A nearly-packed auditorium of mostly young Taiwanese arrived on an early Saturday morning to learn about Universal Basic Income and its role in addressing key trends for the next generation.
This is the third year UBI Taiwan held its international summit in Taipei to push discussion of basic income on March 16. This year’s conference focused on the challenges Taiwan and the global economy is facing in the coming decade and what steps could be taken to make basic income a feasible solution.
Dr. Sarath Davala, vice chair of Basic Income Earth Network, was the keynote speaker for the second year in a row. Davala said this year’s attendees were even more enthusiastic.
“UBI Taiwan exudes unique energy and dedication to the idea of basic income. This kind of energy is perhaps rare in the basic income movement. Nowhere in the world, have I seen such critical mass of students collectively excited about basic income,” Davala said.
Dr. Ryan Engen, an economic officer at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the unofficial U.S. embassy in Taiwan, gave the opening speech for the conference. Engen said basic income is “perhaps the most promising policy” to address Taiwan and the world’s economic transformations.
“If you can succeed in what you are trying to do, I actually think it has the potential to be the tipping point that changes the direction for the rest of the world, and that’s not an exaggeration,” Engen said.
In justifying the need to explore basic income, Engen discussed how the return on capital has outstripped income, which has exacerbated global income inequality.
The world is moving toward nationalism as a result of globalization and automation, which requires “creating a new global social contract that leaves nobody behind,” Engen said.
Guy Standing, BIEN’s co-founder, provided a video message for the conference Taiwan. He said Taiwan’s activists should frame basic income primarily in human rights terms, rather than as just an economic policy.
“Basic income is a matter of social justice,” Standing said. “We believe every man, woman, and child has a right to a share of the public wealth of the Commons from the wealth generated over generations, whether it is in Taiwan, China, Britain or anywhere else.”
Standing said while basic income would reduce poverty, this should not be the primary focus of Taiwan’s UBI movement.
“We must constantly stress the ethical basis of the campaign for basic income,” Standing said.
In the final round-table discussion, Ta-Ching Shih, a Taiwanese economic specialist at AIT, said basic income activists in Taiwan must first get attention to the idea and then focus on the policy specifics later.
Peter Knight, a former World Bank economist and a member of Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economics, also produced a video message for the conference where he discussed the economic rationale for basic income.
Knight said Taiwan is likely to face high levels of job automation in the coming years, along with Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. Taiwan’s coming status as a super-aged society may also induce consideration of whether basic income could help alleviate this issue, he said.
“UBI and progressive taxation to finance it, and the use of advanced labor-saving technologies are the key policies for Taiwan to achieve economic, social, political, and ecological sustainability,” Knight said.
Professor Ku Yun-wen from National Taiwan University’s Social Work Department went through a detailed analysis of Taiwan’s welfare policies and discussed how basic income may fit into the system.
Ku had previously written a report on UBI for Taiwan’s National Development Council, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan policy planning agency.
Professor Fong from National Taiwan University’s Economic’s Department provided insight into some of the relevant economic trends to basic income, such as increasing automation and its potential impact in Taiwan.
The conference was assisted in funding from the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship through the Alumni Development Fund (ADF).
Before Alan Krueger passed away, he discussed the prospects of basic income in Taiwan with James Davis, one of the managers for this ADF project. Krueger was the former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Krueger agreed Taiwan implementing basic income would likely inspire conversation around the world. However, Krueger said “there is a lot of work to be done.”
Professor Hou-ming Huang, the director of National Chengchi University’s Sociology Department, presented on the economic and philosophical transitions of humanity throughout history.
A journalist from Taiwan’s magazine The Reporter spoke on the misinformation that is often spread in Taiwan and global media regarding basic income.
Despite this misinformation, Davala said he is optimistic about the future of basic income’s development in Taiwan.
“I am sure that the debate in Taiwan will progress beyond conference halls and to the policy corridors,” Davala said.
Engen ended his remarks by noting Taiwan could play a very important role in the global UBI movement.
Taiwan is a “melting pot” of international influence and is at the center of global supply chains, Engen pointed out. Taiwan is also the “most progressive example in all of the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
“UBI happening here in Taiwan is very different than it happening anywhere else because Taiwan is a fully developed market democracy that is a technology epicenter of the world,” Engen said. “If UBI happened here it would send ripple effects around the world.”
In the run-up to the conference, Elyse Mark and Brian Anderson, who were also managers of the ADF project, produced interviews with U.S. scholars. Mark interviewed a legislative director for a councilmember of the District of Columbia council who produced a policy report on implementing minimum income in DC. Anderson interviewed an economist to understand the benefits of basic income across Taiwan and the United States. Davis also worked with Stanford’s Basic Income Lab to understand the context for how research there could help propel basic income frameworks for Taiwan.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), during a talk at SXSW, was addressed by a tech entrepreneur with a question about automation (how should we act as a society and how will we be able to find a purpose in life as jobs are appropriate by machines).
AOC’s answer placed automation in the broader context of socio-economic inequality: automation is not the problem, and we shouldn’t be haunted by its specter, but rather be excited about it. The problem, AOC states, is that “(…) we live in a society where if you don’t have a job you are left to die (…)”.
The risk is in the reinforcement of the trends that are already occurring with the “automation of injustice”. Automation accelerates economic inequality, she says, and we should be concerned about fixing the current socio-economic system: we are at the most prosperous time in our history, but many are left behind, thus it is imperative for us to figure out new ways to administrate wealth.
Whether the solution is “taxing robots” as proposed by Bill Gates (which AOC considers a clever, acceptable way to suggest taxing corporations), higher tax rates on top income brackets, or some form of wealth redistribution, we need to entertain ideas that would leave us with the possibility to siphon off the benefits brought by automation. It could give us the potential to focus more on studying, inventing and creating art: “Not all creativity should be bound by wage,” she says.
By entering a time in which scarcity is no longer the only reality known to man, and with capitalism being based on scarcity, “our technological advancement as a society has outpaced our system for handling finite resources”, AOC states.
If the system was not broken, people could already be working less, and focus on activities which are currently not considered work, but that would nonetheless benefit individuals and society. But money is appropriated by corporate greed:
“We’re paid on how little we’re desperate enough to accept. And then the rest is skimmed off and given to a billionaire.”
“(i) adequacy and predictability of Universal Basic Income (UBI) benefits to ensure income security, set at least at the national poverty line; (ii) social inclusion, including of persons in the informal economy; (iii) social dialogue and consultation with stakeholders; (iv) enactment of national laws regulating UBI entitlements, including indexation of benefits; (v) coherence with other social, economic and employment policies, and (vi) sustainable and equitable financing”,
the paper shows how some models of UBI can be in accordance with ILO standards, while others cannot.
The paper consists of five parts:
1) Universal Basic Income: A tool for social justice or a strategy to dismantle social security?
In the complex and variegated scenario of UBI proposals, the paper identifies two main currents, one which sees UBI as a tool for social justice which would grant social security to all, and the other, neo-liberal or right libertarian in its concoction, which seeks to substitute the welfare state with a minimalistic safety net.
The first is designed to reduce poverty and inequality, promoting individual rights and freedom, giving people the opportunity to engage in forms of work not recognized by the market (domestic work, volunteering). It would also reduce the administrative costs of existing social protection systems, and increase workers’ bargaining power providing an exit option. The second is a way to reduce the complexity of the modern welfare state and the degree of involvement it requires from governments. For UBI to be an instrument of social justice, the first current is the one to follow.
UBI impact on poverty and inequality, on growth, on work and employment, and on gender inequality varies depending on how the policy is designed, what its source of financing is, and on which level it set at. It is thus complex to generalize its effects, and even for specific contexts in which experiments have been done it would be an error to imply that local effects would be the same once replicated on a larger scale.
The positive effect attributed to UBI is that of tackling the issues of increased social and economic insecurity, growing inequalities and the existing gaps in social protection coverage. The growing debate surrounding it “reaffirms the necessity and importance to provide every member of the society with at least a minimum level of income security which is essential to the realisation of human dignity”, principles that are at the hearth of the ILO Constitution and the Recommendation No. 202. UBI would thus represent the income component of the recommended social protection floor.
Social protection floors should guarantee “effective access to essential health care and basic income security throughout the life course, to allow life in dignity.” This means that UBI can’t represent the entirety of social protection floor, as a nonmonetary component would nonetheless be required, and that UBI would need to be integrated in the institutional settings of the state.
2) Benefit levels, adequacy and coverage
For UBI to be a solution to inequality and poverty it needs to be set at a level sufficient to meet at least people basic needs, and needs to be financed in a sustainable and equitable way. With Recommendation No. 202 requiring social protection floors to be set at “a sufficiently high level to enable individuals to live in dignity and to ensure effective access to essential goods and services” a possible benchmark is represented by national poverty lines.
UBI proposals vary greatly in the suggested benefit levels, but given that in most of them it would supplant social assistance benefits, following the guidelines set by the aforementioned recommendation, the level should be enough to allow access to a set of necessary goods and services. Proposals built taking this into account are promising, whilst those with benefits level set below the poverty line are not able to fulfill the promises of poverty and inequality reduction.
The amount provided via UBI cannot be uniform through the populations, as it wouldn’t be able to account for those in special need, and if the amount was to be uniform UBI would be required to coexist with other forms of social security benefits safeguarding those with specific needs. UBI would thus need to be integrated in the existing systems, in order not to leave individuals worse off, the paper states.
The paper also recommends that, in order to ensure adequacy over time, attention should be given to adjustments to changes in purchasing power and overall standards of living, as to ensure the adequacy of benefits over time. For UBI to maintain its effects over time, it would need to be indexed to inflation and wages.
UBI, a cash benefit, would nonetheless need to be complemented by effective access to services (e.g.: health, education). If UBI was to be financed via the reallocation of the budget dedicated to such services, it would have detrimental effects.
Even with universalism being often presented as one of the key features of UBI, some proposals restrict its coverage in two ways: 1) depending on the age of the recipient (children wouldn’t receive benefits in some instances, whilst older persons would be subject to different rules); 2) depending on the requisite of nationality, or that of residency after a minimum duration, in order to prevent migration.
With ILO standards requiring states to provide “all members of society with adequate social protection” and with the principle of universality of protection being “at the core of the social protection floor concept, stipulating that everyone should enjoy at least a basic level of social security throughout their life course”, a UBI restricted to only nationals, or not granting sufficient benefits to meet children’s needs, would be insufficient to provide the required protection.
3) Costs, Affordability and Financing
The paper presents two scenarios for the cost estimates of UBI:
A basic income transfer at 100 per cent of the national poverty line for all adults and children;
A basic income transfer at 100 per cent of the national poverty line for adults and 50 per cent to children up to 15 years old.
Under scenario I. the global average cost as a percentage of GDP would be around 39.4%, with a cost of 79.1% of GDP for low income countries, 28% for lower middle-income countries, 22.8% for upper middle-income countries and 29.9% for high income countries.
Under Scenario II. the global average cost as a percentage of GDP would be 32.7%, with a cost of 62.3%of GDP for low income countries, 23.1% for lower middle-income countries, 19.8% for upper middle-income countries and 27.4% for high income countries.
One possible benchmark for adequacy of the benefit level supported by Recommendation No.202 is that of national poverty lines, but many UBI proposal are far below them. Even so, an UBI set at 25% of equivalent disposable income is nonetheless deemed unfeasible under the existing fiscal context. In order to provide benefit levels capable of reducing poverty and inequality, new financing sources need to be explored, among them the paper briefly explores:
The reallocation of public expenditures
Increasing tax revenues
Lobbying for aid and transfers
Eliminating illicit financial flows
Using fiscal and central bank foreign exchange reserves
Restructuring existing debt
A mix of the aforementioned would be needed, with an increase in tax revenues being central in order to assure progressivity to the policy. For low income countries, lobbying for aid and transfers may be a feasible method, as the estimate cost for the introduction of an UBI is just 0.68% of the global GDP, 3% of what has been spent by the G20 to rescue the financial sector in 2009.
Regressive proposals are not in line with ILO standards as they would further inequalities. Budget neutral proposals, which rely on cutting existing social benefits in order to provide a modest UBI coupled with social insurance, result in a social net loss which would exacerbate income and gender inequalities.
4) Who would benefit from UBI? Different implementation scenarios
The paper investigates three different scenarios for the implementation of an UBI, in order to find out which one could be beneficial to society to investigate winners and losers.
Only under scenario 1, which assumes the introduction of a UBI set at the level of the poverty line, the majority of the population is found to be net winner, thus reducing inequality.
Under scenario 2 a UBI is introduced in exchange for cuts in employers’ contributions to social security systems. This setting would reduce the capacity for social insurance to redistribute wealth across society. With net losers being among the lower and middle classes, and the net winners being corporations, this scenario is not in line with ILO standards.
Under scenario 3 UBI is introduced in exchange for the complete abolition of public social insurance:
“In this scenario virtually everybody is a net loser; the poorest will not receive anymore social assistance at the poverty line level; the low and middle classes, before covered by a better social protection system, now they will lose their accumulated social protection benefits. Eliminating public social insurance systems by a modest UBI, and promoting individual savings and private provision for those who can afford it, would reduce the potential for both vertical and horizontal redistribution, thereby exacerbating income inequality.”
5) Conclusion: Universal Basic Income in light of ILO standards
While UBI cannot be considered as a solution to all the problems of society, it can potentially act as a useful tool for closing coverage gaps and provide basic income security.
The benefit level should be set at a level sufficient to provide income security to everybody, particularly to those without other sources of income. The benefit should avoid discrimination towards those in special needs.
UBI by itself wouldn’t be enough to provide access to basic services, and it should be coupled with policies granting universal education, health care and social services. At the same time, contributory mechanism will have to remain in place, with public social insurance continuing to provide a level of social protection.
Progressive means of financing are essential in guaranteeing equity, sustainability and that UBI satisfies ILO standards. UBI implementation will need to follow a progressive realization, by setting standards and time frames: this calls for the creation of an ad hoc legal framework and effective governance and administration.
Moreover, “systematically assessing implications for the broader policy context is essential for a UBI to positively contribute to social justice and inclusive development”. UBI cannot be a stand-alone policy, but needs to work in concert with labour market institutions, and the potential interactions that could arise call for further studies.
“The momentum gathering behind the idea of a UBI can help to spur a discussion on how to respond to existing economic and social changes in a more effective and empowering way based on social solidarity and while ensuring social justice outcomes for all.”
Final remarks
The paper is clear in defining Basic Income and in discussing its potential advantages, clarifying that different UBI designs would bring very different end results.
The paper also provides a comprehensive list of experiments, proposals, and pilots, and does a service by calculating the proportions of national poverty lines that their Basic Incomes represent. This is done calculating the gross cost of UBI, which however says little about its net costs.
Much attention is devoted to proposals that eliminate current benefits, a practice that, as the authors of the paper themselves suggest, is not in line with ILO standards.
Rather than investigating a particular mean of financing and its potential effects, the paper follows a more general approach, and highlights that further studies are needed in order the understand the practical implications of UBI, nonetheless being clear about its potential to be a powerful instrument for the enhancement of social security and the reduction of poverty and inequality.
The website, Revista Libertalia, recently published an article in Spanish with extensive quotes from an interview conducted with me. The article is entitled, “Voces sobre la renta básica (II): ¿Está justificada? [Voices on basic income (II): Is it justified?].” It’s author is Pablo Magaña. The Spanish version was published on February 28, 2019. The author created, but did not publish an English version of the article. The quotes below reproduce the entire English version with no additional editing.
Voices on the basic income (II): Is it justified?
The idea of a basic income raises many hopes and some eyebrows. In this article, some of its defenders will explain to us which is, in their view, the best way to justify it. However, in order to make the discussion more interesting, we also asked them to answer one common objection that is often raised against the proposal: the free-riding objection. What does this objection say? Quite simple. Unlike other social security schemes, a basic income is unconditional, which means that you can be entitled to it regardless of your socio-economic condition. And, more crucially, regardless of the extent to which you contribute to your society.
For some people, this is plainly unfair. The viability of a basic income depends upon the existence of enough contributors to a common public fund. But, as long as this scheme is already in place and working in a stable manner, if any individual decided not to contribute to it, there would be nothing we could do in response: given the income’s unconditional character, the supposed free-rider would still be as entitled to it as any other citizen. Let us suppose – so goes the classical example[i] – that I decided to spent all my time living high, surfing the waves in Malibu, playing guitar under the moonlight, driving along endless highways on the wheel of an old van. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Still, since such a plan would only be possible if others work and contribute to a common fund, my decision might look like an injustice, a clear case of free-riding. But is it really like this?
Before introducing some possible answers to this challenge, we will look first at some arguments in favor of a basic income.
According to Hillel Steiner[ii], “the best way to defend the right to UBI involves a dual strategy: (a) showing that this right is implied by some more basic and uncontested principle, and (b) showing that this right is compatible with, and does not encroach upon, other widely accepted rights”. As a left-libertarian, Steiner regards the Earth as humanity’s common possession[iii], which entails that if somebody intends to appropriate herself of any portion of it, she should compensate her fellow co-owners. If she didn’t, she would be illegitimately appropriating of something that is not really hers. In other words, she would be stealing. Steiner’s emphasis on natural resources colors both his model of basic income and his preferred justification of it:
“In my view, a right to UBI should be funded by a 100% tax on the ownership of natural resources, commonly termed a ‘Land Value Tax’ or, more accurately, a ‘Location Value Tax’. This tax would be levied on the value of those locations themselves, and not on the value of any improvements made to those locations by human labour. A right to a UBI funded in this way satisfies (a) since those taxable natural resources/locations, not being the product of any person’s labour, are rightfully available for use by everyone. So if someone wants to privatise some of them, and to exclude all others from using them, then it seems only fair that the privatizer should compensate those others. The UBI I’m proposing simply is that compensation.”
This is a fairly common way to defend the right to a basic income, also employed by Guy Standing[iv], author of Basic Income: And How we Can Make it Happen[v]. In Standing’s view, “the right to a basic income can be justified on three ethical grounds. First, it is a matter of common justice. The land, the air, water, and even ideas inherited from our ancestors are all part of the commons which belong to everybody equally. But elites and the wealthy have been given, have inherited or have used the commons for their benefit. Therefore, they should compensate the commoners who have lost the commons, and the fairest way to do that is give everybody in society a common payment, a ‘common dividend’ on our collective public wealth”.
Again, the basic income is presented as a way of compensating human beings for having deprived them of what is, in essence, a public good. However, as we have seen, Standing believes there are additional reasons on behalf of a basic income. “[A] second fundamentally ethical reason for a basic income”, he contends, “is that it would enhance individual and societal freedom. In particular, it would strengthen republican freedom — the freedom from domination by figures in unaccountable positions of power. Whether you are on the political left or right, we all claim (or most of us do!) to believe in freedom. But you cannot be free unless you have the capacity to say ‘no’ to people who can oppress or exploit you. If you do not have basic income security, you do not have that capacity.”
Note that this argument is slightly different from the previous one. Granted, here the argument is also premised upon the existence of an injustice. Yet in this case the injustice does not involve the illegitimate appropriation of what is commonly owned, but rather the presence of a structure of domination under which individuals cannot really be considered autonomous or free. According to this argument, justice requires that nobody ever feel the need to be subjected to another’s arbitrary will, an aim which would only be secured by implementing a right to a basic income[vi].
Political philosopher Karl Widerquist[vii], author of many books and articles on the basic income[viii], has defended a similar view. As he puts it, we need acknowledge that:
“[I]t’s wrong for anyone to come between another person and the resources they need to survive. It’s wrong for anyone to put conditions on people’s access to the resources they need to survive. Don’t ignore this fact: poverty is the lack of access to the resources you need to live a decent life. A healthy person with the right skills and access to a healthy environment can do many things that are impossible for an impoverished person in society today. They can build their own house; fish, farm, or hunt their own food; they can work with who they want. They call work alone or with whoever they want. They don’t need a boss. They never have to follow orders.”
“Our societies create poverty by interfering with people who would like to use the resources of the Earth for themselves. We do it because better off people want to control all the world’s resources. By allowing a small group to control the world’s resources without paying compensation to the people they thereby make propertyless, we put most people in the position in which “work” becomes synonymous with “a job.” Making a living means taking orders. This is not a fact of nature. It is the outcome of society’s rules. We need to change those rules.”
“UBI rectifies that problem. It says if you’re going to hold more resources than others, you have to pay something back in compensation, so that no one ever again is forced to live in poverty and no one is ever forced into the position where they must take orders to survive.”
“UBI is not the end of the market or the end of paid labor. It is simply a market where income doesn’t start at zero, and workers are freed from the threat of destitution. With UBI, workers enter the labor market as free people. Employers have to pay enough to make it worthwhile for workers to take those jobs. UBI will give us a high-wage economy that works for everyone.”
One view in this vicinity has been defended by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson[ix], who, nonetheless, does not believe that a basic income would necessarily be the best option. Now, if it was, she says, the best way to ground it would be as follows:
“The best case for the UBI is as follows. Automation, and changes in the nature of employment, are bringing about the disappearance of stable jobs and the rise of a precariat class whose members are unable to support themselves with steady employment. UBI is needed to provide the security and basis for a decent life for a rising number of people in the world. BI should be universal to ensure its political stability and to avoid the costs of means testing and intrusive investigations of people’s lives.”
Among other things, Anderson is well-known for her defense of so-called “relational egalitarianism”[x], the view that theorists of justice should focus a bit less on how resources are distributed and more on how we treat each other (the latter having obviously implications for the former). This is to say, what matters the most is not who gets what, but whether we treat each other as an equal or not – without distinctions based on social status or power asymmetries.
Before finishing this part of the article, let us look at another possible strategy to justify a basic income. Until now, the arguments we have seen have focused either i) on a compensation for an illegitimate appropriation of a common good, or ii) on the need to make sure that individuals enjoy a minimal independence, in that they ought not to be forced to choose between accepting orders or starve. But there is a third line of argument, which would stress iii) the alleged positive consequences of a basic income. This is Guy Standing’s third argument:
“The third ethical reason for wanting a basic income is that it would tend to provide basic security, which is what we call a public good. We all want basic security in our lives, and basic security is a superior public good in that if everybody in our community has basic security, it increases the value of it for everybody. Basic security has been shown to increase tolerance, resilience, altruism and mental bandwidth (or mental health and IQ).”
This is all very well, one might say. But, what happens with our Malibu surfer? Isn’t he objectionably free-riding on his fellow citizens? Isn’t it unfair that he can live a highly pleasant life while I have to break my back from 9 to 5?
In Steiner’s view, the answer is no: “[E]veryone – lazy, as well as industrious – is entitled to that compensation”. For remember that, according to him, a basic income is not just another subsidy, but the compensation that those who want to possess more than their fair share of the Earth’s natural resources have to pay to the rest of us – whether we are surfers or not.
Widerquist, in his reply, invites us to cast some doubt on the value judgments and the assumptions presupposed by the objection:
“The thing that most detracts people from UBI is the belief that prosperous people have the right and responsibility to tell less prosperous people what to do. We, the prosperous, want to think we are better than the less prosperous. We want to think our virtue—rather than a less-than-perfectly-fair system—is the reason people are less prosperous than we are. We like to think that we know what the less prosperous need to do to become prosperous—even though the vast majority of us have no idea what it is like to grow up poor and how different people’s circumstances can be.”
“Not only are these beliefs unfounded, they are not good for the middle class. Because we want to put the very poor in the position where they have to do what more prosperous people want, we put the vast majority of people in the position where they have to do what the wealthiest few want. Probably well more than 90% of people in every country have no choice but to take a job for a living. The vast majority of us—even some very prosperous people—are unfree to work for ourselves. And so, we must go to an employer—most of whom represent very wealthy corporations—get a job, and take orders all day. That is neither freedom nor fairness.”
“UBI will put the middle class in a much better bargaining position. In most countries, the middle class is not significantly better off than they were 40 years ago. Virtually, all the benefits of the last 40 years of economic growth have gone to the wealthiest 1%. UBI will help the other 99% command the better wages and the shorter working hours that they have earned.”
Another way to answer the free-riding objection involves calling into question its relevancy. Why should we care so much, the rejoinder goes, about something that is actually very unlikely? A rejoinder of this type has been endorsed by Guy Standing:
“The normal human condition is to want to work, to improve ourselves, to improve our living conditions, to improve the life prospects of our children and so on. I would feel sorry for somebody who would not work because he or she had a modest basic income. But of course this is not what happens or is likely to happen to more than a tiny number of people. We have found in our pilots that people with a basic income work more, not less, and are more productive, not less.”[xi]
Indeed, Standing believes that even if free riding was as likely as the objection assumes, the good consequences of a basic income would probably outweigh its potential defects or unfair aspects. As he puts it, a basic income “would encourage more of us to spend more time doing work that is not labour, such as caring for elderly frail relatives or children or doing community work. Most of us will go into old age wishing we had done more of that type of work and less of labour”.
Finally, one can accept the core of the objection – namely, that justice requires some degree of reciprocity – while denying that one’s contributions to society must be measured solely according to their market value. In Elizabeth Anderson’s words: “Everyone ought to contribute to society. But not all positive contributions to society need be via paid employment on the market. Much of women’s work taking care of children and elder dependents is not paid, although it is socially necessary. Much nonprofit work makes a huge difference for others, but it is also not paid. Most people want to make a positive contribution and will do so in one way or another. Society should expand opportunities to make a contribution, but not insist that they survive a market test”.
What this view suggests is that Californian surfers needn’t be free-riding on us. Though their economic contribution to society may border on nothingness, this wouldn’t necessarily imply that they cannot contribute in other ways, nor that they are unable to provide us with valuable things. Suppose we discovered that no member of the Rolling Stones has ever paid a dollar in taxes since they became famous. Would that mean they haven’t contributed to society as much as they should? Probably. Would it also mean they haven’t contributed anything at all? That seems harder to stomach. For many people, listening to their songs, going to their concerts, or simply learning to play guitar by imitating Keith Richards or Roon Wood are in themselves valuable experiences that would not vanish of a sudden.
Are these arguments convincing? Do they answer adequately to the free-riding objection? Do they really succeed in justifying a basic income? That is something for the reader to decide.
—————-
[i] This objection was famously formulated by John Rawls in his article “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” (1988), Philosophy & Public Affairs 17(4): 257, n. 7. For an equally well-known response, see also Philippe van Parijs,“Why Surfers Should be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income” (1991), Philosophy & Public Affairs 20(2): 101-131.
Chamberlain’s book explores universal basic income (UBI), which he calls unconditional basic income, as a potential step on the way from a “work society,” in which individual gainful employment is placed at the center of citizenship and community membership, to a post-work community in which the wellbeing of others is valued over individual achievements. Undoing Work, Rethinking Community focuses primarily on the UK and the US, moving through a detailed discussion of the place of work in contemporary life and politics, as well as more recent changes that have witnessed a gradual erosion of worker’s rights and stability, contending that the current overvaluation of work undermines freedom, equality, and justice. It then outlines a potential role for UBI in Chamberlain’s vision of the transition away from the work society, along with guidance for UBI advocates who share similar priorities with regard to shifting the conversation from its focus on encouraging employment. Finally, it sketches the theoretical beginnings of a “post-work” community.
Employment in Politics and the Meaning of Citizenship
Chamberlain begins by touching on the centrality of work and employment as a right and citizen’s obligation to the campaign rhetoric on both sides of the US 2016 election. Beyond America, he also points out 2011 UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s focus on employment as a solution to riots through the words “work is at the heart of our society.” In his very first pages, Chamberlain outlines his central contention: that citizenship and social participation are conditional upon employment and that those who are not able (or do not desire) to pursue employment for any reason, be it ability, other priorities or means of subsistence, family responsibilities, etc., are marginalized and configured as social pariahs or “freeloaders” rather than good citizens. In essence, he argues that society itself is currently understood to be the product of collective labour, and thus the work society values work ethic, the independence it permits, and the full citizenship or social participation made possible by said independence.
Interestingly, Chamberlain traces a brief history of types of “dependence” that used to be considered socially permissible or positive (that of a wife, for example, or the elderly) but have become more and more suspect, such that one must demonstrate the reason for one’s dependence (i.e., in the case of pregnancy, disability, or other inability to work) or show that one has paid one’s dues (in the case of the elderly) or is preparing oneself for employment (in the case of youth in school).
Undoing Work outlines the roots of the work society in history and political theory and examines several of the key arguments that connect work to citizenship. For example, the idea that individuals exist outside of society but collectively create society with their labour implies, in turn, that a lack of gainful employment is necessarily anti-social. This can be tied to a kind of apocalyptic, chaotic rhetoric, saying that unemployment will lead to social unrest and disintegration (as in David Cameron’s focus on employment in response to social unrest).
Studio portrait of James Chamberlain
(photo by Beth Wynn / Mississippi State University)
The “Work Society” Limits Freedom and Demands Increasing Flexibility
What is the problem with this social emphasis on everyone “pulling their weight”? Chamberlain argues that it limits the freedom to act according to one’s own “values, needs, and desires,” (10) when a person needs to take any or all employment available. Freedom is also limited when all of one’s time is occupied by making money with no opportunity to spend time on activities that don’t have a price put upon them. Furthermore, the increase in information technology has begun to dissolve the boundaries between work and the remainder of life. Importantly, restrictions to freedom do not fall equally upon a population, with regard to access to greater varieties and qualities of employment: “One can understand justice as equality of freedom or, more specifically, the equal ability of all members of society in ways that reflect their own ends” (12).
In his third chapter, Chamberlain discusses the idea of increasing flexibility of employment, from Reagan and Thatcher to the gig economy and the increase in remote work. Flexibility is a double-edged sword. Half of it entails deregulation, erosion of support for workers, increased precarity in terms of employment and compensation, dissolution of work–life boundaries, lack of collective bargaining, and other employer-friendly policies. Many qualities of flexibility can also be worker-friendly, however: flexible scheduling and the dissolution of work–life boundaries may allow a person to work from home or on their own time, or it may ask them to devote significant quantities of their life to work without any additional compensation. At least there are solutions available to offer support to those remote working away from the office so that they can receive additional training and mentorship from wherever they may be and still progress in their careers. Without the support, those working from home may quickly find themselves without motivation and disassociated from their work colleagues. Companies have begun to look at ways to combat this by finding virtual team building activities such as the ones you can see at BreakoutIQ. This is in the hopes of instilling a sense of comradeship between co-workers.
UBI: Undoing or Supporting Employment?
If our jobs are becoming increasingly flexible and precarious, allowing us to participate socially in a complete manner and support ourselves as independent citizens less and less, then UBI is one way to fill that gap and allow people to continue to find meaningful employment: however, it is just this argument for UBI that Chamberlain finds suspect. In Undoing Work, UBI is established as a partial solution to many of the aforementioned issues, a very important stop-gap permitting what he claims is actually required, which is to dismantle the work society and the social value of employment.
Chamberlain identifies an ideological disjuncture within the UBI movement, between advocates who say that UBI will support employment and advocates who contend that supporting employment is beside the point. This is echoed in the works reviewed by BIEN, as emerging UBI research and economic simulations define different metrics for success, and many of them are focused on employment rates rather than health indicators or other measurements associated solely with wellbeing. Undoing Work places UBI proponents on a spectrum from a full commitment to the work society to the preference for freedom from employment/right and ability to refuse employment. However, Chamberlain acknowledges that some who have argued for UBI’s positive impact on employment rates have done so for the sake of expediency. In other words, supporting a truly Unconditional BI may necessarily be politically precarious due to its promise to give “something for nothing.”
Chamberlain then contends that UBI’s implementation and effects depend upon the ideologies of social participation and citizenship by which it is surrounded. Whether or not a UBI recipient lives in Chamberlain’s “work society” will have a significant impact on a basic income’s ability to transform their lives for the better.
To highlight his point, Chamberlain contrasts UBI with workfare/unemployment and means-tested benefits, examining the differences between the administrative goal of re-integrating a person into the workforce and UBI. An implementation of the latter without a corresponding ideological shift may simply result in social forces creating the same stigmas against and marginalization of those who appear not to be contributing in a normative manner. In other words, without a cultural change in the value of work, people receiving UBI will still feel the pressure to take jobs regardless of interest or aptitude. From the perspective of a reader perennially curious about the intercultural differences in UBI implementation around the world, this is an interesting and important point, though it is beyond this book’s purview to speculate about the international differences that might be seen in UBI implementation depending on each country or region’s ideological variations.
A more radical implementation of UBI may in fact encourage people to shape new “purposes,” voluntary or collectively informed but not necessarily rewarded or validated by a wage. Indeed, if work is as essential to a valuable and meaningful life as its proponents suggest, Chamberlain suggests that it is unlikely that UBI recipients (i.e., all of us) will simply give up any kind of occupation or responsibility.
The Post-Work Society
The final chapters of the book examine visions of a post-work society. Chamberlain suggests that many contemporary visions of post-capitalism (e.g., André Gorz’s work, or Hardt and Negri’s Empire) have not in fact theorized a real “post-work” society because they remain centred upon community-oriented production and reproduction: they still see the common/society as produced by some form of work or labour, and participation in their post-capitalist models is still frequently predicated upon social contribution conceptualized as labour.
A real post-work society, argues Chamberlain, means that membership in one’s community must not be connected to work (paid or unpaid). Rather, he suggests a vision of community that is predicated upon concern for the wellbeing of others but does not then turn around and stigmatize or marginalize community members who do not appear to share similar concerns.
One key part of this is that we should not view individuals as things that can be separated from a community or society (or accordingly marginalized as “non-contributors”). Rather, a community is in its fundamental form made up of interconnected relationships that have little to do with labour.
Chamberlain argues that the tendency to think about this kind of community as encouraging “freeloading” is an intuitive response from those of us who have grown up valuing employment so highly. Accordingly, Chamberlain provides some insightful advice for UBI advocates, suggesting that arguments for UBI should be focused on collective well-being rather than employment potential, shaped in a way that does not encourage critics to jump straight to criticisms about giving “something for nothing.”
Chamberlain’s vision for a post-work society is outlined in terms of what it must not be. The lack of a fuller picture is understandable given the magnitude, impossibility, and perhaps unsuitability of attempting this task theoretically (a challenge he acknowledges). Despite this, the last few pages of the book cite reasons for hope of a transition: the prevalence of conversations about UBI, minimum wage movements, and economic cooperatives, as some examples.
A reader may wonder if none of the smaller communities established within and regardless of political boundaries, including economic or social cooperatives, faith-based communities, secular or intentional communities, families, or Indigenous or ethnicity-based communities, already value interpersonal wellbeing more highly than labour and, accordingly, exhibit unique social economies. While it is sensibly out of the book’s scope to conduct an international comparison of work ideologies, Chamberlain’s focus on national discourse feels relevant and interesting but also general and totalizing, spoken from the “voice” of the work society without exploring the diversity that may be occurring within a nation or testing its borders on local scales. However, overall, Chamberlain’s Undoing Work, Rethinking Community is a considered and valuable critique of the role of employment in life, politics, and UBI policy and discourse. His discussion of increasing precarity, demand for flexibility, and the lack of freedom that employment often delivers despite independence’s promises to the contrary will strike home for many readers.
