by Vito Laterza | Dec 5, 2015 | News
The 16th Basic Income Earth Network Congress will take place in Seoul, South Korea, from July 7-9, 2016. The overarching theme is “Social and Ecological Transformation and the Basic Income”. Activists, politicians and academics from across the world will gather to discuss the current realities and possible futures of basic income, in the context of ongoing global economic and ecological crises.
The Congress will be hosted by Sogang University and will coincide with Korean Basic Income Week, from July 4-10, when concerts, film screenings, performances and campaigns will take place across the country.
Eight keynote speakers have been confirmed at the time of writing: Louise Haagh (York University, England), Toru Yamamori (Doshisha University, Japan), Jan Otto Andersson (Åbo Akademi University, Finland), Sarath Davala (India), Zephania Kameeta (Minister of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Namibia), Zhiyuan Cui (Tsinghua University, China), Gonzalo Hernández Licona (CONEVAL, Mexico) and Evelyn L. Forget (University of Manitoba, Canada). Click here for more information on the speakers.
A call for papers and proposals has been issued by the conference organizers. Interested people can make submissions until January 31, 2016. You can read the full call for papers and proposals here, including instructions on how to submit. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Economic models after neoliberalism, and the position and role of basic income in them;
- The role of basic income in the expansion of democracy in the political arena and in society as a whole;
- The role of basic income in the transition to an ecological society and related cultural issues;
- The role of basic income in moving away from a work-based society and contributing to the de-commodification of the labor force;
- The precariat and basic income;
- The role of basic income in enhancing gender equality;
- Basic income as a tool to tackle youth unemployment;
- Evaluation and prospects of various pilot projects;
- Post-human prospects and basic income.
For all other details, visit the Congress’ website, which is also available in Korean.
by Vito Laterza | Oct 18, 2015 | News
Celebrated Chinese-American community activist, writer and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs died in her house in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday, October 5. She turned 100 in June this year. Her vision of a community-driven socialist alternative to capitalism resonates well with some of the concerns of the basic income movement. While basic income was not a central theme in her work, she endorsed the idea of a city-level universal basic income (UBI).
She was born in New York and grew up in a Chinese immigrant family running a restaurant business. A brilliant scholar, she completed her PhD in philosophy in 1940. After that, she became increasingly drawn into full-time political activism. In 1942, she started her close collaboration with Marxist revolutionary theorist C.L.R. James and the Johnsonites, which lasted for two decades. The Johnsonites were revolutionary socialists who focused more than other Marxist groups on marginalized groups like women, people of color and youth, and rejected the notion of a workers’ vanguard party.
Lee Boggs’ personal encounter with Marxism and socialism was shaped by a focus on race and poverty, in particular the systematic discrimination faced by black American working class communities. In 1953, she married Detroit-based black activist and autoworker Jimmy Boggs, author of the influential 1963 book The American revolution: pages from a Negro worker’s notebook. In the same year she moved to Detroit to live with him. The city remained her home until her death. Grace and Jimmy partnered in community activism, political struggles and revolutionary writing.
Jimmy and Grace Lee Boggs
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Grace and Jimmy were prominent in organizing the civil rights and Black Power movements in Detroit. They collaborated with towering figures like Martin Luther King and Malcom X, and organizations like the Black Panthers. After the decline of mass political activism that started in the 1980s, they continued to focus on community work and alternative urban livelihoods. Jimmy passed away in 1993, and Grace continued with these activities until her death.
In a 2011 piece, Grace Lee Boggs mentions a workshop presentation in the early 1990s in which she had imagined a future where Detroiters would come together to implement a city-wide UBI by the year 2015:
Because Detroiters have developed a deep sense of moral responsibility, citizens decided in 2015 A.D. to adopt a Universal Basic Income Grant (UBIG) as an alternative to welfare. The UBIG is based on the idea that every citizen has a right to the basic material necessities of life, including health care and education, and every citizen also has a duty to share in the responsibilities of the community, city, nation and planet, and to contribute in some form to the overall well-being.
Lee Boggs’ engagement with UBI was more complex than her words above let transpire. Her take was heavily influenced by evolving ideas about work, community and the rejection of the capitalist system. Her socialist approach was informed by Marx’s critique of alienation and wage labor under capitalism. Lee Boggs’ association with black working class communities became a pragmatic entry point into the concept and practice of revolution – which she always saw as something changing, shifting and emerging from uncertainty, rather than a linear path driven by monolithic ideas. Revolution, for Lee Boggs, was what people did on the ground when they took practical action informed by a long-term vision of the society they wanted to build.
Her work speaks to UBI activists because she lived through the decline of formal jobs in the Detroit automotive industry, and the social and economic devastation black communities experienced as a result. In the 1960s, all the signs of the crisis were clear, with black workers losing their jobs in large numbers due to automation and other irreversible structural changes in global capitalist production. In the following years, Lee Boggs was particularly concerned with the dramatic contradictions emerging from the decline of formal labor coupled by rampant consumerism. She identified the capitalist system as the main cause of the breakdown of communities plagued by mass unemployment, crime and drugs.
The Boggses led decades of urban renewal experiments emerging from the ashes of capitalism and focusing on youth entrepreneurship, urban agriculture and community education. Where others saw a post-industrial wasteland, they saw opportunities to build a new society that would break away from consumerism and dependence on large-scale structures like the state and big companies. The James & Grace Lee Boggs School and the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership are among the many projects that carry their legacy today.
The basic income grant that Lee Boggs envisioned was to be delivered by self-governing Detroiters coming together, not as a large-scale redistributive mechanism at state or federal level. It was closely tied to the duty to participate and share with others locally and globally, and to behave responsibly towards other humans and the natural environment. The strong connections between UBI and the community would have neutralized the potential negative effects of linking cash grants to mass production and global capitalism.
In a 2012 talk at the New School in New York, Lee Boggs provided the following comment on Martin Luther King’s proposal of a guaranteed annual income (something quite close to a federal UBI):
I’m not sure I’m ready to propose a guaranteed annual wage. I think that’s too simplistic. … I think we need to do a lot more with ourselves, with our economy, and envisioning a new kind of economy. You can think so much in terms of re-distribution. Or you can begin thinking about justice in terms of restoring another way of life.
Whether one agrees with Lee Boggs’ communitarian conception of UBI or not, her work is a major contribution to basic income debates. Lee Boggs’ writings emphasized the dignity of work, and how its redemptive qualities had little to do, if at all, with wage labor. On the topic of change, she was an advocate of “visionary organizing.” She believed that community activism in the “here and now” could bring about global systemic change only if driven by a strong vision of the future to come. Her mature views about revolution and social change are presented in her powerful book The next American revolution: sustainable activism for the twenty-first century, first published in 2011.
Her radiant presence and profound insight will be sorely missed. She influenced basic income advocates like Scott Santens, who celebrated her life work with these words: “Some people see where the arc of history should bend, do all they can to make it bend, and live long enough to see it bend.” She will continue to inspire thousands of UBI activists engaged in small-scale experiments that are already sowing the seeds of a future world where UBI becomes the norm.
Grace Lee Boggs in post-industrial Detroit. Credit: Quyen Tran. © PBS POV
Essential readings
Grace Lee Boggs, “Visionary organizing and the MLK Memorial,” James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, September 2011.
Grace Lee Boggs, “Jobs aren’t the answer,” James & Grace Lee Boggs Center, September 2011.
Grace Lee Boggs at the New School, New York [TRANSCRIPT], April 22, 2012.
Grace Lee Boggs, Living for change: an autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Grace Lee Boggs (with Scott Kurashige), The next American revolution: sustainable activism for the twenty-first century, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011.
Documentary film “American Revolutionary: the evolution of Grace Lee Boggs,” directed by Grace Lee, June 2013.
Ryan Felton, “Grace Lee Boggs, longtime Detroit activist, dies aged 100,” The Guardian, October 6, 2015.
Michelle Chen, “Grace Lee Boggs’ century of social renewal,” Al Jazeera America, October 7, 2015.
Thomas J. Sugrue, “Postscript: Grace Lee Boggs,” The New Yorker, October 8, 2015.
Barbara Ransby, “The (r)evolutionary vision and contagious optimism of Grace Lee Boggs,” In These Times, October 6, 2015.
Jordan Weissmann, “Martin Luther King’s economic dream: a guaranteed income for all Americans,” The Atlantic, August 28, 2013.
by Vito Laterza | Oct 17, 2015 | News
Guy Standing, honorary president of BIEN, noted author, and leading advocate of basic income was interviewed on National Public Radio (US) on September 20, 2015. You can listen to the broadcast here.
He will give several talks on basic income in the next few weeks. Here are the details:
October 18, 18.00: talk on the precariat and basic income, Warsaw, Poland, organised by Krytyka Polityczna/Political Critique. Organiser: Slawomir Sierakowski (sierakowski@krytykapolityczna.pl)
October 29, 19.00: “The precariat: Towards a new progressive politics” (including basic income), Johannes Kepler Universität, Linz, Austria, organised by Netzwerk Grundeinkommen, the Austrian Basic Income Network. More information here. Organiser: Roland Atzmüller (Roland.Atzmueller@jku.at)
October 30, 18.30: “The precariat: Towards a new progressive politics” (including basic income), University of Vienna, Austria, organised by Netzwerk Grundeinkommen (the Austrian Basic Income Network), with the Institut für Wissenschaft und Kunst (IWK), and the Institut für Politikwissenschaft, University of Vienna. More information here. Organiser: Karl Reitter (k.reitter@gmx.net)
November 10, 19.00: public lecture on “A charter of rights for the precariat in the 21st century?”, Barcelona, Spain, organised by the Observatory for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (DESC) and the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Culture (CCCB). More information here. Contact: (taquilles@cccb.org)
by Vito Laterza | Oct 14, 2015 | News
Debora Serracchiani, President of Friuli-Venezia Giulia
The center-left government of the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is about to roll out a minimum income experiment – the actual wording used in the legislation is “measures of active inclusion and income support”. It was approved in June by the regional parliament. The cabinet finalized the implementation guidelines at the end of September.
This is far from a universal basic income, but institutes a basic floor for all families below a certain income, regardless of family members’ current or previous occupational status. Families that earn 6000 euros per year or less, and have been residing in the region for at least twenty-four months, will receive a monthly sum between 70 and 550 euros for twelve months in the first instance. The monthly payment is determined by existing family income – there are six income bands – and the number of dependent children.
They can apply for a second period of twelve months, after a two months break. The award is conditional on signing an “inclusion pact”, which is a plan beneficiaries agree with social services to improve their financial situation. It can include training courses, further education and other labor market integration activities.
Local newspaper Il Piccolo reports that the scheme roll-out is expected to start in November this year. It is estimated that there are up to 10,000 beneficiaries eligible for this measure. Italian newspapers do not clarify whether this figure refers to the total number of individuals in the receiving families, or the number of applicants. Either way, it is clear that only the very poor will be covered.
Italy, like Greece and unlike most European countries, does not have a universal unemployment subsidy or a national guaranteed minimum income (GMI). A GMI scheme was piloted at the national level in the late 1990s, but discontinued in the early 2000s. Some of Italy’s 20 regions experimented with similar measures throughout the 2000s, but none of them went beyond the experimental phase. Friuli-Venezia Giulia center-left government had already instituted a five-year experiment in 2006, but the scheme was interrupted prematurely by a center-right government in 2008.
Friuli’s reintroduction of a minimum income is not an isolated case. Another region, Basilicata, adopted similar measures in recent months, and others, like Piedmont and Lombardy, are expected to do so in the near future.
Friuli’s law was promoted by the regional president Debora Serracchiani and her cabinet, and approved with votes from across the political spectrum. The center-left Democrats, who lead the regional coalition government, and their regional allies of Left, Ecology and Freedom, supported the measure, with the favorable vote of the opposition party 5 Star Movement – a populist formation with increasingly far right views about migration and borders.
The 5 Star Movement is the main opposition party in the national parliament, and has been campaigning for a “citizenship income” (a form of GMI) at the national level for some time now. In recent months, they have intensified their campaign. Popular support for a national GMI is growing, fuelled by increasing poverty and social discontent caused by the combined effect of austerity and lack of economic growth.
Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister
Three legislative proposals to this effect have been deposited in the national parliament, but none of them has reached the stage of a parliamentary vote. The 5 Star Movement proposal is the most far-reaching of them and calls for a GMI of up to 780 euros per month. Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister and leader of the Democrats, has rejected this proposal, but promised to include in the next budget more modest measures to mitigate poverty.
If you want to find out more, here is a list of relevant sources:
Marco Ballico, “Sei ‘scaglioni’ per l’assegno antipovertà [Six bands for the antipoverty payment],” Il Piccolo, September 22, 2015.
Roberto Giovannini, “In Friuli sussidio per i poveri, i grillini votano con il Pd [Subsidy for the poor in Friuli, 5 Star Movement votes with Pd],” La Stampa, July 2, 2015.
Friuli-Venezia Giulia, “Legge regionale 10 luglio 2015, n.15 [Regional law July 10, 2015, n.15]”.
“Renzi: no al reddito di cittadinanza, per combattere la povertà serve il lavoro [Renzi: no to citizenship income, we need jobs to fight poverty],” September 30, 2015.
Josh Martin, “ITALY: Conflict over report of a basic income experiment in Lombardy”, Basic Income News, May 18, 2015.
For a brief history of GMI experiments in Italy, see Varvara Lalioti’s academic article “The curious case of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI): highlighting Greek ‘exceptionalism’ in a southern European context”, forthcoming in the European Journal of Social Policy. An earlier version is available here.
by Vito Laterza | Aug 22, 2015 | News
The new bailout agreement between Greece and international creditors includes plans for a national roll-out of a Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI).[i] The GMI is not an unconditional basic income for all citizens, but would be the first universal means-tested grant that covers all Greeks below a certain level of income and asset ownership, regardless of employment status, job contract type, professional category, gender or age.
Alexis Tsipras
In the latest round of bailout negotiations, Greek Prime Minister Tsipras reportedly opposed the introduction of the GMI. The final memorandum approved by the Greek parliament last week, however, provides for a national roll-out of the GMI by end of 2016. The government needs to find 0.5% of GDP to finance the national GMI scheme. A draft report from the World Bank published in January this year, provides a core scenario where 1.2 million people would be covered by the GMI – this is constructed on the basic qualifying criteria and payment amounts of a GMI pilot started last year. The measure would cost €980 million or 0.54% of GDP.[ii]
The general wording of the bailout agreement remains vague and the GMI has not yet been approved by parliament. The specifics of implementation will only be known in the next months.
Recent political events are another source of uncertainty. Tsipras resigned on Thursday and called for snap elections, following a rebellion by those opposed to the bailout within the ranks of his party, Syriza. The elections are expected to be held at the end of September. The rebels have formed a new left group which will run under the banner of Popular Unity.
This casts some doubts over the stability of the next government, and might have implications for the bailout implementation. Sources close to the majority line in Syriza stress that, despite the harsh bailout measures, any future government led by Tsipras would be committed to a social agenda that prioritises those who are in most need.
The history of the GMI in Greece
Attempts to introduce a GMI as a basic social safety net for the most vulnerable sectors of society have been made before. In 2000, the centre-left government led by Pasok assessed and then rejected a proposal in favour of this option. Syriza also tabled a legislative proposal to institute a GMI in 2005, without success. In recent times, the GMI has rarely appeared in policy debates, encountering resistance from many quarters. Trade unions and left-wing critics see the GMI as a threat to well established social protection mechanisms for unionised workers, pensioners and their families. From the right, a pro-poor agenda struggled to gain any prominence until the recent economic crisis brought about by the austerity measures of previous bailouts.[iii]
Economist Manos Matsaganis in Greece
The previous coalition government, led by the centre-right party New Democracy in alliance with centre-left Pasok, feebly endorsed a GMI and launched a pilot in November 2014, engineered by the World Bank. The pilot was to be implemented in 13 municipalities across Greece. It’s too early to make final conclusions about it – the new bailout agreement includes provisions for an evaluation of the pilot to be carried out. In a recent academic paper, Matteo Jessoula, Manos Matsaganis and Marcello Natili suggest that there were problems, with little support from central government to the chosen municipalities, and limited capacity from local governments to deliver, resulting in haphazard implementation.[iv] The GMI amount was set at €200 per month for a single person. In a couple, the other spouse was entitled to an additional €100. The monthly sum was increased by €100 for each additional adult dependent and €50 for each minor child. The cash payments would cover the difference between the guaranteed amount and the household’s assessed resources. A couple with two children would fetch up to €400 per month. The GMI also had non-monetary components, including heating allowance, food stamps, and subsidised employment and training programmes.[v]
By the time the GMI pilot was launched, it was strongly opposed by Syriza. Many saw it as a measure instigated by the creditors to justify major cuts in other welfare measures and substantial reductions in wages, while introducing an income floor well below decent living standards. Observers note that the GMI debate rarely hit the spotlight, on either side of the political spectrum, and has been mostly confined to technical discussions among policy experts.
Towards a basic income?
Is the GMI then irrelevant to basic income discussions? Economist Manos Matsaganis, basic income advocate and a pioneer of Greek GMI policy proposals, is not optimistic: “Nobody is really discussing this at the moment, either within Syriza or outside. In any case, calling for the introduction of a basic income in Greece under current conditions would not be right. You cannot have a basic income before having a GMI, especially when fiscal constraints are so severe”. Social policy expert Varvara Lalioti is more positive: “There are a number of obstacles to the implementation of GMI, not least the current government’s political scepticism and problems with delivery. A national roll-out of the GMI would be a step in the right direction”.
Syriza demonstration
The controversies around the GMI are symptomatic of the kind of resistance that might be encountered against basic income as well. The key issue seems to be the implementation of a universal mechanism that would substitute to some degree the redistribution of public funds through specific interest groups – for instance workers protected by unions or retired people receiving contributory pensions.
Critics point out that the GMI might constitute a race to the bottom pushed by creditors in order to reduce labour costs and state liabilities. GMI supporters like Varvara Lalioti note that, while government scepticism might be justified, “the GMI would protect those who have no social safety net and no organisations to speak on their behalf. They are among those who have borne the worst effects of the crisis”.
The controversies will no doubt continue in the next months. Basic income activists note that what the GMI might do is put in place the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to deliver a basic income set well above poverty levels. Reflecting the experience of other southern European countries, the Greek welfare state evolved piece-meal and reflects a complex constellation of interest groups. The introduction of a measure that covers people with little or no income from formal labour markets, and who have never worked under job contracts offering significant welfare benefits, is a significant change. It is likely to have important implications for the future of basic income discussions in Greece.
The article benefited from the expert advice of Dr Varvara Lalioti, Professor Manos Matsaganis and Professor Neni Panourgia. Errors are the sole responsibility of the author.
[i] The Memorandum of Understanding underpinning the bailout agreement.
[ii] World Bank. 2015. Ex ante poverty and fiscal evaluation of a guaranteed minimum income programme in Greece. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group.
[iii] A detailed account of the different positions and criticisms in the Greek GMI debate is offered by Varvara Lalioti’s academic article “The curious case of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI): highlighting Greek ‘exceptionalism’ in a southern European context”, forthcoming in the Journal of European Social Policy. An earlier version is available online here.
[iv] Matteo Jessoula, Manos Matsaganis and Marcello Natili. 2015. “Strengthening minimum protection in southern and eastern Europe? Pressures from within and from beyond”. 22nd International Conference of Europeanists, Paris, 8 July. Abstract available.
[v] Hellenic Parliament – Parliamentary Budget Office. 2014. Minimum Income Schemes in European Union and Greece: a Comparative Analysis.
