We Need a Basic Income to Future-Proof Society
Wealth is co-produced by society as a collective, and everyone deserves a share: a safety net not only for workers but our entire planet.
Photo by Tim Evans.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed cracks in our economic model that many pretended not to notice before the crisis hit. They can pretend no longer. Precarity, unsustainability, fragility, and cruelty are on display for all to see. Society needs to be able to act dynamically to accommodate the radical social changes necessary to confront events like this pandemic. Yet it can’t, because there is no safety net for the people who will be forced out of work by these changes.
For example, I fund my undergraduate studies by working in hospitality at a major U.K. sports venue during the holidays and by topping up my balance intermittently through writing and bits of gig work. Now, however, all shifts for my zero-hours contract job at the sports venue have been cancelled. People like me that duck and dive in and out of the workforce in unstable conditions will have to enter into (likely increasing) debt if no action is taken. Work is stopping for precarious laborers in other industries too, yet rent extraction by landlords and debt collection by banks and student loans companies continues. The burden is pushed onto the most precarious portions of the labour force, rather than onto the stable rentiers. This situation is much worse for people who are full-time workers in the gig-economy. The people working in these jobs are offered none of the protection of genuine employment. Take Deliveroo riders, for example (though, of course, we could equally take many cleaners or people in warehouses, hospitality or delivery). Deliveroo drivers don’t receive sick pay, so if they have to self-isolate they will be forced to choose between isolating for the collective health of the population or carrying on working for self-preservation to avoid hunger or eviction. It’s a non-choice and the virus will spread as people carry on delivering food despite being sick because they were given no alternative. Neoliberal capitalism exists to squeeze the last miserable drop of profit out everything it touches and in situations like this pandemic, it leaves no room for maneuver.
There is a relatively simple policy that could alleviate much of this strain: the creation of an unconditional safety net by the government in the form of a Universal Basic Income. A recurring cash payment of money sufficient to live on, to all citizens, no matter what. Several politicians in the U.K. have called for this, including Rebecca Long-Bailey, Ed Miliband and Layla Moran. Even Trump seems to grasp the basic principle that people will act towards the common good if they can be sure that they are not going to end up destitute by doing so. He has proposed a one-off cash transfer of around $1200 to many Americans, to help tide them over during the crisis.
But Trump’s proposal does not go nearly far enough. It neglects to tax the wealthiest Americans and the paltry amount doesn’t qualify as basic. Further, the payment is means-tested, meaning for many Americans in need, the payment will arrive too slowly or not at all. And, given that it’s just a one-off payment, it cannot future-proof society in the way that a genuine UBI could.
Society will need such future-proofing if it is going to be sustained through the coming decades. Although people are justifiably worried about the pandemic, this is not the only major societal shock we will see as the climate crisis, a much more existential threat than Covid-19, intensifies in western societies and expands its already devastating effects on the Global South. Extreme weather events will disrupt the economy on an increasingly frequent basis and the shifts in the job market required to perform damage limitation, let alone to the much more complex task of mitigating the worst impacts, require a level of societal dynamism that we currently lack. Whilst it is not a panacea and true that social, economic and ecological justice will require much broader interventions, a UBI, if implemented alongside a rent cap, universal healthcare, and wealth tax, could act as a minimum guarantor for citizens’ welfare during these periods of frequent and drastic change.
Why All Green New Deals must include a UBI
In addition to helping increase the fluidity of social reorganization in times of crisis, the UBI must be implemented to tackle the climate crisis in an economically, as well as ecologically, just way. The most concrete plan for confronting climate change is the Green New Deal. The first set of policy proposals bearing that name was originally developed in the U.K. in the wake of the [2008-9] financial crash by the Green New Deal Group before it was exported abroad. Economists and environmentalists like Anne Pettifor, Caroline Lucas MP, and Larry Elliot, among others, aimed to take this opportunity to redesign the economy to distribute resources more equitably and to protect our planetary life support systems. The group argued in their 2008 report that creating a post-carbon economy will not be possible unless the finance system is subordinated to the needs of people and planet. They advocated breaking up large banks, tight regulation of financial products, and controls on capital flows as well as the destruction of tax havens in order to finance large green infrastructure projects that create well-paying jobs and could end fossil fuel dependency. The group was inspired by John Maynard Keynes and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but believed that “the climate threats we are facing are of a magnitude beyond the imagination of New-Dealers” and so advocated proposals on a larger scale. The group saw the need for internationalism, arguing that in addition to a GND in the U.K., financial assistance must be given to the Global South to facilitate a GND in poorer countries too.
Although their policies were not taken up at the time, they have seen a resurgence thanks to the popularity of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ,who proposed her own version of a Green New Deal in a resolution submitted to the U.S. Senate. Since the revival of the idea ten years after its birth, the “Green New Deal” idea has spread far. The U.K. Labour Party, Bernie Sanders, the Australian Greens, and the Canadian Pact for the Green New Deal have all professed support for a version of the plans. One of the most radical and comprehensive versions of the GND however, was put forward by DIEM25 (the Democracy in Europe Movement) in their Green New Deal For Europe report. Their proposals include the establishment of a green public works to channel the wealth of the continent into green infrastructure projects across Europe, the creation of a new progress indicator to replace GDP, mobilizing public banks to issue green bonds, a jobs program that seeks to create well-paid, meaningful, green jobs for European citizens based on a 4-day working week, aiming to reduce overall working hours, intervention in global regulatory standards to introduce punitive measures for fossil fuel-heavy industries, the retrofitting of homes to meet climate standards, the creation of a green transport network, a green technology research program that would make any creations open source to spread green tech and, among many other policies in the program, a universal basic dividend funded through a wide array of new taxes and the closing of tax loopholes.
The DIEM25 version of the Green New Deal should be taken as the model for any nation seeking to make the green transition, in large part because it uniquely contains a version of a UBI known as the Universal Basic Dividend. The UBD meets all the criteria of a basic income, such as universalism, unconditionality, and offering a basic income floor for life’s necessities, but unlike some proposals for a UBI, DIEM25 suggests it should be funded through returns on capital rather than taxation. Yanis Varoufakis, DIEM’s co-founder, argues that “If a universal basic income is to be legitimate, it cannot be financed by taxing Jill to pay Jack” because it would fall prey to the same narratives that are used to demonize the existing welfare system. A UBI funded through returns on capital, on the other hand, may be easier to justify politically. DIEM’s proposal is based on the fact that wealth is created socially. Every smartphone contains components developed in publicly funded research labs, yet the profit is hoarded privately and society never sees a return on that investment. DIEM’s UBD would see the creation of a law compelling companies to channel a certain percentage of capital stocks into a common fund, with associated dividends from those stocks paid to the fund which in turn would finance the UBD. This would not only see the delivery of all the benefits of a UBI, but would ensure all citizens get a share of the spoils of collective effort without jeopardizing the existing welfare state.
The inclusion of the UBD in DIEM’s GND avoids two major flaws that we have seen in recent attempts to green the economy. The first is the contradiction that confronted Emmanuel Macron when he tried to put a tax on fuel after giving massive tax cuts to the wealthiest in French society. Macron’s attempt to green the French economy placed the burden entirely onto the backs of the working class and the marginalized. Car ownership is a necessary evil in much of rural France, and Macron was attempting to make the already difficult lives of the working class in France’s periphery even harder. So, perhaps predictably, they lashed back and he was forced to abandon the tax rise and increase the minimum wage when he realized the scale of anger and destabilization he had unleashed.
I was a participant-observer in many of the initial Gilets Jaunes protests and I still find the tenacity with which people fought remarkable. Much of their protesting drew attention to the injustice of forcing the burden of the ecological transition onto the poorest in society while letting the rich off the hook. The Gilets Jaunes weren’t anti-environmental; they were protesting economic hardship, inequality, and a lack of democracy. Many Gilets Jaunes even took up ecological causes. I interviewed Phillip in Biarritz who was a proud green activist and Gilet Jaune and some of the left-wing members of the movement synthesized the issues into a new slogan: “the end of the month and the end of the world – same struggle.” Macron learned a sharp lesson with his proposals, neatly summed up by the economist James Meadway: “environmentalism without class politics is just gardening.” The DIEM25 GND goes well beyond just gardening; it combines taxes on fuel and carbon use with radical redistribution. The radical unconditional safety net that DIEM25 lay out with their UBD (and other policies) is necessary to make the green transition successful, not only because a GND is the only just way to do it, but because attempts to lower emissions will be rejected by a majority if it does not also address the burning injustices caused by neoliberal capitalism.
A second issue that the DIEM25 Green New Deal confronts through a basic income is the conservatism of the unions. The U.K. Labour Party saw their proposals for a GND watered down at their 2019 conference from a solid target of zero emissions by 2030, to “firm commitment” to net zero by 2030 because of resistance from the General, Municipal, Boilermakers union which represents much of the energy sector. As calls for a Green New Deal grow around the world, they will face resistance not just from vested interests in the fossil fuel industries, but from the leadership of ossified trade unions in a defensive crouch trying to protect their members in the short-term with no thought for the long term implications of their actions. Tackling the vested interests of fossil capital will be difficult enough on its own without also having to contend with what remains of organized labour. This is why whenever a Left party or government wants to adopt the GND as policy, they should model it on that of DIEM25. The UBD would guarantee workers financial security if their jobs were eliminated, as well as handing power to unions through the de facto creation of a constant strike fund (workers can consistently strike to achieve their goals if their basic needs are guaranteed to be met). Equally, the method of financing the UBD, by collecting the profits of public innovation instigated by the Green Public Works into a universal dividend, also shifts the balance of forces in favor of labour and to the disadvantage of capital. By immediately protecting workers in the fossil fuel industries through a UBI as well as offering the retraining and other welfare benefits associated with the GND, you can bring organized labour on side and create a more powerful coalition for taking on fossil capitalism. The conflict in the U.K. Labour Party was between radical green activists and unions. These groups should be natural allies and must be reconciled quickly; a UBI would help do this.
Automation, a world without work and the end of capitalism?
In his 1968 work Strategy for Labour: A Radical Proposal , political philosopher Andre Gorz coined the term “non-reformist reform,” to describe reforms which, rather than making minor improvements to life under capitalism while maintaining it, are anti-capitalist in nature and undermine the operation of capitalism. UBI is one such reform that might herald a world beyond work and the dissolution of the mechanisms of capitalism. A world beyond work may not be as far fetched as it sounds. Automation will almost certainly proliferate for many jobs, at least in the near-term; McKinsey predicts that between 400 million and 800 million people will be displaced from their jobs by 2030. Each recession in the capitalist cycle of boom and bust (or if we see one soon, the cycle of bust-austerity-bust) seems to be producing fewer jobs than those destroyed by layoffs. So as shocks caused by climate change continue, more and more work will be automated and we will carry on seeing “jobless recoveries.”
But this need not be a dystopian nightmare. There are left-wing arguments for the full automation of society. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand that we accelerate these tendencies to push them “beyond the acceptable parameters of capitalist social relations.” They argue that with the correct politics ensuring an equitable distribution of wealth and power, automation is a goal to strive for, as it will liberate us from the tedium of capitalist post-modernity. Automation without redistribution of wealth however would be hellish. The world could come to resemble the rentist future described by sociologist Peter Frase in his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, in which the robots are owned by the one percent who extract rent from the rest of us, there is a secular stagnation of the economy due to a complete lack of demand, so nothing improves, and despite having automated away all productive work, the rentiers create pointless busy work for people so that they have something to do and can earn a crust. This is why Srnicek and Williams add a UBI to their demands, because free time without material security is no freedom at all.
The acceleration of automation and introduction of a UBI probably wouldn’t mean the full destruction of jobs immediately. It could mean a greater sharing of working hours so that people don’t work as long, but are paid the same amount, or more if we share the proceeds of automation equitably. This shift would have drastic consequences for carbon emissions. A 2013 report from the Centre for Economic and Policy Research found that “by itself, a combination of shorter workweeks and additional vacation which reduces average annual hours by just 0.5 percent per year [in the USA] would very likely mitigate one-quarter to one-half, if not more, of any warming which is not yet locked-in.” A UBI and automation wouldn’t just afford us more free time, they might be necessary to save the planet.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development takes an ambivalent view on automation arguing that the social and economic relations guiding the automation process are what will determine its environmental impacts. Their projection for a worst-case scenario would see a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions in line with increased automation. For the theorists of automated post-capitalism like Frase, Srnicek, Williams and others like Jeremy Rifkin, the energy used by automated processes would be provided by a vast, concomitant investment in renewables. They point to the experience curve with solar energy that sees its price per unit fall with investment as evidence that an abundance of renewable energy is possible if the political will is there.
Equally, the introduction of a UBI could have ripple effects that would be felt throughout all of society and begin a process of eroding capitalism from within. Peter Frase expands on The Capitalist Road to Communism by Robert Van Der Veen and Phillip Van Parijs by arguing that a communist future could be achieved through an advanced capitalist economy introducing a UBI which would “reach a situation where all wage labour is gradually eliminated. Undesirable work is fully automated, as employers feel increasing pressure to automate because labour is no longer too cheap…with access to a basic income, workers will be less willing to accept unpleasant and low-paying jobs, and employers would have incentive to automate.” In Frase’s conception of communism, increasing public service provision as well as micro-production through 3D printing would mean that eventually even the UBI would be redundant, as the automation itself provides for people, rather than the cash. Although Frase’s communism rests on the possibly flawed assumption that we can achieve the necessary resource abundance for such widespread production, the takeaway from his book should be that UBI could start to unravel capitalism. Our ecological crisis is linked inherently to capitalism, with emissions growing rapidly since the beginning of English industrialization around 1800. Whether by revolution or dissolution, capitalism has to go if we are to address the ecological crisis: It is violating too many planetary boundaries to be able to continue. An injection of a non-reformist reform like a UBI could get the ball rolling on abandoning our failing system.
One of the defining features of the 21st century economy, is the rise of what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”, that is jobs that are so socially pointless or harmful, that even the people doing those jobs consider them to be worthless. The UBI/automation confluence would help eliminate these many of these useless jobs from the economy as they would be either automated or refused by people who, now that their wellbeing is guaranteed, felt that they could pursue more meaningful work. Equally, capitalism relies on a great deal of unpaid, undervalued care work to ensure the reproduction of society. Much of this work is gendered, with women expected to engage in social reproductive labour while the men earn larger salaries. A UBI would begin to reward this care work, thereby increasing its social value, and would, according to some feminists such as Kathi Weeks, reduce men’s working hours thereby redistributing the burden of reproductive labour more. A UBI instituted by progressive forces would help facilitate a more caring world.
The key though, is that it is instituted by the left. The UBI/automation confluence has a darker side. The prophets of Silicone Valley techno-capital, people like Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg are also advocates of basic income presumably so they can finally eliminate the welfare state and accelerate automation to increase their already vast wealth whilst insulating themselves from the rage created by absolute poverty. In this scenario emissions would continue and the tipping point would be reached and the elite would need even less labour to accumulate capital, so most people would just barely subsist on their UBI. This is precisely why the left needs to embrace UBI as a short term goal and automation as a long-term project, as they will be terrains of political struggle and we must not let the right capture them for their own. A more equal and sustainable future is a potential contained within the UBI/automation confluence, but so is a worsening inequality and climate collapse. We must fight to make sure its the former.
The UBI is not going to solve all the world’s ills. But it may be, in the words of Neal Lawson from the Compass think-tank, “the closest thing to a silver bullet” that we’ve got. People have got used to forty years of neoliberalism, in which collective living has been systematically prevented, commonwealth enclosed, and the political imagination narrowed such that the measures necessary to address the climate and ecological crisis before the biosphere collapses seem completely impossible to voters. A basic income could help rectify this by reversing a trend towards atomization and enclosure. A UBI is a resounding proclamation that wealth is co-produced by society as a collective and as such everyone deserves a share. It could help rewire our conditioning so that people see they are not a robotic homo-economicus, who deserve to live regardless of their use-value to capital. From there, we could begin to reframe politics as a series of challenges to be collectively overcome. The coronavirus pandemic is threatening neoliberal consciousness, with the state spending more than ever, the superfluousness of much high-paid work being revealed and a drop in emissions as society slows down. So, we must now boldly demand a basic income as a human right. If we can succeed in forcing through a basic income now it will be a major step forward in our fight against climate collapse.
Olly Haynes is a student of politics and French and a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in Novara Media, New Internationalist, CityMetric and other places. His Twitter is @the42question.
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