Photos from Day 1 of Bath Congress
To view and download 49 Photos, click here.
BIEN Press Release – BIEN’s submission to the 2025 Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture
On 8 August 2024, the Basic Income Earth Network submitted input for the United Nations
Secretary-General’s report on the 2025 Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture, upon
invitation of the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO). This proposal
was endorsed by over 125 affiliates and partner organisations from 46 countries who joined
their organisational commitment behind BIEN’s call for the consideration of basic income as
a peacebuilding instrument.
To read the full press release, click here.
BIEN Press Release – Responding to Disturbances: Why a Basic Income is Vital
The recent riots in English urban areas and in Northern Ireland were precipitated by racism,
extremist nationalism and religious bigotry. That’s what everybody sees, and everyone is
responding to. However, the unseen underlying cause of such attitudes and behaviour is
chronic economic insecurity, just as lurches to the far right in other countries have been due
to economic insecurity and the growth of the new mass class, the precariat, whose lives are
mired in insecurity, instability, precarity and debt. When people are insecure, it’s easy to
induce them to believe the lie that other vulnerable groups are to blame for their precarity.
To read the full release, click here.
Exogenous Increases in Basic Income Provisions Increase Preventive Health-Seeking Behavior
“Universal Basic Income (UBI) policies have the potential to promote a wide range of public health objectives by providing those who qualify with direct cash payments. One overlooked mechanism of particular importance to health researchers is the possibility that guaranteed income might increase consultation of primary and preventive care (e.g., annual doctors’ visits; regular vaccination against infectious disease) by providing people with both the time and monetary resources to do so, thereby improving general health.
This study assesses the effects of an exogenous shock to Alaska’s UBI payments to all state residents: a 2022 decision to reclassify dividend “energy relief” provisions as non-taxable (thereby increasing payments by approximately $2,000 inflation-adjusted dollars). It estimates quasi- experimental treatment effects (in 2022 vs. 2021) via mixed linear probability models that compare pre/post policy change in primary care seeking behavior in Alaska vs. the US adult population; controlling for respondent-level fixed effects and state-level random effects. Data were collected in 2021-2022, and analyzed in 2024.”
To read more, click here.
Working, but poor: The middle class in crisis
This week the European TV channel ARTE has put out a long documentary, shown around Europe, based on a three-hour interview they did with Guy Standing some months ago. They followed it up by talking to people in Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Sweden, letting them make points Guy had made in the interview. They have the better ability to articulate what it is like to be in the precariat. Guy had repeated in the interview his prediction that unless governments offer their citizens basic economic security there will be more far-right violence.
To view the 90-minute video, click here.
BIEN Congresses
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)