by Josh Martin | Sep 29, 2014 | Research
Flanigan advocates a basic income because it “balances the reasonable complaints that people may have about the effects of a property system that they never consented to join. Though redistribution cannot justify forcing everyone to join a property system, it can at least compensate people who are very badly off partly because they were forced to join that property system. Some people will do very well under a property system that nevertheless violates their rights. But it is not a further rights violation if a property system doesn’t benefit the rich as much as it possibly could.”
Jessica Flanigan, “Political Authority and the Basic Income”, Bleeding Heart Libertarians, 11 September 2014.
by Josh Martin | Sep 28, 2014 | Research
Viktor Persson, “The Theory of Economy”, A Functional Economy, 10 September 2014.
(Source: A Functional Economy)
by Josh Martin | Sep 27, 2014 | Research
[Josh Martin]
This piece gives thorough insight into the issue of automation and robotics replacing human labor and thus leading to an influx of unemployed low-skill workers. Santens describes why a higher minimum wage would fail to properly address the problem and instead advocates a basic income to help ease this process into automated labor.
Scott Santens, “Machine Labor Day”, Medium, 1 September 2014.
by Josh Martin | Sep 26, 2014 | Research
[Josh Martin]
In this post on The Week, Cooper discusses the political debate surrounding a universal basic income. While some policy circles advocate it, politicians are stuck debating the “something for nothing” objection to the basic income, instead preferring to push work on those in poverty. However, Cooper points out trends in work that show decreasing job openings and increasing job seekers, leading him to say, “As someone with a nice, stimulating job, I agree that work can help people flourish. But in an economy that is flatly failing to produce enough jobs to satisfy the need, a universal basic income will start to seem more plausible — even necessary.”
Ryan Cooper, “America is running out of jobs. It’s time for a universal basic income.”, The Week, 9 September 2014.
A supermarket-style food pantry in New York City helps families in need. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
by Josh Martin | Sep 20, 2014 | News
The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) has begun a movement to establish a universal basic income for citizens across southern Africa. The SADC consists of members across the southern half of the African continent, from Congo to Tanzania to South Africa.
This area sees high levels of unemployment, food insecurity, and high income inequality. At the same time, however, this region holds tremendous levels of mineral wealth with high reserves of platinum, gold, and diamonds. For centuries this mineral wealth has been extracted from Africa without using the generated wealth to invest in the local regions. Because of this history of extraction without investment, the SADC wants to implement a SADC-wide universal basic income grant scheme to be funded by a tax on extractive industries.
This SADC-wide movement is being organized by the SPII (Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute) based out of Johannesburg, South Africa.
To read more, the SPII’s post on the basic income grant is online at: https://spii.org.za/index.php/projects/ser-programme-2/sadc-big/
To learn how to get involved, go online at: https://spii.org.za/index.php/projects/ser-programme-2/sadc-big/get-involved-sadc-big/
The SPII is starting a movement for a SADC-wide basic income grant (Logo source: SPII)
