Universal Basic Income E-Book

Dr Paul O'Brien

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 394

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This book is about a radical idea: the idea that each of us deserves enough money on which to live - and that it should be paid independently of our personal means, and independently of whether we work, or even want to work. The concept of 'basic income' has been discussed internationally and has the potential to revolutionise the way that society functions. It would provide greater security for the young, for the self-employed and entrepreneurs as well as reshaping the social welfare system in its entirety. In this book, author and academic Dr Paul O'Brien explores the arguments for and against the idea and explains how this very real proposal might work in practise.

Leseprobe

First published in 2017

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2017

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© Paul O’Brien, 2017

The right of Paul O’Brien to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 8338 9

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Universal Basic Income: An Outline of the Idea

2. A Brief History of Basic Income Proposals

3. Freedom, Justice and Solidarity: The Philosophical Basis of UBI

4. Political Issues: The Implications of UBI for Feminism and the Environment

5. Answering Some Objections

6. Implementation: Making UBI Happen

Conclusion: Summing Up and Looking Forward

Notes

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Gratitude for assistance with developing the text is due in particular to John Baker, Deirdre Coveney, Deirdre de Burca, Michael Fitzgerald, Liam Flynn, John Goodwillie, Joan Healy, Roy Johnston, Claus Kazmaier, Neville Keery, Martina Langan, Ruth Kerr, Garreth McDaid, Seanan Mac Corra, Aoife Sheehan, and Sean Ward. My thanks go to all the members of Basic Income Ireland, and to those who attended meetings from time to time. I should also acknowledge the original Group on Alternative/Green Economics (GAGE) who were foregrounding similar ideas in the Irish Green Party from the 1980s onwards, and helped to shape my perspective. Thanks also to the staff at History Press Ireland: to Ronan Colgan for his deep interest in and support of the project, and to Beth Amphlett for her painstaking work in preparing the text for publication.

INTRODUCTION

This book is about a radical idea: the idea that each of us deserves enough money on which to live – and that it should be paid independently of our personal means, and independently of whether we work, or even want to work.

There are two main arguments in favour of a basic income for everyone: a moral reason and a social/political reason, as it is difficult to see how our society will survive, at least in its present form, without such a thing happening.

Universal basic income is, as its name suggests, a payment made unconditionally to everyone. For convenience I will refer to it as UBI.

The book is aimed at the intelligent general reader. It is not primarily intended as an academic book, though it makes use of a fair amount of academic material, and may be of interest to scholars of the subject as well. There’s a considerable body of scholarly literature by now on UBI, going back several decades. Much of the literature is extremely erudite, and some of it is hard to follow without a background in one (or more) academic lines of study.

I hope the interested reader will be able to follow the argument without having done a lot of previous reading in areas that are touched on here (such as politics, philosophy, sociology, economics and cultural theory). Some of the references, though, may open up lines of further enquiry for those interested in pursuing them, whether from the point of view of general interest, or at a more scholarly level.

My hope is that the reader will not constantly have to go back and puzzle out the meaning of a paragraph, or need to have continual recourse to a dictionary or encyclopaedia. At the same time, I hope that, in the cause of making things accessible, I haven’t distorted some very complex arguments.

If the reader wishes to follow up a particular line of enquiry, the endnotes may be of help. The discussion in them is, in parts, more detailed than the account in the main text. However, the reader who wishes to obtain a general overview of the subject will not need to continually refer to the discussions in the endnotes.

The bibliography may be of use to anyone who wants to delve more deeply into the topic. It includes most of the ‘hard-copy’ material, in terms of books and journal articles, mentioned in the endnotes, with online versions where available. It also includes some of the online material mentioned in the endnotes, where this seemed to be of particular relevance.

The book focuses on some political, economic, philosophical and ideological arguments around UBI, rather than on the mathematical details involved in regard to its implementation (whether actual, experimental or planned for the future) in various parts of the world. However, it includes information in the endnotes regarding further access to sources on this, for those who wish to follow them up.

There is also a (fairly brief) account at the end of the book of some detailed proposals regarding the implementation of UBI in the context of Ireland, since that is where I live and where I have had most experience of these debates, going back to the 1980s.

Academic writing has been of crucial importance in this area, in terms of getting the discussion established and taken seriously by people in the intellectual sphere. The concept of UBI, and political proposals to implement it, are now reaching the mainstream,1 and discussion of these subjects is becoming an everyday matter in the media.

Some decades ago, the notion of an unearned income for everyone, without means testing or work requirement, was viewed as an outrageous proposition. (It was, perhaps, comparable to debates about close encounters with UFOs, in terms of acceptability as a topic for discussion in the mainstream media.) However, our economic system has reached such a perilous state that proposals which seemed shocking some decades ago are now much more acceptable, even by the establishment media.

It is to the credit of a relatively small group of persevering academics that this discussion has now gone beyond academic circles and is reaching the mainstream of political debate. For a long time the academics involved were, to some extent, ‘out in the cold’ on this, and they deserve much gratitude for sticking with the idea and working out the issues that it involves.

At this stage, however, it’s vital, for all kinds of social, political and economic reasons, that the discussion should enter a more general arena – particularly regarding the underlying values involved. Much of the resistance to UBI is based not on mathematics but on ideology, as I will try to show. (The term ‘ideology’ has about a dozen different meanings, but I’m using it here in the sense of thinking that does not have much obvious claim to logicality, or coherence.)

At the same time, there are some rational objections to UBI and, for the sake of honest debate, I try to note them and respond, as appropriate, in the discussion that follows.

I don’t need to labour the political upheavals caused by globalisation, technological development, and the move away from fossil fuels, for traditional patterns of employment. These have had seismic consequences in the US and the UK, and threaten to do so as well on the European mainland, where the rise of far-Right parties offering an authoritarian nationalist alternative is of particular concern. (Anti-globalisation, which 15 or 20 years ago was emphasised mainly by the Left, now seems to be largely taken over by the Right as a rallying cry.)

Ireland may not be immune from such issues either, though we seem to have emerged from our recent economic dislocation relatively unscathed, at least in terms of the economic figures. (Of course, this is not counting the many lives that have been lost or ruined in the process.)

To some extent, writers in the academic world are curtailed by a number of factors. One of them is specialisation: the focus on a particular subject, or aspect of a subject, means that the writer is producing work for a fairly narrow audience. As a result, academic writing becomes a kind of shorthand, which is understood by the writer’s peers, but may not be easily accessible to the general public.

Nevertheless, there is an (arguable) case that the philosopher or theorist should try their best to make their work as understandable as possible, in order to help break down the barrier between theory on the one hand and the everyday concerns of ordinary people on the other.

There are good examples of clear (or clear-ish) writing in philosophy, such as the work of the nineteenth-century thinkers Arthur Schopenhauer and John Stuart Mill (whether or not one agrees with their ideas). There are also bad examples of clarity in philosophical writing – for example Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel – two thinkers who are, however, regarded as being in the first rank of philosophical thought.

Another point to note is that the phenomenon of over-specialisation means that people tend to lose sight of the broader picture, which in fact may encompass many different disciplines or lines of enquiry, but which no one person has the expertise to cover and link together.

Our society is characterised by an overriding concern for analysis rather than synthesis, for breaking things up into ever-smaller bits rather than looking for general patterns that may cut across different areas of enquiry.2

As the cynical saying goes, as a student at university you spend your time learning more and more about less and less, until eventually you end up knowing everything about nothing.3 Over-specialisation is not just an academic problem but a political problem as well – if thinkers lose touch with the public, there is a danger that the public may lose touch with rational thought itself.

Personally, I agree with George Orwell4 that a writer should aim for simplicity and clarity as much as possible. There is, of course, another school of thought that believes that aiming for clear writing surrenders to the prevailing, simplistic mindset of society – a mindset that is presumed to be false. I believe, though, that that viewpoint is misconceived.

For one thing, the question arises as to what basis we have for saying that anything is true or false. There is no consensus in the academic world on this issue. Academics tend to be divided between ‘realists’, who believe there is a knowable world independent of thought, perception and language and ‘relativists’, who believe that the situation is much more challenging than that. There are problems with both positions, and most writing with any claim to sophistication has to negotiate an uneasy pathway through them.

For example, even the most dedicated relativists (or postmodernists) presumably believe that there are fundamental laws of physics, independent of thought, perception or language. If they did not, they might hesitate to step outdoors, since, at any time, some random change in the laws of gravity could spin them off into outer space.

On the other hand, the analysis of language (going back at least as far as Friedrich Nietzsche) has called into question the relationship between language and reality. In parallel, developments in physics raise issues about the relationship between the observer and observed reality.

The issue of ‘truthiness’ has recently come to the fore in regard to discussion of political and media matters – defined as referring to something that feels true, whether or not it actually is. The question of the supposed disappearance of truth from public discourse has recently been the focus of much debate.

However, the issue of truth itself has been the focus of discussion in philosophical circles for many decades – it would be wrong to believe that there is any academic consensus on what truth is (if, indeed, there is such a thing).

That brings us back to the question of whether the beliefs of ordinary people are true or false. As noted above, when you push the discussion to an extreme, it’s by no means clear that there is any substantial basis for saying that any belief at all (whether held by the multitude or by the élite) is lacking in truth, since there is no consensus in the academic world on what truth is, or on how it can be established.

The recent criticism of the supposed lack of concern with objective facts and truth, particularly in media discourse, as if it were something new, is somewhat strange – in fact, this criticism has been levelled at the postmodern or relativist trend in academia for decades.

Bearing these difficulties in mind, from one point of view one could argue that ordinary people are just as likely to be aware of important issues to which the intellectual élite is blind, than the reverse.

In fact, the ordinary person with no claim to being an intellectual may get things drastically wrong in terms of the political solutions that he/she may endorse, but everyday citizens are sometimes more keenly – and accurately – aware of the nature of their economic and social problems than are the ‘experts’ who claim to understand them, but who may themselves have no direct experience of the struggles that everyday people have to undergo. In other words, the bad press that ‘populism’ has may have been undeserved, at least in some respects.

A parallel issue is that, if you never make an effort to communicate radical ideas to the public at large, they will never take them seriously. In 2016, we saw the devastating political fallout (for example Brexit and the US presidential election result) that arose from the exclusion of ordinary people from political debate.

This brings us back, though in somewhat of a roundabout way, to UBI.

While some of the discussion on this topic in the academic world is complex, and much of it is necessarily so, it seems important that an effort should be made to make the ideas accessible to people for whom they may be of crucial importance in everyday life. Such people may not necessarily have an academic background, but may nevertheless be acutely aware of the problems that face citizens in their everyday lives (perhaps more so in some ways than are the – supposed – experts on the way society functions).

My own interest in UBI goes back some decades, to a time when I was spokesperson on economic affairs for the Green Party in Ireland. I subsequently convened an economic policy group in the Green Party, where UBI was high on the agenda. Politically, I’d describe myself as a Left-libertarian Green, though my confidence in the ability of parliamentary politics to be the source of any substantial progress has taken quite a hit in recent times.

As with many people, my disenchantment happened around the time of the financial crisis in Ireland, when the Greens were part of a coalition government that was confronted with impending economic collapse, and faced the challenge of dealing with it. The results were mixed at best.

On the one hand, things could have been a lot worse. In Ireland, we have come through the bad times into a boom economy once more (indeed, we may be well into another bubble, for example in the housing market).

On the other hand, many ordinary people and families have suffered much as a result of ‘austerity’, not to mention the massive increase in Ireland’s national debt. It seems to be in the nature of the capitalist system that, like a bipolar individual, it lurches from exuberance to depression and back again, without being able to experience stability or security. (The exceptions are the people at the top of the economic pile, who have mostly done very well in recent decades. It is in their economic interests to maintain the system, at least until it becomes so unstable that it comes crashing down.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I still pay my subscription to the Green Party, though without any particular enthusiasm for the possibilities that parliamentary politics offers for radical change.

At this point the main priority, in a global sense, seems to be to try to avoid a disastrous regression to the authoritarian politics of the 1930s – to avoid dystopia rather than to bring about utopia (though aiming for the latter may actually be the best way to avoid the former). But for that to happen, it’s essential to alleviate the situation of economic and social alienation that faces large swathes of the population even of developed countries. UBI would be one of the tools in that toolbox, though by no means the only one.

The issues arising from austerity and the loss of economic sovereignty that faced the Irish people subsequent to the economic crash, and the devastation that it caused for many individuals and families, call into question the economic values that pervade the Irish mindset. These include economic individualism (in the negative sense of everyone for him/herself), or the ideology of neoliberalism;5 the work ethic (in the negative sense of the overvaluation of paid employment, as distinct from other kinds of activities that may be of equal or greater worth); and the unquestioning adherence to the ideology of economic growth (infinite growth on a finite planet is surely a contradiction in terms).

There are also, it should be mentioned, some economic issues in Ireland that are not normally discussed to any great extent in the media (such as the historical ownership of land) as well as political issues (such as what it means to be a citizen of a republic, as distinct from a half-resentful, half-admiring former subject of a former colonial power).

The issues involved in being a citizen of a republic and a democracy are surely things that should be prioritised in any school curriculum. The fact that they are not means that the powers that be may not be interested in opening up the radical questions that discussion of such issues may raise.

A related matter is that of the European Union, and Ireland’s place in it. Whatever about its economic effects, culturally speaking the EU was, arguably, a godsend in terms of emancipating Irish people from the either/or, Irish/British duality that previously set their mental boundaries.

With Brexit, and the possible break-up of the EU looming in the future, there is a danger – if Ireland draws back into the orbit of the UK as a result – that we may once more descend to our former mindset. That is, a cap-in-hand, post-colonial mentality with its associated feelings of ‘malignant shame’6 arising from centuries of defeat and oppression – a simultaneous (unconscious) admiration for, and resentment of, the former colonial oppressor.

This is, arguably, a particular danger if we look to the UK as our future economic mainstay rather than the EU (if, indeed, either still exists as political entities in the future). At a time of crisis, we can grasp the opportunity to progress, or else fall into a tailspin of cultural, and perhaps economic, regression. Staying still is not an option.

There is still a tendency for Irish people to copy their British neighbours (consciously or unconsciously) and it’s possible that this may happen in the future in regard to Irish attitudes to the EU – particularly if the EU’s view of Ireland’s current corporation-tax arrangements should harden.

Ireland is a small country with an open economy that is vulnerable to economic shocks. If it should face economic dislocation in the future (for example from currency collapse or industrial relocation as a result of pressures on our corporation-tax structure) UBI would be one of the things that might help to soften the blow for ordinary people.

My interest in UBI arose from an interest in Leftist critiques of capitalism,7 though I’ve never been happy with the alternatives that are usually put forward. In terms of a political programme, I’ve always thought that the notion of instituting a society of freedom and justice through increasing the role of the state was problematic, for reasons that I will outline later.

In terms of political economy, and putting the objection very crudely, the conventional Marxist idea of base and superstructure seems deeply questionable. It’s the idea that you can explain everything, or most things, or most things that are important in a society, with reference to the economy. That, it seems to me, is a bit like the notion that you could satisfactorily explain a statue by a close examination of the plinth – or that you could satisfactorily understand a house in all, or most, important details through a study of its foundations.

The underlying problem with Karl Marx’s analysis is a fairly straightforward one: an over-exaggeration of the explanatory power of the economy. This boils down to the tendency to believe that because the economic level is essential to society, it therefore ultimately explains it in all ways that are important.

In the same way, for example, Sigmund Freud may have overemphasised sex in an explanatory sense, and Friedrich Nietzsche may have overemphasised power. (The nineteenth-century tendency to explain things in overly simplistic ways is called ‘reductionism’ by critics.)

Clearly, many of the things we often do, such as engaging in a search for beauty and truth, or being willing to sacrifice our lives in the service of a higher ideal (such as freedom, for example) are not economically determined, yet our societies could not function in any recognisable way without them.

On the negative side, people’s willingness to sacrifice themselves for a lower ideal – such as religious tyranny – is not economically determined either, at least in an ultimate sense. (Though it may be made worse by economic and political issues, for example the desire for oil, or neoconservative meddling on the part of the West.)

Furthermore, even if historical materialism were key to explaining the way things are, or have been, there is no reason why that should always be the case: we could envisage a society, for example, where higher ideals predominated, and where economic motivations and interests were relegated to the sidelines. (Conversely, we could envisage a nightmare dystopia where the atrocities of religious extremism were the norm, as is, unfortunately, the case in many parts of the world at the moment.)8

Consequently, while economics may explain much of what goes on in the world, it does not account for everything. The issue with historical materialism is that it’s never clearly defined by Marx or his followers: consequently, the riposte to any criticism is usually along the lines ‘well actually, it means something different’.

We cannot, of course, deny that historical materialism (the methodology of Marxism as applied to the study of history and society) may often have a useful function, even though it may be defective as an overall theory of the way things always, or necessarily, work.

For example, many of the high-flown ideals that people have may, on examination, be exposed as being rooted in their own economic interests, or in those of the class to which they belong (or to which they would like to belong) rather than being self-evidently true or justifiable. Examining the economic level may often explain much of what goes on in society – but not always, and not everything.

When it comes to the claim of Marxism to be a fundamentally explanatory system, I’ve never come across any watertight reason why Marx’s analysis should be preferred to any other (apart from the fact of its success in the world of ideas).

In a yet more general sense, there is the issue of whether any social analysis – or indeed any theory in whatever context – has a legitimate claim to truth (as distinct from a claim to have triumphed over other explanatory systems – which is, actually, not to be completely ignored in terms of a claim to explanatory power).

At the same time, it should be said that anyone who has read Marx, in particular his major work Capital, his early writings on alienated labour, and his observations on the politics of his time, will realise that his intellectual contribution is of unparalleled value in terms of the explanation it offers of the nature of society, not only his own society but those that preceded it – and perhaps our own as well. Marx’s work is unequalled in the ways that it highlights the injustice and dehumanisation that pervade the system of capitalism.

This is the case even though it seldom offers us any worked-out reasons why we should actually oppose capitalism. (After all, if you are doing well out of the system, you might decide that it’s in your interest to support it.)9

Anyway, and to put it in a nutshell, I would argue that a Marx-based approach is often – though not always – useful in understanding society. Consequently, while I’ve never been a Marxist, I’d consider myself something of a ‘marxisant’ (to use the French term): that is, someone who sometimes uses ideas rooted in Marx, while not necessarily endorsing other elements of his thought.

In that way, one can utilise Marx as a useful source of ideas and methods, just as one might use Adam Smith, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, or any other major thinker, without necessarily subscribing to their overall analysis as an ultimately explanatory one.

And that brings us to the point that the issues raised by the Right are not always to be dismissed. Sometimes, Left and Right may have important things in common. In a US context for example, there appears to be some common ground between conservatives and progressives on issues such as opposition to military adventurism, support for the decriminalisation of recreational drugs, and opposition to government support for banking and finance.

On the other hand, Left and Right may differ radically on other issues such as gun control, the role of science in education, and reproductive rights – not to mention the key area of disagreement: the role of the market vis-à-vis the state.

In addition to the agreement noted above between Left and Right on certain issues we should, arguably, look for some kind of ‘crossover’ support on the issue of UBI as well – though there may be major disagreements on the form that it should take in practice, the amounts that it should involve, or the knock-on effect on state spending in other areas. (The concept of UBI already has such ‘crossover’ Left-Right support, as will be seen later, though the majority of support appears to be Left-wing in nature.)

While the Left/Right distinction is somewhat inadequate, may be outmoded and sometimes needs to be transcended, if pushed to it I would have to say that I’m on the Left for all practical purposes. However, I disagree with the unquestioning endorsement of economic growth, the state, and the traditional work ethic in terms of maximising ‘jobs’ that are often to be found in Leftist circles.10

At the same time, though, I find it refreshing to read the works of conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke (the best-known Irish philosopher, whose statue may be found outside Trinity College in Dublin), and Friedrich Hayek.11 Even if one disagrees with their overall, conservative perspective, their ideas may highlight issues that are ignored by Leftists (sometimes for bad reasons). We can often learn more from our critics than from our friends.

There are, it goes without saying, obvious and deep-rooted problems with capitalism itself, which do not need much elaboration at this stage. They include, but are not limited to, structural unemployment,12 massive inequality in the distribution of wealth, the atrophy of human potential, and mindless consumerism, combined with the inability of large sections of the population to afford the consumer goods that capitalism produces.

In the environmental sphere, capitalism has given us resource depletion, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, and the terrifying prospect of runaway global warming and climate change. These issues are much clearer than they were back in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when (with the fall of the Soviet Union) it seemed to some that capitalism had triumphed, and that all that remained was to tie up the loose ends.

At the same time, of course, it would be wrong to imagine that capitalism is completely bad (even Marx never claimed that – in some ways he was enthusiastic about capitalism).

Capitalism has, for example, helped to give us freedom from superstition and outmoded social constraints, not to mention its facilitation of democracy – at least when it suits capitalist goals – and technological development (though the role of the state should not be underestimated in that).

From a Right-wing perspective, one could imagine a form of capitalism that might work, or at least one that might work better than capitalism does at present. Such a system might consist of the minimal state (confined to defence, security, the guarantee of contracts, and the redistribution of wealth through a negative income tax). However, a workable capitalist system would need more than that if it were adequately to address the problems of the modern world.

For example, companies that grew beyond a certain size would need to be broken up into smaller ones so they did not achieve inordinate political and social influence (you would need a powerful state mechanism to accomplish that goal).

Furthermore, given our environmental crisis, such a society would also need robust environmental governance, and there’s a question as to what would become of people with mental and physical challenges, in the absence of state support (private charity might not be enough to supply their needs).

Nevertheless, if so inclined, one could make an arguable case for such a form of capitalism. What is much more difficult to justify – from any political perspective – is the form of capitalism that predominates at present.

Capitalism has morphed, particularly in the US in recent times, into a form of corporatism: a monstrous system that combines the worst Orwellian nightmares of socialist bureaucracy with the depredations of bloated corporations; engenders massive inequality; deprives large sections of the population of adequate health care; engages in foreign adventurism to slake the appetites of the military-industrial complex, engendering chaos, misery and social upheaval as a result; imprisons for profit large sections of the population as punishment for things (like drug possession) that ought not to be crimes in the first place; oppresses minorities; turns everyday policing into ultra-militarist martial law; engages in forms of surveillance of which Hitler and Stalin could only dream (see Oliver Stone’s recent film Snowden on this); persecutes whistleblowers; facilitates corporate and media control of the whole society; fosters crime, social fragmentation and atomisation, and generally applies the principle of ‘socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else.’

While people at the lower end of the scale are faced with unemployment (or underemployment), poverty, insecurity and a declining quality of life, even those more comfortably off are not immune to the perilous prospects offered by contemporary capitalism/corporatism.

Uncertainty about the status of currencies and the possibility of future currency collapse; low, non-existent (or even negative) interest rates; the prospect of bank ‘bail-ins’, whereby depositors’ money could be confiscated in the event of an economic crisis; a stock market that has recently boomed, but may be in a bubble; a property market that simultaneously prices out renters and makes it more difficult to buy one’s home; the takeover of mortgages by ‘vulture funds’ – all of these increase insecurity not just for the working class but for the middle class as well.

The Trump phenomenon in the US is an attempted response to some of this. On the one hand, Trump’s foreign policy appears, on the face of it, somewhat more restrained than that of Hillary Clinton, his main opponent in the presidential race, and of his predecessor Barak Obama, at least in regard to US–Russian relations, or military adventurism abroad. It remains to be seen whether his response (in terms of ‘protectionism’ and investment in jobs and infrastructure) to the issue of economic globalisation will work in practice. Interestingly, though, it attempts to address a problem (globalisation) that was widely highlighted by the Left right up to 9/11, when attention was suddenly directed elsewhere.

However, Trump’s policies in other areas – including, crucially, energy, immigration and the environment – seem to involve a major step backwards. It is entirely possible that the economic problems of the United States are due much more to wasting money on militarism, rather than to globalisation and outsourcing.13

As seldom before, there is a need at this point for freedom lovers across the political spectrum to come together. Support for UBI is one area where this could occur, subject to some caveats I will mention later. There may be more in common between libertarians on both Left and Right than is commonly imagined, in terms of a common rejection of the corporate state. (Otherwise, we will continue to see the legitimate concerns of ordinary people appropriated by the far Right.)

The answers traditionally offered by Left and Right to our current social and economic problems have been quite different. On the one hand, the offer is some form of socialism (or social democracy) with its well-known problems of bureaucracy and intrusiveness. On the other hand, the offer is the minimal state, with its problems of inequity, lack of care for those less able than others, and the development of a powerful capitalist class, which erodes the values of freedom and justice for society as a whole.

More recently, as noted above, a Right-wing form of protectionist anti-globalism has emerged with the Trump phenomenon, though it is too early to see how this will work out in practice. (Initial indications look less than promising, to say the least.)

In terms of UBI, while the discussion of this has, in recent times, been largely on the Left, the idea may also appeal to some people of a conservative bent who wish to cut back on the overreaching state, as it seeks to monitor and control every detail of our lives. (Indeed, the prominent neoliberal economist Milton Friedman supported a negative income tax, whereby the government, through the integration of taxes and transfers, pays you rather than you paying the government (if you fall below a certain threshold), which might be seen as a variant of UBI.)

The difference is that Leftists wish to increase social solidarity through state redistribution and other forms of provision, while Rightists want to cut back on the extent of the state, in the interests of individual (and business) freedom. The implications of a basic-income society would be quite different in each case, depending on the political emphasis with which it was pursued.

There is, of course, also the anarchist alternative. Anarchism has influenced people on both Left and Right: the former in terms of anarcho-communism; the latter in terms of support for the ‘minimal state’, and the libertarian project of freeing up business enterprises from what are seen as the interfering tentacles of the state. A coherent case may be made (as it has been, for example by people like the US politician Ron Paul) for the minimal state (whether or not you like the prospect is another matter).

However, the anarchist notion of doing away with the state altogether seems deeply problematic. Abolishing the state would, surely, give free rein to all kinds of antisocial elements. Even if, as anarchists argue, the antisocial tendencies are ultimately the product of state repression (which is by no means obvious) it would surely take several generations to eradicate them. In the meantime, chaos would ensue.

While some anarchists might endorse UBI in the short term (since it offers to cut down on bureaucracy and increase human freedom) it could hardly survive in an anarchist society itself. The obvious reason is that, even if such a society retained money in some form or other (from gold and silver at one end of the scale to digital currency at the other) it would need some kind of centralised structure to administer a system of UBI. (Whether or not one would necessarily call such a structure an element of the state is to some extent, I suppose, a matter of terminology.) Nevertheless, one could imagine some anarchists supporting UBI as an interim measure at least, towards their goal of a society of total freedom.

The bottom line is that UBI will, in almost all foreseeable cases, be introduced in societies that are capitalist to one degree or another. Whether it would help to make those societies run more efficiently, or facilitate the emergence of some kind of radical alternative to capitalism, is more difficult to say. Perhaps it would do both.

One of the problems with the Leftist analysis of capitalism is what might be termed a form of ‘reification’. In this context, the term means a tendency to conceive of capitalism as a ‘thing’ that can be changed only by being smashed, rather than as a complex of relations potentially subject to evolution into something else. Consequently, it becomes more difficult to see capitalism as being subject to possible transformation from within.

What does seem clear is that the present system – with its crippling poverty traps, baffling obstructions and marginalisation of large sections of the population, as outlined in Ken Loach’s recent brilliant film I, Daniel Blake – is not an option.

Personally, I see UBI as part of a smorgasbord, a basket of desirables if you like, that would characterise a post-capitalist (or post-corporatist) society. These could include: a radical reassessment of the goals of economic growth and of full employment; the reduction of the working day/week/year; the valuation of currently unpaid work, often done by women; the development of workers’ cooperatives, profit sharing in traditional firms, and mutuality in the financial sector; radical alternatives in the sphere of finance; changes in company law to compel corporations to take into account social and environmental factors rather than merely the interests of shareholders; the break-up of large corporations into smaller entities; enhanced public involvement in the ownership and control of industries; the radical redistribution of wealth at both a national and global level; the growth of ethical investment; worker (and consumer) participation in management; and of course UBI itself.

UBI would, in that case, be only a part of a package that would help to ensure the survival of our civilisation in the coming difficult times.

Dystopia might be defined as a ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ utopia. So one could say that, while the avoidance of dystopia is the main priority at this stage, the only feasible way to avoid it is not through reinforcing the present system, but through forging ahead with the construction of utopia itself.

You don’t have to be a utopian, though, to endorse UBI. You just have to be persuaded that it would be an improvement on the ways things are done at present. This book attempts to make that case.

Of course, whether capitalism is capable of transformation into a qualitatively new system that would embrace new social, economic and environmental values is a crucial question, and one for which there is no easy answer.

I’ve mentioned already a balancing act that I’m trying to accomplish with this book. That is, I’m trying to make the ideas accessible on the one hand; and, on the other, not distorting them in the interest of simplification.

Another balancing act is that between trying to give an accurate overview of UBI (both historical and theoretical), and advocacy of basic income itself.

In terms of giving an account of the topic, I hope I provide an adequate indication of some of the difficulties and limitations of the UBI proposal, as well as its advantages. It should be made clear that it is not, and does not claim to be, a cure-all for everything that is wrong with society.

In terms of advocacy, while I’m personally in favour of one particular (Left) version of UBI, I hope I’ve made it clear that advocacy of basic income is not confined to the Left. While a Right-wing version might, arguably, have a serious downside, there is a certain scope for a political alliance on this issue, across the traditional Left-Right spectrum.

From the point of view of getting basic income established, tactical alliances may be appropriate between Leftist and conservative supporters of UBI. Nevertheless, it’s incumbent on Left-wing supporters to urge the implementation of UBI in a way that benefits, in particular, the weakest and most vulnerable sections of the population – and certainly in a way that does not weaken them further, or make them less secure.

There is at the moment no well-established UBI system except in Alaska14 (where a partial basic income has been in place for a long time). Nevertheless, in an extended piece of writing it’s a lot less awkward to use ‘is’ rather than ‘would’ or some similar term, so I’ve generally preferred the former to the latter. If the reader bears in mind some future situation, or some parallel/alternative/imaginary reality where UBI actually exists, that will, I hope, make the discussion easier to follow.

Finally, I should add a note about capitalisation. In a political context, I use the terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ to distinguish them from the usage in more general (non-political) terms. Similarly, the word ‘Green’ as I use it denotes Green politics, whether parliamentary or otherwise.

I use ‘libertarian’ with a small ‘l’ to denote a person who holds liberty (whether economic or social or both) in high esteem, to distinguish such a person from a member of a Libertarian party.

1

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: AN OUTLINE OF THE IDEA

INTRODUCTION

The traditional situation of a job for life is rapidly being eroded. Already, machines are replacing workers at supermarket checkouts and in banks, making life more complicated for customers and enrolling them as temporary, unpaid employees of the organisation.

We face a future where, it is projected, there will be massive displacement of humans by robots of one kind or another. In the near future, there will be driverless vehicles on the roads,1 as there have been driverless trains for years. Jobs particularly under threat include those of cashiers, marketers, customer-service employees, factory workers, financial middle men (and women), journalists, lawyers, and phone workers.2

Medical diagnoses can increasingly be carried out over the Internet (either completely automatically or with a human professional online) and robots can do surgery. Higher education in its traditional form is threatened by the development of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Parents worry about how to anticipate the coming robot revolution in terms of their children’s education.3

The subjection of the human being to the machine – so effectively satirised in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times – has been replaced by a new threat: the replacement of people by machines, as foreseen in modern films including the Terminator series.4

Even traditionally human-specific activities such as love and sex are being called in question by technology, with recent films such as Her and Ex Machina. In the future, the sexual partners of many people may be robots.5 Whether you think all that is comical, sad, exciting or horrifying, it’s difficult to see how such a future could be avoided, even if it were desirable to avoid it. There is too much money to be made.

Martin Ford projects that mechanisation will push people off the land where they traditionally made a living, and deprive them of the jobs they might otherwise obtain in the cities to which they migrate as a result. Machines threaten to make economic activity redundant at both the higher and lower ends of the scale.6 Ford describes how recessions eliminate routine jobs: then organisations realise that, in the wake of recovery, technological advances permit them to operate without rehiring the workers.7 While online activity is great for the corporations that prevail in the Internet, income for everyone else drops to the level of pocket change.8

Ford points out that the computer technology of today has roots in the taxpayer-funded, post-Second World War federal funding for research. It does not look as if this is leading to prosperity for the descendants of those taxpayers.9 While the stock market soared, Wall Street banks got rid of tens of thousands of jobs.10 Concerns about the effect of ‘immigration’ on jobs ignore the issue of ‘virtual immigration’ raised by electronic offshoring.11 Higher education is also under threat, with the growth of online education.12 Technology promises to shake up the area of healthcare as well.13 In Ford’s view, emerging industries will seldom be labour-intensive.14 (Ford supports the idea of a guaranteed UBI as a means of addressing the problems he outlines.)15

Where the money is going to come from to buy goods, if nobody has a job to earn it, is not something that owners of businesses, or indeed investors, seem to have thought through to any great extent. In this sense, capitalism is not a ‘rational’ system: it does not necessarily work in its own interest. Things that are good for individual capitalists (such as cutting back on the number of employees) may be bad for the system as a whole. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market that is supposed to ensure the best possible functioning of the system breaks down here (as it does elsewhere, for example in regard to pollution and resource depletion).

While new jobs will no doubt be created by the growth of new technology, they will tend to be at the higher end of the scale, with a growing income gap between those with high and low skills.16 The notion of UBI as a solution is now reaching the mainstream of political debate: in the context of discussions of the ‘robot revolution’, a Financial Times editorial called for ‘data-driven pilot projects’ to test the UBI idea in practice.17

The idea of a guaranteed basic income, citizen’s dividend, national dividend, or UBI, is fairly straightforward. It involves the state paying a certain amount of money to all, without means testing or work requirement.18 Those who argue for UBI usually want it to be enough for each person to live on, though basic income could exist in a partial form (as it already does in Alaska).19

In Ireland, for example, the government already pays a form of basic income to a sector of the population (in the form of child benefit, at €140 per month per child).20 UBI would extend this principle to everyone.21 For those who support UBI, it seems particularly important to defend any ‘universality’ that may already exist (for example in the form of child benefit or pensions) as they may form the foundation of a future UBI.