hankyoreh

Participants of “Reimagine 2018

“I think it’s like a kind of ‘basic income benefit’ simply to have parents from the upper or middle class. The reason their children succeed so early is thanks to the parents’ assets and network.”

Taylor Jo Isenberg, managing director of the Economic Security Project (ESP), likened the stability of having middle class parents to a “basic income” in a May 15 presentation at “Reimagine 2018,” an international conference at Seoul City Hall’s Multipurpose Hall.

“We need to look at what kind of effects a basic income would have,” Isenberg said.

“A basic income experiment with the Cherokee people in the US showed a gradual reduction in demand for public health and welfare services. While it may require a lot of money now, we need to look it as something that will return the investment [through reduced social service usage] in the long term,” she added.

With artificial intelligence and robots seemingly poised to take over jobs in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR) era, many around the world are actively calling for a new welfare state framework that guarantees a certain basic income – not just for wage earners making a living from work, but for all citizens. Experiments with basic incomes are under way worldwide in countries like Finland, the US, Canada, Kenya, and the Netherlands.

Former Seongnam Mayor Lee Jae-myung, who also appeared as a speaker that day, called basic income an “inescapable future.”

Lee was responsible for a “youth allowance” policy in which “Seongnam Love” certificates worth 250,000 won (US$231) were offered every quarter – for a total of 1,000,000 won per year (US$928) – to 24-year-olds who had lived in Seongnam for three or more years.

“The results were beyond our expectations,” he said.

“I heard from a lot of people that they felt like the state was taking an interest in them.”

According to Lee, guaranteeing a minimum quality of life for members of the community is the state’s responsibility. South Korea works in this direction with its basic livelihood security system – but that system involves selecting a portion of the population to receive benefits. The idea behind basic income is that a better approach would be to provide support to everyone and recover funds from those who do not need it by collecting corresponding taxes.

This would reduce the costs of selecting welfare targets while discouraging people from shunning low-wage jobs as a way of ensuring benefits. It also eliminates the issue of stigma. It’s good for both the state and individual – but achieving it in the near future will not be easy.

Another speaker at the May 15 event was Olli Kangas, director of the Social Insurance Institute of Finland (Kela). In response to recent reports in many South Korean news outlets that claim Finland’s experiment with basic income had “failed,” Kangas said, “I was in charge of the experiment, and we have not yet gotten the numbers back. They must be better scientists than I am.”

When asked why Finland was experimenting with basic income, Kangas explained, “In Finland, there is already a kind of indefinite basic income paid to unemployed people, we have around 40 social insurance systems beyond unemployment benefits.”

“This welfare model was created 50 years ago, and some have claimed that it’s a ‘trap’ that encourages people to avoid working. We felt that we needed to integrate this [into a basic income] to make it more efficient,” he said.

Elizabeth Rhodes, a research director for the Y Combinator research lab who has been conducting a basic income experiment in Silicon Valley, shared one of the stories she encountered during a feasibility study ahead of the experiment proper.

“Brianne,” an Oakland resident in her thirties, had been employed in an hourly position, but found a full-time job after receiving basic income. She pooled with friends to rent an affordable apartment in the suburbs, and was able to look after her children. While she longer receives basic income, Brianne was able to establish a solid footing for her life in the meantime.

“The goal of our experiment is to see what sort of changes come from strengthening the social safety net, what kind of changes there are from a local community perspective,” Rhodes said.

“In the US, the income of the top 10 percent in 2014 was more than the income of the bottom 90 percent combined. The number of children who earn more than their parents did has fallen by half since the 1940s,” she noted.

“Basic income is an attempt to share growth and ensure technical programs while eradicating absolute poverty. This sharing of wealth and opportunities is what we are aspiring toward.”

A keynote speech was delivered by Lee Won-jae, president of LAB2050, which organized the conference.

“In the past, the value of people lay in labor and production, but new technologies are taking the place of human work. It’s time for us to think about how to make it so that many people are not treated like they’re ‘useless’ or ‘not fulfilling their human role,’ about what the state has to do to ensure human dignity,” Lee said.

The Reimagine 2018 conference was organized by LAB2050, with support from the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Hankyoreh.

By Park Ki-yong, staff reporter

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