Welcome to this talk tonight on Basic Income - an idea whose time has come?
This event has been organised by the local Basic Income initiative here in Leipzig, Germany.
We are a citizens' group with the aim of promoting the idea of Basic Income.
We want to make more people aware of the concept
and we want to discuss it with as many people as possible.
I am going to talk about an idea which at first seems highly unrealistic and very absurd,
which just challenges our view of society and of other things.
This whole thing, you can only get money if you give something in exchange for it,
is just turned upside down, I know, but let me just ask you a question.
What would you do if you had a basic income,
if you didn't have to worry about the money for your basic needs?
What would be different for you? What would that change for you?
Now think about your friends, your family – what would be different for them?
What would be different for us all?
About dreams and visions
Why should we talk about new ideas?
Why should we talk about ideas that seem to be unrealistic and absurd?
Why should we have dreams and visions?
Because there have always been dreams and visions!
Lets look back for a second.
For example: traveling around the globe
Why could Christopher Columbus go west?
Why could he go west at a time when most of the people were saying,
you are crazy, you can't do that!
Why could he do it anyway?
Because he had that dream, he had that vision,
he could imagine that it might be possible.
And this is true for so many things.
In fact, most of the things we have today
used to be just a dream or a vision in the past.
Look at this guy for example, he was not very likely to be successful.
But why did he even try?
Because again he had such a vision.
And today traveling by plane is absolutely normal to us.
and this applies to politics and society as well.
For example bringing down kings and dictatorships
as you can see here in the French revolution.
or the establishment of political parties and free elections.
Again, it used to be just a dream in the past.
And what I want to show with the last picture is,
that sometimes even great changes happen very quickly and surprisingly
like the end of the cold war and fall of the Iron Curtain.
But where is the connection to Basic Income here?
Maybe Basic Income is one of those crazy ideas,
one of those ideas
that are just a dream but at some point become a reality.
So, what is a Basic Income?
Before I start, I would like to show you
a couple of words you may also find in the debate.
What I call Basic Income is sometimes also called
citizen's dividend, living allowance,
guaranteed minimum income or citizen's income.
But what is a Basic Income?
A Basic Income is a payment of money
to all members of a community, like a state or a country.
It is paid from the community for the citizens of that community.
And this payment has to meet 4 criteria.
What I am using here is the definition of the German Basic Income Network.
There are other definitions out there as well,
but most of them are quite similar.
The first point is: it is paid individually.
So, it's not paid to families, it is not paid to households.
It is just paid to the individual person.
The only exception to this might be the children,
where the parents receive it on behalf of their children.
The second point is: it covers the basic cost of living,
so the Basic Income needs to be high enough.
It needs to be high enough to cover all your existential needs
like food, housing, medical care
and a minimum of social and cultural participation.
So that the Basic Income allows a decent life even without any additional income.
The third point is: there is no means testing.
Means testing means that there is an authority
checking your financial status and so on.
So, you go and you have to see people employed by the state
and they check if you are allowed to get something or not.
All of this just goes away. There is no means testing.
The last point is: there is no work requirement,
so you don't have to accept any job offers in return.
It is truly an unconditional basic income.
And what we have here is a model with an income that everyone gets.
Everyone gets the same amount as a base.
And everything you then earn, you earn in addition.
So the Basic Income is not taken away in that case.
Alright, when hearing this you might say, this is extreme, this is so radical,
what kind of people have such ideas?
Well, let me show you.
The first time people had such ideas
was in the age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century.
It was also an age in which the idea of human rights became popular,
so the idea that just because you are a human being you have certain rights.
And also at that time the concept of Natural Law became popular,
so the conept that there are certain laws that don't come from a king or any ruler
but that just come from nature or even from human nature.
And it was in this way of thinking that people said
the initial state of the world is that there is enough income for everybody.
The initial state is that nature itself provides enough income
in form of resources, land, plants, animals, rivers, forests and so on.
And they suggested, when these resources, that should belong to everbody,
are not accessible any more, then there needs to be a compensation.
For example when a king takes possession of the land
and doesn't allow hunting or farming then there needs to be a compensation.
Today we would call this privatisation, so someone uses land or resources
for his own interests, for his private profits,
then there should be a compensation.
And one man who suggested something like this was Thomas Paine.
Thomas Paine was one of the founding fathers of the United States
who also helped a lot to popularise the idea of human rights.
He suggested to use such a compensation, for example that comes
through taxation of the land, to provide a basic income for all.
But there is also a different approach to the topic
which I want to call a question of justice.
Martin Luther King, and many people don't know that,
was also a supporter of Basic Income.
When he lived he analysed the society he lived in and he critisized.
He critisized that on the one hand there is so much wealth,
abundance of goods and prosperity whereas on the other hand there is still poverty,
existential poverty right in the middle of our society.
How can that be? And he claimed, when productivity is so high
then poverty is not an economic issue any more but just a political one,
then poverty is just a question of distribution.
His criticism was that politicians so far
have always tried to solve poverty by first solving something else.
And instead of this indirect way he suggested, just do it directly.
Give the assistence, give the benefits directly to the people.
And the best way to do that would be a guaranteed basic income for all.
The next slide might surprise you. Is there a connection
between Basic Income and liberalism, maybe even neoliberalism?
Liberalism, to put it in one sentence, is the concept of limited government,
a state with little bureaucracy, free trade and free people.
And it is in this kind of mindset that some liberals suggest:
instead of having a welfare system that is not really efficient,
that is not really transparent,
we simply cut all social benefits and implement a basic income for all.
I would add we cut all social benefits to the amount of the basic income,
as there might still be special needs for some above the basic income.
But what we then get is a system that is highly efficient
in the way that everyone who really needs it, really gets it
and we would have a system with much less bureaucracy,
a system that would be much simpler and transparent in the way
that it would be easier to understand.
Another point here is, what do managers say to this?
If I were a manager I could easily say, Basic Income sounds great.
If there is a Basic Income then I don't need any minimum wages,
I don't need any work regulations, I don't need any job protections.
I can just in a very flexible way hire and dismiss people the way I want to.
And when I dismiss someone, I am not even the bad guy, because the people still have their basic income.
Let me make one thing very clear: Basic Income does not necessarily mean to abolish all other social benefits.
But there is a certain point to the flexibility.
The jobs of the future are more likely to be project based than today.
So groups of people come together for a certain period of time, work on a certain project
and when the project is done, they separate again.
A Basic Income could provide the necessary security for that kind of flexible working.
To put it in other words a Basic Income could be the response
to a labour market that's becoming more and more flexible anyway.
Let me make one last point here, especially when talking about neoliberalism and Basic Income.
The amount of money is absolutely crucial, it is absolutely important that the Basic Income is high enough.
If the Basic Income was not high enough,
then it would just support the low-pay sector and put even more pressure on wages
and this is not what we want to achieve with Basic Income.
In fact, there is a close link between Basic Income and Emancipation.
Emancipation here means the process of obtaining self-determination and personal freedom.
Some people say as long as there is not at least a basic financial protection,
you can at any time be forced though money to do things.
You just need a financial protection for example in form of a Basic Income to really live your own life,
to choose freely how to live your work life, your family life, your private life, maybe even your political life.
And it is in that way we can understand freedom.
Freedom is not you can do whatever you want, first and foremost it is you don't have to do what you don't want to do,
and so we understand that slogan "free from work is free to work".
When you don't have to work then you are free to work, you are free to do the work that you choose to do.
And some people even hope that a Basic Income might lead
to more economic democracy and to more participation in decision-making.
Let's talk about technology for a second - Is there a future for today's jobs?
Ever since industrialisation has started 200 years ago,
people asked themselves what is going to happen when our work is done by machines?
The response to that from established economics is, well that's just structural change,
We have seen a massive change from an agricultural society towards an industrialised society.
Some people even call what we have today a service society,
as most jobs are already based on services, not on industrial production any more.
So it seems that we have to ask that question again. What is going to happen when Our work is done by machines?
Already today we have factories with only a very small number of people, but with a lot of technology and robots.
and in every major company there is a department for research and development
and the only have one aim: to make things more productive, more efficient.
And this usually means to take a machine or software instead of people.
And every time when they make a new invention something really strange happens:
in one department, so in that department, people are happy and proud of their new success;
the managers come and congratulate on the new machine, the new software whatever,
but in all the other departments people complain, people are angry and say
why do we have to go now, why do we lose our jobs (and our income)?
What we need to understand is that this kind of problem is in fact a success story.
I think it is a success story when automation, rationalisation and more and more technology
take away the work that's been hard, dangerous, ineffective or simply inconvenient.
And what we see today is that as we create more intelligent software, more intelligent machines and robots,
the speed of this whole process continues to increase. So that we ultimately have to ask one question:
What is the future of our jobs and of our society when the smartest people we have
do nothing but research how to replace human beings with machines.. ?!
To round this up I would like to introduce two persons to you.
On the left handside a farmer from the middle ages which I would like to call the self-supplier.
On the right handside also a farmer but from nowadays which I call the external supplier.
Some people say the concept of a basic income is crazy because naturally everyone is responsible for his own life
and so for his own income (and you work for your income, don't you?)
Let's have a closer look at this. The economy and labour market of today are highly specialised.
So whenever someone is working today, he is not working for himself, not for his own needs, but for someone else's.
Whatever job I have today, I always work for the interests of others.
And this means when I don't work for what I need then I am completely dependent on the work of others.
I am completely dependent on other people all the time.
This idea that I am responsible for my own income, that I work for my own income goes back to the self-supplier.
For him this was true. He really was working so he had an income, he really was working so that he had something to eat.
Today it still seems like that because of the money, because you get paid for work.
But in fact even the farmer is not a self-supplier any more. Even for the farmer this is not true.
He also sells his products and takes the money to buy something in the next shop.
And this is true for all of us. We are all external suppliers working for the needs of others.
Lets make this visual for a second: think of your income not in terms of money
but in terms of what you actually buy for it, in terms what you actually buy and use.
Imagine you put everything you buy in one month on a table, all the food, clothes,
just everything you spend money for in one month. How would that table look like?
You see: it has all been made by others for you. That is your real income, the stuff you can actually really use.
So maybe it's time to think about the connection between work and income in a new way.
Let's come to a more practical aspect and talk about finances.
Can we afford a Basic Income? I know we are talking about a lot of money here
and of course that needs calculations and implementation models done by economists which by the way already exist.
But we can already answer that question "Can we afford a Basic Income?"
We can answer it when we think about the purpose again,
when we think about what we actually need it for, what we want it for.
So instead of asking "can we afford a basic income?"
we could also ask, can we afford that everyone in our society has enough to eat,
has a place to live, has access to medical care, and a minimum participation in society?
And when you think about it in those terms, I am pretty sure, we can afford that.
What are the costs of a Basic Income?
Well, we need to understand one thing, a Basic Income will not lead to everyone suddenly having more money,
we can only use the money that is already there.
The costs are not as high as you might think because at least in top and middle salaries
the basic income will become a part of today's income.
And considering all the benefits we already have today and we could then cut, the more important question is:
How much more does it cost than today? And to answer that question we need to ask "Who would be better off than today?"
I mean who would directly, in terms of money, be better of than today?
And that is easy to answer, a Basic Income will directly affect all those who have less than a basic income today.
In the end it's that gap we have to close, to make sure that there is a lower bound
saying nobody in our society should have less than that. … fair enough, but where does the money come from?
Like any other social benefit, a basic income can only be funded through taxation.
These are the options. There can be taxes on income, on consumption,
on energy, on property, on financial transactions and there are even more ideas.
I think, it is really worth discussing which taxes are reasonable and which are not.
My personal hope is that we get a taxation system
that is a lot simpler than what we have today and that is more transparent.
But this is a question that is not directly connected to basic income and can be answered differently in different countries.
One could as well just integrate it in the current system of taxation.
But I think it is a good opportunity to think about our system of taxation in general as well when talking about Basic Income.
Let's say we wanted a Basic Income, how could we implement it?
The first question we have to ask is, do we want to implement it all at once
or step by step with an amount increasing over the years?
Maybe we want to implement it group by group for example via pilot projects beginning in certain cities or regions.
We could also start with a certain generation
saying everyone born in next year and later just grows up with a Basic Income.
We could also start with the pensioners implementing something like a minimum pension.
Some people also suggest, if there is someone who really can't be blamed for beeing poor
then it is the children, why not start with an unconditional child benefit for all children?
What are the hopes connected to Basic Income? Let's ask that question.
What would a Basic Income mean to for example single mothers and fathers,
family members providing home care, the self-employed or any other group of society?
What would it mean to you?
And for society as a whole, what would it mean for gender justice,
freedom of ideas, self-determination, lifestyle choices for everyone?
What do you think? What's your opinion?
There are still so many open questions and we should really start discussing them.
So, for now, let me just finish with this quote from Victor Hugo:
”Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.“