Friday 14 July 2017

ATD Quart Monde sponsors UN Panel on UBI

The solidarity movement, ATD Quart Monde, which works with poor communities living in first world countries, has organised a panel at the United Nations with Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, devoted to the theme of a universal basic income.

Thirteen governments from all world regions as well as three UN agencies and fifty NGOs took part in the program on 8 June 2017.

ATD Quart Monde's reports notes that the idea has not raised great hopes nor excessive enthusiasm with both advantages and disadvantages being recognised.

Among the advantages it listed:

1. Reducing stigmatisation of the poor;

2. Enabling everyone to live in dignity and to have access to the necessary minimum;

3. Giving more power to people who would not be in a situation of dependency or insecurity;

4. No longer living below the poverty because of a system that discourages initiatve.

On the other hand, potential risks included:

1. Fear of being permanently excluded from the world of work.

2. Would not enable people to be integrated into society, to be recognised and to develop themselves.

Hence, any policy of UBI would need to form part of an overall policy to eradicate extreme poverty.


SOURCE

Wednesday 12 July 2017

What about UBI for women in South East Asia?


UBI might be one way to both empower women and reduce hunger in South East Asia, argues Tamara Nair, Nanyang Technological University.

"My research focuses specifically on women from the region who live below the poverty line, which, for East Asia and the Pacific, the World Bank defines as living on less than US$3.20 a day," she writes at the Huffington Post.

"Women are primarily seen as wives and mothers, a gender stereotype reinforced in both everyday experiences and in the theological texts of the main religions in the region.

"By giving women the financial freedom to act as “agents” of development in the region, universal basic income could be a tool that ultimately paves the way for their future economic and political involvement.

"This process would start with something simple (and seemingly uncontroversial): women being able to put food on the table," Nair proposes.

"If women were provided with sufficient income to feed their families, it would translate into better nutrition, health and general well-being for children and others entrusted in their care, and by extension, their communities.

"Tacked onto the state’s existing social safety nets, UBI can give much needed specific attention to women’s broader economic empowerment, which is vital to a developing country’s growth.

"The first step toward doing so in Southeast Asia would be to identify women living below the poverty line.

"Accessible through cheap mobile phones, this money can be used to purchase food and other basic necessities in participating shops, which may be incentivised to participate with credits or subsidies of their own," she says.


Wednesday 5 July 2017

Zuckerberg praises Alaska model


On a visit to Alaska, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has once again backed the development of UBI.

"Alaska has a form of basic income called the Permanent Fund Dividend," he wrote. "Every year, a portion of the oil revenue the state makes is put into a fund. Rather than having the government spend that money, it is returned to Alaskan residents through a yearly dividend that is normally $1000 or more per person. That can be especially meaningful if your family has five or six people.

"This is a novel approach to basic income in a few ways. First, it's funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes. Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net. This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea," he continued.

He also linked the development of UBI to a profit-making society.

"Seeing how Alaska put this dividend in place reminded me of a lesson I learned early at Facebook: organizations think profoundly differently when they're profitable than when they're in debt," he added.

"When you're losing money, your mentality is largely about survival. But when you're profitable, you're confident about your future and you look for opportunities to invest and grow further. Alaska's economy has historically created this winning mentality, which has led to this basic income. That may be a lesson for the rest of the country as well."

Zuckerberg also highlighted another form of basic income developed by the Native Corporations. 

"In Alaska, native land is owned and developed by private corporations, which are run and owned by Native Alaskans. These corporations also pay out annual dividends to their shareholders, who are largely natives, based on the resources they develop.

"So if you're a Native Alaskan, you would get two dividends: one from your Native Corporation and one from the state Permanent Fund," he concluded.

SOURCE

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103857892105091

Saturday 1 July 2017

Canadian island province to try UBI

Canada's tiny St Edward Island province  has unanimously voted in favour of trialling a universal basic income for its citiziens in partnership with the national government, The Independent reports.

According to the successful bill, every citizen will receive a basic income in an attempt to reduce or "potentially eliminate poverty in the province".

Green Party leader in Prince Edward's legislature, Peter Bevan Baker, proposed the motion with support of all three other parties.

Mr Bevan Baker told CBC: "A universal basic income could enable the greatest unleashing of human potential ever seen."

The national Canadian government will use the pilot to weigh up the benefits against the heavy costs. The details of how the pilot will be implement have yet to be finalised.

SOURCE

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/canda-universal-basic-income-prince-edward-island-pilot-programme-a7462916.html

Saturday 17 June 2017

Australia debates UBI

Australia's Green Institute says that leaders of the Federal (Opposition) Labor Party should review their opposition to a universal basic income, the Guardian Australia reports.

On the other hand, the Australian Green Party has argued a universal basic income should be considered in conjunction with a four-day working week.

The Green Institute has released a new paper, Views of a UBI: Perspectives from Across Australia, that records the views of different Australians on universal basic income (UBI), a contentious policy idea that is slowly gaining international currency.

However, Chris Bowen, the shadow treasurer, argued forcefully against a UBI during a speech to the progressive thinktank PerCapita, calling it a "terrible idea" adding that Labor should not give up on the principle "of ensuring dignity through work."

Tim Hollo, the executive director of the Green Institute, challenged this view.

"Might we not actually be better off heading towards what John Maynard Keynes was talking about almost 100 years ago, that we should, by this stage, be looking at a 15-hour working week and re-evaluating our ideas of employment and paid work?" he asked.
READ MORE

Monday 5 June 2017

EU funds basic income pilots

The Barcelona district of Besós has been picked to test a €13 million European Union funded pilot scheme investigating “innovative and creative solutions” to urban poverty, The Local reports.

Barcelona was chosen alongside Utrecht in the Netherlands and the Finnish city of Helsinki to test the scheme, which will see the poorest residents in each chosen district given grants for two years to lift them above the breadline.

In the B-Mincome experiment, 1,000 randomly selected low-income households in the Besós district will be given grants of between 400 and 525 euros a month for two years.

Those taking part will be divided into four distinct groups and given the grants in different forms as a way of analysing the ways in which low income families can be best helped.

FULL STORY

Tuesday 30 May 2017

UBI to be tested with 26,000 people in East Africa

The time has come to find out whether UBI is effective, argues Michael Faye at LinkedIn.

" In 2017 we plan to launch the largest and longest evaluation of a basic income yet conducted, studying the effects of a 12-year income guarantee delivered by the NGO GiveDirectly to 26,000 individuals in East Africa using random assignment of villages," he says.

"Studying a program of this duration will let us unlock key questions - for example, does making a long term commitment of support matter, or is it simply cash in hand (which is already well-studied) that matters?

"And the size of the transfers will be enough to enable transformational life changes, not merely incremental improvements in standards of living.

"By coordinating research activities across projects, we will be able to gain insight into the extent to which findings from one setting can be generalized to another.

"We may learn that a universal basic income is a universally bad idea. We may find it suits the needs and circumstances of some economies but not others. Or we may find it the universally liberating force of which its most ardent supporters dream," Faye concludes.

SOURCE

Basic income could transform society. But first, it needs to be tested. (LinkedIn)

Monday 29 May 2017

Robert Reich on the need for UBI


Robert Reich, who was Secretary for Labor in the Clinton administration, explains why he believes UBI will be needed.

Friday 26 May 2017

Explore UBI: Zuckerberg



In his commencement speech at Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg added his name to the list of technology pioneers calling for exploration of the universal basic income.

"Every generation expands its definition of equality," Zuckerberg said. "Previous generations fought for the vote and civil rights. They had the New Deal and Great Society. Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation.

"We should have a society that measures progress not just by economic metrics like GDP, but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things.

"We’re going to change jobs many times, so we need affordable child care to get to work and health care that aren’t tied to one company. We’re all going to make mistakes, so we need a society that focuses less on locking us up or stigmatizing us. And as technology keeps changing, we need to focus more on continuous education throughout our lives.

"And yes, giving everyone the freedom to pursue purpose isn’t free. People like me should pay for it. Many of you will do well and you should too," Zuckerberg said.

Sunday 21 May 2017

Freeing the poor from the anxiety of poverty

"In a nation so contorted at times by its Calvinistic impulses, public assistance has come to be seen not as a hand-up to struggling families but as a paternalistic mechanism for “takers” and “abusers” that contributes to so-called cycles of poverty," writes Kevin Clarke at US Catholic.

"Increasingly even modest assistance to the poor has been challenged—healthcare, for example, is seen not as a human right but as a market commodity deliverable not on the primacy of need but the ability to pay," he says.

"What if the problem of how public assistance is offered is not that it promotes dependency but that it is so parsimonious—and provided with so many confusing strings attached—that it merely maintains the misery? What if public aid could be truly liberating instead of incapacitating?" Clarke asks.

"It is hard to imagine a program of poverty mitigation that is as well directed toward those ends than a basic income. It frees the poor not only from need but also the gnawing, exhausting anxiety of poverty and the tyranny of a perplexing social apparatus that has been constructed around poverty alleviation," Clarke concludes.

FULL ARTICLE

Can a basic income liberate the poor? (US Catholic)


Thursday 11 May 2017

UBI tests show positive results

The most entrenched criticism of UBI is that too many would exploit a guaranteed income to sit on their hands, grinding the economy to a halt buthere are signs that this is too gloomy a view, New Scientist reports.

For four years beginning in 1975, the 10,000 citizens of Dauphin in Manitoba, Canada, were guaranteed a basic level of financial security: if their monthly income dropped below a certain level, the government would top it up. Support for this experiment soon dried up, and it was never properly analysed.

Evelyn Forget at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg recently revisited the experiment, comparing public records from Dauphin with those from similar small towns. Forget found the only groups that spent less time in work during the trial were teenage boys and new mothers. The boys were staying in school rather than bowing to pressure to take agricultural jobs, and the mothers were nursing. What’s more, Dauphin had noticeably lower hospitalisation rates and fewer depression-related illnesses.

Other tests are also now taking place in the Netherlands and private firms are also looking at the idea, New Scientist says.

SOURCE

What happens if we pay everyone just to live? (New Scientist)

Monday 8 May 2017

Basic income a necessity: Yanis Varoufakis


Finnish UBI pilot reduces stress

Citizens receiving a basic monthly income as part of a radical Finnish pilot scheme have seen a reduction in their stress levels, according to local officials, the Independent reports.

Under the scheme, 2,000 people receive 560 euros every month for two years. Recipients do not have to report whether they are seeking employment or how they are spending the money, which is deducted from any benefits they are already receiving.

Marjukka Turunen, head of KELA, the legal unit at Finland's social insurance agency, said as well as cutting bureaucracy, reducing costs and tackling poverty, the scheme was having an indirectly positive effect on people's mental health.

“There was this one woman who said: ‘I was afraid every time the phone would ring, that unemployment services are calling to offer me a job," Ms Turunen said.

The woman was not able to work because she was caring for elderly parents.

Under the pilot, if a participant finds work, they will continued to receive the stipend, easing claimants' fears they will lose out by finding employment, the Independent says.

FULL STORY

Finland's universal basic income trial for unemployed reduces stress levels, says official (Independent)

Finland's guaranteed basic income is working to tackle poverty (Kera News)

Sunday 30 April 2017

Ontario UBI trial to begin this summer

The Canadian province of Ontario will launch a trial run of universal basic income with about 4,000 participants this summer, making it the first North American government in decades to test out the policy, The Guardian reports.

Participants in the three-year, C$150m pilot program will be drawn from the cities of Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Lindsay. A randomly selected mail-out will invite applications in the coming months, with participants screened to ensure they are between the ages of 18 and 64 years and living on a low income.

The pilot will include a mix of those who are working in low-paying or precarious jobs and those on social assistance, with participants able to opt out at any point during the three years.

Unconditional monthly payments will begin to flow this summer; single people will receive up to C$16,989 ($12,570) while couples will receive C$24,027. All participants will continue to receive child or disability benefits, if applicable, the papers says.

FULL STORY

Ontario plans to launch universal basic income trial run this summer (The Guardian)

READ MORE

Canada is launching an experiment that will give 4,000 people free money until 2020 (The Independend)

Thursday 27 April 2017

Monday 3 April 2017

Introducing UBI in the Australian context

It’s high time we take it seriously, argues Charlie Young at The New Daily.

"While the (Australian) Greens have been advocating UBI for years, earlier this month Luke Whitington, the deputy chair of NSW Labor’s Economic Policy Committee, proposed investigating a nationwide program," Young notes.

"A multitude of recent articles, research papers and government reports have started looking seriously into UBI’s feasibility in Australia. Some proposals suggest paying out between $10,000 and $30,000 per citizen per year, which is no small thing. And it doesn’t look like the idea’s on its way out.

"Left wing proponents say a UBI would reduce crime, reward hitherto unpaid labour in the home, and massively reduce gender and income inequality, while essentially eliminating poverty – as payments would likely be set above the poverty line," he argues.

One source of funding would involve "replacing elements of government welfare spending coupled with progressive taxation."

"There’s a lot of money to be saved via the elimination of the bureaucratic means-testing involved in programs like Newstart," he notes.

A UBI could help relieve in other areas, Young says "such as the manifold economic pressures of Australia’s ageing population and jobs at risk from the rise of automation."

However, he notes that UBI champions from the conservative end of the political spectrum have a different notion of it.

"Some Liberals believe UBI could replace the inefficient behemoth that is the Australian welfare system. Mikayla Novak, a senior researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs, Australia’s leading free-market think tank, argued that federal and state welfare spending could have been redistributed in 2013-14 to give 'each adult Australian resident … about $714 per month in a basic income'."

"Remember, that would mean scrapping everything, including Medicare and child support," Young warns.

Different possible funding options are available, he suggests, including former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis' suggestion of taxing automation, while academic Thomas Pogge says we should put a global levy on natural resource extraction.

Land value tax as a funding stream, financial transaction taxes and carbon taxes are other possibilities, Young argues.

FULL ARTICLE

It’s time to take ‘free money’ seriously (The New Daily)

Sunday 2 April 2017

A UBI "social account"

"Can UBI work?" asks Kemal Dervis at Social Europe

"Implementing a full-blown UBI would be difficult, not least because it would require answering a number of complex questions about goals and priorities," he says. "Perhaps the most obvious balancing act relates to how much money is actually delivered to each citizen (or legal resident)."

"In the United States and Europe, a UBI of, say, $2,000 per year would not do much, except perhaps alleviate the most extreme poverty, even if it was added to existing social-welfare programs. An UBI of $10,000 would make a real difference; but, depending on how many people qualify, that could cost as much as 10% or 15% of GDP – a huge fiscal outlay, particularly if it came on top of existing social programs."

However, a proposal from France "is a step in the right direction," Dervis argues.

"The idea is to endow each citizen with a personal social account containing partly redeemable 'points.' Such accounts would work something like a savings account, with their owners augmenting a substantial public contribution to them by working, studying, or performing certain types of national service.

"The accounts could be drawn upon in times of need, particularly for training and re-skilling, though the amount that could be withdrawn would be guided by predetermined 'prices' and limited to a certain amount in a given period of time.

"The approach seems like a good compromise between portability and personal choice, on the one hand, and sufficient social-policy guidance, on the other," Dervis adds.

"Only by striking the right balance between individual choice and social-policy guidance can modern economies build the social-safety programs they need," he concludes.

SOURCE

Getting Basic Income Right (Social Europe)

Monday 6 March 2017

The Charter of the Forest and a commons argument for the UBI

"Every student learns about Magna Carta, the ancient scroll that enshrined the rights of barons against the arbitrary authority of England’s monarchs," writes Jason Hickel at the Guardian. 

"But most have never heard of its arguably more important twin, the Charter of the Forest, issued two years later in 1217. 

"This short but powerful document guaranteed the rights of commoners to common lands, which they could use for farming, grazing, water and wood. It gave official recognition to a right that humans nearly everywhere had long just presupposed: that no one should be debarred from the resources necessary for livelihood.

"But this right – the right of habitation – came under brutal attack beginning in the 15th century, when wealthy nobles began fencing off common lands for their own profit. Over the next few centuries, the enclosure movement, as it came to be known, shifted tens of millions of acres into private hands, displacing much of the country’s population. Excluded from the basic means of survival, most were left with no choice but to sell themselves for wages for the first time.

"And it wasn’t only England. The same process unfolded across Asia and Africa and most of the global south as European colonisers staked private claim to lands and forests and waterways that were previously held in common, leaving millions dispossessed," Hickel adds. 

Indeed, the process continues in many countries, including post-colonial countries which continue to dispossess indigenous people.

In the context of the argument of a universal basic income, what's interesting is that Hickel bases his argument on a right to share in the commons.

"Critics of basic income often get hung up on how to fund it. But once we come to see it as linked to the commons, that problem becomes more tractable," he argues, giving the modern day example of  the US state of Alaska, where "natural resources are considered a commons, owned collectively by the people, so every resident receives an annual dividend from the state’s oil revenues."

Saturday 4 March 2017

Guaranteed minimum income as percentage of national income

Economists Kalle Moene, director of ESOP – the Centre for the Study of Equality, Social Organization and Performance at the University of Oslo, and his Indian-American colleague, Debraj Ray, have called for countries to set aside 10 to 12 per cent of gross national income for a universal basic income, Phys.org reports. 

"We propose a minimum income for everyone as a fixed proportion of gross national income – Universal Basic Share (UBS)," they argue. "The scheme can thereby be introduced in all countries, poor as well as wealthy. It would function in India equally well as in Norway."

In India, this sum of money would be shared among just over 1.2 billion people, and each person would then receive a wage that corresponds to the current poverty line, while in Norway this would constitute approximately NOK 90 000 ($US10,700).

"The whole point is to link the payments to the country's income level. This has three important implications," Ray argues. "Firstly, the poor receive an amount that is independent of personal income. Secondly, the amount paid is automatically linked to inflation. Thirdly, people have no need to fight for the authorities to adjust the amount to keep pace with the growth in the national income."

"Why are these proposals being made now?

"The keywords are: unemployment, inequality, globalization and automation in manufacturing. Those who own the robots rule the world. 

"The universal basic income gradually increases as technological development forges ahead. The scheme means that everyone shares in the prosperity," they conclude.

SOURCE:

https://phys.org/news/2017-03-economists-minimum-income.html

Sunday 26 February 2017

Cut the working week by a third


Rutger Bregman is a 28-year-old Dutchman whose book, Utopia for Realists, has taken Holland by storm and could yet revitalise progressive thought around the globe, The Guardian reports. 

He says we should institute a universal basic income for everyone that covers minimum living expenses – say around £12,000 a year; the working week should be shortened to 15 hours; borders should be opened and migrants allowed to move wherever they choose.

Instead of attacking capitalism and post-enlightenment liberalism, Bregman celebrates its achievements. He also credits globalisation with lifting 700 million Chinese out of extreme poverty – hugely more than communism ever achieved.

“I’ve heard for three years that many of my ideas are unrealistic and unreasonable and that we can’t afford them,” Bregman says, by way of preamble to a more comprehensive reply. “And the simple answer is ‘Oh, you want to stick to the status quo? How’s that been working out?’”

He acknowledges that a genuinely universal system would involve a massive overhaul of our tax system and that it would require an enormous amount of public and political support. But you’ve got to start somewhere, is his outlook, and the best place to start is in redefining what we mean by work.

“There was a poll in the UK that showed that 37% of British workers think that their job doesn’t need to exist. Well, it’s not the bin men, and the care workers and the teachers that say that. We’re talking about consultants, bankers, accountants, lawyers etc. The implications of that are radical. We could cut the working week by a third and be just as rich. Probably richer!”

“One of the basic lessons of history,” says Bregman, “is that things can be different. The way we’ve structured our economy, our system of welfare, it’s not natural. It could be different.”


PHOTO

Friday 17 February 2017

UBI will be necessary: Musk

Elon Musk shared his thoughts on universal basic income (UBI) at the World Government Summit in Dubai recently, Futurism reports.

In his comments, he relayed concerns that autonomous technology will impact jobs, and he noted that we will likely have intelligent, massive-scale automation for transportation relatively soon – within the next few decades.

“Twenty years is a short period of time to have something like 12-15 percent of the workforce be unemployed,” he said, pointing out the extent of how automation will disrupt car-based transportation specifically.

However, displacement due to automation isn’t just limited to transportation, it will sweep across a number of industries, and Musk argues that the government must introduce a UBI program in order to compensate for this.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,” he said. “I think it’s going to be necessary. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.”

Saturday 11 February 2017

UBI as part of a transformative project

"Some of the most compelling arguments for a universal basic income guarantee are about freedom and solidarity: the sense that another world is possible in which our economic system is based on trust and mutual aid, enabling everyone to share in the rewards of technology," argues Sharing The World's Resources (STWR) in a talk given to the World Basic Income conference.

"Unfortunately, there is little hope that the full implementation of a basic income – sufficiently high enough to meet all people’s needs without the obligation to work – is going to be achieved in the present context of financial austerity and so-called neoliberal capitalism.

"As long as present trends continue with the marketisation and gradual deterioration of public services in most countries, any successes achieved in introducing a nation-wide basic income scheme are likely to come at the cost of comprehensive social programs that benefit the majority.

"This means that any strategy to achieve a UBI has to be part of a transformative project, one that aims to delink work from income and redirect productive capacity towards creating real value for society, while at the same time 'switching off the neoliberal privatisation machine' and bringing about a 'controlled dissolution of market forces', as the journalist Paul Mason has argued."

SOURCE

https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-path-to-achieving-a-truly-universal-basic-income/2017/02/10

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Australian unionist proposes universal capital grant

Young Australians should be given a grant funded by an inheritance tax on wealthy estates to help them enter the housing market, pay university fees or start a business, argues Tim Ayres, NSW secretary of the left wing Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.

He raised the idea in a speech to the Fabian Society about inequality and connecting with voters amid the rise of populist politicians like Pauline Hanson and Donald Trump, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

In the speech due to be given on Wednesday night, Mr Ayres – a member of the ALP national executive – offers support for French economist Thomas Pikkety's proposal for an inheritance tax "to fund a one-off capital grant for every citizen at the age of 25".

He quotes Community Council for Australia figures that say if four per cent of the 25,000 families with assets of $10 million paid a 35 per cent duty it would raise $3.5 billion "while affecting only a fraction of the top 1 per cent of Australians".

"A capital grant to young Australians would give millions of young Australians a future: they can put it to a house, they can start their own business, they can pay off their university fees," Mr Ayres says.

"A universal inheritance tax may be bold, but 2016 has taught us that business as usual isn't going to cut it and politics as usual doesn't offer the scale of policy that is required to genuinely tackle regional and intergenerational inequality."

Inheritance or death taxes are in place in countries including Britain and the US but a recognised flaw is that people may transfer wealth before their death to avoid the duty.

In his speech Mr Ayres warns of the limited appeal of progressive politics to blue collar communities, particularly in regional areas where jobs have dried up and living standards have fallen.

SOURCE

Death tax grants would 'give young Australians a future', union secretary says (Sydney Morning Herald)

Wednesday 1 February 2017

Indian govt study backs UBI

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) will be an efficient substitute for a plethora of existing welfare schemes and subsidies, according to India's annual Economic Survey, the Hindu reports.

In a chapter ‘Universal Basic Income: A Conversation With and Within the Mahatma,’ the Survey dwelt at length on the pros and cons of introducing UBI in India before concluding that it was “a powerful idea whose time even if not ripe for implementation is ripe for serious discussion.”

The report justified the introduction of UBI citing several reasons such as promoting social justice, reducing poverty and an unconditional cash transfer that lets the beneficiary decide how she uses the money and generating employment by promoting labour flexibility since it allows “individuals to have partial or calibrated engagements with the labour market without fear of losing benefits.”

It also said the move would bring in administrative efficiency as a direct cash transfer through a JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhar-Mobile) platform would be more efficient compared to the “existing welfare schemes which are riddled with misallocation, leakages and exclusion of the poor.”

The report advocated a “target quasi-universality rate of 75%,” which would entail a cost of 4.9-4.2% of the GDP, well within the ball park of 5% of the GDP, which is what existing centrally sponsored schemes cost the exchequer.

According to Professor Guy Standing, a founding member of the Basic Income Earth Network, told Business Insider UBI trials in India had been “remarkably positive”, giving people a sense of control over their money, reducing debt and empowering women, the Independent adds.

SOURCES

http://www.thehindu.com/business/%E2%80%98Time-ripe-for-discussions-on-Universal-Basic-Income%E2%80%99/article17124378.ece

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-universal-basic-income-combat-alleviate-poverty-economic-survey-a7555416.html

http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2016-17/echap09.pdf

Monday 23 January 2017

UBI backer tops French socialist primary

Benoit Hamon / Marion Germa / Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 4.0

A vocal supporter of basic income, Benoit Hamon came out first in the first round of the socialist primary, Basic Income reports.

Hamon won Saturday's first round of the French left-wing primary with 36% of the vote, ahead of the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls (31%) and Arnaud Montebourg (18%).

Hamon immediately received the support of his fellow main competitor Montebourg for the second round of the election, which should secure his victory against the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls at the second round.

Sometimes described in the international media as the ‘French Jeremy Corbyn’, Hamon, 49 years old, was Education Minister and Minister for the Solidarity Economy under President François Hollande. He was pushed to resignation after a government reshuffle in August 2014.

SOURCE

Wednesday 18 January 2017

Guaranteed income or guaranteed job?

Some economists claim a job guarantee program would better address both inflation and unemployment, writes Claire Connelly at the ABC.

This would make the public sector the employer of last resort to provide jobs for the unemployed population in areas of the economy and community where demands are not being met: aged care, child care, education, retail and small business etc. It would also establish the basic minimum standard for a decent job at decent pay in the public sector.

Connelly quotes Pavlina Tcherneva, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics and Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, who says a basic income program operates on the fantasy that somehow the market will provide things the recipient want or need.

A job guarantee program would connect income with things people - and communities - need and allow them to be part of the social contract, to participate in transforming their communities and their livelihood, Tcherneva argues.

"It would establish the basic minimum standard for a decent job at decent pay in the public sector, a standard which the private sector must match (at a minimum) to attract workers," she said.

Going further, Dr Steven Hail, lecturer at the University of Adelaide's School of Economics, argues it would enhance it by creating a pool of workers that private enterprise could hire from at any time to meet production needs.

Meanwhile, retired economist Ellis Winningham told the ABC a jobs guarantee would put a complete end to all involuntary unemployment while also gaining price stability.

SOURCE

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-19/universal-basic-income-vs-job-guarantee/8187688

An urgent necessity

Guy Standing argues that "the 20th century income distribution system has broken down irretrievably."

"Globalisation, technological change and the move to flexible labour markets has channelled more and more income to rentiers – those owning financial, physical or so-called intellectual property – while real wages stagnate," he writes in The Guardian.

"The income of the precariat is falling and becoming more volatile. And chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits or workfare. In short, a basic income is becoming a political imperative," he says.

Noting a range of pilot programs under way around the world, he stresses that "pilots can only test certain behavioural aspects of paying a basic income and seeing what people do differently."

On the other hand, UBI proponents "rest their case on more fundamental justifications – social justice, freedom and economic security" which cannot be tested by pilots.

Nevertheless, he notes that several pilots showed positive effects. "A well-known experiment in the Canadian town of Dauphin in the 1970s showed that recipients of the basic income suffered less from ill-health and mental stress," for example.

Moreover, in the largest Indian pilot, about 6,000 men people in eight villages received a small basic income for 18 months. Four positive effects were observed: benefits to welfare, positive equity effects, positive economic effects, including more work and labour, raised productivity and output, and reduced inequality, and finally, there was a growth in secondary, self-employed work.

SOURCE

Monday 16 January 2017

Why don't trade unions support UBI?

In an article for Counterpunch, Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark identify six reasons why many trade unions don't support the UBI.

"The chariness being expressed in a lot of trade unions where Basic Income has not been very well received by union bosses or members sheds light on several serious confusions about Basic Income," they write, while recognising that there are significant exceptions like Unite in Great Britain, AFL-CIO leaders in the United States, some groups and militants of the Spanish unions CCOO and CGT, and the Basque Ezker Sindikalaren Konbergentzi.

Here are the six reasons they mention:

First: Basic Income would undermine the power of the unions.

Second: Since the bulk of union membership consists of full-time workers, they could lose out economically because of the tax reforms required.

Third: Basic Income is only a pretext for dismantling the hard-earned welfare state.

Fourth: The bosses will use Basic Income as an excuse for lowering wages.

Fifth: Basic Income challenges the trade union culture of work because it dissociates material existence from work and the rights arising from it.

Sixth: with their existence guaranteed, workers would lose their fighting spirit.

Here are a couple of points Raventos and Wark make in reply:

"The question of basic income and work is much more complex and interesting than the union argument suggests. It is true that, with a Basic Income, material existence would no longer depend on having a job but this doesn’t mean that it’s antithetical to employment. Rather, it would offer a more resourceful way of sharing tasks in different domains of work.

"The unions’ concerns about remunerated work totally overlook two other essential kinds, viz. voluntary work and domestic (reproductive) work, a standpoint which makes it impossible to understand the effects a Basic Income would have for most people. Our definition of work would be much more open: “a set of remunerated or unremunerated activities whose results procure goods or services for members of our species.”

SOURCE

Why Don’t Trade Unions Support an Unconditional Basic Income (Precisely When They Should)?

Boosting the freelance economy

Michael Grothaus at Fast Company argues that a universal basic income could help make the freelance economy more possible and realistic.

He cites Marjukka Turunen, the head of the legal unit in benefit services at KELA, the Finnish government social security institution that is overseeing the project.

"Studies have shown one of the top reasons more people don’t become entrepreneurs is because they don’t have the capital to both support themselves and start a business at the same time. This means they can’t afford to leave their current job to start their own small business," argues Marjukka Turunen. "UBI would give them a solid financial foundation to do this."

He also draws on Guy Standing from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network, who also believes that the UBI could boost the freelance economy in five ways.

1. It could help people retrain for in-demand jobs.

2. It could inspire people to take risks and start their own businesses.

3. It could help freelancers maintain health insurance coverage.

4. It could help freelancers say "no" to abusive clients.

5. It could help compensate freelancers for the unpaid work they do.

SOURCE

Sunday 15 January 2017

UBI as an (affordable) net transfer

"What tends to go unrealized about the idea of basic income, and this is true even of many economists – but not all – is that it represents a net transfer," argues Scott Santens, a founding member of the Economic Security Project, an adviser to the Universal Income Project, in a paper for the World Economic Forum.

"In the same way it does not cost $20 to give someone $20 in exchange for $10, it does not cost $3 trillion to give every adult citizen $12,000 and every child $4,000, when every household will be paying varying amounts of taxes in exchange for their UBI," Santens argues.

"Instead it will cost around 30% of that, or about $900 billion, and that’s before the full or partial consolidation of other programmes and tax credits immediately made redundant by the new transfer. In other words, for someone whose taxes go up $4,000 to pay for $12,000 in UBI, the cost to give that person UBI is $8,000, not $12,000, and it’s coming from someone else whose taxes went up $20,000 to pay for their own $12,000. However, even that’s not entirely accurate, because the consolidation of the safety net and tax code UBI allows could drive the total price even lower.

"The true net cost of UBI in the US is therefore closer to an additional tax revenue requirement of a few hundred billion dollars – or less – depending on the many design choices made, and there exists a variety of ideas out there for crossing such a funding gap in a way that many people might prefer, that would also treat citizens like the shareholders they are (virtually all basic research is taxpayer funded), and that could even reduce taxes on labour by focusing more on capital, consumption, and externalities instead of wages and salaries. Additionally, we could eliminate the $540 billion in tax expenditures currently being provided disproportionately to the wealthiest, and also some of the $850 billion spent on defence.

"Universal basic income is thus entirely affordable and essentially Milton Friedman’s negative income tax in net outcome (and he himself knew this), where those earning below a certain point are given additional income, and those earning above a certain point are taxed additional income. UBI does not exist outside the tax system unless it’s provided through pure monetary expansion or extra-governmental means. In other words, yes, Bill Gates will get $12,000 too but as one of the world’s wealthiest billionaires he will pay far more than $12,000 in new taxes to pay for it. That however is not similarly true for the bottom 80% of all US households, who will pay the same or less in total taxes."

READ MORE:


UBI necessary in Frankenstein defence

Members of the European Parliament have called on European countries to “seriously” consider introducing a general basic income to prepare for wide scale unemployment that could come as a result of robots taking over manual jobs, The Independent reports.

A draft report, tabled by a socialist MEP Mady Delvaux-Stehres, warns preparations must be made for what it describes as the “technological revolution” currently taking place, including provisions for the “possible effects on the labour market of robotics”.

In its introduction the report warns against Frankensteinian consequences to the widespread introduction of robots:

"Whereas from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster to the classical myth of Pygmalion, through the story of Prague's Golem to the robot of Karel Čapek, who coined the word, people have fantasised about the possibility of building intelligent machines, more often than not androids with human features," the report warns.

"Whereas now that humankind stands on the threshold of an era when ever more sophisticated robots, bots, androids and other manifestations of artificial intelligence ("AI") seem poised to unleash a new industrial revolution, which is likely to leave no stratum of society," it continues.

The report, which will be submitted to the entire European Parliament in February, urges member states to consider a general basic income in preparation for robots taking over people's jobs, The Independent says.

“In the light of the possible effects on the labour market of robotics and AI a general basic income should be seriously considered, and invites all Member States to do so,” the report says.

SOURCES

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/universal-basic-income-robots-eu-meps-unemployment-mady-delvaux-stehres-european-parliament-a7527661.html?cmpid=facebook-post

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/EU-Considers-Basic-Universal-Income-to-Combat-Rise-of-Robots-20170114-0017.html

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BCOMPARL%2BPE-582.443%2B01%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN

PHOTO

Mady Delvaux-Stehres / LSAP / Wikipedia / CC 3.0


Thursday 12 January 2017

Pro and against UBI in Australia

Troy Henderson, PhD candidate in political economy at the University of Sydney, and Gigi Foster, associate professor with the school of economics at the University of New South Wales, debate the possibility of introducing UBI in Australia in an interview in The Guardian.

"UBI could reduce the levels of insecurity experienced by Australians in important ways," Henderson says. 'It could provide the means to bargain for better pay and conditions, or to leave an exploitative employer.

'If you lose your job, UBI means knowing you can pay next week’s rent or power bill without having to interact with Centrelink... UBI could also afford Australians greater opportunity to take a risk or have a break. It might provide seed capital for a small business, support while doing voluntary work, or some cash for a much-needed holiday," he continues.

It would "put some meat on the Australian “'air go' bone," but it would be expensive.

"It would mean Australians accepting a tax to-GDP-ratio as high as France (44%) or Denmark (47%) compared with our current level of around 27%," he sys 

Foster agrees that it would be expensive, so much so as to be unworkable.

"A UBI means giving money universally – to everyone, or at least to every adult. To make a material difference to people’s circumstances, this transfer has to be reasonably large. I’ve heard figures floated for the Australian context of between $10,000 and $30,000 per adult per year. 

"Using a mid-range figure of $20,000 yields a total cost of about $380bn per year, which is more than twice our present welfare bill. Where would this money come from?" she asks.

Wednesday 11 January 2017

What to do when machines take our jobs? Give everyone free money for doing nothing

David Tuffley, Griffith University

It was Groucho Marx who said, “While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” Quite true, but what if there’s no money coming in from work because your job’s been taken over by a machine?

Low wage earners appear to be most at risk from automation. In February 2016, the Council of Economic Advisers (an agency within the Executive Office of the US President) issued an alarming report predicting that an 80% or greater chance exists for people on basic incomes of US$20 per hour or less to be made redundant by smart machines in the foreseeable future.

After them come the mid-range workers. Clearly, we need strategies to address any job losses arising though increases in automation.

Theoretically, just about any job that can be described as a process could be done by a computer-controlled machine. In practice though, many employers will decide that keeping a human in a job is preferable to automating it.

These are jobs that involve some degree of empathy. Imagine telling a robot doctor what ails you in response to “please state the nature of your medical emergency”.

Free money for all – seriously?

But what about those people whose jobs are lost to automation? What if new jobs aren’t created to replace them? What are they to do if they can’t earn a living anymore?

This time it’s Karl Marx, not Groucho, who comes to mind with the idea of giving people a universal basic income (UBI). This is raised as a possible remedy to any misery caused by rising unemployment from job automation.

Put simply, a UBI is a pump-priming minimum income that is unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without any means test or work requirement. It eliminates the poverty traps that the poor fall into when welfare payments have many conditions and are administered by large and inflexible bureaucracies.

The suggestion of free money is sure to raise many peoples’ hackles. Yet, this seemingly outrageous idea is being taken seriously enough to be trialled by a growing number of governments around the world, including that of Finland, the Netherlands and Canada.

Meanwhile, Switzerland will hold a referendum in June on whether to include a flat monthly payment of 2,500 Swiss Francs (A$3,380) to all adults, and a reduced flat payment of 625 Swiss Francs (A$845) to children.

Some commentators, such as former US labor secretary Robert Reich, consider a form of guaranteed national income to be “almost inevitable”.

And the US libertarian think-tank, the Cato Institute, last May published an analysis on the pros and cons of a guaranteed national income. It makes for interesting reading.

The Dutch experiment

In the Netherlands, the provincial capital of Utrecht is planning a trial that it calls See What Works. This model is showing other governments how to go about their own trials. Four types of UBI will be tested over two years.

The first type gives people a basic income of around 850 Euros (A$1,250) per month, requiring nothing in return, no reciprocal obligation. People are allowed to earn as much additional income as they desire.

The second gives people the UBI, but requires them to do volunteer community work to qualify for the full 850 Euros (A$1,250). Non-volunteering recipients receive a reduced amount.

The third type offers additional money for volunteering, while the fourth gives people the 850 (A$1,250) but does not allow them to do any work. A control group rounds out the trial.

What about welfare?

Under existing welfare arrangements, some people are already being paid even if they don’t work.

Non means-tested income would encourage people to work to supplement their basic income, an arrangement that would suit the rising class of freelance and casual workers in today’s information economies.

A basic income is described by some advocates in Silicon Valley as venture capital for poor people. They see it as enabling a pool of creative talent which has good ideas but not the means to pursue their projects and create the dynamic new industries that will be key to future prosperity.

Where will the money come from?

Advocates suggest that much of the funding currently going into welfare, state pensions, tax credits and various poverty alleviation schemes could be redeployed to fund a UBI to achieve better results.

More savings can be made by reducing the size of the government bureaucracies that administer them. Big government becomes smaller government.

The shortfall would need to be funded from tax revenue, and therein lies the rub. Raising taxes is never popular, particularly with those already saddled with heavy tax burdens.

But one thing is for sure: automation will continue to change the nature of employment, forcing economic restructuring whether we like it or not. There is pain ahead, and no avoiding it.

As counter intuitive as it might seem to those of us with a traditional work ethic (myself included), a UBI is worth exploring as a simple solution to a complex problem.

We must not underestimate the value of untapped human capital; people with the desire and capacity to be engaged and creative. If they do not need to take a menial job to cover their living expenses, they will have time to do more interesting things that are of benefit to society.

The Conversation

David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics and Socio-Technical Studies , Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Charles Clark on UBI

Professor Charles Clark
"For all the renewed interest in this idea, I haven't seen a lot of talk about it among Christians, as such," writes Nathan Schneider at America magazine.

"Maybe we are especially committed to the notion that each person should get what he or she deserves? Then again, if that's the case, just about any arrangement would be better than what we have now."

One expert Schneider does mention is Charles Clark, a Catholic economist at St John's University, New York, "who has been a basic income advocate ever since being asked to study the idea by the Conference of Religious in Ireland, and then by the Irish government, in the late 1990s." 

Clark argues that to consider basic income 'something for nothing' misunderstands how truly interconnected the economy is, Schneider notes. "His research across Europe and North America suggests that a basic income would actually make production more efficient.

"He also believes that the idea reflects the insistence in Catholic social teaching on the intrinsic value of every person. It would free people to participate more fully in family life and combat the individualism that an 'every man for himself' economy teaches us."

According to Clark, even though it will require a major change in the public mindset, "a basic income is the easiest way to bring everyone above the poverty line and reduce income inequality without making major structural changes to the economy."

According to Wikipedia, Clark also "estimates that the United States could support a Basic Income large enough to eliminate poverty and continue to fund all current government spending (except that which would be made redundant by the Basic Income) with a flat income tax of just under 39 percent.[27]

Schneider also compiles an interesting list of other figures who favored such a proposal including Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King Jr, John Kenneth Galbraith, Margaret Mead and Buckminster Fuller.

Even Milton Friedman agreed and Richard Nixon proposed something similar, Schneider notes.

SOURCES

http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/basic-justice




Monday 9 January 2017

Scottish Councillor Matt Kerr investigates UBI

Scottish Labour Councillor Matt Kerr, an anti-poverty specialist on Glasgow city council, has been exploring how people become enslaved by poverty – and how they can escape it, the Guardian reports.

A meeting in Glasgow last month with Guy Standing, the radical economist who founded the Basic Income Earth Network, inspired Kerr to seek cross-party support to pilot a universal basic income in parts of Fife and Glasgow.

He acknowledges that these are very early days and that there are many obstacles ahead, but the move makes him the most senior incumbent politician in Britain to contemplate a radical scheme that only a few years ago was considered beyond the political pale, the Guardian says.

"Look, it might be that at the end of this whole exercise we find that it’s just not workable, but I’d rather give it a go in good faith. At the moment, defending a system that is only slightly better than the one the government is trying to implement is simply not good enough. It’s not giving anyone any hope."

The current welfare system "has been a 70-year experiment," he said. 

"It worked at the time when we had high levels of employment. But we don’t have that now. And although I’ll always strive for full employment, the reality is that as technology improves and increases, that’s going to be harder to achieve.

"This is a big challenge to the left. In these circumstances you can’t just write people off and nor can you have the current system that is hugely difficult to navigate and completely enslaves people to the state."

SOURCE


PHOTO

Sunday 8 January 2017

The UBI already exists for the 1%, says Matt Bruenig

Occupy Wall Street / Wikipedia
In a comment that inverts received wisdom, US lawyer and welfare expert Matt Bruenig argues that the UBI already exists for the richest 1% of the population.

"In 2015, according to PSZ, the richest 1% of people in America received 20.2% of all the income in the nation. Ten points of that 20.2% came from equity income, net interest, housing rents, and the capital component of mixed income. Which is to say, 10% of all national income is paid out to the 1% as capital income.

"Let me reiterate: 1 in 10 dollars of income produced in this country is paid out to the richest 1% without them having to work for it," Bruenig emphasises.

"Put another way: the average person in the top 1% receives a UBI equal to 7.5 times the average income in the country.

"If passive income is so destructive, then the income situation of the 1% surely is a national emergency! Where does the 1% get its meaning with all of that free cash flowing in?" he asks, citing an argument often used against a UBI for the poor.

Publisher Tim O'Reilly concurs.

"This was Thomas Paine’s argument in his 1795 essay Agrarian Justice," O'Reilly argues. "He called it 'the citizen’s dividend,' arguing that the bounty of the new land should be shared fairly among all. The same point could be made for the fruits of productivity brought to us by the machine age."


Saturday 7 January 2017

Perspectives on the Universal Basic Income

Working with taro roots in Hawaii
Subconsciously, I guess my initial perspective on the concept of the Universal Basic Income was informed by the Old Testament injunction in Genesis 3:19 that "by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food."

This was reinforced by what St Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that "the one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."

Other more positives passages in Genesis, in which labour is presented as a sharing in God's work of creation, also add to this view:

"God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." (Gen. 2:15)

Joseph Cardijn's theology of work is powerful here:

"Young workers, are not machines, or animals or slaves," he wrote. "They are the sons, the collaborators, the heirs of God.

Thinking from this perspective, welfare payments such as unemployment, sickness, disability benefits and the like only seemed justifiable on the basis that those who were unemployed, sick or disabled could not work. Moreover, leaving people to subsist on welfare payments hardly seemed to benefit those who had to survive on such welfare benefits. Why then would we extend this to the point of implementing a universal basic income?

The first time that I remember feeling challenged in this perspective was when I was on a visit to Fiji in 1988.

There, many people still lived in a semi-traditional lifestyle based on fishing and farming for yams, which grew in profusion. What sense did a life based on nine-to-five work make in such an environment? Moreover, it did not mean that people did "nothing." Rather they focused more on cultural activities.

In any case, the point here is not to present Fiji as any kind of original Garden of Eden (and certainly not to imply that people in Fiji do not work) but simply to note that living comfortably did not imply the need for intensive sweat of one's brow.

Reflecting on this it dawned on me that the starting point of the New Testament was a Garden of Eden - not a desert! In other words, God provides humankind with the basic needs of life before he invited people to share in his work of creation.

Yet in the modern world, particularly in cities, it is not possible to go out and fish or gather yams for one's minimum subsistence - as harshly illustrated by the increasing number of homeless on the streets of many of the world's cities.

From this perspective, the concept of the universal basic income (UBI) can be viewed as providing the equivalent of the fish and yams available in an abundant natural environment. In other words, as God did in the biblical Garden of Eden, first we have to provide people with the means they need to survive.

This is a concept very far removed from the increasingly punitive concept of welfare that our politicians have come to embrace.



In any case, over the last few weeks, I have started to read more about the concept as it picks up steam in the media.

In this blog, I hope to share some of the key articles that I find. Hopefully, I may even find time to add a few more thoughts of my own.