Annie Lowrey

The ideas definitely have merit, right up until it comes time to pay for them, and then it reverts to the age-old habit of offering up the US defense budget for the ax. Granted, the defense budget is huge and bloated, but politically I don't see it happening. The concept is sound and beats most alternatives that I have read about. One question - those that are now suffering at the low end of the economic spectrum would likely be very grateful for such a thing, and no doubt it would help countless families and individuals. But if it is to become a permanent thing, what happens when those who have never experienced the same problem in the same way start receiving this benefit? What will be the effect? Will they understand why they are receiving it, or will it become a right rather than a privilege? Just askin'...… (mehr)

The concept of a Universal Basic Income has been around in various forms for quite a while, but it's become more politically relevant recently for several reasons: rapid technological change combined with international supply chains, growing global wealth yet widening inequality, and the sense that not only do we now have the social structure to truly end poverty forever, but that the best tool is also the simplest. There are many examples in miniature of what a UBI could look like; Lowrey covers both historical and recent programs in places like India, Kenya, and Alaska to explore what has worked to reduce poverty, and what has not. For example, delivering unconditional cash grants via India's Aadhaar program (a vast biometric digital identity scheme tied to pensions, banking, census, and various welfare functions) has had many of the intended poverty reduction benefits, but at the cost of great disruption to established patterns of life; requiring that individuals receive their benefits themselves reduces fraud, but sometimes the system crashes, or someone can't send their relative to pick up the money and has to take off work, or they can't make the side deals they used to. That kind of James Scott's Seeing Like a State central control vs local knowledge stuff would be critical in any kind of implementation, both between countries (would a UBI dramatically increase illegal immigration from countries without them?) and within them (would poor people just waste a non-means tested UBI or otherwise stop entering the labor market?), so even beyond the philosophical question of "should we?", the "how exactly?" question remains.

Science fiction has dealt with these questions for a long time, so in addition to the extensive analysis of real pilot programs, Lowrey touches on what, if anything we can learn from those explorations in terms of program design. The founding text for modern sci-fi worlds of plenty is probably Keynes' famous 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren", where he accurately predicted that by 2030 we'd be between 4 and 8 times as rich as in 1930 but inaccurately predicted that we'd all therefore choose to work much less. Star Trek is the most famous fictional example of a society that has solved the "economic problem" and allowed people to work for fun rather than out of necessity, but the questions of how one would actually acquire wine from Picard's family vineyard or gumbo from Sisko's restaurant were usually left offscreen (Manu Saadia's pleasingly nerdy Trekonomics is cited at length). For a different take I wish she had also discussed Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, in which free replicators simply increase inequality, a fantastically wealthy overclass taking full advantage of technological cornucopia while the proles squander their dole in a manner familiar to Dickens. I think the question of whether free money corrodes the work ethic is an empirical question, and as Lowrey shows, while of course some people in Alaska do spend their free money on luxuries, the idea that most or even many people would waste precious funds is more fantastical than Star Trek, where everyone is an amateur archaeologist or chef or what have you.

There are even some conservatives, like Charles Murray, who advocate a UBI as a replacement for the existing welfare state precisely because it maximizes personal choice in that way, and is not susceptible to the familiar incentive-warping problems of means-tested programs: if a program like Medcaid is only available to those with an income less than $X, the strong incentive not to make more than $X can end up entrenching poverty rather than reducing it, to say nothing of how complex overlapping benefits programs are. However, the seemingly more dystopian concept of a federal jobs guarantee seems to be competing for mindshare as the preferred solution for poverty, particularly among liberals. I haven't seen a jobs guarantee show up in fiction to a great degree, but as Nick Taylor's superb history American Made shows, in the real world America still depends to a surprising degree on the infrastructure built during the Great Depression by the Works Progress Administration, the first real experiment with guaranteed jobs. The two concepts need not be opposed - I don't see why people couldn't choose to supplement their UBI by also accepting a government job - but it is striking that a UBI seems much more popular among intellectuals than a jobs guarantee, given the historical record of each. Perhaps the worry is that guaranteed jobs could become mandatory jobs, combining the worst aspects of the medieval corvée with Soviet subbotniks. A UBI seems much more difficult to run poorly than a jobs guarantee, but the work requirements that conservative states are trying to inflict upon their Medicaid recipients should indicate that a government that's determined to harass its poorest or most vulnerable citizens will find a way.

Keynes was a big champion of capitalism as the best tool to raise living standards, and ultimately the idea of ending poverty is an economic question as much as a moral one. It may be that truly ending it involves a sort of struggle against diminishing returns: a typical capitalist economy working well enough for most people (80%?), with guaranteed jobs picking up the majority of the slack (15%?), and a UBI covering those few who for whatever reason can't handle employment in either the private or public sectors. The last mile of anything is always the most difficult, but since a UBI covers everyone, it's less susceptible to the "programs for poor people are poor programs" issues that that currently plague America's haphazard, rickety, and often racist welfare state. The single most difficult aspect of a UBI is the funding structure, and here Lowrey predictably is less able to give useful guidance, since these are bitter political and practical questions. Alaska's scheme is funded from oil, but not only is every state not Alaska, but even Alaska might find its wells running dry someday. As FDR said of his own attempt to fund a UBI for the elderly: "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program." We don't have as much fiscal space as FDR did back in the welfare state's infant days, so either coming up with new taxes, such as on financial transactions or wealth, or finding acceptable ways to increase existing taxes, will prove the most challenging part of all. But, as Lowrey shows, there's no real mystery to ending poverty - just give people money.… (mehr)

What if the US Government started depositing $1000 every month in the bank account of everyone in America, with no strings attached? Sounds incredible, doesn't it? This book gives the details.

No doubt, some people will use the money to purchase items that are not healthy, like cigarettes, liquor or hard drugs. The vast majority of people will use the money to pay overdue bills, or stock up at the grocery store, or make a long-delayed trip to the dentist or doctor. The Universal Basic Income (or UBI) is meant to replace some, or all, of the current welfare system, which seems to be designed to be as confusing as possible.

Why should America consider a UBI now? It is not China, or immigration from Central America that will put millions of people out of work, it is automation (especially the rise of artificial intelligence). Not all of those newly unemployed will find new, 21st century jobs. Establishing a UBI will give these people a reliable amount of money each month, and it is easier, and cheaper, than pushing millions more people into an already overloaded welfare system.

How will America pay for it? The estimated cost of giving every American citizen $1000 per month, every month, is just under $4 trillion (the present size of the entire US economy). The closing of many tax loopholes, and the raising of many tax rates will have to happen to even come close to raising that amount.

This is a gem of a book. It is very thought-provoking, and very easy to understand. A UBI will help fill the "cracks" through which many low-income people fall. Here is an excellent place to start that discussion.… (mehr)

Give People Money is a comprehensive and in-depth look at basic income. The author has looked at schemes around the world and while sympathetic, is frank about some of the difficulties.

In Kenya, she sees how an NGO called Give Directly does just that. It pays everyone in a particular village a basic income for twelve years. This security allowed people to buy equipment to start small businesses and improve their living conditions, and meant children could stay longer in education. Most people did not waste the money but made sustainable changes to their lives.

She contrasts this with aid projects which give people what they think they need, meaning they receive items which often go unused, or have complex and bureaucratic ways of assessing entitlement, which divide communities when some people are deemed eligible and their neighbours are not.

She discusses issues around automation and flexible working. A basic income would give people the freedom to work fewer hours, do more fulfilling work, or develop other interests. It might also mean that people at the bottom would be paid more. At present many unpleasant jobs with unsocial hours are low paid because the people who do them have no choice. With the floor of a basic income, employers might have to pay more to get people to do them.

She contrasts this with the current difficulties of accessing welfare benefits in the US in particular, and the problems of getting into work when it might mean an unpredictable income and the loss of the little amount of money you are receiving (further complicated in the US by the issue of healthcare coverage).

Although its scope is global, Give People Money is written from a US perspective and one thing that she doesn’t address is whether the basic income model should incorporate additional payments for disabled people and for parents of young children. In the UK such benefits are largely paid in recognition of the additional costs of being disabled, or bringing up children, and are not means tested.
One element of her argument that I found disheartening is that universal benefits or schemes that resemble basic income have been most effectively applied in homogeneous communities (she cites Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries). She believes that it might face greater resistance in a divided society such as the US. She points out that entitlement in the US is often linked to the notion of the ‘deserving poor’, and that many benefits are delivered at state level. She argues that the legislation was framed this way specifically so that southern states could exclude black people from entitlement.

Give People Money is ideal if you who want to think in detail about the social and policy implications of basic income.

NB This is an extract from a longer piece on basic income on my blog https://katevane.com/2019/03/18/book-review-give-people-money-by-annie-lowrey-an...
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I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley.… (mehr)