By Joe Mancini
Published in June 2017
The Ontario government is going forward with three pilot projects on Basic Income. It will study whether a basic income can support vulnerable workers by giving security and opportunity. Will it be simpler and more economically effective? The experiments will last 3 years and involve up to 4000 people. At this time, it is highly unlikely that a Basic Income scheme can be generalized to the wider population, because the costs would exponentially increase government expenditures.
This article suggests a different approach to Basic Income by answering two questions:
1. How to develop a Basic Income that supports precarious workers, who now make up nearly 34% of the labour force, without exponentially increasing government expenditures?
2. How to ensure that Basic Income schemes enhance rather than diminish the human need to contribute positively to society?
We live in a society where there has never been greater abundance. It seems reasonable to pay people not to work rather than creating frustrating cycles of unemployment. There is a belief that if people do not have to worry about income, then families will thrive, social problems will go away, the cost of health care will be reduced. The Working Centre wants to add caution to this social myth. Our experience is that money is only one factor that organizes people’s social experience. Community grows; social connections grow when people use tools to define their dignity by producing goods and services that are useful to others. A Basic Income that leaves people isolated and not participating in society does not add to the social good.
This paper argues for a soft Basic Income which encourages choice, and importantly, agency, ensuring workers have control and motivation to earn through the labour market. This form of a Basic Income retains social assistance payments but encourages workers to add to their income without penalty. It would recognize income transfer programs that are already in place such as the Child Tax Benefit (CTB), HST rebates and an enhanced Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) as part of a Basic Income that supports the precarious workforce.
Basic Income is only partially about income. The social context of cooperative supports defines how people live richly in a community. The Working Centre has been testing Basic Income concepts for 34 years. Long ago we interpreted social assistance as a Social Wage. We have long admired our volunteers who put in full weeks cleaning tables, preparing food, growing vegetables and microgreens, sorting clothing, fixing furniture and repairing computers while on social assistance. This type of work serves and feeds community, it helps the individual contribute to society and it provides opportunities for skill development. Our analysis comes from on-the-ground experience.
Defining a Soft Basic Income
A “soft” Basic Income approach is a non-bureaucratic method that allows people to add work income to their social assistance and EI. Whatever the income floor is, what is important is allowing the worker to earn the rest of their income from part-time work. Adding a part-time job that earns about $150 a week (about 13 hours at minimum wage), would mean an individual could earn another $600 a month and this would be a substantial improvement.
Basic Income could be instituted by dropping OW/ODSP rules that taxes earned income at 50% after $200. There are hundreds of small earning jobs, from cutting grass and shoveling snow to filling thousands of gaps that employers and community groups are constantly looking to fill. These would allow workers to piece together an income as a “freelancer” in the labour market.
Low income precarious workers who are not on social assistance should benefit from the tax system through the CTB, HST rebates and an enhanced WITB. The recent change to the CTB already constitutes a form of Basic Income for families with children who are under 18 years of age. The WITB should be increasingly targeted at workers who do not have children under 18. These changes would unleash a substantially healthier labour force ready to do odd jobs and contribute to society.
The advantage of using the established mechanisms of OW/ODSP bureaucracy and CTB/WITB infrastructure is that a soft Basic Income would be introduced incrementally using social programs that have a known quality. It would avoid implementing an expensive big plan that is guaranteed to cause new problems.
A Social Wage
The first step towards implementing a Basic Income is to forge a broader conception of the meaning of work. If society is to embrace a Basic Income distributed by the state, then it is imperative that this wage be understood as a social wage and through it, greater opportunities and responsibilities for workers to voluntarily offer skills and abilities to support communities and neighbourhoods.
Social assistance was first used to support workers and their families during short periods of unemployment. In its present context, social assistance provides few incentives to enter the labour force, acting more like a sponge than a trampoline. These proposals look to improve and add a new twist, by envisioning how a philosophy of a social wage can enhance and transform the labour market.
Supporting Precarious Workers
A guaranteed basic income should first be targeted at precarious workers and those on social assistance. One definition of precarious workers are the 7% who are unemployed, the 20% who are temporary and part-time workers, discouraged workers and the 7% who are self-employed but who earn less than a living wage. In total this group represents more than 34% of the labour market. The percentage grows if you add in those on social assistance.
The temporary labour market has the potential to be a bridge for those supported by a soft Basic Income. It would create new opportunities for workers who increasingly are left out. An investment in a soft Basic Income could substantially change the nature of the labour market by developing a mechanism for businesses and the non-profit sector to support temporary workers.
A soft Basic Income will accelerate the trend of increasing the number of temporary jobs. While growing temporary work might not seem ideal, its greatest defect is leaving people without the ability to pay their rent. Another defect is that it leaves people dislocated from their work. Yet an income floor, whether from Social Assistance, CTB, or the WITB has the potential to reduce dislocation as people meaningfully craft an income and have more options and control over their work. At the same time, businesses could be encouraged to provide increased opportunities for those who receive the income floor. Temporary work in this light could become a social good, an efficient way of getting work accomplished.
Creating a Soft Basic Income
A soft Basic Income would create new incentives to increase participation in the labour market by giving individuals more control over meaningfully crafting their own income. It would reduce the dislocation that temporary work has traditionally imposed on workers. It would reduce the disincentive that OW/ODSP rules have had on labour market participation. A soft Basic Income policy would enhance choice and possibilities for income by opening up work opportunities for odd jobs, short term fill-in-labor, and cash agriculture work. Presently these choices of income are available but social assistance recipients are discouraged and punished for accessing them. This model seeks to open up these opportunities.
Those not on social assistance and who are single find it almost impossible to make a living from temporary work. This is why enhancing the WITB (a mechanism already in place) would be a way to create a Basic Income for this group.
Basic Income Becomes a Social Wage
A Basic Income becomes more than a wage when it offers a social vision to enhance work opportunities that build community. When the Basic Income is deposited into a bank account, it should represent the potential for offering socially beneficial labour to the wider community. This new freedom of income should encourage people to become involved in their neighbourhoods.
A soft Basic Income with a social wage philosophy could enhance community projects. Workers could match their Basic Income with a 15 hour a week job at a social enterprise and also volunteer another 15 hours as their own contribution to recognize their social wage. Others may receive a bi-weekly stipend.This would create a whole new culture of work. An individual who was depressed on $560 per month might now earn upwards of $1,300 – $1400 per month plus find volunteer work that enlivens their sense of responsibility and affirms their wider ability to contribute.
This scenario is not a simple calculation; it takes organizations willing to utilize gifts of labour and skills along with supporting people with different abilities and experiences. Constant support and peer examples will slowly reveal a future potential of wider skill sharing in community services. There is so much meaningful work that people can accomplish together using the Third Sector as the basis for new work opportunities.
Every single human being can contribute in meaningful ways. Poverty is the lack of access to tools. It is the result of being abandoned by community and of being disconnected from sources of support. It is a cycle where the inability to overcome barriers reinforces hopelessness. Can a soft Basic Income reduce isolation? Can it encourage a network of social enterprises that are open to employing those with a Basic Income? Can those who receive a Basic Income recognize this gift of income as a social wage that can then be contributed back to civil society organizations? These core questions are important to answer before a Basic Income is implemented.
A Commitment to Citizenship
A soft Basic Income as a social wage could mean a different kind of commitment to citizenship. It would be based on inspiring people to contribute to their community. People already want to do this but often find their efforts blocked rather than encouraged. A community with a soft Basic Income could highlight projects and useful work available. People would read such a list with interest. Community agencies know this kind of work well. The Working Centre has always been a place that matches skills, highlights work opportunities and directs people to retraining.
A soft Basic Income means an income floor that is expandable by the efforts individuals make to participate in wider community building. Food co-ops, urban agriculture, bread making facilities, and community kitchens are examples of community-based accessible tools that reduce consumerism, create meaningful work and deepen community connections. Public housing costs are reduced when people are given opportunities to be involved in meaningful ways in the areas of administration, maintenance and landscaping tasks. Bikes and public transit reduce the expense of car use. Urban agriculture reduces food purchases and increases fresh vegetable production. These are example of how the combination of a soft Basic Income along with community supports can help people reduce the costs of living.
The soft Basic Income would be designed to give people the freedom to create a large portion of their own income, and the opportunity for a grassroots labour force to become actively involved in the work of building community. Poverty is about the lack of social solidarity. Money alone cannot help people out of poverty. There are too many complicating issues. The income floor needs to be matched with access to tools, friendships, peer supports and community strategies all working together to rebuild connectedness.
Conclusion
In the regular workforce people roll their eyes when they talk about a Basic Income. It is counter-intuitive to believe that people will choose work when they are given a free income. Human beings are imitative. We do not need examples of people taking free government money and using it for minimal social purpose.
This paper argues for developing a soft Basic Income for those on Social Assistance that eliminates work disincentives and builds on existing social income programs such as the CTB, WITB, HST rebates.
All of the ideas contained in this submission are based on the social experiment of The Working Centre which has been developing and implementing these ideas over the last 34 years. A Basic Income can reinforce a broader understanding of work that includes voluntary work, child care, assisting the elderly, supporting the disabled.
A soft Basic Income that recognizes a philosophy of the social wage will broaden the meaning of work and unleash new possibilities. The changes proposed would eliminate work disincentives and help the economy evolve towards better care for the environment, stronger neighbourhoods and living wage opportunities for precarious workers.
