Back in the 1970s, when I was minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Meriden, Connecticut, civil unrest was sweeping our country, cities were burning because urban society had become frustrated and restless, black urban youth in particular were unable to find jobs because automation made many low wage jobs in urban areas redundant and manufacturing jobs were moving to where land was abundant and taxes were low, the welfare system was under attack by the conservative politicians of the right as promoting laziness and creating a disincentive to work and giving their money to the undeserving, the unpopular Viet Nam war was raging amidst anti-war protests, and I was foolish and idealistic enough to think that there was a better way.
It was obvious to me and to others
that one of the most disturbing implications of modern society was that workers
were becoming less important to industrial development, over time blue collar
jobs would be increasingly scarce and become more repetitive and less
meaningful, automation would increase and many workers would become redundant,
and consequently and inevitably unemployment would increase because fewer
workers would be necessary to produce the goods needed by society. [This was
long before industries were moving their factories to the under-developed world
to save labor costs, thus reducing the need for domestic labor and increasing
unemployment.]
Two ideas seemed to flow from this:
first, that structural unemployment would become a fixture of modern society to
which a better solution than welfare and unemployment insurance would have to
be found, and second, income (monetized distribution of goods and services)
needed to be separated from wage producing employment. Providing everyone with a basic income was a
radical idea at the time, but I proposed it in a Sunday sermon and a lengthy
and vigorous discussion followed. The
issue got some press when the editor of the local paper wrote a front page
article on the controversial topic. The
ensuing debate, which continued the discussion at a more heated level in
letters to the editor and a call-in talk radio show, went on for some weeks
afterward.
That concept, now called universal
basic income, is alive and well, has been discussed in policy circles
off and on for years, and has been developed and tried in some nations. The two most often raised objections to
giving everyone a guaranteed income are that (a) it disincentivizes work , that
without the need to work for an income people would not work, jobs would go
unfilled, and economic society would fail; and (b) it is immoral because it
gives people something that they have not earned, generates laziness, and
creates a society that is unfair because some people work and others do
not.
Both classes of objections are handily
vanquished. The first, that it disincentivizes
work, is a factual assertion that has been tested and shown to be false. While some people may choose not to be
engaged in economically productive activity, many others are engaged in
humanitarian, artistic or humanistic work.
The pandemic has taught us that people are eager to be productive
whether to get back to work or back to the classroom. A guaranteed income eliminates
homelessness and food insecurity; they are no longer social welfare problems.
The philosophic and moral objection is
a bit trickier to deal with, particularly for Americans, because our Victorian
and Puritan ancestors have instilled in us the idea that work is a moral good
and that its opposite, laziness or sloth, is sin. However true it is that since Adam work has
been necessary for our survival as a species, it is a bit of a stretch to the conclusion
that work is therefore a moral good.
The common assumption of society that
income should be assigned on the basis of gainful economic employment in the
production of goods and services may actually be unhelpful and unwise in our
current economic circumstances. I will
oversimplify why that is true for the sake of this discussion and those
interested can pursue it in more depth.
In brief our hunter-gathering ancestors were able to domesticate plants
and animals, increasing their surplus production sufficiently to support trade,
subsidize diversification of occupations to merchants, tool makers, artists of
various kinds, soldiers, officials and priests.
Note that the accumulated surplus supported those who were not directly
involved in economic production.
The industrial revolution and the
accumulating surplus of capital eventually led to our current dilemma which is that
there is now a serious imbalance in our economic life caused ultimately by the monetization
of labor that can be described on the one hand as the shift in the accumulation
of the rewards of labor into the hands of fewer and fewer people (which will
ultimately result in the collapse of the economy), and on the other hand, an
economic society that does not need everyone working at economically productive
jobs to sustain our economy, creating increasing unemployment that unfairly and
unreasonably restricts some people from earning a share of that surplus. That inequitable imbalance has created social
problems that society must fix. If they
are not fixed they will result in social instability.
Giving everyone a basic income goes a
long way to fixing the problem of structural unemployment in American
society. [There is an additional factor
that has to be considered: in the United States health care has most commonly
been provided as an employment benefit and that also has to be disconnected from
employment and become universally provided.]
This has been a long and not entirely
satisfactory introduction both to the concept of universal basic income and to an
important article in New Scientist that discusses scientific real world
testing of the concept of universal basic income that debunks a basic criticism
of universal basic income—that it creates a disincentive to work.
Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018,
during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58
monthly payments with no strings attached.
The payments of €560 per month weren’t means
tested and were unconditional, so they weren’t reduced if an individual got a
job or later had a pay rise. The study was nationwide and selected recipients
weren’t able to opt out, because the test was written into legislation….
The study compared the employment and well-being
of basic income recipients against a control group of 173,000 people who were
on unemployment benefits.
Click <HERE> to read the entire article.
The concept of Universal Basic Income
needs to be fleshed out by Democratic Progressives into a workable Federal
program, as a replacement for unemployment insurance, Social Security, housing
subsidies, food stamps, school lunch programs, welfare payments, and other Federal and State
income subsidies, and implemented by the United States as a matter of both
social and economic policy.
Discussion of this topic by readers is
specifically encouraged. Until this
concept is understood through widespread discussion and debate it will not have
enough sufficient acceptance to have any chance of being enacted into law.
