On September 13, the German Netzwerk Grundeinkommen celebrates its 10th anniversary with a big party in the Mauersegler beer garden and club in Berlin from 1 pm to 3 am. Everyone is invited to come. There will be songs, poems, talks, street theater, a fantastic live band and DJ music.
[Josh Martin]
Martin Bohmeyer, a 29-year-old web developer in Germany, has been living on a self-imposed basic income for the past half of a year. He crowdfunded this basic income and after seeing its effects firsthand, Bohmeyer is now crowdfunding even more to finance other peoples’ basic incomes. His initiative, “Mein Grundeinkommen” has already raised enough for almost two full basic incomes of €12,000 per year. Bohmeyer encourages his website visitors to submit their information to possibly be one of the winners of a basic income. The winners are to be chosen at random, but this project has generated responses from people saying what they would do with a basic income.
For more information, read the following links:
“Should we all get €12,000 a year?” The Local, 25 July 2014.
Should we all get €12,000 a year? (Source: The Local)
Werner Rätz, of Attac Germany’s working group enough for all, gave a lecture on 10 April in Brussels entitled, “UBI, Health, Degrowth.” According to Ratz, although the subjects of health and degrowth are closely linked to UBI, the UBI-movement has paid low attention to them up to now.
ABSTRACT: This paper deals with the effects of implementing a basic income on the labor supply side. The German welfare as well as tax and social contributions system are investigated. The results clarify that the abolishment of the so-called unemployment trap due to a basic income policy is a decisive advantage of this approach. In order to demonstrate possible labor supply side reactions to a basic income policy, we use the neoclassical labor supply model and adapt it for our purposes. We compare the effects of implementing a basic income on different types of employees concerning their consumption preferences. We show that, even in the neoclassical labor supply model without intrinsic work motivation, the basic income increases the participation rate in the labor market. Furthermore, current employees are partially incited to increase their labor supply. Therefore, a basic income would not only reduce unemployment but could also expand the magnitude of employment.
Gilroy Bernard Michael, Heimann Anastasia, & Schopf Mark, 2013. “Basic Income and Labour Supply: The German Case,” Basic Income Studies, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 43-70, July.
![By René Spalek (Own work) [CC-BY-2.0-de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADr._Wolfgang_Strengmann-Kuhn%2C_MdB.jpg "By René Spalek (Own work) [CC-BY-2.0-de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons")
Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn (2013)
At the end of January Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn regained a place in the German parliament with the Green Party. He had served as member of parliament from 2008 until 2013, but this year he took over from Priska Hinz, an opponent of Basic Income.
A key batttleground is HartzIV, the basic unemployment benefit in Germany. Strengmann-Kuhn has called on the government to make big changes to the current system, with latest figures showing increasing numbers of recipients receiving cuts to their benefits.
As a co-founder of the German BIEN, Strengmann-Kuhn has numerous Basic Income-related publications and will argue for it amongst policy makers.
For more information, see (in German):
Herbert Wilkens, “Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn wieder Bundestagsabgeordneter [Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn again a member of the Bundestag]”, Netzwerk Grundeinkommen, February 21 2014
Christoph Cuntz, “Erneut als Nachrücker in den Bundestag [Again as successor in the parliament]”, Oberhessische Zeitung, January 8 2014
Markus Sievers, “Mehr Sanktionen gegen Hartz-IV-Bezieher [More sanctions against Hartz IV recipients]”, Berliner Zeitung, March 16 2014
