Cash-for-corona: why the current policy proposal being discussed in Spain has nothing to do with a universal basic income
This article was updated on the 19th April 2020
Since the outbreak of coronavirus and the subsequent social and economic lockdown, there have been numerous appeals from economists, journalists, public figures and policy makers, that the time was ripe for the implementation of a universal basic income. However, the media and public discussion of the imminent need for a universal basic income does not resonate with the measures which are currently being discussed for implementation to tackle the economic crisis derived from the coronavirus pandemic.
In Spain, there has been recent discussion to implement a minimum living income (ingreso minimo vital, IMV, in spanish) as a means of alleviating the economic downturn that is approaching. Some media outlets (see for instance the posts in Bloomberg, the independent, Business Insider, The Local, or Forbes) have used the concept of a universal basic income, instead of a minimum income, to repot the current policy proposals being discussed in Spain. The term basic income was even used by a Spanish journalist in an interview with the third Vice-president of the Spanish government, Nadia Calviño, when she asked her about the minimum income policy that is currently being discussed.
The media’s inaccurate portrayal of Spain’s minimum income policy is not only causing confusion amongst the general population or public opinion, but is also misleading political leaders. Some British members of parliament for instance have tweeted about the possibility that Spain will be introducing a universal basic income. See for instance, Rebecca Long Bailey, sharing the Morning Star’s news post, Douglas Chapman’s tweet, or Dr Philippa Whitford, sharing the Independent’s post.
Despite the media’s insistence in using the label of a basic income, the current policy in question is far from a universal and unconditional policy as such. Although the Spanish government is still considering the implementation details, Minister of Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivà confirmed in a recent interview that this policy is a minimum income to be targeted to vulnerable households, and the generosity will be dependent on the the family typology (mono-marental households will receive more generous quantities) and upon the number of number of children. In a recent article by La Vanguardia, the quantity has been stipulated as for 500 euros for individuals living by themselves, and up to 1000 euros for families with children. Currently, the ministry is working in the elaboration of household typologies and calculating how many households would be eligible for such benefit. However, although the generosity has not been defined still, it is known that this measure will not be temporary but permanent, as a last resort safety net that is more durable than other types of benefits.
This is a non-contributory cash payment, which adds to current policies in different ways: those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits can have access to it, and those who are not eligible for unemployment benefits will have access to it if they comply with other criteria. Very importantly, in principle this is a permanent measure, so it is not exhausted until the recipient is employed. Such a design is convenient to target particular vulnerable groups of people like domestic workers without contracts, or self-employed people who have seen their activity come to a halt. According to calculus made by the minister of employment, Yolanda Diaz, this measure could benefit a total of 5 million people, which is close to 10% of the Spanish population.
Although it adds to current policies in several ways, this is far from a basic income in various ways as it is not individual, unconditional or universal, which are three of the key characteristics of the so called universal basic income policy that some media outlets are are using to label the future policy that will be implemented in Spain. Quite on the contrary, the type of policy being discussed is a non-contributory last resort benefit that will go to the most vulnerable households, and precisely, will be given to households and not individuals, closer to current non-contributory pensions than a basic income, as summarised in the table below:-
Characteristics
IMV (current proposal being discussed in Spain)
Basic Income
Universal
No
Yes
Unconditional
No: the aid is conditional on the number of children, previous income, household typology
Yes
Cash payment
Yes
Yes
Individual
No: households; currently elaborating a household typology and calculating the number of households that will be covered
Yes
Non-contributory
Yes
Yes
Not only a cash-for-corona policy
The minimum living income currently on the political agenda in Spain is not a unique response to coronavirus. The implementation of such a policy was part of the governmental agreement signed between the two coalition parties PSOE and Podemos, already in 2019, as specified in article 2.4.2. of this document. In this scenario, there was an estimation of 600 euros per person, with some households reaching to a top 1,200 euros and with an approximate cost of 10.000 million euros. During an interview in early April, in La Sexta channel, the third Vice-president, Nadia Calviño announced that the introduction of the IMV that is currently being discussed was intended as a pilot of the policy that was agreed upon in the governmental agreement in 2019. In this sense, regardless of the shape that this policy takes now, its implementation is intended to be structural and with a permanent character.
Yet another re-appropriation of the UBI label
Once more however, the media response has been to appropriate the name of universal basic income to label policies that are far from it. In fact, the whole package of policies that comprise the government’s emergency response to the coronavirus resonate with the same targeted and means-tested logic of welfare state comprised of a patchwork of benefits to cover different needs, with many individuals falling through the cracks. The government has already implemented the ERTEs (temporary regulation expedients of employment), in order to prevent mass unemployment, a moratorium on mortgages, a fiscal moratorium for self-employed workers, with benefits for those who have seen their activity massively reduced, and, which belong to the same rhetoric of a patchwork of programs rather than an effective safety net without any cracks, like universal basic income. due to the complexity of the different conditions’ individuals face and are not captured by the all the series of programs and administrative processes.
Political process
This emergency policy took speed yesterday, in ameeting between Pablo Iglesias, Yolanda Diaz -Minister of Employment-, Jose Luis Escrivà -Ministerof Inclusion, Social security and Mogration- and key interest group representatives in Spain, including NGOs like Oxfam, Cáritas, Facua or Cermi, trade unions like CCOO and UGT, although key business organisations like the CEOE did not participate. There is another meeting which has been scheduled for today (10th April 2020) with the Minister of Employment, in which the CEOE has refused to participate. However, Pablo Iglesias had been in contact telephonically with key business and banking sector figures who spoke positively of this measure, and had also been in contact with Antonio Garamendi, CEOE’s president, with whom he had exchanged some documentation.
Emergency minimum living income – latest update 19th April 2020
Given that the implementation of the proposed IMV would take around three months, the government has been working to implement a ‘bridge’ minimum living income (IMVP given its acronym in Spanish), which would be a temporal and emergency measure to be implemented as soon as possible, to be expected in May, as announced on the 16th of april . This emergency IMVP will consist of 500 euros per households, and up to 950€ depending on the number of children, for those with lower incomes than 200 euros if they live by themselves, and lower than 450 if living with one person or more. The benefit generosity will be higher for those with children under their charge. The government has announced that while this measure is temporary it will remain in place until the approval of the permanent IMV, which has been estimated to last for about 3 months.
In a recent interview, Escrivà argued that this policy would arrive to one million households, up to 3 million individuals, with 10% of the households being mono-marental (N.B.: he called them monoparental). Importantly, he argued that this benefit would not be lost automatically once the recipient finds employment, but rather, when their economic situation is stabilised, being compatible with the recipients’ wage for sometime.
The limitations of such a policy
Although the details are yet not clear, it is evident that this policy is far from a basic income, and much further away of combating poverty in Spain. According to the latest report by the European Network against Poverty and Social Exclusion, only in 2019, there were 12,3 million of individuals at risk of poverty or social exclusion. However, this measure will not be getting to more than 3 or 4 million of individuals.
Indepentarianism exists. The Danish punk band, Husligt Arbejde [House Work] has recorded an indepentarian song, “Borgerløn – the power to say no,” which translates into “Basic Income – the power to say no.” According to Google translate, the band describes its music as “aggressively political, minimalist punk.”
“Indepentarianism” is the theory of justice I began to lay out in several works including my book, Freedom as the Power Say No. Universal Basic Income plays an important role in that that theory. I was overwhelmed to find the idea has made it into a punk song. I thought it might be a coincidence. (It’s a basic and obvious argument for UBI.) But I contacted the band and sure enough, the song was about the book.
Most of the song is in Danish. Only one line, “the power to say no” is in English, but they say it over and over again. The lyrics are below in both Danish and English.
Original Danish lyrics:
Kan en luder sige nej?
power to say no, power to say no
Kan en ansat gå sin vej?
power to say no, power to say no
Må en fattig bøje sig?
power to say no, power to say no
Er man fri uden sit nej?
power to say no, power to say no
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
Staten si’r den elsker dig
power to say no, power to say no
mens den strammer garnet om dig
power to say no, power to say no
Løb for vækst og BNP
power to say no, power to say no
“ellers går systemet ned”
power to say no
, power to say no
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
Liberal politik
power to say no
det var det vi aldrig fik
power to say no
Hvad er egentlig faktisk frihed?
power to say no
Det er økonomisk frihed!
power to say no
, power to say no
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
Velfærdsdamer, kontorister
power to say no, power to say no
Arbejdsprøvning, tusind lister
power to say no, power to say no
BU-REAU-KRA-T
power to say no, power to say no
Vi vil hel’re være fri!
power to say no, power to say no
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
BORGERLØN FOR BORGERFRIHED
English lyrics, translated by the band:
Can a whore say no?
power to say no, power to say no
Can an employee go his way?
power to say no, power to say no
Must a poor man bow?
power to say no, power to say no
Are you free without your no?
power to say no, power to say no
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
The state says it loves you
power to say no, power to say no
while tightening the yarn around you
power to say no, power to say no
Race for growth and GDP
power to say no, power to say no
“otherwise the system will crash”
power to say no, power to say no
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
Liberal politics
power to say no, power to say no
That’s what we never got
power to say no, power to say no
What is real freedom?
power to say no, power to say no
It is financial freedom!
power to say no, power to say no
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
Ha! Welfare ladies, clerks
power to say no, power to say no
Work testing, a thousand lists
power to say no, power to say no
BU-REAU-CRA-CY
power to say no, power to say no
We’d rather be free!
power to say no, power to say no
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
BASIC INCOME FOR BASIC FREEDOM
This isn’t the only Indepentarian song. Years before I began writing philosophy, when I was living in New York, going to school, and playing in bands, I was already formulating ideas along these lines, and some of them came out in my song, “The Home of the Fat Homeless.”
The lyrics are contained in the picture below (toward the bottome left):
The Basic Income Network (BIN) Italia has published a petition pleading for the Italian governement and Parliament to immediately install an emergency basic income. There, it can be read:
To the Italian government and Parliament
EXPANDING THE CITIZEN’S INCOME SCHEME! IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
Right at a time when it is recognised that individuals must act as active and responsible members of their communities, it is necessary to prove we all truly adhere to the idea of a society that fulfils its members’ real needs. In short, it is time to guarantee the right to existence for all human beings.
Now that we are all facing sudden and unexpected changes, appropriate political and social structures are needed in order to both respond to the current (corona virus) emergency and introduce an universal social protection measure. It is time to simplify the social protection schemes so as to include the whole population, thus guaranteeing each individual access to these protections regardless of whether they are employed or not.
In 2019, Italy introduced a citizen’s income scheme which, if properly reformed in terms of universal access and less binding criteria, can be an important tool to support people and ensure them the right to access the resources they need to survive.
Therefore, we believe it is urgently necessary to:
Expand access to the Citizen’s Income Scheme for all those who are excluded from social safety nets;
Simplify procedures and access criteria, and make immediate benefit payments to new applicants;
Deliver the benefit payment on an individual basis;
Remove the existing constraints in terms of active labour market policies or other binding criteria, which now more than ever prove to be expensive and ineffective;
Use all forms of financing, including European funds, to support a broader number of citizens’ income beneficiaries;
Provide that changes made in terms of universal access do not end after the “quarantine” or “emergency” period, but rather become structural, thus eventually forming the basis for a new highly inclusive social welfare system.
Social Welfare is not a cost, but an investment!
The petition has been undersigned and supported by dozens of organizations operating in the Italian territory.
Forty years ago today—February 7, 1980—was a small milestone for the Universal Basic Income (UBI) movement: Milton and Rose Friedman dedicated an episode of their television show to a form of basic income guarantee called the Negative Income Tax. This episode might have been the last gasp of the UBI movement’s second wave, which came very close to the centers of power in the United States and Canada in the 1960s and early 70s but had been declining for nearly a decade.
I’m a little embarrassed that this TV show and its accompanying book was my entry into the UBI movement because I disagree with the Friedmans on so many other issues now, but I have to give them credit.
Although Friedman brought his fame and Nobel-Laureate credibility to UBI and related policies, that broadcast did little to stop the decline in UBI’s popularity. It gradually vanished from mainstream politics in the United States and in most countries. It remained an idea for academics, minor parties, fringe activists for decades, only to emerge—seemingly out of nowhere—as a growing worldwide movement over the last 10 years.
So, that day wasn’t a huge milestone for the UBI movement. But it was a big day for me. It was my 15th birthday. I watched the show. I was enthralled with the idea. So, today is my 55th birthday and 40th anniversary as a UBI supporter. That’s probably a good time to write a personal account of what it’s been like following the UBI movement as it fell and rose again.
Movements don’t come from nowhere even if they seem to. I realize now that the groundwork for UBI’s takeoff had been building since the mid-1980s even as it receded from the mainstream political dialogue, and even as the people involved had no way to know at the time. I can’t take any credit for UBI’s rise, but I followed it very closely, so maybe my personal account will be useful.
Although I was a firm supporter from 1980, I couldn’t do much for the UBI movement, because there wasn’t much of one, and I had to go through high school and college. Then I bounced around between crappy, low-paid jobs for three years, before starting graduate school.
The two things I could do for UBI in that period were think and talk about it. The more I thought about it, and the more I learned about politics and economics, the stronger my support became. I began to see UBI as the centerpiece of a just society.
1980 was a depressing time to become a UBI supporter—especially in the United States. There were small waves of support for it in various places around the world during this period and an intellectual movement for UBI began growing in parts of Europe by the mid-80s, but none of that news reached me in the USA. There was no internet. I had the mainstream media, the library, and word of mouth, which was nearly useless.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
I found myself arguing for an increasingly unpopular idea. As the memory of its popularity in the 60s and 70s faded, fewer and fewer people even knew what it was. Politicians like Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in the UK were slowly but successfully dismantling the welfare systems in their countries and vilifying just about everyone who qualified for benefits. People to the left-of-center were so much on the defensive that they were afraid to admit that the current welfare model needed improvement, because they were afraid any admission like that would make it more vulnerable to attack. Left-of-center people often argued that unconditionality was good in the abstract but political support for “the work ethic” was so strong that the only way to make sure benefits were adequate and safe from attack was to direct them exclusively to “the truly needy.”
The obvious weakness of this indirect argument amazes me. Almost all benefits in the USA, the UK, and many other countries, have been based on the model of separating the “truly needy” from the “undeserving poor” since their inception, but they have seldom if ever been adequate, and never free from attack.
Even some nominally left-of-center parties joined in, such as in 1996 when Bill Clinton led a bipartisan effort to “end welfare as we know it,” which basically meant reducing or eliminating benefits for the poorest children in the country because supposedly their mothers were bad people for taking care of children instead of “working.” Never mind that minimum wages weren’t enough to get single mothers or their children out of poverty, much less pay for child care. Never mind that this popular belief coincided with an equally popular belief that mothers whose husbands had money were bad people because they “worked” instead of taking care of children.
Watching things get worse for the least advantaged galvanized my opposition to conditions. Money is power. Propertylessness is powerlessness. Our society uses a judgmental, punitive system to force the least advantage to work for poverty wages. So, my support for UBI as a 31-year-old recent PhD in 1996 was as strong or stronger than it had been as a 15-year-old high school freshmen in 1980, and by now I had some of the skills I needed to work on it in the way I most wanted to—as an academic researcher. There are an infinite number of ways to contribute to a movement. So, I did what I thought I could do well.
Michael A. Lewis
My entry into the UBI movement began in the summer of 1996 while having breakfast the 7A Diner with Michael A. Lewis and Pam Donovan—two other recent PhDs and from the City University of New York. We’d been talking about politics a lot throughout our grad-school years. We had very different perspectives, but that day we all agreed that UBI or something like it was the most important social policy our country could introduce it right now.
Pam said, “then we have to write a paper on it.”
Pam was too busy to collaborate a paper together, but Michael and I had the time. We wrote the paper, and we have been collaborators on-and-off ever since. The feeling that I wasn’t the only one left in the world willing to work for this policy was great. It got my started writing on this issue, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
When Michael and I had a draft of a paper (that would take ten years to publish), we looked through academic journals in our fields (economics and sociology) to find people who’d written recently on the issue, and asked them for feedback. We had to search under at least a half dozen different names (guaranteed income, social dividend, etc.) because UBI had not yet emerged as the standard term. But we found about 20 people’s names and email address. We began getting to know people working on this topic.
In 1997, while I was working at the Levy Institute of Bard College in upstate New York, Malcolm Sawyer asked if I new about the Basic Income European Network (BIEN), as it was then called. I soon learned BIEN had been holding conferences on this idea since 1986. I got online and made plans to attended the next BIEN Congress, which was in Amsterdam in 1998. I can’t describe the feeling of being in a room with of several hundred UBI supporters after 18 years feeling like I was the only one. I’ve attended every BIEN Congress since.
At the conference, I was a new PhD, just getting started, with zero publications. So, I was a little nervous when I introduced myself to the organizer, Robert van der Veen, one of the key UBI researchers whose work had helped bring this issue back into the academic dialogue a dozen years earlier.
But when I thanked him for the work he’d done organizing the conference, he looked at my name tag and said, “And thank you. It was when I got your proposal, that I knew there would be at least one good paper at this conference.”
That comment gave me confidence that I had something to contribute. I hope that helps me remember to compliment others.
I also spoke to another key researcher, the secretary of BIEN, Philippe Van Parijs. I asked him how I could get involved with the network. Because BIEN was a European organization at the time, he said they really needed Americans to organize something like BIEN in the United States. Michael and I had a mailing list of about 20 interested people. That’s a start.
Because I was the only one who had time, they let me be coordinator and write the newsletter, eventually named the NewsFlash. That job gave me the opportunity to scour the internet for any UBI-related news I could find every two months. Sometimes it was hard to find, but I was surprised that there was always something to put in the NewsFlash. And that always put me in a good mood.
Jurgen De Wispelaere
I was the editor and main writer (sometimes the only writer) of the USBIG NewsFlash for it’s first 15 years, and it became a lot of work, but it also was a great education. It was a hard and sometimes thankless job, but I learned so much about the movement, it led to writing a lot of things that weren’t thankless, like writing this article, and collaborating on various projects with Michael Howard and Jurgen De Wispelaere.
From the early 2000s, I was all in with the UBI movement. I’ve attended every USBIG and BIEN and BIEN Congress since then. I’ve written as much as I could in UBI, and I volunteered for whatever I was able to do.When BIEN expanded from a “European” to an “Earth Network” in 2004, USBIG became an affiliate and several USBIG members, like Eri Noguchi, Almaz Zelleke, and me) joned the executive committe at various times. Eventually I was elected cochair along with Ingrid Van Niekerk, and later Louise Haagh.
Gradually, I became a recognizable part of the group of people working on UBI.
BIEN chair, Louise Haagh
But the group didn’t even feel like a movement. It felt like a discussion forum. Most of the membership were academics, and even the activists didn’t have critical mass to organize many actions. Instead, they tended either to focus on policies that were steps in the direction of UBI or to write about UBI like the academics but in more accessible way.
The movement was not only small; it was greying. In the mid-2000s, Guy Standing, referred to me as one of “the young people.”
I said, “Guy, I’m like, 40 years old.”
But that was young enough to be one of the younger people at the BIEN Congress.
Guy Standing–probably the most prolific author of UBI research–occupying Washing in 2011
Now that people in their teens and twenties working harder for UBI than anyone else, it’s hard to believe that as recently as 10 or 15 years ago, we were worried about getting young people involved. The movement was still made up mostly of die-hards from the second wave of UBI support, which had subsided more than 20 years earlier. I couldn’t even count myself as an exception because I learned about at the tail end of that wave of mainstream support. Maybe the UBI movement was the a ghost of Guaranteed Income movement of the 1960s.
Michael Howard unconditionally supporting the umbrella
In retrospect, the perception that the movement would slowly die off is obviously wrong. Even though UBI was continuing to recede from the mainstream political dialogue in most countries, subtle signs that the movement was regaining strength were visible. The first national Basic Income network began in the UK in 1985. The first international conference was held in 1986 and it led to the foundation of the first international network, BIEN. Since then local, national, and international groups had been gradually appearing around Europe and around the world. Minor parties in Parliaments in various European countries and elsewhere had been gradually endorsing UBI.
Localized waves of mainstream interest in UBI came and went throughout this period in places like Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, and South Africa. Even after these waves subsided, they left behind diehards who contributed to the growing international discussion and activism for UBI.
As USBIG’s Newsletter editor in the 2000s, I watched the subtle growth of the movement continue without really noticing that significance of its gradual acceleration. Not many other people did either. I never heard anyone saying this discussion and these actions are growing in a way that’s going to lead to a worldwide wave of UBI support that would make it a visible part of the mainstream political discussion across dozens of countries by in the 2010s.
Allan Sheahen
In 2006, US two activists, Al Sheahen and Steven Shafarman got a member of U.S. Congress to submit a bill to introduce small UBI. This bill was supposed to part of a strategy to rally support and press attention to UBI. Despite a lot of lobbying efforts by Al, Steve, and a few others, only two Members of Congress signed on to support the bill; there was basically zero press attention to it and zero activism for it. No one bothered to reintroduce the bill in the 2007 Congress. And the two Members of Congress (Bob Filner and Jesse Jackson Jr.) both ended up convicted of unrelated crimes a few years later.
Enno, Schmidt
But things were changing. Also 2006, Enno Schmidt and about a half dozen other people put paper crowns on the heads of passerbys in a public space in Switzerland and explaining the meaning of a too-often-forgotten UBI slogan “everyone a king.” Despite my doubts that it would lead anywhere, I was delightfully shocked that someone, somewhere was doing activism for UBI.
About that time, networks in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria created the first International Basic Income Week, which has grown every year since, and now takes place on all six inhabited contents. But it took me several years even to hear about it because it had no web-presence in English.
Zephania Kameeta, Namibian Minister of Poverty Eradication and former Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Namibia
At 2006 BIEN Congress, Zephania Kameeta, slammed his fist on the podiumand said, “Words, words, words. It’s time for action.” I was thinking, “Here we go again. Someone else is going to curse the people lighting candles in the darkness and tell them that they need to stop what they’re doing and start working on his idea.” But he instantly surprised. He announced he raised enough money to start a UBI pilot project in Namibia–the first such experience since 1980, and the forerunner of dozens that are happening now.
These days I look back at 2006 as the year that the UBI reached an inflection point and started to take off, but even following the news as closely as I was, I didn’t notice until 2012.
Before then, the news and research about UBI was small enough that I had time enough to read or listen to a lot of it, seemingly most of it, or at least most of the English-language stuff that seemed important to me. It was getting easier to fill the newsletter, but I felt like I had a good handle on it.
It went smoothly for about a year, but in 2012 Yannick, Joerg, and I all noticed something was happening. Suddenly, there was so much UBI-related news, that the three of us together couldn’t keep up with it.
The three of us knew that UBI was taking off. It’s been rising ever since.
I’d finally noticed that the third wave of UBI movement was happening. And the period in which I had to wonder whether the third wave was going to be as big as the second wave was extremely brief. In about 2010, I was asked to write a chapter called “Is Basic Income Still Worth Talking About?” (not my idea for a title and my answer was yes). But by the time book came out the question already sounded dated. More UBI activity was going around the world than at any time before.
The third wave dwarfs the second wave, and it’s the first genuinely worldwide wave of UBI support. I stepped down as editor of Basic Income News, five years ago (Andre Coelho took over), but I still follow the news as much as I can.
I discussed a dozen or so sources of this rise in another article. I won’t reiterate them here.
Barb Jacobson, one of the many people who work on the European Citizens Initiative for UBI and helped turn it into UBI-Europe
Today, the wave continues to grow from multiple sources even as its most visible driver keeps shifting every couple of years. First, it was two activist-led experiments in Namibia and India. Next, it was two petition drives to get UBI on the ballot in Switzerland and the European Union. Then two campaigns together raised over a half million signatures, and the EU campaign organized in every single EU member state. Somebody took the time to ask people in Malta to gather signatures for UBI. Somebody in Malta said yes. And some people in Malta—along with 350,000 people across 18 other countries—signed.
Look how small and out of the way that place is
After that, the media generated by those two initiatives inspired different kinds of activism around the world. Local, regional, national, and international groups seemed to appear everywhere.
At about the same time, the automation discussion exploded with tech industry people including some deep-pocketed and/or famous entrepreneurs, some of them used their position and resources to promote the idea. Then governments and large institutions around the world started running Basic Income experiments, sometimes in partnership with wealthy individuals or firms. So many experiments are now underway, it is hard to keep track.
Today, the most visible driver of the movement is Andrew Yang‘s campaign for U.S. Present. He’s the first major candidate to make UBI his central campaign issue. In
Andrew Yang upholds UBI as the Freedom Dividend
the 1972 US election, both major-party nominees endorsed forms of UBI, but neither of them made much of an issue of it.
Writing for the USBIG Newsflash during the 2000-2008 elections, I was unable to find any U.S. major parties’ Presidential, Gubernatorial, or Congressional candidates (aside from the two jailbirds mentioned above) even being asked about the issue. The issue was endorsed by Green Party candidates (thanks in part to Steve), and it was in alive in top-level politics in some other countries. But mainstream U.S. politicians almost always either ignored it completely or distanced themselves from that radical idea.
Steven Shafarman
In the 2012 and 2016 election cycles, mainstream politicians including Bernie Sanders, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton started being asked about it. Instead of feeling like they had to distance themselves from the idea, they tended to say favorable things about it while trying to convince UBI supporters that the most effective way to move in that direction right now was to join them in supporting some very non-UBI policies. That kind of response indicates that they recognized that UBI movement as worth courting, and that doing so was a net benefit over any negative they might get from association with an idea that had been too radical to touch since 1972—when even George McGovern quietly deemphasized it after receiving a difficult attack from Hubert Humphry in a primary debate.
Scott Santens with Conrad Shaw (“the UBI guy”/filmmaker) in a good mood after the Basic Income March, October 26, 2019
Yang’s version of UBI is ambitious, but not as much as most UBI supporters want to see. However, he’s been inspired by and considers himself a part of the UBI movement. His plan is a start. He’s received dedicated support from one of the most prominent UBI activist-writers in the United States, Scott Santens. Should UBI supporters endorse a candidate? I, for one, suggest we endorse the candidate who has endorsed us.
Yang’s campaign has raised UBI to greater prominence that it’s ever before received in the United States. It has forced all the Democratic candidates to state a position on the issue. He’s made it more difficult for other politicians to dismissively say nice things about the movement while trying to sell supporters on a non-UBI policy. If they’re not ready to endorse UBI right now, they have to explain why not, and often those arguments against UBI-now don’t look that great for people who see themselves as left-of-center. They sound reactionary and judgmental. If you’re serious about inequality, poverty, making sure everyone (no just the 1%) benefit from our prosperity: stop judging, start helping.
A small part of the Yang Gang in Los Angeles
Yang has built a network of “Yang Gangs” around America, and these groups are rallying around UBI more than any of Yang’s other policy proposals. Many dedicated members of the Yang Gang did not know what UBI was a year ago. Whether these gangs will grow into a long-term movement for UBI remains to be seen, but they’re giving a big boost to the UBI movement right now, and it’s spreading around the world.
Yang’s campaign has certainly reached more people than Milton Friedman’s TV show. Whatever happens it will leave behind many dedicated UBI supporters who will bring their ideas and enthusiasm to UBI research activism for a very long time. Maybe some of them will write articles in 2060, looking back on 40 years of activism–hopefully with a lot of successes to look back on.
Although Yang’s campaign is the most visible driver of the movement, right now, much more is going on–too much to chronicle. Experimental results will begin trickling out soon, and that will keep UBI in the news for years. Several documentaries about UBI are in production. UBI has become a major issue in India–especially in the state of Sikkim.
James Felton Keith & Diane Pagen
James Felton Keith, a candidate for Congress in Harlem, recently teamed up with long-term UBI activists, such as Diane Pagen, to organized a Basic Income march in October 26, 2019 in New York. The idea quickly spread around the world: 30 cities heald UBI marches that weekend.
Two other candidates for Congress, Chivona Newsome in the Bronx, and Agatha Bacelar in San Fransisco participated in the march and have given UBI a prominent place in their platform. I’ve gotten to know J. F. Keith. He’s not just someone who’s willing to say something nice about UBI. He’s a part of the movement. His voice in Congress could greatly raise the prominence of the idea.
From 1980 to 1996, I was an isolated UBI supporter. Then I was part of what felt like an all-but-hopelessly marginalized group of UBI supporters for another 15 years or so. For nearly a decade, I’ve been a part of growing movement that seems to reach new milestones every few months. In the process, I’ve gone from being one of the kids of the movement to a member of the old guard. I’ve had the chance to speak about UBI on all five continents. I even got to speak at the 2019 UBI March in New York.
Congressional candidate, Chivona Newsome, who is making UBI in issue
Being a respected part of this movement is the most satisfying part of my professional career. There is no group whose repect I value more. I hope everyone knows the respect is mutual. The chance to meet and correspond with so many people working for UBI in so many different ways has a been an adventure. The diversity of this group–so many people working in their own way on their own version of UBI or something like it–is what keeps this idea growing.
I’ve watched this movement grow with my mouth hanging open. Each success surprises me. People have given me and other visible members of the old guard way more credit for this wave of support than we deserve. Nobody saw this coming. Nobody said, this is what’s going to happen, and this is how we’ll do it. I can say that because I’ve attended most of the major UBI conferences since 1998.
Congressional candidate, Agatha Bacelar, who is making UBI an issue
Asking who should get the credit from the UBI movement is like asking which brick holds up the wall. The wall is the bricks. The movement is the people involved. The third wave of the UBI movement is being driven by extremely diverse support coming from all over the world for different reasons. The third wave is happening because a bunch of different people tried a bunch of different things–and some of it worked.
If you’ve said anything nice about UBI any time in the last 40 years, you helped build a movement. There’s no way to sort out who to credit and no point in trying.
We don’t know what happens next. This wave might be the one that makes UBI happen, but support might go into a period of decline for an unpredictable amount of time before picking up steam again. All I can say is whether the movement stalls or grows, don’t give up. Support has gone up and down several times, but it’s trended up for over 100 years. The diehards who kept working on UBI when it fell out of favor in their country made it into a bigger movement than it ever was before. It was that tiny group of people putting paper crowns on the heads of perplexed passerbys that started the snowball of activism that made it easy for the UBI march to spread all over the world. Or maybe 100 other little actions started the snowball.
If you want to get involved, there are an infinite number of valuable things you could do. Find something other people aren’t doing or that we need more people doing. If you need ideas about what needs doing, I have lots of them.
I don’t know how long it will take, but I think UBI will win eventually. The conditional welfare state, extreme capitalism, and extreme socialism have consistently failed to solve the underlying problems of inequality, poverty, and privilege. The have failed because even if they know that property is power, they have failed to realize that propertylessness is powerlessness and that making powerlessness the default position of everyone but the 1% is the ultimate class privilege.
UBI March, New York, 2019. Photo by Franklin Chávez
As long as inequality, poverty, and privilege exist, so does the opportunity to build the movement for UBI. The struggle doesn’t end until justice wins. Justice doesn’t win until the privileged stop telling the poor what to do so we can end the powerlessness that makes so many people in world weak, vulnerable, and marginalized.
-Karl Widerquist, Hey Cafe, New Orleans Louisiana, February 7, 2020 (with parts writted earlier and in other places). Updated February 9, 2020
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article makes no attempt to comprehensively cover the UBI movement. It’s the view from my perspective. It’s about the small slice of the enormous UBI movement that I’ve interacted with most closely. My apologies to the hundreds of dedicated people whose names just didn’t happen to come up.
That’s me giving my talk at the UBI March in the New York.
As US presidential candidate Andrew Yang continues to outperform expectations, his signature policy proposal, the Freedom Dividend or Universal Basic Income (UBI), is receiving increased scrutiny. Some of the criticisms are well warranted, while others are misconceptions based on a flawed understanding of how basic income would operate.
The following addresses some of the primary misconceptions regarding Yang’s plan.
UBI is too expensive
The cost issue is one of the most persistent misconceptions about basic income.
A basic income system would have a built-in clawback through the tax system. In Yang’s case, a portion of the clawback comes through the opt-in system that would substitute cash-like welfare programs for the Freedom Dividend, such as food assistance. However, most of the burden of the clawback would be on the wealthiest families who would pay more in taxes than they could receive from basic income
As I have noted previously, the UBI clawback can be both direct and indirect. For example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires families to pay back some or all of their healthcare subsidies at the end of the year if their yearly income exceeds a certain amount. A UBI system can similarly create a phase-out in the income tax system.
Considering Yang’s Freedom Dividend is opt-in, it is likely that many wealthy families would not opt to receive the dividend anyway.
Indirect clawback mechanisms could include Yang’s proposed Value Added Tax (VAT). The VAT is effectively a national sales tax, meaning even lower-income people would pay back a portion of their basic income depending on how much they spend their dividend on taxed goods.
Yang has said he would exclude many essential items from the VAT, though. Calculations show the VAT combined with UBI would have a net positive effect on purchasing power for low-income individuals.
Any taxes paid on the UBI would be used for the following year’s dividend, meaning much of the money is repeatedly recycled through the system. The additional amount that is redistributed to lower-income families is called the “net cost” or real cost of basic income. The net cost is the amount the government would actually redistribute every year under UBI.
Factoring the clawback, the real cost of basic income to the government would be approximately $539 billion annually, according to Georgetown Professor Karl Widerquist. This is less than 25 percent of existing entitlement spending.
UBI would have the same cost as a Negative Income Tax (NIT) when factoring the clawback, but the sticker price of the gross cost creates a false impression of a higher cost for UBI. NIT is not universal — it only provides the subsidy to those who qualify, making the cost appear lower than UBI. When I asked Yang whether he would support NIT to avoid the cost misconception, he said NIT would be a step in the right direction.
UBI would cause inflation
The inflation misconception has been around for many years, but it has become more convincingly debunked since I first wrote about it nearly three years ago.
It is essential to note that Yang’s plan is redistributing existing cash, not printing new cash. For every dollar spent, there must be a dollar taxed first, which would offset inflationary pressures.
As Karl Widerquist noted, basic income is no different than other welfare programs in terms of increasing demand for goods. Denmark has one of the most generous welfare states in the world, but they also consistently experience a low and stable inflation rate below two percent.
In the United States, food assistance, which can be freely spent like cash on most food items, has not produced inflation in food prices. On the contrary, research from the London School of Economics shows in states with higher take-up of food stamp assistance, prices have dropped and there is greater product variety relative to those areas with lower food assistance take-up. This is because suppliers respond to increased demand with more competition entering the market.
Thus, the guaranteed demand from basic income could generate higher levels of competition that brings down costs for low-income people.
In Alaska, which has a small Universal Basic Income funded by oil revenues, inflation has been lower than the U.S. average since the program started. Other research in Mexico demonstrates that directly giving cash does not produce inflation.
Since the United States is a globalized market, any short term demand spike creates an economic profit that is resolved by increased production, bringing the price down in the long-run.
In fact, the United States is experiencing unusually low levels of inflation. Contributing factors could include the Amazon.com effect, automation, immigration, and global trade. Basic income would not change these underlying factors keeping a hold on inflation.
The main area where there could be meaningful inflation in the medium term is the cost of rent because there is a fixed supply of land.
Basic income could empower more people to move and find other options. Renters would have a better bargaining position with their landlord if they had a guaranteed dividend than if they are desperately clinging to their job.
In the long-run, greater purchasing power from low-income people should induce more homebuilding and open up a greater share of unoccupied housing. That said, the high cost of rent exists now in many areas and should be addressed as a separate policy issue.
Nonetheless, it is unlikely that any inflation from UBI could completely wipe out the improved purchasing power from the dividend, let alone make people worse off.
UBI would cause laziness
The problem of laziness is one of the most thoroughly debunked misconceptions about UBI. Among those who closely study cash transfers, many no longer consider labor participation an interesting research question because the results consistently show no effect. Those who have read the relevant research and are still convinced that basic income causes laziness will likely never be persuaded otherwise.
As I reported in 2016, “The Overseas Development Institute just released the largest meta-analysis of cash transfer programs ever, spanning 15 years of data and 165 studies. The main takeaway is that studies show a consistent reduction in poverty measures. Perhaps an even more important conclusion is that most evidence showed an increase in work participation after receiving the basic income.”
Many specific examples from across the developmental spectrum corroborate the conclusion that basic income would not meaningfully reduce work. In Finland’s basic income experiment, there was no negative effect on work. Iran’s generous basic income did not reduce overall work but did cause some young people to substitute their time for more schooling. In Alaska, their partial basic income did not reduce overall work. On the contrary, Alaska’s basic income increased part-time work due to the increased demand generated by a basic income.
With a permanent basic income, there is reason to believe that a healthier and more productive labor market will emerge. For example, the Finland experiment showed basic income recipients were happier and more trusting overall. Many polls indicate that individuals would use the basic income to gain additional skills, spend time with family, volunteer, and engage in freelancing.
If the poor are no longer clinging to a job for survival, they can more freely find a job where they can be the most productive. They will also have more bargaining power to demand better working environments.
Most importantly, basic income would allow greater time and mental energy to be focused on the most important job in society: caregiving. Volunteering and caregiving provide enormous economic and societal benefits that are not recorded in GDP because they are typically unpaid.
Basic income gives people the right to say no to exploitation. But the most revolutionary aspect of UBI is that it finally gives everyone the opportunity to yes to their passions.
Basic Income, Solidarity Economy and Social Protection
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Maricá provides unconditional transfers to almost half of its population. 7 other cities in the state of Rio de Janeiro have already created their own local currencies inspired by Maricá’s Citizens Basic Income. Our other host city, Niterói provides transfers benefiting more than 100,000 individuals.
Pre-congress events: Latin America Day: 25 Aug. & Early Career Day: 26 Aug.
In 1997, while I was working at the Levy Institute of Bard College in upstate New York, Malcolm Sawyer asked if I new about the 
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