Barrie McKenna, “How about a government paycheque, for everyone?” The Globe and Mail, January 31, 2014.
This is how a guaranteed income would work: The government gives people with little or no income a basic living wage, clawing it back as they earn wages on their own. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
UNICEF Policy and Strategy
SUMMARY: Basic Income for Children (BIC) is a universal income transfer unconditionally granted to all families with children, without means test or work requirement. The authors use the European tax-benefit micro simulation model to estimate the effects of their version of BIC. Their model computes tax liabilities and benefit entitlements for all households in European Union (EU) member states based on representative household survey data from each country. Fixing the poverty threshold at 60% of the median income, they find that a Europe-wide BIC-scheme not adjusted for price differences would reduce the number of children in poverty by 14.2% and the poverty gap by 6.2%. The scheme modeled in the paper, paying €50 per month per child, would cost around €18 billion. That is approximately 13% of the current EU budget, or 0.15% of the combined GDP of all EU member states.
Horacio Levy, Manos Matsaganis, and Holly Sutherland “Child Poverty Insights: Simulating the costs and benefits of a Europe-wide Basic Income scheme for Children,” UNICEF Policy and Strategy, 2014.
The United Nations
An online petition calling for a referendum on a global carbon tax with a dividend (a form of basic income guarantee) is online on the Care2 Petition website. The author is Keith McNeill and it is targeted at the secretary-general of the United Nations
To see the petition, go to: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/286/384/042/petition-for-a-referendum-on-a-global-carbon-tax/
This essay includes Basic Income as its third recommendation and protections for the precariat as its fourth recommendation.
Michael Valpy, “Opinion, How to Put Canada Back Together Again: Four big recommendations for repairing the tears in our social fabric,” the Tyee: News. Culture. Solutions. 3 Jan 2014.
Social Justice Ireland, “Basic Income – Why and How in Difficult Economic Times: Financing a BI in Ireland,” Social Justice Ireland, September 14, 2012.
SUMMARY: This report examines the potentials of basic income to serve as a new tool for social and development policy, drawing from the recent experiences from recent pilot projects. The structure of the report is as follows: Chapter two provides a brief literature review of cash transfer policies currently in place in many developing countries and assesses the potential advantages of universal and unconditional transfers over targeted and conditional ones. Chapter three presents the three country cases where universal cash transfer policies have been tested or gradually implemented. Chapter four concludes and explores the prospects of basic income as a part of the new development policy agenda. The empirical material regarding basic income experiments is collected from the projects’ own research reports and newsletters, as well as relevant academic and non-academic articles.
Johanna Perkio, “Universal Basic Income: A New Tool for Development Policy?” Kansainvalinen Solidaarisuutyo: International Solidarity Work, January 31, 2014.
For a direct link to the PDF version of the article go to: https://sange.fi/kvsolidaarisuustyo/wp-content/uploads/Universal-Basic-Income-A-New-Tool-for-Development-Policy.pdf
Kansainvalinen Solidaarisuutyo