Basic Income

[youngian]

UC is a negative income tax, which is slightly different to a Basic Income, but only in principle really, in terms of how much money goes into your pocket they can function the same. Most Basic Income proposals seem to assume that higher/mid range earners won't notice that they're just paying it all back in tax. A shit Basic Income set at the rate of the dole, vs an unconditional Universal Credit is barely worth squabbling over, all it will mean is yet more welfare reform and yet more chaos for the people caught up in it. Compass do talk about it being unconditional, thats a step forward, but instead of another grandiose project to keep everyone busy and try make politicians look clever why not just scrap fucking benefit sanctions.

However conclusive the evidence for a minimum income a politician in this country will always be on the back foot as the tabloids scream about the undeserving poor. Tax credits, negative income tax and child benefit all seem like variants of the idea but masking the concept to make it politically acceptable.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Personally I think a better way to implement a politically acceptable basic income would be to nationalise the banking system and pass a law that says if you want to take out a loan to expand your business, you should have to cede ownership of part of it to a central fund in the form of dividend-paying shares. These dividends would then be used to fund a BI for all citizens that would accumulate over the years, with everyone having their own 'account' containing a portfolio of the entire nations' businesses.

It would achieve a similar outcome as a regular BI, but would tie in with the idea of private ownership more easily, and so may make it less disagreeable to certain segments of society. Kind of like how people recoil in anger at the idea of pensions being removed, people would feel the same about their own basic income account being taken away. People would feel the BI was theirs, rather than being a handout from the state.

*This is a random, Monday morning brain splurge, btw. The flaws in this idea are no doubt extensive.

 

[butchersapron]

This is an interesting piece that looks at a few hidden assumptions behind left-basic-income supporters arguments - get in some real good blows. The tiny bit of maths at the start, don't let it put you off. And do read the very informative footnotes.

What is wrong with free money?

They are sufficiently realistic to know that the provision for poor people in this society is premised on the success of capitalist enterprises in making profits. Their proposed unconditional provision for poor people is made rather conditional. That is, they appreciate that taxation to alleviate poverty should not threaten the endeavour which produces the poverty in the first place

The question is not only whether maintaining the working class is a necessity and if paying benefits is too much of a burden for the budget, but also if paying this or that benefit is more or less useful for the might of the state compared to a bit of the NHS, higher education grants, more prison staff, a new weapon system and so on. This, too, is appreciated by proposals for a Universal Basic Income. Their unconditional provision for poor people is also made conditional on the national interest and the adequate allocation of funds for it. Their realism is demonstrated by alternative budget proposals which would enable the state to finance a Universal Basic Income without undermining other expenditures deemed necessary for its might.

Yet, it is important especially for left-wing supporters of a Universal Basic Income to posit unity [note; the article talked previously about the conservative, libertarian and social democratic basic income approaches]. If only a few post-autonomist Marxists demanded a Universal Basic Income the demand would be as “realistic” as a call for a revolution. If, on the other hand, they can point to bourgeois economists like Krugman or Wolf, to a conservative US president like Nixon even, their project gets a veneer of seriousness and realism. By referring to the ink being spilt on a Universal Basic Income in the Economist and the FT these radical critics of society can point out how practical their suggestions are.

In the name of realism these radical supporters of a Universal Basic Income want to end capitalism while presupposing its continued existence. If people are free from any compulsion to work for a capitalist company, this would destroy the capitalist mode of production. This, after all, relies on the workers to produce the products which are turned into profits. It also relies on the exclusion of workers from these products so that they can become profits. However, at the same time, the same supporters also ask the same capitalist firms to produce the profits to pay for freedom from them in the form of a Universal Basic Income. They want both: the continued existence – for now – of a capitalist mode of production where the reproduction of each and everyone is subjugated to profit and the end of this subjugation by providing everyone with what they need. They want companies to make profits, which relies on and produces the poverty of workers, while at the same time ending mass poverty. They want to maintain the exclusion from social wealth through the institution of private property and end this exclusion by giving everyone enough money. Whilst realism tells these supporters to make the provision of poor people conditional on the success of capitalist firms, it does not make them shy away from these paradoxes.

 

[Treacle Toes]

John McDonnell wants to give every citizen in the UK a basic income

 

[gorski]

For as long as there is no firm ground for a Revolution (hopefully not a violent one but deffo not a superficial one, which primarily changes our political/economic relations but does not involve a serious change in us - which can only happen gradually and dialectically entwined with societal/economic/political changes we forge through common, organised poly-centric struggle, I fear, with many ifs and buts...), there can only be this 'Capitalism lives' story (shame on us but that's where we are at the moment... for a while to come...)...

However, we can tame it and gradually change it, even considerably, starting with decommodification of....

https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Soc924-2011/924-2011-book-project/Esping-Andersen.pdf

Now, I know which one I would prefer, given the models we have today...

Are there adversarial models which have really done it for most people?

 

[Fez909]

BBC World Service - In the Balance, Universal Basic Income: Has its Time Come?

Haven't listened to this yet, but i'll be doing so when I get to work.

 

[eoin_k]

This is an interesting piece that looks at a few hidden assumptions behind left-basic-income supporters arguments - get in some real good blows. The tiny bit of maths at the start, don't let it put you off. And do read the very informative footnotes.

What is wrong with free money?

While they make some good points along the way, I'm surprised you seem so taken with it.

Gruppen gegen Kapital und Nation measure everything, including the more useful insights from workerism/autonomist Marxism about social reproduction and the flow of capital through the social factory, against their own highly formal reading of Capital Vol. I. It's easy to take the 'correct' line when your political practice consists of organising Capital reading groups and writing essays about why everyone else is wrong (based on the same rehashed arguments about value theory).

More importantly, they leave out any historical account of how demands related to a guaranteed income, including those which were far from reasonable at the time, played out in the 1970s when the state actually expected workers to make different sorts of collective demands. While this would still leave open questions about the pitfalls of making such any such demands, the gap between that situation then and now seems like a much bigger problem for today's left-wing evangelists of the basic income. The absurdity of Paul Mason or Nick Srnicek raising demands for a basic income lies much more in how unaware they seem of their lack of leverage and their inattention to how things played out last time, when the balance of forces seemed much more favourable.

 

[yield]

Universal basic income trials being considered in Scotland
Sunday 1 January 2017

Scotland looks set to be the first part of the UK to pilot a basic income for every citizen, as councils in Fife and Glasgow investigate trial schemes in 2017.

The councillor Matt Kerr has been championing the idea through the ornate halls of Glasgow City Chambers, and is frank about the challenges it poses.

“Like a lot of people, I was interested in the idea but never completely convinced,” he said. But working as Labour’s anti-poverty lead on the council, Kerr says that he “kept coming back to the basic income”.

Kerr sees the basic income as a way of simplifying the UK’s byzantine welfare system. “But it is also about solidarity: it says that everyone is valued and the government will support you. It changes the relationship between the individual and the state.”

The UBI already exists for the 1%
Matt Bruenig

The universal basic income — a cash payment made to every individual in the country — has been critiqued recently by some commentators. Among other things, these writers dislike the fact that a UBI would deliver individuals income in a way that is divorced from working. Such an income arrangement would, it is argued, lead to meaninglessness, social dysfunction, and resentment.

One obvious problem with this analysis is that passive income — income divorced from work — already exists. It is called capital income. It flows out to various individuals in society in the form of interest, rents, and dividends. According to Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (PSZ), around 30% of all the income produced in the nation is paid out as capital income.

Tithing to the 1%

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.

Even if you exclude the capital component of mixed income (since it is connected to work even if the income is not from labor) and housing rents (since these are imputed to homeowners rather than paid to them as cash), that still means that, from equity income and interest alone, the top 1% receives 7.5% of the national income without having to work for it. Put another way: the average person in the top 1% receives a UBI equal to 7.5 times the average income in the country.

 

[weltweit]

Articles/books on the subject etc are also welcome.

Cheers

Fez909 you might be interested in this:
India 'plans to give every citizen a universal basic income'

 

[ska invita]

Finland two years trial has begun;

"Under the two-year, nationwide pilot scheme, which began on 1 January, 2,000 unemployed Finns aged 25 to 58 will receive a guaranteed sum of €560 (£475). The income will replace their existing social benefits and will be paid even if they find work."
Finland trials basic income for unemployed

 

[butchersapron]

You can't really trial a universal basic income on 2000 people surrounded by non UBI relations in a state of 5 million people.Already it's being hemmed in by other considerations - the need to reduce formal unemployment figures, cut 'red tape' in existing universal welfare provision, playing a role in the cutting of existing job seeker allowance, provioding free labour to undercut existing wage labour...sick joke.

 

[Idris2002]

Basic income does seem to be an idea whose time has come. . . but that doesn't make it a good idea. The Finnish left is already sounding the alarm over what it sees as the real intention of that country's BI scheme - the final destruction of the welfare state:

“Government's main objective seems to be to dismantle welfare state,” says Andersson

ska invita

 

[butchersapron]

Blimey. Who would have guessed that a capitalist state administered thing could not be the free clean loving UBI of etc

 

[Idris2002]

Blimey. Who would have guessed that a capitalist state administered thing could not be the free clean loving UBI of etc

You see, butchers - we plant the seed. Then nature grows the seed. Then we eat the seed.

Don't you want to be the change you want to see in the world?

 

[butchersapron]

You see, butchers - we plant the seed. Then nature grows the seed. Then we eat the seed.

Don't you want to be the change you want to see in the world?

have you been at your mums watching the old ones?

How on earth could this be put in place over than top down state fiat. And so, done in their interests. It's just making stuff up and saying that you like it.

 

[kabbes]

I mentioned before I am currently reading Rise of the Robots . There's a bit in there about a think tank in the 60s that included/influenced Martin Luther King (wish I could remember the detail) and wrote all kinds of stuff about how things would change in the 60s and 70s -- civil rights, social changes and the effect of automation. The first two got all the play, particularly subsequently, but most of their output was actually about the last thing.

Anyway, this group were heavily into the idea of a basic wage, as being the only answer to the fact that automation was going to simultaneously create much greater national output whilst also putting everybody out of a job. Apparently it made a few waves but got overtaken by the oil crisis of the 70s, then everybody forgot about it for three decades.

It's an interesting book, I recommend it.

ETA: the basic wage part is in a section that includes lots of interesting charts like this:

 

[Idris2002]

have you been at your mums watching the old ones?

How on earth could this be put in place over than top down state fiat. And so, done in their interests. It's just making stuff up and saying that you like it.

At my Mums I had to watch Frozen. Later I was allowed to watch Porridge, though, so it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.

OK, so it's going to be done in the interests of the haute bourgeoisie. Maybe we should brainstorm the political implications of its social outcomes. . .

 

[butchersapron]

At my Mums I had to watch Frozen. Later I was allowed to watch Porridge, though, so it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.

OK, so it's going to be done in the interests of the haute bourgeoisie. Maybe we should brainstorm the political implications of its social outcomes. . .

None. There will be none. It'll be lots of people saying none and what time does the bar open.

 

[Idris2002]

None. There will be none. It'll be lots of people saying none and what time does the bar open.

Frozen's actually pretty good.

 

[Idris2002]

Soma, or lube for the killbots?

 

[ska invita]

Basic income does seem to be an idea whose time has come. . . but that doesn't make it a good idea. The Finnish left is already sounding the alarm over what it sees as the real intention of that country's BI scheme - the final destruction of the welfare state:

“Government's main objective seems to be to dismantle welfare state,” says Andersson

ska invita

That article doesnt mention basic income. Andersson's party, the Left Alliance, along with the Finish Greens support basic income. Ive had a google around and from what i can see they have done for a few years and continue to do so today. Theyve been central to the campaign to introduce this pilot scheme.

This is from the Left Alliance manifesto page:
The Red-Green Future - Vasemmisto

A SUITABLE AMOUNT OF WORK AND A SUFFICIENT INCOME FOR ALL
Goals: In the red-green society, working hours are shortened and work is more evenly distributed among people. The concept of work is broadened so that it also includes forms of work that take place outside the markets. The basic income is used to ensure that all people have a sufficient basic income and the opportunity to engage in different types of work in the markets, households or communities. The gendered division of labour is dismantled in both the labour markets and homes. Enterprises are increasingly owned by the workers who have better opportunities to influence their own work. When people are free to choose how they work, such categories as the unemployed or pensioners will gradually become obsolete. Everyone can undertake work to benefit the society according to their own abilities, knowledge and skills.

 

[butchersapron]

A SUITABLE AMOUNT OF WORK

 

[Idris2002]

THE PARTY OF MODERATE PROGRESS WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW

 

[William of Walworth]

Idris2002 : So will being lazy enough to want never (now I'm over 50) to get up in the dark ever again, be classed as moderate progress, or dangerous extremism?

EARLY PENSIONS OR BRICKTHROWING

 

[Idris2002]

Idris2002 : So will being lazy enough to want never (now I'm over 50) to get up in the dark ever again, be classed as moderate progress, or dangerous extremism?

EARLY PENSIONS OR BRICKTHROWING

You think they won't fix it so you have to get up in the dark anyway, basic income or no basic income? LOL.

 

[Idris2002]

That article doesnt mention basic income. Andersson's party, the Left Alliance, along with the Finish Greens support basic income. Ive had a google around and from what i can see they have done for a few years and continue to do so today. Theyve been central to the campaign to introduce this pilot scheme.

This is from the Left Alliance manifesto page:
The Red-Green Future - Vasemmisto

A SUITABLE AMOUNT OF WORK AND A SUFFICIENT INCOME FOR ALL
Goals: In the red-green society, working hours are shortened and work is more evenly distributed among people. The concept of work is broadened so that it also includes forms of work that take place outside the markets. The basic income is used to ensure that all people have a sufficient basic income and the opportunity to engage in different types of work in the markets, households or communities. The gendered division of labour is dismantled in both the labour markets and homes. Enterprises are increasingly owned by the workers who have better opportunities to influence their own work. When people are free to choose how they work, such categories as the unemployed or pensioners will gradually become obsolete. Everyone can undertake work to benefit the society according to their own abilities, knowledge and skills.

OK, point to you, that link doesn't mention BI directly. But why would you trust a government whose attitude to the welfare state is a malign one to introduce BI in a way that really will usher in the hippy utopia that so many mugs think BI will involve?

 

[butchersapron]

I think some looking beyond what parties support BI and into what the state and capital requires and the gaps and contradictions, differing interests etc between the two would be a far more productive way for those types to proceed than just listing nominally left or green parties who support it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Soma, or lube for the killbots?

Both.

 

[ska invita]

Lord only knows who critisticuffs are, but if youre in London and you want to talk through the worries around UBI in a pub this is a chance to do so (30th Jan, 7pm)
Critisticuffs — Universal Basic Income: what's wrong with free money?

 

[butchersapron]

The same lot who wrote the stuff in the link i posted in june last year.