by Guest Contributor | Jul 3, 2011 | Opinion
SMITH, Jeffery J.President,
Forum on Geonomics
jjs@geonomics.org;www.progress.org
Land Rights course: www.course.earthrights.net
Share Earth’s worth to prosper and conserve.
“This Land is Our Land” is a recent video (2010) subtitled, “The Fight to Reclaim the Commons” and was previously titled “Silent Theft”. It’s by author David Bollier (Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication); it’s available from the Media Education Foundation.
Featured speaker Bollier cites a new international movement that is trying to reclaim our commons by modeling practical alternatives to the restrictive monopoly powers of corporate elites. Given the overlap in values and goals, perhaps advocates for commons could be natural allies of BIGists.
A leading figure in this movement steeped in democratic principles, Bollier places the commons within the American tradition of community engagement – such as good ol’ barn-building by a work party of friends and neighbors – and the free exchange of ideas and information; he could have cited Ben Franklin, man of many inventions, who did not believe in patenting a thing (although the absence of patents and copyrights cost dividendist Tom Paine a fortune).
Bollier shows how commercial interests are undermining our collective interests; for more than three decades, transnational corporations have been busy buying up what used to be known as the commons — everything from our forests and our oceans to our broadcast airwaves and our most important intellectual and cultural works. He bucks the rising tide of anti-government extremism and “free” market ideology.
To see the whole video, click here:
https://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=146
If you’ve not thought much about your heritage and the now-absent commons, Bollier’s film will be informative. But be forewarned: it perpetuates the stereotypes of rich vs. the rest, business vs. the rest, right vs. left, commons vs. market (which is actually part of the commons), as if reality is only black and white.
Of course, the rich, the right, the corporations do commit atrocities, but so do the poor, the left, and governments. Indeed, now in Africa and Central Asia, the biggest land-grabbers are governments such as those of China and Saudi Arabia. And while markets might not be ideal tools for distribution, they are quite useful for efficient and sufficient production. Let’s use them for what they are, not blame them for what they are not.
Bollier’s is a common (no pun intended) mistake, but mistake it is. There is no good reason for one promoting a third way – which the commons approach could be – to take sides. By alienating the people comfortable with freedom, he hampers progress toward justice. The people who’re wary of government and long to live free of oppression are many millions (see North Africa) – many more than the few propagandists and apologists for the current system of crony capitalism. Bollier might benefit by vacating his ivory tower long enough to get his hands dirty and rub elbows with ordinary folk fighting corruption in most countries on the planet.
The other main problem with Bollier and his colleagues is that they either don’t see or are too cautious to mention the most relevant part of the commons – the commonwealth. You’re human and you know how humans are: to us, money matters, even matters more than nature or the environment, never mind any commons. Caution is not persuasive to people open to change, the ones who must support proposals for stewardship or a Citizens Dividend or basic income; it comes across as cowardice at worst and uninspiring at best.
The real issue is not ownership, whether holding some land individually or as a group. The real issue is: who gets the profit – the rent, the immense flow of money that society spends for nature. You might own land with a house on it, but it requires you to make mortgage payments to lenders. Your government might own an oil field but in America when oil companies don’t pay the agreed upon royalties, the US Government turns a totally blind eye. No, it’s not who holds title, it’s who gets the rent.
Rent dwarfs wages and interests. It’s our spending for surface land, buried resources, spectral airwaves, ecosystem services, and those government-granted privileges such as corporate charters, utility franchises, copyrights/patents, and bankers’ sovereignty. In any economy it is so much money that if society shared it, one’s monthly dividend check, deposited into one’s bank account, would easily be enough to constitute a basic income (to cover the costs of the basics: rudimentary housing, a non-packaged diet, non-label clothing, a metro pass, and medical insurance).
Ironically, if Bollier were bold enough to mention the commonwealth, then a vast majority would pull for sparing the environment. Presently, too many people see the false dichotomy of income vs. environment as true. Actually, there are feasible technical solutions to almost all environmental challenges. Society does not use them, is ignorant of them, due to the entrenched power of present rentiers, the few who siphon off most of society’s spending for land and oil, other natural resources, and government-granted privileges. But share that rental flow, and people would become secure enough to think straight. A critical mass would see that the healthier the planet, the higher its locational values, and the fatter one’s social dividend.
Recover that fat flow with land dues and other dues and fees and you can abolish taxes. Share the recovered public revenue and you can abolish subsidies such as corporate welfare. To win your fair share of Earth’s worth, maybe it would help some to talk about ownership and commons, but you’ll do the most good by touting geonomics and an equal extra income to all.
by Michael Lewis | Jun 20, 2011 | Opinion
By Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor
The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
After spending 15 years teaching about, writing about, and observing the U.S. welfare state, I believe that the policies that make it up are based on a questionable assumption. In general, U.S. residents think that there are two kinds of people who receive social welfare benefits—those who deserve them and those who don’t. This is sometimes stated as a difference between the deserving and undeserving poor but it goes beyond poverty. The deserving are those who are in need through no fault of their own, while the undeserving are those who are in need because of “bad” decisions they have made. Perhaps they chose not to work enough, to have a child too early and/or outside of marriage, not to finish school, etc. The key to becoming a member of the deserving group is to be a working person, someone who has worked, or someone who is thought unable to work. Here “work” is used to mean someone working for a wage in the “above ground” economy. For those who distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving this is the only kind of work that counts. Taking care of one’s kids or other worthwhile things people can be doing instead of working for a wage simply don’t “cut it.”
Those who are working, have worked, or are unable to work, have the earned income tax credit, social security, and unemployment insurance. The most infamous program for the undeserving is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF but more commonly called “welfare”). TANF recipients are usually single non-working mothers and typically receive less than recipients of unemployment and social security. TANF recipients are also subjected to a work requirement in order to continue receiving benefits. This requirement means that they have to do some type of work in order to receive benefits. Those who don’t may have their benefits reduced or eliminated. It would be laughable for someone to propose that recipients of social security be required to work in return for their benefits. This is because, so the reasoning would go, they already worked for them back when they were “going to work every day” and “paying into the system.” Even though many in the U.S. seem wedded to the idea that there are deserving and undeserving recipients of social welfare benefits, I think this idea may be way too simplistic.
To see what I mean, consider the stereotypical “lazy” welfare mother. She is poor and needs “welfare” because she has chosen not to work and, because of this choice, doesn’t really deserve assistance. Perhaps we should support her for the sake of her children or simply to be “charitable” but, morally, she has no right to help. I think this view may be wrongheaded for reasons that will soon become clear.
As I understand it, geneticists believe that any observable trait that differs among people can be valid to study genetically, including behavioral traits. They also believe that complex observable traits result from a complicated interaction of genes with other genes and with the environment. They don’t claim to understand these interactions completely but think that what’s going on is that the effects of some genes depend on other genes as well as the environment and that the effect of the environment depends on genes.
As some readers may be aware, there is currently a controversial area of genetics called, behavioral genetics, that focuses on how genes and environment interact to affect behavior, including human behavior. Based on having read some of this work, I think that those working in this field regard human behaviors, such as the choices we make, as complex traits. If choices make up a pattern that some would call laziness, I think this laziness would be regarded as a complex trait too. The problem for the deserving/undeserving distinction is that people don’t choose their genes nor do they choose their environments, at least not completely. This is why it is such a complex process in learning how to analyze social behavior when you have to consider all of these different factors.
I’m the father of a young daughter, half of whose genes came from her mother and half from me, but this is not something she chose. All of her life we’ve chosen the environments she’s spent time in. Since she is still pretty young, this will still be the case for a few years to come. Even as she starts playing more of a role in deciding where she’ll spend her time, the interaction among her genes and between her genes and our earlier environmental choices for her may affect these “choices” too. What I’ve said about my daughter, of course, applies to all of us, whether we are “hard working” or “lazy”.
If genes and environment interact to affect human behaviors, including “laziness,” then the problem it raises for the deserving/undeserving distinction should be clear. In a sense the mother on welfare who has chosen not to work hasn’t really chosen not to work at all. She hasn’t chosen her genes, she hasn’t chosen much of her environment, and she hasn’t chosen how these interact to help create her “laziness.” So is it really fair to deny her the help she needs, on moral grounds, because she has “chosen” not work?
What I’m saying here might be troubling for several reasons. Some might think my argument is similar to the long held view that the average black is not as smart as the average white and that this difference is due, in part, to genetic differences between these two “races.” This is not the case at all. The racial difference in smartness argument is an argument about genes helping to explain differences between groups. What I’m saying is that interactions among genes and between genes and environment may explain differences within a group, where that group is the entire human race. To say that genes and environment interact to affect human behavior doesn’t mean that supposed differences between blacks and whites are partly due to racial differences in genes. An example should help make this clear.
Suppose that blacks and whites differ, on average, for a trait and that genes and environment interact to affect this trait. It’s logically possible for this to be true and for blacks and whites to have identical genes. This is because even though they have identical genes blacks and whites may, on average, have grown up in very different environments. The interaction of identical genes with different environments may be what explains the racial difference in the trait.
Others might be bothered by what I’m saying because they view the idea that human behavior may be influenced by genes as very suspicious. They might say that human behavior is caused mainly by social factors, especially oppressive ones. To this I would say that it is hard to read the work of geneticists and come away believing that genes play almost no role in influencing human behavior—there just seems to be too much evidence that suggests the possibility of such influence. Also, to say that genes may influence behavior is not to say that the environment, even an oppressive one, doesn’t. Remember that what I’m saying is that genes interact with the environment to influence our behaviors. Part of that environment may be racist, sexist, homophobic, neighborhoods ignored by investors and other powers that be, “crappy” schools, lacking in employment opportunities, etc. All I’m saying is that these kinds of environmental factors may interact with our genes to result in certain behaviors being more likely than others.
Still others might have problems with what I’m saying because they believe it means that people cannot be held accountable for their bad decisions. If people make such decisions because of their genes and environments and they have no control over these, how can we hold them responsible for their choices? I have to admit that this even troubles me, especially when one leaves social welfare policy and considers criminal justice. But if behaviors differ among human beings, if behaviors are examples of complex traits, if all such traits are influenced by genes and environment, and if we don’t completely choose our genes or environments then it’s very hard to see how we can fairly be held completely responsible for our “choices,” good or bad.
What does all this mean for social welfare policy? The main thing we should do is stop trying to make policy decisions based on who is deserving of help. Instead of trying to figure out if people are deserving of help we should simply try to figure what they need and how to provide it. If people need housing, how do we get them that? If they need food, how do we get them that? The question “do they need food or housing because they’ve made bad choices and don’t deserve help?” should be seen as irrelevant, since it is so hard to separate the choices they’ve made from the ones that were made for them. Yet we should be careful. Even as we focus less on whether people deserve help, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still care about incentives.
Incentives may be very important parts of our environments that interact with our genes and other parts of the environment to influence our behavior. Thus, whether a policy might result in people working less, spending a longer time looking for a job, family “break-up”, etc. could still be relevant questions to ask. The point is that these questions can be asked and policies based on our best guess answers to them can be proposed without blaming people for their bad choices. A policy that is “in the spirit” of what I have in mind is the basic income (BI).
BI is a proposal that for many would be a better way to deal with poverty than we do now, at least in the U.S. It would set a minimum income in the sense that no one’s income would be allowed to fall below that minimum, whether or not they worked. Those who did work would pay a tax on their earnings but the tax would be set so that those working would always have a net income higher than those who stayed home and lived only on the BI. If it were possible to get this minimum income high enough, poverty could be better dealt with and people would still have a clear incentive to work. Doing both of these things together is how BI considers the incentive to work without also withholding help from people in need because of their “bad” choices. I think that the more we can move toward policies like BI, the better off we’ll be. Such policies would allow us to go beyond the terribly outdated practice of trying to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Carole Schiffman, Steven Strogatz, Eri Noguchi, Jennifer Waldman-Green, Joel Blau, Mimi Abramovitz, and Yuko Kawanishi for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Credit picture: CC Gino Zahnd
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jun 13, 2011 | Opinion
Every time I read about the lives lost in the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, in the repression against movements pro-democratization in many Arabian countries, in the recurring conflicts at the borders of Israel and Palestine, in lamentable episodes that killed Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy Stang, and the couple José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo – defenders of the forests – and in the violence that occur in the outskirts of our metropolis, the beautiful lyrics of Bob Dylan, who turned 70 on Tuesday, May 24th, come to my mind, especially “Blowin’ in the Wind”, written in 1962.
Then, the Vietnam War was spreading absurdly. It seemed that mankind, including Chiefs of State of powerful nations, was hardly listening to the people who called the attention to the absurd of the wars and to how it would be better to solve great divergences among people and nations through the non-violence. There were great examples of this attitude as Leon Tolstoi, Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., the latter always remembered for his beautiful words in “I Have a Dream”, of August 28th, 1963, when he claimed for the approval of laws assuring equality in civil rights among all the peoples as well as the Universal Suffrage:
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism…This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality… Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those who built the conscience of the peoples of the world in a way to put an end to the long and suffered Vietnam War. In big cities, on the streets, in public squares, crowds decided to sing, many times led by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the group Peter, Paul and Marie and other great interpreters.
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they´re forever banned?
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it´s washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist (as the Brazilian people, I think)
Before they´re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn´t see?
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin´ in the wind
The answer is blowin´ in the wind.”
This is a matter of common sense, totally within our reach to accomplish, even with much effort and determination. It is obvious that, in order to reach the conditions for living with less violence in our society, in order to end the need for wars to solve the fundamental mankind problems, we must put into practice the tools of economic and social policies that mean the use of principles of justice, as the ones elaborated by philosopher John Rawls, in The Principles of Justice (1971).
Thus, we could realize a shared feeling of fraternity, which effectively would be recognized by the society, resulting in a much higher level of civility.
So, to create a civilized and fair society, we must take into consideration values that are not only the search of self interest, to take advantages in everything. It´s clear that all of us want to develop and we also want the progress of our beloved ones. I teach my sons and pupils to consider the value of ethics, of the search for truth, of fraternity, of solidarity, of freedom and of democracy. And what are the tools consistent with these values? One example would be extension of good opportunities in education to every child, every youth and every adult who did not have good opportunities of education. A good public health service for all. The accomplishment of an agrarian reform, in a country still unequal in its land property conditions. The incentive to the cooperative forms of production and to the participation of the workers in companies’ profits. The expansion of micro credit opportunities. And the implementation of social inclusion programs that may bring a higher level of freedom and dignity to all the human beings.
According to the conclusion reached by a growing number of economists and philosophers of the five continents at the 13th International Congress of Basic Income Earth Network, Bien, held at USP in 2010, the tool that would contribute for this objective in a high level is a Citizen´s Basic Income, regardless the person’s origin, race, age, gender, civil, social or economic condition.
Fortunately the National Congress approved and President Lula sanctioned, in 2004, the Law 10.835/2004, to institute the Citizen´s Basic Income step by step, under the criterion of the Executive Power, starting with those who need most, like the Bolsa Familia does, until the day when everybody, including foreigners living in Brazil for five years or more, has the right to receive an income, as enough as possible, to meet the vital needs of everyone.
It will be great if President Dilma Rousseff announce this upcoming November the implementation of the Citizen´s Basic Income, during her term until 2014, as approved by consensus by the IV Nation Congress of the Workers’ Party, in February, 2010. We will sing with much joy and significance: “The answer is blowin´ in the wind”.
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 8, 2011 | News
The BIG Coalition in Namibia has been running a BIG pilot project in the village of Otjivero for several years now. On February 6-12, 2011, Brazilian Senator Eduardo Suplicy visited the project while on an exchange visit between Brazil and Namibia. In addition to visiting Otjivero, he held a community meeting in Katutura, met various high-profile politicians, gave TV interviews, and gave a well-attended public lecture together with Bishop Dr. Z. Kameeta, head of the Namibian Lutheran Church and the BIG Coalition in Namibia. The Senator’s visit attracted a great deal of media attention and—according to members of the BIG coalition—gave a substantial boost to their campaign for BIG.
The public lecture of Senator Suplicy was part of a regional conference where social activists from Southern Africa discussed ‘the triple burden of poverty, unemployment and inequality’. The conference identified the BIG as the concrete and tangible policy proposal in Southern Africa, which needs to be implemented as soon as possible. The conference further concluded that the BIG is not a “maximum” demand but a crucial first step in a series of policy interventions needed to reverse the structural injustices caused by colonialism and apartheid and perpetuated by the neo-liberal economic policies of today.
Servaas van den Bosch, of The Namibian, interviewed a recipient of the grant, named Bertha Hamases. She said that the money helped her to land a job. Asked how it affected the town, she said, “The children all buy school uniforms and parents pay the school fees. People buy food and purchase TVs, dvd-players and stoves. Many have extended their houses. Where there [were] few shops before, now there are 10-12 little shops. The place is much cleaner because people don’t mind cleaning when they are fed and not hungry. Crime has stopped totally, while alcoholism and the beating of women has become much less. There was prostitution because women were hungry, but that has stopped completely.” For the full text of the interview see: “Basic Income Grant: ‘Let Others Taste What We Have Tasted’,” in The Namibian:
https://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54503
A recent study on inequalities in Southern Africa found that BIG would be an immediate intervention that would free millions from poverty and its debilitating effects. The study, edited by Herbert Jauch and Deprose Muchena, is entitled, “Tearing Us Apart: Inequalities in Southern Africa.” A news report about the study is online at:
https://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=37445
Senator Suplicy’s account of his visit was published in The Namibian. It’s on line at:
https://www.namibian.com.na/letters/full-story/archive/2011/march/article/senator-in-support-of-big/
For more on the Senator’s visit, the pilot project, and the campaign for BIG. See the following articles:
“Youths in support of BIG,” The Observer:
https://www.observer.com.na/component/content/article/8-newsflash/600-youths-in-support-of-big
“Geingob supports BIG,” New Era:
https://www.newera.com.na/article.php?articleid=37293&title=Geingob%20supports%20BIG
The BIG Confusion, The Namibian:
https://www.namibian.com.na/columns/full-story/archive/2011/march/article/the-big-confusion/
by Karl Widerquist | Jun 8, 2011 | News
This day-long workshop discussed issues such as the “Philosophical Foundations of Justice and Basic Income,” “UBI in the Context of National Social Security and Employment Systems,” “Economics and Labour Market Effects of UBI,” and “Policy Proposals on UBI.” Participants included a wide variety of researchers from around Europe. Johanna Perkiö organized the conference as the kick-start of a major research project that will go on for the next year. The project will study basic income in 3 to 5 European-Union countries, examining how basic income could be accommodated in different types of social security and employment systems, what would be the institutional and cultural conditions, and what are the potential labour market effects. A more far-reaching goal of the study is to provide information on what kind of a basic income system could be feasible in the European Union, on how it could be (institutionally) implemented and on what its (cultural and economical) effects would be.
The program with abstracts of the presentations can be downloaded online at:
https://www.transform-network.net/en/home/events/display-events/article//Universal-Basic-Income-as-a-European-Alternative-international-workshop-on-16th-17th-may-2011-uni.html
The full presentations, papers and PowerPoint slides, are online at:
https://www.vasemmistofoorumi.fi/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=241&Itemid=104
