BIEN | Opinion
Opinion Posts
Here you will find articles expressing opinions about current issues in the Basic Income debate. Opinions expressed are not necessarily the opinions of BIEN.
Blaming The Worker (from 1998)
This article was published by Chronogram Magazine in January 1998. I reproduce it here because the Chronogram does not keep its back issues from that long ago online. -Written mostly in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 1998
The Importance of the Indigenous Voice and Experience in the UBI discussion
Some indigenous nations within the United States may have answers to many of the biggest questions of basic income, due to their experience with basic income-like programs.
The Money-Making Ethic (from 1999)
This piece was originally published by the Chronogram Magazine in 1999. It's an early example of some ideas that still form a big part of my thinking. I reproduce it here because the Chronogram does not keep content from the 1990s online. -Hudson Valley, New York,...
Black Lives Don’t Matter in America
Apparently, black lives don't matter in America. For several years a lot of people have been pointing out that a lot of blacks--who aren't guilty of capital crimes--are getting killed by police and/or in questionable cases of self-defense. Any check of the stats will...
Review of “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.” (from 2014)
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in June 2014. This book was recommended to me a a technology-based argument for the basic income guarantee (BIG), and it is, but its support is tentative and only for BIG in the form of the...
Smaller dividends should inspire a change to “percentage of market value” formula for calculating the Permanent Fund payout (from 2012)
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in December 2012. This year Alaskans received a dividend of $878, not bad compared to all the other states, but this dividend is the smallest since 2005, and it is only the second time in more than...
Portugal: Unconditional Basic Income of All for All
Capitalism does not inherently have a mechanism to guarantee essentials for all. Let us resurrect from our ancestral economic way its essential element: solidarity among people.
Fox News Praises the Alaska Model (from 2012)
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in August 2012. Last February two conservative commentators, Bill O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs, from the Fox News Network, praised the Alaska Dividend as “a perfect Model” of what America should be doing with...
Economic Security for All: Questions about Chris Hughes’ Guaranteed Income Proposal
Hughes advocates what he calls a guaranteed income (GI) and is clear about how his proposal differs from a universal basic income (UBI). A UBI would periodically provide everyone with a certain amount of money without any means-test or work requirement. Hughes’ guaranteed income proposal has two provisions which distinguish it from a UBI: it is means-tested and it does have a work requirement.
Karl Widerquist’s Speaking Engagements Summer-Fall 2018
This summer and fall I'll give at least ten talks in seven cities in six countries including the United States, Canada, France, Scotland, Finland, and Lithuania. Here's the information I have on each talk so far: Friday, May 18, to Sunday, May 20, 2018, keynote...
How Alaska Can Avoid the Third Stage of the Resource Curse (from 2012)
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in February 2012. The resource curse, as I see it, comes in three different forms. Alaska has avoided the first two, but whether it avoids the third remains to be seen. The first-stage resource curse occurs when...
No Time for Austerity (from 2011)
This essay was originally published on Basic Income News in December 2011. I can’t believe the news. We are in the midst of the worst global depression in 70 years, and the governments of almost every major industrialized country are talking about austerity. They’re...
