by Kate McFarland | Dec 27, 2016 | News
BIEN’s Scottish affiliate, Citizen’s Basic Income Network Scotland (CBINS), will be holding a public event in Kelty, a town in Fife, on Saturday, January 28. The location is notable in part because the council area of Fife is presently investigating the possibility of a basic income pilot in one of its towns.
Karl Widerquist, credit: Enno Schmidt
The theme of the event is “Basic Income: Real Social Security”. BIEN co-chair Karl Widerquist will be the keynote speaker, and additional invited speakers include members of the Fife Council, Scottish Government, Department of Work and Pensions, and Inland Revenue, who will discuss the latest plans and possibilities for a pilot project in Fife.
Launched in November 2016 in Glasgow, Scotland, CBINS is one of BIEN’s newest affiliates.
More information about the Kelty event is available here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1637025389924686/
See also the listing on BIEN’s event calendar.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Photo: West Bucklay farm, in Fife near Kelty; CC BY 2.0 B4bees
by Kate McFarland | Dec 24, 2016 | News
Catherine Clifford, senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC, wrote the CNBC article announcing Elon Musk’s prediction that automation would make universal basic income (UBI) necessary. In a subsequent article, titled “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” Clifford
In the article, Clifford portrays the automation of jobs as the main motivation for UBI, continuing to highlight Elon Musk’s remark that he’s “not sure what else one would do” but implement such a policy. (This focus on automation as the sole or main motivator is arguably misleading; many historically important arguments for UBI do not turn at all on worries about automation. Unquestionably, however, the threat of technological unemployment has recently been the driving force behind much of the media attention to UBI in the United States.)
Clifford goes on to note some highlights of the global UBI movement: the impending pilot in Finland, Basisinkomen 2018’s campaign for a basic income referendum in the Netherlands, and Switzerland’s vote on a basic income referendum earlier in 2016.
One passage in the article is especially noteworthy for BIEN: Clifford discusses the resolutions on the definition of ‘basic income’ made at BIEN’s 2016 Congress. In doing do so, she emphasizes that the definition of ‘basic income’ does not entail that basic income must be replacement for other programs and social services, and she point out that BIEN recommends that it not be viewed in this way–quoting BIEN co-chair Karl Widerquist as saying that UBI “is not ‘generally considered’ as a replacement for the rest of the social safety net”:
“Some see it primarily as a replacement. Others see it as a supplement, filling in the cracks. Some people who want it to be a replacement try to create the impression that it is generally considered to be so. But that’s not accurate.”
Reference
Catherine Clifford, “Elon Musk says robots will push us to a universal basic income—here’s how it would work,” CNBC, November 18, 2016.
Article reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı.
Photo CC BY-ND 2.0 OnInnovation.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 23, 2016 | News
Some commentators view basic income as a one-stop solution, which is meant to eliminate the welfare state. Temple University Law Professor Brishen Rogers is one basic income proponent who’s speaking out against this trend.
Brishen Rogers, Associate Professor of Law at Temple University, is a long-time supporter of a universal basic income (UBI) to mitigate poverty and economic insecurity. At the same time, he is critical of certain pervasive “tropes” in the mainstream discussion of UBI. The latter are his focus in a recent Boston Review article (“How Not to Argue for Basic Income”), in which he criticizes discourse that portrays UBI as necessitated (only) by automation and technological unemployment, and that presents it as a replacement for all other welfare programs.
Although he praises former SEIU President Andy Stern’s “willingness to challenge labor movement orthodoxy”, Rogers challenges the presentation of UBI in Stern’s popular new book on the topic, Raising the Floor, which Rogers takes exemplify this problematic discourse:
Like many others in the future-of-work debates, he [Stern] presents UBI as an urgent policy solution to a problem—massive technological unemployment—that has not yet materialized. Also like many others, he signals a willingness to cut welfare benefits in order to get conservatives on board. These tropes of mainline debate are unfortunate. They alienate progressives who might otherwise favor a UBI and cast the policy as a one-stop solution for economic inequality, which it is not.
Opposing a UBI that replaces the social welfare state, Rogers proposes that basic income be integrated into a social democratic economy, rather than laid on top of a neoliberal one:
[T]he solution is not to buy off a hoard of displaced workers armed with pitchforks. Rather, it is to fight for a UBI while rebuilding a robustly democratic state that can enact broader progressive reforms to tax and welfare policies, subject large firms to far greater oversight, and protect workers and the unemployed in the here and now. Such reforms aren’t just good policy but also good politics, since they can help rebuild faith in the state. A standalone UBI simply cannot.
In previous academic work (“Justice at Work”), Rogers has argued that a basic income would not eliminate the need for minimum wage laws, which would continue to be necessary to promote fair and respectful treatment of workers.
References and Further Reading
Brishen Rogers, “How Not to Argue for Basic Income,” Boston Review, October 31, 2016.
Brishen Rogers, “Justice at Work: Minimum Wage Laws and Social Equality,” Texas Law Review, April 26, 2014.
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı
Image: CC BY 2.0 Robert Couse-Baker
by Kate McFarland | Dec 23, 2016 | News
The ReCivitas Institute is introducing a “Lifetime Basic Income” in the Brazilian village of Quatinga Velho–a project it hopes will serve as a model to other organizations running their own basic income pilots.
From 2008 to 2014, the ReCivitas Institute, a non-governmental organization based in Brazil, administered a basic income in Quatinga Velho, a small village in São Paulo, Brazil. Under the project, which was funded entirely by private donors, 100 Quatinga Velho residents eventually received a basic income of 30 Brazilian Reais (about 9 USD) per month, paid in cash. All participants were volunteers.
In January 2016, ReCivitas launched a new project, Basic Income Startup, which intends to make these payments permanent. As of January 16, 14 residents of Quatinga Velho have basic incomes, now set at an amount of 40 Reais, that they will retain for at least 20 years.
Basic Income Startup has pledged that for every €1,000 received in donations, a new individual will start to receive the lifetime basic income at no additional cost to donors. It has also stated that this additional recipient will be selected from those living in areas where 40 Reais per month makes a significant impact on quality of life.
According to ReCivitas President Marcus Brancaglione, the idea for Basic Income Startup originated during a trip to Europe in 2015, when he observed the inequality between refugees and European citizens. Unsurprisingly, then, ReCivitas does not see its work and mission as limited to Brazil, but as having global ramifications.
The ReCivitas Institute is now encouraging other local organizations and communities to replicate its project in Quatinga Velho, and invites other NGOs conducting their own basic income studies to unite and form a Basic Income Projects Network:
Our idea of Basic Income is the universal one. Really universal. With no discrimination of any sort, such as of nationality, citizenship or territorial. We work with an open association model that was not designed to expand while being restricted by geopolitical limits, but instead to multiply without regard for borders, in an international network of communities maintained by the peoples themselves, from person to person, through mutual support between non-governmental organizations.
Describing the results of ReCivitas’s project in Quatinga Velho, Brancaglione says that the basic income ” ‘changed the dreams’ of people in the community…giving some of the poorest a basic security, and [allowing] them ‘the capability to project into the future’ rather than living and budgeting without ever being certain that their income was secure. The money and the terms of payment gave citizens the power to change their relationship with the outside authorities. Rather than having to prove the extent of their poverty in order to receive social security, they were freed to assert their citizen’s right to a basic income” [1].
Although the basic income has brought clear benefits to Quatinga Velho, project leaders have emphasized that their goal is not to study basic income or to prove that it “works”. They are already convinced that basic income is effective, and their goal is to implement it [2].
The Brazilian government has maintained the Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer program for the poor, for over a decade; however, the government has not yet shown a willingness to institute a full universal and unconditional basic income. Thus, ReCivitas has chosen to move forward with administering its own privately-funded unconditional basic income on a smaller scale, and hopes to inspire similar initiatives worldwide.
For more information about Basic Income Startup, see its website and view the video trailer below:
[1] George Bangham, “Report of Lecture at Oxford University,” Instituto ReCivitas, February 28, 2016.
[2] Cf. Karl Widerquist, “Basic Income in Quatinga Velho celebrates 3-years of operation,” Basic Income News, June 7, 2012.
Information and photographs provided by Marcus Brancaglione, President of ReCivitas.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 22, 2016 | News
The most recent report from the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers mentions, but rejects, the suggestion that a universal basic income be implemented to mitigate economic disruption caused by the automation of labor.
On December 20, the Council of Economic Advisers to US President Barack Obama released a report on policy responses to the threat of job loss due to artificial intelligence (AI) and other labor-displacing technologies.
The report recommends three general strategies: (1) greater investment in AI research (noting that, despite the challenges posed by technological unemployment, AI promises myriad benefits), (2) job training and education for the highly skilled jobs of the future, and (3) strengthening the social safety net, including the provision of unemployment insurance to displaced workers. In discussing the third strategy, the authors make clear that their recommendation is to strengthen the existing social safety net, rather than to replace current programs with a universal basic income (UBI).
Jason Furman, CC BY-ND 2.0 Center for American Progress
Although the main body of the report does not directly address UBI, a prominent sidebar quotes a speech made by Council Chairman Jason Furman in a White House workshop last July, in which he dismisses UBI as a reasonable response to concerns about potential technological unemployment (see page 40). In the quoted passage, Furman acknowledges that proponents of UBI have many diverse motivations, including ”real and perceived deficiencies in the current social safety net, the belief in a simpler and more efficient system, and…the premise that we need to change our policies to deal with the changes that will be unleashed by AI and automation more broadly.”
Despite this, Furman goes on to cast UBI as policy “premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed” — a possibility that he himself does not believe the US government should rule out. Instead, according to Furman, “our goal should be first and foremost to foster the skills, training, job search assistance, and other labor market institutions to make sure people can get into jobs, which would much more directly address the employment issues raised by AI than would UBI.” The Council of Economic Advisers’ latest report continues to affirm this approach.
President-elect Donald Trump will take office in January 2017. As reporters like April Glaser (Recode) and Mike Brown (Inverse) point out, it is unlikely that Trump’s Cabinet will be receptive to many of the proposals in the report, which call for increased funding for welfare programs and public education.
References
Complete Report
Executive Office of the President, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy,” December 20, 2016.
Media Coverage
Mike Brown, “White House: Basic Income Won’t Solve Robot Automation,” Inverse, December 21, 2016.
Klint Finley, “The White House’s Fix for Robots Stealing Jobs? Education,” Wired, December 21, 2016.
– Includes commentary from Jim Pugh of the Universal Income Project, a California-based basic income advocacy group, regarding the narrowness of the conception of UBI in Furman’s remarks.
April Glaser, “The White House says the U.S. will need a stronger social safety net to help workers displaced by robots,” Recode, December 20, 2016.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
White House in snow photo, CC BY-ND 2.0 U.S. Embassy, Jakarta
