Leisure and the Unconditional Basic Income
Shaun Cavanagh
Allow me to preface this article with a description of the image of the New Zealand postage stamp depicting sheep drafting. This resembles our capacity for attention and memory. In this metaphor, the sheep represent external stimuli (ie. media) that need sorting. The gate represents attention that determines how sorting occurs and the manner in which our beliefs are formed. The use of this image attempts to describe the plurality of content on Basic Income and approaches to leisure, and to acknowledge this image as a form of regulation that selects and directs content.
Basic Income is being discussed more frequently, especially in the Covid-19 era. It is often described as UBI, with the U standing for Universal and/or Unconditional. Some prefer the term Basic Income. The relationship of leisure to Basic Income is worth exploring on the premise that implementation of Basic Income in New Zealand is likely to give New Zealanders greater access to leisure, which is an important goal of recreation therapy as a profession.
The context for this article is that 14-20 September 2020 is Basic Income Weekl, with various international events happening under the tagline Freedom to Choose. September 17 saw the announcement of New Zealand being officially in recession, with a 12.2 percent drop in GDP (June quarter) following our lockdown from March 26 this year, and a forecast of 280,000 unemployed New Zealanders by 2022 2
Also worth noting is that the 2020 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress was to be held in Brisbane from 28-30 September, but was cancelled due to Covid-19 3 At the time of writing, I had just participated in a World Leisure Organisation (WLO) webinar on the topic of Human Rights and Leisure: the WLO Charter for Leisure, to inform participants about important updates and changes to the Charter in line with emerging social and global issues4 .
Several books on Basic Income have been produced in recent years, including The Precariat Charters, Utopia for Realists6, Basic Income: And How We can Make it Happen 7 Give People Money8, The War on Normal People9 and Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Basic Income has also been addressed by New Zealand authors: The Big Kahuna ll Pennies from Heaven 12 , and The New Zealand Projecti3 . It is a challenge to do justice to all with a single article, although valuable patterns and similarities can be observed among their writings.
The main focus of this article is to investigate how authors treat leisure as a concept. Both leisure and Basic Income can be regarded as amorphous concepts, and require workable definitions. It is observed that leisure is frequently referred to in terms of time use, although some authors (Standing, Bregman, Van Parijs and Vanderborght) discuss leisure in-depth, either through the historical figures who've contributed to discussion, or providing examples of how leisure and recreation have gained through government intervention. The impact of automation and artificial intelligence on the future of work is a focus for Andrew Yang 9 . The WLO webinar covered French sociologist Joffre Dumazadier's (1974) approach to leisure, revised to include personal development and self-realisation in the manner of Aristotelian thought.
Basic Income is defined as "a modest amount of money paid unconditionally to individuals on a regular basis. "7 Paid as a dividend to citizens of a given area, it is distinct from the associated term of a Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI). Descriptors of Basic Income include "venture capital for the people' "foundation" or "floor", "dividend" and "the power to say no". One perspective on leisure, paraphrasing Cicero (106-43 BC) is: "Leisure consists in all those virtuous activities by which one grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living. "14 Each concept has variations in how they are defined, though for the purpose of this article these definitions are useful.
A starting point is to realise that the passage and use of time is a central element of leisure, and this entails a lot of reflection. This is an activity closely associated with a prominent author (Josef Pieper, 1952) and his book Leisure the Basis of Culture15, 16, 17 Leisure is a necessary component of producing an article like this through reflection on different forms of content. Readers will be aware of the expression, "Work is fascinating. I can sit and look at it for hours" — which many students will identify with. Our Recreation Therapy degree taught us that leisure is generally classified in three ways: 1. Specific recreation activities; 2. Unobligated or discretionary time; and 3. A state of mind. 18 Pieper defined leisure as "a state of being necessary for a true vision of reality"15. 16 which aligns closely with leisure as a state of mind (an example of the third definition Maria Popova has summarised Pieper' thought well in a Brain Pickings article17
In 2018, just a few weeks after receiving a post-graduate Diploma in Public Health, I attended the Wellbeing and Public Policy conference in Wellington. The theme anticipated the Government's first Wellbeing Budget, and the words of Amartya Sen's capabilities theory were a common feature: "People leading lives they value and have reason to value. "19 The message taken from this phrase is that the enjoyment must be an inherent part of our regular activities.
There is a contemporary expression that rolls easily off the tongue about "work-life balance", although it implies work and life carry the same value to our wellbeing when it is possible the expression is an example of false equivalence. Of course, people should gain fulfilment from work. What I'm interested in is how we tend to think of leisure as free-time only without acknowledging its classical meaning.
Rutger Bregman6 conveys a similar thought when discussing prosperity and a capacity of people to "spend time on things that genuinely matter to us" rather than remaining idle and doing nothing. The bold statement in Mäori korero, "Tihei Mauri Ora!", is spoken with belief and conviction. The translation 20 of this statement indicates that the value of life will always transcend that of work. The popular contemporary expression work-life balance says something about commodification of time and leisure for commercial ends, with leisure defined as free time in relationship to work.
This article briefly compares two related concepts that are defined and supported in varying ways. I am conscious of various contributions on both topics, but these are outside the scope of this article. The main focus is to make an initial attempt to account for how proponents of Basic Income conceptualise and value leisure. It is anticipated this will be an important area of study as the world adapts to the socio-economic effects of Covid-19 and climate change, and a growth in automation and artificial intelligence.
REFERENCES
Income Movement. Portland, Oregon. basicincomeweek.org
Tim Watkin (17 September). rnz.co.nz/programmes/caucus/ story/2018764442/gulliver-s-election-and-is-labour-angling-to-govern-alone
Basic Income Earth Network. London. basicincome.org
World Leisure Organisation. worldleisure.org/charter
Standing, G. (2014) A Precariat Charter: Denizens to Citizens. London: Bloomsbury Plc.
Bregman, R. (2017) Utopia for Realists. London: Bloomsbury Plc.
Standing, G. (2017) Basic Income: And How We can Make it Happen. London: Penguin.
Lowrey, A. (2018) Give People Money. London: penguin.
Yang, A. (2019) The War on Normal People. New York: Hachette.
. Van Parijs, P, Vanderborght, Y. (2017) Basic Income:A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
11 . Morgan, G, Guthrie, S. (2011) The Big Kahuna:Turning Tax and Welfare in New Zealand on its head. Auckland: Public Interest Publishing Company Ltd.
12. Berentson-Shaw, J, Morgan, G. (2017) Pennies from Heaven. Wellington: Public Interest Publishing.
13 . Harris, M. (2017) The New Zealand Project. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books Ltd.
14 . quotefancy.com/quote/1037462/Marcus-Tullius-Cicero-Leisure-consists-in-all-those-virtuous- activities-by-which-a-man
15. Pieper, J. (1952) Leisure, the basis of culture. New York: Pantheon Books Inc
16. Lambert, C. (2010) Josef Pieper: Sisyphus and the Defence of Leisure. vimeo.com/16982563
17 . Popova, M. Brain Pickings. brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/1eisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper
18 . Datillo, J, and Murphy, W. (1991) Leisure Education Program Planning. State College,PA: Venture Publishing.
19 Dalziel, P. and Saunders, C. (2015) WellbeingEconomics: Future Directions for New Zealand Williams Books Ltd.Wellington: Bridget.co.nz
20 . Tihei Mauri Ora. Maoridictionary
