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

http://basicincome.org/news/2017/01/france-benoit-hamon-wins-first-round-primary/

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

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/12/universal-basic-income-finland-uk

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

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067089/the-future-of-work/how-universal-basic-income-could-rescue-the-freelance-economy

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:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/

http://www.scottsantens.com/

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