Articles
Five reasons why a Universal Basic Income won't solve Technological Unemployment
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There has been a buzz recently about the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and why it could be a solution to technological unemployment. VOX reported a few days ago that Y Combinator, a start-up incubator, is about to start a five-year research project on how a UBI could work. Noah Kulwin over at re/code also has a useful article on this including a broad overview over existing work on the basic income. In the spirit of discussion I’d like to bring together some of the arguments I have made over recent years for why the basic income is not a suitable solution for technological unemployment but another option – a job guarantee – could be. So let’s start with the assumptions.
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Illicit Flows and Funding the SDGs
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In adopting the Sustainable Development Goals this past September, UN member states realized two extraordinary achievements. First, the document itself—with 17 goals, 169 targets and 200+ (yet to be finalized) indicators—is a testament to global ambition, a 15-year roadmap toward what is hoped will be unprecedented progress in poverty alleviation. Second, the global community agreed to “substantially reduce illicit financial flows,” which reached $1.1 trillion two years earlier according to a recent GFI study. It is nothing short of remarkable that 193 nations agreed to address an issue that five years earlier was just becoming known within the international community. Today, the need to reduce IFFs (as they are known) is part of development policy orthodoxy. What many still do not recognize however, is that the SDGs and IFFs are inextricably linked—we cannot hope to achieve the former without addressing the latter.
Is Business Action on Climate change Believable?
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One of a series of Guardian Members’ events, hosted by Guardian Sustainable Business in partnership with Nordea Responsible Investments, the focus of this discussion, facilitated by a Guardian environmental journalist Karl Mathieson, was nominally on the “plethora of pledges from major businesses… in the lead-up to the UN talks”.
In fact, the panel discussion, whilst demonstrating a healthy degree of scepticism, centred mostly on how business can be encouraged to lead in opposing climate change. It was salutary, though, that the longest round of applause came early on from the somewhat pessimistic voice of Professor Kevin Anderson, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, who berated all and sundry for twenty-five years of knowing what needed to be done and not doing it, making it clear that all of us have a responsibility for letting that happen. He also expressed his preference for obligations, rather than targets or goals that can be missed without repercussions.
The IMF's new lending framework: bailing out from bailouts
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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a new reform of its exceptional access framework. The key step made on 29 January 2016 is to remove the systemic exemption clause. This is the clause that has made IMF participation in the mega bailout of private creditors in Greece possible. It created the situation that Greece is now indebted mainly to official creditors, while banks and other creditors have recovered most of their money. However, the reform is no guarantee that publicly funded bailouts will no longer happen. It just transfers the task from the IMF to other official creditors, in Europe to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
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Coca Cola's hidden formula for avoiding taxes
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The hotel door was the dividing line: inside, a first world fantasy of starched uniforms, low voices, and crisp cool air; outside, color and heat, vendors selling knickers, groundnuts and sunglasses along cracked sidewalks. I sat atop my father’s shoulders, holding his ears, taking in this snapshot of Lusaka in the late 1980s. Zambia was a country in the throes of hunger riots caused by massive reduction in the public budget, a chain reaction that engulfed most of Africa during a period known as the “lost decade.” One country toppled after another like a game of dominos playing to the rules of the Washington Consensus. My father was on the board of a Gulf development bank, assisting–or so they were under the impression–efforts to alleviate poverty in various African countries. The doors between the inside and outside of the Lusaka hotel where we stayed were as much symbolic as they were tangible; made of money, race and social class. But the inside and outside had something in common: Coca-Cola, whether dragged by vendors on small carts or poured with a flourish in swanky restaurants.
