Tag Archives: UBI

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Planet Money’s new resource for educators pairs podcast episodes with lesson plans, cataloged by topic. It’s a big week for findings from cash studies including: publication of Chris’s study with Fiala and Martinez showing cash benefitted Ugandan participants, but by 9 years later the control group had caught up; Universal Basic Income in Kenya buffered against hard times when COVID and the agricultural lean season hit...

“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet,” sighed St. Augustine in his Confessions. Today, as the world reels under the impact of coronavirus, policymakers are at last reaching for tools I have long advocated: helicopter money and Universal Basic Income. And yet, like St. Augustine, I find myself sighing, “Lord, grant us helicopter money and Universal Basic Income, but not yet.”I have spent much of the last decade advocating giving people money. Helicopter money in recessions, to...

“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet,” sighed St. Augustine in his Confessions. Today, as the world reels under the impact of coronavirus, policymakers are at last reaching for tools I have long advocated: helicopter money and Universal Basic Income. And yet, like St. Augustine, I find myself sighing, “Lord, grant us helicopter money and Universal Basic Income, but not yet.”I have spent much of the last decade advocating giving people money. Helicopter money in recessions, to...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. It’s a little tricky to write links when it feels like things are changing hourly. Here’s the main message to keep in mind for the research community – you can do more than idle your projects. COVID-19 will affect every aspect of development, health, education, entrepreneurship, mobile money, cash transfers, political systems and trust in authority. But, if you have a research expertise in some area of development, now’s the time...

I have long disagreed with Guy Standing about the solutions to unemployment. 20 years ago we crossed paths on panels and in the literature where he would argue that UBI was the way forward and I would argue that it was a neoliberal plot and that, instead, we needed to push for job creation. My view has always been that to surrender to the neoliberals on their claim that governments cannot generate sufficient jobs to satisfy the desires for work of the unemployed was a slippery slope....

The major problem with a UBI is that it is a shotgun approach that is not addressed to a specific socio-economic need and it is insufficient to meet all socio-economic needs. The other issue is, cui bono? That is, for whose good? And how does that actually work? What happens if it is inflationary, as some economists have warned? If it is indexed, it becomes more inflationary. If it is not, the good it was supposed to do is undone. Sounds good until you go to the spreadsheet.Conversable...

Apparently the British Left is “fizzing with ideas for a smarter economy” according to the UK Guardian article (May 12, 2019) – The zeitgeist has shifted. Now the left is fizzing with ideas for a smarter economy – written by Will Hutton. I can’t say I sensed an outbreak of fizz. But in the colloquial language from where I come from, the term fizzer means “Something that promised excitement but instead was a disappointment”, Yes, Hutton’s fizzers include promoting the insights of a...

Whilst I agree, could politicians not be persuaded that, rather than a largely useless National Citizen’s Service, we could have a instead have a ‘Job Guarantee’ or perhaps better sold as a ‘Guaranteed Job Opportunity’ for everyone of school leaving age. Of course many will be going to university but some might like to take advantage of some work experience before arriving in full time education. Indeed with effort and thought perhaps a Job Opportunity could also be guaranteed to...

Of the various criticisms leveled at a combined ‘job or income guarantee‘, ones appealing to fairness usually go along the lines that it would be unfair for healthy individuals outside the workforce to receive an income while others are occupied in jobs. In considering this objection, a number of points come to mind: heteconomistFairness and a ‘Job or Income Guarantee’Peter Cooper

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. David McKenzie’s great (as always) links has a nice short summary on new thinking from big names in Universal Basic Income making the argument that the effort to target cash to the neediest and the precision required aren’t worth it, and it should be universal.Seven current and former graduate students at Dartmouth’s prestigious psychology and neuroscience department have filed a class action suit against the College. They allege...