Ricardo Anaya. Credit to: OMB Online.
Ricardo Anaya, potential candidate for Mexico’s next presidential elections in July 2018, presents an unconditional basic income as his main proposal in matters of social policy. An overview of this proposal, as spoken by Anaya, can be watched in this short video. Here, in general terms, he presents the basic income proposal, describing what are the ten main advantages of its implementation, in his view. Financing it would essentially come from reorganizing public spending and deeply changing social policy programs within the government.
This initiative comes from a joint ticket between the centre-right Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party – PAN) and centre-left Partido de la Revolución Democratica (Party of the Democratic Revolution – PRD), plus leftist Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens Movement – MC), which calls itself Por Mexico al Frente (Put Mexico Ahead, former Frente Ciudadano (Citizen’s Front)). This coalition aims at “winning the Presidency, building a stable majority government and establish the first coalition government in Mexico’s history”, as ex PAN national leader Anaya Cortés has declared.
The basic income proposal under consideration within the bounds of this coalition aims at a 10 000 Pesos (US$537) per year for every Mexican citizen, including children. Jorge Alvarez, a Mexican congressman involved in the plan has said in an interview that financing this could be done by consolidating funds from federal, state and municipal welfare programs. He also added that this basic income for children could be made conditional on school enrolment. That latter comment, of course, deviates from what would be an unconditional basic income, but such condition has been introduced in other proto-basic income-like programs, such as the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. It could then be referred to as an alternative to basic income for children.
Independently, senator Luís Sánchez Jiménez from PRD has requested the Mexican Senate to look into the cost of various minimum income schemes, including universal ones, through its research department. This report will soon be available, authored by John Scott, a professor/researcher in the Department of Economics at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económic (CIDE) in Mexico.
More information at:
Editorial Processo, “PAN, PRD y MC desechan Frente Ciudadano; su alianza se llamará “Por México al Frente” (PAN, PRD and MC discard Frente Ciudadano: their aliance will be called “Por México al Frente”)”, Processo, 8th December 2017
Anthony Esposito, “Checks for free: a Mexican plan to combat poverty”, Reuters, December 6th 2017
I have conducted a political review about the feasibility of implementing UBI in Mexico, the paper is in spanish but please feel free to ask for a translation if interested.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AgdCmVq8jD3Sg7dS-gyNm4wMKP8evg
I’m not an academic, just an avid follower of the subject, Guy Standing mainly, my motivation to do this work was the lack of knowledge and debate about the UBI in Mexico, This year with the presidential elections coming up this subject should permeate on the minds of mexican voters. A lot of the material was translated literally from Guy Standing Interviews I just added the mexican economic and political reality that confronts the implementation of UBI.
Dear Carlos,
The link points to a blank document, with “revision” written on it.
Please send a link to the actual study, and we’ll be happy to reference it on BI News.
Thanks
I am really glad to see this. Having had neighbors who were from Mexico, I know this will help them so much. It will allow them to come to America as a tourist legally.
The basic icome is a principle of justice. It is an acknowledge that poor are poor by condition, not by choice. They were born poor and had not the same opportunities for education than others or had to quit because of need. It is setting an even floor for poor people. If governments continue to play blind towards poor, they will continue to encourage poor to be poor.
Hi Andre.
Since 2016, Congresswoman Araceli Damián presented an initiative to reform the Mexican constitution and create the right to universal citizen income. I share you the league of the latest version. It is a proposal based on the Mexican context, which contemplates several stages of implementation to make it viable and that also incorporates calculations of its impact on the reduction of poverty by income in the country and the sources through which it could be financed.
http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/Gaceta/63/2017/sep/20170912-IV.html#Iniciativa1
She is an important academic, who spoke on this topic in multiple scenarios, I hope you have time to review her work (of which I am part).
Hi Maria,
Thanks a lot. We’ll be producing a news article on this issue.
Best,