by Guest Contributor | Dec 11, 2015 | Opinion
By Otto Lehto
People have different ideas on what society should look like, but they can still agree that a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is a good idea. The struggle for BIG should be the struggle for a specific policy measure, not for a utopian ideal. We are trying to make BIG a reality. That’s it. We are engaged in an ambitious project with limited boundaries. We are not trying to find a panacea for world hunger, domestic abuse or global warming. All we need is for a critical mass of people, and a few shrewd politicians, to do the right thing and vote for BIG.
In Finland, nearly 70% of the population supports basic income. For the first time ever, more than half of members of parliament do too. Historically, BIG has been advocated in Finland by the Green Party, the Left Alliance and the Center Party, joined recently by the Pirate Party. Advocates are found in all political parties and across all sectors of society. The Finnish National Union of University Students has officially endorsed a universal basic income, and so have many academics and think tanks. Post and neo-Keynesians are calling for it, as are leftist intellectuals. Even the banker Björn Wahlroos repeatedly endorsed BIG on newspapers and TV shows. He is one of the richest men in the country and a free market enthusiast.
We need a broad consensus if we want basic income to become reality. As recently reported in mainstream news across the world, a basic income experiment is about to be implemented, under the new center-right government headed by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä from the Center Party. The experiment is set to begin in 2017. Hopefully, this is just the prelude to a nation-wide implementation of a universal basic income.
There is nothing wrong in being utopian and in favor of radical solutions. But utopianism is not a necessary condition for engaging in the struggle for BIG. Sometimes it can be a hindrance. As basic income supporters, we may disagree on how high a basic income should be. We may have different views on whether to use the tax system, as in the case of a negative income tax, or social welfare instruments, as with most other forms of BIG. We may see basic income as a socialist principle or a free market mechanism. But we all acknowledge the need for a universal, unconditional and simple solution. We do not have to agree on anything else. We believe that BIG is important, because it does three things:
1) it eradicates absolute poverty;
2) it reduces bureaucracy;
3) it lays the foundation for a new, sustainable relationship between states and markets.
In order to achieve this, we need to build alliances between utopians and realists of different persuasions. At BIEN-Finland, our national branch, we are confronted every day with the various political leanings and aspirations of our members. Our diversity is something we celebrate, even if sometimes it causes friction and animosity. A one-sided approach to basic income would seriously hurt the prospects of BIG becoming a reality.
We should learn from popular struggles that have rallied mass support, such as the campaign for extending the right to vote to women in the late 19th and early 20th century. Universal suffrage was advocated by various classes and social groups. Driven by the same goal, farmers and workers marched together. Women were joined by their husbands. Newspapers representing different interests endorsed the idea. After some time, opposition to it was frowned upon. It was not the exclusive battle of Marxists, or trade unionists, or social liberals, or enlightened aristocrats. It was a struggle owned by the whole population. From a marginal idea, universal suffrage became common sense. The opposition did not disappear overnight. But it gradually lost steam, until it became a remnant of the past, deprived of any real power. BIG will succeed when it will achieve the same broad consensus. Our goal is to make opposition to BIG unfashionable and a little reprehensible.
The danger is not that the “wrong people” like the idea. Rather, the problem is that some people want to appropriate the name to implement different policies. If a proposed basic income is not high enough to cover basic human necessities, like food, shelter and clothing, then it cannot be called basic income. BIG should also not be confused with means-tested grants or workfare schemes. We need to be clear about this. In Finland, the government’s position oscillates between a real basic income and austerity or workfare policies, but public pressure and intellectual debate are creating a space for a BIG experiment.
A universal basic income should gain the support of Marxists, trade unionists, neoliberals, businessmen, teachers, farmers, feminists, tech nerds, American billionaires and Nigerian chicken farmers. The alliance must be broad and deep, and focus on common human needs. The emerging domain of populist politics, increased media attention and the growing intellectual debate around BIG, provide an unprecedented opportunity to further our cause.
Of course, we should not kid ourselves that humanity would finally overcome its differences under the guise of a BIG campaign, nor that left-wing and right-wing interpretations would lead to the same result. BIG organizations should be democratic forums for people from different backgrounds. Some of them are naturally inspired by a variety of utopian visions. Broad-based BIG has the potential to act as a true meeting ground for popular struggle, in which conflicting visions of the good society can strategically talk to each other and put forward a shared, simple solution. People should be able to set aside their differences – at least for a short while.
We may not like all our friends in the movement. Some of our allies are horrible people. (By the way, they probably think the same about you.) But we still have to live together in the same house. If people can, for the time being, agree on basic income, then we have already won. Bickering partisans can still keep on fighting over other issues. Trust me, there will always be something to fight about.
So bite your nails and be wise about strategy. Smile to your enemies. Shake hands with the most awful people. The smiling basic income activist is a silent, deadly assassin. If we want to think BIG, we need to act stealthily. We do not have the luxury to choose our political allies.
Otto Lehto is a philosopher and a political activist. He is the chairman of BIEN Finland.
by BIEN | Sep 11, 2015 | News
In a public square in Berlin, Ralph Boes can be found sitting at a table. Anyone who would like to can speak to Boes, who will then explain his protest of the current German welfare system. Boes demands a “livable income”, a guaranteed minimum income that can provide enough for everyone to meet their needs. Germany’s welfare sanctions mean that if an individual refuses a job, regardless of the circumstances, they lose their welfare benefits. Boes believes that this policy of sanctions fundamentally sacrifices the dignity of the individual. Boes has been on strike since July 1, and plans to continue his strike to educate people about the basic income.
For more information on Boes and his ideas, visit Boes website, or the Tumblr page dedicated to his efforts.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Sep 4, 2015 | Opinion
This book is a study of the language that OECD countries use to describe social policies: language such as ‘welfare state’, ‘social security’, and ‘safety net’. Some of the chapters are about particular countries, and some tackle transnational governance levels (such as the EU and the OECD): some are more focused on language, and some more on the
policy characteristics expressed by the language. All are informative.
As the introduction suggests, language is political and context-specific, and so similar terms sometimes describe different policies, and similar policies sometimes have different names. Such terms as ‘welfare state’ are used in such a wide variety of ways that clarity is difficult to achieve. The authors employ a broad range of disciplines in order to study language within its national contexts, and also to study how it travels – as ‘workfare’ has done from the US to the UK. All of the chapters are interested in how social policy language has changed, and in the reasons for that change.
To take two examples:
Barbier’s chapter on the EU shows how the very notion of ‘social policy’ is problematic at the equally complex ‘EU level’; how the dominance of European English in social policy research has affected social policy debate in the EU; how ‘flexicurity’, ‘activation’, ‘workfare’ and ‘social investment’ have come to flourish as somewhat vague notions; and how social policy as formulated in English by an élite Brussels group cannot hope to capture the complexity of social policy across Europe.
In his chapter, Daniel Wincott charts the history of the ‘welfare state’ concept in the UK from its origins in 1928 in a publication by William Temple to its later use during the 1950s and 60s as a description of a developed set of social policies – but, as Wincott points out, the term was not employed as a description of those policies when they were developed and rolled out during and after the Second World War. His interesting conclusion is that ‘welfare state’ has functioned as a description of a golden age that never existed in order to express dissatisfaction with the ways in which social policy has been changing during the past fifty years.
The editors’ concluding chapter shows how influential the concepts of ‘welfare state’ and ‘social security’ have been; how transnational bodies have diffused such language, along with such modern terms as ‘flexicurity’; how earlier traditions (such as ‘deservingness’) continue to influence language; and how more straitened economic conditions since the 1970s have caused convergence of social policy language around such concepts as social investment and activation.
An interesting pair of words to follow through the book are ‘universal’ and ‘universalism’. In some places they mean an ideal state of affairs to which politicians aspire; in others (e.g., p.222) they represent a plan for genuinely universal provision; and in others (e.g. p.263) they express a service’s universal availability for anyone who possesses the need that the service is designed to satisfy. In this last sense the terms might have appeared in the context of the British National Health Service. Wincott does not discuss the current UK welfare state, but if he had then he might have said that Universal Credit is nothing like universal, and that only a Citizen’s Income would be universal in the way in which that word is normally understood.
This most interesting book has opened up some important social policy questions, and we hope to see them pursued further. Maybe a future edition might ask why so many different terms – Basic Income, Citizen’s Income, Universal Grant, etc. – have been used to describe an unconditional and nonwithdrawable benefit for every individual.
[This review was first published in the Citizen’s Income Newsletter, 2015, issue 3.]
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 19, 2015 | News
Guy Standing, honorary president of BIEN, noted author, and leading advocate of Basic Income will give five talks on Basic Income over the next six weeks. The presentations are:
August 20-24, 09.00-12.00: summer school seminar series on “Work, distribution and crisis in Europe”, organised by the European Forum Alpbach, Austria, which will lead up to a full justification for basic income. More information: https://www.alpbach.org/en/event/seminar-week/; organiser Lara Weisz <lara.weisz@alpbach.org>
Guy Standing takes to the street at Occupy Washington DC in 2011
September 3, 13.00: opening ‘keynote’ speech on the precariat, creativity and basic income at the Long Progress Bar festival in Brighton, England, organised by Lighthouse (a “contemporary cultural agency”). More information: https://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/the-long-progress-bar; organiser Grace Baird <gracevictoriabaird@gmail.com>
September 4, 10.00: workshop on basic income as part of the Long Progress Bar festival in Brighton, England. More information: https://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/the-long-progress-bar; organiser Grace Baird <gracevictoriabaird@gmail.com>
September 30, 09.00: Plenary speech on “The expanding precariat: Reviving empathy and universalism”, Australian Social Policy Conference, Sydney. More information: https://www.aspc.unsw.edu.au/; organiser Annie Whitelaw <ASPC@unsw.edu.au>
September 30, 15.10: Plenary forum on “Beyond Workfare: Progressive Social Policy for a Good Society”, Australian Social Policy Conference, Sydney. More information: https://www.aspc.unsw.edu.au/; organiser Annie Whitelaw <ASPC@unsw.edu.au>
by Citizens' Income Trust | Sep 15, 2014 | News
Conference report: 63 people attended the conference, held by invitation of the British Library at its conference centre.
Anne Miller, Chair of the trustees, welcomed everyone to the conference, offered a brief history of the recent Citizen’s Income debate in the UK, and explained that an important aim of the conference was to help the Citizen’s Income Trust’s trustees to develop a strategy for the next few years. Jude England, Head of Research Engagement at the British Library, then introduced the British Library and its many research and educational facilities. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, explained a few terminological matters: that a Citizen’s Income is an unconditional, nonwithdrawable income paid to every individual as a right of citizenship; that different rates can be paid for people of different ages; that a Basic Income is the same thing as a Citizen’s Income (as is a Universal Benefit or a Social Dividend); and that in the UK the words ‘minimum’ and ‘guarantee’ are tainted by association with means-testing and so should be avoided. Child Benefit would be a Citizen’s Income for children if it were paid at the same rate for every child. Debate ensued on the definition of a Citizen’s Income, and on the meaning of citizenship.
Guy Standing, Professor of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, spoke on ‘Citizen’s Income: an income floor for the Precariat, and the means of global development’. He explained that we are in the midst of a painful transition. More flexible labour markets are leading to the breakdown of social insurance methods for sustaining income and to a resultant increase in means-testing, which in turn leads to categorising people as deserving and undeserving poor. Means-testing reduces incentives to seek employment so coercion, sanctions and ‘workfare’ are the result. The precarity trap (the fact that it is irrational to take short-term low-paid employment if that means frequent benefits applications) might now be as significant as the poverty trap. Professor Standing described some of the results of the recent Citizen’s Income pilot projects in Namibia and India, and offered four justifications for a Citizen’s Income:
- Justice: our wealth is due to the efforts of our forebears, so we all deserve a social dividend.
- Rawlsian: a policy is only justifiable if it improves the position of the poorest member of society. A Citizen’s Income can pass this test
- A policy must pass the paternalism test: that is, no policy is just if it imposes tests on some groups that are not imposed on others. A Citizen’s Income passes this test, too.
- The ‘rights not charity’ principle. Due process was an important provision in the Magna Carta. Means-tested benefits allow discretion to State officials, thus bypassing due process.
John McDonnell MP introduced Tony Benn’s theory of political change: that new policies are thought ‘bad’ and then ‘mad’ before everyone claims to have thought of the idea. Thomas Kuhn’s research on scientific change suggested that current theory becomes problematic, new possibilities emerge, and suddenly a paradigm shift occurs. Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit and other changes are revealing the problematic nature of the current benefits system, but there is a vacuum in terms of new ideas. A Citizen’s Income brings together debates about citizenship and poverty, and provides the necessary new paradigm: but obtaining agreement on the implementation of a Citizen’s Income won’t be easy. For the Labour Party, Ed Miliband will only move when it is safe to do so (as he has, for instance, over energy bills). When he does move, then he gathers support. We therefore need to make a Citizen’s Income safe for politicians. We need to lead so that the leaders can follow. The Labour Party is bereft of policies designed to tackle poverty and precarity, so the Trust needs to work with think tanks to provide the required package, and it needs:
- A seriousness of intent
- A professional approach
- Confidence
- Excitement and enthusiasm
Natalie Bennett (Leader of the Green Party) suggested that the outcome of a successful campaign would be that she would be able to say ‘Basic Income’ on Newsnight and everybody would know what she meant. People do ‘get it’ when the idea is explained to them, because the welfare safety net has fallen apart and they want to be able to feed their children without going to food banks. Public education is essential. Biological evolution is punctuated evolution: that is, alternating periods of stability and change. A Citizen’s Income constitutes the next major change because it would change everything, and in particular would provide both economic security and ecological sustainability. The Trust’s task is to educate people about a Citizen’s Income and its effects.
Tony Fitzpatrick (Reader, University of Nottingham) entitled his paper ‘Schemes and Dreams’. The welfare state established after the Second World War was the closest that we’ve ever got to achieving both security and freedom. We must now ask how we should achieve that combination today. Dr. Fitzpatrick discussed four moral contexts: productivism, distributivism, the deliberative, and the regenerative. A post-productivist settlement is needed if we are to conserve the world’s resources. A Citizen’s Income could contribute to that happening, and it could conform to all four moral contexts.
After discussion, and then lunch, three working groups met and then presented their findings at a plenary session:
Brief reports from the working groups
- Funding options: If the level of the Citizen’s Income is too low then it might not be politically inspiring. A variety of funding methods were discussed, but because policymakers are cautious, in the short term it might be important to concentrate attention on the Citizen’s Income itself rather than on possible funding mechanisms: so initially a Citizen’s Income would need to be funded by reducing existing tax allowances and benefits, with other mechanisms being considered later.
- Political feasibility: We need to avoid current vocabulary in order to avoid stale current debates; we need to offer a clear message of hope through visual representations; we need both a core message and variants to appeal to different audiences; we need a group of sponsors to raise the debate’s profile; and we need to relate to MPs, MEPs, NGOs, and other groups, so that they can promote the idea. A Citizen’s Income is the route to emancipation and freedom, and to the exercise of a variety of rights, and rights language could be useful. A Citizen’s Income enables people to care for others, so care language could also be helpful. Pilot projects will be important.
- The research required: Qualitative research is needed to test the acceptability of different ways of expressing a Citizen’s Income. The level at which a Citizen’s Income would be paid would also affect the idea’s acceptability. We need to show that people would wish to work in order to demolish the myth that there would be numerous free-riders. We need to show that a Citizen’s Income would act as an economic stabiliser in the context of a gap between wages and productivity; and we need to show how a Citizen’s Income would impact on health and other outcomes.
Panel discussion
Natalie Bennett (Leader of the Green Party) asked the Citizen’s Income Trust to provide both a wide variety of material and a clear and simple message; Kat Wall (New Economics Foundation) asked the Trust to be clear how work and social participation would be affected by a Citizen’s Income; and Neal Lawson (Compass) said that the time is right for a Citizen’s Income so we need to grasp the opportunity. A moral argument is required, and not just the figures. We need the courage to be utopian. Whilst a Citizen’s Income isn’t about everything, it is about security. Such central connections need to be clearly represented in new ways. Bert Schouwenburg (of the GMB Trade Union) discussed the fact that no trade union has a position on Citizen’s Income, and that that needs to change. Trades unions are wage brokers, and it needs to be made clear that a Citizen’s Income would complement that activity. Chris Goulden (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) explained that researchers are meant to be sceptical. A Citizen’s Income is dignified and simple and it avoids stigma, but such questions as who gains and who loses are important. ‘Something for something’ remains a significant public attitude, and lifecourse redistribution is acceptable, but not redistribution across income groups. A Citizen’s Income campaign needs to take account of such attitudes.
Further discussion followed; and then Professor Hartley Dean (London School of Economics), who had chaired the panel discussion, summed up the conference:
Citizen’s Income is a technology, or policy mechanism, which can serve a variety of ends. We must ensure that it serves social justice. We need to say how it would work, and the detail matters. Citizen’s Income is also a philosophical proposition. It is elegant, and it challenges prevailing understandings, for instance, of work, of human livelihood, of relationships of care, and of rights. ‘Unconditional’ is a stumbling block when applied to people of working age: but ‘working age’ is socially constructed. Work is diverse, and not just what happens within a wage relationship. A Citizen’s Income would support a variety of forms of work. Social insurance is risk-sharing, and a Citizen’s Income would also constitute risk-sharing. It deals with risk now in ways that social insurance did sixty years ago.
A global Citizen’s Income is a distant prospect, but borders are breaking down and citizenship is changing. We need to keep alive a big vision.
