by Kate McFarland | Sep 18, 2016 | News
The fourth Forum des Idées Pour le Québec (“Forum for Ideas for Québec”) will take place at Champlain College from September 23 through 25. It will focus on social policies–including a special session devoted to the idea of a guaranteed minimum income (GMI) for Canada and Québec.
Organized by the provincial Liberal Party, Parti libéral du Québec, the Forum des Idées Pour le Québec is an annual nonpartisan gathering, featuring lectures and panel discussions on major social and political issues facing the province.
Philippe Couillard CC BY-SA 3.0 Asclepias
The head of the provincial government, Premier Philippe Couillard, will be present for the event. Couillard has made a promotional video for the event, which highlights its attention to the GMI.
The session on GMI, which is scheduled for September 24, will feature four highly prominent basic income researchers and advocates:
- Yannick Vanderborght, Professor at Université de Louvain and Université de Bruxelles, associate editor of Basic Income Studies and founding editor of Basic Income News.
- Jurgen de Wispelaere, a visiting researcher at the University of Tampere who has worked on the design of Finland’s basic income experiment and written extensively on basic income.
This session will be chaired by Jean-Marie Bézard, vice-president of the Forum Scientific committee and Director of Plénitudes, Prospective & Management.
Other issues to be addressed include poverty, inequality, pay equity, and coordinating social interventions across a territory.
Visit the event page for more information. Registration is limited, and typically sells out weeks before the event.
Two public discussions of guaranteed minimum income and universal basic income will take place in Québec in the following week (September 27 and 28).
Reviewed by Jenna van Draanen
Québec flag photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Mathieu Thouvenin
Thanks also to my supporters on Patreon
by Kate McFarland | Sep 6, 2016 | News
Economist Daniel Raventós — head of Red Renta Básica, BIEN’s Spanish affiliate — will be participating in a debate hosted by the College of Social Work at the University of Alicante. The debate, which will take place on September 7, concerns the topic of “social intervention beyond the basic income”.
Other participants include Maria Dolores Soler (President of the College), Mercè Martínez (Director General of Social Services), and Angel Elias (Dean of the School of Labor Relations and Social Work at the University of the Basque Country).
For more information, and to learn about future events, see the event page on Red Renta Básica’s site.
Reviewed by André Coelho
Photo: Alicante Castle, CC BY-NC 2.0 Francisco Martins
by Michael Lytton | Jul 12, 2016 | News
Abhijit V. Banerjee. Credit to: Financial Times
On June 18, The Indian Express—an English-language daily newspaper, published an article about the Swiss vote on UBI. The piece titled “The best way to welfare,” was written by Abhijit V. Banerjee, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (His book—co-authored by Esther Duflo—Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, won the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award)
Banerjee says that although the Swiss voted against a universal basic income, polls conducted after the referendum suggest that the debate is not over. He gives two reasons, the first being the widespread concern, especially in the West, about the future of work. An increasing topic of concern is that absent a radical reassessment of the fundamentals of how our economy works, there could be an enormous population of permanently unemployed whose jobs have become superfluous by automated and intelligent machines.
Banerjee then says the UBI debate is still alive because our current welfare systems are fragmented, bureaucratic and overly complicated. He reminds readers that reshaping its social security system is the primary purpose of Finland’s basic income experiment, scheduled to take place in 2017–2018, an experiment he says that is ‘clearly relevant’ for India.
For more information on the Finland experiment, read the Basic Income News reports listed below.
Banerjee cites Renana Jhabvala, an Indian social worker who gained prominence through her work on behalf of women in the informal economy, and, with Guy Standing among others, co-edited Basic Income: A Transformative Policy for India (published by Bloomsbury in 2014). The book reports on the results of three basic income schemes piloted in India between 2010 and 2013, in which 6,000 individuals received completely unconditional monthly cash payments. The book was reported in a Basic Income News item, December 8, 2014.
A summary of results of the project was released on the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) website. On the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) website, Guy Standing reports on the main outcomes of the social experiment. The UNRISD also hosted a seminar on May 13th 2016, titled “Informality and Income Insecurity: Is Basic Income a Universal Solution?”. Seven speakers are also featured in videos as part of this event.
Jhabvala estimates that there are more than 350 separate welfare programs in the India. “Why not,” says Banerjee, “have one universal basic subsidy that covers everything (perhaps except health and education) and let people decide how they will spend it, rather than trying to target subsidies based on our imperfect knowledge of what people need and deserve?”
Credit to: Give Directly
The immediate benefits are reduced poverty and less red tape, enabling the bureaucracy to be deployed elsewhere. And potentially the poor might use their financial security to plan their lives more effectively and invest in their families and businesses.
Finally, Banerjee mentions another pilot project, announced in April 2016 by the NGO GiveDirectly, that will test a universal basic income in Kenya. The plan is to provide at least 6,000 Kenyans with a basic income for 10 to 15 years. The parameters of the study are that it generates unbiased and transparent estimates of impact, that it is a long-term commitment, and that it is operationalized within well-defined communities. Banerjee is among a group of academic researchers who will test the impacts of the experiment.
More information at:
Stanislas Jourdan, “FINLAND: Government Forms Research Team to Design Basic Income Pilots,” October 15th 2015.
Vito Laterza, “FINLAND: Basic income experiment – what we know”, December 9th 2015.
Tyler Prochazka, “Dylan Matthews, ‘Finland’s hugely exciting experiment in basic income, explained”, December 13th 2015.
Kate McFarland, “FINLAND: KELA has sent preliminary report to Prime Minister”, April 5th 2016
Give Directly website
Wikipedia, “Renana Jhabvala“, 16th May 2016
Wikipedia, “Abhijit Banerjee“, 20th May 2016
Wikipedia, “Poor Economics“, 26th March 2016
by Kate McFarland | Jun 1, 2016 | News
Last January, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator released a Request for Research on the effects of a basic income. Over 1000 people applied to lead Y Combinator’s proposed experiment.
In a blog post on Tuesday, May 31, company president Sam Altman revealed the identity of the chosen Research Director — Dr. Elizabeth Rhodes, who recently completed a PhD in Social Work and Political Science at the University of Michigan — and announced plans for a short-term pilot study in Oakland.
According to a report in CNN Money, the research team at Y Combinator has not yet determined who will participate in the pilot or how much money each will receive, but it places the amount between $1,000 and $2,000 per month.
About the Oakland pilot, Altman says, “Our goal will be to prepare for the longer-term study by working on our methods–how to pay people, how to collect data, how to randomly choose a sample, etc.”
He goes on:
In our pilot, the income will be unconditional; we’re going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country—anything. We hope basic income promotes freedom, and we want to see how people experience that freedom.
If the pilot goes well, we plan to follow up with the main study. If the pilot doesn’t go well, we’ll consider different approaches.
Altman’s announcement produced a flurry of interest almost immediately. Within hours, the news had been covered in CNN Money, Vice’s Motherboard, Fortune, Tech Insider, and Tech Crunch, among other media outlets. (See below for links.)
Y Combinator President Sam Altman
Photo Credit: TechCrunch via flickr
References
Sam Altman, “Moving Forward on Basic Income,” Y Combinator Posthaven.
Kate Conger, “Y Combinator announces basic income pilot experiment in Oakland,” Tech Crunch, May 31, 2016.
Jason Koebler, “100 People in Oakland Will Get Free Money as Part of a Basic Income Experiment,” Motherboard, May 31, 2016.
Kia Kokalitcheva, “Y Combinator Wants to Test a Revolutionary Economic Idea,” Fortune, May 31, 2016.
Sara Ashley O’Brien, “Why some Oakland residents won’t have to worry about rent,” CNN Money, May 31, 2016.
Chris Weller, “Silicon Valley’s biggest startup accelerator just announced the leader of its groundbreaking basic income experiment,” Tech Insider, May 31, 2016.
Photo of Oakland (Upper Rockridge neighborhood) CC rbotman1, Wikimedia Commons
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (To see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News, click the link.)
by Kate McFarland | May 29, 2016 | News
Dr. James Mulvale, Dean and Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, believes that basic income is an idea whose time has come — as he articulates in a TEDx talk held at the University of Manitoba in April 2016.
The abstract for the talk summarizes, “By providing an economic floor for everyone in Canada, basic or guaranteed income would simplify and streamline our income security system, lower rates of poverty and inequality, and would enable us to advance environmental sustainability in the context of a steady state economy.”
Watch the full lecture on YouTube here.
Dr. Mulvale also recently participated in a debate on a basic income for Canadians and co-chaired the planning committee for the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress, which took place at the University of Manitoba from May 11-14.
Image: University of Manitoba (from Wikimedia Commons)
