Ireland inspires artists, credit for photo: K. Mitch Hodge
The Programme for Government published by Ireland’s new Coalition Government on 27th June, 2020 committed to the introduction of a universal basic income pilot within the lifetime of the Government. Subsequently, the Report of the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce relied on this commitment when it put forward its proposals for a 3-year Basic Income pilot for workers in the Arts sector.
In Ireland’s Budget for 2022, Government included an allocation of €25m for a Basic Income scheme for artists. While details are sketchy, it would appear that this is intended to fund some 2,000 artists. As this pilot scheme won’t start paying out money till April 2022, it should be possible to pay €325 to 2,000 artists in 2022 within the budget figure of €25m. This is the payment level recommended in the Report of the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce.
This initiative is most welcome as it progresses the discussion and piloting of Basic Income in Ireland. As well as this, artists are appropriate subjects for the pilot. They have suffered a great deal during the pandemic and should be supported through these difficult times.
However, Ireland can’t afford to pay a Basic Income of €325 per week to the whole population; it is only realistic to pay a maximum of around €208 as outlined by Social Justice Ireland in its recent study on this issue. To resolve this dilemma and ensure the initiative really is a Universal Basic Income pilot, Government could pay these artists €208 as a Basic Income and an additional €117 as an Artists Supplement.
It can be expected that UBI would have two kinds of impact:
Activity, e.g. entrepreneurial, increased/decreased output;
Wellness, e.g. financial security, stress levels.
Regarding the ‘Activity’ impact, it is very likely that the evaluation of the pilot will show that most artists in the pilot don’t watch TV all day. Rather, they will be seen to engage in more artistic activity; they may even generate more market income; they are likely to report that their work is of higher quality; they develop their skills etc. Consequently, if a BI of €325 per week doesn’t elicit a lazy response, surely €208 would not either!
Faced with the above hypothetical findings, I think that those who believe that welfare rates should be kept low so as to push people into working would have to accept the conclusion that there is little to fear from the possibility of laziness with a BI of €208 per week for the whole adult population.
Regarding the ‘Wellness’ impact, it is most likely that the evaluation findings will be positive, e.g. greater financial security, less stress etc. It may be reasonable to speculate that this impact would be reduced if the BI payment were reduced. However, the skeptics on UBI are most interested in the labour market response. They are likely to be less interested in the wellness findings and less concerned if these benefits were reduced somewhat when faced with a BI of €208 per week.
Social Justice Ireland will continue to monitor this initiative as it develops.
The Denver Basic Income Project (DBIC) is the first major effort in the United States to study the impact of providing guaranteed income to individuals who are unhoused, as a means of accelerating the path toward stability. It was founded by Denver Colorado businessman and philanthropist Mark Donovan and seeded with $500,000 capital gains he made by selling his Tesla stock. DBIC has already raised an additional $3.3M on top of this to provide unconditional basic income to people experiencing homelessness in Denver, accompanied by a rigorous randomized control trial run by Denver University’s Center for Housing and Homelessness Research.
Donovan believes it is not necessary to wait for the government to come in and fix things, as Tesla has shown in the automotive industry. What is needed is to offer better solutions. Direct cash is increasingly seen as one of the most effective ways to fight poverty and economic inequality. DBIP plans to replicate its program in 20 more cities in 2022 and 200 in 2023.
Donovan recounts that by 2020 he was already familiar with the powerful efficacy of guaranteed income. Then he started to do a deeper dive into the literature and found astounding results like those of the New LeafProject in Vancouver and the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. He believes the current social safety net in the United States is not only highly inefficient and ineffective, it is also demeaning and disrespectful to those it seeks to serve. The number of people who are unhoused is growing despite the enormous resources dedicated to this challenge. The concept of basic income appealed to him, as it acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inequalities built into our economic systems while also making a powerful statement of trust and respect to individuals it serves. It is a direct investment in people that has the power to not only alleviate enormous human suffering but also unleash massive amounts of latent potential. It also has the potential to be an enormous stimulus to the economy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article is a draft of the first chapter of the book I’m working on: Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge. It can also be thought of as a reply to Bitch Bastardly’s guest article from last week. Comments welcome: Karl@widerquist.com.
Every minute of every day, you use something you don’t own to meet your needs without asking anyone’s permission and without paying anyone for the privilege. You do this every time you take a breath. You can’t do that without an atmosphere. You don’t own the atmosphere, but you’ve never had to get a job to earn the money to buy the right to use the atmosphere to keep yourself alive. You simply used it as if the free use of a common resource was the most natural thing in the world.
Karl Widerquist
I bet you’d be pretty angry if the government made a new rule dividing atmosphere into private property without giving you a share large enough to meet your needs. I don’ think it would make you feel better if they gave you the opportunity to get a job to earn the money to buy the right to breathe in your area, and thereby keep yourself alive. I think you’d recognize that if you had that much need for a job, you’d be willing to accept very low wages. I don’t think it would make you feel much better if lifetime subscriptions to breathe were affordable, and if, after working for years, saving your money, investing it wisely, you have the chance to become one of the small portion of people who own piece of the atmosphere before retirement age or the even smaller portion of people who own enough of the atmosphere that other people will pay them to breathe.
If the government tried to privatize the atmosphere, I think you’d say something like this. My ancestors and I have used the atmosphere freely for millions of years. We’re evolved to depend on it. If you take away our independent access to it, you make us dependent on whatever group of people owns it. If there’s some benefit in dividing the atmosphere into private property, either everyone should get a share, or those who don’t get shares should be compensated unconditionally for their loss with an income, and that compensation should be at least large enough to buy a lifetime subscription to the right to breathe.
If you’d be that angry about needing some else’s permission to use the atmosphere to meet your need to breathe, why aren’t you angry that you need some else’s permission to use all the other resources you need to meet all your other needs?
I think you should be. Our ancestors used the land and other resources of the Earth freely for millions of years, just as you and I use the atmosphere now. Every one of us is evolved to depend on it. No group of people “naturally” owns it. A few generations ago, governments took away the independent access our ancestors enjoyed. They created a system in which the resources we all need are owned by a few without giving the rest of us any compensation. By doing that, they made us dependent on the people who own the Earth’s resources.
The vast majority of us who don’t own a large enough share of natural resources or of the stuff we make out of natural resources to keep ourselves alive and thriving. The vast majority of us aren’t allowed to use any resources but air without the permission of an owner. We can’t build a shelter, hunt, gather, fish, farm, start a cooperative, or start our own business. Except for the wealthy few, we get a job to earn the money to buy the right to do use the resources that were here before anyone and that we’re all evolved to depend on. Wages are such that, only the lucky few get to the point where we’re free to do something other than paid labor before we’re too told to work anyway.
The division of the Earth’s resource into private and public property has many benefits, but if some people get a share and others don’t, the private property system has many cruel side effects, among them poverty, homelessness, alienation, fear, and hopelessness. Because most of us have no alternative to paid labor, we are all willing to accept lower wages, longer work hours, and less appealing working conditions than we otherwise would. In some situations, people are forced to accept dangerous jobs, sexual harassment, and other forms of abuse from employers or spouses, because they need the job or a spouse with money to keep them alive. That need is artificial, created by the way our governments chose to divide the Earth’s resources.
Let’s consider a way to divide resources that isn’t so cruel.
Back in 1918, Bertrand Russell’s suggested “that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income … should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful. On this basis we may build further.”
Russell’s proposal is very much what we know today as Universal Basic Income (UBI). Later chapters define it in more detail, but his description gives you a very good idea what it is. UBI is not all there is to social justice, but it removes an exceedingly cruel feature built into our economic system. If we’re going to divide the resource of the Earth unequally, those who own more of the wealth we make out of resources have the responsibility to pay those who have to do with less access to resources.
Although there are many reasons to introduce UBI, I started with this one, not only because I think it’s one of the most important, but also because I think it brings up the central decision that people have to make if we’re going to introduce UBI. Should everyone get an income—even the people who could take jobs but chose not to? I think that question already divides most readers into two groups with pretty firm positions: Yes, because no one should live in poverty or homelessness. No, because every nonwealthy person who can work must work.
UBI, on its own, is a mild reform with far-reaching effects. Later chapters show that it isn’t terribly expensive. On its own, UBI creates a market economy where income doesn’t start at zero. People who don’t take jobs, get less than those who take jobs, but no one has to go without the money they need for food, shelter, or clothing in the same way that no one today has to go without the money they need to breathe.
By offering good salaries and good working conditions, we have enormous ability to give people an incentive to engage in work that the community recognizes as useful. And if we’re not willing to pay enough to get people to freely choose do some particular job, maybe that job doesn’t need to be done all. If we do it this way, we end poverty and homelessness. We end the cruel treatment people at the bottom and relieve the fear of the people in the middle. We invite everyone—rather than frighten everyone—into participating in our economic system. That mild and humane reform finds resistance from the belief that everyone—or more realistically, everyone who isn’t wealthy—must work, and so the issue of whether everyone including those who refuse to take jobs should get the income comes up again and again throughout this book.
The idea of UBI has inspired a growing worldwide movement. Although the concept of a UBI goes back at least as far as the 1790s, the movement for it is stronger as I write these words than it has ever been. The movement grows out of frustration with the ineffectiveness and political vulnerability of conventional approaches to poverty and inequality. The market system also needs many other reforms, but millions of people are coming to believe that one of the most important and fundamental reforms we need right now is UBI.
The central goal of this book is to explain the essentials of UBI: what it is, how it works, the most popular arguments for and against it, how much it costs, how it can be financed, its likely effects, its history, and its possible future. But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I am a strong supporter of UBI. And so, this book’s secondary goal is to convince readers that UBI is a good, workable idea that should be enacted all around the world, but I will make this argument in a way that explains and addresses both sides of the debate over whether to introduce UBI. Whether you agree with my position on UBI or not, I think you can learn more from a passionate attempt to argue points for it and refute points against it than from a dispassionate list of points on either side.
With this in mind, the book begins with a more thorough explanation of what UBI is.
-Karl Widerquist, begun sometime ago, but completed in Aspen, Colorado, July 29, 2021
The event features guaranteed income researchers and advocates from around the world to discuss lessons in messaging and framing to build support for guaranteed income or UBI in varying political and cultural contexts. Speakers include Anne Price, President of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development; Barb Jacobson, Co-ordinator of Basic Income UK; Tatiana Roque, Professor at UFRJ and Brazilian Basic Income Network member; and Catherine Thomas, Stanford University PhD Candidate and Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow. They will be joined by experts from across the globe.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. We welcome you to have your camera on as we hope to allow for discussion across many guaranteed income advocates and researchers in attendance.
About the speakers:
Barb Jacobson
Barb Jacobson has experience on both sides of the welfare system, as a claimant and advisor, as well as working in a variety of other jobs. She has organised around women’s, health, welfare, and housing issues for over 30 years. Barb is Co-ordinator of Basic Income UK, and was the founding Chair of UBIE (Unconditional Basic Income Europe) from 2014 to 2017.
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Tatiana Roque
Tatiana Roque is a Professor of Mathematics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a member of the Brazilian Basic Income Network. Her work examines traditional political movements and the ways in which new mobilization strategies may be employed at universities, unions, and wider political movements. She will speak about the movement for basic income in Brazil, and particularly surrounding the Maricá Basic Income.
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Anne Price
Anne Price is the President of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The Insight Center is a U.S. racial and economic justice organization working to ensure that all people become and remain economically secure. She also serves as a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and was one of the first US thought leaders to examine and push for narrative change in addressing racial wealth inequality.
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Catherine Thomas
Catherine Thomas is a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology and an Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at Stanford University. Her research examines the integration of economic and social inclusion within cash-based policies, and in particular with regard to public opinion on cash policy in the U.S. as well as perspectives of cash-transfer recipients using varying narrative frames. Her research on cash-based policies includes work in East and West Africa with the nonprofit GiveDirectly, the World Bank, and the Government of Niger. She co-authored Stanford Basic Income Lab’s guide for cities conducting basic income pilots.
Mark Drakeford, Wales’ new First Minister, announced soon after the Senedd elections in May that the government will launch a basic income trial in the country. As Basic Income News mentioned over a month ago, the support for trialing basic income in the country has greatly increased and Drakeford has confirmed that a pilot will be launched soon.
Jane Hutt, recently appointed as Minister for Social Justice, will be in charge of the supervision of the project. There is still no definitive information regarding the funding and date of implementation of the pilot, but the government’s commitment is firm. “A basic income pilot is one of the specific responsibilities of our new social justice minister. It will have to be carefully designed, it will draw on the experience of attempted pilots in Scotland, but I have a very long standing interest in basic income”, Drakeford said. “We’ll do it on a cross-party basis. There are 25 members of the Senedd in different parties who have expressed an interest in it,” he added.
The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howes, said that the launching of the pilot shows an “incredibly significant commitment by the First Minister to tackling Wales’ poverty and health inequalities,” and that this trial shows that small countries can lead big policy changes.
Jonathan Rhys Williams, from UBI Lab Wales, said that “this is a huge moment for the basic income movement in the UK and around the world.”
