Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Call for Participation in the 15th North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress, 12-15 May 2016

“BASIC INCOME: A MEETING PLACE FOR EQUALITY, RIGHTS, and JUSTICE”

12-15 May (Thursday to Sunday) 2016

University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

Basic Income Canada Network

This Congress is taking place in Winnipeg, Manitoba in the heart of Canada and the North American continent. The University of Manitoba campuses are located on the traditional homeland of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on Treaty One territory. The Forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, and the city of Winnipeg that formed around the Forks, have been the meeting place of Indigenous peoples, European traders and settlers, and waves of newcomers from all corners of the world.

“Meeting place” describes our physical location. It also describes the power of Basic Income — an idea and goal that can bring together various individuals, ideologies and constituencies concerned about equality, rights, environmental sustainability, and social justice. A universal, unconditional, and adequate income granted to everyone is a common goal that can unite activists, advocates, policy and academic experts, and social movements.

As a meeting place, this Congress will address the relationship of Basic Income to:

  • economic, cultural, and social security for Indigenous peoples
  • reconciliation between Indigenous and settler communities
  • women’s economic security, autonomy and empowerment
  • overcoming racism and ensuring social inclusion of diverse and newcomer populations
  • challenging the economics of “austerity”
  • elimination of poverty as a means of ensuring population health
  • labour market transformation, including technological unemployment and precarious jobs
  • mapping pragmatic models for delivery of basic income, including the pros and cons experimental and demonstration projects
  • strategic alliances and coalitions with progressive social movements (e.g. labour, feminists, environmentalists)

 

Call for Participation

The NABIG Congress 2016 invites proposals for presentations and papers, themed panels, interactive roundtables, and posters that address the themes above.

Community activists as well as academic researchers and policy specialists are invited to submit proposals.

The Congress is open to any disciplinary or theoretical approach or political perspective, including those who express a constructive skepticism towards the basic income option or advocate for variants.

Submitting Your Proposal

Options for participation:

  1. Individual oral presentations (including written academic papers)

Proposals should include a title, a brief summary or abstract (250 words maximum), identification of the conference themes addressed in the presentation, and full contact information of the presenter (name, organizational or institutional affiliation, and email address).

  1. Panels of up to three papers or presentations

Panels should be organized around a clearly identifiable theme The format of the panel involves formal presentation of papers and response to audience questions in a session lasting 90 minutes. Please include the following in your proposal:

  • title and brief outline (maximum. 100 words) of the topic of the panel
  • title and short abstract of each paper (maximum. 100 words each)
  • full contact information (including the affiliations and email addresses) of the panel organizer and participants
  1. Roundtables involving a small number of participants (3 – 4)

Give the topic of the roundtable, and the names and institutional affiliations of all participants, as well as the full contact information of the roundtable convener. The format of the roundtable is intended to be informal and interactive. – the roundtable participants speaking with each other, and with the audience. Roundtable sessions will run for 90 minutes.

  1. Poster display

Posters are to present coherent and well organized information on some aspect of basic income. Posters will be displayed throughout the duration of the conference, with certain time slots set aside for authors to be on hand to meet with those interested in their topics. Proposals for posters should include a title, a brief summary or abstract (150 words), identification of the conference themes addressed, and full contact information of the presenter (name, organizational or institutional affiliation, and email address). Posters should be prepared as one unit should not exceed 100 cm. x 100 cm. (approximately 50 in. x 50 in.).

Submit your proposals no later than 20 November 2015 to:

Nabigcongress2016@umanitoba.ca

All proposals must include this information:

Name:

Address (including institutional or organizational affiliation):

Email address:

Title:

Format (check one):       Oral presentation ___           paper ____         poster ___

panel* ___         roundtable* ____

* specify names, affiliations, and topic of all participants in panel and roundtable sessions

Sessions en français / Sessions in French

La conférence sera menée principalement en anglais. Cette conférence se déroulera au Canada, où les deux langues officielles sont le français et l’anglais. Par conséquent, la soumission de propositions pour des sessions et des affiches en français est encouragée. Contacter l’adresse courriel ci-dessus pour plus d’informations.

The conference will be conducted primarily in English. This conference takes place in Canada, which has the two official languages of French and English. Therefore submissions of proposals for sessions and posters in French are welcomed. Contact the email address above for further information.

Note: All presenters of accepted proposals will be required to register for the Congress

Further Information

For details concerning the venue, program, registration, accommodation, or information about our partners and sponsors, visit our Congress website at umanitoba.ca/social_work.

Conference Organizers

The NABIG Congress 2016 is organized by the Basic Income Canadian Network / Réseau canadien pour le revenu garanti (BICN/RCRG) and the United States Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network, in conjunction with the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, Basic Income Manitoba, Winnipeg Harvest, and l’École de service social de Université de Saint-Boniface.

Basic Income Canada Network

Basic Income Canada Network

UNITED STATES: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz Endorses Unconditional Basic Income

UNITED STATES: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz Endorses Unconditional Basic Income

Joseph Stiglitz, during the question and answer session after his talk at the World Summit on Technological Unemployment in New York on February 29, 2015, was asked whether he supported an Unconditional Basic Income as a policy response to technological unemployment. He replied, “Yes, that’s part of the solution.

He quickly went on to say that Basic Income is not all. He talked about other financial reforms, “predistribution” – changing the rules of the market economy, eliminating the peculiar system in which land speculators are taxed at a lower rate than other people, and so on.

In other words, Stiglitz endorses it, but does not emphasize it. This is somewhat of an unusual position; most people seem to have strong feelings about it whether for or against. Stiglitz is for it, but he sees it as a small part of a host of financial and other reforms.

Stiglitz joins a long list of Nobel-prize winning economists who have endorsed some form of Basic Income Guarantee, including James Tobin, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, James Meade, Paul Krugman, F. A. Hayek, Herbert A. Simon, and Robert Solow.

More on the World Summit on Technological Unemployment can be found online at: https://www.wtn.net/technological-unemployment-summit.

World Summit on Technological Unemployment

World Summit on Technological Unemployment

 

 

 

Stewart Lansley, “How Social Wealth Funds Could Help Tackle Inequality.”

ABSTRACT: This article examines the potential to tackle the roots of inequality by the introduction of one or more social wealth funds. Such funds would aim to capture some of the financial gains from the private ownership of capital—a principal driver of inequality—and use the proceeds for wider community benefit, such as investment in social infrastructure. In recent decades a number of countries have introduced a variant on such funds, mostly taking the form of state-owned sovereign wealth funds resourced through the exploitation of oil, and used for a diversity of economic purposes. In contrast, the UK has failed to take the opportunity to create such funds by, for example, reinvesting the revenue from the sales of public assets. So would it be possible to build one or more such collectively owned funds in the UK, and if so, how should they be financed? As well as funding social investment and anti-inequality programmes, could such a scheme also help finance a regular Citizen’s Dividend payment or a Citizen’s Income scheme?

Stewart Lansley, “How Social Wealth Funds Could Help Tackle Inequality.” The Political Quarterly Volume 86, issue 4, 2015.

The Political Quarterly

The Political Quarterly

INTERNATIONAL: Interview series about Basic Income Week

international basicincome week

international basicincome week

International Basic Income Week from 2008 until today: How did it all start?

Basicincomeweek.org is finding out what is happening with Basic Income initiatives around the world, regarding International Basic Income Week and beyond.
The organization is talking with the people who brought International Basic Income Week to life and who have made it into the international event it is today.  It all started with local events that everyone is invited to join.

Then Basic Income Week is talking with activists of countries taking part for the first time in 2015. Later on there will be interviews with initiatives that are otherwise significantly contributing to worldwide Unconditional Basic Income.

Basic Income Week has interviews with:

 

Further interviews to expect:

  • 18th September: Enno Schmidt, Swiss Referendum campaign
  • Pastor Diergaardt, Chairperson of BIG Coalition, Namibia

BIEN’s Basic Income Week “Ask Me Anything” Series Begins Tuesday, September 15

The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) together with the /r/BasicIncome community on Reddit has planned a series of Q&A events throughout Basic Income Week (September 14-20, 2015). Each event is called an AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything.” In each event a person with specialized knowledge in some area of basic income will go online and answer questions (by text) typed in by anyone accessing Reddit around the world.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DJN.GvxuIx%252bDM3Iz8x%252foD4Z2gg%26pid%3D15.1&f=1

Reddit

Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the internet. It has millions of members in ongoing discussions of specific topics called, “subreddits.” The Basic Income subreddit is a lively and growing discussion with nearly 30,000 members.

The Basic Income Week AMAs are:

Tuesday, September 15, 2pm (Eastern time US): Liane Gale, co-founder of the Basic Income Women’s Action Group and Louise Haagh, co-chair of BIEN, Reader (associate professor) in politics at the University of York (UK) and author of several books and articles about basic income.

Tuesday, September 15, 2pm (Eastern time US): Ian Schlakman, New Economy Organizer, Green Party nominee for Congress (2014) and co-founder of Basic Income Action.

Thursday, September 17, 10am (Eastern time US): Sarath Davala, of the Self Employed Women’s Association (India) and Guy Standing, Professor of Development Students at the University of London, cofounder of BIEN, and author of a dozen books and hundreds of articles on basic income. Both Davala and Standing working on the Indian Basic Income Pilot Project.

Friday, September 18, 12pm (Eastern Time US): Andre Coelho and Jenna Van Draanen, the two co-editors of Basic Income News.

Sunday, September 20, 2pm (Eastern Time US): Sjir Hoeijmakers, econometrician, basic income activist, and leader in the push for a basic income pilot project in the Netherlands.

Basic Income Week

Basic Income Week 2015