Basic Income Week concluded on September 22 with events in 18 countries on 5 continents. The organizers released the following report on the events with a look ahead to a march next month and to Basic Income Week 2020:
1. updated participating countries’ list
2. Call for Basic Income Marches around the world on 26th Oct
3. The motto for next year’s ibiw – send in your suggestions NOW!
1. This week there were live events in 18 countries on 5 continents (we’re sadly missing Africa this year). Not all events made in onto the calendar on https://basicincomeweek.org, partly due to the attacks on the website at the start of the week, partly due to not everyone using the calendar and us becoming aware of events through social media: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UK, US. But as you know, there are basic income developments in many other countries around the globe.
Currently there are Marches planned in the USA, Netherlands and in Germany. These cities are taking part so far: New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Minneapolis.
If you want to organise your own or join an existing one, please get in touch with the organisers via the website or: https://twitter.com/IncomeMarch
3. 13th Basic Income Week 14th-20th Sep 2020: Motto suggestions!
We are now collecting suggestions for a Motto for next ibiw until 31st Oct!
Send the motto in your language plus a translation into English to this Email address. Any mottos sent after 31st Oct will not be considered.
We will publish all the suggestions and hold a Motto election from 1st-30th Nov. Details for the election process will be published with the motto suggestions.
Please send us plenty of suggestions you can then chose from!
The pilot project which is being carried out in Barcelona – B-MINCOME – combining guaranteed minimum income and active social policies in Barcelona’s deprived urban areas– published a report, on July 2019, with the results of its first operational year (2017-2018). The experiment, which began in October 2017 and is due by the end of 2019, aims to reduce poverty and social exclusion in highly vulnerable groups. During these 24 months, and based on a Randomised Control Trial model, 1000 households (randomly) selected from three of the city’s poorest districts (Nou Barris, Sant Andreu and Sant Martí) have been receiving a maximum cash transfer of €1675 a month. Of these 1000 households, 550 have also taken part in four active-inclusion policies which the project has set up: one for training and employment; one of fostering entrepreneurship in the social, solidarity and cooperative economy; one with grants for refurbishing flats in order to rent out rooms; and one involving community participation.
What makes this project so innovative is that it combines four modes of participation: Conditional (people randomly assigned to an active policy are obliged to take part in it), Unconditional (participation in these policies is not a condition for receiving the income), Limited (any additional income that might be obtained proportionally reduces the amount of the cash transfer) and Non-limited (where this additional income does not reduce the amount of the transfer).
Apart from reducing poverty and fostering personal autonomy, the B-MINCOME’s overall objective is to test which modality of income transfer is the most effective (concerning results) and the most efficient (concerning implementation costs). This experiment or pilot project is, therefore, an initial step towards implementing a municipal income-transfer system which should be consolidated in the near future.
In line with the results obtained in similar experiments, such as the one in Manitoba during the 1970s, the Finish one, the one suddenly cancelled in Ontario and those that are now coming to a close in various Dutch cities, such as Utrecht, the report now published by the Barcelona City Council shows very positive quantitative results. For example, an 11% average increase in general well-being and a 1,4% increase in economic well-being. It also shows an 8% reduction in the severe material privation index, and a reduction of up to 18% in ‘worrying about not having enough food’. It is also worth noting the 3% average reduction in the need to get money through means other than employment (e.g. by renting out rooms, a problem that especially affects the city of Barcelona) or the decreasing trend in developing mental illnesses and an improved quality of sleep, by 10% and 1% respectively – two results associated with a reduction in the financial stress suffered by these families. Furthermore, the qualitative and ethnographic evaluation of the project also reveals positive impacts, such as an increase of nearly 28% in happiness and general satisfaction with life, as well as a significant increase in engagement with and participation in neighbourhood and community life.
However, the report does not detect statistically significant changes in housing insecurity or in the households’ ability to cope with unexpected expenses (although this cash-transfer is not designed to make savings possible but only to meet basic expenses). Furthermore, no significant results have been observed regarding work placement or in other dimensions related to employment. However, it should be noted that this result was expected and is in line with other similar experiments, which also confirms the initial hypothesis: people in the Conditioned modality experienced a “lock-in effect”, as their (compulsory) participation in the active policies may have meant they had less time to look for work. However, it should be noted that most participants were suffering from a high degree of exclusion or job precariousness prior to the start of the project. It was, therefore, unrealistic to expect ambitious results in this sense.
The referred report only contains results obtained during the first year of the project, and hence the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the project can only be definitively evaluated in early 2020.
Given the recipients’ highly vulnerable profile, and the fact that these results come from a single year of (the pilot’s) implementation, there are motives for optimism. Final results are expected to be more significant and consistent from a statistical perspective, plus even more encouraging from a substantive point of view, i.e. in improving beneficiaries’ quality of life, increasing their freedom and autonomy and reducing their dependence on other public subsidies.
Written by Bru Laín (bru.lain@ub.edu). Affiliate professor of Sociology (University of Barcelona), researcher at the B-MINCOME project and Secretary of the Spanish Basic Income Network
With an article on medium, Scott Santens, long time Universal Basic Income (UBI) advocate, has explored in depth Andrew Yang’s proposal of a Freedom Dividend (FD).
The Freedom Dividend, one of the pillars of Andre Yang’s campaign for the democratic nomination for the 2020 American presidential election, is a $1,000 UBI for every American. Santen’s article discusses in detail the implications the proposal would have if introduced, and defends it against claims that it would end up increasing inequality or destroying the safety net. In Santen’s words, “The freedom dividend would be the single most progressive policy advance ever signed into law in America history”.
In order to clarify how and why the Freedom Dividend would work as a progressive measure to enhance freedom and as an instrument against poverty and inequality, Santens provides answers to two questions regarding its design:
1) Why to provide people with a choice between existing programs and the Freedom Dividend and not let people keep everything?
People would need to voluntarily opt out from some assistance programs, based on low income, whilst other contribution-based programs would continue to exist on top of the FD (health care remaining a separated issue, not connected with the FD). Santens’ article points out that this is done in order to maximize unconditionality and the incentive to work by avoiding welfare traps.
2) Wouldn’t the funding of the FD through a 10% value added tax –as proposed by Andrew Yang- make it a regressive measure, thus disproportionately disadvantaging the poor?
Even though a tax on consumption is usually considered regressive, as those with lower incomes tend to spend more of it in consumption when compared with those having higher incomes, the VAT-UBI design ends up making it a progressive instrument. That is, those on the lower part of the distribution would end up receiving more than what they lose because of the VAT, which would be rebated by the FD. Santens quotes a distributional analysis by The UBI Center, that concludes “that the bottom 10% (of the income distribution) would see their disposable incomes increased by almost 120% while the top 10% would see their disposable incomes reduced by 4%.”
Moreover, Santens says, the FD would strongly reduce poverty with “74% fewer households would have disposable incomes that fall under the federal poverty line” and impact heavily on inequality, causing a drop of 15% in the American Gini index.
UBI would fill the holes in the existing safety net, a “welfare mess” that leaves many people behind, and which design is far too complex, inhumane and not efficient, as Santens explores in depth in his article.
“Is it progressive to not support the greatest reduction of poverty and inequality — and greatest increase in freedom and dignity — ever proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?”
Compass, a think tank based in the United Kingdom (UK), is looking for a Coordinator for the newly established Universal Basic Income (UBI) Hub. The aim of this position is to “increase the impact of all the good research and campaign work already happening on UBI in the UK”. The role is expected to be self-sufficient, operating from Compass’ offices in Central London (but not necessarily), preferably as a full-time job (although part-time options may also be presented).
Go to ubicalculator.com and get an ideia of how universal basic income plans, as presented up to this moment in time (for the United States reality), affect you and/or your family. Given individual or household income, plus a few other datapoints, such as family composition and social security income, the calculator uses plans by Max Ghenis, Scott Santens and Andrew Yang, to name a few, to deliver how much your economic situation is changed under those plans. The ubicalculator website also delivers detailed information on each plan, justifying and explaining the results.
This UBI calculator is an initiative by Conrad Shaw, UBI Trial Manager and The Bootstraps Project co-producer. All the methodology used to construct the calculator can be found here.
Undertitled “How solar energy can generate a basic income for everyone on Earth”, this new book by Robert Stayton rides on an apparently radical idea: that all people on Earth can earn a basic income, financed from the generation of solar electricity alone. This comes from a known scheme used to incentivize the generation of solar electricity, the feed-in tariff, but other financing mechanisms are also suggested in the book, such as combination with carbon taxes, redirecting existing subsidies on fossil fuel companies to solar electricity generation and taxing corporations from feeding on common held resources (commons).
The book is about to be released on September 17th 2019 (today).
