Isn't Everyone Entitled to a Basic Income?

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.