by Kate McFarland | Jan 6, 2017 | Opinion
One needn’t spend too much time examining the current state basic income movement to deduce that pilot projects are en vogue this year.
Finland’s two-year experiment–in which 2,000 randomly-selected unemployed people will receive an unconditional payment of €560 per month instead of the country’s standard unemployment benefits–was launched on January 1. Several Dutch municipalities are also planning experiments, expected to begin early in 2017, in which existing welfare benefits will be replaced by unconditional benefits for current claimants. Meanwhile in Canada, the government of Ontario is finalizing its plan for a pilot study of a minimum income guarantee (most likely in the form a negative income tax), also set to commence early in 2017, and Prince Edward Island is seeking federal support to run a pilot of its own. And, in Scotland, the councils of Fife and Glasgow are actively taking steps to develop basic income pilots.
In the private sector, some organizations are not waiting for government-run pilots, and have taken it upon themselves to instigate studies. Non-profit organizations like GiveDirectly, ReCivitas, Eight, and Cashrelief have launched, or will soon launch, pilot studies of unconditional cash transfers in poor villages in Kenya, Brazil, Uganda, and India (respectively). In the states, the Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator has initiated a short-term pilot study in Oakland, intended to pave the way for a larger scale basic income experiment.
And this is not to attempt to enumerate all of the various individuals, political parties, unions, and advocacy groups who have issued calls for basic income pilots in their own countries, states, or municipalities. Indeed, it has become commonplace, it seems, for basic income supporters to demand pilot studies of basic income rather than, say, just to demand a basic income straight-out.
This wave of pilot projects–with more, most likely, on the horizon–should rightfully excite basic income supporters, as well as those who are merely “BI-curious”. No doubt these studies will provide many useful and interesting data on the effects of cash transfers. At the same time, however, I caution strongly against the fetishization of pilot studies. A pilot study in itself is never a final goal–such is the nature of a pilot–and such a study is neither sufficient nor (presumably) necessary to secure the implementation of basic income as a policy. Furthermore, significant dangers can arise from a narrow and myopic focus on the goal of running pilot studies.
The first problem is this: excessive attention to experimentation threatens to trigger the presupposition that the question of whether basic income should be adopted is a question subject to experimental evaluation. To be sure, even if one is antecedently convinced that a basic income should be adopted, there are many reasons for which one might run a pilot study. It could, for example, help to identify and resolve potential hitches in implementation. But, more commonly, pilot studies are framed as mechanisms for determining whether a basic income is desirable in the first place. Skeptics and supporters alike speak in terms of finding out whether basic income “works”. The experimental approach tend to invoke an instrumentalist view of basic income as policy: the policy should be adopted if, and only if, it is more effective than other candidate policies in achieving certain socially desirable outcomes.
I would contend that this instrumentalist view should be rejected. We can remain neutral on this point, however, and assert only that the debate surrounding the justification of a basic income is severely and artificially constrained by the implicit assumption that this justification rests on empirical grounds. (And, specifically, empirical grounds amenable to testing in a pilot study!) Consider, for example, the view that all individuals deserve a share of society’s collectively generated wealth, unconditionally, merely in virtue of being a member of that society. On this view, it would be entirely beside the point to run an experiment to determine whether a basic income is justified.
If individuals are owed an unconditional basic income simply as their right–whether as a share of a common inheritance, as a condition on individual freedom, or as a realization of a right to the means to survival–then asking whether basic income “works” has the flavor of a category mistake. It is a nonsensical question to ask. (Conversely, if we assume that the question does make sense, we implicitly rule out the position that a basic income is simply a basic right.)
At this point, perhaps, the activist might say, “I don’t need experimental evidence to pursue me that a basic income should be adopted. Policymakers, however, do–and basic income experiments are the best way to convince policymakers that basic income ‘works’ according to the their criteria.” But this maneuver, I believe, goes to far to countenance whatever criteria policymakers use to judge the “effectiveness” of basic income.
In many cases, the goals deemed valuable in status quo politics–increases in jobs, increases in consumption, increases in economic growth–can themselves be called into question (and, I would argue, ought to be). Yet these conventional goals are likely to guide researchers and policymakers in their selection of “success conditions” of basic income experiments. Finland’s experiment, for example, has been designed specifically to assess whether employment increases with the replacement of means-tested unemployment benefits by unconditional transfers.
Indeed, I believe that a main reason to agitate for a universal and unconditional basic income is to challenge conventional social and political values, such as (especially) the Protestant work ethic. To allow to those same conventional values to provide the metric of whether basic income “works” is to subvert this critical role of the movement.
In a worst case scenario, a pilot study could lead policymakers to categorically reject basic income on the grounds that the policy has been shown to be associated with politically undesirable outcomes, when there is reasonable dispute over whether these outcomes are genuinely undesirable. There is some historical precedent here: in the 1970s, experiments of the negative income tax were held in several US cities; however, they were widely dismissed as failures in light of reports that they showed the policy to be associated with a decrease in work hours and increase in divorce rates [1].
There is, to be sure, much to anticipate in basic income research in 2017. But our excitement and fascination at empirical studies mustn’t overshadow the basic normative question of what society should be like. It is only by keeping sight of this latter question that we can properly contextualize the demand for basic income (if any) and, in turn, the role that can be served by pilot studies (if any).
[1] See, e.g., Karl Widerquist, “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can we Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?” The Journal of Socio-Economics (2005).
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 sandeepachetan.com travel photography
This article was originally written for an editorial in USBIG Network NewsFlash, but posted here instead due to word length.
by Toru Yamamori | Jan 5, 2017 | Opinion
As we’ve reported here, the Finnish government is starting a two-year experiment on a basic income. When the government announced it in last August, a Basic Income News editor conducted a series of interviews in Finland. Summaries of those with the government and a long-term advocate, the Greens, and the Pirates were published here.
This is a longer version of the interview with Tapani Karvinen, who is a politician from the Pirate Party of Finland. He served as the chair of the party between 2014 and 2016. His response to the government’s press release on the experiment is here.
How did you come to know about UBI?
The idea of UBI was first introduced to me sometime 2012 through our political party. It gained instant support within our core members and was promptly adopted as a party statute.
What was your first thought on UBI?
I was intrigued by the simplicity and saw how it could correct most of inequality between students, small time entrepreneurs and various types of unemployment.
Has something changed after you first learned about UBI?
As my view on the matter has broadened, I see that we need wider transformation in our economic policies.
Why do you support UBI?
As they say, the simplest answer is probably the correct one. The simplicity of UBI would make the need for large institutes obsolete, and the tax-income would be shared to boost the economy, while giving equal opportunities to work for extra income for everyone, student, pensioner, unemployed or as entrepreneur.
What would you do if you had a UBI?
I’m an entrepreneur in a co-operative audiovisual company and do daytime work in a small business. UBI would enable me to do more income-taxed work.
Have you talked about UBI with your family and old friends? What do they say?
My parents have both owned small business and they do understand how UBI would make their lives less stressful, especially in those silent months, when income is not guaranteed.
How have you been involved with the Pirates?
I joined the Pirate Party of Finland in 2010, was elected as chairman of the party in 2014 and as vice-chairman in 2016.
What is your biggest priority in politics?
I see the Pirate agenda of sharing information as the key for everyone who wishes to improve themselves or seek knowledge for other reasons. There is a saying which illuminates it perfectly, “give man a fish, and he will eat a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat every day.”
How is UBI related to your important political agenda?
UBI enables people to act on what they see meaningful, without stress that those choices would cause economical catastrophe for them or their household. It gives opportunities for innovations, knowledge, arts, politics and just for caring thy neighbour.
What is your thought on the governmental initiative for UBI experiment?
I’m cautiously welcoming for the Finnish governments plan for UBI experiment. The greatest flaw I see in this experiment is that the saturation of UBI receivers is not strong enough to create work amongst group of friends, for example college classmates, who have idea that could be pursued, if it wouldn’t hinder their studies and student benefits. I would have preferred to see local study with high to full saturation of UBI receivers.
Let readers know more about yourself: where and when you were born, etc.
I’m 35 years old, born in eastern Finland (Heinävesi), from a small-business home. During last fifteen years I have worked several professions and for about dozen employers. Roughly put, I have worked five years as doorman for restaurants, five years in several IT-jobs and five doing pretty much everything from warehouse-worker to teaching. I have degree in computer sciences, and I have studied journalism and media-studies for few years.
The photo was taken by Hannu Makarainen.
by BIEN | Jan 1, 2017 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Louise Haagh (BIEN Co-Chair)
I first came across basic income in summer of 2001 when instructed about it by Workers’ Party Senator Eduardo Suplicy, at his home in São Paulo. I was doing research on workers’ rights, at the same time undertaking a survey of economic security among residents in poor and middle-income districts (published in World Development, 2011a). Eduardo famously played a key role in the drive to legalise a basic income as a policy goal in Brazil, and in presenting the extension of targeted cash grants as a step towards it (Suplicy, 2002). Eduardo was insistent that I do not go home that evening till I mastered all there was to know about reasons for basic income and how the path towards it was being paved in Brazil. Night fell. I remember enjoying more than a few helpings of food and tea, before Eduardo was satisfied I understood, after which – the gentleman that he is – he accompanied me to somewhere I could hail a cab, making sure to have a long friendly chat with the driver before we were sent off into the night.
The basic income appealed to me then primarily as a necessary foundation for consolidating workers’ rights – and in many ways that is still how I see it, but in a broader context of rights to human development. I had been working on workers’ rights and issues of economic citizenship since the early 1990s, during my PhD on Chile and later work on South Korea, both places I spent a lot of time and in which I did surveys of workers’ condition of precarity and their institutional sources of power. Against this background I was struck by the sanity – the immediately obvious justification for basic income. It seemed to me evident that the most important justification was a basic humanist and democratic one – and I still think that today.
Coming to the BI proposal from the perspective of workers’ movements, and in general the problem of the democratisation of everyday institutions, gives a different perspective on the political character of a BI reform. Above all, it makes it evident that BI intersects with other institutional and political challenges. This is something I am very conscious of when thinking about the question of how a BI might extend the social bases of freedom.
The sense in which I first found BI intuitively important was in relation to occupational freedom. I had been studying the economic liberalisation and institutional restructuring of the Chilean economy during the years of Pinochet and found that the precariousness among workers it generated, both economically and institutionally, had become embedded in a way that the new democratic regime of 1990 could not overturn (Haagh 2002a, 1999). The result, I argued (Haagh, 2002b), was that Chile deepened political rights without this leading to the expected deepening of social rights, given the absence of economic rights. This marked an evident contrast to the formation of welfare states in Europe in the 20th century, as discussed in T.H. Marshall (1949). Before I knew about basic income – during the mid-1990s – I had been working on a concept of ‘occupational citizenship’ – first in my PhD and then during a later British Academy post-doctoral fellowship at Oxford University. Essentially, what sparked my enquiry was the contradiction within liberal economic theory – so manifest in the labour market outcomes I studied in Chile – between the expectation of worker mobility– and the lack of underlying forms of economic security – in the forms both of money and services – that would make this sustainable.
I argued the atomised labour market regime not only predictably led to weak investment in skills, and thus a low-wage, low–skill equilibrium economy (Haagh 1999). In addition, it undermined workers’ freedom in a way that denied them effective citizenship within the polity at large (Haagh 2002a,b).
Having theorised a ‘gap’ in terms of absence of occupational citizenship (Haagh 1999, 2002a), it seemed obvious to me that basic income (BI) would be a necessary but not sufficient element in improving persons’ control of their lives.
There are important lessons from Latin America about the political conditions for a BI reform that are important to consider as the debate on BI is gaining force in Europe today. These are of both a practical and analytical kind. Like the case of Chile’s in part stunted democratization, the story of BI in Latin America is not a straightforward one of cash grants turning into rights (Lo Vuolo 2013). Similarly, one cannot be sure prospective transitions into partial forms of basic income through experimentation in Europe will turn into secure bastions of freedom, given the overall context of austerity and preceding roll-back of public sector protections (Haagh 2015).
It is ironic to think that Friedman – who advocated a form of constant basic security in the shape of the Negative Income Tax essentially on freedom grounds as rooted in an idea of independence – also indirectly was architect of Chile’s economic experiment.[1] The irony lies in the fact that that experiment was not complemented with a set of basic rights outside the market. On the contrary, deregulation of unions’ functions – detailed in Haagh (2002a,b) – along with other mechanisms of economic security, was paralleled with the implementation a state organised system of individual insurance, too weakly subsidized to afford real protection (Haagh 2002a, 2006). Given the underlying precarity of workers’ income streams, the individual insurance model was unable to offer effective cover.
The case of Chile shows why basic income has moral appeal, yet the basis of that appeal that lie in destabilisation, precarity, inequality, and loss of workers’ democratic rights may not be a likely political basis for a sustainable BI reform. Moreover, time has shown that in conditions of high inequality and weaker public finances, such as in Latin America, political preferences are likely to continue to be for targeted and conditional benefits (Lo Vuolo 2013, Haagh 2007, 2011a, 2013, Haagh and Helgø 2002).
The practical contradiction – as demonstrated in Chile – between the two seemingly symbiotic elements of Friedman’s advocacy, for economic liberalisation, and for basic security, is then not that surprising from a political and institutional perspective.
This is because the destabilisation of institutions that the first project entails destroys the basis for everyday cooperation within society that gives legitimacy to the second project to extend universal rights. Although Friedman did not see the Negative Income Tax as a welfare right, but as a kind of money mechanism to promote agency and ensure against basic risk, even something ostensibly simple like the NIT, depends on quite complex institutional development and political agreements. The fact that Friedman did not like the welfare state does not mean it did and does not exist in the United States. It is its more hierarchical – interclass-distributive- form that makes it more incoherent and punitive (Haagh 2012, 2015).
In short, the conditions of precarity in Latin America – now more common in the developed world – showed me why basic income is morally necessary for the market economy (as Friedman knew), but not itself sufficient for freedom in a democratic polity.
The Chilean case also showed me that the moral appeal of basic income is not the same as a political foundation for basic income reform. The two may even be contradictory if moral appeal is linked with conditions of crisis and compensation, as distinct from equality as equal standing in a more complex sense, which gives to BI a key but partial role in democratising institutions’ form.
For me it is very important to stress the compatibility of basic income and the interests of workers’ movements. The demands made by workers’ organisations historically can be argued to have played a transitional role in a process of democratisation to consolidate more universal rights. At the same time, the interests they channel in terms of institutions’ stability and democratic form represents something constant and deeper. This is important to remember today when – in a context of growing precarity in the developed world – there is a risk that the defence of basic income comes to be thought about as compensation for loss of – or an exchange for – other rights.
Coming back to that evening in 2001, it was not at all a surprise to me then that it was a Senator of a Workers’ Party advocating for basic income who was trying to convince me of the. To me, it was intuitive that workers’ movements should and would embrace the idea – at least in the context of a family of rights-based institutional changes. Having come to BI via work on unions, I was therefore quite surprised when – after going to the BIEN Congress in Geneva in 2002 – I became aware of the polemical nature of the BI debate concerning the relationship of that proposal and the established welfare state – hereunder social democracy and the union movement. Although it is painful to acknowledge, I think an important basis for that real life tension lies in the academic basis of the BI proposal as couched in fairly abstract and idealistic terms (Haagh 2011b).
In short, coming from the comparative institutional tradition of historical enquiry it seems evident to me that basic income is an element in a wider process of democratisation of institutions in society. The success, substance, form, and stability of that proposal is likely to stand or fall with the level of democratisation of society as a whole.
That is why we should not be surprised that BI experiments and debates are happening today in some of the most institutionally developed welfare states in Europe. It is far from given however how they will turn out.
[1] Explaining the purpose of the Negative Income Tax that closely resembles a basic income, Friedman (1979, 120) argued that the ‘basic amount’ (or ’personal allowance’) would “..provide an assured minimum to all persons in need regardless of the reasons for their need, while doing as little harm as possible to their character, their independence, or their incentive to better their own condition” (italics added) 120 He further (ibid. 121) noted, “[t]he negative income tax would allow for fluctuating income… but that is not its main purpose. Its main purpose is rather to provide a straightforward means of assuring every family a minimum amount…”
Friedman, M., 1990[1979/1980], Free to Choose, San Diego: Harvest.
Haagh, L. (2015) Alternative Social States and the Basic Income Debate: Institutions, Inequality and Human Development,’ in Basic Income Studies, Special Issue on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, August, ISSN (Online) 1932-0183, ISSN (Print) 2194-6094, DOI: 10.1515/bis-2015-0002, August 2015, https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bis.ahead-of-print/bis-2015-0002/bis-2015-0002.xml
Haagh, L. (2013) ‘The Citizens’ Income and Democratization in Latin America – A Multi-Institutional Perspective‘ in Rubén Lo Vuolo (Ed.) Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America. From Cash Transfers to Rights, Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee Series, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Haagh, L. (2012) ‘Democracy, Public Finance, and Property Rights in Economic Stability: How More Horizontal Capitalism Upscales Freedom for All’ in Polity, October, Volume 44, No. 4. pp.542-587.
Haagh, L. (2011a) ‘Working Life, Well-Being and Welfare Reform: Motivation and Institutions Revisited’, World Development, March, Vol. 39, No.3. pp.450-573. Also available Basic Income, Social Democracy and Control over Time at: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeewdevel/v_3a39_3ay_3a2011_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a450-473.htm
Haagh, L. (2011b) , Policy and Politics, January, Vol. 39, No.1, pp. 41-64.
Haagh, L. (2007) ‘Basic Income, Occupational Freedom and Anti-Poverty Policy’ in Basic Income Studies, Vol. 2, Issue, 1, June.
Haagh, L. (2006) ‘Equality and Income Security in Market Economies: What’s Wrong with Insurance?’’ in Social Policy and Administration, Vol. 40:4, 385-424.
Haagh, L. (2002a) Citizenship, Labour Markets and Democratization – Chile and the Modern Sequence, Basingstoke: Palgrave, St. Antony’s Series.
Haagh, L. and Camilla Helgø (2002) (Eds), Social Policy Reform and Market Governance in Latin America, Basingstoke: Palgrave. St. Antony’s Series.
Haagh, L. (2002b) ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Labor Reform and Social Democratization in Chile’, Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 37, No.1, Spring, pp. 86-115.
Haagh L (1999) ‘Training Policy and the Property Rights of Labour in Chile (1990-1997): Social Citizenship in the Atomised Market Regime, Journal of Latin American Studies, Cambridge University Press, 31, 429-472.
Lo Vuolo, R. (Ed.)Citizen’s Income and Welfare Regimes in Latin America. From Cash Transfers to Rights, Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee Series, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Marshall, Thomas, H., 1949, Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suplicy, E. (2002), Renda de Cidadania – A Saída é Pela Porta, Cortez Editora
Photo credit: Enno Schmidt
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 31, 2016 | Opinion, Testimonies
This year, BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth. In commemoration of the occasion, founding members reunited at its birthplace–the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Beglium–for a series of talks on the past and future of BIEN and the basic income movement.
At the end of the year, all Life Members of BIEN were invited to reflect on their own personal histories with the organization and movement. Read their stories here:
• Hyosang Ahn (Director of Basic Income Korea Network; South Korea): “The first time I encountered the idea of basic income was the summer of 2007. I was at the time the vice president of a small party on the left, rather imaginatively named the ‘Socialist Party’, and was preparing for the coming presidential election…”
• Jan Otto Andersson (Life Member; Finland): “… In 1986 I took part in the international congress on Basic Income in Louvain-la-Neuve. My contribution was called “Basic Income in Three Social Visions”: a Red-Blue mixed society, a Blue-Green dual society and a Red-Green combined society. …”
• Christopher Balfour (Life Member; UK): “… Having been adopted as a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate in the mid-1960s…, I began to talk with already-elected Members of Parliament who shared my concerns. In this way I met Brandon Rhys Williams and then his mother, Dame Juliet. They introduced me to this concept of a small payment as of right, no strings attached, to all citizens. …”
• Richard Caputo (Life Member; US): “… I was not taken in by the idea of an unconditional basic income (UBI) guarantee whole cloth. It did not square well with my sense of social justice, nor with my concerns about poverty reduction, though it did address what I saw as the diminished value of wage-based labor in an increasingly global economy and seemed compatible with the social work value of self-determination. …”
• André Coehlo (News Editor-in-Chief; Portugal): “For me to contribute to BIEN…was kind of a natural progression in my personal activism, after the Zeitgeist Movement. I naturally accepted the basic income concept, after defending a resource based economy, as the former can be seen as an intermediate step towards the latter. …”
• Louise Haagh (Co-Chair of BIEN): “I first came across basic income in summer of 2001 when instructed about it by Workers’ Party Senator Eduardo Suplicy, at his home in São Paulo. I was doing research on workers’ rights, at the same time undertaking a survey of economic security among residents in poor and middle-income district …”
• Michael Howard (Coordinator of USBIG Network; US): “I can remember the moment when I first took a keen interest in basic income. I was familiar with the idea, having spent a research leave at the European University Institute in Fiesole, when Philippe Van Parijs was there writing Real Freedom for All. …”
• Julio Linares (“Life Member 252”; Guatemala): “I first heard about BIEN at a conference in Switzerland about the future of work and basic income. I went to that conference because of a hunch. …”
• José A. Noguera (International Advisory Board of BIEN; Spain): “I still remember quite clearly the first time I read something about the idea of a Basic Income: it was back in 1991, when I was finishing my degree in Sociology in Barcelona, and spent most of my time reading abstruse texts of social theory. …”
• Steven Shafarman (Coordinating Committee of USBIG; US): “My drive to enact a basic income – and most of my ideas about how to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize allies – arose from exploring the way young children learn to walk and talk. …”
• Malcolm Torry (Director of Citizen’s Income Trust, Co-Secretary of BIEN; UK): “Almost exactly forty years ago, I left university, got married, and started work in Brixton, in South London, administering means-tested benefits. … [I]t didn’t take long to understand how inefficient, degrading, and disincentivising means-tested benefits were. …”
• Jenna van Draanen (Outreach Coordinator and News Editor; Canada): “Working with BIEN has been a wonderful experience for me. Not only are there extremely dedicated people here, but they are also talented and kind. …”
• Philippe van Parijs (Co-Founder of BIEN; Belgium): “It is hard for young people today to imagine what it meant to run an international network when all communication between its members had to happen through the post. The newsletter needed to be typed, then printed, then photocopied, then stapled. …”
• Martine Mary Waltho (Life Member; UK): “I first came across the idea of a basic income when I was at university in 1984. There was an article in a magazine; it might have been the New Society. …”
• Karl Widerquist (Co-Chair of BIEN; US): “When I first attended a BIEN Congress in 1998, I’d already been a Basic Income supporter for 18 years, but it was exhilarating for me just to find out that there were enough dedicated Basic Income supporters to fill an auditorium. …”
• Toru Yamamori (News Editor; Japan): “My encounter to the idea of a basic income was around 1991-2. I was involved in solidarity activism with a casual worker’s trade union, in which many of the members were homeless construction workers. …”
Photo: Participants at BIEN’s 2016 Congress in Seoul (bien2016.org/en).
by BIEN | Dec 31, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
(photo credit: Enno Schmidt)
Karl Widerquist (Co-Chair)
When I first attended a BIEN Congress in 1998, I’d already been a Basic Income supporter for 18 years, but it was exhilarating for me just to find out that there were enough dedicated Basic Income supporters to fill an auditorium. I was a young researcher looking to get noticed. I sent my proposal in months before the deadline. The leaders of BIEN, especially Robert van der Veen, made me feel that my work was notable. I’ve been involved ever since, and I’ve watched the Basic Income movement growth, slowly, barely noticeably until about 2010 or 2011, but very quickly since then. I don’t think BIEN should try to grab credit for the takeoff. We should all just be happy it’s happening and do what we can to build on it.
It’s exciting to see BIEN growing along with the movement. We now have affiliates all around the world, some of which have been instrumental in activism and research about Basic Income. Our news service has grown from a quarterly snail mail newsletter with a few dozen subscribers to a daily updated news website and an email newsletter with over 4,000 subscribers. We have moved from conferences every two-years to conferences every year. Our membership and interest just continues to grow.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
Feature coordinator: Kate McFarland.
by BIEN | Dec 31, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Jenna van Draanen (News Editor and Outreach Coordinator)
Working with BIEN has been a wonderful experience for me. Not only are there extremely dedicated people here, but they are also talented and kind. With BIEN, I get to talk to people all over the world who are working on basic income in their respective countries and policy contexts – and learn from what they are doing.
This year, we started a new Outreach Task Force. The goal of the Outreach Task Force, which is evolving, is broadly to have more connections between affiliates and more communication between BIEN and the affiliates. We plan to organize a session at the next BIEN congress, where all of the affiliates can meet each other and update each other on activities and strategies in their countries. As a group, we will also develop some shared projects to work on this year.
I am personally excited about the energy already forming with this task force of people. It is neat to have so much participation from groups around the world.
Jenna van Draanen is a PhD student at University of California – Los Angeles. She has been writing for Basic Income News for over five years, and is now a member of the Executive Committee and Outreach Coordinator.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
Feature coordinator: Kate McFarland.
