In recent months, there have been two online efforts to get the idea of Basic Income in front of lawmakers, both in the USA and the UK.
The first one is an e-petition, launched in October by UK Independent politician Pete Higgens, which was reported on previously by BINews. After a slow start, the petition was mentioned by the popular British blog Another Angry Voice and as a result became the most trending petition at least twice. The total amount of signatures currently stands at over 3,000 with 100,000 needed for it to be discussed by lawmakers in the House of Commons. The petition lasts a year and will end in October 2015.
Another effort in the USA is a result of the Big Ideas project, a project launched in December 2014 by the Progressive Change Institute and has the aim of getting crowdsourced ideas in front of US lawmakers. 30 members of Congress have already comitted to taking a ‘serious look’ at the top 20 most voted ideas on the site. Currently there is an idea which quotes Martin Luther King and proposes a Jobs Guarantee or ‘if impractical’, a ‘Guaranteed Annual Income’. This idea has trended repeatedly since the launch of the site and is currently the fifth highest voted idea with over 4,000 votes. There is also another idea which mentions just a Universal Basic Income Guarantee which has over 1,500 votes and was previously in the top 20 but despite trending a number of times, has since fallen below that number.
For more information see:
Pete Higgens, “Replace the Benefits System with a Universal Basic Income for all”, HM Government, 30 October 2014
Progressive Change Institute, “Big Ideas Project”, Progressive Change Institute, December 2014
And tax land ownership to fund it.