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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
VILLAGEAugust/September
A
BASIC income is an agenda whose
time has come. Alaska pays all citi-
zens an allowance from oil receipts,
and Namibia distributes limited funds to its
citizens. Japan has cautiously been exam-
ining a basic income policy. An EU Citizen’s
Initiative is underway seeking a million sig-
natures, a referendum was recently held in
Switzerland (though it failed); Basic Income
Earth Network (BIEN) Finland launched a
Citizen’s Initiative last year; and the pro-
posal has frequently been raised recently
in discussions at the conference on poverty
run by the Council of Europe.
A basic income is defined as a payment
from the state to every resident individually,
without any means test or work require-
ment. It would be sufficient to live a frugal
but decent lifestyle without supplementary
income from paid work. For people who are
not employed, the basic income payment
would replace most social welfare payments;
only disability and sickness benefits would
still need to be administered. For people who
are employed, the basic income payment
would replace most tax credits. The payment
would also extend to those who currently
receive no income from the state.
The perceived lack of reciprocation
under the social contract, by people get-
ting something for nothing, represents a
moral objection from policy-influencers like
Rutgers Professor, Philip Harvey. He calls for
Job Guarantee programmes instead, pack-
aged as social welfare benefits designed
to secure the right to work. Entrenched
beliefs in the work ethic, ingrained desper-
ation about having a job and the insecurity
of being judged worthless without one, dis-
courage openness about other perspectives
and possibilities. Re-education is a prereq-
uisite for countenancing the integration of
basic income in society with its promise of
more individual autonomy, less humiliating
grovelling by dependants, and more equality
through redistribution of resources
An amount between the minimum wage
and average industrial wage is generally sug-
gested as appropriate for a basic income.
% of artists make in the region of the min-
imum wage, which in turn is a third of the
annual industrial wage, a seventh of what the
lowest of the top % of earners are paid,
and a negligible micro-fraction of
the stratospheric fortunes in the
multi-millions and billions squir-
relled away by the mega-rich.
Different funding models, usu-
ally based on either income tax or
VAT, have been mooted.
The notion was in vogue before,
in the s. Before his assassi-
nation Martin Luther King had
been busy organising the Poor
People’s Campaign for a univer-
sal basic income, writing about
it in his final book, ’s ‘Where
Do We Go From Here: Chaos or
Community?’
The international peasant movement, La
Via Campesina, leads the way for grass-roots
reformers. For tribal peoples, and our own
ancestors, generosity with gifts, not usu-
rious accumulation, was the measure of a
man.
From the other end of the political
spectrum, libertarian economist Milton
Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed
income via a “negative income tax”, a version
of which Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried
to pass. His Democratic opponent in the
presidential election, George McGovern, also
suggested a guaranteed annual income. It is
arguable that David Cameron’s simplification
of social welfare in Britain into a “univer-
sal social credit” – unifying housing, social
welfare and pension benefits, for example,
into a single funding stream, indicates a
trajectory towards a basic income,
driven counter-instinctually, by
Conservatism.
The argument for women, consti-
tuting half the world’s population
and a full % of its poor, to receive
a reasonable share of wealth is par-
ticularly persuasive. Women clock
up % of the world’s working
hours but take home only % of
the world’s income. Women living
in poverty must deal with a gross
series of discriminations, inequali-
ties and injustice from cradle to grave, from
poor education to poor nutrition to vulner-
able and low pay employment, according to
the Global Poverty Project.
Nassim N Taleb corrects the misper-
ception that people are successful due to
superior qualities, cautioning that, of any
given number of equally well-prepared
agents, some are bound to perform better
and make more successful decisions just by
luck alone. Taleb invokes the inverse rule
by suggesting that evidence of contribution
is lower as officers climb higher up the cor-
porate ladder, an arena where promotion
particularly awards political skills.
As Alan Watts deduced during a s
talk on ‘Socially Responsible Automation and
an Unconditional Basic Income Guarantee’,
what’s keeping people starving in the midst
of plenty is a psychological hang-up about
the cult of work where devotees believe that
money is real and that people should suffer
to get it, despite humanity’s invention of
machines to cure this state of affairs!
“I was looking for a job and then I found a
job; and heaven knows I’m miserable now”,
sang Morrissey of The Smiths, too honestly
for some ears. Our psychology is back in
the seventeenth century with its religious
fear of laziness and idleness, even as our
twenty-first century technology changes
everything.
Henry George pointed out in that
“the work which improves the condition
of mankind…is not the work of slaves…but
of…men who perform it for their own sake”,
which could be multiplied “in a state of soci-
ety where want is abolished” •
Basic income week takes place 15-21 September:
www.basicincomeweek.org. See also www.
basicincomeireland.com
POLITICS LIVING WAGE
From tribal peoples via
Dr King to Alaska, but
not Switzerland.
By Caroline Hurley
A ‘Basic Income’ whether or not
you work...
I was looking
for a job and
then I found a
job; and heaven
knows I’m
miserable now
“
