Capitalism Has a Problem. Is Free Money the Answer?

Capitalism Has a Problem. Is Free Money the Answer?

By PETER S. GOODMAN NOV. 15, 2017 LONDON —

One need not be a card-carrying revolutionary to deduce that global capitalism has a problem. In much of the world, angry workers denounce a shortage of jobs paying enough to support middleclass life. Economists puzzle over the fix for persistently weak wage growth, just as robots appear poised to replace millions of human workers.

At the annual gathering of the global elite in the Swiss resort of Davos, billionaire finance chieftains debate how to make capitalism kinder to the masses to defuse populism. Enter the universal basic income. The idea is gaining traction in many countries as a proposal to soften the edges of capitalism.

Though the details and philosophies vary from place to place, the general notion is that the government hands out regular checks to everyone, regardless of income or whether people are working. The money ensures food and shelter for all, while removing the stigma of public support.

Some posit basic income as a way to let market forces work their ruthless magic, delivering innovation and economic growth, while laying down a cushion for those who fail. Others present it as a means of liberating people from wretched, poverty-level jobs, allowing workers to organize for better conditions or devote time to artistic exploits. Another school sees it as the required response to an era in which work can no longer be relied upon to finance basic needs.

“We see the increasing precariousness of employment,” said Karl Widerquist, a philosopher at Georgetown University in Qatar, and a prominent advocate for a universal social safety net. “Basic income gives the worker the power to say, ‘Well, if Walmart’s not going to pay me enough, then I’m just not going to work there.’ ” The universal basic income is clearly an idea with momentum.

Early this year, Finland kicked off a two-year national experiment in basic income. In the United States, a trial was recently completed in Oakland, Calif., and another is about to launch in nearby Stockton, a community hard-hit by the Great Recession and the attendant epidemic in home foreclosures. The Canadian province of Ontario is enrolling participants for a basic income trial. Several cities in the Netherlands are exploring what happens when they hand out cash grants unconditionally to people already receiving some form of public support. A similar test is underway in Barcelona, Spain.

A nonprofit organization, GiveDirectly, is proceeding with plans to provide universal cash grants in rural Kenya. As a concept, basic income has been kicked around in various guises for centuries, gaining adherents across a strikingly broad swath of the ideological spectrum, from the English social philosopher Thomas More to the American revolutionary Thomas Paine. The populist firebrand Louisiana governor Huey Long, the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., and the laissez faire economist Milton Friedman would presumably agree on little, yet all advocated some version of basic income.

In a clear sign of its modern-day currency, the International Monetary Fund — not an institution prone to utopian dreaming — recently explored basic income as a potential salve for economic inequality. Not everyone loves the idea. Conservatives fret that handing out money free of obligation will turn people into dole-dependent slackers. In the American context, any talk of a truly universal form of basic income also collides with arithmetic. Give every American $10,000 a year — a sum still below the poverty line for an individual — and the tab runs to $3 trillion a year. That is about eight times what the United States now spends on social service programs. Conversation over.

Labor-oriented economists in the United States are especially wary of basic income, given that the American social safety programs have been significantly trimmed in recent decades, with welfare, unemployment benefits and food stamps all subject to a variety of restrictions. If basic income were to replace these components as one giant program — the proposal that would appeal to libertarians — it might beckon as a fat target for additional budget trimming.

“Tens of millions of poor people would likely end up worse off,” declared Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based research institution, in a recent blog post. “Were we starting from scratch — and were our political culture more like Western Europe’s — U.B.I. might be a real possibility. But that’s not the world we live in.” And some advocates for working people dismiss basic income as a wrongheaded approach to the real problem of not enough quality paychecks. “People want to work,” said the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz when I asked him about basic income early this year. “They don’t want handouts.” Yet some of the basic income experiments now underway are engineered precisely to encourage people to work while limiting their contact with public assistance.

Finland’s trial is giving jobless people the same amount of money they were already receiving in unemployment benefits, while relieving them of bureaucratic obligations. The bet is that people will use time now squandered submitting paperwork to train for better careers, start businesses, or take part-time jobs. Under the system the trial replaces, people living on benefits risk losing support if they secure other income. In short, basic income is being advanced not as a license for Finns to laze in the sauna, but as a means of enhancing the forces of creative destruction so central to capitalism. As the logic goes, once sustenance is eliminated as a worry, weak companies can be shuttered without concern for those thrown out of work, freeing up capital and talent for more productive ventures.

The trials in the Netherlands, conducted at the municipal level, are similarly geared to paring bureaucracy from the unemployment system. Ditto, the Barcelona experiment. Silicon Valley has embraced basic income as a crucial element in enabling the continued rollout of automation. While engineers pioneer ways to replace human laborers with robots, financiers focus on basic income as a replacement for paychecks.

The experiment in Stockton, Calif. — set to become the first city government to test basic income — is underwritten in part by an advocacy group known as the Economic Security Project, whose backers include the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. The trial is set to begin next year, with an undisclosed number of residents to receive $500 a month. The trial in Oakland was the work of Y Combinator, a start-up incubator. Its researchers handed out varying grants to a few dozen people as a simple feasibility test for basic income. The next phase is far more ambitious. The Y Combinator researchers plan to distribute grants to 3,000 people with below-average incomes in two as-yet undisclosed American states. They will hand out $1,000 a month to 1,000 people, no strings attached, and $50 a month to the rest, allowing for comparisons in how recipients use the money, and what impact it has on their lives.

One key element of the basic income push is the assumption that poor people are better placed than bureaucrats to determine the most beneficial use of aid money. Rather than saddle recipients with complex rules and a dizzying array of programs, better to just give people money and let them sort out how to use it. This is a central idea of GiveDirectly’s program in Kenya, where it began a pilot study last year in which it handed out small, unconditional cash grants — about $22 a month — to residents of a single village. The program is now expanding its sights, with plans to hand out grants to some 16,000 people in 120 villages. From a research standpoint, these remain early days for basic income, a time for experimentation and assessment before serious amounts of money may be devoted to a new model for public assistance.

Yet from a political standpoint, basic income appears to have found its moment, one delivered by the anxieties of the working poor combined with those of the wealthy, who see in widening inequality the potential for mobs wielding pitchforks. “The interest is exploding everywhere,” said Guy Standing, a research associate at SOAS University of London. “The debates now are extraordinarily fertile.” 

中產階級下流化不關我的事？

中產階級下流化不關我的事？

2016年07月07日

丁學文

大家都說英國脫歐會很慘、英鎊會暴跌，大不列顛會變成小英格蘭！可是我很窮，即使利己損人，我也要賭一把，所以6月23日英國老百姓公投決定脫歐；大家都說罷工會被公司開除，公司形象會崩壞，很多人搭不到飛機很可憐！可是我很窮，即使利己損人，我也要賭一把，所以6月24日華航空服員決定罷工；大家都說這幫人不懂政治，只會口出狂言！可是我很窮，即使利己損人，我也要賭一把，所以柯P大人以及川普大亨橫空出世。這個世界瀰漫著一股不滿現狀、急思突破的怒氣，難怪最新一期經濟學人要以〈憤怒政治學〉（The politics of anger）來形容現今全球反骨的現象。

曾經日不落的大不列顛，一直溫良恭儉讓的台灣，怎麼會這樣？我覺得真正原因就是大家窮怕了。看看台灣，工資20年鐵打不動，已經變成琅琅上口地理所當然，卻沒有人可以提出解決方法，愛台灣的人越來越無奈，越來越失落。原因何在？除了台灣經濟高速增長的年代不再，更因為在資本為王的時代，你不是既得利益者、富二代或官二代，你就會發現賺錢越來越難。問題是沒有可以期待的未來，沒有可以改變這種狀態的機會，曾經的激情慢慢被消磨成憤怒，終於陷入「可是我很窮，即使利己損人，我也要賭一把」的不得不。

這很奇怪，大家用著比過去更好的手機，有著比過去更夯的娛樂享受，為什麼卻有很窮的感覺？這是長期寬鬆貨幣環境下，資產畸形上漲的結果。如果你是趕上泡沫盛宴的一群，擁有不動產、有價證券，你就可以靠房價、資本利得、房租擁有穩定、不斷現金流的生活。但一般人即使工作多年，如果未持有資產，就會越來越窮。這說明什麼？說明資產比人力更值錢。人賺錢難、錢賺錢易，反映出人力資源所得回報竟然比資產低，新政府必須想方設法讓逐利資本願意追逐人才，千萬別再以台灣人才物美價廉而洋洋得意，唯有讓資本回頭爭奪人才，企業資本支出才會增加，股市動能方能重啟，人力回報一旦上升，大家就會有更多向上流動的機會。

清末，曾國藩曾說，社會大亂之前，必有三種前兆：其一是無論何事，均黑白不分。其二是善良的人越來越客氣，無用之人越來越猖狂。其三是所有問題明明嚴重惡化，卻都被合理化及默許，還以不痛不癢、莫名其妙的方式虛應一番，卻不見人願意為這艘破船補補窟窿，甚至還假裝沒有看見。憑藉台灣過去的累積，原本大家想在體制內成功，只要像狗，忠誠可靠，恪盡職守，會看家護院、保護主人就會平步青雲；想在體制外奮鬥，只要像狼一樣，靈敏快捷，願意奮鬥冒險, 就會突圍而出。在既得利益者的刻意不作為下，現在的台灣，狗不再一定有人養著，還常勞力勞心，裡外不是人。而狼再狠，面對沒有獵物的戰場，早已不再是狼和食物的較量，而是狼與狼之間的撕咬。既然體制內吃不飽還會餓肚子，體制外拚死拚活還搶不到食物，當然最後只剩哭窮及憤怒了。

日本學者Miura Atsushi在《下流社會》一書提出中產階級下流化的概念，他認為一向穩定的中產階級正在萎縮，從中產躋身上流者鳳毛麟角，淪入下流者卻源源不斷，加上網絡和社交媒體的風行，哭窮成為一種政治正確，而炫富則被集體攻擊。最後只見社會處處負面情緒，累積爆發的就是憤怒。我覺得吧，人生一世，草木一秋。大家想追求的是活得積極、向上、有樂趣的日子，沒有人喜歡生活在負面情緒、憤怒哭窮的社會。台灣已經退無可退，政府一定要創造公平環境，提供機會，讓台灣人力得到合理定價，讓大家有可以改變命運的願想。

同時，必須去除攔住年輕人中產之路的門檻，比如收入不平等、通貨膨脹、房價上漲等。簡單來說，就是要讓現在的中產階級實現人盡其才、有限收入保值增值的機會，要讓下一代有公平競爭、躋身上流的機會。人生在世，要想毫不利己，太難；只會損人不利己，太蠢。最好是人己兩利，但窮怕了，就會出現寧願利己損人，也要賭一把的怪象，這樣的台灣不會與你我無關。

（作者為創投合夥人）

(中國時報)

全民基本所得豈是無理取鬧

全民基本所得豈是無理取鬧

2016­06­19

聯合報 陳冲（東吳大學法商講座教授）

一如原先預期，瑞士公投是否提供公民每月二千五百瑞郎（約台幣八萬元）的全民基本所得（ＵＢＩ），因七成八票數的反對並未通過。這個新聞有兩層意義：前者為全世界最酷愛公投的瑞士，又再出手，也又再表現超乎想像的理性。後者則為全民基本所得的觀念，乍聽之下，所有公民，不論有無工作，國家每月發給台幣八萬？會不會造成全民怠於工作、遊手好閒？有媒體甚至認係無理取鬧，其實這問題並不似表面單純。

首先是貧窮陷阱（poverty trap）問題。在國際社會中，國家有所謂「富者愈富，

貧者愈貧」現象，尤其許多低度開發國家，因無力投資於基本建設，改善經濟，故陷入「貧窮陷阱」，不得翻身。而人類社會中，民眾也有貧者愈貧的貧窮陷阱，原因不外是貧窮家庭生存已不易，根本無餘力追求良好教育，或進行任何脫貧的努力。

長期以來，為解決特定階層可能的「貧窮陷阱」，特別是經濟快速成長時，整體ＧＤＰ成長與基層勞工收入間，所出現的嚴重缺口，經濟學家開始思考各種不同方式。尤其在近代，包括台灣在內，許多國家都存有一種抱怨，即經濟成長卻薪資停滯，換言之，經濟成長果實，眾人無法雨露均霑，雖然這是勞力密集產業轉向資本密集或技術密集的自然結果，但各界仍期待對國家的成長，能分派「國家紅利」。

四十四年前美國總統大選，當時民主黨候選人麥高文，在政見中提出「人口津

貼」，每人發給一千元美金，不過這不是隨興喊出的口號，背後操刀人是重量級經濟學家托賓（James Tobin）。麥高文雖然慘敗，但所提出消減貧窮動力仍在，一九七五年美國國會通過著名的ＥＩＴＣ（earned income tax credit, 勤勞所得租稅減免）法律，不少國家仿效，馬英九二○○八年競選政見也曾納入，俗稱「負所得稅」，也就是對工作所得不高的就業家庭，予以補助。

這個ＥＩＴＣ策劃者，更非等閒之輩，是被譽為「廿世紀下半世紀最偉大經濟學

家」也是人口津貼原創者傅利曼（Milton Friedman）。但不論是人口津貼（demogrant）或ＥＩＴＣ，其實都與全民基本所得目的相同，希望經濟成長的

果實，全民均能共享，也是一種財富重分配的努力。其中ＥＩＴＣ因支出較少又能同時鼓勵就業，被認為較可行，但有一好沒兩好，ＥＩＴＣ的受補助者由於薪資成長至某一水準，必須由此機制「畢業」，因此影響基層勞工自我提升或追求較佳工作的意願，尤其在此「顛覆性科技」快速成長年代，許多底層或不需複雜技能的工作漸被機器人取代，民眾欲覓工作無門，削減適用ＥＩＴＣ的機會，因此托賓式全民基本所得又再崛起。

綜上說明，全民基本所得有長遠的發展歷史（甚至三百年前已有類似想法），不是直覺反應所顯示的「無理取鬧」，其原意在對抗貧窮，而不是鼓勵好吃懶做，這也是整體經濟成長後，應思考有無必要發給國家紅利（national dividend）？這也類似一般公司在薪水外另給紅利的道理。

支持全民基本所得的言論認為，這種措施不僅是薪資偏低的基層勞工受惠，許多在家庭工作卻無收入者（例如家庭主婦）、許多默默奉獻社會卻無薪水者（例如志工），就這些對社會付出有價值的勞力卻未獲得財務的報償，社會仍應提供「購買力」，以示公平。當然全民基本所得倡議者的理由不止於此，民眾有基本所得後，因為後有退路，就會勇於創業、勇於追求理想生活方式、自由學習，有助於經濟發展及生活品質，只是應如何訂出適當金額，既能有重分配的脫貧效果，也不會誤導一般民眾怠於工作，才是重點。

在瑞士公投新聞世人看熱鬧之餘，為避免貧富差距擴大，促進社會和諧，台灣應再思考本身的方向。有人主張再提高基本工資，但這種政客邀宴、企業埋單的方式，終將影響就業機會（尤其是機器人／自助機器當紅時代），而且基本工資決策所依據的統計資料，也應該提升其精確度。人人有獎的全民基本所得，雖非無據，但從媒體對瑞士公投評價可知，尚不易取得共識。看來台灣可能比較適合採用ＥＩＴＣ，成本相對較低，又較能鼓勵就業，而對收入較低的的受薪家庭言，也有掙脫貧窮陷阱的機會。

（作者為東吳大學法商講座教授）

A Plan in Case Robots Take the Jobs: Give Everyone a Paycheck

A Plan in Case Robots Take the Jobs: Give Everyone a Paycheck

Farhad Manjoo STATE OF THE ART MARCH 2, 2016

Let’s say computers come for most of our jobs. This may not seem likely at the moment; computer scientists and economists offer wildly varying ideas for how deeply automation will affect future employment. But for the sake of argument, imagine that within two or three decades we’ll have morphed into the Robotic States of America.

In Robot America, most manual laborers will have been replaced by herculean bots. Truck drivers, cabbies, delivery workers and airline pilots will have been superseded by vehicles that do it all. Doctors, lawyers, business executives and even technology columnists for The New York Times will have seen their ranks thinned by charming, attractive, all-knowing algorithms.

How will society function after humanity has been made redundant? Technologists and economists have been grappling with this fear for decades, but in the last few years, one idea has gained widespread interest — including from some of the very technologists who are now building the bot­-ruled future. Their plan is known as “universal basic income,” or U.B.I., and it goes like this: As the jobs dry up because of the spread of artificial intelligence, why not just give everyone a paycheck?

Imagine the government sending each adult about $1,000 a month, about enough to cover housing, food, health care and other basic needs for many Americans. U.B.I. would be aimed at easing the dislocation caused by technological progress, but it would also be bigger than that. While U.B.I. has been associated with left-­leaning academics, feminists and other progressive activists, it has lately been adopted by a wider range of thinkers, including some libertarians and conservatives. It has also gained support among a cadre of venture capitalists in New York and Silicon Valley, the people most familiar with the potential for technology to alter modern work.

Rather than a job­-killing catastrophe, tech supporters of U.B.I. consider machine intelligence to be something like a natural bounty for society: The country has struck oil, and now it can hand out checks to each of its citizens. These supporters argue machine intelligence will produce so much economic surplus that we could collectively afford to liberate much of humanity from both labor and suffering. The most idealistic thinkers see the plan as a way to foster the sort of quasi-­utopian future we’ve only encountered in science fiction universes like that of “Star Trek.”

As computers perform more of our work, we’d all be free to become artists, scholars, entrepreneurs or otherwise engage our passions in a society no longer centered on the drudgery of daily labor.

“We’re talking about divorcing your basic needs from the need to work,” said Albert Wenger, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, a proponent who is working on a book about U.B.I. “For a couple hundred years, we’ve constructed our entire world around the need to work. Now we’re talking about more than just a tweak to the economy — it’s as foundational a departure as when we went from an agrarian society to an industrial one.”

Sam Altman, president of the tech incubator Y Combinator, recently proposed to fund research into U.B.I. The firm has received thousands of applications for research funding, Mr. Altman said; it plans to select winning recipients within a few weeks, and ultimately Y Combinator plans to spend “tens of millions” of dollars on research to answer some of the most basic questions about life under U.B.I. Mr. Altman said these questions range from the most practical — how much U.B.I. would cost the country, and whether we could afford it — to deeper issues concerning people’s motivation and purpose in what you might call a “post-work” age.

When you give everyone free money, what do people do with their time? Do they goof off, or do they try to pursue more meaningful pursuits? Do they become more entrepreneurial? How would U.B.I. affect economic inequality? How would it alter people’s psychology and mood? Do we, as a species, need to be employed to feel fulfilled, or is that merely a legacy of postindustrial capitalism?

There is an urgency to the techies’ interest in U.B.I. They argue that machine intelligence reached an inflection point in the last couple of years, and that technological progress now looks destined to change how most of the world works. “People have been predicting that jobs would go away for a long time, and usually what happens is they just change,” Mr. Altman said.

But even so, “during those periods of change, things can be quite disruptive,” and at the very least, U.B.I. may be able to smooth out the transition period. We may already be seeing the disruptions. Though the macroeconomic statistics suggest the United States has recovered from the last recession — job growth in 2015 reached levels not seen since the 1990s — surveys show that many Americans feel vulnerable and anxious about their jobs and finances. Wage growth is sluggish, job security is nonexistent, inequality looks inexorable, and the ideas that once seemed like a sure path to a better future (like taking on debt for college) are in doubt.

Even where technology has created more jobs, like the so­-called gig economy work created by services like Uber, it has only added to our collective uncertainty about the future of work. “All of a sudden people are looking at these trends and realizing these questions about the future of work are more real and immediate than they guessed,” said Roy Bahat, the head of Bloomberg Beta, the venture capital firm funded by Bloomberg L.P.

A cynic might see the interest of venture capitalists in U.B.I. as a way for them to atone for their complicity in the tech that might lead to permanent changes in the global economy. After all, here are rich people who both actively fund and benefit from creating highly profitable companies that employ very few people. It doesn’t help that you have some investors who’ve been terrifically tin­-eared about the perils of globalization and the modern economy (see musings from Paul Graham on inequality, Marc Andreessen on colonialism and Thomas J. Perkins on class resentment.)

But my conversations with techies interested in U.B.I. revealed a sincerity and sophistication about the idea. They aren’t ashamed or afraid of automation, and they don’t see U.B.I. merely as a defense of the current social order. Instead they see automation and U.B.I. as the most optimistic path toward wider social progress.

“I think it’s a bad use of a human to spend 20 years of their life driving a truck back and forth across the United States,” Mr. Wenger said. “That’s not what we aspire to do as humans — it’s a bad use of a human brain — and automation and basic income is a development that will free us to do lots of incredible things that are more aligned with what it means to be human.”

Like much of what venture capital firms work on, basic income is a pie­ in-­the-­sky notion. Though it has enjoyed recognition among wonks and some political momentum in Europe, not a single American presidential candidate has expressed even passing interest in the idea.

It has also been hampered by some very basic practical questions: How much should we give out in monthly income? Can the country afford that? Proponents say these questions will be answered by research, which in turn will prompt political change. For now, they argue the proposal is affordable if we alter tax and welfare policies to pay for it, and if we account for the ways technological progress in health care and energy will reduce the amount necessary to provide a basic cost of living. They also note that increasing economic urgency will push widespread political acceptance of the idea.

“There’s a sense that growing inequality is intractable, and that we need to do something about it,” said Natalie Foster, the co­founder of Peers, an organization that supports sharing­-economy workers.

Andrew L. Stern, a former president of the Service Employees International Union, who is working on a book about U.B.I., compared the feeling of the current anxiety around jobs to a time of war. “I grew up during the Vietnam War, and my parents were antiwar for one reason: I could be drafted,” he said. Today, as people across all income levels become increasingly worried about how they and their children will survive in tech-­infatuated America, “we are back to the Vietnam War when it comes to jobs,” Mr. Stern said. “We’re entering a universal, white­-collar, middle­class anxiety, which drives political change faster than poor people tend to drive change.”