by Kate McFarland | Aug 10, 2017 | News
Launched in February 2017, the Basic Income Lab (BIL) at Stanford University’s McCoy Family Center for Ethics and Society aspires to provide information and advice to researchers, policy makers, and other individuals and groups engaged in the design and implementation of basic income experiments or policies.
Already this year, BIL has held a panel discussion on basic income experiments, in which Joe Huston described the large-scale experiment to be conducted in Kenya by the New York based non-profit GiveDirectly, Elizabeth Rhodes discussed the plans to Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator to run a basic income experiment in the United States, and Guy Standing reviewed the results of a pilot study in eight villages of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. It also hosted a presentation by Philippe Van Parijs of his new comprehensive book on basic income, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (with Yannick Vanderborght). Now, BIL is preparing for both public and private events to be held throughout the upcoming academic year.
In September, BIL will co-host the Cities and Universal Basic Income Workshop, working aside the Economic Security Project (ESP), the McCoy Family Center, and the National League of Cities, which recommended investigation of city-level basic income programs in its 2016 report The Future of Work in Cities. This private event aims to inform city leaders and other researchers about the latest developments regarding current and planned basic income experiments, and to investigate the possibility of implementing municipal-level basic income policies. Additionally, BIL has scheduled two co-sponsored public lectures on the relationship of basic income to issues of gender and race: in October, Almaz Zelleke (NYU Shanghai) will visit Stanford to speak about how basic income can impact gender justice; then, in January, Dorian T. Warren (Roosevelt Institute, ESP) will speak about basic income in relation to racial justice.
Juliana Bidadanure in audience at BIL panel
BIL is led by Faculty Director Juliana Bidadanure, a philosophy professor who last year designed and taught a graduate seminar on basic income. Describing the mission of the lab, she states, “There is an increasing need for in-depth academic research on various policy designs for UBI and how to evaluate its implementation – assessing the visions that underpin unconditional cash, the political and economic feasibility of various proposals, as well as its strengths and weaknesses as a measure to alleviate poverty and inequality.”
In addition to her work with BIL, Bidadanure is preparing to teach an undergraduate course on basic income during Stanford’s winter term.
To stay abreast of BIL’s activities, subscribe to its mailing list and follow BIL on Facebook.
Reviewed by Dawn Howard and Juliana Bidadanure
Photos from the Basic Income Lab’s “Experiments in Unconditional Basic Income” panel; credit: Christine Baker (at EthicsSoc).
by Kate McFarland | Aug 9, 2017 | News
On Thursday, August 10, the US progressive conference Netroots Nation will host a panel discussion titled “A Progressive Vision of Universal Basic Income.”
The session will examine what type of basic income might “lift up those who are struggling, both today and going forward into the future,” and what implementations of the idea might “leave many worse off than they are today.”
Sandhya Anantharaman of the Universal Income Project will moderate a panel consisting of Joe Dinkin (National Communications Director for Working Families), Reetu Mody (Policy Associate at Presente.org), Tom Perriello (President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund), and Saket Soni (Executive Director of the New Orleans Workersʹ Center for Racial Justice).
Details about the “Progressive Vision of Universal Basic Income” panel, along with biographies of some the panelists, are available on the conference website.
First convened in 2006, Netroots Nation is an annual conference for progressive activists organized by the left-wing political blog Daily Kos. According to its website, the conference is the “largest annual conference for progressives,” attracting nearly 3000 attendees from the US and beyond.
This year, Netroots Nation will take place from August 10-13 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. Wikipedia describes the 2017 conference as “the most diverse event to date, with 69 percent of selected speakers and moderators being people of color.” The event is registration only, with adult ticket prices beginning at $395 USD. A complete schedule of activities, which include keynote talks, breakout sessions, and activist training workshops, is viewable on Netroots Nation’s website.
Netroots Nation will also be livestreaming the conference on its Facebook page.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: “Looking Up” CC BY 2.0 Lee Coursey (interior view of Hyatt Regency Atlanta)
by Kate McFarland | Aug 9, 2017 | News
Erik Christensen, former associate professor at Aalborg University, has written a new book on basic income, På vej til Borgerløn – Aktuel idedebat (“On the way to Basic Income: A debate on contemporary ideas”), which is to be published in August 2017 by the independent publishing house Hovedland. See the announcement at the website of BIEN-Denmark.
Christensen’s latest book is a compilation of revised and expanded blog posts from the past four years, which he previously published on Modkraft, a now-defunct Danish progressive Internet portal.
Contents:
- What is basic income?
- Why has basic income again become topical?
- Basic income in historical perspective
- Basic income as a liberation project
- From welfare state to competitive state
- From working society to civil society
- Basic income and global capitalism
- The trade union movement and basic income
- Basic income and economic democracy
- Basic income and monetary and land reforms
- Basic income nationally and internationally
- On the way to a major breakthrough
Christensen is the author of The Heretical Political Discourse: a Discourse Analysis of the Danish Debate on Basic Income (2008, Aalborg University Press; full text here).
by Kate McFarland | Aug 8, 2017 | News
The 2017 North America Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress was held June 16-18 in New York. Some papers are now available online.
Event Recap
The annual NABIG Congress is jointly organized by BIEN’s North American affiliates, the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) and Basic Income Canada Network (BICN).
In 2017, the 16th NABIG Congress was held at Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work in New York, New York, from June 16 through 18.
The event was the largest NABIG Congress in its history, drawing over 100 attendees and featuring over 50 speakers. Keynote speakers including Frances Fox Piven (Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center), Andy Stern (former President of SEIU), Juliana Bidadanure (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University), Joe Huston (Give Directly), and Chris Hughes (Facebook co-founder). Plenary sessions were also held on Welfare Rights and the basic income movement in Canada, including the guaranteed minimum income pilot soon to be launched in Ontario.
Parallel sessions covered a diverse range of context. As USBIG Chair Michael Howard describes in his summary of the congress (see the July 2017 USBIG NewsFlash), “Quite a few sessions focused on movement building, from local to global levels, including two sessions on grassroots organizing, and sessions on cultural and conversational contexts, communication, and messaging. Other topics discussed included child benefits, women, inequality and economic rents, basic income experiments from New Jersey to Africa, costs and financial aspects of basic income schemes (including blockchains), growth and degrowth, and philosophical and religious arguments for basic income.”
The 2017 NABIG Congress also featured two musical performances. Singer-songwriter Brandy Moore revisited her song “Just Because I’m Alive,” which she originally performed at the 2016 NABIG Congress in Winnipeg. Additionally, John Mize closed the conference by performing his new song “B.I.G.” with his son.
A full schedule of the event can be viewed here.
For additional perspectives on the congress from participants, see “(IDEA/Child Find)+ Basic Income = Equity” by Chioma Oruh (June 20, 2017) and “Recap: North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG)” by Ryan M Harrison (June 20, 2017).
Content Available Online
Several papers and presentations from the conference are now available in the USBIG discussion paper archives, including (as of July 2017) the following:
– Barbara Boraks: “Consensus or Discord- It’s Our Choice: A Values Based Framework For a Basic Income Model”
– Karen Glass: “Ontario Basic Income Pilot”
– Rachel Presser: “Why UBI Should Make the Earned Income Tax Credit Obsolete”
– Steven Pressman: “A LITTLE BIG: The Case for Child Allowances”
– Steven Pressman: “Ecology vs. the Economy: Lessons from Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century”
– Sheila Regehr: “Dignity or Degradation: What should be the value base for building a benefit system?”
– Cameron Weber: “The Actually-Existing Welfare State in the USA and One Possible Transformation to a Basic Income”
– Karl Widerquist: “The Cost of Basic Income: Back of the Envelope Calculations”
Additional papers may be uploaded later.
Photo: Mingling after Plenary (credit: Basic Income Guarantee Minnesota)
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
by Kate McFarland | Aug 7, 2017 | News
With the primary election for Mayor of Detroit on the horizon on August 8, write-in candidate Ingrid LaFleur has proposed a city-wide basic income as part of her Plan of Action for the city.
LaFleur is a curator, arts advocate, and founder of the creative research project AFROTOPIA, whose candidacy for Detroit mayor has previously received coverage in the New York Times.
She frames her campaign around a vision for a new economy that “meets human needs, enhances the quality of life and allows us to live in balance with nature.”
The cornerstone of LaFleur’s plan for a new economy is a municipal basic income of $2000 per month based on blockchain technology. She proposes a new cryptocurrency for the city of Detroit, which she calls “D-coin,” which can only be used to pay for goods and services provided by local businesses, fares for public transportation and other city services, and local taxes.
Under LaFleur’s plan, one half of the $2000 basic income would be paid in D-coins, the other half in US currency. She further proposes that “[a]dditional D-coins can be received for volunteering time at a Detroit organization or program in need of assistance.”
All Detroit residents over 18 years of age, including those who are incarcerated, would be eligible to receive the basic income after having resided in the city for three years.
According to LaFleur, a basic income is necessary to alleviate poverty and offset the economic effects of job loss due to automation. Meanwhile, she argues that her plan for a local cryptocurrency would boost the economy of Detroit.
The two leading candidates in Tuesday’s primary will advance to the ballot for the general election, to be held on November 7. The current frontrunner is incumbent Mike Duggan, trailed by state senator Coleman A. Young II. Six other candidates are also on the ballot, but trail Duggan and Young by wide margins.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo (Detroit skyline) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Mike Boening Photography
