by Karl Widerquist | Feb 18, 2015 | News
The Basic Income Guarantee is a simple idea: income doesn’t need to start at zero. A good functioning society can ensure everyone a small, unconditional income large enough to meet their basic need needs, while everything else they make in the market after taxes is theirs to keep. With basic income no one is destitute, but everyone has incentive to earn more if they can. Once far out of the mainstream, the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is gathering strength politically around the world. The Swiss are voting on it. European Union Citizens are campaigning for it. And Americans are talking about it more and more.
The discussion of BIG comes to New York on the last weekend of February when the Fourteenth North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress holds events in three boroughs. All of the events will be covered by live streaming and interactive posting on Reddit and other websites, so that it will be possible to take part without being physically present.
Frances Fox Piven
1. The Congress will begin on Thursday, February 26th at the LIC Art Center / LIC Academy of Music in Long Island City, Queens with a public discussion entitled, “New Possibilities for the Basic Income Movement.” Speakers include Frances Fox Piven, author of Poor People’s Movements; Marshall Brain, author of How Stuff Works; Mary Bricker Jenkins, Willie Baptist, & Marian Kramer, of the National Welfare Rights Union; Alanna Hartzok, 2014 Democratic Nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 9th District. This event is free and open to the public.
Willie Baptist
2. The main conference events will take place all day Friday and Saturday and half the day on Sunday at the Sheraton Times Square Hotel on 7th Avenue and 53rd Street in Manhattan. More than forty speakers will lead discussions with the audience of the three days. Speakers include Peter Barnes, environmentalist and author of Who Owns the Sky?, With Liberty and Dividends For All, and Capitalism 3.0; Ann Withorn, welfare rights activist and author of Serving the People and co-editor of For Crying out Loud; Jim Mulvale, Dean at the University of Manitoba and Vice-Chairperson of the Basic Income Canadian Network, Mimi Abramovitz, author of Under Attack, Fighting Back; Stanley Aronowitz and Bill Difazio, coauthors of The Jobless Future; Ian Shlakman, 2014 Green Party Nominee for Congress; and Eduardo Suplicy, former member of the Brazilian Federal Senate. The NABIG events at the Sheraton will take place as a part of the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA’s) annual conference. Registration for the three-day EEA Congress is $110. Reduced price admission for low-income people and students is available (contact the organizers). Reporters with press passes reporting on the conference can bypass registration.
Marhsall Brain
Friday and Saturday night the Congress will be followed by a social gatherings at the Three Monkeys, 236 W 54h St., beginning at by 7pm each night. Admission is free, but food and drink are extra.
3. The Congress will conclude at the Commons Brooklyn on Sunday with an open meeting for anyone interested in a political movement for Basic Income in the United States. Everyone is welcome to attend. All points of view are encouraged. It will be an open discussion with no preset agenda and no list of speakers. Organizers invite everyone who is interested in discussing this issue is invited to come. Anyone who can’t be there in person is invited to participate online. The meeting will use an open format that gives everyone opportunities to participate actively, equally. Pizza and drinks will be served. The organizers will take up a collection to pay for them, but in the spirit of BIG, they will be distributed unconditionally—even to those unwilling or unable to contribute to the costs.
Alanna Hartzok
Opportunities to participate online:
Those who can’t attend the NABIG Congress in person can participate online in several ways. An independent group of bloggers from Basic Income Project, LLC will be covering the Congress. The broadcast will be live and accessible from https://live.basicincomeproject.org during the event, and recordings will be available at that same address after the event has concluded.
There will also be a interactive live twitter feed to follow @USBIG hashtag #NABIG15, which will be used to connect the discussions of those both at the conference and unable to attend the conference. In addition, social media discussions will be congregated and made available via Storify throughout the Congress. Another way to participate from afar is to join the live Reddit feed, which will be continually updated, and monitored so that questions proposed from cyberspace can be relayed to the speakers in the room. This will connect the now 23,000 strong community of those interested in basic income on Reddit.
The easiest way for interested people who aren’t regular users of any of these sites to connect will be to watch the live stream of the conference at BasicIncomeProject.org, and comment on it on the live Reddit feed.
The NABIG Congress an event page on Facebook will have links to all of these ways to connect to the Congress.
The organizers especially invite off-site participants to join on Sunday evening for the movement meeting, “Are we ready to start a political movement for a Basic Income Guarantee in the United States?” March 1, 6-9pm.
Event Calendar:
6:30pm to 9pm: Public Discussion: “New Possibilities for the Basic Income Movement” Location: LIC Art Center / LIC Academy of Music
44-02 23rd St., Studio 204 (second floor)
Long Island City, NY 11101
Friday, February 27, 2015
8am to 7pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
7pm until late: Social gathering at the Three Monkeys
236 W 54h St.,
New York, NY 10019
Saturday, February 28, 2015
8am to 6:30pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
6:30pm until late: Social gathering at the Three Monkeys
236 W 54h St., New York, NY 10019
Mimi Abramovitz
8am to 12:30pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
12:45-m-2:15: Lunch meeting: organizational meeting of the USBIG Network
6:00pm: Meeting: “Are we ready to start an activists movement for BIG in the United States?” the Commons Brooklyn.
Additional Information: www.usbig.net
Press contacts:
By email: Karl Widerquist, conference organizer, <Karl@Widerquist.com>
By phone: Michael Lewis, USBIG Committee, +1(646) 270-0911
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 13, 2015 | News
The 2014 Basic Income Studies Best Essay Prize is awarded to Toru Yamamori. The winning paper is entitled ‘A Feminist Way to Basic Income: Claimants Unions and Women’s Liberation Movements in Britain 1968-1987′.
The paper shed light on a forgotten struggle of working class women in claimants unions that articulated a feminist rationale for an unconditional basic income and succeeded to pass the resolution which asked the whole British Women’s Liberation movement to endorse the demand, at the National Women’s Liberation conferences. The paper is based on an oral historical research conducted over 13 years.
The author said that he thanks to interviewees who gave him enormous support both practically and emotionally, and this prize is, he believes, awarded collectively to their admirable struggle, not individually to the nominal author.
The shorter version of the paper is published in the latest volume of Basic Income Studies (2014; 9(1-2); pp.1-24) and available for download here.
For the detail of the prize, see Basic Income Studies’s website.
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 9, 2015 | News
The Fourteenth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress (a joint even of U.S. and Canadian Basic Income networks) will take place in New York City Thursday, February 26 – Sunday March 1, 2015.
Most events will be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA) at the New York Sheraton Hotel and Towers. The Congress will also involve free events including a public discussion Thursday, February 26 and a political movement meeting at the Brooklyn Commons on Sunday March 1.
Featured speakers at the conference include Marshall Brain, futurist and author of How Stuff Works and Manna; Peter Barnes, environmentalist and author of Who Owns the Sky?, With Liberty and Dividends For All, and Capitalism 3.0; Ann Withorn, welfare rights activist and Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Boston, author of Serving the People: Social Services and Social Change and co-editor of For Crying out Loud: Women and Poverty in the U.S.; Jim Mulvale, Dean of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba and Vice-Chairperson of the Basic Income Canadian Network (BICN/RCRG), Mary Bricker Jenkins, Professor of Social Work, Temple University, and US Welfare Rights Union leaders, and forty other speakers.
Event Calendar:
Thursday, February 26, 2015
6:30pm to 9pm: Public Discussion: “New Possibilities for the Basic Income Movement”
Location to be announced
Friday, February 27, 2015
8am to 7pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
Evening: social event to be announced
Saturday, February 28, 2015
8am to 6:30pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
Evening: social event to be announced
Sunday, March 1, 2015
8am to 12:30pm: Sessions at the Sheraton Hotel, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY
12:45-m-2:15: Lunch meeting: organizational meeting of the USBIG Network
6:00pm: Meeting: “Are we ready to start an activists movement for BIG in the United States?” We’ll chip in for pizza and drinks, but we’ll share the food and drink unconditionally with everyone who comes—without means test or any requirement to make a reciprocal contribution. We will discuss this question without any more specific agenda. Karl Widerquist will moderate the discussion, but will not lead the discussion or any effort that might come out of it. Location: Brooklyn Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave. Brooklyn, NY. This event is free and open to everyone.
For updated information on featured speakers, registration, and accommodations as more becomes available, visit the USBIG website: www.usbig.net.
Essential information:
Conference dates: Thursday, February 26 – Sunday, March 1, 2015
Locations: New York and Brooklyn, NY: The Sheraton Hotel and Towers, 811 7th Avenue, New York, NY, Hunter College, and the Brooklyn Commons
Organizing committee: Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com> (organizer), Ann Withorn <withorn.ann@gmail.com>, Shawn Cassiman <scassiman1@udayton.edu>, and Jurgen De Wispelaere <jurgen.dewispelaere@gmail.com>
Website: USBIG.net.
by Karl Widerquist | Feb 9, 2015 | News, The Indepentarian
The recent drop in oil prices has had a devastating effect on the Alaska state government’s budget, most of which is derived directly or indirectly from current oil revenues. Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (or PFD—Alaska’s small basic income) is not financed by current oil revenue and so is technically unaffected by fluctuating oil prices, but budgetary pressure from declining oil revenues could cause political pressure to divert revenue from the PFD into the main budget.
The PFD is financed by the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF), a sovereign wealth fund set up in 1976 to make some of Alaska’s oil windfall permanent. The APF is protected by the state’s constitution: the state can spend only the returns to the fund, not the principle. But the PFD does not have similar projection. It was created by an act of the state legislature in 1982, and even with 33 years of precedent, it is vulnerable to legislative decision. The PFD is so popular that it has been called “the Third Rail of Alaskan Politics,” meaning that any legislator who touches it dies. But budgetary pressure could change that political condition.
The recent decline in oil prices on top of a large tax cut the state government gave to the oil companies a few years ago has led to a very large budget deficit—currently projected at about $3.5 billion. Legislators are discussing how to fill the deficit. Some legislators have promised not to divert money slated for the PFD, but some recent editorials have called to divert money from the PDF to the general budget.
May different solutions are being discussed. One legislator has introduced a bill to amend the state’s constitution to permanently protect the PFD. A recent editorial calls for reversing the tax cut for the oil companies. One plan being proposed is to divert all new oil revenues to the APF, then use half of the returns from the APF for the PFD and the other for general revenue. Another plan calls for reintroducing the state’s income tax; the state has been without an income tax for as long as it has had the PFD. The absence of an income tax has been nearly as popular as the PFD. It remains to be seen whether support for the PFD will remain strong in the face of the prospect of reviving the income tax.
Picture credit: CC Ryan McFarland
For more information, see the following articles:
Alex DeMarban, “Alaska Dispatch, Panelists suggest cuts, tapping Permanent Fund earnings to solve Alaska’s fiscal woes.” Alaska Dispatch News, October 5, 2014
Becky Bohrer, “Permanent Fund Dividend eyed for constitutional protection.” Valdez Star, Vol. 27 Edition 2, January 14, 2015
Becky Bohrer, “Lawmaker’s bill aims to guard Alaska Permanent Fund benefit.” Alaska Dispatch News, January 9, 2015
Carey Restino, “It’s time to file for Permanent Fund Dividends, and contemplate changes.” The Bristol Bay Times, January 30th, 2015
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Editorial Board, “Alaska needs budget leadership: Bold solutions needed to fill revenue hole left by low oil prices.” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, December 14, 2014
John Havelock, “Alaskans should be willing to pay their share with an income tax.” Alaska Dispatch News, January 26, 2015
Katie Moritz, “Senators: Everything but taxes, PFD on table to fix budget.” Juneau Empire, January 21, 2015
KTVA “Walker administration tries to rein in Alaska’s budget.” KTVA CBS 11 News, December 16, 2014
Merrick Peirce, “Writing on the wall: time to dump SB 21.” Fairbanks Daily News-Miner community perspective, January 11, 2015
Ray Metcalfe, “A formula for securing Alaska’s financial future.” Alaska Dispatch News, January 28, 2015
by Karl Widerquist | Jan 31, 2015 | News
Guy Standing, honorary co-President of BIEN, visited Groningen, Netherlands in the last week of January 2015 to discussing with locals the possibility of launching a pilot basic income scheme around there. He does not know yet whether the project will happen, but he says, the group seems very grounded, and the man on the council in charge of social policy seems keen. The discussions were filmed by public Dutch TV with the programme due to be put out in March 2015.
