I would like to introduce the first of our two speakers in this session
this is a person who was one of the founding members
of the Basic Income European Network,
which is now the Basic Income Earth Network made back in 1986
and who wrote the book "Real Freedom For All —
What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism?"
turns out it's only basic income can do it.
(Sorry to give away the ending there)
he is also professor at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve
and he is seated to my right, his name is Philippe Van Parijs.
(Philippe Van Parijs): In order to move forward
we need two things at least:
one is the vision and the other one
is opportunism.
A vision of the future that is both desirable and feasible.
Desirable in the sense that it can be defended in front of everyone
not just on the basis of our specific tastes or interests
and feasible in the sense of sustainable all things considered —
not in the sense of politically feasible, here and now.
In order to make the vision of the future feasible, we need opportunism.
We need to seize opportunities
and we won't seize these opportunities without a close collaboration between two sorts of people.
on the one hand, those I call the "botteurs de culs" — the buttkickers
and on the other hand the "bricoleur" — the thinkers or the fiddlers.
So we need two things : vision and opportunism
and to seize the opportunities we need two categories of people.
First, militants who push forward possibly with unrealistic proposals but driven by a sense of injustice
and on the other hand the people think about how to modify the system
to find the little crevices, the little spots where movement, where progress could be the introduced.
Of course most of these opportunities today can only be seized
where most of the action is, in terms of social policy, which is at national level.
And that`s the level at which most of the meaningful, concrete debates need to take place.
For example the debate alluded to several times this morning about the partial basic income.
The discussion is not a discussion between partial basic income and full basic income.
I personally I'm in favor, including as argued in that book
in favor of the highest sustainable basic income on a scale that is largest politically imaginable.
That's the ultimate objective.
but meaningful discussion is not about partial basic income vs. full basic income.
The meaningful discussion as already hinted at by several today is between, say,
the next step consisting in a partial basic income versus the one proposed by Ronald (Blaschke)
consisting in sort of a full basic income for children and young people
and keeping things as there are for all the others
or as proposed by the European Anti-Poverty Network: an adequate generous minimum income
that would remain family-related and means-tested.
These are discussions which need to be conducted in each particular context
and the answer that is appropriate say for Germany
is not necessarily the one that's most appropriate for Greece
where there may be more urgent things to do than
say a partial basic income or basic income for children
and not the same as in Brazil or Ireland etc. etc.
But what I want to talk about today briefly is something that can be done
and that should be done in my view at a level of power that has emerged in matters of social policy only recently
namely the European Union.
and it is therefore something that this particularly relevant for the new network that is about to be born.
I tested the idea at the BIEN congress in Munich nearly two years ago
and then I published a short paper presenting the idea under the title "The Eurodividend"
a small paper that has then subsequently been translated into a number of languages.
What do I propose there?
I propose the introduction of the basic income
as an income that is strictly individual, unconditional, universal
at the level of the European Union
and funded essentially by VAT (value-Added Tax) of 19% which is about 10% of European GDP.
Why do I propose that? For 4 reasons which I'll quickly sketch.
The first reason, in a sense that the opportunity that is being created, is the sustainability
the stabilization of the Eurozone.
Before the euro was born economists, in particular American economists said:
"You are crazy Europeans! This is never going to work!
Our dollar works for all 50 states
despite the great differences between the states in their economic development and economic fate,
it works because we have two powerful stabilizing mechanisms.
One of them is migration between states
and the other one is transfers across states, organized at the federal level.
You don't have those!"
Migration is about six times higher between states in the United States
than it is today between the member states of the European Union.
And transfers across states - depending on how they are monitored
are between 20 and 40 times larger in the US than in the EU.
So the American economists from the left to the right,
from Milton Friedman to Amartya Sen were warning:
You are crazy! This is never going to work!
And in Europe people said: "mind your own business!"
You don't want the Euro to compete with the dollar,
you want to keep using the dollar as the only major reserve currency in the world
and you try to prevent us from doing what's in our interest.
Now of course people have more hearing for that
and realized that something needs to be done, that something like a stabiliser is needed.
Now the stabilizer we will realize in Europe
will never be migration to the same extent as in the US
for one main reason, not the only one, which is that we have so many different native tongues
and therefore migrating from says, Athens to Munich, is quite a different experience though the distance is not larger,
quite a different experience from migrating from Detroit to Austin, Texas.
So we need the other mechanism absolutely indispensable for the stabilisation of the euro :
And that other mecanism is (financial) transfers across member states.
and the form it should take, if it is to be generous and sustainable,
is not the form of "Finanzausgleich" — that is of a transfer from one state to another one
but it should take the form of "Soziale Sicherheit" — a form of interpersonal transfer across the borders,
something of course that has never happened in the history of mankind
but which is indispensable for the survival of the eurozone.
That's the argument number one.
Argument number two says: well, we don't only need migration, interstate migration
it is not only improbable on the massive level, like in the US
It is also undesirable, precisely because of the diversity of languages and cultures
thus integration is a far costlier process in Europe than it is in the United States.
Costlier both for the people who have to move
and for the communities that have to welcome them.
And a basic income on the European level would be the stabiliser of the population,
it would enable people in Bulgaria or in Romania and in other places in the world
not to be forced to move to the more affluent cities in Europe ;
and be able to stay, with a smaller income
but with a greater quality of life, closer to their families, closer to their roots.
So second argument is the stabilisation of the population which itself is desirable.
it's not that free movement of people is not beneficial in many cases
but it shouldn't be the sort of forced movement
where people are driven by the inability to live and minimally decent life in their own place.
That's argument number two.
Argument number three is of general sort,
and something that we have seen coming for quite a few decades now
it is the inversion of the relationship between the market and democracy.
In the past our ideal of the world
was one in which we saw the market playing its role,
but within the framework of democracies that set the rules of the market game.
Increasingly what has happened as a result of globalization
and more acurately as a result of the single market with its four fundamental freedoms
is that is no longer the market that is embedded within a democracy
but it's a set of democracies that are submerged in the market
and submitted to the rules of the market, competing with each others in terms of competitiveness,
in the way in which firms use to do when still do.
So states are transformed into firms.
And of course one implication of that, among many,
is that it becomes increasingly difficult for our nation states to do,
what some of them didn't do too badly in the past, which is redistribution.
Because today because you are immersed in the larger market,
if you have a generous redistribution system, where you tend to lose the net contributors
and you tend to attract the net beneficiaries,
so the system thereby making your welfare state more fragile.
So argument number three is that we need to organize,
if you want to keep these four fundamental freedoms, the freedom of movement of the people
at least part of the redistribution must operate on a larger scale.
Fourth and last argument can be formulated as follows.
It's often said that the legitimacy of the European Union, which is now under threat,
will only be sort of reinstated, will only be revived through results.
Results, results, results.
Its not by the changes of the institutions or all singing the European anthem
but by doing things for the people.
But doing things for the people that's not trying to implement TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership)
free trade arrangement with the United States with a vague promise of 0.4 percent increase in growth
and God knows whom this growth will benefit.
No.
Results also means and must mean in the first place today, as was well put also by the EAPN's representative today,
we need a caring Europe.We need a Europe that is perceived as caring by the citizens.
And it can only be a caring Europe, if it provides an envelope, a floor, a secure floor to the people.
And its only in that way that the European Union will regain the hearts and the allegiance of these people,
if it is perceived in a tangible way, as doing something that is fair to all the people
and not only the economically more powerful among Europeans
So these are the four basic arguments in favor of the Eurodividend.
Are there objections to this proposal?
Of course there are objections, hundreds of objections to it
just as there are thousands of objections to the the basic income in general
During the 30 years I have been fighting for the idea, arguing in favor of the idea,
I certainly must have heard about 1,584 objections to it.
But of course there are many and they need to be answered.
Some of them are serious objections and I'm sure you will raise some of them later today.
Given that I have only 45 seconds left
I'll just mention one objection which I tackle briefly
in the very last paragraph of the paper in which I present this idea — which you can easily find on the web.
Last objection is: is this not utopian?
Of course it is.
in the sense in which the European Union itself was utopian, until not so long ago
and also in the sense in which the social security system was utopian
before Bismarck put together its first building blocks at the end of the 19th century.
But Bismarck did not create his pension system out of the kindness of his heart.
He did so because people started mobilizing in favour of radical reforms across the whole of the Reich.
He was trying to unify.
What are we waiting for?
Thank you!
[Kudos Vahur Luhtsalu for the subtitles]