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.
OPINION: Report on rights and poverty conference in Strasbourg
On 21 and 22 February, 2013 in the building of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, a conference took place entitled Poverty and Inequality in Human Society. Proposals for an inclusive society. The Conference was opened by Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe. In his talk, he seemed somewhat in favor of a basic income, although his posture indicated that he did not wholeheartedly come forward for the idea.
Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life
The thesis of this book is that there is a ‘good life’ which can be defined independently of our subjective desires, and that it is possible to determine the elements of that good life and some of the means for attaining it. The first chapter sets out from Keynes’...
Simon Birnbaum, Basic income Reconsidered: Social justice, liberalism, and the demands of equality
‘Radical liberalism ... holds a substantial universal and unconditional tier of social rights to be one of the ideal requirements of liberal-egalitarian justice.’ (p.8) Equality and freedom can and should be pursued at the same time, a universalist welfare state is...
OPINION: The One Minute Case for a Basic Income
"What? You think the government should just give everybody money?! Regardless of whether they worked for it or not? Regardless of whether they even need it or not? Why do you think *that* would be a good idea?" You are out in public. It just came up that you...
OPINION: Can Basic Income Cash Transfers Transform India?
Since the 1990s, on average the Indian economy has been growing at over 6% a year. Yet hundreds of millions remain mired in poverty, and inequality has grown steadily. For decades, although there are 1,200 centrally-funded social policies on the statute books and hundreds more at state level, successive governments have relied largely on the Public Distribution System (PDS) to redress poverty.
European Citizens initiative: A historical campaign has been born
A one-year European-wide campaign for basic income aiming at collecting one million signatures has started.
Opinion: A report on the BIEN Congress 2012, Munich, 14th to 16th September
BIEN now stands for ‘Basic Income Earth Network’. Once every two years BIEN holds a congress, and this year’s showed just how appropriate the name now is and how inappropriate it would be to still call it the ‘Basic Income European Network’. There were participants...
Unconditional Basic Income is not a Wrong Way: Book Review
Book review of Irrweg Grundeinkommen: Die große Umverteilung von unten nach oben muss beendet werden [The Basic Income Aberration: The Great Redistribution from Bottom to Top Must be Ended] by Heiner Flassbeck, Friederike Spiecker, Volker Meinhardt and Dieter Vesper...
OPINION: Basic Income and the fear of self-reliance
Even if the term “emancipation” was devalued by feminism to a purely female topic, its original Latin meaning remains “to discharge a slave or adult child into self-reliance.” Thereby it is not a question of competence, but rather one of having the possibility and right to take responsibility.
OPINION: Basic Income, QE3 Plus, and the Euro crisis
By Gary Flomenhotf Not everyone follows the actions of central banks, such as the private bank cartel called the US federal reserve (the fed), but you should know what the fed is up to lately: QE3[1] PLUS! See article here. You may know that QE3 is a fed program to...
Opinion: Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income
My new book, Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory Of Freedom as the Power to Say No, now has a release date of February 28, 2013. Although I have edited or coauthored six other books, this is the first book I’ve written all by myself. It is also...
EDITORIAL: A Popular Legislative Initiative for a Guaranteed Citizenship Income in Spain
A Popular Legislative Initiative (PLI) for a Guaranteed Citizenship Income (GCI), already being presented to the network of notaries, and once to the Catalan Parliament, will start to collect signatures for the next 4 months. Syndicalist and collective entities giving their support to the PLI will have to make an important effort in order to get at least 50,000 signatures.
