by Peter Knight | Mar 16, 2022 | Events, News
The University of Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies, together with the Berlin based think tank
polisphere are holding a digital conference on Wednesday 23.03.2022 chaired by Geoff Crocker,
author of ‘Basic Income and Sovereign Money‘ and editor of the web site www.ubi.org.
The focus of the conference is on economic development in East and South-East Asia, specifically on
three elements
Profiling current welfare systems
The constraint of debt/GDP ratios
The potential for basic income and debt-free sovereign money proposals
The conference is of specific interest to professional economists, including government economists,
academic economists, central bankers, politicians, economics journalists, aid agencies, and think tanks.
For the full program click here
Please register by clicking here.
by Peter Knight | Mar 10, 2022 | News
New publication! Basic Income and the Social Investment State: Towards Mutual Reinforcement? by Luke Martinelli and Yannick Vanderborght in European Journal of Social Security
https://doi.org/10.1177/13882627221085019
Is a social investment strategy compatible with the provision of an unconditional basic income? Prima facie, these two scenarios look like incongruent policy alternatives. While social investment – an influential policy paradigm at the level of the European Union – aims at promoting public services and maximum labor market participation, basic income is paid in cash and has sometimes been presented as the key component of a post-work future.
In this article, Luke Martinelli and Yannick Vanderborght explore this apparent incongruence and show that these two visions for welfare reform are not necessarily incompatible. Martinelli and Vanderborght even argue that they may share a number of substantial points of agreement, and indeed may reinforce one another according to a logic of institutional complementarity. In particular, they claim that a partial basic income (i.e., a modest unconditional income guarantee, whose amount would be insufficient if one lives alone) could enhance or complement the key functions of a social-democratic version of the social investment strategy. By doing so, Martinelli and Vanderborght conclude that the integration of a basic income into a social investment package could contribute to overcoming criticisms of the social investment agenda. At the same time, it could rescue basic income from the numerous critics who see it as an unrealistic policy proposal.
by Peter Knight | Mar 6, 2022 | Events, News
BIEN’s 2022 Congress will be held in Brisbane, Australia, from Monday 26th to Wednesday 28th September 2022. This will be a hybrid face to face and online event. The main face-to-face event will take place in Brisbane.BIEN 2022 hybrid.
Call for papers: Abstracts (250—300 words) are now due by Friday 1 April 2022; please click here for more information.
by Peter Knight | Mar 5, 2022 | News
Eight, a NGO that provides Unconditional monthly cash transfers to people in extreme poverty for two years, in collaboration with IPIS, the Belgian Development Cooperation, Fairphone, Umicore and Proximus, announces the expansion of its basic income pilot project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). From 2022 to 2026, following the first village that was onboarded in October 2021 in Lutala, the project will scale up in the same region (in the Kalima, Maniema province), providing the entire region with a basic income boost – or unconditional cash transfers – for two years.
Read more about the project expansion in this press release.
by Peter Knight | Mar 2, 2022 | Events, News
The Nordic Basic Income Earth Networks have published a common pamphlet featuring nine articles. With this pamphlet, they urge the Nordic governments to introduce universal basic income and show a roadmap for a more just and sustainable world, as well as a more democratic economy.
Download the pamphlet.
See the videos of the international Nordic BIEN conference, where the pamphlet was published.
Credit for cover illustration: Jan Jäger
