Presentation in "Basic income and development policy" seminar, University of Helsinki, january 2014

1. Capabilities, politics,
basic income
Teppo Eskelinen

2. Development policy
• Traditionally, aiming at increasing the level of production in low-income
countries
• ”Catch-up development”, only injection of capital needed
• Result: deepening inequality, modern forms of poverty
• The discovery of poverty

3. How to fight poverty?
• What is poverty…?
• Problem of ”first explaining matter”
• For example: creation of decent jobs caused by legislative changes caused by
political pressure…
• Generally, when widely understood (in an ethically meaningful sense),
improvement of life for the poor has been invariably caused by political self-
organisation AND basic functionings

4. Multidimensional poverty
• From resources to functionings (functioning also bodily etc, basic services
needed)
• Command of resources not sufficient, also future certainty, claiming rights
• Different schools of thought (education, firm support, basic health,
microcredit etc)
• Yet actually unconditional money curiously absent

5. Possibilities of basic income
• Basic Income (in its many forms) implies claiming a right and having a future
orientation
• Most successful social security systems have always been those which are not
restricted to the use of the poor.
• Micro-investment in its all forms
• In poor and inequal conditions, minimal poverty reduction is cheap

6. Limits of BI
From the point of view of development policy, there are several areas which
are necessary but largely out of reach of the possibilities of BI
• Maternal health, disabled…
• Unwanted monetisation: introducing monetary economy, monetisation of
basic services such as schooling…

7. Looking into the future
• From development policy to social policy: control away from the donors…?
• From “development policy” to tax-funded welfare systems…?
• What we don’t know: generalisation of BI pilots…?