A Pelican Introduction Quotes

“Without the freedom to make ‘mistakes’, people cannot learn to take control of their lives successfully.”
― Guy Standing, A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income

“Selective paternalism, for those on low incomes or for other groups needing state assistance, is perhaps even worse than general paternalism, since the minority are denied the opportunity to overturn the rule democratically. The”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“In Lebanon, home to well over a million Syrian refugees, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) decided to use its limited ‘winterization’ funds to pay cash transfers to vulnerable families living above 500 metres altitude. These were unconditional, although recipients were told they were intended for buying heating supplies. Recipient families were then compared with a control group living just below 500 metres. The researchers found that cash assistance did lead to increased spending on fuel supplies, but it also boosted school enrolment, reduced child labour and increased food security.55 One notable finding was that the basic income tended to increase mutual support between beneficiaries and others in the community, reduced tension within recipient families, and improved relationships with the host community. There were significant multiplier effects, with each dollar of cash assistance generating more than $2 for the Lebanese economy, most of which was spent locally.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Security is a precious asset. It should be a goal of everyone who genuinely wants to build a good society rather than one that facilitates the aggrandizement of a privileged elite who knowingly gain from the insecurities of others. Wanting others to have what you want takes courage. That is what basic income is about.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Too often, observers and commentators presume the poor are ‘stupid’, irrational or incapable of making rational decisions. Some enlightened experiments have shown that they just have fewer resources. No doubt, trust will sometimes disappoint. But it is a good principle to guide social policy. Moreover, we all need the freedom to make some poor decisions (though preferably not calamitous ones) in order to learn from them and experiment. Without the freedom to make ‘mistakes’, people cannot learn to take control of their lives successfully.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“What is the ethical or philosophical justification for a basic income? A fundamental claim is that it is an instrument of social justice that reflects the intrinsically social or collective character of society’s wealth. In the writer’s view, social justice is the most important rationale for moving towards basic income as an economic right, although it is complementary to the other two major rationales, namely freedom and economic security.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“While there are reasons to be sceptical about the predicted technological dystopia that has prompted many high-tech plutocrats to come out in support of basic income, this may nevertheless be a strong factor in mobilizing public pressure and political action. Whether jobs are going to dry up or not, the march of the robots is undoubtedly accentuating insecurity and inequality. A basic income or social dividend system would provide at least a partial antidote to that, as more commentators now recognize.6 For example, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, has described basic income as a ‘plausible’ response to labour market disruption.7”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“There is an oft-told story of a delegation going to the White House to present President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a policy proposal. After he had listened to them, he said, ‘Okay, you have convinced me. Now go out and bring pressure on me to do it.’ Fundamental social change rarely comes without sustained political pressure. And politicians are rarely intellectual or policy leaders, even though they will try to take the credit for something once it is up and running. Just occasionally, one emerges with the courage to lead. Pressure matters. One”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Contrary to the preaching of dour labourists, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a bit of laziness. Great philosophers through the ages have argued in its favour. Aristotle explicitly recognized the necessity of aergia, laziness, for contemplative thought. Bertrand Russell wrote a celebrated essay, In Praise of Idleness. Paul Lafargue, Karl Marx’s son-in-law, authored a subversive book entitled The Right to be Lazy that communists detested because it made the case against forcing everybody to labour more intensively. Today, however, the words ‘idleness’ and ‘lazy’ are used pejoratively to convey indolence, time wasting and drift. What is wrong with idleness? In modern society, more than ever, we need to slow down and recall the wisdom of Cato when he said, ‘Never is a man more active than when he does nothing.’ We are in danger of losing the capacity to reflect, to deliberate, to ponder, even to communicate and to learn in the true sense of that term.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“My contention is that a basic income would increase both the amount and the productivity of ‘work’, and could also increase the quality of ‘leisure’, in the ancient Greek sense of schole. This term, from which the English word ‘school’ is derived, meant being free from the necessity to labour, which Aristotle argued was a necessary condition for full participation in cultural and political life. That aside, would it be so bad – socially, economically and ecologically – if some people took advantage of a basic income to reduce the amount of labour and/or work?”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The importance of ethical governance, exemplified by the Norwegian Pension Fund, is highlighted by a deplorable UK government proposal in 2016 to set up a Shale Wealth Fund.38 The fund would receive up to 10 per cent of the revenue generated by fracking (hydraulic fracturing) for shale gas, which could amount to as much as £1 billion over twenty-five years. This would be paid out to communities hosting fracking sites, which could decide to use the money for local projects or distribute it to households in cash. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is a bribe to secure local approval of environmentally threatening fracking operations, to which there has been considerable public opposition. Beyond that, there are many equity questions. Why should only people who happen to live in areas with shale gas be beneficiaries? How would the recipient community be defined? Would the payments go only to those living in the designated community at the time the fracking started? Would they be paid as lump sums or on a regular basis, and how long would they last? What about future generations? Can cash payments compensate for the risk of harm to the air, water, landscape and livelihoods? All these questions cast doubt on the equity and ethics of any selective scheme. They underline the need for the principles of wealth funds and dividends from them to be established before they are implemented, and for a governance structure that is independent from government and business. But”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Environmental pollution is a regressive phenomenon, since the rich can find ways of insulating themselves from bad air, dirty water, loss of green spaces and so on. Moreover, much pollution results from production and activities that benefit the more affluent – air transport, car ownership, air conditioning, consumer goods of all kinds, to take some obvious examples. A basic income could be construed, in part, as partial compensation for pollution costs imposed on us, as a matter of social justice. Conversely, a basic income could be seen as compensation for those adversely affected by environmental protection measures. A basic income would make it easier for governments to impose taxes on polluting activities that might affect livelihoods or have a regressive impact by raising prices for goods bought by low-income households. For instance, hefty carbon taxes would deter fossil fuel use and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change as well as reduce air pollution. Introducing a carbon tax would surely be easier politically if the tax take went towards providing a basic income that would compensate those on low incomes, miners and others who would lose income-earning opportunities. The basic income case is especially strong in relation to the removal of fossil fuel subsidies. Across the world, in rich countries and in poor, governments have long used subsidies as a way of reducing poverty, by keeping down the price of fuel. This has encouraged more consumption, and more wasteful use, of fossil fuels. Moreover, fuel subsidies are regressive, since the rich consume more and thus gain more from the subsidies. But governments have been reluctant to reduce or eliminate the subsidies for fear of alienating voters. Indeed, a number of countries that have tried to reduce fuel subsidies have backed down in the face of angry popular demonstrations.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“It was Ephialtes, in fact, who initiated democratic reforms that involved paying citizens for jury service. Shortly afterwards, he was assassinated (allegedly by his political opponents), and Pericles, his second-in-command, then took over. So, although it was hardly the ideal omen, we could say that Ephialtes was the true originator of the basic income, or at least the ‘citizen’s income’ variant. The essence of ancient Greek democracy was that the citizens were expected to participate in the polis, the political life of the city. Pericles instituted a sort of basic income grant that rewarded them for their time and was intended to enable the plebs – the contemporary equivalent of the precariat – to take part. The payment was not conditional on actual participation, which was nevertheless seen as a moral duty. Sadly, this enlightened system of deliberative democracy, facilitated by the basic income, was overthrown by an oligarchic coup in 411 BC. The road was blocked for a very long time.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Leaving aside instrumental reasons for supporting a basic income, the thrill lies in the potential to advance full freedom and social justice, and the values of work and leisure over the dictates of labour and consumption. The times they are a-changin’, sang Bob Dylan. And times do change the chances of success. As Thomas Paine so memorably put it in the introduction to his epochal Common Sense of 1776, ‘Time makes more Converts than Reason.’ For basic income or social dividends, the time is now.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Politicians must find a way – or several ways for different groups – of framing basic income so as to outflank critics from the media and the establishment, most of whom have had more than the equivalent of a basic income from birth. Opponents will continue to use the sophistry of reciprocity – surely, you cannot want to give something for nothing – which they do not demand of inherited wealth. They will continue to depict images of laziness, dependency, scrounging and such like while reporting gleefully on the frolicking of the indolent rich. And they will leap on any policymaker or politician who suggests that, to finance a basic income, the affluent might need to pay more tax or lose certain tax privileges, while not questioning tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of reduced social benefits and public services.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The ethical and philosophical justifications for basic income – social justice, freedom and economic security – have been well established. They are embedded in the Enlightenment values of all civilized societies and are clearly interrelated, ultimately resting on the sentiment of empathy. This is the emotion that separates the progressive mind from the reactionary one. Empathy derives from a strong faith in the human condition. It is the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes and to accept that people have the right to live as they wish, as long as they do no intentional or careless harm to others. Defending”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Reformers must be able to pre-empt the expected jibes over lack of ‘reciprocity’, affordability, inducement to laziness, ‘something for nothing’ and cash for the undeserving and unneedy. Above all in this respect, reformers must confront the view that ordinary citizens would be taxed to help pay for some people to live at their expense. The right-wing media would seize upon any poor person they could display as enjoying life as proof that the basic income was encouraging debauchery, using ‘taxpayers’ money’. Sadly, statistical evidence would not be enough to curb such prejudiced journalism. Either a pre-emptive strategy would be required in which such incidents were built into the learning process. Or, better, the funding should be shown as coming from ‘capital’ or forms of rent, so the media could not present it as taxing Bill to pay Jack.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“In Brazil, from 2008–14, a local NGO, ReCivitas Institute, gave a monthly basic income of about US$9 to 100 residents of Quatinga Velho, a small poor village in São Paulo state, funded by private donors. In January 2016, it launched Basic Income Startup, another donor-funded project, which will give individuals a ‘lifetime’ basic income, adding another individual for each $1,000 donated. ReCivitas hopes this idea will be replicated elsewhere in Brazil and internationally.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“As of early 2017, GiveDirectly planned to mobilize $30 million for what it claims will be the largest basic income experiment ever. Continuing with the RCT methodology, villages in two Kenyan counties will be divided into three groups: in forty villages all adult residents will receive a monthly basic income for twelve years; in eighty villages all adult residents will receive a basic income for two years; and in another eighty villages all adult residents will receive a lump sum equivalent to the two-year basic income. In all, some 26,000 individuals will receive cash transfers worth about 75 US cents a day. Data will also be collected from a control group of a hundred similar villages. The stated main objective of GiveDirectly is the eradication of ‘extreme poverty’, which is a worthy goal but is not the prime rationale for a basic income system. At the time of writing, the hypotheses to be tested had not been finalized, though one aim of the proposed study is to look at the impact of a long-term basic income on risk-taking, such as starting a business, and another is to look at village-level economic effects. The sheer size of the planned experiments may backfire by distorting the social and economic context. The project has already run into problems of low participation rates in one county, where people have refused the no-strings largesse, believing it to be linked to cults or devil worship. That said, unlike the pilots proposed in Europe, this experiment will test a genuine basic income by providing a universal, unconditional income paid to all individuals in a community. So the hope must be that the researchers, advised by well-known economists from prestigious US universities, will ask the right questions.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“It is a sad irony that many countries possessing natural resources with high income potential have floundered into civil strife as factions compete for their share of the bounty, often monopolized by despotic leaders. Sharing the resource wealth across the country is one suggested way to defuse the threat of political conflict, usually by transferring part of the earnings to local area governments and, in particular, to the area where the natural resource is exploited, be it oil, diamonds or other minerals. In some cases, this fiscal devolution route has limited the conflict, if the amount transferred is large enough. However, in others it has triggered conflict by giving local dissidents the means to pay for insurrection.57 It turns out that the optimum way to defuse or prevent potential conflict is to pay direct cash transfers to all individuals, which would make it much more difficult for secessionist movements or local political parties to appropriate the resources.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“In October 2016, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said: The use of cash-based assistance has been a real game changer in the way we help refugees and we have now decided to make it a worldwide policy and expand it to all our operations, where feasible … Refugees know best what they need. The broader use of cash-based assistance means that many more will be able to decide how to manage their family’s budget. This will help them lead more dignified and normal lives.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), which compared ‘food versus cash’ in four countries, found that in three of the four – Ecuador, Uganda and Yemen (before the civil war) – cash transfers led to better nutrition at lower cost, meaning many more people could be helped for the same outlay. (In the fourth, Niger, severe seasonal food shortages meant that in-kind deliveries improved dietary diversity more than cash.)54 This has led the WFP to put more emphasis on cash transfers; today, just over a quarter of WFP’s aid globally is cash-based.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Although reducing poverty, economic insecurity, malnutrition and ill-health should be the primary driving forces, an additional factor is the stress being placed on societies all over the world from distress and other forms of migration. A basic income system in impoverished and low-income communities in developing countries would surely encourage more people to stay in and (re)build their communities.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The first basic income pilot in a developing country was implemented in the small Namibian village of Otjivero-Omitara in 2008–9, covering about 1,000 people.40 The study was carried out by the Namibian Basic Income Grant Coalition, with money raised from foundations and individual donations. Everyone in the village, including children but excluding over-sixties already receiving a social pension, was given a very small basic income of N$100 a month (worth US$12 at the time or about a third of the poverty line), and the outcomes compared with the previous situation. The results included better nutrition, particularly among children, improved health and greater use of the local primary healthcare centre, higher school attendance, increased economic activity and enhanced women’s status.41 The methodology would not have satisfied those favouring randomized control trials that were coming into vogue at the time. No control village was chosen to allow for the effects of external factors, in the country or economy, because those directing the pilot felt it was immoral to impose demands, in the form of lengthy surveys, on people who were being denied the benefit of the basic income grants. However, there were no reported changes in policy or outside interventions during the period covered by the pilot, and confidence in the results is justified both by the observed behaviour, and by recipients’ opinions in successive surveys. School attendance went up sharply, though there was no pressure on parents to send their children to school. The dynamics were revealing. Although the primary school was a state school, parents were required to pay a small fee for each child. Before the pilot, registration and attendance were low, and the school had too little income from fees to pay for basics, which made the school unattractive and lowered teachers’ morale. Once the cash transfers started, parents had enough money to pay school fees, and teachers had money to buy paper, pens, books, posters, paints and brushes, making the school more attractive to parents and children and raising the morale and, probably, the capacity of its teachers. There was also a substantial fall in petty economic crime such as stealing vegetables and killing small livestock for food. This encouraged villagers to plant more vegetables, buy more fertilizer and rear more livestock. These dynamic community-wide economic effects are usually overlooked in conventional evaluations, and would not be spotted if cash was given only to a random selection of individuals or households and evaluated as a randomized control trial. Another outcome, unplanned and unanticipated, was that villagers voluntarily set up a Basic Income Advisory Committee, led by the local primary school teacher and the village nurse, to advise people on how to spend or save their basic income money. The universal basic income thus induced collective action, and there was no doubt that this community activism increased the effectiveness of the basic incomes.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“In India, about half of all poor households do not have a BPL (below-poverty-line) card and about one-third of the non-poor (under the rules) have one.5 A study in the Indian state of Karnataka found that more than two-thirds of those questioned who were ineligible for BPL cards (for example, owning a water pump) in fact had them, while a sixth of those eligible for the cards did not.6 Research in Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh showed that a large proportion of those in dire need did not have BPL cards or were denied them for some spurious reason.7 Often the poorest were least likely to have them. Targeting also creates poverty traps, with accompanying moral and immoral hazards. If a household obtains a benefit only if it is classified as poor, then it pays to stay poor. Increasing income to just above the poverty level means losing more than the extra earnings. So, there is a disincentive to earn extra. This moral hazard prompts the immoral hazard. Someone gaining a little more income will have an incentive to conceal it, so as not to lose entitlement to the benefit.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“Cash transfer schemes that at present are overwhelmingly targeted at ‘the poor’ have the potential to prepare the way for basic income.2 But four factors have so far impeded the transition – a belief in ‘targeting’ (only the poor should receive the cash), ‘selectivity’ (some groups should have priority), ‘conditionality’ (recipients should be required to undertake certain actions or behave in certain ways), and ‘randomization’ (policy should only be introduced when it has been tested, or evaluated, by randomized control trials, and thus be ‘evidence-based’).”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The spread of charity has largely reflected the manifold failings of means-tested social assistance, the unfairness of conditionality, the deliberate sanctions taken against vulnerable people and the spread of economic insecurity. In the UK, for instance, over 40 per cent of referrals to food banks run by a major charity, the Trussell Trust, are due to benefit delays and sanctions.40 The fact that so many people in modern society are going to food banks and shelters demonstrates social policy failure. Private philanthropy should be marginalized again; it is an undemocratic way of shaping society and the selective well-being of individuals, groups and communities.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“One reason given for supporting guaranteed jobs is that surveys suggest unemployed people are less happy than people with jobs. This is hardly surprising. Being involuntarily unemployed, especially when benefits are meagre, hard to obtain and maintain, stigmatizing and uncertain, is not a happy situation. That is surely quite different from being outside a job voluntarily, with income security and without stigma. Retired people, for example, are not disproportionately unhappy. As Kate McFarland has written, ‘It’s not that our culture values jobs because jobs intrinsically make us happy; it’s that being employed tends to make us happier because we are stuck in a culture that values jobs.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The social justice principles outlined in previous chapters provide a useful checklist for evaluating any policy. To recall, these are: The Security Difference Principle – a policy is socially just only if it improves the security of the least secure groups in society. The Paternalism Test Principle – a policy is socially just only if it does not impose controls on some groups that are not also imposed on the most free groups in society. The Rights-not-Charity Principle – a policy is socially just if it enhances the rights of the recipients of benefits or services and limits the discretionary power of the providers. To these can be added two more:1 The Ecological Constraint Principle – a policy is socially just only if it does not impose an ecological cost borne by the community or by those directly affected. The Dignified Work Principle – a policy is socially just only if it does not impede people from pursuing work in a dignified way and if it does not disadvantage the most insecure groups in that respect. Each policy should be evaluated with these principles in mind. Of course, there are trade-offs in some cases, but we should be wary of any policy that demonstrably runs counter to them.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen

“The financing option favoured by this writer would be to fund a basic income from the construction of sovereign wealth funds, along the lines of the Alaska Permanent Fund or the Norwegian Pension Fund. This option, which draws on the work of Nobel Prize winner James Meade in his book Agathatopia, would allow a country to build up the fund over the years and raise the amount paid out as basic income, or social dividend, as the fund developed.32 Viewed as a rightful share of income flowing from our collective wealth, the social dividend approach is politically attractive since it would not require either dismantling existing welfare systems or raising taxes on earned income.”
― Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make It Happen