Under the U.S. capitalist regime at least, a universal basic income would itself be one big band-aid, essentially compensation, "hush money" for tolerating the continuing mass rake-off of the country's wealth by the miniscule percent at the tippy-top. One could look at it as a dividend.
A common objection is "inflationary!" but as I understand it, universal income wouldn't add dollars to the economy, it would replace existing expentitures. Further, what are most people going to do with the money? They're going to spend it, mostly locally. When they spend the money, other people get that money and spend it again, and so on. Most people would keep their jobs, but they'd spend that money. The "job creators" couldn't get their factories going fast enough to supply all the stuff people will demand. (Right?)
So I dunno, it seems like Universal Basic Income could be a recipe for...a thriving economy! — with what I assume would be close to zero homelessness, and things like losing a job would no longer have to mean a crisis for workers and families.
On NPR, a European economist (sorry, forgot his name, accent sounded French) addressed the inflation question from a different angle: he said that national governments could issue the money and then simply write it off. He chuckled and said 'governments can do this' and that a UBI would generate such economic activity to make the money creation a moot issue. It's a novel approach because there's no interest, no repayment, no lenders or middlemen; the payoff is a busy economy.
Universal Basic income has support from some curious quarters. I'm surprised that billionaire "Trump advisor" Peter Thiel is not on Wikipedia's list below, he's an advocate. My guess is that Thiel figures a UBI would, if nothing else, create a bigger market, and I think that's right: more people spending money. (Will everyone get a free PayPal account as the repository of their $2000 monthly "dividend"?)
Thiel and others predict that a UBI would unleash a lot of untapped genius that would otherwise be lost to the daily grind. I assume that it's also a subtle bribe: "okay, is $2,000 a month enough to stop whining and leave us billionaires alone for once?"
My understanding of economics is pretty dim, my level is along the lines of the popular books of John Kenneth Galbraith, and calculus makes my eyes glaze over. I'm convinced, however, that "supply side"/"trickle down" is a lie, and I can't believe it's still being flogged as a solution.
I heard that Finland is now experimenting with a UBI for unemployed persons in selected regions. To begin here's the Wikipedia primer link & excerpts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Basic income
A basic income (also called unconditional basic income, Citizen's Income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income or universal demogrant[2]) is a form of social security[3] in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.
An unconditional income transfer of less than the poverty line is sometimes referred to as a partial basic income.
Basic income systems that are financed by the profits of publicly owned enterprises (often called social dividend or citizen's dividend) are major components in many proposed models of market socialism.[4] Basic income schemes have also been promoted within the context of capitalist systems, where they would be financed through various forms of taxation.[5]
Similar proposals for "capital grants provided at the age of majority" date to Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice of 1795, there paired with asset-based egalitarianism. The phrase "social dividend" was commonly used as a synonym for basic income in the English-speaking world before 1986, after which the phrase "basic income" gained widespread currency.[6] Prominent advocates of the concept include Philippe Van Parijs, Ailsa McKay,[7] André Gorz, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, and Guy Standing.
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Policy aspects
Transparency
Basic income, it is argued,[8] is a much more transparent and simple welfare system than the one existing in the welfare states around the world today. Instead of numerous welfare programs it would be one universal unconditional income.
Administrative efficiency
The lack of means test or similar administration would allow for some saving on social welfare which could be put towards the grant. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) describes one of the benefits of a basic income as having a lower overall cost than that of the current means-tested social welfare benefits,[9] and they have put forth proposals for implementation they claim to be financially viable.[10]
Poverty Reduction
Basic income is often argued for because of its potential to reduce poverty, and even eradicate poverty.
Basic income and growth
Basic income and growth (or BIG) allows for potential economic growth: people may decide to invest in themselves to earn higher degrees and get interesting and well-paid jobs that, in turn, could trigger growth.[11][12] As Jason Burke Murphy argues, a substantial discussion has grown over recent years about whether basic income could be a part of a degrowth-agenda.[13]
Freedom
Supporters commonly make three very different arguments that Basic Income promotes freedom. First, although most Basic Income supporters tend to be politically left, right-leaning supporters at least since the 1970s, have argued that policies like Basic Income free welfare recipients from the paternalistic oversight of conditional welfare-state policies.[14] Second, Philippe Van Parijs has argued that basic income at the highest sustainable level is needed to support real freedom, or the freedom to do whatever one "might want to do."[15] By this, Van Paris means that all people should be free to use the resources of the Earth and the "external assets" people make out of them to do whatever they might want to do. Money is like an access ticket to use those resources, and so to make people equally free to do what they might want to do with the external assets of the world, the government should give each of individual as many such access tickets as possible—that is, the highest sustainable Basic Income.
Third, at least since Thomas Paine, some supporters have argued that Basic Income is needed to protect the power to say no, which these supporters argue is essential to an individual's status of as a free person. If some other group of people controls resources necessary to an individual's survival, that individual has no reasonable choice other than to do whatever the resource-controlling group demands. Before the establishment of governments and landlords, individuals had direct access to the resources they needed to survive. But today, resources necessary to the production of food, shelter, and clothing have been privatized in such a way that some have gotten a share and others have not. Therefore, this argument goes, the owners of those resources owe compensation back to non-owners, sufficient at least for them to purchase the resources or goods necessary to sustain their basic needs. This redistribution must be unconditional because people can consider themselves free only if they are not forced to spend all their time doing the bidding of others simply to provide basic necessities to themselves and their families.[12] Under this argument, personal, political and religious freedom are worth little without the power to say no. In this view, basic income provides an economic freedom which, combined with political freedom, freedom of belief, and personal freedom establish each individual's status as a free person.
How will people behave? (Will they work less?)
There is also a belief among critics that if people have free and unconditional money they will not work (as much) and get lazy.[16][17][18] Less work means less tax revenue and hence less money for the state and cities to fund public projects. There are also concerns that some people will spend their basic income on alcohol and drugs.[12][19]
If there is a disincentive to employment because of basic income, it is however expected that the magnitude of such a disincentive would depend on how generous the basic income were to be. Some campaigners in Switzerland have suggested a level that would only just be liveable, arguing that people would want to supplement it.[20]
Tim Worstall, a writer and blogger, has argued that traditional welfare schemes create a disincentive to work, because such schemes typically cause people to lose benefits at around the same rate that their income rises (a form of welfare trap where the marginal tax rate is 100 percent). He has asserted that this particular disincentive is not a property shared by basic income as the rate of increase is positive at all incomes.[21]
In one study, even when the benefits are not permanent, the hours worked—by the recipients of the benefit—are observed to decline by 5 percent, a decrease of two hours in a typical 40-hour work week:
While experiments have been conducted in the United States and Canada, those participating knew that their benefits were not permanent and, consequently, they were not likely to change their behaviour as much or in the same manner had the GAI been ongoing. As a result, total hours worked fell by about five percent on average. The work reduction was largest for second earners in two-earner households and weakest for the main earner. Further, the negative work effect was higher the more generous the benefit level.[17]
However, in studies of the Mincome experiment in rural Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, the only two groups who worked significantly less were new mothers and teenagers working to support their families. New mothers spent this time with their infant children, and working teenagers put significant additional time into their schooling.[22] Under Mincome, "the reduction of work effort was modest: about one per cent for men, three per cent for wives, and five per cent for unmarried women."[23]
Another study that contradicted such decline in work incentive was a pilot project implemented in 2008 and 2009 in the Namibian village of Omitara; the assessment of the project after its conclusion found that economic activity actually increased, particularly through the launch of small businesses, and reinforcement of the local market by increasing households' buying power.[24] However the residents of Omitara were described as suffering "dehumanising levels of poverty" before the introduction of the pilot,[25] and as such the project's relevance to potential implementations in developed economies is not known.
Affordability
The affordability of a basic income proposal relies on many factors such as the costs of any public services it replaces, tax increases required, and less tangible auxiliary effects on government revenue and/or spending (for example a successful basic income scheme may reduce crime, thereby reducing required expenditure on policing and justice.)
A 2012 affordability study done in the Republic of Ireland by Social Justice Ireland found that basic income would be affordable with a 45 percent income tax rate. This would lead to an improvement in income for the majority of the population.[26] Charles M.A. Clark 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]
Paul Mason stated that universal basic income would increase social security costs, but that it would also reduce the high medical costs associated with diseases of poverty, by reducing stress, diseases like high blood pressure, type II diabetes etc. would become less common.[28]
C. H. Douglas called for financing a basic income with created money. In a 1935 speech,[29] Douglas said:
We believe that the most pressing needs of the moment could be met by means of what we call a National Dividend. This would be provided by the creation of new money - by exactly the same methods as are now used by the banking system to create new money - and its distribution as purchasing power to the whole population. Let me emphasise the fact that this is not collection-by-taxation, because in my opinion the reduction of taxation, the very rapid and drastic reduction of taxation, is vitally important.
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Advocates
Europe
European advocates of basic income system are for example Philippe Van Parijs,[55] Ailsa McKay (until 2004),[56] Götz Werner, Saar Boerlage,[57] André Gorz,[58] Antonio Negri,[59] Osmo Soininvaara,[60] Guy Standing.[61][62]
Some individuals who support introduction of basic income in Germany include activist Susanne Wiest, Green politician Sabine Niels, CDU politician Dieter Althaus, businessman Götz Werner, CDU politician Thoma Dörflinger,[63] leader of the Left Party Katja Kipping.
In 2015 the London-based RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) launched its own proposal for Basic Income entitled "Creative Citizens, Creative State"[64] which advocated replacing a swathe of UK means-tested benefits with a single universal payment as a response to the changing landscape of work and an ageing population.
In 2016, former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis declared the basic income approach was "absolutely essential."[65]
Other advocates include World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee,[66] Nobel Prize economists Christopher Pissarides[67] and Angus Deaton,[68] Finnish billionaire Björn Wahlroos,[69] Deutsch Telekom CEO Tim Höttges,[70] dm-drogerie markt founder Götz Werner,[71] UK member of parliament Jonathan Reynolds,[72] and President of the European Economic and Social Committee Georges Dassis.[73]
The United States and Canada
Advocates of basic income in the United States approach the issue from a wide variety of ideological and career backgrounds, and include former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich,[74] Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright,[75] feminists Carole Pateman and Ann Withorn,[76][77] journalist Scott Santens,[78] Marxist philosopher and chair of the USBIG Network Michael Howard,[79] venture capitalists Albert Wegner,[80] Tim Draper,[81] and Roy Bahat,[82] Y Combinator president Sam Altman,[83] LGBT activist Dan Savage,[84] artificial intelligence expert Jeremy Howard,[85] HowStuffWorks founder Marshall Brain,[86] conservative writer Charles Murray,[87] computer science professor Moshe Vardi,[88] Niskanen Center CEO Jerry Taylor,[89] financial manager Bill Gross,[90] Zipcar cofounder Robin Chase,[91] Singularity University CEO Rob Nail,[92] Cato Institute senior fellow Michael Tanner,[93] entrepreneur and environmentalist Peter Barnes,[94] and former Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern.[95] Historical advocates in the United States include founding father Thomas Paine,[96] civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.,[97] and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman.[98]
Canadian advocates include politician Hugh Segal, Minister for Families, Children and Social Development Jean-Yves Duclos,[99] journalist and historian Gwynne Dyer,[100] economist Jim Mulvale,[101] Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes[102] and Pythian Group CEO Paul Vallée.[103]
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Political initiatives
In 1976, the Alaska Permanent Fund was created, a constitutionally established permanent fund managed by a state-owned corporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. The Fund pays a partial basic income to all its residents.[114]
In 2008 an official petition for basic income was started in Germany by Susanne Wiest.[115] The petition was accepted and Susanne Wiest was invited for a hearing at the German parliament's Commission of Petitions. After the hearing, the petition was closed as "unrealizable".[48]
In 2015, a citizen's initiative in Spain received 185,000 signatures, short of the required amount for the proposal to be discussed in parliament.[116]
The world's first universal basic income referendum in Switzerland on 5 June 2016 was rejected with a 76.9 percent majority.[1][117]
See also
Bleeding-heart libertarianism
I think I'm for it.