by Guest Contributor | Jun 23, 2016 | Bios & background Info
We need your effort and ideas to help spread the word about Basic Income.
BIEN is an all-volunteer organization. We have no paid labor and hardly any budget. And so we have created several volunteer taskforces to work on projects over the coming year or more. Some of these taskforces have been around for years, but most of them are just getting started, and a few of them are just ideas at this point. We invite volunteers to take part in any and all of these taskforces, to help shape them, and to decide what needs to be done. Most of these taskforces have an open structure chosen by the taskforce members themselves.
We also ask volunteers to join existing taskforces, and they can also suggest additional task forces. What taskforces BIEN ultimately has will be driven largely by what goals our volunteers choose to pursue.
To get more info about any single taskforce contact the point-person listed for the task force.
To volunteer, please contact the point person(s) (listed below) for the taskforce(s) that most interests you. If you’re not sure which suits you best, or if you have an idea for a new taskforce, contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk> (BIEN chair).
Existing and proposed taskforces:
BIEN’s Basic Income News: This is BIEN’s news service and the only news service in the world dedicated entirely to the issue of Basic Income. It is BIEN’s most active and visible taskforce. The work and structure of Basic Income News is described in BIEN’s EC functions. Three members of the EC and many volunteers are in this task force. (See Volunteer for Basic Income News for more information or to apply to volunteer.)
Point person: André Coelho <ascmenow@gmail.com>
Affiliate Outreach: This taskforce is very active and energetic. It’s job is to coordinate BIEN’s interaction with its dozens of affiliates around the world to plan joint strategy for research and educational activities to advance public knowledge and understanding of basic income and of public policy developments and debates linked to basic income. It helps the Local Organizing Committee plan BIEN’s yearly academic congress, such as by organizing a session in which affiliates report on their efforts to educate the public about basic income.
Point Person: Jenna van Draanen <jennavandraanen@gmail.com>.
Public Outreach: This committee is currently being spun off the affiliates outreach taskforce. It will aid in furthering joint events among relevant organisations and the wider public around the world to help educate citizens, and offer research-based engagement with local public officials and citizens, and support informed public debate and increase understanding of Basic Income. This taskforce will also investigate how to expand BIEN’s representation at relevant policy-making bodies and think tanks. This committee does not yet have an point person. In the meantime, contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk> (chair of BIEN), Pablo E. Yanes Rizo <pyanes2007@gmail.com>, and Ana Klincic Andrews <anaklincicandrews@gmail.com>.
Social media: This taskforce is a subcommittee of BIEN’s public outreach committee. It consolidate all BIEN’s social media activities on Facebook and other platforms. It’s a very visible taskforce with tens of thousands of followers on Facebook alone. It is in need of more volunteers so that we can do more things.
Point person: Jason Burke Murphy <jason.burke.murphy@gmail.com>.
Crowdfunding/fundraising taskforce: This taskforce will find ways to use our website, NewsFlash, social media presence, and other avenues to raise funds. It is working on a strategy to promote donations to BIEN online and elsewhere.
It has no point person yet, but the current members of the taskforce are:
Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com)>
Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
Aoife Hegarty <aoife.hegarty@gmail.com>
Ana Klincic Andrews <anaklincicandrews@gmail.com>
Website taskforce: The role of this taskforce is improve the functioning and content of BIEN’s website. This taskforce needs a webmaster(s) and anyone with web-skills to maintain the website. It also needs people to decide how to create on BIEN’s website a depository of research and expertise: to consolidate BIEN’s web-page as a place interested parties can locate relevant experts and find information on policy studies, experiments, and published research on basic income and related topics.
It currently does not have a Point Person. To get involved contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>.
Research Taskforce: This taskforce is working on creating a online database of research on basic income, and to improve research on basic income in any way it can.
Point person: Kate McFarland <faceless.watcher@gmail.com>
Point person: Toru Yamamori <toruyamamori@googlemail.com>
Wikipedia Taskforce: This taskforce is a subcommittee of the research committee. It’s goal is to improve the breadth, depth, and accuracy about Basic Income on Wikipedia.
Point person: Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com>
We hope you will get involved.
-Karl Widerquist, Vice-Chair <Karl@Widerquist.com>
-Louise Haagh, Chair <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
BIEN
by Guest Contributor | Jun 20, 2016 | Opinion
The level of Basic Income (BI) is a matter of heated debate in discussions of BI for national implementation, investigating the level at which BI would be ‘high enough’. There is also growing dispute regarding ‘partial’ vs. ’full’ BI. This was the central topic of investigation at this year’s BI conference in Maastricht in January. The following calculations, using a common formula and comparing BI levels for 24 European/OECD countries, aim to assist in the resolution of this debate.
We don’t want to make the system worse than it is. It’s logical, then, that the minimal level of BI should reach, at least, the level of current Social Assistance (SA): we could call this ‘partial’ BI. All BI proposals included in this analysis satisfy this condition.
It follows that implementation of a BI close to the level offered by the current social security system (e.g., the SA level) implies budget neutrality in countries with a more universal system.[1] This follows the argument “If we can afford our current welfare system, we can afford basic income” that Max Ghenis has well elaborated. These proposals might be socially more acceptable, given that the change would be ‘minimal’.
So, if the level of SA in a country indicates 1) the socially acceptable level of social aid and 2) the first estimation of the social welfare budget, BI at the same level would likely be the most financially and socially affordable solution, offering the shortest implementation time frame. Proposals for Slovenia[2], Hungary[3] and Finland[4] belong to this category.
On the other hand, the level of BI should be high enough to ensure a material existence and participation in society. We assume this when we argue that BI should be at least at the level of the current Poverty Threshold (PT): we could call this ’full’ BI. BI at such a level would probably fulfill the role of an emancipatory welfare system.[5] Proposals for Switzerland[6] and the Netherlands[7] fit into this second category.
The question is, how costly are lowered aspirations regarding a ‘partial’ BI level (e.g., in Slovenia, Finland and Hungary) in service of affordability and/or social acceptance in the foreseeable future? Will we achieve anything? As the microsimulation in Slovenia demonstrated, however, even a partial BI proposal (budget neutral, well below PT and above SA) proved to be: 1) better for the majority, 2) the same or better for the more vulnerable and 3) better for the lowest deciles. The Hungarian BI proposal seems to draw similar conclusions.
To serve discussion regarding the level of BI in different countries, a common formula (similar to that used for the Slovenian proposal) was used to calculate the levels of BI proposed in various countries.
Formula: BI = an average of three components:
- Social Assistance for a single person with no children: Indicates the currently acceptable minimal level of social aid (and the ‘budget’ of the current social security system).
- 1/2 of the Poverty Threshold at the point of 60% of the median income: Takes into account income distribution and the risk of poverty.
- 1/3 of average net wages: Takes into account the ‘value of work.’
A table with Basic Income calculations for 24 European and OECD countries allows us to draw comparisons across and within countries regarding: the social protection system (e.g., SA), the average wage (AW), the poverty threshold (PT), BI calculations using the same formula (both in national currencies and euro) and different BI proposals. It’s very important to note, however, that in countries where the level of SA is already higher than the BI calculation, the existing SA should be taken as a starting point. BI proposals for Finland and the Netherlands belong to this group.
Such BI calculations (that are above SA & ‘budget neutral’ & below PT) could serve BI discourse as the first benchmark:
- at which we could expect results that would be: a) better for the majority, b) the same or better for the more vulnerable and c) better for the lowest deciles;
- of the BI level calculation for countries that, as yet, have made no BI calculations;
- to evaluate competing national proposals;
- to evaluate proposals across countries;
- to evaluate existing social security systems, investigating by how much they diverge from this preferable solution;
- of common European social welfare solutions made by the people (of 99%) for the people and not from the EU elites.
Valerija Korošec: PhD in Postmodern Sociology, MSc in European Social Policy Analysis. Author of (eng) UBI Proposal in Slovenia (2012) sl. Predlog UTD v Sloveniji: Zakaj in kako?(2010). Co-editor UBI in Slovenia (2011). Member of Sekcija za promocijo UTD. Member of UBIE. Slovenian representative in BIEN. Fields of expertise: poverty, inequality, sastifaction with life, social policy anlaysis, gender equality, ‘beyond GDP’, paradigm shift, postmodernism, UTD, basic income. Slovenian. Born 1966 and raised in Maribor. Lives in Ljubljana. Employed at the Institue of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (Government Office of Republic Slovenia). Views under my name are my own. @valerijaSlo
Footnotes:
[1] All included countries have a universal SA system, except: 1) Finland, Germany, Belgium, Estonia and Denmark, which have different levels of assistance based on employment status according to OECD statistic – in these cases it was the data for the ‘Employed’ SA level that were included; and 2) the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, which have no scheme comparable to SA.
[2] https://basicincome.org/bien/pdf/munich2012/Korosec.pdf
[3] https://let.azurewebsites.net/upload/tanulmany.pdf (English version unavailable).
[4] https://basicincome.org/news/2015/12/finland-basic-income-experiment-what-we-know/
[5] https://basicincome-europe.org/ubie/charter-ubie/
[6] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-pay-idUSBRE9930O620131004
[7] Alexander de Roo, by mail.
by Guest Contributor | Jun 8, 2016 | Opinion
Karl Widerquist, co-chair
Louise Haagh, co-chair
We, the two co-chairs of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), have made the following proposal to BIEN’s 2016 General Assembly: “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them.”[*] BIEN has held Congresses once every two years since its inception in 1986. The Congress in Seoul will be BIEN’s sixteenth. In this op-ed we explain why a move to annual Congresses are so important to BIEN at this time, and we address some concerns people might have with annual Congresses.
The main reason that BIEN needs yearly Congresses is that the Basic Income movement has grown enormous. In 1986, when BIEN began, it is hard to say there was a movement. There was a small tight-knit group of researchers; most of them came to every conference. Although some activists were interested in Basic Income, public opinion was not at point to make a real activist movement viable in many countries. Today Basic Income has millions of supporters around the world with many more joining every day. The topic has entered mainstream political debate in dozens of countries, many of which had no previous history of high-level discussion of basic income.
BIEN has to keep pace with the growth of the movement. Its role is to get people involved, to exchange ideas, to give people a chance to build on each other’s ideas. It’s missing too many opportunities to do that with such infrequent Congresses.
The second most important reason to begin having yearly Congresses is that BIEN has grown. BIEN was constituted as the Basic Income European Network, and its geographic reach was limited almost entirely to Western Europe until BIEN expanded to become the Basic income Earth Network in 2004. Even then, for several more years, most of its membership and most of the people attending its Congresses were European. But with BIEN’s expanded reach, it had to have Congresses in other parts of the world. BIEN has had successful Congresses in Africa, South America, and North America, and we expect it will have a successful Congress in Asia this July, but the expansion of geographical reach of BIEN’s Congresses has meant fewer Congresses in any region. Only the world’s most privileged people can travel halfway around the globe to attend a conference. We need to have more conferences in more regions so that more people have the opportunity to attend a one now and then.
We see very little downside to this proposal. Most organizations that have conferences have them yearly. The amount of basic income literature and activism going on today ensures that there is no risk that we will run out of new ideas to discuss at the congresses.
The most likely concern that might make people hesitate to endorse annual Congresses is the fear that they might be too much work and that BIEN might outstrip its resources. Obviously, two conferences are twice the work of one conference, but two conferences are not necessarily more work for any one person. Each BIEN Congress is run by one of BIEN’s affiliate networks. They take on the responsibility of raising funds, finding facilities, inviting participants, creating schedule, and virtually everything else involved with running a conference. The BIEN Executive Committee’s role is limited to overseeing this effort to ensure consistency.
When BIEN began in 1986, it had no affiliates, and there was only one national basic income network—the Citizens Income Trust[†] in the United Kingdom—in existence in the world. Today BIEN has about two dozen affiliates on all six habitable continents. Most of them either have hosted a BIEN Congress or would like to if they got the chance. Many more networks, many of them potential affiliates, are springing up around the world. In its affiliates and members, BIEN has far more resources than ever before. Many networks would like to get more involved in the movement by bringing the BIEN Congress to their country or region.
In 2014, three excellent proposals were put forward to host the 2016 Conference—one each from Finland, the Netherlands, and (South) Korea. According to BIEN’s rules at the time, the General Assembly could only pick one. That meant that we had to turn down two others. It was little consolation to those groups to say, “although you can’t host a BIEN Congress in two years, if you reapply, maybe one of you can host it in four years and the other can host it in six years.” That is an extremely long time to wait. We had to turn away groups that were willing and able to put on great conferences.
As the co-chairs of BIEN, we have been in touch with several groups that are interested in hosting the next BIEN Congress, and some of them are interested in doing it as early as 2017. We are, therefore, confident that we can move to yearly conferences right away. If in any year we do not have an affiliate network capable of hosting a conference, we have written the proposal in a way that allows us to skip a year.
Therefore, we see very good reason to support—and very little reason to oppose—a move to annual BIEN Congresses. We ask all of BIEN’s members to join us in supporting this motion.
— notes —
[*] The full wording is, “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them. If BIEN cannot find affiliate networks to organize Congresses yearly, they will continue with Congresses once every two years.”
[†] Then called the Basic Income Research Group.
BIEN Congress
by Guest Contributor | Jun 5, 2016 | News
by Guest Contributor | Jun 3, 2016 | Opinion
Louise Haagh, co-chair
Karl Widerquist, co-chair
The two of us have proposed a new governing structure for BIEN. This proposal replaces BIEN’s statutes with the attached document, available on the “About BIEN” page of this Basicincome.org. The goal of it is to retain BIEN’s current structure (as much as possible) while officially chartering BIEN as an international non-profit organization compliant with Belgian law. Doing so will give BIEN an official legal standing and allow it to do things such as raise funds over the internet. Potentially this will allow BIEN to engage in and fund more research and events, as well as make it possible for other potential partner organisations to include BIEN as a legal organisation in similar activities. This document replaces BIEN’s statutes as its official governing structure, but all BIEN policies not contradicted by this document remain in effect. All BIEN life-members will become life-members of this newly recognized organization.
The perhaps most important fact to note is that the legal form of the new AISBL ensures that the AISBL is governed directly by BIEN’s elected officers, subject to the GA in the usual way.
BIEN logo
It is important to emphasize that some differences between the old BIEN statutes and this document exist, but in our judgement they are minor and even necessary. This includes for instance the provision that we are able to exclude members in certain circumstances, however subject to final GA approval. Being a legal organisation it is not only required by law, but it seems sensible for us, to have this provision. Many minor changes are the result of compromises worked through over many e.mails and conversations. We are however overall confident having worked through many versions of this document, to include Louise, Karl, and – in the last stages – Philippe, we have done what we can do ensure BIEN’s current practices prevail in this new structure.
