by Karl Widerquist | Nov 25, 2012 | News
Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress: Basic Income and Economic Citizenship
Thursday May 9th to Saturday May 11th, 2013
Sheraton Hotel and Towers, New York City
The Twelfth Annual North American Basic Income Congress, Basic Income and Economic Citizenship, will take place in New York City on Thursday, May 9th through Saturday, May 11th, 2013. The congress is organized by the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in cooperation with the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN/RCRG), and will be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA). Attendees at the North American Basic Income Congress are welcome to attend any of the EEA’s events.
Featured speakers include Carole Pateman, UCLA and Cardiff University, co-author of Basic Income Worldwide: Horizons of Reform; Sheri Berman, Barnard College, author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century; Jurgen De Wispelaere, University of Montréal, co-editor of The Ethics of Stakeholding; David Casassas, University of Barcelona, co-editor of Basic Income in the Age of Great Inequalities; James Riccio, MDRC, co-author of “Toward Reduced Poverty Across Generations: Early Findings from New York City’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program;” Darrick Hamilton, The New School, co-author of “Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?” and Evelyn Forget, University of Manitoba, author of “The Town with No Poverty: A history of the North American Guaranteed Annual Income Social Experiments.”
All points of view are welcome, and proposals from any discipline are invited. For more information see the call for papers at: www.usbig.net.
Or contact the congress organizer, Almaz Zelleke of USBIG, at azelleke@gmail.com.
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: November 30th, 2012
by Sandro Gobetti | Nov 25, 2012 | News
A conference entitled “The Right to Work and the Right to Basic Income” has been held at the Council Chamber in the City Hall of Castel Madama, a municipality in the Province of Rome, Italy, on the 13th November 2012. The event included a series of speeches given by spokespersons of grassroots social organisations, members of unions and political parties. The Conference represented an occasion to release figures and statistical data on job losses, job cuts and workers’ resignation to finding a new job. Also, it included the screening of the video entitled Se potessi avere… [If I could have…] which highlights stories and accounts by unemployed, precarious workers and workers on redundancy payment in the municipality of Castel Madama.
The speakers included Maria Pia Pizzolante who is a spokesperson of TILT – a grassroots social organisation – Sandro Gobetti who is the coordinator of BIN Italia, Canio Calitri who is the General Secretary of the union FIOM-CGIL Lazio, and Paolo Cento who is a member of the political party SEL – Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (Left Ecology Freedom). The presence of organisations with different political background ensured a balanced conference where advocates for workers’ rights and proponents of basic income could share their views. The event has been organised by the political party SEL (Left Ecology Freedom)
https://www.bin-italia.org/
by Sandro Gobetti | Nov 24, 2012 | News
The political and cultural association Umbrialeft has organised a meeting entitled “Talk about Guaranteed Minimum Income”, that was held on the 10th November 2012 in Spoleto, Italy. The meeting was attended by Sandro Gobetti, coordinator of BIN Italia and Alessandra Massari who is the coordinator of the political party SEL – Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (Left Ecology Freedom) in Spoleto. The event has been coordinated by Stefano Vinti.
In recent years, in Italy, despite the misery of the Italian welfare state and social protection system an innovative and lively debate on these issues has developed. Although Italy is, along with Greece, the only European country lacking a universal income support scheme many scholars have managed to mix the different levels of the debate on basic income in an original and promising way. The proposal of a popular initiative bill on guaranteed income in Italy that has been launched in June 2012 (and that continues to gather great support) will end in December 2012. The objective is to collect at least fifty thousand signatures but much more can be done. Collecting thousands of signatures results in a very important political and social signal both for Italian society and politics. The campaign in favour of guaranteed minimum income represents therefore a great opportunity to boost a new era of social rights.
https://www.bin-italia.org/
by Yannick Vanderborght | Nov 22, 2012 | Research
The proposal of a basic income is intensely debated internationally as well as in Germany. While – up to now – the debate mostly concentrated on normative issues the discussion on pathways to a basic income is still at the beginning. The edited volume with contributions in German and English will contribute to the emerging debate on most likely and realistic pathways to a basic income.
In the first section of the book the debate on pathways to basic income is located in a broader framework of social reform strategies and developments. In the second section different proposals on first steps towards a basic income are discussed. The last section deals with model projects and social experiments. The volume includes contributions of Stephan Lessenich, Philippe van Parijs/Yannick Vanderborght, Dirk Jacobi, Sebastian Duwe/Milena Büch/Nicholas Bardsley, Ulrike Herrmann, Katja Kipping, Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn, Franz Segbers, Götz Werner/André Presse, Susanne Wiest, Johannes Terwitte and Guy Standing.
Full references: Dirk Jacobi/Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn/Bildungswerk Berlin der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (eds.), 2012, Wege zum Grundeinkommen, Berlin: Bildungswerk Berlin der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
The book is available for free download.
https://www.bildungswerk-boell.de/downloads/Wege_zum_Grundeinkommen.pdf
by Karl Widerquist | Nov 22, 2012 | News
Two videos on Guaranteed Annual (Basic) Income in the Canadian context, featuring Senator Hugh Segal, can be found on the TVO website:
Politics Around Poverty (49 minutes):
https://ww3.tvo.org/video/184975/politics-around-poverty
What Do You Think of “Guaranteed Annual Income”? (2 minutes):
https://theagenda.tvo.org/blog/agenda-blogs/what-do-you-think-guaranteed-annual-income
