Here Comes Everybody: Basic Income, the Precariat and beyond

Last month, when releasing a report showing that 100,000 children went hungry in Britain in 2014 because their parents’ benefits were stopped or cut, Niall Cooper, chief executive of pressure group Church Action on Poverty, made a simple yet devastating analogy.

“If you commit a crime, no court is allowed to make you go hungry as a punishment. But if you’re late for an appointment at the Job Centre they can remove all your income and leave you unable to feed you or your family for weeks,” he said.

In fact, there is evidence of people stealing in order to be sent to prison and guaranteed three meals a day.

This is the most urgent justification of a basic income. More than 900,000 people in Britain used the food banks of just one provider, the Trussell Trust, in 2013-14 and the most common reasons were benefit sanctions or benefit delays. Always cruel, many of the reasons are arbitrary and absurd. So there is a critical need, you could even call it a demand, for an unconditional income floor – an income that cannot be whisked away at a moment’s notice, at the whim of a bureaucrat with a target to meet. Everyone has their basic subsistence covered. Period.

That seems to be the rationale behind the UK Green Party’s “long term aspiration” for a basic income of £3,700 a year. And while the Greens are mulling it over, 19 well-known economists, including Guy Standing, have called on the European Central Bank to introduce an unconditional income of €175 a month (€2,100 a year), as an alternative to alleged economic stimulus of quantitative easing. Similarly, the Spanish anti-austerity party, Podemos, wants an unconditional income for the unemployed, though like the UK Greens, Podemos is committed, in principle, to a basic income.

Obviously, no-one can live on €2,100 a year, or £3,700 for that matter. These are policies for unconditional income support, rather than a liveable basic income. But they are edging their way towards a minimum income for everyone. For argument’s sake, let’s put the level at £7,000 pa. As one American supporter of basic income writes. “Without an income floor set at the poverty level as a bare minimum, I believe poverty and inequality will continue to grow, the middle classes will continue to shrink, and the livelihoods of all but the top fifth of society will continue to slip away.”

This is one kind of basic income. An income floor for the increasingly numerous precariat. 13.5 million people in Britain live on incomes at or below 60% of the median, which is about £21,000.

But there is another kind of basic income and it has far more ambitious horizons. The Swiss 

Generation Basic Income group who will spearhead a referendum campaign for the introduction of a basic income in Switzerland in 2016, want it to be much more than a subsistence fall-back. They are calling for it to be set at 2,500 Swiss francs a month, the equivalent of £20,000 or US$ 30,000. Another advocate of an unconditional income, the Australian trade union organiser, Godfrey Moase, sets the bar at AUD$30,000 (about £15,000). A universal basic income is not just for the precariat, says Generation Basic Income’s Enno Schmidt, it is for everyone. It is not a product of class struggle, he insists, it does not exclude the rich.

Each kind of basic income obviates the problems thrown up by the other kind, though in turn generates new issues.

To take the first sort of income floor basic income. Though few can doubt its necessity, the intrinsic problem with this kind of unconditional income it that it is only relevant for the bottom 30 or 40% of society – people who can’t get enough hours to support themselves or their dependants, the working poor or unemployed, adults in education or simply those who would gladly trade a stressful job for substantially less money but the freedom to choose the life they want.

The dilemma this variant of basic income provokes is that you can easily imagine it inculcating a reverse politics of envy. The excluded two-thirds or 60% of society will feel they are financially carrying the lucky minority who have the freedom not to work, or work less, and devote themselves to freely chosen pursuits. Astonishingly, this inverted politics of envy is already being avidly stoked in Britain by the Conservatives and their ‘strivers v shirkers’ rhetoric. A basic income would probably elevate this sentiment to astronomical proportions. Once introduced, it is conceivable that a basic income would engender an exodus of people from the world of work to the Saturday morning world of unconditional income. But that would still leave a resentful 50% with the perception of an even greater burden and the pressure from the other side to raise the basic income. Although you can foresee a new social dispensation taking shape, there would be immense social strife in the meantime.

The other, more ambitious, kind of basic income avoids stirring up envious feelings. Set at a much higher level, it is overtly an unconditional income for everybody. “Basic income doesn’t exclude,” says Enno Schmidt. “It’s about humans.” It is clear that the social problems that have prompted an interest in an unconditional income are not restricted to the precariat. Anxiety and depression are rampant across social classes and a sense of powerlessness and control by outside forces affects people with full-time, well paid jobs as much as those on the fringes. “Who, experiencing for years the daily toll of intense corporate pressure, could truly escape severe anxiety?” wrote Alan Lightman in his 2001 novel, The Diagnosis.

Beyond the issue of how to pay for this kind of unconditional income (which I will come to in part 3), two questions arise. One is why pay a basic income to rich people, or people with moderate but secure incomes for that matter, and secondly, what exactly would they do with it if they received such an income? The frequent justification for a basic income that it represents a new attitude to work and would act as a balm for feelings of stress, burn-out and anxiety. “We’re facing a shift of the paradigm of what work means to us, and it is this generation who is ready to express this shift”, said Marilola Wili of Generation Basic Income in 2013.

The fact that a basic income would be paid to all adults, not households, means that, set at a generous level, it would certainly enable those that wished to, to swap their jobs for less demanding ones, or pack in work altogether. But for those that didn’t choose those options, a basic income would just mean the amassing of a lot of additional money. Maybe the possibility of escape represented by the mere existence of a basic income, would engender a seismic change in the culture of work. That could be one effect, but it’s also possible that the repercussions of introducing a basic income would be much more modest than its advocates envisage.

Pilot studies in basic income undertaken in the US and Canada in the 1970s indicate that participants responded by only slightly reducing their working hours.  Such findings have been used to assuage fears that, with the introduction of a basic income, industrial civilisation would grind to a halt and everyone would sit around, doing nothing. But another conclusion is also possible – why go to all the trouble of introducing a basic income if the results are so meagre?

Because in the real world society we inhabit, it is a neo-classical fiction that, even with a basic income to fall back on, people in employment would have the choice to reduce their working hours. They could leave their jobs, certainly, or maybe switch to a less demanding job, or become self-employed. Within households, one partner may leave their job while the better-paid one stays on. But it is my hunch that many would people make the decision to stay in their jobs, working similar hours, and so the only palpable effect of a basic income for many would be to supply a large extra income. You could argue this would reduce inequality but it also has the potential to be funnelled into buying property, stoking an even bigger housing bubble than the one we have now.

I think here we can see the limitations of what a basic income can do. Basic income is not the same thing as Bertrand Russell's 'organised diminution of work'. It can immeasurably strengthen the hand of the individual as they negotiate with the world of the work. That feature should not be underestimated. But in choosing to leave what goes on in that world untouched, basic income reveals itself as impotent in dealing with the ‘daily toll of intense corporate pressure’. Many institutions, in pursuing targets or profits or simply impact of some kind, are now intensely oblivious to the welfare of the people that populate them. And, ironically, I can sense in basic income the same reluctance to challenge the behaviour of large institutions and the distribution of property and profits that used to be exhibited by welfare state leftism – the very movement whose demise is giving such momentum to the movement for a basic income. On its own, a basic income is not enough to really change society.

In part 3, I want to look at the ways in which a basic income might be funded, and whether that can be done in an equitable, not acrimonious, way.

Here is the first part

And part three 

"We're facing a shift in what work means and it is this generation that can express this shift." Interview with the group behind the Swiss Basic Income referendum

Orson Welles was wrong. While most of Europe labours under the strictures of a failed and destructive economics, Switzerland shows independence of mind. The country will soon hold two referendums. One will ask whether the pay differential in companies should be set at no more than 12 to 1. The other proposes that all Swiss citizens receive a monthly unconditional, basic income, whether they are in or out of work.

We are not the Beautiful interviewed Enno Schmidt, co-founder of Generation Basic Income, the group behind the basic income initiative, as well as two of its members, Marilola Wili and Che Wagner.

Here is the first part of the interview:

There will be a referendum in Switzerland soon on whether every citizen should receive an unconditional income of 2,500 Swiss francs (£1,711) every month from the government. When will the vote take place and will a basic income be introduced if you win?

Enno Schmidt: How high the basic income will be is not fixed in the initiative. The amount of 2,500 Swiss francs is only an example. The actual amount will be the result of another discussion and vote in the population. What amount allows a life in dignity? These are questions for the democratic process.

It’s not right to say the basic income will come from the government. The government has no money. It will come from everyone in the community and will be transferred through a levy or tax. The government manages money from the population in order to do what the people have entrusted them. We live in illusions. We live in the idea that we are going to work for ourselves because we get an income on which we live. But, in truth, we go to work to do something for others. And we need an income, regardless of that, to live. Basic income means a new look at everything, not a simple belief in what appears in the newspapers. Today, we pay all the taxes in the prices of goods and services. All taxes on income, on corporate profits and so on are included in the prices. But invisible. The tax or duty for a basic income will be paid in the prices of goods and services too. But visible. Perhaps the process is carried out on behalf of the population by a federal office, but it is quite wrong to say that the money comes from the government.

The vote will take place in two to four years. At present the Federal Council is considering the proposal and examining the consequences. Then the Parliament will do the same. Then the vote will be fixed. If a majority of people vote yes, the federal government is mandated to implement a basic income. But that will be many steps, processes of consciousness and votes, away. This is a long journey in which everyone participates. It is not a shock, not a regulation from above.

We offer this idea and make it clear. It is not our gain if the majority wants it.

 See news coverage about the idea

 Is the idea that this monthly unconditional income will replace all welfare benefits?

ES: The principle is that each person receives this basic income, unconditionally, regardless of how one lives and what one does. It is set to be high enough to live on and to last a lifetime. What happens then? Today’s benefits, up to the amount of the basic income, fall away. The principle of social assistance or welfare benefits remains. But it will be much less necessary.

What else will happen? Income from labour will be renegotiated. With a basic income, I can say no to a bad deal. And yes to what I really want. With a basic income I already bring an income to employment. Earned income is supplemented with the amount of income that secures my existence. Good work that people like to do, will be cheaper. Poor work that people do not like to do, will be better paid, because no-one can be blackmailed with their existence to do it. Basic income does not necessarily mean more money. It is the unconditional nature of the income that is important. Only someone who has little today will have more money in their pocket with a basic income.

Your group, “Generation Basic Income” has submitted 100,000 signatures to force the referendum to happen. Did it take a long time and a persistent campaign to collect them?

Marilola Wili: It did take a long time to actually get the collection of signatures started. The collecting campaign started in April 2012 and, after the first few months, there was not too much happening on the streets. That’s why we founded the Generation Basic Income in September 2012:  to spend all of our energy on the most important part of the Initiative’s history: collecting those 100,000 valid signatures. Due to the fact that almost all of the work related to collect Swiss citizen signatures was voluntary, our most important virtues were fun and focus on the beauty of this process. We designed little competitions or the format “100 times 100”, where 100 people assured to collect 100 signatures within a certain timeframe and invited them to celebrate those 10,000 signatures in the best hotel in town.

In December 2012 Generation Basic Income decided to get the signatures by April 21st, half a year before handing them in. With that, a boost of engagement was set free and on the day, accompanied with a live-ticker, all of us energetically collected signatures to reach this goal. One of the keys of our success lies in our name: not only is it a political question but we’re facing a shift of the paradigm what work means to us, and it is this generation who is ready to express this shift.

ES: Many people have collected signatures, many older people too. And some, very bravely, alone. Generation Basic Income has put the salt in the soup. It was not easy to find this many signatures. We are not many but we have persevered and continued with a strong will. In the end, we have collected 142,500 signatures, 100,000 are necessary. But only 126,000 are valid [the population of Switzerland is about 8 million].

Is there a groundswell of support for a basic income in Switzerland?

Che Wagner:  For the collecting campaign we always talked about 500,000 people who would sign as soon as you asked them directly. Our job was to reach them in the streets, at railway stations, public squares, on festivals or within families. My experience during all these thousands of encounters was often a spontaneous support. But after a while I met all the arguments, which insist that a basic income is impossible. Nobody is capable of ignoring this idea because it is pointed towards every single person. So, by collecting the signatures I had the impression that the more someone knows about the idea, the more he is empowered to support it, too.

“Generation Basic Income” is the generation that already feels what it is to live a life in the mindset of an unconditional income: to actually do what you want to do and to insist on what you want to stand for. Those are the people who are our groundswell and this is a fast-growing generation.

ES: I don’t think there is a greater groundswell of support than in other countries, but in Switzerland there is direct democracy and therefore we have a good cultural conversation. In Germany, for example, when one speaks of the unconditional basic income, many people immediately think that once again something will be decided over their heads. In Switzerland, people listen and think about it because nothing will happen if they do not want it. They are politically sovereign.

There is a great deal of international interest in the Swiss referendum. Can you say in which countries this is strongest and whether you know of others that are likely to follow the Swiss lead?

CW: With our money pile performance we wanted to provoke the media and the international community to acknowledge this historical moment with a unique picture. But I am still amazed about the strong and enduring reaction the handing in of the referendum had. Apart from Switzerland and other central European countries, there was a big interest coming from the East, with Russia Today (RT) broadcasting directly on site as well as Chinese media. Then, there was response from the Arabic press, which was surprising. The strongest response I felt was coming from some Balkan states, especially Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia, where the idea of a basic income turned into quite a national debate a week after the performance. These debates were also boosting the European Initiative to collect 1 million signatures within the EU with the aim of having a debate all over Europe.

Now, several weeks after the event on October 4th, the media response is shifting to the English-speaking world including Great Britain, Australia and the US. There, you can sense that it’s rather an intellectual sphere that is willing to discuss such an issue rather than the broad public.

From the beginning, Germany was the strongest ally in our Swiss initiative. Throughout the campaign, there were Germans involved. I have the hope that not only will basic income become stronger as a topic, in Germany and elsewhere, but also the great tool of direct democracy will attract attention, because it is definitely the key to this whole process. 

ES: I think the most important message of this successful initiative for unconditional basic income in Europe is: direct democracy through referendum – so that the population can implement ideas and it is democratic. Governments in Europe are divorced from the population. You have opinion polls but the population has nothing to say. The lobbies have something to say, however, and money rules. False ideas of economy apply the thumb screws. Basic income is Enlightenment, it is an evolutionary revolution. We are always told we have democracy, but we don’t. Politicians do not want a direct democracy because they will lose power. The basic income strengthens the individual because it speaks to him. It dares a person to think for themselves, to take seriously what one perceives and feels.

Why do you think a basic income is necessary now?

MW: Never in world history were there more products produced, or services delivered and money circulating, than in present times. In Switzerland, and in all western countries, we live in total abundance rather than in scarcity. There is way more than we actually need for consumption. At the same time people live often in fear not to get enough or even are forced to live in poverty. This is a paradoxical situation: Large parts of the people in western societies are living far from the actual reality in their mindsets.

The idea of unconditional basic income helps to uncover this big misunderstanding of our current reality and helps to let go this unproductive and even dangerous fear of scarcity. This idea is able to make things visible and then unpredictably sets human forces free in ways one may have never thought about.

ES: With a basic income people get to what they really want and find important. So much of life is wasted and so many talents remain untapped if we hold to the old ideology of gainful employment and full employment in gainful employment. Lives have fractures; you do not stay in one job all your life. There is a lack of attention, of time for people. This rationalisation puts a limit on living. “We cannot solve today’s problems with the thinking that has brought on these problems,” said Albert Einstein. Basic income is new thinking.

Here is Part two