On 8 September 2022, 2,000 Irish Artists and Creative Arts Workers were granted Basic Income for the Arts. This historic new scheme explores support for artists and creative practice in a 3-year pilot that provides €325 per week as part of a research project. Read the details here.
In August, 2022, a new book and a new report on UBI research in the UK were published.
The book is The macroeconomics of basic income by Zsófi Kőműves, Chris Thoung, and Jakub Zagdanski. It was published by Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics and can be downloaded free here.
While there is growing work on the small-scale (micro) impacts of basic income on people and households, there is much less that considers how such policies might affect an entire economy. This new research by Cambridge Econometrics looks more closely at the economy-wide (macroeconomic) effects of basic income as it might operate in the UK.
A new report, ‘Technological change and growth regimes: Assessing the case for universal basic income (UBI) in an era of declining labour shares’, has been published by the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research (IPR).
The report, co-authored by Joe Chrisp, Aida Garcia-Lazaro and Nick Pearce, supported by funding from Geoff Crocker, examines to what extent the role of technological change is responsible for a decline in the labour share, and discusses the likely effects, and political feasibility, of policy solutions such as universal basic income (UBI).
Cambridge Econometrics’ mission is to provide clear and useful insights, based on rigorous and
independent economic analysis, to address the complex challenges facing society.
www.camecon.com
Cambridge Econometrics Limited is owned by a charitable body,
the Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics.
www.neweconomicthinking.org
Contact person: Chris Thoung (ct@camecon.com)
Authors: Zsófi Kőműves (zsk@camecon.com)
Chris Thoung
Jakub Zagdanski
Readers and BIEN members might be interested in a new book, IN THE BALANCE: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond, which has just been published and is drawing good reviews.
It’s available from online retailers, New York University Press (for North America and Europe) and Witwatersrand University Press (for Africa). An open access PDF version can also be downloaded for free.
Here are a few excerpts from reviews:
“Hein Marais delivers a theoretically powerful, impressively documented, timely and urgent case for radical wealth redistribution …. Crucially, the book supports a basic income not as a policy fix, but as a far-reaching political and imaginative response to the steady collapse of a wage-centered social order. This is a book destined to have lasting influence.”
—Franco Barchiesi, Ohio State University; author of Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa
“If you have been searching for a way to clearly understand the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), then this is the book that you have been waiting for.”
— Awande Buthelezi, coordinator for the #UBIGNOW Campaign and activist with the Climate Justice Charter Movement
“This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the possibility for policies to achieve more equitable levels of well-being in the contemporary political economy of South Africa and the world.”
– Peter B. Evans, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
And here is a short description:
“As jobs disappear, wages flat line and inequality grows, this timeous book presents a
compelling analysis of the need, conditions and possibilities for a universal basic income (UBI) in South Africa and globally.
Paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This
predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates
about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and
distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in
South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the
need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa.
Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing
pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and
social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even
handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention.
The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid
work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the
role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different
versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.”
Start: Tuesday, September 06, 2022 • 6:00 PM • Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London (GMT+00:00) End: Tuesday, September 06, 2022 • 7:30 PM • Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London (GMT+00:00).
This is an online event. Register and get full details here and the organizers will send you the link to join.
Some of the most common criticisms of a basic income are that it is too expensive and that it’s not possible to win the public and political support for the policy. But the research presented at this event shows that an affordable basic income can have a dramatic impact on poverty and that a basic income is a vote winner, specifically in crucial swing seats. How can a modest basic income cut poverty by half? Is basic income a vote winner?
On 31 August 2022 Clarification of the Basic Income Definition’ Working Group’ will hold its 6th Open Forum led off by a presentation by Dr. Ali Mutlu Köylüoğlu on “A NON-SEIZABLE Income and A SCORECARD concept for Evaluation of Basic Income Schemes”.
The Open Forum will be held on Wednesday, 31 August, at 12.30 GMT (UTC) on Zoom.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83993712210?pwd=L0R6ajNIUUlydzJRY09oYUw3ZmJ1QT09
Meeting ID: 839 9371 2210
Passcode: 6thForum
The 24th BIEN CONGRESS in Maricá & Niterói – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 27-29 August 2025
Linkedin, Instagram, X – biencongress25 (at) gmail [dot] com
BIEN2024 was August 29–31 (Pictures and more coming soon)