Looking at BIG in Finland
Peter Bruce’s column (BIG solution would change the country, March 24) continues the important discussion on the possibility of a basic income grant (BIG) in SA.
In thinking about such a proposal, recall the haunting words of the late Allister Sparks, who asked readers to “imagine what it must be like to be in your mid-twenties and realise you are probably unemployable for the rest of your life” (How to get around the big problem of skills training, April 25 2012).
A BIG trial recently began at the other end of the earth, in Finland, with random unemployed individuals receiving a tax-free monthly grant in lieu of unemployment benefits. Although Finland and SA are often at opposite ends of indices of social development, the Finnish experiment may answer some of SA’s questions about BIGs.
There is the obvious question of whether BIG recipients are more successful job seekers. The Finnish experiment expects the option to pick up casual and temporary work without additional taxes will make a difference, as will the stability BIGs offer to those setting up single-person enterprises.
The effect on wages, and so tax revenue, must also be answered.
Moreover, a sometimes overlooked motivation behind BIGs, central to the Finnish experiment, is the desire to simplify welfare services. If a BIG replaces all existing grants; administering the welfare state becomes less labour intensive, ironically leading to job losses.
In the South African context, a great benefit of a BIG would be addressing what Sharlene Swartz calls the “morality of inevitability” in her 2009 book The Moral Ecology of South Africa’s Township Youth.
Describing the self-destructive choices individuals make when they believe themselves condemned to perpetual poverty, as in Sparks’ quote above, the “morality of inevitability” would be fundamentally changed if individuals were offered the modest R2,000 per month Bruce proposes.
Paying these grants would indeed oblige the government “to begin to think about other ways” to grow employment and the economy, as Bruce insists, but it would also allow individuals “to begin to think about other ways” of living, not merely surviving.
Ibrahim Abraham
University of Helsinki, Finland