by Genevieve Shanahan | Mar 6, 2017 | Research
Patricia Schulz, a Swiss lawyer and specialist in international human rights and gender equality, offers a short paper advocating for basic income from a feminist and gender equality perspective in the peer-reviewed journal Global Social Policy.
In this article, Schulz argues that strong arguments for basic income “based on social justice, equality, dignity, freedom from want” could be bolstered by more systematic arguments from a gender perspective.
A central point made in this article is that existing social security systems are tied to long-term remunerated work, disproportionately beyond the reach of women:
“as most social security systems are (still) based on contributions linked to remunerated work, independent or salaried, the inferior income of women, their restriction to part-time jobs as well as the interruptions in their careers due to care responsibilities will directly impact the level of social protection they can expect in case of old age, disability, illness and so on, as well as expose them to depend on a partner and/or the (welfare) state.”
Schulz is an expert with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a member of the Board of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), and was the director of the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality (FOGE) for six years until 2010.
Patricia Schulz, “Universal basic income in a feminist perspective and gender analysis,” Global Social Policy Forum, January 31, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo: Patricia Schulz, member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women addresses during the 5th Edition of Ciné ONU, Palais des Nations. Friday 6 March 2015, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UN Geneva
by Jasper van den Bor | Mar 2, 2017 | News
Gideon Haigh is a journalist who writes mainly about sports and business. In this article, Haigh explores a welfare system of a future in which, as he claims many argue, work will be increasingly flexible, casual, various and scarce. Haigh discusses three possibilities for Australia; universal basic income (UBI), negative income tax and targeted cash transfers, with most of the article devoted to UBI.
Throughout the article, Haigh quotes various writers, economists and politicians on the future of work. One of these is Tim Dunlop, author of ‘The Future is Workless’, who states that “you might be able to string together a lifetime of [short-term contracts]. But, for a lot of people, even if there is plenty of that sort of work, there are going to be periods where you’ve got nothing. And if you have a society based on that insecurity, that’s a bad society.” A UBI is there to fill in these gaps. Furthermore, Haigh notes, UBI has the advantage of a wide variety of advocates across the political spectrum.
Haigh also discusses the perceived downsides of a UBI, such as the expectation that a UBI would be a work disincentive. However, he notes, most forms of income support that are now uncontroversial were first condemned. Another downside, he claims, is that a true UBI would reach many who neither need nor want it. A related disadvantage could be the cost of the scheme, one that is aggravated by the fact that Australia does not rely as much on the tax and transfer system as, for instance, Scandinavian countries do.
An interesting comment is made, again, by Dunlop who mentions that he does not think UBI is an idea whose time has come, given that social and cultural norms are so entrenched. A crisis is required to force this change upon us.
The article closes out with a quote of urgency by economist Ross Garnaut: “We’re testing how democracy works when wages are stagnant or falling. Well, I think we already know how it works, which is badly. In fact, unless we get used to the idea of doing something systematic and non-stigmatising to support the incomes of ordinary people, it may not be viable as a political system.”
Read more:
Gideon Haigh, “Basic income for all: a 500-year-old idea whose time has come?” The Guardian, November 10, 2016.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: CC BY 2.0 Nicki Mannix
by Kate McFarland | Mar 1, 2017 | News
BIEN cofounder Annie Miller has written a new handbook about basic income, fittingly titled A Basic Income Handbook, which will be published by Luath Press Limited in March 2017.
Publisher’s summary:
“In this informative book, Annie Miller not only explores the idea of basic income: she exhaustively explains what it is and what it would mean to implement, using extensive economic data. Miller starts off from a broad, existential position, outlining why the current system is no longer suitable for the times and needs to change. Her proposed solution is a society with BI, which she first outlines abstractly before diving into its internal workings, explaining who would be eligible for BI, what would happen to the rest of the welfare system, and other crucial details. Miller backs up her statements with substantive economic research and analysis. She ends with a section on how to achieve a society with BI, giving examples of pilot schemes elsewhere and discussing the politics behind implementation. Thus she brings the reader full circle from aspiring to a BI society, to seeing what it would take to reach it.”
Annie Miller, a former instructor of economics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, has a long and distinguished history in the basic income movement: she was a cofounder of the Basic Income Research Group (which later became the Citizen’s Income Trust, BIEN’s UK affiliate) in 1984, a cofounder of BIEN itself in 1986, and a cofounder of Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland (BIEN’s Scottish affiliate) in 2016.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo credit: Enno Schmidt
by Michael Lewis | Feb 28, 2017 | Opinion
Written by: Michael A. Lewis
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center
When I first became interested in the basic income, I was a graduate student studying welfare reform. For those who aren’t in the know, “welfare” is the more common name used in the U.S. to refer to a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and which used to be called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). TANF and AFDC aren’t exactly the same programs, but they do have some key things in common: they provide financial support to low income persons, most of those who receive such support are women and children, and, I think it’s fair to say, both programs are somewhat controversial.
The controversy around welfare has to do with the fact that many of those who receive benefits are apparently “able-bodied” persons who’re thought capable of working (“working” in this context means selling one’s labor in return for a wage, instead of, say, taking care of one’s children, something many would regard as work). Yet not enough of those on welfare are working, according to a common belief among many U.S. citizens/residents as well as, apparently, politicians. So in an attempt to socialize welfare beneficiaries into understanding the importance of work, many of them are required to work in return for their benefits, a practice commonly called “workfare.” Many also remain poor, even after receiving benefits, because the financial support they receive is pretty meager.
As a graduate student, I thought workfare, as well as the low level of benefits provided to recipients was a very unjust way of assisting poor persons; I also thought we could do better (in fact, I still think these things). My entry into the world of basic income was because I believed it a more just way of addressing poverty than welfare and related programs.
Once I started studying basic income and meeting others interested in the idea, I heard other justifications for it. It would enhance freedom, it would allow people to engage in care work if they so choose, it would give people an income representing their share of commonly owned natural resources, it would be a way of replacing some or all of the welfare state (which, of course, assumes there is something wrong with the current system), etc. But the argument that seems to have caught on the most, at least in the U.S., is the idea that a basic income will become necessary as robots/machines take our jobs.
I have to admit that part of me has been a bit concerned about the degree to which the automation argument seems to dominate basic income discussions. My worry is that as we spend so much time debating who’s right about whether robots will take most, or perhaps all, of our jobs and, therefore, whether there’ll be a need for a basic income, other arguments for such a policy get “crowded out” of the discussion. Yet as I’ve voiced this concern, mainly to myself, I’ve also wondered why this argument for a basic income seems to have caught on in a way that others haven’t?
I think part of the answer has to do with where I started—U.S. citizens/residents worry a lot about the degree to which healthy people work to take care of themselves (and their families) and are quite skeptical about policies they believe will allow people to shirk this responsibility. But I think another part of the answer has to do with the role of race in our society. I suspect that in the minds of many citizens/residents the degree to which a basic income would allow people to shirk their obligations to work would vary by race. To put it bluntly, I suspect many assume that black and brown people would be more likely to shirk this responsibility than whites would be. If I’m right about all this, then perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the U.S. isn’t naturally the most fertile place for the basic income idea to take hold. But why would it take hold in the form of the automation argument? I think the answer here might be pretty simple. If machines are about to take all our jobs, then automation represents a relatively indiscriminant force. That is, “hard working white people” might be threatened just as much as “lazy shiftless brown ones” are. Perhaps this has been enough to get white folks to take notice of a policy that perhaps could address the problem.
About the author: Michael A. Lewis is a social worker and sociologist by training whose areas of interest are public policy and quantitative methods. He’s also a co-founder of USBIG and has written a number of articles, book chapters, and other pieces on the basic income, including the co-edited work The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. Lewis is on the faculties of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the Graduate and University Center of the City University of New York.
by Kate McFarland | Feb 27, 2017 | News
Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US), a debate program moderated by ABC News correspondent John Donvan and broadcast on more than 200 public stations, will air an episode on basic income on Wednesday, March 22.
Four guests will debate the question “Is the universal basic income the safety net of the future?”
“For the Motion”
- Charles Murray (W. H. Brady Scholar at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute). Murray supports a basic income of $10,000 per year to all Americans over age 21, which would replace all current welfare programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (as laid out in his recently reissued book In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State). Murray’s right-wing approach to basic income has made him a controversial figure within the movement, with many progressive UBI supporters disavowing his proposals.
“Against the Motion”
- Jared Bernstein (Senior Fellow of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; formerly Chief Economist to Vice President Joe Biden). In a previous debate with Murray, Bernstein maintained that replacing the social safety net with a universal basic income would undercut advances in fighting poverty and ultimately leave many of the poor worse off.
- Jason Furman (Senior Fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Peterson Institute; formerly Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Barack Obama). Furman voiced his opposition to basic income in a speech at a White House workshop in July 2016, viewing the policy as giving up on the possibility of job creation and full employment.
The event will be staged live at the Kaufman Center in New York, NY, including an hour long reception before the debate (see details on the live event here). The debate will also be streamed live on the web.
For more information and to listen to the live stream on March 22, 6:45 pm Eastern Time, visit “The Universal Basic Income Is The Safety Net Of The Future.”
Reviewed by Danny Pearlberg
Photo of Kaufman Center (event venue), CC BY-SA 3.0 Kaufman Center
