by Kate McFarland | Aug 27, 2017 | News
Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman will speak at Sydney’s Antidote festival on the theme of his bestselling book Utopia for Realists, in which he argues for a universal basic income and 15 hour work week.
Describing itself as a “festival of ideas, art and action”, Antidote brings together speakers and artists concerned about political, economic, social, and environmental issues.
The event takes place at the Sydney Opera House on the first weekend of spring in Australia, September 2 to 3. Bregman will present his ideas — which the organizers call a “compelling alternative to our current reality” — on the second day of the event.
Antidote supplants the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, also held at the Sydney Opera House, which was held annually since 2009.
More Information
Official page: “Utopia for Realists: Rutger Bregman” at the Sydney Opera House.
Andrew Taylor, “Work-life balance: Why we should only work 15 hours a week”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 20, 2017.
Reviewed by Caroline Pearce
Cover Photo CC BY 2.0 Hai Linh Truong
by Kate McFarland | Aug 27, 2017 | News
The Economic Security Project (ESP), a two-year initiative established in December 2016 to fund projects related to the study and implementation of basic income in the United States, is preparing to host its first public conference.
The conference, called the Cash Conference, will take place on October 19 at the San Francisco Mint in San Francisco, California. Established in 1874, the San Francisco Mint is said to have held nearly one third of nation’s wealth in its heyday, according to the venue’s website. The mint ceased its operations in 1937, and now functions as an event venue.
ESP describes the Cash Conference as meeting to “reimagine what an economy built on the well-being of all of our [America’s] citizens could look like.”
We want to redefine what ‘work’ means and explore how a basic income could provide economic stability to Americans and fundamentally change society. How do we bridge the gap between the ways the job market is failing Americans today, and what it could look like tomorrow? Can we find a new system that provides access to opportunity for everyone and gives all of us the freedom to chart the course of our lives?
The conference will feature contributions from politicians, academics, entrepreneurs, artists, storytellers, and comedians.
Tickets and further details concerning the place and time are available on Eventbrite. The event is free; however, space is limited.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo (San Francisco Old Mint in front): CC BY-NC 2.0 Shawn Clover
by Kate McFarland | Aug 24, 2017 | News
On August 30, BIEN cofounder Guy Standing will speak at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, as part of an event on economic precarity facing the Māori.
In influential books like The Precariat and A Precariat Charter, economist Guy Standing postulates the existence of a new social class that he calls the “precariat,” characterized by unstable and insecure employment. Although the status of the precariat as a “class” is a matter of some dispute among social scientists, the rise of precarious forms of employment, such as short-term and gig labor, is a commonly cited concern among proponents of basic income.
According to researchers at University of Waikato, precarity in employment is a particularly pronounced concern among the Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous Polynesian people.
On August 30, at a public event titled “When Work Hardly Pays: A Conversation with Guy Standing,” Mohi Rua (lecturer in Psychology), Darrin Hodgetts (Professor in Social Psychology), and Ottilie Stolte (lecturer in Psychology) will present their research project “Connections and Flows: Precarious Māori Households in Austere Times.”
As the researchers summarize the project:
We draw on recent scholarship on the precariat as an emerging social class comprised of people experiencing unstable employment, unliveable incomes, inadequate state supports, marginalisation and stigma. Our focus is on the Māori precariat, whose rights are being eroded through punitive labour and welfare reforms. While we document issues of employment, food, housing and cultural insecurities shaping precarious lives, we also develop a focus on household connections, practices and strengths.
After this research overview, Bill Cochrane (National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis) and Thomas Stubbs (lecturer in Sociology) will sketch a “demographic silhouette” of the Māori precariat, one of the key components of the “Connections and Flows” project.
These presentations will lay the ground for Standing’s lecture, in which he will discuss his theory of the precariat and its implications.
See the event flyer from the University of Waikato for details.
On the following day, Standing will head to Auckland to speak at an event on basic income convened by the New Zealand Fabian Society.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram
Photo: Māori rock carving, CC BY 2.0 Tom Hall
by Kate McFarland | Aug 20, 2017 | News
Café Grundeinkommen, a tiny coffee shop in Berlin, Germany, doubles as a center for meetings and discussion of basic income. The café is now preparing to release a prototype of Circles, a cryptocurrency designed by one of its founders as a means to implement basic income.
Cafe Grundeinkommen
Members of Berlin Basic Income first discussed plans for a basic income café in June 2016, inspired by Swiss People’s Initiative. The hub of the Swiss campaign–which culminated that month in a highly publicized vote on a national referendum on basic income–was a café in Basel, unternehmen mitte, cofounded and managed by basic income advocate Daniel Häni.
A year later, in June 2017, Café Grundeinkommen opened as part of the Tinyhouse university project, an art exhibition at the Bauhaus Archive Museum in Berlin.
The café contains a small library for its guests–consisting of one shelf and a coffee table stocked with books on basic income, alternative economics, and cryptocurrency–and provides meeting place for small groups (including the weekly meetings of a local branch of Bündnis Grundeinkommen, a basic income political party competing in Germany’s federal elections in September). Due to its diminutive size, Café Grundeinkommen cannot house meetings of more than ten people. However, its team holds larger events at nearby buildings–such as a recent public presentation on Basic Income on the Blockchain held at the Bauhaus Pavilion.
Vegan baked goods
Currently open five afternoons per week, Café Grundeinkommen serves direct-trade coffee from the Berlin-based roastery Populus, meeting its commitment to using only “local, ethical, and sustainable” coffee.
Understandably, going to a restaurant/café for a cup of coffee may not be the best option for some people. Just as soon as they hear “you can buy coffee in wholesale” those people may become transfixed, and a spark might appear on their faces. Several companies, including Iron & Fire, deliver high-quality roasted coffee beans and even ground coffee beans right to your door. If interested, you can learn more about their services by visiting their website.
Anyway, in addition to coffee, the café offers one or two kinds of baked goods each day, usually vegan muffins or cookies.
Soon, guests of Café Grundeinkommen will be able to purchase coffee and snacks using a prototype version of Circles–a cryptocurrency designed by one café’s founders, Martin Köppelmann, as a possible mechanism for implementing universal basic income.
Discussing Circles
In the proposed monetary system, first put forth by Köppelmann at Berlin Basic Income’s inaugural meeting in December 2015, all individuals have their own currencies, in which their basic income grants would be paid. To engage in market exchanges, they must create “trust connections” with others with whom they are willing to trade currency. Exchanges can occur between–and only between–individuals who trust one another’s currencies. This type of trade exchange is interesting, especially for those who are interested in learning more about stock and currency trades and investments. Most may find a forex trading course interesting to take if they wish to further their experience within the investment market.
Köppelmann believes that such a digital currency provides the best medium for the distribution of a universal basic income. In his explainer “Introducing Circles,” he writes, “A world wide basic income is something so powerful that no single entity in the world should have control over it in order to preclude manipulation. Particularly, there should be no central authority that decides which person can get a basic income and which person cannot.”
Holy Foods House and Cafe Grundeinkommen
Café Grundeinkommen is currently nearing the launch of an app to put Circles to its first “real world” test. Users of the app will receive monthly credits (their “basic income”), which they will be able to use to “buy” products at the café, in addition to food from HolyFoods House (a food-sharing house neighboring the café), usage hours at the co-working space The New Work Studio, and tickets to events at the Bauhaus Campus.
Café Grundeinkommen’s Ronit Kory told Basic Income News, “We want to see how people will use it on their own, encouraging them to use the app to offer their own goods and services, including ones that might not be considered conventionally valuable in a capitalist system.”
It should be noted that the release of the prototype version of Circles is not a trial of basic income, merely a trial of a type of currency that Köppelmann proposes as a means by which a UBI might be distributed.
In addition to launching the Circles app, Café Grundeinkommen is planning monthly meetings featuring various speakers on subjects related to basic income, which it will announce on its Facebook and MeetUp pages.
Reviewed by Russell Ingram.
Photos used by permission from Cafe Grundeinkommen – Berlin’s Basic Income Cafe. Cover photo: Ronit Kory stands outside Café Grundeinkommen during its construction.
by Kate McFarland | Aug 19, 2017 | Research
Three members of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) Young Academic Network — Frederick Harry Pitts, Lorena Lombardozzi, and Neil Warner — have published a study on basic income, entitled “Beyond Basic Income: Overcoming the Crisis of Social Democracy?”
The full paper can be read and downloaded here.
Abstract
Across Europe, a crisis of social democracy prevails. Deindustrialisation precipitates a breakdown of the communities, institutions and interests that held the social democratic and labour movements together. A collapse in everyday life passes over into a steady decline in the electoral realm. Elsewhere, a crisis of social reproduction ensues. The relationship between the wage and subsistence weakens, public services face cutbacks and a generalised dispossession of people from the commons continues apace. This triple crisis- of the society of work, social reproduction and social democracy- is a triple crisis of the social. The universal basic income (UBI) is suggested by many as a means by which the social synthesis can be pieced back together.
In this paper we explore whether or not UBI lives up to the claims made for its implementation, and to what extent it addresses these three crises. We ultimately pose the question whether UBI offers a solution to the crisis of social democracy, and whether, on this basis, European social democrats should pursue the policy as a central demand of a new electoral offer. We conclude that the policy cannot be suggested as a solution to the crises of work and social reproduction, at least not without being complemented by a range of other measures. A suite of reforms could strengthen its impact and ensure it is used to nurture and preserve positive social relations that reflect social democratic ideas, rather than contrary outcomes implied in alternative visions of the UBI proposed from both right and left of the political spectrum.
About the Authors
Frederick Harry Pitts holds a PhD from the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, and is currently a Lecturer in Management at the University of Bristol. His research interests lie in the sociology of work and political economics, with specializations in the creative industries and the future of work.
Lorena Lombardozzi is a graduate student at SOAS University of London, where she holds an MSc in Political Economy of Development. Her dissertation research concerns agricultural commercialization in Uzbekistan’s cotton-food system and its nutritional impacts.
Neil Warner is a postgraduate researcher in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, studying perspectives on unemployment and the British Labour Party in the late 20th century.
FEPS is the first progressive think tank to operate at a European level. It has previously supported discussion of universal basic income, convening a panel discussion on the topic in Brussels in February 2016 as part of its Next Social Europe lunch debate series.
The FEPS Young Academics Network, established in March 2009, currently consists of over 50 PhD candidates and recent PhD recipients from a range of disciplines.
Photo: “Unemployment Wall” CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Luis Colás
