Capabilities, politics, basic income

Capabilities, politics, basic

incomeTeppo Eskelinen

Development policy

• Traditionally, aiming at increasing the level of production in low-income countries

• ”Catch-up development”, only injection of capital needed

• Result: deepening inequality, modern forms of poverty

• The discovery of poverty

How to fight poverty?

• What is poverty…?

• Problem of ”first explaining matter”

• For example: creation of decent jobs caused by legislative changes caused by political pressure…

• Generally, when widely understood (in an ethically meaningful sense), improvement of life for the poor has been invariably caused by political self-organisation AND basic functionings

Multidimensional poverty

• From resources to functionings (functioning also bodily etc, basic services needed)

• Command of resources not sufficient, also future certainty, claiming rights

• Different schools of thought (education, firm support, basic health, microcredit etc)

•  Yet actually unconditional money curiously absent

Possibilities of basic income

• Basic Income (in its many forms) implies claiming a right and having a future orientation

• Most successful social security systems have always been those which are not restricted to the use of the poor.

• Micro-investment in its all forms

• In poor and inequal conditions, minimal poverty reduction is cheap

Limits of BI

From the point of view of development policy, there are several areas which are necessary but largely out of reach of the possibilities of BI

• Maternal health, disabled…

• Unwanted monetisation: introducing monetary economy, monetisation of basic services such as schooling…

Looking into the future

• From development policy to social policy: control away from the donors…?

• From “development policy” to tax-funded welfare systems…? 

• What we don’t know: generalisation of BI pilots…?