In April BIEN’s Executive Committee agreed some plans to feature the growing public attention around basic income as a response to the Coronavirus crisis, in an informative and critical way. We launched the new BIEN Bulletin, which is up and running. We also agreed a BIEN zoom-cast to be anchored by Louise Haagh, Sarath Davala and Jamie Cook. Finally, BIEN’s academic blog the Navigator, will feature the Covid-crisis in its first edition, to be launched this Autumn.
We are pleased today to publish the first episode of the BIEN Conversations Zoom Cast, in which some of the general themes we envisage will run through the series of dialogues are sketched.
To watch the video, click here.
The Zoom Cast does not aim to generate BIEN positions, and does not reflect BIEN positions. The opinions of the anchors and guests are their own.
The aim of the Zoom cast is to fill a gap in the coverage of Covid and basic income, by reflecting critically on both the opportunities and risks which this new context for the discussion about basic income creates.
What is the relationship of a prospective basic income with other economic security schemes, such as Furlough in Britain? How does the existing labour market affect the need for cash grants and the government response? What can we learn from cases such as the US, where the government has extended what looks like a rich-tested temporary UBI, in the form of flat income grants to individuals of 1200$ (for anyone earning less than 125K$)? To what extent it this response a feature of the US labour market context, including the spectre of huge job losses? In India and parts of Eastern Europe, with large labour migrant populations being either stuck or forced to return to their home country without income security, the role of a potential temporary unconditional cash grant scheme addresses deeper problems of labour migration.
What about the preparedness for Covid in different countries? Are there lessons for basic income from the differences in state capacity and social organisation which country responses to Covid reveal? For example, countries which have been able to track and reduce instances of Covid have needed less extensive lock-down restrictions and in turn the economic outlook may be better. Contrasting examples show vividly how the need for and capacity to support basic income-like schemes and transitions may be at odds: greater need often comes with less capacity. What implications can we draw of relevance for the wider debate from this sort of scenario?
Other issues the Zoom cast series hopes to cover include the relationship of basic income debate, rationale, and prospects with larger questions affecting the conditions in which basic income be can be realised and be effective. Relevant background factors include post-covid servicing and potential restructuring or relief of public debt, and government-led choices about austerity versus social investment. Debates which pit basic income against other public policy measures will be more likely where short-term debt servicing trumps long-term social investment and planning. Some say that short-term recovery measures can be turned into a permanent basic income scheme. But is it that simple? How do administrative, political and funding logics intersect? What is already clear is that in the post-covid context the debates about what motivates basic income, and if choices need to be made, which features of a UBI matters most in a transitional context, will only become more urgent. Perhaps we need to accept these choices and their answers will look different in different places. A theme that has always motivated me however is the importance in general of emphasizing basic income as an institutional innovation, which is linked not only with unconditionality but also with the scheme’s permanency.
Permanency is key to a UBI’s impact on health and motivation, and thus the sense of freedom, and to the potential to support other public policies. Without permanency, the fit of basic income to other economic institutions and to development transitions such as towards a green economy, are harder to envisage.
Permanency of basic income is accepted as an inbuilt feature of UBI by most experts, but it is lost sight of in public debates in favour of short-term needs – understandably, and this tendency becomes naturally more prominent in crisis conditions. However, being able to maintain a long-term perspective, with an eye on the advantages of permanence can also be argued to be even more important at critical junctures such as these, including to avoid an impression that basic income is essentially a crisis or anti-poverty measure.
All these considerations, and many others, are harder to balance in moments of, respectively, opportunity and crisis.
In the Bien Conversations series, we hope to raise some of these and other issues through a dialogue that engages events, and their regional dimensions, whilst also brining the long-standing debates to bear on our reflections.
The format of the Conversations series will be a discussion of the news and events, combined with a focus on regional experiences and on topical issues, led by the anchors and with the presence of guests from around the world.
feature the growing public attention around basic income as a response to the Coronavirus crisis.
Louise Haagh, BIEN Chair
To watch the video, click here.
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Why no critical debate about the equal inclusion of each human being on the planet in a globally standard process of money creation?
An agreement, for a rule to govern international banking: All sovereign debt shall be financed with equal quantum Shares of global fiat credit, that may be claimed by each adult human being on the planet, held in trust with local deposit banks, administered by local fiduciaries and actuaries exclusively for secure sovereign investment, at a fixed and sustainable rate, as part of an actual local social contract.
If you can’t provide a moral and ethical justification for the current process of money creation, or deny the ethical basis for the rule of inclusion, or provide argument against, why refuse to honestly discuss the structural emancipation of humanity?
I think there are a variety of reasons why this debate isn’t happening. I think most of it is fear of the unknown, possibly greed, and ideological struggles. Ultimately money commands resources which are limited and unequally distributed, often vastly so. The people who have the vast majority of the money and resources won’t embrace such a bold idea unless they can be convinced that they will not lose or, better yet, be better off. I don’t think they’ll be swayed by a purely moral argument.
The only reason to oppose the equal inclusion of each human being on the planet in a globally standard process of money creation, is because one doesn’t want some included.
“Money Creation” by stephenstillwell https://link.medium.com/UvEAhrK2J6
Please no more useless debates, this just prolongs the problems , I know debates are financed and create jobs but create jobs but we need to get with IMPLEMENTATION now.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+grunch+of+giants+chapter+6
All instructions in that video link above, left by scientist Buckminster Fuller.
The development of UBI will not conform to a rational ordered path dreamed of by us thinkers. I would hope that the end point would be a world system for UBI, but the first steps can only be undertaken within existing political units.
We should put aside the meaningless or degrading “experiments” in UBI, which are incompatible. The clue is in the word Universal. Well, we have not got so far in space travel, let alone world government, so UBI must start at a lower level, but not at a lower level than the nation state for its results to be meaningful.
It is a small step for conservative forces to accept UBI as a measure of efficiency to do away with the expensive and cumbersome mechanisms needed to separate sheep from goats in existing welfare schemes.
I aim, and I think most supporters of UBI do also, for the rate at which a UBI is set would be mechanism to redistribute wealth from the wealthy and the prosperous to the the poor and and the less poor. To have any meaningful effect UBI would have to be accompanied by increased taxation at the higher levels.
More than this being desirable, this is necessary to transform the engine of the economy away from grotesque accumulation of wealth and frantic competitive consumerism which has led to the ecological crisis the world faces.
Action restrictions by corona reduce the economy.
It reduces corporate profits and people’s income. (It reduces the income of the wealthy and the profits of large corporations too.)
That reduces tax revenues such as income tax and consumption tax.
Therefore, in the age of corona pandemic, isn’t the basic income due to tax revenues difficult?
Universal basic Income will always be difficult because it will always be opposed by the rich and the better off as long as it is set at a level which involves a redistribution of wealth. There will never be a right time.
It is getting attention at this time of crisis, and it is this type of critical time that new ideas and concepts come to the fore, and give possibilities for advances
During the period of the corona pandemic, the income of the wealthy has also declined.
In other words, the total income of the people is decreasing.
When introducing a basic income based on tax revenue in such a situation, it is necessary to increase the tax more than in normal times.
Or if I don’t increase the tax, I think I need to lower the amount of basic income.
During the period of the corona pandemic, the income of the wealthy has also declined.
In other words, the total income of the people is decreasing.
When introducing a basic income based on tax revenue in such a situation, it is necessary to increase the tax more than in normal times.
Or if don’t increase the tax, I think that need to lower the amount of basic income.
At a more fundamental level….
Have you thought about code, including monetary code, in a physics, evolution & complexity context?
eg
“The story of human intelligence starts with a universe that’s capable of encoding information.” Ray Kurzweil — How To Create A Mind
eg
“Code is a constructor.” David Deutsch, physicist
See:
Non-Selectable Code
https://bit.ly/2Z0kz5C
I liked the words “practical” and “utopia” and would like to build on them by sharing my vision of a foundation for a post-corona19-society:
Freedom Money – A Circular Central Bank Digital Currency
It will end the negative interest rates policy of the European Central Bank as well as other central banks.
It will finance the Universal Basic Income.
The states are not involved.
Let the Central Banks create a parallel currency, a CBDC with a twist: Every day it loses in value by 0.4%.
Every citizen and every company gets a new account holding the freedom money.
The state and other public authorities do not get such an account.
Every month the UBI is deposited into the accounts of the citizens.
All payments are done via a program at the Central Bank that splits the amount into a weighted normal currency part and a freedom money part and initiates the two transfers.
Imagine …
Dear Kyukyn
We cannot wait for some ideal time at “peak wealth” to introduce UBI. By what markers would you know when the time was right? Is UBI only appropriate in rich countries?
The world must move away from the existing model of endless accumulation of “wealth” , maximum consumption of goods, and inequality to deal with the ecological crisis which is its result.