If those other uses of their time do not involve being part of the paid labour market then the extra productivity is not available to be taxed and redistributed as part of a BIG.

So your $6/hr gas station attendent quits his job and the gas station owner replaces him with a machine. And the $6/hr gas station attendant stays at home taking care of his kids – important work but as it is not producing taxable income it doesn’t reduce the level of taxes to pay for the BIG.

For capitalist system to perform, there must be permanent pressure to increase labor costs, otherwise entrepreneurs don’t have to come up with innovation…

Not so. For example, it’s hard to make up a labour cost theory to explain innovation in computer games.
And the traditional account of the Industrial Revolution is that the improvement in steam engines was driven by the need to pump water from incresingly deeper mines, not labour costs.

It appears from this thread that no advocate of a BIG has done any estimates of how it will be paid for. Which I thought would have been a basic part of the analysis.

Why these jobs aren’t automated in Boston? I don’t think it’s anything, but simple economics: when people who clean the toilets are paid $6/hr it makes sense to use them, but you’ll buy a self-cleaning toilet to avoid paying $18/hr.

To be fair, when I was in Boston a few months ago, I saw a self-service check-out in a Shaw’s supermarket, which is something I haven’t seen here.

I think I read somewhere that technology of US agriculture along the Mexican border is extremely antiquated: why bother using machines when you can hire a bunch of Mexicans for next to nothing?

And if you can build a factory in China and pay workers 17c/hr to make T-shirts with old Singer sewing machines, you are not going to be trying to implement any new technology; in fact you’ll probably try to prevent it from being invented.

That’s just natural. For capitalist system to perform, there must be permanent pressure to increase labor costs, otherwise entrepreneurs don’t have to come up with innovations and the economy (or this particular segment of it) degenerates.

Has anyone done any analysis of this situation, and what evidence have they come up with as to the extent of possible productivity gains and th impact on the required taxes to pay a BIG?

(Incidentally, this line you are running abb1 implies that BIG will not address relative poverty, not particularly an issue for me but may be for many of the readers of the book).

Making labor more expensive would cause increase in productivity. As the number of productive work-hours goes down, the amount of resources available may go either up or down, depending on the specifics.

All I’m saying, I don’t see this as an impasse.

So has anyone analysed the “whole different dynamic” – and in particular what tax rates it implies?

For example, this reform would certainly eliminate all low-paying jobs. That would cause many jobs to disappear, either by automation (parking, gas station attendants) or just disappear completely (store greeters, grocery baggers). Decrease in the number of people working is not necessarily a bad thing.

This change would not increase the resources available in society to pay the BIG, and thus my initial point remains – the BIG implies extremely high tax rates if it’s set at a level to replace existing social welfare payments.

I don’t know, it probably has something to do with the inheritance taxes too, but – imagining myself rich – I think regardless of the tax advantages I would prefer the trust fund mechanism for my children. Seems obvious to me, though apparently it isn’t.

Because it involves redistribution towards the poorest sections of society? Because it aims to give poorer people an advantage which right now is only enjoyed by the rich, who already get an SG in the form of inherited capital or parental support? If your aim is to narrow the inequalities which presently exist, then it sounds like it’s at least worth talking about, doesn’t it?

I looked at the gender aspects of Basic Income in 1998, and published two papers on that topic.

One paper was more empirical, trying to see what evidence we have to predict the gender effects (published in a book edited by R. van der Veen and L. Groot, Basic Income on the Agenda, Amsterdam University Press, 2000.)

The other paper was normative, and it did indeed argue precisely what you predict too. Basic income divides the care-centered feminists and the employment-centered feminists, since the evidence that we have is that it reinforces the traditional gendered division of labour. This is a bad thing for women who want to have a more egalitarian gendered division of labour, but it is not the first concern for women who are very poor and with limited labour market earning capacities. That paper was published in Analyse und Kritik in 2001 and can be downloaded here
There is also a reply by Philippe Van Parijs on my and a number of other papers, and his response on the gender issue was, well… rather disappointing from a feminist point of view.

I am desperately trying to finish a Dutch-English translation of a 40.000 words research report, and once that is finished I will try to write a post on gender and basic income, since I think there are many very intersting but also seriously troubling aspects of the basic income proposal from a gender perspective.

This collection is intended as an example of political theory with an empirical focus, considering as it does two related proposals for achieving ‘a more egalitarian capitalism.’ Specifically, the collection addresses the relative merits and demerits of two much-debated schemes: the Stakeholder Grant (SG) and the Basic Income (BI). An SG, on the version defended by Ackerman and Alstott, would award individuals reaching adulthood a one-off capital sum to invest or spend as they see fit. A BI, as defended by Van Parijs, would award individuals an unconditional, non-work-related income for life. The collection comprises a brief description and justification by each scheme’s advocates, a series of critical (though generally supportive) essays, and a response by each camp.

Whilst each defends their scheme vigorously, the normative commitments and political goals on both sides are broadly held in common. The authors share a concern with the inegalitarianism of current distributions of wealth and income, with the limited opportunities afforded to the poor in market societies, and with how individual decisions about careers, voluntary and caring work, and the decision simply not to work are influenced by economic conditions which are in themselves of limited justice. Much of the debate herein therefore focuses on questions of practicability, and the effects of implementing one scheme rather than another. On the surface of it, the two schemes are similar (especially since one could either invest an SG thereby to secure a constant return equivalent to a BI, or mortgage one’s BI to generate an SG equivalent.) Van Parijs pulls no punches in ruling this latter option out of court, however, and this refusal marks out a genuine difference of perspective. The real problem of ‘stake-blowing’ – the possibility that individuals receiving an SG might squander it in ill-considered ways – makes BI, Van Parijs asserts, much preferable. This claim opens a controversial set of issues concerning paternalism, discussed ably by Stuart White in his illuminating chapter. Other chapters concentrate on the priority of SG or BI vis-à-vis erstwhile commitments to the welfare state, and the effects of both schemes on democratic citizenship, as well as on poverty and class-based exploitation. Finally, some of the more empirically-minded chapters attempt to track the likely expense, and effectiveness, of both schemes. Overall, the collection represents a valuable attempt to think through some of the practical implications of a normative commitment to economic freedom and security for all.

***Nothing very controversial in that mini-review, I think. The gender implications of the policies are very interesting though, and seem to really divide feminist commentators. Personally, I’d have thought either would count as a good move in addressing many work-based gender inequalities, but some people are concerned, I think, that BIG could actually bolster the existing gender division of labour. Any views on this?

I watched the debate over AFDC/TANF from two different places—the academy and a far left political organisation. I didn’t know anyone who was unaware of the incentive built into AFDC, and I didn’t know anyone who made the kind of arguments you refer to. But of course academics and the far left hardly have much impact on politics. I did see them being made by more mainstream and less academic types, and assumed, as usual, that the people making those arguments were using overblown rhetoric as a counter to equally overblown rhetoric on the other side (I’m not accusing the intellectual framers of TANF, or many of the politicians involved in pushing it, who it seems to me were often well-willed and as honest as contemporary politics allows). I do think TANF would have been much less successful had it been tried 6 years earlier, btw—it was good luck that it was implemented during the second half of the Clinton job miracle, the half during which it was lower end jobs that were being created. I also think we still have to see the effects. I am also highly sceptical that it is better for young kids to be cared for in poorly regulated institutions by low-paid and ill-trained workers in who are not their parents than by someone who is their parent, and a full evaluation of TANF would try to make some sort of judgments about the long term effects on the kids (which would also, I should add, involve the effects which I’d imagine would be positive, of having a parent who is integrated long term in the labor force).