by Kate McFarland | Jan 20, 2017 | News
A Parliamentary session on universal basic income (commonly known in the UK as “citizen’s income”) was held at the University of Birmingham on January 12, 2017.
This session had the status of an “inquiry”, a formal call for information on the topic of citizen’s income, in the form of an oral evidence session to the Work and Pensions Committee of the UK Parliament.
While this is not the first time in recent history that citizen’s income has been discussed in the UK Parliament (in September 2016, MPs debated the topic in the House of Commons), it is the first event of its status as an oral evidence session, at which selected experts were called to address questions from a cross-party committee of MPs.
Seven panelists took part in the session, selected by the committee on the basis of their background and interest in the basic income (and in part on the basis of the results from a request for participants released in October 2016). During the event, each panelist was given time for opening and closing statements on basic income, with about an hour allotted for addressing questions and concerns from the MPs on the committee. Questions focused on general information about basic income, its relationship to the existing welfare state, and arguments for and against it.
An article by André Coelho on the content of the oral evidence session in forthcoming in Basic Income News.
The entire session can be viewed here:
Panel Participants
• Louise Haagh (Reader at the University of York and Co-Chair of BIEN). Haagh supports a basic income as part of a system of progressive reforms.
• Annie Miller (Chair of Citizen’s Income Trust and founding member of BIEN’s affiliate Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland). Like Haagh, Miller supports a basic income, but only in conjunction with other benefits. Specifically, she believes that separate housing and disability benefits are needed in addition to a basic income.
• Becca Kirkpatrick (Chair of UNISON West Midlands Community Branch). Kirkpatrick agrees with Haagh and Miller that basic income should be adopted as part of progressive reforms (cf. her union’s 20-point manifesto, which includes a proposal for a basic income “micro pilot”).
• Ben Southwood (Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute). Southwood is not only on the viewer’s right of the first three panelists but also the political right: he supports a basic income or negative income tax but only as a replacement to the majority of the UK’s existing welfare system.
• Peter Alcock (Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham). Alcock opposes basic income, which he describes as “such an appealing idea that it’s too good to be true” (referencing his 1989 article “Unconditional benefits: misplaced optimism in income maintenance”). He believes that, in the current system, demands for a citizen’s income are distractions from more pressing issues.
• Declan Gaffney (independent political consultant; policy advisor to the previous Mayor of London). Like Alcock, Gaffney believes that universal basic income is “too good to be true” — which, as it happens, are the precise words used in the title of a piece he wrote on the topic for The Guardian after Finland announced its pilot plans in late 2015. According to Gaffney, basic income is a useful “thought experiment” but not practically feasible or necessary.
• Andrew Harrop (General Secretary of the Fabian Society). Harrop endorses a related policy of “individual credits” for adults in the UK (cf. his report for the Fabian Society published last year); he stresses, additionally, that basic income and similar policies should be viewed through the lens of tax reform.
Photo: University of Birmingham at twilight, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Samuel George
by Kate McFarland | Jan 17, 2017 | News
Juliana Bidadanure, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, has designed a graduate seminar on the philosophy of basic income, which she is currently teaching for the winter term.
According to the official course description, the seminar will address questions such as the following: “[I]s giving people cash no strings attached desirable and just? Would basic income promote a more gender equal society through the remuneration of care-work, or would it risk further entrenching the position of women as caregivers? Would alternative policies be more successful (such as job guarantees, stakeholder grants, or a negative income tax)? How can we test out basic income? What makes for a reliable and ethical basic income pilot?”
The seminar will analyze and critique basic income from multiple perspectives in political theory, including feminism, liberalism, republicanism, communism, and libertarianism. Initial readings include classic works by Philippe van Parijs and responses from his critics. Subsequent sessions will address contemporary philosophical work on basic income, as well as potential alternatives, such as job guarantees. Additional topics include empirical work on the health (and other) effects of basic income, the role of automation in motivating basic income, and basic income in relation to gender and racial justice, among others.
Explaining why she was inspired to develop the course, Bidadanure says, “It has been my dream for a while to teach a class on the Philosophy of Basic Income. First, because I am committed to the idea that everyone has a right to an income and because I think that UBI deserves serious treatment; second, because I think it is a great lens through which one can teach Political Philosophy. There is great writing for and against basic income from within pretty much each and every school of political thought. And so my idea was to introduce students of a variety of disciplines to a broad range of writers in political philosophy by focusing on UBI. Given the recent interest in Basic Income in the US, including by computer scientists, engineers and economists, I thought that the timing was right to launch the class!”
On February 8, a special panel on basic income experiments will be held in connection with the seminar.
The panel will feature guests Guy Standing (Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London; BIEN co-founder), Elizabeth Rhodes (Research Director of Y Combinator’s basic income experiment), and Joe Huston (Regional Director at GiveDirectly). Standing, Rhodes, and Huston will speak about basic income research in (respectively) India, Oakland, and Kenya. The event will be presented as a roundtable discussion and open to the public. More information on this event is available here.
Reactions from Students
Although housed in the Department of Philosophy, the seminar spans topics of interest to students in many disciplines. The seminar group is constituted by 10 enrolled participants as well as a further 10 auditors, comprising students of philosophy, political science, psychology, economics, computer science, engineering, and business.
Asked about his interest in the seminar, one participant, a PhD student in Economics, remarks, “Basic income is such a hot topic, but I’ve not come across much rigorous academic thinking on the topic, in any discipline. I now discover there is a whole bunch in philosophy, which I was unaware of and which is really exciting!”
Commenting on his reactions after the first session, he adds, “It’s awesome that the class is about a third economists, a third philosophers, and a third computer scientists – it seems like the venue for a truly exciting exchange of views; and the arguments for and against basic income are so much richer and more diverse than this economist expected!”
Another student in the seminar, Sage, is currently working towards a masters in Symbolic Systems while also finishing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Her interest in the topic derives from her work in the technology sector:
“My masters thesis is a work of political philosophy analyzing the responsibility of tech companies to help those in poverty. I am interested in Universal Basic Income because it has grown increasingly popular in the US due to the fear that one day all of our jobs will be completed by robots. I am interested in exploring the other reasons for Universal Basic Income and determining if it is a viable choice in the U.S. given our trajectory in the tech sector. I was impressed by how diverse our class was by region, interest, and background. Having the opportunity to discuss topics in basic income with students so different from me is a fantastic opportunity to round out my research.”
Anusha, a graduate student in Computer Science says her love for data structures (especially the top view of binary tree) made her focus on natural language processing and computer vision. She became interested in the seminar due to her background in AI:
“I was really interested in this seminar because Universal Basic Income has been receiving a lot of attention lately, especially in the Computer Science and AI communities, due to the potential impacts of automation on the future of work. There have also been a lot of discussions around the joint responsibilities of Silicon Valley and policymakers to help those whose jobs are most at risk. I’m really excited about this seminar because it addresses Universal Basic Income from several different perspectives, and I’m eager to learn about the various arguments for and against UBI from those standpoints.”
Nishith, an undergraduate senior in Computer Science who works on computer vision and reinforcement learning, became interested in UBI following a discussion of the economic impact of self-driving trucks and President-Elect Donald Trump’s emphasis on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. He is excited by Bidadanure’s seminar, adding, “I was surprised to learn that discussions about UBI need not revolve around automation (as they do in Europe) and had a great time talking about the potential benefits and pitfalls of this proposed policy [at the first class meeting].”
Dr. Bidadanure, who holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of York, has research interests at the intersection of philosophy and public policy.
She has written on the theory and practice of equality, including, in particular, age-group justice and what it means to treat young people as equals. She has written on the specific arguments to give a basic income to young adults as well as on hybrids of basic income and basic capital.
Bidadanure plans to teach an undergraduate course on basic income at Stanford in the next academic year. She is also working to launch a basic income research initiative at Stanford as part of the Center for Ethics in Society in 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan.
Information and photo provided by Juliana Bidadanure.
by BIEN | Jan 16, 2017 | News
Councilors of the small Ontario town of Smiths Falls voted on December 19 last year to reject participation in its province’s basic income pilot, to the objection of residents and the town’s mayor. A petition requesting a re-vote is currently circulating online. The story begins, however, in 2008.
That year The Hershey Company shuttered its Canada operations, at the time based in Smiths Falls, largely for cheaper Mexico-based labor. This exit of the area’s biggest customer precipitated the same by other businesses, and although the ensuing purge of jobs merely reflected a manufacturing decline already underway in the province, the disappearance of five hundred positions at Hershey’s alone, accounting for nearly 6% of the town’s population, catalyzed especially forward-looking pain. That year the town operated at a surplus of C$11.2m, and by the town’s most recent reported fiscal year, its once budget excess had trudged through increasingly tight leverage to a deficit of C$1.3m (albeit improved since 2013). Today the town struggles with unemployment above the national rate, and a third of children live below the poverty line.
Given also an aging population and petering labor force – per census data the town’s median age increased by 2.1 years in the five years leading up to 2011, and the overall population declined by 2% – it could be in the interest of Smiths Falls’ residents to entertain a basic income system. Indeed the petition created by resident Carol Anne Knapp has so far gathered 113 supporters, with a goal of one thousand. This is despite the council’s three-two vote, with two councilors absent, against mayor Shawn Pankow advocating to Ontario’s finance minister for participation in the program. Pankow has meanwhile expressed interest in holding a public meeting on the topic this month, health officials in tow.
A prominent councilor, Dawn Quinn, cast one of three “nay” votes. According to Jordan Pearson, writing for Motherboard, her vote was at least partly informed by her credo of frugality, stating that “folks sit around in Tim Hortons all day instead of looking for jobs, and they should consider buying a tin of Tim Hortons coffee to make at home instead of buying a cup.” On that point Pearson continues, “[Quinn added] they could consider shoveling snow to earn some extra money.” Similarly conveying Quinn’s underlying sentiment, Kate Porter quotes her in CBC News: “They need to be able to learn how to take that money and stretch it […] we need more of that kind of thinking.” So it appears the belief that basic income causes squander was, at least for one decision maker, a reason for the council’s vote outcome.
There is, however, some evidence from a bordering province that suggests this perspective is dogmatic, as reflected in Knapp’s petition letter requesting that a “new vote be based on science and evidence.”
Nearly forty years ago, Dauphin, a similarly small town in the Canadian province of Manitoba, underwent a five-year minimum income (dubbed “mincome”) experiment. Mincome was also similarly basic income-lite. Rather than a true guarantee, which is regardless of preexisting income status, mincome subsidized only those poor enough and was reduced for those who earned above a threshold. Likewise, Ontario’s pilot makes whole those earning below a set threshold. Even so, the experiment provides refutation to Quinn’s apprehension of lethargic congregations at Tim Hortons.
Evelyn Forget (credit to: Ecocide Alert)
According to Evelyn Forget, an economist at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Manitoba Research Data Centre, primary earners in Dauphin worked only marginally less within the five-year study, and much of the other reductions in labor force participation was comprised of women who extended maternity leaves and male high school students who simply stayed in school rather than work. Additionally, hospitalizations, in particular for mental health problems, dropped significantly (nearly 9% across the board) and would alleviate the burden on healthcare programs today.
Quinn acknowledges, though remains unpersuaded by, the Manitoba findings and is further dissuaded by cost – a concern currently aggravated by budget shortfalls. She protests that Smiths Falls became financially saddled after a 1970s investment in low-to-moderate income (LMI) housing, giving rise to her concern about opting into another government-borne program. A ten-year housing plan published in 2014 by Lanark County and Smiths Falls, however, notes that 74% of the county’s dwellings requiring major repairs were constructed prior to 1971. Coupling two observations then – 60% of LMI housing was developed under the program to which Quinn is referring; and renting in lieu of owning has been on the rise since Hershey’s departure – the 1970s investment appears to have provided an arguably necessary safety net.
Expenses, furthermore, reflect precarity when business output, curbed by economic disempowerment of consumers, constrains municipal revenues. In pursuing a conservative bottom line, rejecting basic income has a potentially truncating effect on the top, and budget woes thereby persist. On this, councilor Lorraine Allen, one of two “yea” votes, says the proposal would enable residents to “shop more, buy more groceries, perhaps be more involved in things that they couldn’t before.” Hence her vote for the program.
Still, the short-lived nature of the pilot is consistent with another of Quinn’s concerns: that a pilot implemented, then taken away, could prove negligibly meaningful. In the town’s 2015 operations approximately C$2.4m was spent on social and family services. Tucked inside these costs were, in addition to unspecified uses, assistance to the elderly, childcare and the social housing expenses which Quinn resents of the 1970s. If the Ontario program follows the recommendation by former senator Hugh Segal (a monthly allowance of C$1,320), the combined cost to eligible individuals could perhaps exceed the town’s existing social and family services expenditures. This mainly reinforces the need for cooperation between municipality and province-level governments to realize success from basic income. Eating the full burden, what Ontario offers is more generous than that. But in order for such a program to live past a test phase, the council of Smiths Falls would first have to heed the needs of its residents – and try.
Thanks to Genevieve Shanahan for reviewing this article.
Cover photo by wyliepoon.
More information at:
AreaScore, “Smiths Falls unemployment,” 2016.
Carol Anne Knapp, “Smiths Falls council reverse the decision regarding basic income,” Care2 Petitions, December 21, 2016.
City-Data, “City data of Smiths Falls,” 2011.
Evelyn Harford, “Basic income pilot project a no-go for Smiths Falls town council,” InsideOttawaValley, December 20, 2016.
Jesse Ferreras, “Ontario basic income should be $1,320 per month, adviser says,” The Huffington Post, November 4, 2016.
Jordan Pearson, “Why a struggling town voted against a basic income,” Motherboard, December 22, 2016.
Kate Porter, “Smiths Falls residents fight for guaranteed income pilot project,” CBC News, December 22, 2016.
Lanark County, “Lanark County and the town of Smiths Falls ten year housing and homelessness plan 2014-2024,” 2014.
Sarah Gardner, “On the Canadian prairie, a basic income experiment,” Marketplace, December 20, 2016.
Statistics Canada, “Census subdivision of Smiths Falls, T – Ontario,” 2011.
The Canadian Press, “Ontario floats idea of guaranteed minimum income to ease poverty,” CBC News, March 14, 2016.
Town of Smiths Falls, “2009 consolidated financial statements,” 2009.
Town of Smiths Falls, “2015 consolidated financial statements,” 2015.
by Stanislas Jourdan | Jan 16, 2017 | News
The European Parliament will vote on a report calling on the European Commission and all EU member states to “seriously consider” basic income in order to address the economic consequences of automation and artificial intelligence.
On Thursday 12 January, European Parliament’s committee on Legal affairs (JURI) adopted a report on “Civil law rules on robotics” which considers the legal and economic consequences of the rise of robots and artificial intelligence devices.
According to the report, since “robots, bots, androids and other manifestations of artificial intelligence (“AI”) seem poised to unleash a new industrial revolution, which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched, it is vitally important for the legislature to consider all its implications. There are many tools claiming to be the best tool for machine learning and if these keep developing can artificial intelligence become a real threat to human job roles?
It reads further: “the development of robotics and AI may result in a large part of the work now done by humans being taken over by robots, so raising concerns about the future of employment and the viability of social security systems if the current basis of taxation is maintained, creating the potential for increased inequality in the distribution of wealth and influence”
To cope with those consequences, the report makes a strong call for basic income. “A general basic income should be seriously considered, and (the European Parliament) invites all Member States to do so.”
The resolution is based on a report prepared by the Working Group on Legal Questions Related to the Development of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, established in January 2015.
This legislative initiative is however not legally binding. If adopted in February by the European Parliament’s full house, the EU Commission would be invited to present a legislative proposal but it can also refuse to do so.
The Commission is not entirely unaware about basic income. Last year, Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen said she would follow with great interest the outcomes of the basic income experiments currently underway in Finland.
The rapporteur of the report, Socialist MEP Mady Delvaux, said she was satisfied that basic income was included by the JURI Committee at this stage.
However she expressed doubt that the idea would survive the plenary vote. In a statement published on the website of the Socialist and Democrats group at the European Parliament, the MEP explained:
“As social democrats, it is urgent that we look at new models to manage society in a world where robots do more and more of the work. One idea adopted in this report is to look at a universal basic income – where everyone would receive a wage from the government whether they are in work or not.”
Mady Delvaux MEP
Barb Jacobson, Chair of Unconditional Basic Income Europe said, “We are very pleased Mme Delvaux mentioned basic income in this report, and we hope that Parliament and the Commission will give it serious consideration along with rules about the use of robots. The benefits of automation should be enjoyed by all members of society, not just those companies which directly benefit from it.”
UBI-Europe urges European basic income supporters to get in touch with their MEPs to make sure this aspect of the report reaches the Commission.”
“Whether automation ends up destroying a larger proportion of jobs or not, however, incomes are already increasingly insecure, and in most parts of Europe wages have stagnated or fallen. While many member states are starting to take basic income seriously, the need is urgent. The EU could help lead the way with its own Eurodividend,” added Nicole Teke, Secretary of UBI-Europe.
The European Parliament is expected to vote on the final report on the week of February 13.
Pictures CC European Parliament
by Genevieve Shanahan | Jan 15, 2017 | News
Kate McFarland, a News Editor for BIEN, has been awarded a $24,000 grant by the Economic Security Project to focus on this work throughout 2017.
Of the grant, McFarland has the following to say: “As a reporter on the basic income movement, my primary task is to present accurate information in a clear and objective manner. With the movement gaining incredible momentum in world plagued by clickbait headlines and sensationalized reporting, this task is more important than ever. It’s a challenging and demanding job, and increasing my knowledge, building new connections, and perfecting my skills as a reporter has been an ongoing process for me since I took the plunge into writing for Basic Income News in early 2016. With the Economic Security Project grant, I’ll be able to further expand the scope and depth of my reporting, and hopefully help to bring other lasting improvements to the important work being done by Basic Income News and BIEN.”
In addition to McFarland’s role as a writer and editor for Basic Income News, she is a member of the Executive Committee of the Basic Income Earth Network, and the Secretary of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network .
The Economic Security Project describes itself as “a two year fund to support exploration and experimentation with unconditional cash stipends.” The project uses donations to fund academic research, basic income campaigns at both state and local levels, and cultural projects related to economic security.
The Economic Security Project is co-chaired by Natalie Foster, an expert on the future of work with the Institute for the Future, Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, and Dorian Warren, a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and President of the Center for Community Change Action. Notable founding signatories include Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator (whose proposed basic income research we have covered here), Scott Santens, a well-known writer and advocate for basic income, and Andy Stern, President Emeritus of the Service Employees International Union (whose recent book on basic income we have covered here), among many others.
McFarland covered the launch of the Economic Security Project for Basic Income News here. As a founding signatory herself, she was also invited to participate in a special series of blog posts honoring the launch. Her “call to fellow supporters” (available here) makes the case for a multifaceted approach to investigating basic income, as well as clarity of understanding of what empirical studies can tell us and what values they imply.
McFarland graduated from the Ohio State University in 2015 with a PhD in Philosophy and a master’s degree in Statistics. She taught philosophy for a year before leaving to concentrate on her work for BIEN. McFarland started writing for Basic Income News in March of 2016, before her election to the Executive Committee of BIEN in July.
Photo: Kate McFarland
