Basic Income demonstration in Berlin, 2013. © Flickr stanjourdan
Faced with a future of automation and growing
inequality, governments are paying considerable attention to the universal
basic income, emboldened by trials in Finland, the Netherlands and Africa.
The
origins of the basic income
The
idea of a universal basic income (UBI), i.e. an unconditional weekly or monthly
grant for every human being, has been debated for centuries. In his Utopia,
first published exactly 500 years ago, Thomas More presented his idea
of a perfect society, rejecting the feudal system in favour of a social
collective organisation. More reports a conversation between the English
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Portuguese Raphael Nonsenso.
Debating
the fashion in which England was treating its growing number of thieves,
Raphael said, “Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be
far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so
that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief and then
a corpse.”
After
Thomas Moore’s Utopia, the idea of the UBI was built upon the assumption of a
reinvention of the social security system. In the XVIII century, Antoine
Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), wrote the Sketch for a
Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind. It contained a brief
draft of what social insurance might look like and how it could reduce
inequality, insecurity and poverty.
Later
in the XIX and XX centuries, British Labour Party member Dennis Milner (1892-1956)
published a short pamphlet entitled Scheme for a State Bonus (1918). The essay,
based on an eclectic series of arguments, defended the introduction of an
income paid unconditionally on a weekly basis to all citizens of the United
Kingdom.
Contemporary
advocates of UBI are building up an understanding of this theory. The British
journalist and author of
Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future,
Paul
Mason, delivered a
lecture in
Amsterdam, claiming that neoliberalism has failed and a new economic model must
be put in its place.
In
his book, the author explains why replacing capitalism is no longer a utopian
dream, how the basic forms of a post-capitalist economy can be found within the
current system and how it could swiftly expand.“Our long-term aim should be to
push more and more economic activity to be done outside the market and the
state. This requires, in part, that we end the reliance on wages for work […]
We need to quickly pursue the experiments with the universal basic income […]
and aim within ten years for states to be in a position to roll out the policy
itself,”
said Manson.
“The
basic income is not left or right. It’s forward,”
said Scott
Santens, an American activist for the UBI. Political will is the determining
factor for a constructive discussion on the basic income, which could represent
a major political reform in political and economic systems around the world.
Yet,
such advances would require a whole new level of policy-making and countries
that are better off will keep resisting. The current social and political
instability threatening Europe may weigh substantially in a country’s decision
to adopt the basic income. Nevertheless, it is up to every country to find the
most appropriate way to implement the policy according to their own
administrative and financial capacities.
Basic
Income debated by European governments
Switzerland
Proposals
for this concept were presented in Switzerland last June, in an unprecedented
referendum that ended with the UBI being overwhelmingly
rejected by the Swiss
people. Why would the Swiss people waste the power they hold by rejecting the
opportunity to set the example? Most likely, the high welfare enjoyed by the
Swiss and fears of a sudden influx of undesired migrants were the reasons
behind the failure of the plebiscite that could have set a milestone in history.
The
Swiss right wing rejoiced. “Theoretically, if Switzerland were an island, the
answer is yes. But with open borders, it’s a total impossibility, especially
for Switzerland, with a high living standard. If you would offer every
individual a Swiss amount of money, you would have billions of people who would
try to live here”,
said Luzi
Stamm of the Swiss People’s Party. Besides, critics of the concept argue
that a society where a basic income is granted would encourage slackers. “If
you pay people to do nothing, they will do nothing,” said
Charles Wyplosz,
professor of economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
Yet
this argument is debatable given that, due to rising inequality, most of the
people who would be entitled to this grant would still need to work to be able
to enjoy a dignified life, particularly in countries displaying high levels of
poverty and wide gaps between rich and poor.
Finland
Contrary
to the Swiss, the Finns have seen better days. The Finnish Minister for
Finance,
Petteri Orpo, received a
letter from
the European Commission recommending a reduction of Finland’s
deficit by 0.6% of GDP, as the country’s large deficit threatens it with
significant hardships. Indeed, the IMF states that Finland was showing “tepid”
signs of economic growth.
Nevertheless,
last August the government passed a
bill for an
experiment in which a number of unemployed citizens were
randomly selected to receive a monthly basic income. Not surprisingly, a
survey found
that, with hard times knocking at the door, the Finnish people happily welcomed
the idea of a basic income.
The
Netherlands
In
August 2015, the Dutch city Utrecht
announced it
would run an experiment to assess the impact of UBI. The try-out emboldened the
supporters of the basic income and in January this year, the member of the
Dutch Parliament
Norbert
Klein of the Cultural Liberal Party wrote a “note of
initiative” to the Parliament asking for a serious and open debate about the
idea of a basic income for all over the age of 18 (who have lived in the
Netherlands for more than ten years).
Poverty
is crushing us
A
study from Oxfam
reported that
62 people in the world are now in control of more than half of global wealth. A
graphic
illustration from the Spanish daily El País has depicted how
global inequality is growing, with nearly half of the world’s wealth in the pockets
of roughly 1% of the world population.
Furthermore, a
report released
by the World Bank stated that, even though poverty has declined in Africa,
evidence shows that more people worldwide live in poverty today than in 1990. The
study is underpinned by surveys of ten African countries, exploring the levels
of inequality of economic opportunity by looking at such factors as ethnicity,
parental education and occupation and region of birth. Another approach was to
examine persistence in intergenerational education and occupation. “Is a
farmer’s son less likely to be a farmer than he was a generation ago?” However,
the authors claim that measuring poverty in Africa remains a challenge.
The
study also claims it is possible that the poverty level would have declined
even more if the conditions under which the study was conducted – data quality
and comparability – had been taken into account. Yet because of population
growth, many more people are poor, the according to the report.
Writing
in the Guardian,
Jason Hickel did not hold back in his criticism of
the
World Bank’s alteration of the international poverty line from $1.25 to
$1.90 per day. “It’s a PR coup for the World Bank: the poverty line appears to
have been raised to a more humane level and the number of poor people is
lower than before,”
denounced Hickel.
As
of 2015, the African population is estimated to be around
1.166 billion, a number
that is set to expand greatly in the next decade. In
Kenya, an
experiment conducted
by the charity
GiveDirectly is granting 6,000 Kenyans a basic income
for a decade. Neighbouring
Uganda will
also take part in the experiment from 2017 for a period of two years. And
China,
the second world’s largest economy, is conducting research on the benefits of
the basic income.
The
dawn of the robotic future
Advisory
firm
Forrester released a
report in
June 2016, revealing that robots will soon replace 7% of US jobs. “By 2021 a
disruptive tidal wave will begin. Solutions powered by artificial
intelligence/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact
felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services,”
said Forrester’s
Brian
Hopkins in the report.
Uber
recently announced that it expects to have a fleet of driverless cars operating
in Pittsburgh soon. Last May, Adidas revealed its new prototype robot-driven
Speedfactory in Ansbach, Germany. Adidas will start retailing its first sports
shoes manufactured by robots in this factory in 2017.
While machines are taking the jobs of humans, the level of corruption and
misconduct in the world is mounting, putting an ever-bigger strain on wealth
imbalances. A recent
report from
Oxfam has reinforced the belief that fraud and corruption are a cancer long
embedded in the financial system. The document stated that 90% of the world’s
biggest companies operate in at least one tax haven.
Momentum
Faced
with the immense difficulty of tackling such deeply-rooted societal curses,
advocates of the UBI believe that granting a basic income to fulfill the basic
and natural needs of each human being is the progressive way to empower people
and confront the scourge of poverty.
The
movement is gaining political momentum and the opportunity to enforce a
continued demand for such a universal right is there. The debate over an
unconditional grant for every human being must be exhaustive, taking into
consideration all the dimensions at stake.
How
much would each individual earn? Would all individuals earn the same? Would the
money come from national budgets? If so, would social services such as health
and education be compromised? Should there be some sort of penalty in the form
of community service for those who eventually refused to work? We
are yet to discover the full social and economic impacts of such a humanitarian
experiment but the road towards an inclusive society is already laid out in
front of us.
