by Kate McFarland | Jul 24, 2017 | News
A new local basic income group in the United States–based in New Orleans (a.k.a. the “BIG Easy”)–was formed in summer 2017 and is currently holding monthly meetings.
The group is led by Scott Santens, a well-known basic income write and advocate as well as the treasurer of BIEN’s US affiliate, US Basic Income Guarantee, Inc (USBIG).
Meetings are currently being held on the last Wednesday of every month, with discussion oriented around the general topic of what can be done to advance basic income on both local and national levels.
For more information and updates, see the New Orleans Basic Income Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/New-Orleans-Basic-Income-Meetup/.
In additional to nationwide networks like USBIG and Basic Income Action, the US is home to several basic income advocacy groups that are active on a local level, including groups based in New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Photo: the street where the New Orleans basic income meet-ups are being held (photographed by Kate McFarland during the New Orleans Basic Income Create-a-thon).
by Kate McFarland | Jul 22, 2017 | News
The Universal Income Project, a basic income advocacy group headquartered in San Francisco, is hosting a Q&A with California state senator Bob Wieckowski on basic income and carbon dividends.
This free public event will take place on July 25 at Covo, a coworking space in San Francisco.
Bob Wieckowski, CC BY 2.0 Internet Association
Wieckowski, along with Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León, was a sponsor of Senate Bill 775 (SB 775), introduced earlier this year, which proposed to revise the state’s carbon cap-and-trade program and institute a small basic income in the state.
Under SB 775, a portion of the new carbon revenue would be directed towards a newly created California Climate Dividend Program, which would distribute quarterly cash payments to all individual residents of California. The bill proposed a Climate Dividend Access Board to work with state officials to develop a mechanism to deliver the quarterly dividends (see the previous Basic Income News article “California State Legislature to Consider Carbon Dividend”).
Many American proponents of basic income see a carbon dividend, such as that proposed by SB 775, as a politically feasible stepping stone to a universal basic income of a livable amount.
At present, however, California is unlikely actually to adopt such a policy: on Monday, July 17, the state legislature voted to extend the state’s current carbon cap-and-trade program, which had been set to expire in 2020, through 2030. This program does not include a dividend.
For more information about the Q&A with Bob Wieckowski, see Eventbrite and Facebook.
Top photo: Coal power plant in southern California, CC BY 2.0 Rennett Stowe.
by Kate McFarland | Jul 20, 2017 | News
Earlier in July, Bündnis Grundeinkommen (BGE) was officially recognized as a national political party in Germany. The party is campaigning on a single issue: the introduction of an unconditional basic income for Germany.
BGE is now preparing for its official campaign launch event on July 29 in Berlin. The event, called BGE: Open Air, will feature a combination of talks and artistic performances.
DUNDU, CC BY 2.0 Kris Duda
Performers include the high-wire artists of One Inch Dreams (the team behind Alexander Schulz’s recent highly publicized high-wire walk to the summit of Scotland’s Old Man of Hoy)–symbolizing balance in society and freedom with a sense of security–as well as the “gentle giant” puppets of DUNDU. The event will close with a concert from a brass jazz combo.
Guest speakers include Enno Schmidt (co-founder of Switzerland’s basic income referendum campaign), Sascha Liebermann (Professor of Sociology at the Alanus University and co-founder of Freedom Instead of Full Employment), Michael Bohmeyer (founder of Mein Grundeinkommen), Ralph Boes, and Bernhard Neumärker (Professor of Economic Policy at University of Freiburg). BGE chair Susanne Wiest and vice chair Cosima Kern will also speak at the event.
BGE: Open Air will kick off BGE’s campaign for Germany’s federal elections, held on September 24.
More information, including a detailed schedule, is available on the website of Bündnis Grundeinkommen and BGE’s Facebook event page.
Edit (July 22): This article originally stated that Helwig Fenner would represent Mein Grundeinkommen at BGE: Open Air. Since this time, Michael Bohmeyer, the organization’s founder, has agreed to speak. Founded in 2014, Mein Grundeinkommen crowdfunds money to distribute in the form of year-long “basic incomes” to individuals chosen by raffle. To date, it has awarded 99 basic incomes.
by Kate McFarland | Jul 19, 2017 | News
India’s Institute for Human Development (IHD), an independent nonprofit research organization, held a roundtable on universal basic income (UBI) on July 10 in New Delhi.
More than 80 politicians, academics, researchers, and other experts participated in the event, which featured keynote addresses from Pranab Bardhan (University of California Berkeley), Vijay Joshi (University of Oxford), Arvind Subramanian (Chief Economic Advisor of the Government of India), and Renana Jhabvala (Self Employed Women’s Association), as well as panel discussions and debates.
UBI has attracted serious attention in India in recent years, due to the success of pilot studies in Madhya Pradesh in the early 2010s, as well as a widespread view that India’s current system of targeted welfare benefits and price subsidies is wasteful and inefficient. Published in January, the 2017 Economic Survey, an annual document prepared by the Ministry of Finance, devoted an entire devoted an entire chapter to UBI, reviewing arguments for the idea, challenges of implementation, and strategies for introducing possible stepping stones to UBI in India. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has recently stated that UBI is not feasible in the country due to “political limitations.”
The IHD roundtable event began with an inaugural address by Bibek Debroy of National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog), a think tank of the Government of India.
This was followed by four technical sessions organized around the work of Bardhan, Joshi, Subramanian, and Jhabvala, respectively.
Pranab Bardhan, CC BY-NC 2.0 UNU-WIDER
Bardhan maintains that a UBI of about a thousand rupees (about 15.5 USD or 13.5 EUR) per month can be afforded by increases taxes on the rich and ending certain government subsidies that primarily benefit the better-off. He cautions, however, that the UBI should not replace all current welfare programs nor divert funding from public goods and services.
(For an overview of Bardhan’s position, see his blog post “How India can do UBI: Universal Basic Income is a practical solution to poverty and inequality,” published May 3 in Times of India.)
Three panelists–Abhijit Banerjee (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Abhijit Sen (formerly of India’s Planning Commission), and Ajit Ghose (Visiting Professor at IHD)–discussed Bardhan’s proposal following his presentation.
Vijay Joshi, CC BY 2.0 Chatham House
In the second technical session, Joshi laid out the model of UBI developed in his recent book, India’s Long Road: The Search for Prosperity, which he calls a universal basic income supplement (UBIS). Joshi proposes a UBIS of 3500 rupees per person year (at 2014-15 prices) to replace most price subsidies and targeted welfare programs (“retain[ing] only those of proven worth”). According to his calculation, the UBIS would cost of 3.5 percent of India’s GDP.
(See also Joshi’s blog post for The Economic Times, “Universal Basic Income is worth fighting for, even against the long odds in its implementation.”)
Panelists who discussed Joshi’s ideas included Amarjeet Sinha (Secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development of the Government of India), Dilip Mookherjee (University of Boston), and Swaminathan Aiyer (author and columnist).
Arvind Subramanian CC BY-SA 2.0 PopTech
The third session focused on the proposals in the Economic Survey, written by Subramanian. (Subramanian himself was unable to participate in the event; however, an aide delivered a presentation on this behalf.) Whereas both Bardhan and Joshi argue in favor of universality, the Economic Survey’s proposal is written under the assumption that, in practice, no program can achieve full universality; thus, it ultimately focuses on a “de facto UBI” with a “quasi-universality rate” of 75 percent. In the document, Subramanian considers several methods by which to phase in a (de facto) UBI, such as introducing the program first only for women or members of other vulnerable groups, or only in urban areas, or allowing beneficiaries of current welfare programs to opt instead for unconditional cash transfers.
Panelists on the Economic Survey proposal included Ashwani Saith (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague), Rohini Somnathan (Delhi School of Economics), and Shekhar Shah (National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi).
Renana Jhabvala, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ILO in Asia and the Pacific
Finally, Jhabvala presented “perspectives from the field,” reviewing the results of the UBI pilots conducted by SEWA in rural villages in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Contrary to worries that a UBI would lead to higher spending on temptation goods, the pilots revealed no increase in alcohol consumption. Furthermore, the short-term UBI was associated many positive effects, including better nutrition, a decrease in serious health problems, higher rates of school attendance, lower debt, and greater job opportunities, especially for women. A follow-up study conducted earlier in this revealed several lasting effects in the villages in the study, as compared to control villages; these included higher incomes, especially for women, and lower rates of alcohol consumption. Other effects, however, were seen to have ended quickly after the termination of the pilot program, such as increase enrollment of children in private schools.
Panelists on the SEWA pilot study were Jeemol Unni (Ahmedabad University, Institute for Rural Management Anand), S.M. Vijayanand (Former Secretary, Panchayati Raj, Government of India and Former Chief Secretary, Government of Kerala), and P.K. Joshi (International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi).
A closing session, chaired by MP Jay Panda, was held after the four technical sessions.
For more information, see the IHD website, which includes a press release summarizing the event, as well as a booklet containing a full schedule, speaker and panelist bios, and background reading for all keynote lectures.
Cover Photo: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 sandeepachetan.com travel photography
by Kate McFarland | Jul 18, 2017 | News
Dr. Malcolm Torry, Director of the Citizen’s Income Trust and former minister of the Church of England, has published Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy.
The book’s publisher (Darton, Longman, Todd) provides this summary:
Citizen’s Basic Income – often called ‘Universal Basic Income’ or simply ‘Basic Income’ – is an act of grace. It is an unconditional income paid automatically to every individual as a right of citizenship and operates on a similar principle to the National Health Service – free at point of use for every legal resident.
As a national social policy, reforming the UK’s benefits system, Citizen’s Basic Income would recognise God’s equal treatment of every person while recognising individuality and celebrating God-given abundance. It would provide for the poor, be non-judgemental and recognise our mutual dependency. It would facilitate liberty, the duty to serve and a more just society, while both relativising and enhancing the family and inspiring us all to be co-creators.
The idea of an unconditional payment for every citizen has been around at least since the eighteenth century. In the modern day Malcolm Torry and the Citizen’s Income Trust have promoted debate and understanding of its feasibility. In this book Torry explains the models by which Citizen’s Basic Income could work, and demonstrates the association between Citizen’s Basic Income and Christianity. He calls for greater Church involvement in a wide-ranging debate on the subject.
In addition to his work with the Citizen’s Income Trust, Torry is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics and, as of May 2017, General Manager of BIEN.
September Launch Event in Birmingham
While Citizen’s Basic Income: A Christian Social Policy was published in September 2016, its launch event will take place in September 2017: Torry will speak on Tuesday, September 12, at St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.
The event is open individuals of any faith or none.
Tea, coffee, and biscuits (US English: cookies) will be served at the beginning of the event.
More information is available on the event’s Facebook page.
Photo: Detail of “The Adoration of the Magi” in St Martin in the Bull Ring, CC BY-NC 2.0 KotomiCreations
