by Yannick Vanderborght | Jun 10, 2013 | Opinion
Marina P. Nóbrega – for the Municipal Council for the Citizen’s Basic Income, Santo Antonio do Pinhal, SP, Brazil
Humanity has to rescue the human solidarity that used to pervade tribal societies where wealthy was evenly shared. In our days money has to be used to that effect as great social thinkers have been preaching. In Brazil, President Lula´s law 10,835 from 2004 says that “A monthly benefit enough for the basic needs of a person will be paid equally to all. This basic income is to be instated by steps, taking care first of the most in need.” This law is still unregulated but the government, immediately after, created the successful Bolsa Familia (BF) program. Law 10,835 is unique in the world and needs to be regulated as to the steps to be taken to gradually universalize the benefit.
The Municipal Council for the Citizen’s Basic Income in the city of Santo Antonio do Pinhal has such a proposal.
Our initial proposal was to have a municipal pilot project fueled by a percentage of gross earnings from private businesses and private donations plus 6% per year from the city’s revenue. The idea was to create a fund to operate as the Alaska scheme. The Council analyzed carefully this proposal in the light of basic income principles and the practical attempts made to collect funds. We came to the conclusion that the Alaska way is impossible to succeed in our conditions besides we also do not accept that the annual and variable dividends represent the idea we have about a basic income.
Instead, we suggest that the path to Basic Income should go through 3 stages. We do not think this to be the best way for other countries but, considering Brazil’s situation, with almost 50 million under the support of the conditional BF (average of US$ 17.50 per person), we have a stepping stone to approach the final goal of including all in basic income. The steps suggested are:
Step 1 – Start the unconditional and universal basic income with all newborns in Brazil in the near future. The Council suggested that the caring parent receives US$ 35.00 per month and the same amount is deposited monthly in a savings account in name of the child, to be withdraw when he/she reaches legal age. This will be particularly valuable in two ways: it is financially viable, progressive and amenable to planning, will carry a strong symbolic value benefitting the children of the nation and pointing to a better future. This move will have a crucial educational value by giving people of all social classes time to understand the revolutionary value of a minimum income independent of work.
Step 2 – Next we suggest remove all conditionalities linked to the Bolsa Familia program. This will require that the funds for the almost 50 million involved (about 25% of our population) be doubled. We can predict that the result will be impressive economically and socially. The humiliation of means test, the complexity of the paperwork that opens the opportunity for political manipulation will vanish. The economy will benefit, and the results will be boosted by the possibility of taking regular jobs or opening a small business, both banned under the present conditionalities. These people will be freed from the known “poverty trap” created by the requirements for admission.
Step 3 – The Bolsa Familia bureaucracy can now be directed to monitor people that are still economically vulnerable but outside the government lists or people that fall into the “precariat”. They and their dependents should immediately receive the unconditional basic income.
PS: The Council can be reached by sending mail to maripnobrega@gmail.com
Phones: 55 12 9777 9115 or 55 12 3911 3839
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jun 7, 2013 | Opinion
Richard K. Caputo (ed.) Basic Income Guarantee and Politics: International experiences and perspectives on the viability Income Guarantee, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 0 230 11691 7, hbk, ix + 322 pp, £62.50
This volume gathers together a huge of diversity of analysis of national and international political debates over the introduction of a Basic Income.
A big challenge for a survey of the Citizens’ Income debate is to balance breadth with depth. How does one best combine the detail and insight that different authors offer with the need to offer comparative analysis and discussion of themes across countries? Richard Caputo provides a gentle editorial steer through this global journey, helping the reader to pick up specific nuances of debates in individual countries and regions whilst also providing an overview and some connections to international themes. Key topics covered in all of these essays are the historical drivers and opportunities that push forward discussion of Citizen’s Income, the political enablers and barriers to progress in these debates, and the prospect for progress in the future.
The first four chapters offer a helpful overview and comparative approach. Following Richard Caputo’s introduction and overview, De Wispelaere and Noguera outline a potential framework for considering political feasibility of the Basic Income project. De Wispelaere and Nogerua consider feasibility in strategic, institutional and psychological dimensions by mapping two different types of agency against two types of constraints. It feels a bit of a missed opportunity that this framework is offered at the start of the book but not addressed directly by other contributors. However, even without explicitly addressing this framework the reader will find the key barriers and key enablers identified by De Wispelare and Noguera cropping up in the individual chapters. Most notably, the challenges of institutional inflexibility, and the need to convert key political actors and to build coalitions across parties and interests in order to create strategic feasibility for a Citizens Income.
The region and country specific analyses begin on a confident note. In Chapter 3 Suplicy makes a powerful economic and political case for a Basic Income for underdeveloped economies aiming to jumpstart their global competitiveness. In the subsequent chapter, Guy Standing reflects on the first twenty-five years of BIEN and considers that richer nations may turn again to the issue of universal benefits in response to continued economic strife, the depletion of social protection, and the rise of social unrest.
The rest of the book is made up of 11 chapters that draw on social policy and political debates to examine the prospects for Citizen’s Income in a number of different contexts. This reviewer found the most satisfying chapters those that took a thematic approach, which allowed a lay reader to make their own comparisons between the experiences of different countries. Sacha Liebermann’s chapter on the German experience does this masterfully. It is introduced with a quick summary of the current debate and then thematic headings covering the major barriers addressed by discussions over Citizen’s Income in the last thirty or so years. In Germany’s case, this includes: the challenge of unconditionality (or ‘to live at the cost of others without any contribution’) and debates over the link with citizenship and over how to resolve the position of families and childcare within the overall welfare system.
There is a lot of richness in this volume. The authors have reflected widely and fully on social and political discourses, taking in formal actors and policy makers as well as think tanks and more grass roots movements. One of the difficulties and the rewards of a volume like this is the sheer diversity of experiences. Markku Ikkala looks back over twenty years of debates in Finland, identifying and analysing strands of support from the Green Party and some sections of the Press. Malcolm Torry’s analysis of the backdrop to current debates about universality in the United Kingdom examines themes from the process that led to the Family Allowance Act of 1945 and from the Child Benefit debates of the late 1960s. Alongside these we have in depth analyses that focus on the immediate context of contemporary welfare debates. For instance, the chapter on Spain focuses on the deficit reduction package from 2010 onwards and Hamid Tabatabai’s account asks what we can learn from Iran’s 2010 cash subsidy programme.
One important theme across the regions analysed is the important role of economic instability as a precursor to the revival or creation of new debates on universal benefits as the fragile consensus on welfare systems and social entitlements comes under ever more pressure. In the analysis of the Spanish experience, by Daniel Raventos, Julie Wark and David Casassas, the authors distil the frustration experienced by supporter of a Citizen’s Income in the wake of the economic crisis. For families and workers, a Basic Income could provide much needed security, a serious anti-poverty policy, and a sustainable way of maintaining family income following the debt-based consumption of the early years of the twenty-first century. And yet precisely when the supporters feel the case is most pressing politicians are under pressure to reduce expenditure and target welfare spending on narrow sections of the population.
While it seems churlish to criticise a volume of essays for BIEN members and supporters for not including contributions of opponents of the Citizen’s Income, one limitation of the chapters is a lack of context for some of the more aspirational comments on the future of pressure from think tanks, student groups and activists. While many authors are able to cite specific publications, events and movements as evidence, several chapters include a general positive endorsement or aspiration which feels less contextualised. This includes the aside at the end of the essay on Spain’s experience. The authors argue that ‘it can only be expected’ that the interest in a Citizen’s Income will keep growing from activists as the economic crisis persists and unemployment grows, but don’t offer more solid grounds for hope than that statement.
Looking across the chapters, one key question this reviewer was left with was how supporters of a Citizen’s Income should view these national and international debates as an indicator of progress and possible next steps. De Wispelaere and Noguera discuss how we might frame public perception of a Citizen’s Income in the context of arguments about reciprocity and deservingness of benefit recipients. This is salutary for those who already support Basic Income. A number of different chapters point to elements of universality as indicators of the progress of the argument for a Citizen’s Income or as building blocks on which to develop a stronger case for universality. Changes in pensions in Australia and to tax credits in the UK and Ireland can be seen either as useful stepping stones on a gradualist and pragmatic journey towards a Citizen’s Income, as diversions from making the full case for universality, or as further confusing already complex systems. Alternatively, should a Citizen’s Income be considered as a separate discourse of its own? More fundamentally, this reviewer was left asking, what can we learn from these experiences about how to frame a theory of change for the future? And what would ambitious but realistic intermediate goals look like for the next ten years?
It is a strength of this book that it provides the depth and breadth of reach not only to prompt this kind of question but also to provide significant evidence for the analysis of these issues. The volume offers a timely stocktake, and an opportunity to reflect on debates in the past, present and future.
by Ian Orton | Jun 3, 2013 | Opinion
In 2011, the United Nations (UN), fronted by Michelle Bachelet, head of UN Women, launched the Social Protection Floor [SPF] initiative (1). This initiative aims to support the development of social protection worldwide. Arguably, this development represents an opportunity for more experimentation with basic income and possibly fully-fledged basic income programmes.
National SPFs aim to extend social security vertically (providing more comprehensive services and benefits) and horizontally (extending coverage to a greater number) to cover all groups. In particular, SPFs can assist the extension of coverage to the unprotected, the poor and the most vulnerable, including workers in the informal economy and their families. Countries should define their floors according to national needs and priorities and progressively build their floors in the most advanced yet achievable manner. The UN states that SPFs should comprise at least the following social security guarantees:
- Access to essential health care, including maternity care;
- Basic income security for children;
- Basic income security for persons in active age who are unable to earn sufficient income;
- Basic income security for older persons (1,2).
The UN’s use of ‘basic income security’ should not be understood in the same way as the Basic Income Earth Networks use of “basic Income.” Basic income security literally means a set of minimum income guarantee that could or could not be arranged as an unconditional, universal payment. These guarantees can be fulfilled in different ways through social insurance, social assistance or effective minimum wage or labour market measures.
In spite of a possible divergence with BIEN’s conception of a basic income, it is likely that these policies would represent a significant step toward basic income by legitimising the idea of basic income security as an essential ingredient for human development. Arguably, these would create a social policy culture more conducive or receptive to BIEN-type notions of basic income. In fact, many of the income security programmes championed by the SPF are those often touted by the BIEN community as precursors to fully-fledged basic incomes, such as the Bolsa Familia in Brazil. Clearly, there is some convergence.
In June 2012, this initiative was bolstered further when the International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organization voted on an historic Recommendation for a SPF, which supports the extension of social protection coverage and the progressive building of national social security systems. The adoption of this new international labour standard, the Recommendation concerning national floors of social protection (No. 202) (3), marks a major milestone for social security, as it reaffirms the human right to social security and renews national commitments to extend coverage.
The current momentum gathering behind the SPF and the actual proliferation and strengthening of existing SPFs throughout middle- and low-income countries already provides the basic income with an entry point as well legitimising basic income discourse in general. In fact many social pensions and family benefits (as advanced by the SPF) are essentially a basic income for the elderly and for children. Moreover, they have proven their impressive positive economic and social impacts (4) However, extending a rights-based discourse to basic income (in the BIEN sense of the world) still remains plagued by an array of difficulties where active population (i.e. the working population) groups are concerned. In other words, the SPF has a more ‘workfare’ view of income guarantees for the working poor, and that this group should not get unconditional income guarantees. Rather they should have to participate in some kind of public works’ programme.
Perhaps even more interesting still, is the emergence of a new hot topic within development discourse of the SPF: the idea of a specific ‘global fund’ to finance SPFs globally (5). If new financing sources do become available this may open up new financing sources for basic income-type programmes to be introduced for specific population groups. Thus, all those interested in the basic income would be well advised to keep an eye on the emergence of a global fund.
Naturally, many have well founded reservations about a yet another vertical fund earmarked for a specific use. It may add to an already confounded and highly fragmented international development assistance architecture, and result in top down prescriptions of how countries should develop their SPFs. Nonetheless, in spite of these concerns there is a discernable groundswell of political support for the idea of global fund for SPFs. It is perhaps conceivable that the idea of basic income will find ripe opportunities here. Watch this space.
For more information on this issues see:
1. ILO. 2011. The Bachelet report: Social Protection Floor for a fair globalization, Report of the Advisory Group chaired by Michelle Bachelet Convened by the ILO with the collaboration of the WHO (Geneva).
www.ilo.org/global/publications/ilo-bookstore/order-online/books/WCMS_165750/lang–en/index.htm
2. Ian Orton. 2012. The ILO Recommendation on Social Protection Floors: A milestone in the extension of social security coverage. ISSA, Geneva.
www.issa.int/News-Events/News2/The-ILO-Recommendation-on-Social-Protection-Floors-A-milestone-in-the-extension-of-social-security-coverage
3. ILO. 2012. Social security for all: The ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation (Briefing note). Geneva, International Labour Office.
www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessFileDownload.do?ressourceId=31089
4. Ian Orton. June 2010. Reasons to be cheerful: How ILO analysis of social transfers worldwide augurs well for a basic income (with some caveats). Submitted for the 13th International Congress of the Basic Income Earth Network, Sao Paulo, Brazil, basic income as an instrument for justice and peace.
www.bien2010brasil.com
5. Magdalena Sepúlveda & Oliver de Schutter, 2012. Underwriting the Poor: A Global Fund for Social Protection. Briefing Note 7. United Nations SpecialRapporteur on the Right to Food.
www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/otherdocuments/20121009_gfsp_en.pdf
Disclaimer:
The responsibility for opinions expressed in this article rests solely with the author and dissemination does not constitute an endorsement by the International Labour Organization of the opinions expressed in it.
by Yannick Vanderborght | May 27, 2013 | Opinion
The 1st of May is a traditional day in many European countries where members and supporters of trade unions demonstrate for better working conditions. I participated with some friends of mine and had a discussion about basic income with one of them. He is a member of a German trade union and skeptical about basic income as many other members (Gewerkschafterdialog Grundeinkommen 2013). His main argument against basic income is that it would further weaken the position of trade unions and thus impair working conditions.
I have to admit I share his position that trade unions are an important support for employees in order to achieve their rights and fair wages. First, it is hardly possible for an individual to know all necessary information for a successful wage negotiation. Information available is mind blowing and time required to process information is rare. Second, it is difficult to keep track with amendments in the law and developments on the labor market for a person who is only confronted with this topic once a year. Third, one person has rarely the same impact in negotiations as a group of people. Fourth, a person might not have required negotiation skills compared to a trade union with professional negotiators who have training in negotiation. The lack of information, time and skills, thus, make trade unions important for employees.
There has been the argument a basic income would not only provide people with necessary recourses for a life in dignity but also with time for education and training (Howard 2005; Pasma 2010; Standing 2002, 2009). It would be easier to gather information or acquire necessary skills. Both would improve the position of an individual in wage negotiation.
This does not mean that the situation would become perfect and trade unions would be redundant. They would be still important for educating and uniting people. Sometimes, however, I experience members of trade unions terrified exactly from this idea of a situation where they are redundant and have to start recovering from redundancy. I experience them like doctors who fear a world without diseases because they would not have to heal anyone any longer.
In my point of view, this is a contradiction. Should it not be the aim of trade unions to create an environment where employees have equal powers compared to employers? Should it not be the goal of trade unions to empower employees so they can choose the support of trade unions but do not have to rely on them?
If the answer is yes, I hardly understand the rejection of basic income by trade unions. Basic income would allow employees to say no. They would be able to refuse working conditions they dislike. They would be closer to be on a par with employers as they are nowadays.
It, therefore, is time for trade unions to learn basic income is a helpful instrument to achieve their aims and to drop the fear of independent and empowered employees.
Resources:
Howard, M. W. (2005) Basic Income, Liberal Neutrality, Socialism and Work. In: Widerquist, K., Lewis, M. A. & Pressman, S. (eds.) The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. Ashgate, Aldershot.
Gewerkschafterdialog Grundeinkommen (2013) Stimmen. https://www.gewerkschafterdialog-grundeinkommen.de/stimmen Accessed 05/05/2013.
Pasma, C. (2010) Working Through the Work Disincentive. Basic Income Studies 5 (2), 1–20.
Standing, G. (2002) Beyond the New Paternalism. Verso.
Standing, G. (2009) Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, the UK ;, Northampton, MA.
by Yannick Vanderborght | Apr 29, 2013 | Opinion
Considering that the ongoing global crisis has led to massive unemployment, particularly in Europe, and has left many people in despair, groups of citizens from 15 European Union countries have launched an initiative to request the EU to examine the feasibility of an Unconditional Basic Income.
The idea behind an Unconditional Basic Income is to allow for a better distribution of work opportunities, thus supporting decent living conditions for everyone. Such an Unconditional Basic Income must be universal, individual and high enough to be a radical tool for fighting inequalities and poverty.
The Basic Income would also be a way to simplify many welfare benefit rules and procedures, and would not replace the welfare state but would transform it from a weak compensatory one into an emancipatory welfare state.
The broad collaboration of European groups and citizens from 15 countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom) that has been preparing this campaign shows that the long-standing idea of a Basic Income is gaining momentum.
After registration of the European Citizens’ Initiative by the EU-Commission early this year, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have also joined the coordinating group of the campaign.
In addition to those of the coordinating group (“European Citizens’ Committee”) we have already obtained signatures from all 27 countries of the EU (see Figure: “Statistic for the first month of online signatures”).
The organizers of the initiative invite everybody to sign their support on the joint website https://basicincome2013.eu
It is also possible to support the campaign by filling in forms. In other words, you do not need to have internet access. We must maximize the number of signatures by 14 January 2014, to be given for evaluation to the national authorities in all 27 Member States.
Our next European coordination meeting will take place on 27 May 2013 (with a public event on the evening before) in Köln. One item to be considered will be the proposal for an International Week of Unconditional Basic Income, to be held from September 16 to 22, 2013.
So we hope we will obtain the required 1 million signatures, while reaching a minimum threshold in at least 7 Member States, which is a necessary condition to reach the first step of the European Citizens’ Initiative. Once that has been achieved, there must be a public hearing in the EU-Parliament, offered by the EU-Commission, and then the EU-Commission will decide what will be done further.
Please sign the European Citizens Initiative and inform other persons by your media (e-mail, Newsletter, Website, facebook, twitter, print media, etc.) asking for support!
https://basicincome2013.eu
by Yannick Vanderborght | Apr 15, 2013 | Opinion
A very positive sign that the Unconditional Basic Income proposal is advancing in the Americas is that a “Ley Marco de La Renta Básica”, “Draft Basic Income Framework Law”, was approved by the General Session of the Parlatino, Parlamento Latino Americano [Latin American Parliament], held last November 30th, 2012, in Panama City. After three preparatory meetings of the Commission of Economic Affairs of the Parlatino in Aruba, Curacao and Buenos Aires, with the cooperation of the Representatives Rodrigo Cabezas Morales, from Venezuela, President of the Commission, Maria Soledad Vela Cheroni, from Ecuador, Ricardo Berois, from Uruguay, and myself, during which the proposal was discussed, it was finally presented as a model for all the parliaments of all 23 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
This Ley Marco de la Renta Basica takes into account what is considered in the Brazilian Law, approved by the National Congress, by all parties, both in the Federal Senate, in 2002, and in the Chamber of Deputies, in 2003, and then sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in January 8th, 2004: The Citizen’s Basic Income will be introduced step by step, under the Executive criteria, taken into account first those most in need, such as the Bolsa Família Program does.
The Brazilian population in 2013 is around 194 million inhabitants. According to the Bolsa Família Program, all families with a monthly income per capita up to R$ 140.00 can benefit from the program with the following rules:
If the per capita family income is below R$70.00 per month, the initial basic benefit to the family is R$ 70.00. In addition, for all families with income per capita below R$ 140.00 per month, they have the right to receive R$ 32.00, R$ 64.00, R$ 96,00, R$ 128.00 or R$ 160.00 if the family has, respectively, one, two, three, four or more children up to the age 15 years and 11 months, plus R$ 38.00 or R$ 76.00 if the family has one or two adolescents, respectively, from 16 to 18 years of age.
There are some conditionalities: if the mother is pregnant, she must do the pre-natal health exam in the Public Health System of the region where she lives. The children up to six years of age must be taken by their parents to the Health System to take the necessary vaccines, according to the Health Ministry’s calendar. The children aged seven to 15 years and eleven months must be in school at least 85% of the classes. The adolescents aged 16 to 18 must attend at least 75% of the classes in school.
In January 2013 there were 18.491.302 families in Brazil with per capita income up to R$ 140.00 per month that, therefore, would be allowed to get the benefits of the Bolsa Família Program. By March 2013, there were13.872.243 families enrolled in the Bolsa Família Program that is 75% of those who, by law, are entitled to enroll in the program. Since there are around 3.5 people in each family among the relatively poor, we may say that almost one fourth of the Brazilian population of 194 million today benefits from the Bolsa Família Program.
Since June 2011, President Dilma Rousseff has launched the Active Search process through which all levels of government and social organizations of all kinds should help in finding those families with the right to have the Bolsa Família benefit and that have not been identified and enrolled in the program yet. Since March, 2013, all families enrolled in the Bolsa Família program with at least one child up to 15 years and eleven months of age whose monthly family income, plus the Bolsa Família benefits, does not reach the sufficient to provide at least R$ 70.00 per capita, the Federal Government, through the so called Brasil Carinhoso or Brazil Care Program, will provide what is needed to complete the monthly R$ 70.00 per capita to the family. Through this measure the government is trying to guarantee that all Brazilian families, from now on, have at least R$ 70.00 per capita per month.
One day, I hope in the near future, we will be able to make the transition from the Bolsa Família Program towards the Citizen’s Basic Income, not only in Brazil, but in all countries of the three continents of the Americas.
Link to the Draft Basic Income Framework Law approved by the Parlatino:
https://www.usbig.net/papers/Palestra%20USBIG2013_English.doc
