by Karl Widerquist | Apr 5, 2015 | Research
AEJ Applied Economics cover
We study a Conditional Cash Transfer program in which the cash transfers to the mother only depend on the fulfilment of the national preventive visit schedule by her children born before she registered in the program. We estimate that preventive visits of children born after the mother registered in the program are 50 percent lower because they are excluded from the conditionality requirement. Using the same variation, we also show that attendance to preventive care improves children health.
Attanasio, Orazio P., Veruska Oppedisano, and Marcos Vera-Hernández, “Should Cash Transfers Be Conditional? Conditionality, Preventive Care, and Health Outcomes.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2015, 7(2): 35–52.
by Karl Widerquist | Apr 5, 2015 | News
Jurgen De Wispelaere
Jurgen De Wispelaere addressed “”Unconditional Basic Income: Political Obstacles and Strategies” in a talk give on Friday, March 20th, 6:30–8:30 pm at 4200 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls, MN 55407. Hosts were Kristine Osbakken and Liane Gale of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network.
Says De Wispelaere, “The idea of granting each citizen an individual and unconditional basic income is booming. Support from all corners of the political arena seems to follow suit. I want to describe two political problems we need to overcome to make basic income a policy reality. 1) Much of political support is “cheap”, and we need to find ways to make sure political supporters put their money where their mouths are. 2) Strategy: should we try and unite factions from the Left and the Right around a single proposal, or instead work towards a specific progressive basic income proposal. I will invite the audience to think through some of the ways in which a basic income movement might get around these problems.”
Jurgen De Wispelaere is a former occupational therapist turned moral philosopher. He lectures at Trinity College, Dublin and has been a fellow with both the Combat Poverty Agency Ireland and Centre for the Study of Social Justice at Oxford. He’s the founding editor of the journal “Basic Income Trust”, on the Executive Committee of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) and the author of several books and many articles.
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 30, 2015 | News
Operation TOGA
This book is in large part an attempt to popularize and to advocate a BIG. According to the publisher’s description, “Interwoven fiction and essays illustrate humanity’s chance to “Go Ahead” into a future of peace and prosperity in an increasingly “Type One” — high-energy and wealthy — civilization. Nuclear destruction of a major US port hangs in the balance as Max Progress, extraordinary social innovator, joins open-minded twin sisters Athena and Aphrodite and Iraqi scientist Sumaya in a search for the best paths to personal happiness and a better world. Together they explore fresh perspectives on nuclear power, health care reform, education, a national guaranteed minimum income, and other crucial issues. How will their actions — and perhaps yours — affect the outcome of this ingeniously structured tale?”
John Griffin, Operation TOGA: Type One Go Ahead. iUniverse Publisher, 3/2/2010.
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 30, 2015 | News
UBI-Europe met in Maribor, Slovenia over the weekend of March 20, 2015. Below is UBIE’s report from the meeting, reproduced unedited:
UBI-Europe shapes its strategy for the coming years
On 19 & 20 March there was an inspiring public conference ‘Unconditional Basic Income as a Response to Inequalities in Europe’ in Maribor, Slovenia which attracted over 80 participants from 17 countries. Over the following two days Unconditional Basic Income Europe met to agree a common strategy to expand the European movement for basic income and get concrete results by 2020.
Unconditional Basic Income Europe, which was born from after the European Citizens Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income in 2013, celebrated its foundation last year at a major conference in Brussels. Since then, we have been busy getting UBI-Europe officially registered as a non-profit association under Belgian law and consolidating our membership. In the meantime, the movement kept growing through our network of national-level organisations where most of our activists have been focusing their energy.
It was time to get together again and discuss our common vision for Europe and shape a strategy to achieve our goals. Such was the purpose of our meeting in Maribor, Slovenia this March.
UBI-Europe
Objective for 2020: Have UBI in at least one European Country and an EU-wide step towards an emancipatory UBI
Such a step could be achieved by the introduction of a partial basic income scheme as outlined in the Eurodividend proposal elaborated by prominent UBI advocate Philippe van Parijs, or through alternative proposals like a basic income for children.
Whatever they might be, the meeting agreed that any such first steps should not harm current social protection systems and degrade the situation of the majority, and especially not the poorest. On the contrary they should improve social protection systems and contribute to reducing social inequalities within countries, and within the European Union.
In order to achieve our goal, UBI-Europe identifies 4 strategic orientations for 2015:
- Make basic income a mainstream topic in Europe
- Intensify our lobbying activities in order to leverage support among EU policymakers – and facilitate cooperation between them
- Assert the feasibility of and arguments for UBI as an attractive alternative for Europe
- Expand UBI-Europe as a diverse grassroots movement
Several projects contributing to these aims were discussed at the meeting in Maribor. We are in the process of elaborating a more detailed action plan. Our next steps will be unveiled as we are working on them.
UBI-Europe stands against austerity and undemocratic Treaties
UBI-Europe is aware, that the crisis management of the EU and their austerity policy is a severe obstacle for UBI. So we are part of the struggles to overcome them. This is why UBI-Europe has decided to join the Stop-TTIP campaign.
“The TTIP agreement is a danger for social standards in the EU. The EU must address its own humanitarian, social and economic governance problems before further opening up its trade. By giving multinational corporations the right to overturn decisions by European governments it also hinders attempts to make Europe more democratic,“ said Klaus Sambor, co-founder of UBI-Europe and member of ATTAC Austria.
UBI-Europe supports efforts towards improving the European Citizens Initiative
In order to get the EU to move towards new radical solutions such as basic income, UBI-Europe also acknowledge the need for more democratic institutions in the EU.
One of the key pillars for a better European Union should be a significant improvement of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) instrument. “Our own experience with organising one of the first ECIs shows the ECI is not yet citizen-friendly and suffers from many unnecessary obstacles, especially the data requirements. This is why we fully support the ECI Campaign in its effort to reform the ECI. Their proposals are completely reasonable and are sorely needed to avoid the ECI being abandoned by civil society.” said Stanislas Jourdan, former coordinator for the ECI for Unconditional Basic Income which collected 300,000 signatures in 2013.
Welcome to our new board
Our general meeting also was the opportunity to elect UBI-Europe’s new official board. Congratulations to our newly elected members:
- Chair: Barbara Jacobson (United Kingdom)
- Vice Chair: Lena Stark (Sweden
- Vice Chair: Vahur Luhtsalu (Estonia)
- Treasurer: Quentin Fabri (Belgium)
- Secretary: Marlies Kunnen (Netherlands / UK)
- Co-ordinator: Stanislas Jourdan (France)
Follow our next steps
If you want to join our efforts to make UBI a reality in Europe, signup as a supporter here and watch for upcoming announcements. Donations would be warmly appreciated in order to keep us running and facilitate the organisation of our upcoming projects! In fact, if every of our 40,000 supporters donate 5 euros, we would be able to fund all UBI-Europe’s activities for the coming year and more.
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 29, 2015 | News
From General Assembly On Immaterial Digital Labor and Universal Basic Income
The first General Assembly On Immaterial Digital Labor and Universal Basic Income will meet on Friday, April 3rd, 2015 o Grand Street in New York. According to the organizers, the General Assembly will be the inaugural meeting of people interesting in exploring action-based responses to the global “time-famine” created by the digital economy, the collapse of work and play in social media and “hope labor” economies, the rise of unpaid internships, and the burgeoning freelance market. The inaugural meeting will begin to define responses to these issues and the goals of this assembly.
The Assembly springs from the conversations in the Facebook Group, Immaterial Digital Labor, which includes some 970 members. The group has presented the topics of digital labor, automation, machine learning, and emergent definitions of labor and is moving forth towards more material action-based organizing. The organizers propose this as a gathering of people committed to making decisions based upon a collective agreement or consensus model. Anyone is free to propose an idea or express an opinion as part of the General Assembly. The Assembly will be led by facilitators only just as much as needed, no more.
The Universal Basic Income will be proposed as one of many possible platforms of solidarity. An exercise defining the terms: immaterial labor, digital labor, knowledge-economy, and a short presentation will open the Assembly, followed by an open discussion moved by the proposed and collective interest of attendees.
Friday, April 3rd, 2015 7:00-10:00 PM
PARMER at Abrons Art Center
Experimental Theater, 466 Grand St, New York, NY 10002
Statement: https://www.parmer.info/_events/2015-04-03-IDL-UBI-statement.html
Event website: https://www.facebook.com/events/1067136066635771/
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/immaterial.labor/?ref=br_tf
Site: https://www.immaterialdigitallabor.net/
Email: <idl.ok.nyc@gmail.com> with questions, comments, proposals, press inquiries.
From Immaterial Digital Labor
