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CHINA: A new paradigm in the current basic income debate

by Furui Cheng | Apr 18, 2017 | Opinion

Furui Cheng

In the discourse of global basic income debates, China provides the most recent example of a social dividend-style basic income, similar to the Alaskan model. In discussions surrounding Nixon’s welfare reform in the 1970s, which was a quasi-basic income proposal, four different anti-poverty paradigms competed for influence. None of them can well explain today’s social dividend examples. We need a new paradigm in the current round of worldwide basic income debates.

China’s new facts

In November of last year I introduced the Huaidi case from China, in which villagers cooperated in urbanization and received high levels of welfare from their collectively owned land. This is not the only such case in China, however. The Chinese Famous Villages Influence Ranking was published in 2016, and 300 villages were selected from thousands in a joint effort by the Working Committee of Chinese Village Development Association, the Modern Village and Town Development Research Center of Tongji University, the Chinese Council of APCRD (the Chinese Association for Rural Community Development) and the Chinese Reputation Center (CPPC). The evaluation of the influence of Chinese villages in 2016 was mainly based on the comprehensive evaluation of the following factors: the village development index, people’s livelihood index, management index, charm index, green index and reputation index. In this way, the evaluation depends not only on per capita GDP or income, but also on living conditions, security conditions and interpersonal relationships, as well as the temperament of the villagers, including their mental state, sense of ownership and so on. This evaluation incorporates the well-being of the people and promotes the comprehensive development of further villages. The Zhejiang province has 37 villages in the ranking list, the most of all the provinces. Huaidi is one of the Hebei province’s 15 ranking villages, which ranks 77^th of the total 300.

In addition to the regional welfare from land, China’s fiscal contribution by national state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has increased in recent years. In the past, Chinese SOEs only paid tax to the budget, but kept all their after tax profits. Since 2007, SOEs have increasingly paid part of their net profits to the national budget. This proportion will rise to 30% of total profits in 2020. There are four different categories of SOEs. The first type includes tobacco, petroleum and petrochemical, electricity production, telecommunications, coal and other resource monopoly industries and enterprises, which pay 20% of their net profits to the state. The second type includes steel, transportation, electronics, trade, construction and others in the competitive industries, paying a proportion of 15%. The third category includes the military and scientific research institutes, contributing 10%. The fourth category encompasses policy companies, including the Chinese Grain Reserves Corporation and the Chinese Cotton Reserves Corporation, which are exempt from turning over their net profits. Of interest, the proportion of the China National Tobacco Corporation’s net profits to be paid to the state has increased to 25%, singling the corporation out as a fifth category of its own. Part of the revenue from SOEs’ profits has been injected into the national social security system to benefit the majority.

Regardless of the origin of the social dividend – whether public land or SOEs – it is similar to Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) model.

A new paradigm?

What are the key elements in the current global discussions about basic income? Is it simply an anti-poverty strategy, just like any other kind of social assistance program in operation? Or is it a comprehensive overhaul of the welfare system, like the New Deal transformation was in the 1930s, which came to form the very basis of the current social security system? The most controversial elements of debates surrounding present public welfare systems and basic income proposals include work ethic, fiscal affordability, a culture of desert and civil rights, among other aspects. The latter has been reviewed in detail in recent history, especially since Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan (FAP) legislation. The main characteristic of FAP is that people can receive the benefit without work requirement, and independently of their family structure. This is very similar to today’s unconditional basic income definition, although FAP is not universal.

At the outset of the Nixon administration, proponents of four fundamentally different anti-poverty paradigms, each of which contained a different causal story, competed for influence. Three of these paradigms supported Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) plans. Proponents of an economic citizenship paradigm identified the economic system, especially structural unemployment and the wage structure, as the source of poverty. For proponents of this view, the objective of GAI policy was to alleviate poverty and provide citizens with basic income security.

The family stability paradigm identified the social system, especially changing family structures within poor, typically black communities, as the source of poverty. Proponents of this view hoped that GAI policies would decrease poverty by providing additional support for maintaining two-parent families, since rates of marital breakup appeared to be correlated with poverty rates.

The laissez-faire paradigm, which GAI supporters with a libertarian orientation invoked, identified the welfare system and its alleged perverse incentives against work as the root of the problem. Laissez-faire proponents felt that GAI plans would rationalize the welfare system by creating stronger incentives for labor market participation while also granting the poor greater freedom.

The main opposition to GAI proposals within the administration came from officials who saw the behavior of the poor themselves as the primary cause of poverty and believed that welfare reform should rehabilitate the poor by exposing them to the discipline of the labor market. This rehabilitation paradigm argued that limiting eligibility for social provisions and requiring recipients of government benefits to work would be the best path to eliminating poverty.

Is Alaska’s PFD or China’s current social policy context embedded in any of the above paradigms? I don’t think so. At least, that is to say, the four paradigms that undergirded this decade-long debate half a century ago are not sufficient to underpin a new round of worldwide debates on basic income. For example, many countries are considering levying a tax on various kinds of resources, including land, minerals, oil and gas, internet infrastructure, etc. (1). But if we want to justify these different kinds of taxes for financing basic income, the world need a new paradigm. As Philippe Van Parijs says: “It needs to recognize fully that the bulk of our real incomes is not the fruit of the efforts of today’s workers (let alone of the abstinence of today’s capitalists), but a gift from nature increasingly combined with capital accumulation, technological innovation and institutional improvements inherited from the past.”

Notes:

(1) Karl Widerquist and Michael W. Howard (edited), “Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform around the World”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

More information at:

Furui Cheng, “Cooperative Society and Basic Income: A Case from China”, Basic Income News, November 10^th 2016

Brian Steensland, “The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy”, Princeton University Press, September 2007

Philippe Van Parijs, “Basic Income and Social Democracy”, Social Europe, April 11^th 2016

[in Chinese]

The editor, “The Chinese Famous Villages Influence Ranking”, The Orientation News, December 16^th 2016

HEB101, “Famous Villages in Hebei Province”, Hebei News, December 14^th 2016

About the author: Cheng Furui is undertaking a post-doctoral program in the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She got her PhD from Tsinghua University and her research interest is public policy. “Social Assistance and Poverty Alleviation Divergence: A Capability Approach” is her first published book based on her doctoral dissertation, which explores the Chinese social safety net in detail. She is now a voluntary news editor of BIEN, and also one of the organizers of China Social Dividend/Basic Income Network: bienchina.com.

Article reviewed by André Coelho and Genevieve Shanahan.

The ‘people’s dividend’: A universal income proposal with real numbers

by Guest Contributor | Apr 7, 2017 | Opinion

Written by: Thomas Clarkson

This opinion solely represents the view of the author and is not necessarily the view of Basic Income News or BIEN. BI News does not endorse any particular petition or policy.

A Problem

One of the difficulties in talking about universal income is that the arguments lack punch because we discuss them in the abstract. The “People’s Dividend” (PD) petition on Change.org tries to correct that problem by asking people to sign a petition and call Congress to take action. The PD petition is different because it uses real numbers:

$27 trillion, the personal net worth of the one percent wealthiest (PNW1). Naturally, high net worth individuals have very different needs to low-income individuals which is why insurers like Jeff Bernard might be better equipped to assist them when it comes to insurance.
$1.5 trillion per year, the annual growth of the personal net worth of that same one percent
$4,500 per person, if the $1.5 trillion was re-distributed to all 333 million people in the U.S.

The PD petition proposes that the IRS annually harvest the growth of the wealth of the one percent and distribute it every year to every adult and child in the U.S. without conditions. It also urges people to take two specific actions to make that happen: 1) sign the petition and 2) call Congress.

Please Sign the Petition

If you read the petition first, or watch the video that introduces it, you will have a sufficient background for this article. Here is a link for the People’s Dividend Petition. Feel free to sign the petition while you are there.

Fun with Numbers

Before we go into the details of the proposal, it may be enlightening to compare some of the numbers given above to other things.

$27 trillion (PNW1) is:

about 686 percent of the Federal Budget ($3.9 trillion)
about 136 percent of the federal debt ($19.8 trillion)
about 143 percent of GDP ($18.9 trillion)
$81,000 per person in the U.S.

$1.5 trillion (the annual growth of PNW1) is:

38 percent of the Federal Budget ($3.9 trillion)
256 percent of the U.S. Defense budget ($585 billion)
253 percent of the annual Federal deficit ($592 billion)
$4,500 per person in the U.S.

$4,500 per person is:

one-third of the poverty level for 1 person, which is $11,880
$18,000 or three-fourths of the poverty level for a family of 4 persons, which is $24,300
one-seventh of the median wage for workers in the U.S.
$450 million of added income for the population of Flint, MI, a city of 100,000 people
$3 billion of added income for the population of Washington, DC, a city of 675,000 people
$36 million of added income to the 8,000 homeless people in Washington, D.C., which is equal to one-third of Washington, D.C.’s 2017 affordable housing budget of $100 million

Are These Numbers Reliable?

The Forbes list of U.S. billionaires, as of March 21, 2017, identified 565 U.S. billionaires with a combined net worth of $2.8 trillion. This contradicts the established fact that “the personal net worth of the one percent wealthiest (PNW1) is actually $27 trillion. A lot of what is written in the popular press about wealth and income grossly understates PNW1. Fortunately, the World Wealth and Income database (located here) is pulling back the covers on this issue. WID.world has authoritative statistics on wealth and income going back 100 years. That is where the data that supports the People’s Dividend came from. Online access to the WID.world database has been available since 2011. However, economists have been laboring on it for thirty years or more and they deserve great credit for their results. This resource makes it possible for a non-economist like me to grasp wealth inequality trends.

With WID.world data, we can avoid erroneously limiting the wealthiest one percent of U.S. citizens to those found on the Forbes billionaires list. For example, an extrapolation of WID.world data from 2013 to 2017, indicates that the one percent includes all households with over $5 million in net worth. There are about 1,670,000 such households. I estimate that their total wealth in 2017 is $27 trillion, with an annual increase of $1.5 trillion projected. The important result that follows from getting the numbers right is that the size of the People’s Dividend payment gets large enough for people to notice. $4,500 per person is significant. That is the result when you divide the growth of $1.5 trillion by the entire U.S. population. The proposal takes data seriously and the petition includes a link, also given here, to all of my calculations and sources here.

Making It Real

Because the People’s Dividend idea is formulated as an actionable petition with known dollar results for individuals, it makes the numbers behind the universal income/wealth inequality discussion more real. For example, a person knows that their payment would be $4,500, with 99 percent paying no wealth tax. They also know whether their household net worth is above $5 million and, therefore, they know if they are in the 99%.

It is also immediately apparent to many that $27 trillion is simply too much money for one percent of the population to have when 50 percent of the population has so little. For those less easily convinced that that is too much inequity, consider the fact that the one percent’s share of total U.S. wealth has grown from 25 percent in 1982 to 40 percent in 2017. If the one percent’s share keeps growing one point every 2.3 years, then in 23 years it will grow 10 more points to 50 percent of total U.S. wealth. By 2040, the one percent would have as much wealth, 50 percent, as everyone else in the U.S. put together. I think, at that amount, almost everyone would agree that would be much too much.

The purpose of asking people to sign the petition and contact their one Congressional Representative and their two Senators is to encourage them to think about this data, and, in the process, have it become more real for them.

High Points of the People’s Dividend

The $4,500 PD Payment

The $4,500 per person goes to everyone in the U.S., but only households with PNW greater than $5 million pay the tax. A household of 2 people worth $5.1 million would pay $7,800 and receive $9,000. This means that slightly more than 99 percent of the people would be better off financially. This should make it easier to get a majority of voters in favor of PD.
The PD goes on year after year.
The $4,500 is tax-free, so a dollar of the People’s Dividend is worth more to people who pay income taxes than a dollar of ordinary income.
$4,500 is equal to about one-third of the poverty level for 1 person, which is $11,880. However, for a family of 4, $18,000 in PD payments is about three-quarters of the poverty level for a family of 4 persons, which is $24,300. Therefore, it would be a significant poverty fighter.
The PD potentially adds a big boost to local economies. In Washington, DC, for example, a city of 675,000, the total PD payments to the population would equal $3 billion per year. This is equal to about 24 percent of the city’s 2017 budget of $13.8 billion.
The PD is paid to everyone, including the one percent. Therefore, no apparatus for measuring need is needed, and virtually all the $1.5 trillion collected can go to the people.
The PD would be paid out monthly like a social security check to provide a steady flow of income year around.
The PD amount would vary up or down, depending on how fast the PNW1 is growing or decreasing, as it might if stock markets decline. Therefore, the PD amount is not guaranteed to be the same from year to year. This feature helps avoid deficit spending because the PD is always equal to the amount of wealth tax collected. To smooth the change in the PD amounts from year to year a moving average of collections might be used.

Alaska’s permanent fund dividend in 2016 was $1,022 per person. The PD would be more than four times that. See here.

The Wealth Tax

The wealth tax is calculated so that it is equal to the year to year growth in the PNW1, estimated to be $1.5 trillion. Therefore, it represents the increase in PNW1 after the one percent has spent all they want to and paid all their taxes.
The intention is to keep the wealth tax equal to the growth so that the amount of wealth does not decrease and kill the goose (PNW1) that lays the golden egg (PD).
A good part of PNW1 is composed of stocks and bonds whose value can decrease in a market slump. If that happens, then the wealth tax rate would be reduced for a few years, but not eliminated, in order to allow the wealth to recover. You can see from the green and orange chart in the video that the 2008 recession caused everyone’s PNW to decrease. However, by 2013, everyone except the 50 percent least wealthy had recovered.
The wealth tax applies only to every dollar over the household wealth threshold necessary to be part of the one percent. This is $5 million in 2017. A household with PNW of $5,000,001 would pay 7.8 cents in wealth tax. A household with PNW of $6,000,000 would pay $78,000 tax on the $1,000,000 of wealth over and above $5,000,000.
The $5 million threshold amounts to about $500 billion leaving only $1 trillion to tax. The $1 trillion is taxed at 7.8 percent but the overall tax is 5.5 percent of PNW1. PNW1 grows on average 5.5 percent a year so the tax is equal to the growth.

The Amount of PNW1

It is better to tax wealth than income because only “realized” income counts for income taxes, but increase in asset values results in increased wealth tax revenues whether the gain is “realized” through a sale or not.
Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate when it comes to income taxes. Consequently, a lot of big earners take their compensation in the form of shares of stock. In this way, they reduce their income taxes, but a wealth tax would neutralize this tax avoidance strategy.
The PNW1 amount is a comprehensive measure of the wealth inequality and considers: the effects of all other tax laws; economic forces, such as automation and globalization that reduce the share of profits going to labor; changes in government expenditures for health care and other social programs; right to work laws that weaken labor’s position; and all of the other factors that increase or reduce the concentration of wealth in the one percent. As such, it is an easy litmus test for inequality and a measure we should all watch carefully.
Because the WID.world data only went until 2013, I estimated the 2017 amounts using the historical compounded growth rate of 5.5 percent.
But it should not be necessary to estimate wealth amounts. Therefore, an important feature of the PD petition is that it would direct the U.S. Treasury to collect wealth data promptly and directly from banks, brokerage services and other wealth depositories, so that the public could see the PNW1 amount and other wealth distribution amounts shortly after the end of the calendar year.
The petition requests Congress to appropriate extra money to the Treasury to create a wealth reporting system and a reliable means to track down wealth hidden in various tax havens.
Not mentioned in the petition, but a necessary addition, would be for Congress to provide funds to Treasury to negotiate tax treaties with other countries to prevent other countries from giving our one percent a better tax deal than the U.S. This is necessary to prevent all of our “one percenters” from fleeing to other countries to avoid the wealth tax.
By taxing personal wealth, the PD proposal avoids interfering in the taxation of corporations. If they become more profitable, then the shares owned by the one percent increase in value and the wealth tax harvests more.

Obstacles

There are several possible obstacles that might undermine a campaign for getting this petition signed. First, the ideas of universal income and the magnitude of wealth inequality are not well-known by the general public. Second, it might seem too “pie in the sky”, at least initially. Third, many might buy into the common belief that any “giveaway” will ruin the moral fiber of the country and encourage laziness. I am convinced, however, that with enough support, especially from individuals widely admired and trusted such as the Pope, Oprah or Bono, momentum could be achieved. Anyone reading this article with good ideas for getting people on board, please contact me at toclarkson@gmail.com.

Please Sign the Petition

Meanwhile, be sure to sign the petition, if you agree with it, and get one or two others to do the same – People’s Dividend Petition. Once people realize that they have skin in this game and that change is possible we may see some of these proposals become a reality.

VIDEO: Economist James Boyce on Basic Income, Carbon Tax and Dividend

by Kate McFarland | Jan 13, 2017 | News

In a recent interview and article, economist James K. Boyce defends a universal basic income of $200 per month, funded in part by taxes or fees on carbon emissions and financial transactions.

Boyce, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and program director at the Political Economy Research Institute, recently co-wrote a article on the topic with entrepreneur Peter Barnes, who authored the 2014 book With Liberty and Dividends for All. The article was originally published as “$200 Dollars a Month for Everyone? Universal Income from Universal Assets” on Triple Crisis, a blog devoted to finance, development, and the environment. It has also been republished on Medium as “How To Pay For Universal Income”.

Boyce and Barnes argue that a modest basic income could be funded from “universal basic assets” — wealth that is rightfully owned by all members of society, such as that which is derived from appropriation of the commons (e.g. extracting minerals or timber from the land or releasing pollutants into the atmosphere). They argue that universal basic assets also include a portion of wealth generated from society’s financial and legal infrastructure.

On their view, a portfolio of such commonly held assets could (and should) be used to fund a citizen’s dividend of $200 per month to all Americans, distributed automatically via wire transfers to individuals’ bank accounts.

Boyce provides further explanation of the proposal in an interview with Kim Brown of the Real News Network (see video below).

In the interview, while elaborating upon the idea of universal basic assets, Boyce compares and contrasts his proposal with Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), which provides all Alaskan residents with an annual basic income ($1022 in 2016) from the revenues on a permanent fund created from royalties on the sale of the state’s oil. Boyce notes that whereas Alaska’s PFD incentivizes drilling for more oil, a carbon tax and dividend would dis-incentivize carbon emissions, thereby promoting more sustainable energy production.

Boyce further articulates his ethical justification for a citizen’s dividend in response to a question concerning whether it is fair to give money to those who don’t work for it: “All we’re talking about is returning to people the money that comes from uses of assets we all own or should own in common. So, it’s not about handing out free money. It’s about not letting people use those assets for free. That’s the real handout.”

A transcript of the interview is available on the site of the Real News Network (“Universal Basic Income: A Solution to Inequality, Economic Instability, and Climate Change,” November 21, 2016.)

Cover Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Pembina Institute

FILM REVIEW: ‘In the Same Boat’

by Guest Contributor | Jan 11, 2017 | Opinion

On January 9th, Zygmund Bauman passed away at the age of 91. He is considered one of the great philosophers and sociologist of our time, who introduced the concept of “liquid modernity” to describe the postmodern age.

He is the main character in the recently released documentary “In the Same Boat” where he urges to tackle global problems on a global scale, and suggests exploring new roads such as a universal basic income.

Read more in this review: “Man vs machine, or man ahead with machine?”

MACHINE VS MAN, OR MAN AHEAD WITH MACHINE?

Written by: Bart Grugeon Plana

In the modern era, digital technology is substituting human brain power in a similar way as the steam engine did in the eighteenth century, making muscle power inefficient. Would it be possible, however, to harness this digital revolution for the benefit of humans and the planet, to share prosperity? The documentary “In the Same Boat,” which is being released in several countries throughout Europe, has opened up this interesting debate.

We are in the middle of a new industrial revolution and with the advance of Artificial Intelligence, this process is affecting an increasing number of sectors in the economy. Not only is traditional blue-collar work being carried out by machines, but also work that requires specifically human capabilities. In the coming years, for instance, the self-driving car will turn the transportation sector on its head.

This revolution in productivity can be seen as good news, since machines will do our traditional work and we can dedicate our time to education, care, hobbies and services. Also, new technologies and the availability of huge amounts of data allow us to optimise the planet’s scarce resources. However, there is no guarantee that the increase of wealth will be spread over the inhabitants of the planet with any criterion of equity. There is a real risk that the ownership of machines will be reduced to a small number of people and that the great majority of the world’s population will be left without the means to generate an income.

Most countries in the world have seen income inequality rise during the last decade, in part because of the technological revolution. Economic data (Link 1) show that since the year 2000, the western economy has invested more in technology and less in human capital. This strategy has endowed innovative entrepreneurs with more benefits, without creating more jobs or raising average incomes. The generated wealth went to a tiny minority. Wealth accumulation can come if you already have financial capital and know how to invest it, but if you depend on selling your skills in the labour market, it becomes more difficult to make a living.

When looking at the data of the concentration of wealth, there isn’t much margin for many interpretations. There are 62 people in the world that are as wealthy as the poorest half of the global population. In the US, the middle class is endangered; in the period of economic recovery between 2009 and 2013, the top one per cent of the population was assigned 25 times more of the national revenue than the rest (Link 2).

Many people feel that they are being excluded from the labour market, and they are aware that they have little chance to win the race against the machines. The solution is to learn to work ahead with technology and to think about a strategy to create wealth together, says Erik Brynjolfsson, an expert in information economy (Link 3).

“We are in full transformation towards the society of the 21th century, and the outcome is still open: either with shared prosperity, or, at the contrary, with more inequality. This decision depends on our individual choices and on our strategy as a society. The power is in our hands. Technology is merely an instrument,” Brynjolfsson said.

RECONCILIATION OF POWER AND POLITICS

Image still from ‘In the Same Boat’

The dominant political debate today doesn’t pay much attention to the digital revolution we are experiencing, and mainly focuses on creating favourable conditions to stimulate companies to create as many jobs as possible.

This way of thinking conforms to the paradigm of the second half of the 20th century, when we got used to the idea of ‘full employment’, explains sociologist Zygmund Bauman (Link 4). In our social consciousness, the normal situation is to be in employment and a person that is ‘un-employed’ does not fit this normality. However, in the new technological world, the techniques of the past don’t seem to work, and a solution for the structural problem of unemployment hasn’t yet been found. In Europe, 8.5 per cent of the active population has no job, with significant regional and age variation (Link 5). The situation in Greece and Spain is the most alarming.

According to Bauman (Link 6), we don’t know how to regain control over our economic system because it operates on a global scale: “With just one click on a computer, a company can decide to move 100.000 jobs from here to another part of the planet where labour conditions are more interesting,” he asserts, “Capital and finance move without restraints, but labour does not.”

Looking for solutions, citizens turn to the political class who ultimately can’t influence the economic decision-making process. “They have a local sphere of action, mainly at the level of the nation-state, but power is organised on a global scale and escapes from political control. This divorce between power and politics is the essence of the problem of our society in transformation”, says Bauman, who considers it is a task of all citizens to reconcile both (Link 7).

For the first time in human history, all inhabitants of the planet are interconnected and are interdependent. If we want to resist the populist and protectionist wave that is extending over the globe after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, we must think about different ways to organise work and to distribute wealth. Several experts insist that we should radically rethink the foundations of our society and they propose an open dialogue to come to sensible solutions.

WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT

The documentary “In the Same Boat” made a momentous effort to open this debate and to project the voices that invoke a new paradigm. Zygmund Bauman, Serge Latouche, Tony Atkinson, Mariana Muzzucato, José Mujica and many others explain why the current labour model has hit a dead end. With a cinematographic style, spectacular photography and a varied musical palette, the film is fresh and inspiring, even whilst dealing with such a weighty subject as the future of humanity.

Zygmund Bauman considers the message of ‘In the Same Boat’ the complete antithesis of Margaret Thatcher’s famous slogan ‘TINA’; claiming that “There Is No Alternative” to the liberalisation of all parts of society as it is the only way to guarantee welfare. On the contrary, the polish sociologist proposes to “change the course of the boat that all inhabitants of the planet are in”. He believes that the new paradigm of the 21st century should cut the ties between income and work. “We should abandon the idea of working to make our living. We cannot condition the right to live to the interests of the company we work for,” he argues (Link 8).

The documentary proposes a universal basic income as one of the solutions to fair wealth redistribution. It is not considered a charity for the misfortunate, but rather a technological dividend of the past — a common right. Mariana Mazzucato (Link 7), an economist specialized in technological innovation, explains that “innovation largely depends on public financing and on a collective effort. Moreover, innovation today is a heritage of discoveries of the past.” In other words, what makes your smartphone smart (battery, GPS, Internet, mathematical algorithms, touch screen, etc.) are no individual or private inventions, but are the result of the effort of society as a whole with publicly-funded research programs. Why is it then that the benefits of this technological heritage go to just a privileged minority? How can it be justified that the cost and the risk of research is burdened by the public, but the rewards are privatised? If technology allows us to delegate work to machines due to the effort of many generations, wouldn’t the legitimate heir be society as a whole?

The film has arrived at the precise moment to put the current economical and institutional crisis into a wider perspective. Hopefully it can help to spark a global debate about the necessary societal changes.

“In the Same Boat” was released in Spain in November 2016 and will be screened in other countries during 2017. Members of the Basic Income Network that want to organise local screenings can contact the team on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/inthesameb.

Included is the trailer of the documentary and the presentation with Zygmund Bauman, talking about the future of work. Barcelona, February 2016.

About the author:
Bart Grugeon Plana works as an investigative journalist for the Barcelona based newspaper La Directa, and collaborates with other news platforms such as Apache.be and Ouishare Magazine. He has a special interest in common-based peer production, collaborative economy, platform cooperativism and energy transition.

Trailer In the Same Boat

Interview with Zygmund Bauman

Link 1 the great decoupling

https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-great-decoupling

Link 2 US inequality

https://www.epi.org/files/pdf/107100.pdf

Link 3 Brynjolfsson

https://raceagainstthemachine.com/

Link 4 Bauman

https://www.socialeurope.eu/2013/05/europe-is-trapped-between-power-and-politics/#

Link 5 EU unemployment

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics#Unemployment_trends

Link 6 Bauman

https://wpfdc.org/images/docs/Zygmunt_Bauman_Living_in_Times_of_Interregnum_Transcript_web_I.pdf

Link 7 Bauman

https://directa.cat/actualitat/zygmund-bauman-ordinadors-poden-fer-nostra-feina-essers-humans-serem-redundants

Link 8 Mazzucato

https://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/

ALASKA, US: Permanent Fund Defenders protest dividend cuts

by Kate McFarland | Jan 9, 2017 | News

A newly launched grassroots campaign is using social media and video to protest recent cuts to the state’s annual dividend.

As reported in previous Basic Income News stories, Alaska Governor Bill Walker vetoed half of the Legislature’s allocations to the 2016 Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD). Often regarded as one of the best examples of “real-world basic income,” the annual PFD provides all Alaskan adults and children with checks of an equal amount, funded by earnings on a permanent fund in which a portion of the state’s oil revenues are invested.

The amount of the PFD reached its peak of $2,072 in 2015. In 2016, it dropped to $1,022 — though it would have been $2,052 absent Walker’s veto.

Although intended to help preserve the PFD during a significant budget crisis, Walker’s action unsurprisingly generated much controversy. State senator Bill Wielechowski filed a lawsuit charging that Walker’s veto was unconstitutional. The suit was dismissed by a superior court judge in November, but Wielechowski has appealed the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.

With the Supreme Court hearing likely not to take place until April or May, a group of 12 lawmakers and activists have launched the nonpartisan grassroots group Permanent Fund Defenders, which advocates for the restoration of the full amount of the PFD. The group currently operates primarily through social media, and has created animated videos describing the history of the PFD (see below).

On its Facebook page, the Permanent Fund Defenders demonstrate solidarity with the Goenchi Mati Movement in the Indian state of Goa (previously profiled in Basic Income News), which promotes the establishment of a permanent fund and citizen’s dividend based on money from the sale of minerals.

More information:

Liz Raines, “Former lawmakers, political activists launch group to block PFD restructure,” KTVA, January 3, 2017.