Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor and Democratic Party candidate for the United States 2020 presidential elections, is firmly against Universal Basic Income (UBI). According to him, UBI is “woefully inadequate”, fearing it will replace existing (complex, inefficient, stigmatizing and conditional) welfare programs while failing to put people to work. As Joe Biden, the Democratic Party preferred candidate according to all polls, de Blasio believes that UBI “overlooks the intrinsic value of a job, believing the financial life support of a monthly check can substitute for meaningful employment”. He thinks, therefore, that UBI will prevent people from working, rather than the opposite (despite the evidence). That also equates to thinking that people need to be forced to work, which translates into believing that some sort of fundamental laziness afflicts the human species.
In order to engineer his vision of a “work-filled future”, de Blasio proposes a Robot Tax, applicable to large companies able to automate jobs and not inclined to compensate their displaced workers with new jobs. This new tax would be conjured and managed by a newly created organism called FAWPA (Federal Automation and Worker Protection Agency), which would, in practice, act as deterrent companies’ initiatives, turning it harder to invest on automation. Specifically, the Robot Tax would be collected by the state into a special fund. That fund would finance, in practice, an effective Federal Jobs Guarantee scheme, such as the one defended by Bernie Sanders.
With help from an incredible team of software developers, economists, and supporters, we have created the UBIcalculator. The project has taken over a year to construct.
This is what UBIcalculator looks like
UBIcalculator is a very simple yet powerful tool for understanding and communicating how various American basic income plans would likely pan out for…
Your bottom line: Will your household gain or lose money after implementing different versions of UBI?
The American public’s bottom line: How many people would be lifted above the poverty line, what percentage of Americans would gain income versus paying in, how would it be funded, and how much, if any, deficit spending would be utilized and why?
How to Use UBIcalculator
Enter your household income, family dynamic, and, if applicable, Social Security and government assistance (welfare) income into the calculator.
Peruse the plan list to compare the headline numbers (how it affects your income, the number of Americans who gain income, and deficit spending utilized). Sort by any of these factors to see which plan ranks highest in each category.
Click on any individual plan to learn more details about its effects, how it is funded, and why the plan author designed their basic income this way.
Adjust the income scroll bar or change your household inputs at any time to see the numbers react in real-time.
If you want to display a widget of any specific plan on your website, there is an embed code down at the bottom of each one that will let people use the calculator on your site.
Go as surface level or deep as you want. You can discover the highest potential return for you and your family.
Now you have a great idea of how UBI could impact you and the rest of the United States, and you have a convenient tool you can share to avoid getting into drawn-out economic debates. Just share the knowledge with this link.
What is Next for UBIcalculator?
This is Version 1.0. It is very powerful, but there are plans to keep improving.
Version 2 goals:
Include more UBI funding mechanism options (wealth tax, land value tax, corporate tax, etc.)
Policy-Maker Mode: A platform where anyone can create and submit a UBI plan of their own (limited by specific “Do No Harm” principles that would not allow for anything draconian or irresponsible to be proposed)
Create a database of plans with improved searching/sorting/upvoting mechanisms to allow the best and most popular plans and ideas to rise to the top.
Things to Keep in Mind
All calculations are estimates.
We strove to do all of the calculations as conservatively as possible, so the results you are seeing are theoretically the worst-case scenarios.
In order to retain maximum credibility, no plans get special treatment in any way.
Why I Made UBIcalculator
TRANSPARENCY: To cut through misinformation. I am tired of seeing pundits, politicians, and other people with various agendas both for or against UBI telling people what to believe. I want the American public to be able to know about the actual proposals and what is possible directly from the mathematical source, with no spin or propaganda.
VIRALITY: I believe in the grassroots. For that, the public needs to be informed and empowered to act, so I made UBIcalculator as simple to use and shareable as possible.
UNITY: To help the UBI movement coalesce around the best plans and opportunities, to hold everybody (yes, even Andrew Yang) accountable and push them to improve their plans where possible, and to create an avenue for other candidates and political figures to quickly study and propose their own versions of UBI if they so choose.
This page contains a list of links to free versions of pretty much everything I’ve ever written. Free versions are possible because most publishers allow authors to post early versions of their publications on their personal website. Where the published version is free, I’ve tried to include a link to it, but otherwise, the links below are to the early versions on my “Selected Works” webpage.
The early versions are usually the last version I wrote before sending it to the publisher. That means they usually lack copyediting, typesetting, and proofreading. They’re going to contain mistakes that aren’t in the final version. Maybe some really dumb mistakes. But otherwise, they should be good approximations of the works I eventually published.
The reason some things are missing is that it’s a hassle to post everything. If you want something that’s missing please contact me at Karl@Widerquist.com.
According to Google Scholar, my academic publications were cited 1,417 times by July 28, 2020.
My “Selected Works” website has free versions of most of my publications. My Biography, from December 3, 2016, is on BasicIncome.org.
Karl Widerquist. Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge, Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press
Michael Anthony Lewis and Karl Widerquist, Economics for Social Workers: Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press (the First Edition, 2002, is available from Columbia University Press)
Karl Widerquist, forthcoming, “Three Waves of Basic Income Support,” the Palgrave International Handbook of Basic Income. Malcolm Torry (editor). New York: Palgrave-Macmillan
Karl Widerquist, March 2018, “My Own Private Basic Income.” In Amy Downes and Stewart Lansley (eds.) It’s Basic Income: the Global Debate, Bristol, UK: Policy Press, an Imprint of the University of Bristol Press, pp. 48-53. Also published in OpenDemocracy, June 27, 2017 (more than 47,000 downloads)
Karl Widerquist, December 22, 2016. “The People’s Endowment.” In Axel Gosseries and Inigo Gonzalez (eds.) Institutions for Future Generations, Oxford University Press, pp. 312-330
Karl Widerquist, March 31, 2013. “Is Basic Income Still Worth Talking About?” in The Economics of Inequality, Poverty, and Discrimination in the 21st CenturyVolume II, Robert S Rycroft (ed.) Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, pp. 568-584
Karl Widerquist, 2012. “Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Basic Income in Practice,” Democratic Imperatives: Innovations in Rights, Participation, and Economic Citizenship. Report of the Task Force on Democracy, Economic Security, and Social Justice in a Volatile Word, American Political Science Association (ed.). Washington, DC: The American Political Science Association (April), p. 64
Karl Widerquist, 2011. “Why we Demand an Unconditional Basic Income: the ECSO freedom case,” in Arguing about Justice: Essays for Philippe Van Parijs, Axel Gosseries and Yannick Vanderborght (eds.) Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Presses universitaires de Louvain, pp. 387-394
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “Libertarianism,” in the International Encyclopedia of Public Policy: Governance in a Global Age, Volume 3, Phillip O’Hara (Ed.) Perth: GPERU, pp. 338-350
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “Does She Exploit or Doesn’t She?” in The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, Karl Widerquist, Michael A. Lewis, and Steven Pressman (eds.), Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 138-162
Non-Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Including Book Chapters and Journal Articles
Karl Widerquist, 2013. “Reciprocity and Exploitation,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Jose A. Noguera and Karl Widerquist, 2013. “Basic Income as a Post-Productivist Policy,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Yannick Vanderborght, José A. Noguera, and Karl Widerquist, 2013. “Politics,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, Yannick Vanderborght, and José A. Noguera, 2013. “The Idea of an Unconditional Income for Everyone,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, and Yannick Vanderborght, 2013. “The Implementation of Basic Income,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, 2013. “Theories of Justice and Basic Income,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Yannick Vanderborght and Karl Widerquist, 2013. “The Feminist Response to Basic Income,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, 2013. “Freedom and Basic Income,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, and Yannick Vanderborght, 2013. “The Economics of Basic Income,” in Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research, Karl Widerquist, José A. Noguera, Yannick Vanderborght, and Jurgen De Wispelaere (eds.) Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Karl Widerquist, 2012. “Exporting the Alaska Model to Alaska: How Big Could the Permanent Fund Be if the State Really Tried? And Can a Larger Fund Insulate an Oil-Exporter from the End of the Boom?” in Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform Around the World, Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 169-180
Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard, 2012. “Critical Reflections on the Future of Alaska’s Permanent Fund and Dividend,” in Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (eds.), New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 115-122
Michael Lewis, Steven Pressman & Karl Widerquist, 2005. “The basic income guarantee and social economics,” The Review of Social Economy 63 (4): 587-593. (Revised version published as “An introduction to the Basic Income Guarantee” in The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, Widerquist, Lewis, Pressman (eds.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005)
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “Discussion” Time for Land Value Tax? Dominic Maxwell and Anthony Vigor (eds.) London: Institute for Public Policy Research, pp. 60-64
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “Introduction,” The Journal of Socio-Economics 34 (1): 1–2
Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard, coeditors of “Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its suitability as a model”
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “Review of Natural Justice, Ken Binmore,” Utilitas 21 (4): pp. 529-532
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “Jeremy Waldron’s Legal Philosophy and the Basic Income Debate, comment on three books by Jeremy Waldron,” Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2009. “Review of Just Distribution: Rawlsian Liberalism and the Politics of Basic Income, Simon Birnbaum,” Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2008. “Review of The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy, Brian Steensland,” Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2007. “Review of the Ethics of Stakeholding, Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere, and Stuart White,” the Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2005. “Review of Libertarianism Without Inequality, Michael Otsuka,” the Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2004. “Review of Work Behavior of the World’s Poor: Theory Evidence and Policy, Mohammed Sharif,” the Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2004. “Review of The Civic Minimum, Stuart White,” the Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2004. “Review of Real Libertarianism Assessed, Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams (eds.),” the Citizens Income Newsletter (1)
Karl Widerquist, 2004. “Review of Economics as Religion: from Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond, Robert H. Nelson,” the Eastern Economic Journal 30 (1): 153-155
Karl Widerquist, 2001. “Review of The Political Economy of Inequality, Ackerman, Goodwin, Dougherty, and Gallagher (eds.),” the Journal of Economic Issues 35 (4): 1054-1056
Karl Widerquist, “The Growth of the Australian Basic Income Movement,” in Implementing a Basic Income in Australia: Pathways Forward, Elise Klein, Jennifer Mays, and Tim Dunlop (eds.) New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Karl Widerquist “Predicciones de Keynes: ‘Las posibilidades económicas de nuestros nietros’ Una visión restrospectiva” Ciudadanos: Critica Política y Propuesta Año 6, No. 10 El Futuro (Invierno de 2006). Traducido por José Villadeamigo, pp. 55-60 de “Re-Reading Keynes” Dissent
This is a draft version of my forward to the book, Implementing a Basic Income in Australia: Pathways Forward edited by Elise Klein, Jennifer Mays, and Tim Dunlop New York: Palgrave-Macmillan 2019
Back in 1999, when I first started following international developments on Basic Income (BI), not much was going on in Australia. Allan McDonald had been writing about BI in the newsletter for a group called Organisation Advocating Support Income Studies in Australia (OASIS-Australia), but when he stepped down in 2002, no one was available to take over.
But over the last several years, interest in BI in Australia has picked up greatly. Australians inside and outside of academia are producing a lot of research and literature on it, and that work is beginning to have a major impact on politics. Australia’s two major parties might not yet be ready to endorse BI, but they can no longer ignore it. And in fact, the Australian Greens, a party that often holds the balance-of-power in Australia’s federal Upper House, have officially adopted BI as party policy.
Australia has become not simply one of the countries where BI is regularly discussed, but very possibly a major world centre for UBI activity. One sign is that the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), the only worldwide BI network, has selected Australia for the location of its 2020 conference.
Another sign became obvious to me in 2017 when Elise Klein invited me to come to Australia to speak at a BI conference. Members of Basic Income Guarantee Australia (BIGA) took the opportunity to set me up for as many talks or meetings as I could do in the time I had. That turned out to be a whirlwind of seven appearances in four days in three cities—Canberra, Sydney, and Melbourne. I spoke with members of parliament, with members of the media, with academics, and with university students. I slept on a train and on a plane, and I managed to stay awake for all or most of the two-day, BI research conference in Melbourne, where I learned a lot and had the chance to meet many of the authors of this book. I was impressed by the breadth and depth of BI work going on in Australia.
A third sign that Australia has become a major world centre for BI research can be found in the publication of the book, Implementing a Basic Income in Australia: Pathways Forward edited by Elise Klein, Jennifer Mays, and Tim Dunlop (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). It includes a dozen authors from fields as diverse as Anthropology, Development, Economics, Geography, Journalism, Political Economy, Political Science, Public Health, Social Work, and Sociology. It addresses major empirical and philosophical issues of implementing BI in Australia. Although all or most of the chapters are written in a way that will be interesting to an international audience, parts of the book’s focus is on issues that will be especially interesting in the Australian context, such as the specific problems and opportunities for BI in very remote areas as well as its value as a tool to counter the effects of Australian settler colonialism.
The book pays special attention to the political barriers in the way of implementation of BI in Australia and to the opportunities and prospects for political strategies to move BI forward. These include proposals to start with group-focused transfers, such as BI for young people; proposals for how community groups, professionals, and activists can effectively advocate for BI; and proposals for fitting BI into the existing welfare system.
Although these lessons come from the Australian context, the value of this book for the BI movement all over the world needs to be appreciated. It’s a book about implementation—an issue that needs much more analysis by the global BI researchers and activists. Social, economic, and political strategies for BI need to be explored in different ways in every conceivable context. Comparative analysis of different strategies in different contexts is how we’ll truly learn what works and what doesn’t, and this book provides a valuable contribution to that effort.
The book is an excellent read and a valuable resource for researchers, students and anyone interested in BI.
-Karl Widerquist, Doha, Qatar, December 8, 2018
Table of contents (14 chapters)
Introduction: Implementing a Basic Income in Australia
Pages 1-20
Klein, Elise (et al.)
Basic Income in Australia: Implementation Challenges
Pages 23-43
Marston, Greg
Basic Income in the Current Climate: If Australia Can Implement Other Universal Provisions, Then Why Not a Basic Income?
Pages 45-68
Mays, Jennifer
Feminist Perspectives on Basic Income
Pages 69-85
Cox, Eva
Basic Income and Cultural Participation for Remote-Living Indigenous Australians
Pages 87-109
Altman, Jon (et al.)
Diversion Ahead? Change Is Needed but That Doesn’t Mean That Basic Income Is the Answer
Pages 111-126
Bowman, Dina (et al.)
Finding a Political Strategy for a Basic Income in Australia
Pages 129-145
Hollo, Tim
Basic or Universal? Pathways for a Universal Basic Income
Pages 147-161
Quiggin, John
Stepping Stones to an Australian Basic Income
Pages 163-178
Spies-Butcher, Ben (et al.)
What About Young People? Why a Basic Income for Young People Matters
Pages 179-198
Kaighin, Jenny
Situating a Basic Income Alongside Paid Work Policies
Pages 199-213
Scott, Andrew
Social Work, Human Services and Basic Income
Pages 215-235
Ablett, Phillip (et al.)
Basic Income in Canada: Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead
“We’re seeing voter turnout decline across developed nations, in some of them really quite rapidly, says Daniel Park, who is writing his thesis on the impact of UBI on democratic participation. “If UBI could help to stem this flow of apathy by granting people more resources, more time and a greater feeling of respect from the political system, then that can only be a good thing. I certainly think it’s something worth looking at.”
Universal basic income (UBI) is often referred to as ‘money for nothing’, emphasising the unconditional nature of the payment. But in reality, a UBI could be a powerful way to recognise and even enable civic engagement. Citizens contribute to society in important ways other than through paid work, including volunteering, supporting others and democratic participation. Therefore UBI being ‘no strings attached’ doesn’t have to mean it’s ‘for nothing’.
A 2018 House of Lords select committee found that civic engagement should be “a primary objective of a successful democratic nation.” The report quickly establishes the disastrous impact inequality is having on civic engagement, yet focuses its efforts elsewhere, sticking to making recommendations that can “be implemented without major shifts in the distribution of resources.” But a major shift in the distribution of resources may be precisely what’s needed and this could come in the form of a UBI, a payment in exchange for the diverse ways that all citizens contribute to society.
In fact, some have proposed that citizens should prove their contribution to society in order to receive a UBI. This could mean a required amount of voluntary work or, perhaps more controversially, compulsory voting. The link between participation and the payment would then be made explicit, but it isn’t a perfect solution, not least because a conditional UBI would be as intrusive and inefficient to administer as the current welfare system.
Civic engagement also has different meanings to different people, so any proposed way of ‘proving’ it would be arbitrary. For instance, some people may choose not to vote as a political statement, but this would make them ineligible to receive UBI. Park emphasises that forcing people to vote could also cause ‘donkey voting’, where voters “turn up and just close their eyes and put a tick in a box”. Introducing conditionality may bring its own problems, but a basic income would not have to make civic engagement mandatory in order to promote it.
An unconditional UBI could have a strong positive effect on democratic participation and this is particularly evident in the case of voter turnout. It’s often observed that being on a higher income makes an individual more likely to vote. A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US, entitled ‘Family Income and the Intergenerational Transmission of Voting Behavior’, describes a study that successfully used cash transfers to demonstrate this effect. Children from the bottom half of the income distribution scale who received the cash transfers voted 10 to 20 percent more as adults. A basic income may be a powerful tool to combat low voter turnout when it is linked to low income.
But democratic participation covers many activities that go beyond turning up to vote. In a successful democracy, individuals must be able to promote their own political interests in the way they choose, so general participation would hopefully increase with a UBI alongside voter turnout.
Daniel Park outlines three reasons why he believes a UBI would have a positive impact on democratic participation. Firstly, “it will give people more time”, which could be dedicated to political action. Secondly, “it will give a greater level of social trust,” an effect which has been found in a UBI study in Finland. Finally, “social interactions and social capital increase, which is generally good because most people get their political information not from going out and reading manifestos, but from talking to each other.”
Some may disagree with the idea of giving payment in exchange for democratic participation, insisting that it should be a fundamental right. This is rooted in the idea that participation is of most benefit to the individual as they can use it to promote their own interests. But individual participation has a collective benefit too, as it promotes the system that serves everyone’s interests. Ultimately, a successful democracy relies on everybody participating, so when people can engage more in democratic processes, the quality of democracy improves for everyone.
Volunteering is a fulfilling method of civic engagement that allows citizens to give their time to a cause they value. But many people are excluded from this process by the demands of their work life. By removing the threat of poverty, a basic income would open up voluntary work to everyone and it seems lots of people would take this opportunity. A survey conducted by UBI Taiwan found that 10% of people in Taiwan said they’d volunteer more if they received a UBI.
So a basic income would be a successful way to reward and encourage civic engagement. It would also address the limits that poverty places on participation. If civic engagement is “a primary objective of a successful democratic nation”, then changing resource distribution to enable it should be a top priority.
“We could have other methods of engaging people, but I also feel that UBI [is good] because it does so much more than this,” says Park. “This is such a small aspect of the idea of UBI, and it seems for everybody before now, not even really the point at all. This is mostly just to add weight to the argument and go, ‘Here is another way in which it is beneficial.’”
