From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On 4 October 2013, Swiss activists from Generation Grundeinkommen
organized a performance in Bern in which roughly 8 million coins, one
coin representing one person out of Switzerland's population, were
dumped on a public square. This was done in celebration of the
successful collection of more than 125,000 signatures, forcing the
government to hold a
referendum
on whether or not to incorporate the concept of basic income in the
Federal constitution. The measure did not pass, with 76.9% voting
against changing the Federal constitution to support basic income.
[1]
A
basic income, also called
basic income guarantee,
universal basic income (
UBI),
basic living stipend (
BLS) or
universal demogrant, is a type of program in which citizens (or permanent residents) of a country may receive a regular sum of money from the government. A
pure or
unconditional basic income has no
means test, much like
Social Security in the United States. Basic income can be implemented nationally, regionally or locally.
An unconditional income that is sufficient to meet a person's basic needs (at or above the
poverty line), is called
full basic income, while if it is less than that amount, it is called
partial.
Some welfare systems are related to basic income but have certain
conditions. As these are not universal, they are more often referred to
as
guaranteed minimum income systems. For example, Bolsa Família in Brasil is restricted to poor families and the children are obligated to attend school.
[6]
A related welfare system is
negative income tax, in which the government stipend is gradually reduced with higher labor income.
History
The idea of a state-run basic income dates back to the late 18th century when
English radical Thomas Spence and
American revolutionary Thomas Paine
both declared their support for a welfare system in which all citizens
were guaranteed a certain income. In the 19th century and until the
1960s the debate on basic income was limited, but in the 1960s and 1970s
the United States and Canada conducted several experiments with
negative income taxation, a related welfare system. From the 1980s and
onwards the debate in Europe took off more broadly and since then it has
expanded to many countries around the world. A few countries have
implemented large-scale welfare systems that are related to basic
income, such as the Permanent Fund in Alaska and
Bolsa Família
in Brasil. From 2008 and onwards there has also been several
experiments with basic income and related systems. Especially in
countries with an existing welfare state a part of the funding assumably
comes from replacing the current welfare arrangements, or a part of it,
such as different grants for unemployed people. Apart from that there
are several ideas and proposals regarding the rest of the financing, as
well as different ideas about the level and other aspects.
The idea of an unconditional basic income, given to all citizens in a
state (or all adult citizens), was first presented near the middle of
the 19th century. But long before that there were ideas of a so-called
minimum income, the idea of a one-off grant and the idea of a
social insurance
(which still is a key feature of all modern welfare states, with
insurances for and against unemployment, sickness, parenthood,
accidents, old age and so forth).
The minimum income, the idea to eradicate poverty by targeting the
poor, is in contradiction with basic income given "to all", but
nevertheless share some underlying ideas about the state's or the city's
welfare responsibilities towards its citizens.
Johannes Ludovicus Vives
(1492–1540), for example, proposed that the municipal government should
be responsible for securing a subsistence minimum to all its residents,
"not on grounds of justice but for the sake of a more effective
exercise of morally required charity". However, to be entitled to poor
relief the person’s poverty must not, he argued, be undeserved, but he
or she must "deserve the help he or she gets by proving his or her
willingness to work."
[7]
The first to develop the idea of a social insurance was
Marquis de Condorcet
(1743–1794). After playing a prominent role in the French Revolution,
he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. While in prison, he wrote the
Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain
(published posthumously by his widow in 1795), whose last chapter
described his vision of a social insurance and how it could reduce
inequality, insecurity and poverty. Condorcet mentioned, very briefly,
the idea of a benefit to all children old enough to start working by
themselves and to start up a family of their own. He is not known to
have said or written anything else on this proposal, but his close
friend and fellow member of the Convention Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
developed the idea much further, a couple of years after Condorcet’s
death.
The first social movement for basic income developed around 1920 in the United Kingdom. Its proponents included
Bertrand Russell,
Dennis Milner (with wife) and
Clifford H. Douglas.
- Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) argued for a new social model that
combined the advantages of socialism and anarchism, and that basic
income should be a vital component in that new society.
- Dennis Milner, a Quaker and a Labour Party member, published jointly
with his wife Mabel, a short pamphlet entitled “Scheme for a State
Bonus” (1918). There they argued for the "introduction of an income paid
unconditionally on a weekly basis to all citizens of the United
Kingdom". They considered it a moral right for everyone to have the
means to subsistence, and thus it should not be conditional on work or
willingness to work.
- Clifford H. Douglas was an engineer who became concerned that most
British citizens could not afford to buy the goods that were produced,
despite the rising productivity in British industry. His solution to
this paradox was a new social system called "social credit", a
combination of monetary reform and basic income.
In 1944 and 1945, the
Beveridge Committee, led by the British economist
William Beveridge, developed a proposal for a comprehensive new welfare system of social insurance and selective grants. Committee member Lady
Rhys-Williams argued for basic income. She was also the first to develop the negative income tax model.
[8][9]
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were welfare debates in United States
and Canada which included basic income. Six pilot projects were also
conducted with negative income tax. Then US president Richard Nixon once
even proposed a negative income tax in a bill to the US Congress. But
the Congress eventually only approved a guaranteed income for the
elderly and the disabled, not for all citizens.
[10]
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, basic income was more or less
forgotten in the United States, but on the other hand it started to gain
some attraction in Europe. Basic Income European Network, later renamed
to Basic Income Earth Network, was founded in 1986 and started to
arrange international conferences every two years. From the 1980s, some
people outside party politics and universities took interest. In West
Germany, groups of unemployed people took a stance for the reform.
[11]
From 2005–2010 and onwards, basic income again became a hot topic in
many countries. Basic income is nowaday discussed from a variety of
perspectives. But not least in the context of ongoing automation and
robotisation, often with the argument that these trends will mean less
paid work in the future, which in turn would create a need for a new
welfare model. Several countries are planning for local or regional
experiments with basic income and/or related welfare systems. The
experiments in India, Finland and Canada, for example, have received
international media attention. There have also been several polls about
basic income, investigating the public support for the idea in different
countries, and in 2016 a basic income proposal was rejected in
Switzerland by 76.9% of the voters in a national referendum.
Perspectives in the basic income debate
Transparency and administrative efficiency
Basic income is potentially a much simpler and more transparent
welfare system than existing in the
welfare states today.
[12]
Instead of separate welfare programs (including unemployment insurance,
child support, pensions, disability, housing support) it could be one
income, or it could be a basic payment that welfare programs could add
to.
[13]
This could require less paperwork and bureaucracy to check eligibility.
The lack of means test or similar bureaucracy would allow for saving on
social welfare, which could be put towards the grant. The
Basic Income Earth Network
(BIEN) claims that basic income costs less than current means-tested
social welfare benefits, and has proposed an implementation that it
claims to be financially viable.
However, other proponents argue for adding basic income to existing welfare grants, rather than replacing them.
Poverty reduction
Advocates of basic income often argue that it has a potential to reduce or even
eradicate poverty.
[16]
Freedom
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".
[17]
By this, Van Parijs 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 want. Money is like an access ticket to use those
resources, and so to make people equally free to do what they want with
world assets, the government should give each individual as many such
access tickets as possible—that is, the highest sustainable basic
income.
Karl Widerquist and others have proposed a theory of freedom in which
basic income is needed to protect the power to refuse work.
[18] The theory goes like this:
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.
[19]
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.
Gender equality
The Scottish economist
Ailsa McKay argued that basic income is a way to promote
gender equality. She noted in 2001 that "social policy reform should take account of all
gender inequalities and not just those relating to the traditional
labor market" and that "the citizens' basic income model can be a tool
for promoting gender-neutral social citizenship rights."
[20]
Arguments from different ideologies
- Georgist views: Geolibertarians seek to synthesize propertarian libertarianism and a geoist (or Georgist) philosophy of land as unowned commons or equally owned by all people, citing the classical economic
distinction between unimproved land and private property. The rental
value of land is produced by the labors of the community and, as such,
rightly belongs to the community at large and not solely to the
landholder. A land value tax
(LVT) is levied as an annual fee for exclusive access to a section of
earth, which is collected and redistributed to the community either
through public goods, such as public security or a court system, or in the form of a basic guaranteed income called a citizen's dividend. Geolibertarians view the LVT as a single tax to replace all other methods of taxation, which are deemed unjust violations of the non-aggression principle.
- Right-wing views: Support for basic income has been expressed by several people associated with right-wing political views. While adherents of such views generally favor minimization or abolition of the public provision of welfare services,
some have cited basic income as a viable strategy to reduce the amount
of bureaucratic administration that is prevalent in many contemporary
welfare systems. Others have contended that it could also act as a form
of compensation for fiat currency inflation.[22][23][24]
- Feminist views: Feminists'
views on the basic income can be loosely divided into two opposing
views: one view which supports basic income, seeing it as a means of
guaranteeing a minimum financial independence for women and recognizing
women's unpaid work
in the home. Conversely, a second Feminist view opposes basic income,
seeing it as having the potential of discouraging women from
participation in the workforce and reinforcing traditional gender roles
of women belonging in the private area and men in the public area.[25][26]
Employment
One
argument against basic income is that if people have free and
unconditional money, they will "get lazy" and not work as much as
before.
Less work means less tax revenue, argue critics, and hence less money
for the state and cities to fund public projects. 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.
There have been some studies around the employment levels during the
experiments with basic income and negative income tax, and similar
systems. In the negative income tax-experiments in United States in the
1970s, for example, there were a five percent decline in the hours
worked. The work reduction was largest for second earners in two-earner
households and weakest for the main earner. It was also a higher
reduction in hours working when the benefit was higher. The participants
in these experiments, however, knew that the experiment was limited in
time.
[28] In the
Mincome
experiment in rural Dauphin, Manitoba, also in the 1970s, there were
also slight reductions in hours worked during the experiment. However,
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.
[30]
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."
[31]
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.
[32]
However, the residents of Omitara were described as suffering
"dehumanising levels of poverty" before the introduction of the pilot,
and as such the project's relevance to potential implementations in
developed economies is unknown.
[33]
James Meade states that a return to
full employment
can only be achieved if, among other things, workers offer their
services at a low enough price that the required wage for unskilled
labor would be too low to generate a socially desirable distribution of
income. He therefore concludes that a "citizen's income" is necessary to
achieve full employment without suffering stagnant or negative growth
in wages.
[34]
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.
[35]
Tim Worstall, a writer, blogger and Senior Fellow of the
Adam Smith Institute,
[36]
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 since the rate of increase is
positive at all incomes.
[37]
Bad behavior
There are concerns that some people will spend their basic income on alcohol and drugs.
[19][38] However, studies of the impact of direct cash transfer programs provide evidence to the contrary. A 2014
World Bank
review of 30 scientific studies concludes that "concerns about the use
of cash transfers for alcohol and tobacco consumption are unfounded".
[39]
Wage slavery and alienation
Fox
Piven argues that an income guarantee would benefit all workers by
liberating them from the anxiety that results from the "tyranny of
wage slavery" and provide opportunities for people to pursue different occupations and develop untapped potentials for creativity.
[40] André Gorz
saw basic income as a necessary adaptation to the increasing automation
of work, yet basic income also enables workers to overcome the
alienation in work and life and to increase the amount of
leisure time.
[41]
Economic growth
Some proponents have argued that basic income can increase
economic growth because it would sustain people while they invest in education to get interesting and well-paid jobs.
[42][19] However, there is also a discussion of basic income within the
degrowth movement, which argues against economic growth.
[43]
Automation
The debates about basic income and automation are closely linked. For example,
Mark Zuckerberg
argues that the increase in automation creates a greater need for basic
income. Concerns about automation have prompted many in the
high-technology industry to argue for basic income as an implication of
their business models.
Many technologists believe that automation (among other things) is creating
technological unemployment. Journalist
Nathan Schneider first highlighted the turn of the "tech elite" to these ideas with an article in
Vice magazine, which cited
Marc Andreessen,
Sam Altman,
Peter Diamandis, and others.
[44][45][46]
Some studies about automation and jobs validate these concerns. The US
White House, in a report to the US Congress, estimated that a worker
earning less than $20 an hour in 2010 will eventually lose their job to a
machine with 83% probability. Even workers earning as much as $40 an
hour faced a probability of 31%.
[45] With a rising
unemployment
rate, poor communities will become more impoverished worldwide.
Proponents of universal basic income argue that it could solve many
world problems like high work stress and could create more opportunities
and efficient and effective work. This claim is supported by some
studies. In a study in Dauphin, Manitoba, only 13% of labor decreased
from a much higher expected number.
[47] In a study in several Indian villages, basic income in the region raised the education rate of young people by 25%.
[48]
Besides technological unemployment, some tech-industry experts worry
that automation will destabilize the labor market or increase economic
inequality. One example is Chris Hughes, co-founder of both
Facebook
and Economic Security Project. Automation has been happening for
hundreds of years; it has not permanently reduced the employment rate
but has constantly caused employment instability. It displaces workers
who spend their lives learning skills that become outmoded and forces
them into unskilled labor.
Paul Vallée, a Canadian tech-entrepreneur and CEO of
Pythian,
argues that automation is at least as likely to increase poverty and
reduce social mobility than it is to create ever-increasing unemployment
rate. At the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress in
Winnipeg, Vallée examined slavery as a historical example of a period in
which capital (African slaves) could do the same things that human
labor (poor whites) could do. He found that slavery did not cause
massive unemployment among poor whites, but instead increased economic
inequality and lowered social mobility.
[49]
Economic critique
Daron Acemoglu,
Professor in economics at MIT, has expressed doubts about basic income
with the following statement: "Current US status quo is horrible. A more
efficient and generous social safety net is needed. But UBI is
expensive and not generous enough."
[50] Eric Maskin has stated that "a minimum income makes sense, but not at the cost of eliminating Social Security and Medicare".
[51]
Basic income as a part of a post-capitalistic economic system
Harry Shutt proposed basic income and other measures to make all or
most enterprises collective rather than private. These measures would
create a post-capitalist economic system.
[52]
Erik Olin Wright
characterizes basic income as a project for reforming capitalism into
an economic system by empowering labor in relation to capital, granting
labor greater bargaining power with employers in labor markets, which
can gradually de-commodify labor by decoupling work from income. This
would allow for an expansion in scope of the "social economy", by
granting citizens greater means to pursue activities (such as the
pursuit of art) that do not yield strong financial returns.
[53]
James Meade advocated for a social dividend scheme to be funded by publicly owned
productive assets.
[54]
Russell argued for a basic income alongside public ownership as a means
of shortening the average working day and achieving full employment.
[55]
Economists and sociologists have advocated for a form of basic income
as a way to distribute economic profits of publicly owned enterprises
to benefit the entire population (also referred to as a
social dividend),
where the basic income payment represents the return to each citizen on
the capital owned by society. These systems would be directly financed
from returns on publicly owned assets and are featured as major
components of many models of
market socialism.
[56]
Guy Standing has proposed financing a
social dividend from a democratically-accountable
sovereign wealth fund
built up primarily from the proceeds of a levy on rentier income
derived from ownership or control of assets - physical, financial and
intellectual.
[57][58]
Herman Daly, considered as one of the founders of
ecologism, argued primarily for a
zero growth economy within the ecological limits of the planet. But to have such a green and
sustainable economy,
including basic economic welfare and security to all people, he wrote a
lot about the need for structural reforms of the capitalistic system,
including basic income, monetary reform,
land value tax, trade reforms and higher
eco-taxes
(taxes on pollution and CO2). For him, basic income was thus part of a
larger structural change of the economic system, towards a more green
and sustainable system.
National debates (a few examples)
Germany
A commission of the
German parliament discussed basic income in 2013 and concluded that it is "unrealizable" because:
- it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work
among citizens, with unpredictable consequences for the national economy
- it would require a complete restructuring of the taxation, social
insurance and pension systems, which will cost a significant amount of
money
- the current system of social help in Germany is regarded as more
effective because it is more personalized: the amount of help provided
depends on the financial situation of the recipient; for some socially
vulnerable groups, the basic income could be insufficient
- it would cause a vast increase in immigration
- it would cause a rise in the shadow economy
- the corresponding rise of taxes would cause more inequality: higher
taxes would cause higher prices of everyday products, harming the
finances of poor people
- no viable way to finance basic income in Germany was found[59][60]
India
India has been considering
basic income in India.
On January 31, 2017, the Economic Survey of India included a 40-page
chapter on UBI that outlined the 3 components of the proposed program:
1) universality, 2) unconditionality, 3) agency. The UBI proposal in
India is framed with the intent of providing every citizen "a basic
income to cover their needs," which is encompassed by the "universality"
component. "Unconditionality" points to the accessibility of all to the
basic income, without any means tests. The third component, "agency,"
refers to the lens through which the Indian government views the poor.
According to the Survey, by treating the poor as agents rather than
subjects, UBI "liberates citizens from paternalistic and clientelistic
relationships with the state."
General ideas about the funding
The affordability of a basic income proposal relies on many factors,
such as the costs of any public services it replaces, required tax
increases, and less tangible auxiliary effects on government revenue or
spending (for example a successful basic income scheme may reduce crime,
thereby reducing required expenditure on policing and justice).
Reducing or removing of the current welfare systems
Basic
income would substitute to a wide range of existing social welfare
programs, tax rebates, state subsidies and work activation spendings.
All or a lot of those budgets (including administrative costs) could, at
least in theory, be reallocated to finance basic income.
Income tax
Although
basic income is paid to everyone universally, people whose earnings are
above the mean income are net contributors to the basic income scheme,
mainly through an income tax. In practice this means that the net cost
of basic income is much lower than the raw cost calculated as a sum of
monthly payments to the whole population.
[citation needed] A 2012 affordability study in the
Republic of Ireland
by Social Justice Ireland found that basic income would be affordable
with a 45% income tax rate. This would lead to an improvement in income
for the majority of the population.
[61]
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 39%.
[62]
Tax on consumption (VAT)
Other taxes
Other taxes that have been mentioned to finance basic income include
tax on capital,
carbon tax and
financial transaction tax.
Monetary reform
C.H. Douglas, an early British proponent of basic income and monetary reform.
Major C.H. Douglas argued in the 1920s and 1930s for a political philosophy called
Social Credit.
Central in this philosophy was a combination of basic income and
monetary reform. In the 1990s and onwards, his ideas has been
reintroduced by some authors. Among them
Michael Rowbotham in
The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics (1998)
[63] and Richard C. Cook in
We Hold These Truths: the Hope of Monetary Reform (2008).
There are also economists and political scientists who have argued
for the combination of basic income and monetary reform with inspiration
from the original
Chicago plan and the 100% money proposals from the 1930s. Among them
Joseph Huber and
James Robertson.
In the 2010s there have also been proposals about a different kind of "
quantitative easing". British Labour Party leader
Jeremy Corbyn,
for example, has talked about a “People’s QE”, in which the Bank of
England would channel money directly to the government, which then would
use it to stimulate the economy through different projects. Another
model was suggested by a group of economists in an article in Financial
Times. They proposed that quantitative easing money from ECB should be
given directly to citizens of the eurozone countries, instead of to the
banks but also instead of giving it to the government. Economist Milton
Friedman once called that kind of payments “
helicopter money”.
[64]
The monetary reformist Ellen Brown thinks the same. In an article
named "How to Fund a Universal Basic Income Without Increasing Taxes or
Inflation" she notes that if the entire welfare budget were split among
the country’s 50 million adults, each of them would get £5,160 a year.
That, however, is not enough to cover for basic survival in a modern
economy - she says. To pay for the rest one could either increase other
taxes and/or reduce other programs, or one could go for "quantitative
easing". The main objection to "any form of quantitative easing in which
new money gets into the real economy", she explains, is that it would
cause hyperinflation. But the quantitative easing in the form of money
from central banks to the British economy via the banks, $3.7 trillion
according to Brown, has not increased inflation so far. She also thinks
that the
velocity of money would change with quantitative easing directly to the people, and that this would reduce any tendences to inflation.
[65]
Contemporary political parties that include both basic income and monetary reform in their political platform include:
New Economics Party (New Zealand)[66] and
Enhet (Sweden).
Reduction of medical costs
The
Canadian Medical Association passed a motion in 2015 which clearly signed the organization's support for basic income and for basic income trials in Canada.
[67]
Paul Mason,
a British journalist, has stated that universal basic income would
probably reduce the high medical costs associated with diseases of
poverty. The stress, diseases like high blood pressure, type II diabetes
etc. would according to Mason probably become less common.
[68]
Taxing the data giants
The Guardian
has speculated and vaguely suggested, in an Editorial published in
September 2017, that basic income could be financed by taxing data
giants like Google and Facebook. The editorial writes: "Mrs Clinton
tried, and failed, to make the numbers work by looking at spectrum
levies. But if data is the new oil, why not tax the Googles of this
world for the use of customers’ data? These could capitalize a fund that
makes annual payouts. Citizens could then see they had collectively
traded their privacy for something more tangible than tweets. Tech firms
might squeal. But one of the fund’s biggest contributors would be
Facebook – its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, backs UBI as an idea. He, and
others, could now do so with their cash."
[69]
A few examples of more specific funding proposals
Scott Santens, basic income activist, USA
Scott
Santens, an American basic income activist has suggested a yearly basic
income of $13,266 ($1,105/mo) per adult citizen and $4,598 ($383/mo)
per citizen under 18 in the United States. He proposes among other
things the following reforms to achieve this:
[70]
- Food and nutrition assistance programs ($108 billion) and temporary assistance for needy families ($17 billion) is removed.
- Likewise the following are also replaced with basic income: The
earned income credit ($73 billion), the child tax credit ($56 billion),
home ownership tax expenditures ($340 billion), married filing jointly
preferential tax treatment ($70 billion), the tax break on pensions
($160 billion), fossil fuel subsidies ($33 billion), and treating
capital gains differently than ordinary income ($160 billion).
- A carbon tax
starting at $50/ton with annual increases of $15/ton. That would,
according to his calculations, add $150 billion to the basic income fund
the first year, and thereafter grow annually. In five years it could
grow enough to provide everyone with a basic income at about $100 per
month.
- A financial transaction tax starting at 0.34% (based on a microsimulation by Urban-Brookings). It would raise an estimated $75 billion.
- Seigniorage reform, or monetary reform,
by which he means public money creation instead of money creation
through bank loans. Such a reform could according to Santens annually
contribute with about $2.22 trillion to basic income.
- Land-value tax (LVT)
Existing basic income and related systems
Omitara, one of the two poor villages in Namibia where a local basic income was tested in 2008–2009.
The
Permanent Fund of Alaska
in the United States provides a kind of basic income, based on the oil
and gas revenues of the state, to (nearly) all state residents. During
her
2016 presidential campaign, former
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with
her husband,
considered including a policy similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund
called "Alaska for America" as part of their platform after reading
Peter Barnes book on the subject
With Liberty and Dividends for All. Ultimately, the Clintons decided not to, with Hillary stating in her
2016 election memoir
What Happened, "Unfortunately, we couldn't make the numbers work."
[71]
However, in retrospect Clinton also said, "I wonder now whether we
should have thrown caution to the wind and embraced 'Alaska for America'
as a long-term goal and figured out the details later", considering
that former
Republican U.S. Treasury Secretaries James Baker and
Henry Paulson have also proposed a similar nationwide policy.
Bolsa Família
is a big social welfare program in Brazil that provides money to many
poor families in the country. The system is related to basic income, but
also has some differences.
Nimses is a concept that offers universal basic income to every member of its system.
[74] The idea of Nimses consists of
time-based currency
called Nim. 1 nim = 1 minute of life. Every person in Nimses receives
nims that can be spent on different goods and services. This concept was
initially adopted in Eastern Europe.
[75]
There are also several smaller experiments, which have been labeled as "basic income pilots". The best known are:
- Experiments with negative income tax in United States and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s.
- A town in Manitoba, Canada, experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income in the 1970s.[76]
- The Basic Income Grant (BIG) in Namibia, launched in 2008 and ended in 2009.[77]
- An independent pilot implemented in São Paulo, Brazil.[78]
- Several villages in India participated in basic income trial,[79] while the government has proposed a guaranteed basic income for all citizens.[80]
- The GiveDirectly experiment in Nairobi, Kenya, which is the biggest and longest basic income pilot as of 2017.[81]
- The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands launched an experiment in early 2017 that is testing different rates of aid.[80]
- In Canada, the Ontario provincial government launched a three-year basic income pilot in the cities of Hamilton, Thunder Bay, and Lindsay in July 2017.[82][83] Initial reports indicated difficulties in finding and receiving applications from eligible individuals and households,[84] and as of November 2017, the Ontarian government was still seeking more applicants.[85]
- The Finnish government implemented a two-year pilot in January 2017 involving 2,000 subjects.[86]
- Eight, a nonprofit organization, launched a project in a village in Fort Portal, Uganda, in January 2017, providing income for 56 adults and 88 children through mobile money.[87]
Prominent advocates
Prominent advocates include
Philippe Van Parijs,
[88],
Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece
[89] and
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of
Facebook[90][91]
Petitions, polls and referenda
- 2008: an official petition for basic income was started in Germany by Susanne Wiest.[92]
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".[59]
- 2015: a citizen's initiative in Spain received 185,000 signatures,
short of the required amount for the proposal to be discussed in
parliament.[93]
- 2016: The world's first universal basic income referendum in Switzerland on 5 June 2016 was rejected with a 76.9 percent majority.[1][94]
Also in 2016 a poll showed that 58 percent of the European people are
aware of basic income and 65 percent would vote in favor of the idea.[95]
- 2017: POLITICO/Morning Consult asked 1994 Americans about their
opinions on several political issues. One question addressed attitudes
towards a national basic income in the United States. 43 percent either
‘strongly supported’ or ‘somewhat supported’ the idea.