by Olivier de Schutter, Philippe van Parijs | Oct 21, 2024 | News
Photo: Skorzewiak/shutterstock.com
Recent UBI trials reveal that guaranteed income provides immediate mental health relief, but sustaining long-term benefits may depend on lasting economic security.
Interest is surging in the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) – a regular income paid by the government to each adult member of society, regardless of their personal or financial circumstances. But can it achieve its stated goals of reducing poverty, improving working conditions and increasing well-being? Thanks to a global flurry of pilot programmes putting these claims to the test, answers to this question are starting to trickle in.
To read the full article, click here.
by Philippe van Parijs | Sep 26, 2024 | News
Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash
Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, sent me his most recent report (attached). As you will see, §§ 54-57 contain a strong plea for UBI.
To view the report, click here.
by Philippe van Parijs | Aug 23, 2022 | News
BIEN has made a crucial contribution to the worldwide awareness of the idea of an unconditional basic income. For this to happen, perseverance was key, but also technology.
Philippe Van Parijs reflects on the shaky birth of our network in this article published in The Brussels Times on 17 August 2022.
by Philippe van Parijs | Jun 9, 2020 | News
Lieselotte Wohlgenannt died in Bregenz (Austria) on the 29th of May 2020. Born in 1931, Lieselotte was one of Europe’s first prominent advocates of basic income. After studying in Bregenz and Paris and spending ten years working for the catholic school network in the Congo (then Zaïre), she joined the Vienna-based Katholische Sozialakademie in 1977 and remained one of its driving forces long after her official retirement in 1992. Grundeinkommen ohne Arbeit [Basic income without work], the book she published in Vienna in 1985 jointly with the Jesuit Herwig Büchele, was the first German-language book devoted to the idea of an unconditional basic income. Lieselotte represented the Austrian network at several of BIEN’s congresses, and was the main organizer of the congressBIEN held in Vienna in 1996. Along with Ireland’s Maire Mullarney and Scotland’s Annie Miller, she was one of those strong, committed, selfless women who helped keep the frail flame of basic income alive long before it ignited the world.
by Philippe van Parijs | Jan 4, 2017 | News
Photo: Atkinson receiving honorary degree from Hoover Chair at Université catholique de Louvain
Sir Anthony (“Tony”) Atkinson, a distinguished economist best known for his work on inequality, passed away on January 1, 2017. Atkinson was Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.
In the January 3 issue of Le Monde, Thomas Piketty wrote:
With his distinctive approach, at once historical, empirical, and theoretical; with his extreme rigor and his unquestioned probity; with his ethical reconciliation of his roles as researcher in the social sciences and citizen of, respectively, the United Kingdom, Europe, and the world, Atkinson has himself for decades been a model for generations of students and young researchers.
I could not agree more. This is exactly why Louvain’s Hoover Chair chose to offer him an honorary degree in 1996, on the occasion of its 5th anniversary. This is also why he was invited repeatedly to BIEN-related events.
Unlike his mentor James Meade, Atkinson did not advocate a fully unconditional basic income. In 1993, he wrote:
One has to ask why, despite finding supporters in all political parties, citizen’s income has not yet come close to being introduced. Consideration of this question has led me to the view that, in order to secure political support, it may be necessary for the proponents of citizen’s income to compromise.
This compromise became his participation income: individual, universal but conditional on socio-economic participation in a sense that extends far beyond employment and involuntary unemployment. By defending this compromise with his characteristic honesty and rigour all the way to his last book (Inequality, Harvard University Press, 2015), largely written while fighting against cancer, Tony Atkinson remained up to the end an invaluable fellow traveller for the basic income movement and a powerful intellectual voice in the service of greater social justice.
Philippe van Parijs
See also
this obituary in
Basic Income News for more words of remembrance about Sir Tony Atkinson and his influence on the basic income movement.
