by BIEN | Oct 12, 2014 | News, Research
A new book has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan in its series “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee.” Entitled “Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State“, and co-edited by Yannick Vanderborght & Toru Yamamori, this collective volume provides the international audience with the very first general overview of the scholarly debate on basic income in Japan. The fifteen chapters offer a balanced picture of this debate, using basic income as a test case for analyzing the ongoing transformations of the Japanese welfare state. Contributors address many of the key issues faced by other developed nations today, such as growing economic insecurity, income and gender inequalities, poverty, ageing, migration, and the future of universal versus selective programs. Even if some remain skeptical about the immediate prospects for this radical idea, all contributors believe in its relevance for the study of contemporary Japan. The volume includes a foreword by Ronald Dore, one of the most prominent experts of Japan’s economy, and a long-standing basic income advocate.
For further information, and the table of contents, see here
A conference on the book will take place at Maison franco-japonaise in Tokyo (in French and Japanese) on October 31, 2014. More details on the conference here.
Full references: VANDERBORGHT, Yannick & YAMAMORI, Toru (eds.) (2014), Basic Income in Japan. Prospects for a Radical Idea in a Transforming Welfare State, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
by BIEN | Oct 9, 2014 | News
The leader of the Centre Party of Finland, Juha Sipilä, proposed on September 10th regional basic income experiments to be run in some highunemployment rural and urban areas. The proposal was part of the interpellation on poverty made by the Centre Party and the Left Alliance. Paavo Arhinmäki, the leader of the Left Alliance thanked Sipilä for taking up the issue of basic income. The next day the National Coalition party MP Lasse Männistö expressed his support to Sipilä’s idea on his blog. The rightwing National Coalition is currently the leading party in Finland.
Basic income became one of the topics of parliament’s discussion on the interpellation on poverty on September 23th. Several MPs, among them Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, expressed their support to the idea of basic income pilots.
The Centre Party, which is currently the fourth largest party in Finland, has included the concept of basic income in many of its programmes during the 1990s. However, in its formulations, basic income has often been conditional and granted only to the poor. The Green League and the Left Alliance, which both are mediumsized parties, support unconditional basic income and have released their own models of it (the Green League 2007 and the Left Alliance 2011). The Green League is currently updating its model.
For more information, see the following links:
The Centre Party: “Sipilä Proposes Regional Basic Income Pilot”
Kansan Uutiset, the journal of the Left Alliance: “The Left Thanks Sipilä’s Opening on Basic Income”
The National Coalition Party MP Lasse Männistö’s blog: “To a Basic Income Journey”
Finnish Parliament Plenary Sessions.
The basic income model of the Left Alliance, a paper presented in the BIEN2012 Congress in Munich by Jouko Kajanoja and Pertti Honkanen (in English)
The basic income model of the Green League from 2007 (there is a link to the English version below the graph).
by BIEN | Aug 21, 2014 | News
Basic income will be a major topic at the 4th International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity from September 2 to 6 in the German city of Leipzig. Activists from Netzwerk Grundeinkommen and from other basic income groups will give several talks, workshops and plenary contributions.
by BIEN | Aug 1, 2014 | News
Interfax-Ukraine
According to an article of Interfax-Ukraine dated to 14th July 2014, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a Ukrainian business magnate and the current Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in Eastern Ukraine, suggests to punish people who support separatism and terrorism in Ukraine by seizeing their assets and to create a special fund out of them. The stakeholders of this fund should be those who are currently fighting at the “Anti-Terroristic-Operation” (ATO), as well as relatives of killed soldiers.
The respective article does not say exactly, if the stakeholders receive a dividend, but if, it can be compared to the Alaska Permanent Fund. However, the beneficiaries would not be all citizens of Ukraine and to become a beneficiary would not be unconditional (either you need to be a member of the ATO, or to be a relative of a killed soldier).
Source in Russian:
Interfax-Ukraine [Ukrainian news agency], “Коломойский считает необходимым провести национализацию ряда активов Ахметова и Фирташа [Kolomoyskyi sees it as necessary to nationalise some assets of Akhmetov and Firtash],” Interfax-Ukraine, 14th July 2014.
