Publish at April 14 2021 Updated November 10 2022
"As a child, I knew how to give; I lost that grace as I became civilized. I lived a natural existence, whereas today I live on the artificial. The smallest beautiful stone was valuable to me; every tree was an object of respect. Today I admire, along with the white man, a painted landscape that is valued in dollars!"
Excerpts from "Barefoot on Sacred Ground," texts from the First Nations of North America, collected by T.C. McLuhan.
Can we sustain a society that both honors the pebble and is moved by a work of art? What value do we give to things, to activities, and what is value? What feeds us, concretely in our basic needs and in our humanity? What makes sense, and what could be fair means of existence?
These questions that we ask ourselves when we form and position ourselves on "the labor market" are the basis of the reflections around universal income. The economist Jean-Éric Hyafil is known to have positioned himself on the subject. In particular, he contributes to the "French Movement for a Basic Income," created in 2013.
"In its simplest definition, a universal income - or basic income, universal allowance, existence income, etc. - "
This notion is connected to political and social ideals that can be diametrically opposed. It is sometimes difficult to disentangle what underpins this or that choice, strategy, and implementation modality.
The author of the thesis also carries an activist ideal of society. But the advantage of reading a thesis on a militant subject is that everything is explained, dissected. It is possible through this to base one's knowledge and to equip oneself to better explore other writings, less distanced, for which we will know how to replace certain subtitles.
His thesis refers to specific and very localized events such as a presidential election and modalities of economic and fiscal organization specific to France. That said, it is a milestone in understanding the larger issues of unconditional income.
Mention of a universal income can be found in the 18th century under the pen of the American and French revolutionary Thomas Paine, who denounced the inequalities of landed wealth: the appropriation of land by a small number of owners, to whom workers sold their labor power under conditions that could not possibly benefit them.
"It was while comparing the ways of life of the American Indians to those of the English and French that he came to write his treatise on Agrarian Justice in 1795, formulating the first basic income proposal. Thomas Paine observes that the absence of poverty among the Indians comes from the fact that no one is excluded from the use of land. The latter is a natural good whose appropriation by a minority of owners cannot be justified."
The majority of today's careers have been made in the context of mass unemployment. Work is metamorphosed (automated, digitized) and the ways of remunerating it are questioned, all the more so in a context of ecological transition and the questioning of professions with low societal or environmental value. The author quotes the engineer Jérôme Chain who explains how "our society educates us to harm it" and that this one "would be so much more useful to the unemployed":
"[...]Every time I thought of something useful to society, it was impossible to make a living from it. "
Moreover, the cognitive contributions that create value can be very diffuse, and it is not always easy to identify them for remuneration: such as the collaborative forms of work that are very suited to our complex form of world.
Economists Jean-Marie Monnier and Carlo Vercellone speak of cognitive capitalism:
"The production of wealth is increasingly extending beyond the framework of traditional employment, while the capture of value tends to be concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller number of individuals, increasing income inequalities. "
Four criteria help circumscribe universal income:
Again, there are many ways of looking at work and employment. For all the concepts outlined in the thesis, a glossary defines them and outlines their contours.
Employment is work + pay + a vehicle for social integration. Work being:
"Any activity creating, directly or indirectly, wealth, use value."
The way in which these different notions of activity, work, remuneration, social integration are considered will have an impact on the criteria determining universal income.
For example, for the author, the causes of social exclusion are individual: he speaks of "feelings of discrimination"when others will speak of "systemic discrimination".
Similarly, he puts forward work as a principle that is a vector of self-realization. In a world still structured around work, this makes sense. In a world structured otherwise, relationship (which is also lived in a job) might as well be the primary vehicle for self-realization.
Universal income is one of the modalities for financing "higher services that are vectors of positive social externalities" such as care (care), education, training, culture, civic or proximity activities. These activities, useful for the common good, increase the margins of choice of individuals, their autonomy and allow the development of their potential.
Part of the thesis consists in developing the potential of weaning from economic dependence on growth, the resilience of the territories and to show that universal income is perfectly financeable. The economic analysis is done, not from a budgetary perspective (which the researcher considers a "dead end"), but from a redistributive effects perspective.
The researcher thus selected the test cases and identified the winners and losers in relation to the social supports or contributions to which the analyzed cases are typically exposed. Because the losers can easily be found in the base of voters for such a program (middle deciles of living standards), the author promotes a diversification of funding. In his model, low-income couples and the working poor are the primary beneficiaries of a universal income.
Note also that, in the context of this thesis, the social-fiscal system is marital. That is, a social minimum benefit will be paid to the "head of household" of a couple. As is overwhelmingly the case, in a couple with two different genders, the benefit will be paid to the male gender, who will hold de facto power.
Similarly, taxes are conjugated, which can reduce the autonomy of the person without income in the couple, more often a woman than a man. The universal income individualizes the question of the resource and is, by this also, a vector of emancipation.
The universal income allows to meet six challenges:
"We have therefore envisioned [universal income]as one tool among others in the toolbox that allow reconciling the autonomy of the worker, the development of higher activities with positive social externalities, and the social integration of all. This toolbox should also contain other devices such as social drawing rights [financing method] - to not entirely break the link between the chosen activity and social validation - or guaranteed employment schemes - to promote the social integration of the most excluded."
Image source: Pixabay - Jutta Einhaus, stadtadler.
Jean-Éric Hyafil, Universal income: relevance to accompany the metamorphoses of work, role in fiscal and macroeconomic policy, implementation modalities and redistributive effects, Sciences économiques, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 2017.
Thesis available on :
https://www.theses.fr/2017PA01E035
Jérôme Chain, "I'd be so much more useful on the dole":
https://www.bastamag.net/Je-serais-tellement-plus-utile-au
Jean-Marie Monnier and Carlo Vercellone, on cognitive capitalism:
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.en/hal-00975108
Denys Lamontagne, "Equality, a factor of success":
https://cursus.edu/9973/legalite-facteur-majeur-de-reussite-et-de-perseverance-scolaire
Regis Vansnick: "Universal income back on the agenda":
https://cursus.edu/21588/le-revenu-universel-un-sujet-social-remis-a-lordre-du-jour
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