by Karl Widerquist | Dec 6, 2011 | News
The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread around the country and around the world in the last few months. It is made up of a diverse group of people with diverse goals, united by one simple idea: to reverse the last 30 years of increasing inequality. The increase in inequality has not only been relative but also absolute. The top 1 percent of the U.S. income distribution has seen enormous growth in income and wealth over the last 30 years, while the bottom 80 to 90 percent have seen almost no real growth in income, wealth, or standard of living.
Within that general focus Occupy Wall Street protestors are talking about many different specific policies, and among them is the Basic Income Guarantee. One blog, which managed to get quoted in Forbes Magazine listed BIG as one of the key demands of protestors. This appears to be an exaggeration, but a lively discussion of BIG is underway on the Occupy Wall Street website.
For the BIG discussion on the OWS Website, go to:
https://occupywallst.org/forum/basic-income-guarantee-for-the-us/
The blog post mentioned above is, “Parsing the Data and Ideology of the We Are 99% Tumblr:”
https://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/parsing-the-data-and-ideology-of-the-we-are-99-tumblr/
The Forbes article about the protestors’ demands is, “Understanding What the Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want”:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/10/11/understanding-what-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-want/
by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 5, 2011 | Opinion
Thomas Paine and many other libertarians concerned with fundamental human rights, dreamt of the day when no one would suffer from want and basic income security should be garanteed to all. The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) promotes the idea among all countries. In Brazil, Senator Eduardo M. Suplicy has been the champion for the basic income, here called “Renda Básica de Cidadania – RBC” or citizen’s basic income.
Brazil developed gradually, since 1994, programs do help the poor. The Lula government united social programs that were dispersed and created the “Bolsa Família Program”, a system of conditional transfer of money linked to school attendance and vaccination. The family income has to be below a defined amount to qualify for the benefits. The program has been a great success. Nevertheless conditionalities require a large bureaucracy to monitor beneficiaries. Senator Suplicy introduced a bill to create an unconditional basic income for all and President Lula sanctioned the law in 2004.
Suplicy’s efforts triggered initiatives by ReCivitas (1). This small organization tried to start a pilot experiment in Paranapiacaba, based on withdrawals from a fund belonging to all, without success. Then ReCivitas started a mini-pilot experiment, using money from donors, to pay a RBC to almost 90 people in a rural “bairro” in São Paulo state. That experiment is doing well and has been described in BIEN’s Newsflash 65, november 2011.
The encounter of Suplicy and the mayor of Santo Antonio do Pinhal, a small city (~7,000 people) at the Mantiqueira mountains in São Paulo, started another effort to bring the idea to a real test. Volunteers explained the idea in meetings at schools, churches, and community spaces. In 2009 the town deputies sanctioned a law, presented by the mayor, that created a town’s fund to be fed by 6% of the city’s earnings. The rest was supposed to be provided by donors. The experiment was analysed by NEPP (2) a organization that is part of UNICAMP (3) and funded by CAF (4). A group of volunteers provided data about the town and stats were recorded, without any clear recommendation. Simultaneously Anthony Baert, from the Economics School of Louvain, Belgium, joined NEPP, had access to the same data, and published his own study (see BIEN’s Newsflash 65) of the known basic income experiments around the world, with an analysis of the existing proposal for Santo Antonio do Pinhal (5). His conclusion stated:
“based on this research, we make recommendations for the implantation of the Citizen’s Basic Income in Santo Antônio do Pinhal (Brazil). We conclude that it is not viable on the short and medium term and we suggest instead to first launch a five-year pilot project.”
We have been aware of the enormous difficulties to implement a fund-based solution to RBC for Santo Antonio do Pinhal. A Basic Income Grant (BIG) Bank is providing the resources at Quatinga Velho representing around 90 persons (see BIEN’s Newsflash 65). Anyone can imagine the difficulties to implement a funding through regular withdrawals from financial investments even for a small city. Above all, we believe that RBC is a basic right and should not depend on donations of any type, although welcome. This right must be provided by the federal government.
As a large proportion of the poor receive already from Bolsa Família, the transition to RBC is a thorny problem considering all that has been invested so far. Also the costs to switch to the universal and unconditional system of RBC right away, would seen dounting.
We believe that the solution to gradually implement the RBC, as President Lula’s 2004 sanctioned law demands, is to define a future date, say January 1, 2013. All children born in Brazil since that day will be registered as recipients of a monthly value (say R$ 50.00 or R$ 100,00) delivered to his mother or legal guardian.
Less than 2-4 billion reais would be used at the first year in Brazil. For Santo Antonio do Pinhal, 60,000 reais would pay the first year, below the 90,000 reais that the law already sanctioned, and reserved annualy for the RBC fund. Bureaucracy involved would be minimal, there will be no conflict with the Bolsa Família program, the implementation will be progressive, viable, manageable and definitive. The RBC gradually will substitute for the Bolsa Família program.
Sustainability at its core is to manage resources wisely. We side with the great Julian L. Simon (6): the most important natural resource is human creativity. Educated and creative human beings are the scarce and precious “material” we need. They will turn natural materials (ores, oil, land, sea, waters, space, etc) and existing knowledge and technologies (history, humanities, biology, physics, chemistry, etc) into valuable and life enhancing assets. Possibly the most important task is to garantee that the coming generations will receive full support in terms of education and health. This is not possible without a measure of income security that the RBC could provide. We must start right away – the pressures of an increasingly old population will tax the young of the future in unprecedented ways. Caring for them is caring for the future of people and environment.
1 ReCivitas – Instituto pela Revitalização da Cidadania – www.recivitas.org.br
2 NEPP – Núcleo de Estudos de Políticas Públicas
3 UNICAMP – Universidade Estadual de Campinas
4 CAF – Confederação Andina de Fomento
5 Anthony Baert – https://www.proac.uff.br/cede/sites/default/files/TD54.pdf
6 Julian L. Simon – The ultimate resource 2 – 1996 – Princeton University Press
Marina Pasetto Nobrega and Francisco G. Nobrega
maripnobrega@gmail.com or francisco.nobrega@gmail.com
Santo Antonio do Pinhal, Novembro de 2011
by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 4, 2011 | News
According to the press release of the Pirate Party from the December 3, 2011, the party argued about and adopted a resolution in support of Basic Income and minimum wages at its party convention in Offenbach.
After a debate, which took about two hours, the motion “Unconditional Basic Income and Minimum Wages” was carried by 66.9 percent and reached the necessary supermajority. The result shows the long, engaged and controversial discussion. Now the motion is part of the election manifesto for the next federal elections in 2013 in Germany.
The party understands the Unconditional Basic Income as: Insurance for the existence and social participation, as well as a guaranteed individual legal title without means test, compulsion to work or any other reward. Because its implementation will be a change of the paradigm in welfare policy, the launch of a public discussion beforehand is necessary. For that reason, the Pirate Party wants to fund an enquiry commission within the German Bundestag to workout new and evaluate existing models. One of the models should be elected by a national referendum. Until the implementation of an Unconditional Basic Income, the Pirate Party endorses a federal legal minimum wage.
According to GoogleNews more than 600 articles were published on this topic, including by leading nationwide newspapers. One of them, the Süddeutsche, spoke with Sebastian Nerz, the party leader, about Basic Income. He said, he was not convinced, even if he know, that it might be possible. But he wished, that the Party would have dealt with a more concrete model beforehand.
This article says further that Nerz is not alone with his opinion, because a few other members were concerned that the motion was too universal. On the one hand, it says nothing about the amount of the Basic Income (could be 500 or 2.000 Euro). On the other hand, it is not clear how to fund the scheme and which influence it would have on the political economy.
In another interview with Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party, from the 15th November 2011 with EurActiv.com he was asked, which issues are especially important to be addressed on a supranational level and which issues are more relevant for the national level. He answered, that topics as a Basic Income, possession of soft drugs and free public transport, are more national and even regional issues of the German Pirates.
-Joerg Drescher
For articles on this topic go to:
Press release of the Pirate Party: https://www.piratenpartei.de/Pressemitteilung/piraten-sprechen-sich-f%C3%BCr-bedingungsloses-grundeinkommen-und-mindestlohn-aus
Article in the Süddeutsche: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/piraten-votieren-fuer-grundeinkommen-vage-statt-gewagt-1.1225882
Interview with Christian Engström: https://www.euractiv.com/infosociety/pirate-mep-expect-party-grow-interview-508952
by Sandro Gobetti | Dec 2, 2011 | News
The Italian basic income network BIN-Italy wrote an open letter to the new Prime Minister Mario Monti, and the new Minister for Labour and Social Policy Elsa Fornero. In this letter, BIN-Italia urges the Italian government to implement an unconditional guaranteed income. This is meant to avoid the risk of “default of citizenship rights”, and allow Italy to meet the European standard protection of human dignity. Below is an English translation of the letter (the Italian version is at: https://www.bin-italia.org/article.php?id=1612
Open letter to
the Prime Minister Mario Monti
and Minister for Labour and Social Policy
Prof. Elsa Fornero
“Please, Hurry up!”
Call for the introduction of an unconditional guaranteed income
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
We would like to address you in the early stages of your new government in order to highlight the plight of social emergency prevailing in our country and ask you to find a solution to it.
The terms “emergency” and “exceptionality” have been both used referring to the international economic crisis that we are forced to face to the point that they brought about the choice of forming of a new government and implementing austere economic policies.
We believe that there is an even more urgent emergency to deal with. We refer to the social emergency that our country has been experiencing for years and that the crisis has turned into an “existential” emergency. Only a few data will be enough to show the necessity and urgency of implementing support measures in favour of citizens: 13.8 percent of Italy’s population lives in poverty (source: Caritas, October 2011), over the last year shoplifting basic necessities increased by 7.8 percent (for a total of 3 billion per year, according to the “Global Retail Theft Barometer” produced by the Centre for Retail Research in October 2011), in 2011 more than 2.5 million of young people are without jobs and excluded from education or training while in 2006 they were 824.000, only 1 out of 4 unemployed workers can find a job within a year and when they find it it is a precarious job, (data produced by Bank of Italy in November 2011). These few data, that you certainly know well, help us understand that we are facing an alarming situation of “social emergency” that needs an immediate response. Our warning cry is therefore turned to the new government to whom we loudly say “Please, Hurry up!”
We know very well your firm intention to steer the government’s decisions in the direction of the recommendations of the European Union. And referring to Europe, we can’t help but notice that the Council has been inviting Italy for years to fight against what it calls the “segmentation” of the labour market. Besides, in recent documents the Council has constantly requested Italy to implement measures for precarious and young people and adopt inclusive and universal forms of unemployment benefit and efficient income support measures. As a matter of fact, since 1992 the Council has invited us with Recommendation 92/441 to commit ourselves to adopt measures to guarantee minimum income in order to strengthen the European social model. As you certainly know Italy is one of the few countries in Europe not to have any measure of minimum income for those who are facing unemployment or economic difficulties. It is no accident that on the 3rd of October 2005 Eurostat indicated “Italy as one of the countries most at risk of poverty” identifying “42 percent of the total population” at risk of exclusion in the next fifteen or twenty years.
We all know that in many European countries when people lose their jobs they are granted unemployment benefits (in Italy only 17.2 percent of unemployed are granted such benefit, against 94.7 percent in the Netherlands, 91.8 percent in Belgium, 70.9 percent in France and 80 percent in Germany) and we also know that when this type of measure ends people are granted social assistance corresponding to the minimum income. They are not symbolic benefits as the average amount is around 600 euros a month. We also know that in addition to those benefits our fellow European citizens in need are granted rent, transport and child allowances.
We are confident that the domestic and European scenario is quite clear to you, that you know better than us the figures of the crisis and its dramatic effects, that the Government chaired by you will assess, under the open method of coordination, both the measures implemented in the European welfare states and the best practices developed. We are also confident that you are surely aware that Italy is still lagging behind as regards the guaranteed minimum income schemes in force in other countries, so as to make us say that today we can be one of those countries that may even exceed and improve the effectiveness of the traditional forms of income support that are present in other European countries by implementing an unconditional guaranteed income.
We wish to emphasize once again that the existential condition of people in need is dramatic if not explosive, therefore we suggest that you immediately put the study of appropriate measures able to face the social emergency on the government’s agenda. We particularly refer here to an unconditional guaranteed income (a measure that goes beyond a generalized unemployment benefit as it should be granted to all workers who are not entitled to the unemployment benefit) as an instrument to affirm a new social right.
We know that many will argue that this measure is expensive, but we also know that not having such a measure will actually cost much more both in economic terms and in terms of social cohesion. Let alone the cost we will pay in terms of guaranteeing rights, recognising full citizenship, impoverishing society as a whole.
Being part of “Europe” does not only imply a commitment to defending the common currency. It especially implies the actual protection of those rights that let all citizens feel as part of a common project where their personal dignity is not trampled on and they are able to play an active role in the cultural, political and social life of both our country and Europe. Now is the time: an unconditional guaranteed income is feasible, necessary and essential.
The risk of “default of citizenship rights and dignity of the person” is at stake. For this reason we ask you to act as soon as possible. Therefore, we are saying “Please, Hurry up!”
We rely on your sensibility and we expect the guaranteed minimum income to become a reality for all Italian citizens as soon as possible.
Best regards,
Bin Italia
