by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 29, 2013 | News
A committee of citizens and BIEN-Switzerland are currently collecting signatures for a ‘popular initiative’, which if put to the vote and accepted by the electorate will introduce a basic income into the Swiss Constitution. 120,000 signatures will probably be needed so that the requirement of 100,000 validated ones is satisfied, and half way through the period allowed–which runs until October 2013–the committee has over 70,000. The prospects are therefore good that a binding popular vote on this subject will be held in three or four years. Even if the electorate does not accept it the first time, the chances of success on a subsequent occasion will be increased. The signature campaign has aroused a great deal of interest and discussion in broad areas of public life.
Further information: https://bien-ch.ch/
Official page from the Swiss government: https://www.admin.ch/ch/f/pore/vi/vis423.html
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 21, 2013 | Opinion
After an unsuccessful first attempt, the European Citizens’ Initiative for Unconditional Basic Income finally got accepted by the European Commission, thus opening the possibility for the organizers from 14 European countries to start collecting their signatures of support. Hereby starts a 12-month European-wide campaign for basic income in Europe, with the goal of collecting one million signatures.
The citizens committee members got it right not to give up after the EU commission rejected the first attempt, back in september. Indeed, the second attempt was finally accepted, the citizens committee members were noticed on the 14th of January in a communication by Klaus Sambor, the head organizer of the initiative.
Under the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) new procedure, the EU commission must certify that the goal of the initiative submitted by citizens falls under its competences and attribution before citizens start collecting signatures, so that they don’t do it for nothing.
Following the first rejection by the EU commission, which stated at the time that the proposal “manifestly fall outside the framework of the Commission’s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act of the Union for the purpose of implementing the Treaties”, the citizens committee decided in Munich to keep on working on a second attempt, with the main objective of having it accepted by the EU commission.
Citizens met again in Firenze (Italy) and, after discussion and consensus, submitted a new proposal – the one that just got accepted by the commission. In order to meet the commission’s requirements, the new text (available here on the website’s commission), does not demand a “legal act”, but instead requests the commission to explore the feasibility of a European basic income. What fiscal harmonization would be necessary for implementing a basic income in the EU? What would a basic income imply for other social policies and labor rights? These questions must find clear answers. Hence the new title of the initiative: “Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) – Exploring a pathway towards emancipatory welfare conditions in the EU”.
This can be done by organizing conferences, calling for studies, giving subsidies and any other means the commission has. Long story short, we’re asking the commission to make a serious case for the implementation of basic income in Europe, and to feed the debate on how to do it in a harmonized way inside the European Union. As we expected, this request could hardly be rejected by the commission.
Now the next step is to have the online signature collection system be authenticated as ‘secure’ by the EU authorities, so that people can directly sign the initiative online. The ECI citizens committee decided to use the system and servers provided by the EU Commission in Luxembourg, which implies a delay.
In other words, citizens cannot sign online yet, but of course we will let them know as soon as they can through our facebook page.
If we collect more than one million signatures, then the commission will offer a hearing to the organizers at the European Parliament in Brussels. The EU commission will then have to accept or refuse the demand expressed by citizens, and give justifications for it.
We admit, our demand is very modest – and the results highly hypothetical. But one has to start somewhere. In France, the ECI has inspired and empowered groups of citizens who are now working hard to create a broader social movement. Being at the front line of this, I can assure you: nothing would have happened without such a challenge like the ECI.
And this is why I completely agree with Philippe Van Parijs, who said in a message of support to the organizers: “Whatever the exact wording and whatever the number of signatures that will ultimately gathered, it is good to seize this new opportunity for spreading the idea of basic income far beyond the circles in which it has been thought about so far. The challenge presented by the mobilization of a civil society spread over 27 countries and speaking 23 different official languages is huge. But is is definitely worth taking on.”
The road may be long, but the way is clearly free. Let’s make it a historical campaign!
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 19, 2013 | News
Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge was founded on October 12, 2012 to promote basic income in Norway. The organization’s main purpose is to inform the Norwegian population on universal, unconditional basic income guarantee (BIG) in hopes of getting BIG on the political agenda. The organization will promote BIG for all Norwegian citizens and one that is large enough to cover all necessary living expenses.
- Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge has already made news or organized events in Norway:
- October 19: The news magazine, NY TID, ran a story about the startup of the organization.
- November 2: Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge organized a lecture on BIG at a Globalization Conference.
- November 12: Network for Social Entrepreneurship invited Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge to a dialogue in Parliament.
- November 24: Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge organized a lecture at the Romsas volunteer center for “Free Philosophical Forum” on BIG in a green perspective.
- December 5: Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge gave a brief introduction to BIG at a “Green Drinks” at Lillehammer.
- December 9: Organizers of Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge were interviewed in NA24. According to the editor, it was read 63,370 times within a few days.
- December 13. Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge had a lecture at “Litteraturhuset”. The title of the lecture was “BIG – In a green perspective.”
In the coming year Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge hopes to get BIG on the agenda for the Norwegian parliamentary elections scheduled for September 9th, 2013. Otherwise Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge will continue to organized lectures and workshops on BIG.
The board of Borgerlonn-BIEN Norge, from left: Ole A. Seifert, Ali Reza Nouri, Lexander Wist, Sjur C. Papazian, Espen X. Leinaes, Anja Askeland (Chair) and Grete Antona Nilsen (Vice Chair).
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 18, 2013 | News
The case of Ralph Boes has gained a lot of public attention in Germany recently. Boes, a longtime beneficiary of the German social support system “ALG-II” – also known as “HartzIV”–and an activist against the sanctions of this system, provoked the responsible German state agency until he was sanctioned at the beginning of November. His benefits were reduced by 90 percent, from €374.00 per month to only €37.40 per month. With only this much left, he saw himself as forced to starve.
Boes refused any private help in order to demonstrate the consequences of the sanctions policy. In 2012, Germany imposed more than 1,000,000 sanctions. This number represents an increase of about 38 percent compared to 2009. In more than two-thirds of these cases, the reason for the sanction is failure to appear.
After 26 days, the authority recognized a formal error, and Boes received the full amount of his benefits again.
More information about Boes can be found here:
https://wir-sind-boes.de/presse.html
More information about rising sanctions can be found here:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/neuer-rekord-jobcenter-verhaengen-mehr-als-eine-million-hartz-iv-sanktionen-1.1527783
An article about Boes in English can be found here:
https://www.vice.com/read/hunger-strike-against-the-welfare-state
by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 17, 2012 | Opinion
Even if the term “emancipation” was devalued by feminism to a purely female topic, its original Latin meaning remains “to discharge a slave or adult child into self-reliance.” Thereby it is not a question of competence, but rather one of having the possibility and right to take responsibility.
Hermann Hesse wrote in his novel “Steppenwolf” (1927):
The citizen is […] by his being a creature with a weak motive for living, frightened, every divulgence of himself worrying, easy to reign. Thus he set instead of power the majority, instead of force the law, instead of responsibility the voting procedure […]
However, many are afraid to be independent because they fear that they will not be able to deal with their own life. A reason for this might be that there is nobody telling them how to do things because there is no “instruction” on how to live. And for a lot of people it is more convenient to have somebody who is guilty in case of their own failure.
It seems to me that this is also the reason for fearing Basic Income: from the viewpoint of a state, there should be somebody who tells people how to live their lives to ensure that the people can live together. However, precisely Basic Income would give people self-reliance and responsibility for themselves and the community they live in. The responsibility of the state fades into the background: the main task of a state is reduced to providing people with a Basic Income.
The trouble is that in a competitive democracy with its majority principle there are apparently a lot of people who prefer to cede their self- and co-responsibility to the state. But by doing so, they force all others to cede responsibility in the same way, or they cede responsibility only to those whom they allow to take responsibility for them.
This leads to the establishment of power relations. But this power is often not based on “natural authority,” meaning that the power holders have the respective knowledge, experience and professional competence. Rather power relations are based on access to instruments of power. And today, one of these instruments is money.
Basic Income would empower those people who want to be self-reliant, but it would also force those people to be self-reliant who think they need leaders. But for such people who wanted to gain and keep power for their own purposes that would be a problem: for them, money became an easy, “humanistic” and convenient way of making people want to participate in the leaders’ goals. With a Basic Income, those leaders would have to find other instruments than money to seduce people into helping them to achieve the leaders’ ends.
Assuming the above is correct, it becomes clear why the introduction of a Basic Income scheme is so difficult – even if it is obvious that everybody needs an income floor for a living. A majority wants to have leaders and leaders do not want to lose one major instrument of their power.
However, mankind is facing enormous challenges: climate change, environmental pollution, peak oil, the dilapidation of a once intact infrastructure, and so on. To solve these problems, I think, creativity is more important than money. But if we waste all our efforts thinking about how to earn the money that contributes to these problems, we are just going to increase the tasks for the future.
Finaly, responsibility and self-reliance provided by a Basic Income could unleash an enormous creative potential, because people, freed from the struggle for subsistence, would start to ask themselves how they would like to live their lives and what they need for them.
