How to sell basic income: guest blog by Marc Zwelling
Note: I am very interested in the debate about basic
income in Ontario. Our former Liberal government started an experiment paying
people a basic income in three cities, including Hamilton, where I live, but
the current Conservative government has cancelled the experiment. For a video
and article about how people are being affected by the cancellation, go to https://globalnews.ca/news/4791459/photo-exhibit-ontario-basic-income-pilot/
Marc Zwelling |
How to Sell Basic Income
Utopians
often imagined a world without jobs. Some hoped automation would bring a leisure
society. Some were afraid machines would do all our work and leave us
impoverished.
Canadians
are suspicious of technological progress. In a 1983 Decima Research poll 72% agreed
automation will lead to “high unemployment.” In a 2016 Angus Reid Institute
poll, 63% agreed “new technology is likely to eliminate more jobs than it
creates.”
Abacus
Data asked about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on
“future economic prospects” in a 2017 poll. While 50% said the impact will be
more helpful, 50% said more harmful.
Anxiety over the future of work isn’t new. In the
early 19th century, the rioting Luddites in Nottingham, England
destroyed the textile machines that were replacing them.
After manufacturers installed the first assembly-line
robots, in a 1979 book, The Collapse of
Work, British union leader Clive Jenkins forecast
“tidal waves of technological unemployment."
Today’s
employment forecasters expect more technology will mean fewer jobs. A typical
outlook, by the
University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre in 2016, predicts “automation, combined
with other trends in employment” will eliminate 1½ to 7½ million jobs in Canada
in the coming 10 to 15 years — up to one in every five jobs.
The
job-killing potential of new technology has revived interest in having
governments guarantee everyone a basic income. The right-wing Fraser Institute commented in 2015
that the idea was receiving “renewed attention” and had support “across the ideological spectrum.”
Polls
show that Canadians want only the needy to have a basic income, not everyone. In
five surveys between 1975 and 1995 conducted by Lethbridge University sociologist
Reginald Bibby, from 84% to 91% agreed “people who are poor have a right to an
income adequate to live on.”
In
seven polls conducted by Environics between 1980 and 1991, from 66% to 77% favoured
“the
government providing a guaranteed annual income for all people who have incomes
falling below an established poverty line.”
In
2017, however, when Ipsos asked if the government should pay “all residents” a “basic
income in the form of free and unconditional money in addition to any income
received from elsewhere,” only 44% agreed. Another 31% disagreed while 24% were
unsure.
In the Angus Reid Institute survey in 2018, 59% said
giving everyone “a minimum sum of money every month to live on” is a good idea,
but only 21% said it’s a “very good idea.”
Samuel Beckett's play,
guaranteed basic income “could well become the sleeper issue in
Canadian politics in 2017.”
But here’s no pressure on politicians to enact a basic income
because Canadians are deeply ambivalent about it. One barrier is the public’s
impression that it would cost too much.
In the 2016 Angus Reid Institute survey, 34% were
willing to pay “more in taxes” to support “some kind of guaranteed income.” But
59% felt it would be “too expensive for Canada’s government to afford.”
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says a universal basic
income “raising everyone’s income above the poverty line” would cost $30
billion a year. The Parliamentary
Budget Officer estimated in 2018 it would
cost $76 billion but save the government $33 billion, so the net yearly outlay
would be $43 billion.
To put that in perspective, the government’s projected budget deficit
in 2018-19 for all its programs is $18.1 billion.
The biggest obstacle to a basic income program,
however, isn’t the cost. It’s the public’s concern about the work ethic.The Fraser Institute says basic-income experiments prove that giving people
money discourages them from working and “could foster long term dependency on
government transfers with widespread effects on the economy.” The public generally concurs.
In the 2016 Angus Reid Institute poll 63% agreed that
guaranteed income programs “discourage people from working.” And 52% agreed “if
you don’t work you don’t deserve an income.” In the 2017 Ispos survey, 60% agreed a basic income “will make people reliant
on the state for income” while 54% said it would “discourage people from being in
or seeking paid employment.”
If a
basic income is a disincentive to work, what’s wrong with that? With the prospect
of technology-driven massive job losses, dissuading people from working
would be a good policy.
Stagnant pay and unemployment are the result of too
many people chasing too few jobs. Paying people not to work would shrink the labour
supply and lift wages. It might force employers to automate more jobs, which
would rev up innovation and boost productivity (higher productivity, economists
say, leads to higher profits and wages).
Advanced
economies already pay some people for not working. Millions of retirees in
their 60s and 70s live on their employer-based pensions though many are physically
able to work.
To convince a skeptical public, advocates need to
reconceive the universal basic income to match public opinion. Canadians want a
guaranteed income that’s earned or deserved. A basic income Canadians would
support would be a reward for initiative and effort, like a commission, a tip
or a bonus.
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