by Kate McFarland | Jul 12, 2017 | News
BIEN Chair Louise Haagh spoke on basic income at Journey to 100, a longevity-themed conference held last month in Guernsey.
Guernsey, an island with a population of about 63,000, aspires to join the world’s blue zones — regions boasting an exceptionally high proportion of centenarians — and become the first country with a life expectancy over 100. To begin pursuing this goal, Guernsey’s Dandelion Foundation and Evolution of Medicine founder James Maskell organized Journey to 100, a “world-exclusive conference” held on June 30 in St. Peter Port.
In additional to diverse experts in areas such as medicine, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture, the event’s 20 speakers included BIEN Chair Louise Haagh (University of York), who spoke about basic income as a means to rethink and change the way our institutions are governed. Haagh stressed that basic income is neither a radical restructuring of the current welfare state, nor mere business as usual, but a chance to pause and rethink our systems of social insurance. In contrast to welfare programs that impose strict terms and conditions on recipients, basic income, would allow all people to enjoy independence in the form of “selvstaendiggørelse” — to stand in themselves.
Watch the full conference, including Haagh’s talk (beginning around 6 hr 30 min), below:
by Kate McFarland | Jul 11, 2017 | News
The end of June saw the proliferation of rumors that a basic income experiment would be launched in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. While such rumors were inaccurate, a political coalition in the state has called to further research basic income.
The June 25th edition of the newspaper Flensburger Tageblatt, the daily newspaper of the city of Flensburg in Schleswig-Holstein, heralded the purported plans of the state government to introduce an experiment of basic income. The paper quoted Robert Habeck, Green Party leader and future minister of environment, as saying that “we want to test a basic income from the government side and propose Schleswig-Holstein as a model region.” It further claimed that a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Green Party backed the demand for a test of a basic income.
The article fueled rumors, widely disseminated through basic income social media channels, that Schleswig-Holstein is preparing to launch a basic income experiment.
This announcement, however, was premature. Despite Habeck’s support, a basic income experiment Schleswig-Holstein remains at best a remote future possibility. In fact, the coalition agreement signed in between the CDU, FDP, and Greens does not call for an experiment or pilot study of basic income. Instead, calls only for the establishment of a “laboratory for the future” (“Zukunftslabor”) to research and assess new forms of social protection, a basic income being one.
Arguably, the coalition agreement’s proposed “laboratory for the future” does signal progress toward the investigation of a basic income in Schleswig-Holstein. However, the reality is far more modest than originally rumored.
No German UBI Experiments So Far..
Shortly prior to the first rumors of a basic income pilot in Schleswig-Holstein, the State Legislature of Hawai’i passed a bill that created a working group to study a universal basic income among other possible policies to provide the state’s residents with economic security. This generated a spate of media attention for basic income — but, as usual, not all reports were entirely accurate. Some news reports on the legislation, identified Germany (in addition to Finland and, soon, Canada) as a country that is already “testing” a basic income.
The claim may have originated in an article published in Business Insider and Futurism, which cites an article about the startup Mein Grundeinkommen as its source. This is misleading: Mein Grundeinkommen is a private effort, not a governmental one, and it merely awards year-long “basic incomes” of €1000 per month to individuals chosen by lottery. The startup’s work benefits randomly selected individuals while increasing awareness of basic income — and, in these aims, the project been highly successful. Mein Grundeinkommen has distributed year-long “basic incomes” to 94 individuals (and counting), and each drawing continues to generate media publicity. However, although anecdotes from individuals are sometimes presented as evidence regarding the effects of a basic income, the project should not be confused for an experiment.
Currently, no basic income experiment is being conducted in Germany — and, so far, no developments in Schleswig-Holstein have changed this fact.
More information on the alleged Schleswig-Holstein pilot:
Lea Hampel, “Jamaika-Koalition flirtet mit dem Grundeinkommen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 27, 2017 (in German).
“North German state weighs up introducing unconditional basic income,” The Local, June 27, 2017.
Ronald Heinrich, “Grundeinkommen in Schleswig-Holstein? – Reality Check,” Huffpost, June 30, 2017 (in German).
Photo (Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein) CC BY-SA 2.0 Rüdiger Stehn
by Kate McFarland | Jul 11, 2017 | News
The municipalities of Groningen, Wageningen, Tilburg, Deventer, and Ten Boer have received permission from the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment to proceed with proposed social assistance experiments.
Jetta Klijnsma, CC BY 2.0 Partij van de Arbeid
Jetta Klijnsma, State Secretary of Social Affairs and Employment, signed the authorization of the five municipal experiments on July 3, 2017.
Groningen and Ten Boer will be carrying out their experiments in cooperation with one another.
In each of the experiments, which will run for two years, participants will be randomly selected from a pool of current social assistance beneficiaries (with participation voluntary for those selected), and assigned either to a control group or to one of several treatment groups.
Each experiment has at least three treatment groups, testing the following types of interventions: (1) removing reintegration requirements (e.g. job applications and training programs) on welfare benefits; (2) providing a more intensive form of reintegration service; (3) permitting participants to earn additional income on top of their welfare benefits. Subjects assigned to the third treatment groups will be permitted to retain 50% of additional earned income, up to a maximum of €199 per month, for the duration of the two-year experiment. In contrast, under current policy, welfare recipients are permitted to keep only 25% of additional income, and only for up to six months.
The Groningen / Ten Boer experiment includes a fourth treatment group, in which participants are permitted to choose to join any one of the three preceding groups.
Although international media have referred to these experiments as “basic income experiments”, the description is a bit of a misnomer. In all treatment groups, benefits remain means-tested and household-based, and participation is limited to current welfare recipients. Moreover, legal constraints create an effective demand on participants to seek work (on pain of removal from the experiment); this effective conditionality, unique to the Dutch experiments, is discussed below.
Sjir Hoeijmakers, an econometrician who consulted municipalities in their design of the experiments, prefers to speak of “experiments in the context of the Participation Act” (cf. this Basic Income News article), while others refer to “social assistance experiments”.
The experiments are expected to begin around October 1 of this year.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment is currently reviewing applications from three additional municipalities who also wish to conduct experiments on social benefits: Amsterdam, Nijmegen, and Utrecht. Decisions on these proposals are expected later in the summer.
Update: Shortly after the publication of this article, Nijmegen was granted permission to carry out its experiment, which will commence on December 1. A full report on Nijmegen’s experiment will follow.
Background
The municipalities of Groningen, Tilburg, Wageningen, and Utrecht have been planning social assistance experiments since 2015, following the enactment of the Dutch Participation Act. Originally, these experiments were conceived as trials of unconditional basic income (or at least policy moving in this direction), although political pressures encouraged their proponents not to use the term “basic income” (which is popularly associated in the Netherlands with utopian thinking and celebration of laziness). Under the Participation Act, municipal officials are required to implement obligations and sanctions to encourage recipients of social assistance benefits to seek employment. For example, beneficiaries are generally expected to complete a set number of job applications per week, participate in training programs, and attend group meetings as conditions on receiving their benefits. Skepticism regarding the effectiveness of these conditions was a main motivation of the experiments.
In September 2016, Klijnsma authorized municipalities to perform experiments, up to two years in duration, testing the effects of altering the conditions of the nation’s social assistance benefits. This authorization was granted, however, only under strict terms of compliance with the nation’s Participation Act, which effectively prevent the municipalities from testing an unconditional basic income (despite interest in the idea from researchers and promoters of the experiments). For example, in the case in which an experiment treatment involves the removal of work reintegration requirements, the Ministry mandates that officials assess test subjects after six and twelve months to verify that they have made adequate effort to find employment; those who have not done so are subject to dismissal from the experiment.
The Ministry also capped the amount of earned income that participants are permitted to retain on top of their benefits, and required that any experiment including a treatment group with relaxed conditions on social assistance also include a treatment group with stricter conditions.
In the face of these constraints, researchers were forced to design experiments farther from “basic income experiments” than originally desired.
After announcement of a start date of May 1, 2017, Utrecht saw its proposed experiment put on-hold due to a failure to comply with the terms of the Participation Act. The city has since submitted a revised proposal to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, which is pending evaluation.
Another municipality, Terneuzen, proposed a small-scale study of basic income–providing unconditional cash payments of €933 to 20 test subjects–which was axed by Klijnsma earlier in the year. Terneuzen has not submitted a new proposal to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.
In a recent presentation to the Dutch branch of BIEN, Sjir Hoeijmakers stated that 45 municipalities are considering social assistance experiments.
More Information
“Eerste vijf gemeenten krijgen toestemming voor bijstandsexperimenten” (July 3, 2017). Official press release of the Dutch government.
Charlotte Huisman, “Vier steden mogen experimenteren met soepelere bijstand,” Trouw, July 3, 2017.
“Should the Netherlands test the basic income,” EuroTopics, July 4, 2017.
Previous Basic Income News Coverage
Florie Barnhoorn, “The Netherlands: All that’s left is the action. Where do we stand with the experiments?” (June 2, 2017).
Kate McFarland, “THE NETHERLANDS: Social Assistance Experiments Under Review” (May 9, 2017).
Florie Barnhoorn, “NETHERLANDS: Design of BI Experiments Proposed” (October 26, 2016).
Information provided by Florie Barnhoorn, Hilde Latour, and Ruud Muffels.
Photo (Tilburg) CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Stephan Ohlsen
by Kate McFarland | Jul 10, 2017 | News
The Economy Security Project (ESP), a two-year fund launched in December 2016 to support investigation of basic income in the United States, has published the results of a new survey of Alaskans’ attitudes towards the state’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD).
The Permanent Fund Dividend
In 1976, the Alaska State Constitution created a permanent fund in which the state must invest at least 25% of its oil revenues, enabling wealth generated from the sale of a nonrenewable resource to continue to benefit future generations of Alaskans. The PFD, created in 1982, distributes a portion of the fund’s earnings as a dividend paid annually to all Alaskans.
Disbursed in equal amount to all adults and children who have lived in the state for more than a year (and intend to remain indefinitely), the PFD is widely regarded as one of the nearest “real world” examples of a basic income. Although its amount is variable, and too small to guarantee even a poverty-level existence, the PFD is universal, unconditional, and paid in cash at regular intervals, entailing that it does indeed satisfy BIEN’s definition of a basic income.
The PFD reached a peak amount of $2,072 per resident in 2015, but fell to $1,022 in 2016 after Governor Bill Walker used a line-item veto to cut the funds allocated to the PFD by the Alaska Legislature by more than half–a controversial decision that provoked a lawsuit from State Senator Bill Wielechowski, seeking to restore the full amount of the 2016 PFD approved by the legislature. Without Walker’s veto, the amount of 2016 PFD would have been $2,052.
At the time of this writing, Wielechowski’s lawsuit is being considered by the Supreme Court of Alaska, having been dismissed by a Superior Court judge in November of last year. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on June 20, but its final decision is likely to take months.
Meanwhile, Governor Walker recently signed the state budget for 2017, without exercising any line item vetoes this year. According to KTOO News, the budget includes $760 million for the PFD, which will amount to about $1,100 per Alaskan.
Popular Opinion Survey
Earlier in the year, ESP commissioned a telephone survey 1,004 Alaskan voters, carried out by the market research firm Harstad Strategic Research. According to ESP, the new survey is the “most comprehensive review of public attitudes about the PFD since 1984.”
Respondents answered a variety of questions concerning their attitudes toward the Permanent Fund and Dividend. Asked how much of a difference the PFD has made in their lives “over the past five years or so,” 40% replied that the dividends have made a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of difference, with 28% replying that the dividends have made “only some” or “just a little” difference, and only 8% saying that the dividends have made no difference. Women were more likely than men to say that the PFD has made “great deal” or “quite a bit” of difference (47% versus 33%), and 70% of those who described their economic circumstances as “barely surviving” stated that the PFD had this degree of impact.
While 87% of respondents agreed with the statement, “How people spent their Permanent Fund checks should not determine whether or not the dividend program continues,” respondents meanwhile do not believe that Alaskans use their annual PFD checks frivolously: 85% of agreed that “Many people spend a large part of their Permanent Fund dividends on basic needs,” and 79% agreed that “The Permanent Fund dividend checks are an important source of income for people in my community.” A comparatively small number, though a sizeable minority (43%), agreed with the statement “Many people have wasted a large part of their Permanent Fund checks on such things as liquor or drugs.” Asked about their own spending behavior, 27% replied that they save all or most of the payments, while 30% say that they use the PFD to pay off credit cards or other debt.
Respondents also view the universality of the PFD favorably: 72% support the fact that “everyone who is basically a full-time resident of Alaska” receives the PFD, and 84% agree that “As owners of the Alaska Permanent Fund, Alaska residents are entitled to an equal share of the earnings of the Fund.” Interestingly, though, only 50% favor the distribution of the PFD to “millionaires and multi-millionaires living in Alaska,” suggesting that framing effects may influence respondents’ expressed attitudes towards universality.
The survey also suggests that–in an apparently pronounced change of opinion since the 1984 survey–a majority of Alaskans would prefer the institution of a state income tax over the termination of the PFD if it became necessary for the state to adopt one of these measures to raise money for government services. The preference for keeping the PFD was strongest among those with annual household incomes under $50,000 (72%) and those who described their situation as “barely surviving” (82%). Even those respondents with household incomes over $100,000 tended to prefer preserving the PFD to avoiding income taxes (58%).
Many other related questions were also included in the survey. For more details and graphical displays, see the links in “more information” below.
More Information
Economic Security Project, “Alaska PFD Phone Survey: Executive Summary,” June 22, 2017. Official Executive Summary of the survey’s findings, prepared by Harstad Strategic Research.
Supplemental materials from Harstad Strategic Research:
Taylor Jo Isenberg, “What a New Survey from Alaska Can Teach Us about Public Support for Basic Income,” Medium, June 28, 2017. Blog post summarizing of survey results, with background about the PFD.
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 U.S. Pacific Command
by Kate McFarland | Jul 9, 2017 | News
On July 6, the German political party Bündnis Grundeinkommen (“Basic Income League”) announced that it had established chapters in all 16 federal states of Germany and collected over 30,000 signatures–thereby fulfilling the conditions required for the party to participate in Germany’s parliamentary election on September 24.
Founded in September 2016, Bündnis Grundeinkommen is devoted to promoting a single issue: the establishment of an unconditional basic income in Germany. Unlike Switzerland (which voted on basic income in June 2016), Germany does not hold national referenda; thus, advocates launched a single-issue political party as a means to put basic income on the ballot. The party has not committed itself to any specific implementation model.
Bündnis Grundeinkommen has already been on the ballot in two state elections: in Saarland, where it received 0.1% of the vote (286 votes) in the election on March 26, and in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it received 0.06% of the vote (5279 votes) in the election on May.
Bündnis Grundeinkommen is likely to be one of 48 parties competing in the parliamentary elections.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: Reichstag building, CC BY-SA 3.0 Cezary Piwowarski
