by Karl Widerquist | Aug 18, 2015 | News
A Basic Income action group, organized by and for women, is currently coming together. Below is the organizers invitation to join the group–reprinted in full:
To: Basic Income Supporters
From: Ann Withorn (Massachusetts) and Liane Gale (Minnesota)
Re: Basic Income Women Action Group (BIWAG)
It’s time for women in the Basic Income world to get organized, to make sure our presence is strong within the emerging Basic Income Movement, and to liven up and expand women’s participation, dialogue and actions. We are contacting you because we think you are, or would be, interested in building a stronger base among women within the wider BIG community.
Liane Gale
As a response to the February 2015 NABIG Congress in New York City, we released the attached statement to announce the formation of this group. Since then, while also building local Basic Income chapters, we have been spreading the word about BIWAG to Basic Income activists, primarily women. We have also established a FB group – Basic Income Women Action Group. The FB group has not been very active so far, but we hope to use it more extensively in the future. We’ve attached the original BIWAG statement.
We are establishing a Planning Group that will help BIWAG be more focused and expand our reach. Are you interested in joining a conference call to discuss the future of BIWAG?
We will hold two conference calls to accommodate different time zones and schedules; Ann and Liane will co-moderate both.
Monday, August 31: 8 pm – 9:30 pm ET
Wednesday, September 2 :10 am – 11:30 am ET
These calls will be open-ended conversations that will allow us to
1) Introduce ourselves to each other, share what we have all been doing already that feels part of this work, and discuss progress and challenges.
2) Share our thoughts about the original BIWAG statement.
3) Generate ideas for becoming more active in pursuing our stated goals, and discuss expanding (or limiting) our scope in the future.
4) Identify a list of specific Next Steps such as:
o Creating a timeline of activities to be accomplished by December;
o Increasing the involvement of women in all ongoing Basic Income efforts, with special attention to bringing more women, and more women related content, to the May 2016 NABIG meeting in Winnipeg (Call for Participation attached)
o Producing an up-to-date contact list of women in the Basic Income community
Please reply by Aug 28 to let us know whether you will join one of the calls, so that we can provide you with call-in info. If you cannot participate in a conference call, but are interested in being actively involved, please reply to that effect, and we will make sure that you will have another opportunity for input.
Please share this invitation with anyone whom you think would be interested in joining this effort. Also, we aren’t excluding men from the call, so if someone knows an interested BI man who would like to support this effort, please tell us, and we’ll send an explanatory invite.
Reply to either of us by e-mail,
Ann Withorn (withorn.ann@gmail.com), Liane Gale (liane.gale@gmail.com) or feel free to call Ann at 617-515-8177
BIWAG
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 6, 2015 | News, The Indepentarian
Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD)–the closest policy to Basic Income existing in the world today–could reach over $2000 this year, but it remains under threat as Alaskan politicians seek ways to close the budget deficit.
According to KTUU TV, Bill Popp, the head of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation predicted that this year’s PFD will reach $2,000. The PFD varies each year because it is financed by an investment fund owned by the state. It is paid each year to every Alaskan U.S. citizen who fills out a form verifying their residency in the state. Last year the PDF was $1884. A payout of $2000 would be close to the record high dividend of $2,069.00 of 2008. It will still be far below 2008’s full payment, which included a $1200 supplement from the state’s budget surplus that year.
Alaska’s Dividend is so popular that recent editorials have suggested linking the PFD application to voter registration to encourage more people to vote. However, it is under attack because declining oil exports coupled with declining oil prices have created a large budget deficit. This budget pressure does not directly affect the PFD because it is financed by its own dedicated investment fund of more than $50 billion. However, politicians have increasingly been talking about redirect money from that fund to the regular state budget to help close the deficit. One recent editorial suggests capping the dividend at $1000 and using the rest of the money for the regular state budget.
For more information see:
Kortnie Horazdovsky, “2015 Permanent Fund Dividend could hit $2000, AEDC says,” KTUU-TV, Jul 29, 2015
Dermot Cole, “Linking voter registration to PFD would create fundamental change.” Alaska Dispatch News, August 2, 2015
Elise Patkotak, “How about this? If you don’t vote, you don’t get a PFD.” Alaska Dispatch News, July 28, 2015.Brian O’Connor, “Sustainable Alaska: Tax package likely necessary to plug $2.7b budget hole.” The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, August 1, 2015.
Picture credit CC Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) Timothy Wildey
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 28, 2015 | News
In an interview with Ezra Klein of Vox published on July 28, U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was asked pointedly about basic income. His response this time was more specific than his answer when asked about basic income on Reddit a year ago, but it was still rather vague.
Early in the interview, Sanders endorsed a single-payer healthcare system, which is an unconditional and universal program. He went on to say:
It seems to me that when you look at basic necessities of life — education, health care, nutrition — there must be a guarantee that people receive what they need in order to live a dignified life.
Klein responded later with a very specific question about basic income:
Let me end on a question about a policy that is getting, seems to be, some momentum but it’s not often talked about in Washington, which is a universal basic income. You’ve begun to have people go back to both Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King Jr., saying we should really have a fundamentally guaranteed standard of living in this country.
Sanders responded by saying, “I am absolutely sympathetic to that approach.” But of course, “absolutely sympathetic” is not the same as “absolutely in support of.” So, exactly what he means is unclear. The rest of his answer does not specifically address basic income. Here it is in full:
I am absolutely sympathetic to that approach. That’s why I’m fighting for a $15 minimum wage, why I’m fighting to make sure that everybody in this country gets the nutrition they need, why I’m fighting to expand Social Security benefits and not cut them, making sure that every kid in this country regardless of income can go to college. That’s what a civilized nation does.
Here’s the point. This is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but nobody in America knows it because their standard of living is going down and almost all of the new wealth is going to the top 1 percent. That is an issue that we have to deal with.
In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the top one-tenth of 1 percent should not own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Everybody in this country should in fact have at least a minimum and dignified standard of living. All right?
He didn’t specifically mention any unconditional programs and he specifically proposed expanding two conditional programs (Social Security and the Minimum Wage). Therefore, he indicated that basic income is not high on his agenda. He appears to be trying to attract basic income supporters to the idea that the conditional approach can achieve their goal of meeting everyone’s needs, if it is expanded and made more generous. However he might also be implying that he would be interested in basic income if it had sufficient public support to become a political reality. The facts that major-party presidential candidates are being asked about basic income and that some are responding sympathetically is taken by many supporters as an indication of the increase in the political viability of basic income.
The full Vox interview is online:
Ezra Klein, “Bernie Sanders: the Vox Conversation.” Vox, July 28, 2015.
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 27, 2015 | News
SADC BIG
The SADC BIG Secretariat (SPII) will host its biannual BIG Conference for the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) region in the third quarter of 2015. The conference will discuss ways and means to end poverty in the region and present work about social protection and the campaign for a basic income grant in Southern Africa. The dates and location of the conference are yet to be announced. For further information go to the SPII BIG campaign website.
by Karl Widerquist | Jul 22, 2015 | News, Opinion, The Indepentarian
Alaska’s small Basic Income, “the Permanent Fund Dividend” (PFD), has recently come under greater political pressure than — perhaps — ever before.
The PFD is a yearly dividend paid out of an investment portfolio, “the Alaska Permanent Fund” (APF), which is financed by accumulated savings from the state’s oil revenue. The fund has a principal of more than $50 billion, and it paid out a dividend of $1884 to each Alaskan in 2014. The dividend is fully funded by the APF. On its own it is financially sound. Barring a major catastrophe, as long as politicians leave the APF alone, it can continue to fund the dividend long after we are all dead.
Politicians will leave the APF alone, or so most Alaskans thought until recently. The PFD has been so popular that it was known as the “third rail of Alaskan politics,” meaning that any politician who touched it died. But political realities might be changing.
Since 1980 the Alaska state budget has been funded almost entirely by oil revenue. Now with both declining oil prices and declining oil production, the state faces a large budget shortfall. Lawmakers eventually agreed to close the deficit without tapping into the APF and PFD by cutting spending and taping into another state savings fund, but several lawmakers, including the state’s governor, Bill Walker, proposed tapping into APF earnings. The phrase “third rail of Alaskan politics” barely made the conversation.
Cuts to the PFD could be coming in the next few years. Discussing the future of the budget, Governor Walker said, “At this point I don’t see a scenario that doesn’t involve some of the earnings from the permanent fund.”
