Infographic: Guaranteed Livable Income in Canada
Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) is a national organization of members inspired by faith to act for justice in Canadian public policy. It’s website now features an infographic which compares current Canadian welfare system to a Guaranteed Livable Income (Basic Income).
Link: https://www.cpj.ca/infographic-guaranteed-livable-income-canada
Basic Income Massachusetts (from BIMA webpage)
Welfare rights and anti-poverty activists Ann Withorn, Jason Murphy, and Diane Dujon have just started a Basic Income (BI) organization in Massachusetts, the immediate goal of which is to build a Basic Income Movement in Massachusetts. Using the acronym BIMA, the organization started functioning in July and is already present online with a website and Facebook page. A formal Founding Meeting is planned for this November, in the Dorchester/Roxbury area, Massachusetts.
Starting out with a small group of activists, including but not limited to the founders mentioned above, the organization intends to initiate its activity by creating a database of supporters, who may or may not be directly involved in the group’s work. This reach-out effort aims to speak about Basic Income to other community or movement groups, and producing BI-related literature for local newsletters and events, including how BI can be implemented in Massachusetts.
BIMA also plans to host a workshop at the Center for Popular Economics this summer, speak at the and at the . Joining in with Survivors Inc. to revive local newspaper Survival News is also part of BIMA’s further actions to spread the word about BI. BIMA will also develop efforts to push for a BI for Massachusetts, starting by creating a strategy for a Massachusetts Legislative Initiative.
According to its founders, BIMA defends BI as a full blown anti-poverty proposal, not only aimed at those currently poor but also at removing fear of poverty from all. In their view, the only way to actually achieve that is for a significant number of poor people to get involved from the beginning, joining efforts with activist groups dedicated to anti-poverty, labor, and community work. For BIMA, including those who have actually suffered socioeconomic insecurity in their lives is the only way to keep the movement going, keeping up the push for a Basic Income.
More information at:
BIMA website at https://basicincomema.wordpress.com/
BIMA Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Basic-Income-MA-BIMA/729327107177594?fref=ts
Círculo Renta Básica event poster (credit to: Círculo Podemos Fuencarral – El Pardo)
Spain is preparing for general elections, and the party known as Podemos has found itself at the center of the latest political dispute. As a progressive movement, Podemos has started out by considering Basic Income (BI) in its political framework, namely in the latest elections for the European Parliament. More recently, however, BI has been left out from a more recent economic draft forming the basis of the present party platform. However, that fact has not dissuaded Círculo Renta Básica, a BI-focused group within Podemos, which has opened an initiative to reinsert BI into Podemos’ platform. (These latest events are summarized here).
Círculo Renta Básica’s official presentation took place on the June 8th, and despite that politically, two months is a great deal, it is important to register what exactly was presented at this event.
At this meeting, Podemos member and founder of Círculo Renta Básica, Héctor Zapata, spoke on the Spanish social situation and presented the case for BI, after being introduced by Raquel Carrasco, a member of Podemos Citizen Group in Madrid (Consejo Ciudadano de Madrid). Héctor started by establishing BI as a human rights matter with respect to the Spanish Constitution, in which human subsistence is designated as a basic right. He then listed BI’s main advantages, such as eliminating poverty, reducing inequality, reducing crime (as most crimes are co-related with poverty), enhancing workers’ bargaining power and boosting local economies. As for financing, Podemos’ Círculo Renta Básica adopted the proposal published by Daniel Raventós et al. Raventós states that, overall, financing BI can be accomplished with only €35 billion, or 3.5% of Spain’s gross national product. Calling for support for his group’s proposal, Héctor stressed that if this initiative is successful, Spain will be the first country in the world to eradicate poverty.
One of Podemos’ founders, political scientist and college professor Juan Carlos Monedero, highlighted the political, as opposed to technical,nature of BI discussions. Hence, he argued, it’s up to the people to decide the issue, not a very narrow subset of “specialists”. He stated that BI can have a positive effect on today’s global problems, such as climate change and high-finance terrorism, making the case that all these societal challenges are related. Monedero reasoned that it is senseless to maintain inequality and then spend public funds in police and jails, when the truly intelligent investment would be to bury poverty altogether by implementing BI. Clearly agreeing with Héctor on the BI benefit of empowering workers when dealing with employers, he also pointed out to another benefit of BI: rewarding women for all the unpaid work they contribute to society. He concluded that the BI is a necessary tool for each person to participate in society in a meaningful way, a crucial piece of social policy to restore democracy and minimum living standards.
As for Daniel Raventós, he emphatically reminds us that other revolutionary ideas have been resisted and ridiculed, until they are finally adopted and “obvious”. He recalls that it is not possible to merge great fortunes and democracy, so we must choose the one we really want for our society. Raventós also dives into the usual criticisms of BI, the first one being: if BI is so wonderful for most people (over 70%), then why such resistance? The first reason stems from the fact that the people who are supposed to pay for the BI are the richest, with greater power and influence, casting their perspective over the populace through the media. Another reason comes from lack of information, leading many to conclude that BI will just make people give up work, or that it will only feed lazy people, or that its financing is impossible, or even that it will cause degeneration into social disorder. In his view, the greatest obstacle to implementing BI is the fact that it would considerably enhance most people’s freedom, which when seen from the rich elite’s point of view, is catastrophic. He argues that humans are all different but some differences cannot be allowed. The smallest fraction of people impose their interests on millions of others, who get restricted and conditioned in their access to even the most basic necessities. It is because BI will break what he calls a “disciplining effect” that elites struggle so hard against it.
With 20 days left till the Podemos Círculo Renta Básica BI proposal ends, 4.17% support has been achieved, with 10% as the target minimum.
More information at:
In Spanish (event streamline):
Liam Upton, “SPAIN: Efforts Within Podemos to Ensure Basic Income is a General Election Policy“, BI News, July 8 2015
Juliana Bidadanure and Robert Lepenies (credit to: European University Institute)
This article rests on an interview with two Max Weber Fellows, Juliana Bidadanure and Ropert Lepenies, who are also Basic Income enthusiastic defenders and organizers of a summer conference on Basic Income at the European University Institute. The article discusses interactions between Basic Income and the welfare state, its implications on work, the benefits for workers, women and society at large. It also addresses some limitations of Basic Income, among which the inability to solve the root causes of inequality and alienation in society.
Olivia Arigho Stiles, “Universal Basic Income – treading the ‘capitalist road to communism’?“, European University Institute, July 2 2015
Emancipation Day (credit to: timeanddate.com – Emancipation Day in United States)
This essay by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark is a thorough yet condensed analysis of today’s situation of the Basic Income activism, particularly the one within Spanish reality. It acutely focuses on Basic Income’s implications at the political, philosophical and economic facets, while showing the shortcomings of the usual right-wing criticism. The discussion runs long and deep, but at the end it boils down to one simple issue: that rich people do not take well the idea of being swept aside, in favor of an emancipated vast majority who finally gets enough freedom to live “according to their own lights and in defense of their own dignity”.
Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark, “The Basic Income debate: political, philosophical and economic issues“, Counterpunch, August 21 2015
Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark, “The Basic Income debate: political, philosophical and economic issues“, Truthdig, August 26 2015
