The Freiburg Connection

Prof. Straubhaar began his lecture by emphasising the important role that Freiburg has played throughout his academic career. As a young research assistant he had the opportunity to edit the galley proofs of Alfred Müller-Armack’s works, which were published by the Rombach publishing company in Freiburg. Müller-Armack’s vision of a social market economy that strives for a harmonious balance between market efficiency and social justice had a lasting impact on his economic ideas.

His time, in 1991/92, as a deputy professor at the Freiburg Chair of Economic Policy, known as the Friedrich von Hayek professorship, also left a lasting impression on a very personal level. The experience of having a significant part of his gross salary reduced by deductions for social security made it clear to him how much of a financial burden the existing social security system was. This personal exposure to the costs that employees bear without feeling any direct benefits reinforced his thoughts on alternative forms of social security and strengthened his interest in the concept of a basic income.

The Importance of a UBI

In his lecture, Straubhaar explains why, in his view, a UBI is not only an innovative response to current socio-economic challenges but also the logical consequence of the ordoliberal principles advocated by the so-called Freiburg School of Economics. He argues that a basic income can create the ideal link between individual freedom and social security by providing every citizen with a financial safety net, without hindering the dynamics of the market.

An article published on 30 January 2024 by Utopia.de, a German platform that aims to promote sustainable lifestyles, came up with two opposing positions on the Universal Basic Income. Economists Bernhard Neumärker, Director of FRIBIS, and Giacomo Corneo, Professor of Public Finance at the Free University of Berlin, each put forward their arguments. And despite their differences, they agreed that the existing social system needs to be reformed.

Bernhard Neumärker on the potential of the UBI

For Bernhard Neumärker the UBI is far more than a mere response to “wage slavery”. Instead he sees it as a catalyst for a fairer and more productive economy. The UBI would give workers in the low-wage sector an “exit option” which could lead to fairer wages and make society as a whole more productive as people would have the freedom to choose work that suits their inclinations. Neumärker argues that the UBI would reduce bureaucracy, increase individual freedom and allow people to refuse morally dubious or exploitative jobs. A UBI could respond more flexibly and purposefully in times of crisis than means-tested systems, such as Hartz IV (the German unemployment benefit and social security system). Here he highlights the positive effects on mental health, based on experiments, in Finland, for example.

Basic income sceptic, Giacomo Corneo

Giacomo Corneo, on the other hand, is critical of the introduction of a Basic Income, arguing that a UBI would be divisive. It could, for instance, lead to some people living exclusively from the basic income while others continue to work and have to pay tax on a large proportion of their income in order to finance the basic income. Here, Corneo sees the danger of an “exploitative relationship”. As an alternative, he envisages a “stock market socialism” in which bigger companies are to a large extent (at least 51%) publicly owned and their dividends are used for a form of social dividend. This would, however, be lower than a UBI.

For more about the arguments and responses of Prof. Neumärker and Prof. Corneo, see the Utopia.de article here (in German).

The volume is now available for € 19.90 and can be ordered from the LIT-Verlag website.

On January 24, Sophia Seung-yoon Lee, Professor of Social Policy at the Department of Social Welfare at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea, presented her new book, Varieties of Precarity. Melting Labor and the Failure to Protect Workers in the Korean Welfare State to the members of the FRIBIS Junior Research Group (JRG). At the same time, she introduced the novel concept of “melting labour”. The development she is trying to capture with this term is that traditional, stable employment relationships in South Korea are becoming increasingly rare, while the boundaries between the different types of work and jobs are becoming blurred. She thus draws attention to forms of precarious work that currently exist in South Korea — despite the economic successes and the presence of the welfare state.

We asked her how she felt about the discussion after her lecture:

About Prof. Sophia Seung-yoon Lee

Sophia Seung-yoon Lee, who has a PhD in Social Policy from  Oxford university, is a respected expert in the field of East Asian welfare states and labour markets as well as precarious work. Her expertise has made a contribution to European researchers’ understanding of the challenges of precarious work and protective measures in East Asian countries.

We are delighted to start the new FRIBIS year with the FRIBIS Best Paper Award. The FRIBIS Board of Directors pays tribute to the PhD candidates, Franziska Leopold and Tobias Jäger, for their excellent contributions to the second FRIBIS Annual Conference (2022) “Basic Income and Development”. With their contributions to the anthology, Basic Income and Development. Proceedings of the FRIBIS Annual Conference 2022, Leopold and Jäger have made a significant contribution to both basic income research and the civil debate.

In her paper, I Would Like to Continue to Advocate for the Basic Income, BUT… Barriers to political UBI-participation in German-speaking countries, Leopold examines the crucial role of political education and information in basic income from the perspective of non-profit organizations, against the backdrop of the opportunities and limitations of advocating for a universal basic income. Based on an analysis of qualitative interviews, she examines the socio-demographic profiles of volunteer workers and the hurdles they face, some of which have led to the end of activism in some cases.

In his contribution, In the Face of Double Crises: Crossroads for Social Protection, Tobias Jäger expands on the idea of a universal basic income in the face of current and future crises, referring to Ugo Gentilini’s (World Bank) presentation, Lessons from cash transfers during Covid and implications for the UBI debate, which was delivered at the FRIBIS 2022 Annual Conference. The paper focuses on a discussion of changes in the social protection policies of various countries during the COVID-19 crisis. Leopold points out that the coronavirus crisis has not brought about any new trends in social protection policy but has reinforced existing ones instead.

We would like to thank all the authors once again for their contributions and congratulate Franziska Leopold and Tobias Jäger in particular.

Klaus Baumann

How did you benefit from taking part in the conference?

Bianca Blum, Christine Rudolf, Klaus Baumann

What new ideas or collaborations have emerged?

Bianca Blum, Klaus Baumann, Ronald Blaschke

Gender and basic income: Intersectional perspectives at the annual conference

The gender part of the annual conference was characterized by intersectional-feminist perspectives Universal Basic Income. Among other things, the focus was on how the UBI could influence traditional roles in the world of work (production) as well as the private sphere, such as family work and raising children (reproduction). Feminist perspectives, which have been neglected to date, were given greater prominence. Ben Trott’s exciting keynote shed light on basic income from a queer perspective, while Almaz Zelleke’s keynote impressively showed how varying social and control systems shape different genders in different ways. The other presentations also encouraged participants to think about the role of a basic income in a possible social reorganisation based on feminist considerations of the economy and politics.

We asked keynote speaker Prof. Almaz Zelleke about the impressions the annual conference left on her.

Almaz Zelleke

Almaz Zelleke, Jurgen De Wispelaere

Conclusion

The FRIBIS Annual Conference 2023 was an excellent opportunity for international participants to engage in an interdisciplinary exchange on care and gender in the context of the UBI. The future collaborations that are being established will undoubtedly help to anchor the topics of care and gender more firmly in the basic income discourse. We would like to thank all participants for their enriching contributions and look forward to continuing the discussions in the coming year.

Prof. Dr. John Davis thinks it might not. In his view developments in the fields of AI and robotics are encroaching on tasks previously only humans were thought able to.  On the 20th of November, he visited FRIBIS, giving a talk on the ethics of private and public property in the aforementioned context. He argues that, when trough progressive automation humans are pushed out of the job market with no future employment in sight, it might be ethically acceptable or good to fund a basic income from the increased profits of “the capitalist”. These profits he claims further are a new form of public property. Instead of falling back on established schools of anticapitalist thought, he structured his argument in a conversational style directly engaging with justifications offered by defenders of the status quo.

Coming to Freiburg to get an economic perspective on his thesis, he entered a productive discussion with the listeners. Although there was much agreement, some points were discussed from both the viewpoint of economics, social science in general and ethics. We thank Prof. Davis for his presentation and look forward to reading the paper that he is planning to publish on the talk’s subject.

Learn more about Prof. John Davis publications here.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in Freiburg, Professor Toru Yamamori presented his paper as part of his guest stay at FRIBIS: Is a penny a month a basic income? A historiography of a threshold in basic income to the members of FRIBIS, as well as external interested listeners. The professor of economics at Doshisha University in Kyoto won the essay prize of the renowned journal Basic Income Studies for this paper for the second time.

As part of his work as co-chair of the BIEN working group on the clarification of basic income definitions, Toru Yamamori posed the question of whether a threshold for basic income should be included in the definition of basic income and gave an overview of the development of implicit and explicit definitions of basic income. The lecture, with the title kindly adapted to the German audience Is a cent a month a basic income? was followed by a lively discussion that continued into the evening hours during the subsequent joint dinner. We would like to thank Professor Toru Yamamori for his stimulating lecture, the professionally exciting and pleasant conversations during his stay and his work for the FRIBIS Gender Team, which after years of online meetings could finally meet partly in person.

How was your stay in Freiburg/at FRIBIS?

It was really great. I have been in UBI and Gender research team and have known Jessica and Clem for a few years, but this is the first time to meet them in person. Also, the head of FRIBIS, Prof. Neumärker, and the people in FRIBIS are friendly and made me feel like I am at a home institution.

What suprised you or you expected as a reaction to your lecture?

People listened to my lecture attentively and gave me important feedback. It is a shame I could not stay longer to communicate more, but I would like to come back to Freiburg again.

During the interactive exchange, possible approaches to mitigate undesirable effects of the above-mentioned problem areas were discussed. For example, Dr. Sologon shed light on the impact of inflation within Europe, pointing out that the inflation rate is higher for lower income groups because they consume a larger share of their income. This regressive effect, i.e., the higher burden on lower-income households, is also observed with the CO2 tax. According to Prof. Neumärker, this effect could be mitigated or eliminated if the resulting tax revenues were returned to the population through a so-called partial basic income. Dr. Tanja Kirn drew a parallel with the effects of rising health care costs in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Here, too, a regressive burden effect is evident, she said. However, moving away from the concept of a uniform premium would mean a change in the system.

In order to find politically viable and economically sustainable solutions, detailed microsimulation analyses are necessary – a research area in which all researchers involved are active. The new Erasmus+ research project ecoMOD (Project: 2023-1-LI01-KA220-HED-000157594), in which Prof. Dr. Neumärker from the University of Freiburg/FRIBIS is involved as a project partner, aims to further develop existing models and strengthen the analytical skills of young scientists and students. The event took place within the framework of the ERASMUS Days, which raise awareness across Europe of the activities of ERASMUS+ projects co-funded by the European Commission.