by Kate McFarland | Jan 19, 2017 | News
Photo: Buchanan Institute team at a brainstorming event.
The Buchanan Institute, Scotland’s only student-led think tank, has prepared a report (“A Secure Foundation to Build Our Lives”) that makes a case for universal basic income in the UK.
The report will be launched at a University of Edinburgh event on January 26.
The Buchanan Institute’s recommendations for a UBI draw upon previous work by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), especially the report “Creative Citizens, Creative State” by Anthony Painter and Chris Thoung, and the Citizen’s Income Trust. In particular, it looks to the RSA’s proposal as one that meets three core requirements laid out in the report: “that the proposal is fiscally sound, practically achievable and is within reasonable budget constraints; that it ensures that the least-well-off, particularly low-earners with children, are well supported; and that it ensures low marginal deduction rates, making work pay for the majority of earners.” However, the Buchanan Institute proposes some adjustments to the RSA’s basic income scheme, specifically concerning the amount of the basic income allotted to adults aged 18 to 24 (who, under the RSA’s scheme, would receive transfers lower than those paid to adults over age 25) and to children.
After assessing previous models and research on basic income, the Buchanan Institute proposes a UBI of £7,420 per annum for adults over age 65 (i.e. current pensioners), £3,692 for adults aged 18 to 65, £2,925 for children aged 5 to 17, £3,839 for firstborn children under age 5 and £3,387 for additional children under age 5. The report estimates the cost of such a UBI, implemented across the UK, at between £14 and £19 billion per annum — an amount that the author claims is not out-of-line with previous revenue decisions (e.g. tax cuts) and “affordable and achievable with the necessary political will”.
In conclusion, the report recommends that the British government commission a pilot study in a “medium-sized” city or town (defined as having a population between 250,000 and 500,000), in which participants are provided with an unconditional basic income at levels matching those proposed by the Buchanan Institute. Additionally, it recommends the Work and Pensions Committee of the House of Commons, which recently held an oral evidence session on basic income, to investigate the Buchanan Institute’s proposed UBI.
The report is authored by Jonny Ross-Tatam, founder of the Buchanan Institute and a student of history at the University of Edinburgh.
Launch Event
The official launch of the report will take place at a public event at the University of Edinburgh on January 26, 2017.
The event will also feature talks from Glasgow Councillor Matt Kerr, who has been instrumental in spearheading the movement for a basic income pilot in the city, and RSA Scotland leader Jamie Cooke, who is also involved in the planning of regional pilots in Scotland. At present, basic income pilot studies are being considered in both Fife and Glasgow.
While emphasizing that the Buchanan Institute is “very supportive of pilot projects being commissioned anywhere in the UK,” Ross-Tatam expresses hope that the organization can begin to act on its recommendations within the Scottish context: “As part of our launch, we will call on those leading the basic income pilots in Fife and Glasgow to consider the payment levels we have proposed for these pilot projects. We hope that the Buchanan Institute and our work on basic income can contribute to any pilot projects that take place in Fife and Glasgow.”
For more details about this free event, as well as registration information, see its pages on Facebook and Eventbrite. (Note that, as is just and fair, wine and beer will be served at the beginning of the event.)
More Information
• Ross-Tatam has written a summary of the report for the RSA’s blog (December 21, 2016).
• “A Secure Foundation to Build Our Lives” develops ideas that Ross-Tatam earlier articulated in his TEDx talk “Why we shouldn’t have to work just to survive” (February 2015), in which he argues that a basic income should be supported as a way to allow people to pursue their passions:
N.B. Two days following the Buchanan Institute event, BIEN’s Scottish affiliate, Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland, will be holding an event in Kelty, Scotland, with further discussion of the pilots currently being planned in Scotland.
Article reviewed by Jonny Ross-Tatam and Danny Pearlberg.
Images used with permission of Jonny Ross-Tatam.
by Kate McFarland | Jan 17, 2017 | News
Juliana Bidadanure, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, has designed a graduate seminar on the philosophy of basic income, which she is currently teaching for the winter term.
According to the official course description, the seminar will address questions such as the following: “[I]s giving people cash no strings attached desirable and just? Would basic income promote a more gender equal society through the remuneration of care-work, or would it risk further entrenching the position of women as caregivers? Would alternative policies be more successful (such as job guarantees, stakeholder grants, or a negative income tax)? How can we test out basic income? What makes for a reliable and ethical basic income pilot?”
The seminar will analyze and critique basic income from multiple perspectives in political theory, including feminism, liberalism, republicanism, communism, and libertarianism. Initial readings include classic works by Philippe van Parijs and responses from his critics. Subsequent sessions will address contemporary philosophical work on basic income, as well as potential alternatives, such as job guarantees. Additional topics include empirical work on the health (and other) effects of basic income, the role of automation in motivating basic income, and basic income in relation to gender and racial justice, among others.
Explaining why she was inspired to develop the course, Bidadanure says, “It has been my dream for a while to teach a class on the Philosophy of Basic Income. First, because I am committed to the idea that everyone has a right to an income and because I think that UBI deserves serious treatment; second, because I think it is a great lens through which one can teach Political Philosophy. There is great writing for and against basic income from within pretty much each and every school of political thought. And so my idea was to introduce students of a variety of disciplines to a broad range of writers in political philosophy by focusing on UBI. Given the recent interest in Basic Income in the US, including by computer scientists, engineers and economists, I thought that the timing was right to launch the class!”
On February 8, a special panel on basic income experiments will be held in connection with the seminar.
The panel will feature guests Guy Standing (Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London; BIEN co-founder), Elizabeth Rhodes (Research Director of Y Combinator’s basic income experiment), and Joe Huston (Regional Director at GiveDirectly). Standing, Rhodes, and Huston will speak about basic income research in (respectively) India, Oakland, and Kenya. The event will be presented as a roundtable discussion and open to the public. More information on this event is available here.
Reactions from Students
Although housed in the Department of Philosophy, the seminar spans topics of interest to students in many disciplines. The seminar group is constituted by 10 enrolled participants as well as a further 10 auditors, comprising students of philosophy, political science, psychology, economics, computer science, engineering, and business.
Asked about his interest in the seminar, one participant, a PhD student in Economics, remarks, “Basic income is such a hot topic, but I’ve not come across much rigorous academic thinking on the topic, in any discipline. I now discover there is a whole bunch in philosophy, which I was unaware of and which is really exciting!”
Commenting on his reactions after the first session, he adds, “It’s awesome that the class is about a third economists, a third philosophers, and a third computer scientists – it seems like the venue for a truly exciting exchange of views; and the arguments for and against basic income are so much richer and more diverse than this economist expected!”
Another student in the seminar, Sage, is currently working towards a masters in Symbolic Systems while also finishing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Her interest in the topic derives from her work in the technology sector:
“My masters thesis is a work of political philosophy analyzing the responsibility of tech companies to help those in poverty. I am interested in Universal Basic Income because it has grown increasingly popular in the US due to the fear that one day all of our jobs will be completed by robots. I am interested in exploring the other reasons for Universal Basic Income and determining if it is a viable choice in the U.S. given our trajectory in the tech sector. I was impressed by how diverse our class was by region, interest, and background. Having the opportunity to discuss topics in basic income with students so different from me is a fantastic opportunity to round out my research.”
Anusha, a graduate student in Computer Science says her love for data structures (especially the top view of binary tree) made her focus on natural language processing and computer vision. She became interested in the seminar due to her background in AI:
“I was really interested in this seminar because Universal Basic Income has been receiving a lot of attention lately, especially in the Computer Science and AI communities, due to the potential impacts of automation on the future of work. There have also been a lot of discussions around the joint responsibilities of Silicon Valley and policymakers to help those whose jobs are most at risk. I’m really excited about this seminar because it addresses Universal Basic Income from several different perspectives, and I’m eager to learn about the various arguments for and against UBI from those standpoints.”
Nishith, an undergraduate senior in Computer Science who works on computer vision and reinforcement learning, became interested in UBI following a discussion of the economic impact of self-driving trucks and President-Elect Donald Trump’s emphasis on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. He is excited by Bidadanure’s seminar, adding, “I was surprised to learn that discussions about UBI need not revolve around automation (as they do in Europe) and had a great time talking about the potential benefits and pitfalls of this proposed policy [at the first class meeting].”
Dr. Bidadanure, who holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of York, has research interests at the intersection of philosophy and public policy.
She has written on the theory and practice of equality, including, in particular, age-group justice and what it means to treat young people as equals. She has written on the specific arguments to give a basic income to young adults as well as on hybrids of basic income and basic capital.
Bidadanure plans to teach an undergraduate course on basic income at Stanford in the next academic year. She is also working to launch a basic income research initiative at Stanford as part of the Center for Ethics in Society in 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan.
Information and photo provided by Juliana Bidadanure.
by Kate McFarland | Jan 16, 2017 | News
Austrian activist Helmo Pape has founded the initiative Generation Grundeinkommen (“Generation Basic Income”) to campaign for a basic income in Austria. The initiative will be launched at an event in Vienna on January 19, 2017.
Featured speakers include:
• Film director Christian Tod, writer and director of the basic income documentary Free Lunch Society.
• Enno Schmidt, co-director of an earlier influential basic income documentary (Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls) and co-initiator of the Swiss referendum campaign.
• Götz Werner, founder of the drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt and author of the influential book 1000€ für Jeden Freiheit Gleichheit Grundeinkommen, which makes the case for a basic income of 1000€ per month in Germany.
For more information about the Generation Grundeinkommen founding, see fuereinander.jetzt (German).
Reviewed by Danny Pearlberg
Photo: Vienna roofs, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 J. A. Alcaide
by Kate McFarland | Jan 16, 2017 | News
A group of basic income supporters in Germany is about to launch a nationwide “tour”, featuring a series of events and speakers on the topic.
BGE Tournee 2017 will commence in Bonn on January 21, with a series of lectures and discussion periods. (BGE is an abbreviation for “bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen”, the German term for unconditional basic income.)
Invited speakers comprise members of three different German political parties — the Greens (Grüne), Pirates (Piraten), and “the Left” (die LINKE) — as well as representatives from several advocacy groups promoting an unconditional basic income:
– Dagmar Partenoga of the advocacy group Attac.
– Sascha Liebermann, professor of sociology and founder of the “freedom instead of full employment” initiative.
– Ulrich Buchholz of the Bonner Initiative for a Basic Income.
– Winfried Gather, secretary of the Catholic Worker Movement in the Diocese of Cologne.
– Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn, MP, economist and member of the German Bundestag; member of the Grünes Grundeinkommen (Green Basic Income) network.
– Charly Hörster of the democratic-socialist party DIE LINKE.
– Jürgen Jack_R of the basic income workgroup of the German Pirate Party.
Following the inaugural event in Bonn, BGE Tournee 2017 will continue with events in Kiel (March 25), Eisenach (April 8), Frankfurt (April 22), and Berlin (April 29). Later events are currently being planned in Bremen, Hannover, Rostock, Stuttgart, and Würzburg.
The idea for BGE Tournee 2017 grew out of a meeting of basic income supporters in 2016 in the small city of Andernach, initiated by Claudia Laux of the German Green Party. Founding member Kostas Thomopoulos says that, at the meeting in Andernach, “we created a movement, and we hope to win the struggle for freedom and justice. Because, we think, the basic income is the right solution for everyone in the future.”
Currently, leaders of BGE Tournee 2017 are continuing to meet with other German organizations sympathetic to basic income, and hope recruit an even broader range of speakers for future events.
Post reviewed by Danny Pearlberg.
Photo (Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 jaime.silva
by Kate McFarland | Jan 15, 2017 | Research
The quarterly Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare (based at Western Michigan University) published a symposium on the basic income guarantee (BIG) in its September 2016 issue.
The symposium includes five articles on the topic, plus an introduction written by two members of BIEN: Richard K. Caputo (Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University) and Michael Lewis (School of Social Work at Hunter College, CUNY). The first three articles present arguments for the adoption of a BIG in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, respectively. The fourth argues that a BIG is more politically feasible in the United States than alternative approaches to economic security, such as a Swedish-type welfare state. The fifth proposes a feminist argument for a BIG, although cautioning that more empirical work is needed.
Titles and abstracts, with brief descriptions of the authors, are given below. Links to manuscripts are provided where available.
Jennifer Mays and Greg Marston – “Reimagining Equity and Egalitarianism: The Basic Income Debate in Australia”
“Reimagining equity and egalitarianism calls for rethinking traditional welfare responses to poverty and economic security in Australia. Similar to other advanced Western democracies, Australia has pursued policies underpinned by neoliberal economics in an effort to curtail perceived excesses in public expenditure over the past three decades. In response to these policy settings, commentators and policy activists have increased their attention to the potential of a universal and unconditional basic income scheme to address economic insecurity. This paper positions basic income within the context of Australia’s welfare state arrangements and explores the potential of the scheme to respond to economic insecurity, particularly precarious employment and poverty traps created by a highly targeted social security system.”
May is a Course Coordinator in the School of Public Health and Social Work at the Queensland University of Technology, and Marston is Head of School at the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland.
Mays and Marston are both active members of Basic Income Guarantee Australia (BIGA), BIEN’s Australian affiliate, and were co-editors (with John Tomlinson) of Basic Income in Australia and New Zealand: Perspectives from the Neo-Liberal Frontier (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
James P. Mulvale and Sid Frankel – “Next Steps on the Road to Basic Income in Canada”
“Canada has had recurring debates about guaranteed or basic income over several decades. This article outlines reasons for implementing basic income in the Canadian context–reducing poverty and inequality, addressing precarious employment, and building an ecologically sustainable economy. Recently there has been a strong renewal of interest in basic income in Canada. Expressions of interest have come from the Liberal federal government elected in 2015, from provincial governments, from political parties not in power, and from municipal governments. Support for basic income also is found in a growing range of prominent individuals and organizations. While basic income advocates are encouraged by recent developments, several large and complex questions remain on how this approach can be implemented in Canada. These questions encompass the specifics of design, delivery, funding, and political support. How can basic income build on existing income security programs and leave Canadians better off in the end? How can we ensure that basic income is not used as an excuse to cut vital services such health care, social housing, early childhood care and development, and social services for those with disabilities and other challenges? How can basic income be set in place in Canada,given its complicated federal-provincial nexus of responsibility for, delivery of, and funding for social programs? The article concludes with principles that might help guide the implementation of authentically universal, adequate, and feasible basic income architecture in Canada.”
Mulvale is Dean and Frankel an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba — the site of the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress, which they helped to organize.
Keith Rankin – “Prospects for a Universal Basic Income in New Zealand”
“New Zealand is a small liberal capitalist country with a history of egalitarian values and political reform–including the early introduction of universal welfare benefits–and with an uncomplicated relatively flat income tax structure. As such, it has sometimes been seen as a “social laboratory,” a theme of writing about New Zealand and of New Zealand social historians. It therefore has all of the elements in place that could make New Zealand a candidate to become a world leader in integrating income tax and social welfare regimes into a form of universal basic income. Nevertheless, through a combination of intellectual inertia, media cynicism, and the requisite elements not all coming together at the same time, the outlook for an open and healthy discussion around public property rights and unconditional benefits remains constrained. Despite this unpromising intellectual environment, New Zealand may yet stumble upon such reform as a political compromise, as it might have done in 1988.”
Rankin is a Lecturer of Business Practice at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand.
Almaz Zelleke – “Lessons from Sweden: Solidarity, the Welfare State, and Basic Income”
“Progressive critics of a universal basic income argue that most nations face a budgetary choice between a full basic income and investment in public goods, including universal health care, free and well-funded education, and universal pensions, and have prioritized a robust welfare state, or the “Swedish Model,” over basic income. But examination of Swedish economic policy reveals that the welfare state is only one of the ingredients of the Swedish Model, and that another is an interventionist labor market policy unlikely to be expandable to larger states without Sweden’s cultural and demographic characteristics. Indeed, evidence suggests that Sweden’s own recent diversification–not only of race and ethnicity but of occupational strata–will make the Swedish Model less stable in its own home. What lessons can be applied to the case for a basic income in the U.S. and other large and diverse nations or regions?”
Zelleke is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at New York University’s campus in Shanghai. She has written multiple journal articles and book chapters on basic income, and has been an active member of BIEN.
Sara Cantillon and Caitlin McLean – “Basic Income Guarantee: The Gender Impact within Households”
“The potential of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) to contribute to gender equality is a contested issue amongst feminist scholars. This article focuses on the nature of BIG as an individually-based payment to explore its potential for reducing gender equality, specifically intra-household inequalities in material or financial welfare; economic autonomy; psychological well-being; and time allocation, especially leisure time and time spent in household and care work. We employ a gender analysis of existing BIG pilots/schemes as well as close substitutes (e.g., universal child benefits) to assess some of the key claims about the effects of a basic income (BI) on gendered inequality. We also present findings from empirical work on intra-household allocation and decision-making which underscore the role of independent income. The article finds some support for BIG as a feminist proposal with respect to mitigating intra-household inequality, but concludes that further empirical research is needed to argue persuasively for BIG as an instrument for furthering gender equality.”
Cantillon is Professor of Gender and Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University. McLean is a lead researcher at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Cover photo by Christopher Andrews, CC BY-NC 2.0
