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July 7, 2017

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Home » Opinion » Book review

Basic income: key ingredient for a truly free and happy society

IN the current environment in the United States — a culture steeped in free-market ideology — it is unlikely that this book — Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy — will be remotely considered as providing a useful option for public policy.

Nonetheless, at some point even today’s unthinking embrace of unregulated capitalism and disdain for the non-rich will likely have to confront workforce changes that are likely to negatively impact the social and economic situations of a growing number of people failing to find sustainable employment.

Among the most important of these are the ongoing robotic revolution, the relentless effort to maximize profits by having fewer workers do more, and the replacement of traditional full-time employer-employee relationships with contractual arrangements that offer fewer hours and reduced, if any, benefits. Taken together, these will shrink the number of well-paid, full-time positions, adding to the downward momentum of the middle class.

With minds unimpeded by ideological rigidities, the authors have examined the major trends most likely to impact work in coming decades. They conclude that the future is unlikely to see either anything like the full employment, flourishing of manufacturing and construction industries or ever-expanding markets that was responsible for the rise of the middle class in the West for decades after World War II. Those post-war conditions responsible for jobs with generous wages and sound benefits came to an end (unheralded at the time) by the 1970s. In their place, technological innovations, competition for jobs from nations paying lower wages, and political policies favoring the interests of the wealthy served to set in motion the slow, inexorable decline of the middle-class.

In the near future ongoing developments in artificial intelligence and other technological innovations will jeopardize even those cherished white-collar positions that so far have remained relatively untouched. In reality, in a future nearer than we suspect, we may have to revisit our understanding of what “full employment” can mean when even the most avid jobseekers cannot find employment.

While such a dystopian future is not the central focus of Basic Income, the arguments the book contains may help us to see that the idea of nations providing their citizens with some form of basic income — if only as a supplement to those with meager wages — will have to be seriously considered. The authors believe that if we are “to rebuild confidence and hope in the future of our societies, in the future of our world, we shall need to subvert received wisdom, shake our prejudices, and learn to embrace radical ideas. One of these … is that of an unconditional basic income: a regular cash income paid to all, on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.”

This is not, they write, just “a clever measure that may help alleviate urgent problems. It is a central pillar of a free society, in which the real freedom to flourish, through work and outside work, will be fairly distributed…. It is a crucial part of the sort of vision needed to turn threats into opportunities, resignation into resolution, anguish into hope.”

Payment to everyone

Rather than continue to tie our present policy of assisting people based upon their income, ethnicity, gender, or age, Van Parijs and Vanderborght urge us to consider annual cash payments to each citizen regardless of these categories. These cash payments can be a reasonable portion of the average median household income.

To illustrate: In the US that figure was US$57,000 in 2015. And, since the average household consists of two adults, the average per person income was US$28,500. Adopting the approach of providing a basic annual income equivalent to a portion of the average annual income, therefore, would mean about US$14,250 — 50 percent of US$28,500.

This payment would be made to individuals, not to families, and would be obligation free, permitting the recipient to use the funds in any way she or he saw fit (although some constraints on usage could be placed upon funds disbursed to minors before their age of maturity). Not only would this be an effective way to redistribute wealth to the majority — the very opposite of current policies — but it would also maximize individual choice and freedom.

The authors discuss the many ways in which such annual cash payments could be utilized, including helping the poor to find affordable housing and adequate food and health care.

Throughout the rest of the book, Van Parijs and Vanderborght discuss various likely objections to this idea, among them that this would allow too many deemed “unworthy” to have a “free ride.” They explain how this very objection reveals how judgmental our societies continue to be, and are driven by our deeply embedded convictions that only people “like us” — that is, of good morals, hardworking, well-behaved, and sensible — really deserve to be given any support at all.

They also discuss the important question of affordability. They concede that our current approach to budgeting will need drastic readjustments. However, they also argue that, with a proper reordering of budget priorities, we could also find ways that basic income payments will allow us to reduce — or even eliminate — other existing programs that attempt to restrict income flows to certain groups or for certain purposes.

As they concede, the current environment is not very receptive to such an idea. It is a favorite theme of the Right, for example, that too many people are just lazy, having become dependent upon today’s “welfare state.”

Nonetheless, the authors prompt us to raise our heads above our rabbit hole of insularity and contempt for the poor in order to consider other approaches. They forcefully criticize the prevailing US model of public assistance that effectively demeans recipients even though it alleviates the worst consequences of poverty. What is needed are alternative policies that invest in citizens for their own — and society’s — future betterment by providing all with sufficient nutrition and health care from the moment of conception through young adulthood, the means to educational fulfillment according to individual talents, and the equal opportunity to attain worthy jobs.

When Thomas Jefferson composed the famous line in the Declaration of Independence — that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” — he did not mean “happiness” as some trivial, passing state of joy but, rather, as representing the fullness of a life well lived.

Is not a future community that strives to achieve the enrichment — in knowledge, service, and joy in living — one in which we would all like to live?

Does it not make our current mad economic striving for “ever more things” seem rather paltry in comparison?

 

The author was a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives and also served in the Iowa executive branch. He retired in 2004. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.




 

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