The Tin Man

An Unconditional Income for Everyone

October 20th, 2013

I saw an interesting article on Business Insider today about a proposal that is being considered in Switzerland to implement an unconditional basic income for everyone living there:

Recently, there has been a spate of popular initiatives designed to curb inequality in the country. Earlier this year Swiss voters agreed to an idea proposed by entrepreneur Thomas Minder that limited executive (in his words, “fat cat”) salaries of companies listed on the Swiss stock market. Next month voters will decide on the 1:12 Initiative, which aims to limit the salaries of CEOs to 12 times the salary of their company’s lowest paid employee.

There’s a crazier proposal than this, however. Earlier this month an initiative aimed at giving every Swiss adult a “basic income” that would “ensure a dignified existence and participation in the public life of the whole population” gained enough support to qualify for a referendum. The amount suggested is 2,500 francs ($2,800) a month.

While most observers think that the vote is a longshot, it has certainly sparked debate — and not just in Switzerland. Writing for USA Today, Duncan Black said that a “minimum income” should be considered for the U.S.

“It’s pretty clear that the most efficient way to improve the lives of people is to guarantee a minimum income,” Black concludes.

I often wonder why it is that after all these years, we haven’t managed to figure out how to structure our societies in such a way where every human being on this planet could at the very least have access to the basic human needs for his entire life. Just recently I blogged about why the poor get poorer and the rich continue to get richer, and it’s very clear that this is because of the way the economic system is set up so that a constantly smaller elite benefits from what is essentially the enslavement of the rest of the population. We’ve reached a point now where this abhorrent situation of inequality is not going to be tolerated much longer, and the kinds of developments discussed in the above mentioned article clearly show this.

I also found the following information from the included interview with Daniel Straub very interesting:

BI: Why choose a minimum income rather than, say, a higher minimum wage?

DS: We are not proposing a minimum income — we are proposing an unconditional income. A minimum wage reduces freedom — because it is an additional rule. It tries to fix a system that has been outdated for a while. It is time to partly disconnect human labor and income. We are living in a time where machines do a lot of the manual labor — that is great — we should be celebrating. (*)

BI: How was the figure of 2,500 Swiss francs settled on? What standard of living does this buy in Switzerland?
DS: That depends where in Switzerland you live. On average it is enough for a modest lifestyle.

BI: What effect would you expect the minimum income to have on Swiss government expenditure?

DS: The unconditional income in Switzerland means that a third of the GDP would be distributed unconditionally. But I don’t count that as government expenditure because it is immediately distributed to the people who live in this society. It means less government power because each individual can decide how to spend the money.

BI: I’ve seen people compare it to Milton Friedman’s negative income tax, do you think that comparison works?

DS: We go a step further than Friedman with the unconditionality. This would lead to a paradigm change. Not the needy get an income from the community but everybody.

BI: There have been a variety of initiatives recently that appear to be aimed at limiting inequality in Switzerland, from the 1:12 initiative to Thomas Minder’s “against rip-off salaries” referendum. Why do you think this is happening?

DS: People seem to be unhappy with the rising inequality. The other initiatives try to put a band-aid on an outdated system. We are proposing a new system.

BI: On the surface of it, Switzerland is a good place to live, with a high quality of life, relatively high salaries, and good public services. Why do you need to take these big steps to rearrange society?

DS: Switzerland has incredible material resources. But we are not using them in a smart way. A lot of people are stressed and there is a lot of fear. Our resources don’t lead to the freedom they could. And I am not saying that this freedom is easy — but it could lead to more meaningful lives. If more people start to ask what they really want to do with their lives, Switzerland will become an even more beautiful place to live.

In a recent article on our basic needs as human beings, I discussed how unconditionally taking care of the basic needs of every single individual could lead to vastly more improved lives for everyone. This is something that futurist and social engineer Jacque Fresco often mentions. And in the age of abundance that we’re now heading into, as discussed by author Peter Diamandis in his book “Abundance” — where machines are going to be taking over a lot of the tedious work that’s now being done by humans, and where we’ll reach a level of production where it no longer makes sense to continue to maintain this current scarcity-based economic system we’re living in ¹ — unconditionally taking care of everyone’s basic needs will certainly become a reality.

And like Straub mentions this will allow for people to be freer, not only from their governments, but from everyone in general. When people are unconditionally guaranteed of being able to take care of their basic needs, then not only will they be free to pursue the things they truly and honestly love doing, but they will also feel free and be unafraid to express their true thoughts, feelings and desires. And as I mentioned in my article on being politically incorrect, this will lead to drastic changes and improvements in the world. In the situation we have right now, people mostly live in fear of what they have to lose, become hypocrites and remain politically correct as much as possible, which holds back important progress for humankind.

But ultimately, an unconditional income, as proposed in Switzerland, will just be another temporary transitional step towards a fully resource based economy as described by Jacque Fresco in The Venus Project.

Update December 2nd, 2016

Every time I read articles on basic income the writers fail to address one of the biggest threats to every individual that exists today worldwide, namely governments and the anti-social system that they’re a part of, better known as “Statism.” Once you truly understand this system, you’ll realize that no amount of free money will be able to sustainably improve life for individuals in society. Any additional freedom that’s gained will be for the short-term because of the way this anti-social system works.

I explain why and discuss the details in my post “Governments and Basic Income: Why they don’t go together.”

Footnotes

I highly recommend checking out the below presentations by Andrew McAfee on how automation and the coming machine age will change our lives.

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Additional Notes

It looks like people are hard at work trying to get an unconditional basic income implemented in all of the EU. Check out the video below for the details.

Added on January 2nd, 2014 at 4:10 pm
I recently also saw a documentary titled “Will Work for Free” that shows what will happen in the very near future — and indeed a lot is already happening right now — when it comes to automation in various industries and the impact this will have on our jobs. You really need to take the time to watch this; it’s an eye opener.

Added on January 2nd, 2014 at 4:11 pm
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had proposed the implementation of a guaranteed income to fight poverty in the USA as far back as the 1960s. This is what he said:

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the Guaranteed Income.

He also recognized that fundamental flaws in the way our societies are structured gave rise to inequality:

The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

The distribution of wealth in our societies is set up in such a way where there’s a forceful confiscation of wealth from the poor that is distributed to the rich. This is not accidental; it’s designed like that on purpose, and in fact it’s one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on humanity to enslave us all. I highly recommend reading my post Income Taxation is Slavery for the details, including the updates and references contained there.

Added on June 25th, 2014 at 4:15 pm
In Finland the debate about introducing a basic income for everyone is now ongoing:

A basic income would pay everyone in Finland a flat sum, regardless of need.

IF SOME people have their way, you might soon be receiving a monthly payment from the State of Finland. You won’t have to apply for it or prove that you need it. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you are destitute or a billionaire. Simply by living in Finland you would be eligible. This is the so-called basic income.

The basic income is designed to be paid to every person, regardless of need. In its pure form it would be enough for anyone to live frugally. With a basic income all other transfer payments would cease. There would be no more child allowances, student stipends, unemployment benefits, housing assistance, disability payments or pensions. All such programmes would be unnecessary, because every person would automatically receive enough to cover basic living expenses.

[…]

The idea for a basic income has grown in popularity in recent years due to the current moribund state of the economy. Economic futurologists such as Thomas Piketty claim that our future growth will be much less than in the past. We may have to learn to live with significant and permanently high unemployment. A great wave of automation could conceivably eliminate up to 47 per cent of all current jobs, according to a study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University. The theory is that in a world where only a minority of people have jobs we need a new system of social welfare.

Looks like a fully resource based economy is closer than we think.

Added on July 27th, 2014 at 4:16 pm
In the below presentation by Federico Pistono he discusses some research that’s been done in the past proving that the concept of a basic income could work and solve a lot of the problems we’re facing today around the world, including poverty and inequality.

Added on August 27th, 2014 at 4:17 pm
In the below interview U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network Board Member Allan Sheahen discusses the guaranteed income bill with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line.” He answers the often asked question having to do with a potential decline in incentive, and also mentions Alaska as an example where a kind of basic income is implemented and working for years now.

Added on August 27th, 2014 at 4:18 pm
In the below episode of Dutch TV program Panorama they discuss the implementation of a guaranteed basic income, including a pilot that was done in a village in Namibia that was very successful.

Also mentioned is the fact that Thomas Paine was one of the first to mention the basic income in 1795. Later Joseph Charlier also wrote about it in 1848.

Only the man whose material needs are guaranteed is independent. He who is dependent on others for his absolute needs, is a slave. — Joseph Charlier

Interestingly this is similar to what Muammar al-Qaddafi wrote in his Green Book, which I highly recommend reading.

The freedom of a human being is lacking if his or her needs are controlled by others, for need may lead to the enslavement of one person by another. Furthermore, exploitation is caused by need. Need is an intrinsic problem and conﬂict is initiated by the control of one’s needs by another. — Muammar al-Qaddafi

He further wrote:

Whoever possesses the house in which you dwell, the vehicle in which you ride or the income on which you live, possesses your freedom, or part of it. Freedom is indivisible. For people to be happy, they must be free, and to be free, they must possess the possibility of satisfying their own needs. Whoever possesses the means of fulﬁlling your needs controls or exploits you, and may enslave you despite any legislation to the contrary. The material needs of people that are basic and personal start with food, housing, clothing and transport and must be regarded as private and sacred and their satisfaction should not depend on hire. — Muammar al-Qaddaﬁ

And regarding the incentive to work — one of the arguments often used against a basic income — Qaddafi wrote the following:

Work for wages, in addition to being enslavement as previously mentioned, is void of incentives because the producer is a wage-earner and not a partner. Self-employed persons are undoubtedly devoted to their work because from it they satisfy their material needs. Likewise, those who work in a collective establishment are also devoted to their work because they are partners in it and they satisfy their material needs from the production. Whoever works for a wage, on the other hand, has little incentive to work. — Muammar al-Qaddafi

Like Qaddafi mentions, people actually have less incentive to work when they do it for a wage. With an unconditional basic income, people can take full control of their lives, do what they love doing most, and as a result will be a lot more motivated to work. This is also one of the things that’s been proven during the pilot implementation of a basic income in Namibia, as discussed in the above mentioned episode of Panorama.

Added on December 30th, 2014 at 4:20 pm
The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands plans to do a “basic income” pilot soon. Here’s from a story on The Guardian, Dutch city plans to pay citizens a ‘basic income’, and Greens say it could work in the UK (December 26th 2015):

“We don’t call it a basic income in Utrecht because people have an idea about it – that it is just free money and people will sit at home and watch TV,” said Heleen de Boer, a Green councillor in that city, which is half an hour south of Amsterdam.

Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a “small step” towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested. They will instead have the security of that cash every month, and the option to decide whether they want to add to that by finding work. The outcomes will be analysed by eminent economist Loek Groot, a professor at the University of Utrecht.

…

To those who say it is an unaffordable pipedream, Westerveld points out the huge costs that come with the increasingly tough benefits regimes being set up by western states, including policies that make people do community service to justify their handouts. “In Nijmegen we get £88m to give to people on welfare,” Westerveld said, “but it costs £15m a year for the civil servants running the bureaucracy of the current system. We will save money with a ‘basic income’.”

Horst adds: “If you receive benefits from the government [in Holland] now you have to do something in return. But most municipalities don’t have the people to manage that. We have 10,000 unemployed people in Utrecht, but if they all have to do something in return for welfare we just don’t have the people to see to that. It costs too much.”

Lucas says she will seek a parliamentary debate on the policy in the new year, and will ask the government to look into the feasibility of a “basic income” pilot here. “I think in Britain people have quite a puritanical idea of work,” she said. “But this is an urgently needed policy. With increased job insecurity, the idea of everyone working nine to five is outdated. People go in and out of work these days.” “People are increasingly working in what they call the gig economy. The current system is not fit for purpose.”

Added on January 4th, 2016 at 4:33 pm
In an article by Scott Santens titled “Deep Learning Is Going to Teach Us All the Lesson of Our Lives: Jobs Are for Machines” he writes:

If a machine can do a job instead of a human, should any human be forced at the threat of destitution to perform that job? Should income itself remain coupled to employment, such that having a job is the only way to obtain income, when jobs for many are entirely unobtainable? If machines are performing an increasing percentage of our jobs for us, and not getting paid to do them, where does that money go instead? And what does it no longer buy? Is it even possible that many of the jobs we’re creating don’t need to exist at all, and only do because of the incomes they provide? These are questions we need to start asking, and fast.

…

All of this is why it’s those most knowledgeable in the AI field who are now actively sounding the alarm for basic income. During a panel discussion at the end of 2015 at Singularity University, prominent data scientist Jeremy Howard asked “Do you want half of people to starve because they literally can’t add economic value, or not?” before going on to suggest, ”If the answer is not, then the smartest way to distribute the wealth is by implementing a universal basic income.”

AI pioneer Chris Eliasmith, director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, warned about the immediate impacts of AI on society in an interview with Futurism, “AI is already having a big impact on our economies… My suspicion is that more countries will have to follow Finland’s lead in exploring basic income guarantees for people.”

Moshe Vardi expressed the same sentiment after speaking at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about the emergence of intelligent machines, “we need to rethink the very basic structure of our economic system… we may have to consider instituting a basic income guarantee.”

Even Baidu’s chief scientist and founder of Google’s “Google Brain” deep learning project, Andrew Ng, during an onstage interview at this year’s Deep Learning Summit, expressed the shared notion that basic income must be “seriously considered” by governments, citing “a high chance that AI will create massive labor displacement.”

Added on March 16th, 2016 at 5:23 pm
From an article on CNBC, “Elon Musk: Robots will take your jobs, government will have to pay your wage” (November 4th, 2016):

“There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation,” says Musk to CNBC. “Yeah, I am not sure what else one would do. I think that is what would happen.”

…

But the optimistic Musk sees increased automation as an overall benefit to society, even an opportunity.
“People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,” says Musk. “Certainly more leisure time.”

Added on November 5th, 2016 at 9:02 am

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