by Tim Widerquist | Nov 18, 2016 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
This is a guest post by my brother, Tim Widerquist
With Donald Trump in charge of the executive in the United States, Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and a conservative judicial system, the time seems to have come for serious reorganization of American social welfare programs. House speaker Paul Ryan’s proposed 2015 budget cuts 3.3 trillion over a ten-year period from programs (Pell Grants, SNAP nutrition assistance, Medicaid, Section 8 housing) designed to assist those with low incomes.
Since the Reagan administration conservatives have pushed the notion that removing these programs will reduce the “culture of dependency” and removes the incentive for low income individuals to participate in the free market. They believe simply removing these programs will be a stimulus to income growth. Sadly, this is contrary to research on the effect of reducing assistance to low income populations. Much more likely is greater income disparity and real suffering for lower income populations.
Tim Widerquist
This leaves us with a rather bleak situation, greater poverty and less infrastructure in place to assist the poor. At that point America will desperately need to act. Will we choose to rebuild a system like what we have now — a mixture of housing, education, nutrition, and health programs — or is there a single program that would quickly provide support for those in need? Is there a program that would go directly to each person’s greatest need? Luckily there is. It’s getting a little bit of press now, but you’re sure to hear more about it in the future: it’s called The Basic Income Guarantee.
The adoption of BIG may be closer now than if Clinton had won. The unfortunate, desperate situation that Republicans are likely to create over the next two-to-four years effectively clears the playing field for new ideas. When progressives take over the Democratic Party they may find BIG an attractive policy; it is the sharpest tool available for slicing into the income inequality and income inequality that is coming. The midterm election is only two years away. BIG is a winning issue in this political environment. The future could be exciting.
Dark clouds
by Guest Contributor | Jun 27, 2016 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
By Karl Widerquist, co-chair BIEN, and Louise Haagh, co-chair BIEN
BIEN has made great strides in the last few years. Two years ago, our main goals were to charter BIEN as a legally recognized non-profit organization, to organize the 2016 Congress in Seoul Korea, and to expand Basic Income News. We succeeded in all three. The Seoul Congress will be our first in Asia, and it will bring together hundreds of Basic Income supporters from around the world. Official non-profit status will be completed if and when it is ratified at the 2016 Congress. This status will allow us to raise and spend money more easily in the coming term.
Our biggest success of the last two years has been Basic Income News (along with its accompanying email NewsFlash). Basic Income News has grown both in how much news it reports and how many people it reaches. Before the creation of Basic Income News, BIEN produced one NewsFlash (with perhaps twenty news stories) every two or three months, most of them excerpted from elsewhere. Today BIEN’s all-volunteer news team produces an average of two or three news stories every day, most of them original. Thanks mostly to Basic Income News, BIEN’s website has grown from 60 unique visits per day in June of 2013 to 1,365 unique visits per day in May of 2016. Some articles have reached more than 45,000 people. NewsFlash subscriptions have more than doubled in the last ten months, from 2,100 subscribers in August 2015 to 4,300 subscribers by June 2015.
Basic Income Earth Network’s Logo
BIEN’s growth has coincided with an enormous growth in the Basic Income movement around the world. New groups are forming. People are taking action. And people in power are taking notice. Government-funded pilot projects are going to take place in at least two countries and possibly several more over the next few years.
Major international institutions such as the Council of Europe and the Economic Commission for Latin America of the UN, have funded research, conferences and reports that endorse basic income and seek to connect it with other contemporary progressive movements and ideas. BIEN representatives have been instrumental in these developments, which is evidence of the influence BIEN is having in official organizations. An important objective for the coming term is to continue and extend these efforts to engage with these organizations, and we currently have activities and plans in the works to do so.
With BIEN’s Congress and General Assembly approaching, now is a good time for BIEN to set some goals for what it can do to strengthen the movement in the following year. This article proposes some priorities for the coming year-our “vision” for BIEN if you will. We speak for ourselves, but we hope others will agree.
We begin with one thing that BIEN should not do. It mustnot to dictate a grand strategy to the worldwide movement for Basic Income. The movement has gotten as far as it has by different people in different places attempting very different strategies. Some have worked better than others, but they have all made their contribution, and the combined result has been enormous growth in the political prominence of Basic Income. Any effort to force that diverse movement to follow one central script would be arrogant and divisive.
BIEN’s charter calls on us to serve that movement, “as a link between individuals and groups committed to, or interested in, basic income … to stimulate and disseminate research and to foster informed public discussion.” BIEN. How can BIEN serve that movement better?
We suggest two board objectives: our news service (Basic Income News) and our efforts to improve our outreach and networking with Basic Income groups and sympathetic individuals. In pursuit of these two broad objectives, we suggest the following priorities:
- Expand Basic Income News.
- Start holding yearly congresses.
- Improve BIEN’s outreach to affiliates and nonaffiliated organizations.
- Set up the website to take online donations and determine a crowdfunding strategy through means of Paypal, Patreon, ect.
- Improve BIEN’s website (which may be a complete website redesign), including an effort to create a depository of research and expertise.
- Increase BIEN’s presence on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, ect.
- Attempt to obtain representation on international bodies.
- Create better democratic institutions within BIEN.
This is an ambitious agenda for next year (and the coming years). This op-ed is the third in serious arguing for this vision. Louise Haagh and I argued in two previous op-eds for yearly Congresses, and for the importance of these taskforces (and others our supports might create) in improving our outreach and networking.
With those goals of BIEN already discussed, this article makes a special case for expanding Basic Income News-the only website in the world specializing solely in news about Basic Income. This service provides a badly needed source of just-the-facts reporting on Basic Income by well-informed writers. This kind of news reporting is something that we do well. It is something that no one else is doing. It is something that few other groups could do or are likely to do. Basic Income News provides an important way for BIEN to inform and to the influence debate over Basic Income. Basic Income News provides a mouthpiece for BIEN’s members and affiliates by reporting and publicizing their activities. Basic Income News provides information that our affiliates and other groups need to work together to build the movement.
In this way, Basic Income News supports BIEN’s other certain objective: outreach and networking with other groups and individuals interested in Basic Income. BIEN is able to do the other things it does because it reaches out to people daily on the web and monthly by email.
Basic Income News is BIEN’s principle strength. We need to build on this strength.
Basic Income News has done all this on a budget of less than $100 a month for webhosting and emails services. It has no paid labor. Everything Basic Income News does, it does with an all-volunteer workforce, and is unlikely to move to a paid labor force anytime soon. We have too many other things that we need to do with the money we raise before we can start paying our volunteers.
So, what do we do to expand? We suggest, four things.
First, BIEN’s Executive Committee (EC) has agreed to dedicate four of its members to Basic Income News as their specified task for the coming term. (Every EC member commits to work several hours per month on a specified task.) Dedicating four EC members to the news reflects its high priority, but it is not out of line with BIEN’s other priorities. The list of EC functions for next year provides for two Co-Chairs, two Co-Secretaries, and four people working together on outreach and communication.
The four news editors share the joint responsibility of keeping Basic Income News up-to-date, ensuring that it has regular features, trains volunteers, and so on. With oversight from the whole EC, they divide those functions among themselves as they think best. Typically one member acts as lead editor, taking overall responsibility for the news service. One takes on the role of “features editor,” recruiting guests to write reviews, Op-Ed, interviews, and so on. One or more trains new volunteers. We need several EC members to take charge of these very different roles.
Second, Basic Income News needs to recruit more volunteers. Although we publish a lot of stories, many more stories go unreported because we don’t have enough writers to cover them. Very often we are asked, “why didn’t Basic Income News cover this…” and the answer is almost always the same: “We wanted to, but we didn’t have enough volunteers.” This is our principle limitation. We need to have one scheduled reporter online every day of the week, every week of the year, so that we can cover news stories as they come in. We also need reporters to clear out our backlog of story ideas on our website. We also need to find reporters who are fluent in German, French, Spanish, and other languages to improve our reporting from non-English sources and perhaps to translate some of our content into other languages. We need copyeditors to review the work of our reporters. Maintaining and improving quality is a constant struggle in any all-volunteer organization. All of these things require us to recruit a lot more volunteers.
Third, Karl Widerquist has made the following motion to the General Assembly: “BIEN encourages all affiliates to provide at least one person to work with Basic Income News to report on their news and the news from their region.” We make this request to improve our reporting of each affiliate’s activities, to improve our reporting of local events around the world-especially those in non-English-speaking countries. The relationship between Basic Income News and its affiliates should be a two-way street. We should not only gather news from our affiliates, but we should also provide a platform for them to publicize their activities and to discuss their concerns with a worldwide audience. If at least one person from each network learns to use Basic Income News’s system, they can directly use it to broadcast their events and concerns. We can also offer to our affiliates using our news stories in their newsletters and on their websites, if that is a help to them.
Fourth, Basic Income News has to increase-not only its hard news reporting-but also its opinions, reviews, analysis, interviews, audio, video, and so on. One strength of Basic Income News is a clear separation between just-the-facts news reporting and opinions. With this separation, people in and out of the movement can learn how the movement for Basic Income is progressing without being distracted by propaganda or by uninformed reporting. The “Features” side of Basic Income News has been minimal, publishing perhaps one feature per week. Yet, there is no limit to how many features we can publish. In this effort, Basic Income News has appointed a features editor who is in charge of contacting our affiliates, other organizations, and individuals to contribute occasional features.
None of this means that BIEN should promote Basic Income News to the exclusion of everything else we do, but we have to have priorities, and Basic Income News should be our top priority or very close to it. We have done a lot, but we can do a lot more, and we can do it better.
In sum, over the coming years, we see BIEN improving its efforts to serve as a link between individuals and groups that support Basic Income by having yearly congresses, raising funds, creating a web depository of research, increasing our social media presence, working more closely with our affiliates and other Basic Income groups, creating ties with appropriate institutions, and by creating a larger and more professional news service that will provide news about Basic Income and a mouthpiece for Basic Income supporters around the world.
-Karl Widerquist, co-chair BIEN (Karl@Widerquist.com)
-Louise Haagh, co-chair BIEN (louise.haagh@york.ac.uk)
BIEN Congress 2016
by Karl Widerquist | Apr 15, 2016 | News, The Indepentarian
GiveDirectly, a charity which has used direct cash distribution in one-time, lump-sum payments to fight poverty in Africa, announced it will launch a full basic income trial. The project will involved at least 30 million dollars and academic support from leading researchers at the MIT. The charity is relying on donations from all around the world. The trail will fully adopt the basic income model by making regular cash payments to every resident in several villages in Kenya.
GiveDirectly’s appeal for support it below:
Dear friends,
We’re announcing something new. Something that’s never been done before.
GiveDirectly is launching a universal basic income trial — this year, we’ll begin paying everyone in multiple Kenyan villages a regular income that’s enough to meet their most basic needs, and keep doing so for more than ten years.
People have long debated whether we should provide a guaranteed minimum floor for everyone (a “basic income”), and what would happen if we did. Would it spur risk-taking and creativity, or would people just stop working? Would it drive growth or reduce it? Would people spend more time on entrepreneurship, or on education and parenting? With the idea being hotly debated around the world, it’s time we found out.
We’re teaming up with leading researcher Abhijit Banerjee from MIT and have calculated that we can run and study a real trial for $30 million, and we’re willing to match the first $10 million donated.
To make this happen, join us and contribute a small amount to help the world find out if a guaranteed basic income could be the tool that ends poverty.
Together, in the last five years, we’ve raised $100 million, helped shift a worldwide policy discussion, and served over 150,000 individuals based on the proven principle that giving poor people cash works. Now it’s time for us to take the next step. It’s because of you that we’ve made it this far, so we hope you’ll join us for this newest project.
Visit our website to learn more or to contribute to the project.
If you do decide to give to this trial, at a minimum your money will help shift the life trajectories of thousands of low-income households. At best, it will change how the world thinks about ending poverty.
All the best,
Ian Bassin
Chief Operating Officer – Domestic
You can read more about GiveDirectly’s new basic income project at the following links:
by Karl Widerquist | Oct 16, 2015 | News, The Indepentarian
Alaska’s small basic income, the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), is coming under increasing political attacks as the state’s fiscal crisis grows. the dividend, in place since 1982, has been incredibly popular, but the double-hit of declining oil prices and declining oil production have created a fiscal crisis that has forced the state to look for new revenues. As Basic Income News has reported recently, both legislators and the Alaska public have shown an increased willingness to divert Permanent Fund earnings from the dividend to the state general budget.
As this year’s record-setting dividend checks of $2072 were being distributed, several editorials argued for reducing or eliminating the dividend and using that money to fill the state’s budget gap.
Craig Johnson, Chairman of the State House Rules Committee, recently spoke in defense of the fund, but went so far as to say only that touching the Permanent Fund should be a “last resort” that he does not support, “right now.”
Paul Jenkens, Tim Hale, and Mike Navarre have all written in favor of diverting funds from the dividend, and the Ketchikan Borough Assembly is considering a resolution urging the state to divert funds.
Some of the arguments are as simple as this statement from Tim Hale, “To me, it comes down to one thing: I’d rather lose my dividend than pay taxes.”
Hale’s attitude is very much the opposite to that of the founder of the dividend, the late Governor Jay Hammond, who believe that a dividend was far more important than a tax reduction. The dividend ensures that all Alaskans, rich and poor, share in the wealth of the state. Only people with substantial incomes benefit very much from lower taxes, and how much they benefit depends on the size of their income.
For more information, see the following articles:
Paul Jenkins, “Don’t tax Alaskans until state cuts to the bone and adopts endowment model for Permanent Fund.” Alaska Dispatch News, September 26, 2015
Tim Hale, “Use Permanent Fund earnings to pay for services – and cap dividend at zero.” Alaska Dispatch News, September 30, 2015
Mayor Mike Navarre, “Permanent Fund earnings can help keep state afloat. “ Fairbanks Daily Newsminer, September 27, 2015
Alaska Business News, “Johnson Touts Benefits of Dividends to Local Economy and Vows to Protect PFD.” Alaska Business News, October 2, 2015
Mary Kauffman, “Ketchikan Borough Assembly Considers Urging State to Include Permanent Fund in Fiscal Plan” Sitnews, October 03, 2015
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 1, 2015 | News, The Indepentarian
A recent poll asking Alaskans how to deal with the state’s increasingly severe budget deficit found that trimming the Permanent Fund Dividend or PFD (also know as “the Alaska Dividend”) was the most popular solution. The poll also found that a second strategy for trimming the dividend was third in popularity.
-Alaska Dispatch News
The Alaska dividend is the closest program to a basic income in the world today. Each year it pays out a dividend, usually between $1000 and $2000 per year, financed out of the returns from the Alaska Permanent Fund or APF—a savings portfolio of more than $50 billion accumulated from past state oil revenue. Its enormous popularity earned it the nickname of “the third rail of Alaskan politics,” meaning that any politician who touched it died.
This poll might be an indication that the dividend is losing that status in the face of Alaska’s financial situation, which is deteriorating because of the state’s dependence on oil revenues. The state has no sales or income tax. The vast majority of its revenue comes from taxes, fees, and royalties on the state’s oil exports. Not only have oil prices declined by more than 50 percent since 2014, but the amount of oil exported from Alaska has been declining significantly for years. The state is quickly running through the savings it built up in good years, and it is faced with the situation in which it must either make deep cuts in spending or seek new revenue.
Asking Alaskans to respond to several strategies of dealing with this issue, the Rasmuson Foundation found the following:
- 66% of Alaskans agreed with “Using a portion of excess earning from the Permanent Fund to fund public services and programs while protecting the dividend program.” 27% opposed.
- 57% agreed with “Introducing a statewide sales tax.” 41% opposed.
- 55% agreed with “Putting a cap on the yearly amount of Permanent Fund dividends.” 41% opposed.
- 54% agreed with “Reducing oil development tax credits offered by the state.” 32% opposed.
- 41% agreed with “Introducing a state personal income tax.” 55% opposed.
- 16% agreed with “Making deep funding cuts to essential public services like schools, police, health care, and roads.” 16% opposed.
The first option might not sound like a cut in the dividend, but it is. There are no “excess earnings” in the PDF. Every dollar the PDF receives in returns either goes to spending or to generating more returns and higher dividends in all the years to come. Any strategy that defines some returns as “excess” and diverts those to other spending, necessarily means lower dividends in the future. This opinion protects the existence of the dividend, but it does not protect its future growth or even its current level. If any significant amount is taken in “excess earnings,” it will slow the growth of the dividend in the future, and it might even create negative future growth in the dividend.
The poll did not ask people whether they would support eliminating the dividend entirely, but over time either of the two strategies suggested would lead to significantly smaller dividends than what would otherwise occur.
The poll also did not ask about spending the principal of the PFD, which is constitutionally protected. The legislature would need a constitutional amendment to spend down the $52 billion fund, but with a simple majority vote, it could cancel the dividend and use that money to finance state spending. Before the recent fiscal crisis, such a strategy was politically untenable, but the poll shows that movement in that direction might have become politically tenable.
The poll results suggest that Alaskans might view the dividend as a luxury to be distributed as long as the state is booming. If so, it is very different than how most basic income supporters view it: as an essential tool to promote social justice and an important way to show solidarity with economically disadvantaged individuals. Whether this or any other view of the dividend is strong enough to project it during Alaska’s fiscal crisis remains to be seen.
For more information see:
Alex DeMarban, “Poll: Alaskans prefer new revenue over deep cuts, including tapping Permanent Fund.” Alaska Dispatch News, August 13, 2015.
The Rasmuson Foundation, “Alaska Attitude Survey On The State Fiscal Climate.” The Rasmuson Foundation, Conducted July 13 – 21, 2015
Representative Wes Keller, “My Turn: Don’t be snookered, ther’es no ‘free ride.’” The Juneau Empire. August 20, 2015
Rep Les Gara, “My Turn: Open discussion needed on oil taxation.” The Juneau Empire. August 19, 2015.
NOTE: The paragraph beginning, “The first option might not sound like a cut…” was added after this article was first posted in response to questions from readers.
by Karl Widerquist | Aug 31, 2015 | News, The Indepentarian
Alaska Dispatch News has released its estimate of Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PDF) for this year. The Alaska Dividend is the closest policy to a basic income in the world today. It has paid dividends to all Alaska residents since 1982. According to reporter Sean Doogan, the dividend is likely to be about $2,100. If so, the dividend would be technically the largest in the state’s history. The next largest amount ever paid as “the Permanent Fund Dividend” was slightly smaller, $2,069, in 2008. In that year, however, the state added $1,200 to each check as a rebate from the state’s budget surplus, making the total amount each resident received $3,269, considerably higher than any likely amount this year.
The Alaska Dividend amounts 1982-2014
The amount is large this year because the investment fund on which it is based is doing well. The amount paid each year depends on how many Alaskans apply and on a five-year average of returns to the fund. The fund has been making strong returns in recent years. It has recently reached a total value of $52.8 billion. Although the fund was created out of out revenues and is supplemented by them each year, the value of the fund and dividend is not dependent on current oil revenues, which have been declining sharply from both lower prices and fewer exports.
Sean Doogan, “Our estimate of this year’s PFD check: $2,100.” Alaska Dispatch News, August 22, 2015
Catie Quinn, “Permanent Fund Adds 4.9%.” KSRM Radio Group, August 20, 2015.
APFC, “The Permanent Fund Dividend.” The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation website.
Credit pciture: CC Teddy Llovet
