by Toru Yamamori | Jan 1, 2018 | News
Sonia Sodha (Twitter account image)
Sonia Sodha, lead writer at the Observer, urges the British Left not to support UBI. According to her latest opinion piece for the Guardian, UBI will not cure any social disease that UBI advocates claim will be alleviated, and rather, it is currently a fatal distraction from other battles on which the British Left should focus.
Sodha charted the rationales for UBI in the following three categories: tech utopians’s prophecy of a decrease of jobs, Ken Loachian welfare critics’ blame against inhumanely complex welfare system, and.labour market dystopians’ poverty backstop against insecurity.
Sodha dismisses the tech utopian’s argument by insisting it falls ‘lump of labour fallacy’. According to Sodha, ‘[f]ar from robots stealing jobs, the reality is that many firms are underinvesting in technology, suppressing productivity’ in Britain, and ‘technology will radically reshape the world of work without reducing its sum total’. She also dismisses the argument of what she calls ‘Ken Loachian-welfare critics’ (though Loach himself has never argued what Sodha labels under his name) and states:
“We could fix the caring issue simply by increasing the generosity of the stingy state benefits paid to those who care full-time for older people or adults with disabilities. If we were so inclined, we could get rid of punitive benefit sanctions and replace them with a welfare-to-work system that puts much more emphasis on training and support for people to find the job that is right for them, not the first that comes along.”
Finally, Sodha opposes the labour market dystopians, by accusing them of not fighting for labour rights but for ‘a dribble of cash’. Similar points to Sonia Sodha’s were made by Bo Rothstein in a recent Social Europe article, ‘UBI: A bad idea for the welfare state’ A response followed, ‘Universal Basic Income: Definitions and details’. The same detailed response would apply here.
Behind her accusations, there is a recent move for UBI inside the Labour party. See the articles below for more on Labour Party activity regarding UBI support:
Toru Yamamori, “UNITED KINGDOM: Jeremy Corbyn, candidate for Labour Party leader, recruits Basic Income advocate to draft economic plan”, Basic Income News, August 8th 2015
Toru Yamamori, “United Kingdom: Labour Party considers universal basic income”, Basic Income News, February 21st 2016
Kate MacFarland, “UK: Labour Leader to Investigate Universal Basic Income“, Basic Income News, September 15th 2016
Genevieve Shanahan, “UK: Labour Party sets up working group to investigate UBI”, Basic Income News, February 10th 2017
More information at:
Sonia Sodha, ‘UBI is no panacea for us – and Labour shouldn’t back it’, The Guardian, 18th December 2017.
by Andre Coelho | Oct 11, 2017 | News
Jim Chalmers. Credit to: Financial Review.
Jim Chalmers, a Labor Party MP in Australia, claims that basic income, a concept gaining traction in Australia, is a “backward step”. His concerns focus on perceived increases in inequality and affordability issues. Chalmers and Mike Quigley, former chief executive of NBN Co, have laid out these views in their latest book, “Changing Jobs: The Fair Go in the New Machine Age”, released on the 25th September 2017.
According to Chalmers and Quigley, the way forward is to aim for full employment, in the face of technological change. This generally aligns with previous claims by Labor Party shadow treasurer Chris Bowen. They also agree that introducing basic income will also equate to slashing on the welfare state. As for unemployment, Chalmers is blunt: “feared widespread loss of jobs in the coming age of automation will not be fixed by giving everyone a basic income”. He also views basic income as basically unfair, since it would amount to giving the same support to a millionaire and to “a single mom struggling to keep food on the table”. That, however, is given out of tax context, since basic income proposals usually revolve around redistribution of tax money from the relatively richer people towards relatively poorer ones. Within this context, a millionaire will naturally be a net contributor to the basic income scheme.
However critical of basic income, Chalmers and Quigley present their own views of what can work for humanity in the near future, of which the Australian people are a close example. They think it is possible to use Big Data to predict “social problems at the household level before they emerge”. This, of course, comes along with high surveillance over people’s “work patterns, hours and wages”. With that and new ideas such as “income smoothing”, which will arguably complement low-paid workers incomes, or smooth their transition from better paid jobs to less paid ones (admitting that well paid jobs will definitely diminish, on average, in the foreseeable future). They also refer to reinforced unemployment benefits, financed by extra taxes on the general public and/or large corporations. To tackle future unemployment, Chalmers and Quigley recommend compulsory education on programming and robotics, while strengthening existing curricula with computational disciplines in order to elevate technological skills in everyone.
More information at:
Roberta Stewart, “AUSTRALIA: Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen (Labor Party) Urges Party NOT to Support Universal Basic Income”, Basic Income News, 16th July 2017
Gareth Hutchens, “Labor MP ridicules universal basic income push and says it would worsen inequality”, The Guardian, 24th September 2017
Daniel Raventós, “Basic Income – The material conditions of freedom”, Pluto Press 2007
by Roberta Stewart | Jul 16, 2017 | News
Chris Bowen. Credit to Britta Campion
Shadow Treasurer of the Australian Labor Party, Chris Bowen who is the Opposition Minister for Government expenditure and revenue raising, delivered a speech to the progressive think tank PerCapita in Sydney on June 9th, expressing his resistance to the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), despite the support within the Labor Party for such a policy. Bowen describes the UBI as a “terrible idea” and claims that the model would undermine the Labor Party principle of ensuring dignity through work in Australia. Bowen then makes another common argument against a UBI, that it delivers unnecessary payments to the wealthy. Following this line of thought, Bowen expresses support for means tested benefits where citizens can access welfare on a conditional basis, claiming that this would be a more cost-effective measure for alleviating poverty. This claim, however, is made without establishing his grounds for comparison.
Bowen has also said that UBI could lead to a “savage cut” in people’s current benefits, namely pensions or disability allowances, and also that unsustainable tax rises would be necessary. These are reminders of two other common arguments against basic income: that UBI will demolish social security and that it cannot be financed (due to an unsustainable tax system).
Meanwhile, the Australian Green Party support the consideration of a UBI in conjunction with a four-day work week. This proposal is consistent with the idea that a UBI is best implemented as part of a broader policy package that aims to address concerns such as inequality and the impact of technological change on working conditions.
More information at:
Katharine Murphy, “Chris Bowen attacks universal basic income as ‘payments to millionaires’”, The Guardian, 8th June 2017
