by Andre Coelho | Apr 8, 2017 | News
Event room at Coolabora. Credit to: Graça Rojão.
On the 25th of March 2017, a meeting of the Fórum Cidadania & Território (link) took place in Covilhã, a mountain city in Serra da Estrela, Portugal. This regular gathering of individuals and institutions was at Coolabora, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), and apart from particular issues related to citizenship and territory, it was also dedicated to presenting and discussing basic income.
Fórum Cidadania & Território is a formal network of NGO’s and individuals concerned with social issues, development and non-discrimination in Portugal. Hence it represents a larger universe of activity than the strict number of people attending these meetings allows for. In this 14th meeting, organized and hosted by Coolabora, activists promoting basic income in Portugal were invited, in this case André Barata, André Coelho and Pedro Ferrão.
André Barata presented basic income as a natural outgrowth of social democracy, nowadays very much torn apart and distorted. According to him, basic income is justified not so much because automation in upon us, but mainly as a right of citizenship. Countless generations of human beings have created everything upon which we live today, and so a basic income is a way for every person to get a fair share of that heritage. André Coelho exhibited a few slides to explain how a basic income could be financed in Portugal, referring to a study offered by Miguel Horta. He also reviewed what he considers to be the advantages of basic income, over our current social welfare systems. Paulo Ferrão spoke of the next BIEN Congress, taking place in Lisbon, and called for participation in the basic income week taking place while the Congress is ongoing (25th through 27th of September, 2017).
After these points, the debate was opened to the audience, who took the opportunity to pose questions and discuss the traditional arguments against basic income (e.g.: disincentive to work, difficulty in paying for a basic income).
by Kate McFarland | Apr 7, 2017 | News
Charlie Young, an economics writer who has worked at the UK think tank New Economics Foundation, has contributed an article on basic income to the online journal Evonomics. In the piece, he proposes a categorization system to help make sense of some of the main sources of variations between basic income schemes.
As Young points out, “universal basic income” is not a single proposal. Instead, the label encompasses a broad set of proposals that are not mutually compatible in practice, even though they are related in a more abstract conceptual or philosophical sense. For this reason, it does not make sense to say that one is “for” or “against” UBI outright.
According to Young, the “most important distinguishing feature” between these varied proposals is the source of funding (which he takes to encompass such questions as whether the UBI is a replacement to the welfare state or an add-on). He mentions the scope (“just how ‘universal’ is the income?”), amount, and regularity of the basic income as other distinguishing features.
In this light, Young recommends the following three-fold classification scheme for UBI proposals: (A) proposals based on adjustments of existing tax and benefit systems (which, in his words, have in common “a shared belief that a politically feasible UBI must be small-scale, sometimes include transitional proposals, and be based on funding from existing tax structures”); (B) proposals focused on replacement of existing welfare programs (which Young claims to differ from the former in their justification and outcomes of interest, the latter focusing more on individual autonomy than macro-level effects); and (C) proposals funded by “communalising common assets” such as natural resources, wealth, or productivity increases due to technology.
Read the full article:
Charlie Young, “The Conversation About Basic Income is a Mess. Here’s How to Make Sense of It,” Evonomics, March 19, 2017.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Christian Guthier
by Kate McFarland | Apr 1, 2017 | News
On March 22, 2017, the popular debate program Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US), hosted and moderated by ABC News correspondent John Donvan, held a debate on the question “Is the universal basic income the safety net of the future?” Specifically, the panelists debated the proposal of a $12,000 per year UBI for Americans.
On the “yes” side, Andrew Stern, former President of the Service Employees International Union and author of Raising the Floor, partnered with libertarian author and scholar Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. Their opponents were two leading economists of the Obama administration: Jason Furman (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Barack Obama) and Jared Bernstein (Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden).
Prior to the debate, members of the live audience were asked whether they were “for the motion”, “against the motion”, or undecided.
During the first round of the debate, each debater was given time to make opening speeches delineating their positions. Initiating the round, Stern argued that current welfare programs are insufficient, leaving millions of Americans in poverty, and that impending job disruption due to automation will make the economic situation even more dire. Opening for the “against” side, Furman maintained that the threat from automation has been overblown, that UBI is not financially viable–at least without removing benefits from those who need them–and that there are better policy options, such as programs designed to help individuals obtain jobs.
Next, Murray argued that a basic income would open more options to individuals, remove the need for the poor to supplicate themselves to government bureaucrats to receive benefits, and restore more responsibility to family and friends in supporting one another’s needs. Finally, Bernstein laid out a case that basic income would waste resources on those who don’t need them, eliminating funds from programs that could do much more to help poor and middle-class Americans, ultimately to the detriment of those who need help the most.
The opening statements were followed by an interactive debate moderated by Donvan. This second round began with the question of the extent to which technological unemployment is a real threat. While Furman emphasized that earlier fears of mass job loss to automation turned out to be unfounded, Stern and Murray contended that the threat is indeed significantly greater now. Meanwhile, Bernstein stressed that there is still plenty of work that needs to be done today.
Redirecting discussion from the impasse over the magnitude of the automation threat, Bernstein stressed that the most important point of the “against” side is not that automation is not a major concern, but that UBI wastes money on those who don’t need it, rather than investing that money in programs targeted at the most vulnerable. In response to assertions by Stern that the poor are obviously better off under a UBI, given that they have an additional $12,000 per year, Furman challenged the arithmetic of the “for” side–challenging Stern and Murray to explain how their UBI can be financed.
Near the end of the round, the debate shifted to the more “ephemeral” parts of the pro-UBI argument, focusing on the potential impact of UBI on civil society.
After the second round of the debate, members of the studio audience were invited to ask brief questions, and, finally, each of the four panelists summarized their key points in two-minute closing statements.
At the end of the debate, the audience members were against asked to vote “for”, “against”, or “undecided” on the motion that UBI is the safety net of the future.
In the end, the “against” side clearly dominated the contest. While only 20% of attendees were opposed the motion prior to the debate (with 45% undecided), fully 61% were afterwards. Meanwhile, the proportion in favor dropped from 35% to 31%.
The “against” side also won in a poll of the online viewing audience, although less starkly. At the beginning of the debate, 49% of online viewers expressed support for the motion–rising to 53% by the end. The percentage against, in contrast, started (and ended) smaller, but saw a much larger increase–from 19% to 42%.
It is important to keep in mind that these results reflect the views only of a small self-selected group of individuals, and thus neither the “before” or “after” votes should not be taken as representative of Americans’ views on UBI.
Watch the Debate
Reference
“The Universal Basic Income is the Safety Net of the Future” at Intelligence Squared Debates.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod.
by Kate McFarland | Mar 31, 2017 | Research
Luke Martinelli, Research Associate at the University of Bath’s Institute for Policy Research (IPR), has prepared a new working paper that uses simulation techniques to analyze the effects of four different revenue-neutral basic income schemes. Martinelli’s analysis suggests that the design of a basic income falls prey to the “iron triangle of welfare reform” — wherein it is impossible simultaneously to meet the goals of keeping the program at a reasonable cost, meeting the needs of beneficiaries, and maintaining work incentives (see pp. 6, 44-46).
The paper was published as part of the IPR’s ongoing project Examining the Case for a Basic Income, which also includes a series of lectures, workshops, and other events.
Abstract:
In line with a dramatic resurgence of interest in basic income in recent years, there have been a number of studies analysing the fiscal and distributional consequences of specific basic income schemes. These ‘microsimulation’ studies use representative household surveys to examine the effects of hypothetical reforms at the national level and for specific demographics.
We make several original contributions to this burgeoning literature, modelling a number of original basic income schemes. These include a wide variety of schemes with full coverage and a number of schemes with partial coverage. We also carry out a detailed analysis of four revenue-neutral full schemes.
- Among systems with ‘full’ coverage, we have modelled four levels of generosity, and four types of compensatory tax and benefit reform for each.
- For the partial coverage schemes, we model how expansion of coverage could be sequenced in order to distribute the fiscal burden over a longer period of time.
- The revenue-neutral schemes assume that increases in expenditure must be broadly matched by increases in tax revenue. We suggest that besides the elimination of the personal income tax allowance and national insurance lower and upper thresholds, the income tax rate would have to increase by 4% (for a basic income set at the standard level of existing benefits) and 8% (for one with premiums for individuals determined as disabled) to pay for our schemes.
For each scheme, we discuss the fiscal implications and the implications for levels of poverty and inequality. For the revenue neutral schemes, we provide a more detailed breakdown of distributional effects, disaggregating changes in household income levels by income quintile, family type, number of children, and labour market status. The main argument of the paper is that we are faced with a series of trade-offs with respect to policy design, between the goals of meeting need / alleviating poverty, controlling cost, and eliminating means-testing. Our schemes aims to replace a large range of existing benefits with a basic income. The unavoidable reality is that such schemes either have unacceptable distributional consequences or they simply cost too much. The alternative – to retain the existing structure of means-tested benefits – ensures a more favourable compromise between the goals of meeting need and controlling cost, but does so at the cost of administrative complexity and adverse work incentive effects.
Paper
Luke Martinelli, “The Fiscal and Distributional Implications of Alternative Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK,” Institute for Policy Research, March 2017.
Photo: “lots of iron triangles” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 danna § curious tangles
by Kate McFarland | Mar 30, 2017 | News
The UK think tank Compass, which published the 2016 report Universal Basic Income: An idea whose time has come? by Howard Reed and Stewart Lansley, recently launched the blog series on the topic of basic income (“Universal Basic Income: Security for the Future?”).
Two pieces in the series are “Coming off the fence on UBI?” by Ruth Lister (chair of the Compass Management Committee and Emeritus Professor at Loughborough University) and, in reply to Lister’s contribution, “Basic Income and Institutional Transformation” by Louise Haagh (co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network and Reader at the University of York).
Lister expresses much sympathy toward UBI, in part due to its challenge to the “contemporary fetishisation of paid work.” At the same time, however, she questions the total lack of conditionality on benefits — on grounds of both ethics (is it fair to subsidize the “right to be lazy”?) and feasibility (would the idea garner enough political support?) — and notes a “participation income,” as defended by the late Tony Atkinson, as a potential compromise. In the end, though, she states that “for all my ambivalence, I am coming round to the idea of a UBI as a means of ensuring everyone a modicum of basic security in an increasingly insecure world.”
Haagh, writing in part in response to Lister, argues for UBI as a way to fundamentally reconceptualize the relationship between citizens and the state. She emphasizes that removing conditionalities on a basic level of economic support does not “entail a general separation of income from work” (since monetary remuneration for work would continue to exist). Neither, in her view, should a basic income be seen as a “challenge to the work ethic.” Instead, according to Haagh, the removal of conditionalities should be seen as a way to enable individuals to think and plan for the long term. Conditional income support, as she puts it, aims to “motivate people in the short-term, with a heavy dose of stick.” For example, beneficiaries risk losing their most basic support if they do not take the first job offered — regardless of the job. The punitive nature of conditional benefits encourages short-term thinking aimed at mere self-preservation. In contrast, an unconditional basic income provides a floor on which individuals can engage in long-term strategizing.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: “Welfare Office” CC BY 2.0 Jacob Norlund
