by Kristine Osbakken | Apr 20, 2015 | Opinion
Have you ever thought of a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) for absolutely everyone? The 14th USBIG Congress held in conjunction with Canada BIG was just held in Manhattan, and a friend with frequent flyer miles got me there. Presenters from across the globe shared perspectives on how to equalize the obscene income gap and confront the unrelenting increase in job loss due to technology, robots, the chip.
In 2007/2008, Wall Street criminals were bailed out to the tune of trillions, while news reports began to predict no uptake in the economy till 2017. Who wasn’t aghast? Who determined such a forecast and weren’t there going to be new policies to get people back to work? Seems not. As much as we hear of declining unemployment, we know that such figures discount and dismiss the long-term unemployed. The ‘service industry’ promised us by Bill Clinton has resulted in millions of underpaid workers. The right has taken out the unions.
Last year, the Democrats in our own Minnesota legislature did not find it fit to vote sick leave a worker’s right, and came up with a minimum wage of, voila: $9.50 an hour. That’s compensation of about $20,000 a year, thousands less after deductions and next to nothing if you have to pay for day care. I made $20,000 a year in the mid 70’s as a teacher in Philadelphia. That’s approximately what I make 40 years later as a substitute teacher in ISD 709, but now with absolutely no bennies.
No wonder a Basic Income makes unprecedented political progress, and around the world. Sean Healy of Social Justice Ireland dramatized the scenario, showing a bar graph with the thinnest of lines representing the wealth of the bottom 20%, and bars and bars of wealth so high they couldn’t even fit onto the graph for the top quintile. Marshall Brain of North Carolina State and author of the 60 million hit website “How Things Work” envisioned a visit by extraterrestrial creatures who take note of: 10,000 nuclear missiles, massive poverty for billions, environmental destruction, gigatons of carbon in the air, extinction, burgeoning prisons, religious strife, war, disease, millions of dying children, mass surveillance, nations, racism/sexism/homophobia. Their conjecture: ‘humans appear to be insane. Hundreds own everything while billions starve.’ Brain isn’t sure that our species can agree on anything, so that in a few decades humans will be forced to totally yield to silicon intelligence. He sees BIG as a route out of this and to a rational existence.
Frances Fox Piven of CUNY: “welfare as we know it regulates the poor and is bent to keep people at the low rungs of society. And the US has been losing its low level programs.” (In Minnesota, ‘welfare’ stipends have not risen for 27 years, and if you’re a low-income worker, you’re denied a living wage and benefits.) “Human needs for caring for old and young cannot be met. Many work multiple jobs…we must have a political strategy and ally with groups who rally for improvements in unemployment insurance and social security. We must leave behind the old left ideas of full employment (wage slavery) and economic growth—global warming won’t permit either.”
Speaker Willie Baptist (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) talked about building a new poor people’s campaign because conditions in Watts are now found in all communities. Marion Kramer and Sylvia Orduno from Detroit Welfare Rights Organization explained the hell Michigan residents are experiencing. Automation took the good paying jobs with benefits, and now Marion’s son can’t even collect unemployment when he’s laid off from what part time jobs are available. Detroit’s water plan, developed in the 90’s and based on income, was never implemented. So that the water supply for 30,000 people was recently shut off. And when water is shut off, the MI government can take your children. What Kramer called ‘the beginning of fascism in Michigan’ includes the Mackinac Plan to sell off public assets, charter schools replacing public schools, the assault on public employees, and taxation of pensions. Orduno said potentially a quarter million people risk losing their houses because unaffordable water bills are being billed to their taxes. She expressed a bond with the people of Northern Minnesota over water issues, ours due to impending sulfide mining.
Alaska was continually brought up as an example of BIG, with residents receiving yearly checks from oil revenues. Eduardo Suplicy, a former member of the Brazilian Senate, had pushed for and obtained passage of a bill that would ferret out implementation of a guaranteed income. The first stage was initiated as a stipend to the poor for enrolling their children in school. Suplicy urged us to sign a letter to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to resurrect the aging bill and get it off the back burner.
Recent articles on a Basic Income Guarantee have appeared in the pages of The Economist and the Washington Post and there’s a community on Reddit that is closing in on 25,000 subscribers. That’s not to mention the huge number of signatures collected for the European Citizen’s Initiative and the successful campaign for a Basic Income referendum in Switzerland.
In just the last few months, the momentum among political parties and leaders has also picked up. The Green Party worldwide has of course had Basic Income on its policy agenda for quite some time, but recently the general conference of the Liberal Party in Canada approved two motions towards a Basic Income, one in favor of a federal pilot program and one in favor of implementation. This is after the premier of the Canadian Province of Prince Edward Island, Robert Ghiz of the Liberal party, called for a pilot program for a Guaranteed Minimum Income in the form of a Negative Income Tax, and the leader of the provincial opposition party, the NDP, called for a similar Basic Income Guarantee.
Kristine Osbakken, Duluth, MN
krissosbakken@gmail.com
by Liam Upton | Apr 20, 2015 | News
The Centre Party, a party which is in support of Basic Income, will become the largest party in the Finnish parliament, after winning yesterday’s election.
They received 21% of the vote with 99% of votes counted. Other Basic Income-supporting parties, the Green League and the Left Alliance were on 8% and 7% respectively. This is a big gain for both the Centre Party and the Green League but is a reduction in support for the Left Alliance. The second and third biggest parties respectively were the conservative NCP party and the populist True Finns. As a result, the Centre Party is predicted to form a ruling coalition with these two parties.
While the Centre Party has come out in support of Basic Income, it is not certain where these other two parties lie on the issue and whether we would see some movement on Basic Income with these parties in government. The leader of the NCP and former prime minister, Alexander Stubb has expressed his support for Basic Income in parliament, however, the policy is not mentioned in his party’s manifesto. The True Finns have made no statements about the policy.
In a recent poll of candidates for the election by state news organisation YLE, 57% of NCP candidates were opposed to Basic Income while 87% of Centre Party respondents and 57% of True Finns respondents were in favour.
Though this coalition is more likely, a centre-left coalition with the Social Democratic Party (16.5%), the Greens and the Left Alliance is also a possibility. The Greens and Left Alliance already favour Basic Income and while it is not part of the SDP’s platform, 53% of their candidates are in favour according to the above-mentioned poll.
A public opinion poll on the issue earlier this year by a think tank associated with the Centre Party showed 79% of the public in favour of Basic Income.
For more information, see:
YLE, “Polls close in Finnish election“, YLE, 19 April 2015
Johanna Perkiio, “Finland: the opposition leader proposes Basic Income pilots”, Basic Income News, 9 October 2014
Stanislas Jourdan, “Finnish Green Party updates its Basic Income policy”, Basic Income News, 17 February 2015
Stanislas Jourdan, “Finland: 65% of parliamentary candidates favour Basic Income”, Basic Income News, 12 March 2015
by Jenna van Draanen | Apr 9, 2015 | News
The French Movement for Basic Income group is proposing a new pilot project that will reform the existing welfare program (RSA) to become unconditional and remove the job search requirement currently associated with it, among other changes. This proposal calls on the new Departmental Council elected in March to implement the pilot program, and in doing so, move closer to a basic income in France.
Jean-Eric Hyafil, “Expérimenter le RSA inconditionnel dans les départements” [Trying out the unconditional RSA in the Department] Mouvement Francais pour us Revenu de Base, March 19, 2015.
by Josh Martin | Apr 3, 2015 | News
Howard’s post is framed in the modern slavery debate, where a world opposed to slavery still has failed to eradicate it. He argues that a basic income could help fight slavery through its emancipatory nature by citing the recent pilot project in India that freed many of the poorest people from needing to work with moneylenders to make ends meet. Basic income empowers people to say no to bad jobs and say yes to the good ones thanks to economic security.
Neil Howard, “Basic Income and the Anti-Slavery Movement”, Open Democracy, 12 March 2015.
by Joerg Drescher | Mar 31, 2015 | News
After the crimes in World War II dignity became part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of many constitutions. The Ukrainian constitution also contains a right to be treated dignified. In the German constitution the first task of the state is to respect and protect the human dignity.
But who or what is a state?
Georg Jellinek, a German political philosopher in the 19th century defined: state territory, constitutive people and state power. It is comprehensible, that a territory cannot treat somebody dignified, but people and the state power can do. In principle, the members of the state power are also part of the constitutive people, but they have another status with the task to fulfil what is written in the constitution.
Does this mean, only the state power is responsible for dignity in a state? Of course not! The state power can only define the framework wherein dignity is possible.
However, what does dignity mean?
The German word for dignity, “Würde,” is closely related with the word “Wert” – value. In former times it described the rank, the prestige or merit of a person. But since the time of the enlightenment the German meaning has chanced to an abstract moral value. Immanuel Kant, for instance, described dignity as absolute inner value, which cannot be compensated. Each human being is unique and irreplaceable. In principle, dignity means the unconditional recognition of a human as human. “Unconditional” says, that dignity cannot be purchased or reduced by a particular behaviour. (The case of Breivik in Norway is a good example, because he was treated with dignity despite his killing of 77 people)
However, dignity is related to a concept of human. But this concept is less connected to the question “How is a human?” “How to be human” (actions of a human), but rather to the question “What is a human?” in the sense, what makes a human a human.
A natural scientist might answer, that a human is a living being, which pursues metabolism within an area until its death. For that, a human has certain skills and attributes which could pursue him to search for reliable ways (like reading on Gundry MD reviews, for instance) so that he can provide this metabolism. This means, in the eyes of a natural scientist, dignity would be given, if a human has “dignified” conditions to pursue its metabolism: give some food, clothes, and a dwelling, that a human can live “appropriate to its species” and voila – a human is a human.
Scholars of the liberal arts, such as philosophers, would not be satisfied and want to find differences, which raise humans from animals.
One thesis is, that humans have unlike animals a conscious freedom to choose, which is almost independent of instincts. External borders of this freedom are given by physical laws – a human cannot do everything that it wants (e.g. fly in the sky or travel on water without tools). Internal borders can be seen in moral ideas – not everything that a human can do is allowed. This inner borders are built during life and they are influenced by the respective society. Thus, dignity can be understood as achievement of civilization: to see a human in a foreign human and to respect its personhood.
What possibilities do a state have to guarantee dignity?
If dignity is something that we learn, education plays an elementary role. This is why states decide on the main content of basic education.
If dignity is something which is connected with freedom, it is the task of the state to guarantee this freedom. For that purpose there are state institutions as for example the police.
If dignity has something to do with a human’s ability to develop as human by developing its potentials and skills, it is the task of the state to define such a framework, that each human can do so freely.
And in this area there is an idea: Each person should receive monthly a sum from the state, to be able to live. Work is divided from livelihood. This idea has different names – basic income, guaranteed minimum, citizen’s income and others. In principle this state payment can be seen as monetary equivalent of dignity. The payment is also unconditional and it differs from social help, while no (often “not dignified”) proof of neediness must be given.
This lecture was held on 30th March 2015 in Kiev/Ukraine at the international conference “Philosophy of humans as way of humanism and dignity.” After the so called “Revolution of dignity” in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 when several people were killed by state security personnel, the search for new solutions in Ukraine is very high.
