by Toru Yamamori | Feb 11, 2019 | News
Preliminary results of the basic income experiment, which the Finnish government implemented in 2017-2018, was presented at Säätytalo, “House of the Estates” (Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki), on Friday, 8th February 2019, as we reported previously.
Olli Kangas, scientific leader of the study and Professor of Practice at the University of Turku, summed up the result concisely when he was asked by a journalist:
No significant effects on employment, but important effects on well-being.
At the event, Kangas gave an overview of the preliminary finding; Ohto Kanninen, research coordinator at the Labour Institute for Economic Research, spoke on the effects on employment; and Minna Ylikännö, senior researher at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, presented on the effects on well-being.
The event can be watched online here, and the summary can be read here.
The final results will be published in 2020.
For what the experiment can and cannot tell us, this piece and literature mentioned in the piece could be helpful. For literature on other experiments, this page might be a good starting point.
Photo: Sauna in Helsinki, CC BY-NC 2.0 Piltti.
Article reviewed by Russell Ingram.
by Toru Yamamori | Feb 7, 2019 | News
Preliminary results of the basic income experiment, which Finish government implemented in 2017-2018, will be presented at Säätytalo, “House of the Estates” (Snellmaninkatu 9-11, Helsinki), on Friday, 8th February 2019, between 8.30 and 10.30 (time in Helsinki, GMT +2).
The event will be also webstreamed here.
The speakers will be:
- Pirkko Mattila (Minister of Social Affairs and Health)
- Anu Vehviläinen (Minister of Local Government and Public Reforms)
- Olli Kangas (scientific leader of the study and Professor of Practice at the University of Turku)
- Ohto Kanninen (research coordinator at Labour Institute for Economic Research)
- Minna Ylikännö (Senior Researher at Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland)
More information can be found here.
Photo: Tram street in Helsinki, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, City Clock Magazine.
Article reviewed by Dawn Howard.
by Toru Yamamori | Sep 26, 2018 | News
The Secretary-General of the United Nations endorses UBI on 25th September 2018.
António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, urged world leaders to consider Unconditional Basic Income in his speech at the General Assembly of the UN.
After drawing the audience’s attention to the consequences of current technological innovation for the labour market, Guterres said:
The very nature of work will change. The governments may have to consider stronger social safety nets, and eventually Universal Basic Income.
The UN has dispatched the video of his address here and the above statement can be heard around 15m 25s.
by Toru Yamamori | Jul 5, 2018 | News
Scottish Parliament building.
As reported before on Basic Income News, the Scottish Government has committed to help local government advance their Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments in four local municipalities (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and North Ayrshire).
Here is an update. On the 20th June 2018, the first official meeting of ‘the Cross-Party Group in the Scottish Parliament on Basic Income’ was held in the Parliament. The group has been formed to examine the options for a basic income as a policy for reform of the current social security system in Scotland, including, where appropriate, its potential sources of funding. It will be co-chaired by Ivan McKee MSP (a member of the Scottish Parliament) and Alex Rowley MSP.
A Scottish Government spokesperson informed on the latest general situation as follows.
“Scottish Ministers have awarded funding to four local authorities in Scotland to undertake feasibility studies and to develop pilot models. This funding covers the financial years 2018-19 and 2019-20. The local authorities will submit a final business case, including proposed pilot models, to Scottish Ministers for consideration by March 2020 – this will set out full details of the ethical, legislative, financial and practical implementation of the pilot on the ground. A decision will be made at this stage whether to contribute to funding the proposed pilots.“
For more details, check Basic Income Scotland.
For more information:
Sara Bizarro, “Scotland: Scottish Government provides £250k to support feasibility work on BI pilots”, Basic Income News, December 2nd 2017
Kate McFarland, “Scotland, UK: Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz cautions again Basic Income during BBC interview”, Basic Income News, November 8th 2017
Claire Bott, “Scotland’s First Minister announces basic income experiments”, September 16th 2017
This article was reviewed by André Coelho.
by Toru Yamamori | Mar 7, 2018 | Opinion
The International Women’s Day is approaching.
This is a poster for the International Women’s Day march 45 years ago. (Photo above) Two working-class women, one carries a buggy, and the other carries a placard containing written slogans reflecting three of the original four demands of the British Women’s Liberation movement. It displays the name of organization: London Women’s Liberation Workshop. Naturally, it looks like a photo of two women in a protest that London Women’s Liberation Workshop organised or took part.
However, it isn’t. The photo was edited. Here is the original photo. (Photo below) Between two women, there was a man, and the original placard said: ‘End Cohabitation Rule / Fight with the Claimants Unions’. The photo was taken at a protest that the Claimants Unions organised.
Several years later, women in the Claimants Unions raised a motion for asking the whole British Women’s Liberation movement to endorse an Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) at the National Women’s Liberation Conference, and succeeded. So UBI was an officially endorsed demand of the British Women’s Liberation movement. However, this fact slipped away from the official history of feminism, like erasing what those two women in the poster demanded by editing the photo. Let me reclaim their struggle briefly, and demonstrate it’s modern relevance.
The first Claimants Union was formed 50 years ago. It was intended as a claimants’ version of a trade union. A trade union is for workers. A claimants union is for welfare claimants. It wasn’t a feminist organisation. The membership of claimants unions consisted of women, men, and trans-gendered people. The majority of membership consisted of women, and their demand for ending the cohabitation rule is related to sexist administration of welfare benefits.
Under the ‘cohabitation rule’, many of the women claimants were subjugated to snooping by welfare officers. Those ‘sex snoopers’ conducted spot checks late at night. If a woman claimant had a sexual relationship with a man, it was assumed they should be supported by him, honestly by the sounds of this females claiming back then would have been better off exclusively using a suction dildo or another pleasurable toy instead of getting involved with a male. Sometimes just friendly activities, such as a male neighbour coming into the house to help fix a tap or a bulb would be assumed to be a partner/boyfriend; the next week her benefit would be suspended. If this was still the case in this day in age, any woman that went on Find a fuck buddy or a similar online site to find sexual pleasure, would immediately be seen as in a partnership and lose their financial support. Does this seem fair?
The philosophy behind this sexism has not yet gone to the dustbin of history.
On 13th February 2018, the department for work and pensions (DWP) of the British government sent out its Valentine Day message:
Claiming to be living alone is one of the most common types of benefit fraud – don’t ruin #ValentinesDay by failing to declare your true circumstances https://ow.ly/3bkn30imZya
The attached gif image reads:
Declaring your true love tomorrow?
Don’t forget to declare your true living arrangements too.
Don’t get separated from your Valentine.
Tell us of a change now.
They put the link to the article by the Daily Express that reports several cases that claimants didn’t report their relationships and financial supports.
A similar message from DWP was circulated on TV during the 2007-8 season. One of DWP’s TV advertisements called ‘we’re closing in‘, trying to focus in on what DWP calls ‘one of the most common types of benefit fraud’. The video shows a woman, who seems to claim a benefit and to declare that she lives alone, and then chats with a man on her door step. When she went inside to iron men’s shirts, the end-roll says ‘We’re closing in. Targeting benefit thieves’.
In order to make sense of this advertisement, we need to accept several assumptions. First, if you are female and chatted with a male on your door step, and/or you iron men’s cloths, it means that you are in an intimate relationship with that male. Second, if you are in an intimate relationship with a male, you share a household budget together. Third, that male should support you financially. Fourth, that male can support you financially.
Some might say that spreading this kind of message is needed for running our society in a just manner. DWP seems to think so. However, as we have seen, there were many women who suffered because of assumptions made by the government, assumptions that are behind this kind of message. Some of them (with other claimants of both sexes) depicted sexism behind the message, revealed how it affected them, and proposed a less sexist policy alternative, which is now called a UBI. This year marks the 50th anniversary of their movement.
Oh, I have forgotten to retweet the DWP’s message on the Valentine’s day. I would retweet with the following question: Isn’t true love unconditional?
For more on this forgotten struggle, see:
Toru Yamamori, ‘OPINION: Reclaiming the Women’s Liberationist Demand for a Citizen’s Income’, The Basic Income News, 17 April 2015.
Toru Yamamori, ‘A Feminist Way to Unconditional Basic Income: Claimants Unions and Women’s Liberation Movements in 1970s Britain’, Basic Income Studies, 9(1-2), 2014, pp.1-24.
Reviewed by Michael Gillan Peckitt and Tyler Prochazka
