NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

NEW BOOK: Call for authors for Palgrave Macmillan Basic Income handbook (edited by Malcolm Torry)

Malcolm Torry, Director of the UK-based Citizen’s Income Trust, Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, and General Manager of BIEN, has signed a contract with the publisher Palgrave Macmillan to edit An International Handbook of Basic Income.

Torry is currently recruiting authors of each of the book’s chapters (listed below). The publisher has issued the following the call for authors:

Palgrave Macmillan is planning to publish An International Handbook on Basic Income, which it intends to be a definitive guide to the current state of the debate.

The editor, Dr. Malcolm Torry, is seeking chapter authors who will represent the best available scholarship from around the world.

A few of the chapters will be commissioned: but for most of them the editor is seeking expressions of interest.

If you would like to express an interest in writing one or more of the chapters then please contact him at generalmanager@basicincom.org or info@citizensincome.org with a CV and a list of publications on Basic Income. Bids for individual chapters from two or three authors from different parts of the world will be particularly welcome.

Dr. Torry will be at the BIEN Congress in Lisbon from the 25th to the 27th September, and he would very much welcome discussions with prospective authors or groups of authors.

The table of contents is as follows:

Part I: The concept of Basic Income

  1. The definition and characteristics of a Basic Income
  2. The history of Basic Income
  3. The anatomy of a global debate

Part II: The effects of Basic Income

  1. Employment market effects
  2. Social effects
  3. Economic effects
  4. Ecological effects
  5. Gender effects

Part III: Implementation of Basic Income

  1. The anatomy of a Basic Income scheme
  2. The administration of a Basic Income scheme
  3. Costings for Basic Income
  4. The framing of Basic Income
  5. The feasibility of Basic Income
  6. Alternatives to Basic Income
  7. The funding of Basic Income
  8. The implementation of a Basic Income scheme
  9. Objections to Basic Income
  10. An illustrative Basic Income scheme

Part IV: Pilot projects and other experiments

  1. Canada and the USA
  2. Brazil
  3. Iran
  4. Namibia
  5. India
  6. Switzerland
  7. Finland
  8. The Netherlands

Part V: The political economy of Basic Income

  1. Libertarian arguments for Basic Income
  2. Left wing arguments for Basic Income
  3. Neoliberal arguments for Basic Income
  4. Human rights arguments for Basic Income
  5. The justice of Basic Income
  6. The ethics of Basic Income

Blank book photo CC BY 2.0 kate hiscock

UK: Book Launch of Malcolm Torry’s Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy

UK: Book Launch of Malcolm Torry’s Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy

Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and former minister of the Church of England, has published Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy.

The book’s publisher (Darton, Longman, Todd) provides this summary:

Citizen’s Basic Income – often called ‘Universal Basic Income’ or simply ‘Basic Income’ – is an act of grace. It is an unconditional income paid automatically to every individual as a right of citizenship and operates on a similar principle to the National Health Service – free at point of use for every legal resident.

As a national social policy, reforming the UK’s benefits system, Citizen’s Basic Income would recognise God’s equal treatment of every person while recognising individuality and celebrating God-given abundance. It would provide for the poor, be non-judgemental and recognise our mutual dependency. It would facilitate liberty, the duty to serve and a more just society, while both relativising and enhancing the family and inspiring us all to be co-creators.

The idea of an unconditional payment for every citizen has been around at least since the eighteenth century. In the modern day Malcolm Torry and the Citizen’s Income Trust have promoted debate and understanding of its feasibility. In this book Torry explains the models by which Citizen’s Basic Income could work, and demonstrates the association between Citizen’s Basic Income and Christianity. He calls for greater Church involvement in a wide-ranging debate on the subject.

In addition to his work with the Citizen’s Income Trust, Torry is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and, as of May 2017, General Manager of BIEN.

 

September Launch Event in Birmingham

While Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy was published in September 2016, its launch event will take place in September 2017: Torry will speak on Tuesday, September 12, at St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.  

The event is open individuals of any faith or none.

Tea, coffee, and biscuits (US English: cookies) will be served at the beginning of the event.

More information is available on the event’s Facebook page.


Photo: Detail of “The Adoration of the Magi” in St Martin in the Bull Ring, CC BY-NC 2.0 KotomiCreations

Louise Haagh appointed Chair of BIEN, Malcolm Torry as General Manager

Louise Haagh appointed Chair of BIEN, Malcolm Torry as General Manager

Louise Haagh (formerly co-chair of BIEN) has become Chair of BIEN following Karl Widerquist’s resignation as co-chair.

This marks the first time in BIEN’s 31 year history that the organization has been under the leadership of a single chair rather than two co-chairs. As previously announced, Widerquist will temporarily assume the newly created position of Vice Chair until BIEN’s 2018 Congress.

Haagh is a Reader in Politics at the University of York and co-editor of the journal Basic Income Studies. Prior to her appointment as Chair, she had served as co-chair of BIEN since 2014. Haagh has recently been nominated as a fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of Arts (RSA) for her contribution to the public debate about basic income. Her recent publications on the topic include an article in the journal Nature (“Basic income as a pivoting reform”), and she is currently working on a book titled Basic Income, Welfare Systems and Human Development Freedom for Palgrave MacMillan. Among other activities, Haagh spoke on basic income at the annual convention of the Danish political party Alternativet held at the end of May. Earlier in the year, she served as a witness at an oral evidence session on basic income convened by the Work and Pensions Committee of the UK’s House of Commons.

 

Malcolm Torry

Coincident with Haagh’s appointment as Chair, Malcolm Torry (formerly co-secretary of BIEN) has assumed the new position of General Manager.

In this capacity, Torry will undertake tasks delegated to him by the Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary. Torry has simultaneously withdrawn from his role in BIEN’s Executive Committee, making Julio Aguirre the organization’s only current Secretary.

Torry is the Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust, a UK-based affiliate of BIEN, which he cofounded in 1984. His recent publications on basic income include Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy and The Feasibility of Citizen’s Income.

 

The appointments of Haagh as Chair and Torry as General Manager were approved at a meeting of BIEN’s Executive Committee on May 23, 2017.


Post reviewed by Dave Clegg.

Top photo: Louise Haagh at the 2016 UBI-Nordic Conference.

Malcolm Torry, “Citizen’s Income: Both Feasible And Useful”

Malcolm Torry, “Citizen’s Income: Both Feasible And Useful”

Malcolm Torry (Director of the UK BIEN affiliate Citizen’s Income Trust, Co-Secretary of BIEN, and Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics) has published a recent defense of basic income in the online periodical Social Europe.

Focusing on the example of the UK, Torry argues that a basic income can be afforded by adjusting current systems of taxation and benefits. On the scheme that Torry recommends, means-tested benefits would remain in place, but the amount received by each household or individual would be recalculated to account for the amount of basic income. Citing work by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Torry maintains that a 3% increase in income tax is sufficient to fund a basic income for the UK that would reduce poverty and inequality at zero net cost, while also allowing many households to move off means-tested programs.

In the past few months, Social Europe has seen a volley of publications on the topic of basic income, including a defense by BIEN Co-Chair Louise Haagh, and varied critical perspectives from Kemal Dervis, Anke Hassel, Francine Mestrum, and Social Europe Editor-in-Chief Henning Meyer.

 

Full Article:

Malcolm Torry, “Citizen’s Income: Both Feasible And Useful“, Social Europe, April 10, 2017.


Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan

Photo CC BY-SA 2.0 Ken Teegardin

UK: Malcolm Torry lecture on “Money for everyone”

UK: Malcolm Torry lecture on “Money for everyone”

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