Could Bipartisan Support of UBI Jeopardize the Movement?
As our politics appear to be slowly approaching a point at which the discussion of Universal Basic Income is beginning to resemble serious (though skeptical) intrigue, the movement is surely to continue to successfully implement more Basic Income trials like those conducted recently in Canada, Finland, and California.
During this resurgence, we have often heard advocates extol the bipartisan base of support for UBI. After all, it seems like just about every UBI argument is predicated around alleviating a completely separate societal ill than the one before it.
The trendy case at the moment appears to be the framing of UBI as an answer for the coming robot revolution and the massive levels of unemployment that is sure to follow in its wake. But plenty of others favor discussions over UBI’s potential to reduce the overhead of a bloated welfare state, remedy the market’s failure to adequately value work such as childcare or artistry, assist in the transition to a new ‘utopic’ world characterized by the newfound freedom from wage slavery, or, simply, eradicating poverty once and for all.
However, understanding the fragmentation of ideology in the UBI community as a political boon to be exploited is a well-meaning but ultimately wrong-headed notion that risks jeopardizing the movement by failing to adequately consolidate it into a cohesive approach.
By ignoring the gulf which exists between progressives, who are more inclined to emphasize UBI’s promise to rectify the failures of the market as well as create a more human-focused economy, and libertarians or conservatives, who are often arriving to UBI as an alternative to any and all welfare, the wide base of support is rendered useless. Not only is this a major roadblock in a future world looking at drafting a UBI policy, which is sure to be fraught with irreconcilable differences between the two sides, but it poses a massive threat in the here and now.
As UBI’s place as a serious policy consideration is cemented, the world will be closely scrutinizing current and future pilot programs. This means that the design of these experiments, their analysis and their framing in the media will be imperative for the future of Basic Income. This is why the oft-touted diversity of support is deeply troubling.
Right-leaning supporters could encourage programs to adopt restrictive guidelines for recipients such as work requirements or drug tests. Restrictions such as those are immediately disqualifying in any pilot program seeking to accurately assess a true UBI, as it removes the component of universality and preserves the economy’s view of humans as widgets.
A push for this type of pilot is ostensibly informed by a notion of desert — a philosophical stance supporting the idea that people are deserving of various outcomes. This was most famously disputed by John Rawls, who argues that it is foolish to believe any of us are responsible for any personal condition, characteristic, or otherwise influential factor resulting in our being considered deserving of something. “No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society,” Rawls writes, in a forceful rebuttal which serves as a high-falutin version of mocking the person who “was born on third base and thought they hit a triple.”
Unfortunately Rawls’ line of thinking has yet to enlighten a certain segment of UBI supporters, who, despite their supposed support of the policy, are still unable to make peace with their ingrained Puritanical belief in ‘work for work’s sake’ and a generalized sentiment making them scoff at giving people ‘something for nothing’.
There are other, less purely ideological, pit-falls we must avoid in the design of future pilot programs. An unavoidable, but nonetheless detrimental, design flaw comes baked into the cake of any pilot program. These programs, by their nature, are temporary. Yet, one of the most crucial ingredients of UBI is its perpetuity.
A recipient’s assurance that their income checks will continue to arrive for the rest of their life is the precipitating factor which allows for long-term planning and investment. For example, a two year window of a Basic Income is certainly more favorable than no income at all, but fails to provide the sort of long term security vital in order to harness the complete potential of UBI’s effect on economic class mobility.
When pilot programs are flawed in their design, and they inevitably fail, nobody discusses the design. Instead, it’s viewed as a nail in the UBI coffin. Ontario’s early cancellation of their Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) generated a slew of negative headlines for UBI as a policy. Though if you dig in, it’s obvious that the decision to halt the study was firstly a result of a new governing party. But even more importantly, the program’s design completely missed the point of a UBI. In an incomprehensible attempt to, one must assume, satisfy skeptics, the OBIP required recipients to hand over half of their earned income to the government.
It’s clear from the fallout from the OBIP that the complete and utter failure to design a dependable and effectively incentivized program can have disastrous effects on the future of UBI. People are already dubious of what many deem to be a radical approach, so are not going to be willing to listen to excuses for apparent failures.
In future Basic Income pilots we must ensure their universality — meaning no means testing whatsoever.
Efforts should be made to defend against the possibility of a political changing-of-the-guard resulting in an abandoned experiment. Perhaps this could be accomplished by making use of a private contractor, allowing the government to pay the upfront cost of the duration of the experiment to this third-party, which can distribute the cash on the agreed upon schedule. This would prevent new administrations from reallocating resources away from the program.
The results of these studies will also rely heavily upon the way we choose to treat analysis of the data gathered, and how it is later framed. In the highly publicized analysis of the Finnish Basic Income study, headlines such as: “Finland’s ‘free cash’ experiment fails to boost employment” appeared all over the web. Shouldn’t the headline have instead relayed the fact that the experiment proved that recipients were recorded working exactly the same amount as the control group? So, instead of opponents finding evidence contrary to their fear that UBI will ‘make people lazy’, they instead glance at a headline containing ‘free cash’ and ‘fails’ and they continue on their merry way believing they’re justified in completely dismissing the policy’s effects.
These are the stakes. We find ourselves in the most promising, yet most delicate, moment in the history of the UBI movement. And we must be cautious over how we proceed. We must be intentional and deliberate in the treatment of future pilot programs, and we cannot allow a fragmented ideology — and the misguided motives of some supporters — to stop this progress dead in its tracks, and allow it to fizzle out as it has so many times before.
