by Kate McFarland | May 4, 2017 | News
Malcolm Torry (Director of the UK BIEN affiliate Citizen’s Income Trust, Co-Secretary of BIEN, and Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics) has published a recent defense of basic income in the online periodical Social Europe.
Focusing on the example of the UK, Torry argues that a basic income can be afforded by adjusting current systems of taxation and benefits. On the scheme that Torry recommends, means-tested benefits would remain in place, but the amount received by each household or individual would be recalculated to account for the amount of basic income. Citing work by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Torry maintains that a 3% increase in income tax is sufficient to fund a basic income for the UK that would reduce poverty and inequality at zero net cost, while also allowing many households to move off means-tested programs.
In the past few months, Social Europe has seen a volley of publications on the topic of basic income, including a defense by BIEN Co-Chair Louise Haagh, and varied critical perspectives from Kemal Dervis, Anke Hassel, Francine Mestrum, and Social Europe Editor-in-Chief Henning Meyer.
Full Article:
Malcolm Torry, “Citizen’s Income: Both Feasible And Useful“, Social Europe, April 10, 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 Ken Teegardin
by Kate McFarland | Apr 25, 2017 | News
Luke Martinelli is a research associate for the universal basic income project of the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath. In March 2017, Martinelli published the working paper “The Fiscal and Distributional Implications of Alternative Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK”, which uses simulation techniques to examine the effects of four revenue-neutral basic income schemes for the UK on poverty and inequality.
Accompanying the release of this 46-page working paper, Martinelli also published a shorter blog post, focusing on some of the methodological issues underlying his decision to conduct simulation studies.
As Martinelli describes in the post, empirical evidence concerning the effects of basic income can be sorted into two main types: ex-post (“after the fact”) and ex-ante (“before the event”).
Ex-post evidence includes the results of pilot studies and experiments specifically designed to test some of the effects of introducing a basic income, as well as observational studies of related policies such as Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. Martinelli points out that experimental studies are limited in their ability to forecast the effects of a basic income. For example, trials are limited in duration (whereas a basic income would be lifelong) and are influenced heavily by the specific contexts in which they are implemented, constraining the applicability of their results to other contexts. Moreover, the policies analyzed in both experimental and observational studies often diverge from full-blown basic income schemes in key respects.
Ex-ante evidence, in contrast, is exemplified by microsimulation–the technique used in Martinelli’s working paper–which uses computing methods to simulate any of a number of tax and benefit reforms. While microsimulation predict the fiscal and distributional consequences of a broad array of possible policies, it has other limitations; for instance, it does not shed light on the behavior effects of basic income (or other policies) or take account of such effects in prediction. Thus, Martinelli believes that ex-ante evidence must complement, rather than replace, ex-post evidence.
Martinelli’s forthcoming paper “Exploring the Distributional and Work Incentive Effects of Plausible UBI Schemes” will further examine the “distribution of winners and losers” under UBI, again using microsimulation techniques.
Read the full post:
Luke Martinelli, “Addressing the evidence deficit: how experimentation and microsimulation can inform the basic income debate,” IPR blog, March 13, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY 2.0 Michael Greenberg
by Citizens' Income Trust | Apr 23, 2017 | Opinion
Most developed countries’ benefits systems exhibit a mixture of different kinds of benefits, and this is increasingly true of developing countries. Most run social insurance schemes of some kind (either government-run or organized by a trade union, employer, or independent organizations); most have a layer of means-tested benefits, and some have universal and unconditional benefits for certain demographic groups (usually elderly people and/or children). In the short to medium term, this is likely to remain the situation. This is both because complex systems tend to be path-dependent ( – that is, adapting an existing system is easier than starting from scratch), and because there are good reasons for all three kinds of benefits. Social insurance represents reciprocity, with a contribution record granting a right to receive benefits when certain contingencies arise; means-tested benefits recognize that a needs-based approach can be appropriate; unconditional benefits recognize our equal members of society and represent a solid financial platform on which families can build. Each of the three types exhibits both advantages and disadvantages, with perhaps means-tested benefits offering more disadvantages than advantages, and unconditional benefits more advantages than disadvantages, with social insurance somewhere in between.
So the question is rarely: How can we replace the current benefits system? It is usually: How should we rebalance this mixture? In the UK, and in the medium term, no viable Citizen’s Income scheme could entirely abolish means-tested benefits. The complexity of the current system means that levels of Citizen’s Incomes that could be funded by adapting the tax and benefits system would be too low to avoid losses for low-income households at the point of implementation unless means-tested benefits were left in place and recalculated.
Social insurance benefits (National Insurance benefits in the UK) are another question. If a Citizen’s Income scheme were to be implemented, would we wish to abolish National Insurance benefits? Even though they are not genuine social insurance benefits (there is no connection between the amounts collected and the amounts paid out; the Government can alter the rates and durations of benefits at whim), many older members of the public still have a soft spot for them. However, younger members of society do not, and don’t understand them either.
The propensity to manage change in an evolutionary fashion, by systematic demolition (that could be carried out by hiring firms such as prodanllc.com or alike) and building afresh, means that we are likely to see Citizen Incomes implemented alongside social insurance and means-tested benefits. This is not a problem: at least for the time being.
Thank you for reading…
by Kate McFarland | Apr 22, 2017 | News
BIEN co-founder and honorary co-president Guy Standing (also Professorial Research Associate at SOAS) has written a new introduction to basic income, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen. The book has been published by Pelican Books, a well-known publisher of nonfiction works intended to be accessible to a broad audience in both content and cost.
As the publisher describes the book: “Guy Standing has been at the forefront of thought about Basic Income for the past thirty years, and in this book he covers in authoritative detail its effects on the economy, poverty, work and labour; dissects and disproves the standard arguments against Basic Income; explains what we can learn from pilots across the world and illustrates exactly why a Basic Income has now become such an urgent necessity.”
Commenting on Standing’s latest book, journalist Paul Mason states, “Guy Standing has pioneered our understanding of [basic income] — not just of the concept but of the challenges it is designed to meet: rapid automation and the emergence of a precarious workforce for whom wages derived from work will never be enough. As we move into an age where work and leisure become blurred, and work dissociated from incomes, Standing’s analysis is vital.”
Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen will be released on May 4, with a free launch event to be held at the London School of Economics (LSE) on May 8. The event will be chaired by Mike Savage of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute.
Standing’s last book, The Corruption of Capitalism (July 2016), generated widespread global attention, as did his previous works on the precariat.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Guy Standing photo, credit: Enno Schmidt.
by Cameron McLeod | Apr 16, 2017 | News
In a recent article for The Guardian, Jason Hickel writes that “a basic income could defeat the scarcity mindset, instil a sense of solidarity and even ease the anxieties that gave us Brexit and Trump.”
Hickel argues that a basic income is not just a privilege, nor just a nice idea – instead, basic income is a birthright.
Hickel begins by reflecting on the Charter of the Forest, 1217, a companion document to the Magna Carta, which enshrined the right of Englishmen to access royal lands, “which they could use for farming, grazing, water and wood [collecting].” Hickel argues that the Charter defended the right of individuals to access the resources necessary for survival.
This understanding of grazing rights has with time fallen out of usage. This decline began in the 15th century with the enclosure movement, which drove peasants displaced by enclosure into the labour market, “to sell themselves for wages for the first time.” It became necessary for low income farm labours to move into urban areas and become workers in order to survive. Hickel reminds us that the global south understands this scenario very well: a legacy of colonialism having taken away lands that were once common, and divided them into private allotments. For these countries, which Hickel does not note specifically, any attempt to undo this process of driving populations into the capitalist labour market was undone by the post-colonial country’s indebtedness to international corporations and creditors.
Hickel goes on to argue that first the global south has had its land taken away with the promise of employment, and in the future it risks losing its jobs to the rise of automation. For him, employment is no longer a secure economic alternative to the livelihood disparities created by the private ownership of once common land. Automation threatens jobs everywhere throughout the world, Hickel says. The solution, he argues, is an understanding of wealth where earth’s natural resources belong to everyone, where the basic necessities are understood as a birthright, and where a basic income is a way to implement this vision.
The solution, he argues, is an understanding of wealth where earth’s natural resources belong to everyone, where the basic necessities are understood as a birthright, and where a basic income is a way to implement this vision.
With the above in mind, Hickel presents a universal basic income as the most appropriate answer to the rise of automation. UBI, Hickel argues, offers a solution to inequalities that in the past were mitigated by free access to the resources necessary for livelihood. It is a return to the principles of the Charter of the Forest; a “de-enclosure” where every resident receives a dividend of what is commonly held: natural resources. For example, Hickel points to a carbon tax and dividend system.
Possible pushback is explained away by a move up in scale: he proposes a global fund, a trust for every human being rich or poor, and an expansion of our mindset so that again, natural resources and land cannot be simply understood as enclosed and private, but instead as common and vital to every individual’s survival.
De-enclosure is for Hickel an alternative to the road of further labour market integration, an alternative threatened by automation. For Hickel, we avoid considering UBI at our peril.
Article: Jason Hickel, “Basic income isn’t just a nice idea. It’s a birthright,” The Guardian, March 4, 2017.
Reviewed by Sarah Harris and Jenna van Draanen
Photo: As the covered heads move in, Credit Picture CC Veeresh Malik.
