![Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro, “Quem dá e torna a tirar, ao inferno vai parar? Um rendimento básico para todos [Who gives and takes away goes to hell? A basic income for everyone]”](https://i0.wp.com/basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/foto.jpg?resize=1%2C1&ssl=1)
by Andre Coelho | Apr 27, 2017 | News
This article was a response to another article, posted by well-known leftist politician Francisco Louçã, on the 22nd of February 2017. That article was critical of basic income, to which Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro now counter-argument.
They start by clarifying some aspects about the basic income experiment in Finland, in which no subject is expected to lose earnings, only to turn 560 € of those earnings unconditional. As for financing basic income in Portugal, Merrill and Bizarro suggest that distributing 450 €/month to every Portuguese citizen would cost 16.2 billion €/year if, after clawing back from taxes it benefitted 30% of the Portuguese population. Benefitting only 5% of the population would only cost an extra 2.7 billion €/year. They also refer other possible tax sources, like automation, financial operations and property.
Rebating Louçã’s conceptual objection that it is unfair to give a basic income to everyone and then, through taxes, clawing it back from the relatively richer, Bizarro and Merrill cite the example of seat belts in vehicles. This example is used to show that it does not make sense to target specific groups to get a basic income, when all need basic security – even if some already have it at the time being. That would be tantamount to just installing seat belts only in those vehicles that would have an accident.
More information at:
(in Portuguese)
Roberto Merrill and Sara Bizarro, “Quem dá e torna a tirar, ao inferno vai parar? Um rendimento básico para todos [Who gives and takes away goes to hell? A basic income for everyone]”, Público (online), April 4th 2017
by Andre Coelho | Apr 20, 2017 | News
Maricá, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Fabiano Horta, the Mayor of Maricá, Brazil, has extended the unconditional income already distributed in Maricá, Brazil, to all its residents. He also aims at raising the distributed value tenfold during 2017.
The unconditional income is paid in Mumbuca, a local social currency. One Mumbuca is valued at one Real. The initial income was 10 Mumbucas per month, roughly equivalent to 3 €/month. It was introduced by Washington Siqueira (known as Washington Quaquá), who was Mayor of Maricá until late 2015. This was reported on at the time. The modest amount was given independently of the recipient’s job status, and initially only distributed to the town’s poorest residents, around 35,000 people. Under Mayor Fabiano Horta the program has already been extended to all residents (around 150,000 in total) in Maricá.
Like Quaquá, Horta is a PT party (left-wing) affiliate and federal deputy. Horta wants to raise the unconditional income, financed by the town’s oil revenues, to 30 €/month during 2017. This unconditional dividend is supplemented with conditional subsidies to poor families, where an extra 85 Reais/month (28 €/month) is available from current welfare programs.
The stipend is being paid electronically in the Mumbuca social currency even though fewer than 10% of all businesses in Maricá accept Mumbuca (businesses have to wait more than a month to get Mumbuca exchanged into Reais by the government). The program has been criticized by opposing politician Fillipe Poubel, who says that people will become dependent on the stipend. Poubel calls for the creation of jobs instead. Horta maintains the unconditional income will stimulate local economy. He also has said that the town will be able to scale up this project “in an exponential way over the next ten years”.
Fabiano Horta. Credit to: G1 Região dos Lagos
More information at:
Louis Genot, “Brazilian town embraces universal income experiment”, Yahoo News, February 14th 2017
Isabelle Gerretsen, “Brazilian city experiments with universal basic income”, International Business Times, February 15th 2017
Karl Widerquist, “Brazil: Municipality to introduce small basic income for local residents”, Basic Income News, December 6th 2015
by Andre Coelho | Apr 8, 2017 | News
Event room at Coolabora. Credit to: Graça Rojão.
On the 25th of March 2017, a meeting of the Fórum Cidadania & Território (link) took place in Covilhã, a mountain city in Serra da Estrela, Portugal. This regular gathering of individuals and institutions was at Coolabora, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), and apart from particular issues related to citizenship and territory, it was also dedicated to presenting and discussing basic income.
Fórum Cidadania & Território is a formal network of NGO’s and individuals concerned with social issues, development and non-discrimination in Portugal. Hence it represents a larger universe of activity than the strict number of people attending these meetings allows for. In this 14th meeting, organized and hosted by Coolabora, activists promoting basic income in Portugal were invited, in this case André Barata, André Coelho and Pedro Ferrão.
André Barata presented basic income as a natural outgrowth of social democracy, nowadays very much torn apart and distorted. According to him, basic income is justified not so much because automation in upon us, but mainly as a right of citizenship. Countless generations of human beings have created everything upon which we live today, and so a basic income is a way for every person to get a fair share of that heritage. André Coelho exhibited a few slides to explain how a basic income could be financed in Portugal, referring to a study offered by Miguel Horta. He also reviewed what he considers to be the advantages of basic income, over our current social welfare systems. Paulo Ferrão spoke of the next BIEN Congress, taking place in Lisbon, and called for participation in the basic income week taking place while the Congress is ongoing (25th through 27th of September, 2017).
After these points, the debate was opened to the audience, who took the opportunity to pose questions and discuss the traditional arguments against basic income (e.g.: disincentive to work, difficulty in paying for a basic income).
by Andre Coelho | Mar 29, 2017 | News
RTP3: Fronteiras XXI (debate panelists)
On the past Thursday, 15th of March 2017, basic income was discussed for the first time on a prime-time television program in Portugal, through the recently created channel RTP3.
The program, which ran for 1hr 30 min, was framed as a group interview and debate, moderated by journalist Carlos Daniel. The program included some related reporting and excerpts from other interviews. Four participants made up the panel, and the main theme of the discussion was automation and its societal consequences.
Manuela Veloso, a robotics researcher in the United States and head the Machine Learning department of the Carnegie Mellon University, was one of the panelists. Asked if automation will be good or bad, she first pointed out its inevitability. Machines are capable of capturing much more data than human minds cannot possibly manage to cope with in order to make decisions: people will have to rely on machines for support in decision making. She also argued that although machines will naturally replace some human work, other human tasks will be created with the increasing use of automation in industry and services.
Another participant was Carvalho da Silva, a lifetime syndicalist and researcher in sociology. Carvalho da Silva pointed out certain caveats when facing what many are calling a “technological revolution”. He said that we should not be deterministic about it (casting doubts about its impact on jobs), since ultimately decisions are political. He underlined that the entire situation must be contextualized and inserted into a crisis framework, where many more jobs have been lost than those estimated to be lost to automation. Like Manuela, he also highlighted the job creation potential of these new technologies.
António Moniz, a sociologist specializing in work and enterprises, and a researcher on the impact of automation in society was also invited. António pointed out that machines are demanding higher professional standards from people tasked to handle them. He relativized the question of job destruction due to automation, believing that there is no direct relationship between introduction of machinery and loss of jobs (although the numbers shown during the program clearly depicted elimination of jobs in large swathes due to automation).
Finally, João Paulo Oliveira, an executive manager of a large paper production company in Portugal, was also present. He alerted the audience to the fact that the adoption of automation is extremely fast these days, so that all politicians must be made aware of its effects on society. According to him, an important aspect of this transformation is education, which must be more in tune with demand. According to him, the marketplace will determine what the “jobs of the future” will be, and the education system must follow suit.
The program included short pieces and interviews, inserted between presentations by the panel. One of those segments was with Gabriele Bischoff, a long time syndicalist and president of the Workers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee. Shocked to learn that a company in Belgium already uses chip implants in its employees, she highlighted the importance of respecting workers’ fundamental rights and the need to provide them – especially young workers – with good quality, stable jobs, which can give them, dignified life standards.
Another segment featured Guy Standing, a lifetime researcher of economic and social issues; a professor and activist defending the basic income concept. He summarized the basic income principle and, when questioned as to how the Portuguese people can finance it, he clearly stated that “It’s a matter of fiscal priorities”. According to him, if, for example, such regressive practices as the systematic saving of banks in the past decade were eliminated and the money used for the benefit of all citizens, a basic income could have been already administered in Portugal. Standing also predicted that within the next five years some country will implement the basic income concept, which will lead other countries to gradually follow suit.
Guy Standing. Credit to: RTP3
During the program, simple graphics were shown, both for briefly explaining what basic income is and to report on the estimated number of jobs likely to be lost (and gained) to automation in the next 15 years. Notably, the next Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress, happening in Lisbon on September this year, was also cited.
The conversation about the future of work naturally led into a debate about basic income. Each of the participants was directly asked what they thought about the idea and its anticipated consequences. Maria Veloso was quick to support it, although questioning its feasibility. She regards the idea as a freedom gaining instrument, in an age of relentless automation and ever-expanding learning opportunities. She also referred to its role as a secure financial platform that allows people to engage in activities not bound by economic viability, in such a way that work is aligned with what each person wants to do in life. Clearly against was Carvalho da Silva, despite his past as a syndicalist. According to him, basic income is against the work ethic, and he assumes that people will lose their motivation to work under that regime, hence also losing a great deal of their meaning in life. He also thinks that basic income is the perfect instrument for the far right political branch to push in neo-liberal agendas slashing the welfare state. On the other hand, António Moniz was more cautious, supporting the basic income idea in general but warning that its effects on the marketplace and especially on companies must be well understood. João Paulo Oliveira was not convinced by the basic income concept or its rationale, as presented by Guy Standing or his fellow panelists. According to him, basic income will just kill competitiveness as more and more people move away from work.
by Andre Coelho | Mar 21, 2017 | News
Picture: Viktor Orbán. Credit to Politics.Hu
Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, made reference to basic income in his speech at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, held on 28 February, 2017.
The speech itself is very much focused on economic issues, centred on the Hungarian reality. Orbán, however, also offers comments about his vision for Hungarian society and energy investment in the near future. Regarding society, Orbán portrays a vision of a homogenous racial and cultural profile, in which all jobs are performed by Hungarians. In fact, he repeats the word “homogeneity” seven times in the speech within this context. On energy, he firmly supports a nuclear-powered “cheap energy” economy, despite the fact that other nations are divesting from nuclear, with nearby Germany, for example, having closed eight reactors in six years.
Most notably, Viktor Orbán refers to basic income midway through his speech. He starts out by labelling it as “communistic” and “some sort of basic benefit or pay – or something like that”. According to him, “this is an utterly unthinkable approach”, which nonetheless is being pursued in countries like Finland, Canada, and the Netherlands, and seriously discussed even in the United Kingdom. Orbán continues to declare that Hungary would “close shop” if something like basic income were to be implemented. He claims that it would mean Hungary would slip “back to the culture of benefit-based economies”, in what seems to be a reference to communist times. It would also, he warns, bury the “work- and performance-oriented culture based on merit”, and thus, under such a system, “investors can go to another country with their capital investments, because here they could only go bankrupt”. The assumption that people would become idle given a basic income seems to run deep in Viktor Orbán’s view. He concludes his critique of the basic income concept with the following words:
“So I propose that we protect ourselves in a timely fashion – firmly based on foundations of common sense – against these socialistic ideas, which originate from Heaven knows where. […] We don’t have the means or the capacity to distribute money without performance and work in return. We have the means and capacity to build a system in Hungary which is fundamentally based on competitiveness, performance and merit, while also asserting fairness and social and humanitarian criteria. If we undermine these philosophical foundations of the Hungarian economy, we won’t be able stay alive. So in this respect I earnestly ask you not to give in to any kind of political temptation, or to such siren voices.”
