Why the Left’s Next Best Step Is a Basic Income
Trump’s victory has left many progressives asking the same question: what do we do now?
With proposals ranging from running for office, expanding existing coalitions, to building a new third party, leftists have written countless articles over the past two months attempting to answer this pressing question. Dissent co-editor Michael Kazin accurately calls for two main actions: 1) increase and strengthen grassroots movements and 2) join forces with the Democratic Party and realize its leftist potential. While the Democratic Party is not exactly radical, Bernie Sanders’ increasing popularity shows the real possibility of pushing the party in a more radical direction and its ability to mobilize a large number of people, in contrast to less effective third parties.
The ‘what’ may be clear — engage in mass mobilization and push the Democratic Party more left — but the ‘how’ is less obvious. How do we create a Left that energizes large segments of the population, appeals to diverse groups of people, enables the most vulnerable to be heard, and provides an alternative to current discourse?
The answer lies with a simple policy tool — a basic income (BI). A BI is a universal, unconditional grant given to all individuals without means-testing and regardless of job status or income. While a BI may not solve all of the Left’s problems, it would achieve two crucial aims: 1) mobilize the masses by unifying diverse groups of people and most importantly, offering them hope, and 2) empower individuals to question the status quo, contribute to social movements, and engage in counter-hegemonic efforts showing another world is possible.
We must see Trump’s win as our chance to rebuild and re-envision the Left, and a BI is a pragmatic tool that would enable us to do so.
1. Basic Income and Rallying the Working-Class
Many leftists call for the working-class to organize. However, in today’s modern capitalist society, the ‘working-class’ is not a homogenous group with all of the same interests. With identity politics on the rise, the working-class has become increasingly divided; it is highly diverse in terms of occupation, status, wages and salaries, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, to name a few. Michael Walzer claims one of the “historical tasks” of the Left is to figure out how to unify the vulnerable, how to get them to see themselves as a “class in formation”.
How do we find common ground amongst such different groups of people, with seemingly diverse interests and goals? How do we simultaneously inspire an undocumented immigrant and a manufacturing worker whose job was recently outsourced?
A BI offers the widespread appeal the Left has been seeking. Whether you’re black, white, Latina, Asian, Native American or Pacific Islander, gay, straight, trans or genderqueer, disabled or caretaker, manufacturing worker, retired person, or single working parent, attaining a financial cushion with no strings attached is a game-changer for most in the working-class and in vulnerable positions. Reasons for supporting a BI may differ, ranging from putting food on the table to being able to come out without risking destitution. While the motives may vary, a BI nevertheless generates far-reaching support that consequently brings together an increasingly diverse mass of people.
A BI is unique in that it offers hope — hope that there is a way out of poverty and that life could be about flourishing rather than survival.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be heated exchanges about specifics or the policy in general. Personally, I’ve had my fair share of debates with radical and liberal colleagues about the advantages and drawbacks of a BI. Despite this, the discussions were mostly constructive, not polarizing, and often centered on logistics like ensuring a livable income. If anything, such talks taught both sides the importance of compromise and reminded us we shared the same goals of human dignity and societal well-being.
Most importantly, the Left needs to not only unify, but also inspire the working-class. A BI is unique in that it offers hope — hope that there is a way out of poverty and that life could be about flourishing rather than survival. If these past several elections have taught us anything, hope is what mobilizes people. Calling out capitalism and the system may unify certain segments of the working-class, but at the end of the day, it is positive alternatives, hopeful messages that energize the masses and propel movements. A BI is a concrete policy that offers people tangible results. It is easy for the working-class to envision the life-changing impact a BI would have on their daily lives, and this alone inspires. A BI gives the Left the tools it needs to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the people.
As seen in November’s elections, the Left can no longer do its ‘same-old’ tactics; mobilizing the masses requires new strategies and tools. A BI provides the Left a simple yet powerful policy in which to rally and motivate the working-class that transcends difference and identity politics.
2. Basic Income and Creating Radical Change
A BI is a useful tool for rallying the working-class, but how would it benefit the Left after it was implemented?
Once attained, a BI would empower individuals otherwise unable, especially working-class women, to participate politically and contribute to the Left in meaningful ways. To illustrate this point, I will first look at the harmful effects of financial scarcity on the working-class’ time and cognitive resources. I will then show the importance of tackling these two inequalities via a BI. Specifically, I argue that a BI provides the working-class the opportunity to 1) critically question and reflect on the status quo, 2) participate in and lead democratic movements, and 3) contribute to building alternatives. Given these effects, a BI has the potential to play a major role in reinvigorating the Left and building a mass-led, egalitarian alternative.
Financial Scarcity, Time, and Cognitive Inequalities
Material deprivation has many consequences; however, reductions in cognitive functioning and time are often overlooked. In 2013, researchers discovered that “poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity” — for instance, the poor’s ability to think abstractly and problem-solve. This is due to the mentally burdensome nature of financial scarcity, including having “to manage sporadic income, juggle expenses, and make difficult trade-offs”. Alarmingly, they find financial scarcity can have the same effects on cognitive functioning as sleep deprivation and intoxication — lowering a person’s IQ points by roughly 13 points.
Tirado explains “just how fucking impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever.”
Scarcity effectively reduces a person’s ‘mental capacity’ — what authors of Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives call “bandwidth”. They find scarcity places a so-called “tax” on a person’s bandwidth in which they are less able to plan for the future and can only concentrate on the scarcity at hand, often leading to the neglect of other important life matters.
Author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, Linda Tirado powerfully demonstrates this mentally all-consuming nature of poverty in her firsthand discussion of what it’s like to be a member of America’s working poor. Tirado explains “just how fucking impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever.” She uses the example of how a simple flooding of her apartment led to losing her job, home, and car. In times of financial scarcity, having to focus on one urgent matter at the cost of another can have disastrous consequences. This financial scarcity causes stress and cognitive overload, resulting in “psychological scarring”. Being able to think beyond immediate poverty-related concerns is a privilege not often enjoyed by the working-class.
In addition to reduced cognitive capacity, financial scarcity also adversely affects the working-class’ leisure time. In a 2012 study, researchers claim there has been a redistribution of leisure time from the rich to the poor over the past 40 years. Some took this as proof that the rich “work a lot harder” and that the poor are “bumming around more”. A few years earlier, The Economist even questioned whether activists fighting for fewer work hours should “stop talking about the poor” and instead “focus on the beleaguered wealthy, oppressed by the laws of economics”.
Can the vacation of a CEO really be compared to the day-off of a McDonald’s employee whose mind is preoccupied with paying the next heating bill or her child’s hospital visit?
These assumptions are clearly generalized and uninformed. Even when the working-class has time off, people are frequently stressed about financial burdens and poverty-related concerns. The aforementioned study examines the quantity of leisure time but fails to grasp the quality of it. Can the vacation of a CEO really be compared to the day-off of a McDonald’s employee whose mind is preoccupied with paying the next heating bill or her child’s hospital visit? I doubt whether such time can even be categorized as ‘leisure’.
In Guy Standing’s book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, he also analyzes the importance of time, specifically in relation to the precariat — an emerging social class characterized by insecurity. He puts forth the concept of “tertiary time” in which there is “a blurring of workplaces, home spaces, public spaces” in modern industrialized society. Standing claims the current system places incessant demands on the precariat’s time, from training, developing skills, constant multitasking, waiting in lines, to holding multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Constantly working, the precariat “loses control over time”. Leisure time is thus a rare luxury — one rarely afforded to the working-class.
While these inequalities in time and cognitive capacity are problems in themselves, they are even greater for working-class women. Patriarchal norms and the gendered division of labor lead to the expectation that women will take on unequal burdens of care work. For example, women are allegedly more ‘nurturing’, so it’s ‘natural’ for them to take care of the kids. In The Precariat, Standing describes the emergence of a “triple burden”, in which many women go to work, take care of the home and children, and attend to the elderly. This clearly requires a great deal of time, energy and resources. As many caretakers will tell you, it is a 24/7 job.
In her book, Linda Tirado asserts there is a never-ending “time crunch”, which her routine makes clear:
I get up at 6AM, go to school…then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12:30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I’m in bed by 3.
This offers only a glimpse into the time-intensive daily schedules of working-class women. Care work adds a whole new dimension to the mental and cognitive overload they face. Despite the importance of care work to the functioning of society, it remains largely unpaid and undervalued; this results in care workers, mainly women, not receiving adequate money, time, recognition, and emotional support. When consumed with poverty-related concerns, lacking a financial cushion makes care work that much more burdensome and difficult to balance.
The working-class, especially women, consequently suffers not only material deprivation, but also significant inequalities in cognitive functioning and time. Before I delve into why this should be of major concern to the Left, let’s first see why a BI is the most effective tool for addressing such inequalities.
Basic Income
If financial scarcity is what causes cognitive overload, why not eliminate poverty altogether through a financial cushion?
We need welfare tools that don’t demand significant cognitive resources from recipients. What could be simpler than a BI — a monthly check, no strings attached? When I applied for food stamps and Medicaid this past year, it required a lengthy, detailed application and a phone interview. This might not seem like much, but when you’re ill and stressed about money, any added mental burdens can push you to your breaking point. In New America, Olivia Barrow proposes a BI for this exact reason: to eliminate financial deprivation in a way that is the least taxing cognitively.
A BI would also make great strides in addressing leisure time inequalities. Individuals would no longer have to accept multiple jobs to make ends meet or be bogged down by money worries; leisure time would have the potential to actually be relaxing. A BI would combat both time inequality and the precariat’s overwhelming feelings of stress.
A BI would also enhance time to engage in care work. Individuals could even opt for part-time employment or reject wage-labor altogether and devote their time to care work. Because a BI is granted to all, it also makes an important step in recognizing the importance of unpaid work — in particular, care work — and acknowledging that societal contributions come in many forms, not just paid labor.
Overall, a BI provides the financial cushion needed to access genuine leisure time and to fully utilize a person’s cognitive abilities. With a BI, the working-class would have the time and mental space to more easily think abstractly, plan long-term, and live a more fulfilling life.
Why Does It Matter?
So, poverty is bad for time and cognitive functioning, and a BI is a solution. But why should the Left go out of its way to tackle these issues in particular? Below are three implications of addressing these inequalities via a BI that are critical to the Left’s ability to create momentum and build an egalitarian, democratic alternative.
1. Raises Systemic Consciousness
When the system forces people to focus on merely surviving, questioning the system at large is often at the bottom of their worry list. Just as rest is what Tirado calls a “luxury for the rich”, so is thinking abstractly about an unjust system. Even for those who understand that the current system exploits them, they may not have the resources or energy to question its existence. Especially for single working mothers, personal time is almost non-existent; caring about capitalist oppression may be too energy-intensive and time-consuming.
Karl Marx’s theoretical proposition that workers would unite against capitalists assumes that individuals have the time, energy, and cognitive resources to do so.
If some individuals are only able to focus on their financial scarcity, which can lead to a drop in problem-solving and abstract thinking capacities, how are workers expected to question and revolt against the system? Tirado admits that her exhaustion and preoccupation with other concerns “wasn’t great for higher cognitive activity. I stopped thinking about higher concepts…no philosophy, no music, no literature.” Karl Marx’s theoretical proposition that workers would unite against capitalists assumes that individuals have the time, energy, and cognitive resources to do so.
A BI, on the other hand, provides the material basis to support the development of systemic consciousness — primarily by freeing up time and enhancing cognitive capacity. People would have the mental and physical energy needed to engage with political ideas and alternatives. In The Precariat, Standing similarly argues that a BI is needed to offer the precariat the energy and time to deliberate and think.
This is not to say that once a BI is put in place, everyone will start questioning capitalism and join the resistance. It is, however, highly possible that with a financial cushion and the ability to think beyond immediate concerns, many people will engage in self-development and potentially question the status quo. Offering people more time and mental space is essential to developing a mass consciousness of the capitalist system, and a BI holds the key to doing so.
2. Democratizes Social Movements
In terms of time, cognitive, and material resources, activist work in itself is costly. As many of us know all-too-well, burnout is a common problem. Adding cognitive overload, care burdens, and financial worries to an activist’s already overwhelming workload may create barriers that make it increasingly difficult for some members of the working-class to contribute. For example, Tirado quit community organizing because she lacked the time and financial safety net to afford the low base salary.
For those of us advocating grassroots movements, this lessened capacity to participate is a serious problem. In her book, Tirado discusses how the poor already “have too many disasters and their own immediate future to worry about” some “political pet project”. She goes on to say “[e]nvironmental concerns, campaign financing, civic engagement writ large” are “luxury worries for people with time and influence”. Although aware of larger issues like climate change, she cites simply not having the “time or energy to worry about macro concerns”.
This isn’t to say that the working-class isn’t already greatly involved or that local groups aren’t already taking great initiative in being inclusive. It should, however, be a wake-up call. We must be aware of the inequalities preventing some people from participating and take the needed steps to accommodate affected individuals. Such action is key to developing a truly democratic, egalitarian alternative in which all voices are heard.
If we want a democratic alternative, we need to make sure that ‘the people’ can actually participate.
A BI would support this greater democratization of social movements. By freeing up the working-class’ time and mental space, they would have a greater capacity to contribute. A BI “provides a basic subsidy to all kinds of activism and political participation”and thus has the capacity to be “capitalist-eroding”. A revolution is much more likely to commence when everyone has the temporal and cognitive tools to contribute to social movements underpinning egalitarian change. If we want a democratic alternative, we need to make sure that ‘the people’ can actually participate.
3. Supports the Development of Egalitarian Counter-Hegemony
‘Counter-hegemony’ is an alternative discourse that a subaltern class develops in order to overthrow the ruling class’ hegemonic ideology. This is a simplistic view of a complex Gramscian concept, but the main point is to understand that it challenges the dominant ideology and provides an alternative that appeals to and involves the masses.
In order to effectively overturn the neoliberal capitalist order, we need to win the realm of ideas. In order to do so, we require mass support and involvement. We must show and convince the masses that another alternative is feasible. However, without a financial safety net, many members of the working-class may be too tired, busy or focused on immediate concerns to get involved in our counter-hegemonic efforts. With limited time, many cannot afford to spread themselves thinner than they already are. Disillusioned and frustrated, others may simply see no alternative to the current system and no point in using scarce temporal and cognitive resources to struggle against it.
Clearly, many members of the working-class are involved in such efforts; however, many more could be if we instituted a BI. A BI empowers individuals to reject exploitative wage-paid labor for other forms of work, including engaging politically and contributing to economic cooperatives. With extra time, some may even get involved in building alternative media forums. Above all, it supplies people the time and cognitive resources to invest themselves in developing alternatives; this is vital to our showing that inequality and capitalist structures are not the only option and that a more egalitarian, just world is possible.
A BI offers us a path forward — one that can be built on unification, hope, and inclusion and consequently, inspire mobilization and action.
Headlines increasingly question whether a BI is an idea whose ‘time has come’. While this may be true, this is also the Left’s time — to rebuild, re-envision, rally, and make radical change. As seen by much of the working-class’ lack of excitement around Hillary Clinton and their current disillusionment with Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’, it’s clear we need a message of hope grounded in concrete action. A BI offers us a path forward — one that can be built on unification, hope, and inclusion and consequently, inspire mobilization and action. We need a BI to free up the working-class’ cognitive and time resources to build mass-led movements capable of making long-lasting change. A BI is our best chance to achieve our goals — mobilizing the masses, providing alternatives, offering hope, and pushing the Democratic Party’s platform toward the left.
Our ‘what’ and our ‘how’ are clear — it’s up to us to take action and rally around the radical potential of a basic income.
