by Andre Coelho | Sep 21, 2019 | News
Compass, a think tank based in the United Kingdom (UK), is looking for a Coordinator for the newly established Universal Basic Income (UBI) Hub. The aim of this position is to “increase the impact of all the good research and campaign work already happening on UBI in the UK”. The role is expected to be self-sufficient, operating from Compass’ offices in Central London (but not necessarily), preferably as a full-time job (although part-time options may also be presented).
The job description details are available here.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 20, 2019 | Research
The UBIEXP research group and the journal Ethics, Politics & Society (EPS), from the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society, together with the Portuguese Basic Income association, invite submissions for a international essay prize competition on the following topic: “What (if Anything) Can Justify Basic Income Experiments?” Details can be found here. The prize is €1000, and the essay will be published in the EPS journal.
Also, the International Political Science Association (IPSA-AISP), organizing the 26th World Congress of Political Science in Lisbon (25 – 29th July 2020), Portugal, is accepting abstracts for The Epistemology and Political Philosophy of Basic Income Experiments panel, to be sent here, up until October 10th 2019.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 19, 2019 | News
Go to ubicalculator.com and get an ideia of how universal basic income plans, as presented up to this moment in time (for the United States reality), affect you and/or your family. Given individual or household income, plus a few other datapoints, such as family composition and social security income, the calculator uses plans by Max Ghenis, Scott Santens and Andrew Yang, to name a few, to deliver how much your economic situation is changed under those plans. The ubicalculator website also delivers detailed information on each plan, justifying and explaining the results.
This UBI calculator is an initiative by Conrad Shaw, UBI Trial Manager and The Bootstraps Project co-producer. All the methodology used to construct the calculator can be found here.
by Andre Coelho | Sep 17, 2019 | News
Undertitled “How solar energy can generate a basic income for everyone on Earth”, this new book by Robert Stayton rides on an apparently radical idea: that all people on Earth can earn a basic income, financed from the generation of solar electricity alone. This comes from a known scheme used to incentivize the generation of solar electricity, the feed-in tariff, but other financing mechanisms are also suggested in the book, such as combination with carbon taxes, redirecting existing subsidies on fossil fuel companies to solar electricity generation and taxing corporations from feeding on common held resources (commons).
The book is about to be released on September 17th 2019 (today).
by Andre Coelho | Sep 15, 2019 | News
Bill de Blasio. Picture credit to: UPI.
Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor and Democratic Party candidate for the United States 2020 presidential elections, is firmly against Universal Basic Income (UBI). According to him, UBI is “woefully inadequate”, fearing it will replace existing (complex, inefficient, stigmatizing and conditional) welfare programs while failing to put people to work. As Joe Biden, the Democratic Party preferred candidate according to all polls, de Blasio believes that UBI “overlooks the intrinsic value of a job, believing the financial life support of a monthly check can substitute for meaningful employment”. He thinks, therefore, that UBI will prevent people from working, rather than the opposite (despite the evidence). That also equates to thinking that people need to be forced to work, which translates into believing that some sort of fundamental laziness afflicts the human species.
In order to engineer his vision of a “work-filled future”, de Blasio proposes a Robot Tax, applicable to large companies able to automate jobs and not inclined to compensate their displaced workers with new jobs. This new tax would be conjured and managed by a newly created organism called FAWPA (Federal Automation and Worker Protection Agency), which would, in practice, act as deterrent companies’ initiatives, turning it harder to invest on automation. Specifically, the Robot Tax would be collected by the state into a special fund. That fund would finance, in practice, an effective Federal Jobs Guarantee scheme, such as the one defended by Bernie Sanders.
More information at:
Adi Robertson, “New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Bill de Blasio wants a robot tax”, Basic Income Today, September 9th 2019
André Coelho, “United States: Joe Biden believes that jobs are the future, rather than basic income”, Basic Income News, September 23rd 2017
