by Andre Coelho | Feb 18, 2019 | News
Louise Haagh (Twitter)
On the 5th of March 2019, Basic Income Earth Network’s (BIEN) chair, Louise Haagh, will speak at the Café Economique, in Leeds, UK. The event is called “Basic Income and Democratisation”.
Café Economique is an initiative in Leeds, UK, that aims to educate the public about contemporary economic ideas and policies. Inspired by “Café Scientique,” the volunteer group organises events at which “for the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in economics and related politics.”
Louise Haagh will talk about how her account of basic income differs from mainstream polemics about this topic. In her take, basic income represents broader development and governance challenges societies face today as a counterweight to the destabilising impacts of contemporary globalisation. Basic income will help address key inequalities, but not on its own. In her talk, Louise will also explain how basic income entails different challenges depending on the type of capitalist system, comparing the Nordic and Anglo-liberal countries.
More information at:
Café Economique website
by Andre Coelho | Feb 16, 2019 | News
Picture credit to: Finland Toolbox
Finland’s famous “basic income experiment” is now over. The analysis program is being rolled out, and was scheduled according to the following timetable (from Kela (Finnish Social Services)).
At the end of 2018, a phone survey was made, involving all participants (2000 experiment subjects and 5000 people forming the control group), to check on “the impact of the basic income on employment, taxable earnings, take-up of unemployment benefits paid out by Kela, and enrolment in employment services”. This survey was done according to international standards on questionnaires (e.g.: European Social Survey, International Social Survey Programme, European Union Survey). Furthermore, interviews are planned to be performed in early 2019, in order to “interpret and shed further light on some of the unanswered questions and unexpected results”. To contextualize the registry data collection, phone survey and interviews, a thorough look will also be directed to public debate and popular support (or lack thereof) for basic income. This clearly means that the investigators did more than just try to answer the overarching question posed by the Finnish government at the start of the experiment: “could basic income increase employment and simplify the social security system?” (video)
Now that the experiment is over, and while the data treatment and deep analysis is being performed, BBC put together a short video piece entitled “Did Finland’s basic income experiment work?”, asking the corollary inquiry “How free money changed people’s lives?”. In a couple of interviews with experiment participants, the message coming through is that the experiment brought promises of a better, more secure life, with less governmental bureaucracy, but unfortunately it had to end (with no prospects of expansion, let alone implementation by the current government). One of those participants, Tania, told BBC that “basic income changed my life”, since it allowed her to “stand on [her own] two feet”. Another participant, Thomas, referred that the same difficulties remained, during the experiment, for getting into paid employment, which might be related to the fact that the experiment had a very small target group of people (2000), spread along the whole of Finland. That level of scattering doesn’t allow for community effects on the introduction of a kind of basic income allowance, and so the marketplace does not adjust accordingly. This seems to be aligned with one of the preliminary conclusions just published: that the experiment did not result in higher levels of paid employment for the participants.
However, the referred published report does include important (preliminary) results of other (less objective than hours in employment) analysed variables, such as Life Satisfaction, Trust, Confidence, Physical and Mental Health, Concentration, Depression, Financial Security, Stress and Attitudes Toward unconditional basic income (UBI). International basic income activist Scott Santens has summarized these results in a convenient way, which might be put into an even more succinct list (percentages refer to differences between averages of the experiment’s treatment group and the control group, over each variable):
Life Satisfaction – observed an 8% improvement;
Trust – observed an increase of 6% in other people, 5% in the legal system and 11% in politicians;
Confidence – observed an increase of 21% of confidence in one’s future, and a 22% increase in one’s ability to influence society;
Physical and Mental Health – observed a 17% improvement;
Concentration – observed a 16% improvement;
Depression – observed a 37% reduction (measured through qualitative answers);
Financial security – observed a 26% improvement;
Stress – observed a 17% improvement (over the number of people who responded they felt “little or no stress at all”);
Attitudes Toward UBI – observed a 38% improvement over the number of people who strongly agree that a nationwide UBI would make it easier to accept job offers, and a 24% increase over the number of people who think Finland should now adopt a UBI.
It should be made clear again, if two years of the pilot itself and another of preparation were not enough to explain the real important parameters of the experiment, that what happened in Finland was not exactly a basic income (implementation) experiment. It was, as Santens put it, “a test of slightly reducing the marginal tax rates experienced by the unemployed, and also slightly reducing the amount of bureaucracy they experience”. From this to a basic income as defined by BIEN goes a long way. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that such a limited experiment, both in scope as in depth, could generate such positive preliminary results on human (generalized) wellbeing.
More information at:
Toru Yamamori, “Finland: Wellbeing improved: First results of the BI experiment”, Basic Income News, February 11th 2019
Olli Kangas, Signe Jauhiainen, Miska Simanainen, Minna Ylikännö (eds.), “The Basic Income Experiment 2017–2018 in Finland. Preliminary results”, Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, February 8th 2019
Scott Santens, “What is There to Learn From Finland’s Basic Income Experiment? Did It Succeed or Fail?”, Medium, February 14th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 14, 2019 | News
Thomas Piketty. Picture credit to: Books Live (Sunday Times)
Details are being fed into Rahul Gandhi’s promise of a minimum income guarantee to poor Indians, an announcement made earlier this month. Thomas Piketty, an authority in economics, and particularly in inequality analysis, is assisting Ghandi’s Congress party in designing the policy onto the Indian context.
Although Piketty has a particular vision on basic income, he has supported a universal, unconditional basic income. At some point the particulars of his proposal may have generated confusion, but it seems his contribution to what can be a real shot at implementing (a kind of) basic income in India prove his resolve on this matter. “It is high time to move from the politics of caste conflict to the politics of income and wealth distribution”, Piketty has stated. MIT professor Abhijit Baerjee is also helping to materialize this idea on the Congress manifesto for the upcoming elections. Economy Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton was also contacted by party officials, but hasn’t apparently been involved in the scheme’s design.
The Congress’s proposal for its “minimum income guarantee” was told, by party officials, to be “anything above 10000 Rupees per month” per household. For a typical family, that would amount to 66% of the family’s net living wage, which contrasts with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) most recent promise for implementation of a basic income-type of policy (6000 Rupees/year, per small farmer).
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Expenditure and Living Wage calculation in India
Scroll staff, “Minimum income guarantee: Economist Thomas Piketty confirms he is helping Congress with the scheme”, Scroll.in, February 7th 2019
Thomas Piketty, “Is our basic income really universal”, Le blog de Thomas Piketty, February 13th 2017
Genvieve Shanahan, “FRANCE: Piketty’s comments on basic income cause confusion”, Basic Income News, February 3rd 2017
D.K. Singh, “Thomas Piketty & Angus Deaton help frame Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income promise”, The Print, January 31st 2019
André Coelho, “India: The Indian government also promises basic income to farmers”, Basic Income News, February 12th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 12, 2019 | News
Masked Narodi supporters, in 2014. Picture credit to: Aljazeera
Just a few days after Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, announced the intention of implementing a “nationwide minimum income for the poor”, Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s government now proposes a “basic income for poor farmers”. This policy was set as a part of a supposedly interim budget, only up to the elections date (May 2019), although in this case expenditure was scheduled up to December 1st 2019, in a clear bet to win these elections and continue in power.
The cited interim budget was presented by (acting) finance minister Piyush Goyal, and the “basic income for poor farmers” is expected to affect millions of small farmers, who will be paid 6000 Rupees per year (84 US$/year), in principle as an unconditional cash transfer. 6000 Rupees averages around 3% of a typical family yearly net living wage (~183000 Rupees), and 6% that of a single adult (96900 Rupees). It is inferred that the hand-out to farmers would be to the farmer, as the owner of the land parcel, hence to his/her family. In this context, the policy promise is not individual (only if the farmer is single and has no dependent children), nor enough to cover minimum necessities (not basic), nor universal (only for farmers). The “basic income” term, therefore, is used by Modi’s government in a very loose manner, which might indicate more of an intent to get an electoral edge, particularly over the latest Congress proposal.
There is a general acceptance in India that transferring money directly to poor people avoids the corruption of the current subsidies system, and so such a policy as a kind of basic income makes sense to many. Unemployment is another important issue, but, interestingly enough, this might be ameliorated by the implementation of a basic income (type of policy), according to Gareth Price, from the Chatham House think tank. This is because direct, unconditional money in the pockets of people will most likely drive an economic expansion. Despite this reasoning, in other allegedly developed nations, such as France, the ability to work in paid jobs is still seen as central to the social contract. There, policy makers are more afraid people will just sit back and give up on contributing with their work to society, than they are confident that basic income will help those at the bottom of the income scale to fully participate in the economy, as workers and consumers.
More information at:
André Coelho, “India: Basic income is being promised to all poor people in India”, Basic Income News, February 1st 2019
Adam Withnall, “India budget: Modi announces universal basic income for farmers in bid for rural vote ahead of elections”, Independent, February 1st 2019
Expenditure and Living Wage calculation in India
André Coelho, “France: Law proposal to experiment with basic income rejected before even discussed”, Basic Income News, February 10th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Feb 9, 2019 | News
The French Parliament house. Picture credit to: Refresh
A law proposal, named “experimenting over the territory in order to implement a basic income”, was presented to Parliament (Assemblée Nationale), on the 31th of January, 2019. Although government had announced the will to promote such experiments, a majority of MP’s from the party in power rejected the debate before it even started. Concretely, the proposal was rejected by a majority of MP’s mainly from LREM, LR and UDI (Note 1).
The proposal was presented by the party Groupe Socialistes & apparentées, a minority group in Parliament whose history goes back to 1893, and supported by other 17 socialist groups. This almost three-year-old project has been initiated by Gironde’s president Jean-Luc Gleyze, building upon a growing national debate on basic income. In a twisted tint of irony, the discussion of this issue is being blocked by the same party which has declared its openness to amplify its debate in France. Specifically, a “preliminary rejection motion” has been presented, momentarily cutting the avenues for discussion in Parliament.
Although most MP’s have agreed, over time, that direct cash transfers would eliminate social benefits non-take up (in France, 36% of all eligible beneficiaries for social benefits do not take them up, due to ignorance and administrative complexity), the unconditionality feature of basic income was rejected by most. To them, it is the responsibility of the citizens to search for jobs, which are seen as “a cornerstone in individual liberty“. In other words, most LREM MP’s believe that people will be idle if they receive an unconditional basic income, which boils down to the most frequently held criticism over the policy (and a pessimist-laden view on human nature).
On the other hand, the Movement Français pour un Revenue de Base (MFRB) (French Movement for a Basic Income) sustains that it is precisely the basic income that allows people to acquire rights, in such a monetized society. Furthermore, the MFRB has declared full availability to work with MP’s in order to establish the possibilities for experimenting with basic income in French regions.
As for the law proposal itself, before rejected it was subject to several change propositions, sixteen in total. These changes aimed to shift the universal grounds of the proposal to an age cohort of 18 to 25 years of age, and to erase all mentions to unconditionality. Even the title was targeted, with a change proposal from “un revenue de base” (a basic income), to “une prestation d’accompagnement à la vie autonome” (a benefit to support an autonomous life).
Note 1:
LREM – party La Republique en Marche!, in power at the moment (in association with the Democratic Movement)
LR – The Republicans Group (former Union for a Popular Movement group)
UDI – Group UDI, Agir et indépendants
More information at:
[in French]
MFRB press release, February 1st 2019
Assemblée Nationale (Française), “Economie: expérimentation territoriale visant à instaurer un revenu de base [Economy: experimenting over the territory in order to implement a basic income]”, Law proposal
[in English]
André Coelho, “France: Gironde region’s path to a basic income experiment”, Basic Income News, May 17th 2018
