by Kate McFarland | Dec 7, 2016 | News
Universal basic income (UBI) was a topic of discussion at Europe’s largest annual startup conference, Slush, which convened in Helsinki from November 30 to December 1.
A roundtable (or, more accurately, round-fire) discussion held on the second day of the conference, titled “Basic income – Our next moonshot”, featured three advocates of basic income: Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, who has prominently promoted basic income as a response to automation; Matt Krisiloff of Y Combinator, who is a research director of the firm’s basic income pilot in Oakland, California; and Roope Mokka of Demos Helsinki, who wrote an article calling basic income “the moonshot of our generation”.
The discussion covered advantages of basic income, as well as potential hurdles in its acceptance and implementation. Wenger emphasized the potential for UBI to promote entrepreneurship, branding it as “seed money for the people”. Mokka, while agreeing that UBI “has to happen”, added that society additionally needs to conceive of new ways in which individuals can relate to society in a world with much less work for them to do. Krisiloff suggested that, rather than implementing a UBI all at once, it would more feasible to introduce a UBI gradually in a country like the United States, due to the cultural opposition to giving people “money for nothing”.
Two attendees, Sharetribe CMO Sjoerd Handgraaf and tech journalist Derek du Preez, have written summaries of the conversation with brief commentary:
Derek du Preez (December 2, 2016) “Slush 2016 – Universal Basic Income ‘has to happen’,” diginomica.
Sjoerd Handgraaf (December 2, 2016) “Universal Basic Income @ SLUSH 2016,” Medium.
Slush states that its mission is “to help the next generation of great, world-conquering companies forward.” This year, the non-profit event was attended by an estimated 17,500 individuals from 124 countries.
Watch the 30-minute fireside chat
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Slush photo CC BY-NC-2.0 Taloudellinen tiedotustoimisto
by Kate McFarland | Dec 6, 2016 | News
The Icelandic Pirate Party — which has proposed to launch an investigation into ways to implement an unconditional basic income in Iceland — has been granted the authority to form the country’s next government.
Iceland’s Pirate Party (Píratar) gained 10 seats in Iceland’s parliament (Alþingi) in the October 2016 general election (which was held a year early, after the Prime Minister resigned in the wake of the Panama Papers leaks). This put the party in third place in parliamentary representation, behind the center-right Independence Party and the Left-Green Movement.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir CC BY-SA 2.0 Pirátská strana
In Iceland’s political system, the president invites the leader of the winning political party to negotiate with the other parties to select new members of the government. If the party does not succeed, the president passes the mandate to the second most dominant party, and so on. In this case, neither the Independence Party nor the Left-Green Movement succeeded in negotiations; thus, on December 2, President Guðni Jóhannesson handed the mandate to form the government to Pirate Party leader MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir.
This marks the first time — in any country — that the authority to form a government has been handed to a party officially committed to investigate the possibility of basic income.
Píratar does not officially endorse any specific form, amount, or funding mechanism for a basic income guarantee, and the party believes that more research is necessary before moving forward with any such policy. Moreover, neither implementing nor researching a basic income appears on the party’s manifesto for the October 2016 parliamentary elections.
However, Píratar has actively promoted research into a basic income guarantee for Iceland, and plans to continue to do so with the new government. MP Halldóra Mogensen drafted a proposal calling on the Ministry of Welfare and Ministry of Finance to form a working group tasked with “looking for ways to ensure every citizen unconditional basic income” (“skilyrðislausa grunnframfærslu”), which she submitted to parliament in November 2015 along with the other two Pirate MPs, Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir and Birgitta Jónsdóttir. In setting out the case that Iceland should investigate the possibility of a BIG, the proposal reviews the results of past basic income trials, especially in Manitoba (the Mincome experiment) and Namibia, and the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend. It also outlines philosophical arguments for basic income, discusses the potential for a basic income to simplify the welfare system, and presents new concerns surrounding automation and the future of work.
Halldóra Mogensen
Mogensen tells Basic Income News that she will “definitely” put forth the basic income proposal again during the new parliamentary session and “look[s] forward to continuing the conversation in parliament and warming the new MP’s up to the subject.”
Overall, she says, “the conversation [about basic income] is ongoing but no concrete plans have been made regarding implementation or testing.”
Meanwhile, the immediate objective of the Píratar, after forming the government, is to ratify its new constitution.
BIEN Iceland — which is non-partisan but founded by another Pirate, Albert Svan Sigurdsson (Statistics Iceland) — will launch officially on Saturday, December 10 (Human Rights Day).
References:
James Rothwell (December 2, 2016) “Iceland’s radical Pirate Party asked to form its next government,” The Telegraph.
Agence France-Presse in Reykjavik (December 2, 2016) “Iceland’s Pirate party invited to form government,” The Guardian.
Paul Fontaine (November 18, 2015) “Pirates Submit Proposal For Universal Basic Income In Iceland,” Reykjavík Grapevine.
Halldóra Mogensen, personal communication.
Past Basic Income News reports on Halldóra Mogensen’s proposal:
Stanislas Jourdan (November 25, 2014) “Interview: No one in the parliament had heard about basic income before”
Tyler Prochazka (October 6, 2016) “Iceland: Will Pirate Party push basic income?”
Albert Svan Sigurdsson talks about basic income for Iceland at BIST2016:
Article reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Cover photo: Government House in Reykjavík, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Damien Mórka.
Many photos of Pirate Party members unavailable for use in this article due to copyright restrictions.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 6, 2016 | News
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist and member of British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly for the Green Party, has proposed that the province test a basic income guarantee in one or more of its towns.
Weaver outlined his recommendations for a BC pilot in a report in The Tyee. Rejecting Hugh Segal’s recommendation for a three-year pilot in Ontario pilots as inadequate, Weaver believes that the pilots should run for at least five years (“the amount of time it takes to finish a post-secondary degree”).
He also recommends conducting the trials in towns of 5,000 to 6,000 people, preferably with wide income inequality, and possibly testing different implementation in different towns. Regarding eligibility for the pilot, Weaver says that “a Green government would likely determine eligibility based on the tax year before the announcement is made, thus avoiding an influx of people hoping to opportunistically take advantage of the payments.”
The Green Party of British Columbia won its first seat in the provincial legislature in the 2013 general election, when Weaver was elected to represent Oak Bay-Gordon Head district in the Greater Victoria region. Overall, the Greens received about 8% of the popular vote. The next British Columbia general election will be held on May 9, 2017. Kamloops This Week reports Weaver as declaring that if the Greens were to take office, they would attempt to implement a basic income pilot by the end of the first year. At present, however, this remains a very big “if”.
A series of posts on Weaver’s blog, contributed by Sarah Miller, explore the idea of a basic income and its implementation in British Columbia:
References
Andrew MacLeod (November 26, 2016) “BC Greens Pitch a Five-Year Basic Income Pilot Project” The Tyee.
Jessica Klymchuk (November 30, 2016) “Green Leader Weaver visits Kamloops, chides NDP for accepting corporate donations” Kamloops This Week.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Photo (Sandon, British Columbia) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Jasperdo
by Kate McFarland | Dec 5, 2016 | News
Sdumo Dlamini, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), has called on the government of South Africa to implement a basic income guarantee. He voiced this demand before the Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA), which held its congress in Johannesburg on Thursday, November 17.
President of South Africa Jacob Zuma with Sdumo Dlamini, CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA
In his speech, Dlamini contended that “the state’s approach to social protection has been fragmented and narrow,” leaving many members of the population uncovered by social assistance despite lacking an adequate income through their own earnings.
Dlamini also called for other reforms, including a new unemployment insurance fund, a single national pension scheme, and national health insurance.
COSATU is South Africa’s largest trade union federation, representing 1.8 million members (as reported on its website). It has held long-standing support for an inflation-linked basic income grant.
FEDUSA is the nation’s second largest trade union federation, with 20 affiliated trade unions and approximately 515,000 members (according to the latest updates on its website).
Source:
Zintle Mahlati (November 18, 2016) “Cosatu spurs on basic income calls” Business News.
Article reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Cover photo: Sdumo Dlamini at Presidential Labour Working Group (June 2016) CC BY-ND 2.0 GovernmentZA
by Kate McFarland | Dec 5, 2016 | News
Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and co-secretary of BIEN, delivered a public lecture titled “Money for everyone: The state of the Basic Income/Citizen’s Income debate” for the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath on October 11, 2016. In it, he describes proposals for funding and administering a basic income.
A summary of Malcolm’s lecture has been posted on the Institute for Policy Research website, and the entire lecture is also available in both video and audio formats.
The lecture was held as part of IPR’s ongoing project Examining the Case for a Basic Income, which is studying the design and implementation of a basic income proposals in UK. The project description states:
A key aspect of the project is to ask whether and in what circumstances the UK public would support a UBI. To this end, the project is organising a number of public engagement activities to explore the wider issues and public concerns that implementing a UBI here might raise.
Torry’s lecture was the first in this series of public engagement activities.
On November 17, IPR sponsored a panel discussion and debate of basic income (Basic Income – An Idea Whose Time Has Come?), which was held as part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas.
Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 dotpolka
