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.
The Book is Dead (from 1996)
This piece was originally published in Cake: The Nonmusic Music Magazine in 1996. I reproduce it here because the original source is not available online. "The written word is alive..." but the book is dead, at least the bookstore anyway, and so is the CD, the record...
Make Way For Other Toys (from 1996)
This piece was originally published in Cake: The Nonmusic Music Magazine in 1996. I reproduce it here because the original source is not available online. The Magzine's format was to ask a musician to write on a theme other than music. The theme of this issue, which...
Current UBI Experiments: An update for July 2018
[This article is a draft chapter of my book, A Critical Discussion of UBI Experiments, adapted as a blog post] Like the experiments the 1960s and ’70s, the current round of experiments appears at a time when concern about poverty and inequality is rising and people...
Why Welfare Doesn’t Work: And What We Should Do Instead
Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye very often, but they can safely agree on one point: welfare doesn’t work. We must redesign this entire system. In the most prosperous nation in the world, it is ludicrous that children are growing up in the kind of deprivation we normally associate with developing countries.
The Bass Player (from 1997)
This piece was originally published in Cake: The Nonmusic Music Magazine in February 1997. I reproduce it here because the original source is not available online. "Ever since I was a young boy" I dreamed of doing the simple stuff while the guitar player shows off....
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.
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