by Kate McFarland | Nov 22, 2016 | News
Former MEP Christian Engström has written a “concrete proposal” for a basic income guarantee in Sweden. Originally published online only in Swedish, Engström’s paper is now available in English.
Christian Engström, a former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for the Swedish Pirate Party, has prepared a detailed proposal for an unconditional guaranteed income of 900 EUR (8333 SEK) per month, tax-free, for every Swedish resident between the ages of 19 and 65.
The basic income would replace Sweden’s current social assistance programs, student aid, and unemployment benefits, but no other government-funded programs. Disability and sickness benefits, child benefits, and the state pension would remain in place.
Engström’s basic income guarantee is designed as a negative income tax rather than as a universal grant, with the amount of the grant tapering off as the recipient earns income. Specifically, Engström proposes a 33% income tax with a reduction of the basic income grant by the same amount. (For example, someone who makes 300 EUR would pay 100 EUR in income taxes, and see their basic income lowered by 100 EUR, but would still net 100 EUR.)
Engström proposes no increase in income taxes, and points out that 33% is Sweden’s current normal marginal tax rate for low- and middle-income earners.
The basic income grant would be financed in part through money saved on the social assistance programs to be replaced. The rest of the funds, according to Engström’s proposal, would come from eliminating certain industry-specific discounts on value-added tax (VAT), such as those enjoyed in the food and restaurant industry.
In presenting his specific plan, Engström is motivated by concerns about political feasibility. He states that, ultimately, he would prefer a higher level for the guaranteed minimum income–and that his “concrete” proposal might be seen as an initial step toward bigger and more refined variants of the basic income:
“I hope that in time we will see a basic income of maybe 1,100€ or more in Sweden. But it is not strictly necessary to start at such a high level. It is enough that the basic income is livable, and not lower than today’s social assistance benefits. Then we can introduce the new system, which is the big and complicated step. Once we have done that, and can see in practice how it works and what it costs, we can continue improving the basic income through the ordinary political process.”
To date, basic income has received little mainstream political support in Sweden — unlike neighboring Finland, where an experiment on the effects of an unconditional basic income will begin next year.
Read the details of Engström’s proposal in the full report, available here:
Christian Engström “Basic Income: A concrete and financed proposal for basic income in Sweden“.
Video of Engström presenting his proposal at Finland’s International Basic Income Seminar in Turku, August 2016.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Stockholm photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Stina Stockholm
by Kate McFarland | Nov 20, 2016 | News
Eight, a charitable organization based in Belgium, is preparing to run a basic income pilot in Uganda (as previously announced in Basic Income News). The two-year pilot is set to launch in January 2017, and will form the basis for a documentary.
Documentary filmmaker Steven Janssens and sociologist Maarten Goethals founded the charity Eight in 2015, with the vision of reducing global inequality and allowing all people the opportunity to flourish. Eight euros per week is the amount needed to provide a basic income for one adult and two children in impoverished areas, such as parts of Uganda.
According to Janssens, the founders were inspired partially by their own experiences in work and travel, and partially by research and writing on basic income — including the writings of Philippe Van Parijs, Sarath Davala and Guy Standing’s book on the Indian basic income pilots (Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India), Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists, Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan’s Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, and the results of other basic income pilots, such as those in Dauphin and Namibia.
Two-Year Pilot of Village-Wide Basic Income
As a first step towards its vision, Eight is preparing to launch a pilot study in the Fort Portal region of Uganda in January 2017. The two-year pilot will involve the distribution of unconditional cash transfers to all residents of an undisclosed village of 50 households.
Eight officially registered the village for the pilot in July, and marked this accomplishment by publishing video footage (a “moodclip”) from the location:
https://vimeo.com/181199016
The amount of the basic income has been fixed at approximately 30 percent of the average income of lower-income families in Uganda (read more about the decision here), amounting to 18.25 USD per month for adults and 9.13 USD for children (small changes to adjust for inflation are possible before the pilot is launched in January). Eight is cooperating with a local bank and local telecom operator to arrange for the disbursement of payments using mobile phones.
The organization will be primarily investigating the impact of the basic income along four dimensions: education participation of girls and women, access to health care, engagement in democratic institutions, and local economic development.
Anthropologists from the University of Ghent, Belgium, are helping to develop and conduct a study of the effect of the basic income, and are presently collecting data on the state of the village prior to the initiation of the pilot. They will compare these initial data with data collected during and after the basic income intervention.
Janssens emphasizes that the study is truly a pilot — intended to inform more and larger basic income trials: “Important to mention is that it is really a pilot project. From our experiences with this pilot we will learn and adjust where necessary, because in the long term we want to scale-up to more villages as our organization grows.” He adds that, after two years, “the priority of Eight will lay in the possibilities to scale up in a good way.”
Village One: The Documentary
Eight does not only plan to publish the results of the pilot study in journals. In addition, it will create a cinematic documentary, Village One, which will trace the story of the introduction of the basic income and its effects on the community over the course of the study.
Currently, Village One is anticipated to be released in October 2018. Janssens — who describes the documentary as “like a siamese twin” to the pilot — plans to disseminate it through television, the Internet, and film festivals.
https://vimeo.com/136620874
Musician and actor Jenne Decleir has already begun composing the soundtrack to Village One. In a short video, Decleir encourages others to join the cause and donate eight euros a week (“the cost of three servings of french fries, without any sauce”):
https://vimeo.com/170170494
Eight has received a sufficient amount in contributions to fund the entire first year of the pilot and two-thirds of the second. At present, Eight is still collecting donations for the remainder of the second year and the documentary.
Visit eight.world and follow Eight on Facebook and Twitter for more information.
Thanks to Steven Janssens for input on this article and Genevieve Shanahan for review.
Images & videos used courtesy of Steven Janssens.
by Kate McFarland | Nov 20, 2016 | Research
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, Professor Emerita of Social Work at Adelphi University, evaluates the relative merits of income guarantees and job guarantees in a recent article for the national US labor journal New Labor Forum (published by the Murphy Institute and the City University of New York).
The paper ends inconclusively (and with a Philippe van Parijs quote):
There are important drawbacks to both approaches. The UBI is expensive, inefficient and, in the United States, counter-culture. By contrast, the JG suffers from public denial of the magnitude of unemployment, its dependence on government expansion, and the enmity of powerful interest groups. Yet the serious problems that both strategies address impel us to continue to discuss, debate, advocate, agitate, modify, and perhaps find alternatives. As Van Parijs writes, “. . . seismic events do occur, and it is important to prepare intellectually for when a political opportunity suddenly arises.”
Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg, “Employment or Income Guarantees: Which Would Do the Better Job?” New Labor Forum 2016, Vol 25(3): 92-100
Download: https://njfac.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/NLFJobsIncomGuar.pdf
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Brian Dys Sahagun
by Kate McFarland | Nov 19, 2016 | News
Earlier in 2016, the economist Vijay Joshi, Emeritus Fellow at Oxford, published India’s Long Road to Prosperity, in which he argues in favor of a universal basic income in India.
More recently, Joshi summarized his position on UBI in a post at the Economic Times Blog, maintaining that the policy is advisable as a way to guarantee a minimum income floor for all Indians, while also allowing the country’s “dysfunctional” system of price of subsidies to be replaced. Joshi admits that basic income could be a difficult sell politically, but he calls it a “defeatist position” to fail to advocate for UBI for this reason.
Vijay Joshi (October 17, 2016) “Universal Basic Income is worth fighting for, even against the long odds in its implementation” The Economic Times Blog.
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 sandeepachetan.com
by Kate McFarland | Nov 18, 2016 | News
The University of Minho’s 2017 Summer School in Political Philosophy & Public Policy, which has been scheduled for July 13-15, will center on the theme “Philosophical Ideas for a Brave New World of Work”. As stated in the official event description, “In this summer school we will discuss insights emerging from philosophical reflection on the changing nature of work and think about normative principles guiding the future organization and allocation of work and its benefits and burdens.”
While the event is not a basic income conference per se, its theme is likely to interest many basic income supporters, given the tight connection between contemporary basic income movements and concerns about automation, trends toward precarious employment arrangements, and other changes in the nature of work. Furthermore, interested participants may submit proposals related to basic income, provided that the submission is relevant to the philosophy of work.
The Summer School’s keynote speakers will be Ruth Yeoman (Research Fellow at Oxford) and Lucas Stanczyk (currently research fellow at Brown University, joining the faculty of philosophy at Harvard University in 2017). Yeoman will address questions such as “What is work? Why is meaningful work important? How can we organize work to promote meaningfulness? Is there a right to meaningful work?” She’ll draw upon her extensive previous scholarship on the topic, such as her 2014 book Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy. Stanczyk will discuss issues related to the question of how much labor a society can reasonably expect from each individual — the theme of his new manuscript, From Each: A Theory of Productive Justice.
The Minho Summer School has been held annually since 2010, focusing each year on a different topic in the intersection of political theory, philosophy, and public policy. Notably, the 2013 summer school was dedicated to basic income.
The 2017 conference is being organized by Jurgen De Wispelaere (University of Tampere), James Hickson (University of York), and Roberto Merrill (University of Minho). Both Jurgen and Roberto are key figures in the basic income movement. Jurgen has frequently published on basic income in leading journals, and has delivered many lectures on the topic (including in university courses on basic income). Roberto is a leading spokesperson for the basic income movement in Portugal and is currently coordinating the 2017 BIEN Congress in Lisbon.
For more information about the 2017 Minho Summer School, including information about registration and submitting a proposal (due May 20, 2017), see futureofworkschool.weebly.com.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Working people photo CC BY-ND 2.0 R. Halfpaap
