by Craig Axford | Jul 14, 2014 | Opinion
During the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, the Basic Income Earth Network, at the request of its partner, Unconditional Basic Income Europe, signed an open letter to all candidates for the European parliament. The full text of the open letter follows.
Open Letter To All Candidates For The European Parliament
Given the commitment by the EU to reduce poverty by 20 million by 2020, most people want to know: What will you do to deliver results for people in the European Union? Did you know that according to the most recent data available, around one fourth of the EU population, that is about 120 million people, are at risk of poverty? However, given the prolonged economic crisis since 2008 and increasing automation of production permanently eliminating many jobs, there are reasons to believe that the situation will get even worse in the future if nothing changes.
Unconditional Basic Income Europe, which represents basic income networks and organisations in 25 EU countries, along with Basic Income Earth Network, with members all around the globe, would like to underline the current threat which income inequality represents to a peaceful, democratic and social Europe. Therefore we expect our newly elected representatives to support those strategies which will promote social cohesion and ensure sustainable and inclusive development in Europe. Our representatives should see the crisis as a wake-up call.
Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) is an amount of money, paid on a regular basis to each individual unconditionally and universally, high enough to ensure a material existence and participation in society. It differs from traditional guaranteed minimum income (GMI) / social security schemes by removing the bureaucracy and its costs as well as the stigma of means-testing. UBI also eliminates the disincentive to work caused by the high marginal tax rates (65-95%) imposed by these schemes.
Pilot studies throughout the world have proved that UBI is a far more effective tool for reducing poverty and inequality than traditional social security schemes and subsidies, with more positive effects on local economies, health, societal cohesion, public safety and education. An unconditional basic income implemented throughout Europe could also reduce tensions created by intra-EU immigration forced by lack of economic opportunity. It may seem like a radical proposal, but the current ‘business as usual’ attitude is not sustainable and endangers the EU itself.
We expect our representatives and the European Commission to take further serious and practical steps on the European Parliament resolution 2010/2039(INI) of 20 October 2010 on the role of minimum income in combating poverty and promoting an inclusive society in Europe.
Considering that the unemployment rate will gradually increase due to technological advancement while productivity increases, ordinary Guaranteed Minimum Income schemes are becoming less and less effective, leading to rising inequality and social exclusion – all these lead to conclusion that we need culture change to tackle these problems. If you are elected, will you raise a debate about unconditional basic income in the European Parliament and will you stand for implementing it in the EU?
The 9th of May is celebrated as Europe Day because of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. He had a strong vision of a Europe which was peaceful and prosperous for everybody without exception. Europe has become peaceful and prosperous, but not for everybody. Let´s finish the job Robert Schuman has started. What are we waiting for?
Undersigned by:
Unconditional Basic Income Europe
Basic Income Earth Network
The open letter was originally posted at: https://one-europe.info/initiative/open-letter-to-all-candidates-for-the-european-parliament
Sources about poverty in Europe and Unconditional Basic Income:
Ending Poverty is a Political Choice! https://www.eapn.eu/en/news-and-publications/press-room/eapn-press-releases/ending-poverty-is-a-political-choice
Short movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zru79jcVTt4
Recent interview with Prof. Philippe van Parijs, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL): “Van Parijs: An unconditional basic income in Europe will help end the crisis“ https://www.euractiv.com/sections/social-europe-jobs/van-parijs-unconditional-basic-income-europe-will-help-end-crisis-301503
For more profound insight, please watch the movie “Basic Income – a Cultural Impulse“ https://dotsub.com/view/26520150-1acc-4fd0-9acd-169d95c9abe1
Unconditional Basic Income Europe: https://basicincome-europe.org/
Basic Income Earth Network: https://basicincome.org
by Harry Pitts | Jun 29, 2014 | Research
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: ‘Philippe Van Parijs argues for a basic income for all legal residents of the European Union to be financed by Value Added Tax. Unlike the US, the EU lacks automatic inter-state transfers and migration between states is much less common. A universal basic income would serve as a buffering mechanism and enable a stronger recovery from economic downturns. It would also help the Union overcome the pressures of competitiveness, while the EU may also be seen as more legitimate and less of a heartless bureaucracy in the eyes of its residents.’
Philippe Van Parijs, “The Eurodividend: Why the EU should introduce a basic income for all”, LSE EUROPP Blog, 24th July 2013
Philippe Van Parijs
by Yannick Vanderborght | Jan 13, 2014 | Opinion
By Marina Pasetto Nóbrega.
We read the recent article by Philippe Van Parijs suggesting a Euro-dividend for all in the EU. That would represent about 200 Euros monthly to each and everyone, unconditionally. And, he points out, this minimum basic income or citizen’s income can be supplemented with income from labor, capital or social benefits. The author calculated that the total expenses amount to 10% of the EU’s GDP. Recently the citizens of Switzerland petitioned their parliament to examine a proposal for a basic income for all adults, amounting to about US$ 2,800/monthly. This is a mighty sum but Switzerland is a rich country with a small population. Iran, among economic changes applauded by the IMF, introduced an unconditional cash transfer that benefits 90% of its population. We would spare the readers of this newsletter the arguments that Van Parijs aligned to justify the proposal as they are most likely familiar to supporters of the basic income idea.
What we want to discuss is the way to turn the utopia into reality. 10% of the GDP is a sum that will be a formidable barrier to implementation of the benefit. We draw from the discussions we are having in a Brazilian city where there is a Municipal Council devoted to devise a way to start a basic income in steps, as required (in Brazil) by the 2004 law that created the benefit but still awaits regulation(1). Our government, as almost every government in democracies, has a bureaucracy that takes care of requests from the unemployed or underemployed. In Brazil 13.9 million means-tested families are receiving help from the Bolsa Familia program. That amounts to about 40 million persons, nearly 25% of our population. We would argue that the easier first step to initiate an unconditional and permanent basic income for all Brazilians is to target the present Bolsa Familia beneficiaries. Just turn the present benefits permanent and unconditional. The poverty trap will be eliminated. The bureaucracy can now search for the remaining poor and families or individuals that fall into economic vulnerability. Those will receive the permanent minimum income. The existing government social security network will be active monitoring those that enter the “precariat”, moving them to the minimum income shelter. We would claim that such a strategy would also be more palatable and less costly to the EU residents.
We also would like to stress the importance of the minimum income not only as a basic human right but as a necessary measure if we want to improve the safety and well-being of rich and poor because want will increase social unrest and crime for all. It will grant people, amidst the modern revolution in the job market, time to wait for new opportunities that we still cannot foresee or get training to qualify for existing or emerging jobs. The right to frugality independent of work seems relevant when a lot of people pay lip service against excessive consumption. A better life, for those without other means except the basic income, will also boost, we hope, communal arrangements to lower costs for all involved.
The modern situation that adds urgency, in our view, to the implementation of a basic income has been analyzed by scholars and we would like to mention just two studies: Brynjolfsson and McFee(2) have shown that notwithstanding a continuous rise in productivity, the last two decades exhibit a marked reduction in job opportunities. This modern decoupling is due to developments like electronic computation, robotics and artificial intelligence. Job openings are being reduced in a very marked way. Frey and Osborne(3) released a very interesting study of 702 occupations, charting out the many that are in the road to extinction due to the modern trends mentioned. In the US the authors estimate that 47% of jobs are at risk of being automated within a decade or two. Also a fundamental psychological barrier exists and resides in the deeply engrained notion that income has to be linked to work. People will have to overcome that as we did in the recent past with slavery, torture and the rights of women and minorities, finally embracing solidarity in the economic realm.
Anywhere we could hasten the arrival of the basic income dream by taking the stepwise approach, using the existing social agencies to permanently move into the unconditional minimum income the vulnerable.
1 Our proposal was presented in BIEN news in 2012 as “A three-step proposal to get to a basic income for all in Brazil”.
2 Race Against the Machine – how the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McFee, 2011, Digital Frontier Press, Mass, USA
3 The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013,
https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
We thank Jim Hesson for generously reviewing the text
by Karl Widerquist | Dec 14, 2013 | News
The platform of the Green Party of the United States endorses basic income. In Section IV: Economic Justice and Sustainability, part D, “Livable Income,” the party writes, “We call for a universal basic income (sometimes called a guaranteed income, negative income tax, citizen’s income, or citizen dividend). This would go to every adult regardless of health, employment, or marital status, in order to minimize government bureaucracy and intrusiveness into people’s lives. The amount should be sufficient so that anyone who is unemployed can afford basic food and shelter. State or local governments should supplement that amount from local revenues where the cost of living is high.”
Section IV part D of the party platform is online here.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Jun 28, 2013 | Opinion
Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler, The Change Book: Fifty models to explain how things happen, Profile Books, 2012, 1 78125009 9, hbk, vii + 167 pp, £9.99
For each of the fifty models there is a page or two of text and a page or two of diagrams. To give a flavour: There is a page about the ‘m=3 and n=1’ model: that is, we experience three dimensions of space and one of time. The text points out that the mathematics of quantum field theory can be formulated in rather more dimensions than that, but that more than three dimensions of space would offer too little stability, fewer than three insufficient complexity (and so no gravitation), and only a single time dimension permits causality inferences. (Readers beware: the authors have muddled up their ms and their ns.) The final paragraph theorises about a multiuniverse in which universes with different numbers of time and space dimensions are uninhabitable. The following page explains the situation with a diagram: and that’s wrong, too, because the text does foresee a universe with three spatial dimensions and more than one time dimension.
To take another, more successfully executed, example: a page of text explains why economic booms and busts occur (rising share prices attract investors, falling share prices prompt selling); and a diagram usefully portrays how expected share price varies more than earnings per share (which more nearly reflects economic reality).
The models are divided into ‘Explaining our world’ (the section containing the examples above), ‘Explaining my world’, ‘changing my world’, and ‘changing our world’. The divisions are somewhat arbitrary. Take the example in which we might be most interested in this Newsletter: the Basic Income Model is located in the ‘changing my world’ section, but could equally well have been included under ‘changing our world’.
The two pages of text on a Citizen’s Income (pp. 84-5) begin with a paragraph on problems facing our society (‘the death of the social’), and then describe a Basic Income as a ‘polemical as well as fascinating concept based on the idea that those who want to work should not be hindered and those who do not want to work should not be forced to do so’. The advantages of a Citizen’s Income are well described (‘There would be no more unemployment nor the social stigma attached to it’, ‘The job market would be “freer”, etc.), and possible disadvantages are faced: for instance, ‘a restrictive immigration policy’. The authors finally offer some questions: ‘Would people become lazy …?’
The authors are clearly rather taken with the idea of a Citizen’s or Basic Income, and their enthusiasm is welcome, but the fact that the book is all about ‘change’, and preferably change as radical as possible, a Citizen’s Income is described throughout as a world-changing policy. Rather than calling the pages ‘Basic Income’, they use the title ‘What would turn our society upside down’ (without a question mark); and in the text the idea is called ‘polemical as well as fascinating’. This might not be helpful. Another way of describing a Citizen’s Income is as a minor administrative change that would deliver appreciable economic and social benefits, and it is by framing the proposal in that way that we might be more likely to see movement towards establishing a Citizen’s Income.
The following two pages offer a very useful, and rather less polemical, diagram, showing the connections between the current benefits system and a system based on a Basic Income (wage labour, money, and social status) and the differences: minimal bureaucracy in place of lots, freedom in place of stigmatisation, a focus on potential rather than a focus on need, and good wages for bad jobs rather than bad wages for bad jobs. The only problem with the ‘Basic Income’ side of the diagram is that’s entitled ‘utopia’. It wouldn’t be.
In the edition of The Big Issue for the 14th to the 20th January Mikael Krogerus has written a two page article about The Change Book. The three models featured are about the pain that results from change, about how world governance might evolve, and about ‘What would turn our society upside down?’ (this time with a question mark) – and here he repeats the full text and diagram from the four pages in the book about Basic Income.
There is much food for thought in The Change Book, and particularly in the pages on a Citizen’s Income.
