by Kate McFarland | Apr 4, 2017 | News
Paul Basken has written an article about scholarly research on basic income for The Chronicle of Higher Education, a US-based news service aimed toward individuals engaged with higher education.
Despite concerns about job loss due to automation, and despite an increase in the popularity of basic income as a potential countermeasure, it is rare that university researchers in the United States seek (let alone obtain) funding for research projects on basic income. As Basken’s article points out, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the main federal agency sponsoring academic research, has not received a “surge in proposals for research on basic income” — nor has it made any strides to encourage such topics.
However, as Basken also notes, many scholars are themselves not sure what research could reveal about the implementation and effects of basic income, given the inherent limitations of experiments and simulations and the complexities of implementing the policy in practice.
Basken’s article features commentary from three scholars who have researched and written upon basic income: Michael C. Munger (Political Science, Duke University), Michael A. Lewis (Social Work, Hunter College), and Matt Zwolinski (Philosophy, University of San Diego).
Read the full article:
Paul Basken, “Universal Basic Income: An Idea Whose Scholarly Time Has Come?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2017.
Reviewed by Robert Gordon
Photo CC BY 2.0 Stewart Butterfield
by Michael Lewis | Apr 2, 2017 | Opinion
Written by: Michael A Lewis
As someone interested in basic income (BI), I read a fair amount about the topic. I read pieces by supporters and opponents, as well as those who might be considered more neutral. I’m often struck by the degree of uncertainty concerning implementation of BI.
A popular argument for BI these days is based on concerns about the possibility of mass technological unemployment. Some in the “tech industry” contend that BI will become necessary as automation replaces more and more human laborers in the years to come. This has led to a debate among economists and others regarding whether automation will result in a net loss of jobs (for humans) big enough to warrant the need for something like BI. Both sides of this debate bring evidence to make their cases. But in the end, we simply don’t know for certain if and when automation will lead to a net loss of jobs for us human beings.
Assuming BI might be implemented in a society which would still require a fair amount of human labor power, we’d like to know what impact BI would have on people’s inclination to sell their labor or, more commonly, “work.” A BI could affect labor supply in at least two ways.
One is that people who received an income they didn’t have to work for may be inclined to work less. The second possible effect has to do with how BI would be financed. If it were financed by an increase in income taxes, this could also reduce labor supply. The reason is that a large proportion of many people’s incomes are earnings, meaning that an income tax is largely a wage tax. A higher wage tax has two possible effects on labor supply.
On the one hand, such an increase could cause people to work less because with the higher tax (and all else equal) their take home pay is smaller than it was before, creating an incentive to work less. On the other hand, a smaller take home pay means one would have to work more than before to maintain their standard of living. This would create an incentive for people to work more not less. If BI were implemented, we have no way of knowing which of these effects would dominate the other.
Leaving the labor market (but still related to it), another area of uncertainty has to do with how people would spend their time, assuming they did reduce their labor supply. Opponents of BI worry that people would use their time “unproductively”, while proponents tend to argue that individuals would engage in more care work or pursue “self-actualization” through pursuing education, writing poetry, starting a business, and the like. But if we’re being honest, regardless of which side of the debate we’re on, we must admit that we don’t have much of an idea what the relative proportion of unproductive to productive activities would be, assuming we could even agree on how to categorize activities as unproductive or productive.
A third area of uncertainty is related to personal relations and household composition. BI could have an effect on who lives with whom, who marries whom, who has kids or not (as well as how many to have), etc. As a society, we obviously differ when it comes to our values about such matters, meaning we might differ on the desirability of BI. But we don’t really know for sure how implementation of BI would affect “family life.”
Now I’m not saying we’re completely in the dark when it comes to questions of BI’s effect on labor supply, use of non-wage time, etc. Economists, sociologists, and others can draw on theory to help us think through these matters. And, by this point, there’ve been several experiments/studies (as well as more recent “startup” studies) which offer a lens on what might happen if BI were implemented. But we should be careful not to overestimate how much help we can receive from such experts, as well as the studies that have been (and are being) conducted.
Considering the many BI experiments (as well as proposed ones) around the world, we need to be cautious about what lessons might be learned. The philosopher Nancy Cartwright, well known for her work in the philosophy of science, has a phrase that’s quite relevant to this discussion: “it works somewhere.” Cartwright frequently utters this phrase within the context of discussing randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the so called gold standard of empirical research in the social sciences. Her point is that even if a well-designed RCT shows that a policy works in one context, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work in another one. This is relevant to BI studies because they’re being conducted, or proposed, in a variety of different contexts. So if we find out that something works in India or Finland, that doesn’t mean it’ll work in Japan or the U.S. In the article cited above, Cartwright goes into great detail about why generalizing experimental findings from one context to another can be so difficult. For those interested in what we might learn from BI experiments, I think her work is quite instructive.
When engineers design systems, such as buildings, bridges, etc., they also must face uncertainties. To be double sure of the approaches that they take, many engineers tend to avail the services of engineering consultancy firms, so that they can rest easy knowing they are backed up by the same opinion. However, they don’t know for sure what loads the systems will end up having to bear, they don’t know if there will be earthquakes, they don’t know how forceful the winds will be, etc. One of the things engineers do to deal with such uncertainties is to include safety factors in their designs.
For example, suppose an engineer is designing a structure and wind, seismic, and other data indicate that it’ll have to bear a load of 1000 kg. Suppose also that the engineer wants a safety factor of five. Then the load which the structure should be able to bear isn’t 1000 kg but 5×1000 = 5000 kg. So a safety factor is a multiple used to increase the strength or robustness of a system beyond that which is thought to be required to account for uncertainty in what’s thought to be required.
Those of us designing policies don’t have the luxury of being able to use simple equations, which include safety factors, the way engineers do. But perhaps we should adopt a similar safety factor mentality. Implementation of BI would be a complicated undertaking, involving a great deal of uncertainty. Perhaps BI supporters should consider how to increase its robustness in response to labor supply reductions, as well as other unanticipated effects. I admit I’m not exactly sure how to do this. But I believe it’s something worth thinking about.
Michael Lewis
by Cameron McLeod | Mar 30, 2017 | News
Johan Nygren, a basic income activist, is currently exploring if basic income can be implemented using cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency are digital currencies whose value and number of units are regulated by encryption techniques, outside of any central banking system. Understandably, not everyone is going to have a clear idea as to what cryptocurrency is all about, but this is why sites like cryptoexchangespy.com exist. Doing a bit of research is better than doing none at all, especially when it comes to something as interesting digital currency.
If this is something that you are interested in then you can find out how to buy cryptocurrency here.
You might also have heard about Ethereum. Put simply, Ethereum is a global, decentralized platform for money and other applications. Using Ethereum – a block chain network – you can write code that controls money, and build applications accessible anywhere in the world.
Currently, cryptocurrencies can be used as a means of payment in various spheres. Additionally, freelancers who work in digital industries also accept cryptocurrency as a means of payment. If you’d like find out more information about becoming or hiring ethereum freelancers, the Freelance For Coins is a useful resource that can put you into contact with freelancers where you are.
A cryptocurrency-based basic income will be funded with taxes grown within a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. P2P is an architecture for building computer networks that’s focus is on equality and sharing among peers, each user consuming and supplying information to the network. Nygren’s experiment aims to use decentralized ‘swarms’ of users to distribute a basic income through what Nygren calls ‘dividend pathways’.
A dividend pathway is “the world’s first peer-to-peer financial security,” where every transaction opens up a pathway, to a global network of connected users. RES, Nygren’s crypto-currency, is then shared through a branching scheme with all who are connected to the pathways – those on the BitNation network. The branching scheme is analogous to our network of veins, pumping information instead of blood. With the growing interest in cryptocurrency continuing, this type of scheme will give more opportunities to businesses who wish to use cryptocurrency to pay employees. Business owners can check out these Interesting Bitcoin Statistics in 2020 to not only learn more about all available digital currencies but how they compare against bitcoin, before testing this new P2P model.
This model tests whether a network can electronically divert income to users, in this case using a small tax levied on financial purchases and exchanges made over a system called BitNation; the process is called Swarm Redistribution. Nygren writes that “the whole experiment is public, transparent, auditable, [and] includes a close-down switch in case a bug is discovered.”
BitNation, a Decentralized Borderless Voluntary Nation (DBVN), provides public services to its naturalized citizens. As a virtual jurisdiction, the main difference from traditional governments is voluntary allegiance to its constitution – membership is open to anyone and involvement limited only by the user. As a blockchain-based structure, government activities are transparent. Its mission, according to founder Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, is to “get rid of geographical apartheid” and offer “better and cheaper governance services.”
Nygren’s swarm redistribution theory assumes that ongoing transactions with the crypto-currency RES will infuse BitNation’s cybereconomy with a branchwork (think the blood analogy) of paid-forward value additions. This would mean extracting essentially a value-added tax (VAT) along the way and pooling a coffer for the basic incomes’ distribution. The model theorizes that growth is incentivized by the desire for personal return and altruism, or a desire to contribute to social resilience (more information can be found here).
BitNation’s current population of nearly five thousand users with roughly fifty thousand daily transactions involving the cryptocurrency ETH could eventually provide the structure for a basic income for its users.
(more…)
by Tyler Prochazka | Mar 27, 2017 | News
The Universal Basic Income in the Asia Pacific international conference was held at National Chengchi University (NCCU) on March 18. This was the first conference dedicated to universal basic income (UBI) focused on the Asia Pacific region. Scholars, activists, officials, and guests traveled from all over the world to participate in the event.
All livestream videos are available on the UBI Taiwan Facebook page, and a HD version will be available shortly on UBI Taiwan’s YouTube page.
Around 100 people participated in the event in person, including participants who flew from America, Switzerland, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and mainland China. There were nearly 1,000 streams of the Chinese-translation broadcast of the event, and there were over 1,200 views of the livestream videos on Facebook. A total of 16 different sessions were held, with over 100 questions posed to the UBI experts in-person and online. Furthermore, the event page has reached 35,000 unique viewers to date.
Enno Schmidt, leader of the Swiss referendum campaign, gave the keynote speech for the event: “Basic Income and Democracy.”
“The Asia Pacific UBI conference undoubtedly has been one of the historical steps in furthering the worldwide UBI movement, focused on the recognition of Asia Pacific, as well as unity and collaboration,” Schmidt said.
The event has been in preparation since November, when organizer Tyler Prochazka, an NCCU International Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies (IMAS) student and features editor of Basic Income News, received a grant from the US State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Alumni Development Fund along with James Davis, a junior from Columbia University. NCCU’s College of Social Sciences (CSS) later agreed to sponsor the event, and NCCU’s IMAS department provided additional assistance.
NCCU CSS Professor Ping-Yin Kuan provided the welcome speech for the event, where he discussed how he first learned about the idea of UBI while he was studying in the United States. His master’s thesis advisor was involved in the “Income Maintenance Experiment” in New Jersey, which tested a form of negative income tax in the 1960s and 1970s.
“As a student who came from Taiwan – at that time Taiwan was a relatively poor country – I was amazed by such a crazy idea. And I thought that only the US, a rich country, would come up with such a scheme,” Kuan said.
“After I became more familiar with issues of social inequality, I could see that it was not a crazy idea at all. The question that should have been asked then, and I believe should still be asked now, is why a country as rich as the US allows a significant proportion of its people to live below a basic decent condition,” Kuan expanded.
“Now Taiwan is considered a rich county, and we can certainly ask the same question here.”
Conference co-organizer James Davis prepared a documentary for the conference, meeting with prominent figures in finance, technology, and politics to discuss basic income.
“Universal basic income is the future of redistribution and welfare policy. It has the potential to alleviate global poverty and unleash an entrepreneurial spirit unlike anything we’ve seen before. These interviews explore the practical and ideological grounds of universal basic income, debunking the critics, and anticipating its challenges,” Davis said.
Sarath Davala, a researcher on the Indian basic income trial, presented on the “Transformative Power of Basic Income for India” via Skype.
“Universal basic income is the most radical idea of our contemporary times. It takes the discourses of democracy and poverty to the next level,” Davala said. He noted that UBI Taiwan “has created history by organizing the first regional activity in Taipei.”
“This conference is the foundation for future cooperation at the regional level, which is very much needed to take forward the basic income movement in each of the countries in the Asia Pacific region,” Davala said.
Ping Xu, coordinator for UBI Taiwan and co-organizer of the conference, presented on the feasibility of basic income for Taiwan.
“This is the first step for basic income in the Asia Pacific. It represents an awakening of human evolution toward traditional Asian culture and away from our current inhumane working standards,” Xu said.
Joffre Balce, secretary of the Association for Good Government in Australia, presented on “Rewriting the Textbook to Deliver Universal Human Dignity.”
“The first Asia Pacific Conference on Basic Income was a glimpse of how society can work together for a common vision — bold, innovative, diverse yet respectful of each other’s noble intentions, united in efforts and determined to realize each other’s vision for a society of equality in rights, the self-determination of the individual and the freedom to cooperate for a better society,” said Balce.
Ted Tan, the coordinator for research and information for UNI Asia and Pacific Regional, flew from Singapore to attend the event. He said he “hopes there will be another conference next year.”
“The conference was very interesting and it could have easily been extended for another half or one day. There is still much to discuss on the possibility of a universal basic income in this region, so I appreciate the inputs and sharing of all the experts in the same room,” Tan said.
Chung Yuan Christian University provided simultaneous Chinese translation for the event. Enzo Guo, a Taiwanese senior at Chung Yuan, led the group of translators.
“I felt so honored to interpret for those brilliant scholars with their ideas and findings. I benefited greatly by their talks. These are important matters that people living in Asia Pacific should know,” Guo said.
Musician Brandy Moore also provided her song “Just Because I’m Alive” for the conference and its promotional videos. Moore wrote the song after hearing about basic income in 2015 and performed it at a basic income conference in 2016 for the first time. In June, Moore will perform the song at NABIG 2017 in New York City.
“Being invited to put my song forward to be part of this recent basic income conference held in Taiwan was a wonderful additional surprise,” she said.
“Music reaches people on a heart level and it’s going to take both heads and hearts to make basic income a reality,” Moore said.
Purchases of Moore’s song will help fund basic income organizations after she recoups the funding to produce it.
Julio Linares, an NCCU student from Guatemala, had met many of the presenters at the BIEN Congress in South Korea, where he also presented.
“I argued how a Basic Income Fund (BIF) could work as a way of creating long-term investments whose profits are redirected back to people in the form of a monthly basic income while at the same time making the fund financially sustainable over time,” Linares said. “The attendees were not only from Taiwan but from different countries and they all showed great interest in the topic as it raised quite a lot of discussion.”
Petra Sevcikova, an NCCU IMAS student from the Czech Republic, organized the NCCU volunteers for the conference.
“After working in event management in Europe, helping to organize the UBI Conference in NCCU in Taipei was a new and extraordinary experience. I believe that the conference was unique and quite important for people interested in the basic income,” Sevcikova said.
Speakers included Gary Flomenhoft (University of Vermont, USA), Sarath Davala (India), Julio Linares (NCCU), Gregory Marston (University of Queensland, Australia), Joffre Balce (Australia), Munly Leong (Australia), Toru Yamamori (Doshisha University, Japan), Ping Xu (Taiwan), Enno Schmidt (Switzerland), Hyosang Ahn (Basic Income Korea Network), Cheng Furui (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), and Tyler Prochazka (NCCU). The abstracts for each presentation can be found here. A compilation of the research will soon be published online.
For Kuan, bringing these scholars to Taiwan will help to highlight the important issue of inequality, as many social welfare systems in the Asia Pacific are “not working effectively.”
“It is important to bring regional scholars to share knowledge about basic income and spark new ways to think about social security. This is particularly important, not just in Taiwan, but the Asia Pacific in general,” Kuan said.
Yamamori presented on “What Can We Learn From a Grassroots Feminist UBI Movement?: Revisiting Keynes’s Prophecy” via Skype.
“While I was able to attend only via Skype, I could still feel positive vibes and energy from the venue. I know Tyler, Ping and others made a huge effort to make this conference successful,” he said.
“Let me show my gratitude to them and participants, and let us go forward for an unconditional basic income together,” Yamamori said.
Guo said he is optimistic that the conference will have a big impact on Taiwanese society.
“By gathering the elites and people from different fields together and discussing with each other, I believe this conference has undoubtedly paved the way for the popularization of UBI in Taiwan,” he said.
When reflecting on the potential of the UBI in the Asia Pacific, Schmidt said it can bring together all people from all backgrounds, both in the Asia Pacific and beyond.
“The idea of an unconditional basic income for everyone must remain clear, which is regardless of any life circumstances, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. This idea does not exclude anybody, it does not fight against anything. The idea of UBI unites and connects people and restores our forgotten values,” Schmidt said.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 26, 2017 | News
A new documentary on basic income — Free Lunch Society by Austrian director Christian Tod — premiered in Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre on March 20, 2017, to a crowd numbering in the hundreds.
The 90-minute film covers a range of “highlights” of the basic income movement, such as (for example) Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend, Manitoba’s “Mincome” experiment, campaigns for guaranteed minimum income in the 1960s US, the 2008 basic income pilot in Namibia, Switzerland’s 2016 basic income referendum, and current concerns about automation. Along the way, it features interviews with prominent basic income proponents — including, among others, billionaire businessman Götz Werner (founder of the German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt), libertarian political scientist Charles Murray (American Enterprise Institute), venture capitalist Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures), Mein Grundeinkommen founder Michael Bohmeyer, Swiss referendum co-founder Daniel Häni, economist Evelyn Forget, and writer and entrepreneur Peter Barnes.
In an interview about the film (“Curiosity and the desire to improve the world”), Tod explains, “The film takes as its point of departure an ethical justification of basic income founded on the premise that natural resources belong to us all.” Tod’s musical selection — centered around the song “This Land is Your Land” — reflects this orientation toward the subject, as do his cinematographic decisions to include clips of natural scenery interspersed between the vintage footage and talking expert heads. (As he says in the same interview, “What might not come across quite so clearly in the completed film are elements which strike me as extremely important such as the countryside, the Earth, natural resources. I had wanted these aspects to be more prominent, but then the narrative would have suffered.”)
Tod has also acknowledged the influence of the science fiction series Star Trek: The Next Generation on his thinking about basic income and, eventually, the film: “It presents a society where there’s no money, where people only work because they really want to, and where they are driven by human curiosity.” Correspondingly, Free Lunch Society begins and ends with scenes from Star Trek.
About the interview subjects in his film, who were chosen in part to emphasize the political diversity behind support for basic income, Tod notes, “It’s interesting that they are almost all business people: owners of technology companies, CEOs of large or small companies, people who can afford to think about making the world a better place.”
Asked about the most surprising thing he learned while making the film — in an interview following the film’s premiere (see below) — Tod mentioned the discovery that “basic income was such a big thing in the United States in the 1960s,” tested in experiments and nearly voted upon.
Watch the Trailer
World Premiere Event
Most of Copenhagen’s Bremen Theatre 648 were filled at the world premiere of Free Lunch Society on Monday, March 20, 2017.
Director Tod states, “It was a fabulous evening in a tremendous location. It was very special to have the world premiere of Free Lunch Society in Copenhagen, because my film career started in this beautiful city 10 years ago, when I studied at Copenhagen university’s film department. The premiere on Monday was, so far, the peak of my career in filmmaking. Almost 650 people watching my vision and applauding, laughing and apparently liking it, is hard to top.”
The film’s world premiere was followed by short interviews with Tod and Bohmeyer, as well as a panel discussion with Uffe Elbæk (Leader of the Danish green political party The Alternative; Danish: Alternativet), Steen Jakobsen (Chief Economist at Saxo Bank), and Dorte Kolding (Chair of BIEN-Danmark). All three panelists were sympathetic to the idea basic income, although Elbæk explained that The Alternative was not prepared to endorse it — though they would be willing to pursue pilot studies, and though the party’s political agenda includes the provision of benefits to the poor “without specific control measures” (that is, without conditionalities like work requirements, similar in spirit to a basic income). Jakobsen advocates a negative income tax, as proposed by Milton Friedman, as a way to increase the purchasing power of the lower and middle classes and produce a more equitable distribution of wealth. Watch below (panel discussion and debate in Danish).
The world premiere was followed by several other showings in Copenhagen, including one which was held as part of BIEN-Danmark’s Annual Meeting (March 25, 2017), with showings in Austria scheduled in late March and early April.
More Information
Free Lunch Society Official Facebook page.
Jannie Dahl Astrup, “‘Free Lunch Society’: Øjenåbnende ørefigen til kapitalismen,” Soundvenue, March 20, 2017 (film review, language: Danish).
Thanks to Karsten Lieberkind for helpful information and reviewing a draft of this article.
Photo: Free Lunch Society promotional image from CPH:DOX.
