Jean Swanson’s talk about ‘basic income’ + other reports
Jean Swanson’s talk about ‘basic income’ + other reports
So we probably agree that everyone has a human right to an adequate income and today we’re just debating how to get it.
There are a lot of different versions of basic income, which I’ll call BI. The BI that some anti-poverty advocates want is a lot different from the BI that current governments and corporations want.
I’m 74 years old and I’ve seen how corporations have pushed for policies that helped them get to where the richest 8 people in the world now have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 Billion. They’ve been really sneaky. For example, in the 80’s they had a fancy royal commission that wanted free trade. Free trade gave corporations more rights to move to wherever taxes and wages are low and environmental regulations lax. So how can Canadian workers compete in this environment? Well, by chopping EI, massive cuts were made. By chopping welfare; federal contributions to provinces for welfare ended and rates started falling. Free trade was a sneaky way to cut social programs and create more poverty. But the people who wanted it didn’t say, oh we want free trade to make corporations richer and workers poorer. They were really sneaky.
I’m afraid that a BI is one of these sneaky policies. There are many versions of BI. The crucial things to know about each version are
What is the amount
Who gets it
Who pays for it
Will other social programs be destroyed
Some people, mostly in government and business, want a BI that would act as a wage top up for employers who pay low wages. Their version of a BI would
Have a low amount, not enough to live on
Go to low wage workers
And be paid for by basically ending other social programs like social housing, employment insurance, maybe Old Age Security, etc.
This is the kind of BI that has happened historically. For example:
in the 1700s in England farmers in one area called Speenhamland would only hire people who were on the poor rates because they would work for less than people who weren’t.
In 1985 the Canadian Manufacturers Association called for their version of a BI, which they called a Universal Income Supplement Program. The corporations in the Manufacturers Association wanted their BI to end nearly all social programs that we had at the time: family allowance, federal contributions to welfare, social housing, unemployment insurance and even guaranteed income supplement for poor seniors. They also called for keeping the minimum wage the same and letting inflation make it virtually useless. And they wanted to keep the level of the actual supplement at about $7000 a year in today’s dollars so that recipients would have to get paid work to survive but employers could pay really low wages.
And this is part of the BC Green Party platform in the last BC election: “BC Greens support transitioning to livable wages, through establishing a fair wages commission and exploring basic income as an option to fill the gap between current wages and livable wages.” In other words, they want to look at leaving minimum wage low and using a BI to top it up.
So, the BI could be a plan like these three that would simply shift the burden of paying wages from corporate employers to mostly middle income taxpayers. The corporations would rake in more profit, and more middle income people could be pushed into poverty because of having to compete with supplemented people for the wages and because of having to pay taxes to subsidize wages.
The current Finnish BI test which provides about $838 a month is this kind of BI. The main purpose is to ensure that low wage workers have enough money to live on when employers, like, say, the Finnish equivalent of Walmart, don’t pay enough for a decent standard of living. This is the kind of BI that corporations and employers want. Instead of raising minimum wages and/or reducing the workweek at the same pay, employers want to be able to keep paying low wages, keep profiting from automation, keep amassing the kind of wealth they now have where the 8 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people.
The BI that some social justice advocates want would have a high rate, maybe at the poverty line. Everyone would get it so there would be no means test; our existing social programs except welfare would remain. It would be paid for with progressive taxation. But what would a BI like this cost and who would pay the cost?
Again, the estimates depend on the type. One type would have everyone get a BI. One estimate from Rank and File, which provides on line labour news and analysis, is that a $15,000 a year BI which got rid of welfare but kept other things like education and healthcare, would require an additional $200 b in Ontario, more than double the $91 b Ontario takes in now in taxes. And $15,000 is still below the poverty line. It’s important to ask how much a BI would cost because that will shed some light on how feasible it is. What would middle income and rich folks in Ontario say if their government wanted to triple their taxes? If you have a more targeted BI it would be cheaper but then you’d also have to have means testing .
So one of the big issues with a BI is who pays for ensuring that everyone has a decent standard of living. With a BI, taxpayers would pay. Employers and corporations would keep amassing their profits and wouldn’t have to pay wages high enough to sustain their employees. If we go for a system where we work for both tax supported benefits like welfare and disability and employer supported wages like $15 an hour minimum wage and/or living wages, and shorter work week, we’ll be taking more money and power from people who already have more than they need.
If you have a BI that’s really too low to live on it would act like a wage top up for employers who pay very low wages. It would take the pressure off the movement for higher minimum wages and a living wage and shorter work week. It would help employers and corporations keep more of what they make.
It’s really important, too, to figure out how we’ll get from where we are now to the kind of society that we want. If our goal is to have a more just society with no poverty and no degradation, more democratic participation in deciding how to run our world, why not go for the old things: good tax supported programs like childcare and social housing, higher welfare and disability but also higher minimum wage and/or living wages to not only give more to folks who need it, but also to take from the powerful, and keep them from getting more powerful. Governments could end the poverty and degradation in welfare offices tomorrow if they wanted to, by raising rates and treating people with respect. But they don’t want to because welfare poverty has a purpose in capitalism. The purpose is to show workers that if they don’t do everything possible to work for a living at any shitty job, they too could be as poor and as despised as people on welfare are.
This is where the sneakiness comes in. Already the right wing is seeing that people in desperate poverty are grasping at the BI concept with hope. And they’re using this hope in the Ontario BI trial where 70 % of the participants are working and in the Finland trial where the BI rate is really low. They’re using this hope to support a policy that will make low income people work at really low wages and let corporations and employers keep all the profits, shifting the burden of paying wages from corporations and employers to more middle class taxpayers.
If we can have stronger unions and laws that promote unions, higher minimum wages and living wages, people can get more money from employers, which will have the added benefit of reducing their power and influence. But for this to happen, we have to get organized and fight like hell for it on all these different fronts.
You might say, well, we’d have to fight hard for a good version of a BI. But I’m afraid of the wage top up part of the BI, that would serve to prop up rather than undermine capitalism. If most taxpayers are paying to top up wages with a BI, then employers and corporations are getting away with all the profits and power and that’s not the kind of society I want to live in
Also See:
“Solution or illusion?: the implications of Universal Basic Income for Disabled people in Britain” DPAC June 21st, 2018 https://goo.gl/SCZCBQ
“If disabled campaigners weren’t previously worried about growing support for the idea of a Universal Basic Income, then following the publication of the World Bank’s draft annual report for (2019 WDR), they should be now. This document clearly articulates the link between intensification of the neoliberal agenda and provision of a basic income, putting forward a policy programme of extensive labour deregulation including lower minimum wages, flexible dismissal procedures and zero-hours contracts , compensated in part by a basic income “modest in size” so as to “be complementary to work” and financed largely by regressive consumption taxes
World Bank’s draft annual report - The Changing Nature of Work - (2019 WDR) PDF https://goo.gl/WLmeVy
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Basic Income: Progressive Cloak and Neoliberal Dagger, April 4, 2018 https://goo.gl/LSnWe1
“The Neoliberal Danger of Basic Income” - Ontario Coalition Against Poverty https://goo.gl/xXCcjX
Basic Income In The Neoliberal Age https://goo.gl/hKkbMP
“A basic income guarantee is a neo-liberal strategy for serfdom without the work” https://goo.gl/Z3Q25g
“Basic income in B.C.?” Green Party wants it, but some welfare advocates don't” http://ow.ly/XrZx30c0Yas - Jon Hernandez - CBC News - Feb 25, 2017
Basic income would cost Canada $15 billion annually: Report http://ow.ly/gdsh30cqm2T Daniel Tencer - HuffPost Canada - June 6, 2017
The federal government spends more than $100 billion a year on tax loopholes. A shocking amount of that money goes to Canada’s wealthy one-per-centers http://ow.ly/4kGB307MXIa David MacDonald - Monitor - Jan-Feb 2017 18 - 20.
Monitor - Jan-Feb 2017 18 - 20.
Basic Income As A Policy Option: Can It Add Up? http://ow.ly/6dbb30cpBHy James Browne & Herwig Immervoll - OECD - May 2017
Basic Income As A Policy Option: Can It Add Up?
Implications of a Basic Income Guarantee for Household Food Insecurity http://ow.ly/SVPq30cHGiU Dr. Valerie Tarasuk - Northern Policy Institute - June 2017
Implications of a Basic Income Guarantee for Household Food Insecurity
“Basic Income: Rethinking Social Policy” http://ow.ly/I5bE307cSVn - Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - Ontario - Alex Himelfarb & Trish Hennessy, editors - October 2016
Basic Income:Rethinking Social Policy
“Possibilities and Prospects - The Debate over a Guaranteed Income” https://goo.gl/v1hf8F Margot Young & James P. Mulvale - Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - November 2009
A guaranteed income could simply “reinforce the individualism and market focus of neo-liberalism” and lead to results that are “regressive and less just.”
Possibilities and Prospects - The Debate over a Guaranteed Income
Improving Social Security in Canada, Guaranteed Annual Income: A Supplementary Paper, Government of Canada, 1994 http://ow.ly/GBPY30cC7rS
Mincome (Wikipedia) http://ow.ly/ExDT30cC80y
Poverty causes depression, brain connectivity changes in children - Jan 18 , 2016 http://ow.ly/Wxhk30cCdcT Original Study: http://ow.ly/hhCf30cCe0V Audio: http://ow.ly/K1oQ30cCb6f http://ow.ly/MWKL30cCaMa
#PovertyReduction #BasicIncome BC Green Party #CorporateWelfare BC NDP
Distributed by theBC Disability Caucus