Alex Gray: “This is our chance to completely redefine the meaning of work”

Alex Gray: “This is our chance to completely redefine the meaning of work”

By: Rebecca Warne

This article by Alex Gray summarizes a presentation given by historian Rutger Bregman at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, January 2019.

Bregman would like to see ‘work’ redefined as ‘activity which adds value to society.’  He sees the starting point for this as more general recognition that some jobs are socially useless (at best). Bregman quotes Jeff Hammerbacher, an early employee of Facebook who apparently said: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.  That sucks.”

Bregman’s interest in an UBI is twofold.  Firstly, it would enhance individual quality of life by removing the necessity to work for money.  Secondly, workers whose jobs are poorly paid but socially useful would be freer to draw attention to this fact by withholding their labour.

He rejects the further argument that an UBI will be necessary to offset the inevitable replacement of human beings by technology: “Automation throughout history has never meant mass unemployment.  We should never underestimate the power of capitalism to come up with more socially useless jobs.  Theoretically, it’s possible we will all just be pretending to work.”

Bregman doesn’t engage with economic arguments around the feasibility or impracticability of an UBI, so much as the ‘hearts and minds’ aspects: “The obstacle is not about economics or technology, it’s ideology.  We have to redefine so many of our basic concepts.”  According to Bregman, “We’re all basically nice, meaning-seeking creatures, and if you assume the best, that’s what you get out.  It’s the power of expectation…. The first time I wrote about basic income was five years ago, and back then no one was talking about it.  Now the idea is everywhere and there are experiments around the globe.  The first talks I gave were for small groups of anarchists and now I’ve been invited to the World Economic Forum.  It just shows how ideas change the world. Life-changing ideas never start in Washington, Westminster or Davos, they start at the fringes. In a basic income society, wages would better reflect societal value, and kids would live out their dreams.”

More information at:

Alex Gray, “This is our chance to completely redefine the meaning of work”, World Economic Forum,  January 9th 2019

UK: Steven Davies reviews Rutger Bregman’s “Utopia for Realists”

UK: Steven Davies reviews Rutger Bregman’s “Utopia for Realists”

In the three years since its initial publication, Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists has helped spur a global conversation on universal basic income (UBI). The book has become an international bestseller, garnering praise from intellectual heavyweights and propelling its author to the TED stage this past April. However, Stephen Davies, education director at the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), remains skeptical of many of the young Dutch journalist’s ideas. He makes his case in the most recent edition of the Journal of Economic Affairs.

“Rutger Bregman’s book is both interesting and irritating,” declares Davies in the opening line of his review. To clarify, he quickly notes that it is interesting “not so much because of its particular content…but because it gives us an insight into what may turn out to be a development of both intellectual and political importance” (p. 442). Such an off hand rejection of a book advocating basic income from the education director of a think tank advocating free market capitalism may be unsurprising to some, but Davies’ response is actually not as inevitable as it may seem. Historically, UBI has found supporters on both sides of the political divide.

Davies distinguishes between two types of arguments Bregman makes for basic income. The first considers UBI to be a pragmatic solution to the shortcomings of the current social welfare system. The second considers it to be a necessary means of radically transforming the existing social order. While Davies may be more sympathetic to the second line of reasoning, he spends most of his time critiquing the first.

Steven Davies. Credit to: The London School of Economics and Political Science

Steven Davies. Credit to: The London School of Economics and Political Science

In Utopia, Bregman draws on a wealth of research to highlight deficiencies in the means-tested benefit programs that constitute the welfare states of most developed societies. He notes that many of these programs create negative incentives, keeping beneficiaries locked in a poverty trap. Even worse, financial instability can result in a scarcity mindset, making it even harder for poor people to make responsible financial decisions. According to Bregman, unconditional cash transfer programs (UCTs) have proven to be the most successful remedy to this vicious cycle of poverty and dependence. In support of this view, Bregman offers additional in-depth analyses of related programs, including Richard Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan, negative income taxes, and the Speenhamland system.

Davies acknowledges the implications of this body of research. He writes, “Much of the evidence presented by Bregman is indeed very striking and should encourage us simply to trust people more and have greater confidence in their judgment and their knowledge” (p. 447). However, he is far more hesitant to interpret these results as evidence for universal basic income.

Davies notes that many of the policies Bregman touches on are in fact means-tested in one way or another, and may therefore be more analogous to standard welfare programs than basic income. Additionally, Davies argues that many of the UCT programs discussed in Utopia for Realists have not been around long enough to show lasting impacts, and he calls for more research to determine the specific amounts at which UCTs can begin to induce behavioral change. Yet, even more worrisome for Davies is the “bold assumption that there is no meaningful distinction between single lump-sum payments and continuing income stream” (p. 448). He notes that while individual cash transfers may bring sudden and liberating benefits, similar effects of ongoing basic income payments may become muted over time.

According to Davies, all of this “reveals confusion over what a UBI is thought of as being – is it a way of establishing a floor or minimum that is guaranteed to all or is it a redistributive mechanism designed to narrow income differentials?” (p. 449). This confusion motivates Davies’ second critique of Bregman’s argument for universal basic income as a response to the widening global wealth gap. While basic income programs may go a long way in ensuring no one lives in a state of absolute poverty, Davies writes that “it is not clear how a UBI by itself will do anything to reduce relative poverty or inequality” (p. 449). In fact, he notes it may even make the problem of inequality worse if UBI programs seek to replace other means-tested benefits.

However, while Davies takes issue with many of Bregman’s pragmatic arguments, he seems much more sympathetic to the idealistic aspects of his account. As automation increases and “bullshit jobs” proliferate, Davies grants Bregman his assumption that UBI could become a useful tool to decouple meaningful activity from paid work. He writes, “This is clearly the vision that truly inspires Bregman, the utopia of his book’s title, and he would have done better to stick to this rather than muddy the waters by conflating it with more limited and pragmatic discussions of a guaranteed income in a society where wage labor is still widespread and predominant” (p. 456).

While he may be unmoved by Utopia for Realists, Davies clearly recognizes the significance of the political and intellectual movements it represents. The book’s international success seems to reflect a growing anxiety about stagnation of big ideas in the face of an increasingly unsatisfying status quo. Davies concludes, “What we are starting to see is an attempt to work out what a non-capitalist or, more accurately, a post-capitalist political economy would look like” (p. 457).

Davies review appears in the most recent edition of the Journal for Economic Affairs.

The Netherlands: ‘Free Money’ at Studium Generale Utrecht University, October 25, 2017

As the social assistance experiments in several Dutch municipalities will begin this fall, Studium Generale of Utrecht University has organized an event dedicated to ‘Free Money‘.

Studium Generale is a university’s public platform for knowledge sharing and reflection by organizing lectures, seminars and other activities aimed at students and the general public. Entrance is always free and accessible without reservation.

In the Netherlands, municipalities are responsible for the provision of tailor-made benefits to anyone who has insufficient means to support him or herself, and for achieving the purpose of the Participation Act, that is, making recipients independent from social assistance. Several municipalities are conducting two-year experiments, in the context of which they have the option of implementing social assistance regulations in an alternative way.

Each experiment will include at least three treatment groups, who are subjected to various regimes, and a control group. The restrictiveness of obligations between the groups will vary, from a group which has fewer obligations imposed on it to a group which is even more intensively supervised. In addition, participants in a third treatment group may retain a limited amount of their income from work on top of their payments. See the links at the bottom of this article for more details.

Researchers of Utrecht University, one of the four universities that will supervise the experiments scientifically, have been critical about the design of the pilots because of its limited scope and complicated nature.

The experiments, as they are proposed now, raise a number of questions, such as: why don’t we all give a basic income? Is it too expensive, or are there any other objections?

Rutger Bregman (The Correspondent) and Professor Ingrid Robeyns (political philosopher and economist at Utrecht University) will address these issues during the “Free Money” event on October 25, 2017.

Rutger Bregman has written several books on ‘Free Money’ — for instance, Utopia for Realists — and was one of the speakers at TED2017 in Vancouver last April.

Ingrid Robeyns holds the chair in Ethics of Institutions. In her teaching she focuses on normative and applied ethics and (normative) political philosophy. She has been teaching about justice theories and economic ethics at the masters level in recent years. In her own research, Robeyns addresses a number of normative issues related to demography, gender, family, and institutional economy. Robeyns writes for the English-language group blog Crooked Timber and occasionally on her own site Buiten Categorie. She will also be one of the speakers during BIEN’s 17th Congress next September in Portugal.

The event will take place on October 25, 2017. The language is Dutch. Those interested are invited to join the discussion on Facebook event. For more details, see here.


Previous information on social assistance experiments in The Netherlands:

Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: Amsterdam on collision course over social assistance experiments” (August 5, 2017).

Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: All that’s left is the action. Where do we stand with the experiments?” (June 2, 2017).

Kate McFarland, “The Netherlands: Social Assistance Experiments Under Review” (May 9, 2017).

Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: Design of BI Experiments Proposed” (October 26, 2016).

Credit Picture Flickr.com CC Ealasaid.
Thanks to Kate McFarland for reviewing this article.

AUSTRALIA: Rutger Bregman to speak at Sydney’s Antidote festival

Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman will speak at Sydney’s Antidote festival on the theme of his bestselling book Utopia for Realists, in which he argues for a universal basic income and 15 hour work week.

Describing itself as a “festival of ideas, art and action”, Antidote brings together speakers and artists concerned about political, economic, social, and environmental issues.

The event takes place at the Sydney Opera House on the first weekend of spring in Australia, September 2 to 3. Bregman will present his ideas — which the organizers call a “compelling alternative to our current reality” — on the second day of the event.

 

 

Antidote supplants the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, also held at the Sydney Opera House, which was held annually since 2009.

 

More Information

Official page: “Utopia for Realists: Rutger Bregman” at the Sydney Opera House.

Andrew Taylor, “Work-life balance: Why we should only work 15 hours a week”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 20, 2017.


Reviewed by Caroline Pearce

Cover Photo CC BY 2.0 Hai Linh Truong

Rutger Bregman’s TED Talk, a Basic Income lecture with over one million views

Rutger Bregman’s TED Talk, a Basic Income lecture with over one million views

Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman, whose bestselling book Utopia for Realists was influential in generating interest and support in basic income in The Netherlands, spoke on basic income at TED2017, held April 24-28 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The overall theme of this official TED conference was “The Future You,” including talks by scientists and engineers on artificial intelligence and robotics. Bregman was among the speakers selected to discuss a “human response” to such technological developments.

Despite the conference’s focus on AI and automation, Bregman does not frame basic income as a response to technological unemployment. Instead, his starting point is to challenge the idea that poor people are poor because they are lazy, irresolute, or inexperienced in handling money. As reflected in the title of his talk, Bregman argues that poverty doesn’t result from a lack of character but simply from a lack of cash–and that, correspondingly, the best way to end poverty is just to give money to the poor. To bolster this claim, Bregman outlines the findings of Canada’s Mincome experiment, a four-year experiment of guaranteed annual income conducted in Manitoba in the 1970s. Bregman further argues that basic income would liberate not only the poor but also the many other individuals who, in the current economy, are forced to work long hours in unnecessary and unfulfilling jobs.

The talk met enthusiastic response from the audience, who applauded at lines such as Bregman’s remark that the government should do away with paternalistic bureaucrats overseeing welfare programs and just give their salaries to the poor people they’re supposed to help. Bregman wrapped up to a standing ovation.

The video of “Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash” was later uploaded to the TED website–where it had surpassed one million views by early July.

 

Watch the Complete Talk Below:

 

Cover Photo (Bregman at TED2017 – The Future You): CC BY-NC 2.0 TED Conference