Universal basic income a bold, imaginative solution to poverty
Amplifying the call for a universal basic income, a United Nations expert has presented a report describing the idea as ‘a bold and imaginative solution’ at a time of growing economic insecurity. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told the Human Rights Council, “People feel exposed, vulnerable, overwhelmed and helpless and some are being systematically marginalized both economically and socially.
“But the human rights community has barely engaged with this resulting phenomenon of deep economic insecurity,” he said, according to commondreams.org.
His report challenges the human rights movement to broaden its scope and recognize ‘the profound challenges’ of economic insecurity, which represents ‘a fundamental threat to all human rights’, and “now afflicts not just the unemployed and the underemployed, but also the precariously employed and those likely to be rendered unemployed in the foreseeable future as a result of various developments”.
“There’s a clear right to be able to live in dignity, to enjoy a decent standard of living to get access to education, healthcare, and so on. All of these things are fundamentally linked to human rights,” he said.
Among the factors necessitating this expanded vision of human rights, he said, are the ‘Uber economy’, referring to precarious employment, zero hours and outsourcing; the ‘rapid and seemingly unstoppable growth in inequality across the globe’; increasing job automation; and “the ascent of a new neoliberal agenda, which involves further fetishization of low tax rates, demonization of the administrative State, deregulation as a matter of principle, and the privatization of remaining State responsibilities in the social sector, [which] risks leaving the State in no position to protect or promote social rights”.
Affording each individual with a no-strings-attached, basic amount would help safeguard basic human rights, the report said.
“In many respects, basic income offers a bold and imaginative Uncomfortably hot temperatures may make people moody and less likely to be helpful or ‘pro-social’, a study suggested.
Liuba Belkin, associate professor at Lehigh University in the US, said: “Ambient temperature affects individual states that shape emotional and behavioral reactions, so people help less in an uncomfortable environment.”
Researchers conducted a three part study. They collected data from a large retail chain for part one of the study and analyzed the differences in individual behavior under hot versus normal temperature conditions, indiatimes.com wrote.
They found that clerks working in an uncomfortably hot environment were 50 percent less likely to engage in pro social behaviors, including: Volunteering to help customers, listening actively, and making suggestions.
For part two, a randomized online experiment was conducted.
The team asked paid online panel to just recall or imagine situations where they were uncomfortably hot and then, after measuring their feelings and perceptions and a number of survey questions, asked them to help with another survey for free.
Participants were not even experiencing heat at the moment — and researchers still found that, compared to the solution to pressing problems that are about to become far more intractable as a result of the directions in which the global economy appears inexorably to be heading,” Alston wrote.
“While there are many objections, relating to affordability in particular, the concept should not be rejected out of hand on the grounds that it is utopian. In today’s world of severe economic insecurity, creativity in social policy is necessary,” he added.
Though the idea of a universal basic income is far from new, is hasn’t gained ground is the US. The state of Hawaii, however, could change that, as a bill requesting the creation of a ‘basic economic security working group’ recently passed the state’s legislature.
The idea also got a boost last month from historian Rutger Bregman’s talk at TED2017 in Vancouver, Canada.
“Just imagine how much talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all,” he said in his talk on the concept of a universal basic income.
“The time for small thoughts and little nudges is past,” added Bregman. “The time has come for new, radical ideas. If this sounds utopian to you, then remember that every milestone of civilization — the end of slavery, democracy, equal rights for men and women — was once a utopian fantasy too.” while reduction in positive affect did.
In part three of the study, researchers found that even slight fluctuations in temperature changed behavior. They chose students in two sections of a college management course as subjects for a field experiment.
One group sat in a lecture in a room that was uncomfortably warm, the other group sat in a room that was held in an air conditioned room — there was a 15 percent difference in the actual room temperature.
The team then asked the students to answer a series of questions and fill out a survey ‘for a non-profit organization that serves children and underprivileged individuals in the local community’.
Researchers found only 64 percent in the hotter room agreed to answer at least one question, while in the cooler room 95 percent did so.
Even those who agreed to help in the hotter room helped less, answering, on average, six questions, almost six times less than the number of questions answered in the in cooler room (average 35).
Researchers were also able to replicate the mechanism that drives reduction in pro social behavior — the same pattern of results as in study two showed that uncomfortably warm classroom temperature increased fatigue, reduced positive affect and led to less helping.