by Kate McFarland | Dec 4, 2016 | News
The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a non-governmental organization that promotes “programs and policies that cultivate creativity, empathy, and collaboration”, released a new platform on November 19, 2016 — aimed at protecting Americans’ right to culture under a Trump presidency.
The platform consists of 10 policy demands — from a public service jobs program to criminal justice reform to investment in arts education — including a basic income grant.
About the basic income grant, the USDAC writes (pp. 22-23):
[R]ising costs, falling spending-power, the uncertainty of the economy, macroeconomic policies that have placed corporate success above individual well-being. For artists and cultural organizers as for others, the current system mandates overproduction, often exacerbated by under-compensation. For example, existing subsid[ies] for artists operates almost exclusively on a project basis, forcing artists who apply for support to constantly seek novelty and conform to arbitrary deadlines rather than allowing work to evolve and emerge according to a more organic timetable. Competition for scarce resources is incredibly intense and hugely discouraging for those who don’t fall under currently favored criteria …
In virtually every field, decision-makers fail to prioritize necessary time for reflection, restoration, and conviviality. It’s a challenge to discern, integrate, and act on cultural development needs when competition for survival eats what could otherwise be time for creativity, connection, and pleasure. We long for a future in which overproduction and overconsumption will no longer distort our society, with a universal cultural benefit: the ability to live in balance with each other and the life of this planet.
In its abridged platform, USDAC emphasizes that similar challenges confront workers in many occupations and that the organization is not making a “special pleading for artists”.
USDAC proposes a basic income grant large enough to cover basic needs such as food, housing, and medical care, distributed in the same amount to all regardless of other income.
To fund the BIG and other reforms, the organization proposes taxes on advertising and financial transactions, as well as the sell of “social impact bonds” to private investors.
Read the full platform here: “Standing for Cultural Democracy: The USDAC’s Policy and Action Platform”
Reviewed by Dawn Howard.
Cover photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 Edith Soto
by Kate McFarland | Dec 4, 2016 | News
BIEN Iceland, one of BIEN’s newly created national affiliates, will hold its official launch event on Saturday, December 10, 2016, at the Gaflaraleikhúsið Theatre in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland.
The date of the launch was selected to coincide with Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the day on which the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
BIEN Co-Chair Louise Haagh will speak at the event, and Jouko Hemmi and Simo Ruottinen of BIEN Finland will present the latest information about Finland’s basic income pilot study, which is scheduled to begin in early 2017.
More details about the launch are available on the event’s page on Facebook (in Icelandic).
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı
Photo (Hafnarfjörður) CC BY 2.0 Daníel Örn Gíslason
by Kate McFarland | Dec 3, 2016 | News
Baijayant “Jay” Panda, a member of the lower house of the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha), believes that India should consider a universal basic income (UBI) to replace its current social welfare programs.
Panda describes India’s current socials programs as “grossly inefficient, corruption-ridden, misdirected towards the better-off, and thus unable to achieve stated objectives”. These wasteful programs already need replaced. With this in mind, Panda argues that a UBI could be more affordable in India than in a high-income nation like the United States or Switzerland–citing economists such as Pranab Bardhan (University of California, Berkeley), Vijay Joshi (Oxford), and Maitreesh Ghatak (London School of Economics) for additional support. (One might additionally mention Abhijit V. Banerjee, an MIT economist and adviser for GiveDirectly’s basic income pilot.)
Jay Panda belongs to Biju Janata Dal (BJD), a centrist party in the state of Odisha. BJD holds 20 out of 545 seats in the Lok Sabha, having won 20 out of 21 seats for Odisha in the 2014 general election, and eight out of 245 in the upper house (Rajya Sabha). BJD is the dominant party in the Odisha legislature, where it holds 117 out of 147 seats. Panda is a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce and the Consultative Committee for the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Earlier in 2016, Varun Gandhi, MP from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, endorsed basic income in an article for The Hindu.
More recently, India’s Chief Economic Adviser, Arvind Subramanian, has stated that the government will investigate UBI as part of the next annual Economic Survey of India.
Read More:
Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda (Oct 27, 2016) “Cash To All Citizens: Universal Basic Income could actually work better in India than in rich countries” Times of India.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda speaks at Brookings panel, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Brookings Institution.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 3, 2016 | News
A superior court judge has upheld the Governor of Alaska’s decision to halve the amount of the state’s annual social dividend payment in 2016.
Senator Bill Wielechowski
CC BY-SA 4.0 Peter Stein
As previously reported in Basic Income News, Alaskan senator Bill Wielechowski filed a lawsuit in which he contested Governor Bill Walker’s veto of about half of the funding that the state legislature had allocated to the state’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) and asked the courts to require that the Permanent Fund Corporation transfer the full amount originally allocated to the PFD.
Walker vetoed the funds in June 2016, in the face of a mounting budget crisis in the state, and Wielechowski filed his suit in September. On November 17, Superior Court Judge William Morse dismissed the case.
The Alaska Permanent Fund was established in 1976 by an amendment to the Alaska State Constitution that mandated that at least 25% of the money earned from the state’s oil be placed into a permanent fund, enabling the state to share its profits from non-renewable resources with future generations of Alaskans. In 1980, the Permanent Fund Corporation was created to manage the fund. Financed from the investment earnings on the permanent fund, the PFD is a cash payment distributed annually to all permanent residents (including children). The PFD is well-known in basic income circles as a “real world” example of a basic income–a universal and unconditional cash transfer to individuals. The PFD reached its peak amount of $2,072 in 2015, and it would have stood at $2,052 in 2016 had Walker not vetoed the legislature’s budget. Instead, this year’s PFD is $1,022 per Alaskan resident.
In previous years, the transfer of money from Permanent Fund Corporation to the fund for the dividend has been routine and uncontested.
In his suit, Wielechowski charged that Walker violated a law (Alaska Statute 37.13.145) that states that the Permanent Fund Corporation “shall” transfer half of its available income to the fund for the PFD. On Wielechowski’s interpretation, this statute implies that the transfer of funds is “automatic” and thus not subject to veto by the governor.
Morse argued, however, that the amendment setting up the Permanent Fund did not specify that it would affect the governor’s power of veto, saying to Wielechowski, “You’re telling me that what they secretly were trying to do was eliminate the governor’s veto authority, but they never mentioned that?”
Wielechowski has said that he will appeal the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.
References
Alaska Dispatch News (November 17, 2016) “Judge tosses lawsuit challenging Alaska Gov. Walker’s PFD veto” Alaska Dispatch News.
Andrew Kitchenman (November 17, 2016) “Judge upholds Walker’s veto halving Permanent Fund dividends” KTOO Public Media.
Alaska pipeline photo CC BY 2.0 Maureen
by Kate McFarland | Dec 3, 2016 | News
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) was named the UK Social Policy Think Tank of the Year at the 16th annual Think Tank Awards, held in London on November 28, 2016.
Anthony Painter CC BY 2.0 G20 Voice
The award was decided in part on the basis of the RSA’s work on basic income, exemplified in December 2015 report “Creative citizen, creative state: the principled and pragmatic case for a Universal Basic Income“ by Anthony Painter (Director of the Action and Research Centre) and researcher Chris Thoung.
According to a summary in Prospect, the British magazine that hosts the annual award, the judges described the RSA “a great and well respected institution which nonetheless continues to innovate” and specifically commended its “outstanding” work on basic income, which demonstrates “a rare ability to marry a big and disruptive idea with determined number-crunching”.
Painter, who accepted the award for the RSA, told Basic Income News:
This award was not just for the RSA’s work on Basic Income – honoured as we are to receive it. Our analysis was grounded in decades of work by thinkers, researchers, and activists. It reflects their work too.
But there’s something else. The award marks another moment in the case for Universal Basic Income moving relentlessly from margins to mainstream. And this case will get stronger until it becomes irresistible. We look forward to continuing to work with many others to keep the momentum going.
Established in 2001, Prospect’s Think Tank Awards recognize the contributions of think tanks in several regions (the US, EU, and UK) and areas of specialization (Economic and Financial Affairs, Energy and the Environment, Social Policy, and International Affairs).
The RSA was founded in 1754, and now has a network of 28,000 supporters worldwide. Past members include such notable individuals as Charles Dickens, Michael Faraday, and Karl Marx.
Watch a short video introduction to the RSA’s work on basic income (featuring Anthony Painter):
Read More:
Prospect Team (November 29, 2016) “Think Tank Awards 2016: The Winners,” Prospect.
Thanks to Anthony Painter and Jamie Cooke for information and contributions to the article.
Cover photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Laura Billings
