In Oregon, a ballot initiative is making progress towards establishing a statewide Universal Basic Income.
Portland, OR — The Oregon Rebate (IP 2024-017) ballot initiative campaign has announced early success in collecting the necessary signatures to qualify for the November 2024 General Election.
The Oregon Rebate will establish a statewide Universal Basic Income in the form of yearly rebates valued at approximately $750. Every Oregonian, regardless of age, income, or status will be eligible to receive a yearly rebate. For example, a 4-person household will receive four rebates, or about $3,000, tax free.
The rebates are funded by increasing the minimum tax rate of the largest corporations doing business in Oregon. Currently, the minimum corporate tax rate for corporations with more than $25 million of annual Oregon sales is less than 1% and the Oregon Rebate proposes to increase this minimum corporate tax rate to 3%, still well below the 5-10% of personal tax rate Oregonians pay.
“Oregonians know that the biggest corporations are not paying their fair share, and that yearly cash rebates will help them make ends meet.” said Antonio Gisbert, chief petitioner of the Oregon Rebate.
The scope of the Oregon Rebate is noteworthy: Every year, approximately $3.0 billion of new revenue will be rebated among the approximately 4 million Oregonians. Using the UBI Center’s Basic Income Builder, the campaign estimates an overall reduction in poverty of approximately 15% and, specifically, a reduction in child poverty of approximately 26%.
“Cash is care, cash reduces poverty and provides opportunity, and cash stimulates our local economies and communities,” said Antonio Gisbert.
To date, among others, the Oregon Rebate campaign has been endorsed by PCUN, the Oregon Working Families Party, the Pacific Green Party, and the Oregon Progressive Party.
The campaign has until July 2024 to collect the statutorily required 120,413 signatures to qualify for the 2024 General Election. Those interested in reading the full text of the petition, learning more, and getting involved or contributing to the Oregon Rebate campaign may do so at https://oregonrebate.org/.
Over the past few decades care work and the social dimension of gender have increasingly become central issues in both academic and public debates. The close connection between them is evident from the high number of women involved in care activities. This year’s FRIBIS Annual Conference will examine both topics independently of each other but it also aims to explore their overlaps in content. The common reference point will be the Universal Basic Income, whose potentials and risks for the care field and gender-related issues will be explored.
Applications for active participation in the conference are now open for submission. The deadline is 30 June, 2023. As a university institute that strives to bring together both civil society actors and academics, FRIBIS is looking forward to receiving applications from academics in the field as well as from participants from civil society. More detailed information on the conference contents and registration procedures can be found here. Participation as a member of the public is also possible (registration opens on 5 July 2023).
Saturday April 30th was a significant day for the UK UBI movement, as over 30 people from around the country came together in Sheffield to discuss movement coordination and consolidation. Attendees included politicians, researchers, civil society organisations, and activists. Institutiions represented included the Green Party and the Alliance Party, the Universities of Bath and Northumbria, the Basic Income Conversation, COMPASS, Autonomy, the UBI Lab Network, Citizens Network and, of course, BIEN.
A participatory movement mapping session preceded an afternoon talking strategy around funding, communication, engaging with critics, and building institutions to foster integration, more effective and efficient use of shared resources, and coordinated campaigning. Attendees have committed to meeting again to take forward plans that were put in place in Sheffield, and to work towards major national events such as the 2024 BIEN Congress, which for the first time in 35 years will be hosted in England.
Jamesta Istimewa is a Basic Income Pilot experiment that provides participants free cash payments without strings attached. “Jamesta” means Universal Basic Income Guarantee in Bahasa (Indonesian language), and “Istimewa” means “special,” which is nothing but another name for the Special Region of Yogyakarta. In this place, this experiment was conducted. Jamesta Istimewa also has the privilege of being the first Crowdfunding-Based Basic Income Pilot experiment in Yogyakarta and Indonesia, which was carried out in a structured and systematic manner.
Yogyakarta’s Basic Income Pilot (YBIP) was conducted to answer some basic questions: Do people tend to be lazy when receiving free money? Is that true, or is it just a myth? Can Basic Income – to a certain extent – positively affect a person’s mental health? How do Basic Income recipients interpret and respond to Basic Income payments for themselves and their future? As well as various other interesting questions that have been coloring the debates related to the pros and cons of UBI, especially in the Indonesian context.
This Basic Income Pilot ran from November 2021 to April 2022. Experimental participants were recruited through an online open form distributed to the public in Yogyakarta. This city was chosen because it has a unique and interesting sociodemographic characteristic. Yogyakarta is widely known as a college-student-friendly city. With hundreds of universities, students come here from all over Indonesia. Yogyakarta is also known as a city of arts and culture with various relics of the past, which attracts millions of tourists from all over the world every year. Yogyakarta is also known as an area with a relatively low minimum wage level compared to other provinces in Indonesia. Furthermore, the cost of living in Yogyakarta is also touted as one of the cheapest in the country. Of course, the attributions above are debatable. But Yogyakarta’s unique sociocultural and socioeconomic setting was considered appropriate and exciting for carrying out this first Basic Income experiment in Indonesia.
Anyone living within the province of Yogyakarta during the experimental period (November 2021-April 2022) could register as a participant. Yogyakarta consists of four regencies (Sleman, Bantul, Kulon Progo, and Gunung Kidul) and one city (Yogyakarta City). According to the results of the 2020 Population Census (BPS, September 2020), the total population of DIY was 3,668,719 people. Participants who lived in Yogyakarta did not have to have a Yogyakarta ID card. Those who had a Yogyakarta ID card but lived outside Yogyakarta at the time of the experiment could not register as participants. When registration opened online on October 15, 2021, there were 2150 initial registrants. It was found that 50 double registrants had to be removed. Thus, the total number of registrants for this experiment was 2,100 people spread across five DIY regions. The average age of applicants was 33 years, with a composition of 51.4 percent male and 48.1 percent female. Of a hundred Pilot participants, 60 percent of them are female.
From the 2,100 registrants, 100 participants were randomly selected to be involved in further experiments: 25 recipients of basic income (control group) and 75 people who did not receive basic income but were willing to be involved and fill out the questionnaire given by the researcher (control group). The drawing process was carried out via Livestream on YouTube, and the recording can be seen here.
Jamesta Istimewa was run by a group of enthusiastic volunteer-young people in Yogyakarta. Most of them live in Yogyakarta, and some work remotely from outside the city, for example in Bandung and Jakarta. This experiment ran because of the full support of the CEOs of Kita Bisa (M. Al Fatih Timur) and M. Faiz Ghifari (Strategic Initiatives Kitabisa.com). Sena M. Luphdika was the project coordinator responsible for the overall management and implementation of this Pilot. Sena was supported by several other volunteers, such as Bimo Ario Suryandaru (Campaign Coordinator), Dianti Wulansari, Kurniawan Adhi, and Niko Febrianur (Webmaster). They are the ones who were behind the scenes running this Pilot from beginning to end. Yanu Endar Prasetyo (IndoBIG Network & Research Center for Population BRIN) is the research coordinator responsible for the study of this Pilot.
The final report of this pilot experiment will be released on Sunday, May 7, 2023 in a public discussion in Yogyakarta with some panelists such as Sarath Davala (Chair, BIEN), Dr. Nawawi (Chair, Research Center for Population – BRIN), Herni Ramdlaningrum (The Prakarsa) and representatives from the Yogyakarta Province Poverty Reduction Acceleration Team. The discussion also can be followed on YouTube Live Stream by clicking here.
This month Silicon Valley Bank defaulted causing the biggest bank failure since Lehman Brothers in 2008. The US government helped in finding a solution to stop the depositors from losing their money. The main reason for the bank’s failure was a bank run because of the bank’s inability to raise enough capital after miscalculating its investment strategy and not preparing enough for the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. Credit Suisse also faced a lot of trouble which caused the Swiss government to pressure UBS (Switzerland’s biggest bank) to acquire Credit Suisse. Those two incidents might seem irrelevant to a UBI, but such events show us the importance of UBI now.
The current economic and political scene is unstable. There are a lot of tensions between the main actors USA and China on the global stage as well as the conflict in Ukraine in combination with the aftermath of the Covid crisis which hurt the global economy and supply chains. Especially Russia’s attack and Ukraine and the resulting trade war with Europe caused a supply shock in the Energy sector which led to global inflation hence rising poverty and forcing the Fed to raise interest rates. Those hikes in interest rates, slowing economic growth, and an underperforming tech sector are causing a lot of economic instability and caused recent bank failures. But the question is how that is connected to UBI.
To understand why recent events, show the importance of a Universal Basic Income it is important to think about the potential worst-case scenario. The scenario that happened to SVB and Credit Suisse might repeat. Bank depositors might fear the repetition of such a bank failure in different banks and cause more bank runs as the whole banking sector is based on trust and there is no single bank that would survive a bank run without government support. There is also doubt in the current political climate how much possible bank bailouts are politically doable especially as most people will feel that the government supports the banking gamblers with their tax money while leaving the normal average people who didn’t do anything wrong alone when they struggle because of different reasons.
So, the first connection between UBI and the current banking problems is that the implementation of UBI would increase the population’s trust in the government as people will now feel seen and protected by society and will be less negative towards a potential bank bailout. Although possible bank bailouts would have to come with increased regulation to avoid giving the banks the feeling that they can do whatever they want, and the government will protect them while they screw the people’s money.
Another reason why the current economic situation makes UBI more necessary than before is that in a climate of increasing interest rates and declining trust in banks people will draw money from the economy, hence decreasing demand. Decreasing demand will lead to decreasing supply and will increase unemployment. A lot of economists like Larry Summers confess that and say it is a bitter pill to take to reduce inflation. Let’s assume that’s correct although I’m not sure that this is the best way out of the current situation that would mean that society is sacrificing jobs and hence the wealth of a lot of people to reduce inflation for the rest.
Such action is morally wrong, especially if people aren’t given a social net that protects them after losing their jobs to provide for themselves and their families. And we have to remember that the sole reason for them being unemployed will be that the FED and other Central Banks in other countries decided that higher unemployment is necessary to reduce inflation. This would make those people and their families suffer a lot financially and mentally and they might not find a way back to bring back structure in their life without support that relieves them of the stress of having just lost their livelihood. UBI would be the perfect measure to achieve that
The third argument which highlights the importance of UBI now has to do with the real economy and supply and demand. While a huge part of inflation is caused by the supply shocks from the Ukraine war it can’t be denied that it is also caused partly by a demand that might be higher than the current supply especially as supply chains haven’t recovered completely yet. And while many people might assume that this would be an argument against UBI as UBI would most probably increase demand we have to look at it from the other side too. Giving people a Universal Basic Income would mean giving people more flexibility and more control over their lives. People will choose the jobs they want to do instead of just taking any job. This dynamic might be crucial in overcoming the current crisis. It is expected that UBI will have a positive impact on entrepreneurship and small investments and such effects have been seen partly in previous pilot programs. Giving people a UBI would hence increase supply as smart entrepreneurs will see the gap between supply demand and work on filling that gap to make profits. This will mean a virtuous way out of inflation instead of a vicious way out of inflation. It would be also a way of directly supporting the victims instead of rewarding the gamblers
While a bank crisis is still avoidable, the current situation shows the importance of UBI on multiple fronts to help people in those difficult times. The government has tried to rescue the economy through trickle-down measures often and now it’s time to give people the chance to rescue the economy themselves by giving them a fair chance and promoting entrepreneurship by introducing a UBI and following a spirit of capitalism that left and right will be able to agree on.
