BIEN | News
News on the global Basic Income debate
USA: Cash transfers to victims of Hurricane Harvey: a useful experiment
GiveDirectly, a nonprofit organization currently most known for unconditional cash transfers in East Africa, has decided to distribute cash among Hurricane Harvey victims, starting with those afflicted in Rose City, Texas with a population of about 500 people...
GUATEMALA: ICEFI presents a book on the economic and social effects of a universal basic income in Guatemala from 2019 to 2030
Zone 10 - Guatemala City. With the support of the Swedish Embassy and Oxfam in Guatemala, the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI) has presented a new book entitled Universal Basic Income: More Freedom, More Equality, More Jobs, More...
SWITZERLAND: Zurich city parliament decides to examine a Basic Income pilot project for two city districts
In a 2016 vote regarding a Basic Income initiative in Switzerland (rejected by 76% of the people), two districts in Zurich voted in favor of the initiative. In November of 2017, the Zurich parliament accepted a parliamentary postulate that proposes the launch of a...
UK: A debate about the feasibility of Citizen’s Basic Income
Picture credit to: European Parliament On the 23rd November, Social Europe published an article by Bo Rothstein entitled ‘UBI: A bad idea for the welfare state‘: First, such a reform would be unsustainably expensive and would thereby jeopardize the state’s...
European survey reveals significant public support for Basic Income
50.8% in UK support implementation of BI, 49.2% oppose
International Labour Office report discusses Basic Income
…as a possible way of improving income security in face of the uncertain availability of jobs.
SCOTLAND: Scottish Government provides £250k to support feasibility work on BI pilots
Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities of the Scottish government announced that a fund of £250,000 is available for feasibility studies of the Basic Income pilots proposed in Scotland. In addition to the fund, the...
VATICAN: Basic income can’t be ignored, says Vatican expert
Charles Clark. Credit to: Michael Swan Writing for The Catholic Register, Michael Swan reports on a talk by Charles Clark, Vatican’s top economic advisor, at an interfaith conference on universal basic income (UBI), held in St. Michael’s College in Toronto on...
Portugal: Web Summit – Guy Standing’s Basic Income Panel
At the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 5th to 8th, Guy Standing took part in this big event. Over 60,000 participants from 170 countries attended the event; the event hosted about 1,200 speakers. Some speakers included influential individuals like Elon...
RSA Article: How Has Basic Income Progressed from Radical Idea to Legitimate Policy
Anna Dent, fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), recently wrote an article titled “How has Basic Income progressed from a radical idea to a legitimate policy?” In this article, Anna Dent looks for an explanation of...