This article discusses the recent Basic Income Grant pilot project as a strategy to address the great inequality experienced in most southern African countries.
Henning Melber, “Rich region, poor people,” D+C, October 25, 2013.
View on Swakopmund, a popular holiday destination for rich Namibians. -from D+C
Heteconomist.com, “A BIG Justification Under Capitalism,” Heteconomist.com: Thoughts from the economic heterodoxy, 27 October 2013.
Jillian Steinhauer, “An Artist’s Plan to Get Everyone in Switzerland Paid,” Hyperallergic, November 13, 2013.
A woman dressed up as the Swiss Helvetia signs the basic-income popular initiative (via Facebook).
Maniza Naqvi is a Senior Social Protection Specialist working on Safety Nets in Malawi and Ethiopia.
[Craig Axford]
According to the Word Bank’s Maniza Naqvi, Alaska and Iran have something important in common: they both use revenues generated from their mineral resources to provide direct payments to their citizens.
Marcelo Giugale, World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reduction Programs for Africa
World Bank economist Marcelo Guigale, also supports directly transferring money generated from oil, gas, and mineral development into the pockets of people. He argues this both strengthens the economy and reduces corruption. African nations in particular currently stand to see the greatest income gains by sharing the wealth generated from their rich mineral deposits with their citizens.
Maniza Naqvi, “Mining Mineral Revenues”, Nasikiliza “I am listening”: Stories of development from the World Bank in Africa, June 22, 2013.
Marcelo Giugale, “A Latin Solution to an African Problem“, The Huffington Post, May 30, 2012.
The author connects the way out of the busy trap to BIG, writing, “My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays.”
Tim Kreider, “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” The New York Times Opinion Pages, June 30, 2012.
Shanta Devarajan, “Let Them Eat Cash,” World Bank: Future Development, October 29, 2013.