Archiv der Kategorie: Gesellschaft

Israelischer Diplomat Avi Primor: „Kein Land im Nahen Osten wünscht sich einen Krieg.“ Avi Primor im Gespräch mit Camilo Jiménez, 03.08.06

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Interview mit dem ehemaligen israelischen Botschafter in Berlin und Top-Diplomaten Avi Primor über den Nahost-Konflikt, das Recht Israels zur Selbstverteidigung und den verhüllten Größenwahn des Iran.

Am 12. Juli wurden zwei israelische Soldaten von der Hisbollah im nördlichen Israel entführt. Vier Tage später überfiel eine Miliz dieser Extremistenorganisation eine israelische Armee-Patrouille. Folge: Israel bombardiert den Libanon und den Gaza-Streifen, sein Recht zur Selbstverteidigung ausdrückend. Ist die Auseinandersetzung mit der Hisbollah einen Krieg wert?

Das hängt davon ab, was Sie unter Krieg verstehen. Ich weiß nicht, ob das ein Krieg ist. Ich glaube, ein Krieg bedeutet eigentlich eine Konfrontation zwischen zwei oder mehr Armeen bzw. Ländern, und das ist heute nicht der Fall. Wir verteidigen uns gegen eine Miliz, eine Terrororganisation, die uns aus dem Territorium des souveränen Libanon bombardiert, ohne dass der Libanon interveniert oder intervenieren kann, oder dass wir überhaupt eine Konfrontation mit einem arabischen Land haben. Wir haben überhaupt keine Ansprüche auf libanesisches Territorium, wir wollen gar nichts; die einzige Sache, die wir verlangen ist, dass man uns in Ruhe lässt. Und wenn wir aus dem Südlibanon, einem Territorium, das wir freiwillig und einseitig vor sechs Jahren geräumt haben, bombardiert werden, da bleibt doch nichts anderes übrig, als dass wir uns dadurch verteidigen, dass wir versuchen, die Miliz zu entwaffnen. Auf jeden Fall: keine Raketen mehr über unsere Grenze.

Wie rechtfertigen Sie dann die Konsequenzen, die solche Aktionen gerade in der libanesischen Bevölkerung hinterlassen?

Das Problem ist natürlich, dass diese Miliz, die Hisbollah, die von Iran bewaffnet wird und ihre Anweisungen aus Teheran bekommt, ein Bannerträger des iranischen Islamismus ist. Sie verschanzt sich innerhalb der Zivilbevölkerung der Schiiten im Libanon. Wenn wir uns dann verteidigen wollen, also wenn wir die Raketen der Hisbollah treffen wollen, so haben wir keine andere Alternative, als dass wir dort angreifen, wo sie sich tatsächlich befinden. Und wenn sie sich innerhalb der Zivilbevölkerung befinden, dann haben wir ein Dilemma. Manchmal fordern wir die Bevölkerung auf, ihr Dorf oder ihre Stadt zu verlassen, weil wir dorthin zurückschießen müssen. Schön oder angenehm ist das nicht. Wir haben aber keine Wahl: Wir müssen uns dort verteidigen, wo der Feind sich befindet; wir können nicht anderswohin schießen.

Berichten zufolge stieg die Anzahl an libanesischen Zivilopfern auf fast eintausend Menschen. Eine der gefürchteten Folgen der Bombardements im Libanon und im Gazastreifen ist das Risiko, dass die schnell steigende Zahl an Opfern so groß wird, dass eine neue Generation von Arabern entsteht, die Israel leidenschaftlich hasst. Machen Sie sich keine Sorgen darüber?

Ich glaube, dass die schiitische Bevölkerung im Südlibanon Israel ohnehin schon hasst, weil sie unter einer fundamentalistischen schiitischen islamistischen Gehirnwäsche lebt und dies mindestens seit sechs Jahren, d.h. seit dem wir das Territorium geräumt haben – aber bestimmt auch schon vorher. Also, in diesem Sinne wird sich nichts verändern. Es geht darum, dass diese Zivilbevölkerung die terroristische Miliz beherbergt; sie unterstützt sie, liebt sie, jubelt ihr zu – also ganz neutral sind diese Leute nicht. Und ich möchte noch hinzufügen: Sie sprechen von 600 Zivilopfern. Woher wissen Sie eigentlich, dass es dabei um Zivilisten geht? Das weiß ja kein Mensch. Diese Miliz, die Hisbollahmiliz, die trägt keine Uniform, es sind oft dieselben Leute, die in diesen Dörfern leben: Nachts tragen sie die Raketen, mit denen sie uns beschießen, und tagsüber arbeiten sie als Bauern, sodass man sie gar nicht erkennen kann. Natürlich, wenn ein Milizkämpfer der Hisbollah umkommt, dann sagt die Hisbollah sofort: Guck mal, da ist ein Zivilist umgekommen; aber das kann kein Mensch beweisen. Jeder Libanese, der bis heute gefallen ist, wird als Zivilist beschrieben. Sollte das bedeuten, dass wir heute in unserem Kampf noch keinen einzigen Hisbollahkämpfer getroffen hätten?

Der Chef der IAEA Mohamed El-Baradei hat gesagt, er könne sich nicht erinnern, die Situation in der Region schon einmal so bedrohlich empfunden zu haben. Betrachten Sie auch die Lage im Nahost als eine so alarmierend verschärfte?

Nein. Ich verneine die Frage, denn es gibt kein Land im Nahen Osten, das sich heute einen Krieg wünscht. Israel will keinen Krieg und die Nachbarn des Staates Israel auch nicht: Ägypten nicht, Jordanien nicht, auch nicht der Libanon und selbst Syrien wünscht sich keinen Krieg; und solange die Länder in Nahost keinen Krieg wollen, wird es keinen Krieg geben. Deshalb ist die Lage heute noch nicht so extrem gefährlich. Aber es gibt ein Land, das von uns weit entfernt ist und sich den Krieg wünscht: Das ist der Iran. Der Iran ist ein Brandstifter, der seine eigene Ambitionen im Nahost hat und auch die Hisbollahmiliz aufgefordert hat, den Krieg zu entfesseln. Aber der Iran liegt weit von uns entfernt, und wenn unsere Nachbarn keinen Krieg haben wollen, dann wird es keinen Krieg geben. Der Iran kann allein in unserer Region keinen Krieg führen, zumindest nicht, solange er über keine Atomwaffen verfügt. Trotzdem meine ich, dass die jetzige Situation gefährlich ist, weil man nie weiß, wie eine Krise eskalieren kann; man kann es sich ‚logisch’ vorstellen, wie ich es eben getan habe, aber nicht immer ist alles so logisch. Ich glaube, dass wir auf jeden Fall nicht nur eine Beruhigung des Südlibanon anstreben sollen und dies anhand von internationalen Truppen, sondern wir müssten auch mit Syrien verhandeln, obwohl unsere Regierung heute nicht dazu bereit ist, unter anderem, weil die Amerikaner es verhindern.

Es gibt auch eine weit verbreitete Vorstellung davon, wie nach einem Ende des Konflikts ein Friedensprozess durchgeführt werden konnte. Einige Leute behaupten aber, dass die immer wiederkehrenden Schwierigkeiten des Friedensprozesses nicht in der Theorie liegen, sondern in der praktischen Umsetzung in der Realität. Haben Sie unter den zahlreichen Vorschlägen zur Stabilisierung im Nahost einen gefunden, den Sie für realisierbar halten?

Ich sage Ihnen klipp und klar meine Meinung in dieser Sache: Das erste Problem des Nahen Ostens heute ist das palästinensische Problem. Mit den Palästinensern müssen wir verhandeln, wir müssen die palästinensischen Gebiete und die jüdischen Siedlungen auf diesem Boden räumen. Im Gaza-Streifen haben wir das einseitig gemacht. Die damalige Regierung Sharons behauptete, es gebe keinen Gesprächspartner. Ich stimme und stimmte dem damals nicht zu; aber ich war schon ziemlich zufrieden damit, dass sie zumindest als ‚Schlussfolgerung’ den Gaza-Streifen und vor allem die Siedlungen geräumt haben. Nun haben wir heute eine eher realistische und pragmatische Regierung, die von der rechten, nationalistischen Ideologie nicht geprägt ist. Aber diese Regierung steht heute vor einer neuen Situation im palästinensischen Lager. Da findet nämlich ein Machtkampf statt. Es gibt heute keine echte Regierung der Palästinenser. Die Hamas hat die Wahlen gewonnen, konnte aber nicht richtig die Macht ergreifen: Erstens, weil sie zersplittert ist zwischen der Führung vor Ort und der, die sich in Damaskus befindet. Zweitens reiben sie sich an der Macht des Staatspräsidenten Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), der verfassungsgemäß nicht nur viele Befugnisse besitzt, sondern dem auch Streitkräfte zur Verfügung stehen. Und solange dieser Machtkampf nicht zu Ende kommt, sei es, dass einer die Oberhand erzielt, oder dadurch, dass man einen Kompromiss schließt und eine Koalition bildet, haben wir Schwierigkeiten mit den Palästinensern zu verhandeln. Meine Meinung ist dennoch, dass wir mit jedem Palästinenser verhandeln müssen, sowohl mit Abu Mazenals auch mit der Hamas. Solange diese Verhandlungen nicht fruchtbar sein können, müssen wir auf jeden Fall die besetzten Gebieten und die Siedlungen räumen. Das ist auch die Meinung des neuen Ministerpräsidenten Olmert, wie auch die des Hauptpartners des Ministerpräsidenten, des Koalitionspartners Amir Peretz, der Chef der Arbeiterpartei und heute unser Verteidigungsminister ist. Aber gleichzeitig müssen wir mit den Syrern verhandeln. Mit denen kann man verhandeln, sie sind dazu bereit und wir kennen den Preis: Das ist ein Preis, den frühere Ministerpräsidenten wie Ehud Barakoder Benjamin Netanjahu zu zahlen bereit waren. Es besteht nur die Schwierigkeit, dass die Amerikaner es nicht zulassen wollen – es gibt sogar viele Amerikaner, die uns noch heute hinter den Kulissen dazu drängen, Syrien anzugreifen. Ich glaube, man müsste mit Syrien verhandeln. Ich glaube, man müsste mit den Palästinensern verhandeln oder zumindest die besetzten Gebiete einseitig räumen. Und das wird zu einem echten Friedensprozess führen. Aber all dies erst, nachdem wir Ruhe im Südlibanon bekommen. Es kann nicht alles parallel getan werden.

Sie haben eben auf die Amerikaner hingewiesen. Wie schätzen Sie die bisher zurückhaltende Beteiligung der USA im Nahost-Konflikt im Gegensatz zur klaren Einstellung der UNO ein, die von Israel den sofortigen Waffenstillstand und Entschädigung gefordert hat?

Da gebe ich den Amerikanern Recht – und ich gebe den Amerikanern nicht immer Recht: In Sachen Syrien und Irak widerspreche ich der Bush-Regierung. Aber im Südlibanon finde ich, dass sie Recht hat, denn sollten wir heute einen Waffenstillstand akzeptieren, würde das bedeuten, dass die Hisbollah da bleibt, wo sie vorher war, mit ihren Stellungen gegenüber Israel, mit ihren Raketen, mit den entführten israelischen Soldaten und mit dem Kontakt zu Iran, sodass sie sich weiter ausrüsten und weitere Anweisungen und Geld von dem Iran bekommen kann. Da hat man bisher überhaupt nichts getan. Insofern gebe ich den Amerikanern Recht und meine, erst müssen wir den Südlibanon von den Hisbollah-Milizen und ihren Waffen räumen, dann soll eine internationale Truppe kommen, damit sie die Übernahme des Südlibanon durch die libanesische Regierung ermöglicht, und nur dann kann man einen Waffenstillstand akzeptieren. Aber nicht in der heutigen Situation.

Sie würden also der israelischen Außerministerin Tzipi Livni zustimmen, die Ende Juli sagte, die Internationale Gemeinschaft dürfe momentan keine Waffenruhe fordern, weil ein Vakuum hinterlassen würde, das ein großer Sieg für die Hisbollah sei?

Ich würde das Wort Sieg nicht benutzen, denn das wäre kein Sieg für die Hisbollah. Die Hisbollah kann über uns keinen Sieg erlangen. Die Hisbollah würde nur in einer Position bleiben, in der sie uns bedrohen kann, aber vor allem würde der Iran an seiner Stelle bleiben. Und das können wir nicht zulassen. Insofern stimme ich der Außerministerin zu, weil dieses Vakuum zwischen Libanon und Israel weiter bestehen würde.

Selten war die Internationale Gemeinschaft dermaßen ratlos wie diese letzten Wochen. Würden Sie trotz aller Disparitäten im Westen immer noch von einer Internationalen Gemeinschaft im Bezug auf den Nahost-Konflikt sprechen?

Ich glaube nicht, dass die Internationale Gemeinschaft ratlos ist. Natürlich war sie überrascht, genau wie wir überrascht waren, weil keiner es erwartet hat, dass man uns aus dem Südlibanon wieder angreift, schließlich haben wir den Südlibanon vollkommen, total, freiwillig und einseitig geräumt, uns auf die internationale Grenze, wie die UNO es verlangt und dann anerkannt hat, zurückgezogen; warum soll man uns nun angreifen? Das hat keiner erwartet. Für die Internationale Gemeinschaft geht es um eine Lösung, die man vorbereiten muss, und das ist nicht so einfach. Die Internationale Gemeinschaft ist heute dazu bereit, eine internationale Friedenstruppe, eine ‚robuste’ Truppe, eine Kampftruppe, in den Südlibanon zu entsenden. Dort soll sie den Waffenstillstand und das Ende der Miliz nicht nur beobachten, sondern gerade zu erzwingen. Eine solche Friedenstruppe zusammenzusetzen braucht Zeit. Zunächst muss man ein Mandat der UNO bekommen, dann (nur) wahrscheinlich eine Schirmherrschaft der NATO. Schließlich muss man Länder finden, die sich dazu bereit erklären, Truppen zu entsenden, Truppen, die bereit sind zu kämpfen, ihr Leben zu riskieren. Das können natürlich nur Länder sein, die auch ein eigenes Interesse im Libanon haben. Doch zuvor müssen diese Länder die Genehmigung ihrer Parlamente bekommen und erst dann muss man die Truppe zusammensammeln und hinschicken. Das alles braucht Zeit. Selbst wenn man dieses Prozedere so weit als möglich beschleunigt – und das tun die Länder –, wird es noch ein paar Wochen dauern. Da ist also keine Ratlosigkeit der Internationalen Gemeinschaft, sondern eine Prozedur, die man durchgehen muss.

Wie Sie es angemerkt haben, hat die US-amerikanische Wochenzeitschrift TIME behauptet, der Iran sei die zentrale Figur des ganzen Konflikts. Glauben Sie, sollte eine Lösung für den Konflikt erst mal gefunden sein, dass der Iran wie auch immer einen Konflikt mit Israel anstrebt?

Ich hoffe sehr, dass dies nicht der Fall ist. Ich bin fest davon überzeugt, es gibt keine Widersprüche innerhalb der Interessen der Staaten zwischen Israel und dem Iran. Gerade heute habe ich einen Artikel für die Süddeutsche Zeitung geschrieben, in dem ich erkläre, was für eine unglaublich tief greifende Zusammenarbeit es zwischen dem Iran und Israel vor der Zeit Khomeinis gegeben hat – weil es ein ihnen gemeinsames geopolitisches Interesse für Israel und den Iran ist, zusammenzuarbeiten. Die Fundamentalisten ziehen das religiöse, fanatische Interesse dem Interesse des Staates vor und deshalb haben sie die Zusammenarbeit mit Israel zugrunde gerichtet und sich zum Bannerträger im Kampf gegen die Existenz Israels erklärt. Ich glaube, dass es nicht im Interesse des Staates Iran ist und infolgedessen wird es auch nicht so bleiben. Irgendwann gewinnt das Interesse des Landes die Oberhand. Auch der islamische Iran hat nationale, ja, imperiale Interessen, genau wie der Schah, und seine Interessen gelten nicht Israel.

In Iran ist Israel heute ein ‚schwarzer Peter’, den man verwendet, um die Bevölkerung aufzuhetzen. Also der Hass gegen Israel, die Drohungen gegen Israel sind eigentlich Folge der Volksverhetzung, und zwar der Volksverhetzung vor allem im Iran, aber auch in der arabischen Welt, um sich darin als Held darzustellen.

Aber der Iran hat seine Schwierigkeiten in der arabischen Welt. Zunächst einmal, weil die Iraner keine Araber sind und historisch im Konflikt mit den Arabern stehen. Ferner, weil sie Schiiten sind und die große Mehrheit der arabischen Welt sind Sunniten, und die Feindschaft zwischen den beiden ist historisch und tief greifend. Gleichzeitig hat der Iran einen eigenen Ehrgeiz. Dieser besteht darin, die unmittelbaren Nachbarn, also die arabischen Staaten, Irak, Saudi Arabien und die Emiraten im Golf zu beherrschen. Nicht unbedingt erobern, aber so oder so irgendwie beherrschen. Sollte ihnen das gelingen, würden sie, also der Iran mit den arabischen Vasallenstaaten, über 75% der weltweiten Erdölreserven verfügen. Wenn Sie nun bedenken, dass Russland die Atomprojekte des Iran sowohl mit Geld als auch mit 6.000 russischen Experten unterstützt, dann können Sie sich eine Allianz zwischen zwei atomaren Staaten vorstellen. Das ist die eigentliche Gefahr, die vom Iran ausgeht – und sie ist nicht unmittelbar gegen Israel gerichtet – auch wenn man sich im Iran schon freuen würde, sollte Israel ausgelöscht werden –, sondern sie richtet sich gegen die unmittelbaren Nachbarn. Gemeinsam mit Russland zur Weltmacht aufsteigen, und dann die Welt erpressen zu können.

Sie sprachen von einer tief greifende Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Iran und Israel. Könnte diese nicht wieder neu entstehen?

Ich glaube schon, weil beide Länder ein echtes Interesse daran haben. Eben deswegen war es schon so vor der Khomeinistischen Revolution. Solange der Fanatismus, der Fundamentalismus, der Messianismus – wenn Sie wollen – im Iran herrschen, spielen die Interessen des Staates eine kleinere Rolle. Aber ich bin der Überzeugung, dass sich das im Laufe der Zeit ändert. Der Iran selber wandelt sich allmählich: Die Bevölkerung will sich modernisieren, fühlt sich mehr den USA verbunden als den religiösen Führern. Noch kann es kein Parlament, keine Demokratie geben, da die religiösen Kräfte die Regierungsgeschäfte in der Hand haben. Es gibt diese so genannten ‚Pasdaran’, das sind die Kämpfer der Revolution, das sind die Fanatiker, die dem so genannten ‚geistlichen Entführer’ entkommen, dem hamanai, unterstellt sind, und sie erpressen die Bevölkerung. Aber man weiss, wie es bei Diktaturen ist: Wenn sie über die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung jahrelang nicht verfügen können, zerbrechen sie irgendwann. Dann kehrt der Iran zurück zu seinen normalen staatlichen Interessen, die mit den Interessen des Staates Israel eigentlich viele Gemeinsamkeiten haben.

Deutschland könnte sich als möglicher Vermittler profilieren, falls die Hisbollah und Israel indirekte Verhandlungen zum Austausch von Gefangenen aufnehmen. Dennoch, selbst der libanesische Präsident Emile Lahoud bezweifelt, dass die Deutschen diesmal so behilflich sein können, wie sie es 2004 waren, als 400 palästinensische Gefangene durch die deutsche Intervention freigelassen wurden. Trotzdem hat der BND bereits Aufgaben im Nahost übernommen. Halten Sie Deutschland im Augenblick für einen angemessenen Vermittler?

Der beste Vermittler, weil Deutschland von einem hohen Ansehen auf beiden Seiten profitiert. Die Frage ist nur – und insofern hat der libanesische Ministerpräsident Recht –, mit wem verhandelt man? Wir wollen mit der Hisbollah nicht verhandeln, aber wir bestehen darauf, dass die Hisbollah, die aus Libanesen besteht, dem souveränen libanesischen Staat die Macht zum Verhandeln sowie die Geiseln übergibt. Dann werden wir verhandeln wollen, und da können die Deutschen die besten Vermittler sein.

Tomlinson, John/ Schooneveldt, Simon/ Harrington, Penny: Australian Workers and Unions Should Support Basic Income, 18.11.05

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The journey to a full universal Basic Income is essentially the search for the answer to just one question: „How do we best meet the income support needs of all who find they are without the capacity to provide for themselves?“ This paper will try to answer that question.

Introduction

 

Australia has a federal system where the Commonwealth Government has responsibility for social security. Nationally social security started with age and disability pension legis­lation in 1908. Since then, with the exception of blind pensions and child endowment, social security payments have been means – or asset – (sometimes both) tested. Thus the system is categorical and selective rather than universal. The categories reflect the positive light in which the needs of chosen beneficiaries are held by the powerful. For example, widows with children have been paid since the mid-1940s but most unwed mothers were not paid social security until 1973. Since 1977 the Government has assisted all lone parents who meet the specified requirements.

Australians have been subject to increasing inequalities in income and wealth distri­bution during the last two decades due in large part to a general acceptance of economic fundamentalist ideas and government enthusiasm for deregulation and globalism. Michael Costello[1], former Secretary of the Department of Industrial Relations, suc­cinctly summed up the changes occurring in Australia when he wrote: „If you were hard up, you used to get a hand-up from government. Now you get the back of its hand.“

Under the previous Labor Government, low paid workers were compensated for decli­ning real income from employment by increases in the social wage. The current conserva­tive Howard Liberal Coalition Government recently elected for a fourth term and now with ‚control‘ of both houses of the parliament has assaulted the social wage. The universality of Medicare (health insurance) has been weakened, the dental service for low-income earners abolished, and the social security safety-net has been under­mined. The 2005/6 Budget outlined the Government’s determination to get single parents back into the workforce once their youngest child is at school. Likewise, it has reinvigorated attempts to move people off disability pensions onto unemployment benefits with onerous ‚mutual obligation‘ activity requirements[2]. Since coming to office in 1996, this Government has undermined the dignity and rights of Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers.

Job insecurity has increased; the Government is determined to weaken the fair dis­missal legislation. The officially recognised unemployment level has dropped below 6% but if people who are underemployed, discouraged unemployed and disguised unemployed are taken into account the real level of unemployment is in the order of 12 to 18% of people of working age.  Unemployment and the weakening of the social secu­rity safety net are real issues for low-income wage earners because people in the bottom 30% of income distribution are the ones most likely to experience periodic unemploy­ment interspersed with short stints in casualised, part-time and precarious employment.

Captains of industry are gaining disproportionate rewards – the ratio between Chief Executive Officers‘ salaries and those of workers has risen from 3 times workers‘ salaries in the 1970s to 74 times workers‘ salaries[3]. Increasingly arduous work ‚flexi­bility‘ arrange­ments are being imposed. The industrial arbitration commission and the union movement are constantly challenged by Government attempts to impose a dra­conian industrial relations regime.

Australia over the last two decades has been converted from a reasonably caring, mixed economy with a frugal but comprehensive social security safety net into a country where private provision, „individualisation of risk“[4] and a „do it yourself wel­fare state“[5] is the order of the day. The Government has intensified the rhetoric about the evils of „welfare dependency“ as a way to decrease the legitimacy of claims for government assis­tance. In doing so it has foisted the obligation to support those in financial need back onto families.

This portrait of Australia may make it appear unlikely that a Basic Income paid to each permanent resident, as an individual, irrespective of their personal or social circumstances will be introduced in the near future: yet as will be seen there are grounds for optimism. A Basic Income system would be more just than the existing Australian system of income support. Low income-earners would be net beneficiaries of a Basic Income whereas rich Australians would not be economically advantaged by it because they would pay more in tax than they gain in benefits.

Income Support Schemes

Before we can examine Basic Income further, it is useful to outline other existing and proposed systems of income support.

Private superannuation and other privatised solutions

In Australia, private superannuation is the only form of superannuation available to non-government workers. The amount paid is proportional to contributions from workers‘ salaries (paid by workers and by their employers) or private investments made during the workers‘ employment. The inequalities experienced during working lives are extended into the post-working phase of people’s lives. All private superannuation funds are at some degree of risk. The Australian Government Superannuation watchdog recently warned that at least 10% of funds are insecure[6]. Some workers, particularly those who in recent years have been forced by their ‚employer‘ to become contractors, have private unemployment, sickness and accident insurance. It is not an affordable option for the majority of workers.

The Job Guarantee

A job guarantee can only exist when a government is prepared to commit itself to becoming an employer of last resort. In the last thirty years there have been two forms of limited job guarantee provided by Australian governments. The first in the 1970s, under the Whitlam Labor Government, was the Regional Employment Development Scheme, and the second was the job offer, after 18 months unemployment, under the Keating Labor’s Working Nation package in the mid 1990s. The Centre for Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle is promoting the most detailed current Australian proposal for a job guarantee. Under a job guarantee, those who are available and capable of doing the work on offer will be assisted. But those who cannot find suitable child care, or have a disability will be unable to take up a job under the job guarantee unless child care is provided and the obstacles to obtaining and keeping employment are overcome for people with a disability.

Social Security

The greater the universality in any system of social security the nearer it comes to being an income guarantee. For instance, in Australia, all long-term residents who exceed specified age limits are entitled to apply for the age pension. The age limit for women is gradually being phased in to equal that of men. If their income and assets are below a specified amount they will receive payment. This is a Guaranteed Minimum Income for older Aus­tralian residents. Current age limits are 65 years for men and 62.5 years for women. Yet it needs to be remembered that the average age of death for Indigenous Australians is 56 years for men and 62 years for women. This compares with rates in the non-Indigenous population of 76 years men and 83 years for women. In Queensland, South Australia, Wes­tern Australia and the Northern Territory three-quarters of Indigenous male deaths and two-thirds of Indigenous female deaths occurred before the age of 65 years compared with one-quarter of male and one-sixth of female total deaths in Australia (ABS/AIHW (2003), p. 183.).

Social security benefits are targeted to those whom the government has decided should be paid. Complexity, stigma, system failure and recipients‘ lack of sophisticated knowledge about bureaucracies results in many eligible people not receiving their proper entitlements. The Brotherhood of St Laurence and St Vincent de Paul 2003 report entitled „Much Obliged“asserts that people who become long term unemployed have so much of their time taken up just meeting the obligations imposed on them by the Government that they don’t have time to find work: the report concludes the mutual obligation regime „is failing the most disadvantaged job seekers. Overall the system operates (…) not as ‚welfare to work‘ but ‚welfare as work'“[7].

Guaranteed Minimum Income, Negative Income Tax and Tax Credits

The first fully elaborated book length Basic Income proposal, in the English language, was written by Dennis Milner in 1920. A Guaranteed Minimum Income, if it is available to all permanent residents, is very much like a Basic Income except for the requirement to establish that an individual’s income and or assets are below the amount that is allowed. In 1943, Lady Juliet Rhys-Williams was the first English writer to provide a book length outline of the idea of a guaranteed minimum income. The purpose of such an income guarantee was in Rhys-Williams‘ words „to provide a ‚floor‘ below which he (or she) cannot fall, but ought not to have a ceiling beyond which he (or she) can rise“[8]. In 1970, Ian Braybrook wrote the first academic paper on negative income tax in Australia. The earliest Australian proposal to introduce a negative income tax was that of the Priorities Review Staff of the year 1975.

A Tax Credit is a form of negative income tax paid through the tax system. The aim of a guaranteed minimum income, negative income tax and tax credits is essentially to provide a minimum income guarantee to those whose incomes fall below a specified amount. All these generalised forms of income support differ, in theory, from categorical payments in at least one important regard. They make no presumption about social eligibility. Yet when income guarantee policies are formulated residues from categorical social security policies are frequently present. When Professor Ronald Henderson, Head of the Poverty Inquiry, proposed his guaranteed minimum income[9] he wanted a two-tiered structure, using the family as the unit of income, which distinguished between those in receipt of benefits or pensions and those who did not then qualify. Other Australian guaranteed minimum in­come proposals have used the household as the unit for payment[10]. Such proposals ignored the inequities present in intra-family and intra-household transfers.

Participation Income

Participation Income ideas are widespread in the present Australian system of income sup­port. Participation income is a euphemism for the chance to impose an obligation on people who receive government or government-subsidised payments coupled with the paternalistic belief that this will assist the recipient to improve their life. Many resear­chers have described the philosophical underpinnings of Participation Income as unethical[11] because the only choice offered to welfare recipients is comply or starve. The practical outcomes for those who are breached are socially disastrous[12]. Evidence is emerging from the United States which suggests that a reduction in or removal of social security payments leads to increased health difficulties for children.

There is little recognition that workfare jobs entrench low paid employment by displacing full-time, above poverty-line jobs[13].  „Work for the dole“ and Community Deve­lopment Employment Program (CDEP) jobs in Australia have a similar effect of entrenching poverty[14].  The CDEP is a „work for the dole“ program operating in Indige­nous communities since 1977. The bulk of Indigenous „jobs“ on Indigenous com­munities are CDEP „jobs“ – paid at about the rate of unemployment benefits and only the most misguided would claim that such „jobs“ have abolished poverty in Indigenous Australia.

Advocates of participation income seem oblivious to the life experiences of low paid workers‘ revealed in 2003 in the Australian Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union’s (LHMU) submission to the Senate Inquiry into Poverty. There is very little recog­nition of the demoralisation that follows in the wake of working full-time yet still being in poverty, or only being able to gain casualised, poorly renumerated, preca­rious employment.

The impact of enforcing obligations upon unemployed people, insufficiently employed people, lone parents and people with disabilities is the same whether it is expressed in the considered tones of Patrick McClure’s Report of 2000, or, one year before this, Minister Abbott’s suggestion that unemployed people are „job snobs“. The hysterical denunciation of „welfare dependency“ and particularly intergenerational „welfare dependency“ is based on a myth. There have been no intergenerational panel studies of long-term social security recipients in Australia. Recent overseas long-term panel studies refute such assertions[15]. Cook, Dodd and Mitchell[16] report that since 1975 in Australia there have been around eleven job seekers for each job vacancy.

Some researchers[17] have argued that if a Basic Income was put in place that workers would stay away from work in droves; whereas other researchers have argued the exact opposite[18]. The only study conducted in Australia into the impact on work willingness (where low-income families were provided with a guaranteed minimum income), showed these families experienced no decline in work willingness[19]. Van Parijs[20] claims that because a Basic Income is paid, irrespective of all other sources of income, it can be used by those who desire work as a wage subsidy; yet, because it provides sufficient income on which to live, it does not compel any potential worker to work under conditions which that worker finds unacceptable.

Effective Marginal Tax Rates

The rate of tax people pay is very confusing because of the progressive tax rates in the Australian income tax system, the presence of family allowances paid through the tax system and because the social security system and the tax systems intersect; as a result many families do not get much benefit from extra income they obtain by working.  Many low-income earners pay a greater proportion of their income in direct and indirect tax than do more affluent citizens. It is a long-acknowledged problem which governments over the years have failed to address adequately. The Government took a small step to reduce withdrawal rates from 70% to 60% in its 2005/6 Budget.

Tax

Australian taxpayers are, for most taxation purposes, assessed as individuals. But eligibility for most social security benefits is calculated in terms of total family income. A person applying for social security benefit can be refused payment if they have a partner who is earning more than a specified income. If an employed person is supporting a partner who is without income, that person cannot lower their tax by counting the income as spread between two people. A government, interested in assis­ting families to stay together, would not persevere with the existing social security arrangements which discriminate against people pooling their resources. With a Basic Income, unlike all the other forms of public assistance discussed, neither the employ­ment income nor the amount of Basic Income is directly affected by the other source of income. The withdrawal rate is the income tax rate on earned income. Importantly this removes poverty traps and work disincentives simultaneously.

In the current climate of individual work contracts and increasingly precarious employment, rather than relying upon individual employers to pay a wage sufficient to lift workers out of poverty, organised labour needs to consider whether there is not considerable merit in the collective provision of a Basic Income.

 

Why Australia needs a Universal Basic Income.

The income support issues with which Australia is grappling at the start of the 21st century are remarkably similar to those which many other countries are confronting. Anyone who reads the papers in the Basic Income Earth Network’s 2002 and 2004 Conference Proceedings, which detail the work of researchers from every continent, could not fail to be struck by the similarities in the debates. It needs to be remembered that in the decade prior to the 1980s there were many social welfare improvements and a great hope for even more. The Henderson Poverty Inquiry’s First Main Report of 1975 endorsed the idea of introducing a guaranteed minimum income and the Whitlam Labor Government seemed accepting of the idea.

 

Social protection

The prime reason for supporting a universal Basic Income is that it is the most socially just way of ensuring social protection[21]. In an ideal world everyone would have their needs fully met and all would contribute their utmost to ensure that everyone’s needs were met. This was essentially what the welfare state was meant to do in the post-Second World War period. The current Australian social welfare system, due largely to under-funding resulting from economic fundamentalists‘ constant attacks, is less capable of ensuring social pro­tection for the most vulnerable than the Australian welfare state of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many of the family support structures which were the first port of call for help in earlier times have been eroded; full-time work above the poverty-line is harder to find.

Intergenerational distribution young / old

Whereas social insurance payments are largely paid for by the contributions of workers, social security in Australia is paid from general taxation. In the 1960s and early 1970s age pensioners were often confined to poverty level incomes. The Henderson Poverty Inquiry of 1975 exposed this sorry state of affairs and now the Australian social security system treats age pensioners far more generously than unemployed people and younger unem­ployed people in particular. In Europe similar age-delineated inequities have led to inter­generational envy. Older Australians need to realise that their taxes went to pay the pensions of their parents‘ generation. There is nothing left to pay theirs and if they don’t treat younger people better the young might refuse to contribute to older people’s support. A Basic Income, because it is paid equally to all, abolishes such inter­generational envy.

Affordability

In any social policy process the first and last question asked is „Is it affordable?“ No space has been devoted to this question so far and it must be addressed. The Henderson Poverty Inquiry of 1975 showed that its guaranteed minimum income scheme was affordable. Keith Rankin has written extensively on the economic affordability of Basic Income in New Zealand. George has specifically addressed this question in relation to the United States. The Irish Government has declared it is affordable there[22].

In Australia, Saunders[23] worried that a full universal Basic Income might require a 50% income tax rate which he considered politically unpalatable. This calculation was made prior to the GST which, now implemented, would lower the tax rate required to something more in line with what the Irish Government has recently declared would be necessary (that is 43 percent) to pay for an above-poverty-line Basic Income.  This would mean that the required tax rate to pay for a Basic Income would be at or slightly above the current tax rate imposed on incomes exceeding $63,000 (probably in the order of 45 percent).

Perhaps the last word on affordability should be left to José Iglesias Fernández[24] who proposed a full universal Basic Income scheme for Catalonia paid at 50% of the average European Union wage. Considering whether his proposal was affordable, Iglesias Fernández wrote that since the Basic Income was only half of the per capita income that therefore the money needed to pay for it already existed and that it was simply a matter of redistribution.

Efficiency

While Australia has 12 to 18 % of its working age labour force unemployed, underem­ployed, disguised unemployed or discouraged unemployed, it is clearly not making an efficient use of available labour in this country. The Commonwealth Government’s Committee on Employment Opportunities commented: „The loss of production through unemployment is the single greatest source of inefficiency in our economy. Unemployment is also the most important cause of inequality and alienation for individuals, families and communities“[25].

Governments in Australia are certainly capable of determining the cost of delivering specific categorical benefits to those who are paid. They can and do calculate how much they ’save‘ by cutting people off income support when they do not meet the eligibility requirements for any specific benefit. This is accounting or target efficiency. Govern­ments seem uninterested in what social costs are incurred in the wake of decisions to remove income support from such citizens. Target efficiency processes give no measure of how efficient the system of social security is as a whole.

Some of the system-wide questions, which would need to be answered if the efficiency of the system as a whole was being calculated, would be:

–      Are any of the people excluded from the social security system poor?

–      How many people who have an entitlement miss out?

–      How satisfied are the people who are confined to low levels of income support?

–      Does the social security system advance social justice for all permanent residents?

–      Are the human rights of all residents protected (or even enhanced)?

–    Does the system remove all obstacles to inclusion of people with a disability?

–      Are all genders, ages and ethnic groups treated equally or equitably?

–     Is there equitable treatment provided to people from the city and the country,

–     and does the system of income support provide sufficient security to recipients so as to allow them to contribute to society in ways with which they are comfortable?

Attempting to ascertain the degree of impairment experienced by an individual applicant and then paying those applicants who can establish they have met some predeter­mined ‚level of incapacity to work‘ is costly and an extraordinarily inefficient way of providing income support to those with a disability. People with equivalent levels of im­pairment often have widely different employment histories. It would be more efficient to provide a universal income guarantee if the desire is to encourage productivity/contri­bution/inclusion by those who have a disability. Australian govern­ments have recognised this in relation to Blind Pensioners[26] but continue to subject others who have severe dis­abilities to stigmatised, selective, targeted, categorical payments.

There are broader aspects of efficiency that can and should be mounted in support of an unconditional Basic Income:

–     A Basic Income requires the least interference in the lives of citizens.

–     It supplies all permanent residents with equal assistance.

–     It is the most inclusive form of income support payment and the most secure, thus enhancing citizenship.

–     It provides sufficient income to allow people to explore their creative capacity.

–     It removes many of the obstacles to a reinvigoration of industrial, technical and computing infrastructure.

–     It allows the State a fuller understanding of the impact of its other social wage policies.

Conclusion

A universal Basic Income is not a utopian idea. It is an efficient affordable way to ensure no Australian permanent resident remains in poverty. However, a Basic Income is just that – an unconditional universal income guarantee. It delivers an income floor without impeding productivity. It is a vast improvement on categorical selective social services. It is an advance on all social insurance and private provision schemes which invariably result in the „individualisation of risk“ and as a result create a „do it yourself welfare state“.

References

  • Abbott, T.: „Bridging the Incentive Gap“, Australia Unlimited Conference, 4th May 1999, see: http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/speech/Incentive%20Gap.
  • ABS/AIHW: The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. ABS Cat.4704.0, 2003.
  • Basic Income Earth Network, see: http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/Index.html.
  • Braybrook, I.: „Negative income tax in Australia“, in: Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1970, pp. 120-130.
  • Briggs, C./Buchanan, J.: „Australian Labour Market Deregulation: A Critical Assessment“, Research Paper 21 (1999-2000), Parliamentary Library of Australia, Canberra 2000.
  • Committee on Employment Opportunities: Restoring Full Employment. Common­wealth of Australia, Canberra 1993.
  • Cook, B./Dodds, C./Mitchell, B.: „The false premises of Social Entrepreneurship“, Paper presented on 21st November, Workshop: „Social Entrepreneurship: whose responsibility is it anyway?“, CofFEE, University of Newcastle 2001.
  • Costello, M.: „Poor live in the shadows“, in: The Australian, 25th July 2003, p. 11.
  • Edwards, M.: The Income Unit in the Australian Tax and Social Security System. Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne 1984.
  • Galvin, R.: „Can Welfare reform make Disability Disappear“, in: Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol.39, No. 3, August 2004, pp. 343-355.
  • George, R.: Socioeconomic Democracy. Westport: Praeger 2002.
  • Goodin, R.: „False Principles of Welfare Reform“, in: Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 36, No. 3, August 2001, pp. 189-206.
  • Goodin, R./Headey, B./Muffels, R./Dirven, H.: The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University 1999.
  • Hayes, J.: „Big super funds could fail: APRA“, in: Courier Mail, 30th August 2002, p. 1.
  • Healy, S./Reynolds, B.: „From poverty relief to Universal Entitlement“, presented at BIEN’s 9th International Conference, Geneva, 12th-14th September 2002.
  • Henderson, R.: Poverty in Australia. Vol. I and II, Australian Government, Canberra 1975.
  • Iglesias Fernández, J.: „Strong Models versus weak Models of Basic Income in Catalonia“, presented at BIEN’s 9th International Conference, Geneva, 12th-14th September 2002.
  • Jordan, A.: Permanent Incapacity: Invalid Pension in Australia. Department of Social Security, Canberra 1984.
  • Kinnear, P.: „Mutual Obligation: Ethical and social implications“, Discussion Paper, no. 32, The Australia Institute, August 2000.
  • Lerner, S./Clark, C./Needham: Basic Income: Economic Security for All Canadians. Toronto: Between the Lines 1999.
  • Liffman, M.: Power for the Poor. Sydney: George, Allen & Unwin 1978.
  • LHMU: „Confronting the Low Pay Crisis: A New Commitment to Fair Wagesand Decent Work“, Senate Poverty Inquiry Submission, 2003.
  • McClure, P.: „Participation Support for a More Equitable Society“, Reportof the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Department of Family and Community Services, Canberra 2000.
  • Milner, D.: Higher Production by a Bonus on National Output: A proposal for a minimum income for all varying with national productivity. London: George Allen & Unwin 1920.
  • Page, R.: „The Prospects for British Social Welfare“ in: British Social Welfare in the Twentieth Century(ed. by Page, R. and Silburn, R.), Basingstoke: Macmillian 1998.
  • Priorities Review Staff: Possibilities for Social Welfare in Australia. Australian Government, Canberra 1975.
  • Rankin, K.: „A New Fiscal Contract? Constructing a Universal Basic Income and a Social Wage“, in: Social Policy Journal of New Zealand. Vol. 9, November 1997.
  • Rhys-Williams, J.: Something to Look Forward to. London: Macdonald 1943.
  • Rhys-Williams, J.: A New Look at Britain’s Economic Policy. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1965.
  • Saunders, P.: „Conditionally and Transition as Issues in the Basic Income Debate“, in: Income Support in an Open Economy: Basic Income Revisited. VCOSS, Melbourne 1995.
  • Schooneveldt, S.: „Do Mutual Obligation breach penalties coerce compliance with government expectations?“, in: Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 39, no. 2, 2004, pp. 155-167.
  • Shields, J./O’Donnell, M./O’Brien, J.: „The Bucks Stop Here: Private Sector Remuneration in Australia“, Labour Council of New South Wales, Sydney 2003, see: http://council.labor.net.au/community//public//files/The%20Buck%20Stops%20Here.pdf
  • Standing, G.: Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality. London: Verso 2002.
  • Tomlinson, J.: Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative. 2003, see: http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/interest/e-books.jsp.
  • Van Parijs: Real Freedom for All – What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism?Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997.
  • Van Parijs, P.: „The Second Marriage of Justice and Efficiency“, in: Arguing For Basic Income (ed. by Philippe Van Parijs), London: Verso 1992.
  • Widerquist, K.: „A Failure to Communicate“, in: Promoting Income security as a Right(ed. by Standing, G.), London: Anthem 2004.
  • Whiteford, P.: „Work Incentive Experiments in the United States and Canada“, Research Paper, no.12, Research and Statistics Branch, Development Division, Depart­ment of Social Security, Canberra 1981.
  • Ziguras, S./Dufty, G./Considine, M.: Much Obliged: Disadvantaged job seekers‘ experiences of the mutual obligation regime. Brotherhood of St Laurence and St. Vincent de Paul, 2003, see: http://bsl.org.au/pdfs/MOreportV2.pdf
Endnoten    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Costello (2003).↵
  2. Galvin (2004) and Ziguras/Dufty/Considine (2003).↵
  3. Shields/O’Donnell/O’Brien (2003).↵
  4. Lerner/Clark/Needham (1999), p. 11.↵
  5. Klein/Millar, cited according to Page (1998), p. 307.↵
  6. Hayes (2002), p. 1.↵
  7. Ziguras/Dufty/Considine (2003), p. 43.↵
  8. Rhys-Williams (1965), p. 163.↵
  9. Henderson (1975).↵
  10. Edwards (1984).↵
  11. Kinnear (2000), Goodin (2001).↵
  12. Schooneveldt (2004), Ziguras/Dufty/Considine (2003).↵
  13. Briggs/Buchanan (2000).↵
  14. Tomlinson (2003), Ch. 4 and 6.↵
  15. Goodin/Headey/Muffels/Dirven (1999), pp. 260-261.↵
  16. Cook/Dodd/Mitchell (2001), p. 24.↵
  17. Whiteford (1981).↵
  18. Widerquist (2004), Van Parijs (1997) and Tomlinson (2003).↵
  19. Liffman (1978).↵
  20. Van Parijs (1992), p. 229.↵
  21. Standing (2002), Van Parijs (1997) and (1992).↵
  22. Healy/Reynolds (2002).↵
  23. Saunders (1995).↵
  24. Fernández (2002).↵
  25. Commonwealth Government’s Committee on Employment Opportunities (1993), p. 1.↵
  26. Jordan (1984).↵

Nattrass, Nicoli: AIDS, Disability and the Case for a Basic Income Grant in South Africa, 18.11.05

Veröffentlicht am von

AIDS gehört zu den heimtückischsten bekannten Krankheiten. Besonders in afrikanischen Ländern prägt sie stark das Gesellschaftsbild. In Ländern wie Südafrika, die AIDS-Erkrankten finanzielle Unterstützung gewähren, ist immer wieder zu beobachten, dass besonders arme Menschen sich über eine AIDS-Erkrankung in der Familie freuen. AIDS wird dann zu einem Argument für die Einführung eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens, um bewusst herbei geführte Erkrankungen zu verhindern.
Nicoli Natrass untersuchte die Bedingungen für die Einführung eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens in Südafrika.

Introduction

AIDS is a very serious problem in South Africa. According to the demographic model of the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA2002) for the year 2004, 19% of the adults between the ages of 20 and 64 (and 11% of all South Africans) were HIV-positive. This situation amounts to the deep socio-economic crisis experienced nowadays in the country. The AIDS-emergency in South Africa weakens the economic safeguard of households by reducing the productivity of – and eventually killing – mainly prime-age adults while simul­taneously deflecting scarce domestic resources towards the health-care of AIDS-affected family members. Especially vulnerable to these shocks are in fact the poorest households in South Africa.

It is particularly appalling that the engrossment of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa coincides with the fact that over a third of the nation’s labour force remains unemployed and lacks thereby of social security[1]. South Africa’s welfare system beholds a full employ­ment programme: means-tested grants exist for over-aged (old age pension) and under-aged (child grant), as well as for disabled citizens (disability grant). Not the less, jobless labour forces do not dispose of such contributions. This ‚gap‘ amidst the social security network of the country may be a good reason for explaining the frequent correlation between unemployment and poverty[2].

In fact, only the disability grant is available for people of working age. This reality leads not only to social problems within the nation, but – as explained below – to complications with the recently begun Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), South Africa’s ‚rollout‘ on HIV prevention[3].

Welfare, AIDS and Disability in South Africa

Disability grants are accessible for all those ‚physically and mentally severely disabled‘, whose ages lie between 18 and 65. The whole system works according to a ‚medical model‘. The latter instructs medical officers recommending patients for disability grants to judge the patient’s capacity to labour independently of whether work is available or not[4]. People who have fallen into the fourth stage of AIDS, i.e. AIDS-sick, as long as they have passed a fairly generous means-test, become eligible for the disability grant. Yet these grants are to be renewed by officers periodically – every six months or up to every five years depending on the kind of contribution the patient is receiving. A dramatic consequence of this is that a patient on antiretroviral treatment who, during the treatment, turns up well enough to work should expect to lose his or her disability grant[5].

Disability grants (which pay up to R740 [approx. US$115] per month) seem to be an important source of income for AIDS-affected households in South Africa[6]. Survey evi­dence from Khayelitsha, Cape Town, reveals that for households receiving the disability grant, the contribution comprises between 41 and 49% of the total household income[7]. The profit obtained from the disability grants can be illustrated by the answer of a woman queried in another study, where she said: „I love this HIV“, a statement she explained as follows:

„Yes, I like this HIV/AIDS because we have grants to support us… Before I was living with my mother, my father and my sister; they didn’t work. Maybe I was passing three to four days without eating. People discriminated me and no one came in the house. The only thing helping was my grandmother’s pension. We survived through that money.  But after the illness, our lives have changed completely.“[8]

The notion of someone loving HIV seems at first shocking. But it is understandable – albeit in a terrible way – when considering the desperate circumstances to which households can be driven to when they lack of an income-earner. The advent of a disability grant, as was clearly the case for the respondent quoted above, can ensure a longer life-line for an entire family. Thus, the threat of its elimination, resulting of antiretroviral treatment, is utterly serious. If the data from Khayelitsha does constitute a reliable source, it may then suggest that average household income could fall by a third if a disability grant is lost through restored health.

This is evidently bad news for the prospects of the HAART-rollout. Firstly, there will be a great number of HAART-patients to which the access to certain food-products will be bounded once their disability grants are cancelled. People undergoing the treatment need to eat regular, nutritious meals in order to enjoy optimal health benefits. The loss of the disability grant could consequently threat a patient’s health status – thereby shortening his or her life – and could additionally increase viral loads in the patient, increasing by this means his or her infectiousness. Such consequences could undermine the benefits of the HAART-rollout both in terms of preventing from new HIV infections and of extending the lifetime of those infected[9]. Furthermore, a small, but significant percentage of the AIDS-affected may opt for discontinuing HAART so as to become AIDS-sick again and thus once more qualify to the disability grant; once it is reinstated, the patients take up again the treatment. In cases where the disability grant is cancelled as a result of restored health, some patients go for repeating the cycle. Besides the negative impact on the indivi­dual’s health, such behaviour can dramatically increase the development of drug resistant strains of the HIV virus, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of the entire HAART-rollout. These reasons reinforce the necessity of carrying out a strong case in favour of the introduction of a basic income grant in South Africa’s social security system.

Towards a Basic Income Grant

One way out of the potential trade-off between disability grants and the antiretroviral treatment may consist in removing the grant altogether for HIV-positive people. Such measure would at least facilitate the disappearance of appalling incidents as described above. The result of this, however, could be socially distorting, since its discriminative core is liable of being censured: people disabled by AIDS can’t be categorically disentitled from government support. Moreover, the elimination of the disability grant for all citizens who are HIV-positive would certainly cut down an essential source of income in poor AIDS-affected households. Likewise, the resolution may have unfavourable effects on the nutritional state of people using antiretrovirals. By this means the efficacy of the treatment rollout would be reduced, allowing the following two conclusions: firstly, that in South Africa the decline of a private household income can in fact lead directly to lower food-expenditure. And secondly – taken the fact that AIDS is most common within poor social spheres -: that the ensuing growth of poverty could exacerbate the development of the AIDS epidemic.

An alternative response is to allow HIV-positive people to maintain their disability grants even after their health has been restored. There are, however, two problems with this strategy. The first is that perverse incentives, as described above, can’t be eliminated in this way. Allowing access to the disability grant for patients whose health has been restored may result in some people desiring to become HIV-positive. Although this may sound far-fetched, there is anecdotal evidence from the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal indicating that various persons become annoyed when having negative re­sults on their tests – arguing that they were hoping consequently to get the grant. In the Eastern Cape there is the saying that someone has ‚won the lotto‘ if the HIV-test draws positive. Such news is actually seen as a ticket to the disability grant. If antiretroviral treat­ment is regarded – indeed incorrectly – as a ‚cure‘ for HIV, then it is possible that some people may desire to become HIV-positive under the mistaken notion that they will be able to get access to the disability grant, and then be healed through antiretroviral treatment.

The second problem with allowing HIV-positive people to keep their disability grants, even when their health has been restored through antiretroviral treatment, is one of moral character. Why should HIV-positive individuals be privileged over others possibly equally needy, but HIV-negative? Put in this way, the question after the introduction of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) for all disabled nationals immediately arises. Nonetheless the esta­blishment of a BIG would need to be effected at a much lower level (probably in the range of R100 to R200 instead of the current maximum grant of R750). Households having lost the disability grant as a consequence of antiretroviral treatment would obtain in some degree a financial cushioning resultant of the fact that they, and each household member, would have received a BIG. This measure could help prevent people on anti­retroviral treatment from the temptation of quitting their obligations to the treatment’s regimens in order to restore a disability grant.

Suppose that a BIG is introduced for all people, say at R100 per month: what would then be the appropriate level of payment for the disability grant? If the payment to disabled people is to remain at its current level, then a disability grant on the top of the BIG could fall by R100 to R650. This means, for example, that if a person loses a disability grant for entering to antiretroviral treatment, his or her loss in income will consequently sum up R550 rather than R740 – and yet the patient will have a BIG aiding his or her subsistence needs. It is however possible that for some very poor individuals on antiretroviral treat­ment the gap between the disability grant and the BIG may still be large enough to encourage them to stop taking antiretroviral treatment in order to restore the grant. If so, then there is actually a case for reducing the value of the disability grant and/or raising the value of the BIG.

There is a range of arguments, both moral and economic, in favour of a generalized BIG[10], particularly in the case of South Africa[11]. This is not the place to review these arguments, nor the arguments against the introduction of a BIG. The point at present is simply to show that given the factual circumstances of the widespread of AIDS in South Africa and, as mentioned above, the perverse incentives associated with the removal of the disability grant, arguments have amounted in favour of the introduction of a BIG.

Previous research and financial simulations have shown that even a modest BIG of R100 per month for all South Africans could indeed contribute to reduce poverty and in­equality in South Africa[12]. This is the reason why the latest report of the Taylor Committee on „a comprehensive welfare policy reform“ argued in favour of a BIG[13]. According to Le Roux[14], financial means for a BIG could be gained through a 7.3% point increase in value-added tax (VAT) and a 50% boost on excise and fuel taxes. This scheme is broad-based and redistributive: those who spend more than R1,000 a month would end up paying more in consumption taxes than they benefit from the R100 BIG.

In earlier work, I estimated that the implementation of a full-scale AIDS prevention and of a treatment intervention that could provide HAART to all those in the need of it (i.e. with a rapid rollout and no share in antiretroviral treatment), would require an increase in resources equivalent to raising VAT by between 3 and 7% points according to the level of care provided to those suffering from any AIDS-related illness[15]. Given the subsequent, remarkable decrease in the price of antiretrovirals (between November 2003 and June 2004 the first line triple therapy treatment regimen dropped by 72%) the revenue expected to be raised would now probably require only an increase of between 1.9 and 5.7% points on VAT. If we take the mid-point estimate and sum it to Le Roux’s valuation of a necessary tax increase, then it seems that South Africa would have to raise tax revenues by an equi­valent of a 12% point increase in VAT so as to finance a BIG and implement a national AIDS prevention and treatment intervention for all who need it.

This, of course, implies a significant increase in taxation. The viability of this can’t be exactly estimated, as different societies tolerate different levels of taxation, and at different times. Welfare expenditure as a proportion of GDP has risen economic development, and in times of crisis, such as war, citizens have accepted large increases in taxation as legitimate[16]. The notion of what is and is not ‚affordable‘ thus varies according to social and economic circumstances. Given the high degree of unemployment and the progress of the AIDS epidemic, it is possible that a part of South Africa’s population does agree with an increase in taxation, and may be able to deal with it. Whether one appeals to Rawlsian logic to protect the lives and livelihoods of the poor, or to more radical left libertarian ideas of providing each citizen with a social dividend as a basic right, the issue in the end boils down to whether people can tolerate living in a society that forces AIDS-affected individuals to choose between income and health.

Finally, it is important to note that even if a BIG and a suitable AIDS prevention and treatment intervention were to be introduced, there is yet much more to be done regarding the problem of unemployment and poverty in South Africa. A BIG of R100 a month is ac­tually very small: it amounts only to one tenth of the average African per capita income, and to one twentieth of the average per capita income in South Africa. Addressing poverty through other means – most notably by encouraging labour-intensive growth – must therefore have an essential role in any future solution.

References

  • Bhorat, H.: „A universal income grant scheme for South Africa: An empirical assessment“, Paper presented at the 9th International Congress of the Basic Income European Network, Geneva 2002.
  • Coetzee, C./N. Nattrass: „Living on AIDS Treatment: A Socio-Economic Profile of Africans Receiving Antiretroviral Treatment in Khayelitsha“, Centre for Social Science Research, Working Paper No. 71. Cape Town 2004. Available on www.cssr.uct.ac.za.
  • Leibbrandt, M./Woolard, I./Bhorat, H.: „Understanding Contemporary Household Inequality in South Africa“, in: Studies in Economics and Econometrics, vol. 24, no.3: 31-51. 2000.
  • Le Roux, P.:  „Financing a Universal Income Grant in South Africa“, in: Social Dynamics, vol.28, no.2: 98-121. 2003.
  • Nattrass, N.: „Unemployment and AIDS: The Social-Democratic Challenge for South Africa“, in: Development Southern Africa, vol.21, no.1, March: 87-108. 2004a.
  • Nattrass, N.:  The Moral Economy of AIDS in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004b.
  • Seekings, J.: „Visions of Society: Peasants, Workers and the Unemployed in a Changing South Africa“, in: Studies in Economics and Econometrics, vol.24, no.3. 2000.
  • Seekings, J.: „Providing for the Poor:  Welfare and Redistribution in South Africa“, Inaugural Lecture, University of Cape Town, 23 April. 2003.
  • Seekings, J./Nattrass, N. From Race to Class: The Changing Nature of Inequality in South Africa. Yale University Press, New Haven (forthcoming).
  • Simchowitz, B.: „Social Security and HIV/AIDS: Assessing ‚Disability‘ in the Context of ARV Treatment“, Draft paper presented at the Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, July 29, 2004.
  • Standing, G./Samson, M. (eds): The Basic Income Grant in South Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press 2003.
  • Taylor Committee: „Transforming the Present:  Protecting the Future“, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa, RP/53/2002, Pretoria, Government Printer. 2002.
  • Van der Berg, S./ Bredenkamp, C.: „Devising Social Security Interventions for Maximum Poverty Impact“, in: Social Dynamics, vol.28, no.2: 39-68. 2003.
  • Van Parijs, P.: What is Wrong with a Free Lunch? Boston: Beacon Press 2001.
Endnoten    (↵ returns to text)

  1. Nattrass (2004a).↵
  2. Leibbrandt et al (2000); Seekings (2000); Seekings and Nattrass (forthcoming).↵
  3. Nattrass (2004c).↵
  4. Simchowitz (2004).↵
  5. Nattrass (2004c).↵
  6. Coetzee and Nattrass (2004).↵
  7. Ibid.↵
  8. Nattrass (2004b), p. 95.↵
  9. Nattrass (2004c).↵
  10. Cf., e.g. Van Parijs (2001).↵
  11. Cf., e.g. Standing and Samson (2003).↵
  12. Bhorat (2002).↵
  13. Taylor Committee (2002).↵
  14. Le Roux (2002).↵
  15. Nattrass (2004b).↵
  16. Seekings (2003).↵

Howard, Michael W.: Is a Generous Basic Income Compatible with Open Borders?, 18.11.05

Veröffentlicht am von

Die Forderung nach der Einfuhrung eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens wurde besonders in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten kontrovers diskutiert. Dass es sich dabei nicht nur um ein Problem der Finanzierung handelt, sondern auch Entwicklungen deutlich größeren Ausmaßes losgetreten werden können, macht Michael W. Howard deutlich.

For the purposes of this paper, I will take for granted that a strong moral case can be made within the framework of a liberal theory of justice for a basic income for all, if not globally, then at least within liberal societies. I am also going to assume that for some years into the future basic income advocates will need to focus on national basic income (NBI) policies, because neither a global basic income (GBI) nor a regional basic income (RBI) is feasible, and they may also be vulnerable to moral objections. I am not com­pletely convinced of this assumption, but I believe it is at least plausible, even if one is inclined, as I am, to favor GBI in principle. I will return briefly to this topic at the end of the paper.

Assuming then that NBI is the highest level on which BI can be practically considered, the problem I am addressing is a possible dilemma between generous egalitarian welfare policy, epitomized by NBI, and egalitarian immigration policy, epitomized by relatively open borders. If a generous NBI would trigger welfare mi­gration, and this in turn would undermine the economic or political feasibility of NBI, then egalitarians would have to choose between a generous BI and restrictive immigra­tion policies on the one hand, and on the other hand more open immigration policies but a less generous or more qualified welfare policy (BI for citizens only, or the benefits subject to familiar sorts of means tests and willingness-to-work requirements, or even further erosion of a commitment to a welfare state). If indeed this is a dilemma, then it is not enough to say, as some BI defenders do, that BI cannot solve all problems. In this case, BI would itself trigger a pro­blem in immigration that in turn would require either retreating from BI, or possibly making undesirable changes in immigration policy. Can we defend BI in light of possible welfare migration effects, and what kind of defensible immigration policy is compatible with NBI?

Three Migration Problems

There are in fact three distinct sorts of problems that BI advocates need to consider, cor­responding to three different sorts of migration. The first is „North-South“ or „vertical“ migration from relatively poor to relatively affluent countries. The second is „horizontal“ migration between countries that are on roughly the same level of develop­ment, but may differ in the level and structure of social benefits. The third problem, a spin-off of the first, concerns the ghettoization of immigrant groups. Although I will be concerned in this paper with the first of these, the other two may pose greater challenges to basic income per se, whereas the problems raised by the first may be common to all generous welfare policies and are not peculiar to basic income.

Horizontal migration may involve some welfare magnet dimension, but the more se­rious problem may well be the emigration of the highly skilled. Social benefits can be gene­rous with respect to level or with respect to conditionality. Basic income can be generous in the first sense (along with any other welfare benefit) and is inherently more generous in the second sense, insofar as it, being unconditional, is extended to more people. To the extent that it involves a shift in the real tax burden from lower to upper ranks of income earners (a success with respect to distributive justice), this may provoke an exodus of the highly skilled, thus eroding productivity and threatening the economic viability of the basic income itself. If immigration is difficult to control, emigration is even harder, particularly for this class of migrant sought by other coun­tries. Emigration might also be complemen­ted by immigration (horizontal or vertical) of low-skilled workers, seeking not so much the unconditional benefit per se, but the plentiful low-skill jobs made feasible by the basic income.

The ghettoization problem concerns those, often members of immigrant groups, but also subgroups among citizens, who are trapped in cycles of poverty and exclusion, because a) they have inadequate education, linguistic skills, and social networking, b) they fail to find regular well paid employment, and c) they consequently fail to integrate with others outside their subculture with whom they could form networks, acquire language skills, find work, and gain access to better neighbourhood schools. Migration networks can contribute to the growth of this part of the population. Basic income, by dropping a work require­ment, one might argue, enables such people to remain stuck in patterns of exclusion. This does not strike me as an insuperable problem (and may overstate the self-excluding dynamic and neglect discrimination as a factor), but it raises the question whether basic income, in combination with other programs, is a better solution to the problem of exclu­sion than a system of income support conditional on seeking paid work.

Is there a Migration Dilemma?

We should consider first the argument that there is a migration dilemma, at least politically, if not economically, for relatively generous welfare states with relatively open borders between member states. The answer may differ for different countries and regions. Roswitha Pioch, in a paper for the 2002 BIEN Congress, describes the substan­tial welfare gaps between wealthier and poorer EU countries, which is widening with the entry of state of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She concludes that „these welfare gaps undermine the political viability of a basic income,“ because „countries that provide generous income support have become vulnerable to welfare migration under the EU’s freedom of mobility rules, which do not allow a country to discriminate against the nationals of another welfare state (…) if basic income is introduced in any one of the member states of the European Union, it must be offered to nationals of other EU member states as well“. It isn’t clear from her paper that welfare migration from a national basic income (NBI) would be economically unsustainable, but it may be politically unsus­tainable, she thinks, because „people would fear welfare migration (…).“ It should be possible to determine any welfare migration effect from unconditional income by com­paring European states with dif­ferent levels of child benefit. The child benefit amounts to a basic income for an age group. While the evidence would be inconclusive for the poten­tially more mobile single population, the presence or absence of any evidence of migration on account of child benefit should give us some indication of the relevance of benefit levels for migration decisions.

Turning to the U.S., the evidence on internal welfare migration among the native population is mixed. Some studies in the U.S. show no evidence of internal welfare migra­tion between states that have significant differences in the generosity of their benefits; others find evidence of „positive, but modest, effects of welfare benefit generosity on migration decisions“. However, the welfare gaps between states within the U.S. are rela­tively small compared to the differentials between some countries in the EU, or between the U.S. and Mexico. These larger gaps, and other differences between the native and immigrant populations would lead one to expect a more substantial „welfare magnet“ effect. This is the case even if most immigrants come in search of work and not state services. Although Borjas claims that „there is little evidence to suggest that inter­state dif­ferences in welfare benefits generate a magnetic effect in the native popu­lation“, he points out that the costs of interstate movement are lower for immigrants than for natives, and there is a clustering of immigrants in the more generous states. Furthermore, this clus­tering in California, one of the most generous states, is not due only to its proximity to Mexico and Asia (the latter the origin of many refugees), there is also clustering of non-Mexican and non-refugee immigrants. And while higher welfare benefits are generally not the reason for migration, they may discourage return to the country of origin if a person fails in the labor market. Higher welfare generosity, although not the magnet that draws, may be the magnet that holds.

Although there has been a trend toward greater use of welfare services by immigrants, still, at current benefit levels, it does not appear that most immigrants are migrating for the sake of benefits. Despite this, there has been significant backlash against immigrants, both at the national level and in California, where native house­holds pay an additional $1,200 per year in taxes to support social services for immigrants. Efforts have been made, sometimes successfully, to exclude undocumented immigrants from education and health care, and to deny pension and disability, food stamp and cash benefits to legal immigrants.

These mean-spirited policies have been accompanied by increased border patrol, resul­ting in „more than 2,640 border crossing-related deaths-10 times more lives than the Berlin Wall claimed during its 28-year existence-and a sharp increase in permanent settlement of unauthorized Mexicans in the United States“. Migrants have not been deter­red from entering the U.S.; they are only entering by more dangerous routes and incurring higher personal risks. On top of this we have the increased security after the 9/11 attacks. In this political climate, it is unlikely that any generous welfare policy could be introduced that promised to have even a modest welfare magnet effect.

However, I do not conclude from these observations that a NBI is politically unfeasible. Although NBI might face strong opposition grounded in irrational fears and prejudices, or even narrowly construed self-interest, it may still be politically feasible if it can be justified by appeal to a reasonable sense of justice. Perhaps the most important point to make is that the problems we are considering are just as likely to occur for conditional and means-tested benefits as for a basic income, so they do not constitute objections to BI as opposed to its alternatives. People migrate for work, not benefits, and if they would migrate for BI on account of their neediness, they would presumably also qualify and migrate for conditional benefits. If on the other hand they are working and contributing, then their productivity adds to the resources available for distribution, and their receiving a BI is not a net cost to the native community. Thus, in what follows, one could just as well speak of any generous welfare policy, as of NBI.

NBI for Citizens Only?

One solution to the welfare magnet problem would be to restrict NBI to citizens. This would partly just shift the problem, with applications for citizenship increasing dramati­cally, as the benefits of citizenship vis-à-vis residency increased. But more to the point, a citizens-only NBI is an unethical solution, and unworkable. Simply put, people who have been legally admitted, allowed to reside, to work, and who often are required to pay taxes, cannot be denied the benefits of full membership, even if they are not citizens. In the U.S., where, as I just indicated, an effort has been made to deny benefits to legal immigrants (benefits much less generous than NBI), it has proven difficult in practice to enforce in many respects. In the European context it is already not even a legal possibility at the current stage of integration. One also has to consider a labor market in which the wages of some would be supplemented by (and perhaps lowered because of) a BI, while others would have no supplement and reduced wages. How could such a two-tiered system be justified? Addressing the migration dilemma thus shifts to the border.

NBI and Tightening the Borders?

Philippe Van Parijs, who supports a GBI in principle, but NBI for residents as a second best, endorses some measure of border control against economic migrants. „In the mean­while, however, do not let people in too easily from poorer countries – because capital migration is a less painful process, because the least advantaged, being less mobile, are not likely to benefit, and above all because it would undermine any serious attempt to equalize, be it locally and partially, wealth and job assets.“

If this strategy were construed narrowly as stronger border enforcement, it would carry a heavy price indeed, in lives but also money, and might even be counterproductive with respect to the narrow aim of reducing the number of im­migrants, because of the disincentive to return home, as we have noted. Stronger worksite enforcement is likely to be ineffective, politically unpopular, and economically disruptive. President Bush’s pro­posed temporary worker program is likely to produce a parallel flow of undocumented workers, and „permanent settlement of ‚temporary‘ workers whose continued services are sought by employers.“ Cornelius concludes that „the most effective approach would be to get serious about creating alternatives to emigration in the key sending areas of Mexico and Central America… Any strategy of immigration control that addresses only the supply side is doomed to failure“.

A GBI or RBI could be part of a policy addressing the demand side. But our starting point was the premise that in the short term we are not able to do this successfully. Now we find that a precondition of NBI, controlling the supply side of immigration, may be unworkable. In this light, as I suggest at the end, a GBI or RBI may be less utopian than a NBI.

Hillel Steiner has argued that NBI is a form of „justice among thieves,“ by allowing each wealthy country to share among its own citizens more than their fair share of global wealth. Philippe Van Parijs offers two defenses of NBI against this charge, first that if we take into account human capital as well as resources, „solidaristic patriotism“ might well enable poorer countries to retain their own skilled workers. Second, what is important is not national wealth but basic income potential. Solidaristic patriotism, even if it reduces a (poorer) country’s wealth, may facilitate a higher basic income, because of the greater willingness of citizens to keep their assets in the country and be taxed. So some border restrictions may have egalitarian justification. But when do the border restrictions implied by solidaristic patriotism become unfair?

In a longer paper I explore a number of arguments for and against open borders that I cannot rehearse here. I will close only with the approach that I have, to date, found most compelling for addressing conflicts between duties to compatriots and duties to non-compatriots, duties to compatriots favoring restrictions on immigration, and duties to non-compatriots favoring open borders.

Darrel Moellendorf argues that all associations generate duties. Hence political association, in particular that of the state, generates specific duties among compatriots. But global associations also generate duties among non-compatriots, and because these involve the distribution of some of the same resources involved in duties among compatriots, there is potential conflict between these two classes of duties. Moellendorf does not think that there is in general a priority of one kind of duty over the other. However the distribution necessary for political equality – and we might add, solidaristic patriotism – may put justifiable limits on the distribution necessary for global equality of opportunity or a global difference principle. „If we have democratic duties to our compatriots, it is quite plausible that we have duties to limit inequalities so that they are consistent with healthy democratic politics. The idea is that sufficiently large socioeconomic inequalities give rise to inequalities in power that corrupt democratic processes, or may render the worst-off either unable to participate, or unwilling to participate, because of a justified loss of faith in the political process. These reasons are not sufficient, however, to justify the view that redistributive claims of compatriots necessarily trump those of non-compatriots“.

Although the claims of non-compatriots involve a greater need, duties toward com­patriots may be more realizable, „where extensive state institutions of redistribution exist and can be operated or built upon (…) [and thus duties of compatriots may trump those of non-compatriots] because what is important is achieving what justice demands“.

The claims of non-compatriots set a long term goal, and a duty to develop effective institutions for fulfilling that duty. The claims of compatriots require us not to move so rapidly toward global justice that we undermine the only effective redistributive institutions that currently exist, by undermining political equality, and by straining the commitment of citizens to a shared political community. A policy of not worsening the worst-off among compatriots, while attending in the long run to the worst-off generally, is a policy that acknowledges the claims of global justice, while respecting the special obligations among compatriots.

A sociological conjecture may reinforce this position. Individuals do not develop an ef­fective sense of justice-a sense of justice that overrides self-interest-merely by reflecting on the equal worth of all persons. They learn first to love and care about family and personal friends. Then they learn to widen the circle of concern to members of their local com­munity, and from there to larger political associations. Through personal friendships and experiences, education, and rational reflection, this circle can be widened further, to encompass global concerns. But if the social basis for a sense of justice is weakened, there is little chance that these wider sympathies will develop. This is not an argument for the superiority of duties to compatriots over duties to non-compatriots, but only a conjecture that solid institutions for fulfilling the former are preconditions for developing institutions that better address the latter. One bit of evidence in support of this conjecture is the per­centage of national income directed to foreign aid from affluent countries with well-developed welfare states versus the percentage from affluent countries with relatively weak welfare states – Norway versus the United States, for example.

In conclusion, NBI policy should be designed to address the implications of NBI for immigration. There is likely to be a tension between generous NBI and relatively open borders, and more open borders are to be expected from further economic integration. While the case for tightening borders is rather weak, and the effort to reduce immigration at the border can be counterproductive, some restriction can be justified as politically reasonable in order not to strain the commitment of citizens to egalitarian principles by making the poorest citizens significantly worse off. At the same time, the claims of global justice need to be acknowledged, and wealthier states put on a path toward egalitarian justice on a global scale. A first step would be serious exploration of a workable GBI, or, in the western hemisphere, a RBI similar to a proposed European BI.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper from participants at the 2004 BIEN Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, particularly Philippe Van Parijs, Yannick Vanderborght, Iwao Hirose, and Jan Erk.

References

 

  • Barry, Brian/Goodin, Robert E.: „Free Movement: Ethical Issues“, in: The transnational migration of people and of money, University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1992.
  • Borjas, George J.: Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999.
  • Cornelius, Wayne: „Evaluating Enhanced US-Border Enforcement“, in: Migration Infor­mation Source, 1st May 2004: http://www.migrationinformation.org.
  • Howard, Michael W.: Basic Income and Migration Policy: A Moral Dilemma? Online for the 10th BIEN Congress, Barcelona 2004: http://www.basicincome.org.
  • [aartikel]0745630081:left:wwwavinusmaga-21[/aartikel]Jordan, Bill/Düvell, Franck: Migration: The Boundaries of Equality and Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press 2003.
  • Krause-Junk, Gerold: „Probleme einer Integration von Einkommenbesteuerung und steuerfinanzierten Sozialleistungen. Anmerkung zum Gutachten der Experten-Kom­mission“, in: Wirtschaftsdienst, no. 7, 1996, pp. 345-49.
  • McKinnish, Terra: „Evidence of Cross-Border Welfare Migration“, 2003 (unpublished, forthcoming in: Journal of Human Resources).
  • [aartikel]0813365562:left:wwwavinusmaga-21[/aartikel]Moellendorf, Darrel: Cosmopolitan Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Westview Press 2002.
  • Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: „Final Official Development Assistance data for 2003“, see: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/19/52/34352584.pdf.
  • Pioch, Roswitha: „Migration, Citizenship, and Welfare State Reform in Europe: Overcoming marginalization in segregated labour markets“, presented at the Ninth International BIEN Congress, Geneva 2002, see: http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/ Index.html.
  • Schmitter, Philippe/Bower, Michael: „A Modest Proposal for Expanding Social Citizenship in the European Union“, in: Journal of European Social Policy, no. 11:1, 2001, pp. 55-65.
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  • Van Parijs, Philippe: „Basic Income at the Heart of Social Europe? Reply to Fritz Scharpf“, in: Basic Income on the Agenda (ed. by L. Groot and R.J. van der Veen), Amsterdam: Ams­terdam University Press 2000.
  • [aartikel]0271008881:left:wwwavinusmaga-21[/aartikel]Van Parijs, Philippe: „Commentary: Citizenship exploitation, unequal exchange and the breakdown of popular sovereignty“, in: Free Movement: Ethnical Issues in the Transnational Migration of People and of Money (ed. by Brian Barry and Robert E. Goodin), New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1992, pp. 155-165.
  • Van Parijs, Philippe: „Hybrid Justice, Patriotism and Democracy: a Selective Reply“, in: Real Libertarianism Assessed: Political Theory after Van Parijs (ed. by Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams), Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2003, pp. 201-16.
  • Van Parijs, Philippe/Vanderborght, Yannick: „From Euro-Stipendium to Euro-Dividend“, in: Journal of European Social Policy, no. 11:4, 2001, pp. 342-52.
  • Oxfam International: „Dumping without borders: How US agricultural policies are destroying the livelihoods of Mexican corn farmers“, Oxfam Briefing, paper 50, 2003, see: http://www.oxfam.org/eng/policy_pape_corn_dumping.htm

Van Parijs, Philippe: Does Basic Income Make Sense As a Worldwide Project?, 18.11.05

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Does basic income make sense as a worldwide project? To my own amazement, I have come to believe that it does, incomparably more than I did when we founded the Basic Income European Network in 1986.

To explain this, I first need to distinguish two senses in which one might think of turning basic income from a national, or at most a European, into a worldwide project. There is the swelling and there is the spreading.

Swelling the project?

Swelling the basic income project into a worldwide one consists in imagining that it can be organised in a truly universal way, administered and funded at a global level.

I have great respect for the moral commitment of those who have been mobilising around that idea, most forcefully perhaps the Dutch artist Pieter Kooistra and his Foundation “UNO basisinkomen voor alle mensen” (2). Yet, for our generations this is pure speculation. Not the less, pure speculation needs not be useless speculation. And in this case it is definitely not too early to start considering Basic Income seriously as a worldwide project. Indeed, as ever stronger worldwide interdependencies make progress in this direction, it’s become more feasible and more necessary.

Obviously, a crucial part of that speculation concerns the funding. Let me just state, without argument, a couple of negative and a couple of positive convictions. I do not believe in the viability of a worldwide personal income tax, since the exact definition of taxable income should, from my point of view, rather be left at a far more decentralised level. Nor do I believe in the relevance, for this purpose, of Tobin-type taxes on international transactions. They may be useful for keeping destabilising speculation in check or funding expanded supranational organisations in less precarious a way than is currently the case. But their equilibrium yield would fall far short of making a significant contribution to the funding of a worldwide basic income.

More worth exploring, in my opinion, is the idea of combining the shift to one single global currency, as advocated e.g. by Myron Frankman (3), and the use of the seignorage rights associated with this currency for funding a modest non-inflationary basic income at the level of the annual growth of the world GDP, along the lines developed by Joseph Huber (4).

Finally, and of least remote relevance, is the idea of a fair worldwide distribution of a sustainable volume of tradable pollution rights – as distinct from a distribution according to existing levels of pollution of the sort currently considered. To reflect Thomas Paine’s old notion of an equal repartition of the resources of the planet, this would come down to a uniform global tax on the volume of emissions whose revenues would be distributed according to population size.

Even in the long term, however, this swollen basic income will not come in substitution, but in support of a basic income funded at a far less global level. Moreover, it will come only if a large number of far more local schemes first prove that implementation difficulties can be overcome and that key objections can be refuted, however adverse a country’s circumstances may seem.

Spreading the project? The Congo

For the time being, therefore, by far the most important interpretation of the central question in this paper concerns the diffusion of Basic Income as a worldwide project. In other words: does it really make sense to think of spreading the project beyond those relatively affluent countries with fairly developed welfare states, in which Basic Income first took root? In recent years, two sets of contrasting impressions have strongly affected my thinking on this subject.

In the spring of 2001, I discovered the Congo in the course of what was one of the most mind-blowing academic trips of my life. Among the many aspects that struck me about the situation in the Congo, I’ll now mention three that are directly relevant to our matter.

When the Congo became independent from Belgium, both countries had about 10 million inhabitants, slightly more for the Congo, slightly less for Belgium. Four decades later, Belgium has laboriously reached 10.5 million, while the Congo approaches an 52 million. A walk through the sandy streets of Kinshasa gives always the impression of strolling through a kindergarten. Yet it cannot help feeding our concerns about how vigorous the demographic transition will need to be and how ill-advised has been any transfer scheme for slowing it down.

Another striking experience was talking with people at the very top of the Congo’s state apparatus. There, you realise that no one has (or at any rate had then) much of a clue as to how many people the government is employing, who these people are, how often and how much they are paid. Can you imagine, in this context, conveying an income in reliable fashion, not merely to some thousands of civil servants, but to several millions of citizens?

Last but not least, one has to consider the cultural barriers within the own country’s population. What political chances can there be for a serious and ambitious programme in favour of the poor in a country in which nearly all political, administrative and academic life operates in French, a language mastered by a small and shrinking minority of less than 10% of the population? How can the voices of those who would stand to benefit from such a programme be sufficiently heard, while looking forward to making significant, politically sustainable steps?

While flying back from the Congo, I sat thinking about these three sets of considerations – shortly after having to escape from a last attempt by some locals, at the airport in Kinshasa, to get a small first instalment of their prospective worldwide Basic Income. Had I been asked then whether Basic Income made sense as a worldwide project, I’m pretty sure I would have said no.

Spreading the project? South Africa

Yet, not long after I got back, I found out, bit by bit, both about what was already in place and what was being vocally demanded in a country, geographically as well as socio-economically, not quite distinct from the Congo: the Republic of South Africa.

What is in place? First and foremost, as regards our subject, a non-contributory, monthly pension of 600 Rand (or EUR 60), paid, at the time, to all women aged 60 or over, and to all men aged 65 or over. These must have been subject to a means test that practically amounts to excluding all households entitled to a pension from the formal sector, and only them. Developed during the final years of the apartheid regime, this scheme is far more redistributive than all other aspects of the South-African tax-and-transfer system taken all together. It is also without a doubt the largest redistributive transfer scheme in the whole of the African continent. About 80% of the age-qualified Black population of South Africa reports receipt of it, compared to about 10% of the age-qualified White population. In total, 75% of the recipients are women (5).

What is most remarkable about this scheme is that it works: that it has somehow managed to tackle the huge implementation problems involved in reaching nearly two million beneficiaries, many of them illiterate and living in remote rural areas. Remarkable too is that the redistribution effected through it reaches far beyond its immediate beneficiaries. The granny’s pension is the main source of formal income for a large number of extended households, with wide-ranging effects across generations, most strikingly on the granddaughters’ health (6). Moreover, making title-holders out of the elderly obviously has the advantage of handling the demographic problem far better than any other simple type of poverty alleviation scheme. And it avoids any direct work disincentive for the population of working age – which is not to say that it does not come without intrinsic defect, as expressed for example in the alleged tendency for the administrative existence of grannies to significantly outstrip their physiological life.

On the background of both the success and the limitation of this remarkable scheme, South Africa has recently witnessed the surprising development of a powerful movement calling without the slightest ambiguity for a fully unconditional universal basic income at a monthly rate of 100 Rand (about EUR 10). A basic income coalition has been formed around this demand, with the support of the Churches and, most strikingly, the Trade Union Confederation, COSATU.

One key question is of course: Will the administrative cost of delivering so widely such a small amount not end up swallowing an absurdly large share of the resources? Advocates are quick to respond that any serious means test would lend itself to far more waste and abuse. Another key question is who is going to pay. If it becomes clear that the bulk of the net funding will need to come out of the salaries of formal sector workers, how can one expect strong Trade Union support to persist? Will it help to point out that fewer remittances will need to be sent to the villages once all the workers’ relatives receive a basic income grant? Will it help to turn to indirect taxation, as forcefully advocated for example at this congress by Pieter Le Roux (7), on the ground that a VAT strategy would spread the tax net far more widely beyond the incomes of formal sector workers?

My own prediction is that this campaign will fail, in terms of its stated immediate objectives at any rate. But such a failure must not breed despondency. Qua advocates of basic income as a worldwide project, we must be cold-blooded enthusiasts, prepared to cope with countless disappointments and always ready to draw lessons for the next move.

Whatever the fate of South Africa’s deeply impressive and, in my opinion, totally unexpected basic income campaign, it is clear that in this domain, as well as in several others, this is a country whose development we must follow closely. Given their demographic situation, it is to South Africa rather than to Brazil, and in particular to its pension scheme, that African countries should first turn in order to draw lessons for what can and should be done.

Spreading the project? Santos

This certainly does not mean that nothing is to be learned from Latin America. Indeed, it is a Latin American contrast I want to use as a second way of putting into perspective the ambition of spreading the basic income project.

In the summer of 2002, I happened to be in the city of Santos, of Pelé fame, on the Brazilian coast, standing on a platform raised above a huge crowd next to front-running presidential candidate Lula and his party fellow and federal senator Eduardo Suplicy, his challenger for the presidential nomination a few months earlier. When it fell upon Lula to speak, at the frantic end of the joyful meeting, it turned out that the importance of work was one of the two themes he had chosen to address. “What we demand”, he explained, pouring with sweat, to a cheering crowd which hardly needed convincing, “is not alms but jobs, not a handout but work.” One of the greatest days in his life, Lula movingly told his supporters, was when he came home to his mother to hand over his first salary. When he subsequently lost his job, he smeared some grease on his overalls to make his mother believe he was still working. It is work, not income, that gives people the dignity, the respect they long for, Lula proclaimed. And the crowd loudly approved.

I too agree with him. In a very important sense, there is incomparably more dignity, more respect, to be gained from grease on one’s trousers than from a basic income in one’s pocket. Recognition, appreciation, esteem by those we care about, and by society as a whole, cannot and must not be given as a right to anyone. It can and must be earned through doing with some degree of effort and competence things that are of some use to others. And for most people, the regular performance of paid work is the most obvious and important means for this purpose. There is no need for basic income supporters to deny this. Indeed, it is a central part of their analysis that a basic income is a key precondition for giving everyone real access, in sustainable fashion, to both a decent standard of living and to the sort of activity that can provide the recognition a job is supposed to give.

Jobs for all and three meals a day for every Brazilian were the two central objectives emphasised in Lula’s presidential campaign. But to make them compatible, and sustainable, something like a basic income is needed. Owing to Eduardo Suplicy’s persuasive lobbying, the idea of a universal citizen’s income has been incorporated into Lula’s presidential programme by the party’s assembly, along the lines developed in the Senator’s recent book, Renda de Cidadania: A saida é pela porta (8). But listening to Lula on the Santos rostrum suggested that this was hardly more than lip service or a friendly concession to a long-time loyal supporter, that he had not made the link between what he really cared about and the basic income idea.

The following day, as I bid Eduardo farewell at the Sao Paulo airport, where he had kindly driven me through the morning fog, and then queued into the plane and sat down, the intense memories of that extraordinary evening and of the whole of my brief stop in Brazil overcrowded my mind. If a voice as articulate and eloquent, as convinced and convincing, as insistent and inexhaustible as this man’s does not do the trick, if he does not manage to persuade his life-long comrade who may soon be running one of the biggest countries in the world, if this unique chance is missed, then can anyone ever hope to overcome understandable resistance within a party calling itself the workers’ party and to move basic income to the political agenda of a less developed country? Had someone asked me, as the plane took off over the sleepy metropolis, whether Basic Income made sense as a worldwide project, I am not sure I would have said yes. I would have been wrong.

Spreading the project? Medellín

Three planes later, I landed in Medellín, Colombia. As part of the celebration of its 25th anniversary, the Escuela Nacional Sindical, a nation-wide training school for trade union officials and activists, had specifically invited me to give, next to more academic talks at the University of Antioquia, a public lecture on Basic Income. The event, I discovered, had been carefully prepared by a substantive dossier in the School’s magazine and was punctuated by the publication of a little book, collecting some of my works on global justice (9).

I was amazed, not least because the initiative came from Trade Union circles. But my hosts soon helped me understand better why such importance was given to the Basic Income project under conditions of civil war (a bomb exploded during a break, 200 m from where I was giving my talks) and breakdown of law and order (10), which would seem to impose quite different priorities.

Behind Colombia’s violence, and mixed with many other factors, hides the ideological clash between what often seem to be the only real, coherent options around: the neo-liberal credo, to which all people in power seem to be resigned, and the millenarian socialism to which the guerrilla claims allegiance. In this context, it is regarded as no mean feat to be able to offer a vision of the future, local and global, which can be vindicated systematically as a radically distinct approach on the high ground of ethics and political philosophy, while inspiring specific policies of far more modest scope which can both weather technical economic objections and promise to improve the situation of some of the weakest.

Significant steps towards a basic income may be further off the road in Colombia than in some other countries, because of the direct and indirect drain on resources caused by the civil war. But precisely because of this context the basic income project receives particular ideological importance as a meaningful alternative horizon, as a way of remaining loyal to the fundamental aims of the socialist tradition while making uninhibited but intelligent use of the market mechanism. In other contexts, the ideological need may be less pressing, but everywhere it gives the basic income project a potential role which goes far beyond the fixing of some shortcomings of conventional welfare states. In Santos or Sao Paulo no less than in Medellín or Cape Town, parties and organisations that conceive themselves as defending the interests of all workers can and will understand that such a project must be made part of the vision that gives their struggles a meaning.

Moving forward. Montevideo’s carriage

In a park that surrounds Montevideo’s Centenary Stadium, there is a huge bronze statue representing a carriage badly stuck in the mud. The carriage is pulled by four powerful oxen, it is followed by a fifth one, and a gaucho escorts it on his horse. Melt in bronze, you could not help think, there is no way these poor oxen will ever get the carriage unstuck. But real carriages are not confined to bronze. The gaucho may have to jump off his horse and dirty his trousers to get on moving. The ox behind may need to be harnessed, and nearby walkers may need to be given a job, those with a smart brain or with a big mouth, others with a great heart or with a big ego, those with the breath of marathon runners or with the patience of a Benedictine monk. Getting the carriage to move forward will require some to push and others to pull, some to pinch and shout and even sing, while others fiddle around the wheels or tighten some screws, or pull ropes attached to the carriage, or even explore alternative tracks a long way ahead to help keep clear of treacherous mud or prohibitive slopes.

So it is, in particular, with the carriage of Basic Income as a worldwide project. As a philosopher, I hold the (admittedly self-serving) conviction that this carriage is helped forward more than hampered by the sort of austere thinking incorporated in my Real Freedom for All (Oxford, 1995) and other like-minded writings, which attempt to build a rigorous ethical case for Basic Income, a sound intellectual foundation that cannot easily be dismissed by academics of any description and cannot easily be shaken even by the smartest of arguers.

But of course, forward movement is helped far more directly, powerfully and visibly in many other ways. It is helped, for example, by those who feed the public debate by putting together a bunch of thoughtful contributions on Basic Income, some more favourable, some more critical, as was done in recent years, for example, by Loek Groot and Robert J. van der Veen (11), by Angelika Krebs (12), Nina Kildal (13), Daniel Raventos (14), Josh Cohen and Joel Rogers (15), by Ruben Lo Vuolo (16), Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams(17), Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Stuart White (18), by Erik O. Wright (19) or by Guy Standing (20). In the context of such bundles, and indeed also in the context of events such as the congresses of the Basic Income European Network (BIEN), it is of crucial importance to listen and keep listening to sympathetic and intelligent but unambiguously critical voices. For the Basic Income movement, there is no surer recipe for degeneration into an irrelevant utopian clique than shutting oneself off from intellectual challenges.

But to get the carriage of basic income to move, and to keep it moving, far more is needed than intellectual debate. It requires the tireless enthusiasm of campaigners, such as those who designed the lovely posters of South Africa’s Basic Income Grant campaign, who stuck them up, who organised human chains in the streets of Johannesburg, marched on public buildings and lobbied in hundreds of ways.

It is helped by the countless small pressures, meetings, proposals, decisions that have led, for example, nearly all 5,581 Brazilian municipalities to introduce some form of guaranteed minimum income for families, however limited in level and scope.

It is helped by bold statements by people who manage to fulfil important functions in a responsible way without losing either their vision or their guts. Thus, ILO Director, General Juan Somavia, concluded his welcome address at the opening session of BIEN’s Geneva Congress, on September 2002, by proclaiming: “And yes, the moment may be nearing when your ideas will become commonsense.”

Moving forward. Brasilia’s ceremony

More than by anything else, Basic Income as a worldwide project is helped by acts that go beyond sheer intentions. No doubt the most exhilarating and least expected moment I experienced as a Basic Income supporter was when less than two years after the Santos speech I was invited back to Brazil to take part, on the 8th January 2004, in a hardly credible ceremony. Overlooking the world-famous Praça dos Três Poderes designed by Oscar Niemeyer, the ceremonial room of the President’s Palácio do Planalto was gradually filling with journalists, photographers, TV crews, ministers and other political dignitaries. Facing the swelling audience stood four empty chairs. And behind them, a large wall covered by colourful smiling faces of people of all ages and races, alternating with an inscription in large letters: “RENDA BÁSICA – Cidadania para todos” (“Basic income. Citizenship for all”).

Then an off voice announced the arrival of the President, and the crowd went quiet, as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his wife Marisa sat down. By their side were the Ministro da Casa Civil (Brazil’s de facto Prime Minister), José Dirceu, and Federal Senator Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy, author of the law proposal which the President was there to sign.

Summoned by the off voice, I rose to the pulpit to indicate briefly what I saw as the world-wide significance of the event. Next was Senator Suplicy’s turn. Visibly moved, having retraced his long fight for the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income in Brazil, he eloquently recited a poem, restated the key advantages of a universal citizen’s income over means-tested schemes, thanked the various Workers‘ Party heavyweights who had helped the proposal through the critical stages, and ended, in a way that did not exactly go unnoticed in the Brazilian press, by warmly hugging the President. After the signing ceremony of the law, Lula paid homage to the determination of his old comrade, whom he described as the inexhaustible Don Quixote of minimum income, while warning that there was no magical solution to Brazil’s problems and that the new law would only be introduced gradually.

Notwithstanding this presidential caution, this was definitely a “day of glory” for the very popular 62-year old Sao Paulo Senator. A first culmination in his fight had been the unanimous adoption of his minimum income proposal of 1991 by the federal Senate, never endorsed by the Chamber of Deputies. His more ambitious citizen’s income proposal of 2001 was, on the contrary, only approved with some amendments by the Senate in December 2002 and by the relevant commissions of the Chamber of Deputies in September and November 2003. The President had until January 2004 to either veto or sanction it. He chose the latter.

Does this mean that the carriage has reached destination in a most significant part of the world? Not at all. As initially formulated, the 2001 Suplicy proposal stipulates that, subject to it being endorsed by a national referendum in 2004, “an unconditional basic income, or citizenship income” will be introduced in 2005 for every Brazilian citizen or foreign resident for five years or more, that it will be of equal value for all, payable in monthly amounts and sufficient to cover “minimal expenses in food, housing, education and health care”, “bearing in mind the country’s level of development and budgetary possibilities”. However, two main amendments were made before unanimous approval by the Senate: the idea of a referendum was dropped, on the ground that, anyway, everyone would be in favour, and a new article was added, stipulating that the basic citizenship income “will be realized in steps, at the discretion of the Executive, giving priority to the neediest layers of the population”. It is with these two amendments that Suplicy’s proposal was signed by Lula.

From the second amendment it follows, no doubt, that Brazil is bound to remain stuck for quite a while with a means-tested system. But this does not make the law meaningless. Firstly, the existence of the law eases progress towards a stronger integration of existing assistance schemes with one another, and towards a stronger integration of the social assistance system with both the social insurance system and the income tax system, as Brazil’s federal government is henceforth legally entitled to take any number of further steps, in a financially responsible way, towards a full universal basic income.

Secondly, the long-term perspective firmly asserted in the new law should help face the powerful objections that will no doubt arise soon, as the federally funded means-tested system keeps getting more comprehensive and less stingy, and as individual and collective beneficiaries strategically adjust to its getting established. When over 50% of the active population works entirely in the informal sector, the income test needs to rely essentially on declarations of income earned by the beneficiaries. As the officials in charge of the existing income-tested Bolsa Família system are well aware, there is no realistic way of seriously checking whether the declarations are correct. This generates a dilemma. Either one needs to be ready for major problems of arbitrariness in or resentment about local decisions of inclusion and exclusion, in particular of a clientelistic kind. Or one needs to devise more observable alternative proxies of income poverty, such as the number of light bulbs, the quality of the material used for the house or how well fed the children look, at the expense of discouraging systematically a diligent use of the modest resources poor households have.

A genuine citizen’s income would get rid of theses problems in one swoop, while extending support to low-paid formal sector workers. Of course, progress towards a full-fledged basic income must be gradual – for example through turning the existing means-tested Bolsa Família and the existing income tax exemption for dependent children into a universal child benefit system that would also benefit the working families that are neither poor enough to be entitled to welfare payments (about EUR 50 per capita per month) nor rich enough to pay tax (about EUR 400 per month). Nonetheless, the objective unambiguously stated in the law offers the promise of tackling effectively the criticisms the existing means-tested schemes are bound to trigger without feeling compelled to roll them back.

For these reasons, the signing of Senator Suplicy’s law proposal was an important, indeed incredible, moment in the history of Basic Income. We are no longer talking about Joseph Charlier or John Stuart Mill phrasing their interpretation of the Fourierist blueprint in the 1840s, nor even about the lone economists (and future Nobel laureates) Jan Tinbergen and James Meade trying in vain to convince their respective labour parties of the soundness of an unconditional Basic Income in the 1930’s. We are now talking about real laws. However, the path, the many paths are still long, often uphill, and the carriage is quite heavy. No time to waste. Let us press on.

Notes

1. This is a significantly edited and updated version of an address delivered at the closing plenary session of the 9th Congress of the Basic Income European Network (ILO, Geneva, September 2002).

2. Cf. website: www.uno-inkomen.org.

3. Cf. Myron Frankman: “Beyond the Tobin Tax: Global Democracy and a Global Currency”, in: The Annals, no. 581, 2002, pp. 62-73.

4. Cf. Joseph Huber: Vollgeld. Beschäftigung, Grundsicherung und weniger Staatsquote durch eine modernisierte Geldordnung. Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1998.

5. Cf. the informative analysis in: Case, Anne/Deaton, Angus: “Large cash transfers to the elderly in South Africa”, in: The Economic Journal. no. 108, 1998, pp. 1330-61.

6. Cf. Case, Anne: “Health, Income, and Economic Development”, Princeton University, Department of Economics, May 2001.

7. See above note 1.

8. Suplicy, Eduardo Matarazzo: Renda de Cidadania: A saida é pela porta. Sao Paulo: Cortez Editora, 2002.

9. Van Parijs, Philippe: Hacia una concepción de la justicia social global (ed. by Jorge Giraldo Ramírez). Medellín: Fundación Confiar, 2002.

10. With an average of 12 murders a day last year, Medellín credibly claims to be the most dangerous city in the world.

11. Basic Income on the Agenda, Amsterdam, 2000.

12. „Basic Income?“, in: Analyse & Kritik (special issue), Düsseldorf, 2000.

13. Den nya sociala fragan. Göteborg, 2001.

14. La Renta Básica. Barcelona, 2001.

15. What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch? Boston, 2001.

16. La Renta Básica en la agenda política. Buenos Aires, 2002.

17. Real Libertarianism Assessed. Basingstoke, 2003.

18. The Ethics of Stakeholding. Basingstoke, 2003.

19. “Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Cornerstones of a More Egalitarian Capitalism”, in: Politics & Society (ed. by Erik O. Wright; special issue), March 2004.

20. Promoting Income Security as a Right: Europe and North America. London, 2004.

Allendorf, Leif: Noch mehr Dampf im Kessel. Die Islamische Republik Iran nach der Präsidentschaftswahl 2005, 07.07.05

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Immer wieder ist der Iran in aller Munde. Wirtschaftlich gesehen ein 3.-Welt-Land. Politisch und militärisch betrachtet jedoch spätestens seit der Wahl Mahmud Ahmadinedjads eine ernstzunehmende Größe. Leif Allendorf in einem Rückblick zur Präsidentschaftswahl von 2005.

Die Erfahrung, dass Wahlen heutzutage nicht gewonnen, sondern verloren werden, scheint der Iran bei der soeben entschiedenen Kür des Staatspräsident gemacht zu haben. Als “unvorstellbar unbeliebt” bezeichnete Rudolph Chimelli, Pariser Korrespondent der “Süddeutschen Zeitung”, den unterlegenen Kandidaten Akbar Haschemi Rafsanjani. Auf einer Podiumsdiskussion der Grünen-nahen “Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung” in Berlin am 5. Juli äußerte der Journalist sein Unverständnis darüber, “wie der auf die Idee kommen konnte, sich zur Wahl zu stellen”.

Diese Einschätzung teilte auf der gleichen Veranstaltung Farah Karimi, die für die Grünen im niederländischen Parlament in Den Haag sitzt. Rafsanjani, einer der reichsten Männer des Landes, stehe für alles, was bei der Bevölkerung derzeit unbeliebt ist: Korruption, Vetternwirtschaft, Verlogenheit.

Ein Verlegenheitskandidat wird Sieger

Dies warf die Frage auf, wie es denn um den Gewinner der Wahl, Mahmud Ahmedinedjad, stehe. Dieser gilt als fundamentalistischer Hardliner. Ob die Gangart des Regimes nun allerdings schärfer wird, bezweifelte Chimelli: “Die neuen Machthaber werden sich hüten, die Leute unnötig zu verärgern.” Die kleinen Erleichterungen, die der gemäßigte Präsident Chatami in den acht Jahren seiner Amtszeit dem übermächtigen Klerus abzuringen vermochte, seien kaum rückgängig zu machen. Etwas differenzierter sah dies Farah Karimi. Sie rechnet mit einer leichten Verbesserung der sozialen Zustände. Schließlich seien es die “Barfüßigen”, die Armen, die wie schon bei Chomeneis Revolution 1979 die Machtfrage entschieden hätten. Allerdings rechnet die Abgeordnete mit weiteren Repressionen gegen die Meinungsfreiheit.

Einig waren sich beide, dass es sich bei Ahmedinedschad um einen Verlegenheitskandidaten handle, der “im letzten Moment aus dem Hut gezaubert wurde”. Die Konservativen hätten damit neben der vor einem Jahr errungenen Parlamentsmehrheit nun auch die Exekutive zurückgewonnen.

Eine Alternative fehlt

Über die Zukunft des Landes will sich Rudolph Chimelli keine Illusionen machen. Seit Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs habe bislang jede iranische Regierung auf nichts anderes als auf den Erlös des Erdöls gesetzt – mit fatalen Konsequenzen für die Wirtschaft des Landes. Da klinge es besonders beunruhigend, wenn der Wahlsieger verkündete, dieses Geld solle künftig “auf den Tellern sichtbar sein”. Farah Karimi erinnerte daran, dass der drittplatzierte Kandidat des ersten Wahldurchgangs, Mehdi Karrubi, fünf Millionen Stimmen gewinnen konnte. Sein gesamtes Wahlprogramm bestand darin, jedem Volljährigen im Monat umgerechnet 50 Euro zu versprechen.

Leute wie er sowie der gescheiterte Kandidat der Reformer, Mostafa Moin, sind es, die nun die Opposition stellen werden. Beide kündigten dier Gründung einer Partei an. Chimelli glaubt allerdings, dass beide nicht in der Lage sind, einer charismatischen Figur wie dem Religionsführer Chamenei etwas entgegen zu setzen. Auch Farah Karimi hofft eher auf die im Iran sehr aktive Frauenbewegung, die es geschafft habe, neben der gebildeten Oberschicht auch andere Teile der Bevölkerung zu gewinnen.

Streit um die absolute Herrschaft der Geistlichkeit

In seinem monatlich erscheinenden “Iran-Report” hält der in Berlin lebende Autor Bahman Nirumand an der Hoffnung fest, die zersplitterte oppositionelle Szene könnte sich einigen und das Land reformieren. So fand der Aufruf des Reformers Moin zur Bildung einer “Front für Demokratie und Menschenrechte” Anklang bei Vertretern der so genannten “National-Religiösen”, die sich für Änderungen im Rahmen der geltenden iranischen Verfassung einsetzen. Stärker laizistisch orientierte Kreise aber sehen in der Abschaffung der absoluten Herrschaft der Geistlichkeit die Grundvoraussetzung für eine Modernisierung des Landes. Sie sind von einer Beteiligung an der “Front” von vorneherein ausgeschlossen. Die kommenden Monate werden zeigen, welche der beiden Strömungen in der politischen Landschaft des Iran größeren Einfluss haben. Denn dass sich angesichts der anhaltenden Verarmung der Bevölkerung – 50 Prozent untrer der Armutsgrenze und einer offiziellen Arbeitslosenquote von 15 Prozent – etwas ändern muss, darin sind sich alle Beobachter einig.

Allendorf, Leif: Kommentar zu Michael Moore, 21.02.05

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Am Tag, als US-Prädident George W. Bush 2005 zum zweiten Mal in sein Amt eingeführt wurde, interviewte der amerikanische Fernsehsender CNN Leute auf der Straße, was sie von einer weiteren Regierungsperiode des Republikaners erwarten. Eine junge Frau antwortete: “Mehr Geld für die Reichen, weniger Geld für die Armen und mehr Krieg.”

Bush spaltet das Land in zwei feindliche Lager. Bezeichnenderweise heißt die Homepage von Michael Moore, dem schärfsten Kritiker des amerikanischen Präsidenten, „Mikes Warroom“. Allerdings hatte nicht einmal Moores sensationell erfolgreicher Dokumentarfilm Fahrenheit 9/11 Bushs Wiederwahl im November 2004 verhindern können. Seit Jahren schreibt Moore gegen die Politik seines Kontrahenten im Weißen Haus an. Dabei macht sich Moore allerdings auch selbst angreifbar durch Oberflächlichkeit, nicht nachprüfbare Behauptungen und die ermüdende Wiederholung der immer gleichen Anschuldigungen.

2001 erschien Moores polemisches Sachbuch Stupid White Men. Eine Abrechnung mit dem Amerika des George W. Bush. Rezensentin Manuela Haselberger von libri.de lobt:

„Stupid White Men gehört zu den Büchern, die ganz unscheinbar daherkommen und es ohne viel Werbeaufwand schaffen, sofort nach Erscheinen die Bestsellerlisten zu erklimmen. Zu Recht. Denn der Stoff, den der amerikanische Regisseur, Fernsehmoderator und Autor Michael Moore zwischen die Buchdeckel packt, ist reines Dynamit. Alles beginnt mit einem grandiosen Wahlbetrug in Florida. Und mit welchen Mitteln hier manipuliert, Wählerstimmen ignoriert und die ‘richtigen’, wenn es sein muss auch gerne doppelt gezählt wurden, das liest sich tatsächlich wie eine Geschichte aus einer Bananenrepublik am Ende der Welt. (…) Das Manuskript zu Stupid White Men wurde vor dem 11. September 2001 fertig gestellt. Für alle, die damals sehr schnell die ‘bedingungslose Solidarität’ mit den USA angeboten haben, ist es jetzt an der Zeit, innezuhalten, Luft zu holen und sich einmal kurz Michael Moores Ausführungen durch den Kopf gehen zu lassen.“

Das Erscheinen des Nachfolgebuches Querschüsse – Downsize This! gab den Anlass für erste kritische Stimmen, sowohl über Moore selbst als auch über seine lautstarken deutschen Fans. Schließlich ist es ein Unterschied, ob ein US-Amerikaner über die USA herzieht, oder ob es ein Deutscher tut. Ein Rezensent bei Amazon schrieb:

“Michael Moores Bücher haben Hochkonjunktur und zwar auch deshalb, weil Stupid White Men einen gewissen Anti-Amerikanismus bediente, der im Zuge des Irak-Krieges hierzulande fröhliche Urstände feierte. Querschüsse ist deutlich innenpolitischer angelegt und zeigt, dass niemand die Verhältnisse in den USA so scharf und so witzig kritisieren kann wie US-Amerikaner Michael Moore. Dass Moore für deutschen Anti-Amerikanismus gar nichts taugt zeigt in Querschüsse das Kapitel zu deutschen Touristen in Florida. Und man würde sich freuen, wenn jemand einmal mit gleichem Witz einen Beitrag zur Agenda 2010 oder anderen Aspekten der sozialen Wirklichkeit hierzulande leisten würde. Und das ist es, was bei dem Lesevergnügen bleibt: Die Freude über das Buch und ein klein wenig Wehmut, dass es solche Bücher eben nur in und für die USA gibt.“

Anstatt also das eigene Nest zu beschmutzen, fühlen sich die deutschen Anhänger bestätigt, dass die Amerikaner das dümmste Volk der Welt sind. Und reagieren dann irritiert, wenn Moore auch die Deutschen nicht verschont. So meint ein anderer Amazon-Rezensent:
“Ganz bestimmt ins Bein geschossen hat er sich bei dem völlig überflüssigen Hass-Kapitel gegen die Deutschen, denen es in der 2.Generation nach Hitler anscheinend wieder zu gut gehe. 68 Mrd. gezahlter Schadensersatz würden nicht reichen. Der Aufruf zu weiteren Morden an Deutschen in Miami als Holocaust-Rache passt nicht in das Buch und würde auch niemandem helfen.”

Seit einiger Zeit sind die Dokumentarfilme, die Moore bekannt machten, auf DVD erhältlich. Birgit Schwenger schreibt für die Amazon-Redaktion:
“Mit der zynischen Politsatire Roger & Me, seinem Erstlingswerk über die Umwälzungen in seiner Heimatstadt Flint, Michigan, machte Moore sich bereits 1989 einen Namen als unbequemer Zeitgenosse, der die gesellschaftlichen und politischen Zustände in Amerika kritisch hinterfragt und brillant komisch kommentiert. Moores zweiter Film, The Big One, begleitet den Filmemacher und Autor auf der Lesereise zu seinem ersten Buch, dem Bestseller Querschüsse durch den Mittleren Westen der Vereinigten Staaten. Die Allmacht der Großkonzerne, ihre profitorientierte Politik des Gesundschrumpfens sowie die undurchsichtigen Seilschaften zwischen Politikern und Unternehmensvorständen sind die Themen, die Moore in The Big One ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste aufs Korn nimmt. Er entlarvt das angebliche Wirtschaftswunder im Amerika Mitte der 90er-Jahre als Propaganda der Wirtschaftsbosse und Funktionäre.”

Im Schweizer Magazin cineman.ch ergänzt Michael Kathe:
“Moores Dokumentarfilme sind nicht von den Argumentationen folgerichtig und zwingend, sondern eher intelligente, recherchierte Filmessays. Doch genau das Polemische und das Weiterspinnen von Gedanken, die sich zum ‘gesunden Menschenverstand’ formen, machen den Reiz seiner Filme aus. Ob er sich wie in Roger & Me mit der Entlassung von 30.000 Arbeitern durch den Autokonzern General Motors und dessen CEO Roger Smith oder mit dem Waffenfetischismus der Amerikaner und dem Schulmassaker in der Columbine-High-School in Littleton beschäftigt (in Bowling For Columbine) – die Themen sind ernst und die Kunst etwas heiterer.”

Mit Volle Deckung Mr. Bush – Dude, Where Is My Country? knüpft Moore an seine Erfolge als Autor polemischer Abrechnungen mit der Bush-Administration an.

Leser der Internet-Verkaufsplattform von ciao.de kritisieren allerdings:
“Ob das kommerzieller Druck ist oder das ernsthafte Bestreben eine zweite Amtszeit von George W. Bush zu verhindern, sei einmal dahingestellt (vermutlich ist es beides…), aber in meinen Augen hat Michael Moore mit seinem neuesten Werk an Format eingebüßt.”

Eine andere Stimme meint:
“Moore springt scheinbar willkürlich von einem Thema zum nächsten und dann wieder zurück auf einen Themenkomplex, dem er sich bereits früher gewidmet hat. Es wirkt fast so, als hätte er das Buch etwas planlos geschrieben und dann aneinandergereiht, was ihm gerade einfiel. Besonders gut durchdacht wirken Gliederung und Struktur größtenteils nicht. Wer diese Themen lieber etwas tief greifender und komplexer abgehandelt haben möchte, der ist bei Michael Moore einfach an der falschen Adresse.”

Die neueste Buchveröffentlichung ist Hurra, Amerika! – Adventures in a TV-Nation, das Moore mit seiner Frau Kathleen Glynn geschrieben hat. Die Plattform mrrat.com meint:
“Deutschland ist für Michael Moore als Markt mindestens ebenso wichtig wie die USA. Das gilt für seine Filme, ganz besonders aber für seine Bücher. Nach dem immensen Erfolg seiner mit wütender Sorge um die amerikanische Heimat und die Welt verfassten Anti-Bush-Bücher war es deshalb höchste Zeit für eine deutsche Ausgabe von Adventures in a TV-Nation, das die Geschichte von und Geschichten aus der preisgekrönten dokumentarischen Fernsehshow ‚TV-Nation‘ erzählt, die Moore und seine Frau, Katheen Glynn, Mitte der 90-er Jahre produziert haben. Von Michael Moores bissigem Sarkasmus ist in diesem Buch relativ wenig zu spüren (vielleicht kommt das Ganze auch in geschriebener Form nicht so gut rüber wie in der TV-Version). Dieser Frühwerke bedienen sich die Verlage natürlich jetzt, da sich alles, was den Namen Moore trägt, bestens verkaufen lässt, nur allzu gerne. Und was passt besser, als zum Kinostart von Fahrenheit 9/11 ein scheinbar neues Buch auf den Markt zu werfen?”

Bücher

  • Moore, Michael: Querschüsse. München: Piper 2003.
  • Moore, Michael: Stupid White Men. Eine Abrechnung mit dem Amerika unter George W. Bush. München: Piper 2001.
  • Moore, Michael: Volle Deckung Mr. Bush. München: Piper 2003.
  • Moore, Michael / Glynn, Kathleen: Hurra Amerika! München: Piper 2004.

Filme

  • Bowling for Columbine. 122 Min. USA/Kanada/Deutschland 2002. Regie und Buch: Michael Moore. Produktion: Charles Bishop, Michael Donovan, Kathleen Glynn, Jim Czarnecki, Michael Moore.
  • Fahrenheit 9/11. 121 Min. USA 2004. Regie und Buch: Michael Moore. Produktion: Jim Czarnecki, Kathleen Glynn, Michael Moore.