[Josh Martin]
This piece gives thorough insight into the issue of automation and robotics replacing human labor and thus leading to an influx of unemployed low-skill workers. Santens describes why a higher minimum wage would fail to properly address the problem and instead advocates a basic income to help ease this process into automated labor.
Scott Santens, “Machine Labor Day”, Medium, 1 September 2014.
[Josh Martin]
In this post on The Week, Cooper discusses the political debate surrounding a universal basic income. While some policy circles advocate it, politicians are stuck debating the “something for nothing” objection to the basic income, instead preferring to push work on those in poverty. However, Cooper points out trends in work that show decreasing job openings and increasing job seekers, leading him to say, “As someone with a nice, stimulating job, I agree that work can help people flourish. But in an economy that is flatly failing to produce enough jobs to satisfy the need, a universal basic income will start to seem more plausible — even necessary.”
Ryan Cooper, “America is running out of jobs. It’s time for a universal basic income.”, The Week, 9 September 2014.
A supermarket-style food pantry in New York City helps families in need. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
This article responds to those who disparage the poor and calls for a basic income. Ranventos and Wark write, “There is increasing awareness that the most basic human right, on which all the rest depend, is the right to exist and, for that to be possible, everybody must have an income above the poverty line. This, in a nutshell, is an unconditional, universal basic income for every single citizen and resident in the country. It is no longer seen as “utopian” or “hare-brained” as the well-to-do and their cronies have claimed in the past. More and more people understand that this guarantee is necessary for a truly democratic society. The obstacles faced by Basic Income have been political, just as they were (or are, depending on the place) in the cases of universal suffrage, paid holidays, and the rights to strike, to abortion and to same-sex marriage.”
Daniel Raventós is a lecturer in Economics at the University of Barcelona and author inter alia of Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom (Pluto Press, 2007). He is on the editorial board of the international political review Sin Permiso. Julie Wark is an advisory board member of the international political review Sin Permiso. Her last book is The Human Rights Manifesto (Zero Books, 2013).
Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark, “Disparaging the Poor: From Badmouthing and Sterilization to a Reclaimed Right of Existence.” Counter Punch, September 12, 2014
Counter Punch
Ellen Brown, “Council on Foreign Relations: Give money directly to the people.” Scott.net: Signs of the Times, 01 Sep 2014. Published also in the Progress Report, Sept. 2, 2014.
Scott.net
The article, located on a fundraising site, describes a new French news publication that is being launched to explore different aspects of basic income through articles, interviews, and reports of workshop proceedings. The release date is set to coincide with the 7th Annual International Basic Income Week, September 15-20, 2014.
L'inconditionnel
Language: French
Stan Jourdan, “L’inconditionnel – journal sur le revenu de base” [The Unconditional – Newspaper about Basic Income]. Pick and boost, No date.
David Orrell, “We gave the banks money, so why can’t we give it to the people?” World Finance: The Voice of the Market, September 1, 2014.
