by Yannick Vanderborght | Feb 15, 2013 | Research
Some news on how to access full text versions of articles published by Basic Income Studies (BIS) on the website of its new publisher, DeGruyter: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bis
Individual users with already existing accounts at the DeGruyter site can use the token “newusercredits”. This token can be entered in the window popping up when a user chooses a BIS article and clicks on “Get Access to Full Text”.
For new users … DeGruyter is planning to include the BIS as part of a free access promotional package of 11 journals. When this promotion is launched, all BIS articles will be freely accessible for every new user registering (i.e. creating a new account) on www.degruyter.com.
For technical reasons, current registered users with DeGruyter will have to use the token as outlined above in order to access full text articles.
LIBRARY ACCESS: If you have access to a library that subscribes to Basic Income Studies, this of course is another means of accessing the journal. If the library at your institution or organization does not yet subscribe to BIS, please suggest that they do so!
If you are having access problems to BIS, please contact jim.mulvale@uregina.ca
by Yannick Vanderborght | Feb 6, 2013 | News
General elections will be held in Italy on 24-25 February 2013. After the presentation of Mario Monti’s “Agenda for Italy”, Beppe Grillo, the colourful leader of Movimento 5 stelle (5 Stars Movement) proposed a counter-agenda in 16 points, in which the second point is a “Guarantee Citizens’ Income”. After the news of suicides provoked by the critical economic situation, Grillo asserted on his blog that “No one should be left behind” and that every one needs to be assured of some sort of basic guaranteed income as soon as possible. In a public speech he said that in these times of economic crisis, the funding for it would be found by taking money from the so called “gold pensions”, i.e. taxing retirement benefits over four thousand euros. However, his (somewhat vague) proposal remains closer to a minimum income conditional upon work availability than to a true basic income.
Movimento 5 stelle is not the only party that put some form of citizens’ income on its agenda. Elettra Deiana, member of the national presidential committee of Sel (Sinistra Ecologia Libertà / Left Ecology and Freedom) has called for a welfare reform to ensure every adult with no means and who is looking for work an income that can cover his/her basic needs.
If the policy proposed by the two parties is not really an unconditional basic income, it’s important to stress that for the first time in Italy the problem of non-contributory income support (i.e. not linked with previous contribution or prior work activity) has featured in a campaign for the national Parliament.
Links
Beppe Grillo on guarantee citizen income:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04ECfodHwuo
https://www.beppegrillo.it/2012/05/omicidi_sociali.html
Elettra Deiana (Sel) on basic income:
https://www.sinistraecologialiberta.it/articoli/reddito-lavoro-esistenza-il-quid-della-cittadinanza/
by Yannick Vanderborght | Feb 5, 2013 | Research
In this paper, Andrés Felipe MORA CORTÉS criticizes the “contribution principle” in order to rediscover the transforming dimension of the social policy in the process of configuring a society that ensures the “right to existence”. Progress, the author argues, must be made towards breaking the “wage dependence” over economic and social rights and advance towards the guarantee of voluntary full employment. Vindication of the transforming dimension of the social policy lies in scorning the liberal notion of citizenship and breaking the close and deep connection between contribution principle, the myths that support it, and the social policy. Today, the individual, unconditional and universal basic income model constitutes a fundamental element for contemporary renewal of the social policy in terms of its reunion with its transforming dimension. The citizen’s basic income also offers an alternative to the diverse institutional configurations of the State of welfare and the social protection systems “moving a step forward”.
Available online at: https://www.uclouvain.be/325318.html
Full references: MORA CORTÉS, Andrés Felipe (2012), ‘Social policy and social transformation: the citizen’s basic income and the end of the contribution principle’, CriDIS Working paper 31, December 2012, Louvain University, Belgium.
Andrés Felipe MORA CORTÉS is a Political Scientist (Master in Economics from the National University of Colombia), PhD Candidate in Political Science in the Université Catholique de Louvain, and Researcher of the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires Démocratie, Institutions et Subjectivité CriDIS <andres.moracortes@uclouvain.be>
by Yannick Vanderborght | Feb 1, 2013 | News
The Austrian newspaper dieStandard.at published a report on the basic income pilot project in India, organised by the All India Federation of Self-Employment Women’s Associations (SEWA) and financed by UNICEF.
DieStandard.at: “Armen-Grundeinkommen in der Testphase,” DieStandard.at, December 26, 2012
The report is in German and can be found here:
https://diestandard.at/1355460457667/Armen-Grundeinkommen-in-der-Testphase
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 30, 2013 | News
The German television show, “Bread for the World,” on the public-service German television broadcaster, ZDF, recently called for donations to support Otjivero’s BIG pilot project in Namibia. Requests for donations are not unusual in the pre-Christmas period, but a request to support Basic Income is unusual on major German TV. Broadcasters called it “a beautiful project.”
A video of the show, in German is at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocwaFwyIaIM
The “Bread for the World” website is online at:
https://www.brot-fuer-die-welt.de/so-helfen-sie/ihre-spendenmoeglichkeiten/spendengala.html
