by Karl Widerquist | Oct 5, 2014 | News
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Thursday, February 26 – Sunday March 1, 2015
The Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) is suddenly a major topic of conversation in America and around the world. Activist movements have sprung up to push for it. Recent articles in the popular press have discussed it as a part of strategies to address recession, poverty, inequality, carbon pollution, and technological unemployment. In an economy forcing increasing numbers of people into precarious employment situations, is BIG a necessary and achievable part of efforts to retrieve democratic social stability? Can we afford it? How will it affect the economy? Will the new activist movements for BIG take off?
USBIG
We invite participants to address these and other questions at the Fourteenth Annual North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress, which will take place in New York City starting Thursday, February 26 – Sunday March 1, 2015. The congress is organized by the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG) in cooperation with the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN/RCRG). It will be held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Economic Association (EEA). It will also include free event(s) to be held at other venues and announced later.
Featured speakers at the conference confirmed so far include Marshall Brain, futurist and author of How Stuff Works and Manna; Peter Barnes, environmentalist and author of Who Owns the Sky?, With Liberty and Dividends For All, and Capitalism 3.0; Ann Withorn, welfare rights activist and Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Boston, author of Serving the People: Social Services and Social Change and co-editor of For Crying out Loud: Women and Poverty in the U.S.; Jim Mulvale, Dean of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba and Vice-Chairperson of the Basic Income Canadian Network (BICN/RCRG), and Mary Bricker Jenkins, Professor of Social Work, Temple University, and US Welfare Rights Union leaders.
A major focus of this conference is to introduce BIG to new audiences and to explain why it matters to so many. Therefore, we invite participants either to present a paper or to organize a dialogue or a workshop. For example, we suggest submitting proposals for a dialogue about BIG and today’s social movements, which could focus on labor issues (full employment, minimum wage, etc.), on racial and gender justice, on environmental issues, on immigration concerns and so on. The goal is to engage an open conversation about the connections (and possible tensions) between movement activists and BIG supporters. A dialogue is not a debate, but an effort to promote discussion across movements. Alternatively, workshops might involve an exercise to bring out the group’s thoughts and feelings about some issue relating to BIG.
Everyone attending the events at the EEA Conference must register with the EEA and pay their registration fee. If you register as a USBIG participant, you can register for the EEA members’ price of $110 without paying the EEA’s membership fee—saving $65. All registered attendees of the North American Basic Income Congress are welcome to attend any of the EEA’s events. Participants attending only the free event(s) need not register. Details of those events will be announced later.
BICN
All points of view are welcome. To present a paper, to organize a workshop, or lead a dialogue at the congress, submit a proposal to the congress organizer, Karl Widerquist of USBIG, at Karl@widerquist.com.
Please include the following information with your proposal:
1. Name(s)
2. Affiliation(s)
3. Address
4. City, Province/State, Postal/Zip Code, and Country
5. Telephone
6. Email Address(es)
7. Title of Paper, Presentation, or Panel
8. Abstract or description of the presentation or workshop (50-150 words)
9. Indicate your availability for the free events, the paid events, or both.
Panels: Proposals for panel discussions should include a title, topic, and description of the panel and the names and contact information for each participant. For dialogues, only one or two moderators need to be listed.
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: November 10th, 2014
For updated information on featured speakers, registration, and accommodations as it becomes available, visit the USBIG website: www.usbig.net. For more information about the Eastern Economics Association Annual Meeting, visit the EEA website: https://www.quinnipiac.edu/eea/41st-annual-conference/.
Essential information:
Conference dates: Thursday, February 26 – Sunday, March 1, 2015
The deadline for participant submissions: November 10, 2014
Location: New York, NY
Organizing committee: Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com> (organizer), Ann Withorn <withorn.ann@gmail.com>, Shawn Cassiman <scassiman1@udayton.edu>, and Jurgen De Wispelaere <jurgen.dewispelaere@gmail.com>
Website: USBIG.net.
by Karl Widerquist | Sep 3, 2014 | News
The NYC Climate Convergence will hose a conference entitled, “Building a Broader Climate Movement: Universal Basic Income and the Transition to a Low-Carbon Economy,” at 7:00pm, Thursday, September 11, 2014, in The Commons Brooklyn, 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11217.
This is a free build-up event for the NYC Climate Convergence (www.convergeforclimate.org), a series of events and actions that will take place 9/19-9/21. See the website for registration and details.
Convergenceforclimate.org
Since the economic collapse of 2007-2008, calls for a universal basic income (or “Social Security for All”) have resurfaced in major outlets for the first time since the 1970s. While many of the voices calling for a UBI have come from outside established social movement groups, the UBI has tremendous potential to link the disparate movements of the left. It also may present a way of beginning to address perhaps the most urgent problem of our time–climate change.
Speakers:
Alyssa Battistoni is PhD student in political science at Yale University and an editor at Jacobin magazine.
Benjamin Kunkel is a founding editor of n+1 magazine and the author of Utopia or Bust. His play Buzz will be staged this fall in Brooklyn.
Michael Lewis is a social worker and sociologist on the faculty of the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. He’s interested in quantitative methods, public policy, and poverty and is the co-author of Economics for Social Workers and co-editor of The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee. Other articles he’s written have appeared in a number of peer-review journals.
Time & Date: 7:00pm, Thursday, September 11, 2014
Location: The Commons Brooklyn
388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11217
Host: NYC Climate Convergence
More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/283099725223819/
by Josh Martin | Jul 15, 2014 | News
[Josh Martin]
The 2014 BIEN International Congress took place in Montreal at McGill University from June 27 to June 29. Among the hundreds of attendees were academics from a variety of disciplines—economics, social work, development studies, philosophy, and many others—as well as community activists, politicians, and others simply interested in the idea of a basic income for all. The Congress generated press around the world for a few major reasons: some of the attendees started an international youth activist organization for the basic income, numerous papers were presented on the basic income, and, most significantly, the Basic Income Canada Network furthered its push for a $20,000 basic income for all Canadians.
Here are some of the news stories run around the world about the Congress:
Ahn Hyo-sang, “[Special report] Basic income movement gaining momentum worldwide.” The Hankyoreh, July12, 2014.
Benjamin Shingler, “$20,000 per person: Activists push for guaranteed minimum income for Canadians” The Globe and Mail, 29 June 2014.
The Canadian Press, “Guaranteed $20K income for all Canadians endorsed by academics”, CBC News, 30 June 2014.
Beryl Wajsman, “The fierce urgency for a guaranteed national income”, The Metropolitain, 30 June 2014.
Dan Delmar, “The Exchange Podcast with Dan Delmar,” CJAD 800AM Radio, 2 July 2014. [Discussion of BIG begins about 18 minutes into the broadcast.]
Mélanie Loisel, “Le revenu garanti est la voie de l’avenir, croit Blais”, Le Devoir, 30 June 2014.
Deirdre Fulton, “New Campaign Pushes for ‘Basic Income Guarantee’ in Canada“, Common Dreams, 3 July 2014.
Jacob Kearey-Moreland, “Universal Income Worth a Look”, Orilla Packet, 4 July 2014.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Oct 22, 2012 | Opinion
It is always interesting to read detailed arguments for a Citizen’s Income, but might I invite your readers to consider a broader reform programme which would entail a long-term foundation for the Citizen’s Income we all want to see? A reform programme which would reconcile socialism and capitalism? Of course a claim such as this cannot be fully argued in the space of a letter, but the principles can be simply stated.
The most important element in a new framework for the economy would be the evaluation of the social costs and benefits of each kind of enterprise and, through a system of levies and grants, their introduction into market prices. Other demands on industry and commerce, most notably taxation of profits, would cease. Taxation would be confined to individual participants in the economy, but in their capacity as citizens or residents paying for the benefits society brings them. The Citizen’s Income should not be paid for out of a levy on economic enterprise.
Society, for its part, should recognise its capital value as an instrument which makes enterprise possible. And it should translate this value into a practical tool by the creation of a sovereign wealth fund which would invest in stocks and shares at home and abroad in parallel with other funds. Income from the fund would be dedicated to the citizens, thus providing a funding base for a true citizen’s income, though the fund could also be used for collective initiatives. The model would be Alaska’s Permanent Fund. I leave on one side the priority support needed by those who cannot be expected to support themselves in the economy, that is: children, who are too young to work; the very elderly, who are past working; and people who suffer chronic sickness or disability.
The size of the fund ultimately required to make it worthwhile should not be underestimated. As to practicalities, nations such as China already have sovereign wealth funds. The way forward will become clearer once the principles and implications are widely understood. Even if one doesn’t want to go the whole way in redesigning the framework of the economy, the creation of a sovereign wealth fund surely provides a way forward by translating the value of society into a practical reality for the benefit of all its members without imposing a levy on the economy. At the same time, the fund would help to reduce the serious inequality in the ownership of our capital.
The way to pursue the objectives of a basic income needs to be looked at in the light of a reconciliation of socialism and capitalism, which has been the great unsolved problem of the last 100 years. The advent of globalisation has pointed up a way to do this.
The starting point is the recognition that it is no longer satisfactory to treat the economy as if it were simply society at work, the way in which its members make their living. Globalisation has made it as clear as can be that society needs to clarify and redefine the framework within which it allows the economy to operate.
Here are the principal elements of a new framework:
- Capitalism must be required to operate in its most competitive forms, subject only to the laws of the land and effective constraints on monopoly ( whilst recognising that some monopolies are an indispensable adjunct of privately owned initiatives ).
- Market prices of products and services must reflect social as well as private costs and benefits. These costs would include such things as the use of public communications systems, the consequences of pollution and effects on health of products sold.
- The most instructive example of this is the labour market. Employers provide the indispensable benefit to society of gainful work by its members. On the other hand they receive the benefit from society of a readily available labour force. Recognising their joint interest society and industry and commerce should jointly meet the cost of maintaining the supply of readily available labour. A great advantage of this approach is that employers of all kinds would immediately apply their minds to the invention and support of all kinds of scheme for reducing and even eliminating unemployment.
- Alongside this would be a requirement that all those participating in the economy must insure themselves against the risk of unemployment – through ill health or redundancy for example – under a system of mandatory minimum cover and optional higher levels. Society would no longer pay benefit to unemployed people capable of working.
- Profits as such would no longer be subject to tax, for which there would no longer be any justification. Taxation would be confined to individuals as citizens or visitors.
- Society would, of course, continue to play its own direct part in the economy through social enterprises such as health services, and education and, increasingly it seems, local and national collective initiatives.
We turn now to the changes in society itself which will secure the objectives of socialism alongside its wholehearted commitment to capitalism as the best way of maximising the national product. Society’s financial support for its members should be concentrated in the first place on those who cannot be expected to support themselves in the economy, that is: children, who are too young to work; the very elderly, who are past it; and those who are chronically sick or disabled. The funds for this support should be provided by the collective ownership of productive capital. The amount of capital required to generate the necessary income should not be underestimated. But support will gather as taxpayers realise that the demands on them will fall as the capital increases.
Beneficiaries would receive their income as of right but expenditure would be administered in a three-way partnership with a family carer, if any, and the state, normally represented by a dedicated social worker. The capital funds would be managed by professional investment managers alongside their commercial analogues.
Once we have provided for those who cannot operate in the economy income from the sovereign funds can be used to introduce a basic income for all. It is entirely right that this, rather than the income of working taxpayers, should be the source of the basic income.
by Karl Widerquist | Mar 31, 2012 | Research, The Indepentarian
Palgrave Macmillan, part of the Macmillan Group of publishers, is a global academic publisher of textbooks, journals, monographs, professional, and reference works. For several years now, the publisher been putting together a book series on the basic income guarantee. The new series, “Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee,” has released its first two books, Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism, and the Demands of Equality by Simon Birnbaum and Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model, edited By Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard (see the Recent Publications section below). Birnbaum’s book makes a social justice argument for basic income. Widerquist and Howard’s book considers the Alaska Dividend as model for basic income policies.
The series editors are Karl Widerquist, Associate Professor in philosophy at SFS-Qatar, Georgetown University; James Bryan, Professor of Economics, Manhattanville College; and Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor, Hunter College School of Social Work. They aim to publish two-to-three books per year initially.
Upcoming books in the series include: The Political Feasibility of the Basic Income Guarnatee edited by Richard Caputo; Basic Income in Latin America, edited by Rubén Lo Vuolo; Exporting the Alaska Model: Adapting the Permanent Fund Dividend for Reform Around the World, edited by Karl Widerquist and Michael Howard; Basic Income Guarantee: The Right to Economic Security, by Allan Sheahen; and Basic Income and the Free Market: Austrian Economics and the Potential for Efficient Redistribution, edited by Guinevere Nell.
For information about books available in the series go to: https://us.macmillan.com/series/ExploringtheBasicIncomeGuarantee
If you might be interested in writing or editing a book for the series, contact Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com>.
