UBI, Caritas, et Amor
Pope Francis recently caused a stir among Catholic and some secular media, with a letter released on Easter Sunday. The Pope suggested that, in light of the current pandemic and social distancing requirements keeping many people away from their work, “it may be time to consider a universal basic wage.”
There are different concepts of a “Universal Basic Income,” and there has been some debate over whether the Pope meant a “Universal Basic Income” — generally understood as a regular payment made to every adult citizen independent of their job or employment status — or if a “Universal Basic Wage” is more akin to a Minimum or Living Wage guarantee.
Although I think the Pope would say it’s long past time to consider a Living Wage — a concept the Church has articulated for centuries, rooted in the Old Testament prophets. Universal Basic Income is a more radical idea, and more in sync with the realities of our current situation — not just our COVID-enforced unemployment, but some trends in the modern labor market.
Andrew Yang made Universal Basic Income a cornerstone of his 2020 Presidential campaign, but the idea has been kicking around for a while. In a Wired Magazine article from a few years ago, contributor Joi Ito writes,
Clearly income disparity is ripping the nation apart, and none of the efforts or programs seeking to address it seems to be working. I myself have been, for the past couple of years, engaged in a broad discussion about the future of work with some thoughtful tech leaders and representatives of the Catholic Church who have similar concerns, and the notion of a universal basic income (UBI) keeps coming up. Like many of my friends who fiddle with ideas about the future of work, I’ve avoided actually having a firm opinion about UBI for years. Now I have decided it’s time to get my head around it.
Fair enough. And as someone who fiddles with ideas about income disparity and Catholic social justice, I too have decided it’s time to try to make some sense of it.
Universal Basic Income seems to be in equal measure supported and opposed by both sides of the political divide. As Ito observes, “UBI is a partisan issue that, paradoxically, has bipartisan support.” And bipartisan opposition. On the theological side, the idea seems to fall into a murky gray area of Catholic social teaching.
On the one hand, Marquette University theologian Father Joseph Ogbonnaya tells The Catholic Register, “At a minimum level everyone has to have – as a matter of justice – sufficient income to participate in our society.” A Universal Basic Income, he says, “effectively implements most of the complimentary framework of Catholic social teaching.” As a means of providing for those in need, UBI could be a means of working toward a more just and equitable society.
The Economy Serves the Person
This speaks to one of the first and most basic assertions of Catholic economic justice, as laid out in the USCCB’s Catholic Framework for Economic Life: that “the economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy.” To be clear: here in the US our current economy does not serve the people — ours is an economy that is served by the people. This is why all the popes of the last century or so have been critical of it. It might serve the proverbial One Percent of the people, but only through demanding service from the remaining ninety-nine percent.
Universal Basic Income could change that. There is no denying that our modern Capitalist system is very effective at creating wealth. If a UBI system could spread that wealth more equitably among all citizens, that could bring it more in line with the requirements of a just economy — one that serves the needs of its people.
The Church holds that a “fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring.” Universal Basic Income would, in principle, benefit the poor and most vulnerable in society by providing them the means to secure the basic necessities of life. And if this basic income is provided equally to all regardless of need, this potentially removes the social stigma associated with receiving welfare benefits. If implemented effectively and equitably, UBI can protect the dignity of the human person, support the family, and serve the common good.
The Dignity of Work
Patheos blogger David Cruz-Uribe opposes UBI, based on a different line of Catholic Social Teaching — that of the Dignity of Work. He begins with a solid and, I think, undeniable point: that “post-industrial capitalism is no longer oriented for the good of persons, but rather towards the maximization of profit.”
He goes on to say,
The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fundamental nature of work, not simply as a means of acquiring the means to survive, but as a constitutive part of human identity. Men and women need work to fulfill their vocations as human beings. To replace work with “income” is to complete the reduction of a person from a member of society to a consumer.
The point is a valid one as far as it goes, but I believe it depends upon two basic assumptions which need to be examined: First, that a Universal Basic Income would eliminate any need and/or incentive to work; and second, that income is in fact the best and most desirable incentive to work.
As to the first point, a recent study suggests that UBI policies show no negative effect on employment. The study looks at the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, which since 1982 has made regular oil reserve dividend payments to every resident of Alaska, unconditionally. While acknowledging the need for more research, the study finds that, “There is no significant effect, positive or negative, on employment as a whole, although part-time work does increase by 1.8 percentage points, or about 17 percent.”
On the second point, Psychologist Barry Schwartz offers some insights in a recent Ted Radio Hour broadcast on NPR. There is a classist assumption, he says, among “the elite, who want all this fulfillment from work, and then there’s everybody else that just wants a paycheck.” Before the Industrial Revolution, Schwartz says, “people didn’t think … about whether work was fulfilling. People were craftsmen, or farmers, the work they did was simply a part of their life and not divorced from it.”
It is only since the Industrial Revolution, he says, that we see work is separated from the rest of everyday life and becomes nothing more than a means to a paycheck.
Because the father — one of the fathers of the Industrial Revolution, Adam Smith — was convinced that human beings were by their very natures lazy, and wouldn’t do anything unless you made it worth their while, and the way you made it worth their while was by incentivizing, by giving them rewards. That was the only reason anyone ever did anything. So we created a factory system consistent with that false view of human nature. But once that system of production was in place, there was really no other way for people to operate, except in a way that was consistent with Adam Smith’s vision.
If, as Andrew Yang’s campaign website suggests, “one out of three Americans are at risk of losing their jobs to new technologies” in the next twelve years, we might question some basic assumptions about the dignity of work that can so easily be automated. Does this kind of mindless, mechanized labor really qualify as the “productive work” we all have a right to? Does it truly contribute to society? Or does it deaden our sense of human dignity, making the human person little more than a replaceable widget in the industrial machine?
Schwartz here is making a point of cultural anthropology, not theology, but it does flirt with basic theological understandings of the nature of Humanity. We understand our human nature as being a struggle between our baser and our better instincts – humanity desires good while being drawn toward evil. Catholic Social Teaching tells us that our economic, and indeed all our institutions, should be informed by basic moral ideals – should work to create, as Dorothy Day was fond of saying, “the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good.”
In this, Schwartz argues, our modern system fails. It holds workers to their obligation to earn a paycheck, while denying them the right to productive work, fair compensation, and just labor conditions. Furthermore, the workers’ obligation to “contribute to the broader society” becomes a non-issue – workers contribute to the good of their employers, who in turn may or may not benefit society.
Indeed, our modern US economy does appear to fail across the board at every point of the Bishops’ Framework. It puts the person – indeed, puts all Creation – at the service of economic growth. It recognizes no moral principles and is generally resistant to those imposed on it by government or other external influences. It tends to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and turns basic necessities into luxuries for those who can afford them. And as Cruz-Uribe points out, Universal Basic Income in some respects would amount to “just putting a band-aid on a more fundamental problem.”
But it might also help to solve a fundamental problem. This goes back to our universal obligation to work for the greater benefit of society. Under the current US economic system, work that is most beneficial to society tends to be least valued monetarily. Our current pandemic situation has shed some public light on this, as some of our lowest-paid and undervalued service-industry workers have been elevated to “Essential Worker” status. Though we must note that wages, by and large, have not reflected this change.
And there are plenty of other examples of our culture’s divide between civic and monetary value. Teachers, social workers, and artists have always been among those who provide vital but underpaid services. Artists and journalists should arguably be trading in hard truths that society would not be willing to pay for. Might a Universal Basic Income allow more people to pursue these much-needed professions? Or would it, as Cruz-Uribe suggests, encourage laziness among workers who don’t have to work as much, and greed among employers who don’t have to pay them as much?
The answer on all counts, I think, is “yes.”
It would be naive to think of Universal Basic Income as a magic bullet to solve all our income inequality problems. But neither should it be dismissed out of hand. But as a tool available to our society in our striving for a more just and equitable world, it deserves serious and thoughtful consideration.
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