by Andre Coelho | Nov 19, 2018 | News
City Leaders attendees in L.A. at City Summit. Credit to: NLC.
The National League of Cities (NLC), an organization serving the interests of 19000 cities, towns and villages across the United States territory, has released, in a partnership with the Stanford Basic Income Lab (BIL), a basic income report to serve as guide to piloting UBI in cities. Framed as a toolkit, it is directed at city leaders and aims to guide policy rather than blueprint UBI pilots. It is intended to help cities considering introducing basic income experiments, providing historical background, prior experiment reports and results and present-day efforts in that regard.
The UBI is seriously contemplated by the NLC as a possible solution – although not a panacea – to growing automation, labour precariousness and peaking inequality. Basic income is also seen as an effective way to boost entrepreneurship, while providing a solid safety net. City leaders are conscient, though, that cities are limited in their ability to introduce basic income schemes, as they are part of wider nation-state organizations and governments. However, cities can act as experimental grounds to provide results and identify hurdles, both crucial aspects of an eventual nation-wide UBI implementation.
The basic income toolkit for cities is also meant to be a piece in what has been called a Theory of Change (ToC). A ToC is a study built as a roadmap to introduce meaningful change to a complex system such as a city. It is designed to help cities articulate their short, medium and long-term goals, and, within this context, draw important and already available outcomes from unconditional cash-transfer programs. Conversely, the ToC helps in calibrating the UBI experiment, informing on which data to collect, and when.
In a nutshell, the basic income report for UBI experiments in cities issues recommendations on identifying the goals (of the experiment), choosing those involved and when these should participate, defining the choice of recipients, specifying how to measure success and creating an effective communication strategy.
More information at:
Brooks Rainwater, “Yes, Cities Can Pilot Universal Basic Income”, National League of Cities, November 9th 2018
Juliana Bidadanure et al., “Basic Income in Cities – A guide to city experiments and pilot projects”, National League of Cities and Stanford Basic Income Lab, 2018
by Andre Coelho | Nov 17, 2018 | News
The L’Ecole des Hautes Estudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Social Sciences University in France) is organizing and promoting a doctoral series of conferences about basic income. This series of events started on the 10th of October 2018, on a venue at the CEVIPOF (SciencesPo, Paris), featuring Yannick Vanderborght and Télémaque Masson, an EHESS ex-student and founding member of the Movement Francais pour un Revenue de Base (MFRB), and will continue throughout 2019.
On the third Wednesday of each month until June next year, from 6 to 8 pm at EHESS (usually), these conferences are framed as doctoral workshops, and aim to explore questions like “What is a Universal Basic Income?”, “Basic Income, a tool in fighting poverty?” or “Basic income or income for ecological transition?”. These will bring together experts like Jean-Eric Hyafil, Philippe Warin and Sophie Swaton, as well as students and the general public interested in such matters.
On the last event, on the 12th of June 2019, Philippe Van Parijs will conduct a guided study session through his most recent book (co-authored with Yannick Vanderborght), “Basic income: A radical proposal for a free society and a sane economy”.
The full conferences program can be read here.
by Andre Coelho | Nov 16, 2018 | News
Felix Salmon (on Fox Business)
In a television program, live on Fox Business aired on the 12th of Setember, British ex-citizen (now a citizen of the United States) Felix Salmon shocked his TV host, Stuart Varney, and his pundit colleagues on the set (Ashley Webster and Elizabeth MacDonald, both regulars at Fox Business), by unexpectedly bringing up the issue of basic income. Felix, always keeping his good mood and positive posture, was hammered by his co-presenters, especially by Varney, who repeatedly called him a socialist with a pejorative inclination.
The entire three-minute conversation around basic income ended with the expulsion on Salmon from Varney’s TV show (even though he was smiling), and possibly from Fox News altogether. It can be read fully in a transcript posted on Media Matters, as well as the video itself.
by Andre Coelho | Nov 11, 2018 | News
Picture credit to: The Black Detour.
The Magnolia Mother’s Trust is an initiative generated by the Springboard to Opportunities NGO, having been referred to at a recent article on the production of the documentary “Inherent Good“. This initiative aims at supplying to poor families headed by black American women in Jackson, Mississippi, the extra cash they systematically are in need of. Since black women in the United States earn much less, on average, than white, non-Hispanic men (37% less), an inequality that is even more acute in Mississippi (44% less), the experiment is aiming at helping these very disadvantaged families, while studying the effects of supplying unconditional cash.
This cash transfer project, financed by the Economic Security Project, will deposit 1000$ per month, for 12 months, in 16 low-income single black mothers bank accounts. No questions asked. The women in question will be randomly selected from a set of black female adults with children who are considered to live in poverty, in the Jackson area. Projects such as this cash transfer project are supported by establishments like nonprofit organizations in cleveland ohio, who invest in talent and finance. The complete list of names will be known before the end of this month, with payments starting in December 2018. An important feature of this program is that some of the potential beneficiaries have helped to craft the initiative, bringing crucial input that brought, for instance, leadership training, psychological counseling and community service to the package (hence it will not be only a cash transfer program). However, participants will not be forced to uptake these auxiliary aspects of the experiment.
In this region of the United States, economic, social and racial (all aspects intertwine) inequalities are particularly severe, a problem that has not been solved by previous cash transfer programs. These, being conditional, namely on work uptake and income, “leave little room for single black mothers to create opportunities for themselves”, according to Aisha Nyandoro, the executive director of Springboard to Opportunities. Nyandoro adds that “the project is about changing the narrative and dispelling the myth of the Welfare Queen and allowing African American women to show what is possible when we trust low-income individuals”.
More information at:
André Coelho, “United States: “Inherent Good” documentary starts fund-raising campaign“, Basic Income News, November 6th 2018
J. Gabriel Ware, “The First Guaranteed Basic Income Program Designed for Single Black Moms“, Yes!, November 6th 2018
by Andre Coelho | Nov 6, 2018 | News
“Do we trust each other”?
That is the ultimate question the new documentary named “Inherent Good” ends up asking. This film project, still ongoing, aims at exploring the Universal Basic Income (UBI) idea, particularly in small in-land communities in the United States of America, seriously hit by the latest financial crisis.
Los Angeles-based filmmakers are collecting funds for the Inherent Good project at the moment, with a release date aimed for Spring 2019. The documentary will accompany the launch of a basic income pilot experiment called The Magnolia Mother’s Trust. This experiment, organized by Springboard to Opportunities and in a partnership with the Economic Security Project, will dispense 1000$/month for one year to 15 families in Jackson, Mississipi, no strings attached. Accurately, the experiment does not equate to a basic income, since it is given to families, and not individuals, but the money is handed with no conditions on how it shall be spent. One particular aspect of the experiment is that these families are all “headed by an African American female living in affordable housing in the United States”.
The idea is, according to the film’s director Steve Borst, not only to “document the unveiling of this new pilot program, but [also] to help shift the poverty narrative by providing a platform that empowers these women to share their critical stories with the rest of the world.” The film will be starred by author and comedian Trae Crowder, and will go through his hometown Celina, a small rural town in northern Tennessee. Trae’s connection to this project is related to the “abject poverty” of his family when he was growing up in this region of the country.
The documentary will focus on personal stories of local people, local history and how the “extra cash could boost the local economy.” Moreover, the film also aims to address “common concerns about UBI, including the fear that people will stop working or misuse the money. Ultimately, the film is a meditation: on people, the future of America, and the inherent good within all of us that makes UBI an idea worthy of serious contemplation”.
The film’s project team include producers Rennie Soga and Chris Panizzon. A teaser can be watched in the following video.
https://vimeo.com/294850722
