Though establishing a basic income was once at the forefront of politics, it has since become more of a Utopian, abstract project. But sometimes it is helpful to step back from the day-to-day wonk work and think Utopian.

First, what are some advantages of providing a universal basic income? To those on the left, a UBI would create greater equality by ending poverty and providing a minimum living standard. It would also increase bargaining power for workers, who could demand better working conditions with a safety cushion. As Erik Olin Wright argues in Envisioning Real Utopias, such bargaining power “will generate an incentive structure for employers to seek technical and organizational innovations that eliminate unpleasant work,” which would “have not just a labor-saving bias, but a labor-humanizing bias.”

Read more at Washington Post.

The headline on Suzanne Daley’s article about a political kerfuffle in Denmark, recently published in The New York Times, summarizes its main point: “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault.” The star of this story, dubbed “Carina,” is real, unlike the single mother in Ronald Reagan’s famously fictional anecdote.

But the economic claims made in the debate go far beyond “welfare” (means-tested benefits) to concerns about the effects of excessive assistance to students and pensioners — recapitulating the evolution of austerity arguments in the United States from the early 1990s to the present.

Certainly, policy debates in Denmark, as here, reflect partisan dynamics. In 2001, a conservative coalition came to power in Denmark, with the strong support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party. The Social Democratic Party regained power by a narrow margin in 2011. Many members of this party see support for mothers like Carina as a means of reducing child poverty; as in the United States, conservatives put a lower priority on this goal.

Read more at New York Times

The claim is false because the countries that have the highest spending on social programs are far and away the happiest. We looked at this earlier this year in the World Happiness Report, which collected the best cross-country data on this very question. People are asked to report on their life satisfaction or what is sometimes called “subjective wellbeing.” There are two kinds of questions. The first asks people to place their lives on the rungs of a ladder, from the lowest rung (0) to the top rung (10). The second asks people how satisfied they are with their life “as a whole these days,” again on a scale from 0 to 10 in the case of the Gallup World Poll.

So who comes out on top: the countries with the lowest “dependency” on social programs? Just the opposite! The social democracies are far and away the happiest places on the planet. In the Gallup World Poll ladder question (Table 2.3), the happiest countries are Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. The United States ranks 11th. In Gallup’s “life satisfaction” question, the leaders are Costa Rica, Denmark, Iceland and Norway. The U.S. comes in 10th. In the World Value Survey on life happiness, the leaders are Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark and the Netherlands. The U.S. comes in 23rd.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

But Shawn Fremstad of the Center for Economic Policy and Research challenges that methodology, pointing to measurements showing that the poverty rate did rise significantly among working-age adults over this period.

Further, increased unemployment contributed to economic stress across most of the social spectrum, not just among the poor and near poor. Between 2007 and 2011, average household income declined in all four bottom quintiles.

Expansion of unemployment insurance and means-tested benefits are not the best solution to persistently high unemployment. As John Stuart Mill emphasized many years ago, those who are capable of supporting themselves should not rely on the habitual aid of others. But Mill went on to explain why such aid is sometimes necessary:

“Energy and self-dependence are, however, liable to be impaired by the absence of help, as well as by its excess. It is even more fatal to exertion to have no hope of succeeding by it, than to be assured of succeeding without it. When the condition of any one is so disastrous that his energies are paralyzed by discouragement, assistance is a tonic, not a sedative: it braces instead of deadening the active faculties.”

Paralysis by discouragement is a pretty good description of a growing segment of the United States population.

Read the rest at The New York Times.

This is a vision of the government as a giant coupon machine, whose primary responsibility is passing out coupons to discount and subsidize private education, health-care, old-age pensions and a wide variety of other primary goods. Over the past 30 years, efforts to privatize what government does and replace it with vouchers have taken hold in elite policy circles. But recent popular pushback against the privatization of Social Security, the use of private military contractors, and the voucher-ization of Medicare in Paul Ryan’s budget shows that the proper method of provisioning of government services is still a point of contention.

Beyond that, there’s an increased realization that public options are capable of creating better outcomes while taking advantage of both democracy and markets when used under the right circumstances. But when should public options be used? What guidelines should be used to understand when the state should provide a good directly versus subsidizing the private market through subsidies?

There have not been many clear guides on which is a more preferable outcome for goods the government wants to provide: public allocation or public subsidies for private allocation. This paper seeks to outline a theory of when public provisioning of goods is a superior solution to the approach of subsidizing private goods with vouchers.

Read more at the New America Foundation.

His 1989 book Market Volatility (MIT Press) is a mathematical and behavioral analysis of price fluctuations in speculative markets. His 1993 book Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society’s Largest Economic Risks (Oxford University Press) proposes a variety of new risk-management contracts, such as futures contracts in national incomes or securities based on real estate that would permit the management of risks to standards of living. His book Irrational Exuberance (Princeton 2000, Broadway Books 2001, 2nd edition Princeton 2005) is an analysis and explication of speculative bubbles, with special reference to the stock market and real estate. His book The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (Princeton University Press, 2003) is an analysis of an expanding role of finance, insurance, and public finance in our future. His book Subprime Solution: How the Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do about It, published in September 2008 by Princeton University Press, offers an analysis of the housing and economic crisis and a plan of action against it. He co-authored, with George A. Akerlof, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism published in March 2009 by Princeton University Press. He co-authored with Randall Kroszner Reforming U.S. Financial Markets: Reflections before and beyond Dodd-Frank published in March 2011 by MIT Press.

Dr. Roubini has extensive policy experience as well as broad academic credentials. From 1998 to 2000, he served as the senior economist for international affairs on the White House Council of Economic Advisors and then as the senior advisor to the undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department, helping to resolve the Asian and global financial crises. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and numerous other prominent public and private institutions have drawn upon his consulting expertise.

He has published over 70 theoretical, empirical and policy papers on international macroeconomic issues and coauthored the books “Political Cycles: Theory and Evidence” (MIT Press, 1997) and “Bailouts or Bail-ins? Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Markets” (Institute for International Economics, 2004) and “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance” (Penguin Press, 2010).

Dr. Roubini’s views on global economic issues are widely cited by the media, and he is a frequent commentator on various business news programs. He has been the subject of extended profiles in the New York Times Magazine and other leading current-affairs publications. The Financial Times has provided extensive coverage of Dr. Roubini’s perspectives.

An expert on the politics of U.S. health and social policy, he is the author of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, written with Paul Pierson (2010, paperback 2011), The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream (2006, paperback 2008), The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (2002), and The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton’s Plan for Health Security (1997), co-winner of the Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is co-author, with Paul Pierson, of Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005) and has edited two volumes—most recently, Health At Risk: America’s Ailing Health System and How to Heal It (2008).

A frequent media commentator, Hacker has testified before Congress, advised leading politicians, and written popular pieces for the American Prospect, New Republic, Nation, New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Boston Review, and other publications. He is the author of a 2007 proposal for universal health care, “Health Care forAmerica,” that became a template for several presidential aspirants’ plans.

Most recently with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, he and a group of multi-disciplinary researchers including Greg Huber and Mark Schlesinger of ISPS developed the Economic Security Index (ESI), which measures the share of Americans who experience at least a 25 percent decline in their income from one year to the next. In addition, he oversees a Social Science Research Council project on the “privatization of risk.”

In 2009, she co-chaired a task force within Americans for Financial Reform that helped shape key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  In 2008, she served as the Deputy Policy Director in charge of Domestic and Economic Policy with the John Edwards for President campaign, helping craft that campaign’s agenda-setting policies to end poverty, halt global climate change, reform financial services, and other far-reaching aims.  She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law

Herbert has numerous awards, including the Meyer Berger Award for coverage of New York City, the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing, the David Nyhan Prize from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University for excellence in political reporting, and the Ridenhour Courage Prize for the “fearless articulation of unpopular truths.”

Reich is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was formerly a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Reich is a political commentator on programs including Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, and APM’s Marketplace. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Best Cabinet Members of the century, andThe Wall Street Journal in 2008 placed him sixth on its list of the “Most Influential Business Thinkers”. He was appointed a member of President-elect Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board. 

He has published 14 books, including the best-sellers, The Work of Nations, Reason,Supercapitalism, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, and a best-selling e-book, “Beyond Outrage”. He is also chairman of Common Cause and writes his own blog about the political economy at robertreich.org.

Perhaps Mr. Romney was confident that his remarks were private, or perhaps he was pandering to his audience of potential donors. But he did follow a well-established conservative script, one of two competing horror-show narratives that increasingly dominate political discourse in this country.

The basic right-wing story line evokes zombie apocalypse: The shambling, diseased living dead — Obama Zombies — are threatening human civilization. A self-described neoconservative Web site features a parody of Shepard Fairey’s Obama campaign poster featuring the zombie in chief.

A forthcoming book by Nicholas Eberstadt is titled “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic.” Charles Sykes contends that we have become “A Nation of Moochers.”

Read more at the New York Times.

Ghilarducci joined The New School in 2008 after 25 years as a professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame and 10 years as director of the school’s Higgins Labor Research Center. As an author, her most recent book – When I’m Sixty Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them – investigates the loss of pensions on older Americans and proposes a comprehensive system of reform. Her previous books include Labor’s Capital: The Economics and Politics of Employer Pensions, winner of an Association of American Publishers award in 1992, and Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets, published in 1995.

Ghilarducci’s work focuses on the need to restore the promise of retirement for every American worker. To do so, she has put forth a bold reform idea – the creation of Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) – to solve the many problems Americans now face in planning for retirement: decreasing coverage and contributions, increasing investment risk, portability, leakage, high fees, and the drawdown of benefits in retirement.

Ghilarducci’s proposal has been met with critical success from high level opinion leaders. In February 2010, the White House Middle Class Task Force issued a report calling Ghilarducci’s proposal a viable option to help American families save for retirement, irrespective of their of financial sophistication, and called for further research on the plan. In July 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) identified GRAs as one alternative to overhaul the U.S.retirement system. In 2008, New York Times Magazine named the GRA Plan one of the best ideas of the year.

Ghilarducci frequently publishes in peer-reviewed journals, testifies before the U.S. Congress, and is a media source to popular and online news outlets about pensions and labor economics. She writes a regular column for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Brainstorm” blog. In addition to her current work with the Rockefeller Foundation, her research has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, U.S. Department of Labor, Ford Foundation, and Retirement Research Foundation.

The lab where this theory that we’re headed toward a radical egalitarian state is being developed is the American Enterprise Institute, the oldest of the conservative think tanks and one that, much like Romney, has forsaken the traditional business-minded conservatism of, say, the first President Bush, for hard conservatism in which everything is a grand showdown of incompatible worldviews. The two recent books by the current AEI president, Arthur Brooks (The Battle and The Road to Freedom) embody this apocalyptic approach, as does a recent essay-with-graphs by longtime AEI scholar and accomplished demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, called “A Nation of Takers.”

AEI invited me to participate on a panel with Eberstadt a few months ago, when the essay was just a series of unpublished PowerPoint slides. I welcomed the invitation, but had to cancel due to a conflict. However, I wrote up notes at the time, and what follows is adapted from those notes.

Read more at Salon.

She is a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Dr. Kelton has a B.S. in Business Finance and a B.A. in Economics, both from California State University, Sacramento(1995). After finishing her undergraduate degrees, she completed an M.Phil in Economics at Cambridge University, England(1997). She then spent a year at The Levy Economics Institute on a fellowship she won through Christ’s College, Cambridge.

While at the Levy Institute, she wrote a number of papers that became part of her Ph.D. dissertation at the New School for Social Research (April 2001), titled Public Policy and Government Finance: A Comparative Analysis Under Different Monetary Systems. She is creator and editor of New Economic Perspectives, a top-ranked economics blog, and has been featured in: Common Dreams, Business Insider, Truthdig, Counter Punch, Wall St. Pit, Credit Writedowns, and many more.

Ryan’s budget proposal, which propelled him to the headlines a couple of years ago, would return government spending to 16 percent of GDP, the same the size it was in 1950, before Medicare or Medicaid were created or Social Security expanded enough to lift the majority of the elderly out of poverty. He would basically privatize Medicare, providing an inadequate subsidy to enable the elderly to purchase plans on the open market. He once proposed to change change Social Security in a similar way, but that is now apparently on the back burner. He will deeply gut Medicaid and would almost entirely cut out all other government spending in coming decades, except for defense, which he seems to adore. This includes students loans, veteran programs, infrastructure spending, R&D, and so on.

Despite all this, he would not balance the budget, because the tax cuts he proposes are so extreme that even his social spending cuts won’t pay for them for a generation. Indeed, the size of his tax cuts seems to get lost in some analyses. They are bigger than Romney’s, really whoppers. There was a casual promise that they would be partly financed by closing tax loopholes, but as with Romney, we have yet to see details

Read more at The Huffington Post.

None sought to be heroes. None were motivated by external validators such as money, power or fame. Indeed, in all cases, the opposite occurred—loss of money, influence and status. They acted, rather, out of a profound sense of empathy and compassion, putting the needs of the “many” before their own.

Throughout the book, Press presents theories, experiment results and analyses of what motivates people to nonconformity, quoting luminaries such as Hannah Arendt and Adam Smith. But in the end, theories are just that. Press’ message is that people can, and do, have the capacity to make humanity-preserving choices, regardless of the obstacles. It is not because they are radicals, but because they witness something terribly wrong in the system they trust.

Read more on TruthDig.