by Sandro Gobetti | Aug 17, 2019 | News
Tuesday, 30th July, after a quick, aggressive and ruthless illness, Luca Santini (43), has passed away. For over a decade he had been President of the Basic Income Network Italia (BIN Italia), an association for basic income for which he had enthusiastically contributed to as a Board Committee member. He had been championing over twenty years of study, writing, action and shared campaigns in the social movements or in governmental institutions, in favour of an unconditional and universal basic income.
Luca Santini, no longer among us, was the lawyer always smiling, cheerful, methodical, polite and brilliant we were lucky enough to meet and that now we all remember: always on the side of the weakest and most defenseless, always alongside those who claim daily rights, freedom, social protections, guarantees and solidarity.
Luca, INCA’s lawyer, Progetto Diritti’s lawyer, founder of the Rome-Dakar project, creator of dozens of initiatives and projects including the festival À travers Dakar, was also a passionate cyclist, lover of opera, cinema, poetry, music, art, literature, social and technological innovation, and interested in the transformation of cities and work. His interventions, essays, writings are scattered among magazines, such as the legendary Infoxoa, newspapers, books, articles, interviews and videos. He also had research supported by local and European institutions, collective publications and books edited by BIN Italia, up to the various Notebooks for Income (Quaderni per il Reddito), in which he has always contributed with his commitment and proverbial organizational and theoretical ability.
Hundreds of people took part at the funeral, held in Roma on August 2nd 2019, and dozens of messages of condolence were sent by precarious workers’ collectives, migrant rights associations, researchers, intellectuals, lawyers and many supporters of basic income.
In memory of him, BIN Italia will continue the promotion of basic income and social justice for all.
The Board Committee of the Basic Income Network Italia.
by Andre Coelho | Aug 12, 2019 | News
In this video from MSNBC, Democratic candidate for the United States presidency Andrew Yang answers some direct questions about racial issues and economic inequality.
According to him, racial issues get diluted if communities are economically better off, of course with the Freedom Dividend which is central to Yang’s candidacy. That would be because poverty is one of the greatest causes for racial exclusion, while also a consequence of it, in a social degrading feedback loop. So, the rationale is that with less poverty, people respect each other more, irrespective of their skin colour.
On economic inequality, Yang reminds us that 1000 $/month for someone like Jeff Bezos is irrelevant, while crucially significant for millions of people living on the lower end of the income scale. That means that, according to him, the distribution of a Freedom Dividend immediately reduces inequality. Moreover, financing the Dividend might also further reduce inequality, by imposing a 10% Value Added Tax which naturally will weight more on relatively richer people, due to their higher levels of consumption.
by Alastair Dunning | Aug 8, 2019 | News
Recent analysis of US proposals for a $1,000 a month basic income show it would have a dramatic effect on poverty and inequality, while also substantially increasing the US budget deficit.
Max Ghenis, a researcher at The UBI Center, explores the financial implications of Andrew Yang’s plans to give all US citizens a Freedom Dividend. Ghenis’ investigation shows that it would cost $2.8tn a year. Tax revenue and related changes to welfare costs would pay for around half of this, leaving a deficit of $1.4tn to make up the difference. This is considerably more than the current US deficit (just over $800bn in 2018).
Despite the lower economic growth caused by a larger deficit, Ghenis calculates significant benefits for nearly all citizens. Only those the wealthiest 10% (in terms of yearly disposable income) would suffer financial loss, and there would be marked increases in disposable income for the poorest 10%. Even median earners would receive over 20% extra disposable income.
Ghenis also discusses the potential economic benefits of Yang’s Freedom Dividend, comparing it with earlier studies on basic income in the US (such as the Penn-Wharton model and Roosevelt Institute study). He is sceptical of Yang’s claims that the Freedom Dividend would stimulate government by up to $900bn – with the implication that alternative strategies would need to be considered. In a related article, Ghenis proposes a deficit-free basic income of $471 a month that would not add to the US budget deficit.
Picture: Photo of Andrew Yang. Attribution: Collision Conf from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [CC BY 2.0]
by Alastair Dunning | Aug 5, 2019 | News, Research
Johanna Perkiö, Doctoral Candidate, University of Tampere
A recent article on the Finnish basic income experiment has demonstrated how ‘framing’ the benefits of basic income in specific ways can make it acceptable to a wide political spectrum.
University of Tampere researcher Johanna Perkio has recently published an article examining how basic income has been perceived in Finnish political circle since the 1980s. Analysing party programmes and election manifestos, parliamentary motions and debates, and questions to ministers, she concludes that its take up within the current neo-liberal climate has been facilitated by seeing basic income as a way of dealing with economic problems of work and incentivisation.
Earlier debates, in the 1980s, emphasised notions of equal rights and fairness in employment. As more monetarist economic views began to dominate political thinking, basic income started being seen in terms of how it might incentivise the unemployed to find work. This was particularly true within political parties who were hesitant about supporting basic income.
Perkio also notes that the preliminary results from the Finnish experiment – which indicated that basic income led to increased well being amongst the recipients but did not necessarily help them find work – may mean that supporters of basic income need another frame to justify their support.
A blog post summarising the article is available online. The article itself is published by the Journal of Social Policy.
by Andre Coelho | Aug 1, 2019 | News
Things are stirring in Liverpool. In the aftermath of Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s commissioned report on basic income, Liverpool mayor John Anderson and councillor Jane Corbett have manifested their will to pursue a basic income pilot program in the city, if Labour gets into office in the next elections. However, they also have expressed their concerns about the possibility of Tories staying in power, and pursuing themselves the idea of doing basic income trials in the United Kingdom. Anderson and Corbett argue that no one, under a UBI trial, should be left worse off than under the current circumstances, which implies not cutting certain social benefits targeting the most vulnerable.
Jane Corbett has said, at a city council governance meeting: “My worry about UBI is that right-wingers like the ones in government now will say ‘once people have got their UBI they can go away without any other help’”. Even still, a working group studying the basic income possibility has been formed and is functioning within the city council. This group includes councillors Ann O’Byrne and Patrick Hurley, the first ones to officially calling for a basic income implementation, within Liverpool’s sphere of governance.
As for the UBI being considered for experimentation, the idea is to initially distribute 2400 £/year to each adult, plus a 1500 £/year grant for each child under the program. On a second stage, the amount for adults could be doubled onto 4800 £/year, disbursed at 400 £/month. Details for the plan are still inexistent or kept out of publications, so at this moment there is no information on how many people the experiment might include, for how long it shall be rolled out, what changes to present-day social security it might imply, and what outcomes are expected to be regularly monitored.
More information at:
Nick Tyrrell, “Joe Anderson makes Universal Basic Income promise as work on radical policy continues”, Echo, July 29th 2019
André Coelho, “United Kingdom: As the first Labour Party commissioned report on basic income comes out, renewed interest on the policy surfaces in the UK”, Basic Income News, May 13th 2019
by Andre Coelho | Jul 30, 2019 | News
It seems that the Alaskan tax policy is being too generous with oil companies. On top of the fact that there is no income or value-added tax (VAT) in Alaska, every year oil companies operating in Alaska are granted wealthy tax credits, this year amounting to $1.2 billion. That is roughly the amount of the state’s deficit, for the reduction of which governor Mike Dunleavy now has a plan to slash $440 million, as reported before.
Under the referred plan, features a 40% cut in the University of Alaska funding, a $58 million reduction to the state’s Medicaid program, and considerable slashes to several social security programs. That or the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) gets cut in half. The professed need to perform these draconian cuts flies in the face of the inexistent tax policy in Alaska, a clear ultra-liberal state of affairs which mainly benefits oil companies operating in the State.
State Senator Bill Wielechowski, a long-time APF defender has recently introduced a bill aimed to eliminating the unjustified tax credits to oil companies, but hasn’t got much support until now. One reason for this is that, traditionally, Alaskans are pretty averse to taxation, no matter who or what is targeted by it. However, scrapping these enormous tax cuts and introducing income and consumption taxes could be, in the long term, the only viable road to provide middle-class and lower income Alaskans the social security spending they need, and the APF unconditional payment they deserve.
More information at:
Tim Higginbotham, “Don’t Blame the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend”, People’s Policy Project, July 18th 2019
André Coelho, “United States: Alaska’s desperate governor considers massive cuts to university budget to keep Dividend”, Basic Income News, July 9th 2019
