religious Studies. I was also quite
religious at the time and lived at a bible college in Kitchener, but I don’t consider
myself religious anymore, and actually have an article published on the
Huffington Post on the reasons behind that decision. Later, I moved to
Hamilton, and while in Hamilton I went to school at George Brown College in the
Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counselling and Advocacy program. I explored a
number of careers, including youth pastor, piano teacher (I’m a classical
pianist) and social worker, but I currently work as the Operations Manager at
Photographers Without Borders, and hoping to expand my career as a
photographer, storyteller, and writer.
What was your work life like before Basic Income?
I’ve had numerous jobs in my life. I have worked as a cleaning lady, I’ve worked in retail, I’ve ran kids programs and day camps and worked as a dog walker. I’ve always worked/volunteered for not-for-profits in different capacities my entire adult life. Prior to receiving Basic Income I was working as a dog walker in the mornings/afternoons, teaching piano in the evenings, and in the time in between, working at Photographers Without Borders, and working to book photography projects and grow my own freelance photography business. I had no free time. I often wouldn’t be able to get home to cook myself dinner, and I’d often find myself up until late in the night working on projects and applications.
What is Photographers Without Borders?
Photographers Without Borders (PWB) is an international non-profit that amplifies the stories of grassroots organizations all over the world by sending volunteer photographers and videographers to document the work they are doing. The organization is able to receive this footage to build their own capacity, while PWB also brings awareness to these issues through a robust social media, a print magazine and online magazine, and a video series. I have volunteered at PWB for two years, and we are on the brink of realizing some tremendous growth which would expand our capacity as an organization, and potentially offer paid positions to staff. BI gave me the time to devote to PWB full-time in order to realize that vision. Losing BI means I will have to reduce my capacity at PWB.
How did your plans get foiled by the cancelation?
I had plans to work full-time at pursuing photography and building my business to a point where it’s self-sustaining, as well as develop my capacity at PWB and help to grow the organization. I will now have to return to having multiple jobs.
Even though it was canceled, do you think that there were positive consequences for you personally from having participated in the program?
Yes. I have now experienced what living and pursuing photography full-time feels like, and I’m very excited about this life, and don’t want to return. I have used the cancellation to pursue a portrait series, and I believe this experience has made me bolder, and less afraid of taking risks in order to succeed. I threw myself into the portrait project without a lot of thought, andI’m lucky for all the miracles along the way that has kept this project alive. I’m less afraid of the consequences, and more passionate about amplifying the stories of the people I have met on this journey, who have become friends.
What do you say to critics who accuse you and others in the project of being “parasites”?
I believe this kind of dehumanizing language is extremely dangerous and opens up the opportunity for violence. With language such as “parasite” it strips a person of their humanity, saying they are only human if they contribute to the economy financially. If they are unable to do so, they aren’t human, they are parasites. In history, when dehumanizing language is used against a group of people, it allows for the justification of violence, because this person is seen as “the other” or “less than human” and therefore less of a person than the one holding the prejudice, and this allows for violence. It’s this dehumanizing language that has, historically, caused genocide and holocausts. Furthermore, this was a pilot project, and even those opposed to BI would benefit from the results of the project, so they can use the facts and data obtained to justify their opposition. And 70%of the people on the pilot project had/have jobs, myself included. Anyone who wasn’t working wasn’t doing so because they were lazy but do to physical and mental disabilities that prevented them from working.
Do you think a pilot that included more income levels and a more gradual take back rate could avoid this accusation?
I’m not sure. I think the stigma against people in poverty is only really growing, especially in this area where political views between the left and right are becoming so far divided. You still see name-calling and dehumanizing language used to describe people of opposing political views, and you see this from both liberal and conservative-minded people. It would be interesting to see what a pilot focused on a wider range of income could do and how it would affect people. I did like that Ontario focused on low-income people, because it was a study attempting to address and come up with a solution to a social service system in Ontario that I now know is deeply broken, and keeps people in poverty. It would be interesting to see a pilot focused on a wider range of incomes, however. A multi-faceted, nuanced approach would be really great to see, where different income levels in different areas, and different types ofpilots are examined. We do see this right now – there are Basic Income studiescurrently taking place in small communities and pockets all over the world.
What do you think is the main purpose of the pilots?
There are so many purposes for the pilots, but one of the bigger ones I see is that we need to examine the future of economics in our society, as the rise of AIand technology changes the future of work, and in many cases, increasingly replaces the need for human work. This is an economic change as big as the Industrial Revolution that will be realized in our lifetimes. Humans don’t need to work in a factory if a robot is doing the work, online banking has replaced the need for bank tellers, self-serve check-outs in grocery stores and kiosks in fast food restaurants have replaced cashiers, thus many industries which were so heavily reliant on human work are increasingly no longer needing humans. The question of how one works, and how one derives an income and contributes to the economy is a tremendous question to ask – it is imagining a new world. Increasingly, the issue of climate change and globalization will also affect the future of economics. A Universal Basic Income is just one idea, but it’s worth examining. Right now we are only in the stages of speculation, but research and pilot projects would be able to drive the conversation forward, answering important questions while unearthing new ones. The pilots can absolutely measure the cost benefits – how much money is saved in healthcare costs if people have access to good healthy food and don’t develop long-term health problems? What is the cost benefit if a person is avoiding committing crimes and the ensuing consequences because they have all of their basic needs taken care of? And I think it’s important to analyze different models of Basic Income because the economic needs of communities all over the world are vastly different from one another. I think what a Basic IncomeProgram in Ontario looks like can’t and shouldn’t look like what a Basic Income Program would look like in another country, or even in another part of Canada. Different areas have different economic needs, which is why I’m glad to see so many projects taking place all over the world that are trying out different models of Universal Basic Income.
In your opinion, was the pilot working in getting people to improve their situations, including your own experience?
Having a Basic Income improved my life. Everyone I’ve talked to were improving their lives, and these improvements were small, but noteworthy steps to living better lives out of poverty – lives with dignity. Small things like the ability to afford to buy new clothes, or buy healthier food at a nicer grocery store, or be able to pay bills on time. The amount was small – if someone wanted to use Basic Income as a disincentive to work, they could, however, they would not be living a nice life. It was enough to get a leg up out of poverty – move into safer housing, get a better job, and live better lives, contributing to the economy. The cost of poverty on a person’s mental wellbeing is staggering – the amount of mental energy it takes to survive will actually reduce a person’s IQ. If all their mental energy is concerned with how they will pay the next bills, where they will find food, how they will pay for health care, etc. there is no time for one to dream of bigger pursuits. I saw Basic Income buying people that precious time. To give that to someone, and then take it away with no warning, and little information, and no reason based in fact, is simply reprehensible.
*
The Basic Income movement is still going strong, despite the Ontario Pilot’s cancelation. In Canada, activists are fighting to take the pilot to a Federal level, and to finish the research that was started. At the time of the cancelation, there was no data analysed by the pilot, all we have are the stories of the recipients as told in Jessie’s portrait series and on a website called Basic Income Voices. These stories are powerful and provide a window into how Basic Income can bear positive, life-changing benefits for its beneficiaries. The future is here and the time to explore policy solutions is now.
By Amy King, in collaboration with Basic Income Waterloo Region
Basic income is currently a hot topic in Canada. From debates across the political spectrum of a basic income and reminders of the success of Manitoba’s Mincome experiment in the 1970s, to the cancellation by the Progressive Conservative (PC) government of Ontario of the previous Liberal government’s basic income pilot, “basic income” is the subject of lively discussion among Canadians.
While this widespread attention is welcome, it has also raised the concern that the discussion of a “basic income” often conflates two distinct concepts: a basic income (BI) and a negative income tax (NIT). The result of this conflation is that the concept of BI has been marginalized in current social and political discourse, as the term “basic income” is co-opted to refer to an NIT and not a basic income as advocated for by the basic income movement. This co-optation creates confusion around which concept one is referring to when they use the term, “basic income” and, perhaps more damagingly, leaves the basic income movement without a term to capture the concept they so passionately believe in and advocate for.
NIT is referred to by Parijs & Vanderborght (2017) as a “cousin” of BI. Briefly, a basic income is distributed upfront to all individuals in the same amount, without an obligation to work or otherwise contribute something in return and without income or means testing (Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017). A negative income tax, in contrast, is distributed within an income tax scheme and is determined based on the level of income of the individual or household (Parijs & Vanderborght, 2017). A negative income tax, therefore, differs from a basic income in important ways: It is not necessarily universally distributed; it is not necessarily distributed to individuals; it is not distributed in the same amount to all individuals; and finally, the amount may be determined through income testing.
Distinguishing between the BI and NIT is, therefore, crucial, as each has a clear, and often disparate, vision of the implementation and ends of a “basic income.” Advocates of a basic income push for the implementation of a basic income program that is universally and exclusively individually distributed. Universal distribution ensures that recipients will not be stigmatized or privileged based on income or employment and does not require individual administrative oversight by public employees. Individual distribution allows recipients to manage their own financial affairs. While an NIT has poverty alleviation as its goal and it may well succeed in achieving this, BI has a robust vision of socio-economic justice that aims toward liberty and equality for all.
Ontario’s so-called basic income pilot followed a negative income tax model. Participants were between the ages of 18 and 64, with an income below $34,000/a for an individual, and $48,000/a for a couple (Ontario Basic Income Pilot, 2017). The pilot followed a tax credit model, so that single participants were guaranteed $16,989, less 50 percent of any earned income and couples were guaranteed $24,027 per year for a couple, less 50 percent of any earned income (Ontario Basic Income Pilot, 2017). The scheme implemented during the pilot therefore differed from a basic income in that it was not universal, distribution was not exclusively individual, and it was income tested.
Another example of this co-optation occurs in Mark Gollom’s article for the CBC, “Basic income finds support on right as ‘most transparent’ form of redistribution” (2017, April 25). As indicated by the title, Gollom (2017, April 25) reports support from the right for the Ontario Liberal government’s NIT trial and discusses the championing of the concept of an NIT by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
In this article, Gollom (2017, April 25) offers a useful outline of arguments from the right for an NIT, which may be considered by some a “welfare” program more amenable to supporters of left-leaning economic policy. However, it also offers a helpful example of the conceptual blurring that occurs around the term “basic income”. The terms “basic income” and “negative-income tax” are employed often, but the article’s focus is a negative-income tax—there is no mention of support for a basic income. If someone unfamiliar with the distinction between the concepts of a BI and an NIT were to read the article, they would conclude that an NIT scheme is a basic income scheme. This is conceptually misleading—an NIT is not a BI—and it results in the marginalization of the concept of a basic income in the current debate.
It is evident then that there are important philosophical and political differences between BI and an NIT that are obscured when the term “basic income” is employed indiscriminately. Indiscriminate use of the term “basic income” is also problematic because it has resulted in co-optation of the term to refer to an NIT. This marginalization and co-optation of the term “basic income” is problematic for many reasons.
First, in Canada, as we’ve seen, NIT currently serves as the default against which basic income programs are measured. The argument is made that the differences between an NIT and a BI are negligible, or that they do not make a substantive difference. The argument is also made that an NIT is more politically feasible than a BI. These factors, along with NIT’s support from vocal advocates, has positioned NIT at the forefront of the discourse around a basic income. However, the discourse does not often refer to an NIT as an NIT. Instead, an NIT is referred to as a “basic income”, and even sometimes, a “universal basic income” (for example here). Because the concept of a BI has been absorbed in the discourse into the concept of an NIT, BI advocates struggle to describe and argue their case.
Second, when we envision a just society, where people are not prevented by socio-economic barriers from realizing their potential, where people do not face insurmountable obstacles to breaking the cycle of poverty and where people are not discriminated against, oppressed or stigmatized because of socio-economic factors, it is clear that only a BI holds this transformative socio-political promise. Why not measure proposals against a vision of a society worth striving for, rather than ignoring the differences between an NIT and a BI and limiting our vision to considerations of political feasibility? BI’s transformative potential is obfuscated when NIT-based proposals are referred to as BI proposals and the discourse centres around these NIT-based proposals. The potential of BI is dismissed and marginalized from the discourse.
Third, because the language to describe a BI has been assimilated to an NIT, BI advocates must resort to using clunky and obscure terms such as “demogrant” to describe the concept, or else engage in lengthy explanations to describe what could otherwise be summed up in the term “basic income.”
Fourth, internationally, the term “basic income” is still used to refer to a universal, unconditional and exclusively individually delivered basic income. Because of the co-optation of the term “basic income” in Canada to refer to an NIT, there is a discrepancy between the understanding of the concept in Canada and in the rest of the world. This not only creates confusion, it can create a sense of deception in supporters of a basic income when they learn about a “basic income” pilot in Ontario, where the basic income is not universal, unconditional or exclusively individual. These supporters may question their involvement in the movement when the basic income they advocate for is so different from what is implemented in a “basic income” pilot.
This is not to underestimate the importance of the NIT concept to the basic income movement, nor to set it up in opposition to BI. Because of their appeal across the political spectrum and amenability to current income tax schemes, advocacy for, and implementation of NIT schemes, may be a crucial step toward realizing the aims of the basic income movement. NIT schemes are considered by Parijs & Vanderborght (2017) to be the most appealing of basic income’s cousins because they do not exclude people who do not perform paid work from being recipients, offering a step forward in terms of liberty and equality, while also reducing the stigma against people who do not have paid employment.
Distinguishing between BI and NIT is critical at this time as support for and dialogue around the idea of a “basic income” has reached critical mass. The hope is that clarifying the distinction between the two concepts will unite supporters of both negative income tax and basic income to form an inclusive movement based on their mutual recognition of overlapping aims. The strength in unity is especially critical now as a bulwark against current and future government policies that target and punish the least well-off in society.
Lowrey, A. (2018, July 13). Smart money: Why the world should embrace universal basic income. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved from: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-smart-money-why-the-world-should-embrace-universal-basic-income/
Ontario Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (2017). Ontario Basic Income Pilot. Retrieved from www.ontario.ca/basicincome.
Parijs, P and Vanderborght, Y. (2017). Basic income: a radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP.
Participants brought many arguments in favor of basic income, but the organizers made the opposite conclusion: Basic income is not necessary for Russia. The organizers argued it is better to increase targeting of social support; in authoritarian regimes, since the president is always “good,” something like basic income is “not necessary”! This was the expected conclusion from a state-run university and “experts” dependent on the state budget.
