by Andre Coelho | Aug 22, 2018 | Research
Ive Marx. Picture Credit to: University of Antwerp
A news article posted in Flanders Today refers to a report, headed by economist Ive Marx, which concludes that introducing basic income in the Netherlands can actually increase poverty while having only a small effect on inequality.
Marx, from the University of Antwerp, concluded that introducing a 700 €/month basic income to all citizens with ages between 18 and 64, and 165 €/month to all minors would have a yearly net cost of 94 million Euros. That, according to the research, would have to be funded by extra taxes, plus cutting on unemployment and child allowances. As a result, around 75% of adult citizens would lose out financially, compared to their actual situation given the present-day benefits structure in the Netherlands. According to the study’s parameters, around 30% of the adult population would lose more than 10% of their income, which would contribute to an increase of poverty in 3%. Marx has also added that “proponents of the system must show why it is superior. You would have to be almost crazy to introduce it.”
In spite of these discouraging results, the study itself is not explicitly referred to in the article above, and no link to it is supplied. This way, base assumptions cannot be verified and a relevant discussion about it initiated. Furthermore, the author has not replied to contact attempts, which would allow to report on the study’s details, and compare it to other research reports and experiments.
More information at:
Editorial Team at Flanders Today, “Basic income doesn’t work, Antwerp research suggests”, July 13th 2018
by Andre Coelho | Aug 21, 2018 | News
The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Conference 2018 is about to start in Tampere, Finland. The final program has been released, and confirmed starting the event with the Nordic Day on the 23rd of August.
There will also be a link for live-streaming the plenary sessions, so these can be watched remotely.
Any last minute contacts should be directed to biencongress2018@gmail.com.
by Andre Coelho | Jul 27, 2018 | News
Barack Obama. Credit to: CNBC.
Despite having failed to actually endorse basic income, for the second time, international media is portraying Barack Obama as a supporter. For instance, the Trumpet, a news depot that “seeks to show how current events are fulfilling the biblically prophesied description”, depicts Obama as a hard-core socialist, sending him an indirect message saying that “the Bible warns against a get-something-for-nothing mentality”. However, and apparently, being knowledgeable in clerical issues and having served in the Church of England ministry, hasn’t stopped Dr. Malcolm Torry from supporting and studying in detail the basic income policy.
Another online news service, the Independent Sentinel, which announces it “report[s] the news the media won’t”, blatantly calls Obama a communist. A communist who has “saddled us [in the United States] with the far-left system of healthcare which has been an expensive and failed experiment”. Considering the nature of the privatized-insurance based healthcare system in the US, Sweden’s healthcare could be called an extreme-far-left successful case study. This news article joints Barack Obama and former Greek minister Yanis Varoufakis as unrepented communists who promote basic income, a policy under which “people become enslaved to the State”.
The Mic reports the same event on a soberer tint. However, its post starts out by pointing that Obama “come[s] out in support of an economic policy that is far to the left of anything being proposed by most sitting U.S. politicians”. The writer and basic income Scott Santens once claimed that basic income was neither left or right (it’s forward), but apparently polarized politics is still very much popular in the US.
Quartz Africa reduces the focus on Obama’s reference to basic income itself, to highlight his speech on inequality, and his views on what should be the solution to humanity’s current crisis: an inclusive capitalism, “which protects collective bargaining, breaks up monopolies, enforces laws that root out corruption”. Unresolved remains Obama’s belief that “a job […] provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose”, while saying in the same breath that “we’re gonna have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like universal income.”
In a CNCB article, on the other hand, a more cautious approach is taken concerning Obama, who is, arguably, a more fervent supporter of a job guarantee than a basic income. He his cited to have said that “the job of giving everybody work that is meaningful [will get] tougher, and we’re going to have to be more imaginative, […] to protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job”. The article also mentions Obama’s former vice-president Joe Biden, who basically supported that view integrally.
Whether former US President Barack Obama is a basic income supporter or not, it is rising to become one of the most debated issues in contemporary politics. Robert Reich, former President Clinton’s secretary of labor and ex-member of Obama’s transition advisory board, already looks at some sort of basic income policy as “inevitable”, along with tech moguls like Elon Musk. And that’s not only over the elite’s dome, it’s also among the average American citizen, whose support for the policy has been steadily increasing over the past few years, reaching almost half of the population according to recent polls.
More information at:
Karl Widerquist, “Obama speaks favorably about UBI but stops short of endorsing it (for the second time)”. Basic Income News, July 18th 2018
Andrew Miller, “Barack Obama Voices Support for a Universal Basic Income”, the Trumpet, July 19th 2018
S. Noble, “Barack Obama Promoted Universal Basic Income in South Africa”, the Independent Sentinel, July 18th 2018
A.P. Joyce, “Barack Obama signals support for a universal income”, Mic, July 17th 2018
Lynsey Chutel, “Barack Obama says the rich owe the world a huge debt”, Quartz Africa, July 17th 2018
Catherine Clifford, “Barack Obama suggests cash handouts be considered to address workforce challenges”, CNBC, July 18th 2018
André Coelho, “UNITED STATES: Joe Biden believes that jobs are the future, rather than basic income”, Basic Income News, September 23rd 2017
Catherine Clifford, “Ex-Labor Secretary: Some kind of cash handout ‘seems inevitable”, CNBC, July 13th 2018
André Coelho, “United States: American citizens support for UBI rises four times, compared to a decade ago”, Basic Income News, July 10th 2018
by Andre Coelho | Jul 21, 2018 | News
Jeff Bezos. Picture credit to: Evening Standard
Leonid Bershidsky, in this article, posted on the 18th of July, says that the best way to enact basic income is to “persuade tech billionaires to fund universal pay plans”. Motivated by Obama’s latest speech on Mandela’s (posthumous) 100th birthday, he suggests Obama should try have their attention – and money – to finance a basic income. Bershidsky is also convinced that a basic income cannot be financed through more taxes on the wealthy, which would only, according to him, “have a negative effect on growth and innovation”. There are those, however, who object this purpose of growth for its own sake, and propose other directions for society, such as degrowth.
Bershidsky affirms that others may be able to fund a basic income, such as Norway, but that is inconceivable in the United States. In the simplest of ways, he determines the cost of basic income as 327 million people times 500 US$/month, which equals around 2 trillion US$ per year. This kind of reasoning has been done many times before, but it lacks mathematical sense, as Scott Santens has already pointed out. Santens, on a more generous assumption for a basic income in the US, has suggested a gross cost of 3,3 trillion US$ per year. However, and most importantly, that is gross cost, not net cost. Net costs, according to him, can be zero, or even negative, if several reforms occur in welfare and the tax system, such as the elimination of welfare programs (turned obsolete due to their own means-tested nature), the abolition of invisible welfare benefits (those which benefit high earners), reforms in social security (turning pensions and disability benefits into supplements, as basic income is phased in), application of a carbon tax, a financial transaction tax, implementation of seigniorage reform, introduction of VAT (value-added tax) and LVT (land-value tax). To this could be added all the savings possible with the reduction or abolition of poverty, in health care, education and social security.
More information at:
Leonid Bershidsky, “Obama and Bezos Could Make Basic Income Work”, Bloomberg Opinion, July 18th 2018
Scott Santens, “How to Reform Welfare and Taxes to Provide Every American Citizen with a Basic Income”, Medium, June 5th 2017
by Andre Coelho | Jul 19, 2018 | News
Alexander Solovyev, Dimitriy Sarayev, Sergey Vladimirovich Khramov and Irina Soloveva
This Basic Income Conference moto was “Let’s win poverty in Russia together!”, and it took place in Moscow on the 26th of June 2018. It was organized by the combined efforts of the activist organization Basic Income Russia Tomorrow and the Moscow Communists (members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation), which also invited leaders from the Trade Unions of Russia (Khramov Sergey Vladimirovich, General Labor Inspector) and the Russian Land Charity Fund (Baldanova Zinaida, Chairman of the Board of Trustees). The Conference main purpose was to debate around issues related with poverty, and how to solve it within the Russian context, while having present the best international examples on the subject.
The two organizing groups took the opportunity of this Conference to announce they would join forces and dedicate more time and effort, together, to reduce poverty in their country. Participants also seized the moment to criticize the government on its decision to raise the retirement age. This, according to them, will degrade the standard of living of all, increase the total number of poor people and spread social discontent across the whole country. A particular statement by the youth branch of the Basic Income Russia Tomorrow was made, as the organization is now determined to make reducing child poverty a priority for its activities. Finally, participants generally called out to all citizens, weather individually or in public or private organizations, to be alert and participate in a society-wide discussion about poverty and how it can be reduced in the 21st century, helping to build a fairer Russian society for the years to come.
The Conference was divided into four main themes: Poverty, Pensioners, Child Poverty and Labor Relations Reform.
Poverty, a theme delivered by Alexander Solovyev (council chairman of Basic Income Russia Tomorrow), was portrayed as destroyer of citizens and the State, degrading health, security, confidence, initiative and promoting the growth of crime. According to Solovyev, Russia has no right to have poor citizens, being so rich in natural resources. Therefore, he argued for the implementation of a US$ 500 per month individual and universal basic income, financed by the State’s revenue with natural resources, which should be shared with every citizen in the country.
Dimitriy Sarayev spoke about pensioners, who are in Russia, according to him, socially unprotected citizens. This situation is only made worse by the unilateral decision by the Russian government to raise the retirement age, which is thought to be justified by a need of this government to cut spending. Sarayev says this will also raise unemployment, as people unable to retire will stay on the jobs longer. According to him, raising the retirement age, if any, must be accompanied with proper healthcare and higher pensions, which is the exact opposite of what the government is doing.
As for child poverty, Irina Soloveva expressed her extreme concern about the high level of child poverty in Russia. She defends basic income as a necessity for children, first and foremost. Irina also refers the US$ 500 per month per person basic income allocation, as “a reliable foundation for their future life, [to] give children freedom and financial security, reduce the level of crime and corruption in the country, [which] will enable the country to develop”.
This Conference, and its focus on basic income as the single most important strategy to reduce poverty in the country, comes at a time when, for the first time in Russia, “public and political organizations began to unite to address the problem of poverty in Russia as a whole, including child poverty”. That is particularly important when in public discussions around poverty, in Russia, the term “child poverty” is completely omitted by state officials and the press.
