Basic Income Has Always Been a Women’s Cause

 

The vibrant debate around the question of basic income has all too often neglected a crucial aspect: gender dynamics. In a deeply gendered society, how might a basic income impact men and women differently? Could basic income be harnessed as a tool in the fight for women’s rights? Bringing a feminist perspective to the basic income discussion foregrounds a distinct set of concerns and virtues of the proposal. Natalie Bennett recalls the long 20^th-century history of women’s struggles in the UK to make the feminist case for a universal basic income.

It is telling that, in the United Kingdom at least, women were at the forefront of early campaigns for a universal basic income.[1] It has even been claimed, with some justification, that Virginia Woolf, in asserting a woman’s need for 500 pounds a year and a room of her own, was setting out at least the case for a universal basic income, if not yet a model for it.

The campaigner Lady Juliet Rhys-Williams, with a pre-Second World War background in maternity and child welfare, set universal basic income out as a less gender-discriminatory and labour-based alternative to the UK’s Beveridge welfare state model in her book Something To Look Forward To in 1943.[2] However, the Beveridge model (whereby incomes such as pensions are based on contributions rather than need – something that has trapped older women too often in desperate poverty) triumphed, geared as it was to the needs of the capitalist growth economy. The model’s architect, William Beveridge, came under significant attack from a range of women for these aspects of his plans, notably from Elizabeth Abbot and Katherine Bompas of the women’s suffrage organisation Women’s Freedom League, who said his was “a man’s plan for man”. But the Labour Party that would deliver the plans – and certainly the Conservatives who would acquiesce in them for decades – were unlikely to take up such a challenge and act on it.

It is important to keep highlighting that history today, when male tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and their ilk are creating a splash with their championing of universal basic income for a (possible) age of technological triumph. Many women were here first and must not be forgotten.

How the feminist vision of basic income took hold

It was often women who, in the UK, continued the push for universal income through the decades that followed. That most notably included the successful campaign for a universal child benefit, introduced in 1946, led by the strong-minded and determined Member of Parliament Eleanor Rathbone. That universal benefit was only recently (in 2013), and disgracefully, dropped with little fanfare, under the 2010-2015 coalition government of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Campaigning, however, never really achieved traction beyond support for children (and implicitly their mothers) with the public or the largest, massively male-dominated political parties, which in the British winner-takes-all first-past-the-post electoral system, are the only ones who have been able to introduce structural changes.

The feminist case for a universal basic income often starts, as Flanigan does, from the fact that women in the UK, as around the world, are more likely than men to be poor. 

Yet the push continued. In 1984, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in the UK proposed a universal basic income, saying that women would be the main beneficiaries, no longer dependent on their husband’s earnings (along with the unemployed, who wouldn’t be caught in what we now call ‘benefit traps’).[3]  In 2001, Philosopher Ingrid Robeyns again set out the case for a universal basic income, pointing out how the welfare states of Western Europe had developed in a very different age, one of stable, secure jobs and marriages, and a highly gendered division of labour, with men allocated to the bread-winning role.

In recent years, the feminist case, like the broader case, for universal basic income has been gaining traction. University of Richmond academic Jessica Flanigan wrote in a millennials’ journal of choice, Slate, that it is a “feminist cause”. The feminist case for a universal basic income often starts, as Flanigan does, from the fact that women in the UK, as around the world, are more likely than men to be poor. But at its heart is the fact that women are more likely to be responsible for the care of the young and the old, work that is very often entirely unremunerated, sometimes not chosen, and not respected. The phrase “I’m just a housewife” was often heard thirty to forty years ago. That might be less the case now, at least in ‘polite’ public discourse, but that does not mean these caring responsibilities have become properly respected or valued, either in the lives of individuals or at the national level (in the form of GDP).

That is not a new situation, but the pressures of a carer’s life, in a world in which people are being told increasingly to ‘sell themselves’, to be a ‘product’, to always be ready to seize opportunities, have become more acute than ever. A grinding life of poverty, caring for aged parents, an ailing husband or wife, or a disabled child, leaves little space for a sparkling Instagram account or Facebook feed, the development of a ‘look’ or a ‘brand’, or the upbeat manner and the kind of ‘people skills’ demanded now even for many minimum-wage jobs. Equally so with the nature of modern employment. It might look like the gig economy lends itself to fitting around the demands of caring responsibilities, but instead its workers are increasingly expected to fit their lives around its demands.

Fostering solidarity

There has also been a growing focus on the way in which a universal basic income could address the disempowerment of poverty and destitution (that results from a UK welfare system increasingly under threat).  With benefit sanctions affecting almost one in four Jobseekers’ allowance recipients between 2011 and 2015, and benefits of 132 million British pounds being withheld in 2015 alone, desperation is a condition all too familiar in many communities, with women often being the ones left to pick up the pieces.

And it is the most vulnerable who are likely to suffer the most. The deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Amelia Womack, wrote online in the British newspaper The Independent in 2018 about universal basic income’s value to some of the most vulnerable women in society: victims of domestic violence and abuse. By contrast, the universal credit system being implemented by the Conservative Party sees household payments all being aggregated into one (except by special request), making it even harder for vulnerable women to escape abusive situations.

A German study found that incapacity to meet employment demands, and particularly lack of opportunities due to discrimination by employers, was preventing older women and men from remaining in the labour market when they wished to do so, frequently forcing them to take pensions at a lower rate earlier than they would have wished, condemning them to an old age of poverty and insecurity.[4] This is the situation of a group of women known as the WASPI in the UK (Women Against State Pension Inequality). Born broadly in the 1950s, they have been adversely affected by rapid increases in their state pension age, bringing them to equality with men (with which few argue as a principle) but with little time to plan and prepare, and in many cases no official notice (and often personal knowledge) of the change in their circumstances. A universal basic income would ensure they were not forced into humiliating, often health-damaging, requirements for the receipt of the very low unemployment benefit, with little chance of gaining employment.

That a universal basic income might smooth the way to more gradual retirement, through a phased process of gradual disengagement from waged work, is not a particularly feminist point, but it is a significant one for many women.

There are some further groups of women who might particularly benefit: those working in low-paid jobs with low rates of unionisation and relatively toothless unions representing them, such as shopworkers and cleaners. This applies particularly, but not exclusively, in the case of the UK, with its highly repressive anti-union legislation.

No miracle cure for all society’s ills

There is, it has to be acknowledged, a genuine and progressive case made in some quarters against universal basic income from a feminist perspective. The chief claim is that it could, by guaranteeing women basic subsistence, render them even more exposed than they are now to social pressures to take up unpaid care and even community responsibilities, condemning them to lives of low incomes, limited opportunities, and lower status. The case was made two decades ago that one of the early forms of extended parental leave in Belgium, a payment for up to three years during career interruption, was – as might have been expected around the turn of the century – chiefly taken up by women.[5]

a struggle for universal basic income needs to be combined with the struggle for an equitable sharing of care responsibilities

This, however, brings up a very broad and important point about universal basic income. It is not a panacea, a solution to all of society’s ills, including misogyny, discrimination, and a failure to respect caring and community roles. Few of its proponents have suggested that it is. So, in some respects, this is a ‘straw woman’ argument, although it does highlight the point that a struggle for universal basic income needs to be combined with the struggle for an equitable sharing of these responsibilities – for shared parental leave, for respect for the role and difficulties of caring, and adequate recognition of it by employers, families, and society in general.

As argued elsewhere against those who suggest that universal basic income could pose a threat to universal basic services, universal basic income would only threaten to impose an ideology of women being forced into home and caring duties in a society with politics whereby this could be conceivable or acceptable. In an equitable society, or one working towards gender equality, such a claim would not stand up to scrutiny.

It can be argued, then, that the struggle for a universal basic income is a struggle for all women’s groups and feminists. Recognising that all members of society deserve a fair basic share of its resources, enough to meet their basic needs, because they all in some way or another contribute to it by their existence, strengthens the position of women, and all of their other struggles: as workers, as family members, as people in need of respect as well as material resources. When women fully secured the vote in 1928 in the UK, many thought they were well on the way to respect for women’s contributions to society. It is obvious that progress has been glacial since then, and a universal basic income for everyone could be an important step further along that road.

---

[1] Sloman, P. (2015). “Beveridge’s rival: Juliet Rhys-Williams and the campaign for basic income, 1942–55,” Contemporary British History, pp. 203-223.
[2] Sloman, op cit, p. 203.                                                                                                
[3] Hencke, D. ”Basic income ‘should replace benefits’ The Guardian (1959-2003); Jul 31, 1984; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer, p. 4
[4] Wübbeke, C.J. (2013). “Older unemployed at the crossroads between working life and retirement: reasons for their withdrawal from the labor market,“ Labor Market Res. 46: 61.
[5] Robeyns, op cit, p.85.

 
WELFARE AND SOCIAL ISSUES





Quality of Life Before Sustainability:Contemporary Green Discourse

A Green New Deal is good, but an ecofeminist one is even better.

 University of Manchester environmental politics expert Sherilyn MacGregor has explored the writings, theories, and critiques of ecofeminism to develop the concept of ecological citizenship on how citizens are key to social and ecological transformation. 

She spoke to Tine Hens about what we can learn from justice-centred ecofeminist theories and why climate action must look beyond technological innovation to embrace quality of life for all.

Tine Hens: So tell me, what is ecofeminism?

Sherilyn MacGregor: Ecofeminism is often deliberately mis­interpreted as concern for the planet that almost essentially belongs to women, as if they were pre-programmed simply because they have children and can be mothers. These are precooked, unscientific assumptions. In the course of its own history, ecofeminism has evolved into a critical, political movement that not only focuses on women’s rights, but also connects different forms of oppression.

Ecofeminism was born in the 1970s out of a feminist critique of the environmental movement and an ecological critique of the feminist movement. The analysis is fundamentally simple: the oppression of people and the subjugation of nature start from the same logic that we find in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal thinking. In this sense, you cannot tackle one injustice if you are silent about the others. As a feminist, you can’t simply argue for higher wages for women if you remain blind to planetary boundaries and the fable of eternal growth. In the same way, it’s pretty perverse for an ecologist to work towards alternative ways of living and consuming without pointing out gender role patterns or the over-representation of male standard-bearers.

In this sense, ecofeminism is essentially intersectional in that it links different forms of exclusion and injustice – from racism to environmental pollution – and challenges privilege and the existing order. It is therefore not surprising that the existing order reacts to it in a poisonous and dismissive manner. Or that they deride ecofeminism as a product of oversensitive, panicky women. Or that they attack women as such. And yes, they even react by casting suspicion on climate science.

In the US, a Feminist Green New Deal has been put forward by a coalition of women’s rights and climate justice organisations.¹ Is a Green New Deal not transformative enough?

This Feminist Green New Deal was launched in October 2019 and at first glimpse it makes certain points that aren’t put forward enough in mainstream green politics. Reproductive rights, for example, especially in the face of climate change.

The best-known environmentalists like Jane Goodall and David Attenborough are neo-Malthusian: “Stop population growth to stop climate change.” That cannot be allowed to carry on without criticism. We have to call it what it is: a form of racism and neocolonialism. Feminists in particular should speak up about this issue, because it will be an attack on women’s bodies.

The oppression of people and the subjugation of nature start from the same logic that we find in colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchal thinking.

 

Another principle in the Feminist Green New Deal is a different approach to work and labour. We have to understand work as being much more diverse. It’s not just about paid jobs – all caring work has to be seen as an integral part of a green jobs agenda. We can’t rebuild or transition to a new kind of economy if people just keep on making things. We need to employ people and pay them well in caring jobs: educators, nurses, community workers, home helpers.

So these are all good and necessary points of this Feminist Green New Deal. At the same time, it’s still very human-centred and mentions nothing about moving to ways of respecting and giving agency to the more than human. If it was an ecofeminist Green New Deal, that would be in there – the idea that humankind is just one species among others on this wonderful planet.

How can you move these more profound understandings of the climate crisis from the side rooms to the centre stage of the debate? How do you start redefining work when the focus is on the deployment of big, green infrastructure through a “world war-like mobilisation”?

The dominant perspective within green economics is that of green growth, a kind of ecomodernist idea that is all about investing in the right technology and triggering fantastic innovation. The strategy is not to say that’s wrong, but to show that it’s not going to bring the masses along. We’re all worried about right-wing populism, and how this has an attraction for people who are feeling left out, not listened to, and neglected.

You can’t answer rising populism with more elite solutions. Technofixes are exactly that. They’re not going to create jobs for the masses and put money in everyone’s pockets. So how can you turn your green agenda into a popular agenda? Every Green New Deal must appeal to the working class, the cleaners, the hotel workers, the restaurant cooks. What’s in it for them? Why is it good for them? If we change the economy, it has to change in a way that improves quality of life for all. In terms of money, economic justice, healthier air, cleaner neighbourhoods, better food, and time. It’s about these intersections of low-carbon and high-welfare policies.

Ecofeminism criticises the traditional environmental movement. Is it too privileged, too white, and blind to its own exclusion mechanisms?

Two examples from the past year. For every Greta there exists a young person of colour. Yet Greta draws all the attention. That’s not her fault, but it’s important for the media to make sure diverse voices can be heard. Second: Extinction Rebellion (XR). Their strategy is civil disobedience and getting arrested. However legitimate that may be, it ignores the simple reality that someone with a dark complexion would rather not end up in a cell. There are plenty of reports about police violence and racism. You can’t sweep that under the carpet because the end would justify the means.

Right now, like the rest of the environmental movement, XR is pretty white. The debate about the importance of representation, diversity, and inherent justice is starting to unfold. Inequality and climate policy are two sides of the same coin. Not everyone likes it, but it is a necessary debate. You cannot talk about climate policy and remain silent about structural injustice or other forms of exclusion. And it is not only about injustice at a global level, but also in our own backyards. In my research, I have experienced how and why green themes are regarded as elitist when they do not have to be. But this is the result if you talk more about electric cars than about the importance of public transport.

You did research in different neighbourhoods in the UK city of Manchester where you found out that people weren’t interested in the green agenda. How do you make this agenda popular?

Stop talking about sustainability and start talking about and investing in quality of life. Under the conditions of austerity in the UK, this is crucial. Working-class people are harmed by all the cuts in social welfare and are concerned about their daily comfort. You can’t go to them and speak about buying less or changing behaviour. Some people simply need to consume more because their basic needs aren’t fulfilled. That’s why justice is the right word, rather than equality. The minute you start to talk about justice, about a fair distribution of means, it resonates with people.

The most recent research I did in Manchester was in a community called Moss Side, which is well known as a very deprived and diverse area. We reached out to the inhabitants on subjects like quality of environment and quality of everyday life, and one of their biggest concerns was rubbish on the streets. We also worked with migrant residents from Somalia, who are treated by policymakers as hard to reach – a community they don’t understand. We discovered that there’s a great need for the non-Western engagement of immigrants with nature and the environment to be acknowledged. They see the world through Islamic principles about not wasting and caring for the natural world. Being open to that brings hope for a more inclusive understanding of sustainability. We have to stop making it seem like environmentalism is a white, middle-class concern. It’s time to start decolonising environmentalism and climate change policies. The more we question the narrow frame of Western environmentalism, the more will change.

I would rather have democracy in a poor environment than repression in a perfect environment. We don’t need less democracy, we need much, much more.

It doesn’t help that a lot of the communication about climate change is quite abstract about “reducing emissions”, “parts per million”, or “going climate neutral”. As if this existential crisis is the excel sheet of the accountant of the planet.

The science is clear. There is no longer any discussion about that. So what do we do? That question turns it into more interesting discussions in which more people can participate. What does a post-carbon, fair and just society look like? We need to translate the knowledge and the science into a palpable imaginary. How do we employ people? What kind of society do we want to live in? What are its basic principles? That’s where caring for people and the planet becomes a more accessible vision than solar panels, energy-efficient housing, and precision agriculture. In Moss Side, people live in houses so outworn you cannot even begin to make them carbon neutral. So where do you start? By leaping over the scientific jargon and putting quality of life at the centre.

Elections prove over and over again that people are willing to vote against their own interests. Some voices in the environmental community even hint at the straightforward choices a non-democratic government can make. It seems like we’re not only living a climate crisis, but also a democratic crisis.

I would rather have democracy in a poor environment than repression in a perfect environment. We don’t need less democracy, we need much, much more. All over the world, and certainly in the UK, party politics is becoming extremely polarised and toxic. There’s a loss of vision, and hatred is being nurtured by strategy and negative campaigning. It’s a sad and troubling evolution. But maybe it is also is a chance for alternatives to blossom.

There have been some interesting and successful experiments with citizens’ assemblies in Ireland and in British Columbia over a carbon tax. In the UK, smaller and more specific citizens’ juries led to the banning of GMOs.

Finding common ground, speaking, and listening are so desperately needed. I can imagine citizens’ assemblies starting to take shape in cities, or even on a community level. Cities are way ahead of national governments on climate – they’re the right size for doing this. But they also struggle to reach out to the non-converted. The mayor of Manchester tries every year to organise a green summit. It’s really nice to go there, but you look around and only see white faces. “We don’t know how to reach out,” is an often-heard complaint – to which I say, “Get out there and instigate kitchen table discussions around a few common questions. Record people’s ideas. Decentralise and remove thresholds.” Decentralising is a very ecofeminist point of view. Not just the process of decision-making, but also the dominant knowledge.

Some would argue we don’t have time for the slow process of citizens’ assemblies. They argue we need big solutions that we can upscale at an unprecedented tempo.

I don’t deny that climate is an emergency but sometimes this has been used to force a certain direction, which is why this “climate emergency” language worries me. It may be rhetorically useful, but there’s a negative side. What happens in emergencies? You’re allowed to take exceptional measures. This could mean taking people’s rights away, which is something we can never allow to happen.

In response to the “we need to upscale” argument, I like to point out that we have to value every kind of meaningful action. It’s a very masculine thing to focus on big solutions, on a politics of resisting and fighting. This must be called out because it’s a way to plant doubts in the minds of those who are willing to act. It’s saying that caring for your community garden has no value.

Let me give you an example from my neighbourhood, where there is a lot of poverty, alienation, and social isolation. People have decided to come together and start cleaning up forgotten green spaces and alleys, to plant flowers and to create nice places for children to play and elderly people to sit. It’s no big deal, you could say, it’s just about people coming together, caring together, and keeping those plants alive. But what you really make happen is restored contact and connection. It starts with someone from Malaysia talking to an elderly Jamaican woman and realising they have so much in common. There is such hope in that.

FOOTNOTES

1. See the Feminist New Deal.

This interview is part of our latest edition, “A World Alive: Green Politics in Europe and Beyond”.

Ahmaud Arbery and the racist history of loitering laws

Racism.Illustrated | AP Images, Screenshot/Twitter, iStock

Bonnie Kristian May 7, 2020

Ahmaud Arbery went for a jog in a neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia, a coastal town south of Savannah, in late February. He paused to look around a construction site of a new house. Then, in the middle of his run, a newly public video reveals, he was confronted by Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father-son duo — the father, Gregory, a retired police officer — who'd seen Arbery and decided he looked like a local burglary suspect.


Arming themselves with a .357 magnum and a shotgun, the McMichaels, who are white, chased Arbery, who was black, with a pick-up truck. The video doesn't always keep the three men in frame, but we see Arbery attempt to go around the pick-up only to be intercepted by Travis McMichael with the shotgun. There's a shot, then the two men tussle for the weapon, then another shot at point-blank range, after which Arbery stumbles away, attempting to run before collapsing dead on the pavement. The McMichaels claimed they were attempting a citizen's arrest and shot Arbery, an unarmed runner they'd chased and cut off, in self-defense. No charges have been filed.

The video's release prompted protests, plans for a grand jury, and a statement from Georgia's attorney general calling for swift justice. It's a welcome call, but swift justice wouldn't have required a viral video. And this case is all too familiar: It calls to mind the spate of nationally reported killings of unarmed black men and boys, often by white police officers, over the last six years. But it's also reminiscent of a longer American history of doing violence to black men for the "crime" of being out in public. Arbery's death resembles nothing so much as lynchings conducted in the name of vagrancy laws, Jim Crow-era legislation crafted to create an endless supply of excuses to harass African Americans and even arrest them, jail them, and profit from their labor.

"We have the power to pass stringent laws to govern Negroes — this is a blessing — for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them," said one Alabama planter in the post-Civil War era. The Jim Crow "black codes" were indeed stringent. "Nine Southern states adopted vagrancy laws," writes Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow, "which selectively made it a criminal offense not to work and were applied selectively to blacks."

The black codes also worked hand-in-hand with convict leasing laws, Alexander notes, which "allow[ed] for the hiring out of county prisoners to plantation owners and private companies. Prisoners were forced to work for little or no pay," supplying the plantations with cheap labor and the county governments with an income stream. It wasn't antebellum slavery, but neither was it an entirely different creature — and indeed court decisions of the time, like 1871's Ruffin vs. Commonwealth, decided by the Virginia Supreme Court, held that a prisoner is a "slave of the state" who has forfeited "all his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords him."

While the classic vagrancy law required proof of employment, some of these measures also included "loitering" as an offense. An 1866 Georgia law banned "wandering or strolling about in idleness." Kentucky enacted "laws which allowed persons guilty of 'keeping a disorderly house, loitering, or rambling without a job' to be arrested and bound out to the highest bidder for a year's service."

And like most vagrancy laws more broadly, anti-loitering laws were race-neutral on paper. In practice, they gave police a reason to arrest black people, especially black men, simply for their public presence as opposed to any specific criminal act. The concept of vagrancy, including loitering, as a criminal offense was also used by racist vigilantes to justify lynching.

By 1949, vagrancy was criminalized in every state, but most of the laws have been withered under court scrutiny in the years since. A Jacksonville, Florida, law was struck down by a landmark 7-0 Supreme Court decision in 1972. It permitted arrest of "[r]ogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging, common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, ... persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers," and many more. (The court deemed the Jacksonville law unconstitutionally vague; absurdly, a defendant in a related case was charged with loitering "because he was standing in the driveway, an act which the officers admitted was done only at their command.")

Many anti-loitering laws have been rewritten for greater specificity in the last 50 years, ostensibly to address issues like gang violence and prostitution, but they remain on the books and subject to tremendous abuse. More importantly for Arbery's case, the idea of loitering as a threatening act by African-American men remains embedded in our culture.

Thus do black parents teach their children to take extra precautions and black children worry about their parents. "My wife often cautions me against going out at night," tweeted black Michigan pastor Mika Edmondson in response to Arbery's killing, "because she knows that when some people see me out at night, they don't see a Presbyterian pastor or a PhD in systematic theology. All they can see is a threat."

That seems to be all the McMichaels saw, too, when they killed Ahmaud Arbery after hunting him in the street.

How the virus could weigh down America's economy for the long haul
James Pethokoukis

Illustrated | iStock
May 7, 2020

President Trump frequently called the pre-pandemic American economy the best in the country's history. And in some ways it was pretty impressive. The stock market was way up and unemployment way down — as the president's social media accounts constantly reminded us.

But all that good stuff only came after a long, so-so recovery from the Great Recession. In the decade before that devastating downturn — one many of us probably thought would be the worst we would ever experience — economic growth averaged 3.3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation. In the decade after the 2007-2009 recession, however, growth averaged 2.3 percent, a percentage point lower. And that slower pace was a big reason wage growth was steady but unspectacular.

Now, of course, the quarantined economy is suffering its worst contraction since the Great Depression, if not ever. It might shrink as much as 40 or 50 percent, on an annualized basis, from April through June. But as states gradually reopen, the economy should start growing again, maybe quite quickly at first. After that, it might oscillate between slower and faster growth, depending on the future path of the coronavirus outbreak.

For his part, Trump is tweet-promising to "build the greatest economy in the world AGAIN!" But we have to do better. Much better. Before the COVID-19 collapse, economists from Wall Street to Washington were forecasting the long-term U.S. growth rate at a bit below 2 percent. One reason is the demographic-driven decline in labor-force growth. America is getting older and having fewer kids. With fewer new workers, the ones we have will need to be more productive, at least if future growth is going to be anywhere near as strong as past growth. Unfortunately, rich nations entered into the pandemic in the midst of a 15-year-long productivity growth slowdown.

Now there are also all sorts of virus-related reasons to think even those reduced growth and productivity rates will be tough to achieve going forward. Maybe the Two Percent Economy downshifts to a One Percent Economy. In the new analysis "The COVID crisis and productivity growth," economists Filippo di Mauro of the National University of Singapore and Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago highlight several reasons for concern. Among them: disruption to schooling, the loss of operational know-how at failed firms, and the creation of "zombie" companies that survive long after the pandemic only due to government support. About that last point, Di Mauro and Syverson write, "While there are arguments for limiting business closures at least in the short run, zombie firms might further limit the ability of new, higher-productivity businesses to enter."

But some of the wounds might be self-inflicted if a more risk-averse, pandemic-shocked society and government pursue populist, "drawbridge up" responses to the pandemic. Case in point: Trump suspending immigration to protect jobs. While the measure is supposedly temporary, it gives aid and comfort to the notion that immigrants are bad for the economy. That simply isn't true. The latest piece of evidence is a new NBER working paper, "Immigration, Innovation, and Growth," which demonstrates the positive impact immigrants continue to have on American economic dynamism and innovation. From the paper: "The significant increase in local wages suggests immigration not only affects innovation and creative destruction, but also the overall level of economic growth."

Or as legendary investor Warren Buffett said the other day at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting (live-streamed, of course) while marveling at the "miracle" and "magic" of the American economy: "Can you imagine that? For 231 years, there's always been people that have wanted to come here." And it would be a very bad thing if they stopped coming. Immigrants account for nearly half of the U.S. workforce with a science or engineering doctorate. In Silicon Valley, 64 percent of engineers are foreign-born. Indeed, more than half of U.S. startup "unicorns" have at least one immigrant co-founder.

Perhaps even more likely than more anti-immigration policies are more anti-trade actions. Trump has already mused about slapping China with $1 trillion in tariffs as punishment for the pandemic, while Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, just wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for the World Trade Organization to be abolished. Across the conservative world there are calls for "industrial policy," a wonky term for a range of actions including trade protectionism and subsidies for favored industries — especially those whose owners or workers lean toward the party dispensing the favors. Sounds like a recipe for even more zombie companies.

The coronavirus has created myriad obstacles to faster economic growth and the opportunities it generates. Don't think populism can't make things worse.

OPINION

What a sane country would learn from coronavirus

Ryan Cooper

Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock
May 6, 2020

Countries around the world are learning some hard lessons during the coronavirus pandemic. Ones that had their acts together — usually places that had recent experience of disease outbreaks, like Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Sierra Leone — acquitted themselves rather well. Ones that did not, like Sweden and the U.K., saw huge caseloads and mass death.

But nowhere has bungled things worse than the United States. It may well end up that some countries have worse epidemics relative to their population size, or that some U.S. communities escape disaster thanks to their state governments or dispersed geography, but the national American response has been basically nonexistent, despite our vast wealth and power. In almost every other rich country cases are now falling sharply, but here they have plateaued or even increased. The Trump administration appears to be all but giving up on attempts to control the spread and is itself forecasting huge increases in both cases and deaths, while the Democratic House has been almost wholly absent in the last month.

This failure points to how broken the United States was before coronavirus hit. It turns out we were already wobbling on the precipice of disaster, and it took only a sharp shove to send us over the edge. If America were a sane country, this would be a perfect opportunity to clean house.


Probably the most glaring weakness exposed by the pandemic is America's horrendous health care system. We spend about 17 percent of our economy on health care — roughly twice the figure of many of our peer nations — and yet the system was caught flat-footed by the crisis. On the one hand, even before the crisis about 14 percent of Americans were uninsured, and a much greater fraction who technically had coverage effectively could not use it in many circumstances because the benefits were so lousy. Now that tens of millions of people are being laid off, they are also losing their employer-based insurance, which was already crumbling before the crisis. Perhaps a quarter of Americans with employer-based coverage may lose it before the crisis passes. Some will end up on Medicare or the lousy ObamaCare exchanges, but many will no doubt go uninsured.

Health care providers are also being hit hard by the crisis. Consumer health care spending fell 18 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and many providers cut pay to doctors and nurses or laid them off, despite the fact that many hospitals were jammed to bursting with COVID-19 patients. The reason is that elective procedures — like knee surgeries charged at a 500 percent markup — is where providers make most of their money. There just isn't much percentage in treating regular old sick people.

In other words, the American health care system is not geared towards providing care as such. It is geared towards profit.

One could not imagine a better case for a sweeping overhaul of America's health care system. The argument often heard during the recent Democratic presidential primary that the status quo allows people to choose their insurance is a filthy lie — if you lose your job, as millions of people per month did even before the crisis, you are almost always thrown off your coverage. Sweeping away the dysfunctional hodgepodge of insurance systems and replacing them with something like Medicare-for-all would make sure all Americans are covered forever. Then with that leverage, the government could re-gear providers away from churning out high-margin procedures (or straight-up highway robbery of the sick or injured) and towards providing useful basic care.

The pandemic has also proved America's (and the world's) supply chains to be exceptionally rickety. Outsourcing, globalization, market concentration, and "just in time" inventory management has made commerce more profitable for wealthy oligarchs, but also made it fragile. Businesses that source key components from one or two central facilities spread out all over the globe and keep as little inventory as possible (Apple CEO Tim Cook once called inventory "fundamentally evil") are exquisitely vulnerable to shocks like a viral pandemic.

Antitrust policy to break up corporate behemoths and create multiple redundant supply chains would not only make the production system more resilient, but also more fair. Monopolies generally produce poorer-quality goods and services, and squeeze both workers and suppliers for profits. This is a particular problem in agriculture, where monopolist middlemen have cut the share of consumer food spending flowing to farmers from 37 percent in the 1980s to 15 percent today. Multiple centralized meatpacking facilities have seen gigantic coronavirus outbreaks, because hundreds of low-paid workers are jammed into unsanitary facilities where they generally do not get decent benefits like sick leave.

Finally, America's basic state structure has been revealed as rotten to the bone. Other countries have found it much easier to keep their economies in stasis during the pandemic, because they have efficient bureaucracies with up-to-date knowledge of the citizenry (addresses, bank accounts, and so on), and because they have functioning welfare states that could easily be dialed up in the pinch.

The United States has struggled to follow their example. The economic rescue payments to individuals were long delayed in reaching many citizens, because the government doesn't know where they live, or because of technical foul-ups. The boost to unemployment insurance is not reaching many laid-off workers because many state unemployment systems are ancient and decrepit, or have been deliberately designed to not pay out benefits. The small business bailout was routed through private banks in a way that virtually guaranteed it would fail to reach many of the small companies that needed it most.

Over and over we have seen that state capacity and foresight has been by far the most important factor in controlling both the epidemic and the economic fallout. A generation of arguments from both parties that the main task of government should be getting out of the way of the private market has been revealed not just as a hollow fraud, but dangerous.

At any rate, liberals in California have been pressing the argument that the pre-coronavirus status quo was horribly broken. Already the state has abolished cash bail for most crimes, provided shelter for the homeless population, and sent computers to poor students so they can continue to attend online classes. If we can do these things in response to a viral pandemic, why not all the time — and why not more?

They are correct, but it seems highly doubtful whether either political party is willing to take up the challenge. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has surrounded himself with goons who were deeply involved in breaking America in the first place. On the other hand, should he choose to try to bring American up to civilized country standards, there would be no shortage of opportunities. It's up to him.

Meanwhile, Republicans are patently uninterested in any of the above proposals, or are dead against them — and they are only in power because of America's anachronistic and anti-democratic Constitution. Many party ideologues have openly called for Americans to be fed into the coronavirus meat grinder so production and profits can resume. It doesn't bode well for America's future.

American individualism is a suicide pact
Damon Linker

Illustrated | iStock, Wikimedia Commons
May 6, 2020

The United States is about to undertake a remarkably risky epidemiological experiment on itself.

With at least 72,000 Americans dead of COVID-19 over the past seven weeks and no sign of overall decline in rates of infection, the White House and numerous state governments have decided it's time to begin lifting stay-at-home orders that were imposed to slow the spread of the disease.

There are several reasons why the country has decided to risk precipitating a sharp increase in the number of infections and fatalities. For one thing, there's genuine fear among elected officials that damage to the economy from the lockdowns is too great for them to be allowed to continue any longer. (This is usually combined with an unproven and most likely dubious assumption that people will return to normal patterns of behavior and spending as soon as legal restrictions on economic activity are lifted.)


Then there's the restive faction of the Republican Party that uses its media perches and headline-grabbing protests at state houses and city halls to express displeasure with stay-at-home orders. And well-publicized anecdotes of people becoming less willing in warm spring weather to continue sheltering-in-place (despite numerous polls showing strong broad-based support at both the national and local level for maintaining such restrictions).

But underlying all of these sources of opposition to public-health measures is a deeper cause that intertwines with and underlies all of them, at least in part — and that is the old-fashioned, pig-headed individualism of the American people. We hear it every day from politicians, protesters, and media personalities — and on Tuesday it was also expressed by Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley. Judge Bradley and her colleagues were presiding over a lawsuit filed in protest of the Wisconsin governor's stay-at-home order when she volunteered that she considered it "the very definition of tyranny."

Americans like to see their "don't tread on me" ethic as one of the country's most admirable traits. And maybe in some contexts and historical moments it is. But during a pandemic it is idiocy to cry tyranny at efforts to mitigate the spread of the pathogen. In such circumstances, our incorrigible individualism can become lethal — a suicide pact that threatens individuals as well as the political community as a whole. That makes it a public menace.

We hear versions of the argument for individualism so often that it's hard to think about it critically. In the context of the coronavirus, it goes like this: "Don't force me to shelter-in-place against my will. I can take care of myself. If I want to work, shop, or go party with my friends, that's my call. I'll accept the risk. And anyway, the only people facing a significantly elevated likelihood of death from the illness are the elderly. So worry about them and get your niggling, do-gooder, nanny-state nonsense out of my face. You're not the boss of me. Let me live my life and make my own choices about what risks I'm willing to accept."
Even if we assume this imagined individualist is actually informed about how bad COVID-19 really is and hasn't been hoodwinked by nonsense about how it's "just like the flu," the argument is wildly irresponsible — as we can see as soon as we reflect on cases in which it is comparatively persuasive.

Take the example of drugs. Who is harmed if you decide to spend your days shooting up heroin or smoking meth? If this activity prevents you from taking care of a child or other dependent, then it could be quite harmful. But if you're responsible only for yourself, habitually doing drugs may harm no one and at most will harm only you — which means that the argument from individualism may be justifiable in such a case.

But now imagine that you combine this drug-taking lifestyle with a public activity like driving. Now the actions of the heroin or meth addict has the potential to cause great harm to others — namely, the other drivers and pedestrians who could be injured or killed in an act of intoxicated driving. That leads the individualist argument to break down. Now one person's decision about how to live his life and how much risk to accept collides (perhaps literally) with the well-being of other people who have their own lives to protect and levels of risk to accept for themselves.

And of course allowing people to go about their lives freely during a pandemic when there is as yet no vaccine or even an especially effective treatment regimen is potentially far more of a danger to the public good than allowing a drug addict to drive under the influence. If you live your life without regard for social-distancing, and especially if you don't wear a mask when you do so, you aren't just taking a bold and potentially foolish stand against supposedly tyrannical government restrictions. You're also threatening to spread a deadly virus far and wide among your fellow citizens. That's especially so with COVID-19, which is highly contagious and asymptomatic for many.

So, you need to imagine a drunk driver who could harm not just one or a few people but dozens, each of whom could then unknowingly spread the contagion still further. Now multiply that possibility by all the millions of people who, thanks to their stubborn individualism, may soon become the epidemiological equivalent of drunk drivers and you can begin to grasp the magnitude of what we may soon confront.

It may be inapt and somewhat tendentious to compare the struggle against COVID-19 to a war, but there is at least one respect in which the comparison holds. A war and a pandemic both threaten the political community. Not just the good of atomistic individuals within the community but the good of the nation as a whole is at stake. That requires a national response, one that calls out for and requires restrictions on personal freedom for the sake of the entire polity. How long those restrictions need to remain in place isn't a function of how annoying, frustrating, or even economically painful they are for individuals. It's a function of the need to contain the deadly virus — just as the duration of the hardships of war is determined by the shape of the battle and the imperative of victory. In both cases, neglecting to do what is necessary to prevail deserves to be judged a gravely serious failure of responsibility.

Countries in which citizens are inculcated with a sense of the common good will respond responsibly to coronavirus threat — by, for example, setting up, paying for, implementing, and accepting the hassles involved in a rigorous testing and tracing program. That's the one thing that could have allowed us to begin easing lockdowns without risking a serious spike in new infections and deaths.

But that's not the American, individualistic way. We value personal freedom too highly — and for that we are likely to pay a very steep price over the weeks and months to come.

Did we just witness one of the nuttiest foreign policy blunders in American history?
Matthew Walther The Week•May 7, 2020


I cannot be the only American who somehow missed the news that on March 26 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the United States would offer bounties of a combined $55 million for the capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and four of his top associates. By the end of March, most of the country was living under some sort of mandatory lockdown. People were fighting for toilet paper and stocking up on bags of rice and making plans for aspirational quarantine reading. Millions of us were preparing for Mad Max.

It now appears that we were thinking of the wrong '80s action flick. Last weekend it was reported that a group of more than 100 American mercenaries, including two former Green Berets and one ex-agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration, had failed in some kind of apparent coup attempt and that some of them were being detained by the Maduro government. What was being called "Operation Gideon" perhaps unsurprisingly failed to bring about regime change, much less result in the apprehension of the country's socialist dictator. Reports suggest that 50 of the mercenaries stormed Venezuela by sea, joining up with around the same number of fellow soldiers of fortune already waiting behind enemy lines. The Venezuelan army (and Maduro's own paramilitary loyalist forces) outmatched them by around 350,000. A small ragtag band of American warriors attempts to force the commies out of South America against all odds? This is basically the plot of Predator if the Predator hadn't shown up.

Pompeo maintains that the United States government was not involved in this offensive. For what it's worth, he is probably telling the truth. Instead it appears that the plot was launched long ago by a bunch of former Venezuelan military officials who have been training deserters from the Maduro regime in secret Colombian camps for a year. One of the principals, a retired general named Cliver Alcalá, was arrested in the United States back in March for drug smuggling and is imprisoned in New York.

Operation Gideon was, not to put too fine a point on it, at odds with both federal social distancing guidelines and current recommendations from the World Health Organization. It was also absolutely insane. Convincing Maduro, whose presidency is considered illegitimate by the United States and around 80 other countries, to release captured Americans is going to be an enormous hassle for everyone involved. Pompeo says that the Trump administration is prepared "to use every tool" to secure their freedom. This includes, presumably, the threat of military force. What other options are realistically on the table? Official recognition of the Maduro regime? The imposition of additional economic sanctions upon what is arguably the worst economy in the Western hemisphere during the middle of a global public health crisis? A nice handwritten apology note saying, "Sorry, next time we want to encourage bored ex-servicemen to collaborate with your own generals in a revolutionary plot on the pretext that you are involved in high-level drug trafficking, we will, well, there won't be a next time?"

Under virtually any other circumstances a story like this one would be a foreign policy blunder worthy of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in terms of the lunatic scope of its ambition, if not, thankfully, in the number of lives lost, American or otherwise. Instead it is likely to be forgotten amid the pandemic. This does not mean that it is lacking in significance.

The main lesson of Operation Gideon is that whatever the Trump administration claims about the importance of Venezuela to American foreign policy, they have no serious interest in doing anything about Maduro, much less in helping ordinary citizens for whom a carton of eggs now costs more than a month's wages. It is easy to rail against the undeniable wickedness of the communist dictatorship there; it is harder to displace it. Sounder heads would leave off talk of gazillion-dollar bounties and hope that the worldwide collapse in oil prices might force Maduro out of power, at which time the United States would be better positioned to help a new government.

The other lesson is that, whatever we owe the people of Latin America after a half century of destroying their economies through unfair trade arrangements and our addiction to vile drugs, we lack the national will to help them, just as we failed to move the needle against the Taliban in Afghanistan despite 20 years of trying. This is why, no matter how illogical it seems, one of our nation's two major political parties has committed itself to the principle that virtually unlimited immigration is the only feasible solution. So far, no one is proving them wrong.

American captured over alleged Venezuelan coup plot says Donald Trump ordered plan

Telegraph reporters
The Telegraph•May 6, 2020

An alleged US mercenary captured in Venezuela has said he was part of a plan ordered by Donald Trump to kidnap president Maduro.

In an apparent confession on state TV, Luke Denman, who was arrested alongside other alleged mercenaries, said he had been sent across the border from Colombia to secure an airport to fly Mr Maduro America.

In a separate televised address, Mr Maduro said Donald Trump was behind the alleged plot to oust him, and ordered the US nationals to be tried in Venezuela.

In a video broadcast Mr Deman admitted his role in the alleged plot. "I was helping Venezuelans take back control of their country,” he told an interviewer hidden from the camera.

The veracity of the comments is unclear, as was the conditions under which the video had been made. Mr Denman is being held by the Venezuelan authorities.

Speaking after the Denman video was played, Mr Maduro said: “Donald Trump is the direct chief of this invasion.”

The US government has denied any involvement. Last night Russia said the US denial over the alleged plot was "unconvincing".

Researchers study Gulf of Mexico in international collaboration

by Bill Wellock, Florida State University

Rachel Kalin, left, an alumna of Eckerd College, and FSU research assistant Samantha Bosman transferring a core sample during a research cruise. Credit: Devon Firesinger

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suffered a blowout in 2010 and began spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists got to work understanding the effects of that disaster.

But limited data on the typical conditions in the Gulf made understanding the potential changes from the spill more difficult. To make sure scientists weren't caught unaware in the future, Florida State University and partner universities investigated current baseline conditions in the southern Gulf to create a series of maps and guides that detail the distribution of carbon, nitrogen and the carbon-14 isotope.

These elements are all important ecological factors that contribute to the natural habitat supporting untold number of plants, fish and other marine life.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a productive system that is important both in ecology—by providing unique habitats for various species— and economy, for industries such as tourism, fishing and the oil industry," said Samantha Bosman, a research assistant in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and the paper's lead author. "The ecosystem may not go back to its pre-spill or pre-disturbance conditions, so having a baseline makes it easier to determine how much has changed after the disturbance. That helps you determine if conditions are returning to what was observed prior to a spill or if they are changing to a 'new normal.'"

Florida State researchers worked with colleagues from the University of South Florida, Eckerd College and the National Autonomous University of Mexico to complete fieldwork for the project in 2015 and 2016.

"This joint collaboration of Mexican and U.S. scientists brought together people with unique skill sets and significant local knowledge," said Jeff Chanton, a Robert O. Lawton professor of oceanography in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and a co-author of the paper. "They were able to access the environmental health of the southern Gulf, which is subject to significant oil and gas recovery."

The researchers surveyed the southern Gulf of Mexico, an area that had been home to the Ixtoc 1 well, which suffered a blowout and massive oil spill in 1979. Along with measuring the typical distribution of elements, the study looked for evidence of oil within the sediment that could have come from that spill, but they didn't find any signs of that disturbance remaining.

The oil industry and fishing industry exist side-by-side in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of people live around its coast. An understanding of the baseline conditions in the ecosystem will help scientists looking at the impacts and recovery of the environment in the event of any future oil spills.

One particular area of interest to scientists was the composition of sediment on the seafloor. To understand typical conditions in the region, the researchers measured how much carbon, nitrogen and carbon-14 were in the sediment.

Before this research, there was limited data on the sediment composition in the southern Gulf. Understanding the composition provides scientists greater insight into when fossil fuels might have entered the environment.

For example, scientists can measure the carbon-14 found in organic material. Younger material has higher levels of the isotope, and older materials have lower levels. Right after an oil spill, scientists should find very low levels of carbon-14. As the oil degrades and the ecosystem recovers, the level will increase.

"In the event of an oil spill, that's a big slug of carbon emitted to the surface of the Earth," Chanton said. "And everything in the surface of the Earth has carbon-14 in it because it's pretty modern. Sediments have a modern date. When you add petroleum or some petroleum product to the sediments, they look older, and that's because they're being diluted with fossil fuel."

But that analysis is most useful when scientists know what the typical measurement is for a particular location, allowing them to understand when conditions have returned to normal.

As their sampling sites moved from near the coastline to further out to sea, the researchers found that the amount of carbon increased but the amount of carbon-14 decreased. This information showed them the sediment they were pulling up was older.

"The better you know the pre-existing conditions, the better off you are when something happens," Chanton said.

Scientists have found oil from the Deepwater Horizon blowout in fishes' livers and on the deep ocean floor

More information: Samantha H. Bosman et al, The southern Gulf of Mexico: A baseline radiocarbon isoscape of surface sediments and isotopic excursions at depth, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.023167

Journal information: PLoS ONE 

Provided by Florida State University 

Hong Kong customs seize 38,500 endangered shark fins

MAY 7, 2020

A record 26 tonnes of shark fin were seized by customs officers in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has seized 26 tonnes of smuggled shark fins, sliced from some 38,500 endangered animals, in the largest bust of its kind in the southern Chinese city.

The record haul was discovered in two containers from Ecuador, and highlights the continued demand for shark fin, which is served at wedding banquets in many Chinese communities.

The city's customs department unveiled the haul on Wednesday and said it smashed previous records.

"Each consignment consisting of 13 tonnes broke the previous record seizure of 3.8 tonnes of controlled shark fins made in 2019," customs official Danny Cheung told reporters.

Most of the fins came from thresher and silky sharks, both endangered species. A 57-year-old man was arrested but has been released on bail pending further enquiries.

Some of the ocean's most vital apex predators, shark populations have been decimated over the last few decades with finning and industrial long line fishing the main culprits.

Fishing fleets often cut the fin from the shark and then and throw the fatally maimed animal back in the sea to maximise profit.

The dried fins sell for considerable sums and are usually served in a glutinous soup at banquets.

The sale and consumption of shark fin is not illegal in Hong Kong, but must be licensed.

Years of campaigning by environmentalists and celebrities like Chinese basketball star Yao Ming have led to the dish becoming less fashionable among younger consumers in China, Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

But it remains stubbornly popular among older generations and many prominent hotels and restaurants still offer it.

A 2018 survey by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found seven out of 10 Hong Kongers had eaten shark fin that year.

"There is still strong cultural value placed on consuming shark fin, particularly at weddings, business events and family gatherings like the upcoming Mother's Day," senior conservation officer Gloria Lai Pui-yin told AFP.

Some restaurants and hotels had signed WWF's "no shark fin" pledge but many continued to offer the dish, she added.

Wild Aid estimates some 73 million sharks are killed every year for the trade.

Their research says consumption has dropped significantly on the Chinese mainland but there is growing appetite for the dish in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

With its busy port and international connections, Hong Kong has long been a major trafficking route for wildlife and drug smugglers.

Importing endangered species without a licence is illegal and carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a HK$10 million ($1.3 million)

© 2020 AFP

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM IS M&A   

Virgin Media, O2 plan merger to create new UK telecoms giant

Internet supplier Virgin Media and mobile phone carrier O2 plan to merge and create a big new telecommunications provider in the U.K., the brands' parent companies announced Thursday.

Virgin Media's owner, Anglo-Dutch-American firm Liberty Global, and Spain's Telefonica, which owns O2, valued the new company at 31 billion pounds ($38 billion).

Telefonica chief executive Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete said that "combining O2′s number one mobile business with Virgin Media's superfast broadband network and entertainment services will be a game-changer in the U.K."

The new firm would be a rival to BT PLC, currently the U.K.'s main provider of combined internet and phone services.

O2 is the U.K.'s largest phone company with about 34 million users. Virgin has more than 5 million subscribers to its broadband and cable television service

Virgin Australia to go into administration: source

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