by Albert Joerimann | Feb 14, 2016 | News
Daniel Häni. Credit to: The Establishment.
Within the past two months, the well-known German magazine Der Spiegel has published two comprehensive articles about Basic Income.
The December 25th edition of Der Spiegel contains an article that discusses models of Basic Income and the current popular initiative in Switzerland, as well as some calculations on the cost of introducing it in Germany, Finland and Switzerland.
The author, Florian Diekmann, distinguishes between two basic formats: a “humanistic” approach that lets people make a free choice on the base of a real income guarantee, and a “neoliberal“ model that would get rid of a large part of the traditional social security payments as well as the social bureaucracy. The Swiss proposal is presented as an example of the “humanistic” model, and the Finnish pilot in its current design as the “neoliberal” model. For Germany, following the Swiss model would result in a Basic Income of €1,500 per month/person and following the Finnish model €664 per month/person. (Currently, most German supporters of the Basic Income talk about a BI of approximately €1,000 per month/person.) All in all, Basic Income would cost Germany €1.2 trillion per year under the Swiss model, €530 billion under the Finnish model and about €800 billion for the level proposed by the German BI supporters. In comparison, the current annual amount of social expenditures in Germany is about €850 billion.
Diekmann also compares the proposed amounts of a Basic Income to the level of all incomes in Germany for the year 2011. For the Swiss model, the BI corresponds to nearly two thirds of all private incomes; for the Finnish model, in contrast, it is barely 30%.
On January 28th, Der Spiegel published an in-depth interview with Daniel Häni and Philip Kovce, the authors of the book Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist? (What’s missing if everything is there?). (See the book review on this webpage as of November 15th, 2015)
Philip Kovce
In the interview, Häni and Kovce emphasise that one of the core motivations for a Basic Income is the social transformation from alienated work into intrinsically motivated, freely chosen activities. They believe that, if provided a guaranteed, unconditional Basic Income, most people would continue to be active and work to create value, albeit on a radically different fundament. To achieve such a change, Häni and Kovce acknowledge that a long process will be necessary, but they stress that this process is one which has been initiated already, due to recent changes in working conditions and the evolution of the economy in the second, third and now the fourth industrial revolutions. Nobody can seriously expect the return to full employment under the conditions and in the form we experienced in the 1970s.
More information at:
Language: German
Zeit Online, “Digital revolution: The boss of Deutsche Telekom is in favour of a Basic Income [Digitale Revolution: Telekom-Chef Höttges für bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen]“, December 29th 2015
Giovanni di Lorenzo, “The difference between humans and computers will be lifted soon [Der Unterschied zwischen Mensch und Computer wird in Kürze aufgehoben sein]“, January 14th 2016
Carsten Knop, “A Basic Income is helpful for everybody [Ein Grundeinkommen hilft allen]“, Frankfurter Allgemeine, January 21st 2016
by Albert Joerimann | Nov 15, 2015 | Opinion
SUMMARY: In 2016, Switzerland is going to vote on a popular initiative that asks for the introduction of an unconditional Basic Income. Daniel Häni, one of the promoters of the initiative, wrote this book with Philip Kovce in order to gather support for the initiative. It is made for a lay audience rather than a scientific publication with some succinct arguments against popular criticisms of basic income, for instance that it would be killing personal initiative, promoting idleness, etc. The title gives an indication that the authors do not see the Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) primarily as a mechanism or institution to combat poverty. On the contrary: the UBI prepares for abundance which is the reality of modern societies (even if their actual structures do not yet correspond to this reality and still produce precariousness—but this is not the issue of Häni’s and Kovce’s book). By discussing these items as well as focussing on (paid) labour which our economic system is revolving around, they give several tips to rectify a number of current systemic prejudices: namely that within a society based on the division of labor, people do not work for themselves anymore, contrarily to all appearances; instead, all the others are working for oneself. Above all, the core questions of freedom and democracy are discussed: what are people going to do if they aren’t constricted to paid employment anymore? How will they materially realize this freedom? The main quality of the basic income scheme as discussed in this book is to raise these and other crucial questions for our present and our future.
Most of the arguments are known already from earlier publications and interviews of Daniel Häni, often in collaboration with Enno Schmidt, and in particular from the 2008 movie “Grundeinkommen – ein Kulturimpuls” [Basic Income—A Cultural Impulse]. As a matter of fact, the authors do integrate today more of the topics generally discussed in the context of the BI, above all in Germany, than they did some years ago. On the other hand side, they abstain completely from any discussion of the financing of the BI introduction, in Switzerland and in general.
Language: German
Daniel Häni, Philip Kovce: “Was fehlt, wenn alles da ist?” [What’s missing if everything is there?] orell füssli verlag, Zurich, October 2015, 189 pp., paperback, ISBN 978 3 280 05592 2
by Albert Joerimann | Oct 3, 2015 | News
Robin Jessen, Davud Rostam-Afschar und Viktor Steiner, 15. Sept. 2015
This article presents a proposal for how basic income could work in Germany. An Unconditional Basic Income of 800 € per month and adult person (corresponding to the actual, conditional social transfer payments, above all the Hartz IV payments) could be financed by a flat tax of 68.9%. This flat tax would replace the actual progressive tax system and the contributions to the current social security system that makes up about 20% of gross income. A micro-simulation shows that people with low incomes would have increased work incentives compared to the current Hartz-IV-system.
Another simulation was established to evaluate the effects of UBI on the average working time of different types and incomes of households. The simulation resulted in a reduction of the hours worked by 5% on average, whereas the poorest households would increase their hours worked by 1.4%. Women would reduce their working time on average markedly stronger than men.
A third simulation calculates the redistributive effects of an UBI. The top five deciles of all households would loose from 0.2% of their equivalent household disposable income in the 6th decile up to 21% in the 10th decile, whereas the lower deciles would profit from 34.1% in the first up to 4.9% in the fifth decile. The main beneficiaries of this proposal would be single parents with several children, whereas single persons without children would lose some 2000 € per year on average. All in all, the redistributive effects of this scheme would be material.
Thus, two important arguments against the UBI are disproved: a) it can be financed without massive distortions of the public finances, and b) the incentives to assume a salaried work would be strengthened for people with small incomes who are considered to be the most prone of perils like passivity and idleness.
The article and the underlying study of the same authors was written as a reaction to two recent critical papers against the UBI (Habermacher und Kirchgässner, 2013, and Flassbeck et al., 2013). The authors present their proposal as revenue-neutral, which leaves some questions, above all concerning the actual progressive income tax rates of 14% up to 45% in Germany. Replacing this progressive tax (and the actual 20% of social security contributions) by a flat tax of 68.9% would, at first sight, mean a significant increase of the tax burden not for the lowest, but for the lower and middle incomes. Still, the results of the simulations have to be taken into account in future discussions about the effects of the introduction of an Unconditional Basic Income.
Language: German
Robin Jessen, Davud Rostam-Afschar, Viktor Steiner, “Welche Effekte hätte ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen für Deutschland?” [What effects would a Basic Income have for Germany?]. Ökonomenstimme, September 15th, 2015.
Jessen, R., D. Rostam-Afschar und V. Steiner. “Getting the Poor to Work: Three Welfare Increasing Reforms for a Busy Germany,”. Freie Universität Berlin, School of Business & Economics,Discussion Papers 2015/22, No date, 2015.
Straubhaar, T., Werner, G., Eichhorn, W., Friedrich, L., Habermacher, F., Kirchgässner, G., Flassbeck, H., Quaas, G. and Thieme, S.: “Das Bedingungslose Grundeinkommen: ein tragfähiges Konzept?”, Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer, Band 93(9),September 19,2013.
by Albert Joerimann | Sep 1, 2015 | News
8th International Basic Income Week
“A Safety Net for Life”—this is the motto of this year’s International Basic Income Week which will take place from 14th to 20th September in several European countries. On their website www.woche-des-grundeinkommens.eu, the promoters write: “In a world in which salaried work is increasingly marked by flexibility, lack of security and precarity an Unconditional Basic Income can resolve the fears that make people receptive of hatred and violence. It can create growth where growth is urgently needed, as well as facilitate degrowth where this makes sense. An UBI enables ecological and economical sustainability that can make sure the continuity of life on our earth for the future”.
Eight years ago, the Basic Income organizations of the German speaking countries started the International Basic Income Week which actually is spreading out to the other members of the European and global Basic Income movements; the corresponding invitations and appeals have been sent out, and there is a Facebook page as well. The major part of the activities up to now are still foreseen in Germany and in Austria, but other organizations increasingly start to seize the opportunity to attract the attention of the public within a broad, international campaign.
The website woche-des-grundeinkommens.eu gives plenty of information about the planned activities, about the principles of Basic Income and offers several important links (mostly in German). It is completed by an international version available under basicincomeweek.org. The calendar on this website shows up to now events in Sweden, Canada, a lecture at the Tsinghua University of Beijing (September 12th) as well as a large number of public meetings etc. in the Netherlands and in Belgium, in addition to the aforementioned events in Germany and in Austria.
More information at:
www.woche-des-grundeinkommens.eu
www.basicincomeweek.org
