by BIEN | Dec 30, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Michael Howard (Coordinator of US Basic Income Guarantee Network)
I can remember the moment when I first took a keen interest in basic income. I was familiar with the idea, having spent a research leave at the European University Institute in Fiesole, when Philippe Van Parijs was there writing Real Freedom for All. We had some casual conversations, but I failed to appreciate the radical implications of basic income, until some months later, when I happened to read one of Philippe’s essays, in a collection on social class edited by E.O. Wright.
My work up to that point was focused on market socialism and worker self-management, and, more generally, just and feasible alternatives to capitalism. I thought that the way to address the democratic deficits and inequalities of capitalism, without abandoning its efficiencies, was to convert capitalist enterprises into worker-managed firms operating in a market economy, and also to democratize investment decisions through a system of public banks.
When I read Philippe’s essay, I realized that the model of work I was presupposing, where workers work full-time over many years for a single enterprise, was disappearing. Philippe observed that many in our generation were finding themselves in and out of paid employment, working part-time, or in temporary positions, relying on fellowships, increasingly finding themselves in a precarious position regarding income and work. I invited Philippe to my campus for a series of talks, and to discuss my work.
I attended my first BIEN congress in Amsterdam. In some ways it was my favorite. While I would not wish BIEN to return to an attendance level where everyone meets for the whole conference in the same room, it was great to be able to have one continuous conversation with everyone, and enough break time for serious one-on-one conversations on the side.
In the book I subsequently published, Self-Management and the Crisis of Socialism, I incorporated a basic income into the model of socialism I was defending. After the book, my focus shifted from market socialism and cooperatives to basic income, and I became a regular contributor to conferences on basic income.
I had the good fortune to spend a semester as a Hoover Fellow at the Catholic University in Louvain-la-Neuve. I worked with Karl Widerquist to edit two books on Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. When the US Basic Income Guarantee Network needed a coordinator to take over from Karl in 2008, I was willing, and have been doing the job ever since.
It has been a pleasure and inspiration to work with the dedicated scholars and activists in USBIG and BIEN. During these roughly 25 years, I have seen basic income move from a novel idea, under discussion by academics and a few visionary activists in response to unprecedented changes in our world, to a policy idea being tested in South Africa, Brazil, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, India, and Canada, and on the radar of mainstream policy makers in the US like Robert Reich and even President Obama. The growth of interest threatens to outpace the capacity of our organizations. USBIG, for example, is just now becoming incorporated, has relied on voluntary labor, and has operated without a budget since its beginning.
But BIEN, USBIG, and other organizations are gearing up to meet the rising interest and the important and difficult policy challenges and decisions that lie ahead. Despite recent turns toward the right in politics, I am confident that our best times lie ahead. Xenophobia and neoliberal austerity cannot solve the climate crisis, the disruptions created by the current wave of automation, persistent global poverty, and stagnating economies. Once the false promises of right wing populism are exposed, there will be an opening for new solutions, and basic income is likely to be an essential part of the mix. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with my comrades in BIEN during these very interesting times.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 29, 2016 | News
Economist Joseph Stiglitz was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on information asymmetries in the market. He was Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton and Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000. And he is a supporter of universal basic income (UBI).
On October 25, 2016, Stiglitz was the featured guest on Vox editor Ezra Klein’s podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. Although the question was not a focal point of the 70 minute interview, Klein did ask Stiglitz whether he favors a UBI in the United States.
The famed economist replied that he thinks UBI is a “good idea”, although he has not made up his mind about one question: if a society has limited resources, is it better to target those resources on the poor–those who need assistance the most–rather than giving an unconditional cash transfer to everyone? As Stiglitz goes on to describe, however, those who are in most need of support often cannot afford to wait weeks or months to receive it; under the current system, however, many are forced to undergo such a waiting period–given the paperwork they must complete and the bureaucracy they must navigate. Stiglitz claims that an unconditional basic income would avoid this problem.
Stiglitz seems disposed to support a UBI in a country that is rich enough to afford unconditional payments to the rich and poor alike. (He mentions the US, Switzerland, and Norway as examples of sufficiently wealthy countries.) At the same time, though, he is quick to rule out a UBI in the US as politically infeasible.
The full episode can be heard here. The question about UBI begins at 55:25 and Stiglitz’s reply lasts until about 58 minutes.
This is not the first time Stiglitz has been asked to comment on UBI. In February 2015, he was asked about technological unemployment at the World Summit on Technological Unemployment, and replied that he agreed UBI would be part of the solution–although he went on to discuss the fact that a UBI alone is not the whole solution.
Joseph Stiglitz at Asia Society New York CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Asia Society
by Kate McFarland | Dec 24, 2016 | News
Catherine Clifford, senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC, wrote the CNBC article announcing Elon Musk’s prediction that automation would make universal basic income (UBI) necessary. In a subsequent article, titled “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” Clifford
In the article, Clifford portrays the automation of jobs as the main motivation for UBI, continuing to highlight Elon Musk’s remark that he’s “not sure what else one would do” but implement such a policy. (This focus on automation as the sole or main motivator is arguably misleading; many historically important arguments for UBI do not turn at all on worries about automation. Unquestionably, however, the threat of technological unemployment has recently been the driving force behind much of the media attention to UBI in the United States.)
Clifford goes on to note some highlights of the global UBI movement: the impending pilot in Finland, Basisinkomen 2018’s campaign for a basic income referendum in the Netherlands, and Switzerland’s vote on a basic income referendum earlier in 2016.
One passage in the article is especially noteworthy for BIEN: Clifford discusses the resolutions on the definition of ‘basic income’ made at BIEN’s 2016 Congress. In doing do so, she emphasizes that the definition of ‘basic income’ does not entail that basic income must be replacement for other programs and social services, and she point out that BIEN recommends that it not be viewed in this way–quoting BIEN co-chair Karl Widerquist as saying that UBI “is not ‘generally considered’ as a replacement for the rest of the social safety net”:
“Some see it primarily as a replacement. Others see it as a supplement, filling in the cracks. Some people who want it to be a replacement try to create the impression that it is generally considered to be so. But that’s not accurate.”
Reference
Catherine Clifford, “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” CNBC, November 18, 2016.
Article reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı.
Photo CC BY-ND 2.0 OnInnovation.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 23, 2016 | News
Some commentators view basic income as a one-stop solution, which is meant to eliminate the welfare state. Temple University Law Professor Brishen Rogers is one basic income proponent who’s speaking out against this trend.
Brishen Rogers, Associate Professor of Law at Temple University, is a long-time supporter of a universal basic income (UBI) to mitigate poverty and economic insecurity. At the same time, he is critical of certain pervasive “tropes” in the mainstream discussion of UBI. The latter are his focus in a recent Boston Review article (“How Not to Argue for Basic Income”), in which he criticizes discourse that portrays UBI as necessitated (only) by automation and technological unemployment, and that presents it as a replacement for all other welfare programs.
Although he praises former SEIU President Andy Stern’s “willingness to challenge labor movement orthodoxy”, Rogers challenges the presentation of UBI in Stern’s popular new book on the topic, Raising the Floor, which Rogers takes exemplify this problematic discourse:
Like many others in the future-of-work debates, he [Stern] presents UBI as an urgent policy solution to a problem—massive technological unemployment—that has not yet materialized. Also like many others, he signals a willingness to cut welfare benefits in order to get conservatives on board. These tropes of mainline debate are unfortunate. They alienate progressives who might otherwise favor a UBI and cast the policy as a one-stop solution for economic inequality, which it is not.
Opposing a UBI that replaces the social welfare state, Rogers proposes that basic income be integrated into a social democratic economy, rather than laid on top of a neoliberal one:
[T]he solution is not to buy off a hoard of displaced workers armed with pitchforks. Rather, it is to fight for a UBI while rebuilding a robustly democratic state that can enact broader progressive reforms to tax and welfare policies, subject large firms to far greater oversight, and protect workers and the unemployed in the here and now. Such reforms aren’t just good policy but also good politics, since they can help rebuild faith in the state. A standalone UBI simply cannot.
In previous academic work (“Justice at Work”), Rogers has argued that a basic income would not eliminate the need for minimum wage laws, which would continue to be necessary to promote fair and respectful treatment of workers.
References and Further Reading
Brishen Rogers, “How Not to Argue for Basic Income,” Boston Review, October 31, 2016.
Brishen Rogers, “Justice at Work: Minimum Wage Laws and Social Equality,” Texas Law Review, April 26, 2014.
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı
Image: CC BY 2.0 Robert Couse-Baker
by Kate McFarland | Dec 22, 2016 | News
The most recent report from the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers mentions, but rejects, the suggestion that a universal basic income be implemented to mitigate economic disruption caused by the automation of labor.
On December 20, the Council of Economic Advisers to US President Barack Obama released a report on policy responses to the threat of job loss due to artificial intelligence (AI) and other labor-displacing technologies.
The report recommends three general strategies: (1) greater investment in AI research (noting that, despite the challenges posed by technological unemployment, AI promises myriad benefits), (2) job training and education for the highly skilled jobs of the future, and (3) strengthening the social safety net, including the provision of unemployment insurance to displaced workers. In discussing the third strategy, the authors make clear that their recommendation is to strengthen the existing social safety net, rather than to replace current programs with a universal basic income (UBI).
Jason Furman, CC BY-ND 2.0 Center for American Progress
Although the main body of the report does not directly address UBI, a prominent sidebar quotes a speech made by Council Chairman Jason Furman in a White House workshop last July, in which he dismisses UBI as a reasonable response to concerns about potential technological unemployment (see page 40). In the quoted passage, Furman acknowledges that proponents of UBI have many diverse motivations, including ”real and perceived deficiencies in the current social safety net, the belief in a simpler and more efficient system, and…the premise that we need to change our policies to deal with the changes that will be unleashed by AI and automation more broadly.”
Despite this, Furman goes on to cast UBI as policy “premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed” — a possibility that he himself does not believe the US government should rule out. Instead, according to Furman, “our goal should be first and foremost to foster the skills, training, job search assistance, and other labor market institutions to make sure people can get into jobs, which would much more directly address the employment issues raised by AI than would UBI.” The Council of Economic Advisers’ latest report continues to affirm this approach.
President-elect Donald Trump will take office in January 2017. As reporters like April Glaser (Recode) and Mike Brown (Inverse) point out, it is unlikely that Trump’s Cabinet will be receptive to many of the proposals in the report, which call for increased funding for welfare programs and public education.
References
Complete Report
Executive Office of the President, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy,” December 20, 2016.
Media Coverage
Mike Brown, “White House: Basic Income Won’t Solve Robot Automation,” Inverse, December 21, 2016.
Klint Finley, “The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education,” Wired, December 21, 2016.
– Includes commentary from Jim Pugh of the Universal Income Project, a California-based basic income advocacy group, regarding the narrowness of the conception of UBI in Furman’s remarks.
April Glaser, “The White House says the U.S. will need a stronger social safety net to help workers displaced by robots,” Recode, December 20, 2016.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
White House in snow photo, CC BY-ND 2.0 U.S. Embassy, Jakarta
