BIEN 2008 Basic Income X Minimum Income: How the Political-Ideological Dispute has advanced in Brazilian Concrete Programs Carolina Raquel D. Mello Justo

BIEN 2008

Basic Income X Minimum Income:How the Political-Ideological Dispute has advanced in Brazilian Concrete Programs

Carolina Raquel D. Mello Justo

Doctor in Social SciencesUniversidade Estadual de Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

E-mail: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Santo André

Santos

São Paulo

Jundiaí

Campinas

Theoretical Debate

• Conservative Minimum Income

• Progressive Basic Income

• Nor Minimum nor Basic Income: the Left Dilemma

• Political Enrichment of Basic Income Project

• Minimum Income

• Liberal Citizenship

• Basic Income

• Democratic Citizenship

Model

Characteristics

Liberal Minimum Income

Left Minimum Income

Progressive Basic Income

Beneficiaries Restricted:Poor people

Restricted: workers Universal: everybody

Income right? No No Yes

Unconditional? No No Yes

Linked to work? Yes Yes No

Citizenship based on Work Work ?

Incentive to the Political participation?

No Yes Yes

Society Horizon Maintenance ? Transformation

Basic Income X Minimum Income in Brazilian Concrete Local Programs

•Poverty and Work/Employment Views

•Universal X Focused Programs

•Unconditional right or counterpart conditioned benefit?

•Citizenship and Politics

Poverty and Work/Employment Views

Jundiaí and Santos

“For those people who have the will of getting better, for those people who have the intention of starting working hard, investing the money in professional courses or in building something, for those the program result is very visible”. (Helena, PAGRM technician, Jundiaí, 24/05/2005).


Jundiaí and Santos

While in Jundiaí beneficiaries receive the money to study, in Santos they receive it to act and invest in self-income generation alternatives. While bureaucrats in Jundiaí have faith in the beneficiaries’ insertion in the formal work market, those ones in Santos have faith in their insertion in the informal work market, through their entrepreneur potential.


Jundiaí and Santos“I tell them: ‘if you run behind thinks you want, maybe you don’t get them now, but tomorrow you get others. If today you find a job to earn little money, tomorrow you find another that pays better. So, you can get things by going outside home, trying and taking the risk. If you think you have conditions to work today, you can work at any time. If you can’t find a job outside, you can yet work at home!”. (Catarina, PNF technician, Santos, 20/01/2006).


Campinas and Santo André“There was [in the program trajectory] an “entrepreneur wave”. But it did not work. If there are [by supposition] fifty manicurists in the neighborhood, how can one generate income through this way? Making manicure one the each other? There are lots of people who were in the formal work market, were excluded and are not able of going back. How can we insert those other people who have never been employed?” (Glória, PGRFM technician, Campinas, 09/06/2006).


Campinas and Santo André“Of course the conservative field will prefer to keep advocating for the ideological discourse according to which just who deserve should have income, and so, just who work, and so, just who undergo any work conditions, even the most humiliating and degrading. I do not agree with this idea. Since we do not have full employment, if we link income to work, it means many people do not have income, since they do not have a job. And it is not by their will they do not have a job. Therefore I think everybody should have the right to an income. It does not matter if such income is obtained through a work effort or through a state transference. That does not change in any way the dignity”. (Santo André social inclusion secretary, 07/04/2006).

Universal X Focused ProgramsJundiaí and Santos

In Santos, beneficiaries are selected according to some desirable behavior. They are chosen. Despite of advocating the inclusion of beneficiaries in the PNF as a technical process, bureaucrats admit the new inclusions are based on individual profile: the program is for those who demonstrate interest and will of acting to generate and increase the familiar income, to come back to study, to attend professional qualification courses and to open their own business.

Program enhances the idea of a society of winners and losers, of competition, of prize and punishment.

Universal X Focused ProgramsSanto André

Santo André

“The program is today a public policy of right. The benefit is not occasional anymore. If you are according to the criteria, you enter in the program. We opted for a universal public policy. Well, it has become universal in relation to the goal we intended to reach: all those below the poverty line. To become universal in relation to the entire city population is indeed the dream of any income transfer program: since you are born, you receive a monetary deposit every month, it does not matter who you are sun of. Of course we are not at such a stage – yet. So, if I work according to the sense that everybody has this right, I can’t elevate the benefit value (for those who are already included) while there are people who have the right outside the program. Such has been an option we surely did in Santo André, not without polemic. But we clearly said: ‘that is the way we will follow – the universalism”. (Santo André social inclusion secretary, 07/04/2006).

Universal X Focused Programs

Campinas and Santo André

Inclusion: not according to desirable behaviors

Campinas: dilemma => to increase benefit value or the number of families beneficiaries.

Santo André: option for the universalism

Unconditional right or counterpart conditioned benefit?While the bureaucrats from Campinas and Santo André tends to defend it as an unconditional right, and so to not agree with counterparts’ requests, those ones from Jundiaí and Santo André advocate exactly the opposite: that counterparts are the programs core, what makes the perspective of seeing benefit like a right impracticable.

Jundiaí and Santos

Unconditional right or counterpart conditioned benefit?

Jundiaí and Santos

“We establish norms for the program working. There are penalties, suspension, verbal and written advertences for who arrives late or does not come to the workshops”. (Helena, PAGRM technician, Jundiaí, 24/05/2005).


Jundiaí

Benefit discount => Employment relation Workfare practices Maintenance of the contractual linkage between work and income


SantosWhile in Jundiaí beneficiaries are included in the PAGRM under the condition of being committed to attend, learn and work at the workshops, in Santos the condition to be inserted and remain as PNF’s beneficiaries is the disposition to come back to study and to invest in work activities like self entrepreneur. When beneficiaries are inserted, they should sign a “commitment term”, which includes a “personalized individual accompaniment plan”.


Santos

“We tell them [beneficiaries]: it is your merit, because if you had not complied with the plan, we would have cancelled your benefit and transferred it for other family. If you don’t work, don’t get it better, don’t try to show anything different, you may be excluded and another family may be included in your place”. (Catarina, PNF technician, Santos, 20/01/2006).


Campinas and Santo AndréThe benefit is seen as a right, or faced according to the right logic by the policy makers.

In Santo André, counterparts are seen as a way for turning effective other rights (like health and education) for poor people, and not as way to combat complacency and state dependence, or to stimulate individual and work initiatives. They are seen by the bureaucrats as an incentive, not as punishment


Campinas

Strong vision against counterparts

“Mine opinion, and the opinion of a set of other professionals, a group that I figure out tends to get bigger, is that it must not be required any counterpart from population, since such money is a right: it already belongs to her”. (Marina, PGRFm technician, Campinas, June 28th 2006).


Campinas

If health and education are rights, they can not be considered as duties. Campinas policy makers fight against such message subjacent to the counterparts’ requirements, which change rights in duties. For high and median classes, health and education are rights; for poor people, however, this meaning is sometimes changed in obligations.


Campinas “We do not think meetings are bad, nor children health conditions and school frequency accompaniment are. But we contest the monetary benefit reception be dependent on the satisfaction of some requirements. The beneficiary has the right to access health and other public services. And she also has the right to the monetary benefit. But these things can not be connected. The right to the income transference is independent on the access to these other services. Because her family receives a monetary benefit, the beneficiary does not have to bring me x, y or z documents to prove her children go to the school and health center. To access such services is her right, not an obligation! (…) In the PGRFM, it has prevailed on the idea of instituting it as a policy of right and of trying the income redistribution, in order to guarantee the income access to those families that are totally excluded. We intend to fortify the income transference as a right: the beneficiary has the right to a minimum income and so, according to this logic, she does not have to give back any counterpart”. (Glória, PGRFM coordinator, Campinas, 09/06/2008).

Coverage

Model

RIGHTXCONDITION

Modelo :

Jundiaí

Santos

Campinas

Santo André

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

4,5

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Cobertura

Dir

eito

X C

on

diç

ão

$

Targeted Universal

Conditioned Benefit

Unconditional Right

Basic Income

MinimumIncome

Cidadania :

Jundiaí

Santos

Campinas

Santo André

0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

4,5

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8Política

Trab

alho

Authoritarianismand Passivity

Democracy and Participation

Based on work

Not based on work

WORK

CITIZENSHIP

Politics

Política:

Santo André

Campinas

Jundiaí

Santos

Foco

Rel

ação

Téc

nic

as-B

enef

iciá

rias

Individual Coletivity

Hierarchic

Egalitarian

Focus

Politics

BURXBEN

RELATION

Relações Inter e Intra Governamentais:

JundiaíSantos

Campinas

Santo André

Integração entre Políticas e Secretarias

Diá

logo

ent

re E

sfer

as d

e G

over

no

Pouca Muita

Weak

Strong

INTER AND INTRA GOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

Integration among policies

StrongWeak

INTERGOV

INTEGRATION

Documents

BIEN 2008 Basic Income X Minimum Income: How the Political-Ideological Dispute has advanced in Brazilian Concrete Programs Carolina Raquel D. Mello Justo